Murder with a Twist

by Allyson K. Abbott

  I suspect Alicia’s primary motivation for coming to the bar stems from the giant crush she has on my bartender, Billy Hughes, who is working to pay his way through law school. She finds endless excuses to talk to Billy, manages to sneak in plenty of supposedly casual touches to his arms and hands, and laces every conversation they share with sexual undertones and innuendo. Unfortunately for Alicia, Billy has a girlfriend named Whitney who he seems to be serious about, which is also unfortunate for him, in my opinion. I don’t like Whitney much. She deems bartending to be a job far beneath Billy’s talents and has made it clear she thinks being in my bar is akin to hanging in the slums. She’s all about appearances, snobbish, and rude, and it’s hard for me to see Billy with her since his personality is the exact opposite. At least he stands up to her and defends both his job and my bar, but I sense that if the relationship continues, Whitney will soon be the one in charge.

  I keep hoping Billy will succumb to someone else’s charms and dump Whitney. But aside from the gently flirtatious banter he uses on all the women who come into the bar, Billy, like Tad, never gives Alicia, or anyone else, any hope that her feelings are reciprocated, even though he has plenty of opportunities. With his tall, lanky build, emerald green eyes, and café au lait–colored skin, the man is a looker, and his charming, fun personality round out the package. Despite all the attention he gets, Billy manages to keep his admirers at a safe distance without pissing any of them off. And because he is a law student, he seems to enjoy the crime-solving games as much as anyone. Not only is he good at thinking outside the box, he’s smart enough to figure things out a lot of the time. My goal is to train myself to think more like Billy.

  On the flip side of the coin is my cocktail waitress, Missy, the female version of Billy—a lovely girl with silky blond hair, a curvaceous body, huge blue eyes, and milky smooth skin. Men flirt with her all the time, and I have several customers who I know come in to my bar solely to see her. Unfortunately, Missy doesn’t have Billy’s ability to keep her admirers at a safe distance. As a result, she is now a single mother of two and lives with her parents. Missy is very intrigued by the crime games despite her inability to understand the most basic connections and concepts, and on that Friday night before I came face to face with the real hanging man, she was hovering by the tables where the others were sitting, listening when she probably should have been making rounds and taking drink orders.

  Unfortunately, Missy isn’t my smartest employee. She’s about as sharp as a bowl of oatmeal, at least when it comes to everyday knowledge and common sense, although she has a savantlike ability to match a face with a drink. If you are someone who orders the same drink most of the time, you’ll only have to tell Missy once. She’ll remember it forever after that. She might not remember your name or anything else about you, but she’ll get that drink order right every time. While I know I should probably get on Missy more about hanging around the crime game folks—something she does every time she works—I often let her get away with it for one simple reason I’m not proud of: Missy’s dim-witted attempts to solve the crimes make my comments and feeble guesses look almost brilliant by comparison.

  Since it was a Friday night and therefore a homicide night, the drink special was an Alibi—a vodka-based drink flavored with ginger and lime—which was offered half price to all customers, and free, along with something to eat, to anyone who solved the “crime” for the night. Most of the folks at the CSI table had ordered one in preparation for the night’s crime-solving puzzle.

  I smiled when I saw that both of the Signoriello brothers had pens and little notepads just like the one Duncan uses, so they could take notes as Cora talked. The brothers love these little crime-solving sessions, and lately they spend as much time in my bar as they do at home. They are like eager children, which is funny given that they are both in their seventies with salt-and-pepper hair and a lot of well-earned wrinkles.

  “To justice,” Cora said, offering up a toast. Everyone clicked glasses and drank. When they were done, Cora kicked off the night’s crime solver. “Here’s our scenario. Listen carefully.

  “A woman named Penelope comes home from an overnight visit to her daughter’s and finds her husband, Harry, dead, hanging in the utility room in the basement from a pipe in the ceiling. Harry had been ill with cancer, but according to his wife, he was in full remission and on the mend. The open ceiling in the basement is ten feet high. There is no chair, stool, or anything else in the room that Harry could have stood on, and his feet are dangling a good foot above the floor.

  “The noose is fashioned from a long utility-style extension cord, one end of which is around Harry’s neck and tied in the back using a typical hangman’s knot. The other end has been looped over two pipes in the ceiling and is then tied around a floor-to-ceiling beam several feet away. Harry’s hands are secured in front of him with a zip tie and his wrists are slightly bloodied, presumably from his attempts to escape his restraints. The sink in the basement utility room is plugged and the hot water faucet is turned on, resulting in the sink overflowing. There is a drain in the utility room floor, but it has been blocked by an empty plastic kitchen-size trash bag, resulting in three to four inches of standing water in the basement. Some recyclable trash—an empty, half-gallon-size plastic milk carton, the soggy remnants of a large cardboard box, and three plastic containers from some microwaveable meals, all of which are presumed to have come from the trash bag—is floating on top of the water.

