Happy Hour

by Anina Collins

  Flipping open the brown leather wallet he’d taken from the man’s coat, Alex slipped his driver’s license out from behind the clear plastic slot and read the name. “Marcus Tyne, thirty-one. He would have turned thirty-two right after Thanksgiving.”

  I leaned in and saw Marcus Tyne’s license picture of him wearing a big smile. Poor guy. He looked happy. Reading his address, I saw he lived in Millville, an even smaller town than Sunset Ridge a few miles away.

  “That’s why I didn’t recognize him. He’s not from here.”

  Alex closed the wallet and looked down at me with a skeptical expression. “I still say you’re slipping, Miss McGuire.”

  “And I say you’re slacking off on this whole detective thing, Officer Montero.”

  He chuckled like he always did when I teased him right back. I liked when we could be lighthearted like that. Some people might think it tactless since a man lay dead just a few feet away, but like Donny’s gallows humor, our joking around was just our way of keeping our sanity on cases like this.

  But I saw the smile slide from his face and before I could ask what was wrong, Alex said, “I need to know if Marcus Tyne was at McGuire’s tonight, so we need to talk to your father.”

  We headed into the bar and found my father sitting alone staring up at the baseball game playing on the TV. He wore a worried expression and sighed when he saw us come through the door.

  “Hi, Joe,” Alex said as he sat down and took his notebook and pen out of his shirt pocket.

  My father turned on his barstool and forced a smile. “Hi, Alex. I can’t believe something like this could happen right outside my bar. Do we know who the man was?”

  “Marcus Tyne. He was from Millville. Did you know him?”

  Shaking his head, my father sighed again. “The name doesn’t ring a bell. To be honest, I only really know the names of my regulars, so if he wasn’t in here a lot, I probably wouldn’t know his name. What did he look like?”

  Alex handed him Tyne’s driver’s license. “Do you recognize him as someone who was in here tonight?”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “He might have been in once or twice before too.”

  As Alex jotted down notes on my father’s answers, I said, “Just tell us whatever you can remember, Dad.”

  He pressed his lips together and took a deep breath before he let it out slowly. “I want to say he came in around ten. Let me see. What was he drinking?” After a few more moments, he continued, “Bourbon. I got this new bottle of Gold Label the other day and he saw it on the wall behind the bar and specifically asked for it.”

  Looking up from his notes, Alex asked, “Was it just you behind the bar tonight?”

  My father smiled at me and nodded. “Yes. My go-to girl was busy, so I had to man the bar alone.”

  “Okay. How many drinks do you remember serving him?”

  “Two, and now that you mention it, he seemed to get drunk pretty fast on just two bourbons. I mean, he was a skinny guy, but two drinks doesn’t usually level a grown man of any size. I poured him a cup of coffee, but I don’t think he drank much of it before he left.”

  “What time was that?” Alex asked as he wrote down two drinks and coffee.

  “I can’t be sure, but I want to say before eleven.”

  Looking up, Alex stopped writing. “Why before eleven?”

  “I had a big crowd come in right around that time, and I don’t think he was still here by then.”

  “Okay. Did anyone talk to him or buy him anything to drink?”

  My father thought for a few seconds and shook his head. “I don’t remember him spending time with anyone while he was here, but I didn’t see him leave. I can’t be sure because it was so busy, but he only had those two drinks and a few sips of coffee. That I know.”

  Alex looked up and down the bar and then returned his attention to my father. “I’m guessing the coffee cup has already been washed?”

  Nodding, my father said, “Yeah. After he left, someone else sat down where he’d been, so I cleared away the cup.”

  “I’ll take it anyway. There might be some evidence left behind that can tell us what killed Mr. Tyne.”

  I held up my hand to stop my father from getting up. “It’s okay, Dad. I got it. I’m wearing gloves, so I’ll bag it.”

  Heading around the bar, I saw a single coffee cup sitting alongside the sink. Alex handed me a plastic evidence baggie and I gingerly dropped it in before handing the bag back to him.

