She smiled when Colin and I sat down.
“Hey there, did you decide to come back and try some more samples?” Robyn asked as she slid cocktail napkins in front of us.
I ordered the lunch special, roast beef sandwich, with a Coke, and Colin asked for the lunch special with the house IPA.
“So how’s your article coming along?” Robyn asked after giving us our drinks.
I frowned. “We sort of got sidetracked.”
She nodded. “That’s something, huh?”
“My editor’s pretty wound up about it,” I said. “We’re just coming from a press conference at the police department.”
“Yeah? I bet that was a scene,” she said.
“No. No arrests. No big announcements.” I paused for a moment and then added, “Well, the Pat Malone thing—I guess that was interesting. He and his lawyer kind of commandeered the podium. It was awkward.”
Robyn nodded. “He’s an odd one. He and Bunny came over here a few times for lunch. They’re definitely family. They both have the eccentricity gene, I think.”
“Really? Did they seem to get along?”
“Let’s put it this way—Bunny always paid. Pat never offered, never tried to leave the tip, nothing.” Robyn shrugged. “But that was a long time ago. Mitch sort of had a falling out with her, and those two stopped coming around.”
I wanted to play it cool, but I knew my face was giving away some of my excitement at hearing this juicy little tidbit.
“Really?”
Robyn looked at me and chuckled, shaking her head, “Nothing too scandalous. It’s just that she owns most of this block. She’s Mitch’s landlord. He gets on her for not cleaning up her place. I’m sure you saw: It’s a dump. And then she turns around and raises Mitch’s rent a couple times a year.”
“Well,” I said, looking around, “I’m sure he does a good business here. This place is really cool. Plus, he’s got the name recognition thing.”
“Yeah, this is a popular place,” she said. “But overhead on a craft brewery is really high, so, I don’t know. That’s not my department. Let me see if your food’s ready.”
When she walked away, Colin said, “Too bad that wasn’t on the record.”
He spoke? Colin talked to me, like, spontaneously! I gulped and tried to project my coolest, most nonchalant tone of voice.
“It’s okay,” I said. “She’s giving me some good leads to check into, so, you know … sometimes it’s better to have solid off-the-record information than get a really generic statement from someone, and then they just clam up anyway.”
I wasn’t sure my remark made any sense, but Colin nodded as if it did.
I thanked Robyn when she set my plate in front of me. Then I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “So is Mitch, is he, okay? I saw him getting in a cop car yesterday.”
Robyn glanced down at the bar and wiped a smudge with her towel. She nodded. “I think he’s all right. He was in earlier, but then he said he had to step out for a while—didn’t say where he was going. He’ll probably be back before the dinner rush. Mitch doesn’t like to miss that.” She looked toward the front door.
“I guess they just questioned him because he’s a neighbor.” I stirred my Coke with the straw and watched the bubbles rise from the ice cubes they’d been clinging to.
Robyn gave a non-committal, “Yeah,” before walking to the other end of the bar. She smiled as she gave the middle-aged woman sitting at the end of the bar another glass of ice water and two packets of Club Crackers.
For the first time, I noticed how out-of-place that woman was. She wore a tea-length flowered skirt and a long pearl necklace that was obviously fake. They were about two inches in diameter. As if that didn’t make her stand out enough, she had a giant, dark blue bird appliquéd onto the left breast of her light blue cardigan.
I leaned toward Colin and said, almost under my breath, “Is she, like, a librarian, or what?”
He didn’t answer me. But he did make a sideways glance toward her salt-and-pepper, stiff pageboy haircut and giant quilted tote bag, with its handles looped around one leg of the bar stool.
Colin finished his sandwich in about three bites. I filled up on fries, free Coke refills, and coleslaw, then only had room for about half my sandwich.
While Colin watched Germany and Uruguay play soccer, I took out my laptop and tried to trace Bunny’s family line back to the gold mines.
