The smoke had cleared, but the thick night air still smelled of charred wood. A cloying smell that had nearly suffocated her as she’d run back to the house to call 911 that fateful night.
“There isn’t a thing for you to see out there,” Sheriff Hunter DeMassi had told her once the smoke had cleared enough and the flames had died. “It’s a health hazard and I’ll make sure we get a dozer up here to level it and clear off the debris first thing next week. I can’t touch anything until the feds have their look-see, but then I’ll make sure I help get it all cleaned up. Until then, it’s better just to keep your distance.”
Better than what? Than seeing James passed out in his own vomit? Callie had seen it all and whatever devastation lay on the other side of those trees wasn’t going to shock her. If anything, it would remind her of what an irresponsible old coot her grandfather had been. He hadn’t just put himself in danger by doing something so illegal. No, he’d put them all at risk.
Because he was selfish.
Thoughtless.
Mean.
Even if the reverend had said all those nice things about him. About how he’d been a good man once upon a time and a good husband and a loving father. Callie had never seen any of it. Not one redeeming quality.
Just this, she reminded herself as she reached the end of the path and saw the blackened remains of her grandfather’s old trapper’s shack. The trees for a hundred-foot radius were scorched down to nothing and the moon cast an eerie glow on what was left of James Harlin’s pride and joy cooking site.
Everything was gone except for one of the walls and half of another. Debris littered the inside space and she made out what had once been a table, the burned edges of a transistor radio, the blackened blades of a box fan.
Copper tubing sat here and there, but the main hull of the still—the condenser—had been confiscated by the local authorities and hauled away, along with the few jars of shine that hadn’t burst from the heat. The larger gallon containers—all plastic milk jugs James had salvaged over the years—had melted and shriveled while the contents had spit more fuel onto the fire and no doubt helped it spread to the surrounding timber.
Yellow tape spread from limb to limb, surrounding the large area and marking it as a crime scene. The suffocating stench of charred cedar and stale ash cloyed at her nostrils.
Callie ducked under the thin yellow barrier and picked her way around a few fallen limbs and piles of rubble until she reached what had once been the interior of the dwelling.
She’d seen the aftermath of hurricanes that had hit the Texas coast. Amid the piles of rubble would be a calendar or a picture or something that had defied the odds of devastation and remained intact.
She eyed the small black-framed bifocals sitting on the windowsill of the one wall that still stood. A layer of soot covered the plastic and glass, but they were still there, no doubt sitting in the exact spot her grandfather had set them before he’d been blown to smithereens.
Her hand closed around the frames and she noted the yellowed sheet of paper sitting beneath the glasses. It, too, was covered with the same soot. She smeared the greasy covering off and unfolded the paper to see a partial list of ingredients for the infamous Texas Thunder.
The family moonshine had been responsible for every bad thing that had happened in Rebel since its founding. It had also been responsible for every good thing.
The Sawyers had used it as a springboard to their current success. Meanwhile, the Tuckers had let it drag them down so far that Callie had no clue if she could actually climb back up.
Instead, she wondered if maybe, just maybe, it was time to hop into her granddad’s truck, hit the road, and never look back.
The notion dangled in front of her like the most decadent seven layer chocolate cake, but Callie wasn’t about to reach out. She’d sacrificed ten years of her life to get to this point. To give up now would make all that time a total waste.
It would mean that she’d made all the wrong choices and sacrificed for nothing.
She slid the glasses and the paper into her pocket and eased her way around the rubble.
If only James had managed to pinpoint the final ingredients before he’d blown himself up.
But he hadn’t come through with that any more than he’d come through on anything else in his life.
Half-assed. That’s the way he’d always done things. The recipe was no exception. He’d blown himself up, leaving Callie to finish up like he always did.
Ten thousand dollars.
Mark’s voice echoed in her head and she entertained the crazy thought that maybe she ought to try her hand at finding the remaining ingredients.
That, or rob a bank. Both would pose a hefty jail sentence …
The thought stalled in her brain as she spotted the edge of a tennis shoe sticking up from the debris. Leaning down, she tugged at the toe of the shoe and pulled it free. Rubbing the edge, she revealed a worn leather shoe with a red, white, and blue sole.
