New Brew

by Mark Lashway

  “Mmmm, we have a few new faces this year,” Billy Bomb announced, pointing to two young women who stood behind the Four Horsemen. Both were dressed very plainly, almost sloppily, with long, wild hair. “Our blonde-haired one here Aura, the brunette is Glow. They’re like members of our crew now, so you’ll see them with us a lot.”

  Noticing Sonny about to lose it, Cam quickly asked, “Uhh, what do you ladies do?” God, I can guess what’s coming!

  “We’re both meditation facilitators,” Aura replied. “I know that you’re going to ask what that is. It’s a very specialized field, that’s probably why you haven’t heard about it. We’re the people who assist others in their meditation, helping them achieve out-of-body awareness.”

  “Do you burn incense, or stuff like that?” Cam asked, keeping a straight face.

  “It’s always an option,” Glow answered. “Aura and I can provide just about any product needed for us to achieve our mission of helping someone achieve their proper state.”

  Pot, acid, other good candy, Cam thought. Shauna gave him a look to let it go.

  A large white SUV roared up to the edge of the campsite and braked hard, creating a big dust cloud. Right behind it was a blue pickup truck. The driver of the first vehicle leaned out enough to be seen. It was Vinnie Costa, another one of the Stardust Boys. “Sonny, Cam!” he yelled. “Get in and come with me. There’s trouble. That Father John you had around earlier.”

  “Ah shit!” Sonny growled. They got into Costa’s vehicle and it took off. The blue pickup started out, too, but was cut off by the Four Horsemen, who got in uninvited.

  “We’ll be back sometime, ladies!” Billy Bomb yelled to them. “If it’s a bad situation, they’ll need us there!”

  “Ohhhh,” Aura sighed. “There they go again to save the day, just like last year.”

  “Heroes,” Glow mumbled, tears in her eyes. “Simply heroes!”

  -4-

  “What do you think, Cam?” Vinnie Costa muttered somberly as they stared at a body lying mostly hidden under a bush. There was a considerable gathering here now, and it felt like everyone was staring at him, waiting: Sonny, Vinnie, Abbot John, the Four Horsemen and the driver of the pickup, Bucky Fritsch, a man whom Cam had met last year but still didn’t know very well.

  “Give me a minute,” Cam mumbled, drawing a deep breath as he slowly gazed at every part of the body and surrounding ground. Something was just a little off, he thought. Actually, there was a lot of stuff off as he began to pick up on one thing after another. “Father John, did anyone touch this body while you were here?”

  “No, Cam, nobody has touched it since I showed up.”

  “Were you the one who found it?”

  “No. While I was riding back, one of our monks working the fields came running up to me to tell me after he found it.”

  “Was he alone in the area when he did?”

  “As far as I can tell, Cam. The nearest man was about a quarter-mile away.”

  “Who was the monk who found it?”

  “His name is Matthew. I assume you will want to talk to him.”

  “Actually, the state police in these parts will want to talk to him. I have no authority here. Has anyone called 911 yet?”

  “I did,” came the voice of another man who had recently arrived. Cam knew the face from last year, but didn’t know the man. “Father John flagged me down. I made the call on my cell phone and then called Vinnie to get some guys out here.”

  “Did Matthew say whether he touched the body or not?” Cam asked the abbot.

  “He said he panicked and began running when he saw it. Then he came upon me.”

  “Hmmm.” It was odd, Cam realized, as a few thoughts formed in his mind. He wouldn’t share anything with anybody except the county or state police when they arrived. Silence ensued as the group stared at the body once more, the corpse of a young man who was apparently one of the monks from the abbey. The man’s white robe was stained with the dull brown of dried blood, and though the wounds were not visible due to the way the body laid, they would almost certainly be bullet holes or stab wounds when revealed. The man had died with what seemed to be an accepting look on his face. What drew the most attention, though, were the several dollar bills shoved into the corpse’s mouth. Cam noticed Sonny’s sideways glance at him. Yeah, we won’t talk here.

  “Who is this man?” Cam asked the abbot.

  “His name was Manuel,” John replied. “He was with us almost eight years.”

