Murder at Catfish Corner: A Maggie Morgan Mystery

by Michelle Goff

  Maggie once again inhaled deeply and exhaled softly. “I ran into him a few weeks ago, by accident, and bounced a few ideas off him.”

  Luke slumped in the chair. “Would you have told me about recognizing the person on the video if Seth hadn’t called you on it?”

  “I thought you weren’t mad? You distinctly told me you weren’t mad.”

  “I said I wasn’t mad before I learned of Seth’s involvement.”

  “So, you are mad?”

  “No, not really. I am curious, though. And you haven’t answered my question. Would you have told me?”

  Maggie placed the palm of her hand on her forehead as if she were checking her temperature. “I can’t say for sure when I would have told you.”

  Luke nodded. “I guess it’s a good thing Seth saw that video. He’s keeping you honest.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A warm soothing rain continued to fall as Maggie arrived home. She ducked into the house and tried to get Barnaby, who had become accustomed to a certain dry lifestyle, to go outside and do his business. He refused that command but he did accompany her to the front porch where Maggie sat and reflected on her discussions with Seth and Luke.

  Her meeting with Seth had unsettled her. Although she tried to chase such thoughts from her mind, she couldn’t help but ponder on how her life would have unfolded if she had married him.

  “I would have gotten that honeymoon in Vermont,” she said to Barnaby, who lay at her feet with his head on his front paws. “We had already made reservations at a bed and breakfast and planned what the website referred to as a scenic fall drive. We were going to drive all the way up there from here and spend a day near Boston so Seth could watch a football game.” Barnaby stole a glance at the rain and Maggie followed his gaze. Following the breakup, Maggie had consoled herself with the thought that the New England fall foliage couldn’t be more spectacular than the colorful eastern Kentucky leaves that greeted her every time she looked out a window. She had a harder time convincing herself that the Mrs. Butterworth’s she poured on her pancakes tasted as good as the fresh maple syrup she had hoped to experience in Vermont. “I haven’t thought about the trip that never was in a long time. I put it out of my mind. I saw no sense in dwelling on that or chastising myself for delaying the talk about children until we were already engaged.”

  Barnaby moved from his position on the porch floor and put his head in Maggie’s lap. “He would have been living here with us,” she said and patted the dog’s nose. “He would have taken you for hikes in the hills and let you eat human food.” She looked into Barnaby’s eyes. “You would have liked him more than you like me, wouldn’t you?”

  Barnaby averted his eyes and looked to the rain.

  “Of course, he would have been much firmer with you than I’ve been. This business of holding it for a sunny day would not have worked on him.” Barnaby lifted his head from Maggie’s lap and returned to the floor. “Hmm. I guess somebody can’t handle the truth.”

  She threw her head back and looked at the porch ceiling. “Why am I torturing myself? I have a good life. It’s better than most. I’m happy with my job and my relationship with Luke. Gosh, this is so unfair to Luke. He doesn’t deserve a girlfriend who sits on her front porch playing a game of ‘what if I hadn’t broken my engagement to my ex-boyfriend’ with her dog. And Seth does seem to be popping up everywhere. Heck, I accused him of following me. So, Luke has every right to be upset by his presence” Maggie bent over and looked into Barnaby’s face. “You’re a good listener, but I’ve gotten better advice from a fortune cookie. I need to talk to your Antie Edie. Too bad she’s drinking daiquiris on a beach this week.”

  Maggie stretched her arms in front of her and said, “Oh, Barnaby, I need to get my mind off this.” She looked to the sky. “It doesn’t look like it’s letting up soon. Stay here.” She disappeared inside the house only to emerge seconds later carrying her car keys and a leash. She attached the leash to Barnaby’s collar, opened her trunk with her keyless remote, and stepped off the porch and into the rain.

  Barnaby would not budge. “Come on,” she prodded him. “If I can stand the rain, you can. Your canine ancestors would be so embarrassed by your behavior right now.” She gently tugged the leash and began walking down the driveway. Barnaby put his head down and followed. “I know a good boy who will earn himself two treats if he does his business.” She added in a lower voice, “And a mommy who will be out here cleaning up that business.”

