MURDER IN RETROSPECT (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 5) (6 page)

              She'd passed the Tree Top Inn on her way to Verdenier General. It was a picturesque bed and breakfast, a mid-sized Victorian house done in baby blue gingerbread. Inside, the atmosphere invited every one of the senses to linger. The burgundy hues and the plush pillows on the settee in the waiting area were enticing to eyes as well as the fingers. There was a Vivaldi string concerto playing softly on hidden speakers, and the smell of something warm and freshly baked wafted throughout the place.

              "Welcome to the Tree Top Inn," said the matronly figure behind the front desk. She had a puffy face with red cheeks and she wore her hair in a tight, blonde and gray-streaked bun that looked like it had been cemented into that shape for all of eternity.

              "Hi there, my name is Allie Griffin; I'm inquiring into the whereabouts of someone who may be staying here. His name is Ganz, Eddie Ganz."

              "Hmm, doesn’t ring a bell."

              "Hmm, that's too bad," said Allie, taking out her wallet. "I have something, where is it?" She riffled through her wallet and said, "Are you sure you don’t remember anyone by that name?
              The woman shook her head. "Wait, did you say Ganz? That does ring a bell, hang on." 

              She opened up a ledger and scanned a few pages.

              "I didn’t think you guys used books like that anymore," said Allie, truly impressed as the antiquarian she fancied herself to be at times. "I thought it was all digital."

              "Oh, everything in here is backed up. But there's something quaint and comforting about a ledger, don’t you think? Ah, Edward Ganz. Yes, he was here two weeks ago. I have trouble with names sometimes. Yes, he's here regularly—almost every weekend, in fact. Sometimes during the week. Not so much lately though."

              "Interesting. He's here on business?"

              "That what he says, yes."

              "You realize you just said that with a wink."

              The woman smiled coyly. "We don’t pry into our guests' lives."

              "He stayed with a guest, then?"

              "Frequently."

              "Frequently?"

              "Oh, always the same person. She signed the book once. Let's see..." More riffling through the book, and then, "Here she is: Miss Sarah Sandeswack."

              "Sounds made up."

              "We don’t like to pry."

              "That's ok." Allie leaned over to have a closer look at the name. "It's been spelled out clearly."

              "Mmm."

              "No, when I say clearly, I mean slowly. Look at the stiff hand and the curves on all the a's. They’re deliberately formed, and not by a hand that's used to forming them. And there are no flourishes anywhere on the signature. It's a fake name, Sandeswack."

              The woman closed the book abruptly. "I'm sorry, but I'm not at liberty to give you any information about our guests."

              "So a physical description is out?"

              "I'm afraid so."

              "That's ok, I have enough. Thank you for your time. You have a lovely place here, by the way."

              "Thank you."

              "Oh, and how much is Mr. Ganz paying you to keep his affair quiet?"

              "Excuse me?"

              "It's not that hard to figure out. You had no idea who the guy was until I opened my wallet pretending to look for something. I intentionally flashed a couple of fifties and suddenly you remembered everything about this frequent guest of yours. Until, that is, I asked for more information, and suddenly it became apparent that I wasn't going to give you anything for it, which is when you snapped the book shut. So that's why I asked. And I'm going to ask again. How much is Ganz paying you?"

              "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

              "I thought so. You still have a lovely place. Good day to you."

              "How are you feeling?"

              Del Collins was standing on her doorstep.

              "No longer like the entire world is trying to escape from my stomach, thank you very much."

              Allie invited her friend in. Del had lost a few pounds and was still somewhat pale around the gills.

              "You poor thing. Did they ever find out what it was?"

              "Oh, they most certainly did. Turns out, your friends at the Creek Falls Café served me bad shrimp."

              "No way."

              "Yes way."

              "I refuse to believe it."

              "Believe it, girl. I'm never going back there again."

              "Well, we're just going to have to find ourselves another spot then."

              Del then asked the words Allie had been waiting for. "So, what did I miss?"

              "First, I'm going to make you some ginger tea. And then you’re going to sit down right in that comfy chair over there and listen."

              Allie brewed a strong ginger tea for her friend, who sipped and pronounced upon its immediate beneficial effects. Then Allie gave her the entire rundown. From Hawkes's death to Lucy Wainwright and the blackout story, to her anonymous source confiding in her about the cover-up, to Ganz and his Tree Top Inn rendezvous. And about the elusive Ms. Sandeswack.

              "She's the one having the extramarital affair, not him."

              "How do you figure?" asked Del.

              "An extramarital affair has more negative consequences for the married person. Therefore, that person is more likely to conduct his or her business under an assumed name. Hence, Miss Sarah Sandeswack was the married one here. But that isn’t the real mystery here. Can you guess what is?"

              "You tell me. I'm still a little woozy from rancid crustaceans."

              "The real mystery is this: Why would a guy who worked for a semiconductor company in Maine make regular business trips to Verdenier? He's just an engineer, not a salesman. There are no trade shows here in Verdenier. I checked. So why would he come to Verdenier that often unless it was in order to have an affair?"

              "He likes the town? Anyway, you said it yourself: He's having an affair."

