Murder With A Chaser (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 2) (10 page)

              Sorry about the lingo. I guess I read too many pulp novels in my teens.

              We were escorted to the area where the safe deposit boxes were housed. The bank guy took our key, opened a gated entrance with an electronic card, and then walked with us to where Daniel and Sheila Ward's box was. He pulled it out, this shining metal case about the size of a shoebox, and brought it over to a table.

              He then went to the doorway and waited with his back turned.

              We opened the box in silence.

              There was nothing there, except for a single envelope with one name written on it:

MADISON DARBY

FOR HER EYES ONLY

              I looked at Sheila, and she at me.

              "I don’t want to know," she said, and picked up the envelope and handed it to me."

              "I don’t understand."

              "Whatever, I'm done, and I'm leaving."

              "Sheila, you have to believe me. I don’t know what this is all about."

              "We were divorced. He was a free agent. You could have been a bit more honest with me, is all I'm saying."

              "Is everything alright?" said the bank guard.

              "Everything is fine. We're through here," I said.

              Outside the bank, with my envelope in hand, I tried to convince Sheila that I had nothing to do with her ex-husband.

              "I'm not mad," she said from the window of her cab. Really, I'm not. Goodbye, Madison."

              And she sped off.

#

              For a short while I stared at the envelope on my dining room table. I paced and passed it, throwing glances at it. I was nervous about what a dead man was so keen on communicating to me. I finally found the strength to open it. It had been neatly typed out and printed from a computer printer. The paper was normal, copy grade paper. Nothing fancy. And I took it to the comfy chair in my living room and read:

             
It's two in the morning right now and I can’t sleep. I'm all alone here. So I'm writing to you in case I'm found dead somewhere sometime soon.

              Tomorrow I have work to do at the shop, a little detailing work. I'll head on over to you and talk to you about all this. First, I need to write it out. Maybe it will be easier to believe.

              My brother Shawn is a philanderer with a number of affairs to brag about, and believe me, he has. I always thought that one day his affairs would get him into trouble. But I never pictured this kind of trouble.

             
Shawn has always loved the spotlight and celebrity culture. He's a charmer too. And he loves danger. These three things turned out to be a lethal combination. A recent affair he had was with Zelda Calverton, the wife of Eli Campbell. Campbell found out. I don’t understand this kind of mindset, because Campbell himself has had quite a few affairs, but he went to my brother and threatened him physically. They may have fought, I don’t know. My brother never said. He's very proud. My brother threatened him right back with exposure. He said he'd find a way to make Zelda's infidelity public, thereby embarrassing Campbell, who was then trying to rehabilitate his public image.

              But Campbell had an ace up his sleeve. He revealed that his wife, Zelda Calverton, has a side business.

              You pay Zelda enough money, and she'll hit whomever you want hit. And she’d hit them hard.

              But, you see, she doesn’t kill them. No, that would lead the cops to her in an instant. No, Zelda Calverton has devised a very clever scheme of insulation, one that allows her to pull the strings and benefit herself and her various enterprises at the same time.

              Ever wonder how some people become so successful? Ever wonder how a woman as rich and powerful as Zelda Calverton can remain so well hidden?

              She uses blackmail, extortion, and false press leaks; she taps phones, plants phony evidence, and has people followed and harassed.

              Richard Nixon had nothing on Zelda Calverton.

              I have a feeling there is something very wrong taking place here. I don’t know who killed Eli Campbell, but I'm in fear. Whoever killed him can kill again for self-protection.

              My brother Shawn knows I know these things. He knows I know about Campbell's threats. ‘Wouldn't it be nice’, he told me, ‘to hit Campbell where he lived?’ Those are the very words he used. I objected to this, and we fought a great deal over it. He accused me of familial disloyalty. He said they kill you for that in the mafia.

              Those were his last words to me, today.

              I am now in fear for my life.

              If you are reading this, it means I have been killed, and someone involved in the Eli Campbell murder has done it.

              I placed the letter down gently onto the coffee table and sat there, staring at it. I could hardly breathe while reading it, and I felt as if I had to catch my breath now.

              Something hit my front porch. It made me jump.

              I opened my front door and saw a taxicab pulling away.

              On the ground was a manila folder with a sticky note attached that read:
Late for the airport, but thought you might want to see this.

              I took the parcel inside and opened it. It was a marble notebook with Maisie Ward's name scribbled on the front.

              Inside were figures, money crunching.

              Maisie was listing college expenses. Across the top, however, was the one figure that stuck out and nearly blinded me:
$75,000 from Uncle Shawn.

              The next morning, I sat in my office, unable to concentrate on anything having to do with beer. It was still too early for anyone else. I was the only one there and I preferred it that way. I needed some serious space. Not to mention quiet time to think.

