“Not my ribs!” Catcher hissed. Ignoring him, I tossed ribs and fries at the dogs. They dove at them and immediately began to devour them. With the dogs occupied, we started across the yard to the porch.
“I can’t believe you just gave twenty dollar’s worth of ribs to two backwoods hound dogs,” Catcher grumbled.
“It was either the barbecue ribs or our ribs. Besides, you can stop by for more on the way home.”
“Fine.”
The front of the cabin was lined with flowerbeds and rose bushes that would be beautiful in the springtime. After climbing the steps, we walked tentatively across the incredibly worn floorboards.
As I rapped my knuckles on the gnarled wooden door, Catcher palmed his gun in his holster. After all, we didn’t know what might be lurking behind the door. A few moments passed, so I knocked again.
“What do you want?” a creaky, somewhat muffled voice questioned.
“Excuse the interruption, ma’am, but we need to speak to the Granny Witch.”
There was a flurry of locks being turned, and then the door swung open. A diminutive woman with a face lined like a road map stood before us in a faded calico housedress. Just like her daughter had said, she had a shotgun in the crook of her arm. With her size, I couldn’t help wondering how she possibly had the strength to lift it.
She narrowed her eyes at us. “I assumed you was looking for the Granny Witch. I sure as hell knowed you wasn’t a bunch of Jehovah’s Witnesses comin’ out chere to see if I knew God. I don’t believe Avon has ever called on me either.” She tilted her head at us. “The question is what do you want with me?”
Once again, Catcher took out his badge. But before he could explain what we were doing there, the little woman shook her head. “Randy’s dead.”
Catcher and I both stared at her open-mouthed. “How did you—” Catcher started to question.
She waved a weathered hand dismissively. “Saw it in the tea leaves this mornin’.”
My brows furrowed in confusion. “The tea leaves?”
The Granny Witch pursed her lips at me. “Yeah, girlie, ain’t ya never heared of readin’ tea leaves?”
Since my only reference of the reading of tea leaves was in Harry Potter and the Prince of Azkaban, I decided it was best just to say no. With a grunt, the Granny Witch grabbed the sleeve of Catcher’s shirt and dragged him inside. “Yer lettin’ out all the heat.”
“My apologies, ma’am. I didn’t want to be rude since we hadn’t been invited in,” Catcher explained as I followed the two of them in. I quickly shut the door behind me before the Granny Witch could yell at me…or put the evil eye on me.
The Granny Witch led us across the worn hardwood floor and motioned for us to have a seat on a lumpy looking couch with a seventies design. I couldn’t help stopping to wonder how the hell furniture was delivered out here.
“My name’s Holden Mains. What’s yours?”
“Olive Thornhill.”
I smiled. “What a small world. My name is Olivia.”
Olive didn’t seem to appreciate the similarities of our names quite like I had. She eased down into a creaky rocking chair next to the fire. “When did Randy die?”
“He was found three days ago.”
After nodding, Olive asked, “So what happened to him?”
“He was poisoned,” Catcher answered. I tried to hide my surprise at his response. I figured he must be playing some kind of mind game with her to see what kind of information he could get.
“Why you lie to me boy?”
“Excuse me?”
“You and I both know Randy wasn’t pizened. He was shot.” Of course, it took me a minute to decode pizened in her dialect to mean poisoned.
Catcher shot straight up off the couch. “How could you have possibly known that?”
Olive narrowed her eyes at him. “I done tole ya I seen it in the tea leaves.”
As the hair on my arms tweaked up, I started to feel like Catcher and I had stumbled into an episode of the Twilight Zone. I mean, it wasn’t like we hadn’t already experienced weird with Randy and two dicks, not to mention crazy snake handlers.
After swiping his hand across his face, Catcher eased back down on the sofa. “Do excuse my doubt, Mrs. Thornhill. I’ve been a GBI agent for eight years, and I have yet to ever come across anyone who read tea leaves.”
