Murder By The Pint (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 1) (5 page)

              Question: Why would the owner of a microbrewery begin investigating a murder?

              Answer: Because of pure boredom.

              I didn’t realize until I started working here how much down time there is at a brewery. If you're not actively involved in the actual brewing process, there isn’t much to do. If you are involved, there's a lot of just standing around waiting. Fermentation takes time. The best brewers know how to wait it out. You can fill up a portion of the interim by checking in on the other batches, but after that, nothing.

              I was hoping peak season would pick us up, keep us active, because I have to tell you, it was looking like a whole lot of nothing to do from now until the end of time for yours truly.

So I spent a lot of time at my desk, the word processing program open on my computer, editing the manuscript of a novel I'd started back when I was in college, and then abandoned because I'd started dating the guy my protagonist was based on. That's happened more times than I care to confess. But I digress.

              I found myself thinking about that body in the alleyway. About all the particulars of the problem.
              Question: How does one begin a murder investigation?

              Answer: One starts at the edges.

              The trick lies in knowing just where the edges are. For me, it was in the hops shipment. Let me explain. I figured that if the diamonds were inserted into the package at the farm, the police would have discovered it by now. Surely they traced the package to the farm. So I figured this package must have changed hands a couple of times en route to us. For instance, the thing winds up at a courier hub, gets put on a truck, goes to another hub, gets processed, gets put on another truck, then hits our docks. Somewhere in that journey has to be an ideal time in which someone can slip in and tamper with the package. It can’t be when the thing is sitting in the hub. I had an ex who worked for the same company as our guy and said the place is guarded like it's Fort Knox. Cameras everywhere and everything accounted for. Ditto for the loading and unloading docks. So the ideal spot would be when the truck is en route. But let’s say the driver is held up. Isn’t that a bit risky? So it would have to be done without his knowledge. But that would involve having to dog the guy along every step of his route in order to gauge when the package is sitting unguarded inside his truck. The truck has a camera too. So no go there. So maybe the driver is in on it.

              That's what I mean. The driver is the edge. So I started my investigation with him.

              Our driver's name was Donald. Donald was your typical delivery guy working for a multi-gazillion dollar enterprise. That is, he was always tired and he never smiled. We had his cell number on file. He'd given it to us so that we could page him for a pickup without having to call the 800 number of his company. If he was around the block – and everywhere in Carl's Cove is around the block – then he'd drop by and do the pickup. So I called him.

              Now here's the thing. Donald had already been questioned mercilessly by the cops and wasn't really interested in prolonged conversation with me, the apparent source of the misery in the first place – or at least a representative of it. However, I did manage to get some information out of him. Namely that the package was on his truck and was not out of his sight or the cameras for the entire route to our dock. And that the same could be said for the driver from the farm to the hub.

              Ok. On to the next edge.

              This is the part I didn’t care for very much, because the next edge involved my own microbrewery, and my cousin Gerry.

              Gerry was the only guy who received that package. He signed for it. His signature is on record electronically, and associated with every mailing label, as well as every tracking number on that label.

              So I casually walked up to him. He was just finishing with the first addition of hops to the boil kettle. There are usually three altogether, spaced out over the course of an hour. I knew it would be about a half hour until the next hops addition. In that time, Gerry didn’t have much to do.

              He climbed down the small stepladder that led to the sliding door of the boil kettle.

              "Hey there, cuz," I said, my hands in my pockets, a smile on my face.

              "I didn't put those diamonds in there," he said, looking at me severely.

              Good old Gerry. Master of subtlety.

              "I didn’t say you did."

              "No, but you’re thinking it. You come sauntering over here with your hands in your pockets like your Huckleberry Finn. You don’t even saunter like that at family barbecues."

              "Alright, that's enough."

              "You still suspect me."

              "No, but I don’t know whom to suspect."

              "Donald," he said matter-of-factly.

              "I just spoke with him. The package never left his sight."

              "And you believed him?"

              "Of course I believed him. The package never left..." And I paused. And Gerry realized that my mind was working.

              "Good. You got it," he said. "I'm going to lunch."

              I did get it, and I was in the middle of getting it as Gerry walked off for his lunch break.

              Donald had said the package had never left his sight. That's what he told the cops. It was a criminal's lie, one that allows you to lie without actually denying anything.

             
Just because the package never left his sight doesn’t mean he didn’t put the diamonds in it.

              How could I be so dumb?

              I went to my office and called Donald's company. They gave me his address. Just like that.

