Murder Comes to Notchey Creek Read online

  Murder Comes to Notchey Creek

  A Harley Henrickson Mystery

  Liz S. Andrews

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this book are the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  MURDER COMES TO NOTCHEY CREEK: SECOND EDITION

  Copyright © 2020 by Liz S. Andrews

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  Ebook ISBN: 9780578429359

  Hardcover ISBN: 9781098300357

  Softcover ISBN: 9781543997309

  Audiobook ISBN: 9781094269924

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by BookBaby

  Interior illustrations from Shutterstock.

  For Drew and Scout,

  with all of my love.

  “It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.”

  ~Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Books in the Harley Henrickson Mystery Series

  The Autumn Orchard

  Hazel’s Hot Toddy

  Demerara Syrup

  Simple Syrup

  The Seelbach

  Harley’s Midnight Manhattan

  Pioneer Punch Cocktail

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  A Midnight Haunting

  Dr. Patrick Middleton lay alone in silence—the silence of regret.

  Whispers had woken him, whispers in restless dreams from the mouths of ghosts he had not yet buried. They whispered to him of the past, of his wife dead now for more than thirty years, and of others: those he had abandoned, yet never forgotten.

  For memories are not mere illusions. They are alive and well in the minds of haunted men.

  The digital clock on his nightstand read 12:00 a.m., and he realized he’d hardly slept at all that night, his mind replaying the day’s troubling events in a recurring loop. His cell phone, too, sat on the nightstand, dead and silent, never receiving the call he’d so anxiously anticipated.

  Eyes tired from chasing shadows on the moonlit ceiling, he rose from his bed. He plucked his glasses from the side table and perched them instinctively on the bridge of his nose. Over the last forty years, those tired eyes had pored over countless texts, recording the lives of men long dead, their actions immortalized in the taps and clicks of his computer.

  And like men who tempted fate, he tied his housecoat about his waist and ventured out into the autumn night, a lantern in his hand.

  He had to see her.

  On the hillside, his three-hundred-year-old mansion stood like a brick fortress, the kitchen lights aglow like the eyes of a watchman awoken by an old man’s guilt. A brood of clouds eclipsed the October moon, muting his lawn to a sea of charcoal, dappled in hues of silver starlight. To the east, tucked in the quiet folds of the foothills, lay the small town where he had spent the last thirty years, only slivers of light peering from curtained windows. What moonlight remained illuminated the surrounding apple orchards, pumpkin patches, and hay fields as they rolled east toward the mountains, where the blue-gray peaks of the Smokies melded, stack by stack, toward the night sky.

  The heavens were dark.

  God and his angels always seemed to abandon him on his darkest nights.

  And from those mountains, cresting from a vein of the Tennessee River, Notchey Creek wound its way like a snake toward Patrick, the mist hanging heavily over its dark waters, gathering a blanket of fog on the creek bank.

  He could hear her now. She was calling to him.

  He crept down the hill toward the creek, lantern held out before him like a shield. Trees huddled around him, and he dared not look into the surrounding forest. His mind could create far more terrifying things than the hand of creation could. The lantern’s low flicker cast shadows at his feet, shadows that morphed and mutated, creatures becoming more embellished with each step he took. Though he had travelled this path countless times, he found himself disoriented by the darkness, only scant ribbons of light permeating the dense tree branches above.

  He took in a deep breath and released it into the chilly night air. He was gathering himself, gathering himself for what lay ahead. How could love and horror be so entwined? he asked himself. How could it seize the mind with one thought, one memory?

  But he had to see her. Now was the time.

  It was late October, Hallowmas, when spirits were believed to enter the earthly realm through the between places, where water meets land or mountain meets sky, when spirits rise from ancient waters to walk freely about the earth until dawn. This was his best chance to see her again, at last.

  “Are you here?” he whispered, checking the creek’s water, then its bank. “Please, tell me you’re here.”

  But only the creek answered his calls, its ripples roaring with each step he took, the autumn wind howling through the tree branches above. If evil does exist out here tonight, he thought, I wouldn’t know it. Not until it was too late.

  Before he could call a third time, he froze with the lantern suspended, the flame flickering over the creek before him. He stared into the dark waters, where the currents shimmered like golden ribbons beneath the harvest moon.

  His breath caught in his throat.

