10. Bootlegging Bargain

10

BOOTLEGGING BARGAIN

Seth knew he had a standing invitation to have dinner at his parents’ house whenever he liked, so he guessed he wouldn’t raise any suspicions by showing up tonight. No, the real trick would be figuring out a way to talk to Charles alone.

Because that was the course of action he’d decided upon after a long day at the mine, doing his best to avoid Lionel Allenby, even while his thoughts kept chasing after one another as he tried to find a solution to what appeared to be an impossible problem. Maybe it would have been smarter to talk to the elders, or Mabel McAllister, the clan’s prima, but Seth didn’t much like the idea of going over Charles’s head before he gave his brother a chance to explain himself.

At least he had let Deborah know that they wouldn’t be having dinner with each other tonight, or the night after that. As much as he hated not seeing her, he also knew it was more important to confront Charles with what he’d witnessed and give him a chance to explain himself.

And, Seth couldn’t help hoping, convince his brother that he needed to stop working with the bootleggers…as long as he hadn’t gotten himself dug in so deeply that there was now little way out.

“It’s so good to see you again so soon,” his mother said as Seth came into the apartment where he’d grown up, with its collection of family photographs in gilt frames and the sofa and love seat with the damask upholstery and carved backs, a little out of date, maybe, but something that was comfortingly familiar. “I didn’t know whether you’d be entertaining Miss Rowe again. She seems like such a lovely girl.”

“You’ve met her?” he responded, startled. True, Jerome was a small town, but….

“Oh, yes,” Molly McAllister said. She’d just been setting down a platter of fried chicken when he appeared, so she left it in the place of honor next to her husband’s plate and sent a bright smile at her youngest son. “She came into the store this morning with a shopping list from Ruth. I got her all the things she needed, and also sent Miss Rowe home with some more clothes. It seems Ruth thinks she might be here for a while, so she needed something more than a wardrobe that would only work for two or three days.”

Well, that was something. Even with his brother’s crimes hanging over his head, Seth couldn’t help being relieved that Deborah clearly intended to stay in Jerome for the foreseeable future. Now all he had to do was make sure they spent as much time together as possible, no easy feat considering his work schedule.

Charles came in then, followed by their father. For just a moment, the two brothers’ gazes locked, and Charles’s eyes narrowed for a moment before he went to take his regular seat across from their mother and to their father’s left.

Luckily, neither of their parents appeared to notice the brief few seconds of tension, and everyone took their places and settled their napkins in their laps. In civilian families, this might have been the moment when they said grace, but instead Henry murmured a quiet thank-you to Brigid for her bounty, and then they commenced passing around the fried chicken and gravy and mashed potatoes and green beans.

Once that was done, Seth’s father said, “It’s good to see you here tonight.”

“I heard Mother was making her famous fried chicken,” Seth replied, a little white lie. He’d had no idea what was on the menu, and probably would have choked down liver and onions to get a chance to talk to his brother.

However, he had to admit the fried chicken was a nice bonus.

Their talk was commonplace enough after that, with his mother jokingly offering her menu for the rest of the week in an attempt to lure him back for more family dinners, and his father talking about the new radios he’d ordered from New York, five in all, that would be proudly displayed in the mercantile.

“I know some people like to order from a catalog,” he went on, “but I don’t think anything beats being able to hear things in person, or to touch the cabinet and feel the fine wood. I’m hoping they’ll be a good impulse buy for people fresh off a bonus.”

His gaze slid toward Seth then, as if implying his son would be a good customer for that sort of luxury item. And although he had to admit he’d considered adding a radio to his living room, that sort of thing wasn’t really in his budget right now despite his foreman’s salary.

Or rather, he supposed he could have splurged if he hadn’t been carefully saving as much spare cash as he could so he would be able to buy a bigger, grander house in a few more years.

He made a noncommittal noise, and his father seemed to realize a radio wasn’t in the cards for his younger son at the moment. Molly eased the conversation toward the Fourth of July parade that was being planned for less than a month from now, saying, “And of course we’ll drive in the parade again. I’ll need to dig out the bunting to decorate the truck.”

