Death in the Distillery (28 page)

I hesitated, but the nudge of his automatic sent me up
the stairs. "I figured it all out, Jackson. Except one thing.
The weapon. After you hit Patterson, you climbed up the
tree and made your way back to the second floor window.
A limb punched a hole in your cheek. That was the purpose
of the Band Aid. My only question is what did you do with
the club?"

His voice carried a lilt of amusement. "All of you walked
right past it. In fact, some helpful soul even placed it back
on the stack of logs."

I grimaced. I remembered that morning on the way to
the distillery, I found a log of firewood on the ground and
tossed it back on the stack. I was the helpful soul.

We reached the walkway at the top of the stairs. I hesitated. He tilted the muzzle. "Over to the railing." At the same time, he flipped a switch, and with a deep humming
groan, the eighty-foot corkscrews began turning, their six
blades meshing. By the time the blades pushed a body
eighty feet, nothing would be left but a bloody smear.

My brain raced. I glanced at the Saladin Box below. My
only chance was to leap beyond the bay, almost twenty feet.

Suddenly, the door below slammed open. Huey staggered inside followed by a gust of rain.

Jackson shouted. "What the-"

Huey jerked his head up and in the same motion fired at
Jackson, but the Master Distiller, Emeritus was a second
faster. His slug spun Huey around, but that gave me the
time I needed.

Lowering my head, I charged the taller man.

He spun back and fired just as I hit him. A powerful
blow struck my side, throwing me off balance, but with
one hand, I clung to Jackson, pulling him with me, at the
same time scrabbling for his gun with the other. I grabbed
his wrist and hung on like a turtle with his head cut off.

Grappling and biting, we rolled along the walkway. He
tried to jam his knee in my groin, and I tried punching him
in his temple. A numbness spread down my side into my
leg.

,.You cheap ..." he muttered. "I'll ..."

I butted him in the nose with my head and grabbed his
wrist with both hands, at the same time, rolling him over
and frantically slamming his hand against the iron walkway
in a desperate effort to break his grip on the automatic.

In the next instant, he cursed, but the handgun clattered
across the walkway and fell into the Saladin Box below. I
was straddling his waist. Abruptly, I sat up and busted him
between the eyes with my fist.

He caught me on the side of the head. Stars exploded,
and my head slammed against the iron floor. I felt myself
falling into a deep abyss.

I fought against the unconsciousness threatening me. If
I passed out, I was dead. Groggily, I staggered to my feet,
using the railing to steady my swaying body.

"You low-class hick," he growled, leaning forward at the
waist, chest heaving, fists clenched. "I'm going to enjoy
watching you die." He took a step toward me.

The wound in my side began burning, the pain radiating
through my torso. I clutched the wound, hoping to ease the
throbbing, but I kept my eyes on Jackson. He was desperate. He had nothing to lose. He had to kill me.

A cold determination settled over me. I was weak. I
didn't know how long I could last, but whatever he got
wasn't going to come easy. "Get on with it," I gasped.

With a maniacal gleam in his eyes, he lunged, and I
swung a wicked uppercut, catching him flush on the chin
and spinning him around. His veins must have been pumping nothing but adrenaline for Jackson bounced off the wall
and leaped at me, fingers extended, all in one motion.

I screamed in pain as he drove them into my eyes. I
grabbed him around the waist and slung him into the railing. Quickly, I backed away, blinking my eyes in a desperate effort to focus. My numbed leg threatened to fold
on me.

Jackson snarled like an animal. He was a blur stalking
toward me. With a shout, he leaped. "You're a dead man,
Boudreaux!"

"Not yet." I leaned back against the wall for balance and
kicked at him, catching him right in the groin.

He cried out in pain and doubled over, clutching his
groin. He hit on the walkway and rolled back and forth
violently in agony.

I blinked again, and when he came into focus, I shouted.
"Jackson! Stop rolling! Don't ..." I was too late. Alonzo
Jackson, with a shriek of terror, rolled off the walkway into
the Saladin Box.

Staggering to my feet, I stumbled the length of the walkway to the cutoff switch, falling half-a-dozen times before
I reached it. The groaning corkscrews ground to a halt.

My legs gave way, and I sagged to the walkway.

I lost track of time. Somehow, I made it down the stairs
to Huey, who was still alive, despite eating two slugs. I pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called Danny. I
remember looking down at Huey when I clicked off the
phone. He was grinning up at me.

The last thing that flickered through my mind was the
field day Ben Howard and his cops were going to have
with all this.

I awoke in my own bed. I lay motionless, gazing at the
ceiling and then around the bedroom, surprised to still be
alive. I turned my head on the pillow and saw Oscar in the
living room, still swimming in circles.

I tried to sit up, but the sharp pain in my side cautioned
me otherwise. I moaned and lay back, closing my eyes.

"Well, Tony boy. You decided to come back to us, huh?"

I opened my eyes. Danny was looking down at me, a
sandwich in one hand, a beer in the other, and a typical
lopsided Danny O'Banion grin on his face.

"Hey." That was all I could say.

"Hey, yourself. How you feeling?" He took a bite of
sandwich and washed it down with beer-Bud Lite, I noticed. I guess he didn't like my Old Milwaukee.

"How ... how'd I end up back here? What about-"

He held up the sandwich, silencing me. "Everything's
taken care of. Nothing for you to do or worry about."

