A Deadly Draught (20 page)

He reached around me for Jake’s hand. “I’m Ronald Ramford.” He nodded toward the sheriff’s car. “What did she do? Speeding? Shoplifting? Your sticky fingers in junior high got you in some trouble, didn’t they, Harry?”

Puzzlement joined Jake’s frown. “Harry?”

“She was a real tomboy. We thought she needed a name that wasn’t so wimpy, so we called her Harry.”

Jake ignored Ronald’s good-natured ribbing of me as well as the looks of pure joy on both our faces. His police presence said he didn’t have the patience for jokes or a review of old times. “Do you know that the authorities have been looking for you for the past several weeks?”

Ronald and I weren’t in the mood to have our get-together ruined by Jake’s sour attitude.

“You read my ad in the Albany paper then?” I asked.

He nodded. A woman emerged from the passenger side of the van. She, too, appeared to have walked right out of a how-to-be-a-hippy manual. Long black dreadlocks swung in the moonlight, and delicate silver bells sewed onto the hem of her skirt tinkled as she stepped around the van to take my hand.

“Ronald has told me about you and your family. You saved his life, you know. If you hadn’t showed him such kindness when he was here, he would have killed himself. Surely he would have.” Her accent said she might have been from Jamaica. Listening to her with the jingle of the tiny bells in the background was like an island song set to the sound of the waves.

I gave Ronald another hug and reached out for Deni’s hand. “Good. You’re here, and that’s all that counts. How about a cup of coffee or a beer?” I put my arms around their waists and began steering them toward the house.

“Oh, hell, I give up. I’ll be back in the morning to ask you some questions.” Jake stalked off to his car and sped out of the drive, spraying gravel and dirt in his wake.

“Don’t visit Francine without me.” I yelled loud enough for my voice to carry into the next county, but I feared Jake might have decided not to hear me.

“Did we interrupt something important?” Ronald asked.

“I don’t think so. Let’s go into the house, and I’ll make some coffee and dig up a few stale cookies. Where are you staying? You can stay with me, if you like. Or you can have beer. You might want to try one of my new brews, or I think I’ve got a little wine.” I was so excited at Ronald’s appearance that I was running on and on, and I couldn’t help myself. Neither of my guests seemed to mind my chatter.

*

“I almost came back here five years ago when I heard about your father. He meant a lot to me, you know.” Ronald and Deni sampled Knightsbridge Ginseng Rush in my living room. “Great brew.” Ronald lifted his beer glass to the light and studied the amber glow of the liquid.

“This could make a beer drinker out of me.” Deni stuck out her tongue to lick away the foam that settled on her top lip.

“About Jake, he’s not such a bad guy. He’s just a little tense about this case. It’s his first in the county, and he wants to make a good impression on his boss and the people in the area.“

“You don’t need to explain. We understand.” Ronald spoke, but both heads wagged up and down in agreement. “I’m kind of glad you’re over Michael. I never thought the two of you were a good match anyway.”

Oh, no. They thought Jake was my boyfriend.

“Let me give you the whole story.” Deni and Ronald sat close on my battered maroon couch. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and the two sets of brown eyes focused on me. I rocked back and forth in my mother’s chair and told them about Michael Senior’s death and how I found the body, then updated them on the investigation so far and included Jake’s suspicion that my father’s death wasn’t suicide. I left out two things, Sally’s pregnancy and most of what they really wanted to know about Jake and me, but they seemed to respect my omissions and never pressed me for more about him.

“We’ll take you up on your offer to let us stay here. I’ll visit the family tomorrow, and I think I’d better go alone. From what you told me about Mother and Michael, I can’t trust how they might treat Deni, and I don’t want her hurt by their unkind words.”

Deni lifted her head off his shoulder, straightened up, and looked him in the eye. “I can take care of myself. Besides, when did you want to spring me on them?”

“She’s always right. Reminds me of you, Hera.”

Kind words, but nothing felt right in my life now, not my business or my personal life. Deni tried to hide a yawn behind her hand.

“We can talk more in the morning. I’m not being a very good hostess. I don’t even have anything substantial to offer you to eat. Everything’s in the freezer. I’ll give you my bedroom, and I’ll take Dad’s old room.”

