Murder at the Dinner Bucket Diner, page 12
part #5 of Maggie Morgan Mystery Series
When she got home later that day, she was greeted by the sight of Seth’s car in the driveway and, when she reached the house, by Barnaby at the front door.
“Hey, boy,” she said as she rubbed her hands on each side of Barnaby’s ears. “Is that meatloaf I smell? I must have been a good girl.”
“You must have been a real good girl because I also made homemade macaroni and cheese.”
She looked up to see Seth leaning against the wall, wiping his hands on a dishcloth. “Well, unless you brought it from a restaurant, it’s always homemade,” she said.
“You know what I mean. Unlike that boxed stuff you eat, my mac and cheese contains real cheese grated over hot macaroni.”
Patting Barnaby on the head, Maggie walked to Seth, “I don’t know how anybody from eastern Kentucky got fancy enough to turn his nose up at boxed mac and cheese.”
“It’s because I’m from the big city of Jasper and not a holler. I also opened a can of green beans, but instead of cornbread, you’ll have to settle for brown-and-serve rolls.”
“That might be a deal-breaker.”
“It gets worse.”
“I don’t think it can get worse.”
“Oh, yeah? I didn’t have time to make dessert.”
“I don’t need dessert anyway, but there should still be some of those snack cakes in your junk food cabinet.”
Smiling, Seth said, “Once again, Little Debbie saves the day.”
After supper, as Seth enjoyed a Nutty Bar, or in their words, a buddy bar, he said, “I should probably head back toward town. Or at least stop at a Zippy Mart.”
“Why? There’s no way you could be hungry. Do you need to get some gas? There should be some in one of those plastic red containers we use to fill the lawn mower.”
“No, I was thinking about buying a lottery ticket.”
“When did you start playing the lottery?”
“Today. It’s my lucky day.”
“It’s just mac and cheese.”
“That was not just mac and cheese. And don’t forget the meatloaf.”
Brushing an errant piece of chocolate from his mouth, Maggie said, “You’re so low maintenance. It’s one of your most endearing qualities.”
“Well, as delicious as supper was, it’s not the only good thing that happened to me today.”
“Oh, yeah? What can possibly be better than brown-and-serve rolls?”
“As you know, we’ve been down a couple detectives due to one of them moving and another one retiring.”
“Yes, and you told me they’re hiring a new detective.”
“They’re also hiring a new patrol officer, so they’ll be promoting a current officer to detective.”
“Great. That means they’ll have two new detectives.”
“Wait, there’s more. They’re also promoting a detective to sergeant.”
“Good. That should take some of the load off you. I don’t know how you do it. I covered a play one evening last week and worked late the next day because that’s the only time the guy could do the interview. And I was exhausted. I can’t imagine putting in the hours you do.” When Seth continued looking at her without responding, she said, “What? Do I have ketchup or cheese on my face?”
“No. Your face is as flawless as usual.”
Blushing, Maggie said, “Then what is it?”
“Follow the clues, Maggie, P.I.”
“The clues? Ugh. You’ve had a good day. You had a scrumptious meal enhanced by impeccable company. You learned that your workload will probably lessen because they’re adding two detectives. And promoting a detective to sergeant, but I don’t see how that affects you.” When Seth’s façade broke and he revealed his crooked grin, Maggie threw her arms around his neck. “Why didn’t you tell me as soon as I came in the door? Why didn’t you yell the news at me while I was petting Barnaby? You could have said, ‘Hey, Maggie, smell that delicious meatloaf? By the way, I’ve been promoted.’”
“This was more fun. Besides, nothing is official. The captain told me, but until I hear it from the chief, I shouldn’t even be thinking about it, let alone be telling you. I don’t want either one of us to get our hopes up.”
“Don’t worry about that, because it will be official.” Hugging him again, she kissed the side of his face and said, “I wish I had known. I would have come home earlier than you and made supper for you. I’m eating fruit again, so I would have even made a banana pudding.”
“That sounds good, but Little Debbie hit the spot, too. In fact, I think I’ll keep celebrating. On a night like tonight, a man can have two desserts.”
As he reached for the snack cake, Maggie pushed it out of the way. “This supper and the buddy bar represent a cheat day on our endeavor to eat healthier, but let’s not get too crazy.”
Frowning, Seth said, “How was your day? Did you finish that story you’re writing for the paper about death certificates?”
Maggie disengaged herself from him and returned to her chair. “About that … I was looking through death certificates for information about Rose Mary’s son.”
“I’m intrigued. Please tell me more.”
She sighed and told him about Ben’s recollection of Rose Mary as well as her pursuit of obituaries and marriage and death certificates. “I went through ten years of death certificates and six pages of online obituary search results. But I can’t find anything relating to the death of either of her sons.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this today? Why did you make up that ridiculous cover story about doing a story on public records?”
“That actually might not be a bad story. If I had to guess, I’d say that at least half of our readers have no idea how to access the treasures that are just sitting in the courthouse, waiting for someone to pull a file out of a cabinet or a book off a shelf.”
“Maggie.”
