Murder With A Chaser (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 2) (3 page)

              I should probably explain something. When I was in high school, some of the girls and I thought it would be a good idea to see if we could get into a local bar. Rumor had it that a band featuring a guitar-playing senior that I was in love with was playing there. Teenagers are psychotic, that's a fact, and I was no different. It seemed like a good idea at the time when we went to a friend of Tanya's and had a bunch of fake IDs made. We even had fake social security cards for backup.

              So, the thing is, there is no Molly Nelson. I came up with the name by combining Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson, the two stars of
The Breakfast Club
, which had been on that night. I held on to the fake IDs for fun. Looking at the license picture now, I was shocked to notice just how underaged I looked. It's a miracle we got in at all. The social security card, on the other hand, had no picture. Just a randomly-generated number.

              And so I presented this as my official ID, claiming not to have a picture ID handy.

              Hectic day at the probate office? Perhaps. The guy at the desk seemed a little bit put off by my insistence that the social security card was all I had – the nerve of me not to have my driver's license on me! I apologized profusely and told him I was only in town for one day and if he could just please do me this favor and accept this ID as my proof blah blah blah...

              Why yes, I said next, I
did
happen to have a letter of introduction on my organization's official letterhead. It was easy to forge as I'd sent away for some literature and received a nice form letter in return, along with a stack of brochures. And so I presented him with a cleverly-worded letter (thank you, college writing program) and bunch of pristine handbills extolling the virtues of the NREFFC.

              He took it, God bless him. Then he disappeared from his desk for an excruciating five minutes, and returned with a manila envelope. He handed it to me with a look on his face as though I'd just blackmailed him into handing over nude pictures of his sister. I thanked him and he said "You're welcome" to his desk and that was that.

              My hands had just stopped trembling by the time I got home.

              Tearing into the envelope like a kid on Christmas, I eagerly shuffled through the stack of documents, all written in that indecipherable legalese into which that all such documents are rendered. Finally I came to the bequests.

              Will you allow me one more cliché? Fine then, allow me to say that my jaw dropped onto my chest when I read who was to receive the largest chunk of Eli Campbell's cash.

#

              Eli Campbell's house in the Hamptons was a typical example of new money architecture. It was quite a beautiful mansion to be sure, but it was done in that overly-obvious "I am a rich dude's house" style that so many of these newer houses have. Absent were any distinguishing features like columns or classical influences. In their place was fine stone and sloping glass panels and a perfectly, obsessively, manicured lawn dappled with topiary statues of forks and spoons. Clever. Oh, so clever.

              It was gaudy and ugly in an ostentatious way and it was everything Eli Campbell was in life.

              And it was protected by every bit of high-tech security known to man.

              Now here's the thing, houses can be protected, and should be protected, but there's a part of the house that is almost, if not always left untouched. It's a part of the house that the public must have access to. And it's the one part of any private residence that is actually considered public property. I speak, of course, of the garbage bins.

              It was five o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday, the first day since Eli Campbell's death that the trash was to be picked up. I wore gloves and I had one of those little boy scout LED flashlights you can pick up on impulse on the grocery store cash-register line.

              I picked up three bags of trash and threw them into my trunk. This was not my proudest moment.

              Nor was it the best of moments between Tanya and me when I got home and she awakened to find me sitting Indian-style on our back porch, rummaging through a stranger's garbage.

              She seemed to have trouble finding the words. "What...are...you...doing?"

              I looked up at her, exasperated. "Sorting."

              "Why are you sorting the trash?"

              "It's not ours," I said.

              "It's not ours."

              "Nope." I went back to sorting.

              "Can I ask whose it is?"

              "Not
is
," I said, "
was
. It belonged to Eli Campbell."

              "Eli Campbell."

              "Yes."

              "The celebrity chef."

              "That's right."

              "Didn't he just... I mean, weren't you there when he..."

              "He just died, yes. And I'm searching through his trash. And I could really use some help."

              Tanya, you should know, has a heart bigger than anyone I've ever known in my life. Only when it comes to me, for some reason. If we weren't related, we probably wouldn’t be friends at all, we're that different. But we are best friends, and always will be. And true best friends. Which means that when one half of the duo is up to her armpits in a dead celebrity chef's garbage, the other half has no other real choice but to roll up her sleeves and get in there too. Out of love.

              And so it was that five minutes later, we both had cups of coffee, and we both sorted Eli Campbell's garbage into meticulous piles of paper, food, toiletries, and one horrible pile with the benevolent label "Other".

              I hated the Other pile. There were some things in that pile that, I think, were alive. We swept the Other pile into the corner of the porch once it became obvious that it was a pile of garbage full of mystery and horror.

              We focused on paper, food, and toiletries.

