Murder and Moonshine: A Mystery

by Miller, Carol

  No one would be coming out, at least no one requiring medical care. Sue Lowell, the chief paramedic for the squad, determined that quickly enough.

  “He’s gone,” she said, after completing a brief examination of the man who had collapsed on the tile.

  Daisy swallowed with an audible gulp. Brenda said a quiet prayer.

  “I’ve got a blanket out in my truck,” Rick offered. “Should I bring it in, so we can cover him?”

  Sue shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Can’t you at least close his eyes?” Bobby muttered, growing a bit green about the gills. “Or turn his head? It’s like he’s staring at us. He looks so … so…”

  “He looks dead because he is dead,” Sue said.

  Her words may have sounded cold and clinical, but she wasn’t a cold person. Sue Lowell was a tall, thick woman with closely-cropped black hair and a penchant for glittery dangling earrings. She had a warm, hearty disposition and possessed an admirable degree of patience. The disposition came naturally, while the patience had been progressively acquired through thirty years of marriage to the Pittsylvania County sheriff.

  Sheriff George Lowell appeared just as his wife stood up and began peeling off her protective gloves.

  “There’s my girl!” he exclaimed.

  As if recoiling from a cobra, Rick and Bobby both took two hasty steps backward. Despite the morbid circumstances, Daisy couldn’t help chuckling to herself. The Balsam brothers had plenty of experience with the law, particularly the law of Pittsylvania County, and from their perspective, it was never a good experience.

  The sheriff, who was even taller and thicker than his wife, gave her an affectionate peck on the forehead, then glanced merrily around at the entire group. “So what’s the trouble? Bad case of pancakes? I was getting a clip over at Beulah’s, and they heard about it there before I even got a call. Where’s the emergency?”

  “George—” Sue nudged him with her elbow and pointed toward the diner floor.

  “Oh.” His laughing face grew somber as he gazed at the recently departed lying before his feet. “Wait a minute. Isn’t that—”

  “Fred Dickerson,” Hank concluded for him.

  The sheriff looked over at the counter where Hank was sitting on a stool, leisurely perusing the Danville Register & Bee with an occasional bite of peach cobbler thrown in for good measure.

  “Howdy, Hank.”

  “Howdy, George.”

  The two men exchanged a cordial nod. They had known each other most of their lives, since their much earlier, more carefree days when they used to run around old abandoned tobacco barns together looking for spiders to put in jars and a good afternoon consisted of digging frogs from ponds in the rain.

  “Fred Dickerson, eh?” Sheriff Lowell leaned down for a closer inspection of the still face hidden beneath the long white beard. “I think you’re right, Hank. It is Fred.”

  “Surely,” was Hank’s reply.

  “Fred Dickerson,” the sheriff mused, rubbing his own freshly trimmed peppered beard. “I can’t remember the last time I talked to old Fred. It must be at least two or three years back. Maybe more even. I thought I caught a glimpse of him at the hardware store last fall, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “I used to see him now and then over at the Food Lion in Gretna,” Brenda said, “but that was a long time ago.”

  “He grew corn,” the sheriff went on. “Feed corn mostly. Off Highway 40, down by Frying Pan Creek.” He inclined his head toward Daisy, who was well familiar with that area. “I don’t think he had planted for a couple of seasons though. Last time I drove that way it was all grown over. I never checked on the house, if anybody was still living there. You can’t see it from the road. It’s back behind—” He broke off midsentence.

  “Back behind?” his wife prodded him.

  Sheriff Lowell didn’t respond. He straightened up slowly, and as he did, his gaze moved from Fred Dickerson to Rick and Bobby Balsam. “Isn’t that your land?” he asked, his tone edged with equal portions of distrust and dislike.

  Bobby shuffled his feet and took another step backward. His brother wasn’t nearly so easily intimidated and held his ground.

  “It’s mine,” Rick confirmed.

  Daisy’s head snapped toward him. “What do you mean it’s yours?”

  “I own it.”

  Her eyes stretched wide. “You own it? The fields north of Frying Pan Creek?”

