The Turkey Tussle

by Anne Hagan

  Faye flipped a hand at him. “And you young man, as destructive as you are, never will be!”

  Jef pushed down a tower of blocks Cole had just finished stacking.

  “You won’t get to use them either,” Cole told the toddler.

  I remembered the knives then and stared off into space as I tried to figure out how to bring the subject of them up to Faye privately.

  She solved my problem for me. “Earth to Dana. You’ve got something on your mind. What is it?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “If it’s about what you’ve been looking into, I told Kris and I know Hannah knows too.”

  “Sorry,” I said, feeling like maybe I’d slipped up and let her down.

  “No need to apologize,” Faye said, waving me off.

  She looked at Morgan. “A man was killed in my old family home more than 40 years ago. Dana’s been looking into a little bit. They never caught the killer,” she said by way of explanation.

  “What did you think of just then?” she continued with me.

  “It’s just that as I’ve poked around I’ve learned that they never found the murder weapon even though they confiscated every knife in the house that day...or so I was told.”

  “They did,” Faye said. “Pocket knives, kitchen knives, everything. My mother was hopping mad about that and dad was pretty mad too because they even took some of his tools from the garage. The turkey was cold by the time the we finally got to eat it and we had no way to cut it properly. Everyone else left, but we still had to eat.” She shuddered as she rubbed her arms. It’s weird to think about it that way now but, back then, it had been a very long day.”

  “Were any of the knives ever returned?”

  “All of ours were, as far as I know. I can’t tell you if all the men who had pocket knives and whatnot taken that day got them back but I imagine so.”

  I thought of something else. “Did they search vehicles that day?”

  Faye shrugged. “Probably. We were all kept inside so I don’t know.”

  That hadn’t been in the case file. ‘Just another thing that doesn’t jive for me,’ I thought.

  “We took Jef up to see your mom this past week Faye,” Hannah told her.

  Faye smiled. “I’ll bet she enjoyed that.”

  I jumped in, trying to spare Hannah what might be coming next. “There was a motive, of course,” I said.

  “I figured but I doubt she could have told you much. Her memory just isn’t what it used to be.”

  “You’re right but, I think, somewhere in the back of her mind, she was getting it and lucid enough to try and tell us something. She kept mentioning ‘carving’ when they went to the nursing home. Could she have been talking about a meat carving knife?”

  A light bulb seemed to come on for Faye. She leaned forward in her chair then and waved both arms in the air as she signaled something she’d remembered that she’d long forgotten.

  “My mother had a meat fork and carving knife set they’d been given as a gift, she told me, for a wedding anniversary by her grandmother. Mom couldn’t find it that morning to set out for her dad to carve the bird when we all got to the table. She told me she’d dug it out of the pantry the week before Thanksgiving and she thought she’d put the set in the china cabinet in our dining room...that china cabinet,” Faye said as she pointed to the cabinet behind me.

  It was quiet while everyone in the room turned to stare at the cabinet.

  “She said, when she went for it to set it on the table, just before the turkey was due out of the oven to rest, it wasn’t there. She didn’t know how long it had been gone and it was never found.

  She shuddered again. I searched the house up and down for that thing..well, that floor anyway. I was still searching when one of my cousins...I never did know which one, for sure, found that man. In all of the hullabaloo over that, I forgot all about that set.”

  “Did the police find it Mom?” Kris asked.

  “You know, I don’t think so.”

  There was no carving set listed on the inventory in the case file. “I think we now know what the murder weapon was,” I said. “The question is, who took it and what did they do with it afterward?”

  Chapter 16

  We were all quiet, lost in our thoughts.

  I broke in as gently as I could. “Do you remember the set your father carved with Faye?”

  She shook her head and blew out a breath. “You know, I don’t have the foggiest idea. I don’t actually know that I ever saw it or, if I had, I don’t remember it. There wasn’t much call for carving in our house when we were growing up. We always went out to Granddaddy’s farm for the big holidays. We usually had our ham or our turkey out there and he did all the carving.”

  “Your mom’s family?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember what he carved with, then?”

  “As I recall, a knife and fork set that he kept in a wooden box.”

  “Could that set be what your mother had, that they gifted to her?”

  “I don’t rightly know; possibly,” she shrugged. “My grandparents were a lot older. Mama was the baby of the family. They were getting up into the years where they couldn’t, for health reasons, do the big dinners anymore by the time I was a teenager. In fact, if I remember right, by that year, Grandpa was in a nursing home.He didn’t get to come to Thanksgiving. His breathing, I think. But, you know,” she half shrugged then, “I just assumed it was a new set since it was an anniversary gift to them but maybe it was passed down, kind of like a passing of the torch.”

  “What was?” Jesse asked as he came into the room.

  “A carving set; one my mom and dad had.”

  Jesse said, “Stuff like that was usually handed on back in the day. Times were different. It wasn’t all about the latest and greatest then,” he said as he shot a look at his grandson.

  Hannah added, “My parents have stuff that’s been in the family for generations.”

  Jesse turned back to his wife, “You have a really old carving set here, in the house.”

