Brew or Die

by Caroline Fardig

  He hesitated for a moment, then said, “No, there’s no chance. After I found out about the falsified police report, I had to take it to my captain. He verified that Stafford is not in fact on some secret undercover op and gave me the go-ahead to tail him.”

  Well, that blew my last shred of hope out of the water.

  When he saw the expression on my face, he said, “Again, I’m sorry to keep ruining your impression of your boyfriend.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s his.”

  Ryder closed the case file. “Anyway, the first priority is to take down the operation, then once that’s done I have to turn everything over to IA and let them deal with Stafford. I don’t envy what the guy’s going to go through when they—”

  He was interrupted by a thump from across the street, then shuffling of footsteps. We hurried over to the window. The three men—Wonderlich, the truck driver, and Jensen—were heading for one of the vehicles.

  Wonderlich muttered, “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

  As Jensen opened the driver’s door, he asked, “Where the hell is this place, anyway?”

  Taking the sucker out of his mouth, Wonderlich replied, “Other side of the airport.”

  “Shit,” Ryder said, scrambling to load his surveillance tools into a bag. “We have to go. They’re moving the party to Vashchenko’s house.”

  Chapter 23

  As Ryder sped east toward the rural Una area, I couldn’t help feeling a total rush of adrenaline from being on my first ride-along.

  He took his eyes off the road for only a moment to flick a glance at me. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Scooby? You’re such a nerd.”

  Even his needling couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. “Hey, don’t hate. This is my first experience in hot pursuit. You wouldn’t even turn on the siren for me before, not even for a second.”

  “I don’t want to burst your bubble, but we’re not in hot pursuit. We’re only using the siren and driving quickly in order to beat our suspects to their destination and allow ourselves some time to get in position.”

  “Could you please not ruin this for me with technicalities?”

  “Facts. I’m ruining this for you with facts.”

  Whatever. I didn’t care. It was still awesome.

  “Does Wonderlich remind you of Kojak?” he asked.

  I glanced over at him with a puzzled expression. “Huh?”

  “Kojak. You know, the seventies TV detective. Bald, always had a sucker in his mouth.”

  I knew, but I couldn’t resist a chance to remind him of our four-year age difference. “I wasn’t even alive in the seventies, old man.”

  “Neither was I, but I’ve binge-watched the show.”

  He was so weird sometimes. “What would possess you to do that?”

  Shrugging, he said, “After Amanda died, I couldn’t handle being in our house alone, so I went and stayed with Ed and Bonnie for a while.” Ed and Bonnie Marchand were Amanda’s parents. They were lovely people, having welcomed me into their family when Ryder and I were dating and even keeping in touch with me after we’d broken up. He continued, “Neither Ed or I could sleep. What we ended up doing was watching late-night Kojak reruns together. We didn’t talk or anything, just sat there in the same room and stared at the TV. Crazy as it sounds, that show got me through some tough nights.”

  How he could sit there and bare his soul to me while driving at breakneck speed was beyond me. I didn’t know how to respond, so I kept quiet, and he didn’t say any more.

  As we approached the quiet road Dmitri lived on, Ryder turned off his siren and slowed to a reasonable speed. The lights were off at Dmitri’s house, an aging prefab that had a surprisingly expensive sports car next to it, which was blocked in by Stafford’s truck. If Dmitri could afford that kind of vehicle, maybe being a “delivery driver” was more lucrative than what would normally have been expected. Ryder passed the house and parked at the street’s dead end. We gathered our surveillance gear and cut through the grove of trees behind the neighboring backyards to get to Dmitri’s house. The lots were fairly large and the houses spread apart, so we weren’t in danger of being seen by anyone on our trek to our destination, including Stafford, who had just emerged from a yard barn and was walking away from us, back toward his truck.

  The trees and unkept brush lined the side of Dmitri’s property as well, which made the perfect vantage point for us to be able to see his front door and still remain out of sight. We crouched down just as Wonderlich’s black SUV came pulling up in the driveway. I held the parabolic mic, and Ryder and I shared the set of earbuds I’d attached to it. He had his own long-range camera.

