Murder and Moonshine: A Mystery (22 page)

When she didn’t respond, Beulah’s curiosity grew. “What on earth did Zeke say to you, Daisy?”

Ethan turned to Beulah. “Who’s Zeke?”

“He’s the bartender at this roadhouse everybody goes to. It’s called the General. We were there a couple of weeks ago and—”

Not waiting for her to finish, Daisy mumbled, “See you later.”

Both Ethan and Beulah shouted after her as she pushed open the screen door and jogged down the front steps, but Daisy didn’t stop. She headed straight for her car. She figured it was better that way. Beulah could flirt with Ethan as much as she wanted. Ethan could flirt back or read his files. And she would go talk to Zeke alone.

It was a clear night. The moon was nearly full, and the stars were large and bright. Daisy was grateful for it. Driving through rural southwestern Virginia wasn’t so easy after the sun went down. The roads were nearly all unlit, and the intermittent reflectors pasted on posts and mailboxes weren’t much help in navigating the snaking curves. It was dark out. Really dark. The kind of dark that made you stretch your eyes as wide as they would go like some nocturnal creature peering out from the inky depths of a cavern.

Daisy didn’t take much notice of the occasional vehicle that zoomed by her. No doubt they were all heading home, which was precisely what she would have preferred to have been doing. She was tired from the events of the long day and much more interested in a soft pillow than a crumbling roadhouse. There were still a few cars and trucks at the General when she arrived—spread out in the corners of the unpaved parking lot—but that didn’t surprise her. Somebody always left the place with somebody else. Either they wanted to share that soft pillow or one of them could no longer stand, let alone safely operate any machinery more complex than a toaster.

The bar was closed for the evening. Daisy was sure of that. The neon advertising signs were shut off, and the front door was locked with a thick metal bar across its middle. That meant she had to go around to the back of the building, which didn’t thrill her. There was only one orange security light on the premises, and it was at the opposite end of the parking lot, the farthest point from where she needed to go.

The instant Daisy stepped out of her car, she felt a warning prickle on the nape of her neck. Someone was there. Someone was watching her. She glanced around hastily but saw nothing. No person. No movement. Not even the shadow of a cat’s tail slinking behind the Dumpster. She took a deep breath as she walked across the gravel. It was probably just a patron trying to sleep off the evening’s enjoyments in the bed of his truck. A harmless drunk. No cause for concern.

Daisy had almost succeeded in stifling her anxiety when she caught the sound of a footstep. She froze and looked around once more. Still nothing. Not even a slight breeze. She tried to laugh at herself. Aunt Emily had made her paranoid. That was the problem. She was always prattling on about people lurking and spying and skulking around the neighborhood just waiting for an opportunity to prey on helpless females. It was silly. There wasn’t anyone lurking or spying or skulking around the General. And Daisy certainly wasn’t helpless.

All the same, she quickened her pace. She also found herself wishing that she were in possession of Aunt Emily’s shotgun. Nobody preyed on a female holding a double-barreled 20-gauge. There was another footstep. This time Daisy was positive. But she couldn’t tell what direction it came from. For a second she debated spinning around and sprinting back to her car. Then she shook her head. What good would it do? The owner of the footsteps might be expecting her to do exactly that. It made more sense to keep going. She was almost there. Zeke was inside waiting for her. They would talk, and she would go back to the inn. That would be the end of it.

She turned the corner of the building. It was black behind the roadhouse. Solid black. Daisy couldn’t even make out the outline of the back door. But she knew that it was there somewhere. Over the years she had used it on more than one occasion, always to pick up Matt when he and Rick had been too intoxicated to crawl out the front. The footsteps were close now. They crunched over the gravel like plodding doom. With a fearful lump in her throat and her heart hammering at triple speed, Daisy ran her fingers along the pitted wall. The knob. The knob. Somewhere there had to be the knob for the door.

Suddenly the footsteps stopped. The last crunch was directly in front of her. At the same moment Daisy’s palm touched the knob. She turned it, and the door opened a few inches before a hand grabbed her arm. She responded by throwing her shoulder against the wall of the building, squashing the unwanted hand in the process. There was a rewarding yelp of pain.

“Damn it, Daisy! What the hell did you do that for?”

It was Ethan. Ethan’s voice and his face in the crack of light streaking out from the gap in the door.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Daisy hollered right back at him.