  “The house has been ransacked and, according to Penelope, there are electronics and jewelry missing, along with some cash from a money jar the couple had. The police investigate and find that the couple is financially drained, as both were self-employed and much of Harry’s cancer treatment was paid for out of pocket. Harry does have life insurance, and the payout doubles for an accidental death. However, a death from his cancer is excluded for a period of five years because he had it at the time he applied for the policy and there are still two years to go before this exclusion expires. Fortunately for the wife, the settlement from the insurance company will be enough to pay off all the debts the couple has incurred and still leave her with a tidy nest egg.

  “At first the cops decide poor Harry was the unfortunate victim of a break-in and burglary gone wrong. They surmise that the water in the sink was left running and intentionally allowed to flood to eliminate or compromise any trace evidence. They later begin to wonder if Harry committed suicide, but they can’t figure out how. Since Harry’s hands were secured in front of him, and there was nothing found in the room that he could have stood on in order to hang himself, could Harry have committed suicide, or was he murdered? Go.”

  Cora then sat back and smiled at the group. Since the purpose behind these games was for me to try to learn to be more deductive in my reasoning and think like a detective, everyone turned and stared at me. Duncan had recently prepped me by suggesting that I analyze each crime scene with an eye toward motive, means, and opportunity. So I started there.

  “Hanging seems like a rather extreme way to kill someone on the spur of the moment,” I said. “So I can see why the cops might have been suspicious. Maybe the killers were sadistic. It does seem like they used stuff that was readily available, so maybe they were surprised by Harry’s presence and had to think on the fly.”

  “However,” Sam said, “the apparent randomness of the crime suggests a killer or killers who aren’t very organized in their thinking. Could the wife have strung him up?”

  Cora shook her head. “Penelope’s alibi is verified. She was nowhere near the house at the time of the crime. And even though Harry was thin, he was still quite a bit heavier than Penelope.”

  “Did Harry have any drugs in his system?” I asked.

  “Good question,” Cora said. “As a matter of fact, he did. The coroner found morphine in his blood, but not enough to have killed him. A chat with Harry’s doctor reveals that his cancer had recurred, something he had kept from Penelope, and he had a pre
scription for morphine that he was taking on a regular basis.”

  Carter jumped in then. “Is it possible he committed suicide and staged it to look like a murder?”

  “Excellent!” Cora said. “While processing the house, one of the crime scene techs notices a very tiny drop of blood on the broken window of the door, which is assumed to be the mode of entry the burglars used. DNA typing shows that this tiny drop of blood belongs to the victim. No trace of anyone else is found in the house except for Penelope. After further investigation by the insurance company and the police, it is determined that Harry’s death wasn’t a murder at all, but rather a cleverly staged suicide meant to look like a murder. Eventually, they find all the missing jewelry and cash in a trash bin behind a convenience store. They also discover that the insurance policy excludes suicide as a payable death for five years, meaning that if Harry did himself in, Penelope gets nothing. But you still have to figure out how he did it.”

  I frowned, unable to come up with an answer. Apparently, I wasn’t alone, because no one else offered up a solution, either. Someone suggested that Harry somehow jumped up and grabbed an overhead pipe and then managed to get his head in the noose and tighten it. Cora nixed that one pretty fast. I could see why. It would take a talented and very fit contortionist to manage all that with his hands zip tied together.

  After several minutes of discussion, Carter suggested that the zip ties could have been applied by Harry himself easily enough and Cora said he was correct in that assumption. But no one had an idea about how Harry had managed to then hang himself a foot above the floor without anything to stand on.

  Before long, the group was busy drawing pictures on napkins of elaborate setups that used physics to perform the feat, but one by one each idea was discarded. Even Duncan was stumped.

  After another fifteen minutes of thinking about it and listening in on the ideas the others proposed, I announced that I gave up. “I’m just not built to think this way,” I said.

  “Give it time,” Cora said. “Mull it over. Let your subconscious do the work.”

  I felt certain no amount of mulling was going to help, so I stepped away from the group and went back behind the bar to help wait on customers so Billy could participate in the game for a while. Duncan followed me and helped out as well. He has a knack for the job, and while doing his undercover stint several weeks back, he discovered he liked it.

  Debra Landers—one of my other cocktail waitresses and the mother of two teenage boys—came up to the bar and ordered a round of beers. Duncan helped me pour them from the tap and, as we worked, our bodies came into incidental contact several times. Every touch was like an electric charge coursing through me and by the time we had the beers poured, I was a hormonal mess of synesthetic reactions.

  Duncan must have felt something, too, because after Debra left to deliver her drinks, he leaned down close to my ear and whispered, “Any chance you’d let me spend the night here? I have to get up early in the morning and staying here would save me the drive time.”

  I knew his request to spend the night meant my apartment upstairs rather than the bar, and it both frightened and excited me. This was a step I’d been anticipating in our relationship for weeks since it was obvious we shared an attraction to one another. But, for whatever reason, Duncan had so far kept things on a platonic level.

