Brew or Die

by Caroline Fardig

  Ryder said, “No, Max. Bad dog,” which made the dog stop what he was doing and sit obediently.

  I sat up and hugged my arms around Max’s neck. “Don’t call my new BFF a bad dog, you meanie.”

  Ryder smiled. “So you’re saying you didn’t mind being violated like that?”

  Max turned his head and planted another sloppy doggy kiss all across my cheek.

  Chuckling, I said, “Not at all. And I don’t believe for a second that this dog is standoffish with new people.”

  He shrugged. “I’m honestly shocked. He’s never done that before with anyone.”

  I gave Max a kiss on top of the head. “I’m not just anyone. Right, Max?”

  Heading for the kitchen, Ryder said, “Lunchtime, Max.”

  Max immediately broke away and followed his master. I noticed he had a limp. I got up and trailed behind them.

  Leaning against the doorframe, I asked, “When did you get him?”

  Pouring some dog food into a dish on the floor, he replied, “A couple of months ago. Max was part of a K-9 unit. His handler was killed on the job, and Max was injured. Normally in that situation, the dog would go to the officer’s family, but he was a single guy with no relatives around here. Max needed a home, and I needed…something.” He reached down and petted Max’s head. “We’re good for each other. Right, buddy?”

  It tore at my heartstrings to hear that story. Ryder was so different now—in a wonderful way. Not that I wanted to get back with him or anything, because I didn’t. But I was happy to see him working through his problems, and it was kind of nice to have him in my life again.

  I got a text from an unknown number. This is Detective Brody Callahan with the MNPD. Please meet me at Java Jive in thirty minutes for your interview.

  I said, “Hey, can you drop me at the coffeehouse? Callahan is ready to talk to me.”

  Disappointment crossed Ryder’s face momentarily, but he pasted on a smile. “Ditching me already, huh? I guess I’ll have to talk to the last few delinquents on our list by myself.”

  “I thought we were off the hook since you came across all that new information.”

  “I still need to find out where the missing drugs went.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  This investigation was so close to being wrapped up, but there was that nagging problem of who had it out for Wonderlich so much that they wanted him dead. I shivered, partly relieved the whole thing was very nearly behind me, but at the same time worried that a number of bad guys were still out there, most likely on edge now that Wonder-Gen was at the center of a homicide investigation. I hoped no one decided to do something stupid as a result.

  When Ryder left me at Java Jive, my neighbor Trevor Wells and his friend Ryan Hart were just walking in the door.

  “Hey, guys. Still enjoying your summer break?” I asked.

  Ryan, who had stayed in town to take a summer term teaching assistant job at Vanderbilt, said, “School isn’t so bad when you only have two classes a day and you’re the teacher.”

  Trevor, on the other hand, had hung around for the hell of it. He was from Nashville, so he didn’t have to “go home” for the summer. Instead of moving his stuff across town only to move it back in the fall, he kept his apartment and split his time between there and his parents’ house. “The hardest thing I have to do today is fix your computer virus. Where’s the patient?”

  I led them back to the office, where Trevor got to work, mumbling a bunch of computer jargon to himself that I didn’t understand. Ryan and I sat on the couch, making small talk about our hometown, Liberty, Indiana, until there was a knock on the door.

  I got up to answer it and found Detective Callahan standing there. Even though I didn’t particularly want to revisit finding Laura’s body, I had to admit the guy wasn’t difficult to look at—he was well built, with sandy hair and piercing blue eyes.

  “Hi, Detective. Long time no see,” I joked. It seemed like forever since I had met with him to rat out Candace Monroe, but it was only earlier this week.

  “Ms. Langley,” he said, nodding. “Do you mind if I eat lunch while we talk this time? I’ve been at the scene since before dawn.”

  “Not a problem. I—”

  “Brody?” Ryan said from across the room. He got up and walked over to the door, hand extended. “It’s been forever, man.”

