Murder on Calf Lick Fork

by Michelle Goff

  Gentry motioned to a gas stove. “Jay helped me buy that last winter. The stove I had was wore out, but I couldn’t afford to buy a new one. I used one of those kerosene heaters, but it made my eyes water and I kept a headache.” Gentry nodded to the heater. “That’s made a big difference in here.”

  “We had a heater like that when I was growing up,” Maggie said. “I would stand in front of it and let my back get warm and then I’d turn around and get my front warm.” She gestured toward the bed. “Do you pretty much stay in this room?”

  “I moved in here to keep the heat in one place. That worked out real good when Jay moved in with me. He stayed in my old room.” He said to Sylvie, “It was mine and Irmyjean’s room.”

  “Wasn’t it cold in there for him?” Maggie asked.

  “Nah. He moved down here at the right time of the year, just as it was starting to be spring. He saved up his money and we got the stove the next fall before it got too cold. After that, we both stayed warm and we didn’t have to worry about them old kerosene heaters.” Gentry frowned. “There was no getting used to that smell, not for me.”

  Opening her notepad, Maggie asked, “What can you tell me about Jay?”

  “Well, he was my boy, Gentry Junior’s, son. You know, when I heard that he was going to be a boy and that they aimed to name him Gentry the third, I was so excited. Another generation would carry my name. We’d called my boy Junior, so I’d figured they’d call the baby Gentry, like me, and maybe Gen for short.” He shook his head. “I was so disappointed when they give him the nickname Jay.”

  “That never made sense to me, neither.” Sylvie took a sip of coffee. “Gentry don’t even start with the letter J.”

  Maggie agreed that they had a point and asked Gentry, “How long had Jay lived with you?”

  Gentry crooked his head, which gave Maggie a better view of the shock of white hair that stood on his head like a rooster’s comb. “Well, like I said earlier, he moved up here one spring and he disappeared the next May, so a little more than a year.”

  “How did it come about that he moved from Indiana to here?”

  Gentry grinned. “He always liked visiting me. I’d take him out in the hills. Why, I’m the one that taught him how to hunt. My boy never took to hunting and fishing, but Jay did. He loved it. But, you know how things go. After Junior died, Jay got in a little trouble. He was running around with the wrong crowd and they talked him into stealing some stuff. It wasn’t right and I ain’t upholding him, but like his mommy says, he was struggling. It was hard enough that he lost his daddy, but he watched Junior die. That sort of thing can stay with a young’un.”

  “It can stay with an adult, too,” Sylvie interjected. “There ain’t forgetting some things.”

  “No, there ain’t,” Gentry said. “It certainly stayed with Jay. He wasn’t raised to stealing. He knowed right from wrong. His mommy says he was angry and acting out. Now, I done told you, I ain’t upholding him, but I think she’s right. He’s just lucky he didn’t have to do no time for that stealing, but he was on probation for a little while. After he got off that probation, he and his mommy come down for a visit and he asked me if he could stay. That was music to my ears. If you had handed me a million dollars, I wouldn’t have been happier.”

  “I’ll bet you loved having him here,” Maggie said.

  “I did. But I had rules. And I told him that if he was going to live under my roof, he was going to follow those rules. First thing’s first, he had to get a job.” Gentry leaned forward in his chair and held up two fingers. “Well, let me tell you something. He didn’t get just one job, he got two. I got him a job at the funeral home. I had worked there for years –”

  “Let me stop you, Gentry,” Sylvie said. “Maggie, there ain’t nobody with a better hand to lay off a grave than Gentry Harris.”

  “Now, Sylvie, you’re going to give me the big head,” Gentry cautioned.

  Downing the last of her coffee, Sylvie said, “It ain’t bragging if it’s true.”

  Maggie bit the insides of her lips to keep from laughing. “Which funeral home was this?”

  “Valley. He cut grass and ginned around for them.”

  Maggie wrote Valley View Funeral Home in her notepad and asked, “You said he had another job?”

  “He worked for that meat packing house that Curtis Moore runs.”

  Maggie nodded her head in recognition. Until recently, her dad and uncle had taken their butchering business to Curtis Moore. “Did you help him get that job, too?”

