Murder at Catfish Corner: A Maggie Morgan Mystery

by Michelle Goff

Stella smirked and unbuckled her seat belt. Before Maggie and Stella exited the car, a man stumbled out of the house.

  “Hello, Earnest,” Stella said as she closed her car door. “How are you doing today?”

  “Now, Stella,” Earnest said while repeatedly shaking his head, “I don’t want trouble. I told you I didn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Earnest, I’ve known you since I was five years old and, well, you couldn’t have been more than eleven.” Stella looked over her shoulder at Maggie. “Earnest rode the same school bus as Hazel, Dennis, and me. Earnest became the patrol boy when he was still in grade school. Do you remember that, Earnest?”

  “Of course, I remember, Stella. I was the youngest patrol boy in the school’s history.”

  Maggie noticed Earnest’s trembling hands.

  “Do you remember how I used to go on dates with you and Hazel?” Stella turned to Maggie. “Our mother wouldn’t let us go on dates without a chaperone. I was younger than Hazel, but I was her chaperone. What do you think about that?”

  Unsure if Stella had posed a rhetorical question, Maggie stuttered, “That’s certainly something.”

  “Well, Earnest, we go back a long way and I would like to think you’d extend the courtesy to talk to my friend, Maggie, and me about Hazel.”

  “I don’t have anything to say about Hazel. She was a good woman and I’m sorry she’s dead, but that’s all I have to say.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Stella said.

  “What are you trying to say?” Earnest asked in a breaking voice. “I know what you’re after. I know you’ve been going around telling people I killed Hazel.”

  Just then, the front door flew open and a woman who looked young enough to be Earnest’s daughter raced down the driveway with a little girl on her heels.

  “If you don’t get off my property, I’m calling the police,” the woman shrieked. “You’re trespassing.”

  “Let me handle this, Brandi,” Earnest reasoned. “You take Paradice and go back inside.”

  Brandi broke free of Earnest’s grip and said, “I ain’t going nowheres until these old cows get off my property.”

  Although Maggie didn’t appreciate Brandi referring to her as an aged bovine, she couldn’t argue with the trespassing charge. “Stella, I think we should leave,” Maggie said.

  Stella held her hands up in front of her chest. “Okay, we’ll leave. You’d think that a person with nothing to hide would want to share his story with everyone, but maybe that’s just me.”

  “He don’t have no story,” Brandi yelled in Stella’s face. “He didn’t have nothing to do with your dried-up old sister dying. The old hag slipped and fell when she was off somewheres she shouldn’t have been. Just like you’re somewheres now you shouldn’t be. Maybe you’ll slip and fall, too.”

  Maggie flinched, but Stella held firm. She didn’t move until Earnest and the girl physically pulled Brandi away from her. When Stella reached the car, she pointed her forefinger at Earnest and said, “I will find out what happened to Hazel. And that’s a promise.”

  After they backed out of the driveway, Stella said to Maggie, “Earnest and Hazel were married for thirty-five years. He threw all that away to take up with that loud piece of trash. The only thing that gave Hazel solace was knowing he’d be saddled with that obnoxious and odious woman and her spoiled daughter for the rest of his life.” Stella fell silent and, after driving for several minutes, asked, “So, what do you think? Can you prove Earnest killed my sister?”

  Maggie, who had been reading the back of the Tylenol bottle to determine if she could take two more pills for what had developed into a full-blown headache, said, “I’m not too sure anyone killed your sister.”

  “Now, Maggie, don’t let that floozy intimidate you. I taught her in school. Well, at least I did before she dropped out. I know where she came from. I know where Earnest came from, too. You’re smarter than both of them put together.”

  “Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean the police are wrong. It could have been an accident.”

  Stella snorted. “Common sense will tell you that something or someone lured Hazel out of her house that night.”

  “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean Earnest killed her.”

  “Yes, it does,” Stella said. “Who else had a reason to murder Hazel?”

  Chapter Seven

  Maggie enjoyed dinner and a movie that evening with Luke, her best friend, Edie, and Edie’s husband, Ben. When she and Luke returned to her house, he asked her about vacation plans.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t given it much thought.”

  “Don’t you think you should? It’s fast approaching.”

