A snowflake tickles Lily’s nostril, and she sneezes. Then she laughs, the snowflake spurring a childish impulse. As far as Lily can see, she’s alone on her snow-gilded twenty-acre farm—the boys are frog hunting at the creek, her daughter feeding the mule and dog and cats in the barn—and so she jumps up, sticks out her tongue, and laughs again at the delightful sting of catching a few frosty flakes.
“Lily Alvena McArthur Ross!”
Lily snaps her mouth shut and sees Mama, just inside the mudroom door, arms crossed.
Usually, she’d be aggravated by Mama hollering her full name to indicate irritation. But Lily laughs again. Even as—or maybe especially as—a twenty-nine-year-old widow and mother and county sheriff, she finds something delightful in being treated as if she’s a youngster, with no more concern than the consequences of lollygagging by her garden plot. Maybe for Thanksgiving Day, that can be true.
As she goes back inside, Mama lets the mudroom door slam shut hard.
Just a moment more … a quick walk down to the creek, to the Kinship Tree.…
No. She’s loitered long enough while the other women toil in the kitchen.
Just outside the porch, Lily pulls the soles of her boots over the boot scraper. Warm kitchen scents lure her from the grasping cold: baking pumpkin pies spiced with fresh ground nutmeg and cinnamon, bubbling turkey broth. Lily smiles at the blend of scents mingling into the most exotic perfume. Home.
With now-clean boots, Lily steps inside the mudroom, briefly sets the bunch of sage on top of a stack of old newspapers and Sears, Roebuck catalogue pages for trips to the outhouse. As she hangs her coat on a hook, that jar of sweetened apples from Ruth Harkins catches her eye from a shelf filled with home-canned goods. Then she picks up the sage, holds it behind her back, quietly enters the kitchen, and whips the savory bouquet out at Mama, hollering, “Hiya!”
Mama is too caught up in a conversation with Marvena Whitcomb Sacovech to be startled by Lily’s hijinks.
“You mean t’tell me this here is perfectly legal?” Marvena pokes at a brick-shaped package on the worktable.
Lily sighs and starts tearing sage leaves into a bowl of crumbled corn pone on a small table by the stove. Mama and Marvena stare at each other from either end of a longer table. Mama’s dress and apron bundle her plumpness, and the softness of her round face makes the stubborn thrust of her chin endearing rather than intimidating, especially with wispy gray tendrils flying comically loose from her bun. Marvena is all wiry angles, sharp bones held taut by lean muscles hewn from years of hard farmwork and hunting and moonshining. She’d once spent time in lockup at Lily’s behest for brewing corn whiskey. Still, Lily knows not to count out Mama in this standoff.
On the worktable between the two women is a paper-wrapped brick, one of two Mama had insisted on buying the month before at Douglas Grocers in Kinship. The brick is compressed dried grapes, wrapped in paper and labeled Vino Sano Grapes. Beneath the fancy script are detailed instructions: Dissolve in a gallon of fresh water. Add sugar to taste. Store in jars and drink grape juice within week after mixing. Warning: storing in jug in dark cupboard will cause fermentation three weeks from date of mixing. Can also add baking soda to prevent fermentation.
When Mama had shown her the bricks, Lily had laughed out loud, amused by the absurd yet clever work-around of the Volstead Act, now national law for seven years, making the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcohol illegal. But perfectly legal dehydrated grapes with an absurd “warning” give the company a wide-eyed legal dodge, and “wet” consumers the exact instructions for making wine. Why, even the most die-hard “dry” would have to admit that was clever. Even Mabel Walker Willebrandt.
Yet Lily’s laughter had turned bittersweet as she considered that agents from the Bureau of Prohibition—established this past spring by the US Department of the Treasury—were expected to enforce the laws of the Volstead Act, so filled with loopholes that it was flimsier than worn-out washrags. The bureau was tasked with ending criminal syndicates besetting big cities as they bootlegged alcohol. But with just a few thousand agents, a vast country, and seven years since Prohibition took effect for criminals to develop clever means of mostly eluding capture, the Bureau of Prohibition agents—vastly outnumbered and underpaid—may as well have been sopping up a flood with those worn-out washrags.
