Murder and Moonshine: A Mystery (9 page)

“Just say the word, Daisy. I’d toss all the rest out for you.”

“Rick!” the pink tank top protested.

He wrapped his arm around her bare waist. “Go inside and get a drink or something, would ya? I’ve got to talk business for a minute.”

The pink tank top stuck out a pouty lip. “But—”

“Don’t fuss.” Rick sucked on the lip, then proceeded down her neck. “Be a good girl.”

“Okay.” She sighed rapturously.

“Go on now.” He gave her one last lingering kiss.

“I don’t know if I should applaud or vomit,” Sue said to Daisy, shaking her head as she watched the pair. “How does he do that? She’s like mushy mulch in his hands.”

Daisy shrugged, irritated and unimpressed. Although not quite so proficient as Rick, her husband Matt had been a snake charmer too. And look where it had gotten her. She felt sorry for the pink tank top, mostly because she knew what Rick had said before was true. He’d toss the silly girl overboard in a heartbeat, whenever he got sufficiently tired, or bored, or a potentially greener tank top appeared on the horizon.

As she disappeared into the trailer, Rick swatted her backside. The pink tank top responded with a final breathy giggle, then the door slammed shut behind her.

Having evidently heard her remark to Daisy, Rick turned to Sue with a rakish grin. “Never question the magic of the magician.”

“Or the stench of the dunghill,” Daisy muttered.

He chuckled. “I can always count on you, darlin’, to put me in my place.”

She answered with a grunt.

“But considering you brought a chaperone,” Rick went on, gesturing toward Sue, “I’ve got to assume you didn’t come to play. More’s the pity. What time is it anyway?” He looked down at his watch, only to discover that he wasn’t wearing one. “Shouldn’t you be at the diner serving up slabs of pie right about now?”

“The diner is closed,” Daisy informed him.

His grin faded. “Closed? Still?”

“No, closed again. We were open for breakfast this morning, but then the Danville police dropped the boom on us.”

“Still investigating old man Dickerson’s death, eh?”

Daisy nodded.

“Have they latched on to Aunt Emily’s murder theory yet?”

Sue’s head whipped toward him. “What!”

Rick looked at Daisy. She raised a cautionary eyebrow at him, and she knew from the way his jaw twitched in response that he understood. Although Rick had many faults, being a fool was not one of them. He had been born much cleverer than his brother. With Bobby every card was already on the table. What you saw was exactly what you got. But with Rick there was invariably the possibility of an ace tucked up his sleeve. It could be in the form of a hidden agenda, a sly secret, or a favor to be cashed in later, and as a result, Daisy could always count on him to know when to talk and when to keep his mouth shut, especially with the Pittsylvania County sheriff’s wife.

“What did you say?” Sue demanded.

“Me?” Rick blinked at her like a guileless lamb. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Yes, you did,” she retorted. “About Emily. Emily and a murder theory.”

“Oh”—he feigned a laugh—“you misunderstood. I didn’t say
murder
. I said
burger
.”

“Burger?” Sue repeated skeptically. “What’s a burger theory? And why would Emily Tosh have one?”

“Didn’t you tell her?” Rick turned his lamb eyes on Daisy. “Doesn’t she know?”

Daisy could do no more than frown at him. She was lost.

“I’m sure it’s in one of the reports somewhere,” he continued to Sue smoothly. “You probably read it—or heard about it—and you just don’t remember. The last thing Fred said before he collapsed was
burger
. Daisy mentioned it to Aunt Emily, and she thought he might’ve had some bad beef. Didn’t cook it right. Or it spoiled. That sort of thing. And he was trying to tell us about it when he stumbled into the diner.”

“You mean food poisoning?” Sue said.

Daisy choked. It was a marvelous twist of the facts. She couldn’t help being impressed by how quickly Rick had turned
murder
into
burger
and then explained his reference to Aunt Emily in such a plausible way. But the funny part—which Rick didn’t know of course—was that Aunt Emily had actually talked about poison. It was her original murder theory, except not through spoiled beef.

Sue glanced at her. “Emily thought Fred might’ve eaten something bad?”

“Yes.” And it wasn’t a lie. That was indeed Aunt Emily’s initial assumption, with a sprinkle of cyanide or a dash of drain cleaner added in.

