Murder on Calf Lick Fork

by Michelle Goff

  “We did,” Robert said. “That boy that married our sister’s girl started cutting meat.”

  “Is that right?” Curtis scratched his back against the door jamb. “What kind of job does he do? He do a better job than me?”

  Although Robert Morgan was an easy-going man who rarely lost his temper, Maggie recognized a flicker of anger in his eyes. “Now, Curtis, you can’t blame us for giving our business to family. But I didn’t come here to talk about that. I brought my daughter.” Robert nodded at Maggie. “She wants to talk to you.”

  For the first time since her and Robert’s arrival, Curtis eyed Maggie. “You the one that works for the paper? What you want with me? I don’t need no advertising.”

  “This isn’t about the paper, and I don’t work in advertising. I’m a writer. A feature writer. I don’t cover hard news.” Maggie feared she was on the verge of rambling, but Curtis hadn’t taken his beady little eyes off her and his height and girth intimidated her.

  “Then what do you want?” he asked in a gruff voice.

  Maggie pulled her notepad out of her coat pocket and, despite the cold air that chilled her fingers, removed her gloves. “I was hoping we could chat a little about Jay Harris.”

  “Jay? Why him?”

  “His granddaddy wants Maggie to find him,” Robert explained.

  “Why’d he send you to me?” Curtis put his arms across his chest and leaned against the door frame.

  “Because Jay worked for you. Could you tell me a little bit about Jay? Was he having personal problems –”

  “How would I know anything about his personal life? The boy worked his shift and went home. We didn’t talk about his personal problems. What kind of question is that?”

  Maggie felt her face reddening. “Did you and Jay get along?”

  “He worked for me. If we hadn’t of got along, he wouldn’t have been working for me.”

  “Was he working for you when he disappeared?” she asked.

  Curtis turned his head and spat tobacco juice onto the ground. “No, he quit not long before that.”

  “Oh,” Maggie scribbled in her notepad. “I was under the impression you fired him.”

  “Well,” Curtis scratched the stubble of gray on his chin, “you was under the wrong impression.”

  “Why did he quit?” Maggie asked.

  Curtis grinned at Robert. “You know how it is with these kids. They want a job until they get one. He said Steve was giving him all the work he could handle and that he needed time for school.” Curtis shrugged his shoulders. “I told him he could go whenever he wanted to. There wasn’t nothing holding him here.”

  Maggie shook her hands in an attempt to get her blood pumping. But as numb as her fingers felt, she preferred the cold to whatever lay behind the closed doors of Curtis’ shop. “Do you have any idea what could have happened to Jay?”

  “I bet he went back to Indiana.” Curtis smirked. “I guess nobody ain’t thought to look down there for him.”

  “Actually, they have, but thanks for the tip,” Maggie said. Feeling she would receive nothing helpful from Curtis, she added, “Daddy, I’m ready when you are.”

  Once they were safely inside Robert’s pickup truck and driving away from the butcher shop, Maggie turned up the heater and asked, “Daddy, do you like that man?”

  “Not particularly. It ain’t none of his business what we do with our hogs and beef. I don’t know why anybody has to be that hateful.”

  “Me, either.” Maggie placed her hands on a vent. “This is the first time I met the man, but I took an immediate dislike to him. And something he said doesn’t add up. He complained about Jay’s work ethic and said he quit his job, but Steve and Carrie Fletcher spoke highly of Jay, and Steve said Curtis fired him.”

  “That seems like a weird thing to lie about.” Robert turned a vent away from his face. “As long as that boy’s been gone, none of that should matter now.”

  “I know, Daddy, and I intend to find out exactly why it still matters.”

  Chapter Seven

  Maggie sat in the break room, eating a microwaveable pizza and flipping through an outdated magazine a co-worker had donated to the miscellaneous reading material strewn about the tables. She paid no attention to the celebrity features that dominated the magazine. Instead, her mind focused on the Jay Harris investigation. From what little she had learned about Jay, he didn’t seem like the type of person to abandon his family without so much as a goodbye note. But maybe the stress of holding down a job and attending school had become too much for the young man. Maybe he had decided to start somewhere new with fewer demands. Or maybe his demons had resurfaced and he had slipped into the life of crime that had tempted him in Indiana.

