Free A Living Grave by Robert E. Dunn Page A

surprise waiting and I found it by smell, not by sight. It was a rich, yeasty smell but sweet as well, like a bakery gone bad. I followed my nose outside the main circle and, under an old hedge apple tree, found a compost bin cobbled from the wood of more pallets. It looked like Clarence Bolin was a green bootlegger. Inside the bin were the solid sediment of the missing still along with food scraps, hedge apples dropped from the tree, and a dead armadillo. I had no idea if you could compost the leavings of your still, but I had to give the guy points for trying.
    For a while I poked around, partially just killing time. I found fresh tire tracks in a rutted path where the still had been carried out the night before. How long did it take to set up in a new spot and begin a new batch? How long did a batch take from start to finish? I didn’t know anything about moonshine. I decided to make Clare my personal mentor on the subject as soon as I got hold of him.
    Billy came back in less than an hour. Even at that he’d already drained and refilled his soda cup.

Chapter 5
    T he home of Nelson Solomon was one of those best-of-both-worlds places only the wealthy ever seem to manage. It was close to town, in this case Branson. And it was still secluded, tucked into a cliff top lot with a view of the lake. It was my second stop of the morning. Solomon’s assault looked even less random now that I knew Cotton Lambert had been at both crime scenes. That raised questions, serious questions that needed better answers than I’d gotten yesterday.
    The only approach to the house was a meandering gravel drive that switched back on itself a couple of times before dumping out on a large, paved parking area. As soon as I pulled onto the concrete pad I heard a motorcycle start. It was a big Harley V-twin with loud pipes that roared as the engine revved up. A familiar sound. When it ran by me like a scalded cat it carried the smell of hot exhaust. Even over that, I swear I could smell the rider, a raw mix of sweat, grease, old beer, and tobacco. He was a big man with long, ratty hair and a beard to match. His head was bare but his eyes were covered by dark sunglasses.
    He was not Lambert, the man whose picture I carried in my pocket. It was the one Carrie had identified as Leech. He was the same type, though. And I was willing to bet the pair of them belonged to the same club. This time I got a look at the patch.
    When I saw Lambert running from the scene of Solomon’s beating he was wearing a leather vest with his colors. This guy, Leech, was wearing a cut, the traditional denim jacket with sleeves sliced off, but the patches on the back were the same. This time I was close enough to see them clearly. There was a center image of a masked Bald Knobber, with a rocker patch above that read Ozarks Nightriders , and one below that read Missouri . To the side was a smaller white patch that had the MC for “motorcycle club.” I had heard of them; nothing good. Missouri had been open ground for a while and several clubs had formed or chapters of established clubs moved in. They were all tangling over turf and trade. From what we’d been hearing, these guys were big into meth.
    They had to be local. No one else would use a Bald Knobber mask in their colors. Bald Knobbers were a violent vigilante group in the Ozarks, mostly in the late 1800s. In night rides, they ran off blacks or burned out white farmers they didn’t like, using the whip and the torch to enforce their will on the region. Like the Klan would wear peaked hoods and white robes to hide their identity, the Bald Knobbers wore masks made from flour sacks with embroidered eye-holes and tasseled horns. They took their name from the bare tops of hills called bald knobs where they held their secret meetings. There was a time in these hills when night riders inspired a level of dread to which their modern imitators could never aspire. That, I think, is because of the