Murder and Moonshine: A Mystery
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Authors: Carol Miller
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For Manfred,
in loving memory
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
1
“You’ve outdone yourself with this cobbler, Ducky.”
“It’s the peaches,” Daisy explained, pulling out the used filters from a pair of worn coffeemakers. “Georgia Belle. I picked them up at the farmer’s market in Lynchburg.”
“Lynchburg? When on earth did you have time to go to Lynchburg? You’ve been working here every shift all week.”
“Tuesday.” Daisy leaned under the marred diner counter to retrieve a jumbo can of coffee grounds. “Tuesday morning. Don’t you remember? I left right after the early boys shoved off, and I came back just as the lunch rush kicked in.”
Brenda’s chewing slowed, and she gazed thoughtfully at the little bowl of cobbler in her cracked, peeling hands. “I remember you going, Ducky. But I don’t remember you saying it was Lynchburg you were going to.”
Daisy merely shrugged as she spooned a heap of grounds into two new filters.
“Did you talk to the doctors when you were there?” Brenda asked her.
“I did.”
“And?”
The shrug repeated itself.
Brenda took a fresh bite of cobbler before pressing the matter. “What did the doctors say about your momma, Ducky?”
“The same thing they always say. The same thing they’ve been saying for the last four years.
They don’t know. They can only guess.
”
“So far their guesses have been about as good as Hank’s chili.”
Daisy responded with a rueful smile.
“I heard that!” was the angry roar that followed through the open door leading to the kitchen.
Brenda laughed and Daisy’s smile widened as the owner of the roar appeared a moment later, his thick face creased and red from the vigor with which he had been scouring the grill.
“I heard that!” he shouted a second time. “There’s nothing wrong with my chili, Brenda. Not a damn thing!”
“There’s nothing much good about it either,” she replied crisply.
Hank growled as he wiped his grease-covered hands on the white grease-smeared apron wrapped around his almost equally grease-stained jeans. “Everybody loves my chili!”
“They love it so much,” Brenda returned, “nobody ever orders it.”
“People order it.”
“Only strangers passing through. And they never ask for a second helping.”
“H & P’s Diner has the best chili in the whole Commonwealth of Virginia,” Hank insisted stubbornly.
“H & P’s got the best chicken stew, the best potato salad and baked beans, and without a doubt”—Brenda nodded approvingly at Daisy—“the very best peach cobbler between Charleston, West Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina, but I’m afraid its chili is near inedible. Always has been, Hank. Since the day you and Paul first opened this place.”
“Paul always liked it.”
“Paul never liked it.”
Hank turned to Daisy for support. “Your pop liked my chili, didn’t he?”
Before Daisy could answer him, Brenda said, “He liked feeding it to the pigs out back maybe.”
Daisy sighed to herself as she poured a pot of cold water into the machines and clicked the red start button. It was far too early in the morning for a full-blown battle over the quality of Hank’s cooking. He and Brenda sparred frequently—sometimes even violently if flinging hush puppies and pickle spears was included in the discussion—but it was usually much later in the day. Not at six in the morning before the sun was up and the coffee had brewed.
“What’s the special today?” Daisy asked Hank, watching a pair of headlights turn from the road into the diner’s parking lot.
He and Brenda stopped squabbling long enough to look toward the front bank of windows, curiosity over the identity of the day’s first customer winning out over the continued debate regarding the value of H & P’s chili.
“Looks like the Balsam boys,” Brenda determined, squinting at the shadowy outline of a pickup truck in the gray light of the approaching dawn.
Daisy sighed again, more audibly this time.
Brenda nodded in agreement. “They’re always trouble, aren’t they, Ducky?”
“Trouble?” Hank looked back and forth between the two. “What do you mean by that? They’re just a couple of red-blooded country boys.”
“Red-blooded country boys who like to start fires, take target practice at anything that crawls, and cook up heaven-only-knows-what in those beat-up old trailers of theirs back there in the woods,” Brenda retorted with derision.
Hank shrugged. “They’re just kids being kids.”
“They ain’t no kids! That older one must be getting on thirty now. Isn’t that right, Ducky?”
“I went to school with both of them,” Daisy said. “Bobby was my year. So he’s twenty-seven like me. Rick is two years older.”
“That makes them getting on thirty,” Brenda crowed at Hank. “Thirty ain’t kids!”
Shrugging once more, Hank started back toward the kitchen. “So long as they pay their bill when they leave and don’t drive off other customers, I don’t care what they’re doing on their own dime or their own property.”
“You should care,” Brenda snapped. “They always bother poor Ducky.”
Hank swiveled on his heel. “Have they been bothering you, Daisy?”
“No more than usual,” she answered truthfully.
He frowned.
“And the usual is pretty bad! Every time they’re in here that worthless Rick is badgering her to go out with him.” Brenda wrinkled her pug nose indignantly. “As if she’d ever stoop that low. It’d be like a beautiful butterfly dating a stinking maggot.”
