The Bourbon Thief

  he could smell light perfume on her skin, something like baby powder and vanilla. She looked older than the last time he’d seen her. She looked good. Pretty white shirt with blue trim, bare arms, tight jeans and long brick red hair in a loose braid over her shoulder. She was even prettier close-up, like that was the best way she should be looked at, face-to-face, eye-to-eye. She had a good straight nose and lips full enough to give him bad ideas of his own.

  When she was sixteen, she’d been too pretty for her own good.

  Now she was too pretty for his own good.

  “Tamara, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been looking for you ever since Momma fired you.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “It wasn’t easy. Momma would have killed me if she knew what I was up to. Every time I spent the night at a friend’s house, I’d borrow their phone and call a stable or two. I knew you’d work with horses, but I called every number in the Yellow Pages and couldn’t find you. I’m not allowed at Red Thread by myself, but last week was Granddaddy’s secretary’s retirement party and I used that as an excuse to get into Granddaddy’s office. Nothing had been touched. I found your mother’s old pay stubs and her employee file. There wasn’t much in it, but there was a phone number. I called it and someone named Gloria answered. I told her you used to work for us and you’d left some stuff that I wanted to return. She told me where you worked.”

  “My aunt Glory. My mother’s sister. I’ll tell her to keep her mouth shut in the future when people call looking for me.”

  “I needed to talk to you, Levi.”

  “And get me in trouble again? I’m lucky your mother didn’t call the cops on me for kissing her precious baby. Thanks to you, I make half the money I used to make working for your granddaddy. I have a nice loft to sleep in, though. You want to see it?” He pointed up to the stable loft, where he slept most nights. He couldn’t afford his own place anymore and at age thirty he wasn’t about to move in with his aunt and uncle, even though they’d offered.

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Sorry about kissing me?”

  “Sorry about getting you fired. I never meant that to happen.”

  “And now here you are apologizing to me like a grown-up. You have changed, haven’t you?”

  “I had to grow up after Granddaddy died. But even before... I felt bad about getting you into trouble with Momma. I hope you accept my apology.”

  “Accepted. Now you can go. You’re boring the hell out of me. I liked it better when you were a spoiled rotten brat.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”

  Levi exhaled heavily. A visit from Tamara Maddox was the last thing he needed this week. He’d almost gotten to where he could fall asleep at night without thinking about her and that kiss that lost him the best job of his life. Hating Virginia Maddox had been easy, kept him going. Hating Tamara had been harder, but he’d managed somehow. But never had he ever imagined that her mother would sell her horses to punish her. As cowed and quiet as she seemed now, he had to wonder if her mother punished her in worse ways than that.

  “Can we go for a ride?” Tamara asked. “I want to talk to you about something. If you’re not busy. And I can pay for using one of the horses. I haven’t gotten to ride in a long time.”

  “My boss is a cheapskate, but he won’t charge a Maddox for borrowing a horse for half an hour.”

  “Is that a yes?” She grinned at him.

  “Fine. Yes. I got nothing else to do. Might as well listen to your teenage bullshit for a few minutes.”

  Tamara grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks.

  “Ah, mon capitan. I knew you still loved me.”

  “Where’d I put my pitchfork?”

  Tamara ignored his threat and went from stall to stall looking for a horse to ride. She picked a sorrel mare with four white socks named Scarlett. Levi wasn’t about to ride his favorite stallion, Rhett—Tamara would read too much into that—so he saddled Ashley, the one gelding in the stables, instead.

  “You haven’t lost your seat,” Levi said as they passed the woodshed and took the easy main trail. The entire Happy Trails estate was about three hundred acres of woods and fields and horse trails.

  “Guess riding a horse is like riding a bike.”

  He’d opened her up to flirt by complimenting her seat. Nothing. Not a word. How unlike her.

  “Guess so.”

  “You like it here?” Tamara asked.

  “It’s all right. I get five dollars an hour to give riding lessons to rich girls like you and not so rich girls who want to feel rich. Ten dollars for a private lesson. When I’m not working, I can ride all I want. I don’t much like living in a stable loft, but I save a lot of money on rent. One more year and I can buy a place of my own.”

  “You said Granddaddy paid you better?”

  “A lot better. More money for less work. But we know how that turned out.”

  “You know, you never told me how you ended up working for Granddaddy,” Tamara said.

