Murder at Catfish Corner: A Maggie Morgan Mystery (3 page)

Chapter Five

Maggie met
Stella the following morning at Hazel’s house on Sassafras. Although Maggie liked
the home, a ranch with a gray brick exterior, an eerie feeling came over her as
soon as she entered the front door. Maggie didn’t know what had prompted Hazel
to leave her house the night she died, but she supposed Hazel hadn’t intended
for it to be the last time she walked out the door. She noticed an umbrella in
its stand and a rain slicker on a coat rack, both items waiting in vain for their
owner to use them in the next downpour. They were two everyday household
objects, just a fraction of the material possessions, not to mention the loved
ones, Hazel had left behind, and the sight of them made Maggie sad. They also
made her feel like she was invading Hazel’s privacy.

“Hazel and
Earnest, that was her ex-husband, saved up and built this house in the ’90s,”
Stella explained. “Hazel’s only demands were vaulted ceilings and a large
kitchen. Come on in here and I’ll show you the kitchen.”

“Wow, look at
all that counter space,” Maggie said when she entered the room. “I live in my
grandparents’ old home. It’s where my dad grew up. I love it, but if I could
change one thing, I’d add more counter space. You can never have enough.”

“Especially if
you love cooking as much as Hazel did. Look how clean this house is. Other than
cleaning out the refrigerator, I haven’t touched a thing. Hazel kept a tidy
house. So do I. We learned that from our mother. She taught us to take care of
what we have even when we didn’t have much.”

Maggie looked
around the kitchen. Nothing seemed out of place. A few papers and receipts lay
on the kitchen nook beside a laptop and a bookmarked copy of University of
Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari’s latest book, but she wouldn’t characterize
that as clutter.

Stella picked up
the book. “I asked her what she hoped to get out of reading a book about
coaching, but what can I say? She loved the Cats and she loved their coach. She
even decorated her bedroom in Wildcat blue. Let me show you.”

Maggie followed
Stella into Hazel’s bedroom, which indeed served as a shrine to the Wildcats.
Framed prints of the basketball court and the program’s winning teams adorned
the walls and a UK spread, sheets, and pillows decorated the rumpled bed.
Maggie thought the pink pajamas thrown over a chair, which had been upholstered
in repeating images of the team’s logo, seemed out of place in this blue-and-white
mecca.

“Let’s walk over
to the lake,” Stella suggested.

Maggie
hesitated. “Did Hazel make her bed every day?”

“Of course, she
did,” Stella snapped. “I told you that she kept a tidy house.”

“So, why isn’t
her bed made?”

“I, well, I
don’t know.” Stella stared at the bed as if she hoped it would answer Maggie.

“And look at the
pajamas. It’s like she just tossed them onto the chair.”

Stella shook her
head. “That’s not Hazel. The only time she didn’t make her bed was when she was
sick and, even then, she wouldn’t sleep in an unmade bed. She’d sleep on the
couch. And she always put her pajamas under her pillow every morning when she
dressed. Our mother taught us to do that. I still do that, too. She would not
have thrown them on the chair like that and left them there all day. No. That’s
not Hazel.”

Maggie’s eyes wandered
to the nightstand. “May I check the alarm clock?”

“Sure, you can do
anything you think will help you.”

Maggie walked to
the nightstand, picked up the clock, and smiled. “Of course, her alarm clock
would have a big blue UK in the middle of its face.”

“You better
believe it,” Stella said.

Maggie examined
the clock. “The third hand is on two. Would she have set her alarm for two in
the afternoon?”

“I can’t think
of any reason why she would do that.” Stella opened her hands as she looked
around the room before letting them drop to her sides. “But I can’t think of a
reason why she would have done any of this.”

“Maybe she was
taking a nap and wanted to wake by two.”

“If she napped
during the daytime, it was on the couch.”

“Then it looks like she set the clock for two in the morning, went to
bed, got up at two, dressed, and left the house.” This time, it was Maggie’s
turn to look to the bed for answers. “The only question is, ‘Why?’”

Once Maggie and
Stella passed the privacy fence on Hazel’s property, they walked along the side
of the road to avoid the ankle-length grass and weeds protruding from under the
chain-link fence that separated the road from the pay lake.

