Murder and Moonshine: A Mystery (8 page)

“This is good. Stop here.”

They had reached the center of the clearing. It wasn’t a pretty clearing with a white picket fence and manicured shrubs. It was a large, oval, man-made break in the forest filled with plenty of stumps and boulders. At some point gravel had been dumped there to make a sort of entranceway, but it had washed and worn away over the years, and now the ground was mostly red clay mixed with scruffy weeds.

Rick and Bobby’s trailers stood side by side at the far end of the clearing. On first approach a stranger could have easily thought they were abandoned. There was no potted plant on the steps, no lawn chair sitting out front, not even a bag of trash waiting to be taken to the dump. Both trailers were ancient and covered in flaking rust. Their formerly white paint had turned dingy gray. The windows were streaked with dirt, and the screens were shredded. It all looked terribly tattered and pathetically forlorn.

“He’s got plenty of money to buy Fox Hollow,” Daisy mumbled crossly, “but he still won’t spend a nickel to fix up this place.”

“What was that?” Sue said, parking the ambulance.

“Nothing. Ready?” She took a deep breath. She wasn’t any more eager to climb out of the vehicle than Sue, although for an entirely different reason. Sue dreaded the dogs. Daisy dreaded their owners.

“Ready?” Sue echoed apprehensively, gazing at the growling collection of canines awaiting her. “I don’t know. You’re sure it’s all bark and not bite?”

“Positive. Let me go first, and they’ll come around to my side. When I’ve got their attention with the ham, then you can go. They probably won’t even notice you once they’ve started in on the bones.”

“Which trailer is Rick’s?” Sue asked.

“The one on the right.” Daisy furrowed her brow as she looked back and forth between the two dented doors. There was no sign of either Rick or Bobby. “It’s strange they haven’t come out yet. Their trucks are both here.” She gestured at the two pickups parked toward the left in between a fire pit and a scorched charcoal grill.

“Maybe I should keep the engine running,” Sue said, “just in case they don’t answer and we have to sprint back to the ambulance to avoid getting mangled.”

“I think we’ll be okay.” Daisy suppressed a chuckle. For a robust woman, both in girth and personality, Sue was awfully timid when it came to pooches. Maybe she had gotten a set of razor teeth locked into her thigh once in the past and was now doubly shy. “Well, wish me luck.”

Sue watched as Daisy scooped up her bag of bones and opened the door. As predicted, all the dogs immediately galloped around to her side. Before her feet even touched the ground, she was enveloped in a giant woofing, whining, yapping heap of fur and paws. Sue may have cringed in anticipation of the first savage bite, but it didn’t come. Tails were wagging. Tongues were drooling. Daisy acknowledged them in their self-determined pecking order. She scratched the thick backs of the rottweilers first, then rubbed the broad heads of the blueticks. The black-and-tan coonhounds came last, pushing their muzzles against her for their share of the affection. Finally she doled out the ham bones, smartly scattering them away from the ambulance and the trailers.

“Okey-dokey,” she called to Sue when she had finished. “All clear.”

Sue was visibly impressed. “You’re like a dog sorcerer.”

Daisy laughed and shook her head. “No. It’s just basic doggie hierarchy. I’ve met Captain and Morgan before, so they know my scent. They’re the alphas. If they accept you, all the rest will too. Pack mentality. And a bit of meat bribery never hurts.”

While Sue started toward the trailers, Daisy returned to the ambulance and pulled out a second bag.

“More bones?” Sue asked.

“No. This is for the boys. Bribery in the form of baked goods.”

It was Sue’s turn to laugh. “What’s the old saying? The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?”

Daisy grinned. “Hey, you want cooperation. This is the best way I know to get Rick and Bobby to cooperate.”

“I’ll have to remember that.” Sue stopped for a moment and listened. “Gosh, it’s awfully nice in here when it’s quiet, isn’t it?”

In comparison to their former hullabaloo, the dogs were now silent, only breaking into an occasional tussle over an unclaimed bone. A soft Appalachian breeze rustled the crowns of the pines. A woodpecker pounded the bark in search of an insect. On some distant branch a squirrel chattered.

“This is the best part of not having any neighbors,” Daisy remarked. “No car doors slamming. No lawn mowers firing up first thing Saturday morning. Not having to hear everybody else’s conversation out on the patio.”