  “Not much to tell. Mom got sick my senior year of high school. There went college. I had to work, so I got a job. I mucked stalls at Churchill. After Mom died—”

  “How did she die?”

  “Mouth cancer. Killed her slow, but it got her eventually. Your grandfather stopped by for the wake. No one was more surprised to see him than me. But he shook my hand and said Mom had told him I had experience with horses, and that sure surprised the hell out of me. Mom hadn’t worked for him in years. I told him I did and he asked if I’d be interested in coming to work for him at his place. I said yes. The end.”

  “Granddaddy and your mom kept in touch?”

  “Must have, I guess. No offense but your grandfather didn’t seem the type to care much about a cleaning lady. Still don’t know what possessed him to come to the funeral. But I didn’t complain. It was a good job while it lasted.”

  Tamara didn’t say anything to that.

  “So what’s the richest girl in the state want with the poorest stable hand in the state?” Levi asked as they crossed a wooden bridge into the deeper darker parts of the woods.

  “I’m not the richest girl in the state. Not yet, anyway. Everything’s held in trust until I turn twenty-one or get married.”

  “You’ll be twenty-one someday.”

  “Not soon enough. Momma’s selling Red Thread. She accepted an offer this week.”

  “Isn’t that where y’all get your money?”

  “We have lots of money. We’ll have more money if we sell the distillery. But we shouldn’t sell it.”

  “Tell your mother that, then. I can’t help you.”

  “Momma and I don’t talk anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I hate her and she hates me.”

  “I know why you hate her—who wouldn’t? But why does she hate you?”

  “She thinks it’s my fault granddaddy’s dead. I let him drown downstairs and didn’t go check on him.”

  “Did you let him drown?”

  “I didn’t let him drown.”

  “Don’t feel bad your mother accused you of murder. She accused me of rape.”

  “Raping who?”

  “You.”

  “I think I’d remember you trying to rape me.”

  “I’d remember it, too.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. You’d be dead.”

  “Tell that to your mother.”

  “I will someday. Momma has a lot to answer for.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t we all?”

  The old Tamara would have said, “Not me.” The old Tamara would have said, “Speak for yourself.” But this wasn’t the old Tamara. This was the older Tamara and she only nodded like she had something to answer for, too.

  He trotted up to her and met her eye-to-eye.

  “Look at me. Why are you here, Tamara? You’re real good at asking questions and terrible at giving answers.”


  “I’m trying to figure out what to say.”

  “Tell the truth. That shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “The truth is the hardest thing to say.”

  Levi noticed something he hadn’t seen before. Around Tamara’s neck hung a little gold cross on a little gold chain. He reached over and touched the cross, lifted it off her skin. Tamara’s body stiffened at the contact, but she didn’t shy away.

  “You never wore that before,” Levi said, instantly regretting saying that. “Is this why you’re on your best behavior now? You got religion?”

  “God saved me during the flood.”

  “But you carry a knife with you. You don’t think God’ll save you again if you need Him?”

  “I can save myself.”

  Levi let the cross fall back onto her skin.

  “Even your religion is made of eighteen-karat gold.”

  “God saved me,” she said.

  “Nobody saved you. A grand total of two people died in that flood. One old lady who had a heart attack, and your grandfather, and the heart attack might have had nothing to do with the flood. You got lucky like everybody minus two people in town. You might be rich and you might be pretty, but you ain’t that special.”

  “You only said ‘ain’t’ because you know that word bugs me.”

  “Ain’t that the truth?” Levi said, grinning. She didn’t grin back. “Come on. Either put up or shut up. I don’t have all day.”

  “I’m trying here, Levi. Give me a second.”

  “Second’s up.”

  He kicked his horse gently in the side and Ashley obeyed the command, turning them away from her. Yeah, he was being an asshole. He knew it. But he didn’t like being around Tamara anymore. Too many memories. Too many temptations. He’d never told anyone the truth of that day when Virginia Maddox had fired him. She’d humiliated him like he’d never known he could be humiliated. She’d told him if he got within a mile of her daughter, she would call the police, tell them she’d seen him trying to rape Tamara in the stables. He’d go to jail for the rest of his life because “no way any judge would believe the word of the son of a colored cleaning lady over Virginia Maddox.” Oh, he had wanted payback then and the way he wanted to have it was by fucking Tamara, getting her pregnant and then standing there by her side and telling her mother what they had done. Then he’d leave Tamara and laugh his way into the sunset. But those were mad thoughts, the sort he never allowed himself except in the deepest hours of night when he woke up hot and alone with nothing but fantasies of sex and revenge in bed with him. And here she was, right next to him, as beautiful as he remembered, as tempting as he remembered, as dangerous as he remembered.