He shrugged. “I wanted a beer.”

CHAPTER

20

She stared at him, furious and relieved at the same time.

Ethan rubbed his aching hand. “You sure do pack a wallop for a little thing.”

It wasn’t enough of a compliment for Daisy to forget her fear from a minute earlier. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“I told you already. I told you before at the inn. I wanted a beer.”

“And you thought the best way of getting one was by stalking me through the countryside in the middle of the night and scaring the pants off me?”

He looked down at her legs and grinned. “Daisy, you’re wearing a skirt.”

If his hand had still been on her arm, she would have squashed it against the wall a second time.

The grin was replaced by a shrug. “You said you were going to the General. Beulah said the General was a bar. I thought I could tag along and get my beer.”

Daisy glanced around. “Did Beulah come with you?”

“Do you really think that would have been a good idea?”

She wasn’t sure what he meant by that remark, but she didn’t have the opportunity to ask him. Just then Zeke’s thin head appeared in the gap of the door.

“Hey, Daisy. I thought I heard ya out here.” His even thinner neck stretched out like an ostrich. “Who’s that ya talkin’ to?”

“I’m Special Age—”

“This is Ethan,” she cut him off briskly.

“Ethan?” Zeke echoed. “I never met no Ethan before. He a friend, Daisy?”

Was Ethan a friend? She didn’t quite know. He acted like a friend. Sort of. Sometimes. But could any agent from the ATF ever truly be a friend?

“Yes, I’m a friend,” Ethan answered when she didn’t.

“Hmm.” Zeke peered at him in the darkness.

“I came with Daisy.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m staying at the Tosh Inn.”

Zeke turned to Daisy. His voice was thick with suspicion. “What’s he want?”

She was wondering the same thing. What did Ethan want? But there was no point in debating it at this time of night standing in the shadows behind the General. They might as well go in and sit down. Ethan included.

“Don’t worry about him, Zeke,” Daisy said. “You needed to talk to me?”

“Not out here.” His eyes darted about nervously, and he waved for her to enter.

It wasn’t that much brighter inside the roadhouse than it was outside. The lights were all turned down. Without them, Daisy couldn’t see the water stains on the walls or ceiling. She could still smell the dampness though. It was like stepping through the door of a musty log cabin after a heavy rain. A couple of brass oil lamps were burning on the bar, and there was also one at a small tilting table. Zeke pointed to it.

“I lit that fer ya. Ya need anythin’ to wet yer whistle?”

“Not me. Thanks.” She added with a smirk, “But Ethan’s been looking for a beer all evening.”

Grunting in response, Zeke shuffled off toward the bar. Daisy sat down at the designated table with the dim lamp. Ethan followed her. His rickety wooden chair creaked precariously beneath him.

“This place is pretty old, huh?” he said.

Daisy chuckled. “What was your first clue? The moldering interior or the moldering exterior?”

“So why does everyone come here? Beulah told me it’s darn popular.”

“She’s right. It is popular. I think its age and sad state are exactly why people like it. They can wear what they want. They can talk how they want. They can be any way they want to be. There’s no pretense or ceremony. You come for a drink. Maybe a little company. Life is complicated enough. The General is real simple.”

Zeke returned with a beer bottle dangling from one hand and a glass filled with a generous three fingers’ worth of some mahogany liquid clutched in the other hand. He used his foot to pull out the chair across from Daisy and plopped himself down on it with a guttural groan.

“You okay?” she asked.

He answered with a halfhearted nod. “I ain’t young no more. That’s the problem. Parts hurt. Lots of ’em. My knees ’specially. Hips and elbows too. All the ol’ bones. People keep tellin’ me I gotta go see a quack. But what’s a quack gonna do fer me? Tell me I’m gonna die one day? I know it already. I see everybody else dyin’. We all gonna pass eventually. Some sooner, some later. I don’t need to pay good money to hear ’bout that.”

Daisy nodded back at him.

“Well, I surely don’t have to tell ya none ’bout quacks and them medical bills. Ya know fer yerself. Ya got yer poor momma.” Zeke set the beer on the table and slid it over in front of Ethan.

“Thank you,” he said courteously, picking up the bottle.