  Wonderlich and his goons got out of the vehicle and went straight at Stafford. I tensed, and Ryder put his hand on my arm. I assumed it was his way of telling me not to utter a sound.

  Wonderlich got in Stafford’s face. “So Vashchenko disappeared into thin air?”

  “Just because he isn’t home right now doesn’t mean he ran off,” Stafford said, an edge to his voice that wasn’t normally there.

  “He stole from me again, and it didn’t turn out so great for him last time, so he probably knows this time he’s dead. Lucky for me, I got myself a missing persons expert right here. Find him. Now.” He gave Stafford a rough shove, and Stafford headed for his truck, his wheels kicking up gravel as he sped out of the driveway. Wonderlich opened the hatch to his SUV and said to the other two, “Let’s leave Vashchenko a warning. Light that damn Audi up.”

  His henchmen got two big bottles of something out of the back of the SUV and then took them over to the brand-new luxury sports car parked at Vashchenko’s house.

  Close to my ear, Ryder murmured, “They’ve got two bottles of vodka. They’re going to torch that car.”

  I watched helplessly as Jensen used the butt of his gun to break the passenger window, and the two men proceeded to empty the contents of the two bottles into the car. The truck driver flicked on a cigarette lighter and threw it into the vehicle, causing the inside to glow with blue flames.

  The three of them laughed cynically, got in the SUV, and drove away.

  Once they were out of sight, I let out a sigh, realizing I’d been holding my breath most of the time we’d been watching. Ryder immediately called dispatch for backup and a fire truck, then turned his attention to me.

  “That went better than expected,” he joked, although his eyes were regarding me cautiously.

  I frowned. “I guess…”

  “Come on, at least no one got hurt.”

  “Not yet.”

  “It’s going to be a while before I can leave the scene here. I expect the Three Stooges are done making mischief for tonight, so there’s no reason for us to continue our surveillance. You’re welcome to catch a nap in my car while you’re waiting for me, or I can get a uni to drive you back to town.”

  Yawning, I replied, “I’d rather head back so I’ll get a few hours to sleep. It’s my turn to make the pastries for Java Jive tomorrow…I mean, today, which means I have to be at the coffeehouse by six. So I guess I’ll see you later tonight? The cleaning shift starts at midnight, so meet me at Wonder-Gen a little before.”

  “I’ll pick you up. It’s on my way.”

  “That works, too.” I smiled. “Can we drive fast with the lights on again?”

  He smiled back. “Don’t push your luck, Scooby.”

  —

  A few hours later, I was fighting to keep my eyes open as I stumbled into Java Jive and began getting out my ingredients to bake the day’s selection of cookies and pastry items. Halfway through my blueberry scone recipe, I was straining to remember whether or not I’d already added the baking powder to my bowl when I heard someone knocking at the front door. I went to answer it and was surprised to find Ryder standing there.

  “Hey, what’s up?” I asked, letting him in. “Did you just get done over at Vashchenko’s?”

  Rubbing his forehead tiredl
y, he said, “Sort of. There’s more to the story.”

  I motioned for him to follow me to the kitchen. “Can we talk while I work? I got here late, so I’m behind. Does this mean you haven’t slept yet?”

  “Yes, but I got a solid few hours yesterday before our stakeout, so I’m good.” His eyes fell on the flour-covered work surface, where I had already made a giant mess and wasn’t even through one batch of scones yet. “Need some help?”

  My eyebrows shot up. “You can suddenly bake now?”

  “No, but I can follow instructions.” He grinned. “I’m sure you wouldn’t mind bossing me around for a while.”

  Smiling, I said, “No, I probably wouldn’t mind that. Be right back.” I hurried to the office to grab a clean Java Jive T-shirt for him, then returned to the kitchen and tossed it to him. “Change into a clean shirt and wash up.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He stripped off the shirt he was wearing.