              Oh, did I mention I represented myself as Sgt. Lyell of the Suffolk County Police Department? Oopsie. I made a silent promise to my father that I wouldn't lie like that again.

              Donald lived in the town of Crest Falls, a half hour outside of Carl's Cove.

              Long Islanders, I realized, gauge distance by time. You have to when any stretch of road, at any given moment, is clogged with cars that don’t move. That's what happens when you dump a bunch of folks onto an island and give them lots of coffee and city jobs. Ergo, Crest Falls is a half hour away, or two miles during rush hour.

              But little did I know, the gods that govern this little slab of land surrounded by sharks had decreed that five miles of Route 27 needed to be repaved. And so two lanes bottlenecked into one, and a certain individual in a Maserati thought he could cut in front of a Hyundai just at the entrance to the bottleneck, thereby getting himself a coveted ten feet closer to his destination. But the Hyundai would have nothing of this privileged punk cutting her off, and so she stepped on it just as the Maserati was asserting said privilege.

              Crash, bam, boom.

              And another hour and twenty minutes tacked on to my drive.

              By the time I got to Donald's house, my bladder felt like a puffer fish at full puff. So full I think my eyes were crossed. I staggered up his driveway and knocked on the door. Then I rang the bell.

              He answered, vaguely recognizing me. Work acquaintances always have trouble with recognition outside of the job.              

              "Can I..." he started to say.

              "Listen," I said, beginning the electric slide on his front porch, "I just sat in about two hours of traffic and before I started I drank about a gallon of iced tea. Can I just use your bathroom?"

              When a girl is standing on your porch with such a tale, you quickly run through the options. Either let her stand there and deal with the consequences (watered begonias), or let her in and question her after when her mind is more rational.

              Donald opted for the latter, bless his heart.

              He stood in his livingroom when I emerged feeling as if I just gave birth to twin water balloons.

              "What's this all about?" he asked. I was pretty sure he recognized me by now.

              "We need to talk," I said. I'd rehearsed this little speech in the car. Upon retrospect, the nervousness I'd felt the whole time driving here did very little to alleviate my bladder predicament.

              "Ok," he said cautiously.

              "A package was delivered to my microbrewery," I said. "The contents were fifty pounds of Amarillo Gold hops and enough diamonds for an Arabian Nights story. Now I know the cops probably grilled you at length, but you and I both know that cops can be fooled, and the Carl's Cove police are, how shall I put it, probably not on the Mensa society's hot list at the moment. So maybe you should come clean with me, Donald."

              Here's something funny that happens sometimes. You sit in traffic for two hours and you get an idea, and you rehearse that idea and play it every which way until it seems flawless. The trouble is that you've only rehearsed that one idea, that one bit of dialogue. What you haven’t done is consider the other variables of the equation. Like, for instance, what would you do if you were in Donald's living room, and you realized that there was some weird optical illusion that had always taken place when you saw him at work; that the cute little courier uniform had somehow made him look a little smaller, and that now, stripped of that uniform and in plain clothes – plain clothes being a tank top and exercise shorts – an ensemble that showed off a formidable chunk of muscle – he towered over you, looking like he could take you in one fist and crush you like a cashew.

              And what would you do if you realized you were alone in that house? That the house had all the trappings of single life? You realize that you didn’t plan for this. That if this guy really was the criminal you were suggesting him to be, he probably was not above taking you in the aforementioned fist and crushing you like said cashew.

              That's when I thought of Max Bosch and the career criminal. And how I now had my answer: That for career criminals, if they were to continue their career, consistency and restraint was the key to longevity. The career criminal doesn’t go beyond the precedent he has set for himself. He may be desperate for the big score, but the jump from petty crime to harder crime is not like the jump from harder crime to murder.

              And that of course is when I realized that Donald here was no career criminal, but was probably more likely a guy with very little to lose besides his life and his reputation, and who would do anything to protect those precious commodities.

              And that's when I began to scream.

              There comes a time in life when the craziest solution to a problem has to be considered. This was one of those times. I figured I might possibly be killed at that moment, so it really did seem like a pretty decent idea right then and there.

              Here's how it went. I started to scream.

              It's not what you think. See, here was my dilemma: I was trapped in a room with a guy I didn’t know, whose proclivity toward murder I had not gauged. Had I started screaming about myself, there could have been trouble. But I didn’t think there could be half as much trouble if I was screaming about
him
.

