Brimstone Hollow (Annie Gore Novels #2)

Chapter One

ONE

IT’S SUNDAY, MEMORIAL DAY weekend, and I’m sitting at my desk with a cold, sweating glass of ice water pressed to my face.

“God, it’s hot,” I say to no one but myself.

I got up at dawn and went for a run along the river and, even then, it was already boiling.

Now, there’s a single AC unit in my combination office-partment, but instead of sitting in the window where it belongs, it’s on the floor, still plugged in but stone-dead.

I can’t afford to fix it or buy a new one so I’ve let it stay there in the hope that maybe it’ll miraculously resurrect.

Meanwhile, I’ve got the window propped open with a whirring box fan, which delivers the constant wet-hot scent of bacon grease and fried egg from Roxanne’s Diner downstairs.

My stomach gurgles and I try to tell myself to at least finish going through my bank statements from March and April before running downstairs for lunch.

A violent heat wave rolled in with the holiday weekend, and while that’s all well and good for the families headed for backyard barbecues and lazy afternoons on the river, I’m stuck inside.

Being between cases, I’ve decided it’s time I got caught up on the paperwork I’ve neglected for the last two months.

“What the hell did I buy on March ninth for $58.79?” I mutter, glaring at the charge on my business account statement.

I’d been tailing a cheating spouse about that time.

Again, I read the numbers before and after.

Both are gas purchases for the nondescript rental Honda I used instead of my own eye-catching car.

“Hmm,” I say and drain the water from the glass. I suck an ice cube into my mouth and just about choke on it when my office door whooshes open and a young woman with a baby steps over the threshold.

“I’m sorry,” she says, when she sees me. “I didn’t—I thought you probably weren’t open, but, well, the door downstairs was unlocked and so was this one and—Are you open?”

“Well, not really…” I say. She takes a deep breath and nods and starts to back out, but I stop her with “No, it’s okay.” I slide the papers in front of me into a neat, easily ignored pile, which I push to the side of my desk. “Come in and sit down.”

She takes a few steps into the office, looking around at the framed photographs and art on the wall, the bookcases lined up and overfull, the old tanker desk and the red leather chair in front of it. And, finally, me.

“You are the private investigator, right? Annie Gore?”

I laugh to myself as I stand and stick out my hand for her to shake.

I’m not what most people expect. Movies and TV have led to the perception that PIs are mostly men, mostly over forty, world weary and street savvy.

They keep a bottle of good bourbon in their desk drawer and lead mysterious, trench-coated lives in smoky dive bars and atmospheric jazz clubs.

None of that applies to me. Well, none of it except the bourbon. And that was a gift.

Instead, I’m a woman in her early thirties, just a shade over five feet tall with dark-blond hair and eyes of a murky, indecipherable green-ish color.

At the moment, I’m sporting an ancient Cincinnati Reds T-shirt with the sleeves cut off and a pair of old running shorts with flip-flops.

I haven’t shaved my legs since I attended a snooty black-tie event for a case and that was … Was it really eight months ago?

The point is, if you’re being generous, you might describe my look as scruffy.

“That’s me,” I say. “Annie Gore, private investigator, at your service.”

“Katie May,” she says as she leans forward to shake my hand.

She’s in her late twenties, I’d guess, but it’s hard to tell with the bags under her eyes and strained look on her face.

She’s well dressed in pastel linen, and her baby—probably no more than a month or two old and still in that wriggly grub stage—is attached to her chest with one of those stretchy fabric slings.

Her chestnut-brown hair has been pulled back into a low bun but several wavy wisps frame a heart-shaped face with large, limpid blue eyes.

She looks for all the world like she’s just stepped out of a Mary Cassatt painting.

“Have a seat,” I tell her. She heaves a huge sigh as she eases back into the chair, then smooths some of the fabric holding the baby.

“I looked at your website,” she says. “You were in the Air Force?”

“That’s right. Special investigator.”

“That’s like … a soldier-cop who investigates other soldiers, right?”

“Airmen in my case but, yes, sometimes.”

She nods and looks away from me, toward the window.