  With the leash’s loop around her wrist, Maggie lifted her trunk lid with her other hand and pulled one of the boxes from Hazel’s house out of her car while Barnaby did, in fact, do his business. She stood in the rain until he finished and then lugged him and the box to the porch. She collapsed into her rocking chair, removed the box lid, and said, “Let’s see what’s in here.”

  She pulled a file from the box and flipped it open to what she immediately recognized as a patient’s medical records. She placed that file on the table and picked a handful out of the box. Each file contained the confidential records of a patient at Dr. Griffith’s clinic.

  Maggie held the folders to her chest, “I shouldn’t be seeing these files. I should stuff them into that box and return them to the doctor.”

  But Maggie didn’t quit looking at the records. As she examined page after page, she noticed that someone had used a highlighter to mark every file. A few records included several sections highlighted in either blue, yellow, or pink. “For this patient alone,” she said to herself as she scanned the records of an elderly man, “X-rays and blood work were highlighted in October as well as in June, an ultrasound the next December, and a pneumonia diagnosis the following April. Poor guy. I hope he recovered.”

  Although the highlighted records confused her, she continued to search the files until the darkening night forced her to flip on the porch light. It wasn’t until she had slapped at the tenth bug biting into her flesh that she said to Barnaby, “I guess that’s enough for tonight. Let’s go in. Maybe we’ll catch a vintage episode of Dateline on ID.”

  She had no luck with Dateline, but the channel did show an older episode of 48 Hours that had somehow escaped her notice during its original airing. When she went to bed, she was still wondering how one had gotten by her. She didn’t give the medical records another thought that night. It wasn’t until she was conducting a telephone interview with the next performer in the Summer Under the Stars Concert Series that the explanation roared into her mind like the first crack of thunder on a quiet night. As the singer named her musical influences, Maggie wrote two words at the bottom of her notepad – Medicaid fraud.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Maggie considered the medical records that covered her kitchen table. From her limited understanding of Medicaid fraud, which was based on an Internet search, she had deduced that the blue highlights represented billing for services not performed; yellow for double billing; and pink for billing for unnecessary services and tests.

  She sipped lemonade and asked herself, “What are you trying to prove? That Dr. Griffith committed fraud or that somebody murdered Hazel Baker?”

  Without answering her question, she picked up her glass of lemonade, walked to the living room, and called Vanessa Griffith. She was preparing to leave a message when the doctor said, “Hey, Maggie.”

  Surprised, Maggie asked, “How did you know it was me?”

  “I recognized your number. That’s the only reason I answered. In my profession, unless it’s the hospital, the nursing home, family, or friends, it’s best to let the caller leave a message. If it’s important, I’ll call them back. What can I do for you?”

  Maggie didn’t think she fit into any of the categories Dr. Griffith had listed and wondered why she had answered her call. “Dr. Griffith –”

  “Please, call me Vanessa.”

  “Okay, Vanessa, you mentioned that we should hang out and I was wondering what you were doing Saturday evening. No, it’s not shopping an
d I know it’s short notice, so I’ll understand if you have something planned with your husband and kids, but I thought you might want to go to the concert in Jasper with me. My boyfriend bailed on me and I don’t want to go by myself. I hope that doesn’t sound too pathetic or like you’re my last choice.”

  Maggie’s explanation was half-truthful. That morning, Luke had said to her, “I love you, but I cannot sit through one more of those concerts. Can’t Joe get someone else to cover them?”

  “Well, it is my job,” she had answered. “He and I made an agreement at the beginning of the series. I interview the performers beforehand and write a preview, then attend the concerts and write a review the following week. It might sound like I’m doing a lot, but it’s no different from how the sports guys dedicate their Friday nights to football and basketball games.”

  “I guess you’re right and I’m sorry for being such a jerk,” Luke had said. “There are only a couple more. It won’t be that bad.”

