by F J messina
The Bluegrass Files: The Bourbon Brotherhood
The Third In A Series of Mysteries Solved By The Agents of Bluegrass Confidential Investigations
F J Messina
© 2017/2019 Blair/Brooke Publishing
Lexington, KY 859.608.4236
[email protected]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9998533-4-4 (Soft Cover)
PCN: pbi1503
Created with Vellum
Author’s Note and Acknowledgements
For those of you who have read my earlier works, it comes as no surprise that this is yet another book set in my well-loved home, Lexington, Kentucky. I love writing stories set in places I know so intimately, and those readers who are familiar with this region seem to love reading about them as well.
As you may have surmised from the title, this story will be soaked in the lore and reality of Kentucky’s most famous libation, bourbon. However, in order to maintain a certain level of authenticity, while at the same time steering clear of any copyright, patent, or brand name challenges, the names of all significant bourbons and distillers are entirely fictional. In fact, I would direct readers to the admonition on the copyright page, that points out that this is a work of fiction. In other words, I’m just making this stuff up! The only exception is the tragic fire that occurred at the Heaven Hill Distillery in 1996 and is described later in the book.
On the other hand, I hope I have accurately described certain elements of bourbon production as it exists in Kentucky today. In addition, some of Lexingtonian’s favorite places are mentioned by name, but as .you’ll probably notice, only in the most positive of lights.
Now, as to the people who have helped me bring this story to life, my gratitude goes out to a group of special people─special in the help they gave me, special in who they are. I thank my sister (and partner in crime), Judy Thompson, for reading this work while in progress. So many twists and turns in this plot were held up to the “believability test” by her keen mind. Some made the cut and some didn’t.
Then there is my daughter, Jennifer Al-Rikabi, who can spot an extra space or a missing quotation mark with the best of them. More importantly, it was her input that kept Sonia working at the highest possible level in her quest to be a true professional private investigator.
It is my daughter, Kristin Morford, who took on the responsibility of being my feminist filter as well as a critical evaluator of events and character motivations. I am grateful to both Kristin and Jennifer for helping me bring Sonia, Jet, and Tee to life as vibrant, authentic female characters.
Thanks also go out to Alex Vangellow, Mary Roycraft, and George McCormick for their willingness to read the manuscript looking for those little errors that sometimes drive readers to distraction.
As always, I must point out that, although she did not work with me directly on this book, the fingerprints of my mentor, Edie Maddox Torok, are all over this and any other book I write.
Finally, I thank my wife, Denise. Without her patience and support, this book and the ones that surround it in the series could and would never have been written. When I write about a man truly loving and cherishing a woman, I write what I feel about her.
1
It was the kind of crowd you would expect on a Wednesday morning—twelve or thirteen, maybe fourteen folks—almost all of them retirement age. That’s who normally showed up for the eleven o’clock tour at the Horatio Blevins Bourbon Distillery, just west of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, on a Wednesday in mid-May. Soon, kids would be out of school and families would be on vacation. In June or July, Earl could sometimes get twenty or more folks following him around the rustic setting, learning everything they could about how bourbon is made. For some folks, it was just a pleasant way to fill a morning or afternoon. For others, it was a way of feeling more deeply attached to something that was a big part of their everyday lives, enjoying bourbon. Of course, for the folks from Horatio Blevins, it was just one of many things they did to enhance the community’s knowledge and appreciation of the heritage and tradition of this important part of Kentucky culture. In other words, to sell bourbon.
Earl, six feet tall, a little cragley in the face, a little paunchy in the middle, was dressed in khaki pants and a red polo shirt with an HB logo emblazoned on the breast. For him, leading the tours of the distillery three days a week was simply a way to fill some of the empty days of a retirement that was already becoming something akin to a burden. His wife, Jolene, had passed just after Earl had put in his last days as a history teacher at Woodford County High School. Now in his sixth year of retirement, Earl had done all the fishing and hunting he cared to do. He still did those things with some of his friends on occasion, but it had a lot more to do with not wanting to be alone than with the catching of fish or the bagging of a few unlucky ducks.
That’s what Earl enjoyed most about this part-time job, being around people. Somehow, walking around the beautiful Blevins facility, with its rolling campus, ancient brick walls, and tall column stills made of copper—teaching these somewhat-interested folks about a process and a product that was truly enmeshed in the DNA of his beloved Bluegrass state—he felt alive, useful.
Earl finished the part of the tour in which he showed folks the charred white oak barrels that were such an essential, in fact mandatory, part of the production of bourbon and led his little group along the brick pathway that sat next to a simple two-rail system. It was along those rails the 520-pound barrels of bourbon would be rolled to their destination, the nine-story wooden rackhouse in which twenty thousand barrels, or roughly one million gallons of bourbon, sat aging.
