“The teetotallers.”
“Those are the ones.”
As they worked, she told him how the temperance movement had pushed for Prohibition, which began federally in Canada in 1918. “It was flouted initially as a way to save money during the war. Every province made different rules, but people found ways around the regulations. A lot of the local police were paid off, for one thing. If the runners needed to go underground, they literally did. There used to be tunnels and hidden rooms under a lot of the restaurants and taverns. Oh, and if you happened to go to your doctor and tell him you had a headache, he would no doubt write you a prescription for whisky or whatever you wanted.”
“All of a sudden everyone came down with mysterious illnesses,” Matthew quipped.
“Exactly. Most of the supply came from big companies like Hiram Walker’s, but there were a lot of private distillers, too. Like the Baileys.”
“But the big money was in selling to the Americans, right?”
“You know your history,” she said, impressed. “Prohibition went on all across the country, but this seventy-mile stretch along the Detroit River was the busiest. We shipped more booze and brought in more money than anywhere else in Canada—seventy-five per cent of the total illegal liquor that passed from Canada to the U.S. happened right here, between the Windsor area and Detroit,” she said, reciting the facts she knew so well from the museum tours. “There was no bridge yet between the cities, because it wasn’t opened until 1929—at a staggering cost of more than twenty-three million U.S. dollars—so the river was the onlyway across. I’ve read that it was like a highway back then, with boats of all kinds in the summer, skaters or cars when it was frozen.”
Matthew’s jaw dropped. “The rumrunners drove over the river? It must freeze pretty hard.”
“It does, but not all of them made it. That was part of the risk. Some guys bought cheaper cars for something like five or ten dollars, but they were slow and not as dependable. Some drove Whisky Sixes—”
“Drove what?”
“Whisky Sixes, or the McLaughlin Buicks. They’re called that because they had six cylinders in their engines. They could outrun everybody except motorcycles, and they were so big they could blow through blockades.”
He grinned. “What an amazing time that must have been. Just like in the movies.”
“For sure. The American authorities were overwhelmed, trying to chase them down. Prohibition made big-money gangsters out of thugs. There was this one guy, Harry Low, who had a fleet of all the fastest boats—he even bought an old minesweeper and a patrol boat from the war. Those things were super fast, they were hard to sink, and they held a lot of liquor.”
“A minesweeper? I’d love to see that.”
“It’s gone now. The cops finally caught up to him.”
“When you say ‘big money,’ what are we talking?”
“Put it this way. The average workingman’s income at the time was about two thousand dollars a year. In the case of the rumrunners, an average boat made about a hundred and fifty a day. And some could feasibly cross every single day.”
Matthew whistled. “I can see the attraction.” He studied the last bottle with new appreciation before wrapping it. “I can’t believe all this happened right here in my house. Are there a lot of places around the area with mysteries to them?”
She put the lids on the tubs and got to her feet, brushing dust offher jeans. “Not anymore. There are still some neat old houses that have hidden rooms and tunnels from back then, but most are gone now. Either they burned down or they were demolished.”
“That’s a shame. These old places have great bones. I’d never want to knock one down. Though I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this old house.” He looked at her, an idea in his eyes. “Hey, would you like a tour?”
Her heart did a little bump at the thought of revisiting those places she’d tried so hard to forget, but in the end, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see her childhood bedroom. Besides, Matthew sounded so excited, it was difficult to resist.
“Sure,” she said, telling herself she’d be fine. It was all in the past. “That’d be fun.”
“Great,” he said, jumping to his feet. “Maybe we’ll find something else that’ll interest you.”
As she followed him, she forced herself to remember the happy memories. Climbing up these stairs for bed, holding on to her mother’s hand. Sneaking down early on Christmas morning, eager to see what Santa had brought.
He held out his arm. “After you.”
She took a breath then placed her hand on the handcrafted bannister, its wood smooth and dark like it always had been. It felt strange to set foot on these stairs again, at once familiar and new.
“Did you say you came here from Alberta?” she asked to distract herself as they ascended.
“I was working at the oil rigs, but I left that.”
“What brought you to Windsor?”
“Oil was a temporary thing for me. I was always more into construction—my first job was working with my dad on houses. When I lived in Alberta, I made some pretty good coin working on the rigs, and I was on my own.” He paused, making her wonder what he wasn’t saying. “Anyway, I decided to leave and start something new, maybe try flipping houses. Iliked the sound of Windsor, and this house kind of called out to me when I saw it online.”
