by Mark Lashway
New Brew
The Brewer Murders
Book Two
By Mark Lashway
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
NEW BREW. Copyright © 2014 by Mark Lashway. All rights reserved.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to Reed Antis, who, along with his wife Mary, operates the Saratoga Zymurgist homebrew supply shop. Always helpful to a lone soul wandering in to search for ingredients and equipment in their quest for a better brew, he provides some enjoyment with his wise advice. May there be more like him.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank all of the everyday people out there, including myself, who, through their quirks, foibles and obsessions, provide an inexhaustible flow of grist for the mill.
-1-
Whap whap whap was the only sound to be heard as a solitary man strode down the stone walkway, his black clogs slapping down from his impatience to be somewhere else quickly. Haste and urgency were not part of the daily existence here, but this was to be an exception.
The man, known as Brother Manuel to everyone here, suppressed a mutter as he tripped, catching himself before he fell. Despite being at this abbey for about seven years now, he still had problems moving easily with his cuccala on, the choir robe worn over his habit. The white garment, the distinctive symbol of the Trappist order to which he belonged, would signal almost anyone that he was of a monkish order, a man of God. For all that, however, his thoughts and motives had been of a darker kind as of late. If revealed, they would lay bare his unholiness.
Leaving the sun-drenched front patio and gaining the shade of the veranda, Manuel walked briskly down the hundred feet or so on one side, then turned a corner to find the entrance to a side corridor. Apart from the sound of his clogs contacting the stone floor, there was only the far-off din of work up in the fields. It made for a typical day at the abbey, but the monk still felt a bit uneasy at the little noise that he was making, as if it was abnormal and would betray his plans. Although he wasn’t an especially paranoid man, he couldn’t help but feel that others suspected him despite all of his painstaking care in concealing his actions. The abbot, John Smegley, had once told all of them that a guilty man often has a dark cloud around him that was visible only to others. Manuel wondered if such a cloud surrounded him, then quickly decided that it wasn’t important. Right now, he had to hurry to his room and dig out his cell phone, a forbidden item here, so that he could make an extremely important call.
“Whuh!” he gasped involuntarily at the sudden realization that he wasn’t alone, spotting another white-robed individual standing silently in the dark doorway to the pantry. The other man stared at him with amusement but said nothing. Although tempted to speak, Manuel didn’t, knowing that the order discouraged casual talk. Instead, he motioned with one hand to indicate that it was nothing, part of the well-developed hand signals that the Trappists had employed for centuries as a substitute for chitchat.
The second man motioned out toward the patio, then wiped his brow. Yes, Manuel indicated with a nod and polite smile, it is hot indeed. About to leave, he was interrupted by another gesture from the other man asking him where he was going. Manuel stifled a look of irritation at the man’s nosiness, sighing to himself that he had always had the feeling that this one was different in too many ways. He stared at the other man with a look that clearly indicated that he must be going now. The second man smiled and held up the outer part of one hand.
Manuel gazed at the hand with curiosity, noticing that it had something wrapped around it. It wasn’t a bandage, nor any of the gauze that one might be given in case of a minor injury. No, this was more like the tape that was used on athletes’ ankles. Whatever it was, he didn’t care. He shrugged to show his indifference. It was rude, but he really needed to be on his way.
It all happened too fast for Manuel’s mind to make sense of it as the taped hand clenched into a fist and, with incredible speed, delivered a short, direct and powerful punch to the young man’s jaw. There was no crack of knuckles contacting bone, as the tape muffled the sound to only a low crunch. Manuel was already unconscious by the time his body came to a rest on the floor in a sloppy, semi-fetal position.
Moving quickly, knowing that his time might be very limited, the second man pulled the cowl of his robe farther over his face, bent down and grabbed Manuel’s robe just behind the neck with his two hands. With a hard jerk he pulled the dead weight through the door and into the pantry, knowing that nobody should be there for at least another hour. He paused there with Manuel only long enough to bind his victim’s hands and feet with rope that he had brought along. Then he took the precaution of gagging him.