Lily’s laughter had drawn startled looks in the grocery. After all, Lily is sworn to uphold the law. And she does, when she runs across the occasional still, or a moonshiner raises too much of a ruckus, or someone—usually a frustrated wife—complains about the speakeasy that kept popping up in a “storage room” in the basement of the Kinship Inn. Lily has raided it twice. But in geographically large Bronwyn County, there is enough else to occupy her time and attention in the spread-out population of mostly coal miners and farmers without looking for trouble in the hills and hollers as well.
Now Lily regards the brick of “vino” sitting in the middle of the long table, like an awkward centerpiece.
“Drinking alcohol is legal,” Lily says. “Just not selling, buying, transporting, making…”
“So anything that makes drinking possible,” Marvena says dryly.
Mama glares over the brick at Marvena. “Don’t get all high-’n’-mighty with me.” Mama is referring to Marvena’s recent conversion to a strict Pentecostal sect, after years of being an unchurched moonshiner. “These were a pretty penny—brought in last month all the way from California. Only two per customer.”
Marvena arches an eyebrow. “Convenient timing, right afore the holidays. I reckon the other brick has disappeared into a jug of water.”
Lily suppresses a chuckle. The jug had been resting in the pie safe for, oh, about three weeks. And Mama had saved the baking soda for its proper use—leavening biscuits.
Mama grins mischievously and nods.
Marvena glares at Lily. “You’re all right with this?”
“It’s Mama’s house, too. If she wants to offer perfectly legal grape juice—even if it’s gone ‘bad’—at Thanksgiving, that’s her prerogative. Just like it’s other folks’ prerogative to say ‘no thank you’ and leave it at that.”
Marvena, usually too tough to be cowed by anyone, drops her gaze. As her shoulders droop, Lily wishes she could retract her snapping tone. Marvena, who has had a hard life, too, values Lily’s respect and friendship. Though sadness has always lingered behind Marvena’s gaze, and worry edging on anger furrowed her brow, of late these expressions have deepened.
Lily softens her tone as she tears more sage leaves. “A grape brick’s not the only frivolous item Mama picked out for Thanksgiving,” Lily says. “She got soda pop for the children! Ginger ale.” The store had started carrying Whistle brand.
“Well, if it’s got real ginger in it, that might settle Frankie.” Marvena picks up a bowl of cream and beats it. Her next words are so soft-spoken that Lily barely makes them out over the clink of the metal whisk. “She had a bit of a sour stomach this morning.”
Oh no. Frankie—Marvena’s daughter, same age as Lily’s eight-year-old Jolene—often takes sickly turns, usually coughing fits. Lily’s had to quietly tell Jolene not to play rough with her friend.
“Well, I hope she feels better,” Lily says gently as she rinses her hands in the pump sink’s icy cold water. She grabs a towel to dry off. “Jolene and the boys were disappointed she didn’t come with you.”
Marvena puts the bowl down long enough to sift in some sugar and cream of tartar—just a pinch to stabilize the whipped cream so it won’t melt back down to liquid. “Her cough gets worse in the cold,” Marvena says. She’d ridden part of the way from Rossville to Kinship with someone she knew, then hiked the rest of the way, all just to help with today’s feast.
Marvena goes back to beating the cream, so hard now that she’s going to beat it into butter, if she doesn’t crack the bowl first.
“Frankie’ll be along with Jurgis and the others,” Marvena says, meaning her husband, Ju
rgis; his mother, Nana; Marvena’s brother, Tom; his son, Alistair; and Hildy Cooper, the coal-mining town’s schoolteacher and Tom’s sweetheart—and Lily’s oldest friend.
Then Marvena’s eyes glint with amusement. “Well, not all the others. Your mama tells me there’s one more guest coming.”
Lily stops mid-dry, clutching the towel between her hands so tightly that she’s in danger of rending it. “Mama—you didn’t.”
“I did,” Mama says, a mite defensively. Then she grins. “And he said ‘yes.’”
He is Benjamin Russo, an old friend from the Great War of Lily’s deceased husband, Daniel. Now Benjamin works for the Bureau of Mines in the southeastern Ohio branch on safety studies in various mines in the region. Several months ago, he took a boarding room in Kinship.
“Mayhap we should drink to that,” Marvena says, a wry twist to her tone.
