Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

Everett slipped off the wagon seat and made his way to the front of the barge, graceful as a girl as he sidestepped the stamping hooves. Everett was a small man, although Sheldon seldom thought of him that way. He didn’t think of himself as small, and he and Everett were much of a size, thin and wiry with almost dainty features. Everett looked even smaller as he took off his jacket, his shirt white as snow, the billowy sleeves held up by garters on his forearms. He wrapped the coat around Tony’s eyes. Maddy would give him hell.

“Everett Blacklock, as I live and breathe,” said a voice from the patrol boat. Sheldon shielded his eyes with his palm and looked up into the sun, recognizing one of the Cape Vincent excise men.

“How’ve you been keeping?” said Everett in his calm, smooth voice, one hand stroking the colt’s neck.

Sheldon silently cursed his brother’s obliging nature and tightened his hold on the gun. His palms were sweaty, the pistol grip had gone damp, and he wondered if he had the nerve to shoot his way out.

“Fair to middling,” said the excise man. “Yourself?”

“Never better,” said Everett. The horse jerked his head up hard and would have smashed Everett in the chin if he hadn’t stepped aside in time.

Sheldon wondered how far he would make it if he jumped into the lake and swam for Canadian water. Maybe they wouldn’t go too hard on Everett. The worst they would give him was three years, if he got a wet judge.

“Everett Blacklock is the most honest man in two counties.” The excise man turned to the ship’s captain, who took his hand from the sidearm strapped to his hip and looked a tad disappointed. “We’d best let him get on about his business.”

“Be seeing you,” said Everett politely, waving with one hand, still stroking the horse’s neck with the other.

The patrol boat pulled away slowly, taking care not to throw up much backwash. Everett kept Tony blindfolded and the horse stayed more or less calm as Sheldon started the motor. They didn’t have far to go, and Sheldon’s heart almost stopped racing by the time they docked at the wharf where Kit stood waiting, hands on her hips.

“My sweet Lord, Shellie,” she called as he cut the engine and aimed the barge plumb at the boat ramp. No one else called him Shellie, but it didn’t sound small from her. “When those G-men pulled up next to you I just about had kittens.”

“Friends of Everett,” he said, tossing her the tie rope.

“Everett has a friendly side?” sassed Kit, wrapping the rope around the cleat and giving him a bold view down the front of her dress. He stepped off the barge and she jumped into his arms, wrapping her arms and legs around him and kissing him till her lipstick was all over his cheek. Now Everett would see how a woman showed a man she loved him. But when a breathless Sheldon turned around, Everett was going about his business, leading the team off the barge and through the customs check, the excise men waving him past.

“There goes Mr. Friendly,” Kit said, her bosom still heaving.

Everett didn’t speak a word to Kit when Sheldon handed her into the wagon and climbed up after her. Kit stuck close as a whisper to Sheldon, touching him, sighing in his ear, rubbing against him, while a silent Everett drove up the empty street to the Rome-Watertown line. Sheldon was preoccupied, partly with Kit’s carrying on and partly wondering what his brother would do when he saw the real goods. Maybe Everett would keep looking away, the way he did when Kit put her hand up high on Sheldon’s thigh. But he never found out what Everett would have done because they no sooner pulled up the wagon than the man with the Tommy gun stepped out between the horses and the train tracks.

“Hand ’er over, hayseed,” said the Tommy gun.

Sheldon had seen him at the Anchor once or twice, a big operator from Detroit with a silk suit and a loud city tie. Sheldon slid his hand down behind Kit’s back and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He couldn’t make a move, though, not with Kit in the line of fire.

“I expect he’s after that whiskey you hid inside the bales,” said Everett.

Sheldon didn’t register it then, that Everett knew all along; he was still wondering how the gangster had cottoned on to it.

“You’d better hand it over, Shellie,” said Kit. “He means business.”

Everett left the lines on the seat and carefully slid to the ground, taking a cautious step back from the wagon. Sheldon turned to Kit, thinking to get her off the wagon fast and out of harm’s way before he made his stand.

“Sorry, Shellie.” She took out her compact and looked at herself in the mirror, dabbing lip pomade against her full bottom lip with her little finger. “I’m staying for the ride.”

“You stupid bumpkin,” said the Tommy gun. “What’s a woman like that going to do with a yokel like you?”

“Kit?” Sheldon didn’t like the question in his voice, but he couldn’t help it, it gasped out of the hole opening up in his gut.