Murder With A Chaser (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 2) (5 page)

              "Umm... no."

              "He's standing right in front of you, isn’t he?"

              "Yeah."

              "Get his name for me."

              I heard my girl ask, "Who shall I say is calling?" and a heard a man mumble.

              "He says his name is Ward? Daniel Ward?"

              Maisie's father? What was he doing here? Paperwork could wait for this one. "Send him up."

              I got up from my desk and paced nervously. Then came the knock at the door.

              "Come in," I shouted.

              What came through the door was someone who looked only a little like the guy I saw the other day in Maisie's living room. This person was thinner, paler, and looked like he was about to keel over at any moment.

              "Mr. Ward?" I said, trying not to sound too concerned.

              He spoke with a terrible rasp. "The key..." he started to say, and then quickly stumbled over to my office couch and fell into it. I bent down to his level. He managed to turn himself around. He was breathing heavily, gasping for air. "The key..." he said again, "is in the carp."

              And then, no more breathing.

#

              Pardon the gallows humor, but dead bodies aren’t good for business.

              This was the second time now that a dead body had made its way into the day-to-day operations of my brewery, and I was getting a little tired of it.

              "Are you ok?" said Lester Moore.

              "I'm fine."

              "Are you sure?"

              "I said I'm fine, Detective."

              "You can call me Lester in front of these guys. It’s ok."

              His team was just finishing up. The coroner had already removed the body.             

              "He thinks it's some kind of poison," Lester said. "There was a sharp smell about his mouth."

              "I didn’t get close enough to him for CPR. I just froze. It was so sudden."

              I told him I was more than a little ashamed of myself for freezing on the spot.

              "You couldn’t have done anything to save him, Madison. The coroner said he was pretty sure death was sudden and unstoppable."

              "Pretty sure isn’t good enough."

              "I'll get the report to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, why don’t you take the day off?"

              "You wouldn’t believe the amount of work I have to do."

              It was true. The stack of papers I was in the middle of would only multiply now.

              "That's ridiculous," Lester said. His face changed. "Listen, this is awkward, but I'm going to need to take your statement."

              I sighed and rolled my eyes.

              "It won’t take long."

              He listened quietly and wrote as I told him everything that happened from the moment I got the phone call to the moment I called 911. Lester stopped me only to ask clarification on one or two points, and other than that, was totally silent. Until I got to Daniel Ward's last words.

              "Carp? As in fish?"

              "The key is in the carp."

              His face screwed up in confusion. "What key? What carp?"

              "I have no idea."

              "Huh."

              "Exactly."

              "And that means nothing to you."

              "Nope."

              "Was he hiding anything?"

              "How should I know?"

              "Was he... hmm... did you have any idea why he came up to see you?"

              "None whatsoever."

              "And where do you know him from again?"

              I sighed impatiently and rehashed the story of Maisie Ward and her Uncle Shawn.

              "Ah, right," Lester said in deep thought. "Interesting." He awoke from his reverie and said, "Well, listen, you're ok, but I want you to take the rest of the day off. Paperwork can always wait. Ok? I'll call you later?"

              He put a tender hand on my shoulder, and I gave him a smile that I wasn't really feeling.

              Taking the day off would have been a waste – for work, that is, for I couldn’t concentrate on anything but this most recent murder.

              So I did what any obsessive-compulsive would do in my situation: I put on a pair of nitrile gloves and went snooping.

              Asking my front desk girl and others in the brewery, I tried to ascertain from which direction Daniel Ward came. There were only guesses by way of reply, no certainty.

              However, that changed as soon as I walked outside my building.

              Normally, I would have been pretty tee'd off at my town officials for scheduling emergency roadwork now, just as the place was starting to fill up with potential customers. But this was the answer I needed. Daniel Ward came from the west. And that was the direction in which I now headed, looking around – up, down, and side to side.

              I had no idea what I was looking for.

              But let me tell you, when you live in a place like Carl's Cove, you get to see the town for what it really is. It's hard to describe it. It’s a place that doesn’t really change much, that remains a perfect little slice of heaven wherever you go. Sure, there are deviations from that picture. Here and there a foreign scene or sound. But they usually disappear along with the people that brought them.

              What I noticed now, walking past a boutique that sold designer clothes off the rack that I'd have to commit federal crimes in order to afford, I noticed something that stuck out: It was a mask.

