Margaret Maron - Bootlegger’s Daughter

Terry closed the folder and replaced it in the rack. “Now you know well and good I wouldn’t name names if we had any, which, as a matter of fact, we don’t. You can ask Scotty yourself if you want.”

He glanced at his watch. “I’m supposed to meet him at six. Want to come along?”

Miss Molly’s Bar and Grill on South Wilmington Street hadn’t changed all that much since I was last there with Terry. A few more neon beer brands had been added to the already crowded walls and I saw that Spot had finally found him that old blue guitar he’d been looking for last time we talked about his collection of neon signs. He hadn’t taken Little Richard and Elvis off the jukebox, but Randy Travis and Reba McEntire were there now, too.

Spot acted glad to see me.

“The usual,” Terry said as we passed the bar.

“You still drinking gin and tonics?” Spot asked me.

“Yeah, only make it a virgin,” I told him. “I’ve got to drive to Makely tonight.”

“Getting old, kid?” Terry needled.

“Getting cautious. All I need’s a headline in the Dobbs Ledger: ‘Judicial Candidate Cited for DWI.’ ”

We headed back to the big round table at the rear, which had always been populated by law people. That hadn’t changed much either.

I recognized two homicide detectives from the Raleigh PD, a couple of SBI arson investigators, and someone from the attorney general’s office, all males if no longer all white. We’d barely reached the table when a familiar whiff of musky perfume overtook me and I felt light fingers on my shoulder.

“Deborah? That you? Well, hey, gal! How you been? Where you been? God, it’s been ages!”

I turned and there was Morgan Slavin, a blur of long blonde hair, long gorgeous legs, and the clearest, brightest blue eyes south of Finland. We hugged and grinned at each other and found chairs while she pulled out a pack of Virginia Slims and lit up, talking all the while.

“You remember Max, don’t you? And Simon? And, hey, Jasp! Lacy know you’ve slipped your chain?”

Last time I saw Morgan she looked like one of those skinny, white trash motorcycle mamas-tight jeans, denim jacket studded with red-white-and-blue glass nailheads, no makeup, hair skinned back under a baseball cap, and flying high. She’d just infiltrated the busiest crack house in the Triangle and was waiting for the warrants and backups to get there before she closed it down.

Big change from the high heels and chic teal suit she wore this evening.

“Busting corporation types now?” I queried as we pulled out adjacent chairs.

“Naw. This is how supervisors dress.” She poked Terry’s shoulder. “Less’n you’ve got one of them Y chromosomes.”

“Always bragging about double Xs,” Terry grumbled. “Only reason they promoted you.”

“Hey, that’s great,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, thank you,” she said with mock modesty. “And you’re going to be a judge, I hear?”

I held up crossed fingers as Spot arrived with a tray of drinks. Morgan was still drinking scotch on the rocks and the other men had beers, but I lifted my brows at the can of Diet Pepsi and glass of ice cubes that Spot placed in front of Terry.

“Getting old, Terry?” I mocked, squeezing the slice of lime into my tonic water.

“ Stanton ’s got a game tonight.”

“Yeah, sure.” I was going to let him get away with it, but then he remembered I’d heard him order “the usual” and he raised the can sheepishly.

Across the table, the men were trading war stories.

“Y’all work that Smithfield warehouse last week?” Terry asked.

They nodded and Morgan laughed with delight. “You hear about that one, Deborah?”

I shook my head and leaned back and waited for it.

SBI agents have to be brave, cheerful, thrifty, loyal, and all those other Boy Scout virtues, but I sometimes wondered if an SBI director hadn’t added “warped sense of humor” to the job description somewhere along the line.

“Tell her, Max,” said Morgan, acting like a big sister pushing her little brother out to show off

Max was the agent directly across who’d been coming on to me with those big brown eyes ever since I sat down.

“These two guys got a contract to burn out an old dilapidated tobacco warehouse over in Smithfield, see? Insurance scam. You sure you didn’t read about it?”

I shook my head. Smithfield was in Johnston, a county that touched Colleton but wasn’t in my judicial district.

“They had the preliminary hearing yesterday, and one of the perpetrators copped a plea and blamed it all on his partner. He just carried the can, he says, and it was his Dumbo partner who sloshed around all that gas. And it was Dumbo that made the Pall Mall fuse. You know what that is, don’t you?”

Actually I did, but he was cute and wanted to stretch it out.

“It’s a delay device,” he explained, taking his own cigarette from the ashtray and threading the unlit end through a book of matches. “See, tobacco burns at approximately 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I could burn this cigarette all day long and never set off gas vapors because it takes between 550 and 850 degrees to ignite them. Now this cigarette’ll take about ten minutes to burn down to the match heads, giving me time to get back here to Miss Molly’s and establish my alibi. The match heads’ll ignite at less than 350 degrees and generate enough fire and heat to set the paper on fire. The paper will generate up to 1,000 degrees and that’s finally hot enough to ignite the vapors, see?”

I nodded.

“Well, Dumbo does it all-matchbook nailed low to a center post ’cause he did know gas vapors are heavier than air, cigarette laced through the matches, only he forgot to light the cigarette till the last minute and what does he do?”

Everyone was grinning in anticipation.

“He flicks his goddamn Bic. I figure ol’ Dumbo probably had time to say Oh… but by the time he got to shit, he was standing in front of St. Peter, one pitiful crispy critter.”

Through the laughter, Morgan said, “Pretty good, Max. Almost beats one we had a few years ago. Before your time. He and his old lady’d been fighting half the night and she kicked him out of her trailer at two o’clock in the morning. He was so pissed he went next door and borrowed a match.”

I sipped my virgin GT and smiled lazily at Max. Enough to show him he was appreciated but not enough to move him around the table. I couldn’t afford any new entanglements right then.

Morgan misinterpreted and, with misguided generosity, offered me a Wake County sheriff’s deputy. “Tell Deborah ’bout that guy from California yesterday,” she said, gracefully stubbing her cigarette in one of the glass ashtrays.

“That call we got about some suspicious activity out near Fuquay?”

This one was a big, corn-fed blond with an easy aw-shucks-ma’am smile, who didn’t have to be asked twice to perform.

“I got out there and found a red GT with California plates. Unattended. Trunk lid up though, and the trunk half filled with that there stuff we call green vegetable matter when we have to take the stand.”

Terry leaned forward to listen. This was evidently a new story to him and he’d worked drugs. Tobacco is North Carolina ’s biggest legal cash crop, but they say marijuana puts more cash into the state economy than tobacco, and Terry takes it personal.

“Well I just hung around a few minutes and pretty soon, here comes this joker crashing out of the underbrush with his arms full of more green vegetable matter, freshly cut. He’s stripped to the waist. Sweaty. Briar scratches on his chest. Man, he’s been working double-time.”

He paused and tipped up his beer glass, then wiped his lips with calm, assured motions.