Murder By The Pint (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 1) (9 page)

              We needed paper for the fax machine. Thanks to yours truly, the transition to the Electronic Age was coming soon. Not soon enough though, and we needed to send a fax to one of our creditors.

              One thing about a small business: Even the owner has got to roll up her sleeves and scrub the floor every once in a while. Or run out to the stationery store.

              I went in for printer paper and wound up with an armload of tzotchkies that would crash eBay's servers. This was ridiculous. No one needs a paperweight with the map of Carl's Cove Modge-Podged onto it. No one needs a half a dozen pens with little beer mugs on their tips. Maybe one. Not a half a dozen. I began putting some of my stuff back onto the shelves when I caught the eye of a strange-looking dude with a black T-shirt, sharp, piercing eyes, and three-days' growth on his face.

              I averted his gaze and moved on.

              Until I saw in my peripheral vision that he was approaching.

              If there was one thing my military father taught me about combat, it was this: Often the first line of defense involves making the first move.

              I walked up to Captain Stubble and got in his face. "If you're not studying my face for a painting from memory later on, I just want you to know that you're making me uncomfortable."

              "I'm sorry," he said, his eyes wide. He'd taken a few steps back as I approached and was now hanging his head like a dog that’d just had an accident on the sofa. "You're Madison?"

              "Yeah?"

              "One of your employees can’t be trusted," he said quickly, then turned and walked briskly out of the store.

              I dropped my ream of paper and the armload of tzotchkies onto a single shelf and ran after him. He'd ducked into an alley.

              Here's one thing you should know about Madison Darby: Madison Darby doesn’t think sometimes when it comes to confronting strangers, or did you know that already?

              So I ran after him. Now I think he must have stopped short, because I don’t run that fast, but when I rounded the corner I smacked right into the guy, sending him and me to the ground. I heard all the air come out of him in one giant
whoosh
, accompanied by a prolonged grunt. He wheezed in and called out to me, "Don’t hurt me!"

              I don’t know what came over me. I guess I'd had enough of this mystery. Or maybe I just need a series of anger management sessions. Whatever the case is, I grabbed him by two fistfuls of his shirt and pulled him close.

              "What's going on here?" I shouted in his face.

              His expression was a mix of horror and panic, wide-eyed and open, wheezing mouth.

              "Don’t hurt me," he said again.

              "Who sent you?" I said. "And what's going on?"

              "I just wanted to talk to you about someone who works for you! Her name is Hildy and you can't trust her!"

              I let go and got up off him. "What about Hildy?"

              He spoke and he lay there panting and wheezing. "She's my wife."

              I stared at him. "I didn’t know she was married."

              "I'm not surprised. She never talks about me. And why would she? She's cheating on me. That's all I wanted to tell you. She's cheating on me and she can’t be trusted."

              "She's cheating on you? With whom?"

              "I don’t know. Maybe someone she works with? I don’t know."

              "And you’re telling me this because...?"

              He stared for a moment, and then said, "I just wanted you to know. And maybe you can help me find the guy."

              Suddenly it struck me. This poor guy wasn't telling me anything that had to do with my little mystery. He was a desperate, cuckolded husband out for answers, and maybe a bit of revenge.

              "Listen pal," I said, helping him up, "I have my hands full with a lot of stuff these days, and I have to run a business. If Hildy is cheating on you, I'm sorry, but I can’t get involved in my employees' personal issues – you understand? Unless it's hurting their job performance…and Hildy's doing just fine. So we have to part ways here. Good luck to you. I'm sorry I pounced on you like that."

              He brushed himself off and nodded to me. Then he began to skulk away. But then he turned and looked at me with the most sorrowful expression I've ever seen.

              "I thought maybe you could help me look for clues."

              "What clues?"

              He shrugged. "There's nothing at the house. Maybe there's evidence at her job: e-mails, an appointment book…whatever."

              I shook my head to dislodge all the fuzz that had gotten in there over the years. "Ok, listen, what's your name?"

              "Bryce."

              "Bryce. Bryce what?"

              "Bosch."

              "Bosch...hold on. You're...?"

              "Eddie's son."

              "Hold on here."

              "It's not what you think."

              "I don’t even know what I think."

