prologueCASSIE
— Present Day —
Cassie Simmons rolled her shoulders back, then her neck, wishing she’d restocked on Tylenol. She could always tell when a storm was on its way because its threat squeezed everything in her body tight. This one was coming with a vengeance, darkening the museum windows as if she’d closed the curtains. Fingers crossed that the rain would hold off a little longer, so she could run to her car without getting drenched.
She finished sweeping the floor in front of reception and was about to tidy the back room when the main door creaked open. She gritted her teeth, wishing she’d locked the door, even though it wasn’t quite five o’clock. All day long she hadn’t seen more than the mailman and a couple of couriers, andnowsomeone walked in? Probably another delivery or a lost tourist. She pasted a smile on her face and turned toward the front desk to see a man entering the room, almost completely covered in a layer of fine white dust. She tried not to notice the white boot prints he left behind on her clean floor as he walked toward her.
Watching him, her brow twitched with curiosity. He was hardly what she’d come to expect as a guest of the Maison François Baby House museum. As an assistant museum curator in a National Historic Site of Canada, she was used to answering questions about Windsor’s part in the War of 1812, the Battle of Windsor, Prohibition, and the area’s Francophone heritage, as well as responding to requests to see the archives. Normally she tried not to judge in advance, but this guy didn’t look like someone interested in history. He was tall and broad, and around her age, she thought. He might be handsome, but she couldn’t be sure because his attention was on the pack he was carrying, which was also coated in dust. A construction worker, she surmised. He obviously wasn’t here for a tour.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Hey! Yeah. Thanks,” he said, sounding a bit flustered. He looked up from the bag and caught her eye for the first time. A smile cut through the mess on his face.
Yes. He was definitely handsome. Just filthy.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have no idea what I’m doing here.”
“That makes two of us.”
A dark eyebrow flicked, acknowledging her quick answer. “Well, I’m renovating an old house just outside of town, and I found something. Maybe an artefact, but I’m not sure. I figured the best thing would be to find an expert, so I checked Google, and this museum came up. I thought I’d start here and see if I could speak to a local historian or archivist, but this is all new to me. I’m not from around here, so maybe I’ve come to the wrong place…” He trailed off.
Cassie couldn’t yet tell if what he carried would be interesting or not, but her head was still pounding from the headache, so she hoped it wouldn’t take too long. All day, she had been craving her tidy little apartment, a glass of wine with her dinner, maybe a movie, hiding away from the impending storm.
“Can you help me?” he asked, and she reconsidered her plans, noting her visitor’s deep brown eyes. She could do all that a little later.
“I’m happy to, if I can,” she replied. “People often bring in things that they’ve found, but I’ll be honest with you: they’re usually duds. But who knows? What did you find?”
“Uh, it’s an old whisky bottle. I know whisky, but this one is new to me for sure. I polished it up a bit. I hope that’s okay.”
He reached inside the pack, pulled out a dark green glass bottle, and placed it carefully on the desk in front of her.
Cassie’s heart leapt with an unexpected surge of interest. The bottle’s round body and sloped shoulders looked like other whisky bottles she’d seen before, but most these days were brown glass, not green. And this one came with a badly corroded cap and an ancient-looking label. At first glance, she realized the bottle dated back almost a hundred years, to the age of bootleggers and Prohibition, a rip-roaring era that had put Windsor on the map in a big way. She hadn’t seen anything like this in a very long time.
Careful not to overreact, she asked, “Where was this?”
“Inside one of the walls. I broke one bottle, but there are lots more.”
“How many?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t finished the renos and didn’t want to break any more of them, so I left them in the wall. Dozens, though.”
Her fingers wrapped around the cool bottle—she could tell right away that it was full of liquid—and drew it close to read the print.
Bailey Brothers’ Best
1920
Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Her pulse hammered in her temples, overpowering her headache. She’d seen one or two of these before, but only in photographs. “This was in your wall?”
“Yeah. I knew it was whisky right away, because when I smashed the wall the whole place suddenly smelled like a distillery. I wonder if it’s still any good. I’ve never heard of Bailey Brothers’ Best before. Have you?”
Cassie’s mouth had gone dry. Oh yes, she had. “Starting back in the 1800s, there were a number of smaller distilleries around this area,” she said, easing around a direct answer. “In the 1920s and ’30s, this area was the busiest port for bootlegging in the entire world. May I ask where the house is? What’s the address?”
When he told her, Cassie’s heart lodged itself in her throat. What were the odds? Just last week she’d driven past the old place. TheFOR SALEsign sticking out of the tall grass had stood there so long it had practically become part of the landscape, so the bright redSOLDsticker in the top corner had come as a surprise. For a moment, she’d been tempted to stop and peer through any possible holes in the boarded-up windows, but she reminded herself she had no business at that house anymore. She’d pressed her foot on the accelerator and kept going.
“The place looks and smells like no one’s been there in decades,” the man was saying. “Not bad, just kind of musty. But so far, I think it’s in pretty good shape. I got it for a steal.”
