Murder Brewed At Home (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 3) (3 page)

              I turned to leave the room, and then swung around again, and I must have had the look on my face that I sometimes get – the one where my cousin Tanya says I look like I'm being electrocuted – because Lester reacted accordingly.

              "Madison," he said, looking genuinely concerned, "what is it?"

              "I can't believe it. How stupid I am! How stupid
we
are!"

              "Now what?" he said. "And please be gentle. I don’t think I can stand feeling stupid any more tonight."

              I looked at the phone, and I couldn’t help but have the smile one gets from a flash of sudden insight. "What was the time of death listed as?"

              "Approximately eight-thirty."

              "Yeah? Well, Kyle got back to his house after that time."

              "How do you figure?"

              I showed him the phone. "Because this app logs the time at every mile you hit. Look at the time of the second mile."

              "Eight-thirty."

              "Right, and he still had about a quarter of a mile to go before he got back to the house, according to the GPS map of his route."

              "So he
was
killed outside the house."

              "Indeed he was," I said.

              Lester stared ahead again. It was adorable when he did that, but it usually meant he was about to say something that would contradict me. I was right.

              "Then what about the falling body? You all heard it. And the locked door? We're back to that again."

              I bit my lip in frustration. "We have work to do. Let’s retrace these steps."

              "Wait, now?"

              "Now. It stopped raining. Let’s do this. I'm pumped."

              "I'm glad one of us is," he said from several slow steps behind me.

#

              There's something particularly creepy about following in the footsteps of a dead man. Lester and I chatted about the case while we kept our eyes open for anything along the trail.

              Kyle had run a circuitous route, so we found ourselves taking what was essentially a two-mile jaunt around the block.

              The night had a certain heaviness to it, that leaden heaviness in the air that always follows the dumping of a prodigious quantity of rain. The sound of trees dripping their residuals onto the sidewalk was all around us, and made for what would have been a romantic soundtrack were it any other night.

              We walked, following Kyle's route. Here and there we stopped to examine marks in the sidewalk, or to poke through a trashcan. In all honesty, he poked, I watched. I have a little germ problem, remember. My wonderful friend Detective Lester Moore of the Carl's Cove Police Department does not. I made sure to keep at least two feet of space between us, lest any of those nasties jump off his body onto mine.

              It was about 11:00 pm when we got back to the house. Candace was still sleeping on the couch. Amanda and Bernadette were still sitting at the kitchen table, chatting casually, both looking worn and in need of rest.

              "The two of you can go home if you need to," said Lester. "We can stay here with her."

              "She should be somewhere else," said Amanda.

              "I agree," I said.

              Lester nodded and said to me, "You and I are going to try to convince her to stay someplace, perhaps with family members, once she awakens."

              "Righto."

              What I didn’t say right then and there was that it was a task more easily said than done. As the night progressed, I found myself unable to shake the feeling that Candace had an ulterior motive for wanting to hang around.

              "Speaking of sleep," I said, "the two of you look like you can use some."

              "You can say that again," said Amanda. "What a night."

              "I don't know if I could sleep if I tried," said Bernadette.

              "Well," I said, "I wish I could say it's been a fun night. At least it started out fun. Thank you guys for doing this. Maybe another time?"

              The two women returned the sentiment with nothing more than perfunctory smiles.

              When they left, I turned to Lester. "We need to take a look at that door upstairs. I have an idea."

              We padded upstairs and went to Kyle's office.

              "Wait here for a minute," I said, and walked inside and closed the door.

              I bent down to examine the doorknob. There was a button that you pressed to lock it. I did so and couldn’t hear any indication that it was locked.

              I called to Lester on the other side of the door. "Do me a favor and try to come in."

              I heard him turn the knob. It jiggled around without giving.

              I opened the door. "Just as I thought," I said, "it's been tampered with."

              "How so?"

              "I'm not sure, but whatever mechanism is responsible for the dead latch locking in place has been removed or damaged. The latch moves so that the door can be closed, but the knob never turns. In effect, this doorknob is always in a locked position. This is why it was so easy to open with a library card. There didn’t have to be anyone in this room to lock it from the other side. It just needed to be closed."