  “I do?”

  “Yeah. It was in all that stuff we moved out of your mother’s basement when we helped her replace the furnace maybe 15 years ago.”

  “In the house Kris lives in now?”

  “Yeah, that house. She told you, you could have whatever of that stuff you wanted. It was in with a bunch of canning jars you just had to have.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “As shootin’. Probably in the back of the basement or the root cellar. That’s where we put everything you weren’t going to use right away from that go around over there.”

  “Heaven’s, I wouldn’t know where to start down there!”

  “Well, I suggest the root cellar.”

  “Wow,” Faye said. “What if it is down there and it is what we think it is?”

  “What’s that?” Jesse asked.

  “The knife that killed a man more than 40 years ago...long story.”

  Chapter 17

  I looked at my mother-in-law. “The ball’s in your court, you decide.” Despite my recent bad experiences in a root cellar on another case, I was itching to go down there and start digging but I didn’t want to upset Faye.

  She took a couple of deep breaths. “If I go down there and I find it, it could open a whole new can of worms, couldn’t it?” She looked at me as she asked.

  I just nodded my head.

  “On the other hand, if I don’t look, there won’t be any leaving things be for me. I’ll always wonder about it.”

  “You don’t have to do it alone Mom. I’ll go with you,” Kris said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  What started out being just the three of us turned into an expedition to the root cellar that included Hannah and Morgan as well. Jesse and Cole stayed upstairs to play with Jef and to watch for my folks and for Mel and Beth to arrive.

  On the way through the house to the inside access stairs, Faye stopped, turned and said
to all of us, “Please, please be very careful on the way down. The stairs from in here are old wooden ones. We hardly ever go this way...we go into the root cellar from outside when we have stuff to haul in. We’ll be fine if we stick to the side closer to the wall because they can be rickety further out.”

  As we all inched our way slowly down, heeding her warning, she said again from her position at the front of the line, “We so seldom come down here anymore because of these stairs and I don’t come into this part of the cellar at all, only the root cellar. I apologize now because I have no idea what condition anything down here is in.”

  Despite my leg problems, I was managing all right from my position bringing up the rear but Hannah, who was just ahead of me, was a lot more tentative. “You okay?” I asked when she glanced up at me from about the halfway point.

  “This stone is damp,” she said as she pointed at the wall we were all sticking close to.

  The way was lighted; dimly but lighted, but Hannah was right. Between the dungeon like looks, the dampness and the musty smell, the ick factor was pretty high.

  Once we were all safely down, Faye led us through the bigger room at the base of the stairs then we had to squeeze through a narrow doorway set in an old stone wall just past the furnace.

  She apologized for the third time, saying, “Sorry ladies but there’s only one light in this room.” She yanked a chain to pop the single bulb fixture on. “This is the root cellar but now it’s mostly just a pass through from the outside entrance.”

  Despite what she said, there had to be decades of clutter in the main basement and in the root cellar. I was well aware that Faye and Jesse were both pack rats and now I knew that the entire cellar was where their habit went to hide.

  “Let’s all spread out,” Faye suggested. Start looking for boxes of canning jars that aren’t put up.”

  Morgan looked at me and mouthed, “Huh?” but Hannah caught it too.

  “See those full jars on the shelves over there?” She pointed. “That’s stuff Faye has canned or ‘put up’.”

  Morgan wrinkled her nose. “How old is that stuff?”

  “Most of it’s from just this past summer,” Faye answered. “We put in a big garden every year that we tend to from spring through fall. You’re looking at a lot of the results of it. The rest of what we didn’t eat fresh picked is in the freezer.” She glanced around, “My green beans that you all love so much when I do them in the slow cooker with ham and potatoes?” She waved a hand at a set of shelves that must have held forty or fifty jars of beans, “There you go.”

  Turning to Morgan and Hannah, Faye said, “I’m surprised they don’t teach you about canning at that school of yours.”

  “Well, I learned growing up,” Hannah said in her own defense, “and Morgan isn’t from the country. At school we learn to get things fresh and use them right away. It’s, uh, more for restaurant work...”

  “It’s okay, Hannah,” Kris said as she made her way to a corner. “Mom’s just nervous and she gets nit picky when she gets nervous.”

  “Oh I do not!” Faye said.

  We all started digging through boxes then, most of which were stacked high on a few pallets to keep them up off of the dirt floor. Still, there was a lot of dust and that and the musty, damp smell were getting to me. I tugged my t-shirt collar up from under my hoodie, over my nose and tried using it as a filter to breath through. It only helped a little.

  I found a pallet with some boxes that looked promising and started digging. Rather than jars I found vintage Christmas and Halloween decorations that, on seeing them, Faye said had belonged to her mother.

  “At least it appears we’re on the right track then. Wouldn’t these have come out of your house about the same time, Kris?” I looked over at her.

  She shrugged. “Who knows! There’s so much stuff here and it’s all covered in dust.” She coughed, punctuating her point.

  We all continued digging through piles of boxes for several minutes but then I had to stand and stretch. I walked over to Faye who was looking through a box of vintage Tupperware.

