1 Murder on Sugar Creek

by Michelle Goff

  “Thanks for suggesting this place,” Maggie turned to Luke, who sat beside her in the booth. “It’s some of the best pizza I’ve ever eaten, yet I didn’t even know this place existed. I guess because it’s located at the other end of the county.”

  “I’m glad you liked it. A customer at the bank recommended it to me.” Luke looked to Edie and Ben. “Not bad for a restaurant that’s in the sticks.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Maggie joined in. “Try finding pizza this good in the teeming metropolis of Jasper.”

  Edie said, “Whatever,” and chomped on a straw.

  “Speaking of good food, when are you going to have us over again, Maggie?” Ben asked.

  “Ben,” Edie elbowed her husband in the ribs. “It’s rude to invite yourself.”

  “That’s all right,” Maggie assured Edie. “Any time would be good. Well, a weekend would be optimal. I don’t have the time to cook a big meal when I get home from work. I’m too slow.”

  “That’s why you should rely on casseroles, which you can make ahead, or crockpots,” Edie said in a sing-song voice.

  “How would you handle cooking if you had a husband?”

  Ben’s comments drew another elbow to the ribs from his wife, who said, “Seriously, Ben, I can’t take you anywhere.”

  Far from feeling embarrassed, Maggie retorted, “Unless he wanted takeout or macaroni and cheese every night, he would have to cook.” When the laughter died down, she said, “Hey, Ben, Edie told me you worked at the shoe store with Mac Honaker.”

  “She tells the truth.”

  “What was he like?”

  Ben twisted his mouth. “Despite what I later learned about him, I still consider him one of the best – if not the best – boss I’ve ever had.”

  “Are you talking about the store owner who was murdered a couple weeks ago? The one you wrote the columns about?” Luke asked Maggie.

  Maggie nodded. She felt proud of Luke for using the correct newspaper terminology. “When you say ‘what I later learned about him,’ are you referring to the embezzlement?” she asked Ben.

  “Yeah. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. I was going to college and I appreciated him for working around my school schedule. And he was nice enough to let me study during downtime. He was like that with everybody. As long as you got the work done and let him know when you needed time off, he was great. He was generous with his time and money. I left my wallet home one day, so I skipped lunch. When Mac went out for lunch, he brought a burger and some fries back to the store for me. He wouldn’t let me pay him back, either.” Ben chuckled. “But I guess you can be generous when it’s someone else’s money.”

  “How much did he steal?” Maggie asked.

  “I’m not exactly sure, but I heard it was around twelve thousand dollars.”

  “Goodness.” Maggie crossed her arms and leaned on the table. “Why didn’t the store press charges against him?”

  “They didn’t want the embarrassment or the attention. Besides, his dad reimbursed them. That’s ultimately what saved him from prosecution.”

  “Did any of his employees have a problem with him?”

  “Not that I was aware of.”

  “Where are these questions coming from, Maggie?” Edie asked.

  “After the columns ran, I received an email advising me that Mac wasn’t a good person. The person who sent the email suggested I talk to anyone who worked with him.”

  “Huh,” Luke said. “The power of the press.”

  While preparing dinner for Luke, Edie, Ben, and her parents the following Saturday afternoon, Maggie realized she was out of buttermilk.

  “No buttermilk, no cornbread,” she said and headed to her parents’ house. She found Lena watching Sewing With Nancy and Robert waking from a nap. “Can I borrow some buttermilk?” she asked.

  “I guess somebody didn’t check her ingredients before she started cooking.” Lena didn’t take her eyes off the TV. “Get what you need.”

  I guess somebody’s in a mood, Maggie thought to herself. “Thanks. You two are coming over for dinner, aren’t you? I want you to meet Luke.”

  “Dinner? I thought you were making supper?”

  Her parents’ insistence on referring to their midday meal as dinner and their evening meal as supper always tripped up Maggie, as did their insistence that evening was synonymous with afternoon. “I am, Daddy. I misspoke.”

  “What are we having?” he asked.

  “Soup beans, fried potatoes, and cornbread.”

