Death & the Brewmaster's Widow Read online

  “I think you might be,” Leona said, amused, “but when you figure it out you just let me know.”

  two

  “Fire at will!”

  Death had shot a man at near point-blank range.

  The man was a deranged killer and he was coming at Death with a knife, but still. He focused on the black and white target fixed at the end of his lane as gunfire echoed through the concrete block shooting range, muffled by his ear protectors, but not silenced. Sometimes it seemed the gunfire was never silent.

  He could still feel the slick warmth of another man’s blood on his hands and face. The rattle of small arms fire conjured older ghosts, shadowy insurgents who hovered at the edges of his vision with promises of terror and death. Death forced himself to breathe normally. His heart pounded but his hands were steady as he took aim and fired off six shots, all grouped inside the bull’s-eye.

  He had been a soldier once and there was a part of him that would always be a soldier. When he had a job to do, he did it. His job was to hit the target.

  The shooting range was filled with cops this afternoon. The East Bledsoe Ferry Police Department was preparing to face the Rives County Sheriff’s Department in a shooting competition on the Fourth of July. Chief Reynolds, a friend of Death’s, had asked the Marine marksman to coach his officers. “What’s the prize in this contest?” Death had asked.

  “Winner gets to shoot Farrington,” one of the cops had joked.

  Eric Farrington, small but cocky and much disliked, held his job as a jailer only because his uncle was the mayor. He was present today, too, trying (again) to pass the concealed carry exam.

  The echoes of gunfire died away as the shooters expended their ammunition. Death pulled the magazine and double-checked his gun to make sure it was empty before laying it on the counter and stepping back. Around him, the cops were all pulling their targets and comparing their scores.

  “You morons better practice,” Farrington said. “I’m gonna get so good at this, I’m gonna leave you all in the dust.”

  “Did you actually hit the target this time?” one of the cops asked. “Did you hit the paper that the target is on?” another goaded. “Did you even hit the wall?”

  “Ha ha. Very funny. Let me tell you jackasses something—”

  As he was speaking, Farrington walked over to the group of officers. He hadn’t bothered to lay down his gun first and now he swung it around, gesturing with it as if it were an extension of his arm. The barrel came up, pointed at Death’s face and …

  He was back in Afghanistan. The sun blazed, hot and blinding, the red sand and mud-brick buildings glowing with the light. Shadows were pitch-black, the lines between light and dark as sharp as razors. The gunman came out of the shadow, screaming in an unintelligible mix of Arabic and English. With no time or room to bring his rifle to bear, Death reacted on instinct, slapping the gun away. He body blocked his adversary, twisting the gun away from him with his left hand while his right came up across the man’s throat. He pinned him to the wall, brought the gun to bear. A sandstorm arose from nowhere, sucking all the sound away. The world hovered in a shocked silence. Light and shadow spun around him and …

  Death stood in the cool expanse of the shooting range at East Bledsoe Ferry. He had Eric Farrington pinned to the concrete block wall with an arm across his throat. Farrington’s own gun was in Death’s left hand, pointing down at the terrified young man, the barrel an inch from his left eye.

  With a shuddering breath, Death stepped back. All activity in the building had ceased. The gathered cops stared at him. They’d frozen, all of them, as if afraid to provoke him. Chief Reynolds moved forward cautiously, one hand raised in a placating gesture, approaching Death the way one might approach a skittish horse.

  Death released Farrington and the kid slid limply to sit on the floor, his smart mouth silenced for a change. Death fell back himself, raising his own empty hand as if to fend off his friend’s advance. He was shaking all over. He felt the hot flush of blood rising to his face. He was breathing hard, his damaged lungs exacerbating the situation. Spots danced before his eyes. “I—”

  He looked at the older man’s face and the pity he saw there shamed him. Trying to force his breathing to slow, he flipped the gun in his left hand so that he held it by the barrel and extended it butt first. Reynolds took it from him. Death felt like the strings holding him up were being cut, one by one.

  “I’m sorry. I … excuse me.”