  Detective Callahan’s face lit up as he shook Ryan’s hand. “Good to see you, Ryan. Still have that pinball machine?”

  “Yeah, and now that I know you’re back in town, I want a rematch.”

  “I take it you two know each other,” I said.

  Ryan grinned. “He used to date my sister. And he took a bullet for her.”

  My jaw dropped. “Wow. So you lived in Liberty, too, then?”

  “Only a short while.” Callahan shook his head, seeming embarrassed. “I’m afraid Ryan’s exaggerating a little. I was only doing my job.”

  Ryan said, “He’s being modest. You should get him to tell you the story. It’s a good one.” To Callahan, he said, “Juliet is from Liberty, too. You probably have some mutual friends.”

  Callahan nodded, slipping into his professional cop mode again. “Right. Well, I hate to be rude, but I need to get back. This should only take a few minutes.” He took a step back and gestured for me to go ahead of him down the hall. He’d already got his food and had a table waiting for us. “Do you want to eat, too?” he asked as we sat down.

  I shook my head. “No, I’m good. Besides, I guess I’m going to be the one doing all the talking.”

  “Sure. Well, if you would, start with finding Laura Farmer.”

  As he dug into his lunch, I repeated what I’d told Cromwell earlier today, trying not to leave out any details.

  When I finished, he said, “I hear you also were able to provide Detective Hamilton with a list of addresses where the boxes with the drugs were delivered. You made my job a lot easier, so thank you for that.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “He said you got them off purchase orders in Wonder-Gen’s files?”

  “Yes. My partner, Maya Huxley, and I were originally investigating Wonder-Gen’s cash flow at the request of co-owner Thomas Gentry. We found a bunch of hard copies of supposedly paid purchase orders with no matching entries or deposits in the computer system—a half-million dollars’ worth, actually. We assumed they were using them to do something illegal, and it looks like they were.”

  He nodded. “And Detective Cromwell has your file on this?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the status of your relationship with John Stafford?”

  I looked down at the table. Every conversation I’d had lately with law enforcement had boiled down to this one question. “Dead. Finished. Totally—”

  “I get it,” he cut in, smiling for the first time since we’d sat down. “I’m the last person who has room to judge you for getting too close to someone involved in your investigation. That’s all I have for now. I wanted to tell you, though, that I appreciate your cooperation in both investigations we’ve spoken about this week.”

  “No problem. I’m sure you’re probably tired of seeing me.”

  “Not at all. I’m always happy to get good intel from a reliable source. Keep it coming.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at the fact that I’d come so far as to be called “a reliable source” by an MNPD police officer.

  —

  After Callahan left, Trevor came out to let me know he got the computer working again. I paid him his usual wage—a ridiculous amount of food—for his technical expertise, and he and Ryan went on their way. I puttered around the kitchen and office for a while, putting in a food order, when Pete came in for a late lunch.

  “Hey,” I said, smiling. “You’ll be happy to know I actually did a little work on Josie’s case last night.”

  “Wow. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about it,” he replied, a hint of reproach in his tone.

  “Ye
ah, yeah. Anyway, I ran background checks on our four suspects.” I handed Pete a file containing the printouts. “They’ve all been in trouble with the law. Candace surprisingly only has one dealing charge, which is brand new.”

  “Thanks to your snitching.”

  “Correct. Xander and his mom both have possession charges, but hers are from the seventies and eighties.”

  Pete nodded. “She must have gotten better at not getting caught. Or bought off a few cops.”

  “And the most interesting one is Kacey…who has a misdemeanor assault charge dating back a couple of months ago.”

  “Who’d she assault?”

  “I don’t know. It’s worth finding out more about it. Could’ve been a little catfight or she could have snapped and tried to beat someone up. I say we start with her social media around that time—see if she mentioned it there. These people can’t seem to keep their private business private. And maybe Shane could ask Hadley if it happened at work. That would help us decide whether or not it’s relevant to the case.”

