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Shifting into first, Forrest eased his car forward and then steered around and between the rows of vehicles of every shape, color and size. As he started down the long driveway, he glanced in the review mirror mounted on the spare tire next to the hood. Golden light shined from windows on all three floors and he turned his eyes back to the road ahead of him. He’d returned to far more than he’d bargained on.
Several things, mainly the changes he’d witnessed, crossed Forrest’s mind as he drove the four miles from Bald Eagle Lake to the city of White Bear Lake. Including how the town had changed during his absence. Besides new businesses, it was thriving in ways it hadn’t for years.
Employment was up. Everyone seemed to have a job and money to spend. It hadn’t been that way when he’d left. The people he’d met since returning were jovial, happy, content and satisfied with the lives they had. In the nine months he’d been here, he’d concluded Roger Nightingale had a lot to do with that. The man said Prohibition had been a gold mine to him, and he was right. Roger had made plenty of money the past few years, but he hadn’t kept it all to himself. He’d poured a goodly sum into the resort, and in doing so was sharing his wealth. The grocers, the gas stations, the clothing stores and pharmacies, even the amusement park, all benefitted from the success of the resort.
Understanding that fact increased the heavy troubles weighing on Forrest’s shoulders. The Nightingales’ wealth was everywhere you looked. He hadn’t had to see Twyla’s glittering outfit or tasted the delicacies their chef set on the table to know that. He’d heard about it, long before returning home.
The tables had certainly turned.
He ambled along the quiet main drag of the city. This late, everything was dark as folks were already settled in their beds. The town council had passed a noise ordinance last year, along with a ten-o’clock curfew. Forrest could only assume, but he was about ninety percent sure that Galen was the reason the ordinance had been passed. Twyla had been right. Galen was not an honest man and had made a plethora of enemies because of it. She’d been wrong, too, in her statement about Galen never associating with real mobsters. He had. The mobsters that visited the Plantation years ago had been the lowest of the low and the greediest of the greedy. Prohibition hadn’t hit yet, but it was on its way, and gangsters that had found success with extortion and theft had been making plans to increase their activities and make the most of the amendment.
Galen had been involved with the Eastman crew from New York, one of the first non-Irish street gangs, who’d formed a prominent underworld empire in the late 1800s. They’d profited from prostitution rings, illegal gambling and hired thugs, but peddling opium had been where they’d really made their money and gained notoriety. From the information Forrest had gathered over the years, Galen had been ousted from the gang, but had been able to reconnect himself after marrying Forrest’s mother, and had squandered almost every dime his grandfather had amassed to maintain his affiliation.
The depth of Galen’s corruption had eluded Forrest until he’d been recuperating at his aunt’s house in southern Minnesota after his graduation party. Uncle Silas—Aunt Shirley’s husband—felt he was old enough to know.
Gravel crunched beneath the tires of his roadster as he drove through the Plantation’s front lot and around to the back. There he cut the engine, and like he’d done at Nightingale’s, he stared at the building before him. When his grandfather had built it, the large four-story white building, with its huge, gracefully carved pillars and wraparound porch, had been the most stunning and elaborate structure in White Bear Lake. His grandmother, who’d died long before Forrest had been born, had been from the South, a plantation owner’s daughter. Wanting to please his wife, Hans had aptly built and named the building in honor of her roots.
It still glistened brightly in the moonlight like the shrine that it was, but, as he’d noted when he’d returned last fall, all the shine was only on the surface. Neglect wasn’t the word he’d used to describe what he’d discovered, for parts of the building had been kept up and even modernized. Illusion was a better description. The building had the illusion of being magnificent, whereas underneath, upon closer inspection, the wear and tear that was slowly eroding the splendor had been covered up.
The first thing he’d noticed had been that lightbulbs were only in every other, or every third, socket and the heavy drapes were nailed closed, giving the interior a shadowy atmosphere that also hid how threadbare the carpets were, how grimy the wallpaper was after years of smoke and how the ceiling paint had cracked and chipped.