  Shouldering past the officers, he stumbled his way to the door and out. The rifle range sat at the edge of a park. Children played on the swings a hundred yards away. There was a game going on in the baseball diamond. The Missouri sun was softer and gentler than the blazing orb that haunted his memories and he sank down on the nearest bench. Chills wracked his body and he was violently trembling.

  Reynolds came out and sat on the other end of the bench but didn’t interrupt the silence. Death fought to get his breathing under control. Slowly the black spots before his eyes receded. “So what happens now?” he asked finally, when he was sure he could control his voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you need to arrest me? Am I going to lose my license?” He laughed without humor.

  “I probably should, shouldn’t I?”

  “Why in God’s name would I arrest you? Or should you lose your license?”

  “In there.” Death waved one hand in the general direction of the shooting range. “I just assaulted Farrington. I could have shot him.”

  The Chief of Police snorted. “You didn’t assault anyone. You disarmed a moron who was waving a gun in your face. There’s a reason Farrington keeps failing his gun safety courses.” He waited a moment, letting the silence draw out. “Are you having problems, Death? Talk to me, son.”

  Death felt the tension drain away. It left a cold, empty spot in his chest. “Nothing like that’s ever happened before.”

  “What did happen?”

  “I don’t know, I was just … it was like I was back in a war zone. I saw someone coming at me with a gun and I just snapped.”

  “Flashback?”

  “That sounds so melodramatic.”

  Reynolds casually reached over and smacked the back of Death’s head. It was a gesture his father used to use on him and Randy and it brought with it a wave of homesickness so powerful it was almost his undoing.

  “It’s not melodramatic. And it’s nothing to be ashamed of. If you need some help, don’t you hesitate to ask for it. Going it on your own isn’t being macho. It’s being a moron.”

  “I did,” he had to stop and clear his throat. His face was burning with embarrassment now, but he pressed on. “I called the VA and asked about counseling. I can’t sleep with Wren,” he admitted, surprising himself with the revelation. He glanced over at Reynolds. The chief was looking at him with concern, his face carefully void of expression. “I mean,” he felt stupid, “I’m not saying we don’t fool around. I mean, I can’t sleep with her. I was having a nightmare and she tried to wake me up.” He shuddered and scrubbed his hands against his jeans. “I almost snapped her neck. It was so close.”

  “And what did they say? The VA, I mean?”

  “They put me on a waiting list.”

  “Hmph. Yeah, that figures. Listen.” He cupped his hand around the back of Death’s neck. “I know you haven’t been around here that long, but you’ve got a lot of friends in this town. God knows, none of us are professionals, but any time you need somebody to talk to, someone’s gonna be there. And I’m one of those someones, so if you need something, you just ask.” The cold spot in Death’s chest warmed. The knots in his stomach loosened. “Then, could you do me a favor?” he asked.

  “Name it.”

  “I went off and left my gun in there.”

  “You want me to go in and get it for you?”

  “I’d like for you to hang on to it for me. For a little while, at least.”

  Reynolds studied his face. “Are
you sure? You don’t think you’re going to need it, Mr. Big-Shot Private Eye-slash-Bounty Hunter?”

  Death felt a tiny smile tug at one corner of his mouth. “Not that dangerous. Most of my cases are infidelity or missing persons. And you know as well as I do, bounties are few and far between. Anyway, I’m fixing to take some time off. I need to go home to St. Louis and settle my little brother’s estate.” His mind’s eye put Randy in the middle of the baseball game. He could hear the echoes of his laughter among the voices of the children on the swings. “A gun is one thing I’m not going to need.”

  _____

  The Keystone family, of Keystone and Sons Auctioneers, was huge. Sam and Roy, originally the sons in the equation, now had sons and grandsons of their own. When their whole clan had an event, it required the Community Building to accommodate everyone. With three Keystones in the senior class at East Bledsoe Ferry High, the graduation supper was such an event. Death pulled his ten-year-old Jeep into the parking lot and sat for a moment after he turned off the motor. He was wearing a suit for the first time since his parents’ funeral. Wren, beside him in the passenger seat, was dressed in a sleeveless green shift. Her red hair was still short after the loss of her trademark braid and it stood out around her head in a wild halo. Death called her his feral pixie.

