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

  "You called us?"

  "Oh God."

  "I never got notification about it."

  "Oh Lester, I swear..."

  "I believe you. And someone's head is gonna roll over this one, I assure you. This lousy seaside police station. They go for years with nothing more disruptive than parking violations and they start to get a bit lazy. I'm sorry, Madison, I really am."

  "Why are you so sorry?"

  He was looking more grave than ever. "Madison, two people are dead now because of this."

  I have to admit, I've heard more pleasant things in my life. "And by 'this,' you mean that diamond shipment."

  "That's right. Now you have to tell me what you remember about that phone call."

  I closed my eyes and tried to put myself back where I was when that call came in.

  After a moment, I shook my head frustratedly. "All I can remember is that he asked about the diamond package I'd received, and did I hear anything about it."

  "That's odd."

  "It is, isn’t it?"

  It had just hit me now.

  Someone called about the diamond package, obviously knowing that it had been handed over to the police. Then a guy shows up dead a week or so later, apparently in connection with the package – once again, news had to have reached Jack Daltry that the diamonds were in the hands of the authorities. So that meant...

  I didn't want to ask. But I had to. And I did.

  "Was there to be a second shipment of diamonds?" I asked.

  His look told me more than words ever could.

  Chapter 15

  And so it was time to pay Lola Tarkington a visit.

  For someone unfamiliar with the territory, I made it to her house in what I assumed was record time. Ok, I may have violated a speeding ordinance or two. Come on, twenty-five miles an hour over three miles of straight road? Now listen, I don’t want you to get the idea that I'm recommending this habit for the viewers at home. I have, and have always had, extraordinary luck with automobiles. But let's just say that if you're ever in Carl's Cove and you have a chance to attend a town meeting, do me a favor and put in a good word about the idiocy of enforcing a snail-with-a-limp speed limit through what is essentially three miles of nothing – not even deer. Thank you.

  She lived on the outskirts of the town, an area peppered with nothing but fine houses – little gems tucked away from the grubbiness of us commoners. I don’t know how our Ms. Lola Tarkington was able to afford such trappings, although I could come up with a few guesses were I to go solely on the juicy bits offered up by my new friend Mitch the mailman.

  Her driveway was a long one, and hidden from the road by the absence of a mailbox or any other domestic feature. It started off as dirt and then gave way to smooth pavement halfway up.

  The house was extremely modern from the outside. One of those boxy, artsy houses designed by a foreign architect who goes by one name that is neither masculine nor feminine, a thing full of squares and circles and glass where there shouldn’t be glass, and stone where there shouldn’t be stone. Harsh angles jutted out over the hill on which it sat, and numerous pieces of modern steel sculpture stood firmly planted around it, like fat, robot soldiers standing guard.

  I was afraid to knock, or ring, or whatever means of alerting the homeowner one had to execute. It was like approaching a bit of sophisticated machinery for which one was required to have passed at least a 200-level engineering class. I soon found over on the left side a set of granite steps leading up in a semi-spiral through a grove of some kind of dwarf tree specimen, all of which gave off a most fragrant aroma of pine and wood. The grove cleared and there I was on the top of the hill and facing the house. The granite stairs gave way to a granite path and I approached the front door with the same trepidation I usually reserve for roller coasters: I hate roller coasters.

  There was a button for the bell and I pressed it once. Faintly within came the sound of a tinkling set of bells, an eerie, depressing sound. And then Lola answered.

  She was in yoga pants and a tank top. She looked to be in her forties and in spectacular shape. Here I was, thirty-eight, and while I'm not overweight, don’t expect me to be running in any half-marathons anytime soon, unless there's beer or donuts at the other end. Even then I'll probably just take the car.

  "Yes," she said in a soft-spoken voice.

  "My name is Madison Darby," I said.

  Her face lit up. "Yes! Hello! I read about you in Dan's Paper."