              He bent down and examined the knob. "I don’t see any evidence of tampering," he said. "But I do see some wear on the screw heads. That could be from installation of the knob."

              "Or it could be from someone doing their best to cover up the fact that they brought Kyle Young's dead body up here to make it look like he died at home by his own hand. One way to find out. The knob on the bathroom door is the exact same model. Got a flat head screwdriver on you by any chance?"

              He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Swiss army knife.

              "You were a boy scout, weren't you?"

              "Eagle scout."

              "Endlessly fascinating, my friend."

              I took the knife from him and found the screwdriver attachment. I undid the knob on the office and pulled it out. I then went to the bathroom door and unscrewed that one. Without the inside knob attached, it was easy to see into the workings of the exposed latch assembly. I snapped a picture of the bathroom door assembly with my phone and then compared it to the office knob. It was hard to tell the difference, but I eventually found it.

              "See this?" I said, pointing to the office door latch assembly with my pinky. "There's a tiny component missing from the latch assembly here that prevents the lock from fully engaging, while the mechanism that holds the outside knob in the locked position seems to be permanently set that way. Not so with the bathroom door. See?" I showed him on the phone pic and then took him to the bathroom door to see it in person.

              "Incredible," said Lester. "Man, you are amazing."

              "Again with the man," I said. "That's an awful habit. You really need to break yourself of it."

              He ignored me. "This is really starting to look like murder now. Tomorrow we have work to do."

              "I agree," I said. "We need to find those folks in his running network."

              "Not only that," said Lester, "but you're forgetting about one key part of this mystery: How and why that body fell. This proves nothing on its own. I admit, altogether, the evidence is starting to point to something foul. But there's one immutable fact: The four of you swore you heard a body hit the floor."

              He was right, and I felt like cursing him for it.

              A text came through on Lester's cell phone.

              "Huh," he said.

              "What?"

              "A man has gone missing. Guy by the name of William Restocruz. His mom called it in. He was supposed to meet her for dinner. She can’t find him. I may have to get going if they find a body."

              "You sure do know how to turn a phrase," I said. "A body. This is a human being."

              "Madison, I can’t get involved emotionally. One thing you learn is you never say 'passed on.' The word is died. You start using emotional terms and you're through in this business."

              He was right, unfortunately.

              "You know," I said, trying to keep my voice down, lest Candace should awaken and overhear our conversation, "maybe we ought to be thinking locally here."

              "What do you mean?"

              "I mean we're so concerned with the leads we have, and yet we're missing an opportunity."

              "Meaning?"

              "Meaning that if Kyle was murdered, he was murdered on his run. The killer was someone who knew his routine so well that he or she had to know what time he'd be out, but also had to know what time
we'd
be out."

              "And that points us toward..."

              "We'll have to go back and wait until she wakes up," I said.

              We went back downstairs and into the living room. When we got there, we saw that Candace had fallen off the sofa and was lying on the floor in a heap.

              "They're saying it was an overdose of Valium," said Lester. "She's alive but in a coma. We got there just in time."

              We watched the EMTs load up Candace's prostrate body into the back of an ambulance and drive away.

              "I should have stayed with her," I said.

              "You can’t start with that," said Lester. "We had no idea."

              "No. It was irresponsible of us to leave her alone."

              "There was no protocol that said we had to remain with her."

              "I hate it when you’re a cop. Protocol? Once again, Lester, this is a person's life we're talking about here!"

              "Easy does it, Madison."

              "No, Lester. We messed up big time. We left a vulnerable woman on her own. We're responsible for what she did."

              "If she wanted to kill herself, she would have found a way, even if we were standing right in front of her."

              "I'm hating you right now," I said. And I was.

              "Fine," he said, "hate me all you want. You can even blame me. But don't blame yourself. She made the choice to take those pills."

              I looked at him. I had
that
look.

              "Oh no," he said. "What now?"

              I ran past him up the stairs to the bathroom medicine cabinet.