I got as far as learning that her great-great-grandfather had been a prospector who’d struck it rich and used his earnings to buy land and open mines. Like most owners, he treated his workers poorly.
When Robyn brought our check, I asked her about the woman in the bird sweater.
“She orders water and she doesn’t tip,” Robyn said. “Mitch has actually had to ask her to leave a couple times. She never buys anything. And sometimes she paces between the bar and the window over there, staring at Antiquities. It’s odd. I guess she’s a collector and has been trying to do some business with Bunny.”
I slid my corporate credit card toward Robyn without looking at the bill. I was too distracted, glancing sideways at the woman in the bird sweater.
| Four
When Colin and I stood to leave, I saw an unmarked navy blue Impala pull up and park at the curb in front of the brewery. Rebecca Chamberlain got out of the driver’s side while her partner opened the passenger side door and stood on the sidewalk. He wore aviator sunglasses and a polyester sport jacket. The two began walking briskly around the corner, with Rebecca glancing toward the lager house for only a second.
“Let’s go,” I said to Colin.
He slung his camera bag over his shoulder and followed me quickly.
They were halfway down the block by the time we got outside. We were again bathed in blinding sunshine and chilled by a crisp breeze. Colin flipped the collar up on his jacket and put on his sunglasses while I hurried ahead, trying to figure out where the detectives were going—why they were walking away from the antiques shop.
The sidewalks were paved with red bricks and adorned with street lights that were designed to look like old gas lamps. Both were obviously new touches intended to make visitors feel like they’d stepped into olden times.
A white box truck, with “Entermusement” and slot machine images painted on the side, was double-parked halfway down the block.
Across from the truck, Detective Chamberlain and her partner walked through the entrance of an establishment called the Tin Pan Saloon. The saloon sign was made of orange and gold neon lettering. One window held an elaborate neon sign that was a cartoon depiction of a stereotypical prospector—a gray-bearded, wild-eyed barefoot man wearing overalls and a wide-brimmed hat with the brim flipped up.
A man carrying a tool box exited the saloon and climbed into the Entermusement truck. Colin watched the streetscape through the screen on his camera as the box truck rumbled to life and began slowly rolling away. I left him behind as I hurried into the Tin Pan Saloon.
Unlike the fermenting barley aroma in Mission Lager House, a smell that reminded me of breakfast cereal, Tin Pan Saloon smelled like stale beer and tobacco. The patrons were clearly a different demographic.
There were only a handful of people in the saloon, and most of them sat in front of bartop video poker machines, the screens casting a grayish glow on their numbed-out faces.
A man, who loosely resembled the cartoonish prospector from the neon sign, was stepping out from behind the bar toward the detectives. He wore a faded plaid shirt, dark gray work pants, and had bushy gray hair and a gray beard. He looked like he was in his seventies or eighties.
The man cast a sideways glance at Colin’s camera as we took our seats at a high-top table that I hoped was within earshot of the man and the detectives.
I pretended to be engrossed in my phone screen as I strained to hear their conversation.
I could hear Detective Chamberlain ask the older man, “Was it a romantic relationship?”
; “Honey, do I look like I care about romantic relationships?” the man replied, shaking his head. His voice was raspy.
“Well, you were dating at one point, weren’t you?” the other detective asked.
“You could say that,” the old man said as he folded his arms across his chest. “We had a companionship for several years. But that was a very long time ago.”
“Why did you break up?” Detective Chamberlain asked.
“Her family didn’t like me,” he said. “And I don’t hang around where I’m not wanted. I don’t think they would like anyone she spent time with—especially if anyone started talking about marriage. Or changing her will.”
A waitress introduced herself as April and took our orders. I asked for another Coke and Colin ordered a light beer.
“This story is going to turn you into an alcoholic,” I said.
Colin shrugged.
“And it’s going to turn me into a diabetic,” I muttered while I watched the old man and the detectives. He still had his arms folded across his chest when Chamberlain said, “Call us if you think of anything, Mr. Grubler.” Then the detectives left.
