Gin Fling (Bootleg Springs Book 5)

by Lucy Score

  “Well, I heard that she went to Build A Shine and made herself up a recipe called Bootleg Boot Camp. Obviously, she was pokin’ fun at him for being hungover after the moonshine tastin’.”

  “Oh, for sure. It’s damn adorable.”

  “They’re all puffed up about not being serious and about movin’ on at the end of summer. But a lot can happen in one summer.”

  * * *

  Q. What is your most reliable source for community news?

  Cassidy Tucker: A five-minute walk down the street with your ears open.

  34

  Shelby

  With a few notable differences, the Bootleg Springs Community Library was just like every other small-town library. Its book stacks were neatly organized in rows containing hundreds of volumes on everything from classical poetry to farmer’s almanacs. The children’s nook was too noisy. And the whole building smelled like furniture polish and old books.

  Where it differed from most other libraries was in the people and the services. The head librarian, Piper Redman, was a pink pixie-haired walking billboard for piercings and tattoos. She was painfully cool. Literacy rates were on the rise just because she made reading look so darn cool.

  She’d built programs not just around story hours and book clubs but expanded community services. There was a volunteer squad of tech support teens who every weekend walked some of Bootleg’s less tech-savvy residents through problems with their mobile devices.

  Then there was the free weekday shuttle that picked up elderly residents and brought them in to socialize and volunteer. And, of course, the monthly spaghetti dinner, the proceeds of which went toward new books, better computers, and more comfortable reading chairs.

  In an age when community libraries were struggling for funding and in some cases relevancy, Bootleg’s library was thriving.

  There was also an extensive local history section, which I was in the process of devouring.

  I’d started out with good intentions. Jonah and my brother were off doing some fat-busting boot camp for two hours today. I planned to use the time to put together a timeline of defining events in town history.

  But when I walked through the front door, the community bulletin board was different. There was no missing flyer of Callie Kendall where it always was. I’d guessed that flyer, or one like it, had been at the top of that bulletin board since the girl disappeared.

  That made it even sadder, in my opinion. The surrendering of thirteen years of hope.

  I pretended it didn’t matter and settled in to the matter at hand. But in my cursory search of local newspapers on microfiche, I came across an article about the Kendalls after Callie’s disappearance and then another. And another.

  The disappearance had helped shape the community, I rationalized. I’d be doing a disservice by ignoring the tear that moment and the years that followed had ripped in the town’s fabric.

  An hour, I decided. I’d spare an hour and do a little digging into the Kendalls. Then I’d go back to my own work.

  The microfiche blurred before my eyes as I consumed article after article about the disappearance, the family statements, the investigation. It was interesting that the Kendalls had never wavered from their claim that their daughter was dead, had harmed herself. Not until Fake Callie came onto the scene.

  I called up a photo of Callie and another of Fake Callie. There was a resemblance, I thought, squinting at the screen. But more of a “You remind me of a girl I knew” way. The more I looked, the less Fake Callie looked like real Callie. And that bothered me.

  Wouldn’t her parents have known? If not by physical appearance, then by gaps in the imposter’s knowledge of family history. How had Fake Callie convinced the Kendalls that she was their long-lost daughter?

  They’d rented an apartment for her in Philadelphia. Far away from their home, even farther from Bootleg Springs.

  I drummed my fingers on my lips. If they’d believed Fake Callie’s story, wouldn’t they have wanted to be close? To make up for all those lost years? The parents had seemingly given up hope of ever seeing their daughter alive again from the beginning, despite the lack of evidence. Wouldn’t they have been overjoyed that she was still alive and reaching out to them?

  Nothing about the situation sat right with me.

  A thought fluttered in, took root.

  On a whim, I pulled out my phone and ducked outside. It was hotter today. July arrived in a matter of days. The town was already decorating for the Fourth. Swathing everything that didn’t move in red, white, and blue bunting.

  Opting for the shade, I walked down the library steps and took a seat on a bench under a yet-to-be-swathed oak. I dialed, waited.

  “Shelby Thompson! What are you doing on the other end of my phone?” my old friend and former supervisor from Allegheny County Children Youth and Families demanded.

  “I’m doing a little research down here in the great state of West Virginia, Amanda, and I could use a hand with something.”

  “Name it, sweetie.” Amanda had been my supervisor during my brief tenure as a social worker in Pittsburgh. She’d even come to the hospital’s emergency department the night my career came to its disastrous end.

  “Do you still have friends at the state level in Virginia?” I asked.

  “Sure do.” I could hear the click of her fingers on the keyboard as she multitasked. CYF’s to-do list was never caught up.

  “I was wondering if you could have them do a quick case search for me?”

  “What county?” Amanda asked.

  I screwed up my nose, knowing this was the big part of the ask. “All of them,” I said.

  Amanda blew out a breath. “It’ll take a while.” Counties had their own databases for managing children and youth cases. There was no central database connecting them, which made looking for information tedious and time-consuming.

  “I know, and I really appreciate it. It’s important,” I promised.

  “Gimmie the names, and I’ll see if I can have something for you next week.”