“There sure is something to be said for isolation,” Sue agreed. “But this,” she wrinkled her nose at the ramshackle trailers, “is a little too isolated for my taste.”

“If they ever try to sell ’em, I know the perfect way to phrase the advertisement.
Peaceful rural retreat. Needs minor work.
”

“That’s hilarious!” Sue chortled. “The poor girl who marries either of them one day. She’s going to have her hands full.”

“Brenda always says the same thing.”

But Daisy knew that it wasn’t entirely true anymore, at least not in regard to the elder brother and the family homestead. Now Rick and a future Mrs. Balsam could move to Fox Hollow and ruin the beautiful old farmhouse there, which would be a thousand times worse than ruining a pair of inconsequential trailers here. It was a depressing thought.

Sue climbed the two short steps to Rick’s battered door. She squinted at it, then turned to Daisy, who was a couple of paces behind her. “I don’t see a bell. Should I just knock?” She leaned her ear close to the peeling paint. “I don’t hear anything inside. Maybe he—”

Her jaw froze midsentence. Through the tranquil stillness came the unmistakable sound of a bolt driving a round into the chamber of a rifle.

CHAPTER

7

Like a doe catching the crack of a twig beneath the paw of an approaching mountain lion, Sue’s body went rigid. Only her eyes moved. They dashed from Daisy to Rick’s door to the scraggy bushes behind the trailer. Daisy studied the bushes too. She saw nothing. No bending branch. No track in the dirt. Not even a fluttering leaf. She knew they had to be there, concealed somewhere in the undergrowth. But she couldn’t find them, neither the rifle nor the man who was presumably holding it.

“Daisy—” Sue choked in a barely audible whisper.

Daisy understood her panic. There was a very specific feeling of fright that came with a gun pointed in your direction, visible or not. It was a basic, instinctive desire to survive. And it wasn’t lessened in the least by the fact that one half of your brain realized you probably wouldn’t actually be shot. The other half of your brain took priority and screamed at you to flee.

“Where…” Sue stammered. “I don’t—”

With a frown and slight shake of her head, Daisy silenced her. Logic told her that it had to be one or both of the Balsam brothers hidden in the bushes. The most likely scenario was that they had been out in the forest when she and Sue first arrived. They might have heard the ambulance engine and its tires on the gravel. They would have definitely heard the dogs. And they had come home to investigate. They had caught voices and seen people wandering around their trailers, except they didn’t catch or see enough to identify them. Which meant that she had better identify herself. And quick. Daisy wasn’t sure how Rick and Bobby felt about Sue dropping in unannounced for a visit, but she was pretty confident that they wouldn’t knowingly play target practice with her.

“It’s me,” she cried, raising her hands in half-mocking surrender. “Daisy. Not a stranger, government agent, or unwanted solicitor. Just lil’ ol’ Daisy McGovern. Your favorite waitress over at H & P’s.”

Sticks snapped, and a shrub parted. A figure appeared dressed in full camouflage. Hat, shirt, vest, gloves, pants, and boots. Even his face was painted.

“Aw hell, Daisy,” he complained. “I almost took your leg clean off.”

Daisy heaved a sigh of relief and lowered her arms. It was Bobby, and he sounded sober. That was especially good considering he had a loaded rifle slung over his back. Sue exhaled so hard, she coughed.

Bobby immediately paused. “Who’s that with you, Daisy?”

“Sue,” she answered hastily. “Sue Lowell. We came in her ambulance.”

“Ambulance? I didn’t hear no siren. What’d Rick do? Lop off his hand with that new butchering knife?”

Sue grimaced.

“It isn’t an emergency,” Daisy explained. “And we haven’t seen Rick. He’s not with you?” She glanced over at the shrub from which Bobby had emerged to see if his brother had secreted himself there too.

“Naw. I went out alone.”

“Well, he’s the reason we drove all the way up here, so do you know if he’s around somewhere?”

“Ain’t you tried the door?” Bobby motioned toward Sue standing in front of Rick’s trailer.

“I was just about to knock.” Sue raised a timorous fist and rapped the warped aluminum frame gently.

Bobby let out a snort. “How the jiminy is he gonna hear that? I’ll get him for ya.” He pulled the large-bore rifle from his back and let a shot rip into the woods with a sharp, startling crack.

“Bobby—” Daisy began critically.

“Relax. We got no neighbors. Ain’t nobody gonna get nicked.”