              "I mean, I have no relationship with my father. Neither does my wife, to be honest. She's embarrassed to know him. She kept her maiden name so as not to be a part of the Bosch line in any way."

              "Bryce, I need a break from all this."

              "All I'm asking is that you just maybe, I don’t know, ask a few questions here and there. Poke around. See if you can find anything."

              "I don’t think she's having an affair," I said. "But if it will make you happy, I'll pull the phone logs and see if there are any unusual patterns of outgoing calls. Okay?"

              He shut his eyes and nodded.

              "What’s your number, Bryce?"

              "Text, don’t call."

              "Fine."

              He gave me his number, and then thanked me weakly and walked off without another word.

#

              And so it came to pass that I found myself, after hours, rummaging around in Hildy's office.

              I'm not proud of this, but let me try to explain.

              You ever find yourself looking for a little sweet stuff to nosh on? You open up the fridge and there's a whole lot of stuff that doesn't go together: ketchup, old pineapple, a jar of capers, and a half a quart of some powdered diet drink that dates back to the last presidential administration. So you open the freezer and there's a pint of ice cream that you'd forgotten about. You’d bought it for company but that company never showed. So there it is, waiting for you. So you grab a spoon and you say, "I'll just dig in a little – one or two spoonfuls – that's all." And then ten minutes later you’re standing there in front of the open freezer with a container of Ben & Jerry's and you’re scraping away at the bottom of the container?

              Okay, maybe you'll understand then. I started with the phone logs and proceeded on until I was rummaging through her desk. Something took hold of me and I couldn’t stop. Like with the tub of ice cream, every little bite was priming me for the next. The phone logs showed nothing. Okay, maybe she's texting or calling on her cell and deleting the info. Only, Bryce Bosch seemed like the type who'd already looked into that area, otherwise why would he be coming to me? So, the answer could have been here in this office. And so I looked around on the top of her desk. There were no pictures of Bryce there. No pictures of anyone. The desk was the picture of neatness to the point where it was hard to determine whether anyone at all used it.

              So I opened the top desk drawer.

              Not much in there.

              Did I tell you about my pendant?

              Okay, I wear this diamond pendant. It's not real. But my parents once went to look at houses for a time-share deal down in North Carolina and the agency used this phony door prize raffle thing to lure in prospective buyers. They advertised that you could win a Cadillac, a TV, or a diamond pendant. We found out later on that everyone who walked through the place never won the Cadillac or the TV. Everyone walked out with the pendant. And it wasn't a real diamond, which is why my father turned and handed it to me in the car on the way home. I felt so special, and yes it's fake, but I can’t seem to let go of it because it reminds me so much of my Dad and the way he was. And I swear that if the thing wasn't around my neck, I'd run into a burning house to go and fetch it out.

              That said, I had that very pendant around my desk as I bent over the open desk drawer, and it slipped out of the top of my shirt and hit the bottom of the drawer.

              I guess I'm a pretty good judge of sound, because even though the desk had very little in it, the way the pendant knocked against the wood told me that something was there to dull the resonance. It was this dull, dead sound. Like something was underneath the drawer, deadening the vibrations.

              And so it was.

              A manila envelope. Taped to the bottom of the drawer. And so I proceeded toward the bottom of the ice cream container.

              I peeled it off carefully. It was held closed with one of those metal clasps.

              Inside was a series of letters.

              I can’t tell you how they possessed me. In retrospect, I feel dirty for having violated Hildy's privacy like that. But they were fascinating and told the story of a woman seeking a love relationship and being thwarted at every turn. The hand that wrote these notes was a neat one, and belonged to a man, that was obvious, and he obviously had no interest in her. Each letter was a polite rejection of sorts, explaining that he wanted to be with our Hildy but that she was married and it wasn’t right. And besides, he was married too, and trying to make it work. His name was James.

              So Hildy wasn't having an affair. She was
trying
to.

              There were about a dozen letters in all, and the most recent one James had sent was different in tone from the previous ones. It wasn't a kiss-off, but neither was it an acceptance. Rather, it was an instruction of sorts. "
Do what I say and this will get you closer to me than ever
," it said. And the following line, the one that closed the letter, the most intriguing and enigmatic of all: "
And you'll receive our forever in a box of yellow gold
."

