Chapter One

Friday, July 13th, 1923

The woman approached me at the counter, keeping her eyes low. “A quart of maple syrup,” she said, her voice hushed.

I didn’t recognize her. “What kind?”

“Canadian.” Clutching her purse to her stomach, she peeked at me from beneath the brim of her hat.

“What are you making?”

“Griddlecakes.”

I nodded. If she’d answered waffles, or even pancakes, I’d have directed her to the east wall of the store, where tin cans of actual maple syrup were stacked three high on a shelf. But since she knew the password, I named our price and took down the order and her address. She’d get her whisky in a day or so.

Bootlegging was that simple for a small operation like ours. The customers were loyal, the neighborhood grocery store was a legitimate cover, and thanks to the narrow waterway separating Detroit from Canada and its distilleries, our whisky supply seemed endless. Timely payoffs assured us of little trouble from city officials, and the local cops were some of our best customers. So when the bell over Jefferson Market’s front door jangled again that afternoon, I greeted the customer with a smile. But as the well-dressed man removed his light gray fedora and walked toward me at the back of the store, the air took on a strange charge, and gooseflesh rippled across my skin.

It was him. The sheik.

He’d been in twice in the last week. Each time, he’d said practically nothing, bought one pack of Fatima cigarettes, and paid with a fifty-dollar bill. I thought of him as the sheik because he reminded me of a movie star: dark, silent, and handsome in that delighted-villain sort of way, as if he’d just tied a girl to the train tracks and now it was time for a cocktail and a smoke.

“Good afternoon.” His voice was deep and smooth, just how I imagined a screen idol’s should be. “Are you Miss O’Mara?”

I blinked. He knows my name. “Yes. Can I help you?”

“Give this to your father.” He pulled an envelope from his coat and laid it on the counter, next to the cash register. When I reached for it, he placed his hand over mine, pinning it to the cool marble. A buzz swept up my arm as our eyes met. His were so dark they appeared black, and a small scar rested at the top of one cheekbone. “Tell him to answer by tonight.”

It took me a moment to find my voice. “All right.”

Replacing his hat on top of his slick dark hair, he walked out without looking back. The bell jangled once more, and I released the breath I’d been holding, leaning on the counter for support. I jumped when I heard a voice behind me.

“Tiny?” My older sister Bridget poked her head in from the stockroom, her long brown hair coming loose from its knot at her nape. “Daddy’s ready for you to make deliveries.”

Quickly I swiped the envelope into the front pocket of my middy blouse. “Should I go now?”

“Just let me put the bread in the oven,” Bridget said, disappearing into the stockroom again. She and her children lived in the apartment over the store. At almost twenty-one, I was more than ready to move out of our father’s house and get my own apartment, but it would have to wait. There were two more daughters after me who needed tending, and with our mother gone and Bridget widowed with three young boys, I wasn’t going anywhere soon.

While I waited, I fingered the envelope in my pocket. The sheik said Daddy had to answer by tonight, but what was the question? Was he a bootlegger too? He looked a little older than me, but still in his twenties, and wealthy, if his clothing was any indication. He wore exquisite three-piece suits. First black, then blue, and today, gray. I looked at the back of my hand, where he’d touched me, then brought it to my lips.

“What are you doing?” Bridget’s voice startled me again, and she laughed.

Cheeks burning, I tucked my hand into my pocket. “Nothing. Can I go?”

She nodded. “I’ll bring the grocery sacks out to you in the alley.”

I exited through the stock room into the wet heat of a Michigan summer afternoon. In the alley, I pulled the envelope from my pocket and looked at it. Jack O’Mara was written on its ivory face in black ink, the cursive letters small and lean. The seal was tight. No way to tell what its contents were, no clue as to who the sheik might be or whom he worked for.

Not that I much cared about his occupation.

If he comes in again, I’ll say hello first, I thought, recalling those dark eyes that smoldered like Valentino’s. “Hi, there,” I said, practicing. No, too girlish. I cleared my throat and tried again, imagining how a sultry screen vamp like Theda Bara would greet a man like the sheik. “Hello.” Yes, that was better. Deeper, more mature.

Next, I tried to even out my walk so that I could slink into a room, cigarette holder in one hand, highball in the other. But slinking was a bit difficult for me because one of my legs is shorter than the other, not that either of them is what you’d call long. My mother was so small she had difficult births, and my hip broke as I was being born. It hadn’t healed right, resulting in a one-inch difference, and I have to concentrate if I don’t want to limp, especially if I’m tired. But if I smoothed out my gait, kept my weight back and my chin down, bent my knees a little…

Damn. Slinking was harder than it looked.

Giving up, I jogged the rest of the way down the alley and pushed open the door to the garage. Once my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw Daddy taking apart the back end of a Cadillac hearse.

Officially, he was an auto repairman, but his real talent was rebuilding cars—creating hidden compartments, phony gas tanks, false floorboards. It was amazing how many bottles of booze could be stashed in the unseen lining of an automobile. Hearses were especially popular with bootleggers because they had wide back ends, but I stuck with my Model T. Those hearses were creepy.

“I’m here!” I called over the banging of his hammer.

The noise stopped and he straightened halfway, bracing his hands on the hearse’s frame and tilting his chin toward me over one shoulder. His profile revealed the crooked line of his nose, which had been broken several times. “It’s over there. Can you load it?” He jerked his head toward two large boxes labeled Royal Baking Powder sitting on the cement floor near the door.

“Sure.”

“That’s my girl. Fifteen per bottle, and don’t take less.”

“I won’t. This came for you.” I moved closer to him and held out the envelope. “The man who brought it said you should answer by tonight.”

He took it from me, barely glancing at it before shoving it into the front pocket of his work overalls. “To hell with that. I don’t answer to him or anybody else.”

“What’s this about?”

“It’s nothing. Now go on, I’ll meet you at the boathouse at six sharp. I want to get the whole place cleared out, bring it all here.”

I nodded. That could take a while. We had a lot of booz

e stashed in that boathouse, probably enough to—

“What the hell do you want, a police escort?” He waved his hammer toward the door. “Get moving!”

“OK, OK. Jeez,” I muttered, hurrying over to the boxes loaded with whisky bottles. Daddy had a quick temper, but he wasn’t usually so short with me. Either it was something about the letter, or he owed money to his bookie. His business ventures made enough to house, clothe, and feed us, but every extra dime fed his ravenous betting habit. Every man has his temptations, I supposed, slipping my fingers underneath a box. And every woman too. I could still hear the sheik’s low, velvety voice in my head. My stomach tightened as I imagined getting him out of that buttoned-up three-piece suit, removing that crisp white collar, slipping the crimson tie from around his neck. A sweat broke out on my back.

I lugged the boxes just outside the door, then left them sitting there while I retrieved the car. Daddy and I shared a 1921 Model T Sedan he’d rigged with hidden compartments and a trunk with a false floor. Jefferson Market was painted on the side in cheerful white letters, and I always had bags of groceries in the back seat, just in case I got stopped. After pulling alongside the garage door, I turned off the motor and jumped out. I was leaning into the back lifting up the bench seat when I heard a deep voice behind me.

“Excuse me.”

My head snapped up, my heart hammering as I backed out. Please don’t be a fed. I turned around and sucked in my breath.

The sheik was leaning against the brown brick wall, barely three feet from me.

“What are you doing back here?” Definitely not the sultry greeting I’d rehearsed.

“Looking for you.” He lit one of his Fatimas and held it between long fingers, the smoke curling above his head.

“Why?”

Tags: Melanie Harlow Speak Easy Romance
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