Sue gazed curiously at the rifle, which matched Bobby’s clothing in its perfect camouflage of olive green, gray, and neutral beige undertones. “Did you paint it to look like that?”

“Don’t know much about huntin’, eh?” he chortled. “You buy ’em this way. They make ’em for all different terrains. Snow, woods, water. This one’s supposed to look like real trees. It’s for goin’ after turkey.”

“It’s the middle of summer,” Daisy said. “Turkey season doesn’t open until October.”

“I’m just practicin’,” Bobby replied with a suspiciously innocent grin.

“With a rifle? Last time I checked, turkey hunting’s usually done with a shotgun.”

The grin turned sheepish.

Daisy rolled her eyes at him. He was obviously up to something bad, but in her experience the only one who ever got hurt in all of Bobby’s ill-advised and ill-fated schemes was himself, so she let it drop.

“There’s noise inside.” Sue backed swiftly down the steps and away from the trailer. “I think he heard us.”

“Took him long enough,” Bobby muttered, massaging the stock of his rifle.

Sue went over and stood next to Daisy. She knew why. It wasn’t the gun itself. Sue was used to guns. Her husband was the Pittsylvania County sheriff after all. He carried a pistol most of the time. But George Lowell had been properly trained in the use of firearms, and he was emotionally stable. Whether the same could be said for the Balsam brothers was debatable.

A lock clicked, and the screen door flew open.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! How many times have I told you not to do that, Bobby? You don’t shoot at a rustle in the bushes. And if you fire a warning shot, it’s always,
always
into the ground.
Never
the trees! You don’t know who could be out there. One of those high-powered cartridges you’re using can go over a mile.”

“I tried to tell him,” Daisy said.

Rick gaped at her. She couldn’t remember when she had last seen him so stunned. Fred Dickerson’s collapse on the floor of the diner had certainly surprised him, but he hadn’t looked half as shocked then as he did now. It was like she had metamorphosed into a mermaid right before his eyes and was lying on the clay in her clam shells, flapping her tail.

“What—” he garbled, his jaw sagging so low that it wasn’t fully operational. “What are you—”

“What am I doing here?” she finished for him. “I came with Sue. She needs to talk to you.”

Turning to her in anticipation, Daisy assumed that Sue would take full advantage of the introduction and jump straight into the meat of the matter. But she was just as speechless as Rick, although rather obviously for a different reason. If Rick hadn’t expected to see Daisy standing in front of his trailer, then Sue hadn’t expected Rick to come out of that trailer half-naked.

“Gah,” was all she managed to say.

It took some effort on Daisy’s part not to laugh. Sue was quite evidently admiring a view that her darling portly George didn’t provide. It was a good view. That was an unarguable fact. Richard Balsam was tall and tan and lean and muscular. It wasn’t anything new to Daisy. She had seen him shirtless before—as he was now—wearing nothing but an old torn pair of athletic shorts. He had a pretty body and a pretty face, and as a result, girls of all ages tended to throw themselves at him. But Daisy was not one of them.

She walked over to Bobby and handed him the bag of sweet treats that she had brought along from the diner. “Wanna cookie?”

Bobby had the same attention span as his hounds. He promptly tossed his rifle to the ground and stuck his head in the bag like it was a feed trough with a fresh load of slop. Daisy was about to tell Rick that he better act fast if he had any interest in obtaining his share of the goodies, but she was interrupted by a breathy giggle.

“Did somebody say cookie?”

Daisy spun back toward the trailer. A woman was standing in the open doorway next to Rick. She was in her early twenties with big hair and big teeth. Her clothing was the opposite size. She wore a cutoff pink tank top and pink polka-dot bikini underwear. The sight of her broke Sue out of her admiring trance.

“Well,” she snickered to Daisy, “I guess now we know why he didn’t hear the dogs barking.”

The breathy giggle repeated itself. “We heard the dogs, didn’t we, Rick?” The pink tank top rubbed up close against his side. “But we were right in the middle, weren’t we? We didn’t want to stop.”

“Lovely.” Daisy wrinkled her nose in revulsion. “Thank you for sharing that.”

“Jealous, darlin’?” Rick drawled. The appearance of his female companion had snapped him out of his stupor too, and he immediately returned to his usual smug self.

“Oh yes,” Daisy retorted dryly. “I’m terribly jealous.”

“You’re welcome in my bed anytime.”

“By the looks of it, your bed is already full.”