Murder at Moonshiner Days

by Michelle Goff

  Joe sat punching away on his keyboard. “Come on in. Let me finish editing this story and then I’m all yours.”

  Maggie walked inside Joe’s office, closing the door behind her. Joe’s attention shifted from the story to Maggie. “If your visit constitutes a closed-door meeting, then the story can wait. What’s going on?”

  Maggie deliberated on what to say to Joe, who she had worked alongside since her first day at the Sentinel nearly fifteen years prior. She knew she could talk to him about anything, but she hesitated. She didn’t consider herself a tattletale and she certainly didn’t want to exacerbate Joe and Tyler’s already-contentious relationship, but she felt he needed to know what had transpired between her and Tyler.

  “Joe, do you remember how I used my job during the early days of the Mac Honaker investigation to interview suspects?”

  “Of course, I remember. I’ve never before or since been more disappointed in you.”

  “I lied by omission and falsely represented myself. I learned my lesson, which is why I’m coming to you now.”

  “What is it this time?”

  “You know the stories Tyler is writing about the one-year anniversary of the Jennifer Wagner murder?”

  “Yes,” Joe dragged the word out into three syllables.

  “He asked me to participate in the interviews and I did. But after we talked to Jennifer’s daughter, I realized that Tyler has been using me. I guess he thinks solving the murder, with my help of course, will bring him some notoriety and punch his ticket out of here.”

  “In that case, you need to give these stories your full attention. Don’t worry about the obits, the intern can take care of them. And your stories can wait. We need to give Tyler what he wants. Heck, we need to give me what I want and that’s him gone.”

  “Now, Joe, if I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were serious.”

  “I am serious about wanting him gone.” Leaning back in his chair, Joe said, “You know, he’s not a bad reporter. What he lacks in experience he makes up for in enthusiasm. But his attitude makes him unbearable.”

  “Tell me about it. He treated Blake like she was a hostile witness. I’m a team player, but I’m not going out of my way to help him again.”

  Joe grinned. “I only ask that you continue to assist in his job searches.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes and stood to leave.

  “So,” Joe said, “has this stirred any interest in Jennifer Wagner’s death?”

  “Not one bit,” Maggie said. “When it comes to snooping, I’ve retired.”

  When Maggie exited the building at day’s end, she heard birds chirping and saw a couple cardinals carrying on an animated conversation on the steps leading to the sidewalk. She took a deep breath and allowed herself to savor the warming temperature. Even in town, she could smell spring in the air. She couldn’t wait for the sound of croaking frogs to lull her to sleep at night. So consumed was she in her own world that she didn’t notice Blake coming toward her until the girl was standing in front of her.

  “Hello,” Maggie said. “Are you out for a walk?”

  “No, I drove my car. I came back to talk to you and Tyler.”

  “Oh, is something wrong? Did you remember something else you wanted to tell us?”

  Blake chewed her lips. “Yeah. It’s just that I’m not sure I should tell anybody. I mean, it’s probably nothing, but I haven’t told the police. I haven’t even told my dad.”

  “What is it, Blake? Does it have something to do with your mom’s murder?”

  “Probably not, but the day she died, my mom,” Blake sighed, “well, she fired Delphene.”

  Chapter Four

  The second time Maggie visited Delphene’s house, she wasn’t lucky enough to find her relaxing on the porch. Instead, when Maggie knocked on the front door, Delphene called for her to join her inside.

  “I’m just setting in here having me some supper,” Delphene said.

  Stepping inside the house, Maggie said, “Oh, I wish you had told me on the phone that you were eating. I wouldn’t have bothered you.”

  “You ain’t bothering me none.” Nodding her head toward the sofa, Delphene said, “Find you somewhere to set. You want something to eat? I made enough for me and my girl, Scootie, but she said she wasn’t in the mood for corn dogs and tater tots. She run downtown to get one of them five dollar pizzas. I don’t care if it just costs five dollars. If you got food on the stove or in the frigerator, you eat on it until it’s gone. If you let good food go bad, you’re just throwing money down the well.” Delphene sipped a green beverage. “Want some Kool-Aid?”