“I see what you
meant about the grass,” Maggie said to Stella. “If I had a choice between the grass
and the road’s edge, I’d choose the road even if it was at night.”

As they made
their way, a few cars sped by them.

“At that time of
night, there probably wasn’t much or any traffic,” Maggie noted. “Still,
wearing dark clothes wasn’t the smartest idea.” As soon as the words left her
mouth, Maggie wanted to slap her own face. “Not that I’m implying Hazel wasn’t
smart. I’m sure she was very intelligent.”

Stella looked
back at Maggie and grinned. “She was as sharp as a tack, but you’re right. That
wasn’t her smartest move.”

When they
reached the pay lake’s unlocked fence, a lanky man who Maggie guessed to be in
his mid-forties approached them.

“Good morning, Earl
David,” Stella said.

“Morning, Miss
Martin. I’ve been meaning to call you. I was awful sorry that Hazel passed, but
I couldn’t get to the services.”

“Thank you, and
I understand. People have their own lives. We can’t expect the world to quit spinning
when our own lives get turned upside down.” Stella nodded her head toward
Maggie. “Earl David, I want you to meet my friend, Maggie Morgan.”

Earl David winked
and said, “Well, it must be my lucky day. When I got up, I didn’t expect that
two lovely ladies such as yourselves would stop by to see me on this fine
morning.”

“Now, you stop
that flirting, Earl David. I’m always happy to see you, but this is not a
personal call. It’s business. Maggie and I want to talk to you this morning
because I disagree with the police. I believe there’s more to Hazel’s death and
Maggie here has offered to help me get to the truth.”

Stella’s
declaration seemed to surprise Earl David, who lit a cigarette and asked, “What
do you mean by ‘more to her death?’”

“I believe she
was murdered.”

“Murdered?” Earl
David inhaled his own secondhand smoke and began coughing.

“Are you okay?”
Maggie asked him. “Do we need to get you some water?”

Earl David waved
her off, dropped the still smoldering cigarette to the ground, and crushed it
with his muddy boots. When he quit coughing, he said, “Murder? That’s an awful
big word, Miss Martin.”

“I believe it’s
the truth. I have my suspicions, so I need your help. Would you answer some
questions for Maggie?”

“Questions about
what?”

Stella deferred
to Maggie, who said, “Just about that morning. I understand you were here.”

“Yeah, but I’ve
already talked to the police. I don’t see how this can –”

Stella touched Earl
David’s arm. “Please, do it for me.” Stella addressed Maggie. “I was Earl
David’s homeroom teacher in high school. He didn’t want to take my typing
classes, but I convinced him that typing was a necessary skill.” Stella returned
her attention to Earl David. “I was right, wasn’t I? You told me that only
girls and nerds needed to know how to type, but I told you there would come a
time when everybody would need that skill. And I was right, wasn’t I? Why, if
you hadn’t learned to type, you wouldn’t be able to send emails to your
business associates.”

“Yeah, you were
right and I sure appreciate all the advice you gave me back then.” He pushed
his hands into the pockets of his well-worn jeans and said, “Go ahead. I’ll
answer your questions.”

“Is there some
place we can sit down?” Maggie asked. “I’ll need to take notes.”

“Sure, we can go
to the office,” Earl David said as he began walking to a small storage
building. “I keep a table and chair out here when I’m opened, but you can’t
leave nothing out that ain’t nailed down. That’s why I don’t provide chairs for
my customers. They would tear them up or haul them off. They wouldn’t mean to,
that’s just how people are. They don’t think about what they’re doing.” Earl
David opened the door to his office. “Ladies first.”

The building was
larger on the inside than Maggie imagined it would be. A microwave sat on a
small refrigerator in one corner, a couch dominated one wall, and a laptop lay
on a table surrounded by four chairs. Earl David picked up the laptop and
placed it on boxes of bleach resting on a hand cart, making room for himself
and the ladies. Once they had settled around the table and accepted Earl
David’s offer of water, Maggie turned on her tape recorder, opened her notepad,
and started asking questions.

“You mentioned
that people would steal your table and chairs, so why isn’t there a lock on the
fence?”

“I’ve never had
no lock on the gate. That fence ain’t that high, so I reckon a lock won’t keep
nobody out. They’d just jump over.” When Maggie made a notation in her pad, Earl
David said, “Why’d you ask that?”

