Someone Bad and Something Blue

by Miranda Parker

  “Her family didn’t like black people, especially old moonshiners like us. They threw her out when Lucia came. As fair skinned as Lucia is those people refuse to see themselves in her.”

  I gasped. “Lucia is Sean’s baby?”

  She leaned forward. “I guess Sean learned how to keep secrets from me, because you looked stunned. Sean didn’t tell you about him and Rosary.”

  “No, Ma’am. But if he had he would be alive right now.”

  “I know.” She nodded. Her tears fell fast now. “And if I had told Bill . . .”

  “I’m not sure if the outcome would have been different,” Maxim said. “The love of your life has become a bitter man, who has done very bad things to people, including the people closest to him.”

  I held her hand. “I think you need to rest now. Do you want me to call the nurse?”

  She shook her head. “I want you to get Rosie and the baby. I don’t want anyone else hurt and when Bill finds you—and find you he will—tell him that Sean was his son.”

  “You don’t want to tell him yourself ?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Angel, I know it’s been a long time since you’ve been here, but this is the hospice floor. I’m dying.”

  39

  Sunday, 2:30 PM

  South Georgia Medical Center, ER lobby, Valdosta,

  Georgia

  We waited for an hour for Sanchez, but she was a no show and a no call. Maxim asked the sheriff’s department to help with securing Giselle and to bring in Rosary and the baby. Maxim and I headed back to Folkston to find out what was going on with Sanchez. He left Uncle Pete’s truck in the hospital parking lot, because I told him to. Therefore, Maxim had to ride back with me in Mrs. C’s Caddy. But he wouldn’t let me drive.

  “Giselle is dying. This roller coaster just won’t stop.” I closed my eyes and sighed, as we sped back down another state road. “There’s so much that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Seems pretty clear to me. Her sister Marla had better opportunities to raise Sean than she did. The family agreed. I see it all the time.”

  “And what about the moonshine? Sean, the Sean we knew, has been running moonshine all along? I don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t think he was the type to run shine. It was beneath him, but he learned enough or overheard enough while growing up that he used as a benefit when he opened Flappers.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “There are no buts. People are human, three dimensional, not black or white. We don’t wrap up into tidy, pretty bows. You know this. Look at the people you deal with on a daily basis. Sean snitched about the wrong people and so he’s dead. My job is to find out who those wrong people are, so we can get this crap off the streets.”

  “But Sean was different.”

  “If you think so,” he scoffed. “All I’m saying is don’t lose sleep over the psychoanalysis of Sean Graham. He may not have known who is real father was, but he was not a nice guy. He was a prick, actually, and I do remember you didn’t like him either.”

  “True I didn’t like him. He let Rosary sit in jail while her daughter was God knows where.”

  “Actually, Lucia was with Marla. She’s been with Marla until Rosary went missing.”

  “What?” I scooted up in the seat. “She was where and you knew?”

  He huffed. “I knew that the baby was with Marla until Rosary took her, but I didn’t know the baby was Sean’s.”

  “You must be kidding me.”

  “No, I’m not. When I brought Sean in for questioning—thanks to your heads-up—he told me that he had hired you to find Rosary, his employee. I knew that was a lie, because your mom had already told the truth, so he had to tell me the deal or go to jail.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m so not believing you right now.”

  “Don’t get mad at me. Your girl Rosary could have told you. You need to ask yourself why didn’t she?”

  “That will be the first question I ask before I wring her neck.” I pursed my lips.

  He chuckled. “That a girl.”

  “So why did Sean lie to me about why he wanted me to find Rosary?”

  “His mom was keeping Luc, while Rosary was in jail. He wasn’t bailing her out, because he wanted her to go to rehab. She got out early and took their daughter,” he said, as they drove. “When my leak informed him that we were about to launch a case against him, he sent her down here to wait for him. He hired you to throw off our scent, but it failed. So he agreed to help us uncover this illegal moonshine ring, if we could put them all in WITSEC. We were going to retrieve her and Lucia when all Hell broke loose.”

