8. Moonshine and Mysteries
8
MOONSHINE AND MYSTERIES
Seth walked away from his aunt’s house, wearing what he knew was probably a huge, silly grin on his face.
Deborah had agreed to see him again.
No firm date set, but just knowing she was fine with another dinner out lightened his step as he made his way down the hill. If she hadn’t been interested in him at all — if she’d only accepted his invitation to have dinner at the English Kitchen tonight out of politeness — then he doubted she would have said she would like to share another meal.
As he walked along Main Street on the way back to his bungalow, a big Dodge truck moved past him. Under most circumstances, such a thing wouldn’t have been much cause for comment, as people came and went this way all the time, since this was the only route that went over Mingus Mountain and down into Prescott Valley.
Except he knew no one else in Jerome had a Dodge truck that was painted dark green and had wooden slats protecting the bed.
No, that was the McAllister Mercantile truck. And although Seth hadn’t seen the driver, he somehow doubted it had been his father behind the wheel. His mother didn’t drive at all, which meant the truck must have been piloted by his brother Charles.
What on earth would he be doing out and about in the family truck at this time of night? Although they made trips to Prescott on occasion, going over the mountain to pick up shipments of supplies for the store or various items that couldn’t be found in either Jerome or Cottonwood, there was absolutely no reason in the world to take such a trip well past sundown, when all the warehouses and shops in the state’s former capital would have been closed for the day.
Something about this didn’t smell right at all. Although he would never call himself a psychic, not when he couldn’t read people’s minds or see the future, Seth knew he’d always possessed a gut instinct that generally steered him in the right direction.
And right now, the pricking of his thumbs told him something wasn’t right about this situation. No, not at all.
For some reason, the image of the boarded-up mine shaft popped into his mind. He hadn’t wanted to question the superintendent when he’d first spied the shaft being closed off, but more and more, the whole situation felt wrong to him.
Well, it would be easy enough to find out whether his imagination was working overtime for no reason, or whether something really was strange about spotting his brother out and about after dinner like this. Most likely, he’d realize his suspicions were entirely wrong and that Charles had been sent off on his nighttime errand because a particular item was needed at the store as soon as possible.
However, Seth knew he couldn’t simply let this go.
An eyeblink, and he was at the site of the closed mine shaft. Luckily, several large boulders that sat off to one side provided decent cover, and he crouched behind them as he surveyed the scene. All seemed still enough, with nothing changed about the boards that covered the gaping hole in the hill…or anything about the immediate surroundings, either.
But then a pair of headlights raked through the darkness, and Seth dropped to his knees, not wanting to risk those headlights catching the top of his head over the boulder if the angle turned out to be wrong.
A truck stopped a few feet from the shaft, and a man got out of the driver’s side. Not just any man, though.
His brother Charles.
After sending a furtive look in several directions, Charles approached the boarded-up entrance and then lifted a claw-head hammer to carefully pry loose a few of the nails. Once that task was done, he pulled off one of the boards, providing just enough space for him to squeeze past.
What in the world was he doing?
For just a moment, Seth had the impulse to call out to his brother, to ask him what errand could have brought him here long after all the miners had gone home. Some instinct stopped him, though, telling him that Charles would not be very happy to learn someone had been watching his movements.
Not too long after he’d gone into the shaft, his brother emerged, holding a heavy jug in either hand. He opened the passenger door of the truck, set the jugs down — on the floor or possibly the seat; Seth couldn’t tell for sure — and then went back to fetch more.
This went on for a few more minutes, until presumably there was no room left in the cab for any more of the jugs. Charles returned to the mine entrance, carefully boarded it back up, and then put the truck in reverse and drove slowly until he reached a wide spot where he could turn around. A few moments later, Seth heard the shifting of gears as his brother turned onto the highway and then drove off.
Going higher. Going up over the mountain.
Even though he knew he was now alone, Seth still waited a bit longer before he dared get to his feet. His mind didn’t want to accept what it had just seen, but he knew he couldn’t deny the obvious truth.
Charles was working with bootleggers, and surely Lionel Allenby, the mine superintendent, must be in on the scheme as well. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have worked so quickly to get the exploratory shaft sealed up, guessing that it would make an excellent drop spot for their moonshine.
And since Charles had continued upward along the highway, that meant he must be taking the contraband to Prescott. From what Seth had heard, the town’s Whiskey Row had become a bit more subdued after the passing of Prohibition, but it hadn’t shut down entirely, and that meant the saloons there needed to get their alcohol from somewhere.
Who was making the stuff? Someone in Jerome, or possibly farther down the hill in Cottonwood or Clarkdale?
Not that Seth supposed it really mattered. From the beginning, he’d thought Prohibition was a foolish idea — a sentiment shared by most people in the McAllister clan — since all it had done was create its own forms of crime, but he’d never thought he had much of a horse in that race. After all, he’d come of age several years after the law was passed and therefore hadn’t missed out on much, hadn’t had anything really taken away from him.
But if Charles was involved in bootlegging, then Seth was very much involved. So was their family…the entire clan.
He wanted to curse his brother’s foolishness, even if he knew doing so would only be a waste of breath.