“No, you won’t. We’ll sleep in your father’s room.” I squeezed Ronald’s arm in gratitude as I passed by him to run upstairs and make the bed. I hadn’t spent any time in Dad’s room since he died, and Ronald seemed to sense how difficult it would be for me to spend the night there.

As I showed the two of them into the room, Deni hugged me goodnight. “I don’t care what you say about Jake’s trying to impress the good citizens of this county. I think he’s trying to impress someone else.” She kissed my cheek. “May your dreams reveal the path of truth to you.”

I slept well, and if I dreamed, I didn’t remember the content. I awoke with a sense that the sound of bells accompanied whatever gifts came to me that night.

*

Jake caught me in the barn the following morning. I’d dumped the malt in the mash tun and was adding the hot water. Not only was the temperature in the vessel producing enough heat to melt my face, the temperature on the outside thermometer had read above eighty when I entered the barn.

I ignored his arrival by feigning concentrated interest in the water filling the vessel.

“I just talked with Ronald. He arrived from California before his father’s murder, not after, so he’s been stretching the truth a little about why he’s here.”

I tried not to let my surprise show by plunging my head further into the kettle with the hot liquor in the bottom.

“Did you hear me?” he asked.

I decided not to reply.

“He dropped Deni off to visit her family two days before the murder and said he spent time alone in the Adirondacks camping, but he’s very vague about where he was.”

I banged the lid shut on the vat and turned toward him.

“So now you’re saying Ronald is your suspect? Who is it, Ronald or Michael, or do you think they’re in this together?” I took the metal steps down off the platform two at a time and landed in front of him.

“I thought you might like to know, since you’re my unofficial snoop on this case.”

I walked around him and entered the cooler to check my yeast supply.

“What do you want from me? You interrogated Ronald. Don’t you have someone else to annoy?” Why did this man aggravate me half the time and turn my limbs to spaghetti the other half? I could have thought about that if he hadn’t been standing so close.

“Why are you so mad at me this morning? Last night we seemed to be getting along so well, and I thought …”

“This is my property, and Ronald is my guest. Could you not use my house as your office?”

“You’d prefer I hauled him down to headquarters and put him in one of our rooms with the metal chair, light bulb hanging from the ceiling and peeling paper falling off the walls?”

“You’d better take a closer look at your facilities. I attended the open house last spring, and it didn’t look anything like that.” I closed the cooler door, wishing I could shut out the conflicting feelings I had about Jake and the case with as much ease.

I turned to face him. “I’m sorry. Let’s begin again. I am a little peeved that you just came in here and questioned Ronald. Considering what he will be facing at home, I wanted this to be a kind of sanctuary for him.”

“And the rest of your mad?”

I couldn’t admit it had to do with the arrival of Ronald interrupting Jake and me, so I shrugged. “The weather’s getting to me. When it’s hot outside, and I’m in this stage of brewing, it’s an inferno in here.”

“How’s the water holding up?”
Nice of him to ask.

“Rafe’s man connected a new pump on that old well and laid some pipe to the road leading to Ramford property. I’m supplying Rafe and Michael with water, but for how long, I can’t predict.”

I climbed the steps to the platform again and looked in my tank, adjusted the temperature gauge on the water heater, and leaned against the railing.

“I’m like an aerial act in the circus. So far I’ve been lucky to have Rafe and Michael catch me with an infusion of just enough money, but tomorrow, I may lose my partners and fall without a net underneath me. Then what?” A loud clanking sound came from underneath the boiler, and hot water began to pour out onto the floor.

“There goes my net. I’ve got a leak in my boiler. Shit.”

*

By late afternoon, Jeremiah had determined that the boiler was not leaking. A hose from my water holding tank to the boiler had broken, rotted, Jeremiah thought, because of its age. I wasn’t so certain. I thought I remembered replacing that hose a year ago.

“Good as new.” Jeremiah got up from the cement floor after installing a new line and brushed himself off.

“Where’d you put that old section with the leak in it?” I held out my hand for the hose, and Jeremiah slapped it into my palm.

“You know, that doesn’t look like old hose.” He pulled his glasses down his nose and looked over the tops of them.

