Death in the Distillery (2 page)

The first real case I ever worked on for Blevins' Investigations was in 1998, the year of El Nino. It was the year
weathermen had to admit their profession was more of a
crapshoot than a science. It was a year of choking dust
storms, idyllic spring days, paralyzing ice blizzards, warm
nights perfumed with honeysuckle, deadly mud slides, gentle rains, and searing droughts followed by killer floods.
Nature had lost her sense of proportion.

So, I shouldn't have been surprised when a chopped up
body resembling steak tartare dropped at my feet, and I
was paid four hundred bucks a day to prove it was an accident.

The past two weeks in central Texas had been a conundrum of meteorological confusion. Sunny forecasts brought
torrential rains. Cloudy forecasts brought out the scorching
Texas sun. Naturally, the weatherman claimed the unpredictable weather was a result of El Nino.

In Austin, Texas, fourteen seniors at Madison High
School failed economics and naturally, their parents denounced El Nino.

Six state legislators were caught in prostitution stings on
the downtown streets of Austin. They claimed El Nino
made them do it.

The weather phenomenon caught the blame for everything from bad hair to burned steak. Even my next door
neighbor, a lecherous Texas Aggie-I think that's probably
redundant-blamed El Nino when his wife caught him and
a pickup bimbo in the back seat of a car out behind our
apartments.

Later that night, he knocked on my door. I pretended to
be asleep. The poor guy only wanted a place to flop, but
the truth was that while I judged no one's personal life, I
wasn't foolish enough to step right into the middle of a
donnybrook. Let them fight it out in the streets was my
motto.

Finally, El Nino played its trump card when Janice
Coffman-Morrison, my on-again, off-again Significant
Other called, wanting me to escort her to her great aunt's
annual reception at Chalk Hills Distillery. From that moment on, my life changed.

I wasn't crazy about attending the reception, for I viewed
those gatherings as merely showplaces for the socially challenged to take another step up the ladder of social snobbery.
On the other hand, I seldom turned down the offer of free
food and drink. But to be truthful, one compliment I had
to pay Chalk Hills Distillery was that no expense was
spared on the annual receptions. This one promised to be
even more extravagant because, according to Thomas Floria, the wine columnist for the Austin Daily Press, Beatrice
Morrison, Chalk Hills CEO, was anxious to host a lavish
event that would drive her company stock higher.

Janice insisted I accompany her. I protested I didn't have
the time, but she knew better. I was a private investigator,
a skiptracer, which is really just a missing person locator,
and the missing person business had been slow of late.
Runaways and skips must have decided to stay in place
because of the debilitating heat or the whimsical vagaries
of El Nino.

Anyway, I pleaded that my aquarium needed a good
cleaning, but Janice reminded me that she had performed
that task herself, just the week before.

That's when she began pouting. "After all, Tony," she
whined, "how will it look if the niece of the owner shows
up without an escort?"

Janice was a professional pouter. She had the technique
down to a science. Pouting 101. I had no doubt that course
was the prerequisite for each of the required social classes
in the curriculum for the Very Rich at all the exclusive
finishing schools in Atlanta and Dallas, which she had attended.

And for the thousandth time, the feminine artifice
worked. I sighed, and stared at the aquarium, envying Oscar, my tiny albino Tiger Barb, who reminded me of a pink
penny with fins.

Oscar, as was his habit, glided in lazy circles through
the plastic water sprite and Amazon sword plants all by his
lonesome. He was the lone survivor of the murderous
chemical attack by Jack Edney. "Okay, what time is the
reception?"

"One, but I want to go early so I can spend some time
with Aunt Beatrice. After all, I'm the only family she has
left, and the poor dear is so lonesome."

I bit my tongue. Beatrice Lenore Morrison was many
things, but lonesome wasn't one of them. Ever since her
husband died from a massive heart attack fifteen years earlier and left her Chalk Hills Distillery, Beatrice had gone
out of her way not to be lonely. She practiced discretion,
but among the socially elite of Austin, gossip spread like
groping hands beneath a blanket. Nobody admitted it, but
everyone enjoyed it. "Pick you up at eleven then. That'll
give you a couple of hours with your aunt before the reception."

"Good. We'll use my Miata."

I didn't argue. She hated riding in my Chevy pickup. It
rode rough and rattled like gravel in a beer can. The air
conditioning operated on its own whimsy, usually when the
weather was freezing. Like a recalcitrant child, the AC unit
picked its times to function, and since it had regularly dem onstrated an obvious aversion to hot weather, I usually
drove with the window down.

Besides, the little Miata was fun to drive.

By eleven o'clock, the temperature was nearing ninety.
To say the day promised to be a warm one was a consummate understatement.

Wearing a prim skirt and lace-collared blouse with a
matching vest, Janice was standing beside the Miata outside
her townhouse when I drove up. She flashed me a bright
smile and, giving her short brown hair a toss, climbed in
the passenger's side of the red convertible with the white
leather interior. I slipped behind the wheel, buckled up,
tilted my chin at a rakish angle, and slammed the little car
into gear.

Normally, the winding drive along Bee Tree Road
through the oak and cedar-covered hills west of Austin was
pleasant and relaxing, but for some reason, a pinprick of
uneasiness nagged at me. When we topped the last hill and
looked down on the collection of white stucco buildings
with bright red roofs of Spanish tile that made up Chalk
Hills, I spotted a figure running from a large barn. He raced
toward a lone woman who stood under a huge oak between
the distillery and a plowed field. Serpentine limbs thick as
barrels spread in all directions, from the field to the roof
of the distillery.