“Are you kidding? After all”—Lily waves her hands around so hard that the towel flaps noisily—“after all that moralizing?”
Mama’s already opened a lower cupboard, digging past jars of blueberries and pickles so fast that there’s likely to be a mess on the wood floor any second now.
Marvena shrugs. “Hear tell this Benjamin—”
“Mr. Russo!” Lily snaps.
“OK—this Mr. Russo—is a big-city fella, from Cleveland originally.”
Lily turns to Mama, though all she can see of her now is her backside sticking out of the cupboard. “You’ve been telling Marvena about him?”
“Figured she’d want to know about him, seeing as how she’s not met him before.” Mama’s voice comes out muffled from inside the cabinet.
Lily and Marvena exchange a gaze acknowledging the truth—Marvena had met Benjamin before—once, two and a half years before, near the conclusion of the first case Lily had ever solved: the murder of her husband, Daniel. Marvena, who had been Daniel’s childhood friend, had worked alongside to solve the case, while Benjamin had helped resolve a dangerously brewing conflict in the mining town of Rossville between the miners Marvena was helping organize for possible unionization and Luther Ross—the then-owner and boss of the mining company, Daniel’s half brother.
Marvena clears her throat. “Seein’ as how your mama is going to serve the so-called grape juice no matter what I think, we may as well make sure it’s safe for your honored guest. Wouldn’t want to poison the poor man, before he can even start properly courting you.”
“He—he’s not—” Lily stutters. Heat rises in her face. “We’re not—” Well, yes, they had chatted a few times in town, at the Presbyterian church, before and after services. But he was just being polite. And beyond the fact that her work keeps her far busier outside a home than most any man would tolerate, Daniel has been gone for more than two and a half years. He will always be a part of her heart. Is that really fair to a suitor—assuming she’s ever interested?
“There’s a barn dance at a farm north of Rossville tomorrow night,” Marvena says. “Even Jurgis has agreed to take me.” Their new church frowns on worldly goings-on like dances. “And Tom and Hildy will be there. It’s an easy walk from Tom’s place.” Marvena’s eyes twinkle as she grins at Lily. “You could ask this Mr. Russo.”
“I—I’m not much of a dancer—” Lily sputters.
To her relief, Mama finally emerges from the cupboard, no broken jars at her feet, holding a gallon-size canning jar filled with dark liquid. Mama’s hair has now fallen completely loose from her bun and her face is red and sweat slicked, but she’s grinning triumphantly.
Lily laughs, lays aside her tea towel, and gets out three jelly jar glasses.
Mama carefully pours dollops of the liquid in each glass, and each woman takes one.
“Here’s to Lily being written up in Thrilling Gumshoe!” Marvena says.
Lily shakes her head. She’d solved a tough murder case last fall, and it had turned into a story in the popular detective magazine, in an issue that had just come out. She’d been teased and adulated far too much already over that.
“To Mr. Russo, then,” Mama says.
“No!” Lily snaps.
Whoops from the yard draw the attention of all three women. Together, they stare out the kitchen window, as Jolene scoops up a snowball and lobs it across the yard so that it lands right on top of her little brother Micah’s head, while Caleb Jr. laughs at Micah’s shock, until Jolene nails Caleb Jr.—Mama’s change-of-life baby, same age as Micah—square in the arm.
Lily grins. Her girl is showing ever as many signs of athleticism and tomboyishness as she had. Many mothers would try to tamp that down. Mama had for a while, until Daddy told her to let Lily be. She’d overheard him saying folks just have to be true to their nature, a sentiment Lily had reckoned as wise counsel. And so now Lily thinks of her own daughter, Good for her!
Lily lifts her glass. “How about a toast to all of our children. May they ever be joyous!”
Even as she says it, Lily’s heart pangs and her grin fades. All of them—her, Mama, Marvena—have lost children. Life offers no guarantees in life, especially of perpetual joy.
But Marvena and Mama lift their glasses.
And then all three women drink the grape-juice-turned-to-wine.
Well. It has a kick—but taste-wise, Lily had guessed right. It is like gulping pure vinegar.
Lily glances at Marvena, who’d once made nearly 100-proof whiskey. Her mouth twists bitterly, upper lip almost touching her nose, as she swallows.
