Death in the Distillery (16 page)

When I finished the report, in which I recommended an
additional week of investigation just to make sure of the
facts, I called Danny and read it to him. I didn't like lying,
and I had no idea just what I would do if my suspicions
proved true. But, one thing was certain, I had to follow
through on my hunch.

Then I would worry about what came afterward.

I felt like a knight beginning his quest for the Holy Grail,
except most of those poor chumps got themselves chopped
up with a broadsword or fried to a crisp by the local dragon.

Jack stumbled into the kitchen the next morning as I was
pouring water in the coffeepot. He clutched his jaw with
one hand, and his swollen eye had taken on a deep purple
glaze. "How you feel?"

He grimaced. "Don't ask. I gotta get to the dentist this
morning." He popped a couple more Tylenol with codeine
in his mouth. "Find out who did this?"

"Yeah." I looked around at him. "Hey, man. I'm sorry.
They were after me. I feel guilty. I'll pay for the dentist."

He tried to grin. "Forget that. I got insurance. It was my
fault for being here." He climbed up on a bar stool and eyed the coffee hungrily. "Soon as I finish at the dentist,
I'll go down and report it to the cops."

I winced. "Not a good idea, Jack. There's a lot of heat
out there. Like I said, you were an accident." I hesitated.
"I don't know the whole story yet. Do me a favor. Hold
off on the cops until I find out just what is taking place."

He looked at me with his one good eye. "You serious?"

"As a busted leg."

He considered my request soberly. Gingerly, he touched
a finger to his lip, then glanced at his leg. With a resigned
shrug, he replied. "If you say so."

After leaving a copy of the report with Marty, I picked
up some film for my camera, a Fuji 35, and headed out to
Chalk Hills. I mentally tabulated a list of specific objectives
I wanted to accomplish that morning. First, drop off the
report to Mrs. Morrison. Second, pictures of the interior of
Patterson's cabin. If the numbers I had found in his wallet
were a cryptographic puzzle, maybe something in his cabin
would provide a key. Third, more details about Katherine
Voss, starting with Seldes, then the Master Distiller, Emeritus, Alonzo Jackson, and finally talk Carrie Jean into getting me in to quiz someone at the Medical Examiner's
office about the injury to the back of Patterson's skull.

Like a pit bull, I hung tenaciously to my theory, refusing
to believe the injury was incurred by a fall instead of a
club.

I topped the rise above Chalk Hills. The distillery appeared deserted, but I knew better. I gunned the Chevy
pickup and sped down the hill.

As I passed the maintenance barn, David Runnels stood
in the doorway, wiping his hands with a rag and staring at
me. I gave him a cursory, two-finger wave and angled toward the main house.

Beatrice Morrison read the report, thanked me, and
promptly dismissed me with the reminder to report again
in one week. Like the hired help I was, I nodded. "One
week."

Patterson's cabin was just as I had left it. I'd already
given it a thorough look, so I didn't plan on wasting time
searching again. Throwing open the door and raising the
blinds, I proceeded to shoot thirty-six exposures of the interior, trying to place the shots so that I could piece the
final prints into a panoramic sweep of the room.

Next, I visited David Runnels, who seemed puzzled that
I was still around. "Figured to have seen the last of you."

"Couple of odds and ends for Mrs. Morrison. Nothing
major. I probably will have it all wrapped up in a couple
more days."

He snorted, his bulldog face twisted in a sneer. "Emmett
wasn't worth another couple of days."

"Maybe not, but Mrs. Morrison is paying me to finish
up, and that's what I'm planning on doing." I looked
around the barn. "You sure keep this equipment looking
good, almost like it was straight off the showroom floor."

He turned to his machines and beamed. "Well, like I told
you before, that's my job."

I studied him. He was a strong man, strong enough to
have wielded the club that knocked Patterson from the tractor. But then I remembered the tandem discs. They sat in
one corner of the barn, two thirty-foot rows of shiny disc
blades with edges like a knife.

