Wilmington, NC 05 - Murder On The ICW

the larger bottles are dark green with blob tops. There's amber, cobalt, and amethyst. Some of them are round like canteens, others are flat flasks. And they are embossed," I added.
    "Any guess how old they might be?" he asked with an intake of breath.
    And because I know about such things as the ages of glass, I had replied, "I'd say about a hundred years old."
    Derek had let out a long, low-pitched whistle and I'd jerked the phone away from my ear for an instant.
    "There are quite a few mason jars mixed in with the bottles," I said, resuming our conversation, "but we can just trash those if you don't want them."
    "Oh, we take mason jars too. If they're old."
    " Ummm , Derek, Jon and I have discussed this and we don't want the bottles to be sold. We'd rather not have someone make a profit off this find since we are making a gift of them. I suspect they are collector's items and I'd like to see them in the hands of a reputable bottle club and displayed for educational purposes. That's why I called your club, it has a good reputation. Is that okay with you?"
    "Yes, ma'am, I ain't got no problem with that. In fact, I'm with you all the way. That's what our club is all about, educating the public and such. But don't let's count our chickens before they're hatched. I better wait to see just what you have. How's ten in the morning? Good for you?"
    "Perfect," I said. I gave him directions to the hunting lodge and told him I'd look forward to meeting him.
    Derek and Clyde arrived at the lodge a few minutes after ten on Thursday morning. The sun was already heating up the coast, slanting across Wrightsville Beach from the east, highlighting the golden marshes and the ramshackle hunting lodge we were restoring for our client. The finger of land -- a tiny peninsula -- jutted out into the waterway. At the water's edge, a gaggle of geese clacked noisily in the rushes. The grass was high and dry and as we tramped through it to the shed, a cloud of yellow butterflies fluttered up and floated around us as weightless as feathers. An omen? I confess to being a tad superstitious.
    We had discovered the bottles on Wednesday morning. The padlock on the shed door had been badly rusted but was still intact and I had wondered aloud to Jon why the vandals who had wrecked the hunting lodge had not trashed the shed as well. Jon had speculated that perhaps the lodge had provided a more tempting opportunity for trashing. Or perhaps the vandals had been interrupted and were forced to flee.
    But as rusty as the shackle and loop had been, the lock was not so easily prized apart and Jon had had to retrieve a heavy-duty wire cutter from the stash of tools he hauls in the back of his Escalade. Once unfastened, the sagging double doors refused to budge. They had settled into the ground. We'd tugged and yanked, and finally a bottom edge splintered and gave, plowing a wedge in the dry and dusty earth as we'd dragged it toward us.
    Inside we'd discovered the bottles. Hundreds of them, heaped up like a small mountain. Apparently just casually tossed in, one on top of the other, a mound so tall it reached my waist. Many were broken. Right inside the door a litter of glass shards had twinkled in the sunlight.

    Now Derek helped Jon open the doors, grabbing the edge of one in a steely grip and yanking. Jon pulled on the other and together they spread the doors wide.
    With the contents of the shed revealed, Derek stood silently gawking, lips parted, hands jammed in back pockets, feet spaced widely apart. "Jeez!" he exclaimed. Then, "Clyde, you gotta see this."
    But Clyde had already moved up directly behind Derek's right shoulder, eyes widened, silent.
    Derek leaned in and reverently lifted an amber bottle, held it up to the sky so that sunlight danced through it. "A strap-sided flask," he said. "Valuable." Then he lowered it to his upturned little nose and sniffed. "You can still smell it," he said as if he had been expecting nothing else. He passed the bottle back to Clyde who inhaled too and they exchanged nods of agreement.
    Derek turned to Jon and me and grinned. "Moonshine. Them's moonshine bottles. Corn liquor. Has a distinct smell. Originally they were legal distillery bottles or used for medicinals but during Prohibition they got recycled. Mostly, the moon shiners used mason jars, but they'd use any container they could get their hands on." He surveyed the estate, studying the several outbuildings, his roaming gaze halting at the derelict hunting