by Ellie Moses
Moonshine and Manslaughter
A Hillbilly Hexes Cozy Mystery
Ellie Moses
Copyright © 2019 by Ellie Moses
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is dedicated to my Mamaw, Bessie Mae Aldridge Hendrickson.
To me, she was an amazing mountain woman. She chopped her own wood, built her own sheds, hung her clothes out to dry on a clothesline that ran the length of the house, canned her food and raised chickens.
She had three daughters who all went into nursing and were amazing women in their own right.
Her work ethic passed to all of us and her love sustains me to this day even though I lost her when I was 12 years old.
I love you Mamaw. Thank you for making me a strong hillbilly woman.
Contents
Words of Warning
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Also by Ellie Moses
About the Author
Words of Warning
If you’ve picked up this title because you love witch cozy mysteries, I hope you find this book as much fun to read as I found it was to write.
I do need to caution y’all. It’s chock full of hillbilly vernacular. I did not write it that way to make it difficult to read by people outside Appalachia. I am proud to be a hillbilly, and I know there are lots of misconceptions and stereotypes about hillbillies. And many people take offense to being called one. Not me. I’ve been treated ugly for it in my life, but I’m proud of where I came from. Hillbillies will use the word ugly like I just did to mean “rudely” or “rude”.
My aim with this book is to celebrate what is known as Smoky Mountain English by giving you characters with speech patterns true to the region while trying to make it as easy to read as possible. Any misspellings are most likely intentional as I’ve tried my level best to catch every typo.
Words like swan and painter are real words for us. According to one of the best books ever written on Smoky Mountain English by Michael B. Montgomery and Joseph S. Hall, swan comes from the Scots "I's warrant ye" meaning "I guarantee you”. It was a way to avoid the word “swear”.
Painter comes from early settlers calling mountain lions panthers. It was corrupted into “painter”.
Side note; There really is a Mountain Laurel Festival where I grew up. I was in it as part of the Queen’s court when I was in the first grade, ages ago it seems. My mom had my long, long hair piled up on my head in the beauty salon, but I wanted to chase the frogs in the reflecting pond instead of sitting pretty.
So, there’s your warning. I hope you won’t find it too difficult to read and I hope you’ll love Jolene and her family and all the characters you’ll meet in this series as much as I do.
1
The fat droplets of rain rushing down the large plate-glass window of my second-hand shop held me transfixed. The power of precognition tickled my brain to alert me that one of my kin was in deep trouble. The kind that could easily end up as a wake in Granny Mack’s front parlor.
The whistle of my Granny’s old tea kettle broke the spell that stuck my feet to the floor and I hurried to the back room of my shop. My heart lodged in my throat as I poured hot water over the tea leaves I’d dropped in the cup before the warning bells in my soul tore me away from my work and dragged me to the front window in the first place.
When the leaves settled, the truth I'd feared was confirmed by their odd pattern. Someone, or something, had broken one of my wards way up in the mountains. My wards were supposed to be unbreakable. I’d put them in place a few years back and they’d never been down since.
A voice nearby startled me. I’d almost forgotten Ida Mae Ferguson was still in the store since it was so close to closing time. I would offer her tea, but that meant I wouldn’t be able to sit in back and worry over more tea leaves until she’d gone on her way.
“Jolene,” she sang out as she approached the counter with five fat quarters for the baby quilt she was making for her daughter, “can you put these on my tab? I’ll come in and pay you Saturday next after Delbert gets back from selling at the flea market over in Tazewell.”
I opened my worn ledger and marked down the fat quarters under Mrs. Ferguson’s name. I reckon it wasn’t likely her husband would return with very much money, and certainly not enough to pay off the rows and rows of entries under her name. Not after them good ole boys at the flea market got done with their poker game way past midnight.
Still, I treated her as I did my regular paying folks. No need to nickel and dime her with a new grandbaby on the way.
I bagged up her supplies and threw in some horehound candy while she wasn’t looking. Old folks up in these hollers loved them some horehound.
Ida Mae took her bag and for a moment, our hands brushed. Her rich brown one against my pale white one. A little spark flared there like a lightning bug on a warm June night and I felt all peaceful inside.
You see, Ida Mae was a conjure woman. Her mama, and her mama’s mama were too. They came to these hills from the Mississippi Delta. I was happy to stay on Ida Mae Ferguson’s good side.
She looked at me with questions in her eyes but just as quickly, they were gone. She only nodded and moved in to kiss my cheek. I knew she wanted to ask about Ray, but like all my magical friends and relatives, she left well enough alone.
We walked to the door together and I flipped the sign to CLOSED real quick like before anyone else ventured in.
Dolly Parton's voice on the radio distracted me as I watched Ida Mae hurry to her old el Camino. Thunder cracked overhead causing me to jump.
After a few lines of my favorite song, her voice was drowned in static. Reception in the hills and hollers of Devil's Elbow was spotty on the best of days, but when the thunder rolled and lightning flashed, all bets were off.
