Murder With A Chaser (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 2) Page 9

I saw the man himself bustling with nerves of his own on the side of the house. He stiffened somewhat at my approach, looking as though he was trying to place my face.

  "Mr. Ward?" I said professionally.

  "Do I...?"

  "Madison Darby, I'm a friend of your niece Maisie's."

  "Oh sure, Madison, how the hell are ya?" He shook my hand vigorously. "What brings you around these parts?"

  I lowered my voice. "I'll only take a minute of your time. I was wondering about some money for Maisie's college tuition."

  I wasn't sure what kind of response I was going to get. I wasn't even sure what kind of response I wanted. All I know is that it was a bold move on my part to come out with it as bluntly as I did.

  But whatever I was expecting, his response wasn't it.

  His lips got tight and he put his head down and swiveled it left and right. "I'll never live that one down. She put you up to this?"

  "No sir," I said, trying to sound disarming.

  "Well..." he threw a nervous glance at the camera crew. "Listen," he said, his voice lowering to a whisper. "I made the decision at the last minute, and it was my own decision. My wife, she makes some of the money decisions but this one was mine."

  "Ok," I said.

  "Ok," he repeated. "So we’re square on that."

  "I guess we are."

  "Now, I don’t want to hear anything else about it. I put my foot down and that was that. I can’t afford to part with that much cash at the moment. This house ain't cheap. And frankly, I'm getting too old to race."

  I was momentarily stunned into silence.

  "Wait," I finally said. "So, you didn't pay for her college?"

  "No, I didn’t. And I mean it when I say I'm getting sick of hearing about it. First from her mom, now from you."

  "Hold on, I'm confused. Did you originally give her money and then take it back?"

  It had been less than twenty-four hours since I'd spoken with Sheila McCann. Was it possible Ward took the money back in that time?

  "Take it back? I never gave it to her. What, is Sheila saying I gave it and then took it back? Out of respect for our Native American brothers and sisters I won’t use the term some folks use for that, but I can tell you that ain't me."

  "So, ok," I said, trying to get my bearings.

  "This was my choice," he said. "No one else's."

  "I understand that, but—"

  "No buts. This was my choice. I have a standard and frankly that girl does not measure up to it. Brewing beer? Now what kind of occupation is that for a lady?"

  "Excuse me?" I said, raising my voice.

  The look in his eye told me that something had clicked inside his head. His mouth dropped open, with nothing coming out of it for a good twenty seconds as I stared.

  "Listen," he said, "what I meant to say was, I want her to go to a good school and learn something that can make her some money in life."

  I turned and started walking away from him.

  He was yelling after me. "I mean, what good is it to follow your heart when all that does is lead you into the wrong places?"

  I turned and looked at him. "Some of us enjoy the view no matter where we are."

  I think that stopped him. At least he didn’t say anything else. I headed toward my car, fuming, dizzy, tired, and stressed. So Ward never gave her any money for college in the first place. Was Sheila lying? Or just clueless?

  Shawn Ward, for whatever reason, couldn’t part with his hard-earned cash. Did it matter why? I now had probable cause, at least a slight one, to suspect that he was in need of money. If only there was a way to find out if and how he benefitted from Eli Campbell's death.

  "I apologize for my husband," said a voice.

  I turned to see a woman standing before me. She was a plain woman, somewhat worn-looking, a permanent frown on her face.

  "I don’t believe we've met," I said.

  "Margaret Ward. You have to forgive him. He's under a lot of stress lately."

  "I understand that."

  "Yes, well. You don’t know what it's like. I know who you are. You're that little brat that had everything handed to her."

  "Excuse me," I started to say, but she held up her hand.

  "Maybe I'm a little drunk, so you'll have to forgive me too. Life isn’t easy around here."

  "I'm sorry to hear that."

  She stared at me for a moment. "He cheated on me. Did I leave him? Of course not. We celebrity wives stick by our men no matter what. We have no choice. It would have been bad for his image. You know, apple pie, motherhood, the proud, all-American family unit."

