Bootlegger’s Daughter

by Margaret Maron

  A closed coffin seems somehow almost antisocial. Even where there are compelling reasons for it, as with Michael, there’s always a sense of something incomplete when one is confronted with nothing more than polished wood and a blanket of carnations and baby’s breath.

  Then the line moves again and now you are face-to-face with the immediate family.

  I have been to wakes of unloved men that were like Sunday afternoon socials where folks caught up on their visiting and almost forgot the reason they’d come together. I’ve been to wakes for well-loved matriarchs of large families and seen such gladness for release from long or painful illnesses that the wakes often turned into bittersweet celebrations of their lives. Tragic are the wakes for toddlers, more tragic still for children and youths cut down in the morning of their lives with all those shining possibilities consigned to the grave. If I never attend another funeral for a teenager killed in a car crash, it will be too soon.

  Until now though, Janie Whitehead’s was the only wake for a murdered person that I’d attended and if there was a pattern, it lay in the numb disbelief of the victim’s loved ones and in the low-voiced speculations of their friends.

  Denn’s presence exacerbated both.

  Yet people were tactful and kind. Michael’s two sisters and their husbands and three adolescent children were first in the family line beyond the coffin and they closed ranks around Denn as soon as we had found a pathway through the crush of mourners. Each sister squeezed his arm, each brother-in-law and Dr. Vickery gave him a firm handclasp, and even Mrs. Vickery held out her hands and lifted her ravaged face for a formal kiss. Then the sisters positioned themselves on each side of him, so as to minimize any remaining awkwardness.

  And I had not been wrong when I reminded Denn that many of these people were his friends, too. Most were firmly against homosexuality in theory. Most were also firmly against atheism, secular humanism, adultery, alcoholism, kleptomania, and a whole range of other things people did or were that deviated from the perceived norm; and that didn’t stop them from looking past all that if the person was basically decent and didn’t do whatever it was in the middle of the road and scare the mules.

  Michael and Denn had been liked for who they were and for their positive contributions to the community, and there were wreaths from both the volunteer fire department and the Possum Creek Players to prove it.

  Nevertheless, I could feel an unusual electricity in the air, and I’m sure more than one person wondered when they murmured condolences and shook Denn’s hand why Denn wasn’t in jail or at least under heavy bond.

  When I had been through the line and signed the register, I went down the rear hall to the business office and used their phone to call Dwight.

  “A what?” he asked.

  Patiently I described the tapestry wall hanging as Denn had described it to me.

  “No,” said Dwight. “There was nothing like that in the car. I’ll get Fletcher to make a sketch of it tomorrow and we’ll keep an eye out for it.”

  23 this ain’t my first rodeo

  The next hour passed rapidly. The large outer hall ran the entire width of the funeral home and people who had already paid their respects to the family either lingered there to speak with those still waiting on line to go in, or, as I had done, broke off into quiet conversational groups.

  In addition to friends and neighbors, there were also some prominent faces out from Raleigh. G. Hooks Talbert was accompanied by the current president of the bank that had bought out the Cotton Grove bank Mrs. Vickery’s family had founded. The Vickerys were not especially political, but they contributed generously to the Democratic Party and I recognized a member of a former governor’s cabinet and some division heads.

  Several of the people I spoke to were curious about my involvement with Michael’s murder and were not shy about asking, including Sammy Junior Johnson and his wife, Helen, who lived a few miles out in the country, near Bethel Baptist. Sammy’s mother and mine had been best friends from girlhood, and Sammy Junior didn’t mind telling me that he was worried about the effect all this could have on the runoff election. Both of them had campaigned for me in their community and Helen, too, was concerned.

  “I mean, don’t you think it’s getting a little bizarre?” she asked. “First there’s Gray Talbert’s letter to the editor supporting you-Gray Talbert? Whose daddy’s one of the biggest Republicans in the state? Do you know how weird that sounds?”

