1 Murder on Sugar Creek (4 page)

Chapter Six

As Maggie sat in Bug Damron’s
living room, she couldn’t help but feel guilty. Technically, she had misrepresented
the truth to Joe. She prided herself on her honesty and considered a lie by
omission as bad as an intentional falsehood. But she reasoned that the ends
justified the means. If she wanted to learn the truth about Mac Honaker, then
she would need to talk to the people who knew him best. The information they
provided might free an innocent man. Besides, she had every intention of gathering
intimate anecdotes she would then craft into a series of compelling human
interest columns, and Joe certainly would appreciate that.

“Sorry about that,” Bug apologized
when he re-entered the room. “My mommy’s satellite TV receiver ain’t working
right. She’s eighty-six and never misses a minute of
Days of Our Lives.
I told her I’d talk to you for a few and then head over there and check her TV
before her show comes on.”

“This shouldn’t take long.” Once
Bug settled into his oversized recliner, Maggie said, “So, tell me about Mac.”

Bug’s eyes watered as he reminisced
about his murdered cousin. A couple times, Maggie encouraged him to take a minute
before continuing.

“You know, Mac was a good seven or
eight years younger than me,” Bug explained. “We wasn’t even first cousins. Our
mommies was first cousins and Mac and me didn’t exactly grow up together. But
my wife died twenty-two years ago,” Bug trailed off and wiped away a tear. “She
was just shy of her 40
^th
birthday. We didn’t have no children. I still
had my mommy and daddy and other family, but it’s like the life left me when
she died. I just holed up here in this house. When I wasn’t at work, I was
sitting right here. I wouldn’t even turn on the TV.

“Well, Mac showed up one day with
tickets to a UK football game. I was never much of a football fan. I’ve always
been more interested in basketball, but it didn’t matter cause I didn’t feel like
going nowhere. Well, you know how it is. He told me he didn’t have nobody to go
with him and he didn’t want to go alone. If I wouldn’t go, he wouldn’t go. He’d
lose his tickets and a chance to watch the Cats play. I realized later that he
just told me a story, that he could have found somebody else to go with him. I
went, though, and, after that, we started running around together. We’d go to
ball games or to the races or fishing or just sit around and shoot the breeze.
Mac got me started living again.” Bug blew his nose. “I’m sorry about this. I’ve
always been an emotional man. I don’t think there’s any shame in a man crying.”

“There isn’t,” Maggie agreed. She
allowed Bug to regain his composure before continuing. “I hear Mac was lucky when
it came to the lottery.”

Bug removed his UK cap to reveal a red indention, made by the cap, which circled his bald head. “What do you mean?”
he asked as he wiped his forehead.

“Daddy said he bought his tickets at
Mac’s store because it was lucky.”

“Oh, yeah,” Bug returned the cap to
his head. “I thought I remembered seeing Robert in there buying a ticket or
two. There ain’t nothing wrong with that. In fact, that was part of me and
Mac’s morning routine. We’d each buy about ten dollars’ worth of tickets. Some
people say it’s gambling. And I guess it is. But we wasn’t taking food out of
hungry young’uns mouths and we didn’t scratch away our grocery money. Some men
spend a lot of money on hunting and you women like to shop. Well, scratch-offs
was our hobby.”

“How long had you been having
breakfast with him?”

“For as long as he owned the store,
so I guess that would be about twelve years.”

Maggie paused. “I know this isn’t
about the investigation, but I have to ask, did you notice anything out of the
ordinary that morning?”

“No. Nothing. And I had to have
just missed the killer. When I think about that, I could have saved him.”

“Or you could have gotten yourself
killed.” From the expression on Bug’s face, Maggie surmised he hadn’t
considered that possibility. “I was also wondering about the security cameras.”

“He said it got to be too much of a
hassle to keep up with that.”

“Wait a minute,” Maggie said. “Does
that mean that, at one point, the cameras were working?”

 “I believe so, but don’t quote me
on that,” Bug said with a chuckle.

Maggie laughed, too, before asking,
“What circumstances led to his opening the store?”

