Bourbon Springs Box Set: Volume II, Books 4-6 (Bourbon Springs Box Sets Book 2)

by Jennifer Bramseth

  “Then I object.”

  “Grounds?”

  “How could that woman have anything to say about me after all this time? And why wasn’t she called on direct? This is a dirty trick by the bar and I won’t stand by and—”

  “Ms. Cain, your response?” the hearing officer asked, cutting off Walt and turning to Nina.

  “Mrs. Davenport is a classic rebuttal witness, your honor,” Nina said.

  “Bring her in,” the hearing officer ordered and Nina went to fetch Lucy.

  She returned in less than half a minute; Pepper reasoned that Lucy must have been waiting in a nearby office or the waiting area at the top of the landing.

  Lucy, chewing on her lip and clutching her purse, appeared nervous but determined. After an introduction to the hearing officer and a curt nod laced with a sneer to Walt, she sat her tiny little self in the seat Pepper had occupied during her testimony, directly between Nina and the court reporter.

  Lucy shot Pepper an apologetic look before Nina began questioning her. It was that simple expression, rather than the shock of Lucy’s appearance, that told Pepper that something terrible was in store.

  Nina launched into the typical identifying questions to establish Lucy’s persona and background.

  Lifelong resident of Craig County. Graduated from the University of Kentucky and then married, began a family. Retired schoolteacher. Husband was longtime sheriff of the county. Widowed for the past few years. Volunteer, occasionally worked part-time in the gift shop at Old Garnet. Churchgoer.

  In short, a pillar of the community.

  The perfect witness.

  “Yes, I’ve taught Sunday School for… oh, dear, longer than Goose has been alive, and that’s—”

  “Goose?” the hearing officer asked.

  “Yes, my son, Marvin. But everyone calls him Goose. He works at Old Garnet now and is a part owner,” Lucy proudly explained.

  Nina drew out that Lucy and Glenda Montrose had been friends since high school, a fact which Pepper had forgotten. Nina elicited a short history of Walt’s scandal from Lucy, drawing an objection from Walt for being “redundant,” but it was overruled.

  “Can you tell us about the last time you spoke with Glenda Montrose?” Nina asked.

  “It was almost exactly nineteen years ago this month…”

  With each little detail Lucy added—the spot in the milk aisle in Minnick’s where the two women met, how her mother had worn her hair, and even a few of the items in Glenda’s cart, including the cookies her mother used to love—Pepper knew that Lucy’s memory was accurate and that she was telling the truth.

  And that it was going to be a painful, horrible truth.

  “… I will never forget the look on Glenda’s face that day. She was apologizing, in pain, as she told me what he said,” Lucy continued, shaking her head and tears brimming in her eyes.

  “What did Glenda say her husband had said to her?” Nina asked.

  “Objection!” Walt cried, nearly coming out of his chair as he shouted.

  “Overruled,” the hearing officer said without even bothering to look at Walt.

  Lucy swallowed. “That his plan all along was to never return to Bourbon Springs if he got convicted, and that by divorcing him, she’d given him another excuse to leave.” She looked sickened as she said the words, and cast a harsh look at Walt.

  “Was anything mentioned about their daughter?” Nina asked.

  Lucy looked at Pepper briefly, then to Nina. “Glenda said that when she brought up Pepper, Walt said—he said—”

  Lucy had to stop for a moment and take a small sip of water. Pepper was on the edge of her seat, literally, her eyes fixed on Lucy. She was shaking in anticipation of the answer, the adrenaline surging through her body and preparing her for that primal response: fight or flight.

  Lucy finished her drink and looked at her lap.

  “Glenda said Walt told her that not even Pepper was enough to keep him in town, and that everyone had betrayed him and overreacted to what had happened.”

  “That’s a lie!” Walt exploded. “I move to strike that testimony!”

  “Mr. Montrose—” the hearing officer interrupted.

