Murder on Calf Lick Fork

by Michelle Goff

  Still screaming, Sydney flipped over the food tray, causing Maggie to jump to avoid the soda spilling over the table, and ran from the restaurant. Everyone stared at her until she got in her car, slammed the door shut, and motored out of the parking lot. Then, the restaurant patrons and workers turned their attention to Maggie, who wrapped napkins around three breadsticks and left without making eye contact with anyone.

  Maggie had started her mini-Christmas vacation that day and regretted spending part of her first day off work harassing Sydney. She also regretted forgetting Edie’s poinsettia at the Sentinel office. Although Maggie loved her job, she didn’t love darkening the doors when she wasn’t working, especially on the eve of Christmas Eve. She said her hellos to co-workers rushing to meet the holiday deadlines and walked to the newsroom. As she retrieved the flower from her desk, Joe and Seth walked out of Joe’s office.

  “I didn’t expect to see you today,” Joe said.

  “I left Edie’s poinsettia here,” she explained. Looking to Seth, she said, “A lady I featured in the paper a few years ago gives me a poinsettia every Christmas. In the spirit of the holidays, my grouchy editor relaxes his policy against accepting gifts.”

  “And you give the flower to Edie because its leaves are poisonous for dogs. Right?” Seth asked.

  “Right,” Maggie answered.

  Joe’s phone rang, so he shook hands with Seth and scrambled to his office.

  “How are you all doing?” Maggie asked Seth.

  “I volunteered to work the holidays, if that tells you anything. Joe said you had taken a few days off. He said Mark was home.”

  “Yeah, well, he and the family should arrive on Caldonia Road by supper. I’m going to swing by Edie’s for a few minutes and then drop off some spinach dip at Sylvie’s before heading home.”

  “Have you had a good first day of vacation?”

  Maggie sighed. “Not exactly.” She placed the flower on her desk and gave Seth an abbreviated version of her lunch with the hysterical Sydney.

  “She really threw the pizza on the floor?” he asked. “It should be against the law to waste pizza.”

  “You should have seen her. It’s like something possessed her body. I don’t mean that literally, of course, but she snapped.”

  “Hmm. What made you talk to her today?”

  Maggie traced her meetings with Curtis and W.L. in reverse, omitting any admission of guilt from the two men, and revealed Jay’s role as a ladies’ man. “When you interviewed Curtis, did he say anything about Sydney coming by the butcher shop?”

  “No, he did not. I did speak to Sydney briefly. I didn’t catch up with her until a few days after Mr. Harris filed the missing persons report, though. If I had known about all these other women, I would have tracked them down, too.”

  “He had three women, two jobs, and one major. Just thinking about all that wears me out.”

  Seth scratched his head. “Energy is wasted on the youth. So, one of the women is married to Jay’s boss, one assaulted a perfectly fine pizza, and the other one had hung onto Jay’s cell phone since the morning he went missing.”

  “That would be Gina,” Maggie said. “Is she under investigation?”

  “Not until we can prove foul play. Although it appears that she was the last person to see him, there’s still no evidence that any harm came to him.”

  “W.L. thinks Curtis hurt Jay.”

  “Speaking of W.L., I talked to the state police trooper who’s investigating his attack. They don’t have any suspects.”

  Maggie felt the guilt rise in her throat, but she wasn’t about to tell a police officer that W.L. had filed a false report. She wondered if that made her an accessory after the fact.

  “You go on home, get ready for Mark and his boys, and take a few days off from the case. It should be quiet at the office for the next few days. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  As Seth walked away, Maggie said, “Hey, I know it’s hard, but try to find some joy this holiday.”

  Seth’s crooked grin, the attribute that had first attracted her to him, looked more poignant than Maggie could remember it looking before. She picked up the poinsettia and made two strides toward the door before Joe called her name.

  Walking out of his office, he asked, “Are you leaving without wishing me Merry Christmas?”

  “Technically, yes, but I told you Merry Christmas yesterday when I gave you a tin of cookies.”

