Bootlegger’s Daughter

by Margaret Maron

  The mill yard was badly overgrown now. Pokeweeds were head high and beginning to put out flower stems. Poison ivy grew even more lushly. The trees around the stone walls were wrapped in vines as thick and hairy as a man’s arm, with rampant green leaves. Beneath the leaves were clouds of greenish-white blossoms. It seemed incongruous that anything so noxious could smell so sweet, but the air was permeated with a cloying fragrance I couldn’t quite trust.

  The heavy wooden door had long since fallen off its hinges and we entered uneasily.

  “As soon as I switched off my truck I heard your cries,” said Michael. “The sheriff had told me not to disturb anything, but I couldn’t just stand down here and listen. Besides, those two boys had already been up.”

  The lower chamber felt pleasantly cool after the hot afternoon sun outside. Even better, we could discard our twig fly brushes. An end wall had half broken away and more vines had grown up through the opening where the paddle wheel had once turned. Sunlight off the water reflected light onto the stone stairwell.

  “We came up these steps,” said Michael, “and I warned them to keep their hands in their pockets so we wouldn’t leave any extra fingerprints.”

  The upper level was almost completely open to the elements now. Only a small section of the roof remained. Michael gestured to a spot near a sheet of fallen tin roofing. “Your mother was there. When we found her, she was on her back with her arms by her side.”

  “The papers said it was like she’d been laid out for burial,” Gayle said in a small voice.

  “Yes.”

  There must have been bloodstains once, but eighteen years of sun and rain had scrubbed the stones clean.

  Michael gestured to a spot further from the stairs. “You were over here, buckled into one of those portable plastic baskets that sit up on a metal frame. It was pink, like your blanket.”

  Gayle pushed her sunglasses up as if the tinted lenses were keeping her from seeing what Michael seemed to be seeing all over again. Her eyes glistened as he described the scene.

  “The sheriff said leave everything, but your voice was hoarse. Not like a baby at all. I unbuckled you and carried you downstairs and tried to get you to stop crying. You were so tiny…”

  He took a deep breath, and Gayle put out her small hand and touched his arm.

  Even then the Dancy in him, if that’s what it was, couldn’t let him sustain her touch. Not that he flinched dramatically or anything-I doubt if Gayle even noticed-but he shrugged self-deprecatingly and walked away from her hand, over to the edge of the floor where the dilapidated wooden paddle wheel had almost completely rotted away.

  “She must have been so frightened,” said Gayle, looking around the ruins.

  “No,” I said. At least I could add that much. “She never knew she was here, honey.”

  I repeated what Scotty Underhill had told me about Janie’s head wound, though not his theory that she’d been put down like a sick and dying animal.

  “As far as your mother was concerned, it was all over immediately. Her brain was so damaged that she can’t have known a thing after the moment she was first injured.”

  From across the wide loft, Michael said, “So even if she hadn’t been shot, she would have died?”

  “Not necessarily. And maybe not very soon. Modern medicine, and all that,” I reminded him. “But she would have been a vegetable.”

  Gayle flinched at the thought.

  “Yes,” Michael agreed. “There are some things worse than-”

  Ka-pingg!

  Suddenly the wall above his head seemed to explode, sending sharp chips of stone flying every which way. A split second later we heard the actual crack of a rifle.

  Michael’s hand flew up to his face and came away bloody just as a second bullet hit the tin roof with an explosive clatter.

  Instinctively, we all ducked down behind what was left of the wall.

  “Hey! Hold your fire!” roared Michael. “There’re people here! Hey!”

  Silence.

  After a few minutes, we stood up warily. I expected to hear shouts of apology through the thick trees, but none came.

  “Goddamn poachers!” Michael growled.

  He mopped at the cut on his cheek with his handkerchief and his face was pale beneath his tan. It was just a scratch from where one of the stone chips had hit and the bleeding wasn’t serious, but the nearness of the bullets had shaken all three of us.

  “You could have been killed,” Gayle said.

