Murder and Moonshine: A Mystery (2 page)

“B … Burger…” stuttered an unfamiliar voice.

Daisy’s mind instinctively clicked into waitress-mode. “With cheese and onions?” she replied, turning toward the new arrival. “Or bacon and egg?”

“Burger…”

The usual follow-up question regarding mustard versus mayonnaise vanished from Daisy’s lips the instant that she saw the man. He was stumbling across the tile floor toward her, swaying back and forth with his arms stretched out in front of him like a drunken zombie. He had on camel-colored farm coveralls, a black-and-white checkered flannel shirt underneath, and tall rubber farm boots. Based on his sparse white hair and long white beard, it was a safe bet that he was closer to seventy than fifty. Water ran in rivers from his eyes, and his mouth foamed profusely.

“Isn’t that old man Dickerson?” Rick said, rising from his booth.

Neither Hank nor Brenda responded. They were still staring and frozen in place like a pair of ice sculptures. Daisy could only shake her head. She hadn’t seen old man Dickerson in nearly a decade. But it could be him. The age was right. So was his general shape and size. And he was a farmer. Or at least he had been a farmer before becoming a recluse.

The man tried to wipe the foam from his mouth with his sleeve, but more foam appeared. There was so much of it that his lips were completely covered, and it began oozing over his chin and down his neck almost like runny shaving cream. As he staggered closer to Daisy, she saw that both the foam and the tears streaming from his eyes had a strange yellowish tint to them. She was pretty sure he was ill.

“I think we should call an ambulance,” she said.

“You’re right,” Brenda agreed, waking from her trance and reaching for the phone next to the cash register.

As she dialed, the man tried to speak. His jaw moved rapidly, and a string of incomprehensible syllables followed.

“What’s he saying?” Rick asked, coming over and standing next to Daisy.

She shook her head again. “I don’t know. I can’t understand him.” She looked at the man apologetically. “I’m sorry, but we don’t understand you.”

His watery, befuddled gaze switched from her to Rick, and his expression immediately changed. His face tightened, and his shoulders started to twitch. It was clear that he recognized Rick, but it wasn’t at all clear whether that recognition was good or bad. The man was definitely trying to get some point across though. The incomprehensible syllables rolling off his tongue increased both in speed and number. They were joined by two clenched, trembling fists.

“Maybe you should sit down?” Daisy suggested to him.

“That’s a good idea.” Rick pulled a stool from under the counter.

“Or how about lying down?” She gestured toward the booths. “And a glass of water? That might help.”

Before the man could take more than a step toward the proffered stool, his whole body began to shake. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, and the foam gushed from his mouth with an almost startling ferocity.

“Holy hell,” Rick muttered.

A moment later the shaking turned into violent convulsions. The man tumbled backward. He hit the floor with a loud, hard thwack. His mouth stopped foaming, and his limbs grew still. A tiny red trickle of blood crept down from his ear onto the tile.

“Is he—” Daisy stammered, horrified. “He’s not—”

“I think he might be,” Rick said.

Bobby came over and nudged the man’s leg with the toe of his boot. There was no response.

“That ain’t good,” he drawled.

“Should I check for a pulse?” Daisy started to reach down toward the man’s neck, but Rick hastily seized her wrist and pulled her back.

“Don’t!” he barked.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” she snapped in return.

“You don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Rick said. “And you don’t know what that stuff is coming out of his mouth and eyes. You shouldn’t touch it. Not when he’s already down and there’s nothing you can do to help.”

Twisting her arm free, Daisy turned to Brenda questioningly.

“I think he’s right,” she replied with a mournful sigh. “Better to wait for the professionals, Ducky. They’ll be here in a minute.”

The scream of a siren could be heard off in the distance. Closer by, car tires crunched over the gravel in the parking lot.

“One of us should get outside,” Brenda went on. “Make sure no one comes in. We don’t want anybody to see this, especially not any little kids.”

Daisy nodded. “I’ll do it. What do you want me to tell them, Hank? Just that we’re temporarily closed? The gossips will start their wagging no matter what I say the second that ambulance arrives.”

When he didn’t answer, she looked over at him and was astounded to find Hank leaning casually against the counter, calmly feeding himself from the baking dish as though nothing remotely out of the ordinary had happened only a minute earlier and there was no man lying motionless on his diner floor. He raised his placid gaze to Brenda, the barest hint of a smile tugging at his lips.

“You know, you’re right about this cobbler. Daisy’s really outdone herself this time.”

CHAPTER

2

Tasty cobbler or not, Daisy didn’t exaggerate the speed with which the gossip started. Or spread. It moved with the same swiftness as a swarm of cicadas. And she knew that it would be just as dense, blanketing the neighborhood with no house, cabin, or trailer left untouched. The ambulance hadn’t even shut off its blaring siren before she saw the first whisper pass from eager lip to awaiting ear amidst the rapidly growing group of onlookers in the diner’s parking lot. It wasn’t difficult to guess what they were saying. There had been an incident at H & P’s. The Glade Hill Fire & Rescue Squad was on the scene. They weren’t letting anyone in. And so far, no one had come out.

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 sheriff 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.”