1 Murder on Sugar Creek Read online

  Murder on Sugar Creek

  A Maggie Morgan Mystery

  By Michelle Goff

  Copyright © 2014 Michelle Goff

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  For my parents, Burton and Marlene

  Prologue

  As soon as Mac Honaker’s wristwatch struck seven, he unlocked the deadbolt on the glass door and opened his small community store for business. With the daily chore accomplished, he settled behind the counter and poured the morning’s first cup of coffee. He figured he’d be ready for a second cup by the time his cousin and best pal, Bug, arrived at a quarter after the hour for their customary breakfast. Bug always started his day with a Bear Claw, but Mac preferred an Iced Honey Bun. On this morning, Mac’s growling stomach longed for the pastry, so he greeted the sound of the jingling door with a smile. Without looking toward the door, Mac said, “You’re early,” and picked up the coffee pot. Still smiling, he poured hot coffee into Bug’s chipped University of Kentucky mug.

  When he finally looked up, Mac saw the barrel of a gun pointed at his chest.

  Kevin Mullins leaned his bicycle against the singlewide mobile home and sprang up the steps to find the home’s owner, Ray Short, waiting for him.

  Kevin dug his hand into the pocket of his jeans, gave Ray a handful of crumpled bills and said, “I got that money I owe you.”

  Chapter One

  Maggie Morgan loved to sleep. No matter how many hours she slumbered away, she resented the intrusion of consciousness. So when the beeping alarm clock interrupted her bliss, she rolled over in her full-size bed, hit the snooze button, and tried to drift away for five more minutes. Her plans were dashed by the sound of her dog scratching at the bedroom door. Maggie groaned and pulled herself out of bed. Barnaby, her seventy-pound chocolate lab, tried to jump on her when she opened the door, but Maggie held him at bay and struggled down the hallway. When she reached the kitchen, she let a grateful Barnaby outside to do his business in her fenced-in back yard.

  Never a fan of coffee, Maggie depended on the sugar rush from a glass of orange juice to jump-start her day. With eyes closed, she rested against the refrigerator and sipped the juice. She had succeeded in dozing to sleep when the beeping brought her back to reality.

  “Stupid snooze button,” she snapped and shuffled back to the bedroom. As long as she was there, she decided to pick out her clothes for the day. Maggie wore a variation of the same clothing – black, gray, or khaki slacks and blue, green, or red sweaters and blouses – day after day, so the task did not consume much of her time. She finished drinking the juice, let Barnaby inside, and fed him. After he ate, he lay on the floor and allowed Maggie to scratch his tummy.

  In an effort to achieve as much sleep as possible, Maggie devoted a minimal amount of time each morning to getting ready. After a quick shower, she dried and ran her hands through her pixie-cut brown hair, brushed her teeth, dressed, and applied black eyeliner under her dark brown eyes as well as violet-colored lipstick to her lips. The process took fifteen minutes, yet she still managed to look fresh. And cute. In fact, when others described her physically, they chose cute more than any other adjective. Young-looking followed closely behind at second. She always walked with pep in her step and that, as well as the flawless skin she had inherited from her mom and the positive attitude she had picked up from her dad, combined to produce a youthful demeanor that would persevere long after she became eligible for senior citizen discounts.

  Once Maggie had deemed herself presentable for the day, she grabbed her breakfast bar and lunch tote and headed out the door.

  Although the juice and shower helped awaken Maggie, she didn’t start to appreciate the day until she drove out of Caldonia Road and up Sugar Creek Mountain. When she reached the top of the mountain, she looked to her right and beheld the tops of hundreds of trees. She especially appreciated the view during a scenic fall morning like today, and the golden and rust-colored trees blazing under the morning sun gave Maggie a moment of joy and reminded her why she loved eastern Kentucky.

  As Maggie’s Toyota sped down the road, a commotion at Honaker’s store took her mind off trees.