  He patted his stomach. “Now I remember.” He sat on the edge of Tyler’s desk and adopted an expression Maggie had long-since nicknamed Serious Joe. “As your boss, your personal life is none of my business. But as your friend, I thought you should know that Seth made sure you weren’t working today before he’d agree to stop in.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t tell you that to hurt you. But I can’t help but wonder why he’s avoiding you. I mean, you two seemed okay out here chatting about your case.”

  “We were.” Maggie couldn’t find the words to explain the situation to Joe when she couldn’t explain it to herself. “Hey, I’ve got to get this over to Edie’s so I can be home in time to greet the nephews.”

  Joe nodded. “I understand.”

  Maggie reached the door before turning and saying, “Merry Christmas, Joe.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Maggie loved the sound of snow crunching under her boots.

  “This is the first white Christmas we’ve had in at least a decade,” she said to Mark as they made their way up Caldonia Road. They had accompanied their parents and Mark’s wife and sons to Robert’s brother’s house for Christmas breakfast. For some reason Maggie now questioned, she and Mark had forgone the warm ride home for a chilly stroll up the hollow.

  “We get white Christmases nearly every year in Indiana,” Mark said.

  “Quit bragging.” Mark pulled the toboggan down to cover his ears and Maggie smiled at the memory of Joe schooling Tyler on the word’s dual definition.

  “I’m happy to see a smile on your face.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve seemed down since you called your boyfriend last night. Is everything okay?”

  No, Maggie thought, it’s not. She had called Luke the previous evening, but he had cut short the phone call with the explanation that he and his family were in the middle of exchanging gifts. He had told Maggie he would call her back later that evening, but later never came. She had swallowed her pride and called to wish him Merry Christmas that morning, but Luke cut short that phone call with the explanation that he and his family were in the middle of breakfast.

  Pausing on the bridge in front of her house, Maggie said, “It’s complicated,” before outlining the highlights and lowlights of the past few weeks with Luke.

  “It doesn’t sound that complicated to me,” Mark said. “He’s jealous of Seth, and I can see where he’s coming from.”

  “Hey, whose side are you on?”

  “Yours. I’m always on your side. But that doesn’t mean I don’t relate to Luke. He doesn’t want you hanging out with your ex-fiancé, the guy you didn’t marry only because you disagreed on whether to have children. The guy who’s suddenly back in your life now that he’s divorced.”

  “That’s not exactly how it happened.”

  Mark wiped his nose with his gloved hands. “It’s close enough. But I also can relate to you. From what you’re telling me, it sounds like Luke also has an issue with your sleuthing.”

  “See, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell him. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken those cookies to Seth’s dad’s house –”

  “Maybe?”

  “Okay, I shouldn’t have taken those cookies to Seth’s dad, but this isn’t all about Seth. Luke says I act differently when I’m on a case, but so does he.”

  “You should respect his feelings, but he should also respect this part of your life.”

  “You make it sound so easy, but like I said, it’s complicated,” Maggie said.

  Mark pu
t his arm around his sister’s shoulder. “Your nose is redder than Rudolph’s. Let’s go to the house and warm up over hot chocolate and cookies. Then we’ll take the boys for a ride on that sled dad made for them.”

  Maggie laughed. “You mean a toboggan?”

  “Yeah,” Mark said, “they’ll wear their boggans.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Although Maggie considered herself an upbeat person, by the time Christmas morning ambled into Christmas afternoon, melancholia took hold of her. The holiday gloom had first descended upon her during her teens and had made an appearance every year since. She understood the rationale for her blue mood. Christmas represented the most active, stressful, and demanding time of her year, but also her most hopeful. In spite of her age, she retained her childish expectations of the holiday. She couldn’t help but feel let down once the torn wrapping paper had been cleared from the floor and the last present had been retrieved from under the tree.

