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His research had been thorough. The Night peddled Minnesota Thirteen whiskey. Initially a home-brew formula, it was now more sought after than the real stuff brought down from Canada, which is why Bodine wanted in. There was less overhead and more money to be made.
As Nightingale had said last night, Norma Rose ran the resort. All the renovations were probably her idea. She may not even know the base of her father’s business. Except Ty didn’t believe that. He suspected Norma Rose knew every last detail about her father’s business.
Women were swayed by money as easily as men, and from the looks of her wardrobe, Norma Rose liked money.
Ty was almost back to Dave’s cabin when Roger Nightingale appeared on the trail leading through the pine trees.
“’Morning.”
“Good morning,” Ty responded.
“Sleep well?”
“Very. You?”
Ty almost laughed at the shift of Roger’s eyes. Nightingale clearly knew Ty suspected he’d been up half the night checking him out. It didn’t bother him. The more they understood each other right from the beginning, the better off they would both be.
“I always do,” the man answered.
As they walked toward Dave’s cabin together, Ty asked, “Do you have a list for me?”
Nightingale handed over a slip of paper. “You’ll need to talk to Rosie, she may think of others, but that’ll give you a place to start.”
Norma Rose was exactly who Ty wanted to talk to, but he had a few things to investigate before then. “I’ll talk with Dave first,” Ty answered, pausing before opening the cabin door. “If he’s up to it this morning.”
Roger gestured for Ty to open the door. “If he isn’t, we’ll wait until he is.”
Dave wasn’t awake, but Gloria Kasper was. The doctor was in her mid-fifties or so, and although she didn’t look her age—not last night in her night clothes, or this morning dressed in a fashionable blue dress complete with matching headband—she was formidable and stern. She probably had to be, considering she wrote out prescriptions for alcohol and birth control. Two things not easily accepted for a woman to be doing.
“It was wood poisoning, all right,” Gloria said as Ty closed the door. “That government, they think we don’t know what they’re doing. Killing folks. But we do, and that’s exactly what they’re doing, still trying their hardest to make their Prohibition idea work.” During her rant she’d set two mugs on the table and filled them from the coffeepot on the small stove in the corner. “They think by killing people with their tainted whiskey, people will stop drinking. The idea is as ludicrous as making alcohol illegal. They’ll see sooner or later, mark my word. We ousted Andrew Volstead and we can oust the rest of them.”
Ty made no comment as he took a seat indicated by Roger. Andrew Volstead, who the act had been named after, had lost his US Representative seat in 1922. From Minnesota, the man had outraged his constituency and had received numerous death threats before losing his seat. The latest rumor, which had the entire country in an uproar, was sweeping fast. Word was spreading that the government had hired teams of chemists and planted them inside specific areas known to have large still operations that fulfilled the public’s need for intoxicating beverages. Ty couldn’t say he believed in the conspiracy, but his supervisor had warned him to never take so much as a sip of alcohol in certain regions out east.
One more reason Minnesota Thirteen was gaining in popularity. Named after the corn variety grown in the area, the brew was considered safe and pure. Stearns County, where the vast majority was produced, was just a hundred miles northwest of White Bear Lake and known as the best moonshine region in the northwest. Every Prohibition agent knew that, and Ty had used that tidbit of information last night, while telling Nightingale he was on the tail of a snitch, someone who was trying to maneuver his way into the booze trade. It was true, that was what Bodine was doing, but Ty wasn’t a private eye hired by a New York gangster to discover who the snitch was, as he’d told Nightingale. Of course, he’d had enough inside information for Nightingale to believe his story. His question was if Norma Rose would believe him. She might prove to be the hardest one to crack.
The other piece, which, in his mind, had tied everything together for Nightingale, was how he’d known about the Bald Eagle Lake area. Although it had no shipping yards, it had its own depot, with not just north and south trains like White Bear Lake, but trains traveling east and west, too. Freight trains that stopped regularly, yet not a single railroad admitted to stopping or shipping cargo out of the area.
This area was a bootlegger’s dream. A hub that Ty had practically stumbled upon and hadn’t told anyone about. Not even his supervisor. He’d simply said this was his chance to bring down Bodine.
