“We’ve known for a while,” Ben said, “but we wanted to enjoy it a little longer before letting the world in on our secret.”
With her hand still clutching Maggie’s, Edie said, “I hope you’re not upset.”
“Not at all.” Maggie enveloped Edie and then Ben into hugs. “I am so happy for you.”
“And don’t worry, I know you’re really not into kids, so I’ll never ask you to come to birthday parties or babysit.”
“I make exceptions for my nephews, and I’ll make an exception for your little one. If it’s okay with you, I’d like for the baby to call me Antie Maggie.”
“I’ll have it no other way,” Edie said. As Edie drew Maggie into another hug, Maggie accepted the reality that she could not dampen her friend’s day by announcing the news of her breakup.
Upon arriving home, Maggie changed into her pajamas, picked up her e-reader, and began reading a mystery Mark had given her for Christmas. After reading the first page five times, she gave up, drowned her sorrows in cocoa, and replayed her last conversation with Luke. She had started doubting herself before she had backed out of his driveway. Now, alone in her house, except for Barnaby, of course, the misgivings weighed on her chest like lead.
“Maybe I acted in haste. Maybe I shouldn’t have used such decisive language. Maybe everything would have improved if I had given it time.”
She was still questioning herself an hour later. At that point, she realized no good would come out of the internal mind games she played. “Let’s do something productive,” she said to Barnaby, who sat licking his paws.
After talking to Seth, Maggie had decided to compile her notes on the investigation into a report for him. She thought it might help him proceed with the case. As she transcribed her initial conversation with Steve and Carrie, she fixated on his comments about Mira.
“Mira. What makes that baby any more of a miracle than Edie’s baby?” she speculated. “Unless Carrie underwent in-vitro or had her tubes untied or –”
Maggie put her hand to her mouth. Once again that day, she had been stunned into silence.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Maggie waited for Steve in the same chapel where she had first met him and Carrie. When she had called him that morning and asked if she could stop by, he hadn’t asked what she wanted to discuss and she hadn’t volunteered information. After creeping on Facebook, where she had seen that Carrie had a luncheon date scheduled with two friends from high school, she had set the time for her meeting with Steve to coincide with Carrie’s early afternoon appointment. She was making sure, for the third time, that her recorder was on when Steve appeared in the doorway. He loped down the aisle and pulled out a chair adjacent to hers.
“It sure was a surprise to hear from you, but I’m glad you called.” He added with a smile, “I needed to call you anyway.”
“Me?” Maggie couldn’t imagine why he would need to talk to her. “Why?”
“To thank you for recommending W.L. to Carrie.”
After her last visit to W.L.’s, Maggie had called Carrie to inquire about Jay’s old job. When Carrie told her Steve still hadn’t found a suitable replacement, Maggie had asked Carrie to put forth W.L. as a potential candidate for the job. Carrie agreed without hesitation. It was only later that Maggie realized Carrie most likely considered the suggestion a veiled form of blackmail.
“So, he’s doing well?” Maggie tried to keep the disbelief from sneaking into her voice.
“Yes, he is.” Steve frowned and shook his head back and forth as if he were deciding on what to say. “It takes him a couple times to catch on, but he’s a hard worker and he’ll do anything we ask him to do. I hired him the day before Christmas Eve. He worked a few hours and then I pulled him aside and told him I’d need him to work the following two days. You know what he said? ‘What time do I need to be here?’ He didn’t complain at all about having to work during the holiday.”
“Yeah, I guess your line of business doesn’t guarantee automatic holidays.”
Steve brought his hands together and displayed a solemn expression she recognized as his funeral director face. “No, unfortunately, death does not take a holiday.”
Maggie thought of Seth and his family as well as Gentry and Belinda and shuddered.
“Are you okay, Maggie?”
“Do you ever get used to it? The death?”