“It’s in the attic,” Seth told her. He remembered that clearly, since he’d been the one to pack it away in a box the year before and shove it up among the rafters.

“Oh, of course,” she said. “Then I suppose you or Charles will be the one to get it down for me — your father never was very good with heights.”

Henry, who’d just been about to take a bite of drumstick, looked more resigned than anything. “I’ll go in the attic if I have to,” he told her. “But it is probably better if one of the boys does it.”

“I can get the bunting down for you,” Charles said. “It will be easier, considering how Seth is hardly around anymore these days.”

A comment about how his brother was still living at home at twenty-five rose to Seth’s lips, but he swallowed it as best he could. He absolutely could not get into an argument with Charles right now, not when he needed to speak to him after dinner.

In fact, the whole question of the bunting presented a rather neat way for Seth to get his brother alone without raising anyone’s suspicions.

“Why don’t the two of us fetch the bunting after dinner?” he asked. “That way, it’ll be out of the attic and you won’t have to worry about getting it down at the last minute. You can store it in my old room until the Fourth of July.”

Molly tipped her head to one side. “That’s a wonderful idea, Seth,” she said. “One of you can hold the ladder while the other goes up into the attic.”

“I suppose that would work,” Charles replied. While he didn’t sound entirely enthusiastic, neither had he shot down the scheme, making Seth think this whole ploy to get him alone might work after all.

Which it did, with the two brothers dutifully trooping downstairs after dinner to fetch the ladder, and then hauling it back up to the third floor where the bedrooms — and the ceiling access to the attic — were located. The setup would help to keep their conversation private, since their parents had remained on the second floor to clean up after dinner and then retire to the living room to listen to the radio. With any luck, they wouldn’t hear a single thing.

Charles positioned the ladder directly under the opening, and Seth, who’d already volunteered to be the one to go into the attic, climbed up. As he went, he had to wonder why their particular attic didn’t have a drop-down ladder like he’d seen in other homes, but maybe it had been a question of space, since the attic itself was cramped and with a low ceiling barely five feet above the floor, adequate for storage but not useful for anything else.

To his relief, the box with the bunting was situated near the access point, on the opposite side from the spot where a nearly identical box filled with their Christmas ornaments sat. He reached out and got the desired box by one corner, then shimmied it closer to the place where he stood at the top of the ladder so he could grasp it with both hands. With that maneuver taken care of, he was able to slowly back his way down, bumping the box along from rung to rung until he reached solid ground once again.

He began to set the box of bunting on the floor, but Charles stopped him, saying, “Let me take that.”

Even better. He could follow his brother into the spare room that had once been his and confront him there, in a place where they were the least likely to be overheard.

Charles headed into the bedroom, which, in the several years since Seth had moved out, had turned into a dumping ground for any spare odds and ends anyone in the family couldn’t quite decide what to do with. More than once, his mother had made noises about clearing out the junk and turning the space into a sewing room, but so far those plans hadn’t materialized — mostly because no one had time to work on the project.

After setting down the box on the table that had served as Seth’s desk when he lived here, Charles turned, clearly ready to go back downstairs.

Now or never.

“I saw you up at the exploratory shaft last night,” Seth said, and Charles paused almost midstep, one foot awkwardly poised a half-inch or so above the floor before he remembered to set it down.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Well, that was his first mistake. Both brothers took care not to swear around their parents, but they also tended to toe the line around each other and do their best to be courteous. For Charles to slip like that meant Seth had caught him off guard.

“I saw you,” he said calmly. “You drove up in the truck and went in the shaft, then loaded about ten or so jugs of moonshine into the cab. After that, you went up and over the mountain — to take the liquor to Prescott, I assume.”

Charles stood so still that he looked almost more like a waxwork figure than a living, breathing human. Then he spoke.

“Let it alone, Seth.”

No denials, no pretensions of innocence — at least, not after that first falsely shocked exclamation.