  “What kind of work did he do at the abbey?”

  “The last few years, he had been working in our brewery.”

  “Hmmm.” That was interesting, Cam thought, and probably completely irrelevant. He decided against asking any more questions for the time being when he saw two new, most unwelcome arrivals join them: Tom Deville and Clay Sharper. They were beneath contempt.

  “What’s going on here, Witter?” Deville asked, looking at the body.

  “That’s for the home team to sort out,” Cam replied. “I’m just another tourist here.”

  As if on cue, a white troop car of the North Dakota Highway Patrol pulled up and parked. The driver was a uniformed female trooper, the passenger a man dressed in civilian clothes. They got out and walked over slowly, the man painstakingly removing his sunglasses for dramatic effect. Fuck us all, Cam fumed. One of those….

  “I’m Ned Inkwell, state police investigator,” the man informed them. “I need you all to move away from here, this is a crime scene now.” Everyone shuffled off a fair distance except for Cam, who approached the man.

  “Investigator Inkwell, I’m Cameron Witter. I’m a state police investigator back east.”

  “A bit out of your territory, aren’t you, Witter?”

  “Ah, it’s nothin’ like that. I’m just here on vacation. You can call me ‘Cam’.”

  “Yeah. Vacation, huh? Are you with that mob a few miles down the road? A beer festival or something like that?”

  “Yep. GWIBE, it’s called. Anyway, when I saw the body, I noticed….”

  “Let me set you straight here and now, Witter. I know that you might think that this being North Dakota and all that we’re a bunch of simpletons who can’t do anything without the help of some slick investigator from back east, but let me assure you that we can handle our own stuff.”

  Cam stared at him in disbelief. The way that Inkwell had treated him simply wasn’t done. Professional courtesy between two men in identical occupations came to mind. He noticed the female trooper trying to look away from the embarrassing scene, but could see Deville and Sharper in the background, grinning.

  “Unbelievable,” Cam responded with a contemptuous smirk. “You know what? You’re right, you can handle this. I’m here to enjoy myself. Good luck, Inkwell, you’ll need it.”

  Cam waited until they rode away from the scene before saying anything. Abbot John, Deville and Sharper had remained behind. Dusk had fallen as Costa’s vehicle moved quickly down the narrow road, followed by Fritsch’s pickup.

  “A lot of odd stuff back there, eh, Cam?” Lombardo said from the back seat. As if anticipating Cam’s reluctance to talk in front of Costa, whom he didn’t know very well, Sonny added, “You can talk freely in front of Vinnie or his crew. They’re solid.”

  “What did you make of the dollar bills stuffed into his mouth?” Cam asked.

  “It’s what the mob did sometimes when they whacked a guy. It meant that the guy had gotten greedy.”

  “I highly doubt that this monk was hit by the Mafia, Sonny.”

  “No, certainly not. But whoever did it definitely meant for the message to be clear.”

  “Vinnie, I see some question just dyin’ to be asked,” Cam said.

  “I got the impression that the body was moved at some point,” Costa told him.

  “Yeah? So did I. What clued you in?”

  “That bush. The farthest, hardest-to-reach side, well, there were some broken branches over there. I think that’s wher
e the body originally was, that’s where I would’ve put it since it would have been almost impossible to spot it from any distance. The ground in the middle was a little gouged, like something was dragged on it. I would guess that somebody got under the bush on the easier side and dragged the body over to it.”

  “That’s just what I was thinkin’,” Cam sighed. “Hopefully, Sherlock Holmes sees it too.”

  “There’s the site,” Costa announced as they saw the massive sprawl of the festival. “All of this murder and detective stuff has drained me. I’m setting out tonight and drinking plenty of brew! Where do you want to be dropped off?”

  “At Sonny’s,” Cam replied. “Shauna will probably still be there waitin’ for me.”

  Both vehicles stopped at the designated site and emptied out their passengers. In the noisy bustle of everyone exiting, Cam poked Sonny on the arm and whispered in a voice just loud enough for the other man to hear, “Sonny, get hold of this Abbot John again and let him know that I have to talk with him in secret.”

