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don't argue with her." He
gave me a crooked grin. "I can't afford to, especially with
a wonderful wife and two lovely, but spoiled daughters
accustomed to the good life."
    "I see."
    Immediately, that obsessive-compulsive mindset took
charge again. "Now, the next step is the fermenting room
where yeast is added to mash and allowed to ferment for
up to ninety-six hours."
    He spat out explanations and observations like a ruptured
fire hose as we toured the fermenting room. The fermenters
were huge cylindrical vats almost forty feet tall and twenty
in diameter. The bottom was shaped like a funnel, and pipes
ran from the fermenters in every direction, reminding me
of one of those old Rube Goldberg contraptions. You've
seen them-a steel ball rolls down a groove, falls off on a
lever that ignites a cigarette lighter, which in turn burns a
string in two, upsetting a bucket of water on someone's
head.
    "This is really something." I didn't know what else to
say. Jackson was like a child in a toy shop. I supposed that if someone was ever born to be a Master Distiller, Emeritus, it was Alonzo Lynch Jackson. I managed to squeeze
in another observation. "Your mechanic, Runnels, suggested maybe someone killed Patterson."

    Jackson looked around in surprise, then a wry grin
creased his face. He touched his tongue to his lips again.
"David is an excellent mechanic, but sometimes he ...
well, the most generous observation is that sometimes his
imagination runs away with him." He led the way past the
beer wells and into the room with the copper whiskey stills.
"Did he tell you about his friends from another planet?"
    I sensed the gentle sarcasm in his words. "So you think
the death was simply an accident?"
    "Yes, Mr. Boudreaux." He smiled almost compassionately. "A tragic accident. Of course, Emmett helped it along
by getting drunk, but, that was Emmett."
    "Drunk? How do you know that? The autopsy report
hasn't been released."
    He grinned sheepishly. "Not to speak badly of the dead,
but Emmett was drunk. That was what caused the accident.
Now, shall we continue our tour? At the end, we can sample some of our latest sour mash bourbons."
    Well, I perked up at that. After all, I was gaining an
invaluable education in one area of my nutritional needs,
even if my investigation was leading me nowhere, which
is exactly what I had expected. "Sounds like a winner to
me."
    In the next hour, he pointed out the whiskey condenser,
the wine tanks, the finished whiskey tanks, and then led me
into the cistern room where finished whiskey was being
drawn off into new, charred white oak barrels. I watched
as workers stenciled black numbers on a white rectangle
on each barrel with the type of whiskey, the date, and a
number."
    I read one of the numbers. "Four-nine-eight-two-onetwo-eight. Why the number?"
    Jackson grimaced. "Serial numbers. Uncle Sam. He's got
to have his part of this."

    "You mean, every barrel is numbered?"
    "Every barrel. Like that one you just read. It will be
stored in rackhouse number four. The ninety-eight is the
year barreled, and the barrel number is two thousand, one
hundred and twenty-eight." He nodded to a computer next
to a file cabinet. "Here's where we keep record of our inventory. And there," he said, indicating the file cabinet, "is
where we keep our old records on floppy disks going back
to the early eighties. Before that, we kept our records by
hand."
    "And every single one of those barrels, you have records
on?"
    He handed me a printout. "A necessity, Mr. Boudreaux.
The federal government insists on exact records. They want
to know just how much taxes you're going to pay. That
printout gives the type of whiskey, the date, serial number,
and rackhouse location."
    "Rackhouse?"
    "A warehouse of sorts. That's where the whiskey ages."
    I nodded. "Where do you store all these barrels? Here
on the premises?"
    "Not enough room. We have three rackhouses on the
premises and several more