Sagging her shoulders, she said, “I didn’t want to go into it on a sidewalk and, well, I hadn’t told you I had resumed the investigation, so I wasn’t sure how you would take the news.”
“Why would you think I’d be anything but supportive?”
“Uh, remember the orange panic I started because Barbara had low blood pressure? She’s still not talking to me, but she has shown interest when I’ve talked to myself. Anyway, I think the orange incident has caused me to second-guess myself. I’m not sure I can trust my own suspicions and judgment.”
“I’m sure you can trust your own judgment. Yeah, you might have been a little overzealous with the orange, but who’s to say I wouldn’t have made the same assumption. It made sense at the time.”
“You’re just trying to cheer me up.”
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it. And I don’t want you to think you have to tell me every little thing you’re doing, but I also don’t want you to deliberately keep things from me. If we’re in public, you can always say that you’ll tell me later. Now, would you like to hear my take on why you can’t find the death notices?”
“Of course. Unless I state otherwise, I always welcome your advice.”
“Maybe Ben was wrong. Maybe he’s mixed up Rose Mary with another woman. By his own account, the communication occurred several years ago.”
“But he never forgets a face. He tells us that all the time.”
“Eye witness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Maybe he did talk to Rose Mary once. He could still be confusing her with a customer whose son had died.”
“Okay, you have a point. But if he’s right and that was Rose Mary who told him about her son, then don’t you think it’s weird that Culvert referred to her sons as if they were alive? Unless she hasn’t told him about one being dead, which raises a different set of issues. You would think that, oh I don’t know, the death of his daughter would have prompted her to say, ‘Culvert, honey, I know exactly what you’re going through because I lost one of my sons.’”
“I agree wholeheartedly with you. If Ben is right, it makes me wonder what Rose Mary is hiding.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Maggie didn’t have the nerve to contact Rose Mary and directly ask her about her sons, but she did visit Ginger.
“Oh, what’s all this?” Maggie asked upon seeing boxes of dishes and whatnots covering Ginger’s living room floor. “Are you having a yard sale or returning from one?”
Picking up a blue-and-white dinner plate sitting atop a box, Ginger said, “This plate – all this stuff – was my mom’s and, before that, my mammaw’s.”
Maggie examined the dish, which depicted a horse pulling a sled in front of a snow-covered cabin. “My mom has a bowl similar to this. Hers is chipped and the scene has faded, but she still uses it nearly every Saturday to serve gravy. She said it’s part of a set that belonged to her mom.”
A smiling Ginger said, “Mammaw didn’t have the complete set. But Mom didn’t use them once they were passed down to her. She put them in a curio cabinet. That’s why they’re fairly well preserved. Some look better than others. This one is pretty good. Gypsy got them and the pie pans and Mammaw’s other dishes after Mom died. Zack called me the other day and told me I could have them.” Returning the dish to the box, Ginger said, “He also gave me these.” Opening another box, she pulled out an item covered in bubble wrap, ultimately revealing a pink-colored chicken and then an accompanying nest of the same color. Placing the hen on the base and both parts of the set on a box, she said, “It’s called hen on nest.”
“Oh my, God,” Maggie said. “Both of my mommaws had dishes like this, but we just called them chickens. One of my mommaws used them as candy dishes. One time, my brother and I were arguing over who got the last piece of butterscotch candy. I was holding the top of the dish in my hand.” Picking up the hen and demonstrating, Maggie said, “I was holding it by the hen’s neck, just like this. And he shoved me, causing the hen to slip from my hand and crash onto the floor. And, of course, since I was the oldest, I got in trouble. Mark got to eat the last piece of candy and help Poppaw feed the hogs. I had to sit on the couch and think about what I had done. Well, at least I did until Mommaw told my mom that she was overreacting. I can still see Mommaw sweeping the broken blue glass into her dust pan and then emptying another bag of candy into the bottom half of the dish, saying, ‘A candy dish don’t need a lid no how.’”
Gently taking the hen from Maggie’s hand, Ginger said, “Hmm, which box did we pack the blue one in?” She placed the pink hen on top of her coffee table and moved on to another box, which produced a frosted green version of the hen on nest.
“I’ve never seen one like that,” Maggie said. “It’s beautiful. How many did she have?”
“Nineteen. She collected them. Well, actually, my pappaw collected them for her. She had a few from back in the day, and then Pappaw started seeing them at yard sales or, as he called them, junk sales. So, he started buying them for her.” Returning her attention to the box, Ginger said, “Ha. Is this what you remember?”
Maggie instinctively reached for the blue dish, but Ginger held onto it. Acknowledging her history, Maggie didn’t blame her. “Yeah, that looks just like it.” Considering the boxes at her feet, she asked, “What are you going to do with all this? Won’t your children break them?”
“I’ll put them in cabinets. And I’ll show them to my boys and explain that they belonged to their grandma and great-grandma.”
“Where are they? Your boys?”
“Dad offered to watch them so I could unpack this stuff and put it away.”