My uneasy feeling quickly escalated into a chilling apprehension.

I stared in disbelief at the pile of flesh and cloth in the
shallow ditch, uncertain if it were a man or woman. But,
whoever or whatever it had been, it was dead. A set of
tandem discs behind a tractor takes no prisoners and gives
no second chances.

The cleft in the back of the skull through which brains
bulged grinned at me like a Halloween ghoul. "Jesus.
Who ... who is it?"

"That, Mr. Boudreaux, was Emmett Patterson," Beatrice Morrison, matriarch of the Chalk Hills Distillery, stated
with cold disinterest. Her shoulders square, her spine stiff,
she stared indifferently upon what had once been a human
being, at the same time idly brushing at the dust collecting
on her dark brown business jacket. Her thin lips curled in
distaste.

The man standing beside her had the face of a bulldog.

Leaning against my left arm, Janice gagged and buried
her face in my shoulder. My sport jacket was freshly
cleaned, and I hoped she didn't stain it.

A lumbering man who reminded me of a gorilla brushed
past Janice and me. "Oh, my Lord," he muttered in a thin,
girlish voice. Another man hurried up to us. His hair was
long and greasy.

Across the recently disked field, a Massey Ferguson tractor lay halfway overturned in a ditch, held in place by the
heavy discs to which it was hitched. Clods of dirt clung to
the round, steel blades.

I glanced at the three men. I figured they were employees
of the distillery. Beyond them, the door in the side of the
distillery opened and a well-dressed man strode toward us.
I recognized him from the newspapers. William Cleyhorn,
a local Austin shark, I mean, attorney.

Janice muttered into my shoulder, "I feel dizzy."

"Take a deep breath," I replied, grateful for the shade of
the ancient oak under which we stood. I heard a faint thud
and glanced around. Through an open spot in the crown of
the oak, I glimpsed a face peering down from a window
on the second floor of the distillery. After a few moments
surveying the scene below, the face vanished.

One thing for sure, I told myself, looking back at what
was beginning to resemble steak tartare without peppers or
onions, by no stretch of the imagination could El Nino be
blamed for the death of Emmett Patterson.

Behind me, tires crunched to a halt in the gravel. I
glanced over my shoulder.

Police Sergeant Ben Howard paused as he opened the
car door and frowned when he spotted me. He slammed the door and strode in my direction, his ubiquitous cigar
jammed in his mouth. "What are you doing here, Boudreaux?" He had a way of growling when he spoke.

"Believe it or not, Sergeant, I'm a guest." I introduced
him to Janice, whom I was supporting to keep her from
collapsing. "Can I take her inside? She isn't feeling too
well."

He eyed me a moment, then grunted, "Not yet." But his
tone softened when he realized I wasn't sticking my nose
into his business. "What happened?" He turned toward the
remains of Emmett Patterson.

"Beats me." I nodded to the tractor across the field.
"Looks like he fell off the tractor and under the discs."

Howard grimaced. "Reminds me of the hamburger meat
my wife fed me last night."

Janice gagged. "Hambur ... oh, God, Tony. I ... I feel
sick." I tightened my arm about her waist.

"Hold on," I encouraged her. "I'll get you some water."

A voice behind us spoke up. "He wasn't supposed to
work today." The nasal twang belonged to one of the employees, a throwback to the flower children of the sixties
and seventies. Long greasy hair, sallow complexion, and
sunken cheeks, he wore a sweat-stained Houston Astros
ball cap.

The man's words piqued my curiosity. I forgot about the
water for Janice.

Howard frowned at him. "Who are you?"

"Claude Hawkins. I work here. Mrs. Morrison gave us
the day off. Emmett wasn't supposed to be working. We
was going into town after cleaning up the place when the
reception was over."

"Cleaning up the place? I thought you said he wasn't
supposed to be working." Howard glared at him.

"I meant not on the tractor. We finished the field a couple
of days ago. We was supposed to let it lay fallow."

Despite his grating personality and deliberate bad manners, Sergeant Ben Howard was a thorough and determined investigator. Whether it was fraud, theft, or murder, his
bulldog tenacity closed every case he handled.

Maybe if I'd been more of an investigator like the sergeant, Blevins' Investigations wouldn't have stuck me in
missing persons, and given the choice assignments to its
top sleuth, Al Grogan. That was one of the reasons I appreciated Oscar, my little Tiger Barb. I knew what it felt
like to swim in circles.

Janice groaned. "Tony, I mean it. I think ... I'm going
to be sick."

"Okay. We'll get some water. Just a second." I loosened
her lace collar and glanced around for the nearest water.

Howard studied the dead man. A frown wrinkled his
forehead, and he touched the toe of his scuffed shoe to the
polished chukka boot on Emmett Patterson's severed foot.
Green flies swirled and buzzed. "Doesn't look like he
planned on much work today."

A shorter, heavily muscled man stepped forward. His
arms hung down at his sides from rounded shoulders. He
reminded me of a gorilla. "He did that sometimes, Sergeant.
I mean, worked in his good clothes." His voice was high
and thin. I cringed. The voice and body didn't match.

"Who are you?" Howard frowned.

"Seldes. Tom Seldes. I'm the rackhouse foreman. I saw
Emmett this morning before he picked up the tractor. I
guess he was going to run the disc before the reception."