All you can see through the glass is the roof of an old church, the white steeple climbing thirty or forty feet in the air.

The church and the steeple have been there over a hundred years, and every time a thunderstorm blows through, the steeple wavers dangerously.

“Miss May—”

“Katie, please. I’m sorry, I just … I was downstairs eating breakfast with my friend. We get together every other Sunday—except since I had the baby, I haven’t been able to.”

Her voice is very clear with that touch of Southern accent that upper-and upper-middle-class Louisville people tend to affect: mildly folksy but dotted with the soft rhythms of the expensively educated.

She looks back at me and says, “I didn’t want to put it off again even though I really couldn’t imagine going anywhere after this morning and—well, your website said you’re from Appalachia, right?”

“That’s right. Down toward the bottom of the state.”

Another nod. I wait.

Katie takes a quick, sharp breath and then blurts out, “Have you ever been to a snake-handling church?”

“No, I haven’t…” I feel my eyebrows draw up with sudden interest.

I can’t help myself. Despite their being a somewhat infamous icon of the Appalachian South, I’ve never been to a snake-handling church nor even known anyone who has.

But everyone has heard of them. Heard stories about them and the intense, fervent fire-and-brimstone sermons delivered by sweatily devoted—and possibly deranged—preachers who shake snakes around during services as a sort of proof of faith.

“My father, my biological father, I mean. He is—was—a snake-handling preacher,” Katie says. “He … he died. I just … This morning—”

Her voice cracks with emotion and she stops.

She opens her mouth again but then shakes her head.

I stand and go to the mini fridge behind me, pull out two bottles of water.

I crack them both open and put one in front of her.

She says, “Thank you,” and takes the bottle and has a long drink.

When she’s finished, she twists the cap back into place.

I can’t help but notice that her hands are shaking.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“Take your time.”

And I really don’t mind waiting. After all, I’m sure she wouldn’t be sitting here, in my office, on a Sunday, on Memorial Day weekend, if she didn’t feel like it was absolutely necessary.

And, to be perfectly honest, I am much more interested in hearing whatever snake-handling story has brought her in here than in combing through my bank statements.

I watch her as she pulls a soft cloth from the bag she brought with her.

She opens the bottle again, pours a little water onto the cloth, and dabs at the baby’s head.

The infant wriggles and coos and she breathes out a low breath through pursed lips and then, suddenly, says, “I was terrified of him.”

“Your father?” I ask.

She nods, takes another drink.

“I mean … not always. I remember being enamored of him when I was little. But then, when I was six, my parents split up. Well, I guess it’s more accurate to say that my mom left my father and she took me with her.

I was six years old so what I remember about that time is very vague.

But she left because my father had become dangerous. ”

Another drink. Another breath. And then she continues.

“He wasn’t always a snake-handling preacher.

In the beginning, he was just a regular guy.

He moved to my mom’s town to work in a furniture plant, but then the plant shut down right after they got together.

My mom was already married and pregnant with me before she realized what she’d gotten herself into.

My father had a gambling addiction. He lost all of her savings, her college fund, everything.

She pushed him to go to a gambling recovery program, which he did. And that’s when … when he found God.”

She pours a little more water onto the cloth and dabs the baby’s head first and then her own.

Then she says, “The way my mom used to tell it, the church thing was casual in the beginning. But it became very intense, very quickly. She was young when she had me—only nineteen and younger than him by more than a decade—so it was only later that she realized she’d made a big mistake and …

the point is, the day my father brought home a copperhead was the day my mother left him.

She left him, the house, the town … She always said that place was a nest of vipers. ”

She pauses to take a deep breath before continuing, “We went to Florida at first, stayed with a friend of my mom’s.

But then she applied to UofL and got in on a scholarship.

So, we moved back up here. She went to college, became an accountant, and raised me by herself until she remarried when I was ten.

My stepdad was great and I had a wonderful childhood. ”

Katie smiles to herself, but the expression quickly sours into an anxious grimace. I lean back in my chair, away from the old desk.

“Did you ever see your biological father again?” I ask. “Did you reunite?”