  Maggie tried to envision herself relaxing on a beach or exploring the charms of a major American city, but her mind kept returning to the strange day she had spent in Sassafras with Stella.

  She wasn’t in a better state of mind the next morning. Even the Dateline she had recorded couldn’t hold her attention. After twenty minutes, she gave up and concentrated on the mystery surrounding Hazel’s death.

  She couldn’t argue with Stella. There didn’t seem to be any reason for Hazel to get out of bed, dress in dark clothing, and take a walk around a lake in the dead of night, especially since she avoided that lake during the day. Then again, she had to admit that people behave irrationally and unexpectedly all the time.

  She also had to admit that, with the exception of Boone Osborne, everyone she had encountered in Sassafras seemed off. Although she conceded that Earnest and Brandi had every right to request she and Stella vacate their property, Brandi had come across as a lunatic who couldn’t control her temper and Earnest as a frightened old man.

  And she hadn’t failed to notice how Earl David and Fallon had played with their respective plastic bottles while answering simple questions. But their behavior was overshadowed by Dennis’ weird demeanor.

  “If it hadn’t been for him constantly turning in that chair, I would have thought he was on the verge of catatonia,” Maggie said to Barnaby. “And who forgets his last conversation with his dead sister? For that matter, who forgets their last conversation with a former employee? A conversation that occurred less than forty-eight hours before that former employee’s lifeless body was found? But that’s what Dr. Griffith claims.” Although Barnaby showed no indication he wanted to hear about the Sassafras saga, Maggie continued her monologue. “And what’s with Stella? She’s also a little – unusual.”

  Before Maggie could continue airing her concerns to an uninterested Barnaby, the phone rang. Expecting it to be Luke or her parents, she answered without checking the ID and was surprised to hear her ex-fiancé, Seth, say hello.

  “Oh, hi, Seth,” she answered. “This is a surprise.” After Maggie had broken their engagement some years back, Seth had started dating another woman who he subsequently married. He and Maggie had remained on friendly terms, but rarely saw each other until Maggie began looking into Mac Honaker’s murder. Although the murder occurred in the county and fell outside the town’s jurisdiction, Seth, a Jasper police detective, had offered advice, assistance, and admonishment to Maggie. Only after Maggie had identified the murderer did she learn that Seth and his wife had divorced. She hadn’t seen him since that day in the Dinner Bucket Diner when he’d dropped that bombshell on her.

  “How are you doing, Maggie?” he asked.

  “I’m well. You?”

  “Can’t complain on a beautiful day like this. I might get outside and soak up some sunshine. Heck, I might even go fishing later. Can you recommend a place? I’ve been craving catfish.”

  Maggie gritted her teeth and closed her eyes. “If you have something to ask me, just ask.”

  “In that case, I will. Why are you nosing around Sassafras? Why are you and Hazel Baker’s sister harassing people?”

  “In the first place, it’s my business and no one else’s if I want to nose around Sassafras. In the second place, Stella and I didn’t hara
ss anyone.”

  “That’s not what Brandi Baker said.”

  “Brandi Baker also called me an old cow, so what does she know?”

  Maggie heard Seth laughing. “When you put it that way, I can’t disagree.”

  “What’s this about, Seth? How do you even know I was in Sassafras yesterday? Were you following me?”

  “No, but that might not be such a bad idea. Brandi Baker called the state police and complained about you and Stella Martin. She wanted to press charges for trespassing, but the trooper talked her out of it.”

  “Let me guess, it was my old friend, Trooper Surly, who called you and told on me.”

  “That’s pretty much what happened, but instead of giving him grief, you should be thanking him for keeping you out of jail.”

  “I’ll send him a card.”

  “Listen, Maggie, why don’t you cut the attitude and leave this alone?”

  “Why don’t you cut the attitude, Seth? You’re the one calling me. Besides, Stella Martin thinks her sister was killed, and I’m beginning to think she’s right.”

  “Maggie, do not –”

  Maggie hung up the phone before he could finish his sentence.

  “Oh, but I will do,” she said to Barnaby. “And I know just who I need to talk to.”

  Chapter Eight

  “I brought you some cucumbers out of Daddy’s garden,” Maggie said, presenting the bag of gourds to Sylvie Johnson.

