Single Malt Murder

by Melinda Mullet

  Chapter 19

  Patrick must have been having a wild night, because I wasn’t able to reach him even on his cell. I finally gave up around two in the morning and went to bed. I held off till the nearly respectable hour of nine the following morning before dialing his number again.

  “Yeah…,” came a groggy voice on the other end.

  “Good morning.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure it isn’t.” I could hear the rustling of covers and then: “You okay?”

  “I need to talk.”

  “Can’t it wait an hour or two?”

  “I think this’ll hold your attention. I had an interesting conversation with Duff’s girlfriend Claire Jones at the funeral on Monday. She tells me her brother helped Duff get some counterfeit whisky labels printed. Based on the description, they were copies of the labels from an old Fletcher’s whisky known as the Rose Reserve.”

  “Why would he want counterfeit labels?” Patrick mumbled.

  “Did you know, Duff found a half-dozen bottles of the original Rose Reserve buried in a cellar at the Glen? Gave them to Ben for his birthday last year. Best gift Ben ever got, according to Grant. I think Duff realized how popular some of these vintage malts have become while he was working at the Society, and came up with a scheme to make some money selling counterfeit bottles. I’ll bet he even borrowed one of Ben’s empties as a model for the label.”

  “That’s actually quite brilliant.” Patrick was beginning to sound more alert. “They’d be worth a small fortune. But you only have Claire Jones’s word for this. Do you believe her?”

  “I wasn’t sure at first, but I saw Rothes yesterday and he tells me she turned up dead in an Edinburgh nightclub on Monday night…an overdose.”

  “Good God.”

  I could tell Patrick was now fully engaged.

  “I take it it wasn’t suicide or an accident?”

  “No firm word yet, but seems too coincidental to me.”

  “Did anybody see the two of you talking after the funeral?”

  “I didn’t think so, but Rothes seemed to know, and there were plenty of folks who came up from Edinburgh for the service.” I paused to think. “I suppose any one of them could have seen us, but I don’t think anyone was near enough to overhear what we said.”

  “Have you told the police about the labels?”

  “No. They may already know, and if they don’t…well, I promised Claire I’d protect my source.”

  “Abi, your source is dead. It can’t matter to her now.”

  “It could still hurt her brother,” I insisted, “and besides, I feel like I’m so close to an answer. I just need a little more time to figure it out, but if I haven’t found out anything more by tomorrow, I’ll tell the police about the labels. I promise.”

  “The sooner the better,” Patrick stressed. “I have to admit, selling counterfeit whisky is creative. I like the idea myself, but it seems very risky. What if one of the buyers tasted the whisky and challenged Duff on it?”

  “That could’ve been what got him killed, but from what I’ve been told, most people couldn’t tell a good whisky from a great whisky. That would take a real expert. For a hundred pounds Duff could have bought a first-class whisky, relabeled it, and sold it for thousands. It would be a very lucrative scheme.”

  Patrick frowned. “True. It could work, in theory, but I have to wonder how Duff funded it—all the bottles, the whisky, the capsules…”

  “Capsules?”

  “Capsules are the foil toppers that go over the corks. You can buy them on the Internet, but they aren’t cheap. Plus he’d have to reproduce the tax seals. You could do that on a first-class laser printer, but there would be some cash outlay up front.”

  “Damn. I hadn’t thought about that.” I slouched back in my chair feeling deflated.

  “It’s clear enough that Duff had a disagreement with someone that night at the distillery before he ended up in the drink,” Patrick said after a pause. “What if he had a partner in this counterfeiting scam? Someone with connections in the industry? A local distiller or distributor who might have extra stocks of whisky to bottle and sell. Anyone fit that profile?”

  “Maitland,” I offered quickly. “He’s known for being unscrupulous, and Hunter told me he’s been in trouble before for removing whisky from bonded storage. He could have found a new way to divert some of his own product.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Campbell seems a bit staid for those kind of shenanigans, and his whisky isn’t really the right quality,” I mused.

