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 se
em 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.”
Daisy bit the inside of her cheeks, enormously grateful at that moment that Zeke had a strict policy of not allowing any firearms in the roadhouse. Regardless of what the law might permit, he was adamant that guns and alcohol were like chlorine and ammonia and should never be mixed.
There was a lengthy silence. Zeke coughed, sucked down the final few drops in his glass, then coughed once more. Ethan watched him warily.
“The way I see it,” Zeke remarked at last, “every man’s entitled to his own mind and opinions. That’s what makes this land great. Just remember, Mister Government Agent, yer in the heart of that land right now. This”—he rapped his boney knuckles on the edge of the table—“is the blood and muscle of the country. Our boys be the ones losin’ arms and legs and lives fightin’ wars halfway ’round the world. And our boys be the ones diggin’ up the coal and growin’ the food them big-city folks take fer granted when they flip on them lights and eat in them la-di-dah restaurants. I just wish somebody’d show a little appreciation once in a while. But that ain’t how it works. In all them years I’ve been livin’ and workin’ in these parts, nobody’s said one blasted word of thanks fer nothin’. And they never will neither. In my experience the only people comin’ down to southwestern Virginny are those plannin’ on stirrin’ up trouble and botherin’ good solid folks like Daisy and Hank and their kin.”
Ethan nodded in acknowledgment. “I promise you, sir, I didn’t come down here to stir up trouble or bother any good folks. But somebody has. There doesn’t seem to me to be much doubt about that, considering what happened to Mr. Dickerson and Mr. Fitz.”
Zeke nodded back at him. “And there’s gonna be more trouble too. A heap of it I reckon. It’s why I called Daisy. She knows Fox Hollow better than all of ’em.”
That startled her. “You think the trouble has to do with Fox Hollow?”
“I do. And I’ll tell ya why. They was talkin’ ’bout who owns the place. At first they thought it was ol’ Fred, but then they realized it wasn’t ol’ Fred. He was just stayin’ there. After that they thought it might be Rick, but then they was at Fox Hollow—”
“They were actually at Fox Hollow?” Ethan interjected.
“They was at Fox Hollow,” Zeke repeated with emphasis, “and somethin’ wasn’t right. Somethin’ there gave ’em trouble.”
“Was it something or someone?”
Daisy’s mind went immediately to Hank. For the life of her she couldn’t figure out why he had gone to Fox Hollow on that fateful day. But she could very easily envision him causing the big-city folks trouble while he was there. Hank had been just the sort of tough, grizzly person to give strangers grief if he found them nosing about the place uninvited. She wondered if Ethan was thinking along a similar vein.
“When you say someone—” she began.
“I mean Hank,” Ethan told her. “I can’t be certain he was the trouble of course, but if he had information about these people and a confrontation with them, it would explain a lot—why he was there, why his apron was ripped off on the porch, why he was going so fast on the way out and crashed his bike.”
She was in full agreement. Daisy was convinced that Hank had known much more than he ever let on, not just about Fred but also Fred’s connection to Fox Hollow. Aunt Emily had even alluded to that. Maybe it went further. Maybe Hank had known something about Fox Hollow itself. That made sense, especially if Zeke was right and the big-city folks were asking about Fred and Rick and who owned the property.
“Zeke,” Daisy said, “how sure are you those big-city folks were talking about who owns Fox Hollow?”
“As positive as I am them Hokies are gonna win the championship this year!”
That was as confident as Zeke got. He loved Virginia Tech football. It ranked just under God, the United States of America, and the General.
“And how sure are you someone or something gave those big-city folks trouble at Fox Hollow?”
“I ain’t sure what it was, but I’m durned sure it gave ’em trouble. They was complainin’ they had to leave right quick. Too quick. They didn’t get ’nough time to finish what they was doin’.”
What were they doing? They might have been looking for Rick. That seemed to Daisy the most logical possibility. They had previously talked about driving out to Rick’s trailer, so instead they could have gone to Fox Hollow to confirm whether he was the owner of the place. Except why would they care who owned it? Perhaps they were interested in buying the property. When she had lived there, her parents had occasionally received offers for the timber, but they never sold it. They never sold even a fragment of Fox Hollow. Her daddy had been particularly proud of that fact. He always detested the idea of carving up the land like it was a Thanksgiving turkey.
Rick, on the other hand, might be fully amenable to slicing and dicing. Daisy didn’t know. She could only guess. She had no doubt, however, that if Hank had discovered Rick peddling parts and parcels of Fox Hollow, he would have done everything in his power to stop such a sale, especially if it involved big-city folks. But that was where the lo
gical possibilities came to an abrupt end. Timber, or hunting rights, or even a few acres chopped out of one corner of the property to create a pretty little farmette weren’t in any way important enough to result in Hank’s supposed accident or Fred’s poisoning. There had to be more to it. A good deal more. And there was one person who most likely had the answer.
“Rick,” she muttered.
“I told ya before,” Zeke reminded her. “That boy’s foolin’ with the wrong folks this time. They come fer business. Big business. And he better watch out. Ya better watch out too, Daisy. If they’re lookin’ at Fox Hollow now, then eventually they’re gonna come lookin’ at ya. Ya and yer momma.”
He made it sound so ominous, she gulped.
“I think you and I need to have a chat with Rick,” Ethan said to her.
Daisy nodded. When it came to Rick, she appreciated the assistance.
“We’ll go first thing. The sooner, the better.”
She nodded again.
Finishing his beer, Ethan rose from his chair and stretched. “Time to leave.”
It wasn’t clear whether he was referring to only himself or her as well, but Daisy didn’t care. She had not an ounce of energy left for further reflection or conversation. Mind-numbing exhaustion pounded down on her like a crushing wave of boulders. With a prodigious yawn, she pushed herself up from the tilting table and took a couple of lurching steps in no specific direction.
“Whoa there.” Ethan put a hand on her shoulder to stop and steady her. “You better let me drive you.”
“Why? I haven’t had a sip to drink.”
Murder and Moonshine: A Mystery Page 18