  He looked around me toward the shelves of bottles on the back wall and pointed at the Gold Label bourbon. “I’m going to have to take the bottle too.”

  Satisfied he’d gotten all he could from my father, at least for the moment, Alex stood and gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Thanks, Joe. I’ll be in contact if I need anything more.”

  I followed my partner outside and saw Donny had left with the body and Marcus Tyne’s car had been towed away. Darren stood speaking to a couple I didn’t recognize a few yards away.

  Stopping at the bottom of the stairs, Alex turned around and took my hand. Giving it a gentle squeeze, he said, “Stay with your father, Poppy. We can start working on this case together tomorrow, but for now, he needs you more. I’m going to go back to the station for a little bit and see what I can find out about Marcus Tyne. I’ll let you know what I learn when I see you at The Grounds tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay. I guess our plans to spend some time together after your shift are foiled again, huh?” I said, unable to hide my disappointment at us not being able to be together for a third night in a row.

  He nodded, looking as unhappy at the disruption of our plans as I was. “Pretty much, but we do get to work together on a case again.”

  I looked down into his deep brown eyes and wished we were alone so I could show him how much I missed us being together the past few days. Even though it wasn’t strictly allowed since he was on duty, I leaned toward him and kissed him softly on the lips.

  He pulled away quickly before anyone saw, and I said, “That’s a down payment. You can collect the rest tomorrow night.”

  Alex gave me one of those sexy grins that never failed to make my stomach flip and winked. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning at nine.”

  “Okay. I’ll be the woman at the back table waiting for her partner.”

  He nodded and before he walked away, he whispered, “Love you.”

  Just as he turned to leave, I mouthed those same words back to him. As I watched him walk away, I thought about how much I looked forward to us working together again. We hadn’t had too many cases since we’d finally admitted how we felt about each other, and this murder case would be different than any other we’d worked together before.

  But that would have to wait until tomorrow. For now, my father needed me.

  Chapter Two

  After sitting with my father for about an hour, I walked home and tried to get some sleep, but the events of the night made that next to impossible. After tossing and turning for nearly three hours, I decided my mind was too awake and got dressed to go to the station. Alex had messaged me that he’d be there all night filling in for another officer, so by five am I was walking toward Main Street and the Sunset Ridge police station.

  As I passed my father’s bar, I remembered Howard would be expecting me for another of our meetings about how to improve things, as he liked to term his attempts to cajole me into giving away details the police preferred to keep from the public. He’d have to save up all his convincing for another day, though, because after I wasn’t up for it today.

  I quickly left a voicemail on his office phone and told him I’d be writing from home for a few days because of the murder. He’d likely start bouncing in his chair at the news that there had been another murder I’d hopefully report on since I’d become the de facto journalist in charge of bringing those stories to the public whenever they happened since I began working with Alex a year ago.

  As I turned into the police st
ation, I mumbled to myself, “I need a raise.”

  I nearly ran into my least favorite Sunset Ridge cop, Stephen, and as usual, he returned my hello with a sneer I still didn’t think I deserved. I’d asked Alex half a dozen times what the guy’s problem with me could be, but he claimed to have no idea. I didn’t necessarily think he was lying as much as disinterested in the whole thing.

  Pushing past my awkward encounter, I headed toward Alex’s office and found him behind his desk staring at his laptop. Hunched over after hours on duty, he looked tired, and I wished I could step behind his chair and massage the worry out of his broad shoulders.

  “Hey, you. That’s some stress you’ve got going on there,” I said with a smile as he lifted his head to look at me.

  He looked at his watch and then leaned back in his chair. “Five o’clock in the morning? Something tells me you didn’t get much sleep last night. Everything okay?”

  I sat down in the chair in front of his desk and sighed. “I’m fine. I just can’t get my mind to shut off. It’s probably because my father looked so upset when I left him last night. Even after I thought I’d made him feel better about things, I still couldn’t convince him that everything was going to be okay.”