  “What about your friend Blaire?”

  “I suppose. He certainly could have surplus stock.”

  “Several reasonable possibilities, then. From Duff’s perspective it would be easier than coming up with the money to buy good whisky from a retail shop. Not to mention he’d need somewhere to store the finished bottles. He couldn’t leave them lying around at the pub or at the Glen, but his accomplice might have a cellar of his own.”

  “Perhaps something went wrong with the deal,” I said. “Duff and his partner had a falling-out and Duff wound up dead. Maitland or Blaire would’ve known about the sabotage and could’ve decided to use it to their own advantage.”

  “Maitland has a strong alibi for the night Duff died.”

  “True, but he could have sent someone else to do his dirty work. So could Blaire, for that matter. Of the two, I’d still lean toward Maitland. He’s unscrupulous, and he has a preexisting connection with Frank Monroe, the brawny lad from the Glen. And, of course, both Blaire and Maitland were at Duff’s memorial. Either one of them could have seen me talking to Claire.”

  “What a mess, and it still doesn’t tell you who’s threatening you and the Glen.”

  “No it doesn’t. Worse yet, it means I’m looking for two separate people now, one trying to force a sale at the Glen, the other willing to kill over a vintage whisky scam.”

  “But it all seems to converge around Duff,” Patrick noted.

  I planted my forehead on the table in front of me and sighed. “Did you find anything on Duff’s finances?”

  “Nothing unusual. He’s got next to nothing in savings, and he hasn’t received any large payments from anywhere. Of course, that doesn’t rule out cash-based transactions. Cash is always the safest way to go. You should look and see if he’s been spending money on anything unusual lately.”

  “I’ll check, but that reminds me, some of the guys in the DIY the other day were teasing Frank Monroe about a flash car. Wonder where he got the cash for that?”

  “You’ve pegged him as a possible accomplice to Maitland. I’d check it out if I were you. That reminds me, I took a look at Blaire’s financials.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Blaire’s numbers were pretty strong compared to most of his peers, but he’s taken a bit of a beating over the past year. He could finance a conservative offer for the Glen, but it would be a strain. I’ll send you copies.”

  “Right, I’m off to see his shop this afternoon.”

  “Please, please be careful. One of these guys is prepared to kill, and I don’t want you to be next.”

  —

  I liked to consider myself a decent driver. I’ve handled a six-thousand-pound Humvee through the streets of Baghdad, but the hedgerow-framed lanes around Balfour were proving to be my undoing. Grant lent me a jeep from the estate garage. It was a large vehicle with wide-angle mirrors on the side, one of which, I was ashamed to say, was now sitting on the backseat. The lanes were so narrow it was hard to tell the cart paths from the road, and the locals seemed to revel in taking the narrowest bits at speeds more suited to the autobahn than the countryside.

  The only bright spot for me was getting stopped for ten minutes while one of the local farmers moved his flock of sheep from a field on one side of the road to a field on the other. I’d always had a ridiculous affection for sheep, with their fluffy round bodies and their wide trusting eyes. Liam would’ve been thrilled
, but I’d left him in Grant’s care for the day as Hunter was returning his mother-in-law to Manchester.

  Blaire’s shop was located in the heart of Stirling’s historic district, a labyrinth of twisting streets leading down from the castle that towered over the city and the surrounding countryside. As I made my way through the pedestrian precinct, I continued to mull over the question of Duff’s labels.

  I’d grabbed the empty bottle of Rose Reserve left over from Ben’s funeral and examined it over breakfast. To my untrained eye the bottle was nothing special. Green glass, standard shape and size. It was the label that was memorable. The parchment-colored paper, with the watercolor impression of the croft and the roses, was striking. Even I could see the attraction for collectors. A beautiful label, but hard to reproduce. I couldn’t help feeling that side by side, there would be some difference, however small, between the original and a more recent copy. I took the bottle to the sink and carefully soaked the label off, then tucked the bit of paper in my bag, in case Blaire unwittingly had one of the fakes on hand.

