Wilmington, NC 05 - Murder On The ICW

lodge.
    "Somebody made moonshine here once upon a time. And from the number of bottles in there, they made a lot. I'm assuming you've checked those other sheds."
    "We have," Jon replied. "These are the only bottles."
    Derek ducked his head. "Right. Just askin '. Okay, we'll back the truck around and start loading."
    "Want me to give you a hand with the packing?" Jon offered.
    "Thanks, but Clyde and me got it covered. Come prepared. Clyde, pull the SUV around, will you?"
    Clyde left and headed back to where the two-ton Durango was parked, turned it around, then backed slowly over the long reedy grasses. A quail shot straight up out of the grass like a NASA rocket out of the Kennedy Space Center and took flight.
    Distantly, the shrill warbling of a siren interrupted the peacefulness of the morning. "They're raising the drawbridge," I commented, referring to the drawbridge that connected the mainland to Harbor Island.
    Greenville Sound was lovely in the fall; the blatant colors of summer had faded and mellowed into a gentle seascape. South of us, Bradley Creek flowed into Greenville Sound. With our semi-tropical climate, summer-like weather could prevail until Christmas, a boon for recreational sailors and yachting enthusiasts. Glistening white watercraft bobbed in the slips at the Bradley Creek Marina.
    Money Island, an acre of high ground where according to local legend Captain Kidd had buried two treasure chests, humped up out of the water a short distance from the shore. Beyond it and the marshes, Wrightsville Beach with its colorful beach cottages formed a barrier island between the mainland and the Atlantic.
    "We got lots of practice at this," Derek said as he and Clyde unloaded wooden crates from the back of the Durango. "'Course never had such a promising haul as this one."
    A huge plastic bag yielded excelsior. They began the work of crating the bottles, spreading a layer of excelsior in the bottom of a crate, carefully settling a row of bottles on top of the finely curled wood shavings, spreading the next layer, placing a second layer of bottles, and so on, until the crate was full. Then they hefted the crate into the back of the SUV and started a new one.
    Derek lifted his clear blue eyes to my own. "My grandpa used to help his pa make moonshine when he was a kid and he told me how it's done. You wanna know how they did it?"
    "Sure," Jon and I said together, nodding our heads. Not that making moonshine was something I'd ever wondered about.
    "Well, it ain't as easy as you'd think," Derek said. "Lots of hard work, in fact."
    Clyde continued packing, a man of few words. They'd probably been best friends since childhood and doubtless Derek had spoken for both of them even then.
    Derek said, "The origin of the word 'moonshine' means something like 'work done by the light of the moon.' New Hanover County was big into moonshine back in the twenties. They liked to set up deep in the woods or the swamps, preferably near a creek because they needed a cool water supply for the mash and the worm."
    "Worm?" I said.
    Derek grinned. "Not that kind of worm. See, they'd build a big stone fireplace. That would hold the still. The still is a copper jug, big some of them, could hold up to one hundred or two hundred gallons. Then there would be pipes connecting the still to barrels. The barrels held the corn mash. They'd mix corn meal with sugar and yeast and warm water. You can have malt whiskey or rye whiskey or corn whiskey, depending on what you add. If they added juniper juice they got gin.
    "So the mixture in the barrels would have to be stirred while it fermented. A big operation would have six to eight people out there stirring -- men, kids, women with babies on their hips. Moon shining was usually a family endeavor."
    "I don't like the idea of little kids being involved in that," Jon said.
    "That's the way it was back then. So anyway, they'd make the mash and let it steep for about eight days till it got thick and soupy. Oddly enough, the mixture was called 'beer.'"
    "Beer?" I echoed.
    He nodded and chuckled.
    "Then the beer was boiled in the still. It's the vapor from the beer that becomes the whiskey. The vapor rises through the thumper keg and into the worm. The worm lies in cool water so that the vapor condenses and drips into a bucket. And those drippings are the whiskey."
    "Does sound like a lot of work," I said, musing about how easy it was for me to walk into any restaurant or bar and order a drink. What those