  “Glenda Montrose wasn’t a liar, Walt,” Lucy said firmly, her eyes narrowed and fixed on him. “And neither am I.”

  25

  The adrenaline made the choice for her.

  Pepper fled the room with Nina calling after her. But she did not stop and raced to the landing, then sped down the stairs, nearly falling she was so anxious to escape. Once in the foyer, Pepper heard Nina’s voice, strong and loud.

  “Pepper! Please stop!”

  Pepper’s hand was on the front door. She was ready to push through, to leave that place, to forget everyone and everything in that building and what had happened there.

  But she froze and waited as Nina tore down the stairs.

  “I’m so sorry, Pepper,” Nina said, standing behind her at the door.

  Pepper turned to face her as she fought the tears.

  “Why… why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Mrs. Davenport wouldn’t let me. It was a condition of getting her testimony. She wanted to give your father the chance to tell the truth. She told me that if he didn’t come clean, she’d testify and tell you the truth herself after the hearing. We didn’t expect you to be in the room when it happened, and I tried to stop that. I’m sorry.”

  As angry as Pepper was, she couldn’t blame Nina for the situation. She was just doing her job by trying to protect the public from reprobates like Walt.

  Then she heard the reprobate himself, calling to her from the top of the stairs. She turned to see him descending, red-faced and angry-looking, trying to move as fast as his weight-burdened frame allowed.

  “Pepper, what that woman said—it’s just not true, honey,” he declared as he reached the bottom of the stairs. He made for his daughter near the door and sneered at Nina. “And I can’t believe that the bar would stoop so low as to—”

  “Shut up!” Pepper screamed, her voice reverberating throughout the foyer.

  Walt took a step back toward the bottom of the stairs in the face of her wrath.

  “Honey, please—”

  “Never, ever call me that again. In fact, you no longer have the right to talk to me at all, Walt Montrose,” she hissed as she continued to advance on him.

  “Don’t—don’t tell me that you believe that woman,” he stammered as she backed him up against the stairs.

  “That woman? Can you not even use her name? Oh, I forgot—you write people off that aren’t important or useful to you. How silly of me!”

  “She’s not telling the truth,” Walt claimed in a slightly stronger voice.

  “If you’re asking me to believe that Lucy Davenport is capable of perjury, you’re insane. Or are you saying my mother was a liar?” Pepper screeched, her voice again filling the foyer.

  “But—I—”

  “Never mind. I know who the liar is.”

  He looked away and she knew she’d caught him, had defeated him, and that at that very moment he was trying to think up some slick little tale to get himself out of his latest mess.

  But Pepper was never going let that happen again.

  Her father had proven himself to be a complete degenerate, unreformed and irredeemable, no matter how much she might have hoped he was or could become something else. Just like Lucy, she’d given him a chance to tell the truth, to be honest, and to start over.

  But now she saw him for what he was: nothing but a user and a loser, and she had been an idiot for having placed a modicum of trust in such a horrible man.

  She was angry, and it was a boiling, sickening, and seductively empowering sensation she had never experienced. The hatred allowed her to feel physically bigger and morally better than her father, an ant of a man, while she was playing the noble, wronged woman—a role Walt had denied her mother by his cowardice and staying away from Bourbon Springs.

  H
er anger had been stoked and tended for decades—and now she was ready to unleash that pent-up wrath. But her fury was also turned inward; she was livid with herself that she’d been so foolish to trust.

  But at that moment, her father was at the center of every lie, wrong, and hurtful thing.

  And it was at the heart of that target she aimed her dagger: her final words to him.

  “Listen to me, Walt Montrose,” she said in a voice that made him cringe, “because this is going to be the last time I ever speak to you or look at you. I never want to hear your voice again. I never want to see you. I hope I never think about you again, even in passing, and if I come across your obituary someday, I hope that I won’t even remember your name. I’m not going to say you’re dead to me; that’s silly. For me, you never even existed.”

  “Pepper, honey—”

  Pepper turned her back on him.

