“Smooth,” I rasped, my voice sounding worse than Sophia’s broken one.
Mallory beamed at me. “Isn’t it?”
She grabbed the jug like she was going to pour me another, but I shook my head and held my hand out over the top of my jar.
“Can’t handle your liquor, Gin?” Lorelei quipped.
“I can handle liquor just fine,” I wheezed. “But that is not liquor. That is liquid torture.”
Lorelei laughed. “Amateur.”
I glared at her through the tears in my eyes, but she just laughed again and took another sip.
While I tried to catch my breath, Mallory and Lorelei chatted about the mansion renovations, the cocktail party at the bank, and the subsequent robbery. I chimed in when appropriate, all the while trying to think how I could steer the conversation around to what I really wanted to talk about: Deirdre.
But Mallory did it for me. After she had poured herself a third serving of moonshine, she sat back in her chair and gave me a sly look over the top of her mason jar. “So tell me, Gin, how are you liking Deirdre Shaw invading the Pork Pit every day?”
I blinked, and this time it wasn’t because my eyes were still watering. “How do you know about that?”
Mallory grinned, then took another hit of shine. “I have my sources, just like you do. So how is Deirdre? Still the same spoiled, selfish brat I remember?”
A jolt zinged through me. “You actually knew her?” I’d hoped as much, but after so many frustrating dead ends, it was a pleasant shock to hear it confirmed.
“Oh, yes,” Mallory said. “I knew several generations of Shaws. Stuck-up snobs for the most part, who thought that their family fortune made them better than everyone else, especially folks like me who had to do more . . . unsavory things to make a living.”
“So that’s why you were telling me that I should go talk to Finn during the cocktail party. You saw him with Deirdre.” Another thought occurred to me. “And you’ve heard Finn talk about her these past few weeks, haven’t you? You’ve known who she really is all along. Why didn’t you tell me about her? Why didn’t you tell Finn?”
Mallory shrugged. “For one thing, I was a bit preoccupied when Raymond came back to Ashland. For another, it wasn’t my place to spill that sort of secret. Besides, I figured that Deirdre would tell him herself sooner or later, probably in some grand, overly dramatic fashion. Am I right?”
I winced, thinking back to that first lunch at the Pork Pit. “Oh, it was certainly dramatic.”
“So we heard,” Lorelei chimed in. “You probably shouldn’t threaten to kill long-lost relatives in your own restaurant. Could make the customers think twice about what you might be putting in their food.”
I winced again. So news of our initial confrontation had made the rounds through the underworld just like I’d feared. Terrific. But I couldn’t do anything about that now, and this was too good an opportunity to pass up.
I looked at Lorelei. “Deirdre’s icicle-heart rune is the one that was stamped on that letter you found in Raymond’s things. She’s his business associate, the one he mentioned in the botanical gardens the night he died. She’s the one who told him about your real identity and that you were here in Ashland. Do you remember smuggling anything for her?”
Lorelei tapped her fingers against her jar. “I noticed her rune necklace at the bank, and I’ve been thinking about that myself. But I never met or even saw Deirdre before the party. If I ever did any business with her, it wasn’t face-to-face, and she used an alias.”
I stared at Mallory. “And you? What do you know about Deirdre?”
The dwarf shrugged again. “Not much, I’m afraid. She and Lily Rose were a year apart in school, but they were involved in the same activities, went to the same parties, that sort of thing. So I saw her the way a parent would see someone else’s child. Deirdre always struck me as being totally self-absorbed, but then again, most teenage girls are.”
Lily Rose had been Lorelei’s mother and Mallory’s beloved granddaughter. I hadn’t realized that she’d gone to school here in Ashland, though, much less that she had known Deirdre back then. Sometimes it truly was a small world.
Mallory opened the black leather-bound book sitting on the table, revealing a stack of old loose photos. I groaned.
“Something wrong?” Lorelei asked, still sipping her moonshine.
I shook my head. “I’ve had just about enough of old photos lately.”