The Stills

by Jess Montgomery

  She wouldn’t have. Fiona must have truly believed that the methanol was supposed to be switched in this evening.

  Or, maybe, George had sent Fiona to set up Lily to do this raid.

  To what end? To make Lily look foolish? Toy with her?

  Lily shakes her head—she’s done raids before, so another one wouldn’t make her look foolish. Why would George waste his time with her like this?

  She thinks back to what Mr. Kline had just said about Luther asking around about a revenuer—and that the description of the revenuer fit Colter DeHaven. To Zebediah’s giving her Colter DeHaven’s name.

  Could Colter have arrived early—perhaps not trusting Barnaby to handle Luther?

  Could the “older man” Zebediah had seen shoot Colter be Luther?

  For a moment, she considers that she ought to inform Barnaby. But she’s not sure, at this point, if she should trust him, either. What had he really told her? That the bureau was looking for a reason to raid the farm where George was visiting.

  He hadn’t really given a good reason why.

  When she’d raided here, looking for the tainted alcohol referenced in the note Fiona had slipped her, there was none to be found.

  Though Barnaby was older, he seemed gullible. From the state of his clothing and attitude, she had no doubt that if he saw the bureau as offering a fresh start, then George, via Luther, could easily dazzle him with a better offer. Even after Barnaby and Luther left her office.

  You can see she’s not gonna be much help, right, Barnaby? Why not just say you did your best, and take a little extra from us—look the other way? Lily can just imagine Luther saying that to Barnaby.

  That was the problem with the bureau, even in its infancy. Sure, there were plenty of good agents. But there were also too many on the take.

  Well, Lily thinks, as she asks Benjamin if he’ll help her get the crate back to the jail, that’s all supposition. The only way to find out what happened to Colter is to track him down—and, God help her, to track Luther down.

  * * *

  For the second time that night, they pull around the bend to the turnoff to Lily’s house.

  Benjamin idles his automobile at the top of the lane. Lily barely discerns her house under scant moonlight sifting through tree limbs. There is no light burning in the parlor.

  “Thank you, I—” Lily starts, as Benjamin says at the same time, “I could—”

  He laughs as they both stop short. “Ladies first,” he says.

  “Thank you for driving me home,” she says. “And for all of your help tonight.”

  After securing the crate, tagged as evidence, at the jail in a locked storeroom and getting Mr. Kline in lockup for the night, Lily had thanked Benjamin for his help, especially given her bum shoulder. She then started to walk back in the bitter cold night to her house.

  But he convinced her that he could simply drive her home.

  He’d even waited while she interrogated the night clerk at the Kinship Inn to see if there was a Colter DeHaven registered at the hotel.

  No, the clerk had said.

  It was possible, Lily thought, that the agent had arrived on the train and not taken a room yet. On the way to his automobile, Benjamin said, There are only so many rooms for let in Kinship and I’m guessing my landlady knows about most of them—she’s always pointing out to me how hers is the best. Do you want me to ask her, on your behalf, who’s renting rooms? Check if a Colter had rented any of them.

  Lily found herself reluctant to further involve him in this case. But she had to admit that his was a clever idea and she could use the help.

  She’d nodded in agreement.

  Now Benjamin nods in response to her, Thank you.

  “Gentlemen next,” Lily says. In the dark, she can’t tell, but she imagines him smiling.

  “I could stay the night—in the parlor, I mean, like I did last night. Given all that’s going on, I mean. The parlor settee is, it turns out, quite comfortable. Of course, the chickens and the neighbors might take to clucking.”

  Now Lily laughs, and doing so feels good. The last time she’d laughed had been with Mama and Marvena, toasting one another with Mama’s fermented grape juice, not even two full days ago. It seems like much longer ago, or like something she’d daydreamed.

  “But last night, you weren’t napping when I came home. You were awake.”

  Awake. Waiting for her. Since then, he’s only been helpful. Not in a pandering way. Like he admires her. Respects her.

