Wilmington, NC 05 - Murder On The ICW

His children inherited the lodge and lived there. His only son, David Boleyn, Sr., died in the war. Then a daughter died.
    "The surviving daughter married, then in the sixties she sold the land to a speculator. Eventually, our client, Increase Boleyn's grandson, acquired his family's land. The property has come full circle, back to the Boleyn family, and my partner and I are restoring the lodge for Mr. Boleyn."
    Scott leaned forward earnestly. "We know who David Boleyn is."
    "Well, I'm trying to be helpful," I said. "The remains were taken to the university to Dr. McAllister's lab.Perhaps you should contact her. Or is she one of the locals you have to avoid?"
    Randolph did not look happy with my attempt at sarcasm. "I've already spoken to her. Okay, I'll tell you what I can. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is a bureau of the Department of Treasury. It's an outgrowth of the old Revenue Department. During the Twenties and Thirties in the Prohibition Era, the agents were called Revenuers or Revenue Men.
    "Oh, I know. Around North Carolina and Georgia, the Revenue men were the villains and the moon shiners were the heroes. But that's just myth, Miss Wilkes." He gave me a grim look. "Folklore."
    "I don't know much about the subject," I admitted. "Never interested, I guess. My dad was a Superior Court judge. He wouldn't have glamorized people who broke the law."
    "I know who your dad was," he said curtly.
    I suspected he had checked me out. Had checked Daddy out too. He would have discovered that my dad's reputation was sterling.
    He would have also learned that Melanie had been charged with murder and that her reputation was tarnished.
    He continued, "There was nothing romantic about moon shining. Most of the moon shiners were to be pitied. They were mostly poor and illiterate. They had no profession, no training. So they did the only thing they knew how to do: made whiskey. They had no respect for the law. In fact they were a law unto themselves. They lived in small enclaves back in the hills, or here on the coast, they lived deep in the wooded swampy areas, apart from society.
    "Making moonshine was hard work. They needed all the free labor they could get so they didn't send their kids to school, they put them to work stirring those vats -- hogsheads they were called -- and their pregnant wives too. It was a rough life. Nothing glamorous or romantic about it. Do you know that it took seven to ten gallons of mash to yield one gallon of whiskey?"
    "I didn't know that," I said. "Not a very good yield."
    He went on. "And those stills were made of copper. Copper corrodes. At high temperatures, it oxidizes. If they weren't kept clean, the copper would leach into the whiskey. Often the whiskey they made was poisonous, and it killed people. They killed people. And for what? A few pennies."
    "I had no idea," I said.
    "And then there were the wars. The agents would get a lead, go after a still to close it down, and end up getting shot at. End up dead.
    "In 1924, a police officer and a US Marshal were ambushed in their car on a lonely road in the Brunswick Swamps. They were leaving the scene, driving back toward town, but the moon shiners shot them to death anyway. Even killed their pet dog, an Airedale."
    "No!" I exclaimed. I abhor cruelty to animals.
    "I'd like to meet you tomorrow morning on the Boleyn property, take a look around for myself. As I said, in 1931 a Revenue agent disappeared in this area. If those remains you found are his, we'd like to know. And if we can find out how he died, that would be better. He was one of ours. And our agency takes care of its own ."

13

    Agent Randolph met Jon and me at the Boleyn property on Sunday morning. The sun was shining, the air was invigorating, another beautiful day shaping up.
    The shed had been cordoned off with crime scene tape but there was no need to cross the line. The doors of the shed were propped open and we had an unobstructed view of the interior. The glass shards and earth that had served as the dead man's grave for almost a century had been removed. I speculated that at her lab Dr. McAllister had assigned students to sift through the glass and earth to look for clues.
    We strolled down the lane toward the water and the boat dock. Agent Randolph had been silent but when he saw the boat dock, he said, "This dock is fairly new."
    "Yes," I said, "David Boleyn had it rebuilt about a year ago before he hired us to restore the lodge. He wanted to