She hadn’t even realized her gramps had owned a pair of sneakers. He’d lived in boots for as long as she could remember, and then, just two years ago he’d traded the old duct-taped Justins for the camouflage Crocs Jenna had bought him for Christmas. He hadn’t taken the comfy sandals off once since. He’d even worn them throughout the winter with socks.
He’d been wearing them, as a matter of fact, when he’d met his maker the other night.
And the shoe?
She leaned down and fingered the edge of the rubber. Old. Shabby. Maybe a leftover from her dad’s youth? Lord knew James had had a crap-load of stuff stored out here. Things he’d saved and picked up over the years because he’d never been one to throw anything away if there was even the slimmest possibility that he might need it again.
But a sneaker? It just didn’t fit that he would have a pair of sneakers for himself. He wasn’t the sneaker type. Not like Little Jimmy with his shiny black pair, probably pulled from the new-shoe bin at the local YMCA.
Unless the sneaker had belonged to someone else?
A bootlegger? A customer? An intruder?
She wasn’t sure why the thoughts popped into her head except that it had been a long day filled with tons of people telling her they weren’t the least bit surprised about what had happened.
That, and the fact that she’d felt the same unease crawling up her spine the night of the explosion. As she’d stood on the sidelines, waiting for the fire department, she’d had the crazy feeling that something wasn’t right.
You play with fire, you eventually get burned.
That’s what everyone thought. The thing was, James had been playing with the proverbial fire since he was knee-high. He knew how to make moonshine. Even more, he knew how not to blow himself up. Otherwise he never would have made it to the ripe old age of eighty-six. A fire, even a freak accident as the authorities had called it, just hadn’t seemed right.
James was a lot of things, but careless had never been one of them. Not when it came to cooking.
She hadn’t been able to get him to wear his glasses to drive or to watch TV, or even to heat up his favorite Eggo waffles, but he’d worn them out by the still.
Because he was careful when it came to his shine. Too careful to go out in a blaze of glory because of a dumb mistake like a loose fitting.
“It happens,” Sheriff DeMassi had told Callie when he’d given her the findings of his initial investigation just yesterday. “There was a loose gasket on the copper tubing. When the shine heated, the alcohol fumes spilled out and ignited. We’ve seen it time and time again around these parts. It’s a common story.”
For a rookie maybe. But James had had eighty years of experience under his belt. He’d had spills and shoot-outs with the law, and he’d even lost a still to a flood back during the summer storms of 2000, but never a fire.
He’d been too good for that.
That’s what her gut told her.
Then again, her gut had also told her to trust him when she’d handed over the money to pay the taxes.
She’d been wrong to put her faith in him and her mistake had cost her, just as he’d obviously been wrong with this last cook and his mistake had cost him. He’d been old, after all. Maybe the years had made him slow and careless.
She thought of Brett and his pappy. The whole town knew the PBR champ was back to salvage the ranch after his sick grandfather had let it go to hell in a handbasket. Pappy Sawyer had made mistake after mistake thanks to his Alzheimer’s, and now Brett was paying the price for it.
Callie knew the feeling and damned if it wasn’t ironic. They’d been so different back then, on opposite sides of the battlefield, yet here they were walking the same path.
Not that it mattered.
He was still a Sawyer and she was still a Tucker and, as the saying went, never the twain shall meet.
She glanced one last time at the sneaker before pushing it to the furthest corner of her mind. Because as well as she knew her grandfather, she really hadn’t known him at all.
Maybe he had worn sneakers. Hell, maybe he’d worn them when he’d walked into the nearest Piggly Wiggly instead of the tax office, and handed over her hard-earned money to buy more sweet feed, sugar, and yeast for his damnable research.
No, she hadn’t really known him at all, but then that was the story of her life, wasn’t it?
She’d been so sure of Brett way back when and he’d disappointed her most of all.
Never again.
No matter how good he looked in a pair of Wranglers.