Murder on the Rocks (6 page)

After questioning me about my morning, he then asked me about the night before: how
busy the bar had been, who had been working, whether there had been any unusual happenings,
if anyone stood out to me for any reason, that sort of stuff. He wanted the names
and contact info for everyone who was working the night before, and the names and
receipts for any of the patrons who’d been in. I printed off my employee roster, gathered
the night’s receipts from my office, and gave it all to him. Then I did my best to
recall the names of those customers who had paid in cash, but there had been a few
folks in the bar I didn’t know.

When I was done with all of that, Albright asked me about Ginny and her relationship
with my father.

“They met at some function put on by the Chamber,” I told him. “She is . . . was a
local Realtor. They had been dating for around five months when he was killed.”

“Did your father date much before her?”

“Not really. He went out once or twice with women he met, but he didn’t have a lot
of free time because of his responsibilities to the bar. Most women didn’t hang around
for long.”

“Ginny didn’t mind the hours?”

“Apparently not,” I said with a shrug. “She would drop by fairly often in the evenings
and hang out. Sometimes she stayed until closing and helped us with the cleanup. Occasionally
Dad would go to her place after, but most of their free time together happened in
the mornings, or on Sundays when we don’t open until five.”

“How did she get here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what form of transportation did she use? Bus? Cab? Car?”

“Oh, she drove. She owns a nice little silver and blue Mercedes convertible.”

“Always?”

“You mean was it always that car, or did she always drive?”

“Both.”

“Yes, and yes, as far as I know. Why?”

“Because we show her registered to the car you mentioned but we can’t find it. It’s
not parked anywhere near here and it’s not at her home or office either.”

“That’s odd.”

“Do you think your father was in love with her?”

His sudden shift of topic threw me for a second. “I think he was infatuated with her,”
I blurted out, and as soon as the words left my mouth I wished I could take them back.
Even I knew my answer had been too quick and a little harsh sounding.

Albright stared at me for a moment. “I’m sensing some dislike on your part. Did you
and Ginny get along?”

I looked away from him, not wanting him to see the truth. Albright’s ability to read
me made me wonder if he, too, had synesthetic tendencies. “Ginny kept nagging at my
father to sell the place and retire.”

“Sell it rather than hand it over to you?”

I nodded. “She said they could use the money to travel.”

“How did that idea set with you?”

“It didn’t. My father and I were close. We only had each other, at least until Ginny
came along.”

“You were afraid of losing him to her.”

It wasn’t worded as a question and I didn’t bother to answer. Albright decided to
let it go and instead asked, “Did Ginny keep coming around after your father died?”

“For a little while. She would drop in periodically, have a drink, and ask how I was
doing. But we were never that close to begin with and it always felt . . . I don’t
know . . . forced and awkward. Plus she kept trying to convince me I should sell the
place and start over. When she realized I had no intention of putting the place up
for sale, she quit coming around. I haven’t seen or talked to her in months.”

“Is there any reason you know of that she would have come here last night or this
morning?”

I shook my head. “None that I can think of.”

“Interesting,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “That makes me wonder if someone is trying
to send you a message.”

“A message?”

“Why else dump the body behind your bar? Do you have any enemies, anyone you angered
recently, anyone who might be interested in revenge?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I mean, I have the occasional stupid drunk I have to toss
out of the bar, or someone will get angry if I take their keys away and call a cab
for them, but I’ve never known any of them to hold a grudge. Usually by the time they
sober up the next morning, they realize I did them a favor.”

“What about your father? Did he have any enemies?”

“No,” I said without hesitation. “The cops who investigated his shooting asked me
the same question and I told them no, too. My father was a kind, generous man who
bent over backward to help other people. One year one of our regular patrons had a
house fire the Friday before Christmas and they lost everything. Dad got on the phone
and asked for donations from folks who he knew could afford to be generous. Then he
spent several hundred dollars of his own money and bought gifts for the family: toys
and clothes for the kids, clothes and household items for the parents, even chew toys
for their pet dog. One of the wealthier patrons he hit up, a local landlord, provided
an apartment for the family to move into. And on Christmas Eve Dad rented a Santa
costume and delivered all the stuff himself. He made me dress up as an elf and go
with him.”

I paused, smiling at the memory. “I was pissed as hell that he made me do it but afterward
I was glad he did. It felt good.”

“Your dad sounds like he was quite a man.”

“He was.” My throat seized up with emotion again, triggering a host of jagged lines
in a blue-purple color—like a fresh bruise—that zipped across my field of vision.
Fortunately one of the crime scene techs pulled Albright aside, giving me time to
recover.

When Albright returned, he settled back into his chair, leaned back with his arms
folded over his chest, and eyed me with a thoughtful expression. “The techs can probably
wrap up here in another three or four hours,” he said.

“So can I reopen for business this evening?”

“Tell you what. I still think your father’s death and Ginny’s might be related, but
I also can’t help but wonder if that’s exactly what someone wants me to think.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Two deaths, both occurring in the same alley behind the same bar, though technically
neither victim actually died in the alley. At the very least, I think the killer must
have some connections to you, or to this bar. It might be someone who knows about
your father’s murder and the fact that it’s still unsolved.”