I bent the hose in half, and the rupture revealed itself. Instead of disintegrating rubber, I saw a clean cut lengthwise on the tube. “It’s been cut.” A lot of good changing those locks was. Someone was still invading the barn. I’d tell Jake about this when he stopped by tonight to pick me up.

I heard a car rumble up the drive. That might be Ronald and Deni back from their visit to his family.

“I’ll let you take over now. I don’t know what I’d ever do without you, Jeremiah. Is Brian coming in soon? We could use him on cleaning out those kegs that arrived yesterday.”

Jeremiah assured me that Brian was due to arrive within the hour. Then he acted as if he had more to say.

“I know this isn’t the time to drop this on you, but I’ve had an offer for a job at higher pay. I guess I’ll be giving you my two weeks’ notice.”

I felt another rope on my safety net let go.

Twenty

“Have you seen Mom much lately? She seems a little, uh, a little on edge,” Ronald said.

I didn’t know how to answer his question, so I merely shook my head and continued with the tour I was giving him and Deni of my operation. Ronald seemed to be remembering most of the process from his childhood.

I pointed to the floor as we approached the boiler. “Watch the hoses and that wet area. We had a bit of a water leak this morning.”

“Michael told me about the drought here. I’m happy to hear that you, Rafe, and he worked out a deal on water.”

“Rafe was responsible for that. One of his men did the work on the well, and the rest just fell into place.”

“Nice that you can see it that way, but from what I observed of Michael’s new hire, I doubt things fell into place. I’ll bet Stanley was maneuvering behind the scenes.”

I stopped walking and leaned against the barn wall. “What do you think of his skill as a brew master?”

“It’s been years since I had any contact with the brewing business, but he seems to have some fresh and innovative ideas. It’s getting beyond his personality that’s difficult.” Ronald gave me a look, I nodded in agreement, and he let forth a bark of a laugh. “Right, then. You’ve seen that in him, have you?”

“We don’t get along. He’s too entrepreneurial and pecuniary for my taste. Thinks bottom line first, then quality, and he’s talked Michael out of the Ramford recipes.” I clapped my hand over my mouth. What a jerk I was being. Stanley worked for the Ramford brewery, not just for Michael. That meant Ronald was his employer also. “Me and my big mouth. It’s not my place to pass judgment on the guy.”

Ronald’s eyes narrowed. “Please go on. I’m especially interested in the Ramford brewing recipes. You say Michael sold those to him? This is the first I’ve heard that.”

“Maybe I got it wrong, then. You’d better ask Michael.”

“You can bet I will. I’m sure Michael’s not thrilled to have my hand in the running of the brewery, but Dad’s will specified that it went to the three of us, Michael, me, and Mom, to run. So he’s stuck with me.”

Deni said not a word up to this point. Then with a swirl of her musical skirts, she turned away from the bottling line and faced Ronald.

“I thought you were going to sign over your share to your mother and Michael, that you wanted nothing to do with your father’s inheritance. Something’s different now. What?”

“I don’t like what’s going on, Mom’s erratic behavior, Michael’s lack of interest in brewing, and the circumstances of Dad’s death. I thought the murderer would be behind bars by now, but Jake tells me everyone has an alibi, and the physical evidence is minimal. I can’t leave until I know who killed my father.”

Deni’s expression said she wasn’t pleased with his decision, but she understood. “I think you should take me back to the city. I’ll just be a distraction here.”

“Not a distraction at all. You’re my center, my rock. I need you here.” Ronald pulled her to him and held her close to his heart.

Later, over the pizza I’d thrown together, I worked up the courage to ask Ronald the question on my mind. If my summons in the paper hadn’t called him home, and he returned east before his father’s murder, what brought him back here?

“I was looking for something, and I could only find it here, I guess.” He took a swallow of his beer and wiped away a dab of sauce at the corner of his mouth. I waited for him to continue. Deni’s head nodded up and down as if she knew just what he was going to say.

“It was time for me to talk to my father, to tell him how much he had hurt me, to ask him why he treated me as he did, and to try to forgive him. I also …” A knock at the door interrupted Ronald.

“That’s probably Jake. He’s stopping by to pick me up. We’re going to visit Francine tonight and ask her a few more questions.” I stopped there. I shouldn’t reveal the particulars of the proposed conversation with Francine, especially the part about Michael’s alibi.