  Liquid strands of yellow hair formed on the surface, encapsulating a face—ghostly, beautiful, and pale.

  “Oh, please,” he said, falling to his knees on the creek bank. “Oh, please forgive me.”

  She had returned. Was she aware that her existence had been lost to time, to history, to memory? Lost to all but him?

  But it hadn’t been lost. Not forever, nor to everyone. For fate has an odd way of reminding, an odd way of unearthing forgott
en ghosts from the past, those ghosts that lie patiently in the heart, whispering their secrets, waiting for someone to reveal their stories to the world.

  As he lowered his hand into the freezing water, hoping to caress that golden hair, that pale and beautiful face, another figure appeared alongside it. This one was dark, extinguishing those golden locks and shadowing that pale face. And like the mist settling over the dark creek, a heaviness descended on Patrick Middleton, deadlier than the weight of his conscience.

  2

  Matilda

  Flames rose above Harley Henrickson, dissipating into the gray morning sky. Since four a.m. she had been in the fields, stacking the sugar maple boards in a latticework pattern, the structure climbing over six feet high. Then, with the strike of a match, she set the entire thing ablaze, watching in awe as fire billowed from the massive shoulders, filling the fields with a blanket of smog.

  Past the flames, the world at dawn was cold and damp. In the last two hours, the morning mist had left her overalls sodden and her long, dark hair matted beneath her cap. The wet chill of a Smoky Mountain autumn stung her ears and fingertips, and she drew her hands toward the flames, warming them.

  Though she completed this exercise every fall since childhood, she still found herself mesmerized by the rising flames. She drew in the aroma of damp earth and woodsmoke, watching the flames as they flickered and popped. Fire was a dangerous mystery, no doubt, capable of feats of both magnificent creation and undiscriminating destruction. As with every great force, it should be treated with due respect and caution.

  “‘Man is the only creature that dares to light a fire and live with it,’” she whispered the Henry Jackson Van Dyke, Jr. quote, “’because he alone has learned to put it out.’”

  She drew a garden hose from the grass and released a steady stream of cold water over the flames, stymieing the heat and flames just enough to reduce the sugar maple boards to charcoal and not to soot. Later, she would filter her whiskey through the charcoal, giving the spirit its signature smoky taste. For some time she stood like that, watching the flames in meditation, and when the sugar maple was at last reduced to a smoking mound at her feet, she rested the garden hose in the grass and headed across the fields to the Henrickson Whiskey Distillery.

  As she hiked, she took her time, slowing her gait to a saunter. As busy as her days were, this was her one true pleasure in life. A veil of mist hung over the Smokies, the blue-gray peaks floating like islands in a sea of fog. They appeared more like a painting really, the mountains gliding in sweeps of watercolor, each layer a subtly different shade of blue from the next, changing with the light.

  The view would remain like that until around ten o’clock, when at last the sun would burn the mist from the valley and usher it back to the heavens once more. Only then would the last of the fall color be visible, the burnt sienna, umber, and nuances of green and gold covering the foothills like a patchwork quilt.

  The Henrickson Whiskey Distillery rose over the hill, a red ten-thousand-square-foot barn lined with charred oak barrels, a weathervane perched on its tin roof. Fallen leaves and tall strands of yellow Johnson grass clung to Harley’s boots as she strolled down the hill toward the barn. As she approached the white double doors, something cold and slimy rooted against her backside. She glanced over her shoulder and into the eyes of an enormous, mud-caked pig, its tail bouncing like a corkscrew.

  “Matilda, no!” The pig rooted at her overalls, first moistening the fabric, then progressing to an all-out chew. She tried to protect the honeycrisp apple tucked in her pocket, but Matilda bit through apple and overall in tandem. Moments later, Harley removed a handful of mush, only to have the pig lick it from her palm.

  Harley attempted a stern voice. “Matilda, look at me.” To her surprise, the pig stopped chewing and gazed at her with guileless innocence. “You have a trough,” she said, pointing toward the barn. “And you have a trough full of food. Good food. People food. Whatever Uncle Tater doesn’t eat, he gives to you. So why do you feel the need to eat everything you see?”

  The pig tilted her head to one side in momentary consideration and released a single snort. Then she rooted at Harley’s left pocket, the one that held her leather notebook.

  “Please, not my notebook.”

