Murder on the Rocks (26 page)

“Mack, I’ve been hit,” I heard Gary say off in the distance.

Another bolt of lightning gave me a flashing view of my surroundings but the only
thing I registered was the cold, ugly expression on Riley’s face, a side of him I’d
never seen before. And with that glimpse into the darker side of his soul, I knew
with agonizing certainty that he was behind everything that had happened.

In the last flash of light I saw that the two of us had moved in our struggle so that
Riley now had his back toward the water-filled hole in the middle of the secret room.
Angered and desperate, I wrapped my left leg around Riley’s right, summoned up all
my strength, and shoved him backward as hard as I could. My efforts weren’t enough
to push him over, but they were enough to make him step back with his left leg to
try to balance himself . . . except he found no purchase because he had stepped into
the hole. As he started to fall I pulled my hands out of his grasp, bringing the gun
with me. I heard splashing and saw several beams of light bouncing around inside the
room. At first I thought the light was one of my synesthetic manifestations but then
I realized I could see Riley standing in the water-filled hole, sputtering mad, swiping
water from his face.

“Mack? Are you okay?”

It was Duncan’s voice and seconds later the secret room filled with bouncing beams
of real light from a couple of flashlights. I aimed the gun at Riley, though my finger
was far from the trigger and my hands were shaking so bad, I doubt I could have hit
him.

“It was him,” I told Duncan, staring at Riley. “He’s the one who’s been behind all
the stuff that’s been happening and I’m betting he’s also behind Ginny’s murder.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Riley snarled. “It’s that cretin who’s responsible.” He pointed
through the doorway into the tunnel where Gary sat slumped down along the wall, his
hands on his gut, blood oozing from between his fingers.

I turned toward Duncan with a pleading look and saw that Jimmy was with him. “Gary
needs help,” I said. “Call an ambulance. And please hurry.”

As Jimmy got on his cell phone to make the call, Duncan approached me carrying his
gun in one hand, a flashlight in the other. The gun was pointed toward the floor but
I could tell he was wary and ready to use it in a heartbeat if necessary. Jimmy had
followed and he had a flashlight aimed into the room, too. As Jimmy finished his call
for help and tucked his cell phone back into his pocket, Duncan handed him his gun
and said, “Keep an eye on both of these guys.” Jimmy kept the flashlight and the gun
aimed in the general direction of Riley and Gary. Duncan closed the distance to me
by skirting the wall and reached out to take the gun from my hand. I released it and
let my arms drop to my side. Duncan made sure the chamber was clear and then tucked
the gun into the waistband of his pants. When he turned to take his own gun back from
Jimmy, I turned as well, to head for Gary.

Duncan stopped me by grabbing my arm. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Gary is hurt. He needs help.”

“He’s a wanted criminal, and a suspected murderer,” Duncan said keeping a tight hold
on my arm.

“He didn’t kill anyone,” I said without hesitation. “And he saved my life.” I shrugged
Duncan’s hand loose and hurried over to Gary, kneeling down beside him. “Help is on
the way,” I told him, rubbing his shoulder. “And I’m sorry I didn’t believe in you.”

He gave me a wan smile. “I’m not sure I would have believed me either given the circumstances.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” I promised. “Starting with your job. If you still want it,
it will be waiting for you.”

“That’s a deal.”

The power came back on and, moments later, people began appearing. Duncan directed
Riley to crawl out of the water hole and once he had, a uniformed policeman cuffed
him. Riley glared at me, looking angry but defeated. Paramedics arrived and as they
hurried toward Gary, I warned them about the water-filled hole in the floor. They
managed to skirt it safely by sticking to the wall and at some point someone taped
off the area of the hole using crime scene tape and sawhorses from my basement.

I left the paramedics to their duties with Gary and walked back out to the main part
of my basement. I watched as Riley was read his Miranda rights and taken away, and
then saw Gary go by on an ambulance stretcher with one arm cuffed to a side rail.

“I’m telling you, Gary is innocent,” I said to Duncan.

“I believe you,” he said. “But we have protocols we have to follow so bear with me,
okay? Right now getting him medical attention is a priority, but I promise to release
him as soon as I can if the evidence bears up.” With that he walked over to the opened
edge of my father’s worktable and examined the lever that had released it. “Looks
like you might have been right about your Capone theory,” he said. “You found a secret
room.”

