The Turkey Tussle (The Morelville Mysteries, #9)

by Anne Hagan

“What do you suppose it was about him that would push someone to murder him?”

  All eyes turned to Marsha.

  “He was a poker player,” she said. “Seemed to make his living at it. Most of the men around town farmed or worked the oil fields or both. The oil workers would play cards when they got paid in backrooms in illegal gin joints that dotted this village and the surrounding area. He did too and he seemed to win more than his fair share of the games. Took my own husband, God rest his soul, for a penny or two.”

  “Illegal places?”

  “Yup,” Selma said. “The village went dry during prohibition and it stayed dry, aside from moonshine, for a good 15 years after the murder until some of the younger folks pushed for beer carryout at the gas station.”

  Bridget rolled her eyes. “Now they have beer at that pizza shop. It’s turned into a pub and a hangout for all the backwoods oil men that don’t want to clean up to go up to the Boar’s Head.”

  I chuckled out loud at the notion of The Boar’s Head being a higher class place they had to clean up for.

  They diverged from the subject at hand to rail about the pizza shop turned bar for a minute and I watched as Hannah breathed a sigh of obvious relief. It was to be short lived.

  Chapter 3

  The swinging door from the kitchen burst open as a rack of bagged, freshly baked bread was pushed through it. Faye was behind it, doing the pushing. Since Hannah still had Jef, I jumped up to go and help her get it into position behind the counter.

  She smiled when she saw me. “I didn’t know you were out here. Did you bring the baby?”

  I nodded but she was already waving to Jef while Hannah held his little arm and waved it for him back at her.

  The ladies all looked on silently – not at all like them.

  Fayed stepped up behind the display case and questioned them as a group, “Why so quiet? You’d think we were having a funeral in here.”

  Lucy coughed on her sip of tea. She recovered as Bridget patted her back and started explaining, “We didn’t even know you were back there Faye. We weren’t trying to say anything to upset you.”

  Selma shot Lucy a look but she missed it as she rattled on. “We were only trying to give Dana some of the local history for a book she might write.”

  My Mother-in-law turned her head and looked at me with raised eyebrows.

  Glossing right over the fact that some of the conversation had been about her, she instead quizzed me, “So, you’re back to writing are you? What about now? Local history of all things? There really isn’t a whole lot of that, that isn’t already covered, you know?”

  “It’s just a thought,” I said. “Something the ladies brought up when I mentioned that I’d thought about trying my hand at writing up some true crime stuff and maybe even dissecting some of my old cases.”

  “What sort of local history stuff?” Faye asked as she spun away from me and looked pointedly at the women arrayed around the table as she walked out from behind the counter.

  Lucy cleared her throat and admitted, “We were telling her about Tanner Mathis – the one that died that Thanksgiving when you were a teenager. His...it was never solved.”

  Faye looked back at me then. “Lots of people were there that day. Lots of cops too. They went over and over everything.” Her tone implied that if they couldn’t figure it out, it couldn’t be figured out.

  My curiosity won out over my fear of upsetting her. “When,” I asked, “was the last time anyone looked into the case? Does Mel even know about it now that she’s the Sheriff and all?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Faye admitted. “I honestly don’t know what she knows about it. It was well before she was born...heaven’s, more than 40 years ago, I’d say.” She rubbed her temple and then shook her head out as if to clear it.

  “Let me have at that baby for a minute,” she said as she smiled and changed the subject. She walked around the end of the counter and out into the open.

  Hannah put Jef down on his feet again and offered her fingers down for his little hands to hold while Faye squatted to get down to his level.

  Excited, the boy trundled right out of his mother’s grasp and took four unaided steps toward one of the three women he thought of as Grandma as everyone in the shop oohed and awed at him.

  Chapter 4

  After lunch, I decided to put Jef down for his nap in his crib upstairs so I could spend a little time in Mel’s den using her computer. Boo, my Boston terrier, and I crept out of his room and down the hall to the only room in the house Mel hadn’t allowed my mother to touch when she was helping us to furnish and decorate the place.

