Prologue
Jay Harris leaned against a tree and admired the mountains across the road. Growing up in the flatlands of Indiana, Jay had never understood why his parents had chosen to leave eastern Kentucky’s beautiful and rugged mountains. As a boy, he had looked forward to visiting his parents’ families, which gave him the chance to explore the area’s hilly terrain. Sure, it got a little bleak during winter, but after a spring rain and warming temperatures, the trees turned green before his eyes. One minute, they stood stark against a gray sky. In the next minute, they exploded with green buds. Oh, Jay knew it didn’t happen that quickly, but it seemed like that to him. And although he would never admit it to anyone, the display of nature took his breath and brought tears to his eyes.
Jay had struggled after his dad’s sudden death. He had lost his footing and it wasn’t until he and his mom traveled south for a stay with his grandparents that he began to feel better about life and about himself. He mentioned to his pappaw Harris that he wanted to stay in Kentucky, and the old man had helped him find a job and offered him a room in his little house. Jay had accepted his offer and, before too long, he had talked himself into a second job. He didn’t plan to remain at either job or with his pappaw forever, but the jobs put gas in his truck and food in his mouth and funded his tuition at the local community college. The room gave him the opportunity to get to know his pappaw better and provided a connection to his late father. He liked living in the house where his dad had grown up. He liked knowing that his dad had sat in those same old creaky kitchen chairs when he was his age.
Jay breathed in the fresh spring air and smiled. His friends back home questioned his sanity for moving to what they described as the sticks, but Jay didn’t care what they said. He had found a home in these mountains and it’s where he planned to spend the rest of his life. He was so lost in planning his future that he never heard the footsteps approaching him from behind.
Chapter One
By Maggie Morgan’s count, twenty-two inflatable Christmas decorations swayed in the yard beside Sylvie Johnson’s house. Maggie didn’t like inflatables. Their oversized eyes and too wide smiles reminded her of comic book villains. As unnerving as they seemed when inflated, she considered them downright creepy when deflated and lying on the ground like melted witches. Still, she appreciated the homeowners’ dedication to decorating. Most people might consider a dozen cartoon characters excessive, but not Sylvie’s neighbors. They had apparently examined the twenty-one inflatables crowding their lawn, shaken their heads, and said, “It needs more.”
Maggie stepped onto Sylvie’s porch, but before she had a chance to knock, Sylvie opened the front door, wearing a gray sweater and orange house dress over her short, plump frame. “Ooh,” Maggie shivered as she walked into Sylvie’s cozy home. “I can’t believe it’s already this cold, and it’s just early December.”
“This is the kind of cold weather we got when I was growing up. You ask your mommy and daddy about it. They can tell you as good as I can.” Sylvie shuffled across the floor in blue booties, collapsed into her chair, and picked up a pair of slacks and a seam cutter. “That weatherman on channel 3 is calling for snow. They don’t no more know what’s going to happen than I do and I usually don’t put much stock in what they say. But he’s fairly dependable. I allow he’s right more than he’s wrong.”
“I think the weather people are in cahoots with the stores. You watch, every time they predict snow, people swarm to the stores. I bet the TV stations are getting kickbacks on all the milk, bread, and cigarettes people buy in anticipation of a snowstorm that never comes.”
Maggie giggled and waited for the usually verbose older woman to offer comment, but Sylvie worked in silence. Maggie also waited for Sylvie to offer her something to eat, but that wasn’t forthcoming, either.
“I see you’re ready for Christmas,” Maggie said in an attempt to make small talk.
“Huh?”
“You’ve put up a Christmas tree.” The existence of the small tree sitting atop a closed sewing machine cabinet surprised Maggie. She figured Sylvie would be much too practical to waste time and resources on something as ornate as a three foot tall Christmas tree.
“That’s the doings of my niece and her girl. They insist I have a tree every year. So, I said, ‘Fine, if you want me to have a tree, you’re responsible for it.’” Sylvie pursed her lips. “I think all this decorating is just a bunch of nonsense. I believe in living and let live, but every time I look out my window and see all those bouncy, plastic thingamajigs in my niece’s yard, I have to stop myself from going over there with my pin cushion and introducing them to Mr. Sharp. That would put an end to those funny-looking things flapping in the wind.”
