Read Online By Starlight by Dorothy Garlock - Free Book Online Page A

set to work. He and Sumner had gotten a truck, picked up the first load of liquor, and driven back to Colton under a black, moonless sky. Careful to avoid attention, they’d parked in the alley and unloaded their cargo as quickly as they could. Jeffers had installed new locks on the doors to the cellar storeroom and pulley lift to keep any curious visitors away. A few days later, the speakeasy was open for business.
    Everything had gone off without a hitch.
    Jeffers had no doubt Maddy would be furious to know he’d deceived her. Because he had involved her, she was in as much danger as he was, from both the law and the Mob should anything go wrong. She was making a bit of extra money, enough to help care for her sad excuse of a father, but Jeffers stood to make hundreds of times more. Maybe after he’d succeeded in breaking and bedding her, he’d be willing to give her a bigger cut of the money. Unlike Jack Rucker, maybe he’d even take her along when he left this piece-of-shit town forever.
    He was going to be rich and powerful, and there was nothing that could stand in his way.
     
    No sooner had Jeffers locked up the storeroom and turned back toward the speakeasy when he saw something that made his blood run cold. Everyone else had noticed it, too; the whole tavern had fallen dead silent, save for Seth Pettigrew, cackling away on his stool. There, calmly walking toward the makeshift bar, a wry smile on his face, was Jim Utley, Colton’s sheriff.
    Furious, Jeffers’s eyes snapped toward the entrance. Sumner stood in the open door, his eyes wide and his jaw slack. He looked up the cellar steps, then at the sheriff, and then over at Jeffers. Jeffers knew the boy couldn’t have kept Utley from entering, but he should’ve done something , shouted out or caused a ruckus; if he had, maybe things could’ve been settled at the door, out of sight of the customers.
    But now it was too late.
    Jeffers had lied to Maddy about a lot of things, and one of them had been his lack of concern over Jim Utley. He’d told Maddy the sheriff was a pushover, nothing for them to be worried about, but the truth was he really didn’t know. It could go either way…
    Slowly, Jeffers ran his fingers over the knife in his belt.
    Seth Pettigrew laughed on as if the party hadn’t been interrupted. He was drunk enough not to know or care about what was happening. It wasn’t until the sheriff slapped him warmly on the back that he stopped, startling so badly that his voice screeched like a phonograph needle being yanked off a record. When his bleary eyes told him who stood beside him, he looked as if he might vomit, the color falling from his face.
    “Evenin’, Maddy,” the sheriff said, leaning his ample belly against the bar and taking off his hat. Patiently, he dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow.
    “Good evening, Jim,” Maddy answered calmly.
    “You know, darlin’,” he began with a small, knowing grin, “a man doesn’t spend goin’ on twenty years as sheriff in a town small as Colton without hearin’ ’bout every scheme goin’ on, day or night.” He paused, folding the handkerchief and putting it away before continuing. “So when I caught a whisper ’bout someone openin’ up a speakeasy in town, well, I figured it best I go nosin’ round, see if I couldn’t find out where it was. You all might as well have had a sign hangin’ out front, it was so easy.”
    Jeffers inched closer to the bar. He was the only person in the cellar moving; everyone else was frozen in place, watching.
    “When word first came down ’bout this Prohibition business,” the sheriff said, “I figured it was only a matter of time ’fore someone got it in their head to start sellin’ illegally, but there’s one thing ’bout this that surprises me.”
    “What’s that?” Maddy asked.
    “That you’re a part of it,” he said, nodding at her.
    For an instant, Maddy’s calm exterior wavered, a look of unease