  Other than contradictory statements from Steve and Curtis, she hadn’t heard anything during her interviews that sounded suspicious. She planned to speak to Jay’s girlfriend and mom soon, and she hoped they would clear up those contradictions. She was still thinking about Jay when Tyler, a young reporter, charged into the break room.

  Closing the magazine, Maggie said, “Hey, you’re just the person I wanted to see.”

  Tyler retrieved his lunch from the refrigerator and glared at Maggie. “I feel I must warn you, I’m not in a very good mood.”

  “What’s new? You’re always riled up about something.” Indeed, it always appeared to Maggie that Tyler seemed perpetually upset. Of course, Tyler, who had moved to Jasper a year and a half ago, blamed all his problems, whether large or small or real or imagined, on eastern Kentucky. At first, his attitude had bothered Maggie, but after she had demonstrated her mystery-solving acumen, Tyler had developed an acknowledged respect for her. Although he continued to irk everyone else in the office, Maggie’s attitude toward him had softened. Knowing how much he desperately wanted to escape what he referred to as “hillbilly hell,” she had helped him tweak his resume and had written letters of recommendation for him. He had applied for jobs at several media outlets, yet he remained at the Jasper Sentinel.

  “If I’m always in a bad mood, it’s because I’m surrounded by imbeciles.” Tyler punched numbers on the microwave before adding, “Present company excluded.”

  “Of course,” Maggie said. “What’s your complaint du jour?”

  “The county school system is letting out early because of a little snow.”

  “A little? Tyler, we’re expecting up to three inches.”

  “Three inches of snow is nothing. If only people had the sense to know how to drive on snow then this place wouldn’t suffer a state of emergency every time a snow cloud appeared in the sky.”

  “Why do you care if they let out school? You don’t have kids. You don’t have to worry about daycare.”

  “I pay taxes.” The microwave beeped and Tyler removed his food, which Maggie’s sense of smell immediately recognized as fish.

  “I pay taxes, too, and I don’t want those kids on snowy roads. You need to get out in the county more, Tyler. Maybe then you’d understand what three inches of snow can do to one of these holler roads or, even worse, up a hill that’s not maintained because it’s not a county or state road. Let me ask you something, if you go off the road in your hometown in Ohio, what’s the worst that could happen?”

  Tyler pulled out a chair at a nearby table and sighed. “I’d end up in somebody’s yard.”

  “Exactly, but if you go off the road here, you’ll probably end up in the creek or over a hill.” Needing to escape the smell of fish, Maggie picked up her lunch bag, made a mental note not to use the microwave for a few days, and started to leave the room.

  “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? Snowy holler roads?” Tyler asked.

  Tyler’s tirade had temporarily chased Jay Harris from Maggie’s mind. “What? Oh, that. Do you remember the stories you wrote back in the spring about Jay Harris, the boy from Calf Lick Fork who went missing?”

  “I do.”

  Maggie stepped into the hallway and covered her nose with h
er fingers. “I know I could look up the stories, but you’d save me some time if you remember the name of the trooper who investigated Jay’s disappearance.”

  Chewing the fish, he said, “It wasn’t a trooper. Since Jay Harris worked in town, his grandpa and boss went to the Jasper Police Department for help. They talked to your buddy.”

  “My buddy?”

  “Yeah, Detective Seth Heyward. He’s the officer of record.”

  Chapter Eight

  Maggie reflected on the nail polish worn by Jay Harris’ girlfriend, Sydney. Keeping with the current style, the young woman had painted the nails of her ring fingers a different color than her other fingernails. When Maggie had first encountered this trend on the hands of a co-worker in the advertising department, she had concluded that her colleague either craved attention or wanted to stand out in the crowd. But when she spotted dissimilar polish on the nails of more and more women, she had consulted her best friend, Edie, who explained that the color on the ring fingers represented the accent color. Maggie didn’t see the point in using her fingernails to convey her artistic impressions and continued to paint her nails only one color. But at least most of the fingernail artists she encountered employed two separate palettes. That was not the case for Sydney. Eight of her fingernails featured bright orange polish and the other two a slightly less bright orange. To Maggie’s eyes, the colors lived too close to each other on the color wheel and defeated the purpose of the accent color.

