A Nip of Murder

by Carol Miller

  His voice was soft and sweet, almost caressing. She swallowed hard. Rick could be very difficult to resist. It was why he was never lonely at night. Her husband had been the same way, and when Daisy reminded herself of that, she found it much easier to take a step backward. There was no chance on this earth that she was going to suffer through that again.

  “Thank you for the kind offer,” she replied, pretending not to understand him, “but one jar will last me for quite a while.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant.” Rick moved closer to her again. “You know I wasn’t talking about ’shine.”

  Daisy dearly wished that he wouldn’t stand right next to her, not when he was purring at her too. He was like a leopard—slinking soundlessly through the brush—right before the ambush and the kill. Except she wasn’t a clueless gazelle.

  “Aunt Emily’s liquor cart is always full.” This time Daisy took two steps backward. “So whatever I need, I’m sure she’ll have it.”

  Rick’s dark eyes gazed at her.

  “Speaking of Aunt Emily,” she went on, trying to force a change in his predatory mood, “she’s not going to be very happy with you.”

  “Aunt Emily loves me,” he responded simply.

  “She won’t when she finds out that you don’t serve brandy here.”

  He shrugged.

  “Or that you don’t serve anything to women.”

  “We have women,” Duke interjected. “Rick’s always bringing them in.”

  Daisy laughed—hard. “I’m sure he is.”

  Rick turned his dark gaze on Duke, and this time it was full of murder, not seduction.

  Duke paled like a man who had just caught sight of the gleaming guillotine blade hovering above his neck. Grabbing the empty crate, he hustled to the sliding door. “I—I’ll put this in my truck.”

  He was gone as quick as a mouse fleeing the talons of a hawk. Daisy didn’t think that he would be back any time soon. She was grateful to him, however. He had done a marvelous job of switching the subject—albeit unintentionally—to Rick’s philandering habits.

  Still laughing, she followed in Duke’s fleet footsteps and headed toward the door. “Would you like me to take you back to the campground?” Daisy asked Chris.

  “Does that mean dinner is no longer on the menu?” he said.

  She hesitated. For the last hour she had been convinced that their date was not only over but that there wouldn’t be a second one. Now suddenly they might pick up where they had left off before turning onto Cotton Patch Road? The tidbits that they hadn’t shared with each other regarding him having been to the nip joint previously and her having a husband currently were to be forgotten?

  “Daisy,” Rick began, “you should—”

  “Don’t,” she interrupted him crossly. She was hungry, weary, and not at all interested in hearing his criticisms of the company that she might—or might not—be keeping, as well as more snide comments in relation to Matt. Reaching into her pocket, Daisy pulled out the red chip and tossed it onto the bar. “I believe that belongs to you.”

  Rick frowned at it, then at her.

  “It covers the jar, doesn’t it?” She frowned back at him. “I don’t want you claiming later on that I owe you for it.”

  “You need to tell me where you got that,” he demanded.

  Daisy rolled her eyes. Both he and Duke acted like the chip was some priceless piece of stolen art instead of a clay marker for hooch. The only reason that it had any importance to her was because of the place where she had found it. But the more time that she spent at the nip joint, the more reluctant she became to share that fact, at least so publicly. The whole thing had become a spectacle. She was no longer quietly asking for information, as she had planned. She was broadcasting it instead. There were too many men listening and watching from their leather chairs and pecan card tables. And Daisy didn’t know them. Beulah was right. One of the men from the bakery—one of the friends of the man who had died and left the chip behind—could be there right now, sitting a mere foot away from her, and she wouldn’t have a clue. She needed to be careful.

  “What darn difference does it make?” Daisy shrugged in an exaggerated fashion, like she couldn’t remember exactly how the chip had come into her possession and it wouldn’t matter even if she did. “You’ve got it back. I’ve got my jar. We’re all happy, so let’s just—”

  A throat cleared from the direction of the sliding door. In unison, everybody looked over. To Daisy’s surprise, Duke had returned. He was standing at the very edge of the door, twitching like a skittish squirrel.

