Murder Brewed At Home (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  And it got me to thinking about my liberal arts degree. How I took all these random courses in which I learned a lot of great stuff, and subsequently applied none of it throughout my life, save for a reference in a short story or two. One of the courses I took was, wait for it, Ancient Warfare. That's right, yours truly was at one point in her short life ankle-deep in naked Spartans duking it out over a piece of land or a woman or what-have-you. And for some reason I retained some of this stuff. I don’t know why. If I believed in Things Meant to Be for a Reason, I’d say this was providence. But I think sometimes a girl like me with a lint trap for a mind needs lint for her trap every so often, and the luck of the draw ensures that one day it may be some interesting fact I read once about the social structure of mud snail colonies, another day it may be the evolution of the avocado pit. This time, the thing that had lodged in my brain waiting to awaken when needed was the term "scytale.”

  The scytale was an ancient cipher used by the Spartans to send secret messages during times of war. A strip of parchment or papyrus or whatever they used back then was wrapped around a stick and a message was written on it, each letter appearing once per band of paper. When the message was complete, and the paper unraveled, the message was now garbled, and appeared probably in some fashion exactly the way mine did now.

  And I looked over at the only other thing that Maggie had told me to take: the spade. And I picked it up. And I wrapped that piece of masking tape around it, forming a type of spiral that reached halfway up the handle of the thing.

  And this is what I saw:

  THEHOUSE

  ATPOOHCO

  RNEREBAY

  It didn’t take me long to insert the proper spaces between letters before I was able to read the message: THE HOUSE ON POOH CORNER EBAY.

  A quick search yielded a few results. Several people were listing various editions of the book on the auction website. One in particular caught my eye. A very old book that was listed at $5000 for a starting price, and looked amazingly like the editions on Maggie's bookshelf, the ones she'd said belonged to her mother.

  The ones she'd said weren't worth anything.

  Well, you bet I checked into this. First of all, the item description listed it as a "First edition, 1924, London – pristine copy.”

  I did a bit of digging. Yes, this was a first edition. No, it wasn't worth five grand.

  It was worth ten grand.

  Whoever listed this book did so with the intention of letting folks bid it up. Five g's was his let-go price.

  The seller was listed as "Cultured_Club". This was his only listing.

  Slightly more digging led me to the discovery that this title was the fourth in a series.

  Care to guess what the other three are? Yep. The ones sitting on Maggie's shelf.

  So I did some more digging. As it turns out, "Cultured_Club" had made a few more appearances online, mainly in some professional culinary arts forums. I didn’t really care about any of the posts, except for one – in which Cultured_Club asks about the origin of true Madagascar vanilla sold in the U.S., and whether or not it would be to his advantage to pick up some regional vanilla when he goes to Madagascar next month, and so on.

  And then I thought. Cultured Club?

  Culture?

  As in cheese?

  If anyone knew about this, it was the one who sent me this clue. I tried calling Maggie's cell phone. The number had been disconnected.

  #

  "I've got some news for you," said Lester as we got out of his car and headed toward the beach for a leisurely late-afternoon walk. "I know how you are about these things, so I'm not going to call it good news, ok?"

  "Ok," I said, wary of his intent.

  "Just so we're clear on that. I'm making an effort here."

  "And I appreciate that, Lester."

  "We just got the results back from the second autopsy."

  "The second? For Kyle Young?"

  "Yeah, you didn’t know about that?"

  "Um, no."

  "Deaths at home. We always do two autopsies."

  "Is that a thing?"

  "It's a thing here. I guess to rule out suicide in the home for, you know, for insurance purposes..."

  "Say no more," I said. My stomach always churned clockwise whenever I thought about the many ways people profited from death, and the way in which they keep others from profiting.

  "Anyway," he continued, "it seems they found a tiny puncture near the hairline on the back of the neck. Not saying anything here either way, but that could indicate a point of entry for a syringe."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning that you were right, Madison? Are you happy now? I said it. We could have a murder case on our hands."

  I stopped just before the line where the pavement ended and the sand began. "So you're convinced?"

  "I'm more convinced than I was before, let's put it that w— excuse me."

  He held up a hand and pulled out his phone to look at a text.

  "Everything ok?" I said, noting the serious look on his face.

  He typed a quick response and then turned and headed back toward the car. "Come and take a ride with me."

  "Uh, ok," I said, hurrying behind. "Where exactly are we going?"

  "To the inlet over by the yacht club," he said, halfway into the driver's seat of his car.

  I got in quickly as he started the engine. I had just gotten my seat belt on as he tore out of the beach parking lot.

  "You mind tell me what's going on at the inlet over by the yacht club?"

  "I don’t mind at all," he said. "They found William Restocruz."

  #

  The area was already blocked off and police weren't letting anyone near. It seems the body had been spotted by a Mr. and Mrs. Walter Greeley, a couple spending their tenth anniversary on the water. Lester stepped past the blockade and headed toward the Greeleys who sat hand in hand on a bench near the water. After chatting with them, he went down to the shoreline, where I gathered Mr. Restocruz's body was. I refused to go near it. I'm actually quite squeamish that way. Besides, having seen quite a few dead people within the last few months, I had had my fill, thank you very much. I waited till Lester got back. When he did, I saw he had an evidence bag in his hands.