  “It’s yours,” Tamara said.

  “What is?” Levi asked, not looking back at her lest he be turned to a pillar of salt, which was what his uncle called a man who thought only with his cock.

  “Red Thread is yours. Or it ought to be.”

  “I was a damn good groom, but I highly doubt your grandfather saw fit to leave me his entire company in his will.”

  “He didn’t. But he should’ve.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because you are George Maddox’s only living son.”

  10

  Levi didn’t know if he should laugh in Tamara’s face or slap her until she came to her senses. She looked clear-eyed to him, so he went with laughing.

  “That’s cute. Nice joke, Rotten.”

  Tamara didn’t laugh. Tamara didn’t smile.

  “It’s not a joke. Granddaddy is your father. See?”

  She dug a piece of paper out of her back pocket and held it out to him.

  He looked at the paper in her outstretched hand before finally reaching out and taking it from her.

  “What the hell is this?” he said, scanning the note. The ink was purple and obviously some sort of Xerox copy of a handwritten letter.

  “My father’s suicide note. Except he wasn’t my father. A man named Daniel Headley, Judge Daniel Headley, is my father. And according to this note, Granddaddy was your father.”

  Levi’s eyes could barely focus on the words. His heart pounded like horse hooves on dry turf kicking up an ugly cloud of dust.

  It is not easy for me to die knowing what I know about Levi Shelby. I know you’ve had your affairs, but I never dreamed you’d stoop so low to seduce a cleaning lady who couldn’t tell you no any more than the rest of us could...

  But considering he is the only son you have left...

  ...the only son...

  “This is bullshit.” Levi crumpled up the paper and tossed it at Tamara. She caught it against her chest.

  “I know it hurts. It hurt me to know Daddy wasn’t my father... But it’s not bullshit. It’s true.”

  “It’s not true. My mother would not—”

  “Your mother was twenty-five when she worked for Granddaddy, and he was thirty. He was handsome then, and if you look anything like your mother, she was beautiful.”

  “She wouldn’t sleep with a...” Levi looked up into the trees, silenced the scream rising in his throat.

  “Wouldn’t sleep with a white man? A rich white man who she worked for? Why not? You and me, we almost—”

  “That’s completely different,” Levi said, but he couldn’t think of why except Tamara was beautiful and George Maddox was nothing but a smug old rich bastard. Levi grew up knowing he’d been born out of wedlock. He’d been taunted for it at school, and even though he hated Jay Shelby, the man his mother had married when Levi was six, at least he finally had a father’s name they could put down on school forms. “She would have told me.”

  “Did you tell your mother about all the girls you slept with?”

  “She would have told me.”

  “Did she tell you? Who did she say your father was?”

  Levi didn’t answer because he had no answer. His mother had never told him a name. Levi had asked, but he’d never asked her. Instead, he’d asked his aunt Gloria, who said she didn’t know and that Levi shouldn’t worry about it. He had a mother and an aunt and an uncle who loved him and that was more family than a lot of people had. But he hadn’t missed the look of fear in Gloria’s eyes when he’d asked the question.

  But no...

  “No fucking way,” Levi said. “My mother would have told me if my father were the richest son of a bitch in Kentucky. Your grandfather lied to your father and your father believed him.”

  “You said it yourself—Granddaddy went to your mother’s funeral even though she hadn’t worked for him in years. He gave you a job paying you more than you’d earn anywhere else. He was keeping an eye on you. Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know, but I know I’m done talking about this with you. Now get out of here and never show your face here again. All you fucking Maddoxes can go to hell.”

  “You are a Maddox,” Tamara called out after him.

  Ignoring her, Levi spurred his horse and headed straight back to the stables. Tamara, seasoned rider that she was, followed close behind him, keeping up even as he took sharp turns on back trails to evade her.

  Back at the stables he put Ashley back in his stall and didn’t bother to unsaddle him. Before Tamara could say another word to him, he was in his pickup and driving away.

  Last thing he saw as he peeled out of the parking lot, throwing gravel as he went, was Tamara on the back of her horse looking proud and elegant and made of money. She looked like a Maddox. She looked nothing like him.