by Kris Calvert
SEX, LIES & BOURBON
Sex and Lies Book Five
A Moonlight and Magnolias Novel
Kris Calvert
© Copyright 2016 Kris Calvert
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material form the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at www.calvertcomm.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Cover by [email protected]
Edited by Meg Weglarz and Molly J. Kimbrell
ISBN: 978-1-943180-08-0
Calvert Communications, Lexington, KY 40515
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Books by Kris Calvert
Dedication
Prologue
1: Win
2: Ginny
3: Win
4: Ginny
5: Win
6: Ginny
7: Win
8: Ginny
9: Win
10: Ginny
11: Win
12: Ginny
13: Ginny
14: Win
15: Win
16: Ginny
17: Win
18: Ginny
19: Win
20: Ginny
21: Ginny
22: Win
23: Ginny
24: Ginny
25: Win
26: Ginny
27: Win
28: Ginny
29: Win
30: Win
31: Ginny
32: Win
Epilogue
Coming Soon: Sex, Lies & Black Tie
Connect with Kris
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Meg and Molly for being wonderful even when the manuscripts aren’t, and for turning me in the right direction when needed. You are the two best editors and grammar girls around.
Thank you to the ladies who lunch for always making me smile and for being my friend.
Thank you to Maker’s Mark Distillery for allowing me to tour, drink bourbon and ask more questions than they ever needed or wanted to answer.
To Ginny for allowing me to use your amazing name for my character and for kicking my butt at Jazzercise.
Finally, thank you to my adoring husband, Rob and the two greatest accomplishments of my life, Luke and Haley. I love you all, with all my heart.
Books by Kris Calvert
Sex, Lies & Sweet Tea – Book One
Sex, Lies & Lipstick – Book Two
Sex, Lies & Pearls – Book Three
Sex, Lies & Lace– Book Four
Be Mine – a Valentine’s Day Novella
Sparks Fly – an Independence Day Novella
Roses are Wrong, Violets Taboo
COMING SOON
Deliver Me From Evil – 2016
Sex, Lies & Black Tie – November 2016
To Love’s End – February 2017
My Soul to Keep – 2017
The Fox Tales – 2017
www.kriscalvert.com
For my mother, Judy Calvert.
Thank you for teaching me how to be a Southern Lady.
May 1993
I couldn’t look. The long box she was placed in was filled with satin and the mound of yellow roses sent a sickly sweet perfume my way each time I took a breath. I was thankful when they finally closed the top. I wanted to think about my mom alive—playing games with me and my sister, drawing smiley faces in strawberry jelly on my peanut butter sandwich, reading to me every night and always in the best voices. She never said goodnight or goodbye without telling me she loved me—telling me I was her hero.
I stood alone—my little sister Lena still in her room, just staring into space. She’d not said a word to anyone since that night. She wouldn’t get dressed. She wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t come with us today, staying behind with one of our nannies. It made my dad angry. It only made me sad.
Stone-faced, I stared into the distance, my father never looked at me once. He didn’t care. I tried my best to be the man he told me I needed to be today. I dropped my head when the minister told us we had to pray, unable shake the vision of Momma from my mind. I thought of my hands on her face, her neck covered in blood—her body in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Everyone was praying. I couldn’t breathe.
The minister called out to God—my mind wandered back to where I found her. The floor had been cleaned, but I couldn’t walk through the house without thinking of her lying there—dead. Some hero I turned out to be. I couldn’t save her. I’d hated my father for everything he’d done. Now, I only hated him more.
I opened my eyes and looked around while everyone prayed for my mother’s soul to be lifted to heaven. Everyone loved her, especially me. They all thought she had the perfect life—that our family was perfect. I knew the truth, even if my dad wouldn’t speak of it.
Turning around, I caught the eye of Cee Cee—my granddad. With tears in his eyes, he gave me a single nod and I wished I was standing with him on the other side of the casket.
The prayer was over and I stood with everyone and watched men I didn’t know surround my mother. The minister explained to me yesterday what would happen next. They would lower her into the ground next to Grandma. They’d already dug the hole for her. It was where all the Winterbournes were buried. Momma had taken me there every now and again, to put flowers on my grandmother’s grave.
Just yesterday I’d watched the bulldozer dig the perfect rectangle. I wasn’t supposed to wander that far from the main house, but I didn’t care anymore. If Dad didn’t care about Momma, why should I care about him or the rules? Besides, no one was looking after me. Not now.
Dad ushered me to walk in front of him when it was over and I watched my shoes shine in the sunlight with each measured step to the car.
Once in the limousine I gazed out the tinted window at the people flooding from the old cemetery and caught a glimpse of my grandfather once more.
“Cee Cee!” I shouted his name as loud as I could, hoping to get his attention.
“Stop that, Win,” Dad hissed. “He has his own car home. Sit down and buckle up.”