  "He's a big guy," said Lester. "The water tends to bloat the body, but you can tell he was a body builder. My guys say it looks as though cause of death was a cardiac arrest. Of course, we won’t know for sure till we get the autopsy results."

  "Cardiac arrest?" I said. "Not for nothin', but he doesn't exactly look like the most unhealthy guy in the world."

  "Could have been using drugs. Steroids. Speed. Anything to enhance his performance."

  "Ok, then why was he out here?"

  He was wearing running shoes. Looks like he may have been out for a run."

  "Like our boy Kyle."

  "I guess you can sort of say that."

  "And I guess he just fell into the water."

  Lester scratched his head and squinted off to the side. "Yeah, that is a puzzle."

  I pointed to the evidence bag at his side. "Is that what he had on him?"

  "Yeah." He handed the bag to me. I held it up to have a closer look.

  His voice softened to a whisper. "Listen, try not to let anyone see you handling that, will you? You're not even supposed to be here."

  "Aren’t you their superior?" I said, turning away from the rest of the cops milling about.

  "I'm in control of the scene, yes, but that doesn’t mean I can disrupt procedure by having a civilian handle evidence."

  The sun was starting to set, and despite the adequate lighting it was hard to get a good look at the bag's contents. I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight to see the contents of the bag more clearly.

  "Madison," Lester scolded.

  "Hush," I said. "What is this in here?"

  "It's a printout for a flight confirmation."

  "Yeah, I realize that. But what's TNR?"

 
; "I looked it up," said Lester. "It's the code for Ivato International Airport, serving Antananarivo, Madagascar."

  "Madagascar?" I said, almost chuckling. "Are you serious?"

  "Yeah, why?"

  I looked at him. "It's just...interesting is all." I wasn't sure if my boy Lester would appreciate how much work I'd been doing behind his back. "What was he doing going to Madagascar."

  "Well," said Lester, "that's just the thing. I don’t think he was going to Madagascar. Look."

  He donned a pair of nitrile gloves and took the envelope from me. He then extracted the flight confirmation printout and turned it over. On it, handwritten in small, neat, block letters was the phrase:

  Chester Street & Biggs Avenue. 30 yds past large tree on corner.

  "I know where this is," I said.

  "Is it where I think it is?"

  "It's on Kyle Young's running route."

  Lester smiled. "Then it's where I thought it was."

  #

  I'd driven by Maggie's house a couple of times. In the span of two days, she'd not been back. Her cell phone had been disconnected. I had no choice but to call in an anonymous missing persons report.

  In the meantime, while Lester was off checking out the area indicated by the flight confirmation note in the dead man's pocket, I felt it was my duty to follow up on the email sent to me by "Kyle Young" and signed by "MC.” If I could nail down that it was indeed Maggie Childsworth who sent that email pointing me toward – if I was correct – Owen Schiff, the husband of Daisy from Whey Cool, I may have a little extra for the police to go on.

  But how to accomplish this bit of snoopery?

  "Hideous," said Mitch the mailman.

  I hadn’t been paying attention to him. We were in our new tasting room, with the smell of freshly cut cedar all around us, but my mind was obviously someplace else. Mitch had a pint of our signature pale ale in front of him.

  "Now what's wrong?" I said indignantly.

  "Your malt was fresh for this batch?"

  "You're kidding, right?"

  He shook his head behind another sip.

  "You suggesting I would use anything less than fresh ingredients?"

  "There's an unexpected tartness to this, is all. I thought it may have been because the malt wasn't fresh."

  The stress had gotten to me, and I snapped at him. "Listen, you carbonated lunkhead, if you can’t find a way to appreciate my wares, I suggest maybe you go and haunt whatever corner of the earth exists where they haven’t heard enough about you to ban you for life...yet."

  He sat there, pint in hand, frozen mid-air, with a look of utmost shock and stupefaction on his bearded face.

  He put down his pint, picked up the square of napkin on which it had been resting, wiped the corner of his mouth, and said, "I'm really very sorry."

  "Are you?"

  He stared at me for an uncomfortable amount of time. "You're the only one left. They won’t allow me into any other place here in Carl's Cove."

  "So it's not because you love my beer."

  "On the contrary, I like the beer. I like the company even more."

  I allowed a reluctant smile to break through. "You could be a little nicer."

  "I don’t know if I could," he said. "I try to be nice. Something happens between my brain and my mouth. I don’t know what it is."

  I pointed to his pint. "That one's on the house."

  He looked at the glass, then at me. "What do you need?"

  "How do you find out the origin of an email someone sent to you?"

  He paused, and then said, "Are you serious?"

  I rolled my eyes. "Yes, Mitchell, I'm serious."

  A smile appeared in the corner of his mouth and he took a deep breath. "You look at who sent it to you. Usually in the header there's a number – usually a set of four numbers of two or three digits each, separated by periods. You call that an IP address. Copy it, and then look it up online. There are a ton of sites that'll help you find the origin of an IP address."