              First of all, we were very surprised to see that Eli Campbell was a fan of canned sardines in oil. Nothing against anyone who likes canned sardines in oil. We just didn’t see Eli Campbell as the canned-sardine type. Tanya reminded me of an ex-boyfriend of hers that was British – this guy Nigel. Nigel used to love eating sardines on toast. He said he used to eat it as a child and that it was sometimes regarded as a kind of British comfort food. Tanya and I were nauseated by the thought of it then, as we were now, picking through three-day-old cans that smelled every bit as nasty as you can imagine. I half-expected every cat in the neighborhood to come padding around the corner at any minute.

              It didn’t hit me until right about then that I had no idea what I was looking for. I didn’t even know how to interpret any of this garbage. How does one
read
a person's garbage anyhow? All I could think was that I had to be at work later, and that here before me was a big pile of garbage that would have to disappear off my back porch before I left. That left me not a whole heck of a lot of time to find something, if anything.

              The toiletries section was relatively small, so I looked there first. There were used razors—thank God for protective gloves, which were thick latex – not an insurance against cuts but certainly a help—and there was a squeezed-out tube of toothpaste: Crest Extra Whitening formula. And there was a discarded inhaler – Albuterol, the same type I discovered in Campbell's trailer that day.

              This latter I turned around in my hand a minute. Here was something very private indeed. Eli Campbell was a big, intimidating personality. The fact that he used an inhaler to treat asthma would have certainly detracted from that image. Staring at that inhaler, I thought about how someone might use this little secret of Campbell's to their advantage.

              "What are you thinking?" said Tanya. I hadn’t realized I'd been sitting there focusing on this thing for a while.

              "I'm not sure."

              "Well you certainly are thinking a long time on something you aren’t sure of."

              I shook my head. "It's just that I can’t seem to figure it out: if he was poisoned, how did the poison get into his system? It couldn’t have been inside the beer, because we all had it. But it could have been in here." I held up the inhaler. "Someone could have tampered with his medicine and put something nasty in there. I need to find out what forensics found in his system."             

              I took the inhaler into the house and sealed it into a plastic baggie, to keep it for reference. I called Detective Lester Moore and let him know about what I'd found. Then Tanya and I collected up the remaining trash, retaining the separation of the piles as best as we could, and placed them gingerly into our trash bin. We placed the dreaded Other pile into a separate bin all its own.

              Then I took a shower, got ready, and left for work.

              When I got there, my cousin Gerry, our Master Brewer, was having some sort of fit over something or other. It was going to be an interesting day.

#

              "The batch is ruined! The entire batch!"

              Gerry was beside himself; his big, burly figure was bouncing around like a dancer, and he was waving his arms like some sort of crazed primate. Apparently, from what I could figure, we had an Old Ale aging for about three months in oak barrels. Gerry was saying that it was spoiled because temperatures in the storage room had not been consistent.

              "Calm down," I said. "Are you sure it's ruined?"

              "You taste it!" he said, his red face nearly awash in tears. He handed me a sampling glass.

              While I wouldn’t call it ruined, I wouldn’t have served this beer to anyone. My heart sank as I saw a big bunch of numbers in the air – monetary values – clicking away, increasing with every pint of this stuff we couldn’t sell.

              Something you learn very quickly as a business owner, small or big, is how to deal with the unexpected – because everything is unexpected.

              "Ok," I said, modulating my voice to hostage negotiator tones, "I need you to calm down. Go outside, breath some air. I'll handle this."

              "Two months of fermentation…three months of aging! Five months literally down the drain!"

              "I'll handle it," I said. "Go outside. Take a breather."

              He left the building and I paced for a moment. I looked up and my employees, all six of them, were staring at me as if I was the director of a film.

              "I'll be in my office if anyone needs me. In the meantime, I know you all have things to do."

              Slowly they dispersed and went back to their tasks. I went to my office and closed the door behind me. Then I sat down at my desk and put my head in my hands. One-fifth of our line was down. I had to think of something to do that would make up for it.

              "Hey man," said Lester Moore, "great catch on that inhaler."

              We were taking a walk along the same beach that we had first met on when he rescued me from an attack of seagulls that I still hadn't gotten over.

              "Again with the man?" I said, masking my real annoyance with fake annoyance. "You do realize I'm a woman, right?"

              "Come on," he said. "It's a habit."

              "Lose it. So what about the inhaler?"

              He shook his head and smiled. "Benzene."

              "What's benzene?"

              "It's an industrial chemical. Has a lot of different uses. Only there's something awfully strange going on here."

              "Stranger than a guy getting poisoned with his own inhaler?"

              "It's not the method, it's the thing itself. This was added to the inhaler as a powder."

              "Ok, so?"

