Brew or Die

by Caroline Fardig

  Pete squinted. “Oh, yeah. Damn. How much did we drink?”

  Frowning, I replied, “I’m betting just enough to mask some kind of drug we were given. Remember the champagne we were offered right before we left?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “Vaguely.”

  “We originally thought it was a mistake. But considering our current situation, I think someone sent it to us purposely.”

  “Why?” he asked. He thought for a moment, and then his expression darkened. “I know why. Because you made it your business to piss off every person in the place.”

  “Not everyone…just our murder suspects.”

  I could see him scowling at me in the darkness, anger radiating off him. This was my fault, and I knew it. Before he could say anything else, the truck lumbered to a stop, and we had to hold on to each other and one side of the truck to stay upright.

  I whispered, “Do you think we should hide or something? Surprise whoever has us?”

  “Good idea.”

  We grabbed the two laundry carts, wheeling them close to the door and crouching behind them. My stupid dress billowed out in all directions, so I wasn’t exactly hidden, but with any luck we could knock down our captor before he knew what hit him. Or her. I still didn’t have a clue who would have turned to kidnapping to solve the problem of our snooping around.

  The door’s latch scraped open, and Pete and I both tensed. The door began rolling up, and sunlight flooded into the truck, nearly blinding us. Pete said, “Now!” and we both pushed the carts toward the opening with everything we had. We heard a man grunt “Oof” as the carts made contact with him. He fell back, and the carts toppled off the edge and bounced off his barrel chest as he lay on the ground. Pete and I stared down at him from the truck.

  “Who’s that guy?” Pete asked.

  “No idea,” I replied, having no luck recognizing the portly forty-something man wearing a uniform with the words ETG HOTEL SUPPLY, INC and the name MITCH embroidered on it.

  “Well, I don’t want to stick around and find out. We need to get away. Now.”

  Pete jumped down from the truck, then lifted his arms to help me down. Since the guy was semiconscious and making no effort to get up, we took a moment to peer around at our surroundings.

  “Where in the hell are we?” I asked.

  Pete grimaced, pointing down toward the nearest intersection. A sign read beale street. “Memphis.”

  I stuck my hands on my hips and spewed out a string of curses, finally ending with, “Memphis? I hate Memphis.”

  “I know. I hate being in Memphis with you.”

  Pete had thought it would be fun in college to drive over to Memphis for the day and take in the music and sights. I’d never been there, so I was all for it. Even though I enjoyed traveling, I easily tired of car rides and could become rather cranky at times. We didn’t have a good start to the trip. Graceland, which I’d always wanted to visit, was kind of a letdown. Then, after an unfortunate misunderstanding with a homeless man on Beale Street who supposedly “didn’t mean to” come off like he was trying to assault me when he approached me for some money, I’d had it. And of course I complained at Pete the entire way home because it was his idea. Not my best day.

  Mitch was groaning more now, and trying to get up.

  Pete took my hand. “Come on. We need to get out of here before he tries anything.”

  “Wait. I think we should get some information out of him first, while he’s incapacitated. Like find out who put us in the truck.” Before Pete could argue, I stepped over to Mitch and leaned down over him. “Hey, Mitch. Why the hell did you have us in the back of your truck?”

  Mitch squinted up at me. “What? I don’t…Why were you in my truck?”

  “That’s what I want to know. Who told you to bring us here?”

  “I don’t get what you’re asking. No one told me to bring you here. All I’ve done for the past eight hours is drive my normal route. Nashville to Birmingham to Memphis. Night shift.”

  My jaw dropped. “We’ve been to Birmingham, too?”

  Pete said, “Hey, buddy. How in the hell could you drive over four hundred miles and not know you had two human beings in the back of your truck?”

  Still lying on the concrete with a dazed expression on his face, Mitch replied, “I didn’t. I swear. I did my usual thing. That’s it. Then you guys show up and ambush me.”

