“What a spread!” With my arms open wide, I’m trying to absorb the “Martha Stewart” breakfast goodies laid out on the flawlessly coordinated table. Denim blue stoneware, matching placemats with linen napkins folded just so. “This is so nice of you guys.”

Their cabin (as they refer to it) is enormous, tastefully rustic and filled with pottery. Arts-and-crafts furnishings give it a manly feel, while floor-to-ceiling windows fill the great-room with sunshine and warmth.

Johnny places a platter of heart-shaped waffles on the table. We’re informed we have hot maple syrup or whipped cream for toppings.

“Coffee smells scrumptious,” Ruby says. “Your table is lovely and how did you manage fresh raspberries?”

“Out back,” Howard says. “There’s a big clump of bushes along the north side of our shed.”

“This sure is a sweet place you two have.” I plop down into a love seat that’s overflowing with cushy pillows. “Where in the world did you find all this McCoy pottery?” I get up and move toward a small yellow vase perched on a shelf.

My mother had collected this stuff and I catch my breath recognizing this vase, identical to the one I broke as a little girl…. Mom ran over—hearing the crash—and instead of yelling at me she took me in her arms. She said she had buckets full of vases but only one little girl. Besides, now there was one less thing to dust. I smile and carefully put the vase back on the shelf.

“Mostly antique shops. Some pieces are from an aunt—she’s the one that got me hooked,” Johnny remarks from the kitchen. “I have gotten some pieces on eBay—but that feels too much like cheating. So we pick up a piece here and there.”

“It’s an amazing collection,” I say.

“After we finish brunch, we’ll show you the Web site.” Johnny beckons us to sit around the table and we dig in. I wonder if there’s a Weight Watchers group on the island.

Howard starts clicking his mouse, so we move in closer around him. Ruby maneuvers her way into the middle. There are pictures of the boathouse, the cottage, several of Rocky and one of Ed’s smiling grandparents standing near to a beautiful speedboat next to the dock. The best one is a close-up of Ruby’s actual apron.

“You’ve done so much,” I marvel. “And so fast. It’s great. What do you think about an eight-hundred number? Maybe set it up so people can buy directly from the site too?”

“Sure!” Howard sits back, folds his arms over his chest. “No problem—I can easily set up an eight-hundred number as well as a shopping cart.”

“We were wondering”—Johnny clicks back to the picture of Gustave and Adeline—“did you two notice how long that boat is?”

“You know,” Ruby says, putting her nose about an inch from the screen, “it is rather long. How in the world did they get it so close to shore? I mean, we could hardly get the duck that close in and it’s much shorter—and look here.” She points to the boathouse doors that are open in the background.

“Do you still have the originals?” I ask.

Johnny hands me a stack of photos, I sort through them looking for the dock shot and notice how the cottage changes over the years: the addition of the wraparound porch, a picture of the boathouse being built. Then I come to the one of Gustave and Adeline.

“Oh look.” Ruby points out a side window that faces our cottage. “A cardinal is sitting right there on the path. How lovely.”

“Let’s walk over to the boathouse and say hello to the little feller,” I suggest as I snap out of my thoughts. “I have to say, you and Johnny have done so much. We’re really grateful.” The boys both smile with “aw shucks” all over their faces.

Keeping an eye on the bird as it sails ahead of us, we stroll along the path leading through the birch trees to our cottage. The bird follows the shoreline with us, and not until I reach the boathouse does it flit away into the woods.

“What a wonderful day,” I proclaim, starting up the wooden stairs to the second floor of the boathouse. “Just the right amount of chill to get the blood moving.”

Johnny and Howard open doors and Ruby gets the coffeepot loaded. I sort through all the tapes I brought down and realize we haven’t anything to play them with. While over at the boys’ cabin I had put together a list of things that need looking after. I add a tape player.

“Howard and I can build some shelves along this wall for the bolts of fabric.” Johnny points to the far wall where the deer head is mounted. “What are you going to do with the bedrooms?”

“The beds need to be moved out.” I head in one bedroom and then the other for a look. “We can use the dressers for storage. One room will be an office and break room combination and the other will be…shipping and whatnot.”

“This really is the ideal setup, Eve,” Ruby says, smiling. “We need a microwave, some nice dishes for lunch, chairs out on the deck for cigarette breaks and…I must tidy up this old fridge and stove a bit more—Good Lord!”

“How about if Ruby and I head up to the barn and poke around for chairs and a desk. You two can start taking apart the beds,” I say to the boys.

“Sounds good to me,” Johnny replies. Howard nods.

We start out the door. As the screen door slaps shut, Howard says to Johnny, “I want a raise!”

