1 Murder on Sugar Creek

by Michelle Goff

  “Nobody else is going to call you.”

  “You didn’t answer the first question.”

  “I’ve talked to Bug, Carla Honaker, Mac’s ex-wife, Rhonda, Kevin, and Sylvie Johnson.”

  “Sylvie? Why her?” Lena’s voice rose with the pronunciation of each syllable. “You barely remembered her.”

  “I remembered her, Mom, and you told me about Mac stealing from his insurance clients and that Sylvie was one of those clients. That’s why I approached her.”

  “I’m going to get her,” Lena slammed a fist onto the table.

  “Mom, I’m not a child. Sylvie can’t tell me what to do and neither can you and Daddy.”

  Lena’s eyes watered. “If that’s how you feel then go ahead and do what you want. Just make your funeral arrangements and pick out the dress you want to wear during your services.”

  “Lena. There’s no need for that.” Robert shot Lena a look of exasperation before asking Maggie, “Did Bug say he helped Mac with that bit with the lottery tickets?”

  Maggie nodded and thought to herself, that’s not all he admitted to.

  “That surprises me. Not about Mac. I wouldn’t have put nothing by him, but I wouldn’t have expected it from Bug.”

  Lena blew her nose. “I would have. I always knew Bug and Mac were up to no good. That’s another thing I was right about.”

  “Here’s something I’m right about,” Robert pointed a forefinger at Maggie. “Little girl, you’re staying here tonight.”

  “Really, Daddy? The only difference between last night and tonight is that now you all know what’s going on.”

  “That’s all I need to know.” Robert extended both hands out as if he were an umpire calling a runner safe. “I’m speaking now and I’m telling you you’re staying.”

  “What about Barnaby?” Maggie was sure this would break the deal.

  “He can stay in the utility room,” Lena said. “We’ll close the door so he can’t get out.”

  Maggie looked from parent to parent. She knew better than to argue. She recognized defeat when she saw it.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Maggie bolted upright in bed the next morning at a quarter after six. Her heart racing, she panicked in the unfamiliar room. The sound of her dad’s voice only served to confuse her and she wondered why he was at her house. When her mom’s kitchen radio roared to life, Maggie relaxed and lay back in the bed she had occupied for more than twenty years. She had forgotten that her early-bird parents rose the same time every day, even on Saturday. She had also forgotten how loud they could be. She rolled onto her side and pulled a pillow over her head to block out the noise. No luck. Between the intrusive radio and her parents’ noisy conversation, she knew there would be no more sleep for her. She threw the pillow across the bed and said, “That’s it. If I want to return to my peaceful house, I have to solve this murder.”

  After breakfast, Maggie and Barnaby walked the short distance between Robert and Lena’s house and their own. Maggie was there only long enough to shower and make a phone call. Then, she dashed to her car before her parents could see her leaving. Once she reached the mouth of Caldonia Road, she turned right and headed toward Little Elm Fork. As she pulled into the Mullins’ driveway, she noticed Kevin eyeing her car. He made no move to turn off the tiller, not even when Maggie exited the car.

  Failure to obtain at least nine hours of sleep per night produced irritability in Maggie not present when she enjoyed a full-night’s rest. Each row Kevin completed with the tiller increased her crankiness. When he finished his chore and joined her on the porch, Maggie gave him a piece of her ill-tempered mind.

  “I’ve been sitting here for thirteen minutes, Kevin. Don’t you think it was rude to keep me waiting?”

  Kevin shrugged both shoulders. “It’s the end of the season and Dad asked me to till the garden before the weather turns bad.”

  Maggie jumped from the swing and peered at the sky. “There’s not a cloud in the sky. I don’t think it’s going to blow in a storm within the next hour. You had time.”

  Kevin spat a sip of water onto the ground. “So did you. Remember, I didn’t ask you to come up here. You’re the one that called me.”

  Maggie counted to ten, but this time, the exercise didn’t work. “You ingrate,” she yelled. “After all I’ve done for you –”

  “Ain’t nobody but Dad ever done a thing for me,” Kevin huffed.

