Blind Tiger by Sandra Brown

“What about him?”

“Who?”

He lowered his chin and looked at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

She somehow kept herself from squirming. “If you’re referring to Mr. Hutton, nothing about him. He extended us a kindness. I think he would have done the same for anyone.”

“He didn’t, though, did he? There were others hurt. Several shot. I was the only one he slung over his shoulder and brought home. Why do you think he singled me out?”

“Well, not because he suspects something. To him you were just another customer having a drink in Lefty’s back room.”

“He said that?”

“He didn’t say otherwise.”

“That’s not quite the same, though, is it? In fact, I’ve noticed he doesn’t say much of anything unless it’s called for. Did he tell you that he was there with Sheriff Amos?”

“He mentioned him.”

“Strange that he was out there with the sheriff at that particular time.”

“He said he got railroaded into it.”

“Railroaded into what?”

“Into… I don’t know, Irv.” It irritated her that her father-in-law was fixated on the one subject she definitely did not wish to talk about. “Never mind him. Let’s focus on us.”

“All right, I’ll drop it for now. And, anyway, we won’t have to worry about secret agents or incarceration if we don’t make and sell product.”

“Exactly. It’ll take weeks for you to fully recover.”

“Only one.”

“At least two, possibly three.”

“Well, we’ll see. In the meantime, our daytime activities will continue pretty much as they have been. You’ll keep baking and delivering as usual.”

“I can certainly do that.”

“How big’s our stockpile of product in the cellar?”

“Fair. But with the business the O’Connors are generating, it won’t last long.”

“Ernie’s got some inventory stashed away,” he said. “You trust those twins enough to send them out there for it?”

She liked the young men. They were charmers, and had given her no reason to mistrust them. But she didn’t trust them enough to reveal the location of the stills. “No.”

“Me neither. One’s moony over you.”

“Davy.”

He looked surprised that she knew. “Has he professed himself?”

“No. I’ve sensed that he’s infatuated, but pretended not to notice. Please, can we get back to the subject? I’ll go out to the still today, bring back Ernie’s stash, and transfer it to the cellar. It’ll have to last until you’re back on your feet and we resume production.”

“Resume production? Resume? We ain’t shutting down, Laurel. Not for any length of time. As of yesterday, we’ve got twenty barrels of mash fermenting. You planning on just pouring it out, wasting it?”

“All right. Ernie can do a run when a barrel becomes ready, but until you’re up and about we won’t mix more mash, and we’ll cut back to just one still.”

Irv shook his head. “We’ve got customers to keep supplied. New ones that you yourself courted. If we stop delivering as promised, they’ll start buying from someone else.”

His arguments against shutting down were considerations she had already taken into account. “I’ll have to help Ernie then. But on the nights I’m at the still, I worry about leaving you here alone and helpless if anything were to happen.”

“What could happen?”

“The house could catch on fire, and it takes you twenty minutes to use the chamber pot.”

“Well, you can’t be baking all day and then driving back and forth to the still in the dead of night, either.”

“Why not?”

“Because I said so.”

“Irv—”

“Laurel, we’re not arguing over this. I’d bust up both stills myself before I’d put you at risk like that. What I propose,” he said before she could raise another objection, “is this.” He grimaced as he shifted his position. “Situate the girl out there.”

“Corrine?”

“Set her up in the shack. It’ll look like you’ve taken her on as a charity case. You rescued her from a life of iniquity. She’s young and spry. She could walk back and forth over that hill between the shack and the still with no problem at all. She can help Ernie.”

“Help him make moonshine? That’s not rescuing her from a life of iniquity, it’s setting her up to commit a crime.”

“What she’s been doing at Lefty’s is a crime.”

“That was imposed on her.”

“All the more reason this arrangement will be better.”

Laurel rubbed her forehead, which had begun to throb. “Does she know anything about making whiskey?”

“Haven’t asked her yet. I wanted to run the idea past you first. Whether she does or not, she can stir mash. She can seal jars. She can box them.”

“With a broken arm?”

“It’s almost healed. She took her sling off and showed me how she can rotate it. As for the process, she’ll catch on quick enough with Ernie teaching her. She can’t read, but she’s bright enough.”