Your contact on the outside will never hear from you, he silently addressed the unconscious man. They’ll wonder what happened, why you didn’t call. They’ll try to find another way once they find you….not alive. Your boss might not be discouraged for long….
The man’s ears picked up the bits of a low-tone conversation, obviously business. With his knowledge of the abbey and its routines, he knew that it was taking place around a corner down at the end of this corridor. He had time, but could waste none. Stuffing the remaining rope into a pocket and quickly inspecting the area to ensure that he’d left no signs of his presence, he grabbed hold of Manuel again and dragged him out the back door of the pantry. He knew of the perfect place to stash him until later tonight. There was still the last meal, vespers and other events that he had to attend in the meantime, but sometime tonight he would quietly leave his room, make his way out of the abbey, and take care of Manuel. The young man’s absence would raise questions later, but it was unavoidable. His plans usually went off without too many problems, although there had been some notable exceptions.
-2-
“So, dear, are you hating the drive already?” Shauna Geary asked her husband, Cameron Witter. She was trying to be heard above the noise of rushing air coming through their open windows. The summer heat was still heavy in this first half of September. She had minimized the air conditioning, too much of which gave her headaches.
“No, not at all. The long hours suck, but I always wanted to see this part of the country,” Cam replied with a tired smile. They had been driving since eight last night, starting out from several states away.
“We’re making good time,” she observed. “It helps when we cut down on stops.”
“Yep. We can get away with it for several years more, but it’ll change. Every middle-aged guy I know says they have to stop every hour or so to either loosen up or take a piss.”
“Or both,” she chuckled. “My dad was just like that. It drove my mother nuts.”
Cam didn’t reply, determined not to walk into that minefield. He knew that Shauna still mourned her father, who had died suddenly from an aneurysm when she was 19. She and her mother were estranged over some incident that Shauna would never talk about, even to him. So he just stared ahead at the long, straight, apparently never-ending stretch of road before them. This open country driving was great, he reminded himself, unlike the more crowded, stop and go conditions that were typical the farther east one went.
“Are you looking forward to it, or dreading it?” she asked, referring to the Great World Invitational Beer Event festival that they were heading to.
“Would I be goin’ to somethin’ I dreaded?” he replied.
“Cam….”
“Alright,” he muttered. She knew him too well. “It’s actually both.”
“Same here. It’s an insane, degenerate gathering, yet we can’t help ourselves. We still have to
see it.”
Last year had been Witter’s first time at GWIBE, the annual gathering of beer enthusiasts unlike any other. Just the one experience made him feel like an old, weathered veteran now. The memories, still too fresh, came rushing back. Cam didn’t notice himself pushing his sunglasses farther up his nose, nor clenching his teeth, nor the death grip he now had on the steering wheel.
“Cam, honey, it’s alright,” she mumbled, patting his arm.
“Sure,” he grumbled, unable to clear the awful scenes from his mind, which pictured the various settings at which he’d had to save Phil Utah from mob justice. Then there was the vision of Tom Deville and Clay Sharper, two goons he’d been ready to shoot with pleasure. Then the encounter with Trub, his friend the murderer. Finally, the really ugly stuff with the aftermath. He could still remember with absolute clarity all of the details from the disciplinary hearing, from the layout of the room, to the clothes that everyone had worn that day, all the way down to precisely what everyone had said during the hearing. Captain Welker had told him that his career was under a very dark cloud, but he had been understating it if anything.
Cam drew a deep breath before he allowed the mental slide show to move on. When he continued, he remembered Welker’s attempts to smooth things out for him, to little avail. The man above Welker, Major Vanderwaal, had remained unmoved and had done his best to get Cam fired. It was only after the union had sent in a shark lawyer that he had narrowly survived. He had to wonder, though, whether it had been worth it in the end. His reputation was in tatters, he had been suspended for six months before being allowed back to work, and although he was allowed to remain as an investigator he’d had to spend four more months under something called “administrative discretionary conditions”. It had been the equivalent of having to report to a bare room every day where nothing more was expected of him than to play with crayons.