“Well, it looks like you’ve got a lot of unpacking to do, so I won’t take up much of your time. Like I said on the phone, I knew I’d be in the neighborhood for an interview, so I thought I’d check in and see how you and your dad are doing.” Maggie chastised herself for fibbing. She was only in the neighborhood if one considered eleven miles away as being in the neighborhood, but she was genuinely interested in their well-being.
“We’re doing okay. We took him out to dinner last night. Rose Mary had a book club meeting, so she didn’t go. Which was fine with me.”
Although she knew she should remain focused on the task at hand, Maggie heard herself asking, “What kind of book club is she in?”
“I have no idea, but she has a closet full of books. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against reading. I read to my boys every day. But my mom was always doing something. She never had time to sit down and read. Rose Mary never has time to cook, but she sure has time to read and water all those plants and flowers.”
As a fellow reader, Maggie felt she should defend Rose Mary. “I’ve seen the house, though. It’s immaculate, so she must find time to clean.”
“She’s a neat freak, that’s for sure. She freaks out when the boys visit. You should see the way she tenses up when they so much as move anything. One of them knocked over one of those stupid plants of hers and you would have thought he had killed somebody.”
“Her flower garden is impressive, and I don’t know how she manages to keep all those plants in the kitchen alive,” Maggie said. “I couldn’t even keep a cactus alive.”
“Well, if nursing for that cactus was all you did, I guess it would still be living. That woman’s life revolves around books and plants. That’s all she cares about.”
“What about her sons? Didn’t you say she moved here to be near her son? Do you know where he went?”
“I have no idea. I don’t know anything about her family. All I know is that she has two sons and neither of them ever visits her.”
I have a good inkling why one of them doesn’t visit, Maggie thought. “Do they ever call her?”
“Dad doesn’t get cell service, so they still have a landline, but he says she never gets calls. She makes calls every now and then, but Dad says it’s usually to make appointments or order food. She has a cell phone, so I imagine she keeps up with them with calls and texts. She’s fairly tech savvy, especially for her age, and she has a computer. I’d say she emails them, too, but do not ever get that woman started on social media.” Rolling her eyes, Ginger said, “To hear her, if you’re on Facebook, you might as well be watching porn. She actually had the nerve to call it a time waster. As if she has room to talk.”
“Huh. That’s interesting. What about friends? I can’t imagine moving somewhere and then the only person I knew there leaving. She has to have friends, right?”
“She has her book club. She’s been doing that for a few years. But I don’t know if they’re her friends. Wait a second. The last time I saw her, she was talking about her friends at the library. Yes, she goes there so often that she knows the people who work at the library.”
While Ginger’s information filled in details about Rose Mary’s life, it didn’t answer any questions about her sons. Maggie didn’t think she would elicit further useful information from Ginger, so she said, “Well, I’ll let you get back to your unpacking.” Once again regarding the boxes that covered the floor, she said, “I hope you had some help bringing the boxes from Gypsy’s house.”
“Oh, God, you won’t believe that drama. I arranged a time with Zack for today so my husband could go over there with me and help. Well, the first thing that happened is that my husband had to go into work. So, I drove over there by myself and Zack helped me pack up everything. We had started carrying the boxes to the truck when Zack fell and twisted his ankle.”
“Did he drop any of the boxes?” Realizing how that sounded, she quickly added, “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine and, luckily, he fell on the way back to the house when his arms were empty. Anyway, I could have handled it myself, but thankfully, that nice man showed up and he helped me.”
“You should send him a card or something.”
“That’s just it, I didn’t get his name. And Zack didn’t get a good look at him, so he couldn’t identify him. All I know about him is that he looks like a goat.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Although Maggie was enjoying the pineapple upside down cake and cup of milk Sylvie had given her, she wasn’t enjoying the older woman’s lecture.
“Does your mommy know you tell lies?” Sylvie asked her.
Sylvie had been dressing her down since soon after Maggie’s arrival, when she had asked Sylvie to contact Grant on the pretext of needing him to do some work for her.
“But I don’t have no work for him to do,” Sylvie had countered.
“That’s okay. We’ll explain everything to him when he gets here.”
“Now, you wait just a minute,” a wild-eyed Sylvie had demanded. “In the first place, I don’t aim to ask that boy to come over here on false pretenses. He ain’t got a steady job and I expect finding gas money don’t come easy for him. In the second place, I ain’t a liar. The only thing I hate more than a liar is a thief.”
“I’m sorry, Sylvie,” Maggie had said. “I shouldn’t have asked you to lie.”
With a huff, Sylvie had called Grant and Maggie had listened as she laid out the truth to him. When the phone call had ended, Sylvie had informed her that Grant was on his way. Maggie had then endured an endless lecture. The scrumptious cake, however, had almost made it worthwhile.
“That was excellent,” Maggie said as she picked a crumb off the dish.
“Do you really mean that or is it another one of your derned-ole lies?”
“Sylvie, I told you that I was afraid Grant wouldn’t agree to come here if he knew I wanted to talk to him.” Checking her watch, Maggie added, “It’s been twenty minutes, and he’s still not here.”