              I put the letters back in the envelope, resealed and retaped it to the bottom of the desk.

              I felt awful. What does one do in a situation like this? Do I call up Bryce and tell him?

              No, not tonight, I decided. I needed sleep. I needed to think it over.

              And later on, in bed, I tossed and turned and heard that last line echoing from some tortured past:
Receive our forever in a box of yellow gold.

              I got very little sleep that night, and when I did, I dreamed of things that were very sad indeed.

#

              Now we come to the point in the tale where the needle on the crazy meter begins to spin off the dial. That is, the very next day.

              We weren't expecting any tasters. It still wasn't peak season. Besides, the weather was drab. It was that horrible moment before a storm is about to break, but never does. That heaviness in the air that presses on the sides of your head. All I wanted to do was to go home and curl up with a good book and a cup of hot coffee. But I made a promise to Dad, so I forged on, trying to keep up my spirits and the spirits of my staff.

              And wouldn't you know it? A guy walks in all by himself and says he wants a tasting.

              Everything about this guy seemed to be average. He was of average height and build. He had a face like the nice guy next door, but not too nice. He walked slowly and casually, like he had no place to go and was not in any rush to be anywhere.

              You don’t realize how strange average is until you actually see it.

              Being the all-powerful and benevolent ruler that I am, I let my tasting hostess, Trudy – our receptionist when she wasn't conducting tastings – go home for the day. Gerry was busy tending to a batch, and the rest of the staff was busy with the variety of small tasks involved in the normal business of a microbrewery. So it was up to little old Madison Darby herself to conduct the tasting. Very well then.

              I approached Mr. Clean with an award-winning smile and presented him with our flight menu. We serve five of whatever's on tap in four-ounce glasses, and we structure the tasting so that the palate isn’t bombarded with too big a contrast in flavors; rather, we build from light-bodied beers to heavy, from mild to robust, in order to condition the unsuspecting palate to the wonders of the complexity of beer.

              He was soft-spoken, a tenor, and he had cash.

              I don’t mean he was paying with cash, although he eventually did, I mean he was wealthy: nails manicured, high-end clothing – all the little refinements that you notice when you get up close and personal with someone – clean, straight teeth, smooth manners. The works. Oh, and a Porsche parked right outside our door. Did I forget to mention that?

              I told him about the honey wheat starter: light-bodied, fruity but with a slight yeasty bite to it. Delicious, I said. One of my favorites. I wasn't lying.

              He sniffed, sipped, rolled it around his mouth. No expression on his face. Only a slight look to the left, then off and to the right.

              "You're not a talker, are you?" I said.

              He smiled, close-mouthed.

              "Okay," I said. This was going to be difficult. "Next up is our pale ale. It's a bit maltier, which means it has a nice bready sweetness to it, but that gets slammed down by an aggressive hop bitterness.

              I was starting to get good at this.

              He hesitated at this one, staring at the glass as if it were about to jump up and bite him in the neck. Then he sipped.

              The look on this man's face.

              It was the look one might have when one is about to drink hot chocolate, sips, and then realizes one is actually drinking Lysol.

              He actually made a sound.

              "I guess that's not your style," I said.

              "Nope," he rasped, and then made a sound in his throat as if he was trying to dislodge a small animal from it. "I don’t like bitter things, really." He looked left, then off and to the right. In the same exact motion and speed as he'd just done.

              "Hold on a second," I said. Maybe it was the weather, but I was feeling a bit feisty. "You don’t like bitter things, and you came to a beer tasting?"

              Mr. Clean shrugged.

              That's when Max Bosch came in holding a dirty mop head in his hands. "I couldn’t find da new one. How do ya reattach dis?"

              I was horrified. The dripping, germ-ridden mess of filthy spaghetti in his hands reeked of all kinds of foulness. In front of my customer. In front of me!

              The germs on that mop head cried out to me, told me they knew I'd killed their pa and now they was a-gonna git me back.

              Before I was able to react with the unbridled horror I was feeling, Mr. Clean turned around and looked at Max.

              Max's eyes widened. "Oh heh— hey, 'lo there, Mr. Pitt, how are you today?"

              My customer nodded once. "Max."