“I’ll give you a raise,” Johnny chides. They giggle.

Soon Ruby and I are digging through our pile of very carefully stacked items from Eau Claire.

“I’m so glad we kept my microwave.” I pull it out. “We must have enough sets of dishes for…’Course you can always use another plate, you know,” I offer, seeing Ruby’s guilty look.

“I should have gotten rid of the whole lot,” she says, exasperated. “I’m a dish junkie, so I’ve ended up with all this!” She points to a stack of boxes as high as her.

“Oh hell, Ruby—it’s something you enjoy collecting. How many sets you think you have there?” I raise my eyebrows, counting. “That many…” I’m wondering how she snuck some of these in. Sly dish junkie.

“I’ve only got four Christmas sets, so that’s a saving grace, wouldn’t you say?”

“Well…sure I would. I got rid of my stereo though.” I change the subject, realizing it’s a lost cause and who cares, anyway. “The speakers alone weighed a ton, but I’ll die if I can’t play music down there. This is serious.”

“The stereo in the living room is too enormous to move,” Ruby observes. “You know, Ed had a system in the library.”

“Wonderful…Besides, quiet in a library is best.” I head into the cottage.

“Good morning sleepyhead.” I pick up Rocky from the stump table. “You never used to get up on the table at…This is home now and you need to keep your paws on the floor. Come with me, young man.”

We walk toward the library; the toad-window casts a greenish glow on the floor and walls. Turning into the library, I stand in the middle of the room and inhale the calm.

Opening windows to let in morning air, I look around, trying to figure out just where this stereo is. Since I did all the wiring for a music system at my salon, I know how you can hide them, but for the life of me I can’t see a thing. So I start opening some of the cupboards that run underneath the bookshelves.

Most of them are loaded with more books, some have magazines, one’s filled with a collection of rocks. I run my hand over a few and decide to have a look at them another time. I get to the end of one wall and am about to look into the cupboards under the window, when I notice the wall is much thicker than the window frame. Yet there’s no door or shelves. Standing back, I study the entire wall. On either side of the window, it’s built out, but there doesn’t seem to be an opening. I go over to the left side of the window and start tapping it with my knuckles. Then I try pushing the entire wall and—violà! The wall snaps open. Ruby breezes in holding two mugs of steaming something.

“I forgot all about those closets.” She hands me a mug. I can smell the chocolate. “I’ve been meaning to give them a look and you found them all on your own.”

“Here’s the stereo.” I start pulling it out.

“This is one of the speakers, dear.” Ruby holds up a tiny black box.

“I’ll be! So small.” We gather up our find, then head back to the kitchen.

“All we’ve left to do is find chairs and a desk.” I put the dusty speakers on the stump table. “If you’d snazz these up a bit, I’d be grateful.”

“Certainly. Rocky can assist,” Ruby suggests as Rocky leaps from my arms, racing out of the kitchen.

I open the barn doors to let the sun in. The boys are coming up from the boathouse carrying a bed frame over their heads. Ruby comes out on the back porch holding the speakers and a ball of gray fur.

“Now, what’s in this barn that we can use down there?” Howard asks as we all walk in to “shop.”

“There’s some furniture stacked by the workbench,” I say. “Must be a desk somewhere.”

“Here…under this.” Howard points to an enormous moose head. “Doesn’t everyone have a moose in their barn?”

“It’s a great desk. I love the paint splatters—adds character,” I say. “Wrap it up! These club chairs could go in the office, and look here—all these wooden folding chairs!” I point to a stack under the staircase to the loft.

“Just right for the deck,” Ruby adds. “It’s lovely to put all these things to use again.”

Johnny backs up my van into the barn to load it with our finds. Then we head down to the boathouse. Howard takes the stereo upstairs and puts on an old Gloria Estefan tape and soon we’re cleaning, hauling, and doing the mambo to “one-two-three-four.” We leave everything to sit in the sun to “freshen up a bit,” as Ruby puts it, and join the boys upstairs.

“This is awesome.” I look over the bedrooms. “I’m sure we’ll do some moving around later on—but it’s feeling very factory-ish in here. Hey…I thought you said there was only the fireplace for heat. Look at this.” I point to a heater vent in the floor. “So there’s got to be a furnace. Where the hell is it?”

“Good question,” Ruby says. “When guests stayed here it was always in the summertime. Where could one hide a bloody furnace?”

We go into the soon-to-be shipping room directly behind the kitchen. Besides the dressers, there’s only a closet. It takes up the entire wall. We slide the doors open and—nothing. Not even a hanger.

