Death in the Distillery (18 page)

It didn't.

I went over each picture carefully, studying each item.
Thirty minutes later, I leaned back in frustration, sick of
staring at horns, belts, western shirts, lamps, clocks,
couches, and gun cabinets. I pulled out my notebook and
studied the numbers again: 1210841084284212. One thing
for sure, that wasn't the combination.

Across the editorial page of the morning Daily Press, I
jotted the numbers down in pairs, 12, 10, 84, 10, 28, 42.
Nothing. Next, I pulled out other combinations and came
up with two 12s, two 10s, three 8s, one 28, one 41, two 42s, and three 84s. I shook my head. They had nothing in
common.

I put them in threes, fours, and fives. Still no relationship. I wrote them backwards, sideways, and upside down.
Nothing.

I muttered a curse, crumpling the newspaper in my hand
and throwing it in the trash. "You're going nowhere, and
fast, Tony."

I yanked a bottle of Jim Beam Black Label from the
cabinet, gulped a couple of swallows, popped the cap on
an Old Milwaukee, and washed the bourbon down. I stared
out of the kitchen window several moments, gathering my
thoughts, feeling the warmth of the sudden surge of alcohol
hit my bloodstream.

I've always been a great believer in brainstorming. Jot
down any idea, regardless of how bizarre. Sometimes it
worked. Sometimes it didn't. So, with my faithful pencil
in hand, I grabbed another page of the Daily Press and
began making a list of what I had, or at least, what I
thought I had.

I jotted my ideas down in outline form, you remember,
the format old lady Watson insisted on in tenth-grade English. For every 1, there's a 2. For every A, there's a B.

One. Motive for killing Emmett Patterson. There could
be four. A. Blackmail. How did he sock away six thousand,
plus drive a Yenko? B. Seduction. The possibility that Harold Voss had somehow been involved in retaliation for the
seduction of his daughter. C. Vengeance. Mary Tucker getting her dues on the man who impregnated her daughter,
then aborted her grandchild and drove her daughter away.
D. Anger. Claude Hawkins lost his Silverado pickup because of Patterson.

Two. Why did Katherine Voss come to Chalk Hills?

A.

No A. None that I could think of.

I considered the blackmail motive. Since Cleyhorn appeared to be hand-in-glove with Danny O'Banion's bosses,
I couldn't get his help to check bank accounts. That meant I had to fall back on Old Faithful and come up with some
cash.

I reached for the phone and punched in a number. My
man, Eddie Dyson, Old Faithful, was visiting Houston.
"Dunno." The dull voice on the other end of the line slurred
his words. "Probably next couple of days. You wanta
leave'm a message?"

"Yeah." I left a message.

Eddie had never disappointed me. I don't know how he
found his information. The truth is, I didn't want to know.
With Eddie, the old aphorism, the less you know, the better
off you are, is a veritable fact. And if it isn't an aphorism,
it should be with Eddie. I jotted myself a note on one of
those small stick-um pads and posted it on the computer
monitor. I would try Eddie the next morning.

Next on the list was seduction. Harold Voss retaliating
against Patterson. That wouldn't hold water. Voss hadn't
heard from his daughter, so how could he have known what
took place at Chalk Hills?

I made a large, dark X through seduction.

Vengeance next, and that could be Mary Tucker, who
swore she wasn't at the distillery on Sunday. If the truth
was known, the woman was probably so stoned, she had
no idea where she might have been.

Despite the problem Danny posed for the killer having
to leap from the moving tractor, she was still a suspect if
she didn't have an alibi. That was one of my next steps, to
check her alibi.

Then there was the anger motive. Claude Hawkins lost
his Silverado pickup because of Patterson. In Texas, a
pickup is almost as close to a man as his wife. And, Claude
had access to a baseball bat. But, could anyone be dumb
enough to use one of his own ball bats in a murder? My
answer, after having visited with Claude, was a resounding
yes. And he was probably dumb enough to leave the blood
on it as a fashion statement, though I didn't spot anything
that looked like blood when I interviewed him.

But, there was a bleached bat on the wall. I stared into
space, wondering how to get my hands on it.