              "So, benzene isn’t found in any powdered form. Our guys can’t figure it out. But there it is in the inhaler, and there it is in Campbell's lung tissue. Someone found a way to make it into a fine powder and put it into the inhaler like that. We're trying to figure it out."

              "Nowhere on the planet is this stuff found as a solid?"

              "It melts at around 50 degrees. The inhaler would have to be kept at a constant temperature that was lower than that."

              "Ok then," I said. "And so the mystery darkens."

              "You said it. We can’t even figure out a murderer profile. Chemistry student? A genius drug manufacturer like Walter White on
Breaking Bad
? We have no clue. All we know is that nothing in the will points to anyone who may have benefitted. It all went to charity."

              Whoa, hold on.

              I don’t know how I answered this, but I probably just grunted and then changed the subject. Or maybe I just had a faraway look in my eye and started drooling. All I know is that I now had a serious dilemma: First of all, whatever will he saw was not the one I saw. And second: How on earth do I tell this cop standing here that I forged a letter of introduction
and
used a fake ID to obtain legal documents?

              I had no choice but to let it pass.

              But I was never so right when I said what I said a moment ago: The mystery was now very dark indeed.

#

              I finally got a hold of the Deputy Mayor's office. And I used my patented Madison Darby is craving chocolate and peanut butter and there's no chocolate or peanut butter in the house voice to make them feel very ashamed of themselves for overlooking the winner of the homebrew competition. I said I would be by later that day to pick up the prize money, the certificate with Maisie Ward's name on it, and that I'd be calling soon to see how the negotiations with the Gnome Brewing Company were going so that our winner could be featured in their celebratory six-pack.

              That chocolate and peanut butter voice works wonders, I found out, when I showed up at the Deputy Mayor's office and the guy behind the reception desk leapt out of his chair once he heard me say my name. He practically handed me the materials on a silver tray.

              "Tell her the Deputy Mayor says 'congratulations'. And tell her I do too. I was there that day. I'm a homebrewer myself."

              "Are you now?" I said with a smile.

              He looked so scared of me I thought he was going to wet himself. "And I'm a fan of your beer."

              "Well that's very kind of you," I said, really laying on the sweetness.

              He started to loosen up a bit. "I even cloned one of your recipes pretty well."

              When he realized what he'd just said, and to whom he said it, his face drained of its last few drops of blood.

              Perhaps he didn’t realize that cloning a professional's recipe is among the highest compliments a homebrewer can pay. And I told him so. He seemed to relax a bit.

              I left with Maisie Ward's prizes under my arm. When I got back to the brewery, I called her.

              "
I'm so happy to hear that,
" she said. She sounded genuinely thrilled. "
And guess what? My dad is in town along with my uncle. Didn’t you say you were a fan?
"

              "I'm not, but my cousin Tanya is."

              "
Oh, I'm sorry. Well anyway, he's here and, you know, if your cousin wants to meet him...
"

              "That's would be wonderful. You free tonight around 7?"

              "Come on over. 2589 Walden Street."

              "Will do."

              I immediately called Tanya at Junior's Pizza, where she worked as a waitress. She would be working until later that night, she said, but hold on. I heard her put down the phone, and I heard her yelling at Sol Lipschitz, AKA "Paoulo Montefiore," otherwise known as "Junior," that she had an emergency and couldn’t work. I heard Paoulo Montefiore call her a
meshuggeneh nishtgutnick
and why did he even bother to hire her in the first place. She got back on and told me she'd be home at 7 sharp.

#

              Shawn Ward was exactly what you'd picture him to be, if you're anything like me, and not a fan of anything to do with NASCAR. What I mean is: he seemed to be a stereotype of a racecar driver right out of central casting. He was in his early fifties, yet the close crop of hair I noticed below the edge of his baseball cap – which had the logo of a popular brand of motor oil on it – had that dyed shade of brown that was so transparently phony looking that it bordered on the comical. His mustache was something out of a 70s movie involving lots of car chases and truck crashes – something about stolen diamonds and a bikini contest – and he seemed always to be looking for a camera or a fan with an outstretched hand clutching a photo awaiting an autograph.

              Maisie's mother was working that night. My guess was that she knew Maisie's father was coming and made the choice to be out of the house for the evening. The house her mother kept was a modest little ranch house, one located in a cluster of the same in an area of Carl's Cove that had remained miraculously untouched by the influx of money and celebrity culture over the years. The little couch against the wall had a crocheted blanket draped over the top, and there was a similar, yet unfinished project in the works on the couch itself. On a small shelf along the wall there were photos of Maisie over the years, some posing with her mother, some solo. Absent were any pictures of Maisie's father or uncle. Neither seemed to mind, or else pretended not to notice how underrepresented they were in this girl's life.

