Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

Lang, did you ever wonder whether Dan might have done Harley in?”
    John Lee kept walking, but Alafair saw his spine stiffen before he answered. “No, I can’t imagine that he’d have shot Daddy. He’d never done anything to cause Maggie Ellen to think less of him.”
    “Maybe he thought just the opposite,” she speculated, “that she’d get wind of what happened and admire him for it.”
    John Lee shook his head. “No. I’d hate to think Dan was a killer.”
    “Do you know where Dan was that night?” she persisted. She was going to tell him that Dan had been riding around in the dark, ostensibly looking for his father, but John Lee responded before she got the chance.
    “Not anywhere around here,” he said, firmly dismissing this line of thinking.
    They had reached the old willow, hanging precariously over the creek. The bank had been undercut by the current, washing the soil away from the tree’s roots, which dangled in the water. Some day in the not too distant future, the creek would completely undermine the willow, and it would fall. But until that day, the bare, washed-out roots created a perfect little complex of hidden storage compartments, practically invisible to the casual passerby. John Lee squatted down and ran his hand under the overhung bank. After a couple of minutes of feeling around, he sat back on his heels and stared thoughtfully across the water.
    “Empty,” he pronounced. “Last time I was down here, just a day or two before he died, there was a couple of gallon jugs and maybe a dozen quart jars.”
    “You think somebody cleaned him out?”
    John Lee looked up at her. “I reckon. I’ve got Jim Leonard on my mind, but Daddy did business with several of the less respectable types around here, and I imagine there’s any number of folks would have thought of his cache when they heard that he was dead.”
    “So where is this still?” Alafair wondered.
    John Lee stood and brushed himself off absently. “He moved it around, like I said. But he usually used one of about three or four places here on the property that was suitable. I kind of liked to know where it was, so I’d come down here once a week or so to see if I could spot it. He was a pretty good hider, and you could practically trip over it when he had it hid. He’d cover it up with brush and such when he wasn’t cooking with it.”
    Alafair grunted appreciatively. A good working still was a fair sized operation, and had to be run at night, if you didn’t want to be betrayed by the steam. Hiding one was not the easiest proposition.
    John Lee pointed through the brush. “Last I saw the thing, it was over this way.” He started walking east along the bank with Alafair right behind him. He left the path that had been beaten down by many feet following along the creek, and ducked into the tangle of dormant limbs. Once again, Alafair had to grab the back of his coat, this time to keep from getting lost in the dense undergrowth. Alafair lost her sense of direction in about ten seconds flat, but John Lee seemed to know where he was going. He crashed through the woods purposefully while Alafair covered her face with her arm to protect her eyes from slashing branches and hung on for dear life. In less than five minutes they broke through into a small overhung clearing, where John Lee stopped abruptly and Alafair crashed into his back. He looked back at her over his shoulder. “This here is the place, Miz Tucker,” he told her.
    Alafair blinked and looked around. She saw a small, roomlike clearing that had been created when a large pin oak had fallen. Dead branches and leaf litter were at least ankle deep, and the surrounding trees had filled in with their limbs overhead, effectively creating a leafy roof ten feet up. It was a neat little hidey-hole. But there was no still to be seen.
    Before she could question him, John Lee had begun tossing aside man-sized dead limbs from one end of the clearing, exposing bricks, a cauldron, copper tubing….
    “Well, I’ll be!” Alafair exclaimed. “I could have stood right on it and not found it! I can’t even figure out how you found it again yourself.”
    John Lee, who was studying the still with his hands on his hips and his feet planted apart, shrugged. “Like I said, Daddy tended to use the same two or three spots. I’ve been here plenty of times.” He squatted down, eyed the apparatus for a minute, then dug his hand into the ash pile under the makeshift brick fireplace.