  Rick nodded.

  “And the farmhouse too?”

  He nodded again.

  She stared at him in stunned disbelief. “How can you possibly own it?”

  “I bought it,” he stated simply.

  “You bought it,” she echoed. Her hands started to shake, and she pressed them together hard. “When exactly did you buy it?”

  “Beginning of the year.”

  She blinked at him in silence for a moment, then with a clenched jaw she turned to Sheriff Lowell. “You knew about this?”

  “Daisy—” Sue Lowell began gently.

  Daisy was in no mood to be placated. “You knew about this?” she said again, her voice rising.

  The sheriff shrugged somewhat sheepishly. “I just heard about it last week.”

  “And you didn’t think Daisy should be told!” Brenda snapped.

  “I thought she already knew,” he apologized.

  Sue nodded in agreement. “We thought she had to know. We didn’t think the property could ever go up for sale without her knowing.”

  “Well, I didn’t know,” Daisy informed them crisply, fighting the intense urge to pick up a coffee mug and hurl it across the diner. She spun back toward Rick. “But apparently you knew.”

  He met her blazing gaze straight on. “I did.”

  “And you didn’t think it might be nice to share the information with me?”

  “When have you ever thought I was nice?”

  Daisy glared at him, her lips and shoulders quivering with anger. “There was a time when we were friends, Rick,” she spat. “And you and Matt—”

  He cut her off abruptly. “It’s two hundred acres, Daisy. Where the hell would you have gotten the money for two hundred acres?”

  It was a slap in the face, sharp and swift. She felt the color rush to her cheeks. The red was half rage, half embarrassment.

  “Get out!” Hank snarled, jumping up from his stool. “Get out before I toss you out on your sorry ass!”

  Rick didn’t respond. His dark eyes were on Daisy, watching her narrowly like a jungle cat. There was no regret in his expression, but no malevolence either.

  “Get out!” Hank shouted again, pointing a stiff arm toward the door. “Get the hell out now!”

  “We’re going. We’re going,” Bobby said hastily, shrinking from Hank’s tattooed biceps and scarred fists.

  Just as with the sheriff, his brother wasn’t so quickly browbeaten. But Rick had enough good sense and respect for Hank and his flexed muscles to tread lightly.

  “I’m not lookin’ for trouble.” He shrugged.

  “You’ll get trouble—” Hank warned him.

  Rick raised his hands in cool capitulation. “All right. I got the message. But just so we’re clear, I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings. I’m just stating facts.”

  Hank grunted, unappeased.

  “It had to come out eventually,” Rick continued, “so now it’s out. I bought the land off Highway 40, along Frying Pan Creek. I own the house, the barns, and the creek too. All of what used to be known as Fox Hollow.” He glanced at Daisy for a split second as he said the name, but then pulled his eyes away just as fast.

  Hank’s eyes also went to Daisy, as did Brenda’s and George’s and Sue’s. It was obvious that they were waiting for her to respond, to give them some sort of an indication how she intended to handle the matter, but Daisy didn’t say a word. She couldn’t. Her throat was swollen shut, and her stomach twisted painfully.

  After a tense minute, the sherif
f looked at Rick and raised a questioning eyebrow. “You say you bought the property at the beginning of the year?”

  “I did,” Rick answered somewhat absently, not looking back at him. He was focused on Fred Dickerson, frowning at the lifeless man with a grave intensity.

  “Then what about old Fred?” Sheriff Lowell asked. “I know he used to lease the house and land. What sort of an arrangement did you have with him?”

  “I guess you could say he was leasing it from me too, except we didn’t have anything in writing. And no money ever changed hands. We never even talked about it.”

  “You never talked about it? You mean you just let him go on with the old lease?”

  “No.” Rick continued frowning at the body. “I mean I didn’t bother with any lease, old or new.”

  The sheriff squinted at him dubiously. “You’re telling me you bought two hundred acres—some of the best acres we got in the county—along with a farmhouse and outbuildings and a flowing creek, but you didn’t bother with a lease?”