On the other hand, when Patterson started crying, Claude
wimped out, he said. And that was after his Silverado had
been repossessed. I had a gut feeling he wasn't the one.
Where would he get the kind of blackmail money Patterson
was obviously receiving? Still, I wanted to get my hands
on that bat.

The second reason I discounted Claude as the perp was
the ME technicians' opinion the blunt trauma was more
likely caused by a woman than a man. So, I made another
X, a light one across Claude Hawkins.

That left Tucker or whomever Patterson had been blackmailing.

I looked at the subject of number 2 on my outline. Katherine Voss, an unknown. True, it appeared she came
straight from Benchmark, Kentucky to the Chalk Hills Distillery by Greyhound bus. Such an undeviating journey indicated some purpose. What purpose? Maybe if I knew
that, then I'd know the next question to ask.

I leaned back and stared at my notes. The way my luck
ran, I would spend hours and days searching for her, only
to discover she had settled in San Antonio, and for whatever reason, decided not to let anyone know where she was.

Still, I wanted to know more about her, about her reasons
for showing up at Chalk Hills. No one at the distillery could
help, or would help. Then I remembered the idea that had
jumped into my head after talking to Harold Voss. What if
she had come to Chalk Hills to steal the formula, or some
of the culture the distillery had developed? But how could
she have known about it?

"Obviously, stupid," I growled to myself. "She read it or
saw it on TV."

TV archives could be accessed, but not without some
difficulty, plus a hundred bucks an hour for research, and
another hundred for a video. So, for the time being, that
left newspapers and the library.

A shaft of sunlight lanced across the newspaper. I glanced at the blinds. It was late. I checked the time and
grimaced. Rush-hour traffic. Almost impossible to go anywhere in Austin at this time of day without getting caught
up in traffic jams, dodging mushroom heads sky high on
speed, or fighting off homeless beggars at every corner with
signs reading WORK FOR FOOD.

I wanted to visit the Perry-Castaneda Library on the University of Texas campus. Check the newspapers back in the
spring of 1988. I reasoned that if something brought Katherine Voss to Austin, the newspaper and magazine were the
logical delivery systems.

Then I had another flash of inspiration. The Internet. I
had a local server for which service I paid $19.95 a month,
unlimited access. I'd been online for a couple of years, but
still felt like an Arkansas backwoodsman from a hick
county where everyone had the same DNA.

I went into the living room and, despite the scorching
glare from Jack, booted up the machine and went online. I
reasoned it would be simple to find the Austin Daily Press
and dig into its archives. A few months earlier, I stumbled
across the Internet Public Library, which I had the foresight
to bookmark. Finding the Austin newsrag was simple, but
it was only archived eight years. A couple of other Austin
publications, the Austin Business Report and the Austin Today Monthly were archived for two and three years respectfully.

Draining my beer, I leaned back and stared at the screen,
muttering over the so-called advantages of technology.
Here, I'd wasted more time finding nothing than it would
have taken me to drive to the library.

I glanced at Jack. "I'm heading over to the PCL at UT,"
I said, tucking my small notebook in my pocket. "Want
anything?"

"The PCL at the UT? What is that?"

I shook my head. "Christ, Jack. You're an uneducated
slob for a teacher. You've lived in this town all your life.
Don't you know anything? The Perry-Castaneda Library. It's the main library on the campus, only the fifth largest
library in the country."

"Oh." He arched an eyebrow. "Who cares? Just you exEnglish teachers. Those of us in coaching have better things
to do than read books." He turned back to the TV and
ignored me.

"Like what?" I snapped back.

He snorted. "Beavis and Butthead."

"That figures. Morons for morons."

"Get lost."

The library was always crowded. Being an ex-English
teacher, I appreciated the intent faces and busy fingers as
students scribbled notes. The kind of individual you find in
a library is seldom the kind with whom I had to deal in my
present business. Restores your faith in the human race.
And then you run into a Ted Bundy, or Dean Corell, or
Wayne Williams Jr.

I'd been in the PCL often, and I still knew the process
even though technology was changing it. Now, all the card
catalogues since 1985 were online instead of neatly typed
on three-by-five-inch cards arranged alphabetically in hundreds of tiny drawers.

