At the distillery, life was all around her. She wouldn’t have thought of a distillery as such a hive of activity and community, but it was. Tourists loved the place and kept it busy, and she had even spotted a few locals eating in the café.
“So are you on board with this? Want to be an official Old Garnet tour guide?”
“You bet!” she enthused, and took a quick sip of her coffee. “But can I get an Old Garnet parka like that?” Pepper asked, and pointed over Bo’s shoulder.
Into the café strode Goose. His ruddy cheeks matched the color of his deep red parka with the embroidered distillery logo on the upper left chest. The coat partially dangled from his body because his arm was still in a sling.
“A parka, a shirt, a mug, a horse blanket, whatever you want,” Bo promised as Goose approached. He gestured to a nervously smiling Pepper as he turned to Goose. “Good news, cousin. I have a new disciple for you.”
* * *
Jon told Drake the day after Glenda’s funeral he was dating Pepper. Although he’d previously promised Pepper he’d reveal the truth to Drake about his interest in her, that promise had been made the day of Glenda’s fall and death. He’d not had the chance to make his confession in the whirlwind of activity following.
It didn’t go well. Drake was angry Jon had kept his feelings about Pepper to himself as he’d warned him away from the lovely redhead. But the confrontation didn’t dissolve into a shouting match. His personal and professional relationship with his new law partner had taken a blow from which it might not recover, but at least the truth was out.
He then had to tell Bruce. As expected, the senior partner was very unhappy with the news.
“So we lose the wealthiest woman in the county as a client, and we’ll probably lose Drake as a new partner. Great, Jon. Just great.”
He’d then become the equivalent of the guy with a kick me sign on his back.
If there were some nasty client to handle or unpleasant job to be done, he was the one Bruce and Drake dumped the problem on. He’d protested at first (he hated representing people in divorces, but Bruce had dropped three new cases on him in the past week), but eventually surrendered. It was the price he paid for the truth and for being with Pepper—although they hadn’t been together in the biblical way since that quick and crazy afternoon at Hannah’s.
No matter. He could wait. He knew what was waiting for him and that it was more than worth it. Because Jon wasn’t thinking only about getting Pepper back into bed with him (although he did think quite a lot about that, especially during all those showers he seemed to be taking lately). Jon was thinking long-term.
Forever.
Marriage.
The house, two cars, kids, and walking off into the sunset.
And about a hundred horses and who knew how many acres of Bluegrass.
The thought had crept up on him when he had been going through some files that needed to be sent to storage. Most of them were a few years old and closed and ready to be stored off-site. He’d looked at some of the files, seen the age on them, and thought about what he had been doing with his life two, three, or even five years earlier when he’d been working on the files.
The answer was easy: he’d been working. That was pretty much it. No more wife, and if he had a girlfriend during those times he couldn’t quite remember the dates. The musings over the passage of time made him cast a thought or two toward the future, and where he’d be in a similar amount of time.
And every time he thought of the future, Pepper was there, in every place he could imagine. They were at her house or somewhere out on the farm, or walking hand in hand through town. And when he realized that’s what he wanted, he started wanting it to happen sooner rather than later.
Twenty years to him was starting to feel like an eternity, even though she’d felt like they’d rushed into a physical relationship.
And damn, did he want that back. The feel of her in his arms, underneath him, around him as she came and screamed…
The phone buzzed and shocked him back into the reality of practicing law in a small town in the middle of Kentucky.
“Nina Cain from the bar association office of attorney regulation is calling for you,” one of the secretaries informed him.
He took the call.
When the bar called—the people who investigated and prosecuted lawyers for ethical violations—only idiots hung up the phone.
Jon answered with an appreciable amount of anxiety. Was he in trouble? The bar had never called him, and he’d never had a bar grievance in not quite ten years of practice, a mark of which he was justifiably proud. Bruce had had several grievances and spoke as though they were a lawyer’s badge of honor—since they’d all been dismissed at the lowest levels. But better no battle at all than having bragging rights to a handful of unhappy and time-wasting skirmishes.
After Nina introduced herself and confirmed she was indeed Walker Cain’s younger sister (Jon asked since the name was so familiar), she tried to put his mind at ease.
“Whenever I call an attorney, it always goes better when I can say this: I’m not calling about you.”
He let out a long breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. “Thank the Lord for small miracles.”
“I could tell from your voice that I needed to get that out of the way pretty fast.”
“I figured you weren’t calling for a nice chat or to tell me I’ve won a set of steak knives.”
Nina laughed heartily, and he warmed to her. He hated attorneys that played mind games, and she clearly wasn’t one of them.
“You got that right,” she said. “Most of my conversations with attorneys are a little tense. Some more than others.”
“I hope I’m one of those less tense kind of talks.”
“I think so, but let me put it out there before you get your hopes up too much. I’m calling about Walt Montrose.”
He cursed and immediately apologized for his language.
“No need for apologies. That’s the reaction I typically get when I mention the purpose of my call on this case.”
“Before you say another word, I need to tell you right now that I’m dating his daughter, Pepper.”
