The Bourbon Thief

“It is.”

“You store your alcohol in a cabinet designed to hold communion wafers?”

“My grandfather had a dark sense of humor where the Catholic Church was concerned.”

“I assume he was Catholic?”

“Until he fell in love with a girl who left him for the Carmelites. Never stepped foot in a church again after that. Said no man with any pride would enter the house of the man who stole his wife.”

“Pride indeed. Sounds like his lady picked the right man. You exist, so I assume he got over his lover’s defection?”

“Got married, yes, but he never got over it. All the McQueens are heathens now, but I do consider this room my little sanctuary. Every man needs one.” He took a bottle out of the cabinet and handed it to her.

“This is it?” she asked, cradling the bottle carefully in her hands.

“That’s it. You ordered Red Thread at the bar tonight. That, my dear, is the first bottle of Red Thread ever distilled, ever bottled, ever-ever.”

“How did you come by this bottle?”

“Private sale. One million dollars. The provenance is perfect. Virginia Maddox herself sold it shortly before she died to pay her medical bills. One of a kind.”

“No wonder you won’t sell it,” she said.

“Not for all the money in the world. This is the holy grail of bourbon. You don’t sell the holy grail.”

“Unholy grail,” she said under her breath, but not so far under he didn’t hear it.

Her eyes softened as she touched the red ribbon tied around the bottle’s neck. It was a tattered old thing.

“It’s a miracle that thing has stayed on there,” McQueen said. “Piece of ribbon from the 1860s.”

“Slave cloth,” Paris said.

“What?”

“The ribbon was cut from slave cloth. Thick wool. Slave cloth was made to last a long time. Slaves didn’t get new clothes very often. What they had had to last, had to hold up to hard work and many years. The girl who wore this ribbon? This was probably the only nice thing she had, the only thing she thought of as hers.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that ribbon... I didn’t know that part of the story, that the ribbon came from a Maddox slave.”

“Now you know.”

“You ordered Red Thread at The Rickhouse. But you would have been a baby when Red Thread burned down. What exactly is your interest in it?”

“It interests me for many reasons. But here, you can’t trust me with that bottle. I might drop it. Wouldn’t that be a shame?”

She passed the bottle back to McQueen. He put it carefully back into the cabinet. When he turned around, Paris was halfway to the door.

“You aren’t leaving, are you?” he asked.

“Leaving for the bedroom,” she said.

“So I did impress you?”

“You have a fine collection,” she said. “I only wish it were mine.”

McQueen followed her to the concealed door and started to open it for her. With his hand on the knob he looked her up and down and into her eyes.

“Who are you really?” he asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Why not?”

“I told you why. The truth is like bourbon—it’ll burn going down.”

“I want to burn.”

She kissed him, hard enough McQueen forgot about finding out anything else about her except how to make her come again. And after he’d solved that mystery, he fell fast asleep, one arm over her naked stomach, one leg over her leg, his favorite way to fall asleep.

* * *

When McQueen woke up, he was alone, and Paris had left nothing behind but the scent of her skin on his sheets and her red hair ribbon on his pillow.

Red ribbon?

Hell on earth, he was a first-rate fool.

McQueen pulled on his pants and shirt and ran to the room behind the bookcase.

Too late. She was gone.

So was his million-dollar bottle of Red Thread.

2 (#ulink_d624e5f6-36a3-51df-8d44-46eb1a25a184)

McQueen slammed his hand down onto the intercom button and ordered his night shift security guard to lock the gates.

“Already done,” James answered. “Someone tried to get out without the gate code. She’s in my office. I was about to come wake you up, boss.”

He should have been relieved, but he seethed instead, his shoulders tense with his fury, and he nearly wrenched the door off the hinges when he entered the security guard’s small shed. Paris sat primly on a small folding chair, her legs crossed at the ankles, her black Birkin bag in her lap.

“Give us a minute,” McQueen said to the guard.

“Do I need to call the cops?”

“Not yet. I want to hear her story first. Then we’ll call them.”

James left him alone in the shed with Paris. She looked up at him placidly.