“Well, Mac wasn’t as lucky as I was
when it came to working. I got on with the road crew one week after I graduated
from high school. I liked it there. I earned a good wage and enjoyed the work. I
always enjoyed carpentry work, too. So, after I retired, I opened my own
contracting business. It’s nothing big, but for a few years it kept me busy
when I wanted to be busy. But poor ole Mac never found his … what do they call
it?”

“Niche?”

“Yeah, that’s it.” Bug nodded. “He
liked working for the nursing home and at the other jobs that let him work with
the public, but he wanted to be his own boss. He also wanted to help people.
Now, you know as good as I do that some of these people on Sugar Creek can’t
afford to drive to town every day. If they need a loaf of bread or a gallon of
milk, they need somewheres close by. And with all the old stores… what do they
call them?”

“Mom and Pop stores?”

“You’re probably too young to remember
when those Mom and Pop stores was up and down Sugar Creek. Well, not just Sugar
Creek. They was all over the place. My grandma and grandpap, my mommy’s
parents, ran a store. It was just down the road.” Bug gestured with his hand.
“But all those old stores is gone and that left people without somewheres close
to go. Those old Mom and Pop stores and helping people, that’s where Mac got
the idea. And, between you and me, some of these people didn’t even have the
money to buy a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk. Mac would let them have it
anyway and tell them to settle up when they could. Most of them did, too. You
hear about all the bad stuff going on in the world, all the robbing and drugging,
but I think deep down that people are good. Mac sure was.”

Bug blew his nose on a blue paisley
handkerchief and continued, “You know who you should talk to? His ex-wife,
Rhonda.”

“Mac was previously married?”

“Oh, yeah. Years ago. He and Rhonda
married right out of high school. They stayed together a few years, but Mac
told me they was just too young. He never had a bad thing to say about her. She
was a nice girl, but the poor ole thing fell on hard times. She’s living in one
of those apartments in town. You know,” Bug lowered his voice, “for poor people.”

“Do you think she would talk to
me?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Do you think Carla will talk to
me?”

“That, I don’t know. She was hit
hard by this. She and Mac, they was different and they didn’t have the same
interests. He could never talk her into going fishing with him, and she
couldn’t talk him into exercising. But I guess opposites attract and he sure
doted on her.”

Bug’s insight into Mac’s marriage
as well as his bombshell about the first wife had almost made Maggie forget her
next question. “Oh, and Mac built the store with money he inherited from his
late father, right?”

“Yeah, well, he might have had to
borrow some. I didn’t pry into his finances. That was his business.” Bug looked
at his watch. “I really got to get to my mommy’s. I have to reset that
satellite and get that TV working before her show starts.”

Maggie said her goodbyes and went
to her car. As she sat in the front seat, she watched Bug walk across the road
to his mother’s house.

“It’s not even
noon and
Days
doesn’t come on until one o’clock. How long does it take
him to push the reset button?” she asked herself.

“Oh,” Maggie said upon entering
Dottie Elswick’s kitchen. “You must really like strawberries.”

Indeed, Dottie’s kitchen looked
like a strawberry had exploded on the wallpaper, the curtains, the canisters,
the refrigerator magnets, the wall clock, the dish cloths, the cookie jar, and
various knickknacks.

Dottie smiled. “You start
collecting something and you can’t stop. I love every one of my strawberries.”
She picked up a salt shaker. “Every one of ’em has a special meaning especially
the ones that was give to me. You know, it makes you feel special when somebody
thinks enough about you to pick up a little something for you.” Still smiling,
she placed the salt shaker on the countertop. “Well, sit down. I just got a
pumpkin bread out of the oven. You want a slice?”

Maggie’s first instinct was to
resist the temptation, but she hadn’t treated herself in days. “Sure. If it’s
no bother.”

“Want some coffee, too?”

“No, water will be fine.”

Dottie handed Maggie a cup of tap
water and a slice of the warm, aromatic bread.

“It has a distinct taste that I
can’t place,” Maggie said through a mouthful of the bread.

Dottie blushed. “I use butterscotch
and lemon pudding.”

“Oh,” Maggie said. “I wouldn’t have
thought of that.”