  By craning her neck and squinting through the rearview mirror, Maggie identified two police cruisers, an ambulance, and the coroner’s van in the parking lot of the store. She also spotted the Volkswagen owned by Tyler, the eager young reporter who worked alongside her at the local newspaper, the Jasper Sentinel. Maggie felt sure Tyler would bristle at the suggestion they were colleagues. Although she was just in her mid-thirties, the freshly-out-of-college Tyler gave Maggie the feeling he regarded her as old and inconsequential. Whenever she cited a favorite Investigation Discovery true-crime program during newsroom discussions, Tyler sighed and reached for his ear buds.

  The paper’s lifestyle section, which Maggie produced and edited, also elicited excited reactions from Tyler. He complained to the editor when Maggie took the paper’s best camera to snap a photo of a five-pound tomato on the vine, made fun of the garden of the week feature she ran in the summer, and scoffed when she profiled a local man who collected clocks.

  “Why are we celebrating a hoarder?” Tyler asked during a meeting.

  Luckily for Maggie, Tyler wielded no power and their editor, Joe, quickly reminded him of that fact. But, as recently as yesterday, Maggie had caught Tyler rolling his eyes as he flipped through the lifestyle section.

  Despite his attitude, Maggie felt indifferent to Tyler. She realized he wanted to make a name for himself and leave the place he referred to as “Jasper the Friendly Ghost Town.” She also wondered what he hoped to accomplish in a dying field. Although advertising sales and circulation numbers had diminished since she had started working in the industry some thirteen years earlier, at least she lived and worked in an area where readers would always appreciate giant tomatoes, flower gardens, and clock hoarders featured in their hometown newspaper. As much as readers enjoyed seeing the spotlight shine on their neighbors for positive or innocuous reasons, Maggie knew bad news sold newspapers. She need only look to herself to find an example of someone who searched mug shots for a familiar face or the police log for a recognizable name. That’s why, as she eased into her assigned parking spot, she hoped Tyler didn’t linger at Honaker’s store. She was dying to know what had happened.

  Maggie began her work days by checking the fax machine. The task never failed to irritate her. She couldn’t understand why any business continued to use such antiquated technology. Yet, every day, she shifted through a stack of press releases and obituaries. She usually discarded the press releases, which routinely announced a revolutionary way to prepare pears or a patent on a hat that doubled as a camera. But there was no discarding the needed obits. She had asked owners of area funeral homes to email the death notices to her. Only three complied with her request. That she could copy obituaries from the websites of the other funeral homes only added to her annoyance. By Maggie’s reasoning, if these funeral homes could maintain websites, they could send emails.

  She shook her head and carried the handful of obits to her desk. Although the receptionist, the bookkeeper, the publisher, and the advertising staff milled about the office, Maggie was, as usual, the first person to arrive in the newsroom. Except for covering special events or when she was needed to proofread and edit, Maggie generally worked eight-to-five, Monday through Friday. She liked the schedule and the opportunity to start her day before the newsroom buzzed with activity.

  As she copied, pasted, and edited the obits, she speculated on the liv
es of the deceased. She decided the eighty-six-year-old man who died following a short illness was a retired coal miner who supplemented the family income during the 1940s by bootlegging. In Maggie’s mind, the sixty-two-year-old grandmother survived a harsh upbringing and spoiled her children in an effort to give them the material possessions she had been denied.

  Maggie took great care with the obits. She knew the names of most people would only appear in the newspaper on the occasions of their birth and death. Unlike many newspapers, the Sentinel published death notices for free, providing the funeral homes or grieving loved ones didn’t deviate from the obit form. If they wanted to mention their dearly departed’s fondness for fishing or devotion to dolls, they had to whip out the checkbook. Maggie understood the business side of running a newspaper and had no problem asking the aggrieved to pay for extras, but she hoped the publisher and owner never allowed the bottom line to intrude upon free obits.

  Tyler dropped the camera bag onto the desk beside Maggie’s just as she finished the obit of a fifty-seven-year-old man she had determined to be a motorcycle enthusiast. She looked up at Tyler and asked, “What happened at Mac Honaker’s store?”