A pleased smile crept on Olive’s face. “That’s ‘cause it’s a dyin’ art. Not everyone has the gift, and if you do, you has to be acceptin’ of it.”
“The tea leaves actually showed you Randy?” I asked curiously.
“It showed me an ‘R’ with a dagger. The dagger in tea leaves means harm, so I figured harm was a comin’ to Randy.”
“Fascinating,” I murmured.
Olive cocked her brows at me. “You two want a reading?”
Catcher and I exchanged a glance. Call me a pansy, but I was scared to death of what the bottom of Olive’s tea cup might reveal. Thankfully, Catcher let us both off the hook when he said, “We better stick to the facts involving Randy’s murder.”
“Whatever,” Olive replied as she shifted in her rocking chair. “But before I answer anymore questions, I wanna know how you knew about me.”
“One of Randy’s clients said he once referenced getting some of his knowledge from the Granny Witch.”
Olive shook her head. “Randy shoulda knowed better than to be runnin’ his mouth about me. I tole him what we did was to be a secret. Our knowledge in the wrong hands is dangerous. You’d a thought with him drinkin’ an antidote for poison on a daily basis fer twenty-five years he woulda knowd that better than anyone.”
“Why would he have the need to take a poison preventative?” Catcher asked.
“Because he was afraid of being pizened,” Olive answered matter-of-factly like Catcher was the biggest dumbass in the world not to know that.
Catcher leaned forward on the couch. “Excuse me for it not being obvious, Mrs. Thornhill, but why would anyone need to take an antidote every day?”
“Randy needed it cuz he feared the man who was a lookin’ for him might try to pizen him.”
“Randy had someone after him?”
Olive nodded. “Fir over twenty-five years.” She shifted in the rocking chair, causing the wood to groan. “I guess I better start at the beginnin’.”
“That would be good,” Catcher said.
“Randy grew up down the mountain in town. His daddy was the president of the bank, and his mama owned the dress shop. They done way better than most families after Dubya Dubya Two. When he was seventeen, his daddy done fell over dead at his desk from a heart attack. Five years later, Randy’s mama got the cancer. That’s when Randy come to see me.”
“He wanted you to cast a spell to cure his mother?” I asked.
Olive scowled at me. “Girlie, Imma God fearin’ woman. I ain’t never cast no spells.”
I held up my hands. “I’m sorry. It’s just since they call you Granny Witch, I assumed you did some kind of witchcraft.”
She gave a disappointed shake of her head. “You sure got yur idies messed up ‘bout what a Granny Witch is. We practice hillfolk hoodoo, not voodoo. Ain’t no spells cast.”
“Forgive my ignorance, but just what is hoodoo?” Catcher asked.
“Fir starters, it ain’t no dark magic or tied to a religion. It’s about usin’ the gifts of the earth that God give us. It’s been passed down from generation to generation, and it come over with our ancestors from Ireland and Scotland. Then it got mixed in a little when we were a intermarryin’ with the Tsalgi’s.”
“The who?” I asked.
“The Cherokees.”
I nodded. “Ah. I see. So it’s a cross-cultural thing.”
“I guess you could say that. Anyways, when Randy come to see me, I’s able to make a yarb for his mama that give her another year. But I ain’t the good Lord, so I couldn’t save her.”
“A yarb?” Catcher questioned.
Olive w
aved her hand dismissively. “You city-folk would call them herbs.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Anyways, I didn’t see much of Randy after his mama died. Then one day outta the clear blue sky he come to see me. Said he wanted to learn my ways so he could mix it with the ways he’d learned at school.”
“And you agreed to teach him?”
Olive nodded. “’Cause I seen the gift in him. I hadn’t seen it in anyone since my Jewell. Randy was an honest boy, so he promised me half of all the profits he made on his side ventures. I ain’t never had no need for money, so onced I took care of a headstone for my dead husband, I give it to my children and grandchildren.”
“That was awfully kind of you,” I said.
“Randy was a fast learner. Whatever I made, he’s able to improve on it and make it just a tad better. He was particularly interested in the man boosting yarb I made.”
