Speak Easy (Speak Easy 1)

How badly I wanted to say to hell with your roof and your rules—I’m done with them! But I couldn’t. I chewed my bottom lip instead, my fists tight with frustration.

“And Christ almighty, get going already. Here’s the orders.” Daddy dug a folded piece of paper from his pocket and shoved it at me before stalking back into the garage.

“Still living at home, huh?” Joey didn’t even try to hide his amusement.

“Shut up. If you came here to help, then get to it.” I picked up the second box, and we put the booze into the compartment beneath the rear seat, placing the grocery sacks on top. I started the car and looked at the list.

“Where you headed?” Joey asked.

“Smith, side door. Hix, back alley. Then Koehler. Last is Henshaw, and the housekeeper wants the delivery by four.” I wrinkled my nose and shoved the list back in my pocket. “The housekeeper. There goes my tip.”

Joey laughed, dug in one pocket of his grubby black pants, and tossed me a candy bar. “Here—here’s a tip for you. EAT. You haven’t grown an inch in three years—in any direction!”

Grimacing, I put the car in gear and moved forward, hoping I might run over his foot. Who the hell was Joey to talk? Maybe he’d filled out some since the last time I’d seen him, but he wasn’t that much taller than me. Four inches, tops. And that mop of mangy brown hair on his head made him look bigger than he was.

As I turned out of the alley and headed north on Jefferson into Grosse Pointe, my unease about the conversation with the sheik returned. It was the same creepy-crawly feeling I get when I enter a room and just know there’s a spider in it somewhere, watching me. But I sold whisky almost every day of the year. Why should it be any different just because the customer was a little mysterious and a lot gorgeous? Still, I found myself glancing over both shoulders more than usual as I unloaded and collected payment.

At the Smith and Hix houses I made a few dollars in tips, but Mrs. Koehler was five dollars short on her standing order. “Just bring it to the store as soon as you can, Mrs. Koehler,” I told her. She was a good customer

, and we hated to lose anyone’s business. Some other bootlegger could come along tomorrow and try to undercut us.

By four o’clock I was headed for the Henshaw estate, and the twitchy feeling was still with me, like an itch that refuses to go away even once it’s been scratched. But when you’re breaking the law on a daily basis, perhaps a bit of anxiety should come with the territory. Daddy always says good instincts are more important than good friends in our business.

Rather than the stingy housekeeper, it was Mrs. Schmidt, the cook, who answered my knock at the kitchen door of the Henshaws’ lakefront mansion. When I greeted her, she welcomed me with a hug. Mrs. Schmidt had been close to my mother, who’d been a housemaid for the Henshaws before marrying my father. For a year after our mother died in childbirth with Mary Grace, Mrs. Schmidt brought meals to our house and spent her days off teaching Bridget and me to cook. As my sisters will attest, Bridget was the superior student.

“How are you today, Mrs. Schmidt?”

“Oh, I don’t like to complain,” she said, releasing me and rubbing the considerable width of her lower back. “But since you asked…”

I hid a smile as she ran through a list of ailments, nodding and clucking my tongue in sympathy. Finally she paused to draw breath, and I put the grocery bags on the butcher block and carried in the last of the whisky, setting the box on the black and white tiled floor.

“Thanks, love.” She brushed my hair off my face when I straightened. “Such a gorgeous color, this hair. Like sunlight through garnet. Why did you ever cut it off?”

“Just easier this way. Less fuss.”

“Your mother never minded the fuss of long hair.” Mrs. Schmidt crossed her arms. “And I don’t mind saying she wouldn’t have liked you cutting yours off.”

“Yes, you’ve mentioned that.” About a million times. I nodded my head of improperly bobbed hair toward the whisky. “Shall I move it to the cellar for you?”

“Leave it be, I’ll have the boy do it.” She paid me for the groceries, but Mr. Henshaw got his booze for free in exchange for allowing Daddy to use an old dock and boathouse at the edge of his property. “And before you go…” From a canister on a pantry shelf she took a bill and tucked it into my palm. “Mr. Henshaw said to give this to you.”

When I saw it was a fifty, I gasped. “He did? Why?”

“I may have let it slip about your paying your way through nursing school.”

“Oh, Mrs. Schmidt, thank you!” I threw my arms around her globe-shaped middle and practically squeezed the life from her.

“You’re welcome, girl. Now scoot, I’ve got the groceries to put away.” Laughing, she shooed me out the back door, and I skipped to my car.

Fifty dollars! That would go a long way toward tuition and books. Classes would begin again in August, and they weren’t cheap. Daddy didn’t mind my going to nursing school as long as I kept the house running and my sisters in line, but he couldn’t be counted on to pay for anything. He claimed there was no money for it, but I suspected he didn’t offer much because the sooner I had my degree, the sooner he’d be on his own with the house and the girls. It took every ounce of restraint I had not to ask him about all the cash that ended up lining Ralph the Bookie’s pocket.

Sitting behind the wheel, I looked at the crisp fifty in triumph before tucking it into my pocket along with the wrinkly dollars and spare change the other customers had given me. But as I drove back to the store, I began thinking of all the things I could buy with that much money—a smart new dress, something with beading or fringe. A darling little cloche or headband. A pair of satin shoes for dancing.

And how many months’ rent would fifty bucks pay? I clenched my teeth. I didn’t need much—just a studio apartment with a little bath. My own space, in which I would do as I pleased, with no rules. I thought about the sheik, and the way he paid for his cigarettes with fifty-dollar bills. My pulse raced when I recalled how he’d leaned close to me, near enough for me to smell the smoke on his breath.

After parking in the alley behind the store, I peeked into the front but saw Joey at the register, so I headed up the steps to Bridget’s apartment. The smell of fresh-baked bread hit me in the stairwell and my stomach growled when I saw the two loaves on the kitchen counter. “Bread’s done, help yourself,” Bridget called from the front room, where the radio played “I’m Nobody’s Baby.” Humming along, I cut two thick slices and slathered them with butter. Bridget’s cooking and baking skills trumped mine by a mile, and I nearly moaned as I sank my teeth into the doughy white softness. She wandered in a minute later with two-year old Charlie on her hip. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “I thought it was Joey.”

“Does that mean I have to put the bread back?” I mumbled, my mouth full.