“Huh.” Sue was thoughtful for a moment. “There might be something in that. If not food poisoning, then maybe a food allergy. An extreme one. A hypersensitivity. Honestly, I never really considered either of those as possibilities, but that could explain some of the symptoms he exhibited.”

“Well, we’ll find out when the autopsy comes back,” Daisy chirped, eager to move the conversation as far away from Aunt Emily as possible.

“When is that supposed to be?” Rick asked Sue.

“The physical exam should already be complete. As to the blood toxicology, my best guess is by the end of the week. Next week at the latest. I don’t know what all they’re testing for, but I doubt it’s so extensive that it’ll take much longer than that.”

“Then H & P’s can reopen,” Daisy said hopefully.

It was Rick’s turn to raise an eyebrow. She didn’t like its inference. He clearly wasn’t as confident in the results of the autopsy or what effect they would have on the diner.

Leaning against the door of his trailer, he switched topics. “So Daisy said something earlier about you needing to talk to me, Sue?”

“Right.” She nodded. “I’m here for George actually.”

Rick sucked on his teeth with displeasure.

“I know you two aren’t the best of friends, Rick, but please hear me out. As part of the investigation into Fred’s death, they need to look at where he lived. That’s obviously Fox Hollow, and since you legally own the place, someone had to talk to you about entering the property.”

“You want my permission?” He shrugged. “Okay. Tell your husband to knock himself out. He can go digging around Fox Hollow as much as he likes.”

“I’m not sure if it’ll be George or someone from Danville.”

“Whatever. Doesn’t matter either way. The whole damn state police force could—” Rick broke off abruptly and looked at Daisy. “Are you going?”

“Where?”

“To Fox Hollow with the rest of the governmental yahoos.”

“No. Why would I go?” She added crisply, “It’s not my land.”

He gave a little grunt, then looked back at Sue. “Go ahead. Tell ’em anytime is fine by me.”

Sue squinted at him. Daisy understood why. She was thinking the same thing. It was no secret that Rick hated the law, especially the law of Pittsylvania County. He had several dozen signs posted warning everyone to keep away from his junky old trailers. His brother Bobby was both willing and eager to blow a trespasser’s leg clean off. But when it came to Fox Hollow, Rick was perfectly content to let the world wander about whenever and wherever they pleased? He didn’t make even the slightest protest? Something wasn’t right.

“You’re sure?” Sue asked slowly. “You’ve got no objection at all?”

“Nope.”

“And your brother?”

They all turned toward Bobby, who had nearly reached the bottom of Daisy’s goodie bag. The camouflage paint on his chin and cheeks was mixed with brownie crumbs and icing. Bobby looked back at them without saying a word, clueless as to the subject of the discussion.

“Don’t worry about him,” Rick told Sue. “Fox Hollow ain’t none of his concern.”

“Okay.” She seemed almost stunned at how easy her task had been, and she blinked at Daisy questioningly. “So I guess we’ll be going?”

“Definitely.” Daisy was more than ready to go home. She could only take so much of the Balsam boys at one time. They were like hot sauce. A little went a long way, and a lot burned like hell.

“Rick?” came a plaintive cry from inside the trailer.

Daisy restrained a smile. “Golly, this has been fun. We’ve got to do it again real soon.”

Rick cocked his head at her. “My door is always open for ya, darlin’.”

Not bothering to respond, she turned and followed Sue to the ambulance. Rick stopped her.

“Daisy—”

She glanced around. He waited a moment, until Sue had opened the door of the vehicle and was climbing inside, then he spoke in a low tone that only Daisy could hear.

“If the sheriff goes to Fox Hollow, you have to go with him.”

“What?” Her brow furrowed. “Why?”

“Because unless you want him to die like old man Dickerson, you gotta make sure he doesn’t drink any of Fred’s ’shine.”

CHAPTER

8

“By the by, Ducky, you never told me how those ham bones worked out last week.”

“They worked great.” Daisy smiled at the memory. “The pups chewed like maniacs, then they all laid down for a long snooze. And it was a good thing too, because poor Sue was as jittery as a foal wandering too close to a wasp nest. She’s not real good with dogs, at least not big ones that bare their teeth and don’t curl up in your lap at night like a kitten.”