  “Nina, can you please point me to the bathroom?” Pepper asked, wanting to escape to a place her father could not follow. She was shaky and teary-eyed and needed a place to calm herself.

  “Better yet, I’ll take you there myself.”

  Nina, looking pale and disturbed after what she’d just witnessed, directed Pepper down a hall to the left and out of Walt’s presence. Once inside the restroom and its spacious lounge, Nina apologized again as Pepper took a seat on a small upholstered bench.

  “Nina, you have nothing to be sorry about,” Pepper said wearily as she put her head back against the wall. “You were just doing your job.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” she said, turning to Nina. “I want to be alone for a bit, then I’ll be on my way. I—I need to make a call.”

  Nina nodded, but hesitated. She bent over and hugged Pepper.

  “Sorry,” Nina said, then quickly left.

  Pepper pulled her phone out and checked her messages. Nothing new. So she looked at the last text she’d received from Jon to make herself feel better. After verifying that she was alone in the bathroom, she called him.

  “Well?” was all he asked.

  “You were right about him,” Pepper said in a low voice, and told him what had happened.

  “Where are you?” he asked after she’d recounted her ordeal.

  “I’m in the bathroom at Nina’s office. I’m about to leave. Can you meet me at the house when I get home?” she asked, her voice and resolve finally cracking. “I… I want to be with you as soon as possible.”

  “How about right now?”

  “N-now?” she stuttered, not sure she had heard him correctly.

  “I’m in the building.”

  “Wait a minute… you’ve been here the entire time? And didn’t tell me? I told you that I—”

  “Please, just meet me outside the bathroom and I’ll explain.”

  She rose from the bench, angry again. She was so tired of that feeling.

  Once in the hallway, she saw Jon emerging from a small conference room at the opposite end of the hall to her right. He was wearing a suit and tie and was in full lawyer mode.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.

  She saw him hesitate and the tenseness in his face before he answered.

  “Can we go in here?” He gestured to the room from which he appeared.

  She allowed him to lead her into the small space, another conference room similar to the one from which she’d fled on the second floor. Jon closed the door behind him and turned a pale face to her as she stood with her back to the window, unwilling to take a seat.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, the anger still a raging storm. Pepper thought she’d calmed down in the bathroom, but that now felt like a short reprieve.

  “You’d better have a damned good explanation for your presence here.”

  He swallowed, and it made her feel like she was addressing a wayward student instead of her lover.

  “I—I was the one who went to Lucy to ask her to reveal what you just learned,” he admitted in a unsteady voice.

  “You? But… how…?”

  “I was the one who discovered what Lucy testified about.” He explained how he had found some old memo in Lucy’s file recounting the encounter between Lucy and Glenda. “I couldn’t tell you about it because Lucy was a firm client. And she didn’t give me permission to tell you. She wanted to see if Walt would tell the truth. She only said I could reveal any of this to you after the hearing.”

  She stood there for several seconds as she struggled to digest the awfulness of the full truth. The shock, like the anger, was all-consuming and momentarily paralyzing.

  “How long have you known about this?”

  “A few weeks.”

  “Weeks? And you kept it from me all this time?”

  “I had to keep it from you, Pepper. It was a client confidence. I’m sorry, but—”

  “And just how the hell could you represent Lucy while you were fucking me for the past several weeks? Answer me that!”

  “Because I wasn’t representing her. Give me a little credit, Pepper! I went to her and asked her for permission to reveal it, and then realized that she needed another attorney, another opinion.”

  “Well, that’s just lovely,” Pepper snapped. “Washed your hands of it by farming out the little problem to someone else? But still not telling me and letting me walk into an ambush? I feel like a prize! Or a pawn!”

  “Pepper, do you have any idea what it’s been like not to be able to tell you? I’ve died every time I’ve touched you, seen you, made love to you, fearing this very moment, praying that you’d understand why I had to keep this from you and hoping against hope that Walt would tell the truth so this wouldn’t happen.”