  I glanced back into the open truck. It was mostly filled with boxes and pallets of hotel hospitality items, and there were a few new-looking laundry carts in the mix. I guessed our carts could have blended in with items from his other deliveries.

  “Did you see anyone put these two laundry carts into your truck while you were at the Nashville Omni?” I asked.

  Pete offered Mitch his hand and slowly pulled him up into a sitting position.

  Mitch shook his head and winced as he rubbed his back.

  Looking at him uneasily, Pete said, “You might need to get yourself looked at. Sorry.”

  I pressed on, “Was there any time when your truck was unattended while you were at the Omni?”

  Mitch gave me a sheepish grin. “Yeah. I walked down the street to Merchants and got me a double order of those duck fat tater tots. I always get some when I go to Nashville, and last night…well, they didn’t agree with me, if you know what I mean. I had to run for the head real quick, and I think I may have left the hatch unlocked.”

  Pete clapped him on the shoulder. “Who’d have thought a couple of pounds of tater tots deep fried in duck fat would give you the shits?”

  “Pete, gross,” I complained.

  “I’m just saying. It’s common sense.”

  I sighed. “So it could have been anyone that did this to us.”

  Looking from Pete to me, Mitch said, “If you don’t mind me asking, who’d want to kidnap you on your wedding night?”

  Pete was looking at him like a deer in headlights, so I stepped in. “I’m sure it was simply a prank gone horribly wrong. My…brother does stupid, crazy stuff like this all the time. We were drunk, so I bet we were partly to blame somehow, if we could remember. It probably wasn’t meant to go down like this. No worries.”

  Mitch was starting to look nervous now that he had his bearings back a little better. “Since you think it was your brother who pulled the prank, I hope the two of you won’t say anything to my employer about my hand in this.”

  Pete helped him up into a standing position. “As long as you forget that we tried to knock you out with a couple of laundry carts.”

  Mitch held out his hand to Pete, and they shook. “Deal. I’d offer to drive you back, but I gotta make this delivery and beat it to Little Rock.”

  “We’ll figure something out.”

  Mitch gave us a lazy salute and disappeared into the back service entrance of the hotel where we’d stopped.

  Pete blew out a breath. “First things first—coffee. Then we’ll figure out how to get home. There’s a Starbucks a block or two away.”

  I grumbled under my breath, “You and your Starbucks.” We had an ongoing argument about him going to Starbucks every once in a while, even though he owned a coffeehouse.

  We trudged down the street in silence, with me trying to control the fit of rage that was burning inside; Redheaded She-Devil was just itching to come out and strangle someone. Only there was no one to strangle. We had no clue who had done this to us. Well, we had a handful of good ideas, but they were all two hundred miles away, well out of strangling distance. And now we had to figure out a way to get home.

  I heard Pete softly whistling, and I threw him a glare when I realized what song it was. “Seriously? ‘Walking in Memphis’?”

  “What? We’re literally walking in Memphis, ten feet off of Beale. What other song would you use in this situation?” Undeterred, he continued his whistling.

  “Ugh. Now I have an earworm. Thanks for that.”

  He only smiled in response, until we got to Starbucks and found that it
wasn’t even open yet. “Is it really before six?” he griped under his breath and reached into the pocket of his jacket. His eyes got big as he patted down his other pockets. “Jules…”

  “What?” I asked, leaning against the building and trying not to think about how badly my feet hurt, still in the uncomfortable heels from yesterday.

  “My phone and wallet are missing. And my car keys, not that they would be helpful since my car is two hundred freaking miles away.”

  Dread creeping in to overtake me, I pulled up my skirt to get my phone, but my holster was empty. My insides started trembling. “My phone’s gone, too.” Some sick bastard had searched me and found my phone in a fairly private area. I could only hope it wasn’t Xander.

  Pete slammed his hand against the door. “Son of a bitch! Now what? We can’t even get coffee, much less get home!” He was right. No phones, no money, and no IDs meant no travel of any kind.

  “Shit. We’ll have to beg to use the phone in there and call someone to come get us.”