Maggie smiled. That was the Sylvie she knew. “So, what did you want to talk to me about?”
“I made your mommy and daddy a fruitcake. I want you to give it to them. And I made a tree skirt for you.” Sylvie nodded toward the couch where Maggie sat. “It’s on the cushion beside you.”
Maggie spread the cross-stitched tree skirt in front of her. “Oh my, Sylvie. It’s got a brown dog on it. This is beautiful. The dog even looks like it could be a Labrador. It looks like it could be my Barnaby.” She picked up the tree skirt and hugged it to her chest. “I love it and I’ll put it under my tree as soon as I get home.”
“When I saw it in the catalog, I thought you might like it. I ordered it on clearance last year after Christmas and finished it back in the summer. I can’t remember if it was you or your mommy that told me you had a brown dog.” Sylvie glanced up from her work and regarded Maggie as if it were the first time she had seen her. “Why are you so gussied up? You don’t even look like yourself.”
It was true. Maggie had allowed an advertising representative at the Jasper Sentinel, where Maggie worked as the lifestyle editor and feature writer, to talk her into attending a makeover party earlier that afternoon. Maggie, who usually wore a minimal amount of eye liner and lipstick, had received a makeover that transformed her into a poster child for the cosmetics company that sponsored the party. The blush the licensed cosmetologist had applied made Maggie’s creamy skin itch and the eye shadow felt heavy around her dark brown eyes. The makeup also made her feel self-conscious and Sylvie’s declaration only deepened those feelings. She decided that upon returning to her car, she’d remove as much makeup as possible with the paper napkins she collected from restaurants and stored in her center console. Maggie instinctively tugged on her pixie-cut brown hair in an unsuccessful attempt to cover her face. When that didn’t work, she muttered, “It was a favor for a friend from work.”
“Speaking of favors,” Sylvie laid the seam cutter on the arm of her chair and said, “there’s another reason I asked you to come by, but I don’t know if I should even mention it.” She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “You remember hearing about that boy that went missing from over on Calf Lick back in the spring?”
Maggie remembered all too well the day Joe, her editor at the Sentinel, asked her to proofread a story about a young man’s disappearance. Although she had grown up in an area with place names that referenced animals and random adjectives, Calf Lick Fork had always held special interest to her. She attributed this fascination to her mom, Lena’s, advice to her to lick her calf whenever she made a mistake. Maggie had never determined if Lena meant for her to lick a young bovine or the back of her own leg and she had never asked for clarification. She had always wondered if the person who christened Calf Lick Fork had also been a proponent of making do-overs as difficult as possible.
“I remember,” Maggie said. “As far as I know, he still hasn’t shown up.”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“How do
you know about this, Sylvie?”
“Because I’ve talked to his pappaw, Gentry Harris. I worked with Gentry’s late wife at the dry cleaner’s.”
“I didn’t know you worked at an actual job.” Maggie squeezed her eyes shut. “That didn’t come out right. I meant that I didn’t know you had done anything but make alterations and sew and quilt. Oh, that didn’t come out right, either.”
Sylvie frowned and brushed a lock of gray hair that had fallen from the loose bun on her head. “You know I ain’t sensitive about what people say to me. Besides, I know you didn’t mean nothing by what you said. But I worked there before your time, so you wouldn’t have knowed about it.”
“What did you do there?”
“Alterations. I worked there when I was married to that no-count husband of mine. I knowed he wasn’t about to go out and find a job, so I did. Gentry’s wife, Irmyjean, run one of the machines. She died a long time ago, but I’ve stayed in touch with Gentry. They just had the one boy and he lived in Indiana. Well, he did before he dropped dead of a heart attack. Him and his boy had come back from a ball game and he died right there on the porch before he could get inside the house. The key was still in the lock. Him and his wife just had one boy, too. He moved down here to live with Gentry after his daddy died. He’s the one that’s disappeared. And that’s what I want to talk to you about.”
