The Bourbon Thief - Tiffany Reisz Page 0,128

crime could scarcely have taken place in any region calling itself civilized...except Kentucky.”

Kentucky was a border state, after all. On the border between North and South, on the border still between old-world and new, between civilization and the sort of place where the names Hatfield or McCoy still meant something.

A few feet off the main path lay a series of mossy grave markers. Paris stepped carefully onto the lawn and walked past the tomb of Eric Maddox, who died in Vietnam, Nash Maddox, who died by his own hand, George Maddox, who died at the hand of his daughter. She walked down the line, descending decades into the past with each step.

1978.

1968.

1965.

1927.

1912.

Before Paris hit the turn of the century, she paused. This was it.

The gravestone was dark granite, two inches thick and about two feet tall. The top of it was a pointed arch and beneath the arch were angel wings carved into the stone.

Decades of wind and rain and neglect had worn the stone down so that the words were hard to read. But Paris could make out most of it.

Here lies the body of Jacob Jude Maddox and his loving wife, Henrietta Mary Maddox. In heaven they shall be reunited with their children...

After that Paris couldn’t make out the words or the names.

Henrietta had died first, but Jacob Maddox had followed soon after. Her sire. Her ancestor. Her grandmother’s grandmother’s rapist.

She tried to feel something for him. Hate? Bitterness? Anger? Begrudging gratitude he’d been horrible enough to do the deed that not only had brought about her existence but had started the company that had eventually made Paris a very wealthy woman?

She had all Jacob and Henrietta’s money, Paris did. The Maddox money she’d inherited from Levi, who’d inherited it from Tamara, who’d inherited it from her father, George, who’d inherited it from his father and his father. It was hers, all hers. Jacob was dead and she was alive. Alive and rich. The girl whom he’d raped had given birth to a girl who’d given birth to a girl who’d eventually brought about the existence of Paris Shelby, who was standing on Jacob’s grave in five-thousand-dollar Manolo Blahnik heels and carrying a sixty-thousand-dollar handbag, which to her was nothing more than a costume she’d put on to seduce Cooper McQueen. It had worked, for in that overpriced handbag was a bottle of bourbon worth a million dollars.

Two bottles were in her handbag actually. The Red Thread and another bottle of bourbon worth far more than money to Paris.

Paris took out the first bottle, the Red Thread, and unscrewed the ancient rusted cap. She took a whiff. Its scent had faded long ago. It was nothing but dirty water now. Paris didn’t drink a drop of it.

Instead, she flipped the bottle over and poured the contents onto the graves of Jacob and Henrietta Maddox, who were, to the best of Paris’s knowledge, burning in hell at that very moment.

“A little fuel for your fire,” she said, and when the bottle was empty, she dropped it on the ground. With one well-placed kick of her toe, she shattered the bottle against the tombstone. Then she took the second bottle from her handbag and set it on the grave, twisting it into the ground like a knife into a chest.

The label of this bottle read “Veritas Single Malt Bourbon,” the first fruits of Paris’s distillery. Veritas was one label, the high-end fancy stuff she’d worked her ass off perfecting. The other brand currently aging at Paris’s distillery—which had once been Red Thread Bourbon Distillery—was called Truth Serum in honor of old Bowen Berry. Bowen still worked the cooperage on Bride Island and had taught the trade to his nephew, who was learning now to make the bourbon barrels that his uncle had stopped making thirty-five years ago.

“The barons are dead,” she said. “Long live the baroness.”

If and when she told this story to Cooper McQueen someday, she would tell him that she laughed when she stood on their graves. A better story than the truth, that she didn’t laugh. Instead, she cried. Only a little and only for Tamara and Levi and Veritas and herself, too. She cried for herself because she’d been carrying this burden a long time and it hurt to let it down even more than it hurt carrying it.

As Paris walked away, she tied the red ribbon from the Red Thread bottle around her finger.

It was done. It was finished.

Love what they destroyed.

Destroy what they loved.

And with that, Tamara’s vengeance was complete.

But Paris’s was only beginning.

And it began with a million-dollar bottle of bourbon seeping into the ground. Paris shook her head, finally laughing like she wanted to. Hard to believe she’d conned that bottle out of Cooper McQueen with nothing more than a few fucks and a dirty story. Paris owned him last night and perhaps she owned him still.

Like Tamara always said, you can’t sell people.

Oh, but you can buy them.

* * * * *

HISTORICAL NOTES AND

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This story is a work of fiction in its entirety. While the Kentucky River did flood on December 10, 1978, and crested at historic highs of forty-eight and a half feet, no bourbon barons were found dead in its dirty waters the next day. The destruction of Red Thread detailed in the book was inspired by the unsolved fire at Heaven Hill’s distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky, on November 7, 1996, which—to the best of this author’s knowledge—had nothing to do with an inheritance dispute or revenge. George Maddox’s fathering a secret child by a black employee was inspired by the late South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, who fathered a daughter by a teenage black maid. This author wishes to honor the memory of the many Essie Mae Washington-Williamses in this world.

Special thanks to Kentucky attorney and writer Lucie Witt for her help with the legal aspects of the book—inheritance and marriage law both—and her special insights into the social and legal and personal challenges faced by Americans in interracial marriages. Thank you also to early readers Alyssa Linn Palmer, Karen Stivali and Andrew Shaffer. Very special thanks to Tqwana “The Q is Silent” Brown for her thoughtful critique and invaluable insights, as well.

Thank you to all my readers of all my books. As always, my deepest gratitude to my editor, Susan Swinwood, and agent, Sara Megibow, without whom I would have no writing career at all, much less one that allows me the freedom to write books such as this one.

-13: 9781459293991

The Bourbon Thief

© 2016 by Tiffany Reisz

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