Chapter 16 #2
That conversation had happened through David's office, carefully, with the specific gentleness that the situation required — a woman who had already survived one version of her family's legacy being used against her, being told it was happening again.
Gary hadn't been in the room for it. Sue told him afterward that Nancy had been quiet for a long time, and then she had said, alright, what do we need to do, in the tone of a woman who had built everything she had from harder materials than this and was not about to stop now.
Lou had said considerably less and considerably more of it with his hands, but had arrived at the same place.
They would be out of town Thursday. A trip to Houston for a supply meeting that Bill had conveniently arranged through his various channels, real enough to survive scrutiny, long enough to keep them clear of the property for the window required.
The plan for Thursday was clean.
Gary would arrive at the distillery at his regular time, in his regular way, doing nothing that differed from any of the previous twenty-odd Thursdays he had spent there.
Once he confirmed the property was clear, he would move twelve barrels of the old reserve from the back storage room to the tunnel entrance using the distillery's forklift — a task that was, as he'd told Jed, not normally a one-man job, but which was manageable alone if you took your time and knew the equipment, which Gary did.
Three of Jed's men would handle the barrels from the tunnel entrance through to the creek.
They would load them onto the boat. The boat would take them east to the restaurant.
David's team would follow from the creek, at a distance, in vehicles that would not be identifiable as anything official until money changed hands at the delivery point.
Two hundred thousand dollars in stolen Steele whiskey, changing hands in a parking lot east of Renton on a Thursday night in March.
The cameras in the distillery would catch the tunnel entrance. David's team would catch the transaction. Belle's documentation from Christmas Eve would establish the pattern. The restaurant owner's cooperative staff would establish the receiving end.
It would be, David had said at their final meeting, the cleanest prosecution of this kind he had put together in twenty years.
"What happens to Jed and Brett?" Gary asked.
"Brett is looking at the Halloween assault charges, the assault from the county road, receiving stolen property, conspiracy, and a handful of additional charges we're confident will stick," David said.
"Jed gets conspiracy, receiving stolen property, the assault from the county road, and whatever prosecutors in Idaho decide to pursue.
Legally, he'll be in a very uncomfortable position, but it's still manageable given his reputation and the attorneys he'll be able to hire. That's why we have one more plan."
"And the restaurant owner?"
"That's a federal matter," David said. "We pass it along."
Gary nodded.
"The Steele family?"
David looked at him. "Lou and Nancy are victims of a theft operation conducted on their property without their knowledge, documented by their own inventory records and corroborated by a DA's office that has had thirty years of clean history with the family.
" A pause. "They'll be fine. Better than fine. The insurance claim alone will help."
Gary sat with that for a moment.
"And Belle?"
"Belle cooperated with an active investigation, wore a wire that produced the key evidence of the December transaction, and has been granted full immunity in writing since November." David looked at him steadily. "She's the reason this case is as solid as it is. She knows that. We know that."
Gary nodded slowly.
? ? ?
Thursday arrived gray and cold, a late March front pushing down from the north and making the open land around the Steele property feel larger and emptier than usual.
Gary parked the Jeep at his regular spot, walked to the distillery, and let himself in with the key Lou had given him in October.
The building was quiet in the way of places that are usually occupied and currently aren't — the particular held quality of silence in a working space between the people who work it.
Gary stood in the storage room for a moment, letting his eyes adjust, smelling the oak, char, the deep mineral complexity of what a century of work smelled like.
He put on his gloves, fired up the forklift, and got to work.
Twelve barrels. The old reserve section in the back, the one with the hand-tagged dates in the oldest handwriting — the barrels that Harold Steele's generation had put down, that Nancy's father had tended, that Lou had maintained with the specific reverence of a man who understands he is the current custodian of something larger than himself.
Gary moved them one by one to the tunnel entrance at the far end of the storage room, working steadily, not rushing.
The cameras he knew were in the corners of the room captured every pass of the forklift, every barrel tagged and moved and set in place.
He kept his face up and his movements clean and deliberate, everything visible, everything on record.
When the twelfth barrel was in position he stepped back, pulled off his gloves, and checked his phone.
A text from David's office: Creek team in position. Tunnel team moving.
Gary walked to the distillery door and stepped outside into the cold March evening.
He looked across the property at the farmhouse, dark and locked and waiting for Lou and Nancy to come back to it, at the stables beyond it, at the old barn where the tunnel came out and three men were currently loading stolen whiskey onto a flatbed.
He thought about Harold Steele in 1927. Going into the dark for the last time.
He thought about Nancy rebuilding everything in the eighties from nothing but the land and the barrels and a recipe her grandfather had written on paper that still existed somewhere in the farmhouse.
He thought about Lou, who had shaken his hand every Thursday for five months like Gary was someone worth the handshake.
His phone buzzed.
They're moving.
Gary walked to the Jeep, climbed in, and drove back down the tree-lined approach toward the gate and the county road beyond it, leaving the Steele farm behind him in the dark.
Forty minutes later, east of Renton, in the parking lot of a high-end restaurant whose owner had been waiting for a delivery he had every reason to believe was going to arrive exactly as planned, two hundred thousand dollars changed hands under the recording equipment of the Renton County District Attorney's office.
David texted at nine-forty-seven.
We have it. All of it. It's done.
Gary pulled over on the county road and sat in the Jeep in the dark for a moment, Marv's slow breathing from the back seat the only sound.
He typed back: Good.
He sat another minute.
Then he drove home.