  The notebook held a series of cocktail recipes she hoped to launch at her family’s liquor store, Smoky Mountain Spirits, that week. When she pulled it from her pocket, the notebook’s pages were soiled, the leather cover slick with saliva.

  As a last-ditch effort, Harley tried to fend off Matilda with her right hand, pulling at the distillery’s door with her left. As she fiddled with her key in the lock, she whispered a quote from Agatha Christie: “But surely for everything you love you have to pay some price.”

  “Mornin’, Harley.”

  Harley’s great-aunt, Wilma True, who was also the distillery’s secretary, buzzed into the barnyard on her lawn mower. Aunt Wilma and Uncle Buck’s turkey farm was less than a mile from the distillery, and even if lawn mowers weren’t considered suitable means of transportation in Notchey Creek, Wilma would have ridden hers.

  “That pig gettin’ the best of you again?” she asked.

  The lawnmower buzzed down like a dying bee, and the seat belched as Aunt Wilma hoisted her weight to the ground and readjusted her pink muumuu and matching shower cap. She had done something new to her hair apparently, and Harley hoped it hadn’t fallen out in the process.

  “Matilda,” Wilma called across the barnyard. “Matilda, you old heifer, get on over here.”

  At the sound of Wilma’s voice, Matilda trotted across the barnyard and waited at Wilma’s pink house shoes.

  “Now you sit,” Wilma said.

  Matilda fell back on her haunches and gazed up at Wilma with quiet reverence. “You know she thinks she’s a dog, don’t you?”

  Wilma pulled a Little Debbie from her pocketbook and dangled the cake in front of Matilda. “Little Debbies,” she said, glancing up at Harley. “Old gal can’t get enough of ‘em.”

  After removing the cake from its wrapper, Wilma popped it into Matilda’s mouth, watching as the pig chewed and snorted with approval. “Yeah, you can’t beat that Little Debbie. She’s been my dietician for years.” She smacked Matilda on her backside. “Now, you get on back to the barn, and I don’t wanna hear hide nor hair out of you for the rest of the day.”

  Her hind legs squeezing together like the two ham hocks they were, Matilda trotted back to the barnyard.

  “Y’all spoil that pig too much,” Wilma said, unlocking the distillery’s front door. “Heck, I bet she eats better than I do.” She glanced around to her ample backside and grinned. “And that’s sayin’ a lot, ain’t it?”

  Once inside, Wilma headed for her desk and Harley straight for the sink. As she knelt over the running water, scrubbing her hands with soap, she caught a whiff of odor that made her lip curl. Matilda’s attack had lingered. With no time to go home and change or shower, she would smell like pig and … a second sniff … applesauce for the remainder of the day. She dried her hands on a towel and prepared herself for another day of the absurd.

  In the adjoining office, Wilma sat at her desk and placed her pink pleather pocketbook in the side drawer. She looked up, and upon examining her great-niece’s appearance—the long dark pigtails, the thick-lensed glasses, the camouflage hat, the flannel shirt—she cocked a brow in disapproval. “Well, I see you got yourself all gussied up for work again. And what’s up with them ugly-butt glasses? I ain’t seen you wear them since you was in high school.”

  “Lost one of my contacts.”

  “Now that is a shame.”

  Harley hung her barn coat by the door, waiting for Wilma’s usual speech.

  Wilma tucked a pencil behind her ear and began. “I mean it ain’t like you’re out here all the live-long day. What about them days you work at the store downtown? That’s public, ain’t it?” She paused, then adopted a more conciliatory tone. “Your granddaddy
would’ve liked for you to have somebody. To love, I mean. And you ain’t homely like you was when you was a young’un.”

  Gee thanks, Harley thought.

  “And what about the rest of your life?” Wilma asked. “You can’t spend the rest of it here in Notchey Creek. Now, I know Tater and I have needed you these long years, especially since your granddaddy passed, and we do appreciate you stayin’ on to help us out. But we’re good now, honey. We got enough money to hire some outside help. You can do somethin’ else with your life, somethin’ more meaningful with all them brains you got in your head.”

  When Harley’s grandfather had become ill with cancer eight years prior, she had given up a scholarship to Harvard and had used her life savings to care for her grandfather and save the ailing distillery. As she watched her peers leaving for college to pursue their dreams, she had felt sad, of course, but knew she had made the right decision.