“Did this yarb give a man extra energy or something?” Catcher asked.
Olive smirked at him. “You might call it a resurrection yarb. It made dead peckers rise again.”
Catcher and I exchanged a glance. “You mean you made an herbal Viagra?” I asked.
“Sho did.”
“I’ll be damned,” Catcher mused.
“Men up chere in the mountains been needin’ and usin’ my man-booster long before any of them companies made stuff.”
“I see.”
Olive winked at Catcher. “Curious about it, ain’t ya?”
Catcher grinned. “I would be lying if I said no. At the same time, I don’t need any help in that area if you catch my drift.”
“It ain’t just fir dead peckers. It’s fir the whole experience.”
Catcher licked his lips and leaned forward. “Just exactly what does it do?”
Since the conversation was getting way off course and way too weird, I cleared my throat. “So what exactly does this man-enhancing yarb have to do with Randy being in hiding?”
“Like I said, Randy had been enhancin’ my mixtures. He made the mistake of getting’ a little greedy, and even though he hadn’t perfected the mixture, he went ahead and sold a batch to the wrong man.” She glanced around before continuing. “A man in the Dixie Mafia.”
Catcher sucked in a breath. “Wait, the real Dixie Mafia?”
“Is there another one?” Olive huffed.
“No. It’s just I’ve been in the area investigating them.”
“You ever hear of Ronald Krump?”
Catcher’s forehead creased. “No ma’am. I don’t believe I have.”
“Well, he’s the one who had a beef with Randy over the man enhancing.”
“Because he sold him the bad batch of man yarb?” Catcher questioned.
“That’s right.”
A question had been forming in my mind. “What made the batch bad? Did it not work or something??”
“Oh, it worked all right. Too well.” OIive shook her head. “He’s a terrible man, but I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”
“What happened to Ronald?” I asked.
Olive exhaled a deep breath. “His pecker blew off.”
Silence permeated the room as Catcher and I sat there staring at Olive. I think we were both waiting on her to say, “Just kidding.” But she never did. So we just kept sitting there trying to process the possibility of what she had just said.
Finally, after what felt like a brief eternity, Catcher said, “I’m afraid I didn’t hear you correctly.”
“I said his pecker done blew off.”
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any crazier…“Are you trying to say that Ronald’s penis exploded?” I questioned in disbelief.
“It sho did.”
Catcher turned to me with an incredulous expression. “How is that even possible?” he muttered.
Olive harrumphed. “Well, I dunno know how it’s possible. I just knowed it happened.”
“I would assume the medicine caused his penis to swell so quickly and intensely that the blood flow had nowhere else to go,” I suggested.
“Except kaboom.”
I rolled my eyes at Catcher. “It would be more of a forceful hemorrhage.”
Catcher peered curiously at Olive. “Do you know what happened to his penis?”
“Apparently he had to undergo several reconstructive surgeries, but it was never the same.” A wicked look flashed in her eyes. “And it sho wasn’t operational after that either.”
“Damn. That blows,” Catcher said before snickering at his pun.
Ignoring him, I asked, “What happened with Ronald and Randy after that?”
“Well, onced Ronald got out of the hospital, he started lookin’ for Randy. But a few months into his search, he got arrested fir drugs and attemptin’ to murder the man his wife was foolin’ around with. I mean, Ronald shouldn’t been surprised his wife was cattin’ around when he had no dick.” She stared us both straight in the eyes. “A woman has needs.”
Oh. My. God. The last thing I needed at that moment was Olive talking about her needs.
“So what happened to Randy after Krump went to jail?” I inquired.
“He finally decided on Taylorsville as the place he could restart his life. Thankfully, Ronald was so hell-bent on taking revenge on Randy himself that he never put a hit on Randy. He was also so embarrassed by what happened that he didn’t tell too many people how he lost his pecker. He led a lot of people to believe he got it shot off in combat during the first Gulf War.”
“Ugh, what a slime-ball to pretend to be a wounded veteran,” I remarked.
