"That's what I hear," I said. "Fortunately for me, half the town was in the store that day."
"It happened behind your shop," Jared pointed out.
"On public property," I retorted.
He shrugged.
"I hear Cal was giving you a hard time about your business, too," I said.
"He was," Jared admitted. "Trying to gouge me for my liquor license. He was messing with everyone in town. I think he was trying to turn Snug Harbor back to the way it was during its glory days. Tryin' to drive out the old stalwarts and bring in some higher-end stuff."
"It was like the Palm Springs of the Northeast back in the 20s, wasn't it?" I asked.
"It was," Jared said. "My grandfather used to get his booze from your house during prohibition," he said.
"I heard something about that," I said. "Even his wife didn't know."
"He had to hide the loot outside the house so she wouldn't find it, the story goes. Kept the details hidden somewhere; nobody ever found them."
20
"You mean like a treasure map?"
"Or a journal... something like that. He used to walk over to Snug Island at night sometimes. Story goes it's hidden over there somewhere, but no one's ever found it."
"How did he keep all the booze hidden from his wife?"
"He did all his business while she was at church," he said. "And he walled off half the basement; it was all hidden behind shelves, with an outdoor entrance she didn't know about."
"How did he manage that?"
“He built it while she was in Boston. Everyone in town knew about it but her."
"Sounds like a marriage built on trust," I said dryly.
"She never wanted for anything," Jared said, glancing down the bar toward the door to the kitchen. Was Sylvia back there? I wondered.
"At any rate, everyone's always said he left something in the house to point to where he hid his ill-gotten gains, but after all these years, nobody's ever found anything.”
"Loretta didn't tell me anything about that."
"Of course she wouldn't," Josiah said with a snort. "She's already looked for it, is my guess, and decided it must have been just idle speculation."
"Keep your eyes peeled, is all I'm saying," Jared said.
"And we'll be happy to take fifteen percent for tipping you off," Josiah said.
I laughed and said, "I'll keep that in mind." As I spoke, Sylvia emerged from the kitchen, looking wan and tense. "Fried clams?"
"Right here," I said, admiring the basket of golden fried deliciousness. "Those look amazing."
"Thanks," she said, a small smile of pride crossing her face. "A lot of people like 'em with tartar sauce, but I prefer them plain."
"Me too," I said. "Thank you."
"My pleasure," she said. She darted a look at Jared, who had tensed when she appeared, and vanished back into the kitchen.
"Don't ever get married," Jared advised Josiah when the swinging door closed behind her.
"Awww... Sylvia's one of the good ones," Josiah said.
"Need another?" Jared asked, pointing to Josiah's mug.
"Please," he said. "The same."
"Coming right up," Jared said, and poured him a fresh one.
"How'd it go?" Bethany asked when I got back to the bookstore a little while later.
"They both have an alibi," I said. "They were drinking together at Josiah's that night."
"Drat," she said, then cocked her head. "They could be lying."
"They could," I said. "I heard all about the history of the store, too... at least the Prohibition chapter of it."
"The whole hidden ill-gotten gains story? I'm not sure how much of that is true and how much is local legend," she said. "This house has been inhabited pretty much constantly since that time, and Loretta even renovated it into a bookstore, and nothing's been found."
"Do you think that's what my intruder might have been looking for? Some sort of map?"
"It's possible," she said. "The newspaper ran an article on Prohibition-era Snug Harbor not too long ago, and mentioned the role of Loretta's ancestor as the town liquor procurer. But I'm guessing it has more to do with some documentation that might show that Agatha sold her share to her sister."
"You think Agatha was the intruder?"
"It seems the most likely option."
"Hmm," I said. "I am curious about the cellar."
"Want to take a look?"
"I've been down there before, but it couldn't hurt."
"I'll make sure the bell on the front door is working and we can check it out together," she said. "It does feel creepy down there; I've only been down there a handful of times, but I don't like being there alone."
"If the stories are true, the only thing he stored down there was liquor."
She shivered. "I have a feeling there's more to the downstairs than rum and whiskey," she said. "Maybe it's this mystery I'm writing, though. I put an ad in the local paper; I'll be hosting the first meeting this weekend at the store, if that's okay."
"Sounds terrific!" I said as she opened the door to the cellar and turned back to me. "Ready?"
"Ready," I said, and together we descended into the basement.
It was a big, empty room, just as it always had been, with rock walls.
"It's big, isn't it?" she said. "You can tell where they dug it out to make it bigger than the house."
"It doesn't look big enough to store liquor though, does it?"
"Not for the whole town, no," she said. "You can see where people got in and out, though," she said, pointing to the hatch doors that led to the back yard.
We walked around the place for a bit.
"This is disappointing," she said. "Nothing here."
"No," I said, running my hand along one of the dusty walls. My finger slid into a groove between the rocks. "What's this?" I asked.
"I don't know," Bethany said. "It doesn't look mortared in."
"It's not," I said. I pulled at the edge; one corner of