“Yes, though clearly someone else found it before I did,” I said, gesturing toward
the hole. “I’m guessing it was Riley.” I could hear the voices of police officers
echoing back from the tunnel on the other side of the room. A half dozen of them had
gone in there soon after they arrived and so far no one had come out. “Why did you
come back?” I asked Duncan.

“I never left. I was out in my car going over the case file. I was reading through
the summary of all the trash that was sorted and tagged—very boring stuff, I assure
you—and I came across all the waterlogged books that were found.”

I gave him a puzzled look. “Why would they interest you? You knew Riley had the plumbing
problem and had to toss a bunch of books.”

“Yes, and you attributed one of your synesthetic reactions to that musty smell from
the wet paper. You smelled it on Riley, and you smelled it where your Dumpster had
been. You said you also smelled it very strongly when you stumbled upon Ginny’s body.”

I frowned at him, still not seeing the significance.

Duncan went on. “I realized something was off when I saw where the books were found.
Riley’s store is between your bar and the store on the opposite corner. As such, the
two alley Dumpsters are equal distance away from his store and the crime scene techs
seized both Dumpsters as evidence. When I was reading the list of trash the techs
recorded, it said the books were all found in the other Dumpster, not yours.”

It took me a second to digest that and finally grasp the significance. “Ah, so my
smelling that musty odor by the Dumpster and Ginny meant Riley might have been there,
but the books weren’t.”

“Exactly,” Duncan said. “And then I got to thinking about Riley and how his name was
on Ginny’s list of clients. So I made some calls and found out she wasn’t the Realtor
who sold him the bookstore, meaning his connection to her had to have come about some
other way. I remembered you telling me that Riley and your father were close friends,
and how your father entrusted your care to him in case anything happened to him. That
got me to wondering if Riley might have a key to your place. If he did, I figured
we had taken care of it when we changed the locks, but I wanted you to know what I’d
found out and what I was thinking, to get your thoughts on the idea. I tried to call
you but didn’t get an answer.”

“I left my cell upstairs in the bar. I had an argument with Zach and I was kind of
upset when I came down here. Then I saw this puddle of water leaking out from under
my dad’s old worktable. One thing led to another and . . .” I shrugged.

“You didn’t lock the front door,” Duncan chastised, shaking his head. “I can’t believe
I didn’t see Gary come in here. But with the storm raging and trying to focus on the
evidence lists, I missed him.”

“It’s a good thing you did or Gary wouldn’t have been able to get in. Riley would
have shot me in that tunnel.”

As if on cue, a uniformed officer walked out of the secret room and approached the
two of us. “That tunnel back there goes into the basement of the bookstore next door,”
he said. “And there’s a latch on both sides of the wall here to release the worktable,
so that Quinn fellow was probably able to come and go whenever he pleased.”

The thought of Riley Quinn skulking about in my bar at night while I slept upstairs
gave me chills. I should have picked up on him sooner.

I stepped into the secret room and skirted the wall toward the far door. There was
a small pile of concrete dust and rubble on the floor across from me and another in
the tunnel. Duncan saw me studying the piles and said, “It looks like the bullet that
hit Gary hit the walls a couple of times first and ricocheted.”

I nodded and then frowned as that strange, cloying sensation started spreading across
my neck and shoulders. As I stared at one of the piles of dust and rubble, I caught
a whiff of a familiar musty odor. Then it hit me. The smell was not—and never had
been—real.

“What’s wrong?” Duncan asked.

“I had things all confused,” I told Duncan. “I thought it was a musty smell that was
triggering that weighty feeling I had on my neck and shoulders, but feelings like
that can also be triggered by things I see. And sometimes I smell things I see. That’s
what happened here.” I stepped into the tunnel and picked up some of the concrete
dust on the floor. “The musty smell was a reaction to the sight of this dust on Riley.
I noticed it on his arms and clothing several times and he said he got it on himself
from cleaning up after the flood in his basement. But I think it was really concrete
dust from that hole in the floor. That same dust must have been on or around Ginny’s
body when I found her.”

Duncan nodded. “The techs did find concrete particulate on the cardboard that was
covering her body.”

“That dust was on top of my dad’s worktable, too.” I shook my head in dismay. “I should
have put it together sooner.”

“I’d say you did a pretty good job,” Duncan said. “I’m beginning to see how this little
disorder of yours might come in handy.”

I shook my head. “Not if I don’t learn to interpret it better. And that won’t be easy.
I’ve spent most of my life trying to subdue and ignore it.”