  Robert frowned. “Is that all? Where’s the meat?”

  “I never know what kind of meat to make with soup beans.”

  “What’s wrong with salmon patties?” Robert asked.

  Maggie mentally corrected her dad’s pronunciation of sal-mun and asked, “You mean, other than stinking up the house?”

  “Well, next time, throw a ham hock in there.”

  “I don’t like meat cooked with my beans, Daddy.”

  “That’s what gives them flavor,” Robert said, “but I guess you can’t complain too much about a free meal. What’s for dessert?”

  “Apple butter and graham cracker cake.”

  “We’ll be there,” Robert assured her. “You just make sure you make enough – of everything – for us.”

  “I will.” As Maggie made her way toward the refrigerator, she couldn’t help but notice her parents’ bills lying on the bakers rack. When she walked back to the living room, she said, “Daddy, remember when you told me that Mac Honaker stole from his insurance customers?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “How did you know that?”

  Robert knitted his eyebrows. “Who told us about that, Lena?”

  “It had to be Sylvie Johnson.”

  “The talkative woman you used to sew with?”

  Lena rolled her eyes with such vigor that Maggie expected them to become frozen while pointed toward her forehead. “We didn’t sew together, Maggie. When one of us would get behind on our work, the other one would help her.”

  “That’s what I said.” Maggie closed her eyes and counted to ten. She knew better than to poke an ill-tempered Lena’s cage. “How did Sylvie know about Mac’s theft?”

  Lena finally directed her big brown eyes toward her daughter. “Because he stole from her.”

  Maggie wanted her parents to like Luke, so during the introductions, she reminded Robert and Lena that he had grown up on a small farm. When Luke mentioned he had bought his first used car with money earned cleaning barns, Lena said, “A little hard work only hurts the lazy.”

  With that task accomplished, Maggie left her hostess by proxy, Edie, who was modeling her new black boots, to entertain the guests while she set the table. She was counting out the forks when Ben joined her.

  “Did Edie send you in here to help me?”

  “No, but I can help you.” Ben picked up the stack of plates Maggie had retrieved from the cabinet. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you.”

  “If this is about there being no meat at the meal, Daddy is disappointed, too.”

  “I’m sure the meal will be delicious and, as Edie has pointed out, I can get all the protein I need from the beans,” Ben placed the dishes on the table. “This isn’t about food. It’s about Mac Honaker. I thought of something else the other night, but I didn’t want to mention it in front of Luke. He’s a good guy, but I don’t know how he’ll feel about this because it involves the bank.”

  “Mac and the bank?” Maggie poured the beans into the same chipped serving bowl her mommaw had first used in the 1970s.

  “No, Mac’s wife, Carla, and the bank. In those stories you wrote, Carla told you she was going to sell the store because she could barely keep up with the demands of her business, let alone Mac’s store.” Ben took the bowl from Maggie and sat it in the middle of the table. “This goes no further.” When Maggie nodded, he continued, “Her business loan came through the bank, so I know it was not doing well. In fact, sh
e was in foreclosure. She came to the bank the week after Mac died and asked for another extension, which we granted because she’s set to get a sizable payout from Mac’s life insurance policy. It will more than cover her loan.”

  Maggie’s attempt to make sense of Ben’s news was thwarted by Robert, who stuck his head inside the kitchen and asked, “Is it time to eat? My dinner’s wearing off.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The speed at which Sylvie Johnson maneuvered the knitting needles made Maggie dizzy. As Sylvie looped the needles in and out of the yarn, she never looked at her hands or ceased talking.

  “I have to stay busy,” Sylvie explained. “Even if I’m watching TV or talking on the phone, I’ll pick up my quilting loop and make a few stitches or grab my crochet or knitting needles.”