  Tyler took the photo card from the camera before answering. “Somebody shot Mac Honaker.”

  “Wow,” Maggie said. Although she rarely shopped at the store and only knew Mac Honaker by sight, the news stunned her.

  “Did he die? I saw the coroner’s van there.”

  “The coroner’s presence generally indicates death and, yes, Mr. Honaker is dead.”

  Maggie marveled that Tyler pronounced the name so it rhymed with moniker whereas locals said it as Hoe-nay-ker. She also marveled at his smart reply, which she chose not to acknowledge. “Do they know –”

  “It was probably a robbery gone bad,” Tyler cut her off. “The cash register was empty. His cousin said he kept a few hundred dollars in it. However, a safe containing a few thousand dollars in cash was found in the office, but the perpetrator most likely didn’t know it was in there.”

  “His cousin was there? Other than your car, I only noticed official vehicles in the parking lot.”

  “He left not long after I arrived, but I heard him tell the police officer that he stops by every morning for coffee and a diabetes breakfast. From the looks of his protruding stomach, he should scale back on the sweets and consider switching to bananas and whole grain cereal.” Before inserting his ear buds, Tyler added, “This cousin also said there had been at least two attempted robberies in recent months.”

  Maggie wanted to ask why Mac kept so much cash on hand and if the store had security cameras, but Tyler had turned his attention to his computer screen.

  By mid-afternoon, Maggie finally had her unasked question about the security cameras answered.

  She had gone into Joe’s office to discuss coverage of the local high schools’ homecoming events when Tyler interrupted them.

  “Tyler,” Joe said in a level voice, “Maggie and I are in a meeting.”

  Tyler tilted his head and frowned. “The police just updated me on the Honaker murder.”

  “I don’t care if –”

  “It’s okay,” Maggie interjected. “We were almost finished.”

  Tyler paused as if he were waiting for Maggie to leave. When she remained in the chair, he said, “A witness spotted a boy or young man wearing a baseball cap walking into the store just after seven this morning.”

  Joe nodded. “Well, that earth-shattering news was definitely worth interrupting a meeting.”

  Maggie bit the inside of her lower lip, bent her head, and pretended to be reading her notes. She admired the way Joe handled Tyler. Joe also was a transplant to the area, but, unlike Tyler, he did not scorn the community and its citizens. But like Tyler, Joe had come to Jasper with plans to stay only long enough to receive a job offer from a more prestigious paper in a bigger town or city. That was thirty years earlier, before he had fallen in love with a kindergarten teacher and Jasper native whom he later married. Joe had been editor for a week when Maggie began her tenure at the Sentinel. She credited him with bringing her along as a feature writer and, ultimately, a section editor.

  “Did you find out if the store had security cameras?” Maggie asked Tyler.

  Tyler sighed, “Yes. It had them, but they were not turned on.”

  Maggie pondered that development as Tyler added, “Oh, I almost forgot. The police also said a young male wearing a ball cap was seen riding a bicycle in the vicinity of the store this morning.”

  Chapter Two

  Maggie finished eating her Hot Pocket and glanced at the vending machine. A snack cake or candy bar would complement the flavors of the philly steak and cheese sandwich, but she was determined to win her newly-declared battle of the bulge. She had always maintained a trim figure with little effort and without curbing her overactive sweet tooth, but age and a sedentary lifestyle had finally caught up with her. In the past few months, she had noticed excess weight around her waist, hips, and thighs. Although the weight gain had not caused her to burst out of her clothes, she had vowed to put a stop to her unwelcome expansion before it turned her into one of those people who had to be pulled by a crane out of the house because she was too fat to move or to fit through the entry doors. Needing a distraction from the urge to raid the snack machine, she picked up the paper and started reading the Mac Honaker murder story. Tyler hadn’t finished the story when five o’clock rolled around the previous day and, although she had volunteered to stay late and wait on him, Joe had sent her home. Still, on most days, she had read the paper from cover to cover before midday, but two interviews and a deadline had prevented her from doing so today. Tyler had already shared many of the details with the newsroom, but Maggie learned much from reading his story. According to Mac’s cousin, Bug, and Dottie, the lady who worked part-time at the store, within the past six months two attempted robberies had been thwarted by the store’s top-notch security system.