  For a moment, they sit silently, facing each other. Lily’s and Benjamin’s breaths puff and mingle between them.

  Slowly, she leans toward him, desire to bring her lips to his pulling her. He moves forward—but Lily hesitates.

  Desire is interrupted by the need to ask a question—an important question, especially if their lips touching might take them into new territory. She speaks softly. “You said you were thinking. What, what were you…”

  Benjamin leans back. The question trails off into the cold.

  “You. I was thinking about—you.”

  Ah. She waits for him to move forward again. Wills him to.

  But he sighs and adds, his voice taut as if the honesty pains him, “About your job. How much you seem to—to like it. To love it, even?”

  A different sort of cold ricochets through her. Not shock. His reservations are to be expected. But of flickering hopes, doused by reality. There are to be no barn dances tonight, or in their future.

  Her own honesty, in turn, pains her, but at last she answers, “I do. I love my job. And even if I’m not reelected in three years, I’ll find some way to—”

  “I know.” Benjamin’s words click evenly, carefully meted out. “That is part of what I was thinking about. It’s impressive, watching you at work. But I—I’m not sure what I’d think about you keeping a job like that, long term, if we—”

  Before he can say more, Lily opens the automobile door. It creaks loudly in the cold. The sound of her shutting the door echoes loudly across the snow-covered yard.

  She walks carefully down the lane, so as not to slip, and even after she steps out of Benjamin’s headlamps she hears his automobile still idling and feels him still watching her. Good, she thinks. But she’s not sure why. She does not want him to follow her, not tonight, when they are both too tired, too cold, too raw from the long day’s and night’s events. And not if he will, eventually, attempt to talk her out of keeping her job.

  And yet, as she opens the front door, and hears his automobile backing up, and then turns and stares into the now dark, cold night, her heart falls, just a little.

  CHAPTER 22

  FIONA

  Friday, November 25, 1927

  8:30 p.m.

  Fiona keeps her eyes closed and her breathing slow and even to simulate sleeping. She lies as still as possible, but her heart pounds as the door squeaks open and George’s heavy footfalls come nearer. Well, it had taken George plenty long to come check on her, she thinks. She’d started to wonder if Klara hadn’t passed along her message about skipping supper. The bed dips as George sits down at her feet.

  He puts his hand gently on her hip.

  Now she pretends to stir, then startle awake.

  “Oh, Fiona, I didn’t mean to wake you,” George says.

  The room is dim. Fiona sits up. George holds a lit coal-oil lantern. Odd, seeing him with such a rural device. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” she says, as he puts the lantern on the side table.

  “I wanted to check on you,” George says. “Klara came to me—said that you weren’t feeling well, that you told her Abe had hurt you?”

  Though Fiona resists the temptation to smile—Good, pitting Klara and Abe against each other is working—she is glad for the shadowy light, lest her expression give away her gratification.

  “Is it true? That he hurt you?” He looks at her neck, takes her arm and examines the bruises.

  Fiona considers. She could admit now that, yes, Abe had hu
rt her. All that would result in would be George telling Abe to keep his hands off his wife—unless ordered to punish her.

  Or she could deny it, reveal later she’d simply been covering for Abe because of George’s friendship with him, use such a dramatic confession to greater advantage. And in the meantime, George might be more harsh toward Klara, and that will rattle Klara’s loyalty in George.

  Fiona looks down. “I—I just fell. It’s so slippery outside.”

  “Well, be careful, my little spitfire,” George says. “That’s my baby you’re carrying.”

  With those words, George’s voice grates on her nerves. But Fiona forces herself to look back up and smile. “I did tell Klara I wasn’t feeling well, but I—I’m sure she just misunderstood about Abe. Tiredness will make people more easily confused. Klara has been working awfully hard for all of us. I feel rested. Maybe I could get a light bite and then help her a bit? In the kitchen?” She’ll have a piece of bread and then offer to bring up tea and a snack for Elias—save Klara an extra trip up and down the stairs.