“I will not,” Seth said. Although he’d gotten into a confrontation here and there with a belligerent miner who thought it was a good idea to come to work drunk, he’d never had to face down someone he knew before. A thrill of fear went through him as he wondered what his brother might do next. Charles’s magic wasn’t anything too frightening, only a gift for knowing where a particular item was located at any given time — useful for managing the stock at the mercantile — but he was still tall and fit, if not quite as muscular as his younger brother.

A physical altercation was the last thing Seth wanted, if not least because his parents would be sure to hear if he and his brother started throwing punches at one another.

“Let it alone,” Charles said again, and Seth crossed his arms.

“I can’t do that,” he replied, and now he tried to make his voice as persuasive as he could. Shouting would only attract attention…and turn his brother into even more of a stone wall than he already was. “You’re not just putting yourself in danger — you’re endangering the clan as well, consorting with people like that. And you don’t even drink!”

Now his brother’s mouth curved in a smile that bordered on contemptuous. “No, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t see the point in losing control. But that doesn’t mean I won’t help other people indulge if it means getting some extra money in my pocket.”

Seth stared at Charles in disbelief. “You’re breaking the law and putting us all at risk, just for a little money?”

“It’s more than ‘just a little money,’” Charles retorted. “You’d probably be surprised by how much it actually is.”

Seth’s jaw set. He didn’t want to hear any of his brother’s terrible justifications, but he’d stirred up this hornet’s nest and wasn’t about to back down. “Mother and Father pay you a very good wage.”

An amused chuckle. “I suppose it’s good enough for survival, but I want something more than the bare minimum.” He stopped there and ground his hands into his pockets, as if he hoped by doing so he could prevent himself from taking a swipe at his little brother. “I want Mary back, and the only way to do that is to have a lot of money in the bank and a big, fine house that’ll make that holier-than-thou mother of hers — and the rest of her family — look the other way.”

About all Seth could do was stare at his brother in horror, wondering if he’d lost some part of his mind after his fiancée ended their engagement months earlier. “And you think she’ll be just fine with marrying a bootlegger?”

Charles’s lip curled. “Do you honestly believe she’d know anything about that? All she and her family will have to know is that I’ve come into my own and can give her the kind of life she deserves.”

Clearly, Charles was convinced that this terrible scheme was the only way to woo back the woman of his heart. Seth searched desperately for any counter-arguments, anything he could say to let his brother understand what a terrible mistake he was making.

“You don’t even know if she’s already found someone else,” he said, and now Charles laughed outright.

“She hasn’t,” he replied. “You see, I’ve been spending more time in Prescott lately, and I’ve met some people who were able to make inquiries. Mary is living quietly with her great-aunt, and there’s absolutely no sign of any suitors sniffing around. I know I’ll be able to make her mine soon enough.”

One line of argument shot down. What else could Seth possibly come up with to convince his brother that his current course of action would only end in grief?

“You want to give her a fine house,” he said. “Maybe you’ve bought the land, but do you have any idea how long it will take to build a new home? I doubt Mary will be quite as fancy-free a year from now.”

Charles only smirked. “No need to build a house when I can buy one outright. I heard that Jeffrey Waters, who owns the boarding house down the street, wants to sell everything and move back East, since it seems his wife can’t stomach life in a mining town any longer. I have no intention of running a boarding house, but Waters’ home up on Paradise Lane is an entirely different story. When I can show Mary what luxury she’ll be living in, then I think she’ll change her mind…and so will her family.”

Although this news about Mr. Waters was unexpected, Seth knew the house his brother was referring to well enough. It sat on the opposite side of the street and partway down the block from the one his aunt Ruth occupied, and was somewhat bigger than her house, with three stories and a large, flat lot, uncommon in their town. Only the home that Mabel McAllister, the clan’s prima, occupied was more grand, and he realized with a sinking sensation somewhere in his stomach that such a residence might very well be sufficient evidence to convince Mary’s intransigent relatives that Charles McAllister wasn’t such a bad option after all.

“You will be lying to her,” Seth said, hearing the desperation in his voice but knowing he needed to press on regardless. “You will make her entire life a falsehood.”