  “I’ve been trying to clear your name, Kevin.”

  “You wrote a few articles that praised the great Mac Honaker. Big deal. How’s that supposed to help me?”

  “It’s certainly not helped me. I had to install a security system because someone broke into my house and stole my dog. Of course, you might already know about that. After all, Caldonia Road is just over the hill from here.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  Maggie pointed to the hill. “I’m saying it would be easy for you to hike up the hill and watch my house. You live here. It wouldn’t raise suspicions and you hiked over to our place hundreds of times when you were younger. You could have watched and made sure I was gone and then lured my dog away. You could have waited in the barn until I went looking for him and then put him back in the yard.”

  “You mean somebody did that? Somebody took your dog?”

  Although Kevin seemed surprised by her words, Maggie’s true crime stories had taught her that some people possess a natural ability to lie without detection. “They sure did. They broke into my house and took him.”

  “And you think I would do something like that to you?”

  “Why not? You sure were mad after the columns ran and you’ve been rude to me both times I’ve come to the cabin.”

  “Both times? Oh, yeah,” Kevin leaned against the porch railing. “I was mad at you. I thought you were just one more person that’s disappointed me.”

  “Life is full of disappointments, Kevin. You have to learn how to deal with them.”

  “You mean, deal with them without drugs? Well, I am. I’m still clean.”

  “Good.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry if I was rude the other time.”

  “You were.”

  “And I’m sorry for making you wait today. What did you want to talk about?” When Maggie crossed her arms, Kevin asked, “Is it too cold for you out here? Do you want to go inside?”

  After the ordeal with Bug, Maggie had learned her lesson about disappearing inside murder suspects’ houses. “No, this is fine. Kevin, I need to know how you got the money to pay Ray Short.”

  Kevin moved away from the railing and toward Maggie. “How many times do I have to tell everybody? I stole weed eaters.”

  “How many times do I need to tell you that until you come clean, the police will assume you’re guilty?” Kevin slid down the porch post and Maggie joined him on the floor. “I’m not the police, Kevin. You can tell me what happened.”

  After what seemed like minutes to Maggie, but was actually only seconds, Kevin said, “I got it from Dad.”

  “Then why didn’t you just say so?”

  Kevin frowned. “Why do you think?”

  “Oh, you stole it.”

  “You know, no matter what I did, no matter how bad it got, no matter how bad I needed to get high, I swore I’d never steal from him. And I didn’t.” Kevin crossed one foot over the other. “But I stole some scrap metal and the guy I sold it to ripped me off. I couldn’t exactly turn him in, so that left me broke. I had another idea for quick cash, but that fell through, too. I knew Ray meant business. I knew he wasn’t going to sell me no more until I came good on my debt and nobody else would give me credit.” Kevin removed the fraying UK ball cap from his head and held it in his hands. “That’s when I got the quarters.”

  “Quarters?”

  “Yeah, Dad collects quarters in those old yellow sugar cans. They’re the ones that look like those plastic coffee cans. He has a whole bunch of them. One day after he left for work, I went into
his closet and took one. I thought about selling the quarters to a store for cash, but they wasn’t nobody I could trust, so I took a chance and went to the bank. I was afraid they’d call the cops, but that boy just took the can and came back with over two hundred and sixty dollars in cash. I thought Dad might have counted the cans, so I put some old screws and nails in the one I took and put it behind the others.”

  Maggie remembered Mac’s scheme with the change from the vending machines and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Kevin asked.

  “Nothing. Isn’t keeping all that money lying around courting danger? Anybody could break in and steal the cans.”

  “I tried to tell him. I told him I was a thief so I ought to know, but he wouldn’t listen. Dad is too trusting.” Kevin laughed. “Or maybe he thought any self-respecting thief would think I had already taken everything of value out of the house. I’m better than a security system and a lot cheaper, too.”

  Maggie giggled. “Won’t he eventually notice that there are nails and screws where quarters should be?”