  “No, siree, I did not. He got that one all on his own. Steve, that’s his boss at the funeral home, had killed a deer and took it to Curtis to dress. Steve sent Jay to pick it up and Jay heard Curtis saying that he needed help. I had taught Jay what I knew about butchering, so he asked Curtis right then and there if he would give him the job.” Gentry smiled. “That’s Jay. He’s a go-getter.”

  “So, he worked two jobs –”

  “And he went to school. That was another one of my rules.” Gentry sat his coffee cup on the gas stove. “Let me tell you something. I never made much money and I didn’t pay much into Social Security, so I don’t draw much. I’m retired now and, it’s true, I still help dig a grave here or there if a family can’t afford the funeral home’s price and if my back will hold out. I don’t make much from it. I never did and that’s what I told Jay. I told him he needed to go to school and learn a trade so he could make sure he was taken care of when he got my age.”

  “You did the right thing,” Sylvie said. “These young’uns today don’t think about tomorrow. They think they’ll be young forever.”

  Gentry nodded. “He was going to make an electrician. He was going to make something of himself.”

  Maggie paused before asking, “Could you tell me what happened to him?”

  Gentry shrugged. “That’s just it. I don’t know. He left for work one day and never come back. And that wasn’t like him, neither. I told you I had rules and that was another one of them. He had to be home every night by midnight.”

  Sylvie shook her head. “There ain’t nothing good happening after midnight.”

  “No, siree, there is not. I told him there wasn’t nothing he could do after midnight that he couldn’t do before.”

  Try as she might, Maggie couldn’t suppress a smile. “Did he ever break curfew?”

  “Once, right after he moved in. He didn’t think I’d be sitting up and waiting on him, but I showed him. I let him know how I felt and that I wasn’t going to stand for it. He was on time after that. I know cause I waited up for him every night.”

  “Sylvie tells me you went to the police when he didn’t come home.”

  “What good that did,” Gentry huffed. “Steve went with me to talk to them, but they said Jay was an adult and free to come and go as he pleased. They said there wasn’t a law against walking away from your life and starting over. I tried to tell them he wouldn’t have just up and left. He was studying for those … what do you call them?”

  “Finals?”

  Gentry snapped his fingers. “That’s it. Why would a boy leave before he took those tests?”

  Gentry’s pronunciation of tests – testiz – sounded to Maggie’s ears just like the way her dad said the word. Once again, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t keep from smiling. “Did the police offer any advice?”

  “They said Jay might have been in some trouble. They had to bring up that stuff in Indiana. They said he might have stole something and lit out or been running from enemies.”

  “Enemies?” Sylvie asked. “It sounds like they made that boy out to be one of them there mobsters from New York City. He was just a young’un. He hadn’t been on this earth long enough to make enemies.”

  “That’s what I tried to tell them, Sylvie. I let them know he wouldn’t have just up and left, neither. I know that like I know my own name.”

  Maggie flipped her notepad against her knee. “Did he have credit cards or debit cards? Bank acc
ounts?”

  “He had a bank account and one of them credit cards.” Leaning toward Sylvie, Gentry said, “He got it against my advice, but you can only tell them so much.”

  “I wouldn’t have one of them cards if you give it to me,” Sylvie said.

  “I never had one, neither,” Gentry said. “I don’t even know how they work. But like this feller I used to work with the name of Waylon would say, ‘Let Pete take care of Pete’s fence.’”

  “Waylon?” Maggie asked. “As in Jennings?”

  Gentry nodded and launched into a monologue. Maggie heard him describe Waylon as a person you could trust with your life before receding in her mind to a cemetery where Gentry worked alongside a scruffy-looking bearded man whose cowboy hat rested on top of ragged, shoulder-length hair. In her version of history, this man pulled out a guitar every day at lunch and serenaded his co-workers. She was conducting a mental debate with herself in order to determine her favorite Waylon Jennings song when she heard Sylvie say, “Don’t you have nothing else to ask Gentry?”

  Embarrassed to be caught daydreaming on the job, Maggie shuffled through her notes and asked, “Did the police check the activity on Jay’s card and accounts?”