  “What about your clothes?” I whispered back to Duncan, feeling flustered. It was an inane question, but at the moment, it was all my addled brain could come up with. I looked around to see if anyone was close enough to overhear. Fortunately, no one was.

  “I always keep a suitcase in the back of my car,” he said. His breath was warm on my face and neck, and my mouth was bursting with the taste of sweet milk chocolate. Duncan’s voice always tastes like chocolate.

  I looked up at him, knowing I wanted him to stay. But then I had a second of doubt. Was I reading more into this than he meant? What if he was simply asking to sleep on my couch? I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, so I said, “You can stay if you want. I’ll have to make up the spare bed, or if you prefer, the couch in my office is quite comfortable.”

  Duncan frowned at that, and then flashed me a crooked smile. “I was hoping for something a little more . . . cozy.”

  Based on that response, I decided to take the plunge. “Well, if your goal is to get some sleep, I don’t think cozy is the answer. Neither of us will get any sleep.”

  “Trust me,” Duncan said, “by the time I’m done with you, we’ll both get the best sleep we’ve ever had.”

  I looked away from him then and swallowed hard, my thoughts whirling with the possibilities. “Do I have to cook breakfast?” I said. It was another utterly inane question, but my mind was spinning.

  Fortunately, Duncan didn’t answer because Billy chose that moment to approach us. “Cora came up with a tough one tonight,” he said. “I gave up, too.”

  Missy came up to the bar and ordered another round of Alibis for the crime-solving group and I used it as an excuse to move away from Duncan, hoping I could rein in my thoughts. I stayed focused on the task at hand, mentally ticking off each step even though I could make the drink blindfolded. It was as I was scooping the crushed ice into the shakers that I had my epiphany. I stopped what I was doing and froze for a few seconds, the shakers in hand.

  “Mack, are you okay?” Billy asked, staring at me.

  I looked over at him and smiled. “I’m fine,” I told him. “But I think I just figured out how Harry did it.” I handed the shakers off to him and made my way around the bar and back to the group table. Billy took over making the drinks, but I could tell he was intrigued, because he moved to the end of the bar to finish mixing them so he could be closer to the group and hear what I was about to say. Duncan followed me, a curious grin on his face.

  “Cora, how big was the box they found in Harry’s basement when it was in its original shape?”

  I could tell from the smile on her face that I was moving along the right track. “It was a good-size carton, about two feet high and two feet wide.”

  “We already went there, Mack,” Carter said. “Cora said Harry weighed around one-eighty, and there is no way an empty cardboard box like that would hold up that kind of weight.”

  “You’re right, an empty box wouldn’t,” I said. “Did Harry make any purchases right before he died?” I asked, turning my attention back to Cora.

  “In fact, he did,” she said, her smile widening. “After checking out stores in the area, the cops discovered that Harry made a purchase at one that was only two minutes away. It was a convenience store and the receipt wasn’t itemized, but the cops knew that he spent just over thirty bucks.”

  I did a quick calculation in my head. “Enough for about ten twenty-pound bags of ice?”

  “Yes!” Cora said, now gleaming.

  “That’s how he did it, then,” I said. I saw a glimmer in the eyes of several of the others and a few nods of grudging admiration.

  “Of course!” Carter said. “He filled the box with crushed ice and stood on that. That’s why he had the hot water tap running, so it would melt the ice and disintegrate the cardboard box.”

  “But what about the bags the ice came in?” Joe asked.

  “He was close enough to the convenience store to pour the ice into the box and then run the empty bags back to the store and dump them in the trash there,” I said. “The ice wouldn’t melt that much in the four or five minutes it took him to do that.”

  “Well done, Mack,” Frank Signoriello said. Then, with a wink he added, “Only you thought more inside the box than outside it.”

  I received kudos from around the table, and for the next two hours until the bar closed, I was on a high. I felt good, better than I had in a long, long time.

  Though once the bar was closed, the cleanup was done, and everyone else had gone home for the night, Duncan proved that I could feel much, much better.

  Chapter 3

  And that bring
s me back to the real hanging man. The call came a little after eight the next morning while Duncan and I were still in bed, and despite Duncan’s promises, neither of us had had much sleep, not that I was going to complain. He carried his phone into the bathroom and shut the door, eliminating any chance I had of overhearing. When he came back out, he told me he had a crime scene to go to, and based on my success with the crime-solving task the night before, he declared me officially ready for the real thing and invited me to come along. I agreed, but not without trepidation.

  I had thought our little crime games, along with all the preparations I’d been making with Duncan over the past six weeks, would make a real crime scene easier to take. But that wasn’t the case. Our little “test runs” had been clean, sanitary, pretend situations where we laughed and had fun. The crimes were all make-believe, or ones we only heard or read about, and the stakes were small. But the hanging man before me that morning was real, frightening, and all too dead. I don’t like death, and staring it in the face that way was very unnerving.