Joe focused on the road as he drove Doreen to the jail to visit Connor. With the snow turning to freezing rain, he drove slower than usual over the slippery streets.
His mind, however, raced. “I never noticed those bottles you used as vases before last night,” he said. “They’re all the same brand, aren’t they? They looked familiar, but I didn’t see a label.”
“Oh, I soak the labels off before using them. I know some folks like to leave them on as part of the decoration, but I find them distracting. The focal point should be the flowers or foliage, not the vessel that holds them.”
He squinted through the windshield. “Do you remember what the label said?”
“It was something French. The writing was so scrolly I could barely read it, to tell you the truth. But I do remember a picture of a château above the name.”
So far, she was describing the same wine Ray Moretti favored. Moretti and most likely countless others.
“Why do you ask?” she inquired.
“I think I’ve seen that bottle before,” he admitted, “and if I could identify it, it may be a clue in a case.” How that clue would help him, he had no idea yet.
“Oh! Well, why didn’t you say so? If it’s the label you want, I have more. Those bottles are better than the average bud vase because the broader base is sturdier. I have crates and crates of them.”
Joe hazarded a glance at her, schooling his face to conceal his shock. The cost of one of those bottles—at least, when it was full of the wine—was easily a month’s wages. That was before Prohibition. Now it was four times that cost. A single crate holding a dozen of those bottles would be worth four years of his salary.
“That’s a lot of bottles,” he said. “How did you come by them?”
A sigh lifted and released Doreen’s shoulders. “Connor. He was so sweet to think of me. He knew I was always looking for special vases like that, and it certainly cuts down on my overhead expenses if I can get them at a discount. Or in this case, for free.”
Joe gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Did he say where he got them?”
“Sure, I asked him the same thing, I did. He told me the bottles had all been confiscated due to the Eighteenth Amendment. Something about the Folstead Act, I think he said.”
“Volstead,” he corrected her.
Bottles like these would have been confiscated, all right. But Joe wouldn’t have been at all surprised if they’d been emptied into some thirsty gullets instead of into the gutter. At least they weren’t taking up storage space at a cost to the city. Last Joe had checked, more than $7 million worth of confiscated liquor was being stored at a cost of $20,000 per month.
Connor had never mentioned finding a cache of this wine. “Did Connor give you all the bottles at once? Or was it spread out over several weeks or months?”
“Oh, it wasn’t all at once. I would say a crate or two a month.”
Joe slowed the car to make a turn, then fractionally increased the speed again. “For how many months? Do you remember when it started and ended?”
“Let’s see.” She looked out the window again, talking quietly to herself as she sorted it out. “Started over two years ago, but at that time, it was only a few bottles a month, not a case. Then he found more, until it was two cases’ worth, consistently, right up until a month or two before he was arrested.”
That was hundreds of bottles. “This is really helpful,” he told her. “Were the bottles always empty when he gave them to you?”
She didn’t respond right away. “Now that you mention it, there was one time when I’d come to visit him in his apartment, and I saw a bottle on his table. There was no cork in it, so I assumed it was empty like all the rest, and he had set it out to give it to me. So I picked it up, but it was still halfway full.”
“Was there a glass nearby?”
She shook her head. “No, he wasn’t drinking it. He said he was in the process of dumping it down the sink when I knocked on the door, interrupting him.”
That was one possibility.
The other was that Connor had been drinking straight from the bottle. He was no teetotaler.
“So did he finish dumping it down the sink then?” he asked her.
“I did it for him,” she said. “I was the one holding it at that point, after all.”
Oh, what Joe wouldn’t give to have seen the look on Connor’s face at that moment. “Did he seem upset that evening?”
“Something was bothering him, sure and certain, but isn’t that always the case with you boys? Can’t talk about work, even when it’s written across your face.”