  “Judge Henry Kendall, Mrs. Imogen Kendall, and Callie Kendall.”

  “Oh, boy. Sounds like you’re down there kicking a hornets’ nest.” She sighed.

  “I don’t think there’s going to be anything. If there was, the police would have already looked into it. I just want to be certain.”

  “Just don’t go stirring things up by pointing fingers at a state judge.”

  “He might not be a state judge for long,” I told her. “Word has it, our Judge Kendall is first in line for a federal judge appointment.” News traveled fast. Especially news that Bootleggers could brag about. Our Judge Kendall. Finally being recognized for his years of service. A federal judge? Imagine that.

  “Well, that happens,” Amanda said, and I could tell she was getting distracted by the dozens of other tasks that required her attention. I gave her the date ranges to check, which posed an additional problem since some of the records from the earlier years still weren’t electronic and promised to email her an update about what I was doing in rural West Virginia for the summer.

  We hung up, and I stared unseeing across Main Street into the lakefront park where families picnicked and swam.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something sinister happening in Bootleg Springs.

  “Shelby?”

  I jumped a mile, wincing when my shoulder—which had been a little tender this morning—burst into flames of fresh pain. Dang it. I needed some anti-inflammatories STAT.

  “Jenny. Hi. You startled me,” I told her, pressing a hand over my pounding heart. I didn’t like being snuck up on. Had never gotten over the trigger for that particular fear.

  Jonah’s mother looked pretty and fresh in shorts and a button-down blouse the color of summer skies. “Sorry about that. I was just on my way to meet… someone, and I saw you.”

  The way her cheeks pinked at the mention of “someone” I wondered if it was Jimmy Bob Prosser. She was headed in the direct
ion of the hardware store, I noted.

  “I was on the phone and didn’t hear you,” I said.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I overheard a bit of your conversation. I understand where the interest comes from. It’s a fascinating case. But it’s closed now. They found her body. What are you expecting to find that law enforcement missed? ”

  “I’m sure investigators have done their due diligence,” I assured her. “I’m just curious. It’s a flashy story with a lot of shiny information for a researcher like me to play with. That’s all.”

  Jenny sat down on the bench next to me.

  “Men like Judge Kendall have the kind of power that others easily underestimate. Don’t forget that. Don’t underestimate him.” It sounded less like friendly advice and more like a warning.

  And she wanted me to hear it, abide by it.

  “Do you know him?” I asked.

  She shrugged, and the corners of her mouth lifted as she watched a pair of grandparents corral their three grandchildren on the sidewalk.

  “Everyone knows people like him,” she said vaguely. “Don’t underestimate them, and don’t do something that could be misconstrued as a threat. Men like that guard their power and their reputations fiercely.”

  “Like I said, I’m sure there’s nothing to find,” I said lightly.

  “Good. I’d like to think that my son’s casual summer fling is careful.”

  “You heard the news,” I said. I wondered if I’d ever had the “so you are engaging in sex with my son conversation” before.

  “I think Scarlett took out a billboard,” Jenny said with an easy smile. “My son is a good man. And I think you’ll treat him right. So don’t expect any interference from me no matter how much I’d like to see him married and happy and to have a few grandkids on my lap.”

  The woman had said no interference. But she hadn’t meant no pressure.

  “Speaking of dating,” I said, changing the subject to something a little safer. “You should probably tell me who you’re meeting for lunch so I can do my duty as a temporary Bootlegger and spread the gossip.”

  We chit-chatted like two old friends for a few minutes until Jenny said she had to go. She was looping her purse over her shoulder when she stopped again.

  “You haven’t seen Gibson around lately, have you?” she asked.

  I frowned, thinking. “No. Not since Jonah’s party.”

  “Hmm,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I was just wondering how he was taking the news that the body they found was Callie Kendall. I hope all the Bodines are doing okay,” she added quickly.

  “They’re all probably just waiting to see what will happen next with their father still a person of interest,” I guessed.

  Jenny pursed her lips and nodded. “Well, you have a nice day. Be safe, Shelby. My son likes you a lot.”

  There it was again. That vague warning that gave me a little shiver up the spine.

  35

  Jonah

  “T en more burpees,” I said, dropping down into a push-up position.

  “I really fucking hate you right now,” George groaned next to me.

  “No, you don’t. You hate that you have to go through this,” I said, gritting my teeth through the push-up and hopping back on my feet.

  “That, too. And burpees. I fucking loathe burpees,” he said, climbing to his feet.

  “Where’s that jump and clap?”

  I was practically begging to get punched in the face. But training George, a professional athlete, was pretty freaking awesome. The man’s strength was circus-freak level. And his muscle had already burned off six unwanted pounds since we started working together.

  He gave a lackluster bounce on his toes, a sloppy clap.

  “Nine more. Let’s go.”

  “I could punch you for these or the fact that you’re sleeping with my sister and didn’t tell me,” he wheezed.

  “Yeah, you could,” I agreed.

  “I want points for my self-control,” George said, eyeing me before dropping down to the ground again.

  “Consider points awarded.”