“Cam, dear, other investigators wouldn’t have had any better results,” Shauna soothed him. “Not when dealing with GWIBE.”
“It doesn’t matter, Shauna. The whole deal was a disaster, an eyesore, so someone had to pay. Shit rolls downhill and I live in Death Valley. Blame is always assigned for everythin’.”
“It’s a great philosophy. It seems like everything is affected by it now.”
“And if that wasn’t enough,” he hissed, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that the veins in his neck stood out, “the icin’ on the fuckin’ cake was that last fiasco when the ambulance crew lost Trub’s body on the way back from GWIBE!”
“Cam, dear, watch your mouth,” she lectured him. “Besides, how in the world could they blame you for that?”
“They couldn’t, but they did anyway. They had great fun playin’ pin-the-blame-tail-on-the-Witter! But instead of stickin’ it in with a push pin, they used broomsticks to shove it up my ass!” He was screaming now.
At first, Shauna regretted having turned the talk to GWIBE, but then realized that it was good to have him release some of his rage, so long as he didn’t kill the steering wheel. “It’ll take time, dear, for things to heal and the memories to dull a bit,” she told him.
“I blame all of this shit for turnin’ me gray,” he muttered, referring to his temples, where the blonde was reluctantly giving way.
“Your mother said it made you look more distinguished,” she said, smiling. “I agree.”
“I think my mother already loves you more than she does me,” he replied. “She has really taken to you.”
“That’s a relief. The day we told her that we were getting married, her face was so neutral that I couldn’t get any sense of her opinion.”
“Yeah, but then she turned into Baroness Witter as she helped you make the weddin’ arrangements,” he remarked, smiling just a little now. “She became so overbearin’ that my father fled to his garage. Ah, what the hell, he likes it better there, anyway.”
“I got quite the stony look, though, when she found out that I planned on keeping my last name,” Shauna sighed, “but it’s a personal issue with me.”
“Only until you told her that any children we have will take my last name,” he added.
“She’s very much looking forward to that, dear. I’m thinking along those lines, too.”
“Yep. We’ll talk about it more when we go back home in a few weeks.”
“How far away are we now?” she asked. She had never had a good sense of distance.
“I figure about an hour or so,” he told her. Like many of the people where he came from, distance was stated in time, not miles. “We’re barely outside North Dakota. We’ll hit GWIBE by 4:00. Say, you’re the one who keeps in touch with the crews. Who’s gonna be there this year? Sonny and Helen?”
“They both said they’re coming.”
“Gerhard and Johann?”
“Of course. That’s a given.”
“The Stardust Boys?”
“Are you kidding me, Cam? Certainly, but yuck!”
“The Four Horsemen?”
“You are desperate, but definitely.”
“The breakfast guy? The shower guy?”
“Oh my God. For somebody with such bad memories of last time, you’ve certainly become attached to the fixtures, haven’t you?”
Cam noticed that Shauna clipped the reply off awkwardly, knowing that she had caught herself from saying “Just like Trub”. His friend’s ghost would loom large over GWIBE this year, and for several years thereafter, until the inevitable erosion of time began to fog peoples’ memories. Trub had been a larger-than-life figure at the event, a co-founder ousted after bitter infighting, a fighter for GWIBE’s soul and an irritant to those controlling types who sought to sanitize the festival of all its rowdiness. The dead man had been a murderer whom most GWIBE people had liked. Understandably, when introducing Shauna to his mother, Cam had left out her prior ties to Trub and how he had bequeathed her to Witter as he’d given away his possessions before his suicide.
