Single Malt Murder

by Melinda Mullet

  Claire buried her face in her hands and stood without speaking for several minutes. When she looked up at me she said, “It all seems so stupid, but it was important to Duff. I could tell. If I tell you what I know, you have to promise to keep mum. If it ends up havin’ nothin’ to do with Duff’s murder, you have to forget I ever told you.”

  I hesitated momentarily. “If the police don’t absolutely have to know, they won’t hear it from me.”

  Claire leaned back against the car, staring down at the trampled grass under her feet, before beginning in a low voice, “It started when I hooked Duff up with my brother, Stewart, not long after Duff moved down to Edinburgh. He was lookin’ for a good deal on one of those big high-def tellies for his mum’s pub.”

  I nodded.

  “You have to understand, Stewart’s not a bad kid, he’s…creative. A deal maker, like. His friends call him Skiver. He never does nothin’ illegal himself, but he puts together ‘opportunities,’ as he calls ’em. He can put you in the way of things you need, as long as you don’t ask too many questions.”

  “Things like drugs?”

  “Never. Not him, nor Duff,” Claire said with a firm shake of her head. “That’s too much grief. That shite can get you killed.”

  No kidding, I thought. “So he helped Duff get a cheap TV. Was that it?”

  “In the beginnin’, yeah. But then, back in November, Duff asked me to get in touch with Skiver to find out if he knew someone in the printin’ business.”

  “The printing business? Why?”

  “Didn’t ask.”

  “But Skiver hooked him up with one of his contacts?”

  “Yeah, he knows some folks who do fake IDs and such, so he put in an order for what Duff needed.”

  “What was he having them do?”

  “Somethin’ to do with labels. You know, the kind that you put on wine bottles.”

  “And Skiver got him the labels he wanted?” I was starting to think I was barking up the wrong tree.

  “Yeah, not a lot. A small package of them. Duff paid him in cash and that was that.”

  “Did Stewart come to the Society? Give Duff a small package for cash?”

  Claire nodded, looking down at her hands.

  “And that fueled the fire on the drug rumors, right?”

  Claire nodded again. “Duff swore over and over it had nothin’ to do with drugs, but the blokes at work were jealous and they wouldnae let it go.”

  “Do you know why he wanted the labels?”

  “He never said, ’cept that it was some kind of joke.”

  “Did you see the labels?”

  “I wasn’t meant to, but I was at Duff’s one night and they was sittin’ on the table, so I peeked.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “They weren’t like a normal label. They had a kind of paintin’ on the front and the letterin’ was brown and sort of handwritten, ’cept not really.”

  “Can you describe the picture?”

  “I only saw them for a second.” I could tell Claire was getting impatient. “Duff got mad when he saw me lookin’ and took ’em away.”

  “Try to remember what you saw.”

  “I think there was some kind of a buildin’ with splashes of pink and red. Bright red.”

  In my mind’s eye I could picture the labels from the Rose Reserve. The watercolor painting of the croft with the roses and the hand lettering.

  “How many labels?”

  “Dunno, few dozen. I didnae stop to count.”

  “And he said it was some kind of joke?”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t act like it was no joke. But it can’t be important, can it? It’s only stupid labels, right? I told you it was silly. That’s why I don’t want to tell the cops. It don’t mean nothin’, but if they get ahold of Skiver, they’ll give him a hard time. They might even find another excuse to stitch him up. It’s bad enough I’ve lost Duff, I can’t lose him, too.”

  “I understand, but I’m glad you told me,” I said.

  A loud group of young people were straggling down the lane from the church. “I have to go,” Claire said in a panicked voice. “I don’t want the police to see me here.”

  “How can I contact you?” I said.

  “I’ve already said too much, just let me go.”