  It was bad enough that someone should be out hunting this time of year. “Someone that careless with where his bullets go needs to be reported,” I said, more shaken than I wanted to admit.

  “Nothing’s in season now, is it?” Michael asked, still dabbing at his face.

  “Nothing I know of. Which is probably why they’re halfway back to the highway by now. I’ll bet they think you’re the game warden.”

  Sure enough, from far in the distance, we heard someone crashing away from us through the underbrush towards Old Forty-Eight. Michael whistled for the dog, but she didn’t respond.

  The mood was as shattered as the mortar and stone where the bullet had struck. Gayle had seen all there was to see anyway, and Michael seemed to have nothing else to add, but I hesitated after they started for the steps.

  “Michael?”

  “Yes?”

  “Was there anything else of Janie’s when you got here?”

  “What do you mean?” He looked blank. “Like a purse or car keys or something?”

  “Or a scarf or sweater or a baby bottle?” I’d promised Scotty Underhill I wouldn’t mention Janie’s red vinyl slicker to anyone.

  Michael shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “It was in the paper,” said Gayle. “My empty bottle and extra diapers were in a diaper bag with her purse on the backseat of the car when they found it parked at Grandaddy’s on Thursday morning. Her keys were still in the ignition.”

  There wasn’t much conversation on the way back across Possum Creek. As we went up the slope to Michael’s place, I said, “The way you’ve nailed those posts and crossbars up for the roses, they look almost like crosses.”

  “Yes.”

  His quiet concurrence effectively silenced me. I never know quite what to say when I’m confronted with unexpected religiosity.

  “No place should be unexpected,” my internal preacher scolded. “Is God not everywhere?”

  Fortunately my awkwardness was short-lived. Lily finally caught up with us, panting heavily in the warm afternoon. As Gayle and I crossed the barnyard, she thanked him for taking the time to come with us.

  “I appreciate you telling me what you remembered,” she said.

  “Not at all,” he murmured.

  I’d taken out my keys and stood with them next to his pickup, trying to put my finger on what was different.

  Then I realized that Denn’s Volvo wasn’t the only thing gone.

  “Wasn’t there a rifle on that rack before?” I asked, gesturing toward the pickup’s rear window.

  He stared me straight in the eye. “No.”

  I stared right back. “I think there was.”

  He was back behind his plate glass wall.

  “Maybe you do need a divorce lawyer,” I said gravely. I glanced at the Pot Shot sign over the shop door and his eyes followed. “Unless that was an advertisement?”

  He stayed behind the glass wall, but an ironic smile flickered through. “We don’t need business that badly.”

  Gayle’s eyes were big as saucers as we drove away. “You think Mr. McCloy shot at us?”

  I shrugged. “Michael Vickery thinks so. And I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but that dog didn’t bark.”

  12 all my friends are gonna be strangers

  Dwight Bryant was waiting for me in his official Colleton County sheriff’s department cruiser when I drove into my parking spot beside the office next morning.

  “Come ride and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” he said. “We n
eed to have a little talk.”

  “There’s a whole pot of coffee waiting inside. I’ll buy you a cup,” I said, trying to think what I’d done now. “How long’s this little talk going to take?”

  “Depends. Half-hour?”

  “Okay. Just let me tell Sherry.”

  I went on into the office, dumped my briefcase on my desk, told Sherry I was going to take a quick ride with Dwight Bryant (“What’ve you done now?” she asked), and carried two foam cups of black coffee out to the cruiser.

  Dwight’s a few years older than me, and from the time he was a kid, he’s hung out with my brothers so much that he tries to boss me around just like them. Has just about as much luck, too, but none of them quit trying.

  Bunch of slow learners.

  Dwight’s also an ex-basketball player who’s muscled out over the years and he filled up his whole side of the patrol car. With his sandy hair and craggy face, I had to admit he looked pretty sharp in his summer tans. The head of a detective unit usually wears regular clothes, but that doesn’t stop Dwight from putting on his uniform at least once a month to cruise around the county checking things out. Probably a carryover from his years in the military. He was with Army Intelligence in D.C. when his marriage to Jonna went bust and he came on back home.

