Murder By The Pint (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  I reached into the mini-fridge in my office and extracted one such bottle: our signature IPA. I took a four-ounce tasting glass off the sideboard.

  Hildy held up her hand. "I don’t drink beer."

  I almost fainted. "Are you serious?"

  "Dead serious."

  "Do you drink at all?"

  "I love a good cocktail. I just don’t drink beer."

  "Have you ever tried Darby's?"

  "No, but my father was a beer drinker. So was my ex-husband. I never liked the smell or the taste of it."

  "What did they drink?"

  She rattled off two names. Macrobreweries. These are the conglomerates that advertise during the Superbowl and pander to the dead palates of John and Mary Front Porch.

  "Excuse me," I said indignantly, "but that's not beer. That's carbonated corn chowder with essence of aluminum can added to it. It's garbage. Cheaply made and marketed to people without taste buds who drink just to get drunk. We make beer for people who love good food. People who can taste the difference. You, as our Events Planning and Public Relations Coordinator, should know this."

  "It's my job to market a product. Whether that product is pants or beer or sunglasses makes no difference to me."

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. "How on earth can you market a product you're completely ignorant of?"

  "Listen," she said with a persistence of attitude that was starting grate on me, "your dear father hired me to keep the brand consistent. That's an abstract concept that has no room for personal opinions on the product. I'm here to ensure that Darby's keeps its reputation, whatever that reputation is. If the company is failing, then change is needed. If the company is doing well, then change is bad. That's all I need to know. The rest is just beer."

  Maybe I was just tired of being lectured today. I don’t know. All I know is that I found myself collapsing into the chair behind my desk and laughing hysterically. There was something hilarious about this rigid woman in a too-tight suit talking about my father's beer as though it only existed on a spreadsheet, and having never tasted it. I couldn’t stop laughing as I pictured her with a glass of it, frowning and snarling into the foam.

  "Are you quite through?" she said.

  I opened the bottle with the bottle opener that my father had affixed to the desk and poured her a glass. "Just try it."

  To her credit, she took the glass and raised it to her lips.

  "Hold it," I said. "You should really smell it first. It's like wine. It has a bouquet. Cup your hand over the rim and give it a swirl. That excites the aromatic compounds."

  She did exactly as I asked.

  "Perfect," I said, "Now release your hand and take a sniff."

  She did.

  "What do you smell?"

  She took a couple of sniffs. "Flowers." She sniffed again. "Grapefruit?"

  "Correct on both accounts," I said. "Those aromas come from the hops. What else?"

  Sniff. "Biscuits?"

  I clapped my hands together. "Yes! That's the pale and Munich malts we use. Now you’re ready for a sip."

  She took a reluctant sip and made a face as if she wasn't sure if she liked it. That was ok. I myself still make that face when I try new things.

  "It's ok," she said. "Probably not something I'd drink. But it tastes better than I remember."

  "There's your marketing angle," I said. "Just combine that with whatever you have. This isn’t your father's beer. Well, it is in my case. But where most people are concerned, craft beer is what their parents and grandparents had in cans after mowing the lawn. As far as I'm concerned, I would have poured it back into the lawnmower where it belonged. This is Darby's, and Darby's is Carl's Cove. That's what I'm here to make happen. And you’re going to help me."

  Before you stand up and applaud, you need to realize that I was not fully conscious as I spoke. This was not me speaking, but the spirit of my father speaking through me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe this literally, but I do believe my father's spirit is in everything connected to his brewery, myself included. I spoke these words, and then suddenly realized that I was in love with Darby's. It was a wonderful moment. And I saw it on Hildegaard's face. I swear it wouldn't have been any different had I just been shooting flames out of my mouth. She'd actually taken a step back as I spoke rapturously of a future flowing with my father's wonderful brews. At any moment I expected Hildy to take to the streets with a megaphone proclaiming that the Era of Darby's has arrived. She was wide-eyed, and now she was a true believer. She took another sip, and then downed the rest in one swig. She slammed the glass down on my desk and left the room without another word.

  If only every employee was like that.