Some quick mental calculations pointed out that if someone leaped from the tractor, he had only a couple of seconds to cover fifteen or so feet before the discs rolled over
him. Tough job. The slightest stumble or hesitation meant
death.

Runnels interrupted my thoughts. "Anything else?"

"Huh, oh, yeah. That girl that came through here about
ten years back. Remember her?"

He looked around at me. "What about her?"

"Nothing. Just curious. Thought I might try to look her
up and see if she knows anything."

He shook his head in amusement. "How could she? That
was ten years ago."

I pulled out my notebook and thumbed through it. "Yeah,
but you told me she and Emmett had a thing going. I-"

"No. I didn't say nothing about them having anything to
do with each other. I don't know if they did. All I said was
he flirted with her."

So much for my attempt to finesse information from him
about Katherine Voss. "Oh, yeah. Sorry." I glanced at my
notebook. "It was Claude who said they had something
going. But, you did threaten him over her, right? A fight
or something?"

His bulldog face darkened. He held his temper, but his
voice quivered when he replied. "So, I blew up. I never
touched him. Besides, I still don't see why you're so interested in that girl?"

I looked at him from under my eyebrows. "I just figure
that maybe she moved into town, and he kept seeing her."
I was still fishing for any kind of lead, but I didn't get a
bite.

Runnels grunted. "May have. I got no idea, and I don't
care."

With a nod, I stepped back. "Well, I've bothered you
enough. I'll let you get back to work."

Tom Seldes was rolling an oaken barrel onto a forklift
when I entered the rackhouse. He eyed me suspiciously,
then positioned the barrel on the forks.

I didn't ask Seldes any questions, not directly. Instead, I
told him of my conversation with Voss, hoping to elicit
additional information from him, a sly ploy that failed miserably.

"Mr. Voss sent his thanks to you and the others here for
looking after his daughter while she was here." It was a lie,
but I didn't want him to think I was still snooping.

Seldes grunted and positioned the barrel again. "I didn't
do nothing." He nodded to the forklift driver, who backed
away and disappeared into the shadows of the rackhouse
with the barrel.

"Well, you sent her to Jackson when you couldn't use her," I replied, noting how easily he had manhandled the
barrel. He was another who could have swung the club, but
why? What reason could the muscular man have? "You
could have just run her off the place."

He considered my remark. "Yeah, suppose you're right,
but like I told you before, she wanted to see Lonny. Besides, that was ten years ago."

"One more question. You know Mary Tucker?"

"Sure. Why?"

"Was she here Sunday?"

He thought a moment. "I didn't see her, but her car was
here."

"Oh?"

"Yeah."

I waited for him to continue, but he just stared at me. I
pulled out my faithful notebook. "Just another couple of
minutes of your time, if you don't mind. I'd like to go back
over our previous conversation for my report to Mrs. Morrison."

The broad-shouldered man shrugged and reached for another barrel beside the wall. He tilted it and rolled it easily
to the middle of the floor. "You talking about that report
you just gave her?"

His unexpected question knocked the breath from me. I
scrambled to cover my blunder. "Yeah. I just want to be
sure everything I told her was right. I should have doublechecked before, but she was anxious for the report."

It was a lame explanation. He gave me a smug grin, and
I knew he didn't believe me. "Oh," was all he said. I asked
a few perfunctory questions just to save face, which he
answered with the same arrogant grin on his face.

After I left Seldes, I visited Mary Tucker in the maintenance barn, and went nowhere. She vaguely remembered
me from the Red Grasshopper on Monday, and she knew
nothing about the girl. But she did reiterate, in colorful
obscenities, her unbounded delight that Patterson was dead,
and suggest a couple of crude means for the disposition of his body. And yes, she replied defiantly, she was away from
the distillery on Sunday despite what Tom Seldes said.
"Every car out here is red. He mighta seen the forklift and
thought it was mine."