“I know how this is going to sound, but I grew up in a funeral home. Literally. We lived on the second floor. We now use that area for offices and storage space, but it was my home. My family’s home. So, this was as natural and as normal to me as growing up on a farm or in the suburbs is to other people. It was the family business and I feel blessed to have received the same calling as previous generations of my family. I hope that doesn’t sound morbid, but somebody has to provide bereavement services. Somebody has to console the grieving families.” Steve paused. “But some services are harder to officiate than others. Friends, family members, children. Children,” he repeated, “that’s never easy.”
“I would imagine that it makes you think of your children.” Before he had a chance to respond, Maggie said, “I just found out that my best friend is expecting a baby.”
“Well, good for her. That baby will change her life – for the better. It’s almost like my life had no purpose before my kids were born.”
Maggie nodded. “She’s thirty-four. She says she’s lucky she didn’t wait a few months or she’d have to submit to additional testing.”
Steve smiled. “That’s due to the mother’s advanced maternal age. Carrie had to go through all that.”
“Did you all undergo invitro-fertilization or –”
“Nope. Nothing like that.”
“Oh, I thought that’s why you called Mira your miracle baby. I assumed you had undergone treatments or maybe Carrie had her tubes untied or you had a vasectomy reversed.”
Her eyes locked with Steve’s. Until that moment, she had kept trying to convince herself that her suspicions were unfounded and that this seemingly good man had not ended Jay Harris’ life. But his trembling lips and twitching eyes revealed the truth to her.
“How did you know about Jay and Carrie?” she asked. “How did you know the baby was his?”
Steve inhaled sharply and breathed the words, “Mira is not Jay’s baby. She’s my daughter in every way that matters.”
“But she is Jay’s biological daughter, isn’t she? And you killed Jay, didn’t you?”
“How did you figure it out? I guess it doesn’t matter. I always knew somebody would find out. I didn’t think it would be you, though. I thought you seemed too trusting of people. I underestimated you.”
Steve’s opinion of her mattered little to Maggie. She asked him again, “How did you know about Carrie and Jay’s affair?”
He turned his head away from Maggie and took some time before speaking. “I didn’t know for sure. Carrie and Jay rarely interacted. When they were around each other, they were polite, but he seemed to regard her as nothing more than the boss’ wife. And I know Carrie. I love her, but she’s the type of person who’s not present in a conversation or a situation unless it involves her or something she cares about. That’s why I knew she’d work out well here at the funeral home. After we married, I had no reservations about asking her to come on board. She’s not a bad person, but she doesn’t feel other people’s pain. She doesn’t concern herself with other people, either. So, if I had thought about her and Jay, I would have decided that when he was around, she quit thinking about him before his shadow cleared the room.”
“What changed?”
“I was a foolish man. I sent a young, good-looking boy over to the house to perform chores I didn’t have the time to do and that Carrie’s son wouldn’t do. Last year, I asked Jay to help her decorate the house for Christmas. When I went home that night, they were drinking cider and draping garland around the bannisters. They weren’t really talking. She gave him orders, but otherwise, didn’t seem
to notice him. But she kept touching her hair and giggling nervously. This job has taught me a lot about human nature and body language. That night, I knew they had been carrying on like I knew my own name. I don’t know how long it had been going on by that point. I just know that I put it out of my mind. I refused to acknowledge what I knew to be true. It wasn’t until later that I accepted the truth. It wasn’t until she told me she was pregnant.”
“Did you know immediately that Mira wasn’t your –,” Maggie corrected herself, “was Jay’s biological baby?”
“I think so, but again, I wouldn’t admit it, not even to myself. Besides, I had an answer. I thought my surgeon had messed up the vasectomy. I don’t want people around here to know my business, so all my doctors are in Lexington. I made an appointment with the doctor who had performed the surgery and asked him to check things out. He did. He hadn’t messed up my surgery and that confirmed what I had feared for months. Carrie had been seeing Jay.”
“When I talked to Carrie, she was adamant that you didn’t suspect her of cheating with Jay. But if you’ve had a vasectomy, then she should have known that you knew you couldn’t have fathered Mira.” Steve raised one eyebrow, prompting Maggie to say, “Carrie didn’t know about the vasectomy, did she?”