The truth was, I preferred the cards, having researched
with that method for the first thirty-odd years of my life.

The microfiche lab was on the first floor. I made my way
to the window and requested the 1988 April, May, and June
archives for the Austin Daily Press.

The library aide, a young college girl who was obviously
helping to pay her tuition with the library job, found the
cards, slipped me a card to sign, and handed me a white
packet containing the microfiche. She indicated the bibliographical data on the front of the envelope. "This is just
April . . ." She looked at my name. "Just April, Mr. Boudreaux. We can only issue a month at a time. Are you a
student here?"

"No." Aware of the library procedures, I gave her my
driver's license. "Just a local."

She gave me a bright smile, and filed my license under
the counter. "You know how to use the machines?"

I nodded. "I've been here before."

Half-a-dozen machines that looked like computer screens
with an overactive thyroid problem sat back-to-back, three
on a side. The square screens were at least twenty inches
wide. Four were in use. I took one next to a young man,
who parted his black hair in the middle and wore an earring
in his bottom lip. Every man to his own poison.

I turned the machine on and slid the square film on the
glass carrier. As if by magic, three pages of the Austin
Daily Press appeared on the screen. April 1, 1988. Taking
a deep breath, I moved the pointer to the first page and
began scanning, not certain what I was looking for.

Thirty minutes later, I paused and stretched. So far, I
hadn't found a glimmer of whatever I was trying to find. I
rolled my shoulders, loosening the tight muscles, and returned to the task.

By the time I finished May, 1988, my eyes burned, my
neck cramped, and my rear ached. I went back to the window for June, taking my time, trying to work the cricks
from my muscles and joints. At least microfiche projectors
were almost silent, not clanking and clattering like the old
microfilm units.

By ten, with burning eyes and a headache the size of
Georgia, I made it through the middle of June, reasoning
that Katherine Voss had to have her plans formulated by
the fifteenth, the day her father put her on the Greyhound
bus. Otherwise, why would she go?

I leaned back and muttered a curse. Nothing. Zilch.
Nada. "Time to go home to a nice, stiff drink," I grumbled
as I slipped back from the projector and headed for the
window. Unless. I hesitated in the middle of the floor, recalling the magazine on the table in the visitors' lounge at
the distillery.

For a moment, the title eluded me, then I remembered.
The Austin Business Report. Seconds later, I had the April
issue in the projector. The front page jumped out and smacked me between the eyes: BEAUTIFUL BACTERIA
BOOMS THE BUSINESS OF BOURBON.

I squinted at the table of contents. I found the article on
page 78. The lead paragraph gave me all I needed.

Beatrice Morrison, CEO of Chalk Hills Distillery, announced the discovery of a pure culture yeast, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, which will create a rich and
mellow sour mash bourbon unlike any produced in the
United States. The yeast is a vigorous strain that produces its own particular properties for a whiskey that
can be distilled to possess various characteristics as
desired by the producer.

The article continued, detailing the marketing advantages
and financial projections of the discovery. Twice, Alonzo
Jackson was quoted, and singled out as the driving force
behind the development of the yeast strain, a process that
extended over eight years.

"Jesus," I whispered when I finished the article. "Who
would have thought anyone could get so excited over
yeast?" But then, I reminded myself that people do go nuts
over strange things, just like I was going nuts after discovering the reason for Katherine Voss' journey to Chalk Hills.

It was just after midnight when I turned down Travis
Street to my apartment. Cars were parked along the curb
as usual, creating a one-way street, as usual, and as usual
my neighbor's Geo was sticking into the driveway, forcing
me, as usual, to swing up on the lawn.

Inside my apartment, Jack snored on the couch. I shook
my head. Somehow, I had to get him out of here. I figured
he would be gone by now. Maybe he was sore because I
didn't pay attention to his monologue and he wanted to get
back at me.

A soft knock on the door startled me. I jumped. A knock
at the door was the last thing I expected at this time of
night. I thought of Jack. "Not another one," I muttered, mentally running down my list of friends whose relationship with their wives resembled the Bosnian war. This was
an apartment, not a refuge for battered husbands.