“Oh, didn’t know that,” Nina said. He heard the shuffling of papers.
“It’s a recent development, although we’ve been friends since our teens,” he added with a little bit of satisfaction.
“So—Pepper—is that Elizabeth Montrose?”
He confirmed it was the same person. “Tons of red hair,” he explained and immediately wished he hadn’t stirred up the image in his mind of Pepper’s lovely tresses. At least he was sitting down so no one could see the physical results of his very active fantasy life.
“Given your relationship with her, these questions could be uncomfortable. I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk.”
“No, go ahead.”
Nina prefaced her questions by stating that she was the attorney representing the bar regulation office in Walt’s attempt to get relicensed. According to her, Walt was clean—no drug or gambling problems, no other convictions after the theft charges, and had paid restitution, which Jon already knew.
“Wait a minute,” Jon said, irritated, “are you telling me he’s actually going to get his license back?”
“I’m opposing this application, so let me make that perfectly clear. Whether he gets his license back isn’t up to me. The Supreme Court decides.” She gave a quick description of a hearing in front of a hearing officer, who then would make a written report and recommendation to the Supreme Court, which it could accept or reject.
“So what are you looking for exactly? Dirt on Walt?”
She sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Do you know how refreshing it is to hear an attorney admit they don’t know something?”
She laughed. “Something I rarely hear too!”
“So what do you need?”
“Here’s the thing: most former attorneys in thi
s position are trying to get back into the practice with a good word or two from the people back home. These witnesses come to the hearing and tell their story about how the guy has reformed or whatever.
“But Walt’s been living in Louisville for about the past fifteen years since he got out of prison. And one really important thing in a relicensing case is what the people back home think about the idea of the guy getting his license back. Has he continued to live in the place where he screwed up his life and others’ lives? But we don’t have that here.”
“No, he never came back,” Jon said.
“And he has some crazy tale about that.” Nina repeated the same stupid story Jon had heard Walt give Pepper.
“Yeah, that’s what I heard him tell Pepper and most of Bourbon Springs after her mother’s funeral.”
“What?”
Jon hesitated, wondering whether he was betraying Pepper by recounting this event to Nina. But he decided that as long as he stuck to facts and tried to keep his opinions to himself, he could tell Pepper that he’d answered the bar’s questions and not said a bad word about her father—even though he was dying to give Nina an earful on that very subject.
Because he’d seen the devastation that man had caused. And while Pepper might have forgiven the man, he had not. Walt hadn’t asked for it, first of all, but more importantly Jon had seen no evidence the man was genuinely repentant.
So Jon told Nina the story of the day at the cemetery, and how the three of them had returned to Pepper’s house.
“She lives where? On a horse farm?”
“I take it you don’t know she won the lottery around Christmastime?”
“No, this investigative report on Walt was dated late last year. Elizabeth—Pepper—was mentioned in it, along with the ex-wife. Investigator had a contact for Glenda, but then lost track of her. And you just mentioned that she died.”
Jon explained that Glenda had Alzheimer’s and Pepper moved her to a facility in February.
“She wouldn’t have been able to tell you a thing,” Jon said. “And no one—not even Pepper—knows whether that story is true. Only Glenda knew.”
“I take it you knew her, if you were friends with Pepper for years.”
“Yes, and Glenda—”
He wanted to say she suffered with a quiet dignity, but realized that would be editorializing.
“Yes?”
“She was a woman of few words. Not talkative, chatty. Very pleasant though.”
“So not likely to have mentioned to anyone that she told her asshole ex-husband to stay the hell out of Craig County, Kentucky for the rest of his life,” Nina said. “If she told him that at all.”
Instead of screaming Exactly! You totally get it! Jon chose a more measured response.
“So you see the problem.”
“No one to prove the lie,” said Nina. “And you don’t have to say anything, Jon. I know exactly how you feel about this. And, for the record, if anyone asks me, I will be able to tell them that you stuck to the facts. You said not one bad thing about Walt Montrose.”
“You mentioned that you contacted a few other people about him and got some negative responses?”
“Yeah, a few former clients. Most of them didn’t want to be bothered, but almost all still hate the man. A few have volunteered to testify, and I’m going to call them. Walt surrendered his license after he got convicted, so not all of them got their day in court, so to speak. And he never once said sorry to them.”
“Well, you’ve got that.”
“But I don’t have locals. The investigator talked to a few people, and they had poor opinions of him, but that opinion was based on twenty-year memories. And the judges and other county officials who were around at that time are retired, dead, or, like the other witnesses, blowing me off.”
“You’ve got nobody with a recent, fresh perspective on Walt who’s a local?”
“Except someone like you.”
“All I have is an opinion and a gut feeling. And, like you said, I haven’t told you what those thoughts are and I won’t.”
“What about Pepper?”
“According to her, Walt told her he wasn’t going to call her as a witness.”
“I should think not.”
“I really like how you think.”
“Just so we’re clear, I didn’t interpret that as a comment about Walt,” she said with a laugh.
