Her stomach rolled, realizing what she’d just said. She hadn’t been thinking. She backed away from the skeleton.
“Cassie? Your grandmother?”
She stopped at the base of the ladder, realizing it was finally time to tell her story. “Listen, I need to tell you something, Matthew.”
He looked intently at her, arms folded. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just…” She bit her lip, trying to keep her eyes averted from the bones. “My last name, Simmons—that’s my dad’s name. My mother’s maiden name was Finnegan.”
His eyebrows flicked up. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re Irish?”
“It’s a little more complex than that.” She rubbed her hands together, her palms suddenly sweaty. “My grandmother Alice, her maiden name was Bailey.” Feeling slightly ridiculous, she held out her hand to shake his. He took it, a funny smile playing on his mouth. “My full name is Cassandra Bailey Simmons. Jeremiah Bailey was my great-grandfather.”
twenty-fiveJERRY
— November 1921 —
Jerry rubbed his forehead, hoping to ease the headache that had settled behind his eyes. He was in the spare room, his ledger before him, lit by the brass desk lamp Adele had insisted he buy for himself. It was late, well past midnight. Adele was asleep in the next room, her breathing slow and calm and at peace. For so many years, sleep had been Jerry’s enemy. Lying next to Adele, he found he could finally share in that escape. He longed for that peace right now, but he wouldn’t find it tonight. Jerry had spent the last three hours in the tunnel, counting the remaining stock with Walter, hoping, somehow, that he’d been wrong. But he had always kept good records, and the numbers didn’t lie.
After Willoughby raided their warehouse on their wedding night, Jerry hadn’t been overly concerned. This was, after all, what the plan for the storage room had been for. And for a while it worked. Jerry had just enough aged booze hidden underground to quietly fulfill the remainingorders of the year before the next batch was ready. It would be tight, but they could make it work.
But Jerry hadn’t counted on Willoughby continuing to pilfer their shipments, and he was angry that he hadn’t. He should have known Willoughby would be mad as a hornet’s nest. At first, things had been quiet, with Willoughby pleased to have struck what he thought was a lethal blow against the Baileys, but that hadn’t lasted. Slim had spotted some Bailey Brothers’ Best in one of the taverns across the river, and the owner hadn’t known enough to claim it was old stock. So Slim promptly reported back to Willoughby that the brothers were still in business. Ever since then, their runs had been trailed and raided. More and more, Willoughby was chipping away at the hidden stock.
It ate both brothers up inside that Willoughby was making a profit off their hard work. And that he was using them as an example as he bullied other gangs. That really stung.
“I wish you’d let me kill him,” John had said one night after one of their rumrunners had been stabbed on a run. Walter had found the hijacked vehicle with the driver gasping in pain, then he’d driven him to Jerry’s home. They’d laid him out on the kitchen table, and Adele had sewn him up without asking questions. But the look in her eyes told Jerry she was not happy about this at all.
“We’re not killers anymore, John,” Jerry had replied.
“Speak for yourself. Given the opportunity, I’d do it.”
“You’d go to jail, and I’d have to do all this work by myself. I’ll come up with a plan.”
“You better think of one soon. Willoughby won’t stop until he’s taken every last drop from us.”
But Jerry hadn’t come up with anything this time. And day by day, he could feel the increasing pressure of Willoughby closing in on them. Walter felt it, too. Before he left for the night, he told Jerry that he was pretty sure he was being followed.
They’d run into another wrinkle, too. With so much threat hanging over their heads, they had taken as much liquor as possible from Uncle Henry’s farm to keep him out of danger. That new stock, combined with the well-aged whisky, meant there was no more room underground. Crates were stacked inside the house, shoved into his office, the cellar, and wherever else they could find space. That had caused the first friction between him and Adele. So Walter had joined the brothers underground, and they’d dug a larger space, nearly doubling the size of the room. Then, under the cover of darkness, the three of them carried everything from the house to the barn, down the shaft, and through the tunnel. The raw, unaged whisky was stacked in the storage room. While it aged, the booze that was already over two years old was moved into the tunnel for their rumrunner to pick up.
That night, Jerry had come back inside, sweaty and tired, and discovered four more crates in the living room. John was sitting on the couch beside them.
“What’s this?” Jerry asked.
“I have an idea.”
Jerry was tired, and it bothered him that John had purposefully held up the process. He’d wanted it all finished tonight.
“I want to keep these in here,” John said. “Our emergency cache of a hundred bottles.”
“Right here,” he said. “You want to leave them right here in the middle of the house. With my wife. I see a problem with that, John.”
John rolled his eyes. “I’m not stupid, Jerry. Bear with me.” He held his arms straight out in front of his chest. “I see us building a wall. Right here in the main room. And the bottles will be in that wall. We’ll put the bookshelf in front of it for access and use it only if we need it. No one would ever imagine we might hide them here in plain sight.”
He understood what John was saying, and he had to admit it was brilliant. Sometimes it wasn’t possible to get out to the tunnel for whatever reason. Having a hidden stash like this made sense. But his thoughtshad gone immediately to their father and mother, then to him with Adele on their wedding night, dancing in the big open space.
“I hate to give this up.”
“Pa would say it was a smart move,” John said.