He gestured dismissively toward them. “My name’s Gus.”
I texted Quinn the name of the saloon and the name “Gus Grubler.” Then I wrote, “Love interest, murder suspect?”
April set a beer and a cola on her tray, but then one of the video poker zombies called out to her as he held up a wrinkled bill. She nodded and stepped toward him. The old man picked up the tray and looked toward our table. I glanced over at Colin’s camera, wishing he could somehow put it away. I hated how it advertised the fact that we were the press.
Every other step the old man took, he weaved to the left just slightly.
“Got a bad wheel?” I asked when he approached the table.
Gus nodded as he set our drinks on the table. “Used to work for the railroad,” he said. “Had a fall, long time ago.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling lame and wondering what Colin thought of all this.
Before the man could walk away, I said, “Guess there’s been some excitement in the neighborhood.”
“Something like that,” he said, his narrowing eyes telling me to back off.
“Hope that hasn’t been bad for business,” I said. “This is an interesting place.”
The man nodded and walked away. That was a total bust.
I looked at Colin, suddenly hating the fact that I had an audience for my news reporting awkwardness.
“I gotta go on the record with someone today,” I said as I took a deep breath. “My story’s gonna be really boring if all I have is the press conference stuff.”
“I don’t think he’s talkin,” Colin said, nodding toward Gus.
“Not as a suspect, but maybe just as, you know, a concerned neighbor?”
He raised an eyebrow that seemed to say, good luck with that.
“Or I could just interview Mitch,” I said. “I bet he’d give me a concerned neighbor comment.”
“He’d give you more than that,” Colin said wryly.
I wrinkled my nose. “What?”
“He was seriously hitting on you yesterday,” Colin said with a laugh.
“Oh.” My cheeks started feeling warm. I stared down into my Coke while Colin laughed again.
“Shut up.”
Was it the two beers that had Colin finally talking with me, or was he finally loosening up?
I smelled a heavy, flowery perfume that seemed out of place for this little dive. Then I looked up, and saw a woman who was definitely out of place. It was the lady in the bird sweater who had been at the lager house.
She had a strange, hitching gait as she made her way to the back of the bar, nodding at Gus on her way. She went through a door marked “Lotto. 18 and over.”
“She doesn’t look like your typical degenerate gambler,” I said under my breath.
“Yeah, she does,” Colin said. “Haven’t you ever been in a small town casino? It’s wall-to-wall grannies.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I was on one of those riverboat casinos. I think half the people were on oxygen. And other half either had canes or used wheel chairs.”
“The one-armed bandit loves the pensioners.”
I shook my head and, for the briefest moment, looked into Colin’s eyes.
“I’m gonna talk to her,” I announced with a thick layer of exaggerated confidence. “She’ll be my man on the street. It’ll give my story a little color.”
Colin raised his eyebrows. “Okay.”
“You stay here.”
When I walked into the back room where the slot machines were kept, the woman was peering into her quilted tote bag. She was the only person in the room.
“Hi, I’m Jae Lovejoy,” I said. “I write for Alt News America.”
The woman stopped rifling through her bag and looked up. I waited a moment, expecting her to introduce herself, but she didn’t say anything.
“So, I’m doing some stories about this neighborhood,” I said. “One of them is about the crime here. I noticed you at the lager house and I was just wondering if I could ask you a couple questions, as a customer in Mission Key?”
She clenched the bag shut with both hands and said, “Okay.” Color seemed to drain from her face. It’s not unusual for someone to get nervous when they’re interviewed. Normally though, my stature, coupled with my baby face, doesn’t have that effect on my subjects.
Taking a small notebook and pen from my messenger bag, I sat down at the tall, vinyl-upholstered swiveling chair beside her and asked her to spell her name. She was Mary Pettigrew, fifty-four years old, lifelong Denverite. She made her living dealing in crafts and knick-knacks, online and at the Centennial State Flea Market.
