“There’s some furniture stacked by the workbench,” I say. “Must be a desk somewhere.”
“Here…under this.” Howard points to an enormous moose head. “Doesn’t everyone have a moose in their barn?”
“It’s a great desk. I love the paint splatters—adds character,” I say. “Wrap it up! These club chairs could go in the office, and look here—all these wooden folding chairs!” I point to a stack under the staircase to the loft.
“Just right for the deck,” Ruby adds. “It’s lovely to put all these things to use again.”
Johnny backs up my van into the barn to load it with our finds. Then we head down to the boathouse. Howard takes the stereo upstairs and puts on an old Gloria Estefan tape and soon we’re cleaning, hauling, and doing the mambo to “one-two-three-four.” We leave everything to sit in the sun to “freshen up a bit,” as Ruby puts it, and join the boys upstairs.
“This is awesome.” I look over the bedrooms. “I’m sure we’ll do some moving around later on—but it’s feeling very factory-ish in here. Hey…I thought you said there was only the fireplace for heat. Look at this.” I point to a heater vent in the floor. “So there’s got to be a furnace. Where the hell is it?”
“Good question,” Ruby says. “When guests stayed here it was always in the summertime. Where could one hide a bloody furnace?”
We go into the soon-to-be shipping room directly behind the kitchen. Besides the dressers, there’s only a closet. It takes up the entire wall. We slide the doors open and—nothing. Not even a hanger.
“I wonder…” I push on the back of the closet. “I just bet there’s a little spot behind here like up in the library…. Hmmm—nope. Let’s try the other bedroom.”
“You, of course mean the office, darling,” Ruby corrects me.
“What the hell are you two banging on the walls for?” Howard asks, coming out of the bathroom. Ruby and I are all the way into the closet, rapping on the wall.
Ruby’s bracelets are making such a racket! Then Ruby exclaims, “Bingo!”
“Well I’ll be damned,” Howard says. He and Johnny crowd into the closet and peer over our shoulders, which is an easy thing for them to do.
The back of the closet door opens, revealing a small room. Cool air escapes, sweeping by us. No wonder the bathroom is so small and dark; this room is directly behind the shower.
A trapdoor is built into the floor. I lift a round ring and pull up—locked. Ruby hands me the ring of keys and I try a few that look about right. After the ninth try, the lock clicks, allowing me to lift up the metal door. A whoosh of chilly air comes with it. Smells of iron-y water and decay follow. Peering down into the hole, I can barely make out the handrail of a metal spiral staircase.
“There must be a room at the back of the boathouse down there,” I say. “I just thought it was all water in there. Shall we?”
“I’ll go first,” Howard states in a commanding, take-charge voice that for some reason rubs me the wrong way. “Could be bats, you know.”
“Not on your life, buster,” I reply quickly. “I can see more light down there. It can’t be very large and if there are any bats they better watch their hairy little rears ’cause we are coming down!” I yell this last part to ensure everyone is aware of my position and—mostly to convince myself.
“I’ll be…” Ruby mutters.
I start down. With each step of my Keds I feel the dankness on my bare ankles. Ruby is close behind, followed by the boys. I get to the bottom of the stairs and find myself standing on a stone ledge. By the light of several dusty bulbs, I spot three switches next to an old furnace. Its pipes reach up into the ceiling. I flip the first switch.
“This is incredible,” Howard announces, coming down the stairs. His voice echoes off the walls.
The ledge we’re standing on leads farther back into the earth. I can see a long, narrow room with a wooden door at the end. Directly in front of us is water.
“This is all making sense now,” Howard muses, while moving slowly down the ledge, toward the wooden door.
“I think I have an idea of what…” It dawns on me. I flick the next switch. A motor in the center of the wall to our left whirs to life, throwing out a dusty electrical odor. The wall slowly parts in the middle and folds in two until finally it’s flush against either side. We’re now looking into the front of the boathouse and out to the lake.
“Oh, good heavens!” Ruby wipes cobwebs from her hair.
“No kidding,” Johnny adds dryly.
