Murder and Moonshine: A Mystery (4 page)

Aunt Emily reached over to her needlepoint bag sitting on one of the empty rockers and began rummaging around inside. “They’ve taken all the phlox. There’s nothing left but a bit of stalk. Every last leaf is gone, not to mention the blossoms.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Daisy said, trying to be tactful. “But really, Aunt Emily, do you have to start shooting in the middle of the day? It’s not as if the deer are eating anything now. And if you keep firing willy-nilly you could actually hit someone.”

“So much the better. If they’re out there lurking, I hope to hit ’em. Serves ’em right for spying on us.”

Daisy and Beulah looked at each other and sighed.

“Nobody’s lurking,” Daisy argued.

“Nobody’s spying,” Beulah added.

“They could be,” Aunt Emily retorted decisively.

They sighed again. It was a useless debate, one that they would never win. Not with Aunt Emily.

“Found ’em!” She pulled a box of shells from the needlepoint bag. “And you’re just in time, girls.” She dropped two new shells into the breech and snapped it shut.

“Just in time for what?” Daisy asked hesitantly.

“Just in time to see me frighten the molasses out of whatever’s hiding in that holly back there.”

“You mean the holly next to the barn?” Beulah squawked.

“Surely.”

“But that’s got to be at least a hundred yards!”

“I reckon so.”

“You’re going to nick one of the horses,” Daisy said.

“Rubbish.” Aunt Emily raised the double-barreled 20-gauge to her shoulder. “I’ve been shooting since before you girls were even a gleam in your daddy’s eye. And shooting good, I might add.”

“Well, if we end up having to fetch the vet,” Daisy replied tartly, pulling a rocker next to her momma and taking a seat, “don’t expect us to make up some ludicrous story like last time. And I’m not fibbing to Sheriff Lowell about it either. He’s got enough going on with the diner today.”

Aunt Emily swiveled on her heel. “That’s right. The diner. I was meaning to ask you about that, Ducky.”

“Uh, Aunt Emily—” Beulah stammered, shrinking from the business end of the Remington that was now staring her in the face.

“Oh. Yes.” She lowered the gun. “Sorry about that, dear.”

Both Daisy and her momma chuckled under their breath. Emily Tosh had a gift for being sharp as a tack one second and scatterbrained as a day-old chick the next.

“So about the diner,” Aunt Emily said to Daisy, leaning her precious pet against the porch railing. “What was all the commotion?”

“There was a problem at the diner?” Lucy immediately asked her daughter.

Daisy hesitated, debating what to say. Evidently Beulah and Aunt Emily hadn’t told her momma about the ambulance or police cars, and she appreciated it. She didn’t want her worried and upset, especially not needlessly. The doctors had made it very clear that extra stress should be avoided at all cost.

Lucy’s smile faded to a frown. “You’re not having trouble with Hank, are you? Or Brenda?”

“No, of course not. They’re great.” Daisy shrugged, more to herself than the others. She couldn’t think of any reason why the news of old man Dickerson’s passing would cause her momma undue stress. “It’s Fred Dickerson. He—”

“Fred Dickerson?” she interjected. “Is he still living around here?”

“That’s what I said,” Beulah remarked, reclining on the porch swing.

“If he is, I’m surprised to hear it,” Aunt Emily returned. “I always figured Hank took care of him long ago.”

“What do you mean?” Daisy asked.

“What do you think I mean?” she answered with a small smirk. “I’m talking about Hank killing Fred and dumping his body somewhere.”

Beulah gasped. Daisy stared.

Aunt Emily clucked her tongue in amusement. “Oh, girls. Don’t look at me like that. You’re not two toddlers running around with your blankies and pacifiers anymore. This is real life. And real life has consequences.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Lucy mumbled.

Daisy turned to her momma with a gaping mouth. She knew firsthand that life had consequences, and as far as she was concerned, those consequences were all too frequently unpleasant. But life’s consequences or not, she was dumbfounded that Aunt Emily could talk so cavalierly about Hank murdering Fred. And she was even more dumbfounded that her momma didn’t appear to be the least bit shaken by it.

“You were saying something about Fred, Ducky?” Aunt Emily reminded her.

“I … He…” It took Daisy a moment to pick up her jaw off the porch. “Fred Dickerson is dead.”

“You’re sure?” her momma asked her.

She nodded.

“When did it happen?” Aunt Emily said.

“This morning. At the diner.”