“What are your thoughts about crime in Mission Key?” I asked her.
“Well, lately there hasn’t been much crime, I mean, before Bunny,” she said. “But there used to be more thugs around here—more robberies. It’s probably that element coming back.”
I braced myself for some sort of racial remark. Mary Pettigrew struck me as a woman who would be hasty to blame crime on minorities. But when she didn’t say anything like that, I realized that maybe I was the one who was making presumptions.
“It was probably a robbery,” she said before shrugging dismissively. She pulled a small change purse from her tote bag and began picking through the coins inside.
“Did you know Bunny or shop in her store?” I asked.
“I used to go in there sometimes,” she said.
Mary slid two quarters into the coin slot on the machine. It blared carnival-style music as various lights and computerized graphics began flashing and dancing. A computerized voice announced, “50 Credits!”
“What was Bunny like?”
Mary frantically slapped some of the machine’s lit-up buttons before answering me. “Mmm. Not too friendly.” She didn’t take her eyes off of the screen.
“Was her shop popular?”
“No,” Mary said. “She didn’t keep regular hours. If you wanted to shop there, you had to just wait around and hope she’d unlock the door once in a while. You had to get lucky.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, I guess she didn’t really need the income,” I said, mostly to myself.
The machine made a womp-womp sound, telling Mary she’d lost.
“Do you know if Bunny had any friends around here?”
Mary made a snorting laugh and then climbed down from her chair. She picked up her tote bag and walked toward the door as fast as her hobbling gait would allow. The screen on her slot machine read “17 Credits.”
She opened the door and left the little gambling room without saying anything. I watched her frumpy silhouette as she walked out of the saloon’s front door. Gus glanced up briefly from a glass he was drying while Colin looked from the doorway, to me, and back to the front of the saloon, where Mary’s shadow crossed the windows.
I went back to our table and said to Colin, “W
hat a weirdo.”
We left the saloon. When we got outside, Colin looked around and said, “This is good light. I’m going to walk around and get some pictures of the neighborhood.”
“Okay,” I said, following him as he walked in the opposite direction from where we’d started. We passed a wine shop, a bakery, a store that seemed to be dedicated to selling only gourmet spices, and a coffee shop.
Colin knelt one knee on the sidewalk and pointed his lens up at one of the elaborate streetlights. The sun was striking from an angle, making the globes and the fixtures glow a golden color.
I followed him around a corner and down an alley. We walked slowly, as Colin looked around in all directions. The sunlight didn’t reach us between the buildings. It felt much cooler. Despite folding my arms over my chest, I started to shiver.
Then I saw something familiar and pointed toward it.
“This must be the back of the antiques shop. We were standing out here earlier, remember?”
“You mean when you turned green and almost hurled?” Colin asked, his eyes twinkling, teasing.
“Remember that slamming noise right before we found Bunny? I think it was that door.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what I assumed too.”
“The killer must have heard us and was running away.”
“Yeah,” he said, almost in a whisper, as he raised his camera toward the recessed doorway that was nearly over our heads.
This was probably a loading dock where trucks would pull up to drop off deliveries or pick up items. I looked up at the buildings. The next door down had “Mission Lager House” stenciled on it. In the other direction was another loading dock, maybe belonging to the bookstore. A fire escape stretched along the backs of both Bunny’s shop and the bookstore.
“Where do you think they went?” I asked.
“Just ran away, I guess,” Colin said. “Could have gone anywhere.”
I pressed my hands against the cool concrete platform in front of the door. It was almost over my head.
“This would be a big jump. Someone would have to be pretty athletic to make it down without getting hurt,” I said.
Assignment Denver: The Case of the Eccentric Heiress: Jae Lovejoy Cozy Mystery One (Jae Lovejoy Cozy Mysteries Book 1) Page 3