Sylvie ran her hands over the slacks lying in her lap. “I don’t feel right asking you to help, but I saw Gentry at Save-a-Lot the other day. I said to him, ‘Gentry, are you ready for ole Santie Claus?’ He had been smiling, but when I asked him that, his face, well, it sort of fell and he told me the only thing he wanted from Santie Claus was to find out what happened to that boy. That hit me right in the heart. Gentry was the baby of his family and all his brothers and sisters have done died. He has some nieces and nephews and cousins, but most of the family moved away from here, just like Gentry’s boy did. Gentry ain’t really got nobody else in this world. All he has is that boy. And, well, he’s been missing for months now. Ain’t no telling what happened to him.”
“Where do I come in, Sylvie?”
“That’s just it. You snooped around and found out who killed Mac Honaker and then you were the one that figured out what happened to Hazel Baker, so I thought you might be able to help Gentry. But I don’t know if I have a right to ask.”
“Why not?”
“Cause when you came around asking me about Mac and Hazel, I didn’t think you had no business to be doing so. Why, you’re just a little girl. It ain’t like you’re a professional.”
“I’m not a little girl, Sylvie. I’m thirty-five years old.”
“Well, that still don’t make you no professional and if your mommy knowed I was discussing this with you, she’d tear into me so plain that a fly wouldn’t light on me.”
“Don’t worry about Mom. She’ll be fine. Besides, it’s too cold for flies.” Maggie chewed the inside of her lip. “What do you want me to do, Sylvie?”
“Well, I want you to study on it before you make up your mind.”
Sylvie returned her attention to ripping out the seams in the pants and Maggie looked at the little Christmas tree. Every year, she devoted a series of photo spreads to the county’s most outlandish decorations and covered Jasper’s tree-decorating contest. Her fellow Geneva County residents’ efforts to out-Griswold one another amused her and the classy and expensively-decorated trees amazed her. But she preferred the discount ornaments clinging to Sylvie’s tree to the more elaborate and elegant displays she featured in the newspaper. “I like your tree, Sylvie.”
“Thank you.” Sylvie sighed. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell nobody?”
Always appreciative of a secret, Maggie leaned toward Sylvie. “Sure. You can trust me.”
“I think it’s silly the way everybody acts at Christmas. They just go overboard. It’s like they forget they have to live the rest of the year, too. But sometimes, I’ll turn off the lights in here and just stare at the lights on the tree. It makes me feel all warm inside to watch them blink.”
Maggie watched the lights twinkle and asked, “Does Gentry Harris live at Calf Lick?”
Sylvie nodded.
“How about you and I drive over there tomorrow and talk to him?” Maggie suggested.
“Now, no, I told you to study on it for a while.”
“I can’t make up my mind without first hearing what he has to say. Besides, just because I talk to him doesn’t mean I’ll help him.”
Even as she said the words, Maggie didn’t believe them.
Chapter Two
As soon as Maggie hopped in Sylvie’s old pickup truck, she regretted her decision to catch a ride to Calf Lick with her. She was accustomed to growing impatient with the slow driving of older generations, but as Sylvie whipped around Sugar Creek’s curvy roads, Maggie would have welcomed a meandering drive with her parents. To make matters worse, Sylvie drove a stick shift. Maggie didn’t care that people trumpeted the advantages of driving vehicles with gas-friendlier manual transmissions. She had considered them deathtraps ever since her dad had tried to teach her to drive his stick shift pickup. While she had waited for the car in front of her to pull off the road, Maggie had allowed the truck to roll backward on a hill, almost hitting another vehicle in the process. If that hadn’t been enough to scare her off stick shifts forever, she finalized her decision when the pickup stalled in a busy intersection. Sometimes, at night, she could still hear her dad’s raised voice as well as the honking horns articulating their disapproval.
