almost bald, she laid down rubber getting out of the parking lot just in case there were fancier, quicker ways to find out where she was calling from.
* * *
The rain was starting to get on Norwood Love’s nerves. The young man had worked his muscles raw these last few days, trying to get this underground chamber fitted out properly with running water, drainage pipes, air- conditioning, propane tanks, and ventilation ducts. His cousin Sherrill had helped some. Sherrill was the only one he trusted to help and keep his mouth closed. Most of it, he’d done alone though, keeping it secret even from his wife. Not many women want their husbands to mess with whiskey and JoAnn was no different. Fortunately, she worked regular hours in town, so it wasn’t all that hard to do things without her noticing.
With the money from Kezzie Knott, he’d bought some stainless steel vats second-hand at a soup factory over in Harnett County. He’d fashioned the cooker to his own design, did the welding himself. The copper condensing coil was one his dad had made before he flipped out the last time—
He knew how to buy sugar in bulk without getting reported and he had a couple of migrant crew bosses waiting to buy whenever he was ready to sell.
Best of all, he’d figured out a way to keep the smell of fermenting mash from giving him away. That’s how most ALE officers claimed they stumbled over a lot of stills, just following their noses. In his personal opinion, that was a bunch of bull. Oh, maybe once in a blue moon, it’d happen like that. Most times, though, it was somebody talking out of turn or talking for bounty money. All the same, for that one chance in a hundred, he meant not to be found by any smells.
But this rain! The dirt floor was turning into a mud-pie and water was seeping down the concrete block walls. And now the weatherman was saying hurricane? Be a hell of a note if he got flooded out before he even got started good.
* * *
To Rosa Edwards’s relief, she hadn’t left it too late. The Freeman children were just coming out to the carport when she got there. She pulled her car in beside Clara’s and hopped out, leaving the motor running. “Your mama inside?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Lashanda.
“We’re on our way to school,” Stan warned her.
“It’s okay,” said Rosa. “I won’t make y’all late.”
She darted on into the house just as Clara came down the hall with her purse in one hand and car keys in the other.
“Rosa! Good morning.” She tilted her head in concern. “Is something wrong?”
“No, no, and I know you’re in a hurry. I got one quick little favor to ask you though.”
“It’ll have to be real quick,” Clara said, glancing at the kitchen clock. “I forgot how rain slows everything down.”
Rosa handed her the white envelope she carried. Humidity made the paper limp, but it was sealed with Scotch tape.
“Would you keep this for me?”
The envelope wasn’t thick. No more than a single sheet of paper inside. Clara turned it in her hand and looked at Rosa inquiringly.
“I can’t tell you what it is,” said Rosa. “But would you just hold on to it for me till I ask for it back? Keep it somewhere safe?”
“Sure,” said Clara and tucked it in her purse as she shepherded Rosa toward the door. “I’ll keep it right here next to my billfold.”
“Thanks,” Rosa said, heading for her own shabby car which waited with the motor still running. “See you tonight.”
Then she was gone before Clara remembered to tell her that prayer meeting was going to be cancelled.
* * *
“Millard King? Yes, I know him,” said the librarian. “Well, not
Deputy Mayleen Richards smiled encouragingly. “He said you passed him out on the track at the Dobbs middle school Saturday afternoon.”
Peggy Lasater wrinkled her forehead in an effort to remember.
“He said you were wearing red shorts and a white shirt.”
“Did he happen to mention that I was also wearing a Walkman?”
Richards checked her notes. “No Walkman.”
“People think if you’re a librarian, you spend your days reading. They should see all the shelving and cataloging we do. When I run? That’s when I get to read.”
“Read?”
The librarian nodded. “Books on tape. I did run Saturday afternoon, but I was too absorbed in the last Charlotte MacLeod to notice anything except where I was putting my feet. Sorry.”
* * *
Clara Freeman left Cotton Grove and drove south on Old 48, a narrow winding road that follows the meanders