“No. When we got together, she said she didn’t want more children, so I didn’t see any need to tell her.”
“Weren’t you afraid she’d find out?”
“From who? The only people who know about it are my doctor and his staff and my ex-wife. Even if the doctor wasn’t in Lexington, he’s bound by confidentiality. And my ex-wife is an alcoholic and drug addict who can’t keep her days straight. Even if she hasn’t forgotten about the surgery, nobody would believe anything she said.”
“So, after your doctor’s appointment, you knew it was Jay?” When Steve nodded, Maggie said, “Why didn’t you confront him? Why didn’t you confront Carrie?”
“I couldn’t. I was afraid that if everything came out in the open, she’d leave me.”
“For a boy half –”
“For a boy half her age? That’s okay. You can say it. And if he’s half her age, what about me? I’m more than thirty years older than Jay.”
“Surely you couldn’t have thought she would leave you for him. Where were they going to live? With his pappaw?”
“Maybe she would have stayed with me, but what about Jay? What if he had wanted visitation?”
“So, you killed him to keep him from his child?”
“It’s not like I planned it. When I asked Jay to meet me at that family cemetery that morning, I didn’t have any notion of hurting a hair on his head. I asked him to go up there with me to center up a footstone. I don’t know if we had set it wrong or if the ground had caused it to move. But I was determined to make everything right for that nice old widow. When she called me to tell me it wasn’t centered, she apologized for complaining. You can’t blow off people like her. You can’t blow off the bereaved.”
Maggie cleared her throat. “So, about Jay …”
“As I walked up the hill, I saw him resting against a tree. He looked so young, so carefree. Just the sight of him acting like he didn’t have a care in the world made me sick to my stomach. Thinking of how he had ruined everything made me nauseous.” Steve removed his wire rim glasses and cleaned them with the hem of his jacket. Returning his glasses to the bridge of his nose, he said, “My first marriage was a disaster. My wife drank herself into a stupor every day and when that wasn’t enough, she added pills to the mix. I tried to keep it together for our boys, but one day I realized they’d be better off without her. And they were. After I divorced her, I concentrated on work and my boys. I rarely dated and never considered remarrying.” He smiled. “And then I met Carrie. She was my salvation. When I think back to all the battles I had with my ex-wife and when I hear other men complaining about their wives, I laugh. Carrie and I rarely disagree. Yes, I express my displeasure with her lazy son and she and my mother do not get along, but we work alongside each other and then go home together. I spend just about every day with her and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Steve touched Maggie’s arm and said, “You know, when I think of my life with Carrie, I sing that song by Alabama. You know the one I’m talking about?” When Maggie shook her head, Steve said, “She’s close enough to perfect for me. My life was close to perfect. At least it was until Jay came along. When I saw him standing on that hill, it all became so clear to me. He was a reminder of Carrie’s infidelity. He was a reminder that the baby wasn’t my biological child. With him out of the picture, we could continue on and welcome a new addition to our close-enough-to-perfect lives. It would be as if the affair had never occurred. And, you know, that’s exactly what happened. These last few months with Carrie and Mira have been the most wonderful time of my life.”
Maggie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You killed him because his existence was inconvenient for you?”
“No, it was, well, it was like this – when I picked up that branch, I was thinking about how everything could go back to the way it should have been if he would just go away. And I wanted to protect my family. If he had made a claim on the baby, everything would have gotten so messy. I didn’t want Carrie to have to go through that. I didn’t want all that stress in our lives.”
You didn’t want to accept reality, Maggie thought. “What did you do with him? His family has a right to know where he is.”
“You’re right. They do. That has laid on my heart.” When Steve said, “It really has,” Maggie realized the skepticism she felt in her head also must be splashed across her face. “As soon as it was over and I realized what I had done, I fell onto the ground and cried. I hadn’t cried since my dad died fourteen years earlier. I kept thinking about Gentry. I knew his heart would be broken. I pulled out my cell phone to dial 9-1-1. I knew I needed to confess and face the consequences. But I didn’t have service. That gave me some time to think. Jay was past helping and Gentry’s heart would be broken no matter what course I took. I interpreted the lack of cell service as a sign that I needed to think things through before making a move.”