  Although Maggie was thirsty, she had never cared for lime Kool-Aid and was surprised the company still manufactured what she considered an unpopular and unsavory flavor. She didn’t like corn dogs or tater tots, either. Simply seeing the foods took her mind back to her school’s crowded cafeteria, which always smelled of fresh paint and grease. “Thank you, but I have dinner plans,” Maggie said.

  “Why didn’t that boy Tyler come with you?”

  “Well, I’m not here on paper business.”

  “I could of swore you said that you wanted to ask me a few more questions.”

  “I do, but not for the paper.”

  Grasping the stick holding the corn dog, Delphene said, “If you ain’t intending to talk to me about that story you’uns is writing, then what do you want with me?”

  “It’s, uh, well, I’m looking into Jennifer’s murder. I do that from time to time.” Maggie didn’t believe the words until they came out of her mouth. After walking Blake to her car, she had called Delphene without putting too much thought into her actions. But standing there in Delphene’s living room, she accepted the truth. “Well, obviously I don’t look into Jennifer’s murder from time to time, but I have investigated other suspicious deaths.”

  Delphene took a generous bite of the corn dog. “Scootie told me something about that after you come around here the first time. Scootie’s real smart. She keeps up with the news better than I do.”

  “It’s important for you to know that I didn’t misrepresent myself yesterday evening with Tyler. At that time, I hadn’t even considered investigating Jennifer’s death. But information came to light today that convinced me that I should, at the very least, follow up with you.”

  Delphene pulled a packet of mustard from a bowl containing a variety of restaurant-sized condiments and salt-and-pepper packs. Ripping open the mustard, she squeezed the contents onto a paper plate, dipped the corn dog in the condiment, and took another bite of it before smothering a handful of tater tots in ketchup and popping them in her mouth. “What happened today to change your mind?”

  Maggie watched in amazement as Delphene consumed her dinner without so much as getting a smidgen of mustard or ketchup on her hands or face. “Tyler and I spoke to Blake.”

  Delphene sipped the Kool-Aid and wiped her mouth. “Ain’t she a sweetheart? I shore do miss that girl. If I had knowed you were gonna talk to her, I would of asked you to say hi for me.”

  “She seems like a really nice girl.”

  “Jennifer done good by her. How’s she doing?”

  “Okay, I guess. She was quiet. She seems shy.”

  “You ain’t telling me nothing I don’t already know. There were days at Jennifer’s that Blake set in a chair the whole time I was there. She had those things in her ears, so I reckon she was listening to music. And she was reading on one of them there things that put me in mind of an extra big calculator. The first time I saw her staring into that thing, I thought she was doing her math homework. I mentioned it to Jennifer. I said, ‘She shore does a lot of math homework.’ Jennifer laughed so hard that her coffee come out of her nose. After she quit laughing, she told me what it was. Well, she tried to. I still can’t understand how she gets her books on there. Blake spent a lot of time reading on that thing and, if you didn’t know no better, you’d think she was a snob. She’s not, though. She’s backward, that’s all.
When I was leaving, I’d wave until I got her attention. She always looked up and gave me the biggest smile and waved back at me. She offered to help me clean until I explained to her that if she cleaned the house, Jennifer wouldn’t need me.”

  “About you cleaning for Jennifer?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “We – Tyler and I – talked to Blake this morning, but she came back this afternoon to tell us something she had failed to mention earlier.” Taking a deep breath, Maggie said, “That’s when she told me that Jennifer fired you the day she was murdered.”

  Delphene scooped the last of the tater tots into her hands and said, “She didn’t exactly fire me. She just told me she wouldn’t need me for a while.”

  Delphene offered the explanation in the same measured tone she had used to inquire about Tyler’s whereabouts. Her calmness surprised Maggie and threw her off guard. Before she had a chance to regroup, a woman carrying a pizza box came barreling through the door, causing it to clang behind her.

  “Did you get your pizza, baby doll?” Delphene asked.