  "So you stayed."

  "I stayed. He even called her in his sleep once. Zelda. Like the princess."

  I almost fell over.

  "That was her name?" I said with a shaky voice.

  She nodded and smiled. "Glamor and glitz, that's what he likes. Look at me. Do I look like glamor and glitz? Well, go on, then. Pity me and be on your way."

  She stumbled away, her head hanging.

  It had been under my nose, alright. Shawn Ward didn’t benefit, but I now had him tied to someone who did.

  And this same person was paying me the down payment of a house to find it out.

  #

  So here I was, outside the First National bank of Carl's Cove. It was the only bank in town, but a fairly well equipped one. It had to be, with all the money rolling in from the Hamptons over the past ten years or so.

  Sheila McCann pulled up in a cab. She got out and hurried toward me.

  "I told him to keep the meter running. After this, I'm off to the airport."

  She looked frazzled and nervous, glancing around for someone or something that was following or watching her. Her paranoia began to rub off onto me, and I began aping her mannerisms. Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to us would have thought we were casing the joint, or worse, about to knock it over.

  Sorry about the lingo. I guess I read too many pulp novels in my teens.

  We were escorted to the area where the safe deposit boxes were housed. The bank guy took our key, opened a gated entrance with an electronic card, and then walked with us to where Daniel and Sheila Ward's box was. He pulled it out, this shining metal case about the size of a shoebox, and brought it over to a table.

  He then went to the doorway and waited with his back turned.

  We opened the box in silence.

  There was nothing there, except for a single envelope with one name written on it:

  MADISON DARBY

  FOR HER EYES ONLY

  I looked at Sheila, and she at me.

  "I don’t want to know," she said, and picked up the envelope and handed it to me."

  "I don’t understand."

  "Whatever, I'm done, and I'm leaving."

  "Sheila, you have to believe me. I don’t know what this is all about."

  "We were divorced. He was a free agent. You could have been a bit more honest with me, is all I'm saying."

  "Is everything alright?" said the bank guard.

  "Everything is fine. We're through here," I said.

  Outside the bank, with my envelope in hand, I tried to convince Sheila that I had nothing to do with her ex-husband.

  "I'm not mad," she said from the window of her cab. Really, I'm not. Goodbye, Madison."

  And she sped off.

  #

  For a short while I stared at the envelope on my dining room table. I paced and passed it, throwing glances at it. I was nervous about what a dead man was so keen on communicating to me. I finally found the strength to open it. It had been neatly typed out and printed from a computer printer. The paper was normal, copy grade paper. Nothing fancy. And I took it to the comfy chair in my living room and read:

  It's two in the morning right now and I can’t sleep. I'm all alone here. So I'm writing to you in case I'm found dead somewhere sometime soon.

  Tomorrow I have work to do at the shop, a little detailing work. I'll head on over to you and talk to
you about all this. First, I need to write it out. Maybe it will be easier to believe.

  My brother Shawn is a philanderer with a number of affairs to brag about, and believe me, he has. I always thought that one day his affairs would get him into trouble. But I never pictured this kind of trouble.

  Shawn has always loved the spotlight and celebrity culture. He's a charmer too. And he loves danger. These three things turned out to be a lethal combination. A recent affair he had was with Zelda Calverton, the wife of Eli Campbell. Campbell found out. I don’t understand this kind of mindset, because Campbell himself has had quite a few affairs, but he went to my brother and threatened him physically. They may have fought, I don’t know. My brother never said. He's very proud. My brother threatened him right back with exposure. He said he'd find a way to make Zelda's infidelity public, thereby embarrassing Campbell, who was then trying to rehabilitate his public image.

  But Campbell had an ace up his sleeve. He revealed that his wife, Zelda Calverton, has a side business.

  You pay Zelda enough money, and she'll hit whomever you want hit. And she’d hit them hard.