  WITSEC was the U.S. Marshal’s Witness Security Program acronym, formerly known as Witness Protection.

  “Sean wanted to leave his glamorous life for witness protection?”

  “No, he didn’t. He and Rosary had plans to run their own white lightning distillery. Legal moonshine, according to him. Yeah, right . . .” He chuckled.

  “There are a few whiskey distilleries popping up in the state. Amicalola Falls even has a Moonshine Festival.”

  “Yeah, well . . . That’s how he and Rosary fell in love. He hired her to be a mixologist at Flappers and learned she came from a family of profitable moonshiners. He told her about his background and the Brown family’s love of the brew. They traded family recipes and secrets. He felt sorry for her, because she didn’t have the opportunities that he had. Sean tried his best to clean Rosary up and clean the mistake of bringing illegal moonshine into the restaurant. He didn’t realize how deep they were in until we came calling. When we shared with him the facts behind the Calhouns he knew this was the best thing to do for Lucia.”

  “Rosary didn’t tell me much about her family except that they lived up near The Falls. She used to help getting the mash together. That’s how she learned how to make prison hooch. The last time I saw her in jail I was asked to compel her to tell the prison staff member who gave her the supplies to make the alcohol in jail.”

  “Rosie’s family has a lock on North Georgia, especially Grayson, Georgia, where there are no package stores. We hoped Luxe could at least get us in on any nip joints up there or near Winder and Snellville, but we will.”

  “I thought Grayson was finally getting a package store.”

  “Not yet. A lot of red tape with the local government.”

  I snapped my fingers. “And that’s how Sean came into play.”

  He nodded. “Mhmm . . . You see that tax money from alcohol sales could help out the city. Imagine what would have happened if Sean and Rosary could work out a deal to sell only their heritage hooch for a little political nudge.”

  “Whoa, Maxim. This story is better than anything I’ve ever investigated, too bad it was right under my nose. I can’t believe Rosary kept this stuff from me.”

  “The girl has been taught to keep secrets her whole life. Her life depended on it. Her family isn’t the normal kind. They’ll kill their kin, if they ever felt threatened. The Calhouns belonged to a large group, who isn’t fans of the new legit moonshine business owners. Moonshine is sacrilege to them,” Maxim said.

  “That’s why Biloxi didn’t hesitate with killing Sean or anyone who stood in his way.”

  “We knew that Luxe wasn’t the big fish we needed. We still didn’t know who the distiller was and neither did Sean, because of the double blind system. We hoped Luxe would give us more information then Sean was killed. You I.D.’d The Knocker and we still haven’t found the guy.”

  “But he’s not the distiller you’ve been looking for all this time?”

  “No, he’s their hired gun and he needs to be stopped before this crew scares legal shine out of Georgia.”

  “Wow,” I sighed. “I can’t believe Sean was planning to leave Elaine and his family behind for Rosary?”

  “Yep.”

  I shook my head. “The things we do for love.”

  “You don’t have to be in love with the child’s mother, to want the best for her
.”

  I rolled my eyes in his direction. “Do you have children?”

  He nodded. “A little boy and no, he’s not with his mom. I have custody of him.”

  My mouth had dropped too low to pick up off the car floor board, so I tried to roll it back into my face and keep my thoughts to myself until we returned to the B & B.

  Sunday, 4:15 PM

  Georgia Moon B&B, Folkston, South Georgia

  Sanchez wasn’t in her room when Maxim brought me back and someone had been through my room. My Running of the Brides team outfit was thrown around the room and my folded tees sprawled along the floor against the pink carpet, stepped on. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  “It’s a good thing that you didn’t have anything expensive.” Maxim pulled some blue latex gloves from his pocket and handed them to me. “Put these on before we go inside.”

  “I think I need to see if Ms. Claudine is okay first.”

  “Angel, you need to see what’s missing first before the team arrives. Remember I have a leak.”