“My God—this is a brilliant setup,” Howard says with admiration. “From this loading area in the back here and now that the waterway has become several times longer…”
“I think I see, but…” I say.
“There’s a door built into the wall over here and it’s hung on wheels.” Howard gestures toward it. We join him in the back of the cavelike room. “This is one heck of a secure door and…” He gives the door a yank in the direction of the track above it. “It’s locked tight.”
“Perhaps this…” Ruby hands him the toad-key we’d found in Ed’s notebook. “I have a feeling…”
Howard inserts the key, turns it this way and that—suddenly it clicks. “Fantastic! Give me a hand, Johnny ol’ boy.”
Together they pull the heavy door to the side, revealing a large low-ceilinged room. On the wall inside is yet another switch.
“Shall I?” Howard asks. We nod. He snaps the switch, filling the room with light.
The tunnel is crammed on either side with huge wooden barrels. A narrow aisle down the center leads back, ending at a spiral staircase.
“My God, this is so…” I say.
“It’s quite simple, darling—Ed explained a few things in his journal,” Ruby says, “Canada is north…across the lake…During Prohibition, let’s see, what years?”
“It began in nineteen twenty-one and lasted until thirty-three,” Howard informs us as we gather around Ruby.
“Thank you, darling.” She’s totally enjoying this. “Gustave had a trucking company already, with a network to Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. He had a long and fast Chris-Craft boat, the one in the photo. It made late-night trips under the cover of night.”
“What a sneak,” I say in awe. He must have been very interesting. “Then they’d zip in here, close the doors, load these from the boat into trucks and be off.”
“Something like that, darling,” Ruby says. “It was bottled either here somewhere or in a larger city. Gustave’s lot was called—”
“Toad Tea!” Johnny points to a faded toad on the wall with gilded letters underneath.
“How clever…It’s the toad from upstairs!” I say. Ruby nods.
“He was never caught. They simply closed down in thirty-three…and that was that,” Ruby says, and we all kind of go, “Oh.”
“The staircase at the end of the aisle down there?” I ask, pretty sure of the answer. “Takes us to the cottage basement, I bet.”
“Let’s check it out,” Howard suggests.
At the base of the stairs are several wooden cases. Johnny reaches in one and pulls up a brown bottle. He blows the dust off and reads out loud, “Toad Tea—the magic’s in the tea; the toad’s for luck.”
The toad in the picture on the bottle is winking. “I can’t get over the fact that this is here still,” I say with wonder. “It’s not like you could just sell the stuff or…”
“No, the enforcement agents, or ‘Revenuers,’ as Ed referenced them in his book”—Ruby puts her lecturer hat on again—“they searched high and low many years after Prohibition—since so many families had made fortunes. There were back taxes to be collected, so it was best to simply shut down.”
“Let’s get on up these and see where the hell we come out!” Johnny impatiently suggests.
We head up. At the top of the stairs, Johnny pushes the door open and we’re all standing in the basement of the cottage. In the wine cellar, to be exact.
“Nothing like a back entry
to round things off,” I say.
“I think we need to give it a taste sometime,” Howard suggests. “I mean, there’s enough there for—”
“Perhaps later boys. All this excitement makes a girl hungry,” Ruby says. “But one thing you all must promise…and that’s to keep this our little secret. Otherwise…I’ll have to kill you,” she calmly adds.
We chuckle and quickly agree. The boys head back down to the boathouse. We go in the opposite direction to put together a snack.
“Well don’t just stand there, darling,” Ruby says to me. I follow her up the stairs, into the kitchen.
“My heavens, what a super find!” Ruby pulls things out of the fridge. “Ed only gave me a few hints in his journal. But when we found the room and he had explained about his grandfather….”
“It’s history,” I say. “I mean, this is a big deal. But you’re right, we can’t let it out. This place may have been paid for with—”
“Dirty money,” Ruby finishes for me dramatically. “How divine! Now hand me a tray.”
“I’m sure the boys won’t tell anyone about Ed’s grandfather’s past. We could threaten them…’Course as you so nicely put it”—we say the next words together—“we may have to kill them.” We then laugh like hell, remembering the looks on their faces.