  But, you see, she doesn’t kill them. No, that would lead the cops to her in an instant. No, Zelda Calverton has devised a very clever scheme of insulation, one that allows her to pull the strings and benefit herself and her various enterprises at the same time.

  Ever wonder how some people become so successful? Ever wonder how a woman as rich and powerful as Zelda Calverton can remain so well hidden?

  She uses blackmail, extortion, and false press leaks; she taps phones, plants phony evidence, and has people followed and harassed.

  Richard Nixon had nothing on Zelda Calverton.

  I have a feeling there is something very wrong taking place here. I don’t know who killed Eli Campbell, but I'm in fear. Whoever killed him can kill again for self-protection.

  My brother Shawn knows I know these things. He knows I know about Campbell's threats. ‘Wouldn't it be nice’, he told me, ‘to hit Campbell where he lived?’ Those are the very words he used. I objected to this, and we fought a great deal over it. He accused me of familial disloyalty. He said they kill you for that in the mafia.

  Those were his last words to me, today.

  I am now in fear for my life.

  If you are reading this, it means I have been killed, and someone involved in the Eli Campbell murder has done it.

  I placed the letter down gently onto the coffee table and sat there, staring at it. I could hardly breathe while reading it, and I felt as if I had to catch my breath now.

  Something hit my front porch. It made me jump.

  I opened my front door and saw a taxicab pulling away.

  On the ground was a manila folder with a sticky note attached that read: Late for the airport, but thought you might want to see this.

  I took the parcel inside and opened it. It was a marble notebook with Maisie Ward's name scribbled on the front.

  Inside were figures, money crunching.

  Maisie was listing college expenses. Across the top, however, was the one figure that stuck out and nearly blinded me: $75,000 from Uncle Shawn.

  Chapter 12

  The next morning, I sat in my office, unable to concentrate on anything having to do with beer. It was still too early for anyone else. I was the only one there and I preferred it that way. I needed some serious space. Not to mention quiet time to think.

  I pulled out my cell phone and called the Southampton Culinary Institute. Then I hung up. I knew a thing or two about college offices. I would need to be fiddling with my phone, checking email, checking Facebook, just to pass the time while they shuffled me all over creation. I don’t know why it is that colleges make it so difficult for people to get in touch with them. It's fifteen minutes of menu options – hitting 1, then 1 again, then #, then 3, then 4 – only to be routed either back to the main menu or to a receptionist. And do you know what the receptionist does? She puts you into a queue where you get to choose from another fifteen menu options.

  So I sat there, fiddling with my phone, waiting for the bursar's office to come up in the menu.

  Finally, I got through and was waiting on hold. There was the typical awful Muzak playing on endless loop. I surfed the web on my phone – Dad kept the business extremely low-tech. We're lucky we have email. I vowed to get Wi-Fi before Christmas – and waited. And my mind began to wander a bit. Then a miracle happened. I came to m. A most elegant solution, I thought, if my hunch was correct. Amazing how that happens. All you need sometimes is to be in the right frame of mind. To be someplace quiet, with little distraction. I texted Lester Moore.

  "Bursar's office, may I help you?"

  "Hello," I finally said to this real, live human. "I'm looking for information about my daughter's finances."

  "And you are?"

  "Sheila McCann. My daughter is Maisie Ward."

  I spelled out the name for her.

  "We'll just need your or her social security number, Ms. McCann."

  I patted myself on the back for having the foresight to bring Maisie's marble notebook with me, for on the first page with all the scribblings of figures was the entry labeled, "Mom's SSN," and a nine-digit number.

  I read this to the bursar’s office woman and waited an excruciatingly long time for a response.

  "Ok," she said, "Ms. McCann, how can I help you today?"

  I breathed a quiet sigh of relief and spoke professionally. "Yes, I was just wondering about the money she paid to you for this semester. Would you by any chance have a breakdown of the scholarships and grants she received, and money she paid directly?"