  George nods. “Don’t overdo it, though.”

  “Of course not, sweetheart.”

  * * *

  A half hour later, her hands full with a tray filled with light sandwiches and mugs of broth, Fiona nudges the bedroom door open with her hip and gives a little call—“Yoo-hoo! Klara told me you also skipped supper, so I brought a little something.”

  “Come in,” Elias replies.

  Fiona pushes the door open the rest of the way and enters his bedroom.

  Elias is sitting up in bed, reading a book with a well-worn cover—Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Not, Fiona thinks, a book he’d found here. He must have packed it in his and Luther’s trunk.

  As Elias sets the book aside, he smiles benevolently while watching Fiona carry the tray to the side table. The tray just fits. She pulls a chair up alongside the bed, makes herself smile back at him, hopes the coldness she actually feels doesn’t show in her face.

  She’s had time to think, on the drive back from Lily’s and in the time since returning to the farm, about many things—including how to use to her advantage the news of Luther still being missing.

  Fiona sips her broth, watches as Elias greedily tucks into his sandwich. His color is improved, his hands steadier, since he’s been taking his medicine.

  “You seem better,” Fiona says. “Have you been up here alone, all day?”

  “Klara has checked on me,” Elias says. “But I prefer your company.” He looks at her like a kindly uncle. Though she keeps her smile in place, Fiona is unmoved.

  Then he leans forward, his expression turning darkly serious. He grabs ahold of her arm. “Were you able to convince George—about the wood alcohol?”

  “Yes,” Fiona says evenly—though of course she had not. There’s no convincing George. There’s only making him think your idea is really his—and that’s tricky. She’s already nervous about George changing his mind about the property being in her name. It would be so easy for him to change back. And she’d overheard George and Abe reviewing plans while making up this tray in the kitchen. The animals were to be taken away tomorrow afternoon, sold, Fiona was relieved to hear, to a nearby farmer. Trucks hauling in gravel are already set to arrive shortly after that, the gravel to be poured for a makeshift road out the back of the property starting tomorrow and finishing up Monday, just in time for hijacked legal alcohol to be trucked in. Operations start next week, with a small army of armed guards, on round-the-clock duty, posted on both the main lane to the house and along the gravel road.

  By a week from today, the plan will be underway—alcohol trucked for manufacture of Vogel’s Tonic in Cincinnati but hijacked en route. Not by actual gangsters, but by men George had hired to play that role.

  George’s tonic company gets the insurance payout on the stolen alcohol—but then it’s brought here. Trucked in off the main road and access road at the front of the property. Diluted here and rebottled. Trucked back out via a gravel road being constructed on the property and connecting up with a local county road.

  Then bootlegged at bars, dives, speakeasies, at points south and east of here with the assurance that this alcohol is safe—no methanol.

  Ensuring all that will happen will require Abe and George to work closely together, giving Abe plenty of time to convince George to reverse today’s paperwork, to not entrust this or any other property to her after all.

  But she must be the one, the only one, George trusts. Keep pitting Klara and Abe against each other, so that George sees their squabbling. Make Elias trust only her as well, so she can use him to her own purposes—for information. For doing her bidding.

  Still, her moves must be thoughtful. Careful.

  Fiona pats Elias’s clammy hand. “Well, I didn’t exactly convince George.” She leans forward, whispers, “But I was able to get word to Sheriff Lily Ross.”

  For a moment, relief soothes Elias’s brow. It’s as he relaxes, closes his eyes, that she sees in his face—even with better color—how ill he really is. He looks older by years than he did just a few months ago, when he and Luther first came into George’s orbit. But then his eyes pop open, and he stares at her.

  “To Lily? Why did you do it that way? And how?”

  “Luther and Abe went to get your medicine from Dr. Goshen last night—but the doctor had gone to visit Sheriff Lily. Lily was gone with the doctor on an emergency—something about a child, with alcohol poisoning, near a still run by Marvena Whitcomb Sacovech,” Fiona says. “Daniel’s old friend.”