I tried to focus my thoughts. He laughed at the contortions on my face, and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Just relax. I'll bring you up to date. First, you've made
yourself a number of very influential friends, who, naturally, do not wish their names to be spread around." He
paused while he took a huge bite from one corner of the
sandwich, chewed it up, gulped it down, and chugged a couple of swallows of beer. "But, you saved them money
and notoriety. The first they want, the second, they don't.
They won't forget you, Tony."

I managed to prop myself up on one elbow. Wincing, I
asked, "But, what about Huey, and Jackson?"

Danny took another bite of sandwich. "Huey's fine. He's
a rock. He told us what took place. We cleaned everything
up. Jackson, unfortunate accident. He stumbled and fell.
It'll have a couple of paragraphs on the back pages. We've
seen to that. The Voss girl? We sent her back to her father."

He saw the question on my face, so he quickly explained.
"We told him she had been in the morgue here, unidentified."

"For all those years?"

He gave me a look of innocence. "Go down and look at
the records. They're there for everyone and anyone to see."

I stared in disbelief at my old high school chum. I shook
my head, leaned back, and chuckled. "Jeez, Danny. Isn't
there anything you can't take care of?"

He polished off the sandwich and the rest of the beer.
"Not a thing." Then he belched. "By the way. Your boss,
Marty ... whatever his last name is, well, Marty said for
you to take a couple of days to heal the cuts you got when
the horse you were riding threw you into a barbed-wire
fence."

I shook my head in disbelief. They'd even changed the
way I got hurt. What next? "Oh, he did, did he?"

Danny laid his hand on my shoulder.

"He's not a bad guy, Danny. For a jerk."

We both laughed. Or, rather, he did. I grimaced at the
tenderness in my side. The wound from the barbed wire
sure hurt.

A frown wrinkled Danny's forehead. "I got a question,
Tony. How did you figure all that out? About Jackson and
the girl, I mean. That was some slick detective work."

I gave him a silly grin. It felt good having someone brag
on you, but the truth was, it was nothing but dogged perseverance. I shrugged. "Little things that didn't quite fit. A Band Aid on a simple razor cut for a week? More like a
limb punched a hole in his cheek. Then he claimed he
couldn't fire Patterson, yet Morrison herself told me she
never interfered. One of the two lied. No reason for her, so
it had to be him. That meant there had to be another reason
he didn't get rid of the guy. And then he said Patterson
was drunk that Sunday. There was no way he could have
known that."

"Somebody could have told him."

"Could have, but no one did. I asked. But what really
tripped me to the fact Jackson was lying was when he said
Voss was wearing a white blouse. That, and a bank account
that didn't match his income."

Danny's frown deepened. "But the girl was wearing a
white shirt when we took her out of the barrel."

"Yes, but not the first time. You see, when Jackson first
saw her, she had on a red blouse. He sent her to Seldes,
and that's when Seldes found her and Patterson going at it
like two rabbits. When Seldes refused her a job, she went
back to Jackson, but first she changed her shirt right in front
of poor old Tom Seldes."

I hesitated, thinking how simple it was now that I knew
all the details. "Jackson swore she never came back, but he
stated she wore a white shirt."

"I see." Danny's face lit up. "If she hadn't gone back to
him, there was no way he could have known she was wearing a white shirt."

I pointed my finger at him and winked. "Pow. You got
it. The other stuff ... well, the truth is, it came to light
because everything else was eliminated. But, I was sidetracked by the blow to the back of Patterson's head."

Danny frowned.

"The Medical Examiner's office said the blow appeared
to be delivered by a woman. That threw me until I realized
how difficult it would be to balance on a moving tractor
and swing a club at the same time. No way a man could
put his whole weight into the swing."

He shook his head and lit a cigarette. "Well, you done
good, chum. You done good."

"What about Cleyhorn?"

"You were right. He was going to skip the country. He
knew about the blackmail because Alonzo Jackson had borrowed from Cleyhorn to keep Patterson quiet. That gave
the shyster the idea about breaking the company's back and
making a fortune. Can you imagine the scandal? Body discovered in whiskey vat after ten years. Who wants to drink
Chalk Hills Bourbon after a body has been found pickled
in one of its casks?"

"The stock would have dropped to zero." I paused, uncertain if I should ask the next question. What the heck, I
told myself. They won't waste someone who saved them
millions. "Where is lawyer Cleyhorn now?"

The smile faded from his face. "Don't ask." He glanced
at Oscar. A wry grin twisted across his face. "Hey, why
not? You Catholic?"

"Yeah. Well, sort of. Why?"

"Nothing. I was just going to suggest if you were Catholic, you might make the sign of the cross whenever you
take the new exit ramp off three-sixty to Bee Tree Road."

All I could do was stare.

Danny winked. "How about a beer?"

My mouth was dry, but I had no desire for a beer. I
don't know if it was because of old Gus down at the Riverside Club, or the stress of my healing. "No, thanks. A
glass of water'll do."

He nodded. "I'll get you one, then you get some sleep.
That's the best thing for you."

I leaned back, wondering what my old man would have
to say about the job I had done. Probably find something
to sneer at. I shook my head. Who cared?

I closed my eyes. As I drifted off, I made a mental note
to send the snapshots back to Tom Seldes. Next, I'd call
Janice and promise her some blackened redfish and an exciting evening if she'd forgive me.

Then, like Danny had said a couple of days earlier, all
would be right with the world.