  She turned to him now, her face a mask of gentle concern.

  “Are you okay? We don’t have to go in if you don’t feel like it.”

  He dropped his head. “You heard about what happened at the rifle range.” It wasn’t a question.

  “It’s a small town.” She didn’t insult him by trying to deny it. “Cops are the world’s worst gossips.”

  “Great. I’m the local freak now.”

  Wren smacked his arm. “Freak nothing. You publicly humiliated the most disliked person in a three-county area. Today, Batman wears Death Bogart pajamas.”

  He laughed in spite of himself and before the conversation could continue a sharp rap on his window made them both jump. Death opened his door and Roy Keystone pulled it out of his hand and peered in at them. “No necking in the parking lot! Come on. Hurry! We’ve gotta get inside.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “Are you kidding me? There’s food in there. And there’s teenage boys coming. Have you ever seen what a bunch of teenage boys can do to a table full of food?”

  Death climbed out of the Jeep, reaching back for the casserole Wren had prepared. She gathered the pile of gifts they’d brought and came around to join him. Holding hands, they strolled with Roy to the big, white stone building. “He did used to be a teenage boy,” Wren reminded her boss.

  “And a Marine,” Death added. He laughed, remembering. “My first time overseas I spent Thanksgiving at Pearl Harbor. Our sergeant’s wife cooked dinner for our squad. Three big turkeys, all the trimmings. She was planning on sending us back to quarters with leftovers.”

  “No leftovers?” Wren guessed.

  “We barely left bones.”

  Later, when they were all seated at long tables, feasting, Roy’s wife Leona singled Death out. He tensed when she called his name, expecting some comment on his encounter with Farrington, but Leona’s mind was elsewhere.

  “Wren tells me you’re working on a case of industrial espionage! That sounds fascinating. Can you talk about it?” He shrugged, taking a second to chew and swallow.

  “Not that much to tell really. High-tech firm up in the city. I can’t tell you what they do. I don’t mean I’m not allowed to tell you,” he clarified. “I can’t. I have no idea. Whatever it is, it involves proprietary information stored on flash drives kept in safes in the offices of the engineers responsible for them. A handful of those drives disappeared. The drives were tagged with security devices so they couldn’t be taken out of the building without setting off an alarm. Their internal security was getting nowhere, so they called me in as a fresh pair of eyes.”

  “How long did it take you to solve it?”

  “Are you sure I solved it?” he teased.

  Leona smiled at him. “Wren’s sure. So spill. What happened?”

  “Well, when I first started looking into it, I really wanted the guy who was responsible for the information to be the one who had stolen it. Guy was a jackass. Rude, condescending. Called people insulting nicknames. Naturally, he was the prime suspect, so he’d already been thoroughly investigated. He came out clean, even though he was the only one who had the combination to the safe and his fingerprints were the only ones on it.

  “There were no security cameras in the office where the safe was, on the grounds that cameras could be hacked, but the hall outside was covered by a camera and there were cameras on the bank of elevators and on the fire stairs. In the course of their investigation, they’d scoured the tapes for any sign that someone might have put in a video loop. They were even debating the possibility that one of their rivals could have designed a high-tech suit that would interact with their cameras to make the person wearing it invisible on film.”

  “That sounds like science fiction,” Sam observed.

  “To me, too,” Death agreed.

  “So, what did you do, smart guy?” Wren asked.

  “First thing, I went back over their own investigation. I noticed right away there was one person coming and going from that office at will who they had never even questioned.” He looked around the table, enjoying having a rapt audience. “It was a janitor, guy named Hector Boyd. Actually, they refer to him as a maintenance engineer. The reason they never considered him was because he has Down syndrome. He works there as part of a program to employ the mentally disadvantaged. He can handle a broom and push a dust mop, but how would he get a safe open or know what to take? And even if he did, how would he ever smuggle it out and sell it to their competitors? The only thing he takes out of the offices he cleans is trash and he just takes the bags directly to an incinerator and drops them in.”