Lily would laugh, but Mama looks so disappointed that instead she says gently, “It’s—right tasty.”
Mama sighs. “Well. I don’t know about that. Maybe if I add some simple sugar syrup, and a bit of blackberry juice—”
Marvena flicks an eyebrow. “Well now, Mama McArthur, you’re gonna turn into a right proper moonshiner yet.”
For a moment, silence hangs among the three women: sheriff, union organizer and former moonshiner, homemaker. Again, Lily wonders at Marvena’s sudden good humor about alcohol. Maybe she’s backsliding.
But then Mama and Marvena burst out laughing, and Lily joins in.
“To friends!” Marvena says.
The women gulp down the rest of their wine.
CHAPTER 2
FIONA
Thursday, November 24, 1927
Thanksgiving Day
9:50 a.m.
“Is there anything more I can do for you, ma’am?”
Fiona Weaver Vogel looks up from her third frustrating attempt to tie the floral-patterned French silk scarf into a proper bow over the low cleavage of her drop-waist dress. In Cincinnati she’d packed her most conservative clothing, and yet once she’d arrived at her aunt and uncle’s farm in the southwestern corner of Bronwyn County, everything she’d brought seemed out of place. Even scandalous. Thus her effort to correct the fashion blunder with a scarf she hadn’t requested Klara pack for her. And yet she had found it this morning—the first morning since arriving two days before that she’d felt up to dressing—in her trunk.
She’d felt both gratitude and irritation at Klara anticipating this need.
Now Fiona turns away from the floor mirror to note Klara hovering in the doorway of her old bedroom that is, for now at least, hers again. As usual when regarding Fiona, the older woman’s eyes narrow, her lips pinch into an insincere smile. From the point of view of Klara Schneider—longtime cook and housekeeper for Fiona’s husband, George Vogel—Fiona is, as she’d overheard Klara tell another maid, a floozy. Someone to tolerate until, inevitably, George gets rid of Fiona.
Fiona couldn’t seem to find any way to undermine Klara—not yet. The woman seemed as impervious as a cast-iron skillet. The only hint of vulnerability had come on the harrowing drive over. On a sharp turn, Klara’s tote bag had fallen from her lap to the automobile floor—exposing neatly folded undergarments, a dress, a small bottle of cologne, and an old, faded photo in a glass-covered frame, of a woman, a man, and a little boy in formal dress.
Klara had snatched
the photo up first. And Fiona had been too preoccupied with her own illness to ask about it—though it had struck her that the photograph must represent precious people and memories for Klara to travel with it.
Fiona has an item like that—though she hadn’t brought it on this trip. A cut-glass candy dish, with a chip off one of the tendrils of the fluted edge. She knows right where it is, back at the Cincinnati mansion, tucked safely in a trunk.
Now Fiona shakes her head to clear it of thoughts of that dish, and Fiona’s bow falls apart, as if the scarf sides with Klara, whose smile pinches even more tightly as she looks pointedly at Fiona’s cleavage. Heat rises in Fiona’s already-flushed face. Why can’t she tie a simple scarf this morning? Yes, her hands shake from perpetual hunger brought on by morning sickness. This is the first morning in a week she’d been able to keep anything down—just tea and dry toast. The thought of eggs remains nauseating.
But truth be told, her nervousness comes from anticipating the conversation she’s planning to finally have with her aunt Nell.
Best to stiffen her spine before facing the old, judgmental woman. Maybe practice with this one.
Fiona squares her shoulders, gives Klara a full smile as she turns her own pointed look at what Klara’s holding—Fiona’s chamber pot. “That’s fine. Your hands are full as it is.”
A comment meant to hurt. Anger flashes across Klara’s face. Careful, Fiona admonishes herself. Though a servant, Klara is a perpetual part of her husband George Vogel’s life, and though he is more than willing to dispatch her to do the most menial of tasks—like tending to his wife’s personal needs—he also treats Klara with deference. As for Klara, Fiona cannot for the life of her cipher why the nearly seventy-year-old woman stays dutifully in George’s employ. All she knows, vaguely, is that Klara was a distant cousin of George’s mother, and the few times he’d referenced his mother, long deceased, it had been in worshipful terms.
The Stills Page 2