  By the day after Christmas, she could no longer stand the sight of her tree and began taking it down. As she removed the decorations and boxed them until next year, she suddenly became aware of tears forming in her eyes. Instead of fighting her emotions, she sat down and cried until she had her fill. With the tears flowing, she realized this year’s post-holidays blues had hit her especially hard and she reviewed the reasons why. Saying goodbye to Mark and the boys that morning and failing to give Gentry Harris the only thing he wanted for Christmas had left her feeling especially out of sorts. And the situation with Luke only added to her gloomy mood.

  Drawn to the unfamiliar sounds of his master sobbing, Barnaby roused from his mid-morning nap and announced his presence at Maggie’s side.

  “Oh, Barnaby,” Maggie smiled through her tears and reached for a tissue. “It’s okay. I’m just suffering from a bad case of post-holiday blues this year. I promise. It will get better.”

  To prove her point, Maggie shuffled to the kitchen for a glass of leftover punch and a piece of peanut butter fudge. She located a marathon of Southern Fried Homicide on Investigation Discovery and returned to her task. She had removed only one ornament from the tree when her phone rang.

  “Hey, Maggie, it’s Seth. I won’t keep you long, but I wanted to tell you what I found out about a couple of your suspects.”

  Turning down the volume on the TV with the remote, she said, “Which suspects?”

  “Sydney and Curtis. There was a reason Sydney disappeared from Facebook. It’s the same reason I had trouble locating her in the days after Mr. Harris reported Jay missing. Sydney was admitted to the hospital for a seventy-two-hour psych evaluation the last day Jay was seen.”

  The guilt Maggie had felt for pushing Sydney to the point of flipping a tray and tossing pizza on the floor suddenly compounded. “Why?”

  “The report says her mom called 9-1-1 claiming that her daughter was acting out of control and out of the ordinary. The responding police officer and a doctor determined her to be a danger to herself and others and recommended the psych eval.” When Maggie didn’t respond, Seth said, “Maggie? Are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.” The image of Sydney running out of the restaurant played on a continuous loop in Maggie’s memory.

  “When I talked to her back in May, I attributed her quiet demeanor, that’s how I described it in my notes, to the fact that her boyfriend had vanished. That was the same explanation I came up with for her mom’s nervousness.”

  “That’s a reasonable conclusion. How were you to know she had just been released from the hospital?”

  “I should have done more work on this. I should have listened to my gut. Maybe I can forgive myself for not picking up on the behavior of Sydney and her mom, but there’s no excuse for not performing background checks on everyone in Jay’s life, Curtis included.”

  “Why? What did you find out about him?”

  “Curtis lived in West Virginia for a few years. He spent most of them in the state penitentiary for beating a man unconscious.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Seth threatened Maggie with obstruction of justice if she contacted Sydney or Curtis.

  “Let me talk to the chief when he gets back from vacation and I’ll go from there,” Seth told her. “In the meantime, you sit tight. And unless you want to call Robert to post your bond, you will not so much as send Sydney a Facebook message or ask Curtis Moore for an estimate on a pack of pork chops. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Seth. Besides, I would have to call someone else to post my bail. Daddy has always said that if I get myself into jail, I can get myself out.”

  “We both know that’s all talk. Robert Morgan wouldn’t let his little girl spend one hour behind bars. I’d better go. I have bad guys to chase.”

  “Hey, about not contacting Sydney and Curtis –”

  “Maggie.”

  “Just listen to me. I’ll adhere to your wishes if you promise me you’ll quit beating yourself up over not delving deeper into Jay’s disappearance. You told me at your mom’s services that Gentry and Belinda couldn’t think of anyone who would hurt Jay. And Belinda didn’t mention to you that Jay and Sydney had broken up. And Steve didn’t mention to you that Jay no longer worked for Curtis, and Curtis didn’t tell you that, either. And nobody told you Sydney had been stalking Jay.”

  “That’s right. But don’t forget that you were able to get that information from them.” Maggie heard him sigh. “Thanks for trying to cheer me up. You’re a good person, Maggie Morgan.”

  Maggie met Luke at his townhouse the following day. After they summarized their holidays, an uncomfortable silence formed around them. Maggie entertained Luke’s dog until the golden retriever grew tired and wandered over to the front door and collapsed into a nap.

