Murder on the Rocks (7 page)

W
ith Duncan Albright out of my hair, I turned my attention back to getting the bar
prepped. Making money was more important than ever now because at the rate things
were going, I’d need it to pay a lawyer. Or post bail.

Up first was washing and chopping fruit for the drinks, and then doing the same with
the lettuce and tomatoes we used for sandwich orders. But without my knives, it was
going to be a difficult task. I went back out to the main bar area and searched until
I found the paring knife I used to create lemon twists. Fortunately it was still there,
though not in the spot where I usually kept it. Apparently the crime scene guys had
examined it and decided it wasn’t worth taking. I considered asking if it was okay
to use it, and then decided the hell with it. The crime scene techs all looked busy
and uninterested in what I was doing, and Duncan was nowhere to be seen. So I took
it and went back to the kitchen. It wasn’t easy trying to slice tomatoes and lettuce
with the thing, but I managed, though the tomato slices ended up looking rather flat
and dejected.

I turned on the oven so it could preheat for the pizzas I serve, a very popular item
on my menu since I make them fresh and to order. I also turned on the deep fat fryer
I use for my waffle fries and cheese curds, and added fresh oil. The food and kitchen
prep used up half an hour or so, and after checking to make sure my occasionally cranky
ice machine was producing, I inventoried the bottled beers in the cooler and headed
down to the cellar to get what I needed to restock.

The basement was my least favorite area in the building. It was dank, gloomy, and
filled with stuff that created way too many dark corners, creepy cobwebs, and odd
shadows. I kept vowing to go down there and clean out all the junk, but most of it
was my father’s stuff. He was a bit of a pack rat and there were boxes stacked to
the ceiling in places. He also liked to dabble in woodworking in his spare time, and
did so at a large built-in workbench that spanned nearly half of one wall. The emotional
toll of going through his things was something I hadn’t felt ready to tackle yet.
I avoided the workbench whenever I came down here, rarely even looking at it. I preferred
to leave it exactly the way it was on the day my father died, every tool, every scrap
of wood right where he left it.

Looking at it now, however, it was obvious that things had been moved and disturbed.
A fine patina of dust had accumulated on the table, and it created outlines of some
of the tools that had been moved. Apparently the police and crime scene techs had
been down here while conducting their search and evidence collection, though they
had been more careful here than they were upstairs, returning each item to almost
the same exact spot each time. I examined the tools hanging on the pegboard and those
spread out over the table top to see if anything was missing, but near as I could
tell nothing had been taken. While that was some consolation, the workbench area had
been something of a shrine for me, and seeing it disturbed brought tears to my eyes.

Eager to escape the emotional cues in the cellar, I focused on the task at hand, loading
my milk crate with bottled beers and hauling them upstairs. I felt flushed and a little
winded by the time I made it back to the bar, and when I found Duncan Albright there
watching me, my flush inexplicably spread, leaving me with a hot, prickling sensation
over my entire body. I wasn’t sure if this was a new type of synesthetic experience,
or something else entirely.

Either Duncan had gone home or he kept a change of clothes in his car because he had
ditched his suit in favor of khaki pants and a collared pullover shirt. He had a cup
of coffee in one hand and he waved the other in front of himself. “I hope this will
pass for bartender wear.”

“It’s fine,” I said, setting the crate on the floor and moving beers from it to the
cooler.

He held up the coffee cup. “My fellow cops and I, and our crime scene techs, are quite
taken with your coffee. Bars aren’t typically known for their coffee, unless it’s
in a bad way. Most places have stuff that tastes like battery acid. What’s your secret?”

“I’m something of a coffee junkie so I like to have some decent stuff available all
day. Plus it helps to have some on hand if I need to sober up one of my customers.
I make my own blend using beans from a coffee shop a few blocks over and I grind them
fresh every morning. It’s a mix of Ethiopian, Guatemalan, and a mild Arabica, but
my secret ingredient is a pinch of salt used to brew each pot. It takes out the bitterness.
Do you drink battery acid often?”