  Even though her voice was almost too low for me to hear, Sammy Junior shushed her. “He’s right over there.”

  Helen ignored him. “Then that story in the paper about those two phony letters, and more stories-on television even! -about you finding Michael Vickery’s body, and now people are saying you’re the only reason Denn McCloy’s not reading about the funeral from the new jail over in Dobbs.”

  “I can explain all that,” I protested.

  “I’m sure you can, honey,” she said, “but who’s going to listen to the truth with such nice juicy rumors flying? You really ought to quit this messing around till after the election.”

  “She’s right,” said Minnie. She, Seth, and Haywood and their kids had joined our circle just as Helen launched into her indictment.

  The teenagers soon splintered off to form their own circle with Sammy Junior and Helen’s two, and when Minnie and Helen stopped lecturing me for things I mostly had no control over if they’d just stop and think about it, I stuck my head into the kid’s circle to thank them for riding the N amp;O newsbox trail for me the past few nights.

  “I’ll fill you in later, but y’all can stop watching now,” I told them. “There’s not going to be any more of those letters.”

  Haywood’s Stevie and Seth’s Jessica looked a bit disappointed that their night-riding was over so quickly, but I noticed that Stevie brightened up when Gayle Whitehead appeared on the line with Jed.

  In the midst of death, we are in life.

  It was after nine-thirty before the final visitors left. The three grandchildren and two sons-in-law had escaped twenty minutes earlier when the crowds first thinned. Dr. Vickery was bearing up well, but Mrs. Vickery looked absolutely at the point of collapse and her daughters hovered over her nervously. Even knowing how devoted she’d been to Michael, I couldn’t help wondering how much of her exhaustion was from grief and how much from all the touching and hugging she’d had to endure since Saturday night.

  I lingered discreetly on the veranda while Duck Aldcroft confirmed a few final details about the next day’s arrangements. The service was going to be out at Sweetwater with interment among those Dancys who had first farmed the land where the Pot Shot now stood, and Duck needed to find out who was going to ride where. They fixed it that daughter Hope would ride in the lead car with her parents and that Denn would be taken in the second car with Faith and her family.

  The Vickerys left, and Duck and I passed a few words while we waited on the veranda for Denn to have a final time alone with Michael. It was almost ten before he emerged, clutching his handkerchief, red blotches under his eyes.

  “Thanks for waiting, kiddo,” he said and then didn’t speak again until we crossed Possum Creek and headed south on Forty-Eight.

  “I just wish Michael could somehow know how nice his family were tonight. Mrs. Vickery… You know how much she hated it when Michael brought me down.”

  “Yes, I do,” I said. “People thought it would absolutely kill her to admit Michael was gay.”

  I flicked my beams and the oncoming driver hastily dimmed his. On such a dark night, brights were even more dazzling than usual.

  “Perversion is abomination unto the Lord,” said Denn. “That’s what she told Michael when she came up to New York and realized I wasn’t just an ordinary roommate. She almost won, too, did you know that?”

  Despite an emotionally draining day, he seemed keyed up and anxious to talk, as if he needed to put his years with Michael in perspective.

  “How?”

  “T
hat time he left me and came home. She almost owned his soul. See, she comes to New York, finds out for sure her only son is gay and just about flips out. The abomination. The shame. She goes berserk and does such a head job on Michael that he gets schizoid about it; starts to think maybe she’s right and New York is a bad influence. Lots of people are AC/DC and maybe he can be straight in an all-straight community. So he comes back, starts to date a debutante, takes over the barn, lays every brick of the kiln himself till he falls into bed exhausted every night.”

  “And it didn’t work?”

  “Well, here I am, aren’t I?” he said simply. “Mrs. V. hates it when he sends for me, but you know something? Once I get here, even though she never pretends to like me, every time I see her, she’s always polite. But nothing like tonight. She’s a real class act, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” I said, turning into the Pot Shot’s lane. “She certainly is that.”

  A minute or so later, I pulled up beside the pickup and Lily trotted over to greet us.