“I was wondering
if the fence had been locked the night Hazel drowned and, if so, how she got
inside.” Maggie held up her notepad for him to see. “That’s all. But, you know,
I am curious. Why don’t you have a taller fence? What’s to keep anxious
fishermen from hopping over that fence in the middle of the night and casting a
line into the water?”

“I guess I just
ain’t never thought about it. We’ve never had no sort of trouble before. And if
somebody needs a catfish bad enough to steal it, I reckon he needs it more than
I do.”

“Earl David,”
Maggie pronounced the name as if it were one word, “how much traffic passes by
here at night? I know it’s not an interstate highway, but it is a two-lane road
and I’m sure you get more traffic than we do up the head of my holler.”

Earl David frowned.
“Let me think about that. I live up a holler about a mile down the road now,
but I growed up here and some nights I stay for a little while after everybody
leaves. You know, cleaning up. And I’d have to say the traffic varies. It
always has. There will be stretches where it’s one car after another for a
couple minutes and then you might go twenty minutes before you see another one.”
When Maggie made more notations, Earl David said, “Why’d you ask that?”

“Earl David,”
Stella scolded, “would you please quit interrupting Maggie and allow her to ask
her questions?”

Earl David nodded,
took a drink of water, and sat back as Maggie continued her questioning. “Why
was the pay lake closed that night?” she asked.

“I went to
Lexington to see my boy. He lives down there. It was my grandbaby’s birthday.”

“How is that
precious little girl, Earl David?” Stella asked.

For the next few
minutes, Maggie reviewed her notes while Earl David bragged on his
granddaughter. When he attempted to list the toddler’s accomplishments and food
preferences for the fourth time, Maggie stopped him by asking, “Do you have any
employees?”

“Not to speak of.
Well, that’s not a nice thing to say. My cousin helps me out and there’s a boy
that lives up the road from me who works weekends and nights sometimes. He’s
been working this summer, but I didn’t know if I could trust him to run things by
himself, and my cousin was on vacation. I hated awful bad to close for the day
and lose out on business, but I wasn’t about to miss my baby’s birthday.”

“When did you
get back home?”

“Gosh, I don’t
remember what time I got back, but it was early that morning. I stopped at home
for a little while and then I came down here. The ambulance and the police
hadn’t been here long when I drove up. Uncle Boone said –”

“Uncle Boone?” Maggie
exclaimed. “As in Boone Osborne?”

“Yeah, you know
him?”

“No, well, yeah.
My daddy bought a sow from him once and I came with him to pick it up. I
thought he lived somewhere around here. So, what did he tell you?”

“Just that he
had found her not twenty minutes before I got here.”

“Did you notice
anything out of the ordinary that morning?” Maggie asked. “Was anything out of
place?”

Earl David chuckled.
“There’s not an awful lot that can get out of place as long as the fish stay in
the water and the water stays in the ground.”

Maggie allowed
herself a moment to appreciate Earl David’s logic before steeling herself for
the next question. She dreaded asking it, but she had learned while
investigating Mac Honaker’s death that when she had a difficult question to
ask, it was better to blurt it out. Without the benefit of segue, she asked Earl
David, “How did you and Hazel get along?”

Earl David
fidgeted with his empty water bottle and said, “We got along pretty good.”

“I noticed a
privacy fence separating her property from yours.”

“She installed
that fence a number of years ago,” Stella said. “I’ll be honest, she said she
didn’t like looking at the pay lake, but I don’t recall her ever mentioning
specific problems with you, Earl David.”

“I didn’t have not
one problem with Hazel and I can understand why somebody wouldn’t want a pay
lake practically in their front yard.”

“I wouldn’t want
one in my yard, I’ll tell you that,” Stella said, laughing. “But, like I told
Hazel, I live in a subdivision and our deeds specifically prohibit us from
operating businesses. There are no such regulations or zoning laws on your
basic county property.”

“No,” Maggie
agreed, “people like Earl David and I can do almost whatever we want on our
basic county properties.” From the corner of her eye, Maggie could see Stella glaring
at her. “Earl David, if there’s anything else you can think of, just give
Stella a call and she’ll let me know.”