“Cee Cee!” I called out again, slamming my open palm to the dark window, praying he’d see me. I’d been quiet all day. I’d not caused a scene, as my dad had asked. I’d not even cried. But now I just wanted to be with my granddad.
I couldn’t hold back my tears and began to sob, frustrating my father even more. Cee Cee looked to our car, walking to the curb to meet me. Jiggling the locked door handle, I wanted out. I wanted out now. When it didn’t budge, I beat on the car door with my fist, wailing at the top of my lungs. “Cee Cee!” I screamed, slamming my palm to the window once more.
The daylight was leaving, but I could still see the tears in my granddad’s eyes as he matched my palm on the window with his own huge hand and gave me a single nod.
My father didn’t care I wanted out. He simply looked to the driver as if he was being inconvenienced and said, “Let’s go.”
1
WIN
I stared out the window of the high r
ise on Park and 80th from the comfort of my bed and watched the sun come up in the distance. I couldn’t sleep. It was my new thing—not sleeping. I tacked it on to the growing list of physical and mental ailments that troubled me: arthritic joints from my teenage and college years of lacrosse, migraines from the stress of dealing with my family, and a broken heart I’d been trying to mend for over a year now. The newcomer insomnia had plenty of friends to play around with in my head. Most agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation were plagued by on-the-job mental illness and injuries. I came to the Bureau with mine.
My naked body scarcely covered—most of the sheet and all of the blanket tossed from the mattress thanks to the blonde from the piano bar with high aspirations and a low IQ that filled my latest lonesome and empty night. She’d left around four in the morning after I’d called her by the wrong name while she serviced my manhood. Too much alcohol and unresolved shit rolling around in my head, I was lost in the pure physical act of getting off and moaned a name that was in fact, not hers. In my defense, I had apologized. It didn’t seem to go very far.
I rubbed my chest with my open palms and stretched, flinching only when the land line rang. Sitting up, I knew no one but the office would call this line or this early.
“Holloway,” I answered, rubbing the sleep and late night bourbon buzz from my swollen eyes.
“Win?”
“Who is this?” I asked, swinging my legs over the side of the bed, still not willing to take on the day. I needed a long run to sweat out the bourbon and coffee to wake me up.
“Win, it’s Magnus.”
Magnus Page was my father’s oldest friend and closest confidant. A brilliant attorney, he would have no reason to call me at six in the morning unless he was delivering bad news. “What is it? Is Lena okay? Is it Cee Cee?”
Magnus took a deep breath on the other end and my anxiety soared. “Maggie,” I shouted into the phone as I stood. “Answer me!”
“No Win.” His voice was calm. It was one of Magnus Page’s signature qualities—grace under pressure. “Lena and Cecil are fine. I’m afraid it’s your father.”
Fear lessened its grip on me and I took a deep breath. I’d fought with the man who never cared about me or my sister just yesterday. My birthday was on the horizon and he wanted to discuss family business. Instead, I told him off. “Yeah? What is it?”
“Win, he’s dead. Murdered.”
I sat back on the bed, dropping my head into my free hand. “Where’s Lena?” In a state of shock, I instinctively went into protective mode.
“She’s here with me.”
“Put her on the phone,” I demanded. “I want to talk to her.”
“Win, she’s not in any shape to talk right now.”
“Put her on the phone dammit!”
Waiting to hear her voice, a wave of panic flooded my body. After the death of my mother, my baby sister fell into a catatonic depression. With a fixed gaze and a facial expression of frozen astonishment, Lena remained silent and indifferent for over a year before coming out of it at nearly six years old. Relapsing again during college, shock therapy and medication helped her limp along in life, but bad news always hit in ways that I could never comprehend. Now, with almost a decade between her and her last episode, I’d hoped she’d found peace working at the distillery and running the family estate, Winter Haven. But mental illness seemed to travel in her back pocket like a stowaway and I worried an event like this would send her back to a place no one wanted for her.
Pacing my apartment from one end of the open space to the other, an overwhelming feeling of helplessness hit me.
“Win?” Lena’s tiny voice cracked on the other end.
“Lena, are you okay?”
“I’m…” she stuttered through her tears, “…fine. Win, Daddy’s dead. I found him. Magnus called 911, but it was too late. He’d been…” She stopped, choking on her tears. “He bled to death.”
Rubbing my forehead in frustration, I looked to my bare feet on the oriental rug beneath me. “I’m sorry you’re dealing with this alone.”
“Magnus is here. But, please come home Win,” she whispered through a heart-wrenching sob. “Please.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Lena continued to sniff on the other end and I felt my heart breaking for not being there with my sister. “Okay,” she replied.
“Lena, put Magnus back on the phone.”
She didn’t say goodbye, but merely handed the phone over. In the muffled background I heard her say, he wants to talk to you.
“Yes,” Magnus replied.