  Forcing myself to rip my eyes away from Ryder’s bare chest in all its pectoral glory, and fighting to keep from blushing, I said, “I didn’t mean you had to do it right here.”

  He shrugged. “You’ve seen it before.”

  Great. Now I was really blushing. And he noticed, too, because I caught the smirk on his face before he turned to go wash his hands at the sink.

  He said, “Anyway, I went back to the station to start the process of looking for Vashchenko, and he’s not exactly trying to keep his whereabouts a big secret. Not long after I put a trace on him, he used his credit card to buy breakfast for his family at a donut shop down in Chattanooga. Stafford must have run the same trace, because I saw him tear out of the station right about that time.” He grinned. “Being the smarter one, I called up the local boys in Chattanooga, and they were able to locate Vashchenko for me. They’re even going to escort him and his family back to town and deliver him to my door in a couple of hours so I can sit down and have a chat with him.”

  I scattered some flour on my work surface in preparation for rolling out the scone dough. “Excellent detecting, Detective.”

  “Thank you. And Stafford the asshat is on his way to Chattanooga for nothing.”

  I gave him a reproachful look. “Use your nice words.”

  He picked up a pinch of the flour and threw it at me. “Are you actually going to let me do something or did you only pretend to accept my offer of help to be polite?”

  “You want to help? Roll out this scone dough, tough guy.” I grabbed some flour from the open container next to me and tossed it at him, managing to dust the entire front of his shirt and the lower half of his face with it.

  Staring down at himself, he said, “Oh, now you’re going to get it.” Reaching across me, he got a handful of flour out of the container and held it over my head. “Let’s find out what you’d look like with white hair.”

  Jumping back from him, I said, “You really do have an old lady fetish, don’t you?”

  Ryder laughed and came closer, backing me up against the walk-in freezer.

  A thought came to me as I studied the playful expression on his handsome face. “Wait, why did you come over here in the first place? You could have told me about Vashchenko over the phone.”

  “I thought it should be an in-person conversation.”

  “I think it’s because you can’t get enough of me,” I joked.

  He hadn’t yet backed away from me. Leaning even closer, he said, “What would you say if I told you—”

  “What the hell’s going on in here?” Pete demanded from the doorway.

  Ooh. This was going to get ugly.

  Ryder took a step back from me and said nothing, which was a wise choice.

  I said, “Um…Will ‘It’s complicated’ work as an answer to your question?”

  Pete stared at me, anger mixed with complete bafflement all over his face. “No, it absolutely will not.”

  “I’ll go,” Ryder said quietly, waving as he gave Pete a wide berth on his way out the door.

  I never thought I’d see the day Ryder Hamilton backed down from a fight.

  Pete said to me, “Have you lost your damn mind?”

  Rolling my eyes at him, I resumed working on my scones. “Look, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m working with him.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I would tell you if you’d quit freaking out.”

  He raised his hands in surrender.

  I continued, “You know the case that has me going nuts?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it’s escalated, and now the police are involved, specifically Ryder. And I agreed to team up with him rather than do my own thing and duplicate the work.”

  “He’s using you for an investigation again. You realize that, right?”

  “Yes, but he made that very clear from the start, and I’m getting something out of it as well. I’m giving him access to my sources, and in turn he’s giving me police info. Honestly, with Maya gone, I’m happy for the help.”

  Shaking his head, he said, “This is going to end badly, Jules. Like always. And did you even think about how Stafford is going to react?”

  I couldn’t breathe a word about Stafford to Pete, which would be the hardest part. To everyone else, it was going to look like Ryder was coming back and reeling me in again, and I was blindly going along with it and kicking Stafford to the curb in the process.

  Lying through my teeth, I said, “This has nothing to do with Stafford. It’s strictly business between Ryder and me. And…you can’t let Stafford know I’m working with him.”

  “If it really is business, you wouldn’t have to hide it from him.”