  “I didn’t bother with a lease,” he repeated curtly, finally raising his gaze from the diner floor.

  “So then what did Fred think?”

  “How the hell should I know what he thought?”

  “Well, he must have had some inkling in his head if he was still living there.”

  Rick’s patience was wearing visibly thin. His lips curled back from his teeth like a wolf warning an enemy from its territory.

  “Don’t test me, boy.” Sheriff Lowell puffed out his chest and slapped his hands on his gun belt. “I’m the law around here, and we both know you and your brother ain’t done so good with the law over the years.”

  Bobby gave a meek little whimper. Rick’s snarl remained, but he answered the sheriff’s question.

  “I’ve no idea what old man Dickerson was thinking. I hadn’t talked to him in ages, probably close to a decade. Not since before he moved to Fox Hollow.” Rick almost looked at Daisy again but stopped himself this time. “After I bought the place, I figured he’d been living there so long he could just go on living there. It didn’t bother me none, and I didn’t think it’d bother anybody else.”

  Daisy sighed. She was furious with Rick for not telling her that the property was for sale. She was even more furious with him for buying it, and buying it in secret. He of all people knew what it was to her, what it meant. She felt terribly blindsided—and more than a little betrayed—but at the same time, she couldn’t argue with him regarding Fred Dickerson. It had never bothered her that the old farmer lived in the house or planted the fields or fished in the creek. On the contrary, there had been many moments when it almost comforted her, the thought that someone was taking care of Fox Hollow.

  “So you don’t know if Fred was sick?” Sheriff Lowell asked Rick.

  Rick ground the heel of his boot into the tile with irritation. “Of course not. I just told you I hadn’t talked to the man in ten years.”

  “And you also didn’t see him?”

  “I couldn’t swear in all that time his truck never passed by mine on the road,” he replied with a smirk. “Or that we didn’t both order ice-cream cones on the same day over at the Dairy Queen.”

  Sheriff Lowell sucked on his teeth. “You want me to ask you again wearing handcuffs?”

  “I. Didn’t. See. Fred. Dickerson.”

  As he said it, Rick cocked his head to one side. No one seemed to notice but Daisy. And she knew what it meant. Rick Balsam only cocked his head to the side when he flirted and when he lied. He had seen Fred Dickerson somewhere, probably pretty recently if she were to hazard a guess, but he had no intention of sharing that information with George Lowell or the rest of the group.

  “Are we done? Can I go now?” Rick drawled, partially stifling a yawn. “Or do you want to read my diary first?”

  The sheriff grimaced at him. “Go.” He waved his hand at Bobby, then at the door. “The two of you just go. Go before I—”

  “George—” Sue interrupted him.

  He glanced over at her.

  “They can’t leave,” she said.

  Both Rick and the sheriff frowned at her.

  “They can’t leave,” she repeated.

  “Why not?” Bobby whined. It was the whine of a bored and hungry child, one who had never gotten his waffles with pecans or the accompanying sausage patties and was tired of old man Dickerson staring up at him from the diner floor like a bug-eyed trout.

  Ignoring Bobby, Sue spoke to her husband. “I’m going to have to send him to Danville.”

  Sheriff Lowell’s brow furrowed. “Danville? Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “I can’t do this. I’m not a medical examiner.”

  “You think—”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’ve got to send him to Danville.”

  “He was old,” the sheriff remarked. “And probably sick.”

  “I don’t know,” Sue said again. “It might be that. It’s possible he had a stroke or his heart just gave out, but…” She paused for a moment as she regarded the lifeless body with a scrutinizing eye. “There’s that discharge. Especially around his mouth. The color. It’s not right.”

  Her husband shrugged. “Well, you know best. I hate getting them involved, but if you’ve got to send him to Danville, then send him to Danville.”

  “So what does that have to do with us?” Rick asked somewhat sharply.

  Daisy was wondering the same thing. And to her surprise, instead of answering immediately, Sue toyed with her earrings. It wasn’t a good sign.

  “If you’re thinking about needing a couple of strong backs to load him into the ambulance,” Sheriff Lowell said, “I can call the office and get a pair of boys to come over. We don’t need them.” He stuck his thumb in the direction of the Balsam brothers.