              "You know each other?"

              "Dis is Mr. Pitt. He's a, an old friend o' mine."

              The customer got up from his stool, dropped fifty dollars on the bar – the flight was only ten – and said, "See you around, Max." And walked out.

              I stood there, staring at the fifty, shifting my gaze to Max, his dirty mop head, and the stranger pulling away from our building in a brand new, sparkling red Porsche. Although I can’t really be sure, I probably looked like someone who'd just endured mild electrocution.

              "What was that?" was all I could say after about a minute of muteness.

              "Dat was Cornell Pitt. He's a great guy. Promised me a job. Great guy. Well, I gotta go now, Miss Darby. I gotta reattach dis ting and mop up da can."

              "The bathroom can wait. Can you tell me what that was all about?"

              "Oh yeah," he said, gesturing with the filthy mop head. "He's in, uh…whatdyacallit…real estate—"

              "Before you continue," I said, "kindly get that disease-ridden thing out of my tasting room."

              He leaned out the door of the tasting room and tossed the head onto the floor.

              I ignored it. Every battle has its time.

              "So," he said, wiping his hands on his pants, "I got outta the slammer, right? And I was looking for a job. Anything, you know? I mean, here I am mopping up da can. Well, I run into Mr. Pitt when I went to apply for a job mopping up da can in another place. One of dem New York City…whatdyacallit…corporate buildings. Dose tings dat look like dere made o' glass. Anyway, I'm waiting there in da lobby and I'm filling out da application, and Mr. Pitt walks by. Now, he sorta knows me because my son works for him—"

              "Wait, hold on. You have a son?"

              "Yeah, a little brat. Name's Bryce. I didn’t name him. Dat was da missus. She was da heir to da fortune of dat company dat makes da brownies and da cakes in boxes, you know you just add water and trow 'em in da oven? Cake mixes, right? Dat's her family. We divorced and dat was dat. I got into some trouble. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Where was I?"

              "Your son, Bryce?"

              "Yeah, yeah. So da little brat works for Pitt doing da books for him."

              "His accountant."

              "Yeah, yeah. And so Pitt walks by and sees me and says, 'Max, you here looking for a job?' I say yeah. He says 'well you, you been in da slammer right?' I say yeah, but I'm clean and I'm trying to make better o' myself, you know, same spiel I gave you. And so Pitt says, 'well, Max, you do me a favor, you get yourself a job someplace respectable and you hold onto it for three months, and in three months you can come here and work for me.'"

              "So that's when you came to me."

              "Yeah, yeah. Exactly."

              "Lucky me."

              "Exactly."

              "What was he doing here?"

              Max shrugged. "I dunno. Tasting beer?"

              "Well, yeah, that's what he seemed like he was here for. But he only got to the second one. And he hated it. Said he doesn’t like bitter things. Then he plops down a fifty and splits."

              "Huh."

              "No idea what he was here for?"

              "Nope. Well if you don’t need me, I'm gonna mop up da can."

              With that, Max walked out of the room as fast as his stubby little legs could carry him, both arms swinging like pendulums.

              I went to the window and stared out at the darkening sky, the leaden air pounded at my temples. And I whispered, "Just rain already."

              "Oh, Miss Darby?"

              I turned around. Max was poking his head into the room. He was holding his coat.

              "Sorry, didn’t mean to…whatdyacallit…startle ya, but I just wanted to tells ya that I'm actually quitting dis here job."

              I shook my head to get the marbles out of it. "Excuse me?"

              "Yeah, I'm uh, whatdyacallit, uh, moving on to greener carpets."

              "Just like that? No two weeks' notice?"

              "What now?"

              "It's customary when you leave a job to let them know two weeks in advance that you're leaving."

              "Huh. Is dat so? Well, uh, heh, dat's a problem cuz, you see, I really gotta go. How 'bout dis, I'm leaving in two weeks, but I'm gonna need da next two weeks off."

              I pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose and squeezed. "Whatever, Max. Just go. I'm so confused right now."

              "Yeah, okay den. And uh, you know, tanks for da opportunity, Miss Darby."

              "Sure thing, Max."

              "Yeah, see ya 'round."

              And just like that, the rain began to fall. Hard.