  The woman, who Maggie presumed to be Scootie, glared at her while tossing packets of a seasoning Maggie couldn’t identify into the condiment bowl. “There any Kool-Aid left?” she asked Delphene.

  “I left some for you in the frigerator,” Delphene said.

  Scootie disappeared into the kitchen, returning momentarily with a pitcher of green Kool-Aid and an empty tumbler. She fell into a chair across the room, nearly overturning the pitcher. She flipped open the box and pulled out a slice of pepperoni pizza, while continuing to stare at Maggie.

  The image of Scootie that Maggie’s imagination had manufactured did not match the reality of the middle-aged woman scowling at her. Although Delphene had not specified Scootie’s age, from the way she had repeatedly described her as a girl, Maggie had envisioned her as much younger. She had even decided that Scootie was a product of a late pregnancy for the septuagenarian Delphene. Yet the furtive glances Maggie managed to direct Scootie’s way had convinced her that Scootie was most likely in her mid- to late-forties.

  Scootie’s eyes bearing down on her unnerved Maggie, who tried to focus on the task at hand. “Delphene, what were you saying about Jennifer no longer needing you?”

  “Just what I said. She hated to let me go, even if it was just for a little while, but she couldn’t afford to pay me no more. Well, I thought the world of Jennifer, so I told her I’d clean her house for free. But she wouldn’t hear of it. She told me she’d understand if I needed to book somebody else in her spot. I told her she could forget about that. I’d hold her spot forever.”

  “Did she say why she was experiencing financial trouble?”

  “No and I didn’t ask. I figured she’d tell me if she wanted me to know. Jennifer made good money, but she had what I guess you would call expensive tastes. She liked to spend money and Blake was fixing to turn eighteen. Jeff had done made it clear that as soon as Blake finished school and come of age, Jennifer wouldn’t get no more child support from him.”

  Actually, Maggie thought to herself, I think the law makes that clear. “So, you and Jennifer didn’t part on bad terms?”

  “No, I done told you, I adored Jennifer and she felt the same way about me.”

  Maggie studied Delphene as she casually explained her dismissal from Jennifer’s employ. She wondered if it could be as simple as that. “Did you tell the police about this?”

  “About what? Jennifer laying me off? No, there was no need to. If she had lived, she’d hired me back. I wouldn’t of been gone long. Besides, she was coming into some money.”

  “She was?” Maggie asked. “From where?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I keep my nose in my own business and out of everybody else’s. But she told me she was gonna bring me back and redo her kitchen – in that order – just as soon as the money come in.”

  “Did you tell the police about the money?”

  “No, why would I do that? I done told you, it was none of my business.”

  Maggie extended her hand across her forehead and pressed her thumb against one temple and her fingers against the other temple. “Jennifer coming into money sounds like something the police would want to know. I certainly find it intriguing. Besides that, she was murdered the same day she let you go. And your fingerprints were found on the murder weapon. I think the police would find all this suspicious.”

  Delphene rolled her eyes. “They probably would. They find everything suspicious.” Gesturing toward her daughter, she said, “You remember how they treated me, don’t you, baby doll? How they harassed me the night after Jennifer died?”

  While seemingly mulling over her mother’s question, Scootie chewed the pizza in the same slow manner that Maggie recalled her dad’s cows had chewed cud. “I only know what you told me, Mommy. Don’t you remember? I had that bad stomachache. I had it the night before, too. The night Jennifer was killed. I spent that night in the hospital. Don’t you remember, Mommy? I called you all night the night Jennifer was killed, but you wasn’t here to answer the phone.”

  “I was here, Scootie.”

  “You wasn’t here until almost morning. My stomach hurt so bad that I cried all night. You would have made it all better like you always do, but you wasn’t there at the hospital with me cause you wasn’t here to answer the phone.”

  “Now, Scootie, you stop that talk. I told you that I slept so sound that I couldn’t hear the phone.” Looking at Maggie, Delphene said, “I either sleep as sound as the dead or not at all. That night I was a dead sleeper. But I got one of them overactive bladders and when I got up to use the bathroom, I saw the lights flashing on the answering machine. As soon as I found out my baby doll needed me, I tore out of here for the hospital.”

