The Bourbon Thief(104)

So Paris had married Levi because she knew that was what Tamara would have wanted her to do.

Out of respect for her husband, who had been her husband in name only, she waited until he was gone before she put her plan into action. She bought a house in Frankfort, Kentucky, a historic Georgian home on Wapping Street that had once been home to a general in the Union Army. Paris moved her now divorced mother in with her and found all their old fights mysteriously resolved. Their only disagreement these days was over Paris’s decision not to have children. She was still young enough, although time was running out. Better do it, her mother said. Better hurry. For a long time Paris had ignored that advice. It gave her a grim sort of satisfaction to kill off the Maddox line simply by not having children. But it wasn’t only the Maddox line that would die with her, it was Veritas’s, too, and truth was, she wouldn’t mind being a mother. She might even like it. So before she’d gone into The Rickhouse last night to take her chances with Cooper McQueen, she’d decided to take her chances with God and fate, too. Maybe in nine months Cooper would find out last night had been even more interesting than he’d thought it was. Fate was a train that didn’t stop until it reached its final destination. Paris knew this ride was only starting.

Now, that was a story.

Paris drove into town but didn’t go straight home yet. One more thing to do before she was done and she wanted to get it over with because Tamara was out there somewhere watching.

Inside the iron gates of the Frankfort Cemetery she parked her car and stepped out onto the soft lawn. A storm must have hit Frankfort last night, as the ground was sodden and spongy and the heels of her shoes stuck in the grass. She nearly lost one trying to pull herself free. From then on she kept to the paved walkway until she found the row she sought.

Famous men were buried in this cemetery. Men like Daniel Boone and Judge John Milton Elliott, who’d been murdered by a fellow judge, assassinated for the crime of ruling against the man’s sister in a dispute over land. The murder had made national news and the New York Times had said of it that “such a 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.