  I’d initially questioned the wisdom of putting the den upstairs to begin with, when we were laying out the house but, in hindsight, it had worked out well. It was a quiet place for Mel to work when she needed to work from home and it allowed all of us to be close to Jef if he woke up while we worked in there. The room is all about Mel though.

  Unlike her sparsely decorated office at the station, the walls here are covered with pictures of her sister’s kids Beth and Cole and, more recently, of Jef. As I looked around trying to pick out the latest shots she’d framed and hung I worked on moving some of her mess aside on the desktop so I could have a little work space. I finally got settled and booted the laptop.

  The Zanesville Times Recorder didn’t have online archives that would let me search news articles from back in 1972. I really wanted to ferret out some names and to try to piece together more of the story that ladies had started to tell me. I did find a couple of brief mentions in some other rags that were partially indexed from back in the 1970’s, but I ended up wistfully longing to be out in my writing shed where I still had access to the databases I’d paid for when I was trying to take on security and investigative work for Young International.

  The Sheriff at the time was a Vincent Sweeney; that much I was able to figure out from a county elections site. There wasn’t much record of him otherwise though and no mention that I could find with my limited access of him in relation to the murder investigation. This one was looking like a tough slog.

  An hour or so into my search, Jef woke up and started crying. I rooted around quickly in Mel’s desk drawers until I found an empty file folder. I labeled it ‘Tanner Mathis Case’ and jammed the few notes I had and a couple of small printouts inside it before I went to him.

  ###

  Mel came home as Hannah and I were putting dinner on the table. She gave me a quick kiss, scratched Boo behind the ears then snatched Jef up from his position seated on the floor with a car and a block; one in each hand.

  “Hi family!” she said as she swung him back and forth in her arms. He reached for her badge as he always did and she half-heartedly scolded him for it as she always did, smiling all the while.

  “You’re in a good mood.”

  “Actually, I’m beat. It was a looooong day; a physically exhausting day.” She looked at Hannah and asked, “Shouldn’t you be in class?”

  Hannah nodded. “Not till 7:00 tonight. They’re doing some sort of open house for prospects and not all of us had to be there.”

  “That’s good for us,” Mel said, “because it sure smells good in here.” She put Jef down, rubbed her hands together and then reached to take off her gun belt.

  Jef leaned into her leg and looked up at her, his eyes bright.

  “Hang on little buddy. Let me get this off. I don’t want to conk you in the head with it.”

  “Conk!” he repeated, grinning. With that, he let go of her leg and stepped backward a half step.

  Mel swooped a hand down to steady him but I held out my own hand to stop her.

  “Wait babe. Let him go and back up a couple of steps.”

  She gave me a quizzical look but did as I said with Boo following her lead. Jef steadied himself and stood there in a wide legged stance for a few seconds then pulled one leg in slightly and took a tentative step toward her and the dog and then another.

  Mel was
waiting just a couple of more steps away but he started to waver and sank to the floor, crawling the remaining distance. Boo moved in fast to give him a face lick of congratulations.

  “Wow!” was her response. “Look at you, big boy! Tryin’ to walk and all.” She looked at Hannah who beaming from where she still stood at the stove. “It’s going to be no time at all now Mama!”

  “That’s what everyone’s telling me. I helped take care of my younger brothers and my little sister but I just don’t remember them all taking their first steps.”

  I thought to myself, ‘That’s because you were practically a baby yourself.’ The ways of the old Amish order that Hannah had grown up in were quite a bit different, from my perspective.

  “So what’s got you so worn out?” I asked my wife as we all enjoyed the chicken lasagna dish Hannah had prepared.

  She shook her head slowly as she finished a bite. “It’ll be on the news tonight. My guys busted what we thought was a meth lab in the wee hours this morning. Well, they were making meth there but the people that were in there cooking were higher than kites, and not on meth. They were PCP or something even nastier.”