“A pleasant one, though,” Charles returned. “And it isn’t as if she left me because she had fallen out of love. If that were the case, I would have let her go and tried to move on with my life. But to have her sanctimonious relatives step in and decide I wasn’t a suitable match for her, just because Father lost his temper that one time and made a scene? I won’t stand for it…and I’ll make sure they’ll all be eating their words very soon.”

The jut of his jaw told Seth that his older brother wasn’t making an idle boast. While it was true that the Townes, who’d been in Jerome since the late 1890s, had been very firm about making sure their only daughter was safely away from the McAllisters, he also knew that they were invested in the trappings of wealth, and probably wouldn’t have encouraged the match in the first place if it hadn’t been for Charles’s position as the eldest son in the family, a position that assured he would inherit a thriving business and would have no problem providing for Mary. If he were to come back to her with words of love…and the deed to one of the finest houses in town…it was very possible that they might decide to reconsider their opinion of the match.

And truly, if Charles had come by the money honestly, Seth wouldn’t have said one word about the situation. He might have privately wondered how much love was truly involved, since he’d thought once or twice that Mary could have put her foot down and refused to go to Prescott, maybe even encouraged his brother to elope and get married someplace like Phoenix, where they could be sure no one from her family would intervene. Yes, that was de la Paz territory, but the McAllisters and the de la Pazes had always been on friendly terms, and he thought the prima there would probably be sympathetic to his brother’s situation.

But to have the house and the reconciliation and everything else built on money earned by illegal activity?

That, as his uncle Malcolm — who was very prone to malapropisms — might say, was an entirely different ball of worms.

“What happens if you get caught?” he asked. “Do you think Mary would be content with having a husband in prison, even if she was living in one of Jerome’s finest houses?”

Charles’s eyes narrowed. “I won’t get caught. And neither will anyone I’m working with. All I need is for you to keep your mouth shut.”

Well, there lay the rub, didn’t it? Seth was all too aware of the many secrets his family kept from their neighbors and the world in general, but that was an entirely different situation. Witch clans always needed to keep their magical talents hidden or risk persecution. The Salem witch trials might have taken place hundreds of years earlier, but they still served as a stark lesson regarding the hysteria that could grip the civilian population when confronted with the unknown.

In his brother’s case, though, he’d be hiding something illegal, a secret that could put the entire clan at risk if the bootlegging operation was ever discovered. Some people might have argued that smuggling liquor wasn’t a crime like murder or kidnapping, and that if the laws hadn’t changed, it wouldn’t have been a crime at all.

Seth wasn’t ready to split those sorts of semantic hairs, however. All he knew was that his brother had put him in an impossible position.

“I’ll keep my mouth shut,” he said slowly as an idea occurred to him. Charles’s expression brightened at once, but Seth didn’t let that prevent him from adding, “As long as you withdraw from the operation once you have the house and you have Mary back. After that, you won’t need the money any longer, since the McAllister stipend and your salary at the store should be enough to provide for you both.”

This ultimatum didn’t appear to sit too well, for Charles retorted, “Do you have any idea what kind of people I’m working with? It’s not like tendering your resignation from a position at a bank.”

“I don’t care,” Seth said. While he couldn’t count himself relieved, he still thought he’d come up with a handy way to handle the mess. “Tell them that Father has gotten suspicious about all the gas you’re using in the truck, or the way the miles are racking up. Even they should understand this isn’t the sort of thing you can keep hidden forever.”

“‘They,’” Charles returned, “aren’t exactly the most understanding people in the world. But that may be the angle I need. I can’t break it off right away, though.”

“And I’m not expecting you to,” Seth said. “I know you need some time to buy the house and to see if Mary’s family will be willing to let her come back. At least this way you won’t forever be hiding your activities from your wife. Can’t you see that’s a better way to live?”

No response at first, as Charles seemed to be mulling what his brother had just said. At length he replied, “I suppose so. But you can’t breathe a word of this to anyone in the meantime, understand?”

“I won’t,” Seth said.

It was a promise he intended to keep…no matter what.