  “They did. He hadn’t used that card and his money was still in the bank. I said, ‘Right there proves he didn’t just walk away.’ They checked and said there was just a couple hundred dollars in the bank.” Gentry held up his hands. “They said it didn’t matter none cause that wasn’t much money.”

  “Well, if that don’t beat a hen a-rooting,” Sylvie declared. “You hadn’t told me that, Gentry. Lord, I’ve lived too long if a couple hundred dollars don’t matter no more.”

  Gentry shook his head. “It don’t make no sense to me.”

  “Did he have a car?” Maggie asked.

  “He drove Junior’s truck. His mommy let him have it. It’s gone, too. The police seem to think that means he left on his own, but somebody could have stole it from him. They could have hurt him for his truck.”

  Maggie studied the sad old man sitting in the small room and understood why Sylvie felt sorry for him. “Gentry, what do you think happened to Jay?”

  Gentry sniffled and wiped his nose with a handkerchief he produced from the pocket of his jeans. “I don’t know. I hope the police are right. It would make me madder than a wet hen if he left without telling me where he was going, but I hope he’s okay.” Gentry looked inside his empty coffee cup. “Hoping ain’t the same thing as knowing, though.”

  Chapter Three

  After Sylvie dropped her home, Maggie spent a few minutes with her dog before walking the short distance to her parents’ house. It was almost dark and her mom had already turned on the outside Christmas lights. For nearly two decades, Maggie’s parents had draped the eaves of their home with clear icicle lights. Maggie liked the clean look of the white lights, but when her parents announced that most of the lights had quit working and that they would need to replace them, she had talked them into purchasing multi-colored opaque lights. As she stood in the yard staring at the house, she felt pleased with her decision. The big bulbs reminded her of the outside lights that had decorated the house’s exterior during her childhood. She remained transfixed by the blinking lights, which evoked memories of Christmases past, until her dad, Robert, stuck his head out the front door and asked, “Why are you standing there like a dummy? Did you forget the way into the house?”

  Maggie knew better than to offer an explanation, so she marched onto the porch and into the house. “Do I smell homemade soup simmering?” she asked as she slipped out of her coat.

  “Yeah, we just sat down to eat,” her mom called from the kitchen. “Come and get it while it’s hot.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Maggie murmured. Joining her parents in the kitchen, she placed the fruitcake on the countertop and helped herself to a bowl of soup, a peanut butter sandwich, and a glass of milk. While crumbling crackers into the vegetable soup, she said, “I brought dessert.”

  “I hope it ain’t no more of those brownies you made last week.” Robert puckered his mouth and shook his head. “They didn’t taste right.”

  Maggie chased a bite of her sandwich with milk and said, “I explained that, Daddy. Instead of sugar, I put applesauce in the brownies because it’s supposed to be healthier.”

  “Healthier don’t make it taste better,” Robert said, “I don’t know why you’d think we’d want to eat applesauce in our brownies. Applesauce is something you feed babies or old people or put on your biscuits for breakfast. It don’t belong in desserts.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about me ruining today’s dessert,” Maggie said. “I’ve brought a fruitcake from Sylvie Johnson’s.”

  Lena turned her neck until she spotted the fruitcake on the counter. As she reached behind her and retrieved it, she asked, “Where did you see Sylvie at?”

  “I went to her house. She gave me the loveliest tree skirt. It has a brown dog on it. You’ll have to come over and see it under my Christmas tree. It looks stunning.”

  “I hope you don’t let that dog waller all over it or it won’t look stunning for long.” Handing a slice of cake to Maggie, Lena asked, “What business did you have at Sylvie’s house?”

  Maggie thanked her mom for the cake and said, “I didn’t know I needed to be conducting specific business in order to visit a friend. But, anyway, I went to Sylvie’s house yesterday because she asked me to stop by. I’m sorry that I didn’t get a chance to bring the fruitcake to you before now, but I’ve been busy. In fact, this afternoon Sylvie picked me up and we took a little trip over to Calf Lick.”

  Robert furrowed his bushy eyebrows. “I didn’t see Sylvie’s truck at your house.”