  “But it’s obviously Sanchez.” I stood under the threshold.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Okay. Let’s deduce from the evidence we have. Sanchez didn’t respond when called, she’s nowhere to be found, and my room has been ransacked. I was hoping she wasn’t the leak, but clearly she had to be, with the meddling, jealous behavior—”

  “First off. There’s no reason for her to disappear during a manhunt, even if she were. Besides. . .” He stopped checking and looked at me. “What jealous behavior?”

  “You didn’t see how she looked at you when you talked to me?”

  He shook his head. “Why would I see that? She’s a lesbian.”

  I did a double take. “Mama, say what?”

  “Sanchez has the hots for you.” He bent to his knees and looked under my bed.

  “No, she doesn’t.” I pouted.

  “Cinderella, did you lose your slipper?”

  “What?”

  He stood up and lifted a silver sparkled lady’s shoe. “Is this your shoe?”

  I squinted at it and then shook my head. “Although the Dollar General is très chic, they don’t sell Louboutins. It’s definitely a few dollars out of the store’s range—about a thousand dollars, to be exact.”

  He observed the shoe and frowned. “Can you call Ms. Claudine up here?”

  I followed his orders and followed Ms. Claudine to the room she had rented to me.

  “What have y’all done to my room?” she asked, more like she shouted.

  “I don’t want you to be too alarmed, Ms. Claudine, but an intruder has been in this room.”

  “You sure it wasn’t the lady marshal?”

  “That’s what we’re hoping you can help us determine,” Maxim said. “Did you hear any rumbling upstairs?”

  “It’s a B & B, Marshal West.” She tilted her head and pursed her lips. “Most of our patrons are honeymooners or lovers or something close to it. A lot of rumbling going on. My best practice is to put plugs in my ears until my television stops shaking.”

  Maxim rolled his eyes at me then handed Ms. Claudine the shoe. “Is this your shoe, Ma’am?”

  “No, it’s too high city for me.”

  “Have you seen it before?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. I sure have.” She studied it then handed it back to him. “This shoe belongs to the gal who stayed here before you came. I remember, because she wore them when she arrived. Can’t understand why she would leave them behind and how my Girl Friday didn’t see them when she was getting your room together. My apologies. We usually take patrons’ left-behind items to the lost and found closet.”

  My leg twitched. I pulled out my wallet and shared with her a picture of Rosary. “Is this the woman who was here before?”

  She nodded. “That’s her and she had the cutest little girl with her, full of curly brown hair.”

  “Was she here with just the little girl?” Maxim asked.

  “She came with just her and the baby, but she left with a woman. Checked out early, too. I assumed it was her mother, because she was quite happy when she left.”

  “Did the woman have flowing gray hair?” I asked.

  Ms. Claudine nodded.

  “Giselle,” I said under my breath.

  Maxim folded his arms over his chest. “Did the woman drive here?”

  “That’s the only way to get here unless she walked.”

  Maxim leaned toward me. “Did you see a car in the yard when you visited Giselle?”

  I shook my head. “No, but she could have borrowed Giselle’s car. Will she return with the car or get as far as she can away from here in that car is beyond me.”

  “She hadn’t returned yet, because I hadn’t heard a peep out of the officer on duty, who is watching the house.” He looked toward the ceiling and grunted. “She more than likely told Ms. Brown she was going on an errand and skipped town in her car.”

  “I know Rosary hasn’t been painted as a pretty picture, but she’s not that bad and she needs our help.”

  “Then she should have called you back or contacted the local authorities after you told her Sean had died. She has taken one misstep after the next. I still can’t believe Sean Graham and this woman had a connection, let alone a child together.” He walked away from me, thanked Ms. Claudine for her assistance, and showed her out the door.

  There was some truth in what he said, but he didn’t know Rosie like I did. She was sweet and loved Lucia more than anything. I had an addiction for sweets, so I empathized with her alcohol addiction. Most importantly she wasn’t a thief and she hated being in jail. “What if she did come back to Giselle’s and noticed the sheriff parked near the house? What if your security detail scared her off?”