Brenda chortled as she tallied the previous day’s receipts on the cash register. “I once saw her run screaming from a snake out in the parking lot. It was just a lil’ ol’ black rat snake, not a bit scary. But from the way she jumped and tore off, you’d have thought it was one of them poisonous pit vipers that slither down from the mountains now and then. I guess it’s a good thing she decided to fix up people for a living instead of critters.”

At the mention of poison, Daisy’s smile faded. Ever since Rick had whispered the strange warning to her from the steps of his trailer, she had followed the investigation into Fred Dickerson’s death as closely as she could. It was partly out of concern for Sheriff Lowell’s well-being and partly out of concern for her own. The longer the diner remained shuttered, the longer she remained without income. But then after only three days of closure, the sheriff had announced that H & P’s could once more officially open its doors to the coffee-drinking, waffle-eating public of southwestern Virginia.

Although both Daisy and Hank asked for an explanation, neither George nor Sue Lowell was able to give them one. The privileged folks in Danville who presumably had the information were for some reason unwilling to share it with their small-town comrades. There was no report from the autopsy, no further discussion of potential health hazards or sterilizing the diner, no reference whatsoever to a cause of death—natural or not.

After so much initial commotion, all of a sudden the investigation turned oddly still and silent. While that was good news for Daisy financially, it left her other problem uncomfortably unresolved. Sheriff Lowell wasn’t headed to Fox Hollow at present. Even though he now had permission from Rick to enter the property, there was no longer any interest in him doing so from Danville. Daisy could only guess how long that would last, and she had to figure out what she should do in the interim.

If only Rick’s words had been part of a drunken ramble. Then she could have simply dismissed them. Alas, he had appeared entirely lucid and sober. She debated whether it would be best to just come right out and tell the sheriff. But she really didn’t want to stir up a big pot of trouble, and talking to the law of Pittsylvania County about the ominous admonitions from one of the biggest lawbreakers in Pittsylvania County would undoubtedly do that. Plus she had so little information, and it made very little sense. Why would Rick think there was something wrong with Fred Dickerson’s home brew? How did he even know that Fred had been making home brew? And why on earth would he imagine that it had the potential to kill either the old man or Sheriff Lowell?

It seemed awfully far-fetched. Granted, home brew was pretty common in that area. Daisy herself had grown up with a variety of locally made wines and brandies, many of which she had sampled with her daddy after Sunday dinner and on holidays long before she was of legal drinking age. Most of the neighborhood had tried their hand at fermentation now and again over the years when some berry bush or fruit tree in their yard produced an unusually abundant harvest. Aunt Emily, for instance, was well known amongst the community cognoscenti for her remarkably tasty gooseberry concoctions. But when Rick said ’shine, Daisy doubted that he was talking about an innocent glass of the sweet and fruity, one which just happened to contain a touch of alcohol. She was quite confident that he was referring to its country cousin with a lot more punch—whiskey.

The name didn’t matter. You could call it moonshine, white lightning, mountain dew, red eye, or a hundred different colloquial circumlocutions. The end product was always the same—illegally distilled liquor. That meant unregistered, untaxed whiskey made from corn. Other grains were possible of course, but in Appalachia corn was the unrivalled king. So if Fred Dickerson had indeed been quietly cooking up something at Fox Hollow, it was in all probability corn whiskey.

There were two reasons for distilling your own liquor—home consumption and sale. Sale seemed unlikely with Fred, considering that he had been a recluse for close to a decade before his death. If no one ever saw him, then there wasn’t much chance of them buying his hooch. That left home consumption, which was what puzzled Daisy. If old man Dickerson used to sit alone in his kitchen peacefully minding his own business with an occasional shot of joy juice passing over his lips and between his gums, how had Rick Balsam managed to learn of it, and also that there was somehow a bad batch?

She didn’t know anyone who had ever died from moonshine. Sure in theory there was always the possibility of eventual lead poisoning from the solder in an aged still. And there were plenty of stories about crazy toxic additives being thrown in by disreputable distillers, like a splash of lye or chlorine bleach to give their whiskey an extra kick. There were even tales of the occasional pig or possum carcass ending up in the mash, along with buckets of bird droppings and various insects. But that was silliness—or mostly silliness—in modern times with a basic, relatively enlightened understanding of good hygiene and health consequences.