“Well, that doesn’t narrow things down much since my father’s shooting was in the
city paper.”

“Yes, but was the fact that he was dating Ginny in the paper?”

I thought back to the articles I’d read, articles I still had tucked away in a drawer
upstairs. I hadn’t read them until weeks after my father’s death, unable to bear the
unemotional, black-and-white reporting of an event that had so devastated me. But
when I finally did read them, I dissected them word by word, searching for some hint
or clue that might be hiding in them. There had been no mention of Ginny in any of
them.

“No,” I admitted.

Albright looked thoughtful a moment and then said, “There are some obvious differences
in the two killings. Your father was attacked in the alley and Ginny’s body was only
dumped there. Ginny was stabbed and your father was shot. But he was shot with his
own gun, a weapon I presume is still locked up in evidence, forcing the perpetrator
to come up with a different method for killing Ginny. But planting Ginny’s body in
the same alley where your father was shot creates an obvious link between the two
deaths, a stronger one than just the fact that the two of them dated at one point.
That suggests to me that someone wants us to connect you to both of these murders.”

“Are you saying you believe I’m innocent?”

Albright smiled. “You’re still on my list of suspects, but I’m leaning that way. The
more I look at this, the more I think someone is trying to frame you. And if that’s
the case, I’m betting it’s someone you know, someone who frequents the bar.”

“But why would someone want to pin these murders on me?”

“Are you sure you don’t have any enemies? Someone you angered for some reason?”

I thought about it again. “I really can’t think of anyone,” I told him.

“Just because you can’t figure it out now doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection somewhere.
We just have to find it. I’ve got a team headed over to Ginny’s house to look around
and see what they can dig up. Maybe that will help.”

“God, I hope so.”

“In the meantime, I have an idea. I’ll let you open up for business again at . . .”
He paused and glanced at his watch. “Let’s shoot for five, okay?”

“That would be wonderful,” I said with a huge sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“The alley and the back door area will be off limits.”

“No problem. I can work around them.” I would do just about anything if it meant I
wasn’t going to lose an entire day’s receipts.

“And I have one more caveat.”

I raised my eyebrows and held my breath, waiting.

“There’s a good chance that whoever killed Ginny may come in here tonight out of curiosity,
to see what he or she can find out about the investigation.”

It was a chilling thought, one that made me let my breath out hard.

“So I’d like to hang around to observe. I’ll sit at a table like any other customer
and see if anyone piques my interest.”

Having a cop on the premises made the idea that a killer might come back a little
easier to bear, but I didn’t want Albright just sitting around staring at people,
or intruding on any of my patrons and making a nuisance of himself. With my parents
both dead, my regular customers were like family to me. I felt protective of them.

“Tell you what,” I said to him. “You can hang here tonight while I’m open.” I said
this magnanimously, like I had a choice in the matter even though I was pretty sure
I didn’t. “But if you just sit around watching people, it’s going to put them on edge.
You said you were new to the area. How new?”

“Almost a month now.”

“So it’s unlikely anyone will know you or what you do. Why don’t I introduce you as
a new employee I’m training instead? I’m down a bartender anyway, and if you appear
to be working here, it will give you better access to both the employees and the clientele.”

Albright considered the offer. “It’s not a bad idea, but I don’t know the first thing
about bartending.”

“I’ll give you a crash course and you can stick with me all night. That way I can
also give you insight into the customers I know, my regulars.”

Albright smiled in a way that made me think I’d played right into his hands. I began
to suspect that despite what he said, I was still very much under suspicion and that
he liked the idea of being able to keep a closer eye on me.

That’s okay,
I thought, returning his smile
. I want to keep a close eye on you, too.

A
few hours and five pots of coffee later, the crime scene techs who were working upstairs
came down and conferred with Albright. When they were done, Albright walked over to
me and said, “Your apartment is cleared for now if you want to go back up there. We
still have some work to do down here but I think we’ll be able to wrap it up in time
for you to open at five as planned.”

“Thanks.”

“You can call your evening staff to let them know they need to come in. I’d prefer
it if you kept any details you know about the crime to yourself for now, though you
can tell them who the victim is once they get here. Everyone will be talking about
what happened and if someone lets out a bit of knowledge they shouldn’t have, it might
help us nab the killer.”

“No problem.”

I made the necessary calls to my cook, Helmut, my night bartender, Billy, my bouncer
and backup bartender, Gary, and Missy and Debra, the two waitresses who typically
worked Friday nights. Albright insisted I make the calls on speaker phone again and
he listened in on each one. When I was done, he and I spent some time working up a
cover story to explain his presence. With that taken care of, he got up from the table
and glanced at his watch.

“I have a few things I need to do but we’ll hook up again later,” he said.