“It might take time, but I’ll bet you can do it. I’d like to help, if you’ll let me.”

I looked over at him with a quizzical expression. “What are you suggesting, Detective?”

“That you consider a future . . . um . . . collaboration with me.”

Collaboration
wasn’t quite the word I was hoping for, but considering everything else I had going
on in my life, it was probably the safest goal for now. And the word came with all
kinds of subtle innuendos and a burst of chocolate flavor so sweet and delicious I
nearly moaned with delight.

“You could be my personal consultant, my secret weapon,” Duncan went on. “Only if
you want to, of course. It wouldn’t be anything official.”

I walked back over to where Duncan stood, looped an arm around his, and headed for
the basement stairs. “I’ll consider your offer and let you know. In the meantime,
I don’t know about you, Detective, but I could use a drink. And in honor of all that’s
happened, I’m going to fix us both a Bootlegger.”

“That’s a drink?”

“Yes, and a doozy of one. It’s equal parts bourbon, tequila, and Southern Comfort
poured over ice, shaken, and strained into a chilled glass. You might want to arrange
for a ride home,” I warned him.

As it turned out, he spent the night . . . on the couch in my office.

I
t was a gorgeous Saturday in late October with a crystal blue sky, temperatures hanging
in the mid-sixties, and a light breeze coming in off Lake Michigan. The bar was packed
to capacity and I had the front door propped open to let in the fresh air.

Most of my regulars were present, a group that included all the suspects in Ginny’s
murder—minus Riley of course—as well as a group of cops who now frequented my establishment
nearly every day of the week, both for food while on duty and drinks after their shifts.
Oddly enough, the suspects and the cops had drawn together and become friends, bonding
over the fallout and discussions surrounding Ginny’s murder and Riley’s arrest.

Even Gary was here, smiling broadly because he was a free man. He had been discharged
from the hospital a few days ago after some minor abdominal surgery to repair a small
tear to his intestine. He was healing nicely but it would be some time before he’d
be able to make airborne leaps like he had in my basement when he saw Riley holding
a gun and taking aim at me. Though Gary had hit me hard enough to rattle my brain
for a few seconds, it’s a good thing he leapt the way he had or he would have landed
in the water-filled hole and never reached me. He told me later when I visited him
in the hospital that he made the decision to leap because he was afraid he wouldn’t
reach me in time. As a result he managed to jump clear over the hole and never knew
it was there until he saw Riley fall into it. “I thought I was dying,” he told me.
“When I saw Riley disappear into the floor of that room, I thought it was some last-gasp
hallucination my mind was drumming up.”

I figured that was probably the closest Gary would ever come to understanding what
my synesthesia was like.

The story about Mike Levy telling Ginny he knew Gary was innocent of the convenience
store robbery couldn’t be proven since all the parties in the know were now dead.
But I believed Gary, and after putting out some feelers on the street, so did Duncan.
Though we were still trying to clear his name, it wouldn’t have mattered to me if
Gary was guilty. If my father had trusted him, that was good enough for me. Plus the
man saved my life, and for that I was forever grateful. His old job was waiting for
him as soon as he felt well enough to start doing it again.

Gary no longer felt nervous around cops, a good thing since several of them were sitting
with him, Tad, Cora, Kevin, and Lewis, playing with Cora’s new computer program. Frank
and Joe were there, too, but they considered Cora’s program—and computers in general—as
“newfangled contraptions” they preferred to steer clear of. It was just as well since
the program still had a few quirks to be ironed out before it would be of any use
in the real world. Despite that, several of the cops thought it had great potential,
and the geekier ones were drawn to the computer gaming and programming aspects involved.

Duncan was also skeptical of the Clue-like computer program, but he and I were using
Cora and her computer skills for something else. Over the past couple of weeks the
three of us had spent time analyzing my synesthetic reactions, trying to figure out
what they meant, keeping track of our conclusions with a computer database.

“Here,” Cora said, handing me a small perfume bottle. “Take a whiff.”

I did so and after a few seconds I nodded. “That’s it. I hear the same chimes I heard
when I found Ginny’s body.”

Duncan nodded. “It makes sense now. We found this brand of perfume in both Ginny’s
purse and in her bathroom. The reason you heard the same sound when you were near
Cora is because she wears it, too.”

Cora smiled and gave Duncan a saucy wink. “Do you like it, Detective? Or should I
switch to something else?”