“Really darling, no one’s past is truly all that squeaky clean. Let’s see here now…I have some Gouda, a spot of Brie with crackers would be lovely and some bars perhaps.”
“That is plenty.” I marvel at how she comes up with all this food. “To think that all we were doing was looking for the damn furnace.”
“I’m just as surprised, darling.” Ruby pats Rocky on the head as she whizzes by. “Can’t be many more secrets left. Not physical ones, anyway.” She adds napkins to the tray, and we head back downstairs to see if it’s a quicker route through the tunnel versus the path.
“These shoes used to be white,” Ruby remarks, peering down at her gray—but I’m certain expensive—canvas slip-ons. “We must consider installing a lift. This is simply too many steps in one day.” We amble down the staircase, through the tunnel and then up another staircase into the office.
“Hello boys.” I come out of the closet with goodies. “The office looks like…an office! Thanks for hauling all this in here—tight, but cozy.”
“I wonder if it’s safe to drink this?” I hold up one of the newly discovered bottles. “What a cool label.”
“I bet it’s fine,” Howard says. “What are these?” He holds up a square of chocolate-chip yummy-ness.
“Eat it fast or Eve will and I’m not kidding,” Ruby says. I harrumph for effect.
“I’ll pour coffee all around. Give me a hand, will you Johnny?” Ruby brings the pot in from the kitchen and hands Johnny a cat mug with eyes that move. “Special brew…no flavors, no extra smells…pure coffee.”
“So, Eve…” Howard smirks. “There’s this rumor that you and Ruby truly are planning to kill us.”
“So, Ruby,” Johnny adds, “how dirty is the money?”
“What the hell?” I ask, looking at Ruby with a blank face. “I, ah…”
“How in the world could you have heard us? It’s all the way down…and up, around corners…?” Ruby asks, a little breathless.
“You would not believe how clearly we heard you,” Howard says. “Every word—like the sounds were amplified or something. I have a feeling it was designed that way.”
“We didn’t hear you…Nothing.” I’m amazed; embarrassed too. “When you guys headed around the corner, that was it. We never heard another sound. Weird.”
“I imagine it was done for security measures,” Ruby states around a mouthful of cheese and cracker. “If the revenuers found the tunnel in the cottage basement…”
“You could grab your wife and kids, hop in the boat and get the hell off the island,” Johnny offers.
“Thank God it’s legal now,” I say. Everyone nods. “Seems so silly.”
“Yes it does, darling. But we’re slow learners, you know.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning and scrubbing, our energy renewed due to Ruby’s strong coffee; and of course, all that adventure stuff helps too. Johnny brought over some old disco tapes, so the boathouse is thumping to the rhythms of Donna Summer belting out “MacArthur Park.” There’s nothing like good disco to clean up an old boathouse
All the drapes are out on the deck, hanging along the banisters to get some fresh air. They’re fifties’ floral prints with tiger lilies and leaves as big as my head. Ruby and I go through the shipping room and office, dusting, sweeping, shaking rugs and mopping floors. Since the kitchen is open into the living room, we can all chat in between Howard’s pounding.
“The shutters I found in the barn will make great shelves,” Howard says, nails in his mouth. “Should work perfect for the bolts of fabric. Then I’ll start on the wiring for the sewing machines. I’ll bring the electricity up from the furnace room,” he adds, heading down the newly discovered spiral staircase. “This is fantastic—there are enough circuits down here to light the island!” His voice echoes up, loud as all get out.
“Is there anything he can’t do?” Ruby asks Johnny from the stool she’s standing on while wiping the top of the mint green fridge.
“Cook. He is a disaster in the kitchen,” Johnny comments, shoving tables around. “He can burn and melt.”
Later, the four of us are sitting out on the balcony with our feet up, enjoying the view of the lake. The boathouse is all set to go. We have all day tomorrow to shore up any details. Since we’re supplying lunch for the crew, we’re hoping it will evolve into a potluck concept. This is the Midwest, after all. Ruby likes to cook, but I don’t want to push it.
