Murder on the Rocks (15 page)

Billy rolled his eyes and I had to smile. I was fairly certain the chance of Missy
asking one clever question, much less multiple ones, was slim at best.

“You don’t need to interrogate anyone,” Duncan said. “I just want you to let me know
if anyone says or does anything that seems suspicious.”

“Woo-hoo! Fun times!” Missy said, and then she went back to cleaning tables.

I gave Duncan a weary look and said, “This kind of fun I could do without.”

I
t turns out murder can be quite profitable. My proceeds for the night were several
hundred dollars above my average. That made me happy, but I also felt guilty, as if
I was somehow cashing in on the tragedy of Ginny’s death.

After Billy, Debra, and Missy left for the night, Duncan and I settled in at the bar.
I mixed us both a drink and took the seat next to him. “What’s this?” Duncan asked,
eyeing the drink skeptically.

“Something I call Summer Lightning Lemonade. Every summer I make up a vodka infusion
with summer raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. Then I pour half an ounce
each of the vodka infusion, gin, white rum, Triple Sec, and tequila over ice, add
two tablespoons of lemon juice concentrate and shake it all up. I top it off with
a little 7-Up to give it some fizz and voilà . . . a nice thirst quencher with a hell
of a kick to it. It’s not summer but it feels like it, so I thought it would be appropriate.”

Duncan took a sip and made an approving face. “This is good,” he said. “I thought
it would be too frou-frou, but it’s not.”

“Are you afraid a frou-frou drink will somehow threaten your manhood?”

Duncan scoffed and put on a stern expression. “I’m man enough to drink the frilliest
drink you want to make me,” he said in an exaggeratedly deep voice. He took another
swig to prove his point and I hid a smile when I saw his eyes water.

“So what are your thoughts after your first night here?” I asked after taking a big
swallow of my own drink, just to prove I could. “Anyone stand out to you other than
Gary?”

“Several people. There’s no shortage of motives and I’ve learned over the years that
no matter how unlikely it seems, anyone is capable of killing under the right circumstances.
We’re really a rather brutal race.”

“That’s depressing.”

“It’s reality.”

“Who’s highest on your list?”

“Well, Gary, obviously. I’m going to have my guys search his place, pull his financials,
and have a chat with his parole officer.” He paused, sipped his drink, and then said,
“You mentioned something earlier when we were talking to Gary that I wanted to ask
you about—missing money, watered-down booze, and cockroaches? What was all that about?”

I sighed and took a big swig of my drink before I answered. “I’ve had a lot of strange
things happen lately, things I can’t really explain. A couple of times I’ve discovered
that some of my bottles of booze have been dumped out and replaced with colored water.
Problem is I didn’t realize it until I’d served the stuff to my customers, who then
thought I was trying to rip them off. At one point I thought it might be a supplier
problem, but it happened more than once with different brands from different suppliers.

“I’ve also had a problem with money disappearing. At the end of the night I count
up my till, and any cash and receipts I have get stored in the safe in my office until
morning when the bank opens. I don’t make deposits every day so sometimes there will
be two or three days of receipts in there. But there have been times when I’ve gone
to retrieve the money to make a deposit and I’ve discovered it missing.”

“Are you sure you locked the safe every time?”

I nodded. “I might have had some doubts the first time I found money missing, but
after that I was very careful about it. And I had money go missing at least three
more times.”

“Who knows the combination to your safe?”

“I’m pretty sure my dad and I were the only ones before he died. Once he was gone
I felt like I needed to share it with someone in case something happened to me. So
I told Pete and Billy.”

“Pete?”

“Pete Sampson. He’s my lunchtime bartender so you haven’t met him yet. He’ll be here
tomorrow.”

“So those are the only two people you’ve given the safe combo?”

I nodded. “What else? You mentioned something about cockroaches.”

“Ah, yes, the roaches and the rat.”

“Rat?” Duncan said with a slight shudder.