Lucy and Emily looked at each other.

“Well, that’s another chapter ended.” Aunt Emily exhaled, closing the box of shells with firmness and tucking it back into her embroidery bag.

“It’s about time too,” Lucy agreed.

“Was it poison?” Aunt Emily wondered.

“Poison!” Beulah cried.

“Yes, dear.” Aunt Emily shook her well-coiffured head. “How else would Hank do it at the diner? Poison is the most logical choice. He’s the chef, after all. A sprinkle of cyanide in Fred’s hash browns. A dash of drain cleaner in his tomato soup.”

Beulah clutched her stomach with a nauseated expression that clearly stated she wouldn’t ever be able to eat another one of Aunt Emily’s home-cooked dinners.

“Now if it hadn’t been at the diner,” she went on, picking up her gun and wiping a smudge of grease from the stock with her thumb, “I would have guessed stabbing. Hank’s always been handy with a knife. Tool of the trade, I suppose. But then they’d never have found the body. And you saw the body, didn’t you, Ducky?”

Daisy sputtered out a garbled affirmative.

“That’s too bad,” Aunt Emily said. “It’s too bad Hank didn’t have time to get rid of it. It’s so easy to dispose of a body in these parts. You don’t even have to bury it. Just throw it out in the middle of the woods. Ashes to ashes and all that. The only worry you have is a hunter stumbling across it or somebody’s dog going digging and dragging. But you can avoid that if you go deep enough on a nice quiet posted property. No hunting allowed and too far off the road for anything to be running around sniffing that’s not feral.”

Beulah blinked at Daisy. Daisy blinked back at her. It wasn’t every day that they got instructions on how best to hide a corpse in the countryside.

Finally Daisy managed to say, “But Hank didn’t kill Fred.”

Aunt Emily stopped cleaning the Remington. “He didn’t?”

“No. Fred came in, had some sort of a stroke or seizure, and then collapsed. He didn’t eat anything.”

“Huh. That’s interesting. So it might not have been poison then.”

“They don’t know what it was,” Daisy told her. “Sue did think it was a little strange, so she had him taken to Danville for an examination—or autopsy—or whatever it is officially. And Sheriff Lowell called in the Danville forensics team.”

“Even more interesting.” Aunt Emily rubbed her palms together gleefully. “Hank planned better than I gave him credit for.”

With a loud snort, Beulah threw up her arms in frustration. “You’re talking nonsense, Aunt Emily. Absolute nonsense! Poison? Stabbing? Dumping a body in the middle of the woods? I think you’re the one who’s eaten some bad hash browns and tomato soup. Because everything you’re saying is just nuts.”

“And Hank!” Daisy exclaimed, in full accord with Beulah. “Hank’s been cooking at H & P’s since I was a baby. He’s never made a single person sick. At least not intentionally. Why would he want to hurt Fred Dickerson? It makes no sense. Nobody’s seen the man in ages. Everyone’s first question today was whether he even still lived around here. So if Fred hasn’t had contact with anybody, why would anybody—”

Her words fell away as it suddenly occurred to Daisy that maybe she was wrong. She hadn’t seen Fred Dickerson in years. Neither had Brenda or Sheriff Lowell. Rick had initially guessed that the ill man stumbling about the diner might be him, and she had agreed. But it was Hank who had positively identified him. And he did it without any deliberation, even with Fred’s long white beard and the foam covering his mouth and the fact that he didn’t utter more than a couple of syllables. Which made it seem awfully likely that Hank had seen Fred Dickerson much more recently than the rest of them.

“Ah,” Aunt Emily chortled, “the wheels are spinning, aren’t they, Ducky? You noticed something today, didn’t you? Something odd. Something that makes you think I may not be so out of my gourd after all.”

“No,” she protested. “I—”

Again she stopped. She remembered Hank’s strange lack of reaction. The rest of the group had been horrified at old man Dickerson’s collapse. Brenda had called the ambulance. Rick had tried to get a stool for him before he fell. Even the usually oblivious Bobby Balsam had turned queasy after Sue announced that he was dead. But not Hank. Hank had happily eaten peach cobbler and read the newspaper. The corpse lying on his diner floor might just as well have been a muddy sock someone had dropped.

“But—” Daisy frowned. “But why? There’s no reason.”

“Lucy?” Aunt Emily turned to Daisy’s momma.

She voiced no objection.