  “A couple of them were still in processing when I got in there this morning and they were a handful. Then, it was a slow day in court and the judge wanted them in for arraignment today so we drug them over there so he could see they weren’t even competent to stand and then we had to drag them back to the lockup kicking and screaming. We took turns babysitting them all day until they finally started to come down.”

  I grimaced. I missed the investigative side of law enforcement but I was glad I’d never had to do the sort of day to day stuff Mel and her deputies did. “Must have been some powerful stuff to last that long.”

  “One of them, a woman,” she went on as she nodded at me, “had the strength of a couple of men. She got to kicking at Gates and I went to grab her and she twisted around on me until we were tangled up like pretzels. It took three deputies to pull her off me.” Mel flexed and rotated her shoulders as she recalled the struggle.

  “Sounds like you could use a back rub.”

  “That would be amazing,” she said and she cracked a smile for the first time since she’d started telling us about her day. “Tell you what though, I’m going to shower after dinner and then head upstairs for just a bit. Between dealing with them and overseeing all the crap that came in from the scene, I never even got to my email today and I’ve been waiting for responses on a couple of things.”

  ###

  “I thought you were done working cases for Young?”

  “Huh?” I was pulling on pajama pants and I didn’t even turn to look at Mel who was standing by her own dresser doing the same.

  “There was a file on my desk labeled Thomas Mathis Case. I just wondered.”

  “You mean Tanner Mathis. It’s not a case I’m working on so much as research for a book. I didn’t find much though. Do you know anything about him?”

  “Tanner, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “I mean, the name is vaguely familiar. Should I know him?”

  “You must not have looked in the file.” When she shook her head no, I told her, “He was murdered in 1972 in your grandparent’s house. Does that ring a bell?”

  “That guy!” She moved toward the bed and slid Boo down toward the foot of it when she reached it. “It was before my time, you understand but, if we’re going to talk about it, I may as well get comfortable.” She lay down on her stomach and told me she wanted some oil on her back but not to heat it.

  As I warmed the eucalyptus oil she liked to be rubbed down with in my hands, I asked her to tell me what she knew.

  “Not much,” she admitted. “I know it’s an unsolved case and it’s been closed for years which tells me the powers that were in charge back in the day didn’t think it could be solved.”

  “Didn’t think it could be or didn’t want it solved?” I speculated out loud.

  She shrugged into my hands as I rubbed her shoulders. “I can’t answer that either but, before Caden Carter, there isn’t a whole lot of record of my predecessors on the department being corrupt...at least not in the fifty years or so before him. Now around town here, but not recently, mind you, Tanner’s name has come up from time to time and typically everyone around here that knows anything about what happened, on hearing it, goes mum. It’s like they do want to gossip about it but they don’t want to do it around me or my family.”

  “Your mom’s never talked about it?”

  Mel turned her head to the side where I was standing and looked at me. “No babe,” she said letting out a heavy breath, “but then, I haven’t actually asked either. Why’s this case so important to you?”

  “It’s not,” I shrugged myself. “My writing came up today when the Matriarchs were taking coffee and their own special version of high tea at the bakery and I told them I’d given some thought to writing up old cases...sort of doing true crime stuff.”

  She grinned at me.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “Now you’re itching to try your hand at solving that particular one, aren’t you?”

  I had to admit, she knew me well. “Maybe. You sort of saw what I was able to find online though. There’s not a lot to work with.” I kneaded the muscles of her lower back while she shifted around a little.

  “You could ask my mom about it babe but don’t be surprised if she doesn’t want to talk about it. I honestly don’t know if it’s a sore spot for her or not.”

  “Mmm, maybe. You know it’s rough for me to make even small talk with her unless Mama’s around. These days, with Jef, it’s a little bit easier, but still...”

  “No, if you’re going to talk to her about it, it needs to be just you and her.”