Why would Charles have done something so stupid?
Surely it couldn’t all be about the money. Every person in their clan who was eighteen or older received a monthly stipend intended to bolster whatever they earned from their work. It wasn’t a huge amount, just enough to cushion their circumstances, but still, between Charles’s salary from the family business and his monthly allotment, he was doing quite well for himself. There shouldn’t have been any need for him to risk his personal safety…and, by extension, the safety of the clan…by getting involved with bootleggers.
Well, since Seth had already been in the mine shaft they were using as their hidey hole, it wouldn’t be too difficult to go inside and see whether his brother had taken the entire stash, or whether he’d left some behind.
He blinked himself into the tunnel, which was pitch black.
Damn it. He probably should have thought of that.
But his foot clinked against something metallic, and when he reached down, his fingers closed around the handle of a lantern. Just a quick thought to set the kerosene inside alight — he assumed his brother must have done the same thing, using the same witch talents they’d all been born with — and then he was better able to get a look at his surroundings.
A few feet away stood some boulders that he knew hadn’t been there the day before, and hidden behind them were several large barrels that he guessed must be full of whiskey. If anyone removed the boards from the entrance and took only a quick glance inside, they wouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
Well, as long as they didn’t know those boulders hadn’t been there a few days ago.
When he went over and thumped the barrels, one of them sounded hollow, telling him whoever had filled the jugs had emptied it all the way. Although he had no idea how such an operation even worked, he had to believe that the bootleggers would come to retrieve the barrel and fill it up again, return to hide it back here at an opportune time, and the cycle would start all over again.
How much were they paying Charles to smuggle the liquor into Prescott?
Probably a good bit, considering the risk he was taking. True, he was being careful, hiding the jugs in the truck’s cab rather than putting them in the bed where anyone could see them, but still, all it would take was being stopped by the sheriff for going a little too fast and the game would be over.
Or…would Charles even have to worry about the sheriff? Seth wasn’t personally acquainted with the man or the deputies in his department, but with a lot of money being thrown around, he had to guess it might not have been too difficult to pay the local authorities enough to look the other way.
What a mess. He returned the lantern to the place where he’d found it, magically snuffed it out, and then blinked himself back outside. All was quiet, which made sense. The bootleggers would do everything in their power to keep their activities hidden, and he guessed that even if they intended to come here tonight to remove the empty barrel, they’d wait until the hour was much later than eight-thirty.
Since he knew he was alone — and he knew the moonlight would be sufficient to show him what he wanted to find — he went over to the boarded-up entrance and inspected it carefully. As he’d thought, only a few nails actually held the boards in place, while the others were just for show. It would be easy enough to pull out the nails doing the actual work, remove the boards, and then close everything back up once you were done, just as he’d seen his brother do a few minutes earlier.
He had some answers…but many more questions remained.
When Seth returned to his bungalow, it was with a growing rage roiling in his belly.
How could Charles do something like this to the clan? The one rule they all lived by…the one that had been pounded into their heads from the day they were old enough to understand that the McAllisters weren’t like most people…was that they needed to live modestly and quietly, to do nothing that would attract attention to their family. Even if the authorities had been paid off to look the other way, that didn’t mean his brother still hadn’t taken an enormous risk. Seth had read enough in the papers about bloody gun battles by bootleggers over their territories in Phoenix and Los Angeles to know getting involved in that sort of operation meant doing business with all sorts of unsavory individuals. Everything in Jerome had been quiet so far — well, except for the usual sort of drunken brawls that always seemed to take place in mining towns, even during Prohibition — but there was no guarantee the current state of affairs would continue indefinitely.
The real problem was that, although he now had possession of some extremely unwelcome information, he had no clear idea what to do with it. His immediate thought had been to go to his parents and let them know what he’d seen, but he’d dismissed that notion at once. His father’s temper had always run very high, and he tended to act before he thought, never a good combination in a warlock. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have seen fit to use his magic to suspend the thief Oswald Peale upside down in the center of the mercantile until the sheriff arrived, thus making an utter spectacle that had been very difficult to explain away. Although most people agreed there should be zero tolerance for those who tried to take money right out of the cash register, they also thought Henry McAllister could have come up with a less spectacular way to restrain the thief.
But then, there were also the elders. If Seth couldn’t speak with his parents, then it made sense to go to the clan elders, let them know what he’d seen, and have them decide on the best course of action. Of course, Seth had seen on more than one occasion that they didn’t like to meddle any more than they absolutely had to, and he worried they might say that this was a family matter and that Charles’s parents should be the ones to discipline him.
Never mind that he was a grown man of twenty-five, and therefore shouldn’t be under his parents’ thumb at all.
Back and forth Seth went, and then finally decided he would speak with his brother first. He had no idea whether Charles would listen to reason, but it just seemed smarter to do what he could on his own before he brought his parents into this mess…or worse, had to go to the elders for help.
And the thing that made him even angrier was that Charles’s escapades had all but pushed the memory of his dinner with Deborah far away. Now that he was resolved on his course of action, Seth did his best to remember what it had been like to sit across the table from her, to watch the lively play of emotions on her lovely features and listen to her speak…to feel her hand on his arm as he guided her up the hill to Aunt Ruth’s house.