  Maggie leaned back on the overstuffed sofa and rested her arm on a throw pillow. Out of curiosity, she picked up the blue pillow on which the words, “Forget housework. I’m busy being creative,” had been embroidered with beige thread. After a quick scan of Sylvie’s living room, Maggie concluded it an apt description. She could have written her name in the lint that settled on Sylvie’s furniture and choked on the dust bunnies that huddled in the corners of the room. Clutter usually made Maggie nervous, but the piles of craft books and baskets of well-begun projects that crowded the room actually comforted her. “Who are you making that baby quilt for?” Maggie inquired about the pink-and-white afghan materializing on Sylvie’s plump lap.

  “Whoever needs one. Like I said, these hands never rest. Somebody is always inviting me to a baby shower, so I keep a few quilts or booties or afghans on hand. Now, you don’t have any young’uns, do you?” Before Maggie could answer, Sylvie said, “And you never married? Smart girl. Getting hitched was the biggest mistake I ever made. He laid drunk. You just ask anybody and they’ll tell you. He wouldn’t have worked in a pie factory counting pies. I was young and stupid but not young or stupid enough to love him. I could barely stand him. But everybody told me I needed to get married. Needed somebody to take care of me, they said. Well, I took care of him ’til the day he passed out face first into a mud hole. He drowned in less water than I’ll use to clean this-here coffee cup. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want nobody to die. I ain’t that hard-hearted. But I never shed one tear over him. I’m just glad we never had no children. That’s something else people always told me. Have a couple young’uns so they can take care of you when you’re older, they said. I’ll be seventy-three at my birth and I ain’t needed them to take care of me, yet. Take it from me. Ain’t nobody going to take care of you but yourself. Now, what did you want to ask me about Mac Honaker?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Maggie was so enthralled by Sylvie’s monologue that she had forgotten the purpose of her visit. “My parents said Mac Honaker sold you an insurance policy years ago –”

  Sylvie shook her head and a lock of hair fell from the loose bun fastened to her head with bobby pins. Due to Sylvie’s hairstyle, her lack of makeup, and her fondness for house dresses, Maggie had once assumed Sylvie belonged to the Old Regular Baptist Church. Lena had cleared up matters for Maggie by explaining that Sylvie had more important things to do than primp and preen.

  “Mac didn’t sell it to me. Let’s see, who did sell me that policy?” Sylvie cocked her head to the side. “I’m too old to remember that. Anyway, Mac became my insurance agent when the one I had retired or quit or died or whatever happened to him. Why are you asking about this?”

  Although Maggie had anticipated that question, she had not formulated an answer to her liking. “It’s, well, it’s a long story. Regardless, I’d prefer if we could keep this conversation just between us.”

  “Whatever floats your boat, honey.”

  “So, about this policy …”

  “Yeah. Those was the days when they’d come to your house and collect your premium. Mac would show up every month like clockwork. I’ve knowed his family all my life and he was a personable, kindly man, so I always had some sort of sweet prepared for him. Where is my mind? Do you want something to eat? I made a banana nut bread yesterday. It’s still fresh.”

  Maggie felt she had been overindulging lately and had vowed to cut back on desserts. On the other hand, she had worked out every day for two and a half weeks. “I don’t want you to get up,” she said. “Maybe I’ll take a piece for the road.”

  “Don’t you let me forget. Now, where was I? Mac. He never left here without eating a piece of cake or a helping of cobbler or without taking my premium. I still remember the day he collected the last premium from me. He sat in the very seat you’re in and ate a piece of rhubarb cobbler. The next month came and went, but he didn’t darken my door. I gave it a few days and called the insurance company. They said my policy had been cancelled two years before. I said, ‘No, it ain’t been.’ I want a proper burial. I don’t want to be throwed in a cardboard box and dumped in a hole with some stranger. I know I’ll be dead and the dead know nothing, but I want a nice service and a nice coffin. Nothing expensive. There’s no need to go overboard. And I want a nice stone. I’m not counting on nobody to pay for that but me. That’s why I paid on that insurance policy every month. I told the man at the insurance office as much. He made me out to be a liar, but I told him I could prove it. Take some advice from me – keep your receipts. That’s the only thing that saved me. If I hadn’t kept them, I would have lost that policy and all those premiums I paid. In cash. I learned my lesson on paying in cash, too. Looking back, I see it was a mistake, but I trusted Mac, Ah, you live and learn. Anyway, I showed those receipts to the manager or whatever he was, and they, what did they call it, re-activated my policy. There was more to it and it took a while, but to make a long story short, I didn’t lose nothing.”

