“Thanks,” David snatched the photo from her fingers studying his grandparents. He had loved his grandmother and no matter how often family or friends would criticize her mate, she had always defended Harcourt. “You never would have believed from this photo that one day he would just be gone.”
“I’m sorry you never knew him,” Susan said. “It doesn’t seem fair.”
“If I could just find out what really happened.”David ran his hands through his hair as his mind spun.
“Here’s another shot of your grandfather, who is the man with him?” Susan lifted another photo of two men standing shoulder to shoulder in an open field.
“I have no idea,” David said taking the small photo and turning it in his hands. “It looks like there was something written here but now I can’t tell.”
Susan opened a drawer on the desk pulling out a tiny ink roller used for making hand printed greeting cards. “Let me see, maybe we can pick it out with this.”
Turning the photo over, the young woman ran the ink roller over the faded words watching as they darkened, coming into stark contrast against the yellowed paper.
“Sheriff, Drew Frazer,” David read turning to look at Susan. “Why would my grandfather be with the sheriff if he was running moonshine, like all the reports said?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Susan scowled. “They look like they might even be friends.”
“I think a trip to the records office is in order tomorrow,” David mused. “Maybe we can find out about this Frazer fellow and learn why he would be in a photo with my grandfather.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Susan agreed, nibbling a pretty nail. “Did your grandmother ever say anything about the sheriff?”
“No. Never.” David turned back to the photo studying the two men. His grandfather was slightly built while the sheriff was tall, broad and serious. “See if you can find any more photos of them together.”
For the next half hour the two of them scanned every photo in the box but never found another picture of the two men together. By the time Gram called them to dinner they were both plotting their day in the town archives. They needed to find out everything they possibly could about Sheriff Frazer and his relationship with Harcourt Watkins.
Where had the two men been when the photo was taken? How did they know each other? What was their relationship? There were more questions spinning between them now than there had been at the beginning of the day, but something told Susan she was on the right track.
Chapter 8
Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
Colossians 3:12-14
“There are loads of articles here on Frazer,” Susan hurried through the basement of the old courthouse carrying a case full of newspapers. “He seems to have decided he would clean up some of the problems with the old moonshiners in the hills back then.”
“He certainly campaigned on that platform,” David agreed. “Look at all of these old stickers and signs.” He scrolled through the microfiche highlighting old slogans. “If Grandpa Watkins was a moonshiner, why would he have befriended a man set on pulling down the whole industry in these hills?”
“Do you think there was really any money to be made in selling corn whisky?” Susan couldn’t place what was troubling her, but there was something wrong about the picture.
“This county was still dry back then,” David spoke. “It’s only been the past twenty years or so that restaurants have been allowed to serve alcohol, so I guess there was probably a pretty good demand.”
“I hadn’t thought about that.” Susan rifled through the papers searching for any more clues. “Maybe your grandfather was trying to convince Frazer to let well enough alone, and they became friends.”
“Maybe,” David shook his head, “but Grandma Watkins always insisted that Pap-pap would never make or sell illicit hooch. Besides, if it was such a good business , didn’t they every have money?”
Susan paced the small room in the dark recesses of the courthouse. Nothing made sense. It was possible that David and his grandmother before him were just unwilling to accept the truth that old man Watkins really had been a moonshiner.
“Do you think anyone would have killed someone over whisky rights? I mean, there was plenty of room up there in the woods and fresh water was never an issue. Moonshiners could surely have come to some agreement, perhaps each choosing a different area in the county to sell their wares.”
“Your own grandmother said she had seen moonshine makers traipsing through campus when she was a student. Back then you weren’t allowed in the hills for fear of being shot. They didn’t carry those shotguns for nothing.”
Susan looked up, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “But to kill someone over a few bottles of rotgut, doesn’t make sense. It wouldn’t be worth the risk to kill your competition when you could simply pack up and move somewhere else.”
“You’re right, there has to be something more.”
David watched as Susan pinched her bottom lip between her teeth, trying not to remember the warm silky feel of it pressed against his own.
“What would be worth that risk then?” His eyes never left her mouth.
“Something more important than a still and corn liquor. Something more important than the few dollars a man would make from selling a half a dozen gallons of moonshine.”
“What if Harcourt stumbled across something else? What if someone was doing more than just selling moonshine?”
Susan looked up meeting David’s eyes. “Like what?”
“I don’t know.” David pushed himself from his chair