              Her father looked exactly like her uncle, for they were twins. Her father, on the other hand, was quiet and seemed to throw glances around the room not for any cameras or for an adoring public, but for some place to escape.

              "Maisie here is our pride and joy," said Shawn Ward, throwing his arm around the girl. I could tell she felt awkward. She kind of shrank under his touch and her face twisted up self-consciously. "We're all proud of our little girl. We raised her to be a little warrior. Right, sweetheart?"

              He gave the girl a squeeze and she forced a smile.

              I have to say that I didn’t like Shawn Ward very much by this point.

              Tanya, however, was in ecstasy. I've never seen someone so enamored with another human being. You would have thought the Pope or the president or Ben Affleck was standing there before her. She stammered and giggled and her voice went up three or four octaves. She was a mess and didn’t care. And Shawn Ward ate it up like a brown bear at a honey convention. He flirted right back at her. It was embarrassing and, to put it bluntly, a little bit gross. Tanya was at least fifteen years his junior. It wasn't a crime, just a tad unseemly.

              Shawn Ward played the part of godlike celebrity as Maisie squirmed uncomfortably and Tanya squirmed excitedly. He dished out autographs for both Tanya and me even though I hadn’t asked for one. He told us stories about near-fatal car crashes, which had me suppressing a yawn. And then he gave us the obligatory lines that no celebrity can resist: The spewing of hard-won wisdom.

              "No matter where you go in life," he said, looking off as if he'd suddenly entered some other-worldly place where he received the words of the oracle, "always remember that there are folks that matter to you, and those are the ones you call family."

              With this, he gave Maisie another squeeze and then a kiss on the top of the head.

              "Family looks out for each other, don’t they, baby?"

              "That's right, Uncle Shawn," she said, forcing a smile.

#

              "Did you see the way that creep held on to his niece?"

              "What do you mean?"

              "Ugh!" I said.

              "What are you talking about?"

              "She was obviously uncomfortable. You can tell she hates her uncle. And you can tell he knows she hates him but was just playing it up for us. God, it was as phony as his hair color."

              "What hair color?"

              I looked at her. "You really were in la la land, weren't you?"

              "Oh stop it. You're just jealous because he was flirting with me."

              "
That
you noticed."

              "What, are you sorry I came along?"

              "No, I just want you to see that this guy you revere as a hero is actually a fairly vapid and possibly sinister fellow with secrets to keep."

              "What? Secrets? What are you talking about?"

              "Let me ask you a question: When was he looking at us, and when was he looking away?"

              "Madison, will you start making some sense already?"

              "I'll answer for you. He looked at us when he was being genuine. He looked at us directly in the eyes, both of us, when he talked about all his car accidents. When he talked about family and the way he felt about his niece, he looked away. You know why? Because that's where his script was – hanging up there in the air where he had to squint to read it."

              "You're crazy, Madison, and you’re full of jealousy and bizarre metaphors."

              "And you’re blinded by celebrity worship. That ridiculous drivel he spouted about family at the end there? He was looking up and to the left, away from us. People who lie, if they have consciences, try to assuage their consciences by looking away from the person they're lying to. You see it all the time."

              "Just because you're a writer doesn’t mean you know everything there is to know about people."

              "I know enough."

              "Well..." she said, trying to think of a comeback, "you’re wrong. That's all there is to it. I saw a very nice, entertaining, family-loving man standing there before us."

              "And what about Maisie's father?"

              "What about him?"

              "I'm surprised you noticed him at all. The man looked like he was trying everything in his power to remain invisible."

#

              I was poring over the financial records for The Darby Brewing Company. It was peak season, after all, and we were short one brew. I decided that maybe it was time to think out of the box – or the six-pack – and maybe take a page from Eli Campbell's playbook. I decided we would host a charity event. We'd have to really dig our heels in and get cracking if we were going to pull this one off.

              My desk was littered with stacks of paper of every possible variety. I looked at my desk in disgust, imagining all sorts of microorganisms thriving in the mess. It was time to clean up. That would give me some respite from my company's financial distress, I figured. I reached into my drawer and pulled out a couple of purple nitrile              gloves. These are the exact same kind used by hospital staff. Sterile, germ-resistant, beautiful. I donned them like a princess and began the decluttering process, tossing out handfuls of garbage with relish.

              Something caught my eye. You stare at a cluttered desk long enough, you unconsciously memorize its inventory. Here I was now, staring at an envelope I didn’t recognize.

              It was a plain white envelope, a number 10 business size, with a thick, security-type exterior. It was sealed. I tore it open carefully and extracted its contents. I dropped the envelope and sat down in horror.

              In my hand was a swatch of white linen, hastily cut from a larger cloth. And stitched into it, written in elegant black script, was the name "Chef Eli Campbell.”