As Earl entered Rackhouse Number 2, he was joined by his colleague, James─another retired school teacher, another older man in khaki pants and a red polo shirt, another proud purveyor of the history and lore of Kentucky bourbon. Earl explained that the bourbon would sit in the barrels that surrounded them for anywhere from two to twelve years or more. He then shocked many of the listeners by telling them that when the barrels were opened, some of the bourbon would be missing.
“That’s right.” Earl puffed himself up a bit as he spoke, running his hand through his seriously thinned hair. “You see, during the aging process, some of the bourbon actually evaporates out of the barrel.” He leaned forward dramatically, speaking in a hushed tone. “We call that the Angel’s Share.”
As if on cue, James walked over to one of the barrels on the lowest level. Bending his wiry body down a little, he struck the barrel near the bottom with a small hammer. Smiling, as he listened to the solid thumping sound his tapping elicited, he spoke in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. “Full. Full of the most beautiful amber liquid your eyes would ever want to behold.” Then, standing taller, James went through the same process near the top of the barrel. The looks on the faces of Earl’s acolytes made it quite clear that they could hear a distinct difference. Although there was no visible sign, it was obvious that the barrel was less than completely full.
Since this was one of Earl’s favorite parts of the tour, he stepped forward to repeat the process with another barrel. Tapping near the bottom of the barrel with his own small hammer, Earl drew out the same satisfactory thumping sound that his colleague had elicited in the first demo
nstration. Then, smiling confidently, Earl knocked near the upper part of the wooden cask. Confusion tingled in the muscles of Earl’s face though he tried his best not to let it show. He couldn’t resist the temptation to turn to James ever so briefly, though what he saw on James’ face gave him no comfort. Still, this was a great part of the tour and he wasn’t about to let it slip away. He smiled broadly. “Full at the bottom, empty at the top. The Angel’s Share.”
He could see some of his students nod weakly. Others just seemed confused. “Okay, then,” he picked up the pace, “let’s head on back to the main building. There, each of you will be able to sample one of our delicious bourbon balls.” He swung his arms open wide magnanimously. “Aaand, you’ll be able to taste just a little bit of some of Kentucky’s finest libation.” Leaning forward and smiling knowingly to the tiny gaggle, each of them clearly over sixty, he winked. “That is if you’re old enough.”
As soon as he had offered his group a final, “Y’all have a great rest of the day,” Earl headed straight back to Rackhouse Number Two. James was waiting for him. Earl walked right up to the barrel he had knocked on during the tour, the one that had given him trouble. “Did you hear that, James? Did you hear what I heard?”
James was standing nearby, his hands behind him, stuck into the back pockets of his khakis. “You bet I heard it. Sounded like the barrel was still full. You sure you knocked on it good and solid?”
Earl gave him the, “Done this a million times,” look. “Come on, James, I conked it a good one, just like you. Here, give me the hammer. Let’s try this again.”
James handed him the hammer and watched as Earl tapped, first, near the bottom of the barrel, then near the top. James shook his head. “I don’t get it. Sounds the same, don’t you think?”
Earl was shaking his head as well. “I’ll be damned if it doesn’t. This is the right barrel, ain’t it? I mean, this isn’t a new one that got put here for some reason is it?”
James ran his fingers over the coded numbers burned into the rough-sided barrel. “Nope, I already checked. This is right where it’s supposed to be. Six years old. Should have given up the Angel’s Share just like every barrel around it.” He slipped off his baseball cap, scratching his almost hairless head. “But it don’t. Sounds full to me.”
Earl stepped back, pondering the situation. He stood motionless. After a solid fifteen seconds, he responded like any good teacher would when he or she felt the principal should know about something that had happened in the classroom. “I don’t get this, James, but I think we’ve got to call Mr. John. He’s got to be told about this.”
It was seven-thirty that evening before John O’Neal, the distillery’s general manager, finally made it to Rackhouse Number Two. It had been a long and busy day, and the notion that some of his tour guides couldn’t tell a full barrel of bourbon from one that had already given up a portion of its bounty to the angels was a bit frustrating to him. Nonetheless, he had asked one of his long-standing employees, Bobby Ray, to walk with him down to the rackhouse to check out this “big mystery,” as he had put it disparagingly.
Earl and James had been very clear in their messages to Mr. John as to which barrel was the one in question. He had no trouble locating it. Looking around the rackhouse in the semi-darkness of evening, he motioned to Bobby. “Give that thing a couple of good whacks and let’s both get on home.”
Bobby Ray, a short, slight man, thin but muscular in a dark red T-shirt and jeans, walked up to the barrel. He picked up the small hammer that Earl had left lying on the cask’s lid and tapped. Near the bottom first. Appropriate sound. Then near the top. Not so much. Bobby Ray knocked again. Same results. He gave O’Neal a strange look, shaking his head curiously.
John O’Neal, a big man with a freckled face and a shock of red hair that made obvious his Irish heritage, walked over to the barrel and followed suit. Knock near the bottom. Solid sound. Knock near the top. Same sound. O’Neal shook his head as well. “Just not right, Bobby.”
