The Whiskey Tide (35 page)

     
"I'll just check to make sure everything's okay," he said.

     
Mrs. Cole nodded. Kate heard him moving quickly through the downstairs rooms. He was back in minutes.

     
"Mrs. Cole, you took an awful risk coming out to warn us," he said simply. "We thank you."

     
The white-haired woman looked pleased as a girl. Beneath a wool coat she was dressed as she must have been for dinner, in a waisted dress with a brooch of pearls at the neck.

     
"I put two and two together," she said. "Your boat comes in when there's no moon. That's the safest time. Grandfather's grandfather smuggled rum from Jamaica."

     
As usual, Kate found herself at a total loss how to respond to the strange woman.

     
"Then you know there are dangerous people involved," Joe said slowly.

     
Tatia clucked. "You see,
Madame
? Dangerous."

     
"Even the police aren't always nice," Kate put in. "And your boat could have leaked."

     
"I pay to have it kept seaworthy." Mrs. Cole brushed the air. "I'll report it missing. Perhaps someone will find it."

     
Trying to reason with her was no better than trying to reason with Woody. Kate looked to Joe for help, but he was as stymied as she was.

     
"Perhaps — when the weather's nice — you'd like to come for a sail with me. In the daytime," Kate offered impulsively.

     
Delight touched the wrinkled cheeks.

     
"I went away to school, too, for a year," she said in a rush. "For finishing. I adored it. The soup was thin and the rooms were so cold I thought I'd freeze in the winter, but it was the most wonderful year of my life."

     
"Rooms do get awfully cold," Kate said weakly. "Thank you again, Mrs. Cole."

     
When they got outside Joe whooped with laughter.

     
"Hush." Kate elbowed him in the ribs. "The poor woman's addled."

     
"I'm laughing at you, Kate. The expression you got. And I don't think there's anything wrong with her mind."

     
"Two old women setting out in a rowboat — without any lights?"

     
"She knows how rum-running works." Joe had a grin in his voice. "How they got a boat out without being noticed sure beats me, though."

     
"There are boulders between our two beaches. You can't see hers when it's dark. Do you really think someone was down there?"

     
Joe nodded. "Don't know if they were police or not, but yes." He followed her through the hedge into her own yard and touched her arm lightly. "Just sit tight, Kate. Everything will be all right. As soon as the
Folly's
empty I'll give you a call."

***

     
"Look, isn't that Felix Garvey?"

     
Kitty Thorne nudged Aggie as they slid into a table at Stink-o's. The place wasn't full tonight because it had been trying to snow all evening and too many wet blankets were afraid they'd end up pushing a car and getting slush in their shoes. Aggie's heart shrank to an unhappy lump inside her as she looked and saw Felix laughing with a strawberry blonde.

     
"I thought you went out with him," Kitty said archly. In spite of partying almost every night, she'd never turned up when Aggie was out with Felix.

     
"We don't belong to each other." Aggie gave a toss of her head. "Exclusive arrangements are too old-fashioned."

     
Tears stung, unshed, as she watched the blonde run a proprietary hand up Felix's lapel and nestle against him.

     
"Aren't you going to wave?" Kitty asked.

     
Aggie draped an arm over the back of her chair and tilted her chin to blow smoke.

     
"Why should I? If he wants to say hello to me he can come over."

     
Was Kitty thick-headed or deliberately cruel not to see that dwelling on this only made Aggie feel bad? What she ached for at the moment was someone to offer her sympathy. But of course nobody behaved like that. Not in her crowd. If you wanted mushy attention you had to get it from someone like Rosalie, who was too virtuous to bear and whose idea of fun was sitting home doing crochet, or going to church meetings or collecting clothes for the poor.

     
She danced twice with Kitty's brother, who'd squired them tonight, then with three other sheiks who joined them at the table. A supply of interested men was something Aggie knew she could count on when she went out. The sheiks kept them supplied with martinis. The room was tipsy when Aggie made her way to the powder room. When she started back to her table, Felix appeared in front of her, out of nowhere, like a toadstool.

     
"Want to dance, Aggie? You like the song."

     
"Piss off, Felix. You let me go to jail!" Aggie started around him.

     
He laughed, infuriating her with his lack of concern, and sidestepped to block her.

     
"Lots of people get picked up in raids. Think you belong on some sort of pedestal?"

     
The back of his finger trailed lazily down the side of her neck. Aggie pushed it away.

     
"My mistake was expecting someone with no background to act like a gentleman."