  Dan's Paper is the official bible of the area. There's an old saying: If it isn’t in Dan's Paper, it didn’t happen in the Hamptons.

  "I didn’t even know I was in the paper," I said. It was true. They hadn't come to me.

  "Oh yeah," she said, "it was a wonderful article. Nice things to say."

  "Huh," I said, and looked around awkwardly.

  "Can I...help you with anything?" She was polite, I'll give her that.

  "I..." I started to speak, and then a little bird spoke to me. It told me that I was crazy to come out here without a plan, without any of the slightest inkling of what I was going to say to this person. This little bird reminded me that the last time I went to talk to what was essentially a total stranger about this case, I had to fake a psychotic episode and run. This little bird was telling me that this situation I was in right now was similar to that one.

  I did, however, have one little advantage: Tanya had given me a bottle of pepper spray about three months before we moved out here. She had not yet decided to move out here with me and was terrified at the thought of her cousin and best friend going out into the big scary world unprotected. As if I were fresh out of high school.

  It took me only fifteen minutes of rooting around in the still-unpacked boxes in our house to find it, and I had it here with me. I'd practiced drawing and deploying it before I left, looking like a pathetic loner, like Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. But at least it gave me some confidence, even if it didn’t give me a vocabulary.

  "I..." I said. "Listen, is it ok if I come in? We need to talk."

  There must have been a modicum of sincerity in my voice as well as my face, because her expression became one of concern and she stepped aside and ushered me in.

  If the outside of this house was a modern art masterpiece, the interior was obviously trying to outdo it. It was sparsely furnished, a lot of empty space dominated by strange-looking pieces and sculptures and paintings. The walls and ceiling of the living room to which she led me were immaculately white, and every sound here reverberated something awful – to the point where I was afraid to speak above a whisper.

  "This place is unreal," I said.

  "Thank you," she said with a smile.

  "You live here alone?"

  She nodded.

  She bade me to sit down on a billowy leather couch. She took the spot three cushions down. I felt like I was being interviewed by a psychiatrist for a job position as an art museum curator.

  "Can I get you anything?" She had this habit of looking me square in the eye when she spoke. It was unnerving.

  "No, thank you," I said, and found myself looking away.

  "You're here about the note," she said.

  You can probably guess that if there was one thing that could make the situation more awkward, that was it. I was grateful for it however, for it did manage to break the ice.

  I took a deep breath and nodded. "I am."

  "Can I ask how you managed to find me?"

  I told her the story about Junior's punk kids behind the counter and she laughed.

  "Can we talk about the note?" I said, and I'll admit it was kind of abrupt.

  This was the first time she looked away from me, as if she was embarrassed. "I was told to do it. I have no idea what that note said. But I was assured it wasn't anything harmful or threatening. It was my nephew's birthday party. A strange man came up to me sometime toward the end of the evening and asked if I would do him a favor. He gave me five hundred dollars and then told me there was a
nother five in it if I would get my nephew to put this note in the sandwich container. I asked him what the catch was. He just said it was nothing harmful or threatening. He said it two more times. He even offered another two hundred if I didn’t ask any questions. He had a warm smile and a soft voice. I hate to say this, but he looked trustworthy enough, and I'm not usually a very trusting person. So I did it."

  "What did this person look like?"

  She shrugged. "Kind of beefy. Average height. Middle-aged, I guess." She stared at the glass coffee table before us, and then looked at me. "Madison, I'm going to make us some coffee. Would you like some?"

  Not having slept well, I was a bit ragged, so I agreed. I followed her into the kitchen while she told me a bit about herself and her life in Carl's Cove. Being a masseuse was every bit as exotic as I thought it was, she said, and she implied that her particular practice carried with it an extra bit of intrigue. She had high-profile clients that preferred to remain anonymous. They held high office. They were town officials and men of great respect. She had no qualms about what she did, she said, because it afforded her great wealth and fine living. She was from a poor family, raised on a farm in Pennsylvania, and she spent the first half of her life trying to escape her roots. She spoke with great confidence and good grammar – the latter is instant points with me. And she made us our coffee with the strong, steady fingers of someone who uses their hands in their profession. Lola Tarkington was an interesting entity, to say the least. Observing her was like observing a dancer or a painter doing what they did best. I couldn’t figure out why.