              I pulled out my cell phone and called the Southampton Culinary Institute. Then I hung up. I knew a thing or two about college offices. I would need to be fiddling with my phone, checking email, checking Facebook, just to pass the time while they shuffled me all over creation. I don’t know why it is that colleges make it so difficult for people to get in touch with them. It's fifteen minutes of menu options – hitting 1, then 1 again, then #, then 3, then 4 – only to be routed either back to the main menu or to a receptionist. And do you know what the receptionist does? She puts you into a queue where you get to choose from
another
fifteen menu options.

              So I sat there, fiddling with my phone, waiting for the bursar's office to come up in the menu.

              Finally, I got through and was waiting on hold. There was the typical awful Muzak playing on endless loop. I surfed the web on my phone – Dad kept the business extremely low-tech. We're lucky we have email. I vowed to get Wi-Fi before Christmas – and waited. And my mind began to wander a bit. Then a miracle happened. I came to m. A most elegant solution, I thought, if my hunch was correct. Amazing how that happens. All you need sometimes is to be in the right frame of mind. To be someplace quiet, with little distraction. I texted Lester Moore.

              "
Bursar's office, may I help you?
"

              "Hello," I finally said to this real, live human. "I'm looking for information about my daughter's finances."

              "
And you are?
"

              "Sheila McCann. My daughter is Maisie Ward."

              I spelled out the name for her.

              "
We'll just need your or her social security number, Ms. McCann.
"

              I patted myself on the back for having the foresight to bring Maisie's marble notebook with me, for on the first page with all the scribblings of figures was the entry labeled, "Mom's SSN," and a nine-digit number.

              I read this to the bursar’s office woman and waited an excruciatingly long time for a response.

              "
Ok
," she said, "
Ms. McCann, how can I help you today?
"

              I breathed a quiet sigh of relief and spoke professionally. "Yes, I was just wondering about the money she paid to you for this semester. Would you by any chance have a breakdown of the scholarships and grants she received, and money she paid directly?"

              "
Ok, it looks as though she paid nothing directly. All the tuition money came by way of a grant. I'm not at liberty to say any more. Do you have access to a fax machine?
"

              "As a matter of fact, I do, but—"

              "
Ok, we can go ahead and have these records faxed on over to you within the next half hour.
"

              "Why can’t you just read them to me over the phone?"

              "
I'm sorry, ma'am, it's our policy.
"

              "Fine then," I said, and gave her the number of my office fax. I mentally thanked Dad for at least having the decency to bring the office into the
twentieth
century.

              Finally, we ended the call. There was nothing to do now but wait.

              I got up from my desk and was about to resume pacing when I was startled out of my wits.

              A man was standing in my doorway.

              He was tall, dressed in a three-piece suit, and had a thin crop of blonde hair. He had a square jaw and he looked like a German scientist.

              "Zelda isn’t too happy with you," he said and came toward me.

#

              "Alright, who are you? And how did you get in here?"

              He chuckled sickeningly. "You don’t realize how easy it is, do you? This isn’t the first lock I've picked in my life."

              "Ok," I said, "so you're an expert lock picker. Now what?"

              He chuckled again. "Madison Darby, the little beer brat, if I may."

              "My father called me that. Don’t malign his name by calling me that."

              It was then that I found myself staring at a handgun.             

              "Oh Madison," he said softly, "we tried so hard to steer you in the right direction. Why did you have to go and do things the wrong way? Don’t you know how to investigate properly?"

              "What on earth are you talking about?"

              "You found the coffee grinder. Bravo. But you should have talked to us about Daniel Ward. This complicates things."

              I sat down at my desk, my hands in the air. I hoped that this wasn't becoming a thing now – my being trapped in my office by some thug. This was now the second time it had happened.

              "What's with Zelda?" I said. "Is all that stuff true?"

              "All what stuff?"

              "Come on," I said, "you're going to kill me, right? The least you can do is do the old James Bond villain thing and reveal your secret plans before you do."

              He smiled. "Charming. But a brat nonetheless. So what if it's true? What if Zelda and I run a very successful enterprise? Hmm? I can tell you this: I hated Eli Campbell. Hated him as much as one man is capable of hating another man. The way he treated my Zelda. Awful."

              "It's starting to become clear now."

              "Oh I don't think you realize how unclear you are on all this. You see, my Zelda told you we needed to avoid the cops. Fighting with your cop boyfriend? Beautiful. But now, you're a liability. You're too good. All that money can’t stop you from getting at the truth. Ok, so be it. Win some, lose some. But we can’t afford you any longer, Madison."

              "So you're going to kill me here? Then what?"

              "I'll leave. Believe me, no one will ever find us. We’re very good. I can even make it look like a suicide. It would take some work, but I think I could do it."

              I smiled at him. I couldn’t hold it back.

              "My phone is tapped," I said. "Am I right?"

              He nodded. "Very good. And why the hell are you smiling?"

              "I don't know," I said. "Sometimes I marvel at how good I am."

