Irv had dismissed that with a harrumph. “That ain’t worth the bother or the price of gasoline. It’s seventy miles one way.”
Mike had said, “If, along with the pies, we delivered five gallons of whiskey—”
“Five gallons?”
“Every other day.” Davy had turned to Laurel and winked.
Irv and she had given the O’Connors the go-ahead. Wearing their Saint Christopher medals for protection, they’d begun making trips to places where angels feared to tread. Irv and Ernie had difficulty keeping up with the demand.
And so had Laurel. A second oven had become necessary. She’d applied at the First National Bank for a loan. The bank officer, a long-standing customer of Irv’s moonshine, had approved the note. To accommodate the new appliance, Laurel had moved their dining table from the kitchen into the unfurnished dining room.
Between making deliveries and baking, she’d become so busy that hours would go by without Pearl crossing her mind. Her marriage to Derby seemed to have belonged to another woman in another life far removed from the one she was living. But as exhilarating as this venture was, it came with constant threats to her newfound independence, even to her life. She’d had a shocking reminder of that tonight when, once again, she’d crossed paths with Thatcher Hutton.
Recently, on a trip out to the still to deliver supplies to Ernie, as they passed the cutoff to the shack, she’d casually remarked to Irv that it seemed a long time ago since Mr. Hutton had wandered into the yard asking for directions.
Irv had said, “If he wandered, and if it was directions he was after.”
Her father-in-law still had Thatcher typed as a man who was polite, quiet, calm. And deadly.
Now, as she huddled on the side of her bed, Laurel wondered if the cowboy who broke horses was a guise for a government agent who broke up stills.
On the front page of today’s newspaper had been a picture of a still in northeast Texas near the Arkansas line that had been discovered and destroyed by state and federal law enforcement officers, unsmiling men with firearms and stern resolve.
They’d been grouped around the disassembled still and busted casks, spilled corn liquor pooling around their boots and the handcuffed men sitting on the ground. The photograph had been staged to make a point, to send a warning to current or aspiring distillers of illegal whiskey.
Was Thatcher Hutton one of the snitches that Irv had warned her to be wary of? Had he come to the shack that day looking for a still? Did he suspect her of doing precisely what she was doing? Was that why he always regarded her with such intensit
y?
Despite the summer heat that had collected in her bedroom during the afternoon, her arms broke out in gooseflesh. She clumsily removed the pins from her bun and let it unfurl down her back. Ordinarily the release felt good. But tonight the scene in the café had left her nape and shoulders knotted with tension.
She folded back the bed covers and slid in beneath the top sheet. She settled her head on her pillow, closed her eyes, and tried willing herself not to dwell on the encounter.
But her mind replayed the incident anyway. Had she done anything that might have given her away? Should she tell Irv about it? No. Absolutely not. He would make far more of it than it warranted. He would say that she hadn’t just bumped into any man during a delivery, she’d bumped into that man.
As reluctant as she was to admit it, her father-in-law would be right.
Whatever else he was, Thatcher Hutton was no ordinary man.
And neither was her middle’s flighty reaction to the very sight of him.
Twenty-Six
What are you doing out here?” Randy asked as he clomped up the front steps of the boardinghouse.
“Too early to go to bed. Just taking in the air,” Chester Landry replied. He lazily fanned himself with a folded newspaper. “You appear to be drunk.”
Randy laughed and plopped down into the chair beside Landry’s. “As a skunk.”
“Fun evening?”
“Fun and frolic, my friend.” He chortled over his alliteration.
Landry shushed him. “Lower your voice. Everyone else has turned in for the night.” Everyone except for him, Randy, and Thatcher Hutton, who’d yet to return to the boardinghouse since they’d bade each other good night at the café.
Landry couldn’t help but wonder if his dinner guest had cut out on him in order to follow the widow home. He made a mental note to pursue that later, but, right now, his focus was more on the indiscreet and talkative Randy Wells.
“Who were you frolicking with?”