Bootlegger’s Daughter

DK: It’s weird, but De

DM: Yes.

DB: So who killed him, McCloy?

DM: I don’t know. Honest.

At this point, Baby Bird Jamison returned with a bag of hamburgers, fries, and four chocolate shakes. De

“Why do you think Michael took it down, and where is it now?” he asked.

Again De

He unwrapped his hamburger and began feeding it to Lily, who acted almost as hungry as me. When she’d finished it, he leaned back wearily in the golden chair. “I’m dead.”

That brought an ironic smile to his lips. “Look, could we please call it a day? Any minute now, all my systems are going to crash.” He took a deep breath. “And tomorrow doesn’t look to be any easier.”

Dwight looked as disappointed as any man with a mouthful of dill pickle could manage. “I was hoping I could get you to draw me a picture of what that panel looked like. The Holy Ghost, I believe you told Deb’rah?”

De

“Okay,” Dwight said. “You want Deputy Jamison to run you back?”

“No,” he answered wearily. “I’ll be okay. Come on, Lily. Let’s go home.”

Jack Jamison looked after them so longingly that Dwight took pity on him, too.

“The Pot Shot’s on your way home, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jamison.

“Well, if Miss Knott here will drop me off in Dobbs-”

“Consider yourself dropped,” I said.

“You can head on home then,” said Dwight. “Just follow along behind McCloy and see he doesn’t run off the road.”

We munched in companionable silence for a few minutes after we heard the two vehicles drive off, then Dwight said, “Oh, damn!”

“What?”

“I never asked him what he was looking for in amongst the costumes.”

I finished my hamburger and walked over to the racks. “You reckon it was Michael’s panel?”

I hitched up the dust sheet and started flipping through the costumes one by one. “It would be easy to slip a piece of fabric like that on one of the hangers, wouldn’t it?”

Interested, Dwight pulled a chair over and started working through the upper rack from the other end.

It took longer than I thought it would since some hangers held two garments, one inside the other. We passed each other in the middle and, after about ten minutes, had reached the ends of our respective racks without finding the panel.

I glanced up and saw Dwight with his hand on red velvet. “My cloak,” I said.

“Huh?”

“De

He lifted it off the rack, hanger and all. “Thing weighs a ton.”

“Why do you think Victorian women were called the weaker sex?” I said. “They must have been worn out before they began, just lugging that much cloth around on their bodies all day. No wonder they were always fainting.”

“I always thought it was those whalebone corsets.”

I undid the clasp to free the hanger and then realized there was another garment underneath.

One that was stiff and red and shiny.

“Oh my God!”

“What?” Alarmed by my tone, Dwight quickly stepped down from the chair and came to me. “What is it?”

“Janie’s raincoat,” I whispered. “The one she was wearing the day she disappeared.”

26 hell stays open all night long

Dwight had read through the files on Janie Whitehead’s death when he took over the detective division at the sheriff’s department, but he’d been in the army both when she died and when the SBI reworked the case seven years ago. Even if he’d been here, the SBI wouldn’t have let him read their files, so I had to explain the significance of Janie’s slicker.

By this time, I was getting a little confused myself. “What makes it crazy is that Howard Grimes was so right about seeing Janie wearing this, yet got it mixed up about where they were parked.”

“Howard Grimes… he any kin to Amos and Petey Grimes?”

I wasn’t sure. “Their uncle, maybe?”

Dwight shook his head. “Their daddy’s the only one I knew. Howard Grimes. He died a few years back, didn’t he?”

“Yes, just about the time the SBI reworked the murder. I asked Dr. Vickery about him last week and he said Grimes really did have a bad heart.”

Even as we talked about him, we were both being real careful not to touch the slicker Howard Grimes had described any more than we could help. Such a shiny surface would hold fingerprints. Dwight lifted off the heavy cloak and I hung the coat, still on its hanger, on a nearby hook.

It was cheaply made and unlined. Slick red vinyl backed with some sort of white cheesecloth to give it shape. Dwight was interested in an ugly brown splotch on the inside and he used the eraser ends of two pencils to hold the front open.

“No fold marks,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“If this had been folded up in a box for eighteen years, it’d have deep creases. It’s already starting to have some from being squashed inside the cloak. See?” It was an A-line garment and I pointed to some longitudinal folds where the skirt part had been constricted. “But look at the shoulders. That’s odd. Permanent wrinkles across the upper sleeves?”

Dwight stepped back and watched as I lifted a sleeve with his pencil until it was extended straight out horizontally from the shoulder. The wrinkles fell into place naturally.

“It was stored flat?” Dwight asked.

Despite the warm evening, I felt the hair on my arms stand up. “You could say that. I bet if you turn the hanger around though, you’d see a deep little dent at each elbow.”

Dwight reached out and turned it.

I was right.

“Picture this hanging on a wall,” I told him, “with a three-foot oak dowel ru

“Crimson as the blood of Christ,” he said. “Splashed with Janie Whitehead’s blood. Jesus! Was he crazy?”

“Define crazy,” I said, feeling infinitely weary. “Only north-northwest, probably. Every time I ever saw him, he could tell a hawk from a handsaw.”

Dwight smiled. “Tired?”

“A little. What time is it?” I looked at my watch. Not yet midnight. It felt much later. “I guess it’s too late to call Terry Wilson?”

He scowled.

“Don’t be like that,” I said. “You know you’re going to have to sooner or later. Scotty Underhill, too.”

“Yeah, I know. I guess I was thinking it might be nice to let the Vickerys get their son buried before we tell everybody he was a killer.” He went back to the table and sat down on the edge with his milkshake. “Still got a lot of unanswered questions. Who killed Michael? Why’d he bring the raincoat over here and hide it?”

“That wasn’t Michael, that was De

“How do you figure?”

“Because when I thought it was a tapestry panel missing, he very obligingly made up a dove and some lilies, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.”

He held out his empty cup as I uncapped the chocolate milkshake De

“There must have been a spare key to Michael’s room, so when De