  We took our coffee back to the living room and sat.

  "Something tells me," she said, "that the note I left – that my nephew left – said something that may not have been too nice."

  I nodded while I sipped. The coffee was alright. I like it strong. This was like decaf. "You're right about that," I said. "I won’t go into details. But let's just say it was rather unwelcome. My intention was to find out, honestly, who you were."

  She smiled. "This is who I am." She held up her arms to the room.

  "You did these?"

  She nodded. "Everything but the paintings. I'm a sculptor. I did all these and the pieces outside."

  "Incredible," I said.

  We sipped our coffee and talked about life in Carl's Cove. I told her about my childhood amongst the grains and the hops and the jars of yeast, and the smell of fermentation in the house. I told her about how I finally felt content in what I did, even if it had nothing to do with writing. I told her the secret to good beer was good sanitization practices and that I'd be proud to brew in her kitchen. She found that amusing. Before I knew it, my coffee cup was empty and so was hers. And we sat and talked some more. She mostly listened. Good listeners are hard to find.

  It was getting close to dinnertime. I got up and stretched. She bade me farewell with an invitation to come and visit again. That was it. No email address given. No phone number. No Facebook request.

  I got into my car and headed home. I was dog-tired. The caffeine had done nothing for me. Maybe it was decaf after all.

  The next day, Lola Tarkington was dead.

  Chapter 16

  "Apparent suicide," said Detective Moore.

  I was just as shocked as you can probably imagine. We were having lunch at Ernie's when he casually brought it up as a matter of town gossip.

  "How?" I said over my salad.

  He took a breath. "It's not pretty. She ran herself a bubble bath and took a Manhattan cocktail with her, only it had a lethal dose of boric acid mixed into it. She died almost instantly. One of her clients discovered the body when he showed up for an appointment."

  I couldn’t believe it. I was further disturbed when he told me the death occurred several hours after I'd been to visit her.

  "Impossible," I said.

  "I know it's hard to believe."

  "No, Lester, you don’t understand. She was a content, positive, confident woman. There was no mistaking it. She couldn’t have been suffering from any sort of depression. Not the kind that gives way to suicide, anyway."

  He shook his head. "I've seen cases of suicide before. The ones without warning signs are rare, but they do happen. One of the greatest tragedies about depression is the sufferer's ability to hide it. And when you factor in her solitude..."

  I shook my head back at him. "You guys are missing something."

  "Pardon me?"

  "You heard me. Check your forensics guys' diplomas."

  "Now listen here—"

  "No, you listen. There's something odd going on here. This woman is paid to leave me a note and then suddenly she's—"

  "Wait," he said, "hold on. Back it up a second. Paid to leave you a note?"

  Whoops. I felt a hotness creeping around my collarbone. "I guess I forgot to tell you about that," I said sheepishly.

  "Wait, she left you that note?"

  "Not her. Her nephew."

  He threw his fork down onto his plate, causing a few adjacent tables to look up from their meals. "You knew this and didn’t tell me."

  "I was going to tell you."

  "Were you now?"

  "Hey, don’t start being a cop all over my salad here. I can’t help it if the pressures of running a microbrewery are clogging up my brain. Anyway, you guys are supposed to be doing your job."

  He put his head in his hands. "Ok, listen. I'm going to forget about this for a moment. And I'm going to be fair and polite and kind to you. I'm sorry you're under pressure, but I need you, Madison Darby, to come clean with me and tell me what you know about this case and what you don’t know."

