Love You to Death by Bebe Faas Rice

Author:Bebe Faas Rice [Rice, Bebe Faas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alloy Entertainment
Published: 2016-11-30T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Hey, Julie!” Mollie said the next morning, climbing into the car and snapping her seat belt. “I’ve got something interesting to tell you. I was dying to tell you last night, but you were too busy drooling over that gorgeous hunkerino.”

“I was not drooling, Mollie. Salivating a little, maybe, but not drooling.”

Julie released the hand brake and backed out of the driveway. Her mother was letting her take one of the family cars anytime she wanted now. One of the benefits of my new maturity, she thought with a smile. There’s nothing like a big romance to throw you into a whole new league.

“It’s about Tara,” Mollie said.

“Tara? She barely even speaks to me these days.”

“Then this should dull the pain,” Mollie said. “Tommy and I just uncovered the juiciest dirt on sweet little Tara’s fancy ancestors.”

“How? You don’t usually listen to gossip, Mollie.”

“No, but this is high-tech snooping, sister dear. It’s that new program I got for my computer, the one that allows me to access newspaper files. I found a couple of really neat stories in some old 1920’s issues of one of the Richmond papers that said—”

“You can actually do that? Tap into old newspaper files?”

“Yeah. It’s great,” Mollie said with a grin. “Anyway, it seems that back in the twenties, Tara’s family owned Maywood, which was a broken-down wreck, and not much else. They’d lost just about everything in the Civil War and—”

“You mean they were poor?”

“Poor as church mice. Stop interrupting or we’ll be at school before I get to all the good stuff.”

“Sorry.”

“Well, evidently Tara’s great-grandaddy decided to do something about the family finances, so he became—get this, Julie—a bootlegger.”

“You’re kidding me,” Julie said. “You’re talking about Tara’s honored and genteel ancestors?”

“That’s right. Prohibition was in full swing, so the Braxtons became big-time bootleggers, just like the gangsters in all those movies.”

“The newspapers said all that?”

“Well,” Mollie went on, “the paper ran this big story because the government was trying to get the goods on them, but the witnesses kept backing out or changing their stories. The Braxtons were poor, but they sure must have known people in the right places. So they eventually got filthy rich via illegal booze. Old Great-Granddaddy Braxton really knew how to recoup his losses.”

“The Braxtons, bootleggers,” Julie said wonderingly. “Can you imagine? No wonder they could afford all the remodeling and restoration they did on Maywood, not to mention the heated pool and billiard room, and that party-sized hot tub Tara goes skinny-dipping in. Well, I’m glad I don’t have any secret crimes I’m trying to hide, with the two of you snooping around.

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