  “The bathroom is right beside your room, Mommy. Why was you in here?”

  Raising her voice, Delphene said, “I come in here to make shore the door was locked, Scootie. Now quit wallering all over that chair and set up straight.”

  Scootie made no effort to do as Delphene commanded. She chewed her pizza at a leisurely pace and once again fixed her gaze on Maggie, who decided it was time to leave. On the way home, she stopped for take-out pizza. As she feasted on it in the comfort of her home, she wondered why Scootie had questioned her mother’s alibi.

  Chapter Five

  Maggie scanned Traci Taylor’s classroom for a suitable seat, but saw only chairs designed for the comfort of first-graders. Traci’s chair sat near her desk, where it had been pushed back when Traci rose to greet her. But as someone who still addressed her former teachers by their last names and salutations, Maggie didn’t for a moment consider taking the teacher’s chair. With nowhere to sit, she decided to explore the room while waiting for Traci, who had gone in pursuit of her husband, Todd.

  Although the students’ supplies had been packed into their cubbyholes, Maggie pulled out a plastic box with the name Aubree W. written on it in black marker. She smiled when she picked up the small pink safety scissors and frowned when she found a stack of stars fashioned from purple construction paper. It was obvious to her that a six-year-old could cut a straighter line than she could at thirty-five. She returned the stars to the box and picked up a bottle of paste. Having used old-fashioned glue to fasten together her childhood art projects, she had never so much as held a bottle of paste. She wondered if the paste would feel slimy and if it smelled similar to glue. She turned the lid, removed the stick from the bottle, and held it to her nose. As she did so, Traci and Todd Taylor walked through the classroom door.

  Maggie didn’t jump or otherwise express the embarrassment she felt at having been caught sniffing glue and rifling through a first-grader’s art box. She simply closed the lid on the bottle of paste, dropped it into the box, and returned the box to the girl’s cubbyhole.

  “I was going down memory lane,” she said to the Taylors.

  Smiling, Traci said, “I understand. I’m around it so much that sometime
s I forget how adorable their school supplies and toys can be.” Turning to her husband, she said, “Todd, this is Maggie Morgan from the paper.”

  “Well, I work for the paper, but I’m actually here on my own. This isn’t Sentinel business.”

  Shaking Maggie’s hand, Todd said, “We know your cousin, Chris. He vouches for you.”

  “Oh, how do you know Chris?” Maggie asked. “I thought he taught and coached at the high school.”

  “He does, but I’m the coach of the grade school’s basketball team. I guess you could say we run in the same circles.”

  “Or coach in the same circles.” Winking, Traci playfully slapped her husband’s arm with the back of her hand. “Chris told us about how you solve murder mysteries. Are you investigating Jennifer’s murder? Does this rule out Delphene? I never believed she killed Jennifer.”

  Before Maggie could respond, Todd suggested they sit down. As the trio took in the room full of kiddie chairs, Traci said, “Todd, honey, why don’t you go across the hall and get a couple of big-people chairs for you and Maggie?”

  Todd ducked out of the room, leaving Maggie and Traci to make small talk. “The weather has been so nice,” Traci said. “I hope it stays that way for Moonshiner Days. It seems like it rains at least one day every year during Moonshiner Days.”

  Although her nod indicated attentiveness, Maggie’s concentration had settled on Traci’s sweater, which featured letters of the alphabet with corresponding fruit – A for apple, B for banana, C for cherry. In Maggie’s opinion, the attire suited an elementary school teacher. She did, however, question how anyone could wear a sweater once the temperature inched above sixty degrees. Then again, Todd was wearing a jacket and tie. Maggie had never understood how men tolerated suits during warmer weather. She once wore a long-sleeved pantsuit to a summer reception. Shedding the jacket eight minutes into the event, she considered it a small miracle that she had lasted that long without melting.

  Maggie heard a commotion and turned to see Todd wheeling two chairs through the door. He brought them to the middle of the room as Traci pulled her chair alongside.