Maggie enjoyed the pumpkin bread
guilt-free. Just that morning, she had read on a dieting blog that it’s acceptable
and even advisable to indulge every now and then if for no other reason than to
prevent daily indulgences. The pumpkin bread didn’t violate Joe’s strict ethics
policy, either. When the sports reporters accepted T-shirts during the college’s
annual golf tournament, Joe made them return them. When he learned that Tyler had sampled snacks during a Jasper city commission meeting, the paper reimbursed the
town for the cost of the food. But even Joe realized that principles meant
nothing if they hurt an old woman’s feelings, and he made an exception to his
policy when it involved, in his words, “a granny’s homemade food.”

As she lifted the last morsels of
the pumpkin bread to her mouth, Maggie couldn’t be more grateful for this
exception. “Yum. It’s delicious. Second only to my mom’s.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Dottie
answered. “You know, I’ve knowed your mommy and daddy all their lives. I was a
few years older than them in school, but I can remember how tall he was and how
pretty she was.” Dottie laughed. “Listen to me. He’s still tall and she’s still
pretty. Does Lena still mend for people?”

“Do I count as people?” Maggie
asked with a laugh. “She’s always mending for me and she still quilts and sews,
but not much for people outside the family anymore.”

“I’d imagine you could mend your
own clothes.”

“I can’t even thread a needle or
sew on a button. I’m such a disappointment to her.”

“Oh, you know that’s not true. The
last time I saw her, she was bragging about how smart and successful you and
your brother are.”

One of her mom’s favorite mantras –
“self-bragging is half scandal” – echoed through Maggie’s mind and she knew Lena would bristle at the suggestion she had bragged on her children or, for that matter,
on anything at all. Still, she smiled at the thought that her mom had spoken
well of her. Maybe it was the goodwill she felt for her mom at that moment, but
Maggie was struck by how Dottie looked more than just a few years older than the
sixty-year-old Lena. The autumn sun streaming through the kitchen caught the
dyed orange highlights of Dottie’s silvering hair and accentuated her deep
wrinkles. If Dottie hadn’t alluded to her age, Maggie would have guessed her to
be in her mid-seventies. Maybe she’s just had a hard life, Maggie thought to
herself as she pushed the empty plate out of her way and placed her notebook and
a digital recorder on the yellow vinyl tablecloth dotted with hundreds of tiny
strawberries. “Is it okay if we get started?” Dottie nodded and Maggie asked, “How
long had you been working for Mac?”

“About ten years. He had been
running the store for a couple years at that point. It’s funny how life works.
I had sat hamburger meat out to thaw so I could make a meatloaf, but when it
got time to make it, I realized I didn’t have ketchup. So, I ran down there to
buy a bottle and that’s when Mac asked me if I knew anybody who wanted a
part-time job. I said that as a matter of fact I did. He hired me on the spot
and I started the next day.” Dottie took a sip of coffee. “I had worked
part-time jobs ever since my youngest one started school, but after we got the
kids raised, I decided to take it easy. But we ended up raising our grandson,
Corey. You can always use extra money when you got a kid in the house, so I
went back to work.”

Before Maggie could ask another
question, Dottie said, “He was real good about working around Corey’s school
schedule. Corey was in grade school back then and it seemed they was always
having a party or putting on a play. I never missed a one.”

 “So, would you describe Mac as
generous?”

“Yes,” Dottie said.

“How long had you known him?”

 “I knowed him his whole life.
Sugar Creek ain’t that big. And his mommy was my teacher. But I didn’t get to
know him real good until I started working for him.”

“Did he ever say what motivated him
to open a store?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“In the newspaper story, Tyler quoted you as saying Mac made sure you could shoot a gun before he hired you.”

Dottie chuckled. “That’s true.”

“Did you ever have to use the gun
at work?”

“Oh, heavens, no.”

“So, no one ever tried to rob the
store on your watch?”

Dottie squinted in an apparent
state of confusion. “What do you mean?”

Maggie didn’t think the question
needed clarification, but she added, “I was just wondering if any of the attempted
robberies occurred during the day.”

“Oh, I understand now,” Dottie
said. “No, those attempted robberies occurred at night.”

“You also said that Mac didn’t
bother with the security cameras.”

“That’s right. That’s what he said.”