  “Thank you,” Sylvie said. “There’s nothing better on a hot summer day than cucumber slices in cool salt water. When I used to keep a garden, cucumbers was my favorite thing to raise, but it just don’t make sense for me to plant a garden anymore. Between the time I spent working in it and the money I spent on seeds and plants and fertilizer, the way I figured it, I was coming out in the hole. I get my produce from that roadside market out on the four-lane. I don’t buy a whole big lot. Just enough for me to eat on and then I freeze some of it. That’s what I’ve been doing today. Putting up tomatoes. I’ve been so busy that I didn’t have time to bake a cake or cobbler for you. I do have cantaloupe, though. I sliced it just this morning.”

  “Cantaloupe sounds good.”

  Sylvie put two slices of cantaloupe on a saucer for Maggie and said, “Well, there’s no need to stand here all day. Let’s go to the living room and sit down.”

  Maggie sat on the sofa and Sylvie took her spot in her recliner. She picked up a scrap of cloth that had formerly served as a yellow-and-white checkered shirt, a pair of scissors, and a pattern fashioned from cardboard and sandpaper, and started cutting quilt pieces.

  “What are you working on?” Maggie asked her.

  “A double wedding ring quilt.”

  “For anyone in particular?”

  “For a couple of dummies that don’t have no more sense than to get married. The girl’s mommy is getting me to make it. That cantaloupe good?”

  “Yes, it is,” Maggie answered, “and it matches the color of your house dress.”

  “Is that what you come here for? To compliment my dress?”

  “No.” Maggie wiped the cantaloupe juice from her mouth, set the saucer on the coffee table, and made a mental note to swing by that market off the four-lane. “I met one of your friends. Stella Martin.”

  Sylvie frowned. “I don’t know if I’d call me and Stellie friends. I sew for her. I’ve made quilts and clothes for her. I’ve hemmed her clothes. But I ain’t never spent a Sunday afternoon at her house, so I wouldn’t call her a friend.”

  Maggie smiled at Sylvie’s definition of a friend. “Stella considers you a friend. What do you think of her?”

  Sylvie lifted her eyes from the material. “Why do you want to know?”

  Maggie sighed. “Her sister, Hazel Baker, died. I think you knew her, too.”

  “I did.”

  “Stella thinks the police are wrong. She thinks Hazel was murdered.”

  “What’s this got to do with you?”

  “She wants my help. She said you told her about me.”

  “I might have mentioned that it was you and not the police that figured out who shot Mac, but I thought that was common knowledge. I didn’t know it would be news to Stellie, but she does live all the way over there in Sassyfras so maybe the news was slow getting to her.” Sylvie pursed her lips. “But I most certainly did not write you a letter of recommendation.”

  “I didn’t say you did.” Maggie closed her eyes and counted to ten. “Let’s start over. What can you tell me about Hazel and Stella?”

  “I ain’t telling you nothing. Your mommy is still mad at me for helping you last time.” Sylvie snorted. “I bet you ain’t even told her that you’re at it again.”

  “I haven’t,” Maggie admitted, “because I haven’t made up my mind. Well, not completely. I did spend a day in Sassafras with Stella and I did talk to Hazel’s neighbors, her tenant, the brother –”

  “You mean Dennis? Hazel and Stellie’s brother? What did you think of that weirdo?”

  Maggie laughed. “He does come across as an odd duck.”

  “That’s because he is an odd duck.” Sylvie stopped cutting and pointed the scissors toward Maggie. “I’ll talk to you on one condition. You have to tell your mommy what you’re up to. I won’t have Lena placing any blame on me. Not this time.”

  “Agreed.”

  “What do you want to know?” Sylvie asked.

  “Let’s start with how you met them.”

  “I used to make alterations for that fancy dress shop in Jasper. Your mommy helped me sometimes. You know all about that. I got a good deal of work from that shop. That’s how I met Stellie. She wanted somebody to sew a handmade wedding dress for that girl of hers, and the lady that run the store recommended me to her. She must have been pleased with my work cause her and Hazel started coming all the way over here from Sassyfras to get me to make dresses and blouses and even a few pairs of pants for them. They said it reminded them of the clothes their mommy made them. You’d think they wouldn’t have waited until they was, well, I guess you’d call them middle-aged, to start wearing homemade clothes again. And if they wanted homemade clothes that bad, you’d think they would have learned to sew themselves. But what am I saying? Your mommy is one of the best seamstresses that’s ever lived in Genevie County and you never learned to sew, neither.”