  “Who? You gonna call Stafford and tell him what happened? He’d arrest half of Nashville over this.”

  I sighed. “You make a good point. How about Brooke?”

  “It would scare her to death.”

  “Gertie?”

  “Same. Maya?”

  I shook my head. “Maya is on a plane to jolly old England right now to visit her sister and her new niece. Stan?”

  Pete frowned. “No way.”

  “He wouldn’t ask any questions.”

  “I never want to owe that guy anything.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, we’ll just walk home, then, so you don’t have to bruise your ego.”

  “How about Shane? He got us into this mess.”

  “Actually, you got us into this mess.”

  Narrowing his eyes at me, Pete said, “Us being in that box truck was all your doing, Juliet. You and your smart-ass mouth.”

  “Oh, now you’re mad at me, then.”

  “Damn right I am!”

  I turned my back on him, willing myself not to cry. This fight was not helping my already off-the-charts level of frustration.

  Pete put his hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t mean that. I’m angry at the situation, not you. Let’s find a way out of this.”

  I faced him, and he pulled me into a hug, which only made the tears threaten more.

  I sniffed. “We could pawn our rings to buy bus tickets.”

  He said gently, “I think the rings are fake. Plus, it’s Sunday morning at the butt crack of dawn. Nothing’s open. But I’m liking the bus ticket idea. That way maybe we won’t have to wait around for hours for someone to drive here to get us.”

  Leaning back, I asked, “Except we don’t have the money for bus tickets.”

  Pete grinned down at me. “We could turn tricks.”

  I glanced at my reflection in the window. My hair was a mess, all coming out of the updo at crazy angles. “Doubtful. I look insane.” I took a closer look at his face. “And your guyliner is running.”

  “So is yours.”

  I pushed away from him and wiped under my eyes. As I began removing the dozens of bobby pins Boz had put in my hair, I said, “We need to come up with a better idea than turning tricks.”

  “Someone could wire us some money.”

  “Do people still do that?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” He snapped his fingers. “What about an Uber?”

  “An Uber for a three-hour drive plus the driver’s time for the return trip? That would cost a zillion dollars.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Hey, maybe someone could buy us a bus ticket online and have it waiting for us when we get to the station. Wherever that is.” I shook out my hair and let it cascade down over my shoulders. It wasn’t great, but it was at least an improvement over the bird’s nest it had been.

  Pete nodded. “Back to who we’re going to call. I don’t want to upset Shane.”

  “Agreed. I’d call Mallory, but she doesn’t need this kind of stress in her life, either.” I put my hand on his arm. “Can I please just call Stan? He’s the only one who won’t call the cops or freak out.”

  He was pouting big-time over this, but I could also tell he was caving. “You know I can’t stand the guy.”

  “But you know he’s my second best man friend and would do anything for me.” I smiled. “And he’s got enough money to spring for the good seats on the bus.”

  “I don’t think there’s any such thing as ‘the good seats’ on a bus.”

  —

  Once Starbucks opened, we were the first inside, begging and pleading to make a long-distance call on their phone. They agreed, probably because we looked super sad and were in our wedding clothes.

  Stan’s sleepy voice said, “Hello?”

  I nearly fell over with relief at hearing his voice. “Stan! It’s me, Juliet.”

  “Juliet, why are you calling me at…six A.M. on a Sunday? And from outside our area code?”

  Pete had his head against mine, straining to listen to the call. “You said he wouldn’t ask any questions,” he complained quietly.

  Covering the phone, I shushed him. To Stan, I said, “You know me—I’m always getting myself into trouble. Um…this time I’m stranded in Memphis. No phone, no money, no car.”

  There was silence for a moment. “How in the hell—”

  “Stan, I promise to tell you everything, but right now I need you to go with it and get me out of this mess. Pete’s here, too, by the way.”

  “He does an amazing job at keeping you out of trouble,” Stan grumbled.

  Pete stiffened next to me, and I elbowed him to keep him quiet.