The lights flickered twice and I poured hot water into another teacup, the one Granny Mack had given me for my tenth birthday. Its rim was edged in a faded gold, worn from years of use. A single cabbage rose adorned the bottom of the cup. My worries returned like a bad penny and I wished Ida Mae was still beside me for another little jolt of comfort.
Delilah, my feline familiar, swished her snow-white tail and wound around my ankles mewling for her supper. She was a spoiled girl. All white fluffy fur with ice-blue eyes; a dead ringer for that cat on the TV commercial for her favorite food, Fussy Feast. Her alter ego was a full grown mountain lion, or painter as we mountain folk called them.
Instead of feeding her, I took my cup of peppermint tea back out to the front of the shop and went to lighting the beeswax votive candles I made special for this time of year. When the Mountain Laurel Festival began tomorrow, I wanted tourists to be drawn to my shop like bees to honey and scoop up all my fancy, organic candles.
Bright lightning illuminated the front window and Delilah leapt onto the counter nearly upsetting a candle and setting her snowy fur afire.
Before I could pick her up, the front door banged open as another clap of thunder crashed above, and my cousin Billy Jack came blowing in with the storm.
His wild entrance only served to prove my earlier premonition true, if the tea leaves hadn’t been enough proo
f. Now I knew which of my kinfolk was in a fix.
Precognition was only one of my many gifts, or curses, depending on who you asked. An Appalachian mountain witch like me had plenty of both.
Currently, one of my blessings who was often times a curse, stood before me breathing like he’d just run from the devil. And the devil’s name was likely Sheriff Quinn.
Delilah gave a loud meow that grew into a fearsome growl. My cousin's pungent canine scent filled the air. He'd been in his wolf form not more than an hour ago, it was that strong. Delilah morphed into her mountain lion lickety-split.
I should have seen it coming as Delilah despised Billy Jack’s wolf. I grabbed her around the middle as she lunged for my cousin, claws out.
Billy Jack ain't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he does possess enough sense to back away from Delilah when she’s in full painter mode.
“You know not to come in here smelling like a danged dog! Delilah don't like it.” I stomped a foot for emphasis. We'd been down this road one time too many.
I strained to hold Delilah back as the big oaf dripped water all over my floor. The smell of a wet dog ain’t got nothing on a wet wolf, let me tell you.
“I came here because something’s wrong at still #4, but I ain't no dog and you know it, Jolene! Take that back or I'll tell mama. Keep bumping them gums and you'll lose your seat at Mama's supper table.”
He grinned at me as his threat took shape, happy as a possum in a pumpkin patch. He knew dang well his mama would take his side.
She was my aunt Dixie Durham, a blue-ribbon, prize-winning baker, and had been like a mother to me for many years. My own mama and daddy had died in a boating accident on Lake Mistake the summer I turned twelve.
We used to fish there before they drowned, but after that, nobody wanted to drop a line in those murky waters again, even though mama and daddy was pulled up from the lake.
Before I could think up a sassy retort to needle the cousin who was more like a brother or query him on what he’d said about one of his stills, Ray Dang Davis materialized beside me. That was not the middle name his mama gave him, no that was my invention and it fit like a glove as far as I was concerned.
As usual, the ambient temperature dropped ten degrees with his appearance. Ray and I had been in love since junior high. Unfortunately, before we could tie the knot, he was killed in a wreck chasing Billy Jack out on Thunder Road. My cousin ran moonshine and Ray had been an agent with the ATF.
I exhaled a frosty breath and held on tighter to Delilah.Though she accepted ghost Ray in my life, she tolerated him only a smidgen more than she tolerated Billy Jack. Which was to say, not very much. Delilah sensed the tension between the two men and the frustration their feuding brought to my life.
Ray crossed his arms and glared at Billy Jack. If looks could kill, my incorporeal beau would be guilty of murder in the first degree. My cousin was about as welcome as an outhouse breeze. Ray kept his eyes on Billy Jack but addressed me. “I thought we agreed he wasn't welcome here.”
I managed to haul Delilah off the counter before she could cut my cousin to ribbons. I didn't even get so much as a how-you-do from Billy Jack for the favor. One of these days, I'd let my familiar scratch him like a bad itch. Instead of retreating to a corner, Delilah paced behind me with her dangerous, glittering feline eyes trained on my cousin.
I turned to Ray. “He's family. You know I can't ignore him when he's in trouble. And he's in big trouble if my witch sense proves true.” Which it always did.
"Yeah ghostface! She ain't turning her back on family just because a haint like you says so.”
The room dropped another ten degrees. Possum pellets! Billy Jack never did know when to leave well enough alone.
Ray walked right through my counter like it wasn’t even there, a thing only a ghost could do, and stuck a spectral finger in Billy Jack's face.
His voice dropped low and the anger rolled off him in chilly waves. He was plumb scary when his dander was up. “Listen here, mutt. I may be a ghost now, but I bet I can still whoop your mangy hide just like I did when I was living. As for backstabbing, who ran who off Thunder Road?”