  “About how long ago was this?”

  “I didn’t mark it on my calendar, so I can’t give you the exact date, but Hazel was still married to that Earnest feller.”

  “What was Hazel like?”

  “She was a little hateful, if you ask me. She was never rude to me. But she just had a hateful turn. She was always complaining about something or another.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that lake. She said those people who came there to fish used the bathroom on her property.”

  Maggie pictured Hazel’s property and asked, “In her yard? In broad daylight?”

  “I don’t know. It didn’t make no sense to me, but from what she said, there was a little shed at the lake and they would stand behind it and use the bathroom in the direction of her property. I ain’t never been there so I can’t say if it was possible or not.”

  “I have been there and I don’t know if it’s possible. A privacy fence stands between the properties.”

  Sylvie nodded. “She carried on about it so much that Stellie told her to get her one of those fences, but that didn’t satisfy her. She said they was still doing it. Then, she started going on about how they threw their pop bottles and tater chip bags over her fence. Stellie told her to tell that guy that owned the lake and he’d pick up the trash. As far as I know, Hazel never said nothing to him. She just wanted something to go on about.”

  “What did she have to say about Earnest and his new bride?”

  “If I repeated the words she used, my mommy would raise from the grave and wash my mouth out with lye soap. But I can understand where Hazel was coming from. If you count dating, then sh
e and Earnest was together for over forty years. She was not expecting him to leave her. That came as a shock to her.” Sylvie smirked. “Did they tell you how Earnest met that girl?”

  “No.” Maggie leaned forward. “How?”

  “She cleaned for them. She cleaned for Stellie, too. Hazel didn’t even know they had been carrying on until he up and left her. She let him go, but not without getting part of his pension and clear deeds for their house and her mommy’s house. Now, I don’t know if this is true, but they told me he tried to take the house he and Hazel lived in. They said that young girl he left her for was already making her plans to redecorate. They said she had ordered new kitchen cabinets and picked out a room for her little girl. If that’s the truth, then she underestimated Hazel. She wasn’t one to roll over for nobody.”

  Although Maggie did not condone Earnest’s decision to leave his wife of thirty-five years for a woman half his age, she had to wonder if Hazel had demonstrated an aggressive attitude during their marriage and if that had played a role in the dissolution of their relationship. “Did you ever see Hazel around Earnest?”

  Sylvie nodded. “Hazel dragged him here once and insisted I pull out dozens of my quilts to show him. You could tell he had about as much interest in my handiwork as I have in one of those races they show on the TV. It never made no sense to me why grown men would chase each other around a circle or why anybody would waste their time watching them. Don’t people have nothing better to do?”

  “To each his own,” Maggie said. “So, how did Hazel treat Earnest?”

  “I don’t know what went on behind closed doors, but she treated him real good in front of me. Hazel was what they call plainspoken, but she was real nice to him and Stellie. And, Lord, she loved Stellie’s girl. That was her baby.”

  “What about Dennis? How did he and Hazel interact?”

  Sylvie adjusted her glasses and said, “You could tell he got all over her nerves. And I can understand why, but she was downright mean to him. They brought him over here when Stellie’s girl had a fitting for her dress. I had made a pot of spaghetti and meatballs and offered some to them. Dennis said, ‘Yes, I’ll take a bowl,’ but Hazel told him he couldn’t have none. So he didn’t. And then there was Stellie. If I had give him a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, she would have probably fed him. That’s his problem right there. He ain’t never had to be a man. That girl of Stellie’s was the only one of them who didn’t treat him like a baby.” Sylvie looked up from her work. “And you know, he acted almost normal around her. He actually laughed and smiled when she was around. He didn’t sit there moving back and forth with his arms across his chest. Stellie told me Hazel had him tested once. She had in mind to get him signed up on his disability, but they said they was nothing wrong with him. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that, but some people are just weird. That don’t mean they got a condition.”