  He turned around toward me. “Are you blaming me for why this plan isn’t working?”

  “No, I’m saying Rosie’s a professional skip. She knows how to spot Boys in Blue.”

  “What if she did?”

  “Then she bounced, but the good thing is she’s a creature of habit. She hadn’t gone far, because she’s run out of options. She can’t go back to Atlanta without answering to her family and possibly losing Lucia to Sean’s family. And she doesn’t have enough money to hide anywhere else, so I think she’s either going to call Giselle to find out what’s going on or hang around until the coast is clear.”

  “But Giselle is in the hospital,” Maxim said.

  “That’s why we need to go back and leave a message or relieve the patrolman of his duties.”

  “You’re going nowhere. JD and Ty are with the volunteers in the swamp, so that leaves me to do it unless Sanchez returns.” Then he smirked. “I promise I won’t look like a superhero when I catch up to Rosie.”

  “And what do I do, while y’all save the world?”

  “You get the pleasure to keep Ms. Claudine company and move into another room. Oh and call your boyfriend. He called the sheriff’s office looking for you earlier.”

  “I need to call Bella and check on her.”

  “Do that.” He nodded. “And look . . . you’ve had a big day. What you discovered about Sean, Ms. Brown, and Biloxi is short of amazing. We will use this information toward our advantage.”

  My phone buzzed. I looked at it, thinking it was Justus or Mom. But it wasn’t.

  I gasped. “Maxim, it’s Sanchez.”

  “Well, answer it.”

  “Wow, I hadn’t gotten reception since we got here,” I said as I answered it.

  “Angel, it’s Sanchez. I found the Knocker’s still.”

  “What? We’ve been looking everywhere for you.” I patted Maxim’s shoulder.

  “I know, but there was something you said before that stuck with me. I had to check out a hunch and it paid off. I had to ditch your uncle’s truck and walk at least a mile into the woods, but . . .”

  “Sanchez, where are you? Can you hear me?” I asked.

  “Yes.”


  “Why didn’t you leave word with one of the guys, so that we knew where you were?”

  “I did,” she said. The phone reception was choppy. “I told—”

  Then the phone went dead. I tried to call her back, but got no response.

  Maxim touched my elbow. “Where is she?”

  “In some woods, she said she told someone where she was heading.”

  He frowned. “I don’t feel good about this.”

  “Honey, I haven’t felt good about all this commotion since you drove into town,” Ms. Claudine said.

  Ms. Claudine startled us. She had returned from downstairs. Maxim frowned at her.

  “Maxim, do you want me to go look for Sanchez?” I asked.

  Maxim’s brow furrowed deep into his nose bridge this time. “No, no, no, no. She’ll return soon enough.”

  I nodded at him, all the while knowing that I wasn’t leaving her out in the woods alone.

  40

  Sunday, 6:00 PM

  Georgia Moon B&B, Folkston, South Georgia

  The cottage now swarmed with every law enforcement officer near the Georgia Coast. If Biloxi wanted to hop a plane and leave the country, or kill Rosary and Lucia, he could, easily. We were all occupied with other matters.

  “Well, I could let you hold my car again, but I don’t have you on my insurance,” Ms. Claudine said to me.

  “The feds will pay for it, if something were to happen to it.”

  “Really now, then make sure you don’t ruin my pearl interior.”

  “Ms. Claudine, you don’t have a pearl interior.”

  She winked and handed me her keys. “I do, if you total my car.”

  I kissed her cheek. “I owe you big.”

  “Give me some of your uncle’s chacha and we’re even.”

  I left Ms. Claudine in her front yard, while Maxim and the team weren’t paying attention. I didn’t have a clue where I was heading. All I had was Uncle Pete’s map, some bottled water, my taser, my Kahr 45 pistol, some nunchucks, a pair of handcuffs, a billy club, a rifle, a pack of chewing tobacco (don’t ask), a flask of Uncle Pete’s muscadine chacha, and my cell phone. Then I called Justus.