  Sonny didn’t look at him or even nod, but a sad smile was at the corners of his mouth. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” he whispered.

  ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

  “This isn’t good, Tom,” Clay Sharper mumbled as he and Tom Deville stood in the gathering darkness. Abbot John had just left. About 40 yards away, Investigator Inkwell continued to analyze the crime scene, assisted mostly by flashlight. There was another troop car here now to assist, but the female trooper who had driven Inkwell to the scene stood apart, occasionally glancing their way and making Sharper nervous.

  “We’ve got eyes on us,” Deville whispered. “Let’s walk back to my truck. She’s wondering why we’re hanging around as it is.”

  “Yeah? So what? We didn’t kill the poor bastard. The thing that bugs me is that nothing was found on him, at least according to our partner.”

  “Why the hell did he have to move him? That’s when something can fall off and be found later. That was stupid, so stupid!”

  “This might be it, Tom. The whole thing, finished!”

  “Let’s not hang it up just yet. If we could find out who took them, then it’s salvageable.”

  “Them?”

  “The items. You know….”

  “Right, the items. but how do we go about doing that?”

  “Well, the way I see it, the killer would’ve had to come from one of two directions: Our partner, or someone from the abbey.”

  “I don’t buy the idea of a killer monk, Tom. Our partner? I can see that. He’s such a fine, upstanding character, you know?”

  “My thoughts exactly. We should focus on him. It’s good that he’s at GWIBE.”

  “So how do we go about it? If we ask too many questions or….”

  “We just have to be discreet, Clay. Remember, there’ll probably be fireworks again this year. Phil will be doing his usual stuff, creating an uproar. We just do our own thing on the side. Utah will divert attention from just about anything else that goes on.”

  “There’s another complication, Tom.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Witter.”

  “Hmmm. I wouldn’t worry too much about that, Clay. After all, he didn’t catch onto Trub until late in the game, did he?”

  “But he did crack it in the end. Besides, he really wanted to shoot us.”

  “Yeah, but remember, he has no authority here. Different place, different cop.”

  “It was pretty clever of you putting it in Utah’s ear to have a meeting with the state police before everything started, filling them in on GWIBE’s history.”

  “Yeah. It’ll help put Trub’s people on the defensive. There’s one more thing we need to do, though, to help neutralize any problems with Witter.”

  “Oh? What?”

  “We avoid any confrontation with him whatsoever. He’s married. Shauna will want him tamer, so all we have to do is make him think that last year is water under the bridge. We just act like we have better things to do, which indeed we do.”

  -5-

  “Are you sure that you want to hang out there?” Shauna asked Cam as they walked down the main street of the settlement. To him it seemed like the main thoroughfare was considerably more brightly lit than it had been last year.

  “Yeah, why not?” he sighed. “We’ve already visited Helen and Sonny.”

  “But we already saw Gerhard and Johann….and their new flames.”

  “Only briefly. Besides, what place would be better to go to than Little Germany?”

  “No place, but I just thought that we’d take it easy the first night and stay in.”

  “That’s what we mostly do at home,” he reminded her. “We’re only here 10 days.”

  “Don’t remind me. Oh well, there are worse ways to go, I guess. By the way, you still haven’t said much about what you guys saw out there today, other than a dead man who was murdered. You have that look, dear. You are not to get involved, is that clear?”

  He was tempted to respond but thought better of it. Shauna had changed, as most women did, after they were married. Why is it that the moment the man says “I do” he becomes a dog? he wondered. Sit, Spot. Roll over, Spot. Play dead, Spot….

  “It will have nothing to do with GWIBE anyhow, Cam. I’m sure that the state police here have perfectly able investigators to solve it, besides.”

  “Yeah, I guess there are enough peckerheads to deal with at GWIBE, anyway.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothin’. Well, we’re here,” he said, pointing to the massive tent with the German flag hanging outside it. The setup was exactly the same as it had been last year.