I escaped from the bar and headed upstairs to my apartment to gather my wits and my
cell phone, which had one message on it from earlier, a sweet but slightly panicked-sounding
plea from Zach to call him. The crime scene techs were done and gone. They had been
thorough but not particularly neat. Almost everything was out of place or obviously
disturbed, and I discovered with a little chill that my kitchen knife set was missing.
It served as a sobering reminder that I might be a prime suspect in Ginny’s murder.

I spent a few minutes straightening things but my mind was too focused on what was
going on downstairs. I returned to the bar and looked for Albright, but he was nowhere
to be seen, a fact that left me feeling both relieved and oddly disappointed. But
if I thought his absence meant I would be left alone to prep for the evening opening,
a ponytailed, female, crime scene tech who looked to be about twelve years old made
it clear that wouldn’t be the case.

“My name is Jenny and I need to fingerprint you for our files,” she said. No doubt
recalling my earlier meltdown, she quickly added, “It’s standard procedure, ma’am.
We need to rule your prints out from any others we find.”

I winced at the term
ma’am,
which made me feel like Methuselah and wondered just how young these techs were.

“Please, call me Mack,” I said, smiling my warmest to put her at ease. She nodded,
making her ponytail swing merrily. “And let’s get this done. I have to get ready to
open.”

I was anticipating a black inky mess to be made of my fingers but instead Jenny produced
a small device with a scanner pad on it.

“We’ll start with your thumb,” she said. “Just place it on the pad here and push down.”

I did as she said and after she rolled my thumb from side to side, we repeated the
process nine more times, using a different digit each time. When we were done, she
thanked me and headed off to a far corner where she had a laptop set up on one of
my tables. I offer free wi-fi to my patrons because many of my day customers are folks
who drop in for lunch breaks during their workday and they bring along their laptops
or tablets. Was Jenny using my connection, or did she have some special access all
her own? If she was using mine, I wondered if there was any way to tell what she was
doing on her computer. If there was, it was way beyond my computer abilities, though
I knew of a customer who might be able to help.

There was a lot of cleaning to do. The crime scene techs weren’t concerned with neatness,
and after getting an okay from them, I started wiping down the bar area, cleaning
up the fingerprint powder that seemed to cover everything in sight. I was halfway
down the bar when Albright surprised me by poking his head out of the kitchen door
and calling to me. I thought he’d left the premises.

“There’s something I want you to look at,” he said, beckoning me into the kitchen
with a wave of his hand and leading me over to the prep table. Sitting to one side
of it was a wooden block that held a knife set. With a chill I saw that one of them
was missing.

“Do you know where this knife might be?” Albright asked.

“No,” I said, looking around the rest of the kitchen with a sickening certainty that
I wouldn’t find it elsewhere. “It was there last night. It’s the main knife I use
to chop my fruit and veggies. I cleaned it after we closed last night and put it back
where it belongs.”

“Who has access to this kitchen area?” Albright asked.

“All of my employees,” I said with a shrug. “Is it . . . was it . . .” I couldn’t
manage to say the horrible thing I was thinking.

“Was it the knife used to kill Ginny?” Albright finished for me. I nodded. “I don’t
know. We didn’t find any knife at the scene but the techs are still sifting through
all the trash in the alley.” With his gloved hand he pulled the other knives from
the block, one at a time, examining each one. “Can you describe the missing one for
me?”

“It has a blade about eight inches long, two inches wide at the handle.”

“Serrated?”

“No.”

Albright sighed and turned his attention to the crime scene techs standing nearby.
“Bag these,” he said. “And the block, too.” Then he removed his gloves, took my arm,
and steered me out of the kitchen. “The autopsy on Ginny isn’t done yet, but the description
of the knife you gave me matches what the ME described.”

“You think my knife killed her?”

“It seems a likely possibility.”

“Does this mean you’re rethinking your earlier theory that someone is trying to frame
me?”

He stared at me for several long seconds, looking so deep into my eyes I felt he could
see into my very soul. I stared right back at him, afraid to so much as blink. Eventually
he sighed and broke off the contest.

“We haven’t found any blood evidence on you, in the bar, or in your apartment. And
whoever did this would have been covered in blood.”

I shuddered at the thought.

“Granted, you could have ditched the clothes you were wearing and showered before
calling us this morning, but the techs used Luminol on your shower drain and in your
apartment and found no evidence of anything. Still, you have to admit, the evidence
so far is a bit damning.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“I’m keeping an open mind.”

I sighed. “I guess that’s the best I can ask for at this point.”

“Let’s stick with the plan we have and see what develops. If we find the knife that
was used as the murder weapon, we might have to rethink things. But for now let’s
just go for it and see what turns up.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to arrest me, Detective Albright?”

“Not yet. And given that we’re supposed to be friends and I’ve seen you practically
naked, I think you should start calling me Duncan.”

“Yeah, about that,” I said, blushing. “I might have overreacted a little bit earlier.”

“You’re not going to do it again, are you?”

“What? Overreact or take my clothes off?”

“Both,” Albright said with a crooked little grin.

“I’ll try not to do either.”

“Hmm, too bad,” Albright said. Then, with a wink, he left.