  “What is it?” Rick barked.

  “I—uh—I was about to head on back to the hardware store, and I saw those other crates sitting around the side, and I didn’t know if I should take them too.”

  “What other crates?” Rick asked. “What side?”

  “Outside,” Duke explained. “Around the corner of the building.”

  Not interested in either the location or the disposition of Rick’s bootlegging crates, Daisy took advantage of the distraction to make a quick exit. She nodded at Chris as she went.

  “I’m leaving, so you better decide if you’re coming.”

  Chris promptly accompanied her.

  “We’re not done with this conversation, Daisy,” Rick informed her gruffly, following also.

  Brushing past Duke at the sliding door, she responded over her shoulder, “You know how to find me.”

  “Yes, I do. And don’t you ever forget it.”

  It sounded so much like a rather thinly veiled threat that Daisy spun around on her heel, ready to lash out at him, except she discovered that Rick was already walking with Duke toward the corner of the building.

  “You see?” Duke pointed at the ground.

  The daylight was failing, but there were still enough ocher streaks along the horizon to make out the small collection of crates piled haphazardly on the grass. Daisy squinted at them.

  “Where did those come from?” Rick said.

  “I don’t know. I thought you’d know,” Duke replied. “They ain’t like the ones I usually use.”

  Instead of heading to her car, Daisy found herself abruptly heading to the crates. Duke wasn’t mistaken. Although the crates on the grass were also made of wood, they weren’t the same as the crate that he had emptied on the bar. There was one very large, very noticeable distinction, and when Daisy saw it, the blood drained from her face.

  “There’s writing on the side.” Rick leaned down for a better look. “What does it say?”

  “‘Cream cheese,’” Daisy whispered. “It says ‘cream cheese.’”

  CHAPTER

  11

  “‘Cream cheese’?” Rick echoed. “What the hell are crates for cream cheese doing out here?”

  That was a question Daisy would have loved to be able to answer, but she couldn’t. She could only stare at the crates in utter perplexity.

  After a moment’s reflection, Rick turned to her. “Isn’t that what you had stolen from the bakery—cream cheese?”

  She nodded.

  “Are those your crates?”

  The nod repeated itself.

  “You’re sure?”

  Daisy was positive. What she had told Deputy Johnson immediately after the incident was true. The cream cheese couldn’t have been mistaken for anything else. The words were stamped in big black letters right on the crates, on every side of the crates. CREAM CHEESE. CONTENTS PERISHABLE. KEEP REFRIGERATED. And that was exactly what the crates piled on the grass at the corner of the cinder block building said. Three wooden crates for three blocks of cream cheese, except the cream cheese was gone.

  “Damn, that’s strange,” Rick murmured.

  She couldn’t have said it any better herself.

  “When did you first see them?” Rick asked Duke.

  “The crates? Just a couple of minutes ago, while I was putting our crate in the back of my truck.”

  “Then you don’t know how l
ong they’ve been sitting there?”

  Duke shook his head. “I ain’t been here since Saturday—since my last delivery—and they weren’t there when I left at noon.”

  Daisy drew a deep breath. Saturday had been quite a busy day all around. Duke delivering jars. Beulah’s salon flooding. The theft and stabbing in the kitchen. Sometime, somehow between then and now, the crates—but not the cream cheese, apparently—went from her bakery to Rick’s nip joint. If only those crates could talk.

  “I wonder where that cheese ended up,” Rick mused.

  So did she.

  “What about you?” Rick turned to Chris. “You were here Saturday too. Saturday night. Were the crates sitting there on the grass?”

  “I…” Chris shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I didn’t see. It was too dark.”

  Rick snorted. “It had nothing to do with being dark. You didn’t see, because you were too drunk.”

  Chris didn’t deny it. Daisy looked at him curiously.

  “I don’t know what happened.” His brow furrowed. “I didn’t think I drank that much.”