“The sound of the waves is the best tension reliever.” I sigh. “That and a nice smoke.”
“I thought you two were quitting.” Johnny bats my smoke ring away. “It’s really a disgusting habit, you know.”
“I’m hoping to be just too darn busy to think about it,” Ruby says. “You’re completely right; it’s a disgusting habit.”
“Expensive as hell too,” I add. “Do we dare make this a nonsmoking workplace?”
“Seems to me,” Howard says, “it’s against Wisconsin law…some law, anyway…to smoke in a workplace. Only in designated areas. Something like that.”
“This could be the push we need,” I say, and Ruby nods. “Could you look into it on your computer, Howard?”
“Our pleasure,” Howard and Johnny say at the same time, then laugh.
“I think we’re going to head on home and clean up.” Howard yawns. “I need to get out of these filthy clothes and maybe even take a nap.” He grins slyly at Johnny.
“Shall we gather for dinner?” Johnny asks as they get up to go. “We also need to do some sampling of Toad Tea.”
“Let’s make it a couple of hours from now,” Ruby says. “I’m sure there’s something in the freezer that needs to be eaten.”
“Thanks for all your hard work today and look—it’s a factory!” I announce as we walk back into the living-room-turned-sewing-room. “Who wouldn’t want to work here?”
“Hello? Ruby? Eve? Hello?” A voice is coming from the closet. We all look at one another.
“You weren’t kidding…Must be someone up at the cottage,” Ruby says. “Eve…you take the tunnel and I’ll dash up the hill.”
“You want us to hang around?” Howard asks.
“Heavens no; scoot on home.” Ruby waves her hand, then she’s off, out the door, heading up the hill.
“Hello? Is anyone here? It’s Marsha from Rice Lake.” The boys follow Ruby out the door, heading toward their cabin.
Pulling the French doors closed and scooping up Rocky, I head down the spiral stairs.
“Hi there,” Marsha says from the top of the basement steps.
“How are you? I didn’t expect to see you this soon.” I come up the basement stairs a
nd set Rocky on a stool.
“I am doing wonderfully,” Marsha gushes as Ruby comes in the back door. “Hello Ruby. What a lovely cabin. I know you didn’t expect me for a week or two, but I just got to thinking…what am I waiting for?” She walks into the living room and oohs and ahs.
“Where are you staying, darling?” Ruby asks while rooting around in a drawer.
“In an adorable little cottage in La Pointe.” Marsha sits down next to Rocky. “It’s the carriage house of a much larger main house. I just love it here. I’ve already met a few of the locals.”
“What did you decide to do with your house in Rice Lake?” I ask, setting a mug of coffee in front of her.
“I cleaned it from top to bottom—threw out a lifetime of junk—loaded up my Jeep and headed here. I’m not going to sell it. It’s long paid for and maybe someday I’ll want to move back, or maybe my daughter might want it.” She blows on her coffee and turns the mug around to look at the front of it.
“I brought my entire cat-mug collection,” I say apologetically. “Ruby and I need to clean up; then we’re having some friends over for dinner and—”
“You’re more than welcome to join us,” Ruby breaks in. “And we can give you a proper tour.”
“Thank you so much, but I still have some unpacking to do and I don’t want to intrude on your plans.”
“Don’t be silly,” I say. “We’re going to be working together come Monday anyway. That is, if you’re game?”
“I am so ready to do something other than asking, ‘And what’ll it be today?’ What’s the rush though?”
“There’s the Bayfield Apple Festival in October and we’ve rented a booth for our apron collection,” Ruby informs from the freezer. “Oh shoot, I thought I had a chicken in here.”
“I’ve been going to it for years; lots and lots of people. Apron collection?” Marsha asks, raising an exceptionally arched brow.
“What do you think?” I ask. “Easy to make…We found all this wild fabric at Wal-Mart and who doesn’t need a cool, snappy…handmade apron?”
“I think it’s…well, I’m not sure,” Marsha says. “I do hate the ones you find now. Not much to look at and certainly nothing like the fancy ones my mother wore.”
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