  “Another one sucked in by the asshole named Walt Montrose,” Pepper said. “How anyone could ever have believed he’d tell the truth is beyond me!”

  “No one forced him to lie again. That was his choice, Pepper. And speaking of choices—guess what? This is the reason the firm broke up. Bruce told me not to go to Lucy. He didn’t want this revealed. When I chose to do so, it was over for the partnership.”

  “Maybe he was right,” she hissed.

  “And you’d never know the truth?” Jon snapped back, taking a step toward her. “I can understand that you’re angry, but be angry at your dad, not me. He’s the liar.”

  “Right now, I’m having a real hard time understanding the difference, Jon,” Pepper said firmly, although her heart was breaking. “So who’s Lucy’s lawyer—wait, let me guess—is it Drake?”

  Jon nodded.

  “How did I know that?” she mused. “Call him in to make yourself feel better, to atone for what happened before? How special. Will I be seeing this as a made-for-TV movie anytime soon? Or do you have to get Lucy’s permission for that too?”

  “I called him because he’s a good lawyer and I trust him,” Jon said with a scowl.

  “So I’m the last one to know what’s going on,” she said, shaking her head. “I should’ve known better to fall for an attorney.”

  “Pepper, don’t talk like that—”

  “I trust people… and where does it get me?” she said to herself. “Nowhere. Why can’t I learn that lesson?”

  Jon moved closer to Pepper and lightly touched her hand. But she jerked away from him.

  “No, I can’t… I can’t deal with this. I walked into a trap today and you didn’t even warn me. You didn’t protect me.”

  “I urged my client to tell the truth, Pepper. She agreed, but made me promise not to tell you what I’d discovered. I kept that trust, and I kept and keep my promises. I don’t know what I could’ve done any differently.”

  “Nice words,” she said and the tears were now streaming down her cheeks. “I hope you like them, because that’s all you’re gonna have to keep you warm at night. So be sure to keep those words with you,” she said, mocking the text he’d sent her earlier that day.

  She turned on her heel and made a beeline for the fron
t door. Upon opening it, the smell of mash washed over her, making her physically ache to be back at GarnetBrooke.

  Pepper had heard his hurried footsteps as he chased her, and she paused long enough to allow him to say his one last bit, knowing that if she didn’t, he just might follow her into the parking lot, a scene she wanted to avoid.

  “Remember what I said, Pepper: I keep my promises,” Jon told her again.

  She didn’t turn around, and pushed out onto the portico and into the blinding spring sun, wanting nothing more than to be at home.

  26

  “No, it’s not the same thing,” Harriet said.

  Jon, Drake, and Harriet were in the bourbon bar at The Cooperage, the large resort just north of Bourbon Springs, drinking Garnet on the rocks all around. Jon had called his fellow attorneys and former law partners in light of his personal and professional disaster at the bar offices earlier that day, seeking solace or advice or pity—he wasn’t really sure. The only thing he knew was that he needed a few drinking buddies and they were the only ones to come to mind, especially since they both had peculiar insights into his situation.

  “I just got dumped because I kept a client confidence from my girlfriend,” Jon said, leaning on the small round table around which they were gathered. “You got dumped because you kept a client confidence from your boyfriend. How is that not the same thing with different people involved?”

  “Because I shouldn’t have tried to represent the distillery and date Goose at the same time, despite the ethics opinion that said I could. I hate to say it, but Bruce was right about that,” she admitted and put down her drink.

  “Tell me again why I wanted you here? I didn’t want to hear that,” Jon said, thinking about Bruce’s admonition not to go to Lucy.

  “What I meant was that I walked headlong into my problem,” Harriet said. “I was shocked that the ethics opinion I got let me begin a relationship with Goose. In retrospect, that should’ve told me something. I should’ve trusted my gut. But you didn’t really go looking for trouble. You stumbled onto it.”

  “I went looking in that file. And then I went to Lucy,” Jon countered.