Olive sighed sadly. “Although he was supposed to be in for life, I guess ol’ Ronald musta got out of the big house and finally found poor Randy.”
Catcher and I both sat in a stupefied silence, overwhelmed by what all we had just heard. The main question in any murder investigation was motive. You needed a reason to kill. In many cases, it’s revenge. Sometimes it’s revenge for an affair or revenge for ruining a person’s business.
And now we knew that revenge was the motive in Randy’s case. Revenge for a man’s penis being blown up after taking a homemade male enhancement drug. Although I didn’t have all the facts and statistics, I was pretty sure that in the annals of legal history, there had not been another case prosecuted over an exploding penis. Yet here we were.
After everything we had been through, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Yet, I was completely bamboozled. I really don’t know who I thought would be Randy’s killer, but a penis-less member of the Dixie Mafia hadn’t even been on my radar.
Olive rose out of her chair. “You two look like you could use a drink. I’ve got a little White Lightning up at my work shed.”
I held up a hand. “That’s awfully kind, but I wouldn’t care for any.”
When Olive turned to Catcher, he shook his head. “I appreciate it, Mrs. Thornhill, but I’m not permitted when I’m on the clock.” He stood up. “I would love to take a look at your work shed though.”
With a flick of her wrist, she motioned us to follow her. I wasn’t too keen on seeing inside her work shed, but I didn’t think I had much of a choice. So, I got up off the couch and followed her and Catcher out the back door of the cabin. Olive grabbed a cane that was leaning against the porch railing before hobbling down the stairs.
Once again I was amazed that someone her age and in her physical condition could make it up the steep embankment behind her cabin. But she did. The work shed was actually a one-room cabin that I’m surprised hadn’t been condemned.
The inside wasn’t much better than the outside. The sawdust-covered floor didn’t look like it had been swept in years. At least one corner of the room was well kept. It had floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves that overflowed with small bottles and fruit jars.
“You two got any stomach ailments? Don’t sleep? Need energy?” Olive asked.
I could have used something to sleep better, but I decided to keep my mouth shut. I wasn’t quite sure if I believed in the
validity of Olive’s powers. More than anything, I wasn’t convinced her yarbs weren’t toxic.
As Catcher was eyeing the concoctions on the shelves, Olive picked up a small, blue bottle with a corked lid and handed it to me. “But I—”
“You don’t get enough sleep.”
“How did you know that?” Catcher asked.
“Probably from the bags under my eyes,” I suggested.
Olive harrumphed at me. “I know from what you were thinking.”
The hairs at the back of my neck rose at her words. “You can read my mind?”
Shaking her head, Olive replied, “I can feel your thoughts.”
Aaaand, things had officially gotten too weird for me. It was time to get the hell out of there. I waved the bottle at her. “How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing.”
“I can’t just take this.”
“Yes. You can.” She jutted her chin out. “My payment will come when you realize the power of hoodoo.”
Yep. Definitely time to go. “Well, thank you.” I turned to Catcher. “Agent Mains, I need to make a phone call. I’ll be in the car.”
His forehead lined with confusion, but I didn’t stop to explain anything. I just powerwalked right out of that hellhole before sprinting to the car. When I got inside, I locked the door. With one fleeting glance at Olive’s yarb, I tossed it into my purse. Although I wanted to chuck it out the window the first chance we got, the curious part of me wanted to give it a try.
Thankfully, Catcher wasn’t far behind me. He had his phone in his hand, and I could hear the conversation inside the car. “Yeah, it’s Mains. I need you guys to run a check on a man named Ronald Krump. He had been doing time, so you might want to start with the prison records. Thanks.”
After Catcher hung up, he opened the car door and slid inside. “Now it’s time to hunt down our suspect.”
“At least finding out a name was one good thing to come out of this trip,” I grumbled.
“Miss Olive spooked you a little, didn’t she?” Catcher asked as we started down the hill.
I turned in my seat to pin him with a stare. “You mean you weren’t freaked out with all the hoodoo craziness?”