The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings Book 2) (38 page)

After Lane parked next to the old Jaguar, he got out and went to the front door, which was wide open. Knocking on its screen, he called out, “Samuel T.?”

The interior of the house was dark, and as he helped himself and walked in, he liked the smell of the place. Lemon. Old wood. Something sweet like fresh cinnamon buns that have been homemade in the kitchen.

“Samuel T.?”

Some kind of rustling got his attention, and he tracked the sound, walking into the library—

“Oh, shit!”

Pulling a fast pivot from the doorway, he turned away from the image of a very naked woman sitting on Samuel T. on a leather sofa.

“I knocked,” Lane called out.

“It’s okay, old man.”

Samuel T. didn’t seem bothered in the slightest, and the blond was solidly in that camp, too: From what Lane could tell in his very, very peripheral vision, she didn’t bother to even get dressed. Then again, maybe her clothes were in another part of the house. Out on the lawn. Hanging from a tree.

“Wait for me upstairs,” Samuel T. ordered.

The woman murmured something, and there was the sound of a kiss. Then the model—because she was that good-looking and that tall—sauntered by in one of Samuel T.’s business shirts.

“Hi,” she said in a voice that was like whiskey, smooth and probably heady to a lot of guys.

“Yup, good-bye,” Lane said as he ignored her and went in to join his friend.

Samuel T.
was pulling a black silk robe closed and sitting up with a blurry expression. As he rubbed his messy hair and yawned, he looked outside. “So it’s morning, I see. Where has the night gone.”

“On a scale of one to ten, where one is Sunday church and ten is the last frat party you were at, how drunk are you currently?”

“Actually, I was typically drunk in church on Sundays, too. But I’d give me a six. Unless I have to take a field sobriety test. Then maybe a seven and a half.”

Lane sat down and picked up an empty bottle of Bradford Family Reserve off the floor. “At least you’re drinking the good stuff and remaining loyal.”

“Always. Now, what can I do you for? And bear in mind, I am over the legal limit, so please don’t make the request too difficult.”

Rolling the bottle back and forth in his hands, Lane eased back in the chair. “Detective Merrimack showed up first thing this morning. I called you right away.”

“I am sorry.” Samuel T. pointed to the ceiling. “I think I was with her sister at that time.”

Lane rolled his eyes but didn’t judge. He’d gone through that man-whore phase in his own life, and though it had seemed fun at the time … he wouldn’t trade any of it for what he had with Lizzie.

“They want access to the security tapes from the estate.”

“Not a surprise.” Samuel T. rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “Did you allow them? Where is the security room, by the way?”

“There are two of them. A monitoring room in the staff hallway at Easterly, and then the real nuts and bolts of the system in the business center. And no, I didn’t. I told them to get a warrant.”

Abruptly, Samuel T. seemed stone-cold sober. “Any particular reason? And I’d like to remind you that I am your attorney. It may technically be for your divorce, but unless you’re actively planning to commit a crime, I can’t be subpoenaed to testify against you, so please speak freely.”

Lane focused on the label on the bourbon bottle, tracing the famous ink drawing of Easterly’s front expanse.

“Lane,
what’s on the footage?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you fear is on it?”

“My brother. And maybe someone else. Taking my father alive.”

Samuel T. just blinked once. Which was a sign that he’d thought the same thing. Or maybe an indication of that blood alcohol level of his. “You talk to Edward about this?”

“No.” Lane shook his head. “I’m currently pretending that I’m just being paranoid.”

“How’s that workin’ for ya?”

“Well enough.” Lane exhaled a curse. “So can I do anything else to keep them away?”

“They’re absolutely going to come back at you with a warrant.” Samuel T. shrugged. “They have enough probable cause with what you found in the dirt. If you’d wanted to keep them away, my advice would have been to not call them in the first place.”

“Obstruction of justice much, Counselor? And believe me, don’t think I haven’t wished I’d kept quiet. Oh, and get this. They found that my father had terminal lung cancer. He was going to die anyway—which is just one more reason to support the suicide theory. Provided you forget about the piece of him that got buried under my mother’s window.”

The pitter-patter of sexy bare feet got louder and then stopped in the entryway to the room.

But Samuel T. shook his head at yet another woman. “I’m not done here.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, “is that—”

“A friend of mine? Yes, he is. Now, please excuse us.”

As the lady disappeared, Lane said, “How many are in this house?”

“Five? Maybe six? There was a cheerleading thing at the Kentucky Convention Center downtown. All of them are coaches, don’t worry.”

“Only you, Samuel T.”

“Untrue. You’ve had your moments as well.”

“So how’s the self-medicating going? Is it distracting you from what my sister is doing right now?”

The
attorney looked away. Fast.

When there was only silence, Lane cursed. “I wasn’t being an asshole, I swear. I was just talking.”

“I know.” That stare swung back around. “Is she really marrying him? Wait, isn’t that a song? Is she really goin’ ouuuuuut with him …”

“Yes, they’re down at the courthouse now.”

“So it’s done,” Samuel T. said absently.

“You know Gin, though. Her version of marriage is going to be a revolving door, and not because she’s going shopping. Although with Richard and his money, she’ll be going shopping, too.”

Samuel T. nodded. “Yes. Too true.”

“But, man, do they argue.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The pair of them go at it. You can hear them through the walls, and Easterly was built to last, if you get what I mean.”

Samuel T. frowned. After a moment, he said, “You know what the real problem with your sister is?”

“She has a number of them. You want to give me some direction as to which sector of life you’re focusing on?”

“The problem with your sister …” Samuel T. tapped his temple. “Is that as flawed as she is, no one ever compares to her.”