  "That's it?"

  "That's it."

  "That will tell me who sent it?"

  "No, that will tell you the location. Beyond that, you’re on your own."

  "I guess location helps."

  "Helps what?"

  "Drink your free pint and stop asking me questions. I have to think."

  I picked up a bar rag and swabbed non-existent stains off the bar as I thought. I looked at Mitch.

  "You're a funny guy."

  "But looks aren’t everything?" he answered.

  "No," I said, "really. I'm amused by you. What I'm saying is: it goes both ways. I like having you around. You like my beer. You have impossible standards but they are standards and for that I'm grateful. Just know that. I like having you around."

  He raised his glass with a smirk, sipped, and said nothing.

  #

  The IP address pointed me to the Carl's Cove library. It was a crisp morning when I left the house and walked about a quarter of a mile up the road to where the library was.

  Let me explain something. You enter Carl's Cove from the north and all traffic slows to twenty-five miles per hour. That's the speed limit. It's not so bad. You get used to it. Besides, you get to enjoy the scenery as you head toward Main Street. But there's always some entitled punk in a Maserati who thinks he's above it all, some kid who's here for the weekend or something, and he's the real reason for the speed limit. The library on the corner of Main and Harper Way is in a state of perpetual renovation from money garnered from the speed trap. I wouldn’t be surprised if the speed limit changed back to forty or even fifty once the place is fully renovated –if it ever is.

  So I sidestepped a giant hole in the paved walkway that was guarded by two cones with a flimsy piece of yellow tape across them. I had to step onto the lawn to do so. There was dew on the ground and I got grass stains on the upper soles of my Batgirl kicks. But I digress.

  I was a woman on a mission.

  The library is housed in a century-old building that looks like a Masonic temple. I think it actually was a Masonic temple at one point. All these ghosts of Masons still haunt the place, probably in the 600 section in the upper west corner, where no one goes. Me, I just had to go to the information desk where the public computer check-in was.

  Librarians, bless their hearts, are notoriously guarded when it comes to information about patrons, and I hope they always are. I'm actually glad my job was as difficult as it was.

  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

  I approached the desk, and there sat the Mother of All Librarians. I actually looked around to see if there were any cameras filming this. For starters, she had her hair up in a tight silver bun. She had on a floral print dress whose material no doubt had once adorned someone's Southern table for Sunday dinner. She was matronly and comforting, soft-voiced, and peered at me over horn-rimmed glasses. For a second there, I was expecting for her to offer me a Werther's Original.

  All this pleasant exterior gave way the moment I asked to see who it was that checked out the computers on such and such a day. The mask came off, and I was met with the coldest stare this side of Mount Everest. It was as if she thought I was a fluffy bunny rabbit looking for food, and then took off her glasses, and cleaned them, and put them on again, and then saw that I was in actuality a carny geek who bit the heads off chickens and was looking to graduate to something less beaky.

  Her answer was an emphatic, "All patron information is confidential."

  Had not her opinion of me as an intrusive identity thief already been firmly established, I would have offered her some free beer as a bribe. Luckily, better angels stayed my mouth.

  She stared at me, as if the sheer force of her gaze was capable of willing me away. It worked, and I sidled off feeling as dejected as a wallflower.

  Before I got too far, I heard someone trying to get someone else's attention. "Psst."

  I looked over and saw a pudgy man in his fifties, dyed-brown hair and beard, thick g
lasses, and...

  "Mitch?" I said.

  He was peering at me from the reference shelves. He had some kind of computer programming manual in his hands.

  "What's the matter with you?" he said quietly, but sharply.

  "Mitch, did you follow me here?"

  "No, it's my day off."

  "You spend your days off in the library?"

  "No, I'm spending today in the library."

  "Huh," I said.

  "Don’t let her see you talking to me. Come around here into the stacks."

  I ducked around the corner and there, surrounded by a wealth of computer knowledge, received a scolding from Mitch.

  "You can't just go up to a librarian and ask her to see someone's private information."

  "It's not private. It's their IP address."

  "It's associated with private information."

  "What if the person was in violation of their rules of online conduct?"

  "Do you have proof of that?"

  I hesitated. "No."

  He nodded. Then looked around the corner. "You have the IP address written down?"

  "Yeah," I said, starting to feel somewhat annoyed by the interrogation.

  "Let me see it," he said, snapping his fingers impatiently.

  I handed it to him with a dagger shooting out of my eyes.

  He looked at it, and then said, "Wait here."

  I watched him approach the library custodian, an older man in overalls – another character out of central casting – with a sad, friendly face and a couple of days' worth of salty stubble on his face. Mitch whispered to the man. The two smiled and laughed. The conversation seemed interminable. And then the miracle happened. Mitch handed the man the slip of paper on which I'd scrawled the IP address.

  "I'll be over in Reference," Mitch said to the custodian in a normal voice as he walked back toward me.

  "Do you mind filling me in?" I said.

  "Shhh," Mitch said with a smile. "Watch."