  Alex gave me a supportive smile. “He’s going to be good, Poppy. Your father is a tough guy, and he has you by his side. He’ll bounce back from this.”

  His bouncing back wasn’t all I was worried about. What if people in town shied away from the bar because of all that had happened?

  “I know he will, but that bar is everything to him, Alex. Murder has a way of making people skittish. I’d hate to see him lose his livelihood because of this.”

  Shaking his head, Alex smiled. “See, I’ve found murder to have the exact opposite effect on people. Instead of them avoiding where it happened, they seem to flock to it. It’s some kind of morbid curiosity in the human psyche that makes them want to rubberneck at anything having to do with death.”

  “Well, I just hope all of this doesn’t hurt him either way.”

  “I think he’ll be okay, Poppy. Want to hear what I found out about our victim, Marcus Tyne?”

  The mere mention that he had some news already on the case cheered me up. “Hit me with it. Let me guess. He was the bagman for a mafia family that finally caught up with him last night after he turned state’s evidence and ended up in the witness protection program.”

  With every word that came out of my mouth, Alex’s expression morphed into one of complete confusion. Finally, he narrowed his eyes to squints and shook his head. “A bagman?”

  “Yeah. I think I heard it on Law and Order a few times.”

  “Uh, no. I don’t think he was a bagman for anyone. And by the way, I think your imagination is starting to get the best of you.”

  I shrugged at his disdain for my colorful ideas. “Fine. Give me the less interesting version then.”

  Alex rolled his eyes and then began explaining what he’d learned about Marcus Tyne in the past four hours. “I took a ride out to his house in Millville, but it was dark. I didn’t find anyone there. I haven’t found any evidence that he was married, so it might be that he lived alone.”

  “Jeez, that just makes me sad. He lives alone in a house in some tiny town and then dies alone behind the wheel of his car. That’s so depressing.”

  “That wasn’t his car, though,” Alex said correcting me, as if that was the salient point in my statement.

  “That’s even worse. Whose was it?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I do know more about Marcus. He was arrested once in the past year because of a domestic dispute with a woman named Angela Touring. She lives here in Sunset Ridge. Do you know her? She’s around your age.”

  Quickly, I ran that name through my mental Rolodex and came up with nothing. Her name didn’t ring a bell from anyone I remembered from high school. “Nope. I really am beginning to slip, aren’t I?”

  He grinned at my weak attempt at humor. “Not to worry. I’ll still work with you, even if there comes a time when you don’t know anyone in town.”

  I raised my eyebrows in disbelief at the sheer madness of not knowing a single soul in town. As if there could ever be a time when everyone in Sunset Ridge was a stranger to me.

  “Well, regardless, she’s from here and she called the Sunset Ridge police about eight months ago saying Tyne attacked her when she demanded he leave after they had an argument. Derek took the call and went out to her house to find she had a black eye. So he drove out to his house in Millville, but Tyne swore he never hit her and she attacked him.”

  “Okay. So he got arrested for beating her up. I’m starting to feel slightly less depressed about his life and death.”

  Alex raised his hand to stop me from condemning Marcus Tyne too quickly. “Not so fast. He was arrested and brought in because she wanted to press charges. But then a few days later, she recanted and claimed she mistakenly ran into a door, which gave her a black eye. With her refusing to say he hit her, the charges were dropped.”

  None of that made me think he didn’t hit this Angela Touring person. “So maybe he did and maybe he didn’t hit her. Did anything else ever come of it?”

  Glancing over the sheet of paper in front of him, he shook his head. “Not as far as I can see. There was never another domestic call from her. If they stayed together, they found a way to make it work.”

  “Or she was just biding her time until she found the perfect moment to find a way to kill the abusing bastard.”

  Alex’s eyebrows shot up into his forehead. “Whoa. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. You’ve got the guy marked as an abuser and this Angela Touring woman marked as a murderer. Anything else you’d like to share about this case?”