  She couldn’t help chuckling at his moonshine naivete. “When it’s corn whiskey, you don’t need to drink that much.”

  “I learned that lesson the hard way.”

  “Did you also learn the lesson about not dealing from the bottom of the deck?” Rick remarked sharply.

  Chris shifted his weight again. “I was drunk. It wasn’t intentional.”

  “That’s bull, and we both know it.”

  “I don’t cheat,” Chris protested. “At least not when I have any brain cells still functioning.”

  “Except if there’s cash involved?” Rick retorted.

  This time it was Daisy’s brow that furrowed. “Connor said there wasn’t any gambling.”

  Rick raised an eyebrow at her. “So that’s how you heard about this place—Connor?”

  She winced slightly. She hadn’t meant to snitch on him, especially after seeing how nervous Duke had gotten with Rick in relation to her having a jelly jar and the red chip.

  The eyebrow remained elevated. “Was the chip from Connor too?”

  “No,” Daisy answered firmly. Then she added, backpedaling as well as she could, “There’s no need to get mad at him, Rick. Connor didn’t bring up the subject. I pushed him on it.”

  Duke’s shoulders slumped as he exhaled. He was clearly relieved by what she had said.

  “I don’t care about Connor,” Rick replied. “I care about where you got that chip.”

  “And I care,” Daisy countered, “about whether you’re gambling here.”

  “You saw the card tables, didn’t you? Sometimes people play cards.”

  “Of course I saw them. But there’s playing cards, and then there’s gambling. Don’t pretend there’s not a difference.”

  Rick didn’t respond.

  A thick lump swelled in Daisy’s throat. It was a combination of sadness, disappointment, and anger—mostly anger. “That’s great, Rick,” she spat. “Just great. You know how bad it got for Matt. You were there. You saw it. For God’s sake, you were part of it! And now you’re running the same kind of operation here? What the hell is wrong with you!”

  He met her fuming gaze without flinching. Rick’s own expression was unreadable. Daisy couldn’t tell if he was amused, or sorry, or mad himself.

  There was a short pause, then he said—still without discernible emotion—“I’m not running any kind of operation. It’s just cards and a little cash. No big deal. All friendly and easy-going. At least until that one,” Rick stuck a stiff thumb toward Chris, “and his pals decided to start cheating last Saturday night. As I’m sure you can imagine, some of our local boys didn’t take that too well. So I tossed him,” the thumb went back to Chris, “and his pals. And I warned them never to show their faces here again. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it. Maybe I should have just let them get what was coming to them.”

  Daisy understood what that meant. With sufficient likker joined with sufficient provocation, the local boys could have very easily deposited Chris and his pals in a ditch over in the next county, possibly with several appendages missing.

  “You should thank him,” she told Chris. “If Rick hadn’t thrown you out, there’s a mighty good chance that you wouldn’t be in one piece for your sister’s wedding.”

  He cringed. “You won’t tell Laurel, will you?”

  “She didn’t notice that you came back to the campground wobbling like a newborn calf?”

  “She didn’t see me. She wasn’t there.”

  “Of course. I forgot. She would have been with Bobby—” Daisy stopped. “Wait a minute. Last Saturday night?” She looked at Rick. “You and Bobby were at the inn Saturday night.”

  “I came here after leaving there, when I got a call about certain folks,” Rick snickered at Chris, “not being able to handle their hooch and trying to be card sharks. I don’t know where Bobby went. I lost him somewhere along the way.”

  “That’s no surprise.” Daisy’s lips reluctantly curled into a smile. “We both know how good your brother’s sense of direction is. After the sun goes down, Bobby can find his trailer and the inn, but that’s only because he’s been to both of them so many times. Other than that, he might as well be trekking blindfolded through the Amazon. Laurel probably had to help him get to the campground.”

  “He got lost a couple of days ago trying to find her cabin,” Chris said. “I saw him wandering in circles, and he told me that he’d gone into the wrong cabin even though he’d been sure it was the right cabin, except it wasn’t.”