From the barn, I headed to the Master Distiller's office,
toying with the fact that Seldes claimed to have seen
Tucker's car even though she insisted she was nowhere
around. Who was lying? Or was it an honest mistake?

I had also learned one more puzzling fact. For whatever
reason, Beatrice Morrison had made it known to Tom Seldes that I had delivered the report. Why him? And why so
fast? I would have thought the report would have gone to
William Cleyhorn first, not the foreman of the rackhouses.
From Runnels, I had learned nothing new.

I was going in circles, like Oscar, my brain-damaged
Tiger Barb.

I hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. Sometimes I have
trouble piecing together my own logic in any kind of coherent sequence; consequently, I often find myself envying
those who can. I've come to the conclusion that logical
thinking is in the genes, and that only ten percent of the
deductive process can be taught. Those like me, who are
ninety percent impulse, can only stumble and blunder
ahead.

To be honest, I've read all of Sherlock Holmes, and I
can't believe anyone could possibly be so perceptive and
intuitive except in fiction. From a spot of mud on a
woman's cuff, the renowned detective's perceptive deduction that she had been riding in the right-hand seat of a dog
cart traveling along Cambridge Road at two-thirty Sunday,
stretches credibility more than trying to stretch your bottom
lip over your head.

On the other hand, I do, from time to time, amaze myself
with unexpected flashes of logic, just as I did when I looked
up the stairs to the Master Distiller Emeritus' door and
realized that I was getting nowhere.

All the questions had been asked, and all the answers
had been given. I had learned nothing fundamentally new
from Runnels or Seldes or Tucker. With the exception of
Tucker's vehicle possibly being on the distillery grounds on Sunday, both men provided me with the same facts as
they had earlier. I wasn't asking the right questions because
I'd run out of information on which to base my questions,
and until I did some more digging, I wouldn't know what
to ask.

So, what did I need to learn?

First, I wanted to find out if my theory that Emmett Patterson could have been murdered held water. Maybe I had
misinterpreted the head injury? Second, had Katherine Voss
come to Chalk Hills deliberately? And if she did, why?
What could have been so tempting to make her travel over
seven hundred miles? I had an idea, but I needed proof.

If I got the right answer on both questions, then I would
know I wasn't chasing rabbits.

I'm sure ace investigator Al Grogan would not have been
running in circles like me, but that's why he's where he is,
and I'm in missing persons.

I spun on my heel and headed back to the pickup.

Just as I reached the door, Alonzo Jackson's soft, reticent
voice stopped me. "Did you wish to see me, Mr. Boudreaux?"

I looked up the stairs. He was staring down at me, a
slight smile on his lips. He still wore the Band Aid. That
must have been some cut. I shook my head. "Not today,
Mr. Jackson. I'll get back with you if I need to."

He nodded slowly. "Anyway I can help."

"Thanks."

Pulling into a Qwik-Stop Photo Shop next to Safeway
on Lamar Boulevard in north Austin, I dropped off the roll
of film I'd taken in Patterson's cabin, and opted for the
two-hour service. While the film was being developed, I
planned to visit the Travis County Forensics Lab again, and
see if Carrie Jean could wrangle me a few minutes with
one of the technicians in the Medical Examiner's office.

Traffic was more congested than a summer head cold.
To make matters worse, pedestrians ignored the traffic,
darting through the lines of creeping automobiles. I tried the air conditioning on the outside chance it might seize
the moment and function. It didn't, so I did the next best
thing and cursed.

Sometimes luck strolls in and decides to take a hand.
Other times, it strolls right on past the door, leaving you
to fight the battle yourself. My grandfather always told me,
"Boy, one thing for sure about luck, it'll change when you
least want it to, but it will change." I had to grow up some
to understand what he meant, but when I did, I firmly embraced the idea. I never counted on luck. That way I wasn't
disappointed.