Duncan arched an eyebrow while I hid a smile behind my hand. Duncan responded to the
provocation by saying, “For now, let’s just log this into Mack’s database and move
on.”

Cora sighed and started typing. “Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she muttered.

“The vibration I always felt when I was around Ginny was due to a smell, too,” I said.
“But it was her laundry detergent, not her perfume. It explains why I felt the vibration
with my father after he’d been with her. The smell from her sheets and clothing had
rubbed off onto him.”

“Got it,” Cora said, still typing.

Frank Signoriello said, “Did you have your special reactions to all of us, Mack?”

“Most of you,” I admitted. “I heard an oscillating hum the day Kevin came into the
bar wearing his work-clothes and I’ve since figured out that it was the smell of diesel
fuel that triggered the sound. That same smell lingers in the alley out back from
all the trucks that have driven through and idled there over the years, so I had the
same reaction when I was out there and found Ginny’s body, even though it had nothing
to do with Ginny directly.”

“And something similar occurred when she heard a twangy sound near Ginny’s body and
when she was near Lewis,” Duncan said. “We’ve since figured out that it was the smell
of cigarette smoke.”

Lewis nodded and said, “Busted. A lot of the people I work with don’t know I smoke
and it looks bad, you know. So I tend to hide it. And since there is no smoking allowed
inside anywhere, it leaves me skulking about in alleys a lot of the time when we’re
out. I’ve seen other customers from here go back to the alley to smoke and I figured
I was less likely to be seen there than if I went out front and smoked on the sidewalk.
The presence of all those alley smokers explains why the smell lingers back there.
It clings to the walls of the building.”

“It really threw me when I saw your name on the sign-out sheet for those Capone papers,”
I told Lewis, giving him an apologetic smile.

“Why were you looking at that Capone stuff?” Joe Signoriello asked Lewis.

“For years my family has passed along a rumor that when my great-grandmother gave
birth to a daughter out of wedlock, the father might have been Al Capone. That daughter
was my grandmother and if she knew anything, she took it with her to the grave. I
didn’t put much stock in it when I was younger but as I got older I realized I was
starting to bear a faint resemblance to the man. I have the same dark hair, receding
hairline, and overall build.

“The night Mack’s father was brought in to the ER after being shot, he uttered a bunch
of stuff that was incomprehensible, but one thing that came out clearly was Capone’s
name. He said it to me just before he died. I know now that this utterance was his
dying mind trying to communicate what had happened, but at the time I thought it was
because he was disoriented and I resembled Capone. It piqued my curiosity so I went
to the library a week later to do some research, wondering if the family rumors might
be true.”

“Are they?” Joe asked.

“I can’t rule it out,” Lewis said with a smile. “But I can’t rule it in either.”

Tad, who had remained pretty quiet up until now, said, “It’s kind of fascinating how
you made these connections between Ginny and all of us, Mack. It’s like you’re a human
lie detector or something.”

“Not exactly,” I said, “though there are times when a different reaction to someone’s
voice will cue me in that they might not be telling the truth. But for now, most of
my reactions are simply confusing and misleading. That’s why I’m letting Cora try
to track them and record the correlations. Because some of the reactions I had led
me astray.”

“Such as?” Frank asked.

“Well, I was eventually able to attribute a dirt smell I detected when I hugged Zach
to a spot I had seen on his shirtsleeve. It was dried blood from a patient he’d cared
for and the fact that similar spots of blood remained in the alley where Ginny’s body
was found explained why I had the same smell experience there. It was a connection
that really had nothing to do with her murder.

“I also experienced a visual manifestation of breaking ocean waves when I stood in
front of my father’s worktable. I didn’t know what triggered it at the time but now
I know it was a breeze I could feel coming from behind the work area. If I’d figured
that out sooner, I might have found that hidden room quicker than I did.”

“What about Riley?” Tad asked. “Did you have any specific reactions to him that clued
you in to anything?”

“I’m not sure I buy this one but I used to see these round silvery discs whenever
Riley touched me, and Duncan thinks they were thirty pieces of silver, my mind’s way
of telling me the man was a Judas who shouldn’t be trusted.”

I paused, feeling a now familiar stab of guilt and anger. “If Duncan is right, I wish
I had known. Because we did trust Riley and my father paid for that trust with his
life.”

Tad looked over at Duncan. “Are you going to be able to pin both murders on him?”