  We bitched and busted our way through them, and when it was over, we both lay down in the grass. Chugging water and swiping sweat out of our eyes.

  “You’re meaner than any trainer I had when I played,” he complained.

  “They have to be nice to you in the league. Can’t have a bunch of three-hundred-pound babies crying about drills and sit-ups.”

  “So you and my sister?” George said, picking up the thread I’d let drop.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “As long as you’re good to her, I won’t plow my fists into your face,” he said.

  “Understood.” I sat up, grabbed a foam roller, and tossed it to him. “Here, this will help you hate me less in the morning.”

  He leaned forward and rubbed at the scars on his leg. One bad tendon had brought his career to a screeching halt. “I gotta ask Shelby what she used on her scars to help them heal,” he muttered.

  I remembered the scar on her chest, the jagged one on her leg.

  “How did she get them?” I asked. I’d noticed them, but their origin had never come up in conversation.

  He studied me. “She doesn’t like to talk about it,” he said, taking another swig of water before shoving the foam roller under his hamstrings.

  For a minute, I thought that would be the end of it.

  “Since you’re sleeping with her, living with her, I’d feel better if you knew. Sometimes she still has nightmares about it.”

  Despite the heat, the sweat, the hair on my arms stood up.

  “This was back when she was fresh out of college. A family Shelby was working with called her one night, late. They had a lot of issues, but the main one was their teenage son. Big sonofabitch, unstable. More than just impulse control shit. He’d taken a shine to Shelby. She could get through to him sometimes when others couldn’t. But he kept going off his meds,” George said, swiping a hand over his face. “He’d show up at her favorite coffee shop. The grocery store in her neighborhood. She made light of it. Like it was no big deal.”

  I felt the tension in him as he recalled it.

  “She didn’t listen to me. I was the overprotective big brother. She had it all under control. She just wanted to help.”

  “That sounds like Shelby,” I said.

  He nodded. “She cares too much. Thinks she can fix everything, and there are just some things, some people, you can’t fix.”

  He rubbed his palms together slowly as he worked through his memories.

  “One night, he showed up at her apartment. She didn’t let him in, and he tried to kick in the door until one of the neighbors called the cops.”

  “Shit,” I said, clenching my fists.

  “Yeah. Her supervisor reassigned her. They’d seen shit like this before. The kid was obsessing. He’d do things just to get Shelby to show up at his place. Anything for her attention. So they tried to take her out of the equation. Assigned the family to a guy social worker.”

  “How did Shelby feel about it?” I asked.

  George shrugged. “She keeps stuff private a lot. She doesn’t like people worrying about her. But from what I could gather, she thought she failed him. Like somehow she should have convinced him to stay on his meds. They helped when he took them. But he’d forget, or he’d pretend to take them, and then he’d just lose control.”

  He got up and paced restlessly now. A brother who loved his sister.

  I wondered how I’d feel if someone tried to hurt Scarlett. The wave of raw anger, fear, was instinctive.

  “Anyway, one night, the mother called Shelby in a panic,” he continued. “The son had chased her and the rest of the kids into a bedroom with a kitchen knife. They were locked in, and he was kicking and punching at the door.”

  “Why didn’t she call the cops?” I asked, dreading the resolution of the story.

  “Didn’t want her son
to get taken away. Shelby knew that. She told the mom to hang tight, she’d handle it.”

  I closed my eyes, took a breath.

  “So she goes over there—”

  “Alone?” I interrupted.

  He nodded. “Like the innocent do-gooder she was.”

  The past tense got me.

  “He was waiting for her. His mom told him through the door that Shelby was coming to help him.”

  “She knocked on the damn door, but it was already open.” George rubbed a hand over his mouth, taking a moment. “It was dark inside.”

  My hands were clenched again. I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for the words he didn’t want to say. The story I didn’t want to hear.

  “She walked in. All by herself. He came at her with the knife. They struggled. He got in a lucky swipe or two, the whole time screaming about how he loves her and they’re going to be together. But his grip slipped because of the… the blood.

  “She started to run, and she either tripped or he pushed her. But she took a header down the stairs.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered.

  “You know her,” George said with a ghost of a smile. “Odds are she tripped over her own feet.”

  “Yeah, odds are.”

  “Anyway, another tenant—because everyone was in the hallway now calling 911—picked her up and carried her into his apartment. Another couple of them confronted the kid, got the knife away from him, held him down, until the cops came.”

  “Meanwhile, Shelby’s texting me and my parents all like ‘Don’t freak out, but I’m heading to the hospital.’”

  I could picture it.

  “What my idiot sister didn’t tell us is that kid nicked her femoral artery and she almost bled out in a stranger’s apartment. By the time I flew in and my parents got there, she’d had a transfusion or two and was all smiles. Looked like that fucking vampire from the Twilight movie. So damn pale. Insisting that she was fine.”

  “What happened to the kid?” I asked.

  “He was sixteen. He went into a juvie mental facility. I kept an eye on the court proceedings. He was charged as a minor, sealed record.”

  “So he’s just out there now?” I was horrified.