  He was right. I was letting my vivid imagination run away with me. “Okay. Forget all of that. I was just playing around. So what do we do now?”

  “I think we need to speak to Miss Touring, once it’s a more reasonable hour. In the meantime, I called Derek to find out what he can tell us about the Touring-Tyne case, so until he arrives, we wait.”

  “Want to go over to The Grounds and wait there?” I asked, already jonesing for my morning caffeine fix.

  Alex screwed his face into a scowl. “I can’t. Darren had to go deal with some problem up on Colonial Drive, so I’m the only show in town until he gets back or Derek comes in.”

  “What about Stephen?” I asked, nearly hissing his name.

  “He’s not on duty tonight,” Alex explained, ignoring the distaste that hung off his name when I said it.

  That meant we were waiting on Darren to return because since Derek became chief, he didn’t seem to know where the police station was located before nine in the morning. I didn’t relish the idea of going without coffee for another nearly three hours, though. That sounded like torture.

  Standing from my seat, I pointed toward the street and said, “I’ll do a coffee run. Want anything to eat too?”

  Alex’s eyes lit up at the mention of food. “Yeah, I could really go for a cherry danish this morning.” Reaching into his pocket, he took out a twenty and handed it to me. “And make the coffee a large. I think I’m going to be up way past my bedtime today.”

  I took the money from his hand and stuffed it into my purse. “I was going to treat this morning. You know, since I’m all antsy to get my morning caffeine fix on.”

  My offer to buy his breakfast earned me another scowl as Alex shook his head like he disapproved of my suggestion. “Hurry back, though. Just the mention of that cherry danish has my mouth watering.”

  “Got it. A vat of coffee Alex style and a cherry danish. I’ll be right back.”

  I jogged over to The Grounds and got there just as Pam, one of the owners, unlocked the front door. Especially chipper for so early in the morning, she smiled when she saw me bounding toward her and welcomed me into the shop.

  “Poppy! You’re up early today. I usually don’t get to see you anymore. How have you bee
n?” she asked as I walked through the door.

  I followed her toward the register as she slipped the white apron with blueberry juice stains over her head and tossed it onto the counter on the wall. “I’m over at the police station waiting for Derek to get to work, so I had to come over and get my morning fix and some danishes.”

  For a moment, confusion filled her green eyes, and she stared at me as if she was waiting for more information. When I didn’t continue, she said, “I didn’t know you and Derek were…you know…together.”

  Laughter exploded out of me, and I waved the mere suggestion that I could be with Derek away. “No, I am not with Derek Hampton, Pam. We’re just friends, like we’ve always been.”

  Embarrassed at her mistake, she blushed bright red and smiled. “Oh, I’m sorry. I heard you were dating one of Sunset Ridge’s finest, so when you mentioned that you were waiting for Derek, I just put two and two together. Silly me.”

  “No, well, you heard right, but not Derek. I’m dating Alex Montero.”

  Pam’s eyes grew wide and she cooed, “Ooooh, the dark haired one I hear used to be a Baltimore detective? Jennie says he’s the cat’s pajamas with feet.”

  Her description of Jennie’s assessment of Alex made me giggle. I loved that expression because my mother used to say that about people she really liked, and to hear someone say that about him was just too cute.

  “He is pretty great, I have to admit. I’m here for him too this morning. The two of us need some caffeine to keep going. He’s been up all night, and I got next to no sleep after what happened next to McGuire’s.”

  “What happened?”

  I gave her a vague explanation of Marcus Tyne’s death, careful not to let any specific details about the case slip. I’d worked with Alex long enough to know what I could and couldn’t say.

  Pam shook her head and knitted her eyebrows in worry. “What’s this world coming to? I remember when Gerry and I first moved here you could sleep with your doors unlocked and not worry one bit.”

  I remembered Sunset Ridge like that too, but I was a little girl back then. The town had changed in many ways, but in the ways that were most important, like knowing your neighbors and the people who ran the coffee shop you depended on, it was still the same small town I’d grown up in.