  “So when’s the last time you were really down here other than to bring your canning down?”

  She smiled a half smile. “We do tote things in and out in the summer time when it’s a lot less damp down here and when we can use the outside access but most of the rest of the year they avoid it because of the damp and the stairs.” She shook her head then and muttered, “This coming Spring, Jesse really needs to work on those stairs. It isn’t convenient when there’s snow on the ground to have to go outside to get in here and get to the food stores and the stone steps outside can ice up pretty good too.”

  After that, I went back to digging but another 15 minutes later, no canning jars had materialized for anyone and we were all getting chilled from the damp.

  Faye sighed. “If they’re here, we’re not going to find them at this rate. We might as well wait till spring when we can take all of this stuff out into the light of day.”

  A voice came then from out in the bigger basement room or the top of the stairs but we couldn’t make it out. Several of us called out, ‘What?’ in unison.

  Kris said, “I think it’s Cole.” She got up from her crouch and went to the doorway between the rooms and through. The rest of us followed.

  “What did you say Cole? We couldn’t here you.”

  Rather than answer, the teenager came through the door and started to clatter down the stairs far to quickly for their condition.

  She yelled to her son, “Slow down!” but it was too late.

  About five steps down, as he was calling out that Jef was fussing and they couldn’t get him to stop, a step gave way under his foot. His leg went through the now splintered wood and he pitched slightly forward like he was going to tumble the rest of the way down but then he caught himself.

  He tried to pull out but he was stuck. “Help!”

  “Hold still,” I called out to him as Kris, Hannah and I all rushed to the steps. The old wood framework of risers and treads was listing badly now and I wasn’t so sure it wouldn’t collapse. All of us coming down, including Cole had been more stress on it than it could bear.

  While Kris held onto Cole as best she could from above, without climbing onto the rickety stairs herself, Hannah and I pushed around and climbed over more dusty old boxes that were stored up under them to get to the boy and support him from underneath. As we quickly bulldozed our way through them, I thought I heard glass bottles clinking together in one.

  I wedged a shoulder up under the foot that was all the way through. “Hannah,” I said, “step out to the edge of the steps and spot him from the side.”

  Morgan had moved up to the steps by then too. “You too,” I said.

  “Kris, I’m going to stand slowly and push him up. You take his hands and start turning him sideways toward Hannah and Morgan. We’re going to have to pull him out before this whole thing goes.”

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “Listen; Hannah and Morgan, you’re going to play catch. As I push and Kris turns him, you two reach for him and be prepared to guide him down as best you can. He’s going to be a little heavy. Just don’t let him fall on his head.”

  “Ready Cole?” Kris asked him.

  “Yeah...hurry...I’m slipping.”

  “I’ve got you,” I said. “On three. One, two, three!” I eased up under his weight as gently as I could. He was heavy at first but then Kris was turning him and the two girls were reaching and pulling and his weight was gone.

  I ducked under the sagging treads and stepped out to assist the other three in the nick of time. As they took the weight of Cole’s torso, the stairway gave out and came crashing. We all staggered backwards holding the teenager but, somehow, everyone managed to keep their balance.

  There stairs crashed down and a cloud of dust billowed out as we lowered the boy the rest of the way to the ground. We all turned away from the source but it quickly filled the room.
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  Jesse called from somewhere overhead, “What’s happening down there?”

  Faye, finally gaining her bearings, went to the pad that had been the landing at the bottom. “Don’t come down here! The stairs collapsed. Close the door up there and keep Jef away.”

  He came to the top of the stairs and looked down. “I shoulda’ told you all to use the outside entrance. I just wasn’t thinking ‘bout these steps...what used to be steps, anyway. Is everybody okay?”

  We all looked at Cole. Now free, he seemed none the worse for wear other than tearing his already torn jeans a little more.

  “Fine grandpa,” he answered himself.

  “Can you get the key Dad,” Kris asked, “and go out and unlock the root cellar doors and let us all out of here?”

  “Hang on. I ain’t takin’ this baby outside but someone’s pulling in out there. Give me a couple of minutes.” With that, he shut the door.

  Faye surveyed the damage and shook her head. “Okay then, we’ll have to work on a fix for this, come spring. She took the single step off the landing and headed for the doorway between the main room and the root cellar. Everyone else moved to follow her.

  I reached out and took a hold of Hannah’s arm with one hand as I waved at the dust with the other. “Wait,” I said to her.

  She and Morgan both stopped moving.

  “I heard something in one of the boxes under the stairs that might be what we’re looking for. Will you help me? I think it’s one of the ones that got moved out from under.”

  She turned back toward the rubble of the stairs. “You heard it too, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I think it’s one of those four or five there,” I said, pointing.

  We picked our way to the little grouping of boxes we’d hastily moved out of the way only a couple of minutes before. As I nudged them with my foot, I prayed it wasn’t one buried in the pile of mess.

  “What are you doing,” Faye called to us.

  The third box my foot nudged clanged like glass was inside. “Just checking something real quick,” I answered.