The Whiskey Tide (9 page)

     
He squelched the laugh. A wholesome color had finally crept into her cheeks. She was embarrassed by what she was asking.

     
"This isn't some lark? Some bet you've made with a pack of bored friends?"

     
"Absolutely not!"

     
Joe lounged back against the door of the car. He studied her under lowered lids. This didn't make sense. Had her father, the respectable lawyer, augmented his fat fees by rum running?

     
"Why?" he asked bluntly. "Mix in something so chancy, I mean."

     
Stubbornness carved her jaw.

     
"That's no concern of yours."

     
Joe rubbed his chin. Though they were a mite too serious for his taste, the directness of her gray eyes held his interest. They looked full at him as she spoke. No fluttering. A blow to his vanity.

     
"Two hundred," he said at last as devilment nudged him. "I've got my family's good name to consider."

     
She hesitated for several seconds, then nodded.

     
Two hundred dollars. Holy Mother. It was nearly half a year's wages. A fair price, Joe figured, but she was either desperate or innocent — or both — not to haggle. The money tempted him. The challenge of the venture tempted him. And Kate Hinshaw, with her soft cheeks and odd scheme, was a package of fascination.

     
"When?" he asked.

     
"As soon as you can."

     
"We'd better go straight and look at the boat, then."

     
She seemed startled. Another clue she knew not the first thing about the rum-runner's trade.

     
"Two nights from now's the dark of the moon. Every night you wait past that makes you easier to spot. Unless you yearn to make the acquaintance of more gentlemen like Sgt. O'Malley, you'll set out tomorrow."

     
She recognized his joke about O'Malley. Her face relaxed.

     
"Well, then."

     
Her shoulders firmed. Her hands returned to the steering wheel. Billy McCarthy let out a sigh.

***

     
"Right over there's the man I want to meet." Aggie put her rouged lips carefully to a paper straw and sipped her lemon phosphate from its silvery holder. Her eyes were fixed on the profile of a man in a cream colored suit six tables away.

     
The dining room at the Essex Hotel was swanky. Its prices were high, its sandwiches mediocre. But although some of its tables were occupied by the stuffy crowd staying at the resort, it had become absolutely
the
place for the smart young set to take tea.

     
Kitty Thorne looked over her nearly bare shoulder. Her yellow chemise was vaguely reminiscent of a Grecian gown. Aggie's was cut quite similarly, but in black. Otherwise they might never have let her out of the house, Aggie thought petulantly.

     
Kate
could take the car when it suited her.
Kate
could wander about amusing herself without so much as inviting Aggie. Kate could do anything she pleased, it seemed. Well, Aggie would show her! Kitty Thorne had her own car. She'd thought it was simply the berries when Aggie called and suggested having tea at the Essex. They'd raced two other struggle buggies on the road up the shore and had won both times.

     
"In the spiffy suit with the black hair?" Kitty asked licking her fingers and smoothing the spit curl hugging her right cheek. "That's Felix Garvey."

     
"I know."

     
"He's ever so much older than you. Twenty-seven at least."

     
Aggie shrugged.

     
Kitty waggled her fingers at Velmont Hatch, who was really a darb even though he appeared to be squiring his younger sister this afternoon. She lowered her voice to impart what she obviously thought a delicious tidbit.

     
"They say he works for a man who makes piles of money in businesses you can't talk about."

     
"I know."

     
Aggie toyed with a long strand of jet beads. Their dark shine matched the beads on the spray of osprey feathers decorating one side of her head.

     
"But he's too, too handsome. And he drives the hugest car. And — he looks exciting. I'll die if I don't find a way to meet him."

     
"Aggie, you wouldn't!"

     
"Why not? All the boys we know are so utterly boring."

     
Kitty's expression was openly admiring. It warmed Aggie. At home, Kate got all the praise. For being smart. For inventing silly games for Woody. Even for dressing up like an ordinary human being. No one in the family ever applauded what Aggie did.

     
The waiter brought their check.

     
"Could you?" asked Kitty with a vague gesture of her cigarette holder. "I'm so utterly, utterly broke."

     
Aggie swallowed. All at once she felt guilty at coming here when all their money was gone and they were even going to lose their house. But they couldn't let people know. It would be too embarrassing. Besides, she ought to treat. Kitty had driven.

     
Her gaze slid back to Felix Garvey.
He
didn't worry about money. You could tell it by the way he moved; the way the two girls with him clung to his every word and waiters hurried to his side as soon as he raised an eyebrow.

     
She played with her jet beads, swaying them gently. Her finger looped through them and tightened in thought.