My question momentarily stumped him but after a few seconds he caught on, winked,
and smiled at me. “Only when I’m grilling suspects. It makes me meaner.”

I finished loading the beers into the cooler and walked the crate back into the kitchen,
setting it in a corner. When I came back out, Duncan was standing in front of the
liquor bottles lined up along the back bar, staring at them.

“It’s all rather overwhelming,” he said.

“It seems so at first, but it’s not that bad. And I have a cheater for you.” I reached
under the bar, grabbed my bartender’s bible, and handed it to him. “Even I have to
look drinks up from time to time.”

Albright set down his coffee and flipped through the book, looking intimidated.

“Tell you what,” I said, taking it from him and returning it to its hiding place beneath
the bar. “Let’s start out with the basics and we’ll move up from there. For tonight
you can just follow me around and watch what I do. You’ll be surprised how fast you’ll
get the hang of it. The easiest drinks, like your basic booze and mixers, you’ll be
doing before the night is out. But there is one drink you should learn by tomorrow
because it’s my signature drink and very popular with my lunchtime crowd. It’s a coffee
martini that I call the Macktini. Use chocolate vodka instead of the plain stuff and
you have a mocha Macktini.”

“Chocolate vodka?” Duncan said, grimacing. “Isn’t there a law against that? If there
isn’t, there should be.”

“Don’t knock it until you try it. I buy the chocolate vodka ready-made, but I create
a lot of my own vodka infusions here and I’m experimenting all the time with new ideas.
I’ve made ginger vodka, blueberry vodka, citrus vodka, vanilla bean vodka, habanero
pepper vodka, cinnamon and apple vodka, rose—”

“Okay, okay, I give,” Duncan said, holding his hand up to stop me.

“It’s really easy to do,” I said. “And it makes for some very interesting drinks.
All you have to do is put some vodka and whatever food or flavoring you want into
a jar with a lid, and let it sit. Sometimes it takes a few days, sometimes a week
or two, depending on what ingredients you use. Citrus fruits infuse nicely in about
four days but the ginger takes a little over a week. I have several infusions going
in the kitchen now, and while I’ve only played with vodka so far, it can be done with
other liquors, too. I’m thinking of trying gin next.”

Albright stared at me like I’d lost my mind.

“Anyway,” I said, ignoring his skepticism, “the vodkas are popular for making many
types of specialty martinis. And they’re all the rage these days, so you might as
well start learning them now.”

I grabbed a shaker from beneath the bar and scooped some ice into it. “I make a jar
of espresso that I keep here in the fridge,” I told Albright, showing him where it
was. “To make a Macktini you just add an ounce of the espresso, half an ounce of heavy
cream, an ounce and a half each of vodka and Kahlua, and an ounce of white crème de
cacao.” I poured each item over the ice as I talked and, since I was teaching Albright
how to do it, I used a shot glass to measure, though I don’t normally. I’ve been able
to eyeball an ounce with astounding accuracy for years now. “Once the ingredients
are all in, you put the lid on and shake.” I showed him how to put the double lid
on the shaker and how to take off just the strainer lid once the shaking was done.
“Now I need a martini glass,” I told him.

Albright looked at the array of glasses behind the bar and then back at me with a
helpless expression. “I only ever drink beer,” he admitted. I rescued him by showing
him where the martini glasses were. I poured out the concoction and offered him the
glass.

“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m on the job.”

“You don’t have to drink the whole thing,” I said. “Just take a sip.”

He did so, and his expression changed from grimacing skepticism to surprised pleasure.
“Wow,” he said. “That
is
good.” Apparently being on the job wasn’t that much of a concern because he followed
the first taste with another, much bigger one before handing the glass back to me.

Recalling that I had earlier pegged this as a four-martini day and not wanting to
waste good booze, I chugged back the rest of it while Albright watched.

“Okay,” I said, licking my lips and putting the empty glass in the sink, “let’s learn
about some basics.”