Duncan nodded. “When we followed the tunnel from the secret room into Riley’s basement,
we found excavating equipment, several books about Al Capone—including one that described
how Capone had once put a noncompliant bar out of business using the very same tactics
Riley used on Mack—and old blueprints of the two buildings that showed the tunnel
and the secret room. When we used Luminol on Riley’s basement floor, we also found
a huge bloodstain and DNA proved the blood was Ginny’s. So that was our crime scene.”

I delivered the news that Duncan had shared with me a short while ago, news I wasn’t
sure I liked. “Riley worked out a deal and got a lesser charge by agreeing to tell
the cops everything that happened. Apparently after being confronted with all the
evidence and told he was facing at least one, and possibly two first-degree murder
charges, he was happy to talk.”

Duncan eyed me warily. He knew I wasn’t very happy with the lesser charges against
Riley. As far as I was concerned, the man should have gotten the death penalty.

“So he admitted to killing your father?” Cora said.

“Apparently. He told the cops my father didn’t know about the secret room until the
night of his death. Then he discovered it by accident because Riley forgot to close
the workbench door, leaving it ajar. He not only found the room, he saw that part
of the floor had been dug up, though it was still shallow then. At the time of his
discovery, the bar was open and hopping so I can only assume he decided not to do
anything about it until after the bar closed. I feel certain that’s the big thing
he wanted to tell me that night.”

I choked up then with the memory so Duncan took over. “Given that it was apparent
someone had been chipping away at the floor and that the tunnel led to the basement
beneath Riley’s store, Big Mack figured Riley knew about the room and wanted to talk
to him about it. So he called Riley that night and left a message for him to drop
by after the bar closed.”

“He must have come by while I was in the kitchen washing dishes,” I said, feeling
more in control of my emotions. “That’s why I didn’t hear anything. And it also explains
why my father let someone into the bar that late at night. Riley was someone he trusted,
someone we both trusted.”

“We all trusted him,” Frank said. “He fooled everybody so don’t beat yourself up over
it.”

“I’m not, I’m just angry,” I said to the group. “Angry that Riley could have such
disregard for other human beings. Angry I didn’t see it. And angry that he robbed
me of the person I loved most in this world.”

“So did Riley say how the shooting happened?” Cora asked.

Duncan nodded and took over the explanations once again. “According to Riley, he and
Big Mack discussed the Capone treasure theories and Big Mack got angry over the fact
that Riley was doing all this in secret. He told Riley he thought the secret room
was mostly if not all bar property and that he was going to file a complaint against
Riley for trespassing and destruction of property. Riley tried to talk him into a
partnership of some sort to share any treasure that was found, but Big Mack wouldn’t
go for it and threatened to take Riley to court. Apparently their discussion escalated
from an argument to fisticuffs, and ended when Big Mack escorted Riley out the back
door of the bar at gunpoint. A scuffle then ensued and the gun went off, wounding
Big Mack. Riley, who had arrived gloved and stayed that way during the discussion
and scuffle, dropped the gun and ran, leaving Big Mack there to die in the snow and
no sign of Riley’s fingerprints on the gun.”

I shook my head in dismay. “Riley had the nerve to try to comfort me during that time,
knowing all along that he was the one who killed my father. When he started talking
to me about selling the bar and starting over, I thought he was doing so out of concern
for my welfare. Now I know his true motivation was selfish greed. He was convinced
there was a hidden Capone treasure in gold somewhere on the property, and he wanted
to buy it from me so he could find it and keep it for himself. When he realized I
wasn’t planning on selling, he started his campaign of terror and financial woes,
hoping it would force me to sell. He knew the combination to my office safe because
he’d been in the office dozens of times with my father, and after watching Dad open
it a few times, he had the combo figured out. Getting into the bar at night after
I’d closed was easy enough. All he had to do was use the tunnel.”

“I still don’t get how Ginny was involved,” Kevin said.

“At one point, Riley thought he’d worn me down enough to consider selling, so he contacted
Ginny and asked her out, hoping to build a romantic relationship with her so she would
be more willing to help him. He needed her money as well as her real estate expertise.
After a few weeks of dating, he asked her to consider going in with him and investing
in the purchase of my bar, and doing so by writing up an anonymous offer. Ginny had
balked at the idea, knowing I didn’t want to give the place up, but Riley kept insisting
it was the only way to help me get a new start on life.”