  “There’s no need in you going if it will make you miserable. It won’t kill me to attend a concert by myself. I’ll swing by your place when it’s over.”

  And Maggie, who had no trouble walking into a movie theater or restaurant without a companion, had planned to do just that. But after she spent three hours going through medical records, she changed her mind.

  “What time is the concert?” Vanessa asked.

  “Eight o’clock. I know, it’s not dark at that time of night, so it’s not technically under the stars, but it’s a catchy name and the concerts have been lasting a little more than an hour, so the sky is usually twinkling by the time they’re over.”

  “Let me make sure my husband doesn’t have anything planned for that night.”

  Shoot, Maggie thought, I hoped we would be alone. “Will he want to go with us?” she asked.

  “He’d better not. Mama needs some me time.” Vanessa laughed and added, “I’ll talk to him and call you back.”

  Vanessa did call Maggie a few minutes later and the two decided to meet for dinner before the concert. Maggie had planned to discreetly quiz her dining companion in an effort to ascertain a more detailed background of the doctor. But Vanessa, who drank a couple glasses of wine with her grilled salmon, commandeered the conversation.

  “I can’t tell you how great this is. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, my husband, and my practice, but sometimes, you need to have a discussion that does not revolve around the perfect age to potty-train or the correct way to trim your toenails.”

  “Toenails?” Maggie asked.

  “I treat a lot of elderly patients and you’d be surprised by how many either don’t know how or are physically unable to properly cut their toenails. It leads to ingrown toenails, which can result in –” Vanessa slapped her own hand. “Listen to me, talking shop.”

  “I don’t mind –”

  “Are you eating that salad for my benefit?” Vanessa interrupted. “It is better for you than a hot dog, but it’s Saturday night, live a little.” Vanessa quickly changed the subject and asked, “So, what’s your story? Who’s this boyfriend you mentioned?”

  Maggie proceeded to tell Vanessa about Luke and to share an abridged story of her life. When Maggie finished speaking, Vanessa tapped her temple and said, “You’re a smart cookie. I can tell. I bet people encourage you to leave this area, don’t they? You know, that’s what’s wrong with this place. All the smart people have left. Well, not all of them. We’re still here.”

  Maggie didn’t have a chance to share her thoughts on the area’s so-called brain drain before Vanessa launched into a series of complaints against her mother-in-law for feeding the twins ice cream and white bread, her mother for buying the little girl a doll and the little boy a truck, and her husband for leaving wet towels on the floor.

  “Sometimes, I feel like I’m the only adult in the family.” She swirled the wine in her glass. “I don’t mean to give you the wrong impression. I love my family. I cherish my husband, our kids, and my mom and my in-laws, but sometimes you need to vent and you’re easy to talk to. Has anybody ever told you that?”

  “In my job, I’d better be easy to talk to or else I’d never be able to write a story.”

  Just as Maggie leaned in to encourage Vanessa to tell her more about her husband and how he came to be her office manager, Vanessa looked at her watch and said, “It’s fifteen to eight. We’d better hustle or we’ll be standing in the aisles.”

  Although a couple hundred people had crowded into Jasper’s park, the women found two empty seats side-by-side and settled in to watch the show. But Maggie didn’t have fun. She didn’t know if the conversation she needed to have with Vanessa served as a distraction or if she simply didn’t care for the singer’s particular brand of pop music marketed as country. If she checked her watch one time, she checked it twenty times.

  Vanessa noticed and asked, “Do you think it’s that bad?”

  Maggie’s face reddened. “No. I’m meeting my boyfriend later. I guess I’m a little anxious.”

  Vanessa elbowed Maggie. “Big night planned?”

  “Something like that.”

  For a reason Maggie could not understand, the crowd demanded two encores, which pushed the concert beyond the hour and a half mark. On the walk to their cars, Maggie suddenly snapped her fingers and said, “I almost forgot. I have something for you in the trunk of my car. At least I think it belongs to you.”