  As soon as I was properly buckled in, we rolled out of Dobbs heading west. Dwight turned down his radio till the calls and codes were barely audible, and breathed in the coffee’s fragrant aroma.

  “Y’all have the best coffee of any law firm in the county.”

  “Thank Julia Lee for that. She picks it up at some fancy store in Cameron Village.”

  “This tastes like it’s got something else in it.”

  “Hazelnuts,” I said sweetly. “And I just can’t tell you how glad I am to make time in my schedule to have this fascinating discussion about coffee. You might want to come by for our vanilla creme blend sometime. Next week, Julia’s promised to get us a chocolate almond that-”

  “Okay, okay,” he laughed. “What’s this about somebody taking a potshot at you yesterday?”

  “How’d you hear about that so quick?”

  “I’m a police officer. I’m supposed to hear things quickly, remember?”

  “Well, this time you heard wrong. I wasn’t the target. If it wasn’t hunters, then it was probably meant to scare Michael Vickery. He and Denn McCloy seem to be having problems.”

  “You’re positive you weren’t the target? Now that you’re poking into Janie Whitehead’s death, it might be that someone’s trying to scare you.”

  “That would be a stupid thing to do.” I sipped my coffee. “Hey, you’re not worried about me, are you?”

  “Janie’s killer could be somebody you know,” he said sternly, “somebody who’s nervous that you might poke too close.”

  “It’d be dumb to say that’s silly,” I conceded. “But honestly, Dwight, doesn’t a migrant worker passing through make the most sense? Or that Janie took pity on someone hitchhiking in the rain and for some reason, what was supposed to be a lift turned violent? Obviously he didn’t mean to kill her since he didn’t take her money or molest her.”

  (Dwight was stationed in Germany when Janie was murdered, and I wasn’t sure if knew about the red slicker.)

  “First he whacked her on the head and then two days later shot her? That’s not your average migrant behavior, Deb’rah. I’ve been to enough Saturday night brawls-hell, you’ve seen enough of the players in Monday morning court to know the difference.”

  “Okay, okay. But even if the killer was somebody local, the SBI’s already worked it twice. If they couldn’t find any loose strings to pull on back then, there’s no reason to think I could come up with anything new. Mainly I’m just going through the motions because Jed thinks it’ll keep Gayle from bringing in some stranger.”

  Dwight turned north at the next crossroads, which would head us back toward Dobbs. He finished off his coffee and set the cup in a holder between us. “Just think about this a minute: if the killer’s someone Janie knew, it might make him more nervous to have you out poking around than if it was a stranger.”

  I heard concern in his voice. “Hey, you really are worried about me, aren’t you?”

  “Not me.” As the road teed into North Twelfth Street, he gave me a mocking smile. “You’re not my little baby girl to worry about.”

  “Oh, shit!”

  I might have known though. Stupid of me to think I could take a stroll through woods less than a mile from my home-place as the crow flies (or a blabbermouth walks) and not have Daddy know. “Look, would you please make it clear to him that it really was Denn McCloy out there banging away at Michael?”

  “If you say so.”

  He turned up the radio to catch a code directed at someone patrolling a few miles south. Nothing urgent. We rode in silence till he coasted to a stop in front of my office door.

  “How serious do you think Sheriff Poole and I ought to take what happened?” he asked as I reached for the door handle.

  I shrugged. “ ’Bout like you’d take any domestic disturbance. Michael’s not one to talk about his feelings and Denn’s only too willing to talk about his. I’ve heard Michael goes over to Durham more than he used to, though. Without Denn.”

  “Yeah. If they were straight, you’d say it’s the seven-year-itch.”

  “You might,” I jibed, opening the door. “Everybody else these days calls it male menopause.”