  “Neither did I,” Lena agreed.

  Having resided up the head of Caldonia Road for most of her life, Maggie understood the intricacies of hollow, pronounced locally as holler, living. Supposing the presence of Sylvie’s truck had caused a stir among the hollow’s other inhabitants, most of whom were her aunts, uncles, and cousins, she said, “I figured somebody would have called up here asking about the strange vehicle on the holler.”

  “There was a call on the I.D. when we got home from the feed store,” Lena said. “But I didn’t have the chance to check it. I had to finish the soup.”

  Robert pointed at Lena. “I bet Sylvie picked Maggie up while we were gone.”

  “What about when she brought her home?” Lena asked. “Why didn’t we see her then?”

  Between bites of cake, Robert said, “That must have been when we were in the bathroom looking for the Epperson’s salts.”

  Maggie grinned at her dad’s mispronunciation and considered asking which of her parents needed Epson salts and for what reason, but decided against doing so for fear it would trigger an argument or a lengthy discussion about digestive processes. “I’m choosy about fruitcake,” she said, “but this is good.”

  “Sylvie makes the best fruitcake around. Everybody knows that,” Lena said. “Now, what’s going on with you and her? Why did you two drive over to Calf Lick?”

  “We went to Calf Lick to see her friend, Gentry Harris. It was his grandson who disappeared back in the spring. You probably remember that. It was all over the news.”

  “I can’t speak for your daddy, but I read about it in the paper. Sylvie told me about it, too.”

  “Well, to make a long story short, Sylvie and Gentry want me to look into the boy’s disappearance.”

  After Maggie said her piece, she waited for the inevitable scolding from her well-meaning parents who had lectured her during the pursuit of Mac Honaker’s killer and the investigation into Hazel Baker’s death. But they didn’t caution her against snooping or advise her of potential dangers. Instead, they lavished praise on Sylvie’s fruitcake and played a game of what ingredient do I taste?

  “Did you hear me? I said –”

  “We ain’t deaf. We heard you,” Robert said. “And I reckon you’ll decide to
help that man try to find his grandson.”

  “I was leaning in that direction,” Maggie said.

  “From what Sylvie says, somebody needs to help him,” Lena said. “That poor man. He’s lost his only child and, from the looks of it, his only grandchild, too. I don’t know how he can lay his head down at night without knowing what’s happened to that boy. I wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink.”

  Although Maggie felt grateful for her parents’ accommodating attitude, she couldn’t believe her ears. “Just so we’re clear, you guys are okay with me doing this?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be okay with it? You’ve already solved two murders. You must know what you’re doing,” Lena said. “Besides, we should help people when we can.”

  “Do you agree with her, Daddy? Do you think we should help people when we can?” When Robert nodded, Maggie said, “So I guess that means you won’t mind going to Curtis Moore’s meat shop with me one day next week?”

  Maggie interpreted Robert’s sigh as a defeated yes.

  Chapter Four

  With the chore of explaining her intentions to her parents accomplished, Maggie focused on rationalizing her decision to her boyfriend, Luke. Maggie had started dating Luke during her investigation into Mac Honaker’s murder a year earlier. She had withheld her activities from him, a mistake she did not duplicate when she began looking into Hazel Baker’s death. Nevertheless, her extracurricular activities had once again strained their relationship due to the involvement of Maggie’s ex-fiancé, Seth, in the case. A resulting argument had centered on Luke’s assertion that Seth encouraged Maggie’s sleuthing to maintain a presence in her life. Occurring on the eve of their summer vacation to the Grand Canyon, the disagreement had nearly ruined their trip. The couple had experienced a stressful day traveling and another seeing the sights before Luke’s fall from a burro relieved the tensions. He limped away with only minor scrapes and bruises and into Maggie’s arms.

  Maggie nestled in his arms as they watched George Bailey race through the snowy streets of Bedford Falls in It’s a Wonderful Life. Luke’s admission to never having seen the holiday classic had offended Maggie and she rectified the situation after enjoying soup and fruitcake with her parents. The movie’s ending always made Maggie cry and, although she tried to stop the tears from forming in her eyes, this time was no exception.