“Yes, a rat. Back in March I noticed a bad smell in the bar, like spoiled meat. At
first I thought it was just a synesthetic reaction to something but then my employees
and several customers commented on it, so I knew it had to be real. I searched high
and low for two weeks trying to find the source while the smell just got worse. I
cleaned out the fridge and all the trash cans, I mopped and wiped and bleached and
sterilized everything I could find. I even had my water tested, but to no avail. My
customer base started falling off; even some of my regulars didn’t come in. Then I
finally found where the smell was coming from. There was a dead rat inside a heater
vent in the floor over by the other end of the bar.”

“So?” Duncan said with a shrug. “Rats are known to do that sort of thing.”

“But after I found it I called an exterminator to come and check the place out, thinking
there might be more of them. He not only came up empty, he said he couldn’t figure
out how the rat got into the vent in the first place because it was a big rat and
there was some kind of screen in the vent. That screen was intact and something the
rat couldn’t have fit through. Plus the floor grate covering the vent had fresh scratch
marks in it by the screws and along one edge, marks the exterminator said made it
appear as if someone had taken the grate up to put the rat in there.”

I took another drink before continuing. “If it hadn’t been for that discovery, I might
not have thought twice about the cockroach invasion at the start of this summer, but
it was a little strange, too.”

“How so?”

“It was as if they appeared and multiplied overnight. One day, no cockroaches. The
next day, I had hundreds, thousands of them. Needless to say, it put off a few of
my customers and I had to shut the place down for three days to get an exterminator
in here and then clean up after he fumigated the place.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow.”

“Are you still having these issues or have they stopped?”

“I haven’t had a problem with missing money or watered-down booze for the past couple
of months, and there haven’t been any new infestations of any kind.”

“That’s good.”

“I guess, but I’ve just discovered a new problem. I’ve had a couple of dozen bottles
go missing from my inventory downstairs in the basement, and whoever is taking the
stuff knows what they’re doing because it’s the expensive liquors that are disappearing,
the Grey Goose vodka, the Patrón tequila, and some other top shelf bottles. My employees
know about the other problems but I haven’t told anyone about this one because I’m
not sure it’s even connected to the other stuff. Whatever the case, the end result
has been a huge hit to my customer base, lost revenues, added expense.... I’ll be
honest with you, Duncan. I’m hanging on by a thread here. I own the building and it’s
worth some money, but my father borrowed against it to buy stuff for the bar and there’s
nothing left now. That’s why I was so determined to open for business today. I can’t
afford any more lost revenue.”

Duncan nodded and the two of us sipped our drinks. “It certainly suggests an inside
job,” he said. “How else would anyone be able to do all those things?”

“You think it’s one of my employees.” It wasn’t a question. I was smart enough to
make the connections; I just didn’t want to. I’m a good ostrich at times.

“It has to be someone who spends a lot of time here, who knows the bar and your routines,
someone who has access to the place. Tell me, have you ever noticed anything else
that struck you as wrong?”

His question confused me. “What do you mean by wrong?”

“You know, little things that seem out of place, or anyone who you’ve found in a part
of the building that they had no business being in at the time, that sort of thing.”

I frowned and hesitated to answer. On the one hand, I had incidents like that nearly
every day. Things were always being moved by my customers and employees and my synesthesia
registered all these changes on some level. It was something I worked at ignoring
on a daily basis. But there was something else, and I didn’t know if I wanted to share
it with Duncan.

“Come on, spit it out,” Duncan encouraged, reading me like the proverbial book.

“You’ll probably think I’m crazy, or overemotional, or something like that.”

“I promise to keep an open mind.”

“And I’m not even sure if what I’ve experienced is real or some of my reactions.”

Duncan stared at me, patient but expectant.

“Sometimes late at night when I’m in bed I’ve heard things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Just noises . . . creaks, and bangs, and knocks . . . all the settling sounds you
might expect to hear in an old building.” I shrugged as if to dismiss them but Duncan
saw right through it.

“But you don’t think it’s the building, or one of your reactions, do you?”