  “Just the same,” he said through the lowered window, “I think I’ll ride out there and have a little talk with McCloy. And listen, Deb’rah-if they’re going to keep shooting at each other, would you please try to stay out from between ’em? You get hurt and your daddy’s not going to be very happy with us.”

  He drove away, leaving me to wonder if “us” was Bo Poole’s whole sheriff’s department or just Dwight and the boys.

  The only time I ever saw Daddy take a switch to the little twins was when I was twelve and they brought me home with a broken arm. It didn’t matter that I’d pestered them to death to let me swing out over the creek on their rope swing. I remember being furious that he whipped them and then even more furious with them because they acted like they deserved it. Even at twelve I knew that such protection somehow diminished me.

  Mother was usually my ally, but that time she made me wear dresses till the cast was off.

  Tracy Johnson was calling one of my cases just as I slid into court.

  I was supposed to defend a couple of indigent Haitians who’d been netted in the raid of a crack house in a trailer park off I-95. They spoke almost no English; my college French wasn’t idiomatic enough to get through to them, so we’d had to wait for an interpreter to come out from Raleigh before I could get the whole story.

  According to them, they’d been hitchhiking back from New York and had heard that they could find a friendly place to flop at that particular trailer. They claimed to have been sleeping the sleep of innocence when DEA agents knocked on the door with a search warrant. Their “host” seemed to have temporarily vanished; and when the trailer was searched, a half-kilo of cocaine and three grams of crack were found in a bedroom at the opposite end from the room they’d been given. Since they were the only ones there, they took the fall. And they’d been lodged in the county jail for two weeks, refusing to give their names or plead until the interpreter could get there.

  Even though Harrison Hobart was hearing the case, I didn’t bother asking for a jury trial. All I had to do was put everyone on the witness stand and let them tell their stories. DEA admitted he had nothing to link the drugs to these two other than their being in the trailer that night.

  The two youths were quite personable once the linguist translated everything for them. Charming even. Of course it was quite clear to everyone in the courtroom that they were a couple of mules plying the north-south trade route that links Miami to New York. Tons of hard drugs pass up and down I-95, thankfully only a small percentage falls off the t
rucks here, though of course we’re no more immune than any other area. But as I pointed out to the court, there wasn’t a smidgen of evidence upon which to hold these particular two.

  To his regret, Hobart had to agree.

  The charming young men shook hands all around and promised to send money from Haiti to repay the interpreter and me for our trouble.

  The interpreter and I agreed we wouldn’t hold our breath.

  Between getting the facts translated and then fitting the actual hearing in around other cases, it was after four before I was free to leave the courthouse. As I came down the steps, I was overtaken by a tight-lipped Luther Parker.

  “I thought this was to be a civilized campaign, Miss Knott,” he said coldly.

  “Come again?”

  He handed me a sheet of paper. “I suppose you’ve never seen this.”

  It looked like my personal letterhead and was headed “An Open Letter to Concerned Voters of Judicial District 11-C.” It wasn’t quite as blatant as He’s a nigger, I’m white, vote for me, but it was the next thing to it, and it carried my signature at the bottom.

  For a moment I thought I was going to throw up.

  “You can’t believe for a minute that I’d-”

  “It’s your stationery, Miss Knott, and your signature, isn’t it?” he asked, his thin black face looming over me in outraged suspicion.

  “Would you please cut out that ‘Miss Knott? Okay, yes, this looks like my letterhead, but anybody with a copier could…” I examined the sheet more closely. “Look here, Luther. This is a flat-out cut-and-paste job, a real sloppy one at that. They used the campaign letter I sent out in March and put their own mess over mine. See the cut lines here and here?”

  “But then it would look like that, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

  I could see his point. If this were the sort of campaigning I’d stoop to, I’d naturally want to be able to deny it. Therefore I’d do it so crudely that it would look as if someone had doctored my original letter without my knowledge. That way, I wouldn’t be blamed for sleazy politics, yet I’d have gotten the message out.