  “Yeah, I was afraid of that, but I hope to fix it before he finds them. I’ve got a job delivering firewood. It ain’t nothing spectacular, but it’s a job. I should be able to put the money back before he notices. I’m almost there.”

  “Congratulations on the job, Kevin. I had no idea.”

  “You won’t tell him, will you? About the quarters?”

  “Goodness, no, but maybe you should tell the police.”

  Kevin shook his head. “Not happening.”

  “Kevin, if it represents the difference between freedom and jail, I hope you’ll reconsider.”

  Maggie heard a clock chiming in the house, which reminded her to check the time. “I have somewhere else to be, Kevin.”

  Once they had picked themselves off the porch, Kevin said, “Thanks for all your help. And you have to know that I wouldn’t break in and steal your dog. That’s messed up.”

  A quarter of a mile from the Mullins cabin, Maggie pulled up behind a truck hauling a trailer out of the hollow.

  “Of course,” she clenched the steering wheel. “It’s just like when I was a kid. Whenever we had plans to do something fun and exciting like going to the dam for a cookout, somebody would buy a trailer or decide to move and block the road.”

  The truck needed to navigate its way over a bridge and around a curve on the one-lane road, so Maggie shut off the car’s ignition. Just as she had done dozens of times before, she reviewed the details of her investigation. Yet, even after the conversation with Kevin, she didn’t feel closer to the truth.

  “Kevin gave a credible explanation of how he got the money, but he won’t tell the police and he doesn’t want his dad to know. Is that because he doesn’t want to disappoint him or because the quarters never existed? And Kevin was wearing a baseball cap. Come to think of it, he always wears a cap, but around here, so do most males, young and otherwise. Daddy wears one and so does Bug. And what about him? Sure, Mac’s death put an end to the lottery scam, but if he lied once, he’ll lie again and I can’t rule him out.”

  The truck inched around the bridge and Maggie started the car and coasted a bit before coming to another stop. “What about Rhonda? Although she didn’t outright lie, she intimated that she hadn’t seen Mac since she left her job, but Sylvie’s friend said Mac visited her apartment regularly. Why lie about that? Were they having an affair? Could she have killed him during a jealous rage?” Maggie pounded the steering wheel. “Oh, I need to talk to her. Maybe I can pop in after lunch with Luke.

  “And I can’t forget Dottie. It’s a good sign that she spilled her guts to Mom. That doesn’t sound like the actions of a guilty woman, but then there’s Corey. He stole from Mac and, allegedly, Dottie’s sister and he wears a ball cap.”

  Just then, a jogger sprinted past Maggie’s car. “There’s another young man in a ball cap,” she said. When the jogger crossed the road and ran through a field to avoid the truck and trailer, Maggie saw that it wasn’t a young man. It was Carla Honaker.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Maggie watched Carla jump over a culvert and disappear around the mobile home.

  “I hadn’t noticed it before, but she’s got manly shoulders. And she’s tiny and has no curves or hips. With her hair tucked under that ball cap, she looks like a boy from behind,” Maggie said to herself. “Oh, my God. It’s her. It has to be her. I don’t know why or how, but it’s her.”

  She checked her cell phone, but before it even came to life, she knew she would not have service up the hollow. “Of all days to be stuck behind a trailer.” With her heart and mind racing, she rested her head on the steering wheel and closed her eyes. “I’m going to count to one hundred and then look up.”

  She had made it to fifty-eight when the horn sounded. Looking up, she saw a man in a blue pickup through her rearview mirror. More important, she saw the moving truck moseying down the road through her front window.

  “Good,” Maggie said. “As long as I don’t get behind a chatty Kathy who stops in the road to converse with a neighbor strolling through his yard, this will work out for me.”

  The moving truck encountered a few more tight spots, but at the end of the hollow, the truck turned right and Maggie turned left. As she motored down Sugar Creek, she checked her phone. “Please, please, please give me at least two bars.” She kept one eye on the road and one eye on the phone. When two bars popped up, she dialed Seth’s number. “Please, please, please pick up.”