“Tell me what happened.”
“Lena heard a sound around one-thirty in the morning. When she went to see what it was, she found your father at the bottom of the stairs. Win,” Magnus paused. “His throat had been cut.”
“Just like Mom,” I whispered as I stared blindly into the city skyline.
“You’re needed here Win—at Winter Haven. How soon can you leave the city?”
I heard Magnus’s voice in my ear, but found it hard to concentrate on what he was saying. My mind flashed back to the night I found my mother. All at once, I was ten years old and scared shitless all over again.
“Win?”
“Send the jet?” I asked, knowing the fastest way to Kentucky was by private plane.
“It’s already on its way.”
Hurry Win. Lena’s voice called to me in the background.
“Tell her I’m coming. And Magnus?”
“Yes?”
“You’re one of the best men I know. Thank you for being there for us—again.”
The hot water rushed over me, each bead striking my body as if it were an unresolved feeling. I hung my head in the shower and let the warmth envelop me. Every emotion, every situation of my adult life had been orchestrated to stonewall myself from my family. Now I was forced to deal with it—all of it—and on the heels of my latest tirade with my father.
Leaning my body into the white marble of the oversized shower, I braced myself with both hands above my head—thoughts of my beautiful mother filled my mind. I pictured her as if I was still ten years old. Back when we were both young, vibrant and full of life. Of course what followed was always the flash memory of her bloody face in my hands. I’d learned to deal with the image, but never came to grips with it. In my mind it was impossible to hold someone you loved unconditionally in your arms and watch them die. Post traumatic stress disorder was the official diagnosis by my shrink of ten years. They might as well have called it deceptive and terminal angst. You never knew when it would hit you, or long it would hold onto you. There was no cure for the pit of despair, and managing it seemed to be perpetual ascension on a never-ending ladder. Still, I had to be grateful that I’d not suffered like Lena.
I needed to face some facts. My father was dead. Murdered. Murdered in my house, just like my mother, twenty-three years ago. I’d always blamed him for her death and now that he was gone, I had no one to incriminate and everything to figure out. Unfortunately, that also meant I had to go home.
I rinsed off my emotions like the soap on my body and began to formulate a plan. First, I would go to the office. I was going to need some time off. I already had a copy of my mother’s case file—it sat on my desk in my apartment since the day I finally gained access to the FBI mainframe. But I wanted to double-check the database before heading home. This time I would investigate the case and not Barney Fife of the Kentucky FBI and the Mayberry Police department of Valley Springs.
I’d not stayed at Winter Haven in over a year, when I took my then girlfriend for a whirlwind trip to the Bluegrass State while the rest of the family was away. It was a weekend of long walks, sipping bourbon, riding horses and making love all night with the windows wide open while the crickets matched our cries of passion with their singing. It was the one good memory I had of my home. Unfortunately, this trip wouldn’t be anything like that. This trip would be hell.
2
&nb
sp; GINNY
Slowing to a halt, my body heaved with each breath I took. My lungs burned from the warm spring air and noxious exhaust from a delivery truck making its early morning rounds in lower Manhattan. Pulling the buds from my ears, I bent over and braced myself against my knees, trying to catch a deep breath. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d taken a long run and I was surprised how quickly I’d fallen out of shape.
My chest still heaving, I unlocked the main door to my apartment building and began the climb to my third floor walkup in Tribeca near the FBI office I also called home. I’d been assigned here after leaving Quantico two years ago. My brother tried to convince me to come home—to work in Kentucky where our late father was once a crack agent with the Bureau out of Louisville. But I wanted to move to the city—mostly to prove to myself I could do it. That, and in the end, to stupidly follow a man.
It wasn’t as difficult as everyone had said it would be—a southern girl finding her own way in New York City, but then again, I was always up for proving people wrong.
Turning the corner of the stairwell, I sauntered my tired body to my door, 3A, and thought about how sore I would be tomorrow. My body was coursing with endorphins, making my legs feel like I could go another five miles, but tomorrow my quads and hamstrings would be crying.
“Virginia?”
I turned the first key in the lock and looked over my shoulder to find my nosy neighbor and the only person since my grandmother to call me by my given name, “It’s Ginny, Mrs. Todaro. Just Ginny. No one calls me Virginia.”
My next door neighbor was the kind of immigrant Italian woman who’d lived through a war and wasn’t afraid of anything—least of all me. Trying to hear what she was saying through her thick accent wasn’t even the worst part about Mrs. Todaro. No, it was the pungent garlic smell that seeped from her apartment like Agent Orange, permeating anything and everything it came in contact with. For this reason, my closet, which just so happened to share a wall with her kitchen, was always filled with air fresheners. The last thing I wanted was to smell like an old Italian restaurant—even if Mrs. Todaro and I had entertained the same amount of men in our bedrooms over past year—zero.