  —

  All afternoon, my conversation with Claire whirled around in my head like a dog chasing its tail. I skipped the reception figuring I wouldn’t be welcomed by Siobhán anyway. Instead, I took Liam out for a ramble up Drumlinn so I could think in peace. Knowing I had just four days left to piece this puzzle together did nothing to calm my mind or clarify my thoughts. In fact, with this latest information I felt further from a solution, not closer. Why would Duff need fake labels for a Rose Reserve unless he was going into the counterfeiting business? Lucrative, I would think, but risky. Risky enough to get him killed? My knowledge of the vintage whisky market was even less than my knowledge of the regular whisky market. I tried calling Patrick but had to leave a message. If I needed some professional input, I’d have to take my chances and consult Grant.

  Liam and I found him watching over the newly reopened washback. “How’s it doing?” I asked, peering inside the refurbished vat.

  “This is a test batch to make sure everything’s working properly.”

  “And from here it goes to the still?”

  Grant nodded. “We’re doing a trial run now. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  I followed him around the mezzanine and down a half-dozen steps to the platform that housed the glass-fronted spirit safe. A copper pipe extended from the stills, through the glass box, and down to a massive wooden cask below. The whisky was visible through a transparent section of the pipe as it passed through the safe.

  “Once the liquid enters the stills it’s in the final stages of becoming alcohol. It’s condensed twice in the still, and then the run flows through here,” Grant said.

  “Why’s the spirit safe padlocked?”

  “In part so the liquid isn’t contaminated, but mainly because it’s tightly controlled by law once it becomes alcohol. Her Majesty’s government wants to ensure that no one tries to siphon off the new spirit before they get their due.”

  “Why have a safe? Can’t you keep the barrels under lock and key?”

  “We use the spirit safe to monitor the whisky as it flows from the still. Each individual batch is called a run. You never use the whisky that flows through at the beginning or the end of the run. Only the middle of the run is sent into the storage tank over there, before going to the casking room to be put into barrels for aging.”

  “How can you tell what part of the run is the middle? Liquid’s liquid, isn’t it?”

  “By shifting this lever on the top, I can divert some of the whisky into this beaker.” Grant pointed to a glass jar inside the spirit safe. “I’m able to check the color and the temperature of the sample. From that we can tell whether we’ve hit the heart of the run. The heart contains the purest essence of the distilled spirit, the only part you want to move on to the aging process.”

  I watched the golden liquid continuing to course through the pipes in the spirit safe, amazed that Grant could grasp and keep the essential components of his whisky from that torrent. If only it were as easy to distill the truth from lies.

  “You got a minute?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I wanted to run something by you.”

  “I’m about finished here. I can walk you back to the house if you like.”

  “I don’t want to take you out of your way.”

  “You’re not. Besides, Bill keeps saying you shouldn’t be wandering around alone. You need to listen to him.”

  “I’m not so good at doing what I’m told.”

  “You don’t say.”

  Liam and I waited for Grant to lock up before setting off for the Haven.

  “Bill stopped by earlier,” he said. “The forensics team from Stirling found o
ne of the severed valve heads while they were back searching the Still House. Bill wanted me to confirm that it was one of the ones broken off in the earlier rounds of sabotage.”

  “Wonder how they missed it the first time?”

  “They were really only looking in the Yeast Room first go-round. This had rolled underneath the main still. The problem is that Duff’s fingerprints are all over the valve.”

  “That puts Duff firmly back in the picture,” I said, feeling disappointed.

  “Duff and whoever took on the job after he was killed. Michaelson pulled Maitland in to answer some more questions, along with Cam and Hunter and the other part-time staff.”

  “Makes sense. They’re focusing on the accomplice angle,” I said.

  Grant looked at me quizzically.

  “All the principals in this case have pretty decent alibis for the night of Duff’s death. Maitland and the others were together. I was with Patrick and you were with Richard Thomas. That makes it logical that whoever is behind our problems was using an accomplice. Looks like that accomplice was Duff to begin with, but after his death he was replaced because the problems haven’t stopped.”