***

     
Flakes of white blew so thickly that Kate couldn't see the end of the yard when she opened her draperies late the next morning. Coffee in hand, she stood at the dining room window and marveled at nature's rage. Hard to believe only two days ago she had been in another country watching another storm. Now that it was past, she smiled at the memory. While she might not have gotten to Scotland, she, Kate Hinshaw, had slept on her own in a distant hotel and dined among strangers. She had seen the world, or a small corner of it.

     
For the next two days even the milk trucks didn't run. Kate became increasingly uneasy, not only about the valuable, damning cargo stuck square on their property, but about the loan on the house that sheltered them from the storm. A payment was due tomorrow. There was just enough left in the bank to cover it. After the fuss she'd made, even one day's tardiness might give them excuse to foreclose. When there'd been no word from Joe by three o'clock on the third day, she buttoned the thick beaver coat Pa had bought for her when she went off to college and walked to the streetcar.

     
With a check for the house payment in her purse she walked the few blocks to her father's law office, clambering over piles of snow that lay at the curbs. A scene like none she'd encountered there confronted her. Paul Garrison, looking stern and ferocious despite his unimposing appearance, blocked the way to his office. Imogene, the secretary, stood motionless with a folder halfway into one of the wooden file cabinets. A man with a roughened face and a coat that showed hard wear was shouting at them.

     
"You'd help me fast enough if I had money! How many more's going to get crushed by that elevator, you reckon?" He jammed his hat on his head and shouldered Kate aside as he left.

     
Imogene gave a sigh of relief and resumed her filing. Paul smoothed the strands of hair remaining on his crown.

     
"Kate," he said with effort. "Come in."

     
There was no need for it except that Kate didn't want Imogene knowing she was providing the house payments. She turned into the familiar office and opened her purse. Letting Paul hand over the loan payments guaranteed that she had a witness to how regularly and in what amount they were being made.

     
"What was that about?" she asked handing him the check.

     
"He lost his job for complaining about a faulty freight elevator that's caused a couple of accidents."

     
"And you couldn't help?" Kate asked in dismay.

     
Paul swept a hand angrily toward the adjoining office. "Your father's law books are in there, if you'd care to have a crack at them!" He reined himself in; sank wearily behind his desk. "Sorry." He smoothed his hair again. "I've always thought of myself as industrious, but finishing up your father's cases as well as my own has me burning the candle." He smiled faintly. "He was a very committed attorney, Kate. And I'm afflicted with guilt when I say no to someone deserving of help. There simply aren't enough hours in the day."

     
He turned the check over in his fingers. Kate recognized the signs that he was reluctant to raise a subject. She waited.

     
"I need someone to help me here. I'm taking on a bright young man who's just out of law school. He'll need a set of books. Should I sell him your father's?"

     
The shock Kate experienced was nearly as great as when she'd been shot. It had never occurred to her that someone else would occupy her father's office. All the way home she felt disconnected from what was happening around her. She had thirsted for change in the past, but on her own terms. Having it forced on her, she found it was ugly and whittled away even at memories.

     
Lamps were on by the time she stepped from the streetcar. She walked up the street. Almost to her own driveway she became aware of a figure waiting at the foot of it. By the height and broad shoulders she knew it was Joe.

     
"What on earth are you doing out here in the cold?" she asked in greeting. "You should have waited inside."

     
"I doubt your family would expect the hired help to hang around in the house."

     
"You're not—"

     
She stopped. His lips curved in irony. She might no longer think of him as hired help, but in the eyes of her family that's what he was. Joe had said he thought of her as a friend, and she reciprocated the feeling, yet the only thing they had in common was their shared role as rum-runners. He stamped his feet to warm them.

     
"Anyway, here's your check. The
Folly's
clean as a whistle now. I gave Clovis and Billy a bonus before I divided things up. Figured they deserved it."

     
"Thanks, Joe. For everything. Have a good Christmas."

     
"You too, Kate. Take care."

     
His footsteps crunched away in the snow. The world around her seemed suddenly dark and cold and filled with monotony. Kate stood reluctant to move, knowing that when she did some last, tenuous thread would be broken. She hadn't felt so forlorn since the train that should have taken her to her last year at Wellesley had pulled out without her.

Twenty-six

     
Rudy Vogel's ear-to-ear whiskers held more gray than brown. Their undefined edges suggested he didn't waste money on razors.

     
"So you want to rent a corner in my place again, do you?" He scratched what for want of a better term could be termed his beard and squinted at the dregs of a beer Joe had bought him.

     
Joe tilted back in one of Finnegan's sturdier chairs and waited. Vogel verged on seedy in the collarless shirt and shabby jacket he always wore, though Joe suspected he could afford better. The man dealt in scrap and salvage and had a reputation for always getting the best in a deal. It had won him few friends. Joe had found him unfailingly honest, and that you came out better if you let Vogel do most of the talking instead of tipping your hand.