  “No.” Sue kept on fiddling with her earrings. “That’s not what I was thinking. You don’t have to call your office.” Taking a deep breath, she added, “You have to call the Danville office.”

  “What! Why the hell should I call them?”

  “You have to.”

  “No, I don’t!” the sheriff roared, a tad petulantly. “Not those smug bastards!”

  “You don’t have a choice,” Sue returned with briskness. “We need a forensics team, and they’ve got one.”

  George Lowell snorted like an irascible bull.

  “It’s the closest,” she reminded him, “and the only one Pittsylvania County is authorized to use.”

  He snorted once more.

  “A forensics team?” Hank said, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the counter. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “It means she thinks it’s suspicious,” Brenda said, with a touch of excitement.

  “It means I don’t want any of us getting in trouble later for not following proper procedure now,” Sue argued.

  “What it really means is we’re going to be stuck here for a damn long time until the fellas from Danville drive up and do what they do.” Rick walked over to the emerald-green vinyl booth that he had previously occupied and plopped himself down in it. Lifting his coffee mug, he gave Daisy a hopeful little smile. “Refill?”

  CHAPTER

  3

  “Is that you, Daisy?” Beulah cried at the telltale creaks from the aged front steps.

  She was answered by a slamming screen door and a weary moan.

  “Oh, I’m glad you’re back! We were awfully worried.” Beulah came rushing out of the parlor into the entrance hall of the inn. “First the ambulance, then Sheriff Lowell—I was just finishing up his clip when he got the call to go to the diner—and then those police cars from Danville. We were all racing around trying to figure out what had happened, but nobody actually knew anything!”

  Despite her exhaustion, Daisy grinned. Beulah’s untamable mane of flaming red hair was sticking out in every direction, like a cartoon character that had just gotten its finger stuck in an electrical socket. It was pretty fu
nny, especially considering that Beulah owned a hair salon, a really popular hair salon.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call.” Daisy swapped an air kiss with her friend. “But the whole thing was just crazy. And Sue said it’d be better if we didn’t talk to anybody about it until after the police were through.”

  Beulah and her hair nodded. “But you’re okay? You look okay. And Brenda and Hank? They’re okay too?”

  “They’re fine. We’re all fine. Everybody except old man Dickerson.”

  “Old man Dickerson? Is he still living around here?”

  “Not anymore,” Daisy replied, with a wryness that surprised even her.

  “You don’t mean?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Oh my God!” Beulah clapped her hands over her mouth in horror.

  “I know. I spent half the day staring at his dead body on the diner floor and I still can’t believe it.”

  “I can’t believe it either. I thought for sure it had to do with one of the Balsam brothers. They finally got caught doing something even stupider than usual.”

  Daisy shook her head. “Unfortunately not. But they were both there. And just wait until I tell you what Rick pulled.”

  Beulah began chewing on a chipped orange fingernail. “He pulled something with old man Dickerson?”

  “With Fox Hollow.”

  The chewing instantly stopped. “Fox Hollow!”

  Daisy hastily hushed her. “Not so loud. I don’t want my momma to hear.”

  “She won’t. She’s out back. With Aunt Emily.”

  Aunt Emily wasn’t actually Beulah’s aunt. She wasn’t anyone’s aunt. Emily Tosh was the last surviving member of the oldest family in Pittsylvania County. It was her kinfolk that had originally settled the area, and there were plenty of roads, cemeteries, and abandoned houses in the neighborhood bearing the name to prove it. The inn had been the grandest of all the houses, a behemoth Victorian with yellow gables and matching wraparound porches. It had been built—and for many decades maintained—by the glorious tobacco plant. But with the inexorable march of time, the once seemingly endless acres of highly profitable tobacco were converted into cheap corn. There was drought, followed by price wars. Land was sold off, and younger generations moved away, enticed by the thrill of the big city. Eventually only Emily and the venerable Tosh house remained, two worn and weathered monuments harkening back to a slightly different era.