              "I knew it!" I yelled, and then went to the bottom of the stairs with the pill bottle.

              He appeared at the bottom of the stairs. "What did you know?"

              "There were five pills in this bottle when I got her the Valium she asked for. There are still four left."

              "Are you sure?" said Lester.             

              I descended the stairs slowly, feeling the weight of each step the closer I got to him. When I reached the bottom of the staircase, I said, "I guess we can start blaming ourselves after all."

#

              There was no break in, I told Lester over the phone, which means that whoever gave Candace the Valium either had a key to the place or was one of Candace's acquaintances.

              "
You can’t be sure of that
," he said in his at-work tone. We were supposed to go out together to interview our leads, but the trip was called off in order for Lester to look into the case of William Restocruz, the man reported missing.

              "Lester," I said with more than a touch of impatience, "you saw the bottle."

              "
I know I saw the bottle. That only proves she didn’t take any from that bottle. Maybe she had another bottle stashed somewhere.
"

              "Did you look?"

              "
We looked. Couldn’t find anything.
"

              "Ok, so where are we?"

              "
We're in the dark is where we are. You have to understand that there are several steps you have to go through before jumping straight to an accusation of murder. I let myself go there and I shouldn’t have.
"

              "Fine."

              "
Don't start, Madison.
"

              "You have enough evidence here to at least start building a case. I don’t know why you don’t do it."

              "
We
will
do it. These things take time. We still have to wait for the coroner's report on Kyle Young.
"

              He was right, and I was acting like a child.

              "I'm sorry," I said, "I'm just a little frustrated."

              "
I understand
."

              "We'll talk tomorrow?"

              "
I'll call you later tonight
."

              "Ok," I said, and hung up.

              I called the hospital. They weren't allowing Candace any visitors for the time being, which either means I would need the assistance of the police – fat chance given the current climate – or I would have to be very close family. I toyed with the idea of contacting her family to see if I could wangle an in, then chastised myself for thinking about this the way I'd accused Lester of thinking. Candace was not merely a piece of a puzzle, she was a human being in a lot of emotional, and now physical pain.

#

              It was a chilly night for June. Lester had not bothered to remove the light jacket he was wearing.

              "The autopsy results are in," he said as he took a seat in my living room.

              "Ok," I said, "and?"

              He gave it to me straight. "Heart attack."

              I shook my head immediately. "No way."

              "Madison."

              "No way, Lester. They need to look at it again."

              "They looked at it enough. My chief is telling me I have to start backing off this one. The coroner's report is going to be filed."

              "What about the body falling?"

              "No one saw it."

              "We all
heard
it."

              "And it's all been duly noted. The four of you were under the influence of alcohol and—"

              "Oh, no way," I said forcefully.

              "Madison, take two objective steps back and look at the picture here. We have four unreliable witnesses. You had all been drinking. There was a heavy storm outside. Perhaps it was a thunderclap, or something else. There are many ways to deceive the human ear."

              "We felt the vibration."

              "Madison, I have to go. I'm exhausted. I'm sorry."

              I felt like picking up the man and throwing him across the room.

             
I guess I'm flying solo again
, I thought.

              The weekend had done nothing for me. All it had done was immerse me into another murder case.

              And I hadn’t refused to go further. Instead, I went willingly.

              Perhaps this was just what I needed.

              Lester left and I didn’t say goodbye to him. I heard him drive away and I sat and sulked. Then I called Gerry.

              "Yeah?" he answered. I could hear the whirring of the brewing machinery behind him.

              "It's me, I have a problem. I'm not coming in tomorrow."

              "You ok?"

              "I think so. I just need one more day by myself. You can handle the business today, right?"

              "Yeah, I should be able to."

              "Alright, bye Gerry."

              "Bye, Madison."

              If there was one thing I wasn't too worried about, it was the fact that the next day was Monday. Mondays in the summer tend to be dead. People travel here on the weekend, they go out and get themselves sunburned beyond recognition and need to rest up and rub Noxzema on their faces all day Monday. No one ever feels like going out on Mondays in the summer in Carl's Cove.