  Chapter 8

  About four days later, the phone call came in. Gerry answered, and a man's voice asked him for "the guy who runs the place.” When informed that the guy was a girl, the caller simply and tersely said, "Put 'er on."

  I answered the phone. The gruff voice said, "Yeah, you're in charge down there?"

  I said, "That's right. How can I help you?"

  "We're calling about the diamond package you received."

  "Yes, I said. Have you heard anything?"

  "Well, we're gonna need a bit more information."

  "Okay."

  "Your name."

  An eerie feeling came over me. Ever walk outside when it's about to start thundering and pouring incessantly? You know that electric smell in the hot air? That's the feeling I had when this guy – and the savvy reader will have guessed by now that this wasn't the cops I was speaking with – asked me my name.

  "Didn’t you..." I said, as the realization hit me. "Didn’t you guys take down my name already?"

  A pause on the other end. "Who's this?"

  "Who am I speaking with, please?" I asked. I think I sounded strong.

  And the caller hung up.

  For the rest of the day, I thought about that call. And then it occurred to me that perhaps I ought to contact the police and let them know about it. Maybe it was a branch of the police department. Maybe one hand was unaware of what the other hand was doing. I called them up and asked them if there was anyone else working on the case. Anyone that maybe they didn’t know about. No, they said. They were the only ones. They also said that the call was very interesting, and did I manage to get a number. I said that Darby's Microbrewery was probably the only place in the world without caller ID capability. My dad was strange like that with some types of technology. They were nice enough to ask me if I wanted police protection.

  On the basis of a phone call? No. I asked them if they had any leads yet as to who might have been responsible for sending the diamonds. Not yet, they said.

  So that was it. I went home that night with no problems at all, to a reheated penne a la vodka dinner that Tanya had made earlier for her boyfriend, Sam. I curled up in bed with the latest book on the nightstand and was out in fifteen minutes.

  Chapter 9

  All right, so this is probably a good enough time as any to tell you a story about a guy by the name of Max Bosch. This isn’t one of my short stories. This one's all true.

  At the age of fifty-six, Max Bosch got himself a 900 number. If you called 1-900-328-2783 (1-900-EAT-CRUD), you would hear Max Bosch himself, with a voice like a mouthful of wet sponge, his th's pronounced like d's, reading from the previous day's news. Max Bosch charged 99 cents for the first minute and $6.95 for each additional minute. A typical call lasted ten minutes, or one page of news. Max Bosch made $63.54 per call. This tiny bundle of facts is remarkable in no way at all save for the fact that the only person in the entire known universe who ever called this number was Max Bosch himself.

  Here was the scheme. Fifty-six year-old Max Bosch, his hair slicked with chocolate brown shoe polish, his face clean, but aged, like a Turkish tobacco pouch, his algae-colored eyes twinkling, and a fresh plug of Juicy Fruit in his cheek, would walk into a building with a brown parcel under his arm. In reality, it was a shoebox
(Florsheim loafers, size 9 ½ EEE, purchased circa 1956), wrapped in brown grocery bag paper (Shop Rite, most recent home to three packages of Oreos, a half gallon of two-percent, and one can of Hormel chili). But in Max Bosch's scheme, it was a parcel addressed to one Dr. Henry H. Pokey, [this address].

  "I'm sorry; I'm not showing anyone with that name here."

  "Are you shaw, sweetheart? Maybe he's a new guy?"

  "I'll check again...no, I'm sorry, sir, there's no Henry H. Pokey here."

  "Huh. Isn't dat strange. I mean, I gotta package here and it's addressed to Dr. Henry H. Pokey. Dis address – Dis is one-faw-one-seven?"

  "It is."

  "And you got a fawteent flaws?"

  "We do."

  "Huh. Dis is very odd. Tell you what, may I use your phone to call my awffice?"

  Max Bosch dialed his 900 number and waited.

  "Dey got me on hold, dontcha hate it when dey do dat... I like your nails, dere."

  "Thank you."