That’s how I feel about my Lizzie, Lane thought.

Well, except his Lizzie had no flaws.

“Samuel,” he whispered sadly.

“Oh, I can hear the pity in your voice.”

“Gin is a tough case.”

“As am I, my dear friend. As am I.” The attorney sat forward. “Annnnnd we’re going to chalk this little interchange”—Samuel T. motioned between the pair of them—“to my being seriously drunk off my ass. If you ever bring it up again, I will deny it. I also may well not remember us talking about this at all. And that would be a blessing.”

“Wow, hardcore for a six on the drunk scale.”

“I may be underestimating things.” On that note, Samuel T. reached over to a side table and poured more bourbon into a rocks glass. “Back to your
security camera issue. They’re going to get in and see what’s there, and moreover, they will notice if anything is missing or altered with. I advise you not to try to tamper with any of the footage.”

“And yet you suggested I keep quiet about what was in that ivy bed?”

“But the difference is that if you hadn’t called them in at that time, they would never have known. If you try to splice anything on those recordings, however, or shadow the footage, change or delete it, they will be able to tell. It’s one thing to pretend something was never found. It’s an entirely different prospect altogether to try to fool their IT department when you’re a layman and they have a geek squad full of people who are members of Anonymous in their spare time.”

Lane got up and went to the windows. The glass in the panes was the same as Easterly’s, the beautiful farmland beyond wavy and spotted thanks to the bubbles in the antique squares.

“You know,” he said, “when Edward was down in South America, in the hands of those bastards? I didn’t sleep for a week. It was from the time between when the ransom demand came in and when he was finally rescued and brought back to the States.” Memories from the past became like the panes of the old glass, obscuring what was in front of him. “When we were growing up in that house, Edward protected us from Father. Edward was always in charge. He always knew what to do. If I had been kidnapped down there? He would have come and saved me if the roles had been reversed. He would have flown down to that jungle and machete’ed his own way in if he’d had to.”

“Your brother was—
is
, excuse me—your brother is a quality man.”

“I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t do the same for him. And it ate me alive.”

It was a while before Samuel T. spoke.

“You can’t save him now, Lane. If he did what you think he did … and there’s video evidence of it? You’re not going to be able to save him.”

Lane turned around and cursed. “My father deserved it, okay? My father fucking deserved what came to him. He should have been thrown off a fucking bridge years ago.”

Samuel T. put his palms up. “Don’t think that hasn’t occurred to me as
well. And yes, your brother had all the justification in the world—in a
Game of Thrones
scenario. Kentucky homicide law begs to differ, however, and it is going to win in this situation. Self-defense only counts if you currently have a knife to your throat or a gun to your head.”

“I wish I’d found that fucking finger. I would have just piled the earth right back on top of the goddamn thing.”

But he couldn’t have put Lizzie and Greta in the position of lying to the authorities. Especially not with Richard Pford having come out of the house with Gin as he had. That bastard would use his own mother if it got him somewhere.

“You know …” Samuel T.’s face assumed a philosophical expression. “What your brother should have done was invite your father out to the Red & Black. And then shoot him just as he stepped over the threshold.”

“I’m sorry?”

“That’s the way to kill someone in Kentucky. We’ve got a homesteader law that says if someone is trespassing, whether or not they are threatening you with a weapon, you have the right to defend your property against them provided they have entered the premises without your permission. Only two caveats. You have to kill them. And they must not be facing the way out or trying to make it to an exit.” Samuel T. wagged his index finger. “But that’s the way to do it. As long as no one knew your father had been asked to meet him out there? Edward would have gotten away with it.”

As Lane stared across at his attorney, Samuel T. waved his hand like he was clearing the air of the words he’d just spoken. “But I’m not advocating that course of action, however. And I’m drunk, as you know.”

After a moment, Lane murmured, “Remind me never to come here without a written invitation, Counselor.”

I
n
the back of the Phantom Drophead, which had its top up in deference to her hair, Gin sat beside her future husband and looked out the window. The river was muddy and swollen from the storms of the afternoon and night before, the waters rising so much, it looked like they were trying to consume parts of Indiana.

Downtown was up ahead, the skyscrapers glinting in the sunshine, the asphalt necklaces of highway lanes encircling their steel and glass throats. There was a little construction to deal with, her father’s chauffeur hitting the brakes every now and again, but the delay wasn’t going to cost them much time.

As they approached the Big Five Bridge, she stared at the span’s five arches, at the cables that suspended the pavement over the water … and remembered the fight she and her father had had over her marrying Richard. She had refused—only to find that she was cut off financially, marooned on a deserted island of insolvency.

And so she had caved.

And now she was here.

Closing
her eyes, she pictured Samuel T. out by the pool during the visitation that had had so few visitors.

“Sign this, would you.”

Opening her lids, she glanced across the cream leather seats. Richard was holding out about twenty pages of some kind of document along with one of his black and gold monogrammed Montblanc pens.

“I beg your pardon.”

“It’s a prenuptial agreement.” He jogged both at her. “Sign it.”

Gin laughed and looked up at the chauffeur. The uniformed man with his jaunty little cap was about to get a helluva show.

“I’ll do no such thing.”

“Yes, you will,” Richard said.

Staring back out the window, she shrugged. “So turn the car around. Call this off. Do whatever you need to, but I’m not signing away my rights as your wife.”

“May I remind you of the distribution help I bring to your company. Given how it’s struggling, you’re going to need those favorable contracts. And they can disappear fast if I want them to.”

“Given how we’re struggling, there may not be a Bradford Bourbon Company next year. So your personal fortune is a better bet for me.”