Bobby Ray cocked his head. “You sure this barrel is where it’s supposed to be?”
O’Neal ran his fingers through his wiry hair. “Earl Williams said he checked and double checked. It’s six years old.” A long moment went by. Finally, O’Neal motioned to Bobby Ray. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but we can’t take a chance that something is wrong with that product. Let’s tap that thing and see what we get.”
It took a few minutes for Bobby Ray to set up a tap and a pan into which the bourbon could flow. When he was ready, he looked up to O’Neal one last time.
“Go ahead, Bobby. Let’s do this.”
With a few quick moves, Bobby had the amber liquid flowing out of the barrel and into a pan. Several moments later he turned the spigot, shutting down the flow. “There you go, Mr. John.”
John O’Neal was no master distiller, but he had smelled and tasted literally hundreds and hundreds of samples from hundreds and hundreds of barrels in his time. It took him only a moment to know that something was off with this batch. “I don’t get it, Bobby. Something wrong with the barrel itself? Something else going on?”
Bobby just looked up at him, not willing to venture a guess.
Finally, John O’Neal had had enough. “Hell, Bobby. Open the top. I want to get a good look in there.”
There being no way to lift the lid off a bourbon barrel without loosening its metal hoops, thereby releasing fifty-three gallons of bourbon onto the floor, Bobby was forced to do some creative thinking. Drilling a circle of two-inch, concentric holes in the lid itself, he created a round disc that could be lifted out of the top of the barrel without the barrel falling completely apart.
John O’Neal, General Manager of the Horatio Blevins Distillery, bent down to take a careful look at some of his finest product. He shined a flashlight into the amber liquid. What he thought he saw at first was a reflection of his own face. It was only after he looked more closely, that he realized the eyes looking back at him from under the surface were never going to see light again.
Day One
2
“Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Made it.” Sonia Vitale stood on the landing outside the offices of the firm she and her partner owned─Bluegrass Confidential Investigations. She didn’t normally count the steps of the wooden staircase that rose to the second story without a turn-around landing and constituted the only access to their domain, but it hadn’t exactly been a normal week.
The act of getting into the BCI offices had always had its own unique charm for Sonia─turning the ancient handle and pushing the heavy, old, wooden door open, her purse and a steaming hot cup of coffee in her hand. On many days, the process was even more challenging, as it often included a white, paper bag filled with an almond croissant as well. This morning the challenge was even greater than usual.
Sonia got most of her news from cable TV. She would watch as she ate breakfast and then listen as she moved around her tiny apartment getting dressed. This morning, however, she had a copy of the local newspaper, The Lexington Herald-Leader, tucked under her arm. As she’d purchased it, she’d smiled and shrugged, speaking softly to herself. “You can’t blame a girl for buying the paper when her picture is on the front page, can you?”
Sonia walked into the BCI offices and saw her partner, Joyce Ellen Thomas, Jet to everyone who knew her, sitting at her old wooden desk. The firm’s offices filled the converted attic over a bakery. It consisted of a large waiting room, half the size of the entire space, and two glassed-in offices overlooking East Main Street. The waiting room provided only one large leather couch and a small table with a modern, but not-very-large, television─plans for an equestrian motif having been put on hold until finances allowed. The two offices were built with wood and glass walls that afforded privacy, while at the same time offering a sense of security when the girls were meeting with clients, especially males. They hoped the security factor was enhanced by the photos of them at a shooting range and copies of their concealed
deadly weapons licenses hanging in each of their offices.
Jet looked up from her desk. “What’s that you’ve got under your arm, sweetheart? It wouldn’t happen to be today’s newspaper, would it?”
Instead of replying directly, Sonia walked all the way into Jet’s office. Putting the items she was carrying down on Jet’s desk, she pointed to the date on the newspaper already lying in front of Jet. “Hmmm. Friday, May 20th.” She gave Jet a snarky smile. “Seems like we’re both reading today’s paper.”
Jet gave her a coy shrug. “Looks like we made it to the front page.” She slipped briefly into one of her many accents─southern belle. “My, my, my. Now isn’t that just somethin’. You and me both standing there givin’ a press conference.” Her mood quickly changing, Jet lost the accent and let out a long slow breath. “Can you believe it’s been almost a week? I still feel sick when I think about it.”
Sonia was unable to stop herself from thinking about the terrible things they had learned and faced in the previous weeks. “At least we opened a lot of eyes while we were at it.”
Jet pushed her rolling chair back from her desk, locked her hands, and lifted her arms over her head, stretching. “That we did, honey, that we did.”
It being May in Kentucky, Sonia had skipped her signature pea coat and cloche hat. Instead, she had on the blue jeans she almost always wore to work, the ones that hugged her bottom so nicely, a white knit top that was modest yet still accentuated her shapely figure, and a rakish, little blue scarf tied into a knot around her neck. Her red Chuck Taylors completed the ensemble.
Jet looked her up and down. “My, we are looking pretty patriotic today, aren’t we?”