  "Dey look like one a dem George Barris late sixties kinda candy-flecked – Hello? Yeah, dis is Barry Gertweller calling, I gotta package here and dey're saying dere's no such pi'son at dis address...yeah...yeah I checked it...yeah she's right here, would you like to tawk wit her? Alright...yeah, I'll hold..."

  Ten minutes later, Max Bosch, with a snap of Juicy Fruit whose flavor was as distant a memory as the face of the newsstand man he stole it from, hung up the phone and said, "Dey said just bring it back. Some idiot down dere got de names all screwed up. You know how it is. I'm sorry to waste your time, sweetheart. Take care o' yourself, and take care o' dem nails."

  He left the building $63.54 richer, for thirteen minutes of work. If you did your math right, that was $293.26 an hour. Dollar for dollar, it was a better con than a licensed chiropractor was.

  Max eventually got picked up for this little scheme. He did a couple years for it, got time off for time served, and was released.

  That's when my dad hired him.

  Dad was a sucker for hard luck cases. He swore that Max was trying to better himself. Tried to convince us all of it. I was sixteen then and already a sassy little thing who had no patience for anything, least of all for supposed hard luck cases taking advantage of a business owner with a heart of gold.

  Well, poor dad learned his lesson when the business suddenly started hemorrhaging money for no discernable reason. After a quick look at the books, my mother slammed them shut and yelled the name, "Max Bosch!" at the top of her lungs. The dogs went crazy, and Dad sunk in his easy chair, a glass of Darby's Citrus Wheat in his hand.

  So why am I telling you this?

  Simple: A week after the murder, Max Bosch came around looking for a job.

  He looked...almost the same. It’s hard to explain. Max always looked old. But Max always had this peculiar face. It was a face like a piece of dry-cured meat. And he always looked tired, and he always looked like he’d just left his smile in whatever vehicle brought him to you. His hair, last I remembered, had been prematurely gray. Now it was a phony chestnut brown, thinner, and obviously spray-painted in where it refused to grow at all.

  Here's what he said to me:

  "Darling, your father was a beautiful man. A beautiful man. And I hurt him. I took advantage of the guy. Not a day goes by that I don’t regret hurting that beautiful man. I'm clean now. I can show you proof of it."

  I hired him. I'm my father's daughter after all.

  I gave him a job sweeping up, taking out the trash, all the assorted janitorial concerns.

  A week later, he appeared in the doorway to my office.

  "Knock knock," he said.

  I hate it when people say, "Knock knock."

  "Come on in, Max."

  He took off his beret and held it in his hands. "Hope I'm not catching you at an inconvenient time."

  "Nope," I said.

  "Oh, good. I mean, I hate to think you was in the middle of like a conference or something."

  "There's no one here, Max."

  "Well, I mean like a phone conference."

  "I'd probably keep the door closed for that."

  "Yeah, the door closed. Sure."

  "So?" I said, watching him stand there with his beret in his hands, not saying anything.

  "Oh, well, I was wondering what a guy like me could do to, you know, help out more."

  "In what way?"

  "Well, I mean I'm like a janitor here and I know youse guys get big shipments and all and maybe you could use some help there."

  "You want to help out with shipments?"

  "I figure it could get me some more hours."

  "I don’t know, Max," I said, taking Hildy's glass over to my little sink and rinsing it thoroughly of its Hildy germs. "We get a lot of stuff in and it all has to be processed in great detail."

  "Yeah, but Gerry was saying that youse guys could use help is what he was saying."

  "When did you talk to Gerry?"

  "Just now. I mean he was like complaining about there not being enough help and all. And then I was like all 'what do you guys need?' and he was like 'we need help with the shipment' and all that."

  I couldn’t picture my cousin Gerry talking that way. "Well, Max," I said, "I'll have to think that over."

  "Oh sure," he said, fondling his hat, "by all means, you think it through. I mean you're like the boss, right?"

  "I'm like the boss."

  "Yeah, that's what I said. Well you think it over, ma'am."

  "Call me Madison."

  "Yeah, well you think it over. Thank you. Thank you."

  Chapter 10

  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."