  “I hate to drive this truck, but I sure don’t want the Volvo back either,” Denn mused, as he opened the door and rubbed the dog’s ears.

  “Were you going out again tonight?” I asked.

  “No, no,” he said hastily. “Just thinking out loud. I guess I’ll have to file an insurance claim on the car.” He sighed. “Michael always took care of stuff like that. I never even had to balance a checkbook.”

  He sighed again. “Thanks for everything, Deborah. I’d invite you in, but I’m really beat. The only thing I want is to just go upstairs and fall into bed.”

  I was thoughtful as I drove back down the lane, and the ceramic pitcher on the backseat only fueled my speculations. So many loose ends, so many unanswered questions, starting with did Denn think I maybe only scored a 380 on my SATs?

  As I neared the intersection of New Forty-Eight and Old Forty-Eight, I met a sheriff’s patrol car that passed and headed on south. Too dark to recognize the driver, but Jack Jamison was probably home watching television at this hour.

  The sensible thing was to go on home to bed myself.

  “Better to confirm a suspicion than let it fester,” said the pragmatist.

  “Right on!” said the preacher.

  Back of Possum Creek Theatre, a rough drive circled down to the edge of the creek, and I stuck my car in amongst some tall bushes. There was friction tape in the glove compartment and I used it to tape the light button closed so the overhead wouldn’t come on every time I opened the door, then I kicked off my leather sandals and put on the beat-up sneakers I always keep in the trunk next to the locked tool box.

  Inside the box, on top of the usual screwdrivers and pliers, was the loaded.38 Daddy gave me when I told him I didn’t need a man to take care of me. I checked to make sure the safety was in place, then strapped on the leg holster that I occasionally use when I’m out on the road late at night by myself. Carrying a concealed weapon without a license is against the law, of course, but one advantage of being a white, well-dressed female in this part of the country is that if you get stopped for a traffic violation, you’re never going to have to submit to much of a pat down. Especially if you’ve made it clear up front that you’re an attorney.

  Putting penlight, pocketknife, and keys in my pocket, I locked my purse in the trunk and leaned against the car till my eyes got used to the darkness.

  Darker than usual, too. The moon wasn’t due up for another hour and there wasn’t even any starlight with the sky still socked in. If it hadn’t been for Raleigh ’s lights reflected off the low clouds, it would have been pitch black. I shivered in the clammy night air and wished I’d kept Denn’s jacket.

  Down here by the rain-swollen creek, I heard no sounds of traffic from the highway. A dog barked way off across the creek like he’d treed something, but mostly it was the insistent repetitive call of chuck-will’s-widows in the near underbrush and cricket chirps from all around that filled my ears.

  When my eyes were fully adjusted, I walked up the lane to the theater, now a bulky white shape against the darker pines. If I’d been thinking clearer earlier in the evening, I’d have left a window unlocked or slipped the bolt on the theater door so that it’d close without actually locking.

  No cars and no movement. I slipped across the concrete loading area on the off-chance Jack Jamison might not’ve locked the door.

  Fort Knox.

  So it was to be breaking and entering? And me with nothing but a pocketknife to jigger a lock.

  “Go home,” said the pragmatist. “If Minnie and Helen think you’ve got troubles now, what’re they going to think when you appear before Perry Byrd for burglary?”

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” the preacher said nervously.

  As I went around the old wooden building testing windows, I heard a snatch of human sound and froze. Silence. Wait. Cautiously circling the west side, I saw car lights flash back and forth on the highway and realized the noise must have been someone’s loud radio.

  An instant later, I got lucky. Like an invitation to a naughty world, not only was there an unlocked window on this side- the men’s room, if I remembered rightly-it was already open a crack at the bottom. I wouldn’t have to use a rock after all. Standing on tiptoes, I gave a mighty push and cringed at the raucous squeak of wooden window against tight wooden sash. Once it was open, I was further chagrinned to discover I couldn’t swing myself up as nimbly as I’d once shinnied up trees and clambered around on rooftops. Evidently morning stretches weren’t enough anymore. Going to take something more strenuous to get back my upper torso strength.

