Wynn in Doubt Read Online Free Page A

out for illegal transportation. It is unknown at this time what role Miss Harrison may have played in the bootlegging operation. Special Agent Samuel T. Murphy of the United States Treasury Department Bureau of Prohibition, the commanding officer on the scene, said, “Let all Kentucky moonshiners beware. You may be able to distill it, bottle it, and blind the family dog with its proof, but if you drive it across the county line, I’ll be waiting for you.”
The suspects have been taken to the sheriff’s department in Bardstown, pending arraignment by the judge on Thursday morning. Investigators are now searching the Craig family home and lands for evidence of illicit whiskey stills. The home is located on the westernmost corner of
    My heart racing, I turn the article over in my hands, hoping the rest continues on the other side. It’s just an old advertisement for Ovaltine. Elizabeth McConnell Druitz was Grams’s name. But Lola . . . I’ve seen that name before. The article has been torn; the last sentences at the bottom are missing. I search the book and shake it by the binding, but nothing falls out.
    I turn it back over, then smooth out the folded lines, careful not to damage it. Lola Elizabeth Harrison. I stare at the words.
    There’s a grainy, sepia-colored picture to the right side of the article. It shows armed sheriff’s deputies and a man, I presume Agent Murphy, leading away another man in handcuffs. The man in custody has thick black hair and a wide, careless smile, like he’s in on a joke no one else gets. Behind them is an old car, its doors open, and beside it another officer guards a smaller person wearing a fitted, bell-shaped hat. I look closer; definitely a woman.
    In twelve steps, I make it from my bed to the small, eccentrically decorated kitchen. My grandmother’s obituary is pinned to the fridge by a sunflower magnet. I remove it with shaky hands and bring the strip of fresh newsprint back to the desk.
Elizabeth Susanna McConnell Druitz, 93, passed away peacefully in her sleep Sunday, May 25, 2014 at Saratoga Grove. She is preceded in death by her husband of 66 years, Isaac Zacharias Druitz, and her parents, William D. “Dutch” McConnell and Lola Elizabeth Harrison.
    My great-grandmother. It has to be. I sit heavily on the bed, the prospect of champagne forgotten. This makes no sense whatsoever. My great-grandmother died when Grams was just a little girl in the 1920s. I know that. I’ve been told the story a thousand times. Her mother died and Grams stepped up, cooking meals and attending to her father’s shirts and pants with an eight-pound iron on Saturday mornings. Grams almost always told the story directly before a scolding when she thought we, her granddaughters, were taking things for granted. Which we always were, which means we heard the story a thousand times.
    But the name in the article . . .
    I switch off the light and turn onto my side, taking the blankets with me. How is it that my great-grandmother was running whiskey in Kentucky when she was supposed to be six feet under in Illinois? Try as I might, I can’t remember Grams ever saying more than a few words about her mother. But did I ever ask? I don’t think so. I’m not sure I ever gave much consideration to her having a mother at all. It was like she sprung, fully formed and opinionated from the garden behind her house. She was never young to me. She was never passionate about life. She was never anything more than Grams.
    Thoughts of my grandmother, Oliver, and the article keep me from sleep.
    It’s funny, Grams never approved of my crush on the boy with the big dreams. She wanted me to marry a nice young man, have lots of babies, and live a quiet life, as she did. But if the woman in the article was, in fact, her mother, what kind of life did she live? And why was Grams not a part of it?
    I open my eyes and feel around behind me for the book. The paper is rough with age. I pull out the article and lay it on the