  Dottie explained why Mac installed cameras with his security system but didn’t bother to turn them on. “He said he didn’t need to see no faces,” Tyler quoted Dottie as saying. “He said the security system would stop them when the store was closed and his gun would stop them when it was open. He even made sure I could shoot it before he hired me.” As tears formed in her eyes, Dottie added, “I guess he didn’t have time to grab the gun. It’s a shame.”

  The story also contained personal tidbits about the murder victim. Bug said Mac always wanted to run his own business. After unfulfilling stints selling insurance, managing a shoe store, and running the maintenance department of a small chain of locally-owned nursing homes, Bug said Mac finally got to fulfill his dream with money he inherited following his father’s death.

  “He loved running that store,” Bug said. “He loved meeting people and talking to them. I stopped by there every day for breakfast and he always had a smile on his face.”

  Neither Bug nor Dottie could predict the store’s future.

  “His wife, Carla, has her own catering business and bakery, and I don’t know if she has time for a store,” Dottie said.

  Maggie stopped reading, looked up from the paper, and repeated the words, “Carla. Catering.”

  She flipped through the lifestyle section until her eyes landed on the advertisement for Carla’s Cakes & Catering. The way the smiling wisp of a woman stood by the table of sandwiches, chicken salad, and cupcakes had always reminded Maggie of a Price Is Right model presenting a washer and dryer. Maggie estimated she had glanced at the ad hundreds of times, but had only given it casual attention. This time, she studied every aspect of the ad. She wondered how someone who cooked and baked all day could stay as thin as Carla. Having eaten a few pieces of Carla’s cakes, Maggie hoped the baker pulled her long auburn hair into a ponytail when she worked and not just when she posed for pictures. Maggie also decided Carla had lucked out by having a name that started with the letter C.

  “What would she have named the compan
y if her name had been Darla?” Maggie asked herself.

  Before she could further speculate on the fictitious Darla’s employment prospects, Tyler entered the break room.

  “Your murder story was really good,” Maggie complimented him.

  Tyler opened the refrigerator door. “I hope the follow-up is just as good.”

  “Oh, when can we expect that?”

  Tyler put a plastic bowl of butternut squash soup in the microwave. “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Have there already been new developments?”

  “Yes. That is if an arrest qualifies as a new development.”

  “An arrest? Who is it?”

  Tyler shrugged. “Some guy named Kevin Mullins.”

  Maggie gasped. “Kevin? I know him.”

  Chapter Three

  Tyler offered no further comment and Maggie finished her lunch and returned to her desk. But she didn’t accomplish much work. She couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin. As a boy, he had been a friend of her younger brother, Mark. If she closed her eyes, Maggie could see the boys collapsing in laughter under the clothesline the day they hid a frog in her clothes basket. After overcoming the shock of a frog leaping onto her face, Maggie had tried without success to be angry with them.

  Mark and Kevin had grown apart once they reached high school. Mark graduated as class valedictorian. Maggie wasn’t even sure if Kevin finished school. Mark earned his master’s and worked as a chemist in a lab outside Indianapolis. Maggie didn’t know if Kevin had a job, but she was fairly certain he had developed a drug problem. The last time she had seen him, she had been struck by how the skinny man with vacant eyes who asked about Mark bore little resemblance to the chubby boy with dancing eyes who had accompanied Mark in pursuit of a litter of runaway pigs.

  The memory of the boys chasing the pigs down the road brought a smile to Maggie’s face, but Tyler quickly brought her out of her reverie. “Maggie, could you come in here a minute?”