Bootlegger’s Daughter

18 make the world go away

I’m fine,” I said for the third time.

“You sure?” asked Dwight Bryant.

As head of the detective division, he had all his people moving in the directions he wanted them to go, and now he could make time to come over to the car and get my whole story. I was parked at the edge of the grass behind the theater with my front door open and one foot on the ground, and he leaned his big muscular body against the car as we talked so he could keep an eye on proceedings.

Although there was still plenty of daylight, portable floods had been rigged to light the interior of De

So far, everything had been done by the book. I might have disturbed the crime scene by driving in and out, but after I’d gotten to a phone and called the sheriff’s department, the first deputy to respond had blocked off the theater’s drive out by the paved road. All emergency vehicles had come in by driving straight across the grass to the edge of the back parking lot, while one member of Dwight’s team took a close look at the drive and parking lot. I doubted if she’d find anything. Gravel doesn’t mark, we hadn’t had rain in more than a week, and this sandy soil becomes too dry and powdery to hold tracks after two or three days of hot sun.

Dwight wanted to know how I’d discovered the body, and I told him about Sylvia Dayley and the message De

“You thought he’d wait that long?” Dwight asked skeptically.

“Not him,” I said. “Whatever it was he wanted to give me.”

A velvet cloak seemed such a petty object in the face of De

“Nope.”

“What did he say? About shooting at Michael on Wednesday, I mean?”

Dwight gave a wry grin. “Swore he didn’t do it; promised he wouldn’t ever do it again.” He shifted his weight against my car, and I swayed with the motion of the shocks. “Makes me wonder where Michael Vickery is right now.”

“You think Michael-?”

“Well, you’re the one who talked about menopausal males,” he said.

The radio crackled on the county’s emergency rescue truck and I was suddenly reminded of where I was supposed to be. Dwight said I was welcome to ask one of the patrolmen to tell the dispatcher to get word to the Makely Parents Without Partners that I wouldn’t be coming.

As I got out of the car, Jack Jamison, a tubby young deputy, called, “Hey, Major Bryant-see you over here a minute?”

It was more than a minute, and whatever it was that Jamison was pointing out to Dwight inside the Volvo, it sure seemed to set off a whole new flurry of activity. The patrolman I’d collared had barely finished giving the dispatcher my message than I heard Dwight putting out an APB on Michael Vickery’s gray Ford pickup.

The sun finally melted into the pine trees. Not much daylight left as reaction set in. I began to feel as tired as if I’d barned tobacco all day and so utterly saddened by De

All this went through my mind as Dwight gave a physical description of the pickup’s probable driver, and I must have been even more tired than I realized because I sat there stupidly for a moment wondering why on earth Dwight was putting De

The rescue people were lifting the limp form from the car. I went over and tried to focus on the body, without letting myself really look at the head again.

We sure do see what we expect to see, don’t we? Earlier, I’d assumed that the man in De

Wrong.

Now I saw quite clearly that it was Michael Vickery who’d had his face blown away.

It made the eleven o’clock news on all our local cha

Scion of a prominent local family, police seeking his missing male companion, body discovered by an equally prominent candidate for a seat on the bench-all the notice that I’d avoided earlier I was now getting in spades.

The television stories concentrated on Michael and De

Nice of Dwight not to speculate out loud, but it didn’t stop the media.

In addition to my usual academic and career achievements, I was described as the “only daughter of Keziah Knott, at one time alleged to be North Carolina ’s largest bootlegger.” One or two hinted that I was-till now anyhow-the only white sheep of an infamous family, while others picked up on those phony campaign flyers and left the impression that Michael’s murder had something to do with my position on sex, race, drugs, untaxed whiskey, and God knows what else.

Although they were very careful to print or broadcast nothing actionable, the open-ended quagmire of personalities, crime, unanswered questions, and suggestive i

Monday came and went with no sign of De

Mrs. Vickery had collapsed upon hearing the news of Michael’s death and was said to have spent two days under heavy sedation, devastated and unable to accept Michael’s death. It was the first time in anyone’s memory that she’d given in so completely to normal grief. There were whispers of a suicide watch, but nobody believed it. Dr. Vickery refused to talk to the media, but his son’s employees out at the Pot Shot Pottery wouldn’t shut up.

One of them in particular, Cathy King, suffered from what Uncle Ash calls congenital tongue deformity: one that’s tied in the middle and flaps at both ends.

“I really can’t say,” she told any reporter who wandered in, then immediately started ru

The only good thing-as far as De

What didn’t help De

“This past year’s just been wild!” said Cathy.

Her two co-workers were less dramatic but grudgingly agreed with her assessment of a growing rift between the two men. They also agreed that it must have been De