  “He doesn’t really have Down syndrome,” Sam’s wife Doris guessed. “It was just a cover for him to break in and steal all their data.”

  Death grinned at her. “Nope. He’s just exactly what he seems to be. A fifty-four-year-old man with Down syndrome living in a group home and working as a janitor.”

  “So …?”

  “So remember how I said the guy responsible for the information was a jackass? Just imagine how someone like that treats someone with a physical or mental impairment. Boyd didn’t steal the information in order to sell it. He took it to get back at the engineer for being hateful to him. They couldn’t figure out how he got the flash drives out of the building because he didn’t. He just threw them away.”

  “But how did he get them out of the safe?” Sam asked. “Did the engineer go off and leave the safe open?”

  “No. But he opened it in front of Boyd. It never occurred to him that Boyd would be able to remember the combination. And when he opened the safe, Boyd just used a dust cloth to keep from leaving fingerprints. He’s handicapped. He’s not stupid.”

  “Is he going to be in a lot of trouble?” Wren asked, concerned. “Boyd, I mean?”

  Death smiled at her and reached out to trace one fingertip down her cheek. “Nah, not so much. They’re mostly relieved the information didn’t wind up with their competitors and they figure he didn’t understand what he was doing. I’m not so sure of that bit, myself, but the engineer really isn’t a pleasant person so I’m not sorry he’s the one who’s going to suffer. He got taken down a peg for being careless with his safe combination, plus he’s got to re-do all the work that was destroyed.”

  “People always underestimate the handicapped,” Leona said.

  “The invisible demographic,” Death agreed. “Also, with a lot of people, there’s a broad tendency to overlook service personnel. The janitor, the waitress, the kid mowing the grass.”

  “Tell me about it!” Rory Keystone, gangly and awkward, leaned over from a table full of teenagers to join in the conversation. “You know, I got a job at the ma
rket doing carryouts. Yesterday I was taking out a cart of groceries for these two ladies and they were having this conversation you would not believe. It was like I wasn’t even standing there. I just wanted to run away screaming.”

  “Really?” Death asked innocently. “What were they talking about?”

  Rory’s ears turned red and he stammered. “Stuff,” he managed finally.

  “Stuff ?”

  “You know. Woman-ey stuff. Really graphic woman-ey stuff.” His blush deepened as his peers and elders merely watched him expectantly. “One of them was having problems. You know.”

  “Woman-ey problems?”

  “With her stuff,” Leona nodded. “Her woman-ey stuff.”

  “Her lady parts,” Roy clarified. Rory was aghast. “Grandpa!”

  “What? You’re shocked that I know about lady parts? Let me tell you something, son. If I didn’t know about lady parts, half the people in this building wouldn’t exist.”

  “Can we have a moment of silence,” Sam said, “so that I can pray for salvation for my brother? Or possibly from my brother?”

  “You can act like an old maid all you want,” Roy said, “but you’ve had the occasional brush with lady parts yourself, and I can point out a dozen or more pieces of evidence without even turning my head.”

  “Perhaps. But I don’t talk about it at the dinner table.”

  “Maybe I just know more to talk about.”

  “You do know about lady parts,” Leona agreed placidly. She reached over and patted her husband’s hand. “Just don’t go imagining that you’re an expert.”

  three

  The town square surrounding the Rives County courthouse in downtown East Bledsoe Ferry consisted mostly of tall, old stone buildings. The late eighteenth-century architecture was so predominant here that the handful of newer structures stood out like scars against their older counterparts. Death’s office and the connected studio apartment where he slept were located in one of the oldest buildings, above the Renbeau Bros. Department Store.

  Wren was alone in the apartment. She was packing clothes into a duffel for Death to take with him to St. Louis when the bell rang, announcing that someone had opened the door from the street. “Oh, Death!” a woman’s light, melodic voice called. “Sweetie? Are you up there?”