  “Yes, I would, because it has to do with me keeping confidentiality for my clients. Be happy I chose to let you in on the truth.” Or a modified version of it, at least.

  His brown eyes pierced mine. “The truth? Don’t forget I saw the two of you when I came in. You can’t tell me that was all business.”

  I turned away from him and slammed the pan of scones into the oven. “It was. End of story.” Wheeling back around to face him, I said, “Why are you here so early, anyway?”

  “I was up early. Couldn’t sleep. And I needed to talk to you in private.”

  Getting out the ingredients for some oatmeal coconut chocolate chip cookies, I said, “Go for it.”

  He fidgeted, playing with the measuring spoons I had out on the work surface. “Um…can you…maybe not be in the building during open mic tonight?”

  “Sure, twist my arm,” I joked. Pete normally did everything in his power to get me to agree to perform at open mic night, but now I had to vacate the premises. “Why? Do I smell bad today?”

  A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “No, I’ve…invited Alexa to hear me sing.”

  I fixed him with a befuddled stare. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’ve already interviewed her and managed to secure an invite to her mom’s party so we have another shot at talking to some of the Leonidas folks. Having her come here tonight seems unnecessary, and more likely dangerous. If she finds out who you really are and realizes you’re poking into her family’s business, I think you’ll see her claws come out. If that happens, you’ll want to be as anonymous as possible. That’s kind of why we went with the fake identities in the first place.”

  He traced a design in the flour covering the table instead of meeting my eyes. “She knows exactly who I am.”

  I moved closer, forcing him to look at me. “Pete, what did you do?”

  Sighing, he said, “She had a boyfriend who died a couple of years ago, and she was devastated by it. We got to talking, and I opened up about Cecilia. The moment I said her name, Alexa figured out who I was. She knew Cecilia from some charity work they’d done together.”

  I fought the urge to physically slap some sense into my best friend. Trying to control the jitters inside me and not allow them to seep into my voice, I said, “Pete, you can’t bring your own baggage into an investigation.”

  He glared at me. “Oh, ri
ght. Because you’ve never done that.”

  “Sure I have. I freely admit it.” In fact, I had a whole trunkful of baggage in my current investigation. “But now I know I can’t allow it to color what I do. While you’re working with people, it has to be game face all the time. Break down afterward if you have to, but you can’t ever let your mark in on anything personal about you.”

  “Not all of us can be fancy badass PIs like you.”

  There was something else going on with him if he was being so crappy with me over this. At this point, I didn’t have the strength or the clearheadedness to try to figure out what it was. “Fine. You won’t see me tonight. I could use some sleep, anyway.”

  He nodded and left the kitchen, not even bothering to say goodbye.

  Chapter 24

  I went through the motions of doing my job, my mind busy trying to unravel the mystery of why Pete had blown his cover to Alexa and what the ramifications of it could be. I couldn’t come up with any kind of positive outcome. I was convinced the killer had to be a Leonidas employee. Whether he or she turned out to be a member of Alexa’s family or not, it would still impact her family’s business, which she undoubtedly cared deeply about.

  After I worried over that for a while, my brain switched to my other investigation and to Stafford. It was killing me to think about how he was throwing his entire life away by getting caught up in this mess. What could have possessed him to do it in the first place? Did Wonderlich have something on him? Was the money too good to pass up? I hadn’t noticed him having any kind of windfall of money lately. In fact, he lived extremely modestly and hated shopping of any kind. Nothing added up, so I forced myself to put it out of my mind, for a little while at least.

  It was difficult to put someone out of your mind when he walked through your front door. At noon, Stafford came in and headed straight for me. My stomach clenched at the sight of him. For one thing, he looked horrible. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of days, and his beard had grown thick, his eyes were ringed with dark circles, and his overall demeanor seemed defeated. The man was a mess, and I hated to see him like this. On the other hand, I was reminded of how pissed at him I was, and it was difficult for me to crush down my rage.