  When they walked in, there was a considerable gathering of people scattered about in several groups. The Stardust Boys, the Four Horsemen and most of the others waved, although several others whom Cam knew merely gave him some very stony looks. Besides that, however, there was something off about this whole scene, Cam realized as he stared at a table off in a far corner where two men sat drinking the same exact beer while Gerhard Streicher hovered over them. Tina Halbuck stood to one side, ready with a small platter holding two more cups of the same beer.

  “Shauna, love, aren’t those guys your fellow judges?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that the hell is Gerhard doin’ servin’ them a brew which, even at this distance, I can tell is wheat beer?” Shauna gave him a look telling him to forget the rhetorical questions.

  “This is immoral!” she snapped. “When I get him alone, he’s in for it!”

  “Yeah, later,” he replied, taking her hand to guide her in the opposite direction. “It’ll be awhile. Now he’s handin’ ‘em brochures.”

  “Cam, Shauna!” Johann Kopp yelled from the bar. “Come right up. I will pour you a sample of my last dunkel.” Cam gave a joyous smile.

  “Oh, boy, here we go,” Shauna muttered. “I hope you’re not drinking yourself into a stupor like you did last year.”

  “Shauna, you promised that you’d let me enjoy GWIBE and have some fun,” he said.

  “You are to stay on this side of oblivion, though, got it?”

  “The first night this year seems restrained compared to last year,” Kopp commented.

  Yeah, no maniac on a motorcycle raising hell on the streets, Cam thought, flashing back to last year. But I have to wonder, what’s going on right now with our beloved S&M couple, Sharon Norse and Jerry Albert?

  “Ja, but it is still early,” Kopp continued, “to predict anything. Phil Utah lost some key allies last year, although he still has Sean Essex, Tom Deville, Clay Sharper and those two new people he brought around. Dale Sassie has emerged as a leader. Gerhard has been working furiously to win back the blue ribbon for wheat beer from that Belgian swine Vosloo….”

  “Yep, and we’re just here to have a good time,” Cam replied a little too sweetly. Kopp picked up on it.

  “So, Cam, have you brewed your first batch?” Kopp eagerly asked, chan
ging the topic.

  “Yeah, I sure did!” Cam proudly replied. “Shauna provided oversight….”

  “What was it?” Kopp asked.

  “Mild ale, Johann.”

  “Mild ale? A British style, hmm?”

  “Yeah. It used to be probably the most popular style of beer in Britain up until the 1960s, at least from what I’ve read,” Cam said, showing off his knowledge. “It was huge in the Midlands, the big coal and steel region of Britain. A lot like brown ale, but not kept in storage very long before bein’ served, besides bein’ lightly hopped. I was never big on a lot of hop bitterness, anyway.”

  “Ja. Hop bitterness is good in some things, but we mostly prefer beers with a fine balance. How did it turn out?”

  “I thought it was great,” Cam told him, “but I was so excited to be drinkin’ somethin’ I’d made myself that I’m probably not objective.” Kopp gave a knowing smile.

  “It was a very good maiden batch,” Shauna interjected. “I’m drinking it, too.”

  While his wife and Kopp engaged in small talk, Cam suddenly felt very restless. On the first night last year, he had spent it here in Little Germany, drinking the various wonderful beers that the Germans had produced while learning a lot about their origins. It would be different this year, he knew. He had to move on to somewhere, although he didn’t know where. He got off his chair. “Honey, I’ll be back in a bit. I’ve gotta hit the latrine and stretch my legs.”

  After he finished at the latrine, Cam wandered a bit along the main street, occasionally being greeted by GWIBE regulars, but just as often getting those looks again. Finally, he stopped, unsure of what to do. He looked around, gathering in the sights as people continued to arrive and get set up. He spied a small group of people about 50 yards away, although he couldn’t make out any of them, since it was now dark and the moonless night seemed to soak up every bit of light that the settlement could provide. He focused on a woman who had her back to him, since she somehow seemed different. The long blonde hair wasn’t unusual, although the full-length dress she wore was, like a frontier woman. He could tell even through the dress that she had a bony figure, as there just wasn’t much for hips or ass. She turned just a little whereupon he could see a little bit of her profile. Even though he really wasn’t a shallow type, he had to think, Phew! That’s one ugly woman, and I can see it even from this distance!