  I wound up doing an undignified scramble over the window ledge and landed with a crash in a bank of urinals. Thank God, there was no one there to see.

  Inside was blacker than Satan’s unwashed soul, but I fumbled my way out into the windowless hall and closed the door before risking a quick flick of my penlight. Once I got my bearings, I went straight down to the prop room, every nerve taut, all my senses quivering.

  As I opened the door, I heard a rustle somewhere near and every red corpuscle in my body ducked down behind the nearest white ones.

  Remembering that the light switches were just inside the door, I reached down for my gun, flicked off the safety, and switched on the lights all in one fluid motion.

  The big cluttered room sprang into sharp focus.

  Empty.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding for the last week. A mouse, no doubt, and here I was like Dirty Harry ready to blow it away. I put the pistol back in my leg holster. Time to quit scaring myself with imaginary goblins and look for a good hiding place. If I was right, I probably wouldn’t have very long to wait.

  The open shelves offered no cover. Behind the costumes?

  Too Abbott and Costello. Besides, my sneakers were sure to be noticed beneath the hemlines.

  Several pieces of furniture were stacked on top of one another at the far end of the long room, and off in the corner stood that one item indispensable to comic farce-a Chinese screen.

  Perfect!

  I turned off the lights and used my penlight to keep from banging into worktables or tripping over clutter as I worked my way back into the corner where the screen stood.

  Suddenly, a sense of danger overwhelmed me and the closer I got to the corner, the stronger it was.

  Just as I reached over to pull the screen out enough to slip behind, I heard an indrawn breath.

  My penlight swept over big male boots, long male legs and I almost screamed when it touched his leering face.

  “Boo!” said Dwight.

  24 you really had me going

  You scared the holy shit out of me,” I raged.

  “Well, how do you think I felt when I saw you waving that pistol around?” Dwight asked. “Bo Poole give you a permit to carry that thing?”

  Before I could think of a misleading answer, he thumbed his walkie-talkie and it crackled into staticky life. So much for a radio up on the highway.<
br />
  “Blue Jay to Baby Bird,” he said. “I’m back on the air. Over.”

  “ ‘Blue Jay to Baby Bird’?” I hooted.

  “Shh!”

  Immediately I heard Jack Jamison’s voice. “Baby Bird to Blue Jay. The Snowball’s rolling. Just passed my position, heading north on Forty-Eight. Over.”

  “Give him plenty of slack, Baby Bird. Out.”

  Dwight flicked on his own flashlight and stepped from behind the screen. I followed and put on the overhead lights.

  “Who thought up those names?” I teased.

  Dwight just looked at me and shook his head. “The first thing most women would ask is what I’m doing here.”

  “Obvious,” I said. “You’re waiting for Denn McCloy. Soon as I called you about a tapestry panel missing off Michael Vickery’s wall, you remembered how Denn stopped off here this afternoon. And then you figured that he’d probably sneak back tonight to get it.”

  “You don’t?”

  I’ve got to start remembering that Dwight knows me too well.

  “Oh, he’s coming back for something,” I said, “only I think it’s something he left here himself Friday night.”

  “Yeah?” He glanced at his watch and walked over to the door. “Come on. Let’s go where we can see him coming.”

  Using our shielded flashlights, we walked through the aisles of the theater out to the front lobby where double glass doors overlooked the main drive in from the highway.

  I didn’t need to have Dwight draw me a picture to know that he’d stood right here and watched me drive in and hide my car down on the creek bank.

  “ ’Preciate the open window,” I said.

  “I was afraid you were going to bust one before you found it. Hey, you know something? I always thought cat burglars were supposed to be quiet.” He was a dark shape against the white walls, but I saw his teeth flash in a mocking grin as I punched his shoulder.