              "
Oh...my...GOD
!" was how I started. And I pointed to his head. "
Spider!
"

              He ducked as if there was really such a creature descending upon his head at that very moment, and looked up cautiously toward the ceiling.

              "
Oh...my...GOD
!" I repeated.

              "What?" he shouted.

              "On your head! It's black and hairy!" And I let out a scream that could've frozen the Dead Sea. It was easy, I was that scared, and for a moment I actually pictured what would happen if I really did see what I was describing. I hate spiders.

              I kept pointing and screaming. "It's on your head!"

              Like I said, I really was that scared. There wasn't much convincing I had to do. As far as Donald was concerned, there was a huge, black, hairy spider sitting atop his head ready to go exploring.

              The man began to shake like he just grabbed hold of an electric fence in the rain. He slapped at his head, hard. And that was my cue. I ran like it was nobody's business.

              As far as I know, he was still in there slapping and shaking as I started my car and tore out of there.

              As for me, I was shaking too. All over, and I began laughing uncontrollably, or crying, or a mixture of both. All I know is that I actually felt elated to have gotten out of there alive. Then the thought occurred to me that I had no proof of what he
would
have done to me, only what he
could
have done. He also could have done a river dance while juggling three egg salad sandwiches. So, in the end, I may have made tremendous fools out of both of us.

              In fact, I'm almost sure that is what happened.

              I drove and drove, slapping my steering wheel out of frustration when I considered what I'd done back at Donald's house.

              "Stupid," I said to myself. "Stupid, stupid, stupid. My God, how stupid can you be?"

              There was no use going back to the brewery tonight. We were close to closing time when I got back to Carl's Cove, so I just went home. Tanya was there. Thankfully. She'd gotten a job waitressing down at Junior's and today was her day off.

              "You look terrible," she said.

              "Thank you."

              "What happened?"

              "Pour me some wine and I'll tell you."

              She got up and made her way to the kitchen. Tanya had an annoying habit of keeping reds in the fridge. Normally I say something snarky. I let it go for tonight. She filled up a glass and I downed it almost in one shot and motioned for another.

              I told her the whole sordid story. Somewhere around the time when I cried spider, she started to laugh. Maybe it was the wine, the relief of tension, or both, but I started too and found I couldn’t stop.

              The phone rang. We looked at each other. The two of us were too busy losing our lungs to pick it up, and so it went to voicemail. When it beeped, I went over and picked up the phone and dialed in to hear the message. I was still hysterical when the message began:

              "
Madison, this is Donald, your delivery guy...
"

              I was no longer hysterical.

              Funny how that works.

              I let the message play out.

              "
... I hope you don’t mind, I called the brewery and they gave me your home number. I'm not sure what just happened today, but I need your help. There's not much to say about it other than...
" His voice seemed to waver slightly.              "
... other than you were right. And I'm in something that I can’t get out of. And I can’t go back to the police and you're, I think, the only one I can turn to. Can we meet somewhere? It can be a public place. In fact, I prefer that it be a public place. Call me. Ok?
"

              If vampires were real, my face was what most of their victims would look like after a midnight supper. Tanya noticed the blood drain from my face as my laughter died and I listened to the message a second time.

              "What is it?" she whispered, as if the caller was live on the other end.

              I held up my hand until the message finished playing the second time. Then I hung up the phone.

              I told her it was Donald and relayed the message.

              Tanya was frantic. "You're crazy," she said. "You're not going to meet him, are you?"

              "You want to hear his voice? He sounded legit."

              "I don’t care if he sounded legit. You're calling the cops right now."

              "Stop. No I'm not. We're meeting at Junior's tonight. I'm calling him right now."

              "You're crazy."

              "And you're working tonight. Call Junior and see if he'll give you any hours. Call and see if you can switch with someone."

              I picked up the phone and hit the redial button.

              "I can’t believe what I'm seeing," Tanya said, wide-eyed and shaking her head.

              I put my finger to my lips and mouthed a gentle shush.

              "Hang up that phone right now," she whispered.

              I put my hand over the mouthpiece. "Too late, he already knows I'm calli— Hi, Donald...?"

              Tanya threw both hands up in the air while she listened to me talk. She shook her head, and it seemed automatic. Then, after a moment, she gave up with an exasperated gesture and picked up her cellphone to call her boss down at the pizza place.

              I gave her the thumbs up. "Seven-thirty, then? Sounds great. See you then."

              I hung up and she scowled at me.