  “Did they tell you what happened?”

  “They said it was a clerical error.”

  “But Mac had kept your money?”

  “He sure did. I considered the receipts proof of payment. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t care to pay in cash. I’ll only trust anybody so far. But those receipts was phony. He pocketed the money.”

  “How much did he steal from you?”

  “A little more than five hundred dollars.” Sylvie took a momentary break from knitting to take a sip of coffee. “It don’t seem like a lot unless it’s coming out of your pocket.”

  “Oh, no. Five hundred dollars is five hundred dollars.” Maggie thought to herself that Edie could buy another pair of over-priced boots for that kind of money. “Do you know if he stole from others?”

  “The insurance company wouldn’t tell me, but I know he did. He up and quit before they could fire him. You see, they caught him.”

  “Oh, really.” As Sylvie wove her intriguing tale, Maggie felt like a kid during story hour. “How did they catch him?”

  “One of his customers died. When the funeral home tried to cash in the insurance policy to pay for the funeral, the insurance company said there wasn’t no policy. They did them the same way they did me, but those smart souls had kept their receipts. Just like I did. The insurance company didn’t do nothing then. Mac quit as soon as he heard about his customer’s death and I reckon the insurance company thought that was the end of it. Until others like me started asking questions.”

  “How many customers do you think he robbed?”

  “Now, how do you expect me to know a thing like that?” Sylvie finished one row of the afghan and started another. “It couldn’t have been many. It would have raised too much suspicion if all his customers started cancelling their policies. It was probably just a few of us. But even if he stole one dollar, that’s one dollar he didn’t earn.”

  “Did you consider going to the police?”

  “Not really.” Sylvie ceased knitting, studied the afghan, and mumbled something under her breath before resuming the needlework and the story. “It didn’t make no difference to me. I just wanted the insurance company to make everything right for me. And they did.”

  “D
id they let Mac by with stealing all that money?”

  “I wouldn’t say they let him by with it. Not that he paid the piper. Mac’s daddy made everything right with them. McKinley cleaned up a lot of Mac’s messes. I don’t know how true this is, but I heard Mac stole from that shoe store, but his daddy got him out of that one, too. God only knows what he did when he worked for the nursing home or what he did to get himself killed.”

  “You don’t think Kevin Mullins killed him?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “So, you think he’s guilty?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Maggie found talking to Sylvie almost as exasperating as engaging in certain conversations with her mother. “What do you think?”

  “I know that Mullins boy was seen around the store and I know he’s been in some trouble. But I don’t know if I see him as the type of person who could kill somebody in cold blood, as they call it. I don’t care how much you want that dope, if you ain’t got it in you to kill, you ain’t going to kill. I buy my eggs off him. There’s been plenty of opportunities for him to knock me in the head and take off with everything I have, but as far as I know, he ain’t took a thing of mine. But maybe I don’t have nothing worth stealing. Anyway, that boy don’t seem like a killer to me.”

  Maggie felt grateful to finally encounter someone who shared her perspective on Kevin. She also found it amusing that Sylvie referred to the thirty-one-year-old-old Kevin as a boy. Then, again, she had to admit to referring to anyone under twenty-five as a kid and she was less than half Sylvie’s age.

  “You know,” Sylvie continued, “I saw Mac many times after that and he acted like nothing never happened. But we both knew the truth and, one time, he caught me in a foul mood and I said something to him. I looked him right in the eyes and said, ‘After what you done, you should be too ashamed to be in the same room as me.’ He let on like he didn’t know what I was talking about, but I wasn’t having none of that. And you know what he did? He laughed.” Sylvie sighed. “If he could rip off his insurance customers and most of them neighbors here on Sugar Creek that he had knowed forever, he’d do anything. I just wonder where Dottie is going to find work. She ain’t getting any younger.”