  I located the store in an old coaching yard near the castle gate. The front windows looked like something out of Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop. Bottles of all shapes, sizes, and colors adorned a bay window that faced the street, glittering like jewels in the morning sun. They shared space with coffee table books on whisky and its history. No tartans and tourist trinkets here. This was a place for the serious whisky lover.

  Blaire emerged from the back of the shop at the sound of the bell.

  “Abi! How wonderful to see you again,” he said. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?”

  “Well, I was in town, and your shop is a legend among collectors.”

  “Would I be right in assuming that you are also here to check me out?” Blaire said. “I’m sure you’ve heard by now that I’ve put a bid in on Abbey Glen, and I’m guessing you’re checking out all of the prospective new owners. I’ll admit I’m a bit of a long shot. No doubt you have much more lucrative offers, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Abbey Glen, and I decided life’s short—why not give it a shot?”

  “True enough. But, to be honest, I’m here in search of some vintage bottles of Fletcher’s.” I watched Blaire’s reaction, but if the request rattled him in any way he didn’t show it. “I was told if anyone could unearth some, it would be you.”

  “I’m flattered, but Fletcher’s is a bit of a tall order these days. I have a couple of single malts from the mid-’80s.” Oliver went to a case and pulled out two bottles.

  I examined them. The labels were similar to the ones on the Rose Reserve that Duff had found, but not identical. A black-and-white sketch of the croft had replaced the watercolor print, and the roses were gone, but of course, these bottles were newer.

  “And how much would these sell for?” I asked.

  “The ’82 would go for around two thousand pounds. The ’85 a bit less.”

  “A case?”

  “A bottle,” Blaire said with the ghost of a smile.

  I gasped. “You’re kidding?”

  “Price is a factor of many things; age, quality, ability to purchase more. Fletcher’s scores high on all of those fronts. These bottles are eighteen-year-olds, of a high quality, in short supply, and from a historic distillery that’s no longer producing. From a collector’s standpoint they’re very desirable. The Rose Reserve you brought to the distiller’s dinner the other night is a good example. A rare and exemplary year. Many think Martin Furguson hit near perfection with that bottling, and then he went a number of years without releasing another single.”

  “What do you think the Rose Reserve would fetch on the open market today, if there was more available?”

  “Hard to say. The quality’s exceptional. From what I tasted the other night, its character is of a much older malt, one that’s been aged for twenty years or more. Given its age and its reputation,” Blaire said with a shrug, “at auction it could fetch a significant amount. Especially since it’s been out of circulation for some time.”

  “Is a ‘significant amount’ more than the price of the ones you have in stock?”

  “Oh, yes. Could be as much as five or six thousand pounds, depending on the bidders.”

  No wonder Grant had looked at me as if I was mad when I brought the bottle to the distillers’ dinner. Duff could’ve had more of a scam going than I realized. It would be very risky, but the rewards would be significant. At those prices Duff wouldn’t have to sell many bottles to make a tidy sum. Blaire still seemed unfazed. “I’m curious, when collectors pay that kind of price, do they drink the whisky?”

  “Real connoisseurs do, although collectors often hold for appreciation. Don’t forget, at auction some of the rare or really desirable bottlings can go for tens of thousands of pounds. A bottle of forty-year-old Macallan went for sixty thousand pounds last year. A collector would be unlikely to drink that.”

  “I’d think not,” I said.

  “That’s a status collection. In fact, there’s no guarantee that forty years of aging is a plus. The whisky can react poorly with the barrels after a time and go off. It’s a big gamble. It could be glorious, or it could have to go down the drain.”

  “Are there any more bottles of the Rose Reserve out there for sale?”

  “Not in the retail market.”

  “What about non-retail markets?” I asked.

  “If there are any left, they’d be privately held now. You’d have to search online, or contact the Whisky Society. Collectors sometimes advertise for what they want in the newsletter. Of course, you’d pay a hefty premium.”