Aunt Emily looked back at Daisy. There was sympathy in her shrewd blue eyes—and also a hint of excitement—as though she didn’t want to hurt Daisy with what she told her but at the same time was eager to finally reveal a long-held secret.

“Frederick Dickerson,” she said, “was responsible for the death of your daddy.”

CHAPTER

4

“Are you sure you want to be here, Daisy?”

“You’ve asked me that three times already.”

“Yes, but—” Beulah looked at her anxiously.

Daisy lifted her bottle and took a long drink. The beer was cold and bitter. It felt good. Beulah didn’t need to be concerned. The crumbling old roadhouse was a good place to be. It was known fondly throughout Pittsylvania County as the General. The true origin of the establishment’s name was a long-standing local mystery, but there was plenty of speculation on the subject, the most popular theory being that it was a tribute to Robert E. Lee. There was no question that the building and most of its contents could have easily dated back to the War for Southern Independence. The primitive wooden chairs were short and rickety. The tilting wooden tables were etched with countless signatures and doodles. And everything was water stained. The leaky wooden walls. The cracked wooden floorboards. Even the beamed ceiling. The whole place smelled like damp, musty, smoldering firewood, but in a strangely appealing way.

The General didn’t offer much. No exotic drinks in neon colors. No pretty foods with fancy foreign names. There was beer—domestic only, of course. There were hot dogs—spinning ceaselessly under a red heat lamp. And there were three aged pool tables—all with a great deal of scratched felt. No one would have ever claimed that there was anything hip or trendy about the General. But it served the inhabitants of the neighborhood well. There they could sit, drink, and escape the cold, cruel world outside, if only for a little while. And that was exactly what Daisy needed.

Beulah lowered her voice. “After what Aunt Emily said—”

“Sometimes Aunt Emily is a few apples short of a bushel.”

“I know. There’s no doubt about that. Except—”

“Okay. I’ll be honest.” Daisy took another swig from her bottle, then she met Beulah’s earnest gaze. “What she said did surprise me. Only it’s ancient history. Or at least it should be ancient history. That was four years ago. Almost five now. It was a terrible, terrible accident.” She swallowed hard, forcing down the thick lump that surfaced whenever she had to utter the horrible words. “My daddy died. Matt’s daddy died. But it was an
accident
. I don’t know how Fred Dickerson could have possibly been involved. He wasn’t at Fox Hollow then. He wasn’t anywhere near Fox Hollow when it happened.”

Beulah nodded.

“The more I think about it,” her brow furrowed, “the more irritated I get. Aunt Emily shouldn’t be talking about the accident in front of my momma. She knows better. She knows how hard it’s been for her. She shouldn’t be dredging up all those nasty memories.”

“She shouldn’t,” Beulah agreed.

“And she shouldn’t be talking about Hank that way either,” Daisy went on with some vigor. “Hank Fitz was my daddy’s best friend. They went through Vietnam together. They started H & P’s. Hank did everything he could for us when my daddy died. He gave my momma all the money he had, even though it wasn’t a lot. The diner’s never brought in much. And he gave me a job when I had to be close by after Matt left and my momma got sick. Hank may be as sulky and tough as a grizzly, but he’s been like a guardian angel to us, and I wish Aunt Emily wouldn’t say such ridiculous things about him. Poison and murder! It’s so disrespectful. Frankly, I’m surprised my momma didn’t defend him more.”

“She was probably just as stunned as we were,” Beulah suggested.

“I guess.”

“But in a way—now don’t get mad at me for saying this, Daisy—Aunt Emily wasn’t really disrespectful. She didn’t accuse Hank of being a cold-blooded killer. According to her, if he did anything to Fred Dickerson, it’s only because Fred did something to your daddy. She’s talking old-school, biblical-style vengeance. Eye for an eye.”

Daisy sighed. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about any of it. It had been such a strange, surreal day. Everything seemed topsy-turvy. And she was so painfully tired. Far too tired to think any more about it tonight. Too tired to care much at all. Exhaustion had a remarkable way of deadening even the most poignant emotions.

There was an unexpected hand on her shoulder, and she jumped slightly.

“I’m sorry, Daisy. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She turned in her seat and found a heavy-set man with a thick shock of curly silver hair standing next to her. Daisy suppressed a chuckle. It was Carlton Waters. He was a regular customer at H & P’s. Friendly, polite, and a consistently mediocre tipper. Brenda called him the wet poodle. That was how his hair looked. Like a wet poodle had taken up residence on the top of his head.