  Daisy’s smile grew, partially because she could well imagine Bobby ambling around the campground like a disoriented sheep in search of his fiancée’s cabin and partially because she now had a much better understanding of Rick and Chris’s animosity. Chris didn’t care for Bobby, because he wasn’t keen on his dear sister marrying a disoriented sheep. He also didn’t care for Rick, because he was embarrassed about getting drunk, getting caught cheating at cards while being drunk, and consequently getting kicked out of the nip joint. And Rick didn’t care for Chris, because he had had to kick him out of the nip joint. The good news was that none of it was her problem.

  But her smile faded an instant later when Daisy remembered that she did have a problem, and it was a big one in the form of the three wooden crates that were sitting on the grass at the corner of the nip joint. The ochre streaks along the horizon had grayed to a pale charcoal. Soon she wouldn’t be able to see the crates anymore, let alone transport them safely to her car. Spinning around, Daisy walked quickly toward the line of trucks.

  “Not even a good-bye?” Rick called after her.

  She waved absently.

  Chris called after her too. “Uh, Daisy, can I still get a ride?”

  “Don’t expect one from me,” Rick rejoined brusquely.

  “Yes, you can have a ride,” Daisy shouted over her shoulder. “Just give me a minute.”

  Returning within the promised time frame, she found both Rick and Chris still standing where she had left them. Duke had disappeared.

  “I’m sure you won’t mind me taking these,” Daisy said to Rick, as she bent over the crates with the spare blanket that she had retrieved from her trunk.

  He shrugged. “They’re yours.”

  “I’m confused.” Chris shook his head. “They’re your crates—and they were taken from your bakery—and now you’re taking them back?”

  “That’s correct,” she answered him.

  “And you’re letting her do that?” Chris snapped at Rick in the tone of an aggrieved gentleman. “You’re making her clean up the garbage at your place? You can’t haul it to the dump yourself?”

  “I don’t think she considers it garbage,” Rick retorted with equal crispness. “And I’m pretty sure that she’s not hauling it to the dump.”

  Chris went on shaking his head. “Do you need some help?” he asked her.

  She was carefu
lly stacking the crates together using the blanket, and as she did so, Daisy found some irony in the fact that it was the same blanket she and Chris had shared that afternoon for their cozy nap. Now she was trying to protect evidence with it instead.

  “Don’t touch those crates!” Rick barked at Chris.

  Daisy’s eyes flicked up. She could tell that Rick looked back at her, but it had grown too dark for her to make out more than the outline of his face.

  “Fingerprints,” he said to her. “That’s the point of the blanket, isn’t it?”

  Rick was right. That was the point of the blanket, although she was skeptical that there would be any fingerprints on the crates—or at least any useful, legible ones. Maybe an unidentifiable smudge, or her own prints from when she had originally put the crates in the refrigerator. While Daisy was certainly no expert on the subject of fingerprints, she knew two things. First, according to Brenda, the men who had stolen the cream cheese wore gloves, so unless they had removed them after leaving the bakery, they didn’t deposit their fingerprints on the crates. Second, the crates had likely been in their present location outside the nip joint for a while, possibly even since Saturday afternoon. Anyone could have touched them after they were deposited on the grass, where they were also exposed to the deleterious effects of the elements. In the last three days that included rain, wind, sun, dew, and plenty of humidity. Chances were awfully slim that anything useable remained behind.

  But regardless of how futile it seemed to be, Daisy still felt that she had to give it a try. The crates were the only clue that she now had. The clay chip from under the wire rack in the kitchen had proved to be a bust, unless she considered that the chip had led her to the crates. Unfortunately, she couldn’t do anything with this new clue herself. She had to hand it over to Deputy Johnson. So far he hadn’t managed to come up with a single clue, or even any helpful information, but maybe—with a little luck—the crates would at last provide some sort of breakthrough in the investigation.

  “Fingerprints?” Chris echoed. “Seriously? You want to dust a bunch of empty cream cheese crates for fingerprints?”