  “But Cam or Hunter, for God’s sake?”

  “It makes sense. This is a tight-knit community. We’ve all said it before, nothing goes unnoticed here, but nothing has been noticed. That’s significant. It means that the culprit is someone whose presence wouldn’t be remarked on. Someone who’s supposed to be there.”

  “In other words, the Glen’s staff,” Grant sighed.

  “I’m afraid so. Cam and Hunter are kind of obvious, along with Frank Monroe and even Evan Ross and Walter Bell. I figure Michaelson is checking all of them out. I’d like to know where the part-time staffers were the night Duff died.”

  “I could try to find out,” Grant said.

  “It would look less obvious coming from you,” I said. “Thanks, that’d be a help.”

  Grant kicked a rock down the path with great force. “I was so sure Duff wasn’t involved. I’d never have expected it of him.”

  “He may not have wanted to be involved,” I said, a new idea creeping into the corner of my mind. “Whoever this is may have offered him more money than he could refuse, or he may have been blackmailed.”

  “Blackmailed?”

  “I have an idea, but let’s talk about it back at the house. By the way, Michaelson was asking about Ben’s keys.”

  “Cam and I have accounted for ours,” Grant said. “I figured you had Ben’s.”

  “I have copies Richard Thomas gave me, but not the originals. They must think the keys in Duff’s pocket were Ben’s.”

  We arrived at the Haven and found Hunter putting another coat of stain on the stair rail. With him in the house I felt comfortable asking Grant to stay for dinner. I put some soup on the AGA to warm, and dug a baguette out of the bread box. Feeding Hunter was becoming as much second nature as feeding Liam. Grant poured us both a drink from the wine bottle I placed on the table and sat staring out the window toward the dusky hills. Liam paced beside him, growling softly at some movement out beyond my line of sight.

  “Do you know where Ben would’ve kept his keys?” I ventured.

  “They used to be in his desk.”

  I followed Grant into the library and watched as he dug around in the top-right drawer of the desk. He sifted through the binder clips and loose change before pulling out a small brass key ring.

  “There you go.” He handed them to me.

  “I’ll have to let Michaelson know, but it looks like the keys in Duff’s pocket weren’t Ben’s.” Someone must have had copies made. Had they taken them to Frank Monroe at the DIY? No doubt Michaelson would be looking into it.

  I carried Ben’s keys back to the kitchen and dumped them on the counter before pouring the soup into mugs and carrying one through to Hunter. Grant and I ate in the kitchen, each of us lost in his own thoughts.

  Grant drained his wineglass and sat twirling the stem between his thumb and forefinger. “I can’t believe the police haven’t found anything concrete yet.”

  “They’ve been down to question Duff’s ex-girlfriend Claire Jones several times,” I volunteered. “She told me this morning at the funeral. The police have been taking quite an interest in her. They clearly think she knows something she isn’t sharing.”

  “Does she?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, but I swore I’d protect my source on this. You’ll have to keep this between the two of us.”

  Grant nodded.

  “She’s trying to keep her brother out of trouble. Young lad who revels in the name of Skiver…”

  “Sounds like a winner already.”

  “Well, according to Claire, he’s nothing more than a middleman. Facilitates transactions, you might say, but never gets in too deep.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Again, according to Claire, no. Too dangerous for his taste.”

  “Smarter than he sounds, then.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What was his connection to Duff?”

  “Initially, he helped put him in the way of a large-screen TV at a good price when he needed it for the pub.”

  “You’re telling me we have a hot TV in the pub?”

  I could see a slight trace of a smile dancing at the corners of Grant’s mouth. “Probably best not to ask too many questions about that one,” I said. “Anyway, the thing that’s bothering Claire is that Duff got involved with Skiver again, more recently, back in the fall, looking to have some fake bottle labels printed.”

  “Labels? That’s odd. And Skiver was able to help him?”

  “So she says.”