  Stan said, “What do you need?”

  I replied, “We need you to go online and get us some bus tickets.”

  “Juliet, I am not letting you ride a bus home from Memphis,” he said, horror evident in his voice. “Let me call for a Town Car to bring you back.”

  Pete shook his head vehemently. But I had to admit that a car and driver would be so much better than a smelly, crowded bus.

  For Pete’s benefit, I tried to object, though not too hard. “Oh, that’s too expensive. The bus will be…fine.”

  “Nonsense. I’ll expense it to Hollingsworth Industries, anyway, so it’s nothing to me. Where are you? I’ll have a car there within the hour.”

  “At the Starbucks on Third, just south of Beale.”

  “Excellent. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  “Then I’ll order you some breakfast there on my Starbucks app.”

  I sighed. “I love you, Stan. With all my heart. Thank you.”

  “You’re quite welcome.”

  “We’ll pay you back when we get home.”

  He chuckled. “The only payment I want is the whole story over dinner tonight. Every morbid detail—and I know there are always plenty of morbid details when you’re involved.” Stan did love his gossip.

  “You got it.”

  —

  This time on our way home from Memphis, it was Pete who griped all the way back. Or maybe only partway, because I fell asleep not far outside the Memphis city limits. It killed him to let Stan do something nice for him, but he would have to get over it.

  Chapter 18

  When I finally made it back to my apartment, even though I’d slept on the drive home, I was still exhausted. I wondered if whatever drug we’d been given was partly to blame. I crashed on my couch and was asleep instantly, not even having the energy to change out of the wedding dress. In what seemed like only minutes, but in actuality was a couple of hours, I heard a pounding on my door. I rubbed my eyes and went to answer it.

  “Where in the hell have you been?” Stafford cried, barging in and sweeping me into his arms, hugging me so tightly I thought he might snap me in two.

  “Long story.”

  He let me go and took a step back, his mouth open at the sight of my dress, his eyes full of hurt. “Did you…What�
��Juliet?”

  It was then that I realized this probably looked very bad to my boyfriend. Judging by his greeting, he seemed to have been searching for me for a while, and here I finally showed up, and in a wedding dress, no less.

  “I swear I didn’t run off and get married behind your back.”

  “That makes me feel marginally better. I was five minutes from putting a BOLO out for you. Start talking.”

  I sighed. “Where do you want me to begin?”

  “With the tip you gave me about the drug dealer. I texted you a few minutes later and never heard back from you. Then when narco went in and busted Candace Monroe and the detectives wanted to take your statement, you were nowhere to be found.”

  “So she’s in jail?” Wow. I got Xander cut off from Mommy’s money and Candace thrown in the slammer. Not a bad day’s work, if you didn’t count the drugging and kidnapping.

  “She bonded out.”

  “Oh.” Well, she was still in big trouble.

  Stafford looked at me expectantly, with a hint of irritation.

  I took a deep breath. I remembered texting him just before passing out, so there actually wasn’t a lot to tell, because I wasn’t telling him about my little side trip to Memphis. “After I texted you, my phone was stolen. And then…I ended up out all night because of my case, and I didn’t get home until a couple of hours ago.” After my ridiculously vague yet technically truthful statements, I gave him an apologetic smile and added, “I honestly didn’t know you were looking for me, or I would have found a way to get in touch with you. I’m sorry.”

  Shaking his head, he said, “I’m just glad you’re all right.” He pulled me into another hug, this one considerably less tight. “So what’s with the dress?”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, I was surveilling…things at the big wedding expo, and I needed a way to hide in plain sight. Maya worked it out so I could be a wedding attire model. Cool, huh?”

  He released me and looked down at my dress. “That’s one hell of a dress. You look gorgeous.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Need help out of it?”

  Honestly, I would rather have returned to my nap. Feeling like a terrible girlfriend for even considering choosing sleep over him, I put on a smile. “I’d love some, but I thought you were working today.”