  "Ok, it looks as though she paid nothing directly. All the tuition money came by way of a grant. I'm not at liberty to say any more. Do you have access to a fax machine?"

  "As a matter of fact, I do, but—"

  "Ok, we can go ahead and have these records faxed on over to you within the next half hour."

  "Why can’t you just read them to me over the phone?"

  "I'm sorry, ma'am, it's our policy."

  "Fine then," I said, and gave her the number of my office fax. I mentally thanked Dad for at least having the decency to bring the office into the twentieth century.

  Finally, we ended the call. There was nothing to do now but wait.

  I got up from my desk and was about to resume pacing when I was startled out of my wits.

  A man was standing in my doorway.

  He was tall, dressed in a three-piece suit, and had a thin crop of blonde hair. He had a square jaw and he looked like a German scientist.

  "Zelda isn’t too happy with you," he said and came toward me.

  #

  "Alright, who are you? And how did you get in here?"

  He chuckled sickeningly. "You don’t realize how easy it is, do you? This isn’t the first lock I've picked in my life."

  "Ok," I said, "so you're an expert lock picker. Now what?"

  He chuckled again. "Madison Darby, the little beer brat, if I may."

  "My father called me that. Don’t malign his name by calling me that."

  It was then that I found myself staring at a handgun.

  "Oh Madison," he said softly, "we tried so hard to steer you in the right direction. Why did you have to go and do things the wrong way? Don’t you know how to investigate properly?"

  "What on earth are you talking about?"

  "You found the coffee grinder. Bravo. But you should have talked to us about Daniel Ward. This complicates things."

  I sat down at my desk, my hands in the air. I hoped that this wasn't becoming a thing now – my being trapped in my office by some thug. This was now the second time it had happened.

  "What's with Zelda?" I said. "Is all that stuff true?"

  "All what stuff?"

  "Come on," I said, "you're going to kill me, right? The least you can do is do the old James Bond villain thing and reveal your secret plans before you do."

  He smiled. "Charming. But a brat no
netheless. So what if it's true? What if Zelda and I run a very successful enterprise? Hmm? I can tell you this: I hated Eli Campbell. Hated him as much as one man is capable of hating another man. The way he treated my Zelda. Awful."

  "It's starting to become clear now."

  "Oh I don't think you realize how unclear you are on all this. You see, my Zelda told you we needed to avoid the cops. Fighting with your cop boyfriend? Beautiful. But now, you're a liability. You're too good. All that money can’t stop you from getting at the truth. Ok, so be it. Win some, lose some. But we can’t afford you any longer, Madison."

  "So you're going to kill me here? Then what?"

  "I'll leave. Believe me, no one will ever find us. We’re very good. I can even make it look like a suicide. It would take some work, but I think I could do it."

  I smiled at him. I couldn’t hold it back.

  "My phone is tapped," I said. "Am I right?"

  He nodded. "Very good. And why the hell are you smiling?"

  "I don't know," I said. "Sometimes I marvel at how good I am."

  At this point, another figure appeared in my doorway. It was Maisie Ward, and she looked at the goon and me with surprise in her eyes.

  In the instant that the goon turned around, I used both legs to push the desk out, virtually steamrolling him. He hit the floor and let out a yelp. His gun went flying.

  "Grab it!" I yelled to Maisie. She ran to it and grabbed it.

  I looked down at our friend on the floor. "Don’t ever mess with the beer brat," I said. "Good job Maisie."

  But she was pointing the gun at me.

  #

  "Maisie?"

  "Just sit down."

  She alternated the gun between me and the man on the floor, looking as if she was unsure whom she should shoot first.

  "Maisie," I said quietly, "take it easy."

  "How can I?" she said, tears beginning to stream down her face. "You're all crazy and you dragged me into your craziness. And now my father is dead because of it."

  The fax machine buzzed and whizzed.

  Maisie turned, startled.

  I lunged.

  We fell to the floor, wrestling sloppily. The gun went flying once again and we both scrabbled for it.