     
When she and Kitty took their departure a few moments later, Aggie set course not toward the nearest door, but toward one which would take them past Felix Garvey's table.

     
Behind her she heard Kitty's gasp.

     
Aggie favored her with a provocative smile. Her black chemise shimmied around her with every step. Her breathing was hard to control. Felix Garvey half noticed her now. She toyed casually with her swaying beads.

     
"If you're afraid to race, I'll drive," she announced, although Kitty hadn't said a word about cars. They were almost even with Felix's table. Aggie squeezed the strand of jet looped over her index finger. The silk string holding them snapped, sending them to the floor.

     
They were well-strung beads, carefully knotted. Aggie hadn't expected them to scatter. But a few popped free, her foot came down on one, and she slid.

     
Felix Garvey's hand caught her wrist, yanking her back to balance when she would have fallen. His grip was cruelly hard and crushed her when she was no longer in danger.

     
"Be careful." Releasing her, he retrieved the strand of beads and let it sway on an outstretched finger.

     
There was something insolent in his look. As if he'd peered inside her and seen terrible secrets. His thin lips gave the parody of a smile.

     
Murmuring thanks, she fled with Kitty. Her wrist throbbed with pain and heat raged across every inch of her skin. Racing in Kitty's car and petting with Harry Peale had never tasted this sharply of excitement.

***

     
"Hellsfire. A Gloucester schooner!" Joe Santayna dropped lightly from the plank jutting out from the small dock and stared in disbelief at the vessel beneath him. Mahogany. Brass. Elegant workmanship every direction he turned. A right enough change from his uncles' well-worn fishing boat. But a wind-powered ship for rum-running? For the second time since meeting Kate Hinshaw he wanted to laugh. True, ships like this had been used for exactly that purpose a century and more ago. The good ones drew only five feet of water. They could glide into shallow coves, land on beaches, whisper in and out with contraband. But that had been before diesel and gasoline motors.

     
Billy McCarthy looked ready to split with pride. Kate Hinshaw had exchanged her pumps for a pair of the canvas and rubber things that were the new rage with the upper classes. She watched anxiously.

     
"She's a beauty," Joe said walking the deck and staring up at the two varnished masts above him.

     
The Hinshaw girl's fingers slid lovingly over manila rigging. She was not unaccustomed to unfurling a sail, it seemed. Joe touched the wheel and felt it tremble with life beneath his hand. There was no pilothouse to break the deck or protect someone at the helm from weather.

     
"Can't outrun the Coast Guard in this," he said.

     
Her serious gray eyes frowned at him.

     
"Why would you want to outrun them?"

     
This time he couldn't keep amusement from his voice.

     
"Last time I heard, bringing alcohol into the States was illegal, Miss Hinshaw."

     
She colored nicely.

     
"Maybe... maybe they'll think we wouldn't be foolhardy enough to try such a thing then."

     
He grinned at her logic. The scent of the boat embraced him. He itched to feel her ride the open seas. Her hull was sleek. She'd run like the devil before the wind. Becalmed she'd be almost helpless. She didn't even carry a yawlboat.

     
Uninvited, he moved down a short set of aft stairs. There was no proper cargo hold. An aft saloon held shelves stuffed with books. Two forward sleeping cabins held bunks for eight. All three compartments were finely paneled and rich with brass lamps and upholstery. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Allowing his fingertips to brush smooth wood, he turned and went back on deck.

     
"You can maybe carry a thousand cases," he said. "Old blankets might protect the furnishings some, but there'll still be scratches. Unloading has to be fast." He hesitated, telling himself he was crazy; knowing the fact of it wouldn't stop him. "Let's see how she handles."

     
The smoothness with which Billy and the girl turned to hoisting sails surprised him. They seldom needed to speak. Billy set his young strength to the pulleys. Kate Hinshaw scrambled about the bow unfurling brown canvas. The wind was from the west. The schooner leapt eagerly toward the Miseries and the outer channel.

     
"Smooth as silk," Joe acknowledged, unable to hold back a smile. He could turn the wheel with a single finger.

     
Wind lifted Kate Hinshaw's hair. It shaped her white blouse to her breasts.

     
"You'll do it then?"

     
They spoke across a distance of some twenty feet, him at the wheel, her and Billy watching the booms of foresail and mainsail.

     
"Yes. I'll need to get charts... ask some questions... find two men for crew. They'll cost you sixty dollars apiece."

     
"Let me come, Joe!" The plea burst from Billy. "I know the boat good and I need the money. My ma, she's bad sick. Needs medicine for her heart. But it costs dear, and most weeks we can't manage."