They began arguing over who was going to cancel who's birth certificate, though technically Ray's was already cancelled. I lost what little patience I had left. As I took my cooling teacup in hand, I yelled a little louder than was strictly necessary because they'd frayed my last nerve.
“Ray Dang Davis,” I shouted, relishing the use of the middle name I gave him. “Act like you got more sense than to stand and argue with a fence post! I need to know what happened up in the mountains.”
Blue and red lights strobed across the shop window as I spoke and I turned to my cousin. “Sheriff Quinn is fixin’ to put your hind end in the pound, young pup. You best get gone.”
Billy Jack put his old high school track and field glory days to shame as he hurdled my counter on his way to the back door. He never moved that fast unless Sheriff Quinn was breathing down his neck.
I was almost in awe, but Delilah's thick tail thwacked my leg as she chased after Billy Jack and brought me back to my senses.
Sheriff Quinn strolled in with hat in hand. The look on his face was always the same when he entered Value Vintage, my eclectic second-hand shop on Main Street in Devil’s Elbow, Kentucky.
He hated that my customers were often looking for more than second-hand goods in these ancient hills and hollows. He wasn't fond of my Tarot cards or my divining rod and he always wrinkled his nose up like the place smelled bad.
Which at the moment, it kind of did with Billy Jack's odor still hanging in the air. I twitched my own nose and thought of the bright scent of honeysuckle. The air in the room grew lighter and the scent I chose neutralized the stench of wet wolf quite nicely.
I gave the sheriff a smile that didn't reach my eyes. He placed his hat on the counter beside the register. The storm still raged outside and I felt a little zing run down my spine. Whatever brought the sheriff to my shop definitely involved one of Billy Jack's prized moonshine stills.
“Your cousin is parked illegal right smack in front of your door, Jolene. You seen him today?” Sheriff Quinn's eyes darted to the beaded curtain that separated the front and back rooms of Value Vintage. They had stopped swaying prematurely due to the little spell I’d cast on them when he walked in.
“Haven't seen him since Sunday supper at Aunt Dixie's, Sheriff,” I lied like an old rug, “As a matter of fact, I was fixin’ to close up when you came in.” I locked the register to emphasize the unspoken invitation for him to leave.
Ray Dang Davis came stomping from the back room. “Jolene, he's gone out the back door again!”
Sheriff Quinn walked right through Ray like he wasn’t there on his way to the back room. I would have stopped him, but then I'd be admitting guilt. That would be a stupid move knowing Billy Jack had already gone.
The sheriff turned before pushing aside the beads. He gave a little shiver and pulled up his collar as protection from the cold Ray emanated behind him. “Mind if I have a look see?”
Sheriff Quinn was spared a meeting with Delilah as the roar of Billy Jack's truck shook the front window pane. I ran to the door with the sheriff and Ray hot on my heels.
Billy Jack gunned the engine and swung so hard to the right, his front tires rolled up onto the sidewalk and kept me from stepping outside. Sheriff Quinn pushed past me as my cousin's cherry-red pickup rolled coal and tore off down Main Street like it was the Talladega Speedway.
The sheriff's yells of frustration were drowned out by the thunder rolling overhead. This storm was shaping up to be a real frog strangler. I pointed in the direction my cousin's taillights now streaked. “What has that heathen done now?”
Sheriff Quinn beat his hat against his leg. It was a habit he had when his authority was ignored. “He's wanted for questioning in a murder investigation, Jolene.”
I clapped a hand over my mouth and shook my head back and forth. If Billy Jack was a mu
rderer, I was the Queen of England. We all knew better than that. HRH didn't favor granny skirts and clogs with tie-dye tank tops and I'd never worn a set of pearls in my life either.
Sheriff Quinn put his hat on and stepped toward his patrol car. Apparently we were done.
I taunted him as he went, hoping he might slip and tell me more about this murder. “Aunt Dixie won't stand for this and you darn well know it. She'll be fit to be tied if her precious boy ends up behind bars on some bogus charges.”
I crossed my arms and stuck out my chin, ready to battle with the man.
He turned on his heel and moseyed back to where I stood by the door. “Well, I reckon Dixie Durham can get glad in the same pants she gets mad in, Jolene.”
His flippant retort lit me up like a hellfire preacher on Easter Sunday. I focused on the toothpick rolling from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Jolene, don't do it! You know it won't make a bit of difference.”
I ignored Ray's sage advice. Telling me not to do something always had the opposite effect. I stared at the sheriff with my eyes flashing. I mouthed the prank charm that would turn the toothpick in his mouth as wiggly as a wiggle worm on a fish hook.
The toothpick went limp and hung from the sheriff's mouth like a wet spaghetti noodle. His facial expression as he reached for it was priceless.
I held in the belly laugh that begged to be indulged as his eyes crossed with the effort of trying to capture the suddenly uncooperative stick.
Ray placed his ghostly hand on my shoulder and I sighed. Blinking once, I let the toothpick return to its original shape. Sheriff Quinn eyed me with suspicion and I stepped toward him and whispered "Boo!"