“I wonder…” I push on the back of the closet. “I just bet there’s a little spot behind here like up in the library…. Hmmm—nope. Let’s try the other bedroom.”

“You, of course mean the office, darling,” Ruby corrects me.

“What the hell are you two banging on the walls for?” Howard asks, coming out of the bathroom. Ruby and I are all the way into the closet, rapping on the wall.

Ruby’s bracelets are making such a racket! Then Ruby exclaims, “Bingo!”

“Well I’ll be damned,” Howard says. He and Johnny crowd into the closet and peer over our shoulders, which is an easy thing for them to do.

The back of the closet door opens, revealing a small room. Cool air escapes, sweeping by us. No wonder the bathroom is so small and dark; this room is directly behind the shower.

A trapdoor is built into the floor. I lift a round ring and pull up—locked. Ruby hands me the ring of keys and I try a few that look about right. After the ninth try, the lock clicks, allowing me to lift up the metal door. A whoosh of chilly air comes with it. Smells of iron-y water and decay follow. Peering down into the hole, I can barely make out the handrail of a metal spiral staircase.

“There must be a room at the back of the boathouse down there,” I say. “I just thought it was all water in there. Shall we?”

“I’ll go first,” Howard states in a commanding, take-charge voice that for some reason rubs me the wrong way. “Could be bats, you know.”

“Not on your life, buster,” I reply quickly. “I can see more light down there. It can’t be very large and if there are any bats they better watch their hairy little rears ’cause we are coming down!” I yell this last part to ensure everyone is aware of my position and—mostly to convince myself.

“I’ll be…” Ruby mutters.

I start down. With each step of my Keds I feel the dankness on my bare ankles. Ruby is close behind, followed by the boys. I get to the bottom of the stairs and find myself standing on a stone ledge. By the light of several dusty bulbs, I spot three switches next to an old furnace. Its pipes reach up into the ceiling. I flip the first switch.

“This is incredible,” Howard announces, coming down the stairs. His voice echoes off the walls.

The ledge we’re standing on leads farther back into the earth. I can see a long, narrow room with a wooden door at the end. Directly in front of us is water.

“This is all making sense now,” Howard muses, while moving slowly down the ledge, toward the wooden door.

“I think I have an idea of what…” It dawns on me. I flick the next switch. A motor in the center of the wall to our left whirs to life, throwing out a dusty electrical odor. The wall slowly parts in the middle and folds in two until finally it’s flush against either side. We’re now looking into the front of the boathouse and out to the lake.

“Oh, good heavens!” Ruby wipes cobwebs from her hair.

“No kidding,” Johnny adds dryly.

“My God—this is a brilliant setup,” Howard says with admiration. “From this loading area in the back here and now that the waterway has become several times longer…”

“I think I see, but…” I say.

“There’s a door built into the wall over here and it’s hung on wheels.” Howard gestures toward it. We join him in the back of the cavelike room. “This is one heck of a secure door and…” He gives the door a yank in the direction of the track above it. “It’s locked tight.”

“Perhaps this…” Ruby hands him the toad-key we’d found in Ed’s notebook. “I have a feeling…”

Howard inserts the key, turns it this way and that—suddenly it clicks. “Fantastic! Give me a hand, Johnny ol’ boy.”

Together they pull the heavy door to the side, revealing a large low-ceilinged room. On the wall inside is yet another switch.

“Shall I?” Howard asks. We nod. He snaps the switch, filling the room with light.

The tunnel is crammed on either side with huge wooden barrels. A narrow aisle down the center leads back, ending at a spiral staircase.

“My God, this is so…” I say.

“It’s quite simple, darling—Ed explained a few things in his journal,” Ruby says, “Canada is north…across the lake…During Prohibition, let’s see, what years?”

“It began in nineteen twenty-one and lasted until thirty-three,” Howard informs us as we gather around Ruby.

“Thank you, darling.” She’s totally enjoying this. “Gustave had a trucking company already, with a network to Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. He had a long and fast Chris-Craft boat, the one in the photo. It made late-night trips under the cover of night.”

“What a sneak,” I say in awe. He must have been very interesting. “Then they’d zip in here, close the doors, load these from the boat into trucks and be off.”

“Something like that, darling,” Ruby says. “It was bottled either here somewhere or in a larger city. Gustave’s lot was called—”

“Toad Tea!” Johnny points to a faded toad on the wall with gilded letters underneath.

“How clever…It’s the toad from upstairs!” I say. Ruby nods.

“He was never caught. They simply closed down in thirty-three…and that was that,” Ruby says, and we all kind of go, “Oh.”