“Are you regrettin’ not bringin’ the brewin’ gear?” he asked her softly, seeking to turn to more pleasant thoughts.
“Not a bit,” she replied confidently. “I did that every year up ‘til now. Doing that and judging took too much out of me. It was a real hassle. No brewing on the road this year. We’re bringing two kegs and have enough stock back home to keep us quite a while anyway. Say, do you want me to drive the rest of the way and give you a break?”
“Nah, I’m fine,” he said, relaxing his grip and sparing the poor steering wheel. “I love drivin’ this part of the country, I’ve decided. GWIBE, here we come.”
-3-
When Cam and Shauna arrived at the emerging GWIBE site, they could see that it had much in common with last year’s, as it was situated in a large, clear field with no civilization in sight. There was a frantic hum of activity as vehicles continually arrived while the people already there were hard at work putting up tents, stands, latrines and a lot more. New year, new place, but the same old scene, Cam decided.
As they passed very slowly down what was obviously going to be the main thoroughfare here, a voice called out to them from the side, “Hey, you two!”
When they looked they saw a grinning Richie Hobbs. The other Stardust Boys were a ways farther back, merely waving without interrupting their work.
“Richie, good to see you again,” Cam said, catching the irony, remembering how his first encounters with the group hadn’t been very pleasant. He put a hand out and shook hands with Hobbs. Shauna gave a slight wave and polite smile.
“Same here, Cam. We’re looking forward to every one of the old crew showing up. We’ll need every one, believe me.” There was a gloomy tone in his voice.
“Oh? Why’s that?” Cam asked, unable to resist.
“Same shit as last year,” Hobbs sighed. “I’ll give you one guess….”
“Utah?” Witter cried. “He’s here this year? Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me, Richie?”
“Cam, your mouth!” Shauna snapped.
�
��Sorry, honey! I’ll get better, I promise! Richie, I don’t believe it. Oh….yes, I do.”
“Anyway,” Hobbs continued, “I just wanted to give you a heads up so you can try to avoid him. He’s back and he’s got a few new people. Real gems.”
“But wait a minute,” Cam sputtered. “Utah wanted this in Missouri this year, if I remember right, but here we are in North Dakota. He….”
“He didn’t get his way because he was thin on manpower, thanks to Trub, God bless his soul. My guys managed to get enough of a bloc together to have things our way this year, but he’ll be hard at work here again this time, trust me. Anyway, I just wanted to say hi. I’ve gotta get back to setting up, folks. I’ll see you around.”
“Thanks, Richie,” Cam replied, taking his foot off the brake and letting the vehicle roll ahead slowly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Shauna glaring at him. “What?”
“You’re not to get involved in any messes this year, Cam. You’re an attendee this time, not an investigator. We’ll have some good times, enjoy our friends and stay out of the GWIBE civil war, got it?”
“Yes’m, boss lady.”
“I love you so much,” she murmured, leaning over to kiss him. “You know that?”
“But….”
“But you just can’t help being the investigator, can you? You’re always obsessed with knowing the story, being able to unravel everything. Your mother told me that she first saw it when you were only two years-old.”
He was about to reply, but then he saw something not far away that caught his attention. “Hey, right over there!” he said excitedly.
“What?”
“That place up there,” he replied, pointing to a patch of ground about a hundred yards away. “That’d be the perfect site for us. Close enough to everythin’, but not jammed in the middle of it all. What do you say?”
“Looks good enough.”
Within a minute the vehicle was parked and they claimed the spot. Cam’s SUV was packed with stuff, so it took them a few minutes to take everything out. The first, crucial matter was getting their tent up. It was Shauna’s tent, the one that she had used for the last several GWIBEs. Like almost all of the other attendees, she had opted for one of those cavernous tents that allowed comfort for almost everything. That was the taste here and was the main reason why the site was so huge in proportion to the number of people, Cam knew. Working together, they had the tent up in less than half an hour, then smiled with satisfaction at a job well-done.