Thankfully, Sylvie had no such issues with driving a stick. She turned the truck out of Sugar Creek and zipped onto a narrow road that served as a shortcut to Calf Lick. Although Maggie had driven this route in emergencies, she usually preferred to take the long way whenever she needed to visit the northern part of Geneva County. Sylvie motored up the winding road as if a mountain were not staring at her through the driver’s side window and as if a fifty-foot drop off the road did not tease her from the passenger side. Maggie looked out the window at the houses packed into the valley below. Just as with most communities in eastern Kentucky, the houses represented various levels of household income. A camper or a decaying mobile home leaned next door to a two-story brick home or an expansive ranch. Maggie had to admit there were some fine homes in this neighborhood, which she had long-since dubbed the land that time forgot, but she had decided long ago that she wouldn’t move here if someone gave her a clear deed to the most expensive piece of land and the grandest home. The houses on the side of the hill stood on wooden stilts while the homes in the valley sat in and around the road’s ample curves. She had fallen into a reverie in which she wondered if the community’s inhabitants recognized its deficiencies when the truck started moving backward. She had a flashback to the day she drove her dad’s stick shift and imagined that Sylvie had somehow allowed the truck to roll. She forced her eyes from the landscape below to the road where she saw an SUV barreling toward them. As Sylvie backed the truck around a curve and into a wide spot in the road that Maggie estimated to be the size of a railroad tie, Maggie feared the truck would careen down the mountain. But Sylvie smoothly navigated the truck all the while explaining why she had never bought into the latch-hook fad to which so many of her friends in the needlework community had fallen prey.
When they finally descended the mountain and took a left-hand turn, Maggie sighed with relief. A few minutes later, the pickup pulled into a graveled driveway. Sylvie parked and the two women exited the truck. As they approached a small house painted robin’s egg blue, a man dressed in a green flannel shirt and a pair of patched jeans opened the front door and asked, “It cold enough for you, Sylvie?”
“It is mighty chilly, but I’ve survived worse.” Sylvie stepped inside the house with Maggie on her heels. “Gentry, this here is Maggie. She’s the girl I told you about.” Sylvie looked back at Maggie. “I done told him about you solving those other crimes.”
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Gentry extended his hand to Maggie. “I sure appreciate this. Can I get you all something to drink?”
“I’ll take a cup of coffee if you’ve got some handy.” Sylvie produced a chunk of fruitcake wrapped in cellophane from her coat pocket and handed it to Gentry. “Here’s some fruitcake for you. I didn’t bring you much. I allow you ain’t even supposed to have any.” Turning to Maggie, she explained, “He has the sugar diabetes real bad.”
“I thank you, Sylvie,” Gentry said. “Maggie, how do you take your coffee?”
“She don’t drink coffee,” Sylvie said, following Gentry into the kitchen and leaving Maggie alone.
Maggie unbuttoned her coat and looked around the front room. She hesitated on what to call it. Gentry’s bed stood in a corner opposite a wringer washing machine. The sight of the appliance brought back memories for Maggie. She remembered helping her mom wash clothes in the back yard on the hottest and driest summer days. Lena said a wringer washer saved on water. So, a few times each summer, she and Maggie rolled it out of the can house, filled tubs with water, and did the laundry. Maggie was responsible for making sure the wash landed in the tub of rinse water and did not fall onto the ground. Standing in Gentry’s house, Maggie could feel the stiff laundry as it came through the machine’s rollers. The clothesline that extended the length of Gentry’s room reminded her of the chore that followed washing and she remembered burying her head in warm, dry sheets as she pulled them off the line.
Gentry and Sylvie’s return interrupted her remembrances. Taking the only chair in the room, Sylvie said, “You’re still on your first legs, Maggie, so I reckon you can stand better than I can.”
“She don’t need to stand,” Gentry said. “Let me get a chair out of the kitchen for you.”
Gentry brought two old, creaky wooden table chairs from the kitchen, giving one to Maggie and keeping the other for himself.
“It sure is warm in here, Gentry,” Sylvie said.
Murder on Calf Lick Fork Page 1