              Except for yours truly, who was ready to officially begin her new life as a private investigator. Split infinitives be damned.

#

              Maggie Childsworth was the first name on Kyle's list of running buddies. I'd finagled an interview with her first on the basis of my name, which she recognized from the contents of her fridge; and second, by telling her the plain and simple truth: a guy on in her running network had passed on, died, and I was investigating it. Okay, maybe it wasn't the whole truth, but it was plain and simple.

              She was a slight woman in her mid-thirties. She'd lost a ton of weight, she told me, and was thinking about a mid-thirties career change from librarian to full-time fitness coach.

              "I hear you," I said. "I myself have been considering changing career paths lately."

              "How long have you owned the brewery?" she asked, her voice soft and polite.

              "Three or four months," I said, not without embarrassment.

              "Three or four months?"

              "Maybe five."

              "Oh my."

              "It’s not exactly a career change. More like I never really had a career to begin with."

              "I think I understand," she said with a smile.

              She reached for one of the cups of tea she'd poured out for the two of us, having waited long enough for me to grab one for myself and then given up. There was no ring on her finger.

              There was an assortment of books placed strategically around the living room of this modest Colonial house. The room was warm and done in burgundy and brown leather. Some of the books were on shelves made to look invisible, so that the books appeared stuck surrealistically to the walls.

              She noticed my ogling the books. "The first editions are locked up in that cabinet over there. Would you like to see them?"

              The cabinet was an old one, perfectly suited for displaying antique books.

              I saw an assortment of old tomes, some peeling, but most in very good to near-perfect condition. There were editions of books by John Steinbeck, Norman Mailer, and John Cheever, plus what looked to be rare copies of books that had nothing on the spines.

              "My mother gave me those. She kept them very well. They aren’t worth anything, but I can’t throw them away."

              "Then they
are
worth something," I said. "They're priceless to you."

              "I guess you're right. My husband wanted to get rid of them. I solved that problem. I got rid of him instead."

              I chuckled nervously. "Do you mind my asking?"

              "He cheated on me. I found out and said nothing. Instead I cheated right back on him. It was a real healthy situation." She laughed at her own joke. "I'm sorry, but I have gallows humor about it still. It only happened six months ago. That he cheated, I mean. We officially called it quits a month ago."

              "Do you date?" I asked, somewhat boldly.

              "Since my affair, no. But I was thinking of getting involved with the man I had the affair with again. That is, I wanted to, but he's...well, let's just say he's no longer interested. It was an extramarital thing for him, too. Like I said, I tend to go for the healthy ones."

              I turned my attention back to the books and we chatted about them for a bit: where she acquired them, had she'd ever gotten the first editions appraised, and so forth.

              "I hear from people who are avid runners," I said, "that running takes up their lives almost 24/7. They don’t even get a chance to read. Is that true?"

              She laughed. "Somewhat. You get caught up in the lifestyle, chatting with others about it, researching footwear, the latest trends…"

              "Apps?"

              "Apps, certainly."

              I guess I was feeling exceptionally bold, for I said, "I read an article recently that you can share info with others. Like a network."

              "Absolutely."

              "I imagine it's a kind of friendly competition."             

              "It's
supposed
to be friendly," she said with a chuckle. "It isn’t always. The info gets shared, sometimes in real time, and you get encouragement and cheers from your network, and then you go onto social media and see this passive-aggressiveness from them."

              "In what way?"

              "It's hard to explain. It's all a big cliquey club, but there's infighting. Arguments over how to time yourself, about technique. It gets personal."

              "Huh," I said. "I guess I'm having trouble picturing how that's so, but then again, I guess some people are just like that – passive-aggressive, I mean. Did you ever have personal experience with that?"

              "Of course. Our dear departed Mr. Young was one such character. He made quite a few enemies. How many people were in his running network?"

              "Just two."

              "There you go," she said, shaking her head in disappointment. "No doubt he started off with about ten or twenty. You lose 'em quickly when you act like that."

              "Like what?" I said, looking her in the eye.