I shook my head. “It’s more than just the sounds, it’s a feeling I’ve had whenever
it’s happened. I don’t know if it’s my synesthesia, or my gut. Hell, maybe it’s just
my overactive imagination.”

“Does anyone else have keys to the bar beside you?”

“Sure. Debra and Pete both have one because they’re responsible for opening when they
work.”

“Did your father ever give Ginny a key?”

I started to shake my head but then stopped. Based on what I once thought I knew of
my father, I didn’t think he would have done something like that. But over the past
twenty-four hours I’d come to realize I might not have known my father as well as
I thought I did. “I don’t think so,” I told Duncan, “but I can’t be certain.”

We both took another sip of our drinks as we sat there, contemplating the implications
until Duncan broke the silence.

“Given the fact that we can’t be certain your father didn’t give out keys, and given
that several of your employees already have them, our list of suspects isn’t getting
narrowed down much. Even the employees who aren’t known to have a key might have swiped
and copied one from one of the employees who do. Hell, one of your regular customers
could. Is there a lock on the door that leads upstairs to your apartment?”

“Yes, a key lock in the knob and a dead bolt on the apartment side.”

“Do you routinely lock it?”

“I do. It was something Dad beat into my head at an early age because the door is
at the far end of the back hallway, out of sight much of the time, and close to the
exit. Since I spent time up there alone late at night while Dad was down here tending
bar, he insisted that I lock both locks whenever I went up.”

“Good. Stick with that routine. And I’d suggest you look into getting the locks changed
and a new set of keys made. And when you do, I wouldn’t give anyone a copy.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“You need to be scared, or at least on your toes.”

With that frightening caveat, I took a big gulp of my drink before asking, “So who
else do you like for the crime?”

“Despite what I said earlier, I still have an interest in Cora.”

“I’ll bet you do, after she shared her spare time hobby,” I teased.

Duncan laughed and shook his head. “That’s got nothing to do with it, other than to
convince me that there’s something a little off or odd about her. But a woman scorned
is one of the oldest motives in the books. To be honest, I’m hoping we can clear her
quickly because if she’s as good as she says she is with the computer stuff, she could
be a valuable asset down the road.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t see Cora as a killer. And why kill Ginny now? My
father’s been dead for ten months so Ginny didn’t pose any threat to her anymore.
Ginny hasn’t even been in the bar for several months so it’s not like she could be
competing with Cora for any other men.”

“It doesn’t mean they weren’t involved with the same man outside the bar. And as for
killing Ginny this long after your father, Cora could be mentally unbalanced. If that’s
the case, there’s no telling how bizarre her thoughts might be even though she seems
normal on a day-to-day basis. At the very least she seems to be a sex addict.”

I smiled. “Normal might be pushing it a bit when it comes to Cora, but I think eccentric
fits her better than crazy.”

“We’ll see. And then we have that Amundsen fellow. He’s got motive aplenty for wanting
Ginny dead. Have you ever met his wife, Suzanne?”

“No, but I almost feel like I know her, at least Tad’s version of her. He talks about
her all the time, and not in a nice way. But I’ve never actually met the woman.”

“I have.”

I shot him a look of surprise. “How? I thought you just moved here.”

“I did. But Suzanne Collier comes from family money, big family money. Her father
owns half of Chicago. That’s how I met her, at a fund-raiser in Chicago for the Illinois
PBA.”

“PBA?”

“The Police Benevolent Association.”

“Ah. So what is Suzanne Collier like?”

“She’s very . . . commanding,” Duncan said with a half-grin. “If Amundsen presents
her as domineering and controlling, I wouldn’t have a hard time believing that. But
it might also be the money that’s in control. Money is a powerful motive, and the
fact that Amundsen doesn’t just walk away from his wife shows he’s reluctant to give
that money up. So then the question becomes how desperate Amundsen is to escape. That
real estate deal was his big hope and it left him in worse financial shape than when
he started. Ginny was the one who built up his hope in the first place and talked
him into it. That sounds like a potential motive to me. He had to have been at least
a little pissed at Ginny, and I’d wager it was more than a little.”