14Author's Notes: Doesn't take place anywhere particular in canon. I chose characters to be in the story that would help move the plot.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters; they belong to Shaftesbury and the CBC.
PROLOGUE
The sun was scarcely up as Connor O'Neill punched his card and made his way into the grain storehouse at Parkington Whiskey. The industrial area was coming alive; whistles cut through the morning air and a steamship's horn sounded from the harbor. Around Connor, men were calling hello and cursing the night before in a variety of languages: Connor heard his own native Gaelic mixed in with Slavic, Polish, English, and a smattering of others.
He waited for his supervisor, a tall, burly Canadian by the name of Alexander Martin, to unlock the big barn doors that opened into the storehouse, taking a moment to look around the grounds of Parkington Whiskey. The distillery, one of Toronto's finest and oldest, was a large complex made up of five large buildings. These were where Parkington's famed malt whiskey was malted, mashed, distilled and bottled. Several smaller buildings for storage, stables for the horses and outbuildings for the delivery wagons ringed the other side of the plaza. In the big, open space in the middle, wagons were lined up from farmers from the countryside, bringing with them loads of barley. Connor took a look at them as he walked past, shaking his head with a small smile. Back's goin' to be achin' by lunch, he thought to himself. This year's crop was a bumper one. He nodded to a few of his fellow loaders, and frowned.
"Hey," he said, catching one of them by the collar, a tall fellow Irishman he only knew as Lucky. "You seen Brendan this mornin'?"
Lucky shook his head, taking a drag on his cigarette. "Nah, ain't seen him yet this mornin'. Perhaps they're havin' trouble with the twins this mornin'."
"Put that thing away!" a voice barked, cutting through the amiable chatter. Lucky hastened to snub out his cigarette as Alexander Martin appeared, a head taller than most of the men. The big Canadian pushed his way through the men, coming over to Lucky and Connor. "What do you think you're doin', mick?" Martin yelled at Lucky. The Irishman bristled at the derogatory term. Martin ignored him as he pointed at the locked doors. "You could've very well burned the whole damned building down!"
"Won't happen again," Lucky bit, with a side eye at Connor.
"Indeed it won't," Martin agreed. He pulled a set of keys from his shirt pocket and proceeded to unlock the doors to the storehouse. "Now get moving," he growled at the two of them, shoving the doors inward.
The smell of fresh barley assailed Connor as he stepped into the building. The men formed a pair of lines-one line was going to shovel up the barley to take it over to the mashing room; the others were going to start offloading the grain from the wagons. Connor took his place closest to the grain pile with a shovel and dug in. Lucky stood across from him awaiting the first grain sack. It felt foreign to Connor. Normally, Brendan Walsh was across from him, ready to dump the grain out as fast as Connor could help shovel it out.
Connor dropped his first shovelload into the waiting wheelbarrow and twisted again for another. His second shovelful felt heavy. Odd, he thought. Many barleycorns could indeed be heavy, but this was even more so than usual. He lifted the shovel, trying not to lose the grain. There was something in the pile. Connor lifted his shovel cautiously, then screamed as he staggered backwards, his shovel clanging to the plank floor. "Mary, Mother of God!"
"What in the hell is going on, O'Neill?" Martin demanded, his big boots stomping through the gathering group of men, most of whom were wide-eyed and whispering under their breaths. He looked at Connor O'Neill, who was down on his knees, digging frantically through the pile with his hands. "This had better-Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Martin swore as he saw it.
Connor's digging had revealed the body of Brendan Walsh, buried in the grain pile, his leg tucked under the shovel.