“You didn’t interpret it as a sign that we have spotty service here in the hills?”
“You don’t understand. It’s not that I felt God was sending me the message that he condoned what I had done. That’s not what I meant. It just gave me a chance to think. So, I sat there and thought about it and then I dragged Jay farther up the mountain and hid him under some brush. Then, I drove his truck even farther up the mountain. That cemetery is on a hill up the head of a holler. You can’t access it by car. You need a four-wheel drive or an ATV. It’s that remote. You can’t see it from the road, either. Even if you could, it’s rare that a car drives up there, so I wasn’t too worried about anybody spotting the truck or finding him. Still, it was an anxiety-filled day. I had an appointment with a family that had just lost their mother. After helping them arrange the services, I told Carrie that my mom’s neighbor needed her creek cleaned out. That gave me an excuse to load the backhoe on our flatbed without Carrie or anybody else asking too many questions. It’s like I told you, Carrie and my mom don’t get along, so I knew she’d never ask my mom about her neighbor’s creek.”
“That was really convenient for you, and it’s a good thing you’re a funeral director and have access to heavy machinery.”
This time, Steve didn’t comment on Maggie’s sarcasm. “It had started raining by the time I got back to the cemetery. I unloaded the backhoe and drove it up the mountain until I found an appropriate place. It was between two oak trees. All things considered, there are worse places to spend eternity. It’s really a pretty area. I don’t know if I dug out six feet, but I came close. Then, I hiked back to the cemetery on foot, dragged Jay to his truck, and drove him up the hill to his final resting spot. After I put the dirt back in the grave, I found some brush to cover it up. I couldn’t take the risk that people joyriding up there on their fo
ur-wheelers or hunters looking for game would question all that fresh dirt.” He shook his head. “I won’t lie to you, as I stood there taking it all in, I felt relief. I thought I had covered my bases. Then I turned around, saw his truck, and I realized I had to do something with it.”
“What did you do?”
“I loaded the backhoe on the flatbed and sat in Jay’s truck and thought. By this time, the rain was coming down in sheets and it was getting dark. I thought about digging a hole big enough and pushing the truck into it and burying it, but there’s no way I could have found enough brush to cover that much fresh dirt. There’s a good chance somebody would have gotten suspicious. I rested my head on the dashboard until it came to me. There was this guy who used to work for me named Waylon –”
Maggie gasped. “Gentry mentioned him.”
“Really?” Steve said. “What did he say?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie admitted. “I wasn’t really paying attention. I was more interested in his name, but there was something about him and a guy named Pete.”
Steve smiled. “Waylon was a good worker and a good guy. He moved to Virginia about a decade ago and bought a salvage yard. I knew that if I could get the truck to Waylon, he’d junk it and never ask questions because that’s the kind of man he is. When the other fellows would be gossiping or speculating on how somebody or another could afford to drive an expensive car or build a new deck onto their houses, Waylon would say, ‘Pete takes care of his own fence.’ One day, I asked him what he meant by that and he said, ‘Pete takes care of what’s his and I take care of what’s mine. Ain’t none of my business what Pete does with his.’”
Maggie resisted the urge to ask if Pete were a real person. “Is that what happened? Did he take the truck without asking questions?”
“He did. I drove it over there that night. I called him before I left and he met me at his junkyard. He didn’t ask why I was practically giving him a truck.” For the first time in several minutes, Steve looked at Maggie. “I felt I had to charge him a nominal amount for the truck. Waylon keeps to himself, but even he might question a free vehicle. I thought it was blood money, though, and I donated it anonymously to Gentry’s church.” Steve cast his eyes downward. “Anyway, Waylon drove me back to Geneva County that night. Actually, by that time, it was probably early morning. He let me out about a mile from that cemetery. I walked up there, got the flatbed, and drove home. I showered and slipped into bed beside Carrie, but I couldn’t sleep.”
Murder on Calf Lick Fork Page 15