“Doesn’t he know you’re married?” Hank asked Daisy.
“Of course he knows. At one time he and Matt were even friends. They played football together in school. But Rick also knows Matt left me and—”
“Matt didn’t leave you,” Brenda interjected.
“He drove off one morning and never came home again,” Daisy returned dryly. “If that’s not leaving me, I don’t know what is.”
Brenda’s voice softened. “Oh but, Ducky—”
She was interrupted by the rusty bell strung up above the front door of the diner. It clanked as Richard and Robert Balsam pushed their way inside. They were wearing old faded T-shirts, even older and more faded jeans, along with muddy construction boots. Based on their wild eyes and boisterous demeanor, Daisy promptly concluded that neither one had slept a wink the night before. She wasn’t the least bit surprised. All the brothers ever managed to do was drink home brew and plink squirrels. Doing honest work for an honest paycheck and keeping sensible hours were utterly foreign concepts to them.
“G’morning all,” Bobby proclaimed brightly as he and Rick plopped themselves down in the nearest emerald-green vinyl booth.
Daisy rolled her eyes to Brenda and Hank, then swung around toward the brothers with the obligatory chirpy waitress smile. “And good morning to you. What’ll it be today, boys?”
Rick gave her a quick once-over and grinned appreciatively. “You’re looking mighty fine, Daisy McGovern.”
“What’ll it be?” she repeated, ignoring both the compliment and the accompanying seedy gaze.
“Waffles,” Bobby declared.
“With pecans?” Daisy asked.
He nodded. “And sausage.”
“Links or patties?”
“Uh, patties.”
“Coffee?”
Bobby shook his head. “Chocolate milk. A big glass.”
“For you?” Daisy looked at Rick.
“I’ll have a heapin’ platter of you, darlin’.”
She turned away without speaking, having learned long ago that ignoring Rick Balsam’s irritating and usually offensive flirtations was invariably the best course of action. Yelling, whining, or slapping his smirking cheek only egged him on, like a hungry pit bull catching a savory whiff of hamburger.
“With plenty of whipped cream and syrup,” Rick called after her salaciously.
“The poor girl who marries him one day,” Brenda mused, clucking her tongue as Daisy returned to the counter and gave Bobby’s order to Hank through the wide rectangular opening above the grill.
“I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,” Daisy replied, pulling the gallon jug of chocolate milk from the refrigerator.
“At least he tips well.”
“I’m not sure that makes it any better. Strippers get good tips too, don’t they? And I doubt it helps much with their dignity.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Brenda said, scooping a generous second serving of peach cobbler from the baking dish into her bowl.
“Dessert’s supposed to be for the
paying
customer,” Hank chastised her over the sizzle of sausage patties.
Brenda went right on scooping. “If it was pudding or sherbet, I’d agree with you, Hank. But it’s not. I’m telling you, this is the best cobbler I’ve ever tasted in my whole life.”
“Well, quit tasting so damn much of it,” he growled. “Or there won’t be any left for this afternoon when the old dames come in for their tea and cake.”
“You can give them doughnuts instead.”
Daisy didn’t catch Hank’s reply as she set a tall glass of chocolate milk in front of Bobby and a mug of steaming coffee in front of his brother.
“Cream as usual?” she asked Rick, depositing a handful of little plastic half-and-half containers on the table before he could answer.
“Thank ya, suga’,” he drawled at her.
“You want anything to eat with that?”
She raised a finger of warning at him as she said it. Rick cocked his head to one side and gave a roguish chortle.
“Just toast. Toast with jam. Strawberry if you got it.”
Daisy nodded and headed back to the counter once more. As she untied the bag of sandwich bread, the rusty bell strung up above the front door of the diner clanked for a second time that day. Sensing the onslaught of the typical morning whirlwind, she hollered to Hank, “Have you decided on the special yet?”
“Let’s make it hash. Corned beef hash with a side of—”
“With a side of what?” Daisy said, not hearing him over the whistle of the waffle maker.
Hank didn’t answer.
“What’s the side?” she asked again, with a touch of annoyance. Handling the early-morning crowd was tough enough without the so-called chef dragging his feet on the cooking end of the business.
There was still no answer.
“Hank!” Daisy snapped, raising her head from the toaster to give him a sour stare.
But when she saw his face above the grill, she discovered that it was he who was staring, a spatula frozen in one hand with a sausage patty half-flipped. Brenda was staring too, the spoon from her bowl of cobbler clattering to the floor. They were both staring at the door with an expression of absolute shock, as though a horrifying ghost from their past had suddenly decided to come floating through it. Except a ghost wouldn’t have shaken the bell in the process. And a ghost didn’t have thudding footsteps like the ones presently trudging toward the counter.