              "True, but remember, he's not the married one here. This whole episode stinks of a guy bound to more than just a matter of the heart. So why travel so far out of his way? Something to hide? Obviously not. Courtesy? Hmm, maybe, but if you ask me, there's something he needs in Verdenier. Or something that requires his presence here for reasons beyond the amorous. He comes to Verdenier to protect something."

              "Protect what?"

              "The only thing he has to protect."

              "Not following," Del said, pausing with her mug of tea beneath her nose and inhaling softly.

              "He only has one thing really to protect, and that's his involvement in the generator incident at the hospital, and its subsequent cover-up."

              "You think he's being blackmailed?"

              "Possibly."

              Del smiled. "This is getting nasty. I love it."

              "It's starting to eat away at my nerves, to be quite frank. I think I need a drink. Care to tag along?"

              Her friend shook her head. "Not ready for booze yet. I'll take a raincheck."

              "You can hang around if you like. Watch after Dinah for me."

#

              Allie's favorite watering hole had seen some rough times lately. First it was "Flamingos," and then "Dougie's," and now "The Rook's Nest," a British-themed pub. The changes in name were of little consequence, but this most recent change to the very heart of the place had set it on a course for self-destruction.

              Approaching The Rook's Nest now, she was surprised to see a plethora of vans and official-looking vehicles clogging up the parking lot. These didn’t belong to quarry workers, Dougie's usual clientele. Nor were the vehicles belonging to the new Rook's Nest clientele, for The Rook's Nest had no clientele to speak of. The logos on the vans were unmistakable: Fox Broadcasting.

              Pudgy technicians in identical black polo shirts stood around the open backs to a couple of the vans, coffee cups in hand, gesturing to all points on the compass.

              Allie walked past them nonchalantly. They paid her no mind.

              Inside, all was chaos. The place, for starters, was packed to the rafters. Either someone had bussed in a stadium's worth of customers, or these were robots owned and operated by the Fox Broadcasting Corporation. As Allie was to find out, the answer was a combination of the two.

              The place was lit like a nighttime ballgame. Servers Allie had never seen before scrambled back and forth with heaping plates of food. Some half-eaten, no plate completely empty.

              A deep, commanding voice bellowed orders somewhere off in the distance. And a few feet away, looking like a baby ferret that’d just been shot out of a cannon, was Dougie the bartender and co-owner of the doomed Rook's Nest.

              "Aw jeez," he said, eyeing Allie. He approached her quickly, and with fallen shoulders. "Listen, Allie, you shouldn’t have come today. Bad day. Really bad day."

              "Douglas," she said, her mind searching in vain for the right words, or any words at all, to say.

              "Don’t. Please, just don’t. This is a bad day."

              "What in the name—? Douglas, what is going on here?"

              The answer to her question came steaming out of the kitchen like a luxury liner. He was a large man in a white chef's coat, a shock of red hair atop his head, looking as if a mutant porcupine was trying desperately to continue its lineage with the help of the man's cranium. He shouted chesty orders in a Scottish accent to a degraded male server cowering beneath him. Allie recognized this man at once: Eli Campbell, chef and host of the hit show,
Save This Place!
, a Fox show that depicted the fiery Campbell traveling from one failing restaurant to another, imposing frothy-mouthed criticism and a hysterical, raving fanaticism on the already emotionally damaged small business owners of America. It was the number one show this season.

              "Oh my," said Allie. "What? How? How, Douglas?"

              "The missus," he said, pointing in the direction of his wife, a small, stout woman with a graying blond bun on her head.

              Dougie's wife had her hand over her mouth and a camera in her face.

              "I don’t believe this," said Allie.

              "I told her," said Dougie, in the tone one might use if one had tried to warn a ship's captain of a hole in the vessel and was now watching the tip of the mast disappear below the water. "I really tried to tell her. Don’t change the name. Then I told her, don’t change the menu. Then I said, if it ain't broke. Then I said no one wants to look at yours truly in a vest and a bowtie. And then I told her no one around here eats eel pie and no one was going to. But she didn’t listen. Now look at her."

              "So, what's happening?"

              Dougie the bartender shrugged. "She's getting it handed to her. Business was failing—I wonder why—and we were losing big time. And then she says we'll call this guy, the carrot top over there, said he'll come and help us out. She said she heard of him and that Fox will come and pay us. Well, number one, Fox don’t pay you for this. Number two, carrot top here has been screaming at everyone in the joint ever since he arrived in his limo. Told me my fish and chips tastes like, eh, you don’t want to know the word he used. Anyway he said he'd flush them down the toilet but he didn’t want to insult the Vermont sewer system that way."

              "Oh, my goodness, Dougie." Allie felt a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. She hated herself for it.

              "Yeah, I know. Now I gotta wait three days. Three days they're gonna be here. They said they'd make over the place. I guess that's the only good thing about it, although it ain't worth it, I'll tell you that."

              "Dougie!" shouted Eli Campbell. "Get your
bleeping bleep
over here right the
bleep
now!"

              Dougie's shoulders dropped a half an inch more, which Allie didn't think was possible until she saw it with her own eyes. "Here we go," he said, and shuffled off to the chopping block.

              Allie took a look around, and a camera crept up to her. "Ma'am," said a face poking out from behind the equipment, "are you a customer here? Would you mind complaining to the cameras?"

              Allie turned around and left.

              "Ma'am?"