  Although she could have stared at Sydney’s nails for hours, Maggie turned her concentration to the reason for her visit. “How long had you and Jay been dating?” she asked.

  “We celebrated our ten-month anniversary a couple weeks before he …” Sydney’s voice trailed off.

  “What can you tell me about Jay? What was he like?”

  Sydney smiled. “He was a lot of fun, but he was also kind of serious. He spent a lot of time working and studying. He was going to make something of himself.”

  “Was it a serious relationship?”

  “Yeah. Well, we hadn’t discussed marriage or anything like that. That would have been years away. When we met, I was working as a CNA –”

  “That’s a certified nursing assistant?”

  Sydney nodded. “I had earned my certification and gotten a job in a nursing home. That’s what I was doing when we started dating. I didn’t even think about coming back to school, but Jay talked me into it. He told me I was smart enough and good enough to become a real nurse. He gave me the confidence I needed and I’m glad I listened to him. I’m in my second year now. It’s not been easy, but it’s worth all the work and effort.” Sydney paused and added, “You know, this is where me and Jay met. Right here in this room.”

  Maggie followed Sydney’s eyes around the community college cafeteria. Sydney’s gaze settled on a table in the middle of the dining hall. “I had come here to have lunch with one of my friends. She was taking summer classes. She texted me after I got here and told me she had ditched me to go out with a guy. Some friend, right? I decided that as long as I was here, I might as well eat. I was sitting over there eating a cheeseburger when Jay stopped at the table and asked if he could sit with me. He said he hated to bother me, but there were no other empty seats.” Sydney giggled. “It was after the lunch rush and there were maybe three other people in here. He could have sat anywhere he wanted, but he wanted to sit with me.” Sydney picked at her multi-colored nails. “That’s why I wanted to meet you here. It reminds me of Jay.”

  Maggie waited a few seconds before asking, “Sydney, was there anything going on in his life that was worrying him? Can you think of any reason why he would have left or why anyone would have hurt him?”

  “No, Jay was a really nice guy. I mean, he wasn’t perfect and, to be honest, sometimes we argued because I felt like he was spending too much time working or studying or hanging out with his pappaw. Now when I think back to that, I see how selfish I was. Most girls would love to have a boyfriend as ambitious as Jay. He would have made a good husband for some lucky girl and a good provider for her children.”

  As she listened to Sydney, it occurred to Maggie that she had never sized up a boyfriend or potential beau in regards to his earning potential. “What can you tell me about Jay’s jobs?” she asked. “Did he get along with his bosses?”

  “He loved working at the funeral home. At first, I thought that was kind of creepy, but the owner treated him good and he liked the work. He said Curtis, that’s the guy from the butcher shop, was hateful, but Jay seemed to like that work, too.” Sydney wrinkled her nose. “I don’t even like watching my granny cut up chicken, so I can’t imagine why Jay liked having his hands in raw meat, but he said he didn’t think about it. He said the same thing about working at the funeral home. He said when they were covering up a grave, he didn’t let himself think about what that actually meant. He told himself that he was helping a grieving family. Without him and the funeral home, they’d be alone with their grief. They wouldn’t know how to handle the practical matters that come with death. I thought that was a really deep thing to say, but Jay was a thinker. He saw things differently than most people did.”

  Maggie tapped her pen on her notepad. “Did Jay say anything about quitting his job at the butcher shop? Or anything about Curtis Moore firing him?”

  Sydney stared at Maggie. After several beats of silence, she said, “No. Jay didn’t say anything about that. What would make you ask something like that?”

  “Because he was no longer working for Curtis and I’ve heard two versions of what happened. I was hoping you could provide some clarification.” Sydney bit her lips and stared at the table, prompting Maggie to record the girl’s reaction in her notepad. In a soft voice, Maggie asked Sydney, “Did Jay ever say anything about leaving Kentucky?”

  Looking up from the table, Sydney said, “Absolutely not, he loved it here. He planned to stay here forever. He had even tried to talk his mom into moving down here.”