  “Could you buy one through the Whisky Society?”

  “Doubtful. Once Fletcher’s closed its doors, their whiskies became real collector’s items. A mothballed distillery, end of an era, that sort of thing. It attracts serious collectors like bees to honey. Creates automatic scarcity, gives them something unique in their collection. There’s a whole submarket of dealing that never reaches the trade press. Bottles change hands for some unbelievable prices.”

  “Like a black market?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. They aren’t paying any VAT, that’s for sure.” Blaire certainly knew his whiskies and I could guess he was tuned in to what was and wasn’t available at any given time. Someone could easily have brought Duff’s Rose Reserve to his attention.

  I continued to scan the shelves and noticed a collection of blue-and-white labels with the name Warrenton’s in gold lettering at the top, and a variety of other distillery names in smaller print below.

  “What are these?” I asked.

  “Warrenton’s is our house label. We bottle and distribute a collection of whiskies in partnership with a variety of small distilleries. Sometimes distilleries are closing and we buy their remaining stock; other times a distillery wants to try something new, different barrels for aging, or a different blending process. For them it’s about economics. We have a built-in audience, and more room to take a risk.”

  “So, if you’re creative, there’s big money to be made in this business.”

  “Yes, and big money to be lost. My family’s very fortunate. We’ve had other financial interests to cushion the blow during the lean years. Others aren’t so lucky.”

  Did other financial interests include selling counterfeit whisky on the black market? “Ben managed to stay in the black,” I observed.

  “Because more than anyone he understood that it’s not always about producing a product that people want. Sometimes it’s about creating a market for what you’ve got.”

  Blaire’s three words were refined, witty, and diplomatic. I stood by them, but I’d seen killers before that were all three. He was creative, willing to take risks, persuasive, and not in as strong a financial position as I thought. Were he and Duff bottling extra stock meant for the Warrenton’s label and selling it as the Rose Reserve? Had he left Maitland’s earlier than he’d said and met Duff at the Glen? I had trouble seeing him physically wrestling
a dead body into a washback, but it wasn’t impossible, especially if he had help.

  Like it or not, Blaire was percolating to the top of the list of murder suspects.

  —

  On the drive back from Stirling I returned a call from Richard Thomas. Bartolli was back in Edinburgh and looking to meet with me again. I agreed, but suggested the Whisky Society as the venue this time, hoping I might be able to find out more about potentially counterfeit bottles of Rose Reserve. If several bottles of a rare vintage whisky had appeared on the market out of the blue, they’d have heard.

  While I had Thomas on the phone I decided to try to get the answer to an unrelated question that had been bothering me for days. “Just out of curiosity, if something happened to me, who would inherit the distillery?”

  “Do you have reason to believe something is about to happen to you?”

  “No, no, of course not,” I fibbed. “Just curious, that’s all.”

  “After ninety days it would go to whomever you designate in your will,” Thomas replied.

  “Right now that’s Ben,” I said.

  “Then we should amend that as soon as possible.”

  “I suppose we’ll need to, but what happens if I die before ninety days?”

  “Under the terms of Ben’s will, Abbey Glen would go to Grant.”

  A small part of me already knew the answer, but hearing it out loud was a shock. A sucker punch to the gut. I pulled into a lay-by and took a deep breath. For the moment, I was the only thing standing between Grant and complete control of the Glen.

  “Does Grant know?” I asked.

  Thomas answered without hesitation. “Of course.”

  Chapter 20

  All the way home my brain insisted on preoccupying itself with the terms of Ben’s will. Richard Thomas didn’t sound the least bit concerned. I tried to tell myself I shouldn’t be either. Grant’d had plenty of opportunities before now if he wanted to kill me, but I couldn’t quite get the idea out of my head. Was that why Grant hadn’t put a bid in on the Glen—he planned to inherit instead? It was a crazy idea, but as long as I couldn’t get a read on Grant I couldn’t rely on my instinct to guide me. It threw my whole radar off.