              Not a Halloween mask or anything like that. This was a breathing mask like one you'd wear while painting. My nitrile gloves, despite having drawn an odd look or two from passersby, served me well now as I bent down to pick the thing up. I turned it over in my hand.

              I'm not psychic, but I'd bet anything I had in my pockets then that I was getting some otherworldly signals: Something was telling me not to raise that thing to my nose. So I didn't.

              Instead, I brought it to my friend, Detective Lester Moore, Homicide, on loan from another district.

              This time, I decided to stick around and wait for an answer.

#

              "These things take time," he said. "You can’t be serious."

              "I'll wait," I said, taking a seat in the office they gave him.

              "Results will come back in a few days. I guess you'll just sleep here in the meantime."

              "A few days?"

              "For a quick answer, yes. For the full report, you’re looking at four weeks."

              A man in a white coat poked his head into the office.

              "Got a minute?" he said to Lester.

              "I'm with Ms. Darby. Can it wait?"

              "This concerns Ms. Darby," he said.

              The detective and I exchanged glances.

              "What is it?"

              "That mask you brought in. There are traces of benzene in it. So thank you for that. And now I'll just leave Detective Moore to thank you."

              The man gave me a wink and then disappeared.

              "That's a fluke," said Lester, rising from his desk.

              He called out to the young lab-coated man.

              "What gives?" I heard him say.

              There was mumbling, followed by mumbling from Lester. I craned my neck to try and make out what they were saying, to no avail.

              He came back in, his face stern. "Lucky break. They were able to match up residue from the mask to residue left over from Campbell's autopsy."

              "Lucky break, you said? You have a funny way of speaking about your work."

              "Lucky for you."

              I was feeling pretty good, in a macabre sort of way.

              "So what now?" I said.

              He looked at me gravely, and then put his head back and ran a hand through his hair. "What now is that we have a possible connection between this murder and the murder of Eli Campbell."

              We were both silent after that. Very silent.

#

             
The key is in the carp.

              This now was what I was saddled with, and it was driving me crazy. I can’t tell you how many Wikipedia entries I pored over on the subject of keys and carp. I now know everything there is to know about both. Did you know a goldfish is a type of carp? I didn’t.

              I even visited the bait and tackle shop that apparently has no specific name other than the words BAIT & TACKLE in big, blue, block letters over the entrance. I spoke to them, hinting around about keys and carps and what could someone mean if they spoke about a key in a carp? Was a key a type of fly for fishing?

              No, they said. No it wasn't.

              So I visited the hardware store, the one that has been in business ever since John Steinbeck himself used to make his summer home here in the early 1940s. Behind the cash register hung a framed picture of the
Grapes of Wrath
author holding a tack hammer. No, the word carp doesn’t appear anywhere in the entire lock and key lexicon.

              I decided to table this puzzle for now. Perhaps it was a benzene haze of rambling, and incoherent bit of nonsense from a dying man's lips.

              But why me? Why did he come to me when he knew he was dying?

              This much was obvious. Somewhere, either in his home or in Shawn Ward's garage where he worked, he'd donned that poisonous mask. As soon as he realized he was dying, he started on his way to me and got rid of the mask
en route
.

              So, why me?

              Paperwork was mounting. Gerry was calling me with news of his solution for the ruined batch: He was going to brew up a quick stout. Stouts are dark, roasty beers. Usually, a beer needs to age to achieve its peak flavors, and stouts are no exception. However, you can get away with a relatively unaged stout because of their sharp, roasty, bitter character. The strength of the flavors tends to mask the unaged flavor.

              It was a brilliant idea by my cousin Gerry. It made me feel bad for suspecting him of murder a few months ago.

              Remind me to tell you that one someday, if you haven’t already heard it.

              Anyway, needless to say, there was a lot on my plate. And needless to say, I wasn't in the mood to eat any of it.

              I wanted to keep asking questions. That was the only way I was going to get answers.

              There were other contestants in that homebrew competition. I figured it was about time I paid each of them a visit.

#

              I pulled up to an ornate Victorian-style cottage, much like the one I shared with my cousin Tanya. Only ours didn’t have a wood-burned sign that read "Brew for Jesus" over the entrance.

              The Reverend Howard Simmons himself answered the door.