  “What is it?”

  Maggie waited until she was standing under a street light and looking into Vanessa’s face before she said, “A couple boxes of files that came from Hazel’s house. I think they’re medical records.”

  Vanessa stood still. “Hazel had medical records at her house?”

  “I think that’s what they are.” Maggie lifted her trunk, opened one of the boxes, and pulled out a folder. “She had highlighted certain areas of the files.” She pointed to a blue line and asked, “Why do you think she did that?”

  “You looked at these? They’re confidential medical records.”

  “I didn’t know that until I opened the first one.”

  “How many did you see?”

  Maggie shrugged.

  “My patients’ privacy has been compromised.” Vanessa skimmed the file, closed it, and said, “These are copies, but she should have never taken them out of the clinic and you most certainly should have never had access to them.”

  “It’s not like I went looking for them,” Maggie explained. “I had no idea what was in them when Stella gave them to me, and neither did she.”

  “Stella has seen them, too?”

  “She gave me the boxes. She thought they contained Hazel’s insurance forms.”

  “I cannot believe this.” Vanessa clutched the folder with one hand and ran her other hand through her hair. “Listen, I’m sorry for raising my voice. It’s not your fault. It’s Hazel’s fault. I had a feeling she was sneaking in there. I finally had to change the locks.”

  Maggie asked, “Why do you think she made all those copies?”

  Vanessa returned the folder to the box. “It was Hazel. Who knows why she did a number of things? You’re the one who’s trying to figure out why she decided to hang out at a pond in the middle of the night.”

  As Vanessa pulled the second box from the trunk, Maggie said, “I think she marked those files because she suspected you of fraud.”

  “What?” Vanessa stood frozen with each hand on either side of the box. “Why would you make such an accusation?”

  “It’s not an accusation. It’s an observation. I looked inside a few, well, some of the files. There was a pattern and she made notations. Now, I don’t understand –”

  “That’s right. You don’t understand.”

  “There’s no reason to get upset. As I said, I’m not making an accusation. I’m making a statement.”

  “So, let me make a statement.” Vanessa dropped the box onto the asphalt. “Hazel was an embittered woman who wanted everyone to be
as miserable as she was. She resented me for not giving her the run of the clinic and for hiring my husband as the office manager. You’re probably right. She probably printed confidential medical records in the hopes that she would catch my husband or me doing something illegal.” Vanessa slammed Maggie’s trunk lid. “But that doesn’t mean you’re an innocent party. I thought you called me up for a girls’ night out, but you just wanted to pump me for information. Believe me when I tell you that if you ever call me again, I will not make the mistake of answering the phone.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Maggie listened as Edie regaled her with tales from her week at the beach.

  “… and that was the evening we went to the restaurant that served fresh shark. I was skeptical at first, but Ben insisted I try some and it was pretty good.”

  Maggie grimaced. “You ate shark?”

  “Don’t you judge me. You eat squirrel.” Edie kicked off her shoes and rested her feet on an ottoman. “So, what did I miss? How’s the case?”

  “I don’t know.” Maggie nestled onto Edie’s oversized sofa. “It’s complicated.”

  “Are these complications to blame for your gloomy mood?”

  “I’m not gloomy. I’m –” Maggie couldn’t find an appropriate word to describe her mood. “I’ve got a lot on my mind. There’s work and investigating Hazel Baker’s death and dealing with the aftermath of someone vandalizing my car and now Seth.”

  “Seth?”

  “Yeah, Seth.”

  After Maggie filled in Edie on her meetings at the gazebo with Seth, Edie said, “It’s natural of you to wonder what would have happened if you two had gotten married. You dated for a long time.”

  Maggie pulled a pillow to her chest. “If it’s natural, then why do I feel like I’m betraying Luke?”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Pumpkin. It’s not to the level of betrayal,” Edie paused and added, “is it?”

  “No.” Maggie tossed the pillow onto the couch cushion. “You know me. How could you even ask something like that?”