“Good. But your question was about Pepper—and I’m not going to tell you anything else on that subject except that if you want to know more or what she thinks, you’ll have to contact her and ask her yourself. Sorry.”
“Not a problem. I understand you’re in a tough spot. But in the meantime, if in the unlikely event you hear or discover something, anything, about old Walt that you think you can share, I’d really appreciate it if you could pass it on. We can even use hearsay in these proceedings, so almost anything is fair game. A lot of stuff can get into the record in a relicensing case that normally couldn’t.”
“So how do I make the decision whether to pass it on?”
“Ask yourself one question. As an attorney, as someone who lives in Bourbon Springs, and as someone who apparently cares a great deal about Pepper: is it something you’d want the Supreme Court to know when it’s making a decision about whether to hand a law license back to the likes of Walt Montrose?”
“Damn, you do have a way of putting things,” he marveled.
“I may sound a bit jaded or silly, but I understand what’s at stake in these proceedings. It’s not just a law license. We deal with life, love, and loss just like the rest of you folks.”
“I don’t envy you.”
“Back atcha, friend,” Nina said. “Good luck trying to walk that line with Pepper.”
16
“C’mon we gotta get back!”
She was at the grocery store with Rolly stocking up for some new arrivals. Two more horses were scheduled to be delivered to GarnetBrooke in half an hour, and the farm had gotten alarmingly low on carrots, pears, and apples.
“And remember, BB likes the firm pears, not soft,” Rolly said.
Pepper rolled her eyes. She had been reduced to shopping for a food-picky horse. Yet Rolly was right. Unlike the other horses, BB wouldn’t eat a soft, ripe pear. It absolutely had to be crunchy or he’d refuse it or, worse, eat some and then spit it back at the person who had dared to feed him such a nasty thing.
“Got so much to do!” Rolly said as they got in the truck.
Pepper had bought the entire fleet of GarnetBrooke pickup trucks, and had kept the logo the same but had added one thing in very tiny print at the bottom right: RIP GiGi not forgotten. Pepper had insisted that every truck be repainted with this little bit of lettering, and anything with the red, white, and blue GarnetBrooke logo had been changed as well, from stationery to T-shirts to baseball caps.
After her Old Garnet indoctrination with Goose, Pepper appreciated the importance of getting branded merchandise to sell for the tourists she hoped would show up on her doorstep. She had already converted one of the old houses toward the front of the property into a visitors’ center—it was the same place where she used to do data entry when she was a mere worker instead of the lady of the manor. They’d moved those operations—bookkeeping and other related work—to another small house toward the back of the property and away from the expected gaggles of tourists. The few workers didn’t complain, happy to be out of sight, except that they were going to lose a nice view of the large pond and horse barn which faced Ashbrooke Pike.
The barn and pond were favorite subjects of tourists who would pull over in the narrow emergency lane to snap a photo of the ideal Kentucky scene, complete with horses grazing in the distance in front of the barn. In the right conditions, the pond would perfectly reflect the colossal barn in its mirror-like surface. Most tourists, however, missed the most beautiful time of day to see the spot: dawn.
The sun rising over GarnetBrooke produced a spectacular effect w
ith the pink and reds exploding behind the barn and shimmering in the stillness of the water. It was like the water was on fire, a phenomenon which almost did occur a year earlier when one of the rickhouses across Ashbrooke Pike had caught fire from a lightning strike and exploded, sending bourbon and fire across the road in a wickedly dangerous mixture. Miraculously, nothing on the farm had been harmed, but she’d heard tales of workers finding bits of destroyed barrels across the fields in the days after the fire.
While Pepper set to work chopping up the food, Rolly grabbed his laptop off Pepper’s kitchen table.
“Gotta go show this to BB before I forget.” Rolly held up the computer.
Pepper’s knife hovered above a thick carrot. “You’re taking your computer to show a horse?”
“Gonna show him some of his races,” he said. “Your Wi-Fi doesn’t work all the way out there, so I had to download some of the clips. Been meaning to do this for weeks. Didn’t want to do it on my phone; screen is too small. BB’s so excited. Been telling him about it, and he’s been mad at me for not getting around to it.”
Rolly left, and it was a few seconds before Pepper realized her mouth was wide open and her knife was still held aloft. Then she burst into laughter.
“I heard that!” Rolly faintly called from her garage, which only made her laugh harder.
Fifteen minutes later the van arrived with three new horses, and Pepper and Rolly personally greeted them before they were led to the barns. Pepper fed every horse at least one tidbit of apple, pear, and carrot. Not one of them snapped or seemed skittish in her presence.
After the last one was fed and led away, one of the drivers went back into the van. Pepper had thought she’d heard some odd noise coming from the van’s interior, but she was not prepared for the oddity to which it was attached.
“Is that a… goat?” Pepper pointed to a bleating white-and-brown creature which was held by a lead around its neck by one of the drivers.
Bourbon Springs Box Set: Volume II, Books 4-6 (Bourbon Springs Box Sets Book 2) Page 76