              Rev, as he liked to be called, was a very short man with a very large personality. Standing about five-foot-five, he had an expanse of chest ample enough to project his voice throughout an indoor football arena without a mic. His mannerisms were grand. He had a smile that could cure most forms of clinical depression. He called me "child.” And he loved to talk about beer.

              "Child, let me show ya to what my time and devotion have been oh so lovingly dedicated these past five years."

              It was his way of introducing me to his homebrew setup.

              To say I was impressed would be a poor choice of expression. This was a setup that, scale-wise, exceeded the one I now made a living with. For starters, everything was automated. Every square inch of ten-foot by three-foot metal platform – on top of which rested three 15-gallon pots – seemed designed with the express intention of having the brewer do the least amount of work as possible. There were wires leading from the platform to a large contraption that looked like an electronic parking meter off to the side, and this had an array of buttons and flashing lights to keep any tech nerd endlessly happy.

              "I designed it myself, child, based on a holy vision I received one day while taking a bath right here in this very house. I saw an army of angels carrying this platform on their shoulders. They presented it before me and said in voices that resounded through my head like the peal of a thousand trumpets: Thou. Shalt. Build!"

              The first thing I did was to point one toe toward the exit.

              That was a precautionary measure. The Rev's booming voice was enough to straighten your eyelashes. I quickly assessed my ground and got myself on track. I was here for answers.

              But the brewer in me was here for the beer.

              What can I say? I had to ask him for a sample. He received the request as if he'd been waiting for it all his life.

              I recalled his entry to the contest, and I told him so. He seemed genuinely flattered to the point where I thought he might shed a theatrical tear just to drive the point home. Alas, he didn’t, opting instead to refill my glass to the top as quickly as I'd relieved it of its uppermost inch.

              "My child," he said, clasping his hands together, "beer is the Lord's answer to a question written on our very souls."

              I wasn't sure what he meant by this, but I agreed with him anyway.

              "At what age did you first start brewing?" I said, raising the glass to my lips for another highly anticipated sip.

              "Hmm," he started to say, then "I would say, yes, three years ago. Yup. That was my first."

              I almost choked. Three years was an awfully short time from novice to homebrew competition finalist. Needless to say, I was duly impressed.

              "Understand, child, I was inspired by the Lord."

              Curiosity finally got the best of me, and I opened my mouth to the question I was dying to ask. "Yes, and by the way, what church is it that you are—"

              He raised his right hand and proclaimed in the voice of a sermon, "The Church of the Holy Yeast!"

              There are times when the human brain needs a moment to prepare before commanding the rest of the body to react appropriately to certain things. So I stared at him blankly for a moment as he stared back, wide-eyed, his hand still raised.

              And I lost it.

              I doubled over laughing.

              I don’t know how long it was – a minute, five minutes – whatever it was, I finally was able to compose myself long enough. "That can’t be a real thing."

              "Oh child, it is! The church is real and I am its Pope."

              "And how big is your congregation," I asked, stifling another fit of hysterics.

              "Twenty-three Followers of the Foam and counting."

              I put my head in my hands. "Reverend, you are a pip. There's no other word for it."

              "Bless you, my child."

              "Now that I have your delicious Holy Brew in my hands, I'd like to turn to more grave matters, if you will."

              "Ah yes, the death of poor Brother Eli."

              "I understand the homebrew competition wasn't your first encounter with him."

              "Hmm," he said, his eyes narrow, "and from what oracle has this revelation come to you, child?"

              "Pamela Tweed. She did a story on the event and its unfortunate climax, and she was able to supply me with a little background information."

              "Ah yes," he said, taking a seat on a silk divan situated next to his homebrew platform. "Well, it's true, child. Brother Eli and I had words before the event even began. He had the nerve to insult my religion. Called it a dog's religion, he did, the scoundrel."

              "Yet you still refer to him as Brother?"

              "We are all Brothers and Sisters of the Foam, child."

              The Rev's made-up religion was starting to give me a headache.

              "So, let me understand," I said, "where did the two of you meet?"

              "The Holy Yeast converged our paths precisely at the location of the Caldwell Yacht Club."

              "The Yacht Club. What were you doing there?"

              "Preaching the Word, of course."

              "You weren't."

              "Oh, I most certainly was. I stood outside the club bidding all who entered to sample a taste of my most Holy Brew."