Yes, that was what he wanted to think about right now.
The rest of this mess could wait until morning.
When Seth awoke, he wasn’t in a much-improved mood. About the best he could say about his sleep was that he hadn’t suffered any nightmares, even while he tossed and turned, doing his best to find a position that would allow him to fall back into slumber and prevent his mind from continually jumping back and forth between the problem of his brother Charles and the realization that he was beginning to feel a lot more for Deborah Rowe than simple neighborly concern.
A lukewarm bath helped a little. Not that he could linger in it for more than ten minutes at most, since he had to be at work at seven, but still, he felt a bit more human as he combed his hair, then went to the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee. As far as he’d been able to tell, the night had been quiet enough.
Then again, what had he been expecting? Despite all those tortured thoughts he’d suffered overnight that had conjured images of Chicago-style shoot-ups on the streets of Jerome, he doubted such nightmares would actually come to pass. No, the bootleggers would be doing their level best to avoid any sort of confrontation, which meant his brother was probably safe…for now.
Maybe.
A more immediate concern would be facing Lionel Allenby at work today. Although they didn’t interact on a daily basis, the chances were still greater than fifty percent that Seth would at least see Allenby in passing, even if they didn’t have much to say to one another. Would he be able to hide what he knew about the mine superintendent?
If the man was even involved at all. All Seth had to go on were suspicions, and the belief deep in his gut that Lionel Allenby would have had no reason to have his team close up the exploratory shaft if he hadn’t decided it was the perfect drop-off site for the local bootleggers. It was possible that one of the men who’d dug the shaft had passed the information along to the people manufacturing the whiskey, and Lionel hadn’t been involved at all.
However, that didn’t explain why he would have ordered it closed so quickly.
Once again, Seth’s thoughts kept chasing themselves, and it didn’t seem as though a second cup of coffee would do much of anything except make him even more jittery. Instead, he got out some cornbread from the pantry, cut himself a slice, and made himself eat it slowly and deliberately, doing his best to focus on the moment rather than a million possibilities he couldn’t control.
The exercise of preparing even such a meager breakfast helped a little bit, as did his morning rituals of shaving and brushing his teeth. By the time he emerged from his bungalow, he thought he might be able to face the day without letting anyone know that he’d seen something troubling…and potentially dangerous…the night before.
His route to the mine took him past Paradise Lane, and Aunt Ruth and Uncle Timothy’s house. Seth couldn’t stop himself from wondering if Deborah was up yet, or whether she was the type of person to sleep in.
Then he had to shake his head at himself. No matter what kind of sleeper she was, night owl or early bird, he had to believe his aunt would have her guest up at nearly dawn. She was not a supporter of sloth, even in a lost young woman who couldn’t recall who she was or where she’d come from.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. At least Deborah remembered her name, and if their conversation of the night before was any indication, she also retained vague recollections of visiting certain places and performing certain tasks, even if she didn’t have any real context to go on. Seth had to believe this was a promising sign, and that sooner or later, she would have recovered enough of her memories to recollect something of her origins.
And while he certainly didn’t want her to go wandering through life with no clear idea of where she’d come from, he also dreaded the day when those lost memories would finally resurface, like an ancient shipwreck revealed as the tide went out. Because once she knew who she was, she’d be gone forever.
Or…would she? He might have been flattering himself, but he couldn’t help thinking they’d had a certain kind of connection the night before. In that moment when their eyes met…before he, like a coward, had looked down at his plate…he could have sworn he saw the same longing in her expression that he knew he felt in his soul. If it was possible that she was coming to care for him, then maybe she would want to stay here in Jerome.
Oh, sure, he mocked himself as he drew near the gates that allowed entrance to the United Verde. A beautiful, smart woman who could have anyone she wanted is going to be fine with living in the back of beyond with a mining foreman, in a bungalow barely big enough for one person.
Deep down, he knew that evaluation of his home wasn’t entirely fair, that with its two bedrooms and nearly one thousand square feet, his little house was certainly of a size to accommodate a couple…and maybe one child. Anything more than that, and of course they’d need something bigger.
Should he be laughing at the way his thoughts had completely gone off track? He hadn’t kissed Deborah, hadn’t told her that he had feelings for her, and now he was imagining a future where they were married and had children?
Well, thoughts were free, he supposed, and it wasn’t as if he planned to share these innocent fantasies with anyone else. It was enough that she’d excited his heart and soul, had made him believe for the first time that such a future might be possible for him. True, she was a civilian, and those pairings were always a little more fraught for the parties involved. But there were many such couples in the McAllister clan, and he had to assume they weren’t uncommon in other witch clans as well, just because magical families always had to take care that they didn’t become too inbred.
Obviously, he would have to be very, very sure of Deborah before he revealed that side of himself…which meant waiting to see how matters progressed, and also waiting to see what happened when and if her memories began to return. He certainly wasn’t going to take such a large step until he knew for certain that she wanted to stay in Jerome with him.
Until then, he would only do his best to get through the day ahead…and hope the Goddess might offer some inspiration as to what he should do next.