“The staircase at the end of the aisle down there?” I ask, pretty sure of the answer. “Takes us to the cottage basement, I bet.”

“Let’s check it out,” Howard suggests.

At the base of the stairs are several wooden cases. Johnny reaches in one and pulls up a brown bottle. He blows the dust off and reads out loud, “Toad Tea—the magic’s in the tea; the toad’s for luck.”

The toad in the picture on the bottle is winking. “I can’t get over the fact that this is here still,” I say with wonder. “It’s not like you could just sell the stuff or…”

“No, the enforcement agents, or ‘Revenuers,’ as Ed referenced them in his book”—Ruby puts her lecturer hat on again—“they searched high and low many years after Prohibition—since so many families had made fortunes. There were back taxes to be collected, so it was best to simply shut down.”

“Let’s get on up these and see where the hell we come out!” Johnny impatiently suggests.

We head up. At the top of the stairs, Johnny pushes the door open and we’re all standing in the basement of the cottage. In the wine cellar, to be exact.

“Nothing like a back entry to round things off,” I say.

“I think we need to give it a taste sometime,” Howard suggests. “I mean, there’s enough there for—”

“Perhaps later boys. All this excitement makes a girl hungry,” Ruby says. “But one thing you all must promise…and that’s to keep this our little secret. Otherwise…I’ll have to kill you,” she calmly adds.

We chuckle and quickly agree. The boys head back down to the boathouse. We go in the opposite direction to put together a snack.

“Well don’t just stand there, darling,” Ruby says to me. I follow her up the stairs, into the kitchen.

“My heavens, what a super find!” Ruby pulls things out of the fridge. “Ed only gave me a few hints in his journal. But when we found the room and he had explained about his grandfather….”

“It’s history,” I say. “I mean, this is a big deal. But you’re right, we can’t let it out. This place may have been paid for with—”

“Dirty money,” Ruby finishes for me dramatically. “How divine! Now hand me a tray.”

“I’m sure the boys won’t tell anyone about Ed’s grandfather’s past. We could threaten them…’Course as you so nicely put it”—we say the next words together—“we may have to kill them.” We then laugh like hell, remembering the looks on their faces.

“Really darling, no one’s past is truly all that squeaky clean. Let’s see here now…I have some Gouda, a spot of Brie with crackers would be lovely and some bars perhaps.”

“That is plenty.” I marvel at how she comes up with all this food. “To think that all we were doing was looking for the damn furnace.”

“I’m just as surprised, darling.” Ruby pats Rocky on the head as she whizzes by. “Can’t be many more secrets left. Not physical ones, anyway.” She adds napkins to the tray, and we head back downstairs to see if it’s a quicker route through the tunnel versus the path.

“These shoes used to be white,” Ruby remarks, peering down at her gray—but I’m certain expensive—canvas slip-ons. “We must consider installing a lift. This is simply too many steps in one day.” We amble down the staircase, through the tunnel and then up another staircase into the office.

“Hello boys.” I come out of the closet with goodies. “The office looks like…an office! Thanks for hauling all this in here—tight, but cozy.”

“I wonder if it’s safe to drink this?” I hold up one of the newly discovered bottles. “What a cool label.”

“I bet it’s fine,” Howard says. “What are these?” He holds up a square of chocolate-chip yummy-ness.

“Eat it fast or Eve will and I’m not kidding,” Ruby says. I harrumph for effect.

“I’ll pour coffee all around. Give me a hand, will you Johnny?” Ruby brings the pot in from the kitchen and hands Johnny a cat mug with eyes that move. “Special brew…no flavors, no extra smells…pure coffee.”

“So, Eve…” Howard smirks. “There’s this rumor that you and Ruby truly are planning to kill us.”

“So, Ruby,” Johnny adds, “how dirty is the money?”

“What the hell?” I ask, looking at Ruby with a blank face. “I, ah…”

“How in the world could you have heard us? It’s all the way down…and up, around corners…?” Ruby asks, a little breathless.

“You would not believe how clearly we heard you,” Howard says. “Every word—like the sounds were amplified or something. I have a feeling it was designed that way.”

“We didn’t hear you…Nothing.” I’m amazed; embarrassed too. “When you guys headed around the corner, that was it. We never heard another sound. Weird.”

“I imagine it was done for security measures,” Ruby states around a mouthful of cheese and cracker. “If the revenuers found the tunnel in the cottage basement…”

“You could grab your wife and kids, hop in the boat and get the hell off the island,” Johnny offers.

“Thank God it’s legal now,” I say. Everyone nods. “Seems so silly.”

“Yes it does, darling. But we’re slow learners, you know.”