  I told him what I knew of Lola Tarkington, which wasn't much, but was more than he knew. He looked down and nodded silently at his plate while I spoke, absorbing every detail, pausing me once or twice to ask for a detail here and there. He never looked at me while he did this, which I thought was kind of sexy, I'm sorry. He's a smart guy, Lester Moore. Smart is sexy.

  "So that's it," I said.

  He said nothing, but just sat and stared at his plate.

  "Hello?" I said, waving my hand in front of him.

  "What?"

  "You tell me."

  "There's nothing else to say. Only that we have ourselves a real mystery here. We have the suicide of a woman indirectly linked with the disappearance of a guy who delivered a stash of stolen diamonds to a place where someone was killed, presumably looking for those diamonds. Am I missing anything?"

  "Am I in trouble?" I asked.

  He paused, and then said, "I don’t think so."

  It was the pause that got me.

  "Are you sure it was a suicide?" I said.

  "My guys say they’re sure."

  "Boric acid, huh?"

  "Boric acid and the ingredients for a perfect Manhattan in her stomach. And about four cups of coffee. The caffeine in her system may have made it possible to accelerate the effects of the poison."

  I didn’t feel much like eating. I thought of poor Lola. How could any of us survive if she couldn't—?

  Coffee.

  I suddenly was thinking about coffee.

  I was dog-tired on my way home. Sure I like my coffee strong, but that doesn’t mean I'm not affected by caffeine. I'm very sensitive to its effects, as a matter of fact.

  I thought Lola's coffee tasted like decaf.

  "Lola was murdered," I said.

  "What?"

  "That wasn't a suicide. Someone drugged her. And..."

  I shuddered – I think it was visible – when I thought about what I was going to say next. I had to be sure.

  I held up my hand and then whipped out my phone and began a frantic Internet search. I must have been on that day. A search for local artists, sculpture, and the Tarkington house yielded exactly what I was looking for: an archived article in Dan's Paper about local artists and the Tarkington house.

  I must have magic fingers.

  There it was. One of the Lola Tarkington lawn statues. The a
rtist: Nguyen Chang, an obscure Vietnamese sculptor.

  I dropped my phone to my side, closed my eyes, and stiffened myself in order to say it: "That wasn't the real Lola Tarkington I had coffee with."

  "What do you mean, imposter?"

  We had paid our check and beat a hasty retreat out of the café. I needed air. Good old sea air. We took a walk down by the pier, making our way along rows of gorgeous boats and yachts.

  "I don’t know whom I talked to, but it wasn't Lola Tarkington. It was a twin, or someone made up to look exactly like her."

  "You need to explain this," he said.

  "You ever hear someone lie? Really lie to you?"

  "Of course."

  "What does it sound like?"

  "What does it sound like?"

  "Yeah. I mean, lying has a sound to it. If it's done right, it's confident and rehearsed, right?"

  "Not all the time. Often the liar stutters quite a bit."

  "Yes, that's true. But when it's rehearsed, and rehearsed well, do you know what happens? The person looks off to the side, or into the distance. Do you know why?"

  "Because they're reading their script in the air."

  He got it, bless his heart. "Exactly," I said, jabbing my finger at him. "This person, this fake Lola, rehearsed the story well. It was perfect, and it played into such a picture perfect story. Born a poor farm girl? Comes into this glamorous, sordid life full of intrigue and high-profile clients? Totally fake. Sculptor? No way. Look."

  I showed him the article and the picture of the lawn artwork.

  "Wow," he said.

  "We drank coffee that day, Lester. It was decaf. I can’t be sure, but I'm almost positive."

  "So," he said. "Okay, this is puzzling."

  "Yes it is. Someone found out that I found out the identity of the woman in the pizza place and had her murdered."

  "You’re jumping to conclusions."

  I almost throttled him. "Is it so farfetched a conclusion?"

  "No, but you have no evidence."

  "Fine. Whatever."