“So the back room where you watch television used to be—?”

“A regular little roadhouse. Daddy even had a place to hide his liquor any time he thought he was about to get raided. It’s still there, a false wall in the basement. Cleverest thing you ever saw. He never got caught, though I think that’s because he bribed the Prohibition agents by giving ’em bottles of the good stuff.”

“What happened when your father and Ian drank the Madeira?” I asked. “It was already over one hundred years old. What was it like?”

“They drank it long after Prohibition was over, so by then it was legal. They plumb enjoyed themselves, I can tell you that. Talked about the old days and the hijinks they got up to staying a couple of steps ahead of the law.”

“How do you know?”

“I was there. Ian even gave me a sip from his glass.”

“He did what?”

She smiled and nodded.

“What did it taste like?” I was floored.

She thought for a moment. “Cough syrup.”

“Cough syrup?”

Lucille, I was seven,” she said. “I didn’t have the sophisticated paypal for wine that I have now. But Ian and Daddy thought it tasted like something the angels had made up in heaven.”

“I wonder what it tastes like today.”

“Probably just as wonderful, which is why Prescott Avery wanted to buy it,” she said. “I suppose he told you what he was planning to do with it.”

I said in a firm voice, “Drink it.”

“Is that so?” She gave me another you’re-holding-out-on-me look. “Some of the Romeos had been saying Prescott was acting awful peculiar lately. Seems he had some big secret, something real important that he wouldn’t share with anyone. Not Clay, not anyone in his family. Maybe the Madeira had something to do with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Now that,” she said in a stern voice, “I don’t believe.”

I licked cinnamon sugar off my thumb. “Thelma,” I said, “Prescott’s murder was made to look like an accident. Everyone in Atoka knows that members of the Avery family are at the top of Bobby Noland’s suspect list. It seems to me any so-called secret probably had to do with whether or not he planned to sell the Tribune and some of his other newspapers that were in trouble. And he certainly didn’t share that with me.”

She sat back in her rocking chair and crossed one leg over the other, rocking back and forth.

“You could be right,” she said finally. “But I do believe you’re wrong.”

“What do you mean?”