  I knew she was right. Changing the subject, I asked her instead, “Do you want me to do your legs?”

  “No babe, that’s good. Why don’t you lay down here with me? There’s been enough talk about work and murder and stuff for one night.”

  Boo got relegated to the floor as I quickly snuggled in with my wife. Her kiss a few minutes later woke me from my nipples to my loins. I knew she was hurting but I just couldn’t help myself.

  I licked at her tongue while my hands flew to her waistband of her sweats. She’d knotted the drawstring and I worked hard, trying to loosen it without breaking our kiss.

  She knew what I wanted. She lifted up off of the bed, arching her back slightly. I scooted back a little and tried to work the pants down without undoing the knot. They were so tight around her waist that I had to yank from first one side and then the other, trying to will them down over her round ass. Now, frankly, I love Mel’s ass but right then it was impeding progress.

  Mel grinned down at me as she watched me struggle.

  "Um, maybe you could help," I asked.

  Finally, the thick cotton took pity on me and rolled up...er, down and I slid them down to her ankles and off. I thought about tossing them to the floor but then I remembered Boo being down there instead of up with us and I tossed them toward the footboard instead. My girl was past her first year of puppyhood but she wasn’t entirely broken of shredding things in what I called her ‘moments of spite’.

  Back flat on her back, wearing nothing but a pair of electric blue tomboy boxers, Mel spread her legs. I could see a small spot of wetness in the center of her form fitting pants. She was wet, something I didn’t get to see often, with her usually taking the dominant role in our lovemaking. I was even more turned on when I could smell her scent on the air.

  I was seated close to her feet when I decided that I badly needed to kiss her again. I shifted to my hands and knees and gave her an animalistic look, and then started to crawl up over her.

  Mel’s legs were still spread, but as I slid up her torso, she brought them back in slightly, pulling them up toward her stomach. Then she hooked her thumbs into the waist band of my own sweats. As I scooted forward, she worked them and my panties in the oppo
site direction to slip them off my hips. When I got where I wanted to be, I kicked them away, to the end of the bed, then sat up slightly and removed my top too.

  Mel grinned beneath me. Her eyes traced their way down my neck and over my breasts and then belly, and then down between my legs.

  “Do you like what you see Mrs. Crane?”

  “Mmm, do I.”

  “I do too,” I said as I smiled back at her.

  She tried to maneuver me over onto my side but I wasn’t having it; not this time. As I engaged her tongue in a deep kiss, I moved so that I was straddling her right leg, my own wet pussy sliding onto her upper thigh. I slipped my hand under the curve of her neck, and pulled her up towards me.

  With my right hand, I found her left breast. As my fingers sunk into her flesh, she moaned. Her nipple felt hard, like a hard bullet, against my palm. I gently circled my fingertips around the very tip of her nipple, teasing it. As she shuddered I moved forward more forcefully, squeezing her breast a little more firmly.

  Before long, Mel’s attention was no longer on our kisses or on what I was doing to her breasts. A hand rose up and found its way between my legs.

  "Ahhh," I moaned.

  Her warm fingers rubbed gently across my wet slit. My own need grew more powerful and my body shook. My hips moved downward, almost automatically, trying to find more purchase with her fingers.

  My tongue became rigid in Mel's mouth as she toyed with me, just barely stroking me. Since I was still in the dominate position – or so I thought – I decided two could play at that game.

  I slipped my right hand off of Mel’s breast and moved it slowly down over her stomach until it rested between her legs. She was still wearing her boxer briefs, but I could feel her heat. When I pressed my fingertips against the inside of her thigh, her hips bucked slightly.

  I moved my fingers against the cotton of the tomboy boxers. They soaked instantly through and Mel moaned again.

  I wanted to touch her so badly but I needed to hold off. I let my fingers just barely trail across her clit through her boxers. A moment later, I felt her hand move up. She was no longer teasing. Instead, the pads of her fingers pressed into me.