I spent the next half hour showing Albright each of the different sizes and types
of glasses we have, from highball tumblers and martini glasses to red wine goblets
and white wine glasses. By the time I got to the beer steins and mugs, he looked shell-shocked.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “No one is going to shoot you if you use the wrong glass.”

“Bullets I can handle,” Duncan said. “This . . . I’m not so sure.”

Time flew by as we readied the place for opening and continued our crash bartending
course. Anxious to clean up the rest of the black fingerprint dust the crime scene
techs were leaving everywhere, I asked them to let me know when they were done. It
was nearly four o’clock and I was on the verge of panicking when one of them finally
told me they were done with the main bar level and had only the basement left to process.
I thanked him for letting me know, grabbed a pile of rags and a bottle of spray cleaner,
and went to work as fast as I could.

The print dust seemed to be on every surface and half the time it smeared when I tried
to wipe it off. Duncan heard me grumbling as I went and offered up an apology. “Sorry
it’s such a mess but it’s a necessary evil.”

“If you say so, but I imagine your crew will end up with hundreds of customer prints
to wade through that will prove nothing more than that those people were in the bar.”

“It might prove to be a wasted effort,” Duncan admitted. “But it’s what we do. Investigations
like this involve a lot of grunt work.”

As five o’clock drew closer my staff began showing up, and I gave Duncan a quick lowdown
on what I knew of them. The first was Helmut, a slightly cranky, seventy-something
German who had been cooking for my father for more than thirty years. His wife kept
nagging him to retire and I secretly kept hoping she’d win that argument because it
was time for Helmut to be gone. His ideas about food and cooking were as old as he
was and his resistance to the changes I’d made in the menu over the past year or two
made things difficult at times. But I was determined to update our menu both to make
it simpler and to enhance the flavors of what we did have in order to compete with
other bars and restaurants in the area. Helmut hated change and he resisted and grumbled
about every single one I made. It was annoying and time consuming, but I didn’t have
the heart to fire him. Cranky or not, uncooperative or not, he was like family to
me, a crotchety old uncle who finally admitted that my BLT sandwich was one of the
best things he’d ever tasted. Plus, he always showed up for work. He never stayed
over; when the end of his shift came around he was outta there regardless of how busy
we were. But while he was working he always gave it his all.

I filled Duncan in on what I knew about Helmut and his wife and did a brief introduction.
Helmut was my biggest challenge with this little ruse because he’d been around long
enough to remember someone from my childhood, the story Duncan and I had agreed on.
But if he found Duncan’s presence at all suspicious, he didn’t show it. He grunted
a greeting that sounded like hello but might have been lacking the last letter, and
glanced around the bar at the crime scene techs that were still there. “What a damn
mess,” he grumbled with a frown and a shake of his grizzled head. Then he disappeared
into the kitchen, dismissing us both. Small talk was definitely not one of Helmut’s
stronger attributes.

My night bartender, Billy Hughes, an attractive twenty-something African-American
whose skin is the color of a Macktini, came in a few minutes after Helmut.

“Billy has worked here for a year and a half,” I told Duncan in private before doing
a formal introduction. “My father hired him to bartend in the evenings and he attends
law school during the day. He’s quite a chick magnet and hence good for business.”

“He was here the night your father was killed.”

It wasn’t a question. “He was, but he left before it happened.”

“Do you know if he had an alibi for the time of the shooting?” I was taken aback by
the question and my expression must have shown that because he then added, “Look,
I know you don’t want to think your friends or employees could be responsible for
any of this, but we need to look into everyone no matter how far-fetched they may
seem, if for no other reason than simply to rule them out.”

“Billy had nothing to do with my father’s death. I’m certain of it.”

“Did he have an alibi for that time?”

Though I felt badgered by Duncan’s persistence, his tone was gentle. And damn if he
wasn’t also right. I knew there were several people who couldn’t account for their
exact whereabouts at the time my father was shot. Billy was one of them. And there
was little sense to lying about it because Duncan could simply look it up later in
the case file.