  “Interesting, if not somewhat bizarre. But what was he doing with bottle labels?”

  “That’s what I’ve been mulling over. He told Claire it was some kind of joke, but I don’t buy it.”

  “Did she get a look at the labels?”

  “Briefly. She couldn’t read the printing, but she did say they were unusual. Hand lettering and some kind of painting. Said it looked like a stone building with splashes of bright red.”

  “Sounds like the old Rose Reserve labels.”

  I nodded. “That’s the first thing that came to my mind.”

  Grant shook his head. “But why?”

  “This may be a long shot, but Duff was around a lot of whisky collectors in his time at the Society. He knew how popular vintage whisky had become. Maybe he thought he could make some money marketing replica bottles. He’d have had an eager audience at the Society, and we know he needed cash.”

  “Vintage whiskies like the Rose Reserve are very special. Unique. I doubt Duff could fool a real connoisseur with a fake. Not if they tasted it.”

  “True, but not all the members of the Society are serious connoisseurs. Patrick says there are plenty of casual members. People who wouldn’t know a genuine vintage whisky if it jumped up and bit them on the bum, but who’d take Duff’s word that it was something special. And he’d know who to target. He could relabel a decent brand from the off-license, and pass it off as something rare and special. He’d still have a huge markup. With any luck the buyer wouldn’t open it till they got home, and then the odds that they would complain would be slim, or better yet a collector might not ever open it, they might just put it on display.”

  “That’s an elaborate scheme for a kid like Duff. Not to mention risky.”

  “Sure, it’s risky, but is it a crazy idea?”

  Grant stared at the table for a long time. “No, not crazy,” he said at last. “In fact, it has considerable merit. It might explain why he left Edinburgh in such a hurry. Could be something went wrong.”

  “What if one of our competitors found out about Duff’s scam and blackmailed him?” I suggested. “They could’ve forced him to help them sabotage the Glen and threaten me.”

  “If they were blackmailing him, why would they kill him?”

  “I’d guess they di
dn’t. More likely his death was connected to his counterfeiting activities, hence the botched attempt to make it look like an accident.”

  “That makes more sense than anything we’ve come up with so far,” Grant agreed. “I could see Maitland as a blackmailer, but I suppose it could be any of the distillers from around here that frequented the Society bar.”

  I hesitated, then pulled up my photos of the December and January bar accounts and handed the phone to Grant. “Decons has a huge tab, but that’s no surprise,” Grant said, scanning the page. “Blaire, Campbell, Nakimoto, and Maitland all have personal accounts that were used over the holidays, and they’re all in the hunt for the Glen.”

  “Any one of them could have found out Duff’s secret and used it as leverage,” I said. Including Grant.

  “Are those the only suitors so far?”

  I shook my head. “We’ve also had inquiries from AXB, Makison Tokyo Limited, and a distillery from Islay.”

  “The Japanese take a run at most of the decent distilleries when they’re sold, and AXB is no surprise either,” Grant mused. “They’re a key player in the European market. Ben met with Antonio Bartolli several times, including earlier this year. He’s been interested in the place for a long time, but I got the sense that it was more as a collector than as an investment.”

  “So you think, like Ben, this is almost a hobby interest for Bartolli?”

  “In his case I’d say yes. But I don’t see him being desperate enough to get his hands on the place to resort to sabotage and arson, let alone murder.”

  “Me either,” I said. Imagining the well-coiffed Bartolli setting light to a malt barn in his handmade Italian loafers was laughable. “Besides, if he had been in town at the relevant times, I can’t see him doing anything to disturb the Glen’s brand and image, even to encourage me to sell fast.”

  “Upping his offer would be simpler, and more effective.”

  “Exactly. Speaking of money, I’ve got Patrick pulling financial information on all of these guys. If anyone has skeletons in their closets, he’ll find them, and quickly.” I watched Grant’s face, but there was no flicker of concern. “He’s already done Maitland,” I added.