“How’s Dave doing?” Roger asked, ignoring Gloria’s continued rant, which had gone from how if the government made alcohol legal again they could quit taxing poor folks to death to how President Coolidge, in her opinion, was little more than a teetotaler.
Ty had never met the president, but he did know Coolidge had proposed to cut the Prohibition bureau’s budget. The treasury secretary, who was also the chief Prohibition enforcement officer, wasn’t fighting the idea. Andrew Mellon loathed Prohibition and put no extra efforts in its enforcement, which did make Ty’s job more difficult. With a budget that barely paid for gas in his Model T, Ty needed this opportunity with the Nightingales more than ever. He’d used a good portion of his own funds—mainly reward money he’d earned from other arrests—tracking down Bodine.
As he watched Gloria Kasper top all three cups with a bump from a brandy bottle, Ty decided if he was near when either the president or Mellon met Gloria, he’d encourage them to offer her a toast—with alcohol. He’d seen the way she’d jabbed a tube down Dave’s throat last night to wash his stomach with a solution of warm water and baking soda. Remembering the sight now, he had to wonder if Dave would ever be able to talk again.
“How do you think Dave is?” the woman responded to Roger. “He was poisoned and has been throwing up baking-soda water for the last eight hours.”
Roger took a sip of his coffee and nodded before he asked, “You’re sure it was wood alcohol?”
“Can’t you smell it?” she asked.
“All I smell is vomit,” Roger answered disgustedly.
Ty agreed, but made no comment. He did, however, remember how the sight and smell had disturbed Norma Rose last night. A weakness he’d file away to use if he needed it later.
“Exactly,” Gloria said. “I’ve cleaned up everything Dave regurgitated—what you’re smelling is him. That’s what wood alcohol poisoning smells like. Vomit. Grain alcohol doesn’t leave that stench.” She leveled her big brown eyes on Ty. “Ethyl is grain alcohol, methyl is wood. Ethyl’s wage is a hangover, methyl’s is death.”
“I’ve heard as much,” he told her, and noted never to get on her bad side.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Roger said. “Dave doesn’t drink.”
“I didn’t say the methyl was in some form of hooch,” Gloria said. “When distilled properly, it’s odorless and tasteless. From what came out of his stomach, my guess is they slipped it in one of those milk shakes he likes so much.”
Roger’s slow gaze landed on Ty with all the potency of a well-aimed tommy gun.
“Dave didn’t have a milk shake at the drugstore while I was there,” Ty said. “He had soup.” Picking up his cup, he added, “And coffee.”
“When was that?” Gloria asked.
“Yesterday. Lunchtime. Noon or so,” Ty answered.
She shook her head and said to Roger, “If Dave had drunk that at noon, he’d have been dead before they found him on the street corner last night. I don’t think he drank enough to kill anyone, especially a man his size, but because he’s so allergic to alcohol, its effects were ten times worse than they would have been for someone else.”
“What would have happened to someone else?” Ty asked.
“Delirium, shallow breathing, racing heart, stomach cramps,” Gloria answered. “But the most common is blurred vision, which often leads to complete blindness.”
“Will Dave lose his sight?” Roger asked.
Ty recognized concern in the man’s tone. Roger had shown he was worried about his brother-in-law, but now sincere anguish appeared on his face.
Gloria’s expression softened and she reached across the table to squeeze Roger’s hand. “I don’t believe so. Most of his symptoms are because of his allergy, not the methyl.”
“When will we know for sure?”
She shrugged. “Could be up to a week or more.”
Roger nodded and drank the last of his coffee before he asked, “Do you want me to get one of the girls to come and sit with him for a while?”
“No.” Gloria removed her hand from Roger’s to drink her coffee. “I had one of your watchmen sit in here while I went and got dressed. I’ll do that again if I need to.” She glanced at the timepiece hanging around her neck on a shimmering gold chain. “I need to wake him in another twenty minutes for another dose of soda water. I’ll keep doing that throughout the day, just to make sure.” Sitting back in her chair she once again turned her attention to Ty. “I’ve seen a lot of mouthpieces, and you aren’t a lawyer. Who are you and what are you doing here?”
