The Whiskey Baron Read Free Page B

through the fields and disappeared into a distant line of trees, down toward the water. The broom sedge was near waist high, overdue for baling, and blushed wine-red in the eastern light. Heads of blackjack popped up over the sedge. Behind the house was a good garden of corn and beans and tomatoes and squash, the leaves of the squash wilted like tobacco in the heat.Chambers parked in front of the farmhouse, approached the front door, knocked.
    The widow came to the door, a phantom-pale figure with straight brown hair dusted gray, a high forehead and a flat, narrow face, the bulbs of her eyes behind vein-blush lids.
    “He ain’t here,” she said.
    “Ma’am?”
    “I don’t know who you’re looking for, but he ain’t here.”
    “How you know I’m looking for someone?”
    “Sheriff, you haven’t come by in years, and both of us know why. There’s only one reason you’d come here, and that’s because you’re looking for some troublemaker. Lord knows enough of them hang around here. Ernest and Mary Jane and the rest of them. I don’t know which one you’re aiming to find, but you won’t find any of them here. I haven’t seen a one of them since sometime yesterday.”
    Chambers took off his hat. “Ma’am, you’re partly right,” he said. “I am looking for Mary Jane. I’ve also got some bad news. Ernest and Lee Evans were shot in front of the Hillside a few hours ago. Depot Murphy tells me it was Mary Jane who shot em.”
    The widow’s eyes didn’t waver. She leaned against the doorjamb and stared at the sheriff for long enough to make him uneasy.
    “I’m sorry to bring you the news about Ernest.”
    “Where’s he at now?”
    “My deputy drove him to the funeral home.”
    She stared off beyond him at the rising sun. She pressed her tongue into her upper lip, ran it along her teeth. Finally, she looked him right in the eye and, without flinching, said, “It’s funny. When the army told me about my husband, I was sad, but mostly I was relieved that I still had my boy, and that he was too young for the army to take him. When I heard what happened to Jimmy, it was like the world shifted into black and white, and it’s been that way ever since.”
    Chambers kneaded the brim of his hat with both hands and shifted from one foot to the other until he said, “Any idea where I might find Mary Jane?”
    She looked away from him, off to the sunrise again, and shook her head.
    “Or any idea why he might have shot Ernest and Lee?”
    “Sheriff, you know as well as I do what all goes on in this town. Half the farmers around here sell Tull their corn. He sells some of it back to us, but a lot of it goes up to Charlotte. Aunt Lou, you know her?”
    Chambers had heard of her, but he kept out of that business. He had his beat, and the boys up in Charlotte had theirs.
    “Any violence that happens here, your best bet is to look at the liquor. Larthan Tull, Aunt Lou. I don’t know what Mary Jane might be mixed up in, but as long as there’s a liquor trade, there’s bound to be trouble.”
    “I know about Tull,” Chambers said, “but I also know what goes on along the river here.”
    “I didn’t say I was innocent.”
    “Well, what are you saying?”
    “I don’t know, Furman. You just told me my friend Mary Jane shot that youngun I took in. I don’t know what to make of anything right now.”
    Her eyes welled up, and he wanted to reach over and comfort her, but he held back. She blinked her eyes clear and squared her jaw. After a pause for her to recover he said, “I’ll leave you be. You call if there’s anything I can do.”
    “Thank you,” she said.
    “Would you mind if I have a look around out here? I’m not here to bust up a still, but I do want to find Mary Jane.”
    “Help yourself.”
    She closed the door in his face, left him on the porch with his hat in his hand.
    As he stepped off the porch, he slipped and grabbed hold of the railing, and a fire shot up his left arm like a charley