  Elias nods. His eyes grow filmy. He shifts in the bed, as if his back is aching or he needs the pillows fluffed, but Fiona guesses that’s not what’s really hurting him. She can tell she’s stabbing him with the names—Lily, Marvena, Daniel—as if they are knives. She doesn’t know why, she may never know why, and she may never have to care. But it is worth knowing. Maybe for later use.

  For now, Fiona leans forward. She speaks quietly. “Today I learned that Abe and Luther went back to wait at Dr. Goshen’s office last night. When the doctor came back, explained where he’d been, Luther ran off. As if spooked. Why would he be spooked?”

  Elias shakes his head. “I don’t know. Send him up here—we can ask him—”

  “Oh, Elias…,” Fiona says. She pauses, knowing her next words will be as a knife to him, and she wants to slip it in carefully. Slowly. She serrates her next pronouncement by looking as worried as she can muster. “That’s just it—he hasn’t come back.”

  The old man goes still as death. He stares at her, but she is not sure he sees her.

  “We’ve reported him missing to Sheriff Lily, Abe and I; we went this afternoon. That’s when I was able to get word to Lily about the tainted alcohol.”

  “Why, why would Luther have run off? When I’m—sick?” Elias’s voice is a bare, heartbroken croak.

  “I don’t know,” Fiona says—though she does. The Goshens had told her that Luther ran off to the Harkins farm after learning that the Harkins boy had gotten ill after drinking shine near Marvena’s still. And that Abe witnessed this.

  What she doesn’t know is why Luther would care enough about that to run off—or why Abe would withhold this information from George.

  She doesn’t need to tell either Elias or George this just yet. She has a gift, she’s discovering, for saving reveals for when they’re most likely to yield outcomes that she wants.

  Elias protests, “We have to tell George. We have to find Luther—”

  “Not yet, Elias. I’m sure Luther will return. Let’s wait to find out why he ran off when he gets back and then combine that with what I’ve learned about Abe withholding information.” She pats Elias’s hand again. Offers a small smile. “Then, Elias, we’ll help George see that he is better off with you and Luther by his side. Now, you just relax.”

  Fiona takes the book he’d been reading and puts it on the side table. Puts his plate on the tray. Pats his head. “Just rest for now,”
she says.

  Saturday, November 26, 5:00 a.m.

  How easy it is to fall back into old patterns and rhythms.

  And how poignantly amusing that now Fiona finds comfort in the early morning chores that she once chafed against.

  But she is out here, in an old dress and boots of Aunt Nell’s, donned as quickly and quietly as she could while George tosses and turns in his sleep, beset again by nightmares. If he—or Abe or the other men—questions why she is out here, she can tell him, honestly, that she feels sentimental about the farm and the changes coming.

  Then she can give a dizzy laugh, play it off as girlish sentimentality.

  None of them will question that.

  That she does feel sentimental does not make it less of a cover for her true purpose.

  She, too, had tossed about in her sleep, reviewing more of what she’d thought about on the drive back from Lily’s yesterday.

  About Aunt Nell’s beliefs that Uncle Henry had been perfectly healthy at the time of his death. About Dr. Goshen saying he’d been treating Uncle Henry for stomach ulcers without Aunt Nell knowing. About Elias saying that he’d wandered the land and checked the buildings to see what might need to be modified for George’s plans.

  Could it be he was looking for Uncle Henry’s medicine in order to poison it?

  Uncle Henry wouldn’t have stashed his medicine inside the house, surely—that was Aunt Nell’s domain.

  So in one of the outbuildings—Uncle Henry’s domain.

  That’s why she’s really out here—looking for that stomach medicine. Whether it was benign or poisoned, wouldn’t she be able to tell, somehow?

  The springhouse, barn workbench, hen house—none of them had yielded anything.

  There is one place left to look. Uncle Henry’s woodshop. It’s the building farthest down the property, right where the gravel road is going to go in. Uncle Henry’s private place to spend time, by himself.