“Your father and Ian Montgomery actually drank a bottle of that Madeira?” The napkin with what was left of my donut started to slide off my lap, leaving a trail of cinnamon sugar on my jeans. I grabbed it before it fell on the floor, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Thelma. “What happened? You’ve got to tell me the story.”

She leaned back in her rocker. “Funny,” she said in a musing voice, “I haven’t thought about that wine until you mentioned it just now. I’d kinda snuck into the back room and heard the two of them talking. Daddy and Ian swore me to secrecy—actually Daddy threatened to whup the daylights out of me if I told anyone—so I never talked about it again. But I guess everyone involved being dead and gone, it’s okay to tell you.”

“Tell me what? Do you have any idea what happened to it? Where is it now?”

“Why, wherever Ian put it, I suppose. Unless your father moved it.”

“You don’t think Leland decided to do what Ian did and drink it? All of it?”

She shook her head. “He mighta drank a bottle. Your father did like a good bottle of wine. He especially liked the stronger spirits. But Lordy, child, that Madeira would be worth a fortune today. Lee was hanging on to it until he could sell it for a fine price at one of those fancy auction houses where people hold up padlocks because they want to buy something before anyone else gets ahold of it.”

“I never knew anything about the Madeira until Prescott brought it up on Saturday. Leland never said a word. I don’t even know if my mother knew about it.”

“Maybe he wasn’t going to say anything until he sold it and got the money for it,” she said.

Our eyes met. We were talking about my father, after all. It was more likely he was going to sell it and not say anything about the money he got for it. Unfortunately when he died, the secret of where he’d hidden the Madeira died with him.

“I’m sorry, Lucille,” she added.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Can you tell me anything else? Why did Ian decide to tell your father about the Madeira—and then open a bottle and share it with him?”

Thelma made a fuss of straightening her antler headband and I could tell she was stalling. “Oh, that,” she said, reddening. “Well, you see, my daddy and Ian worked together from time to time.”

She waited for the penny to drop.

“Your father was a Prohibition bootlegger, too? Like Ian?”

She blushed some more and nodded. “Not full-time like Ian was. He still ran the store out front, just like I do today. And then behind the curtain, he had a little side business going on.”