  “We’ve bored him,” Maggie said. When Luke offered no comment, she said, “How long are we going to go on like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, come on. We barely speak to each other. It’s been this way –”

  “Since the night I told you to make your choice.”

  “There’s no choice to be made, Luke. I’m with you. And it’s unfair to blame all this on Seth. Things have actually been tense between us since I told you I was looking for Jay.”

  “Yeah, because of Seth.”

  “Is that why you dissected my eating habits? Because of Seth?”

  Luke turned his neck until it popped. “I won’t pretend that I like this sleuthing you do. I think it’s dangerous and I don’t understand why you take other people’s problems on.”

  “Because I want to help people. And I don’t want to brag, but I think I’m pretty good at it. But regardless of why I do this, you either respect this side of me or you don’t.”

  “I guess I don’t,” Luke all but whispered.

  Maggie bit the inside of her mouth in a futile attempt to control her emotions. With her voice cracking, she said, “I’m willing to work on this relationship, but I’m not going to go on like this. I’m not going to drift into unhappiness with my eyes open.”

  “I don’t want that, either.”

  “So,” she asked, “what do we do?”

  Maggie drove to Walmart, parked her car, and cried until her head hurt. She cried so much that she emptied her car’s center console of napkins. As she used the last one to blow her nose, a woman she’d never before seen tapped on her car window. Maggie turned the car’s ignition and pressed the power window button.

  “You okay, honey?” asked the middle-aged woman, whose dark blue sweatshirt featured two deer set against a snowy mountain landscape.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “I was just wondering because I seen you sitting there crying when I went inside and you was still sitting there when I come out. I didn’t say nothing. I figured it was none of my business. But after I loaded my groceries in the car and put the buggy away, you was still here. I knew I had to say something. You sitting out here in the cold all by yourself crying.” When the woman shook her hea
d, her disc-shaped metallic earrings slapped the sides of her chin and her long hair, which was as white as the mountains on her sweatshirt. Maggie wondered if the earrings and sweatshirt had been Christmas presents. “Why, I knowed I had to check on you,” the woman said.

  The stranger’s altruism touched Maggie to such an extent that she had to stop herself from jumping out of the car and hugging her. “I’ve had a bad day, but it was so kind of you to check on me.”

  “Are you going to be okay to drive? If you need to call somebody, you can use my cell phone.”

  “I’m fine, I promise.”

  “Well, you take care.”

  As the woman walked away, Maggie called, “I hope you have a wonderful new year.”

  Before getting into her car, the woman said, “You, too, honey.”

  Maggie started her car and followed the woman out of the parking lot, waving to the good Samaritan at the intersection. When she turned onto the highway, she directed the car to Edie’s. Thinking Luke might have shared the news of their breakup with Ben, she half-expected Edie and Ben to greet her at the door with solemn faces. Instead, Ben welcomed her with a hearty hug.

  “Babe,” he yelled into the house. “Maggie’s here.”

  Before Maggie could accept Ben’s offer of a snack, Edie practically bounced into the room. She, too, gave Maggie a hearty hug. She then took her by the hand and pulled her to the sofa. Ben joined them, sitting on the other side of Edie. The couple repeatedly looked at Maggie and then at each other. Maggie began to worry this was their way of consoling her when Ben said, “Go ahead, tell her.”

  Edie beamed. “Maggie, Ben and I are having a baby.”

  Edie and Ben giggled as Maggie sat in stunned silence.

  “Well, what do you think?” Ben asked.

  “I, uh, well, I don’t know what to think. I didn’t even know you were trying.”

  “Oh, we try every day.”

  “Hush,” Edie chastised Ben. “We didn’t tell anybody. I know it’s not like me to keep a secret, but I wouldn’t haven’t been able to stand the scrutiny. Everyone constantly asking me if I were pregnant would have been too stressful.” She clutched Maggie’s hand. “I know you wouldn’t have been like that, but Ben and I made a pact to keep it between us.”