              At this point, another figure appeared in my doorway. It was Maisie Ward, and she looked at the goon and me with surprise in her eyes.

              In the instant that the goon turned around, I used both legs to push the desk out, virtually steamrolling him. He hit the floor and let out a yelp. His gun went flying.

              "Grab it!" I yelled to Maisie. She ran to it and grabbed it.

              I looked down at our friend on the floor. "Don’t ever mess with the beer brat," I said. "Good job Maisie."

              But she was pointing the gun at me.

#

              "Maisie?"

              "Just sit down."

              She alternated the gun between me and the man on the floor, looking as if she was unsure whom she should shoot first.

              "Maisie," I said quietly, "take it easy."

              "How can I?" she said, tears beginning to stream down her face. "You're all crazy and you dragged me into your craziness. And now my father is dead because of it."

              The fax machine buzzed and whizzed.

              Maisie turned, startled.

              I lunged.

              We fell to the floor, wrestling sloppily. The gun went flying once again and we both scrabbled for it.

              I had the advantage. Maybe there's something in the beer. Like Popeye's spinach or something. Who knows? But I got the gun.

              And Detective Lester Moore entered.

              My heart skipped a beat when I saw him. He was even cuter than the last time I saw him. His face was scruffier. He looked tired and tough. I had to shake those thoughts out of my head. I still kind of hated him. Kind of.

              "Just hang on a minute," I said. "You may want to get a gun on that guy down on the floor there. He's a big, blond gorilla."

              "I got him," said Moore, drawing his gun. "Freeze!"

              I went over to the fax machine.

              "Don't!" yelled Maisie.

              Detective Moore looked at her then at me. "What's this all about? You text me that you're all alone at the brewery and that someone is on their way to kill you?"

              "Hang on a second, copper," I said, lifting the fax from the inbox. "Well now, look at this. Maisie here lucked out in the finance department. From the looks of this, it seems her tuition came in the form of a...well, I'd call it a ginormous grant, but I don’t know if that's a technical term. It was a grant, though, from the Gnome Brewing Company."

              "I hate you," Maisie yelled.

              "I'm very sorry to hear that, Maisie," I said, "because I really liked you."

              "Can someone please not keep me out of the loop here?" said Moore.

              Moore's backup entered the room, guns drawn.

              "It's very simple. Zelda Calverton, more on her later, knew my day-to-day operations by virtue of an office phone tap. As I was patiently waiting for someone to pick up the phone at the Southampton Culinary Institute Office of the Bursar, stellar venue that is, by the way, I realized that this was the only way she could know. I also realized that she had to be the one who orchestrated this whole murder, and that if I was right and I was on the right track, then she'd send someone here to stop me from finding out the truth."

              "It's a lie!" shouted Maisie.

              "Easy does it," said Moore, and then motioned to me with his head. "Continue."

              "Many thanks," I said. "Maisie had asked her uncle for a loan for college tuition. She figured he wouldn’t be able to give it to her if he was ruined, right Maisie?"

              She said nothing.

              "I'll take silence as a yes. You see, her uncle and Zelda Calverton, Eli Campbell's wife, had an affair. This happened and that happened and it all got very messy and Eli Campbell wound up dead over it. But Shawn Ward had nothing to do with it. It was Maisie who took the benzene from his garage, ground it up, and put it in Eli Campbell's inhaler. And how did she know what kind of inhaler he used? My guess is one of the thousands of fan sites you can access with a lot of time on your hands. It probably wasn't very hard to get it, was it, Maisie? Just as it wasn't very hard to get it into Campbell's trailer during the contest. How did I know? When I exited the trailer myself. You were right there. And why? Because you saw me go in. You were worried I'd find the inhaler you’d tampered with."

              The girl was red-faced, tight-lipped, and breathing heavily through her nose.

              "Zelda had Shawn Ward followed after his encounter with Eli. Her goons found out that it was Maisie who took the benzene. Zelda went into full damage control mode to see how she could manipulate events to benefit her. She was getting the lion's share of Campbell's will, but she was in fear of being found out. So she conspired with Maisie, whom she knew had a mutual interest in framing Shawn Ward: Zelda's was pure business; Maisie's was pure revenge. Too bad your father had to get in the way, Maisie. Zelda had him killed in order to frame Shawn even further. The two of you planted that coffee grinder in his dumpster, knowing I'd sooner or later come to search for it. Oh, by the way, tell Zelda she owes me a hazmat suit. Anyway, in the end, all was not for the worst, was it, Maisie? You got paid well for your loss. Zelda's company owns Gnome Brewing, and Gnome gave you a grant."

              I looked at Detective Lester Moore, and I saw the first crinkling of a much-needed smile beginning to form on his face.

              "I missed you," he said.

              "I missed you too." Then I leaned down to my little fridge, opened the door, and surveyed its contents. "Anyone want a beer? I'm buying."

~~~

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