  He did. Maggie interrupted his greeting.

  “Seth, are you at work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you find out what kind of car Carla Honaker drives?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think she killed Mac.”

  “Maggie.”

  “Could you just do this for me?”

  Seth sighed. “It will take a few minutes. Hold on.”

  Maggie had almost reached the Honaker residence when Seth returned to the phone. “It’s a silver Ford Explorer.”

  She thought back to the night Barnaby went missing and Lena’s assertion that she had seen an unfamiliar vehicle – a gray Jeep – on the hollow. Maggie knew her mother described all silver vehicles as gray and all SUVs as Jeeps. “She did it.”

  “Maggie, what are you talking about and where are you?”

  “I’m pulling into the Honaker driveway.”

  “Get out of there and go home.”

  Maggie turned off her phone, tossed it in the passenger seat, and rifled through her purse. When she located her digital recorder, she made sure it had adequate battery life and said, “I’m glad I keep you for backup.”

  Assuming Carla had already arrived home, Maggie exited her vehicle and approached the house. She had taken ten steps when she heard footsteps behind her.

  “Excuse me,” Carla said as Maggie turned.

  “Hi, Carla.” Maggie flashed a broad smile and prayed Carla wouldn’t detect her nervousness. “I saw you running on Little Elm Fork. You have more courage than I do. You’re not going to find me running at all. I hear it’s murder on your joints and cartilage. But, if I did run, I’d do it on the safety of a track or in town.” Maggie was well aware she was rambling, but she couldn’t stop talking. “What do you do on a one-lane road when you meet a car?”

  “I run out of the way.” Carla let her backpack fall to the ground. “Do you mind me asking what you’re doing here?”

  Maggie half-turned so she could see the house while she spoke to Carla. “I’ve always admired your house,” she said. “So much, in fact, that I had never noticed the garage on the side. From the road, it looks like another room.”

  Carla took a drink from her water bottle. “That was the intent, but thank you.”

  Maggie turned so she would have a clear view of Carla. “You’ve been on my mind a lot lately. I’ve been wondering how you’ve been.”

  “I’ve been well.”

  “How’s business?”
<
br />   “Good.”

  Maggie nodded. “You know, I got stuck behind that trailer, so I expected you to already be home. But what’s odd is that I didn’t see you on main Sugar Creek and I got here before you. I’ve lived here most of my life and I can’t wrap my brain around that. Unless there’s some sort of long way home I don’t know about.”

  “It’s a relatively nice day, so I took a short hike.”

  “Oh, you hike? In the hills? By yourself? You are a courageous soul. I’d be afraid of encountering a bear or a snake or a marauder.”

  Carla tilted her water bottle in the direction of the backpack. “I keep water, energy bars, a small first aid kit, and a gun in there. I’m prepared in the event of an attack or an emergency.”

  “Is it the same gun you used to kill him?” Maggie hadn’t been prepared to confront Carla with what she believed to be the truth, but she didn’t regret giving voice to her suspicions.

  Carla didn’t flinch. “Killed who?”

  “Mac.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Is that so?” With her back turned to the road, Carla couldn’t see a state police cruiser approaching the driveway. Maggie could and she wanted Carla to implicate herself before the trooper intervened. “You had the perfect cover. You jog and hike around these parts, so if anybody saw you creeping around the store that day, they’d think you’d run down the road to see your husband. If they didn’t see you, then you could run in and kill him without drawing suspicion to yourself.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Money issues. Your catering business is not doing as well as you’d like everyone to believe. With Mac out of the way, you can raise capital by selling the store and this place. I imagine you’ll be cashing in a sizable life insurance policy, too.”

  Carla sucked the water bottle dry and sloshed the water around her mouth. “Your friend, Kevin Mullins, killed my husband for a couple hundred bucks.”

  “Who said Kevin was my friend?”

  Before Carla could respond, the cruiser pulled into the driveway. Carla jumped at the sound of his car door slamming.