To Daisy’s amusement, before taking a drink Ethan examined the label from out of the corner of his eye to see what exactly Zeke had given him. But he was smart enough not to comment on it.

“So why did you want me to come here tonight, Zeke?” she prodded, figuring that if she didn’t get to the crux of the matter soon, she’d still be longing for her bed and soft pillow at dawn.

“I told ya on the phone—”

Breaking off, he swiveled in his seat to check that both the front and back doors of the roadhouse were shut tight. It gave Daisy a twinge of apprehension. Zeke was edgy, and he was never edgy. Normally he was about as calm and sluggish as a drowsy tortoise. But on this evening he acted much more like a jumpy hare, one who apparently thought he’d caught the whiff of a coyote prowling through the neighborhood.

“I told ya on the phone,” Zeke began again. “They were here.”

“City folks?” she said.

“Big-city folks.”

Ethan looked from Zeke to Daisy, then back again. “Big-city folks?”

He did an admirable job of not laughing, but she could see the hint of a smile tugging at his lips.

“Big-city folks,” Zeke confirmed in earnest, evidently ignoring the fact that Ethan was also a big-city folk.

“But you get people from the city in here all the time,” Daisy replied. “Big cities, little cities, and everything in between. Whoever happens to be driving by and decides to stop. What made these people different?”

“They were askin’ ’bout things.”

She gave a soft sigh. He had sounded so urgent when he called, like it was an emergency of some sort. Not that anybody had severed a limb or couldn’t rescue their baby from a burning building, but a Pittsylvania County crisis nonetheless. Clearly she had misunderstood.

“How did you know they were from the big city?” Ethan asked Zeke.

“By them shoes they was wearin’.”

This time Ethan didn’t restrain the smile. “Shoes?” He turned toward Daisy. “I seem to recall the two of us having a similar discussion once before.”

Her smile matched his. “I explained it to you at the diner. You can find out an awful lot about a man from his shoes.”

“I’m starting to learn that.”

“They were askin’ ’bout ol’ Fred,” Zeke said.

“Old Fred? Wait a minute—” Daisy’s smile faded. “Didn’t you tell me this already? When Beulah and I were in here a couple of weeks ago? You were talking about some folks from the big city who’d come through a couple of weeks before that. They were asking about people, including Fred Dickerson.”

“That’s right.” Zeke took a swig of the mahogany liquid in his glass.

“And Rick Balsam,” she went on. “They asked about him too, didn’t they? Didn’t you say something about them driving out to Rick and Bobby’s trailers in the backwoods?”

“I ain’t certain if they went. But they was talkin’ ’bout headin’ over that way.”

Daisy frowned at him in annoyance. “Zeke, why did I have to come here tonight when I already knew all of this?”

“Cuz they were askin’ ’bout Fox Hollow.”

“You didn’t mention the Fox Hollow part before.”

“They didn’t ask ’bout it before.”

She looked at him. In the short chair and poor lighting, Zeke appeared even more gaunt than usual. He gazed back at her with weary, sunken eyes. But Daisy knew that behind those eyes there sat an excellent judge of character and motives.

“You think something was wrong with them asking about Fox Hollow?” she said.

He sniffled. “Up to no good I tell ya.”

“What exactly did they want to know about the property?” Ethan inquired.

The weary, sunken eyes turned to him. “And what business exactly is it o’ yers?”

Ethan pulled out the black leather wallet from his shirt pocket and flipped it open to reveal his badge. “It’s my business since I’m investigating two deaths in relation to Fox Hollow. That makes it a matter of
official
business.”

Zeke barely blinked in response. Instead he took another swig of mahogany liquid.

“Ethan was sent here after they did an autopsy on Fred,” Daisy explained apologetically. “He followed me to the General tonight—”

“Ya don’t got to be sorry, Daisy. It ain’t yer fault he’s a durned revenooer.”

“I’m not a revenuer,” Ethan snapped. “I didn’t come to tax or confiscate anything. And I haven’t smashed a still or dumped a single pint of whiskey into the creek. So you can knock off the hillbilly attitude and quit pretending you hate the big bad government. We both know it’s a load of bullshit. You’re perfectly willing to take all kinds of money and benefits from the government when it suits you, let the government build your roads and hospitals and airports, and cry for government assistance the instant there’s some homegrown problem or natural disaster that affects you.”