1 Murder on Sugar Creek

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 lives 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.”