  Maggie placed her notepad on the table. “Sydney, what do you think happened to Jay?”

  Sydney shook her head. “I don’t like to think about it, but it can’t be good. The cops are wrong. He wouldn’t have up and left us.” She scratched flecks of orange polish from her nails and added, “He wouldn’t have.”

  Maggie listened with growing discomfort as Belinda Harris sang her praises from the other end of the phone.

  “When the police wouldn’t help us, me and Gentry talked about hiring a private detective, but we don’t have that kind of money. And then one night he calls and says a private detective had come to his door. He says you’re really good. He says you’ve solved two murders. That won’t be the case here, though. Jay’s still alive.”

  “Why do you think that?” Maggie asked.

  “I’m his mother. I would know if he was gone.”

  Maggie had many other questions for her, but before she could go on, she felt she had to clear up something. “Belinda, I don’t know what Gentry told you, but I’m not actually a private detective. I only started doing this to help out my brother’s friend and –”

  “Have you solved two crimes that the police couldn’t?”

  “Well,” Maggie hesitated, “yeah.”

  “Then I don’t care what you actually are. I just want you to find my son.”

  “Okay, in that case, what can you tell me about Jay’s decision to move down here?”

  “After Junebug, that’s what I called my husband on account of him being Gentry Junior, died, Jay got so quiet. I’m more of an emotional person. Everybody knows exactly how I feel, and I wanted Jay to talk to me. I wanted him to tell me how he felt. One day I asked him and he turned his head real quick and looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘Mom, I watched Dad die. How do you think that makes me feel?’ That’s all I could get out of him. After that, he pretty much quit talking to me and he started breaking his curfew and skipping classes. I knew he was hurting, so I didn’t discipline him. And, you know, I was
a mess, too. Me and Junebug had been together since high school. I always told him I’d follow him anywhere. That’s easy to say when you think you’ll be on Calf Lick your whole life. But one day he came home and told me he had lost his job. His cousin had gotten him a job in a factory and we were moving to Indiana. Jay was just a baby then. Me and Junebug had talked about how we wanted Jay to grow up like we had on Calf Lick. That morning, I had my life planned out in Kentucky. That evening, I was packing to move to Indiana.”

  Belinda took a break from talking and Maggie heard her light up a cigarette. When she resumed talking, she said, “I quit smoking when Jay was a baby. He had asthma. But after Junebug died, and I mean the very night he died, I walked into a store and bought a carton. I didn’t start with a pack.”

  “I guess you’ve earned those cigarettes,” Maggie said. “And you quit once, you can quit again.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Belinda agreed.

  “You were telling me about Jay’s reaction to his father’s death.”

  “Yeah, I wasn’t watching Jay as close as I should and he got in with the wrong crowd. I think he was just in too much pain. I know that sounds like I’m making excuses for him and maybe I am. But he had never been in trouble before Junebug died. He was at such an impressionable age and I wasn’t doing him much good. I walked around in a fog. Nothing was real to me.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Maggie said. “And I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t be there for Jay. What kind of trouble did he get into?”

  “He and a couple other boys broke into a garage and stole tools from a man Jay worked for.”

  “Oh,” Maggie said. “What kind of work did Jay do for this man?”

  “Mowed grass, cut weeds, washed cars. You know, the kind of work teenage boys do for older people with a little money. Jay got mad at him over some money Jay said he owed him. At first, the man denied owing him money, but after the trouble was over, he admitted that he hadn’t paid Jay for the last bit of work Jay did. He said he wasn’t pleased with it. I’m not condoning what Jay did, though. If he had come to me, we could have gone to the man and worked something out, but you know how stupid teenage boys can be. He’s lucky he didn’t do time, but in the end, those boys only stole a couple hundred dollars’ worth of tools, so it was only a misdemeanor. When his probation was over, he told me he wanted to move to Kentucky. It was like the reverse of the conversation I had with Junebug all those years ago. It really shook me up, but once I cleared my mind, I realized it was the best thing for him. It wasn’t the best thing for me, though. Even though I talked to him nearly every day, I missed that boy almost as much as I missed Junebug.”