  “I’ll take care of that, since you’re so busy and you hate talking to Shane.”

  I made a face at him.

  He chuckled. “Oh, and clear your calendar for tomorrow night, seven o’clock. You’re on the waitstaff for Ophelia Leonidas’s birthday party.”

  I stared at him. “Come again?”

  “Cecilia made it happen.”

  Cecilia? “From beyond the grave?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “What?”

  “You said Cecilia when I assume you meant Alexa.”

  “No I didn’t,” he muttered, evidently unwilling to admit his Freudian mistake. “Anyway, now we can snoop around some more of the Leonidas employees together.”

  I hated to seem ungrateful for the opportunity Pete had wrangled for us, but I was pretty snooped out at this point. And there was something that bothered me about the situation. “How did you manage to talk Alexa into it?”

  Avoiding my eyes, he said, “I told her who you were…and what we were doing.”

  Stunned by his outright stupidity, I hopped up and yelled, “What? Are you crazy? You had no right to do that, Pete!”

  “I don’t want to lie to her.”

  “What if she goes and tells her brother or her mother? What then? They are dangerous people, Pete. People I’ve made enemies of.” I sat back down and put my head in my hands.

  “Alexa is on our side. She knew Josie and doesn’t think she would have taken drugs willingly, either. She wants to find out who killed her.”

  “Did you ever stop to consider the fact that Alexa is a suspect?”

  His eyes darkened. “No, she’s not.”

  I looked at him suspiciously. “Have you guys had sex? Because it quite frankly sounds like she’s leading you around by your—”

  “Stop it, Jules.”

  “Stop what? Pointing out that you’re putting both of us in danger because, what—you can’t say no to another rich, beautiful socialite? I thought you dating Cecilia was a fluke, but it looks like you’re developing a type.”

  Instead of getting angry, he seemed be getting sad. He didn’t respond.

  I took a deep breath and made my voice gentler. “Pete, are you afraid to be alone?”

  He cleared his throat. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because you’re not over Cecilia.”

  “I like Alexa.”

  “Because she reminds you of Cecilia.”

  “No, she doesn’t. Wait…” His eyes got wide. “Oh…shit. She does. Jules, am I going bonkers, here?”

  I went over to him and put my hands on his shoulders. “No, but it wouldn’t be the worst idea to start seeing your therapist again. Not because I think you’re bonkers, but because you need a better way to manage your grief than through serial dating. Who knows? Maybe you need to be single for a while. I think I’m going to try it. It certainly can’t hurt anything, that’s for sure.”

  Pete frowned. “Now what do I do with the two nice women I’ve unwittingly sucked into my problems?”

  “Come clean like you did with me.”

  “You kind of forced it out of me.”

  I smiled. “Someone has to do the dirty work around here. But trust me, they’ll understand. They may not like it, but they’ll understand.”

  Hanging his head, he said, “Then I have some visits to make.”

  —

  After Pete left, I helped out at the counter. I tried to put Wonder-Gen, Josie’s murder, and Pete’s problems out of my mind and allow the mind-numbing repetitiveness of food service to calm me, but when Ryder burst in the front door, all bets were off.

  I hurried around the counter to meet him, and he put his hand on the small of my back and pushed me all the way out the front door before saying a word. His face dead serious, he turned to face me and said, “I’m about to blow the lid off this case, and I want you there when it happens.”

  Chapter 30

  “What is it?” I asked, excited and a bit apprehensive as we got in his car and tore away from the curb.

  “I kept going with our list of delinquents. One of them told me he overheard Three Pants and one of his buddies talking at work about how their friendly neighborhood drug dealer dropped dead a few weeks ago.”

  I wasn’t following. “So?”

  “So his cause of death was fentanyl toxicity. He was found with two hundred grams of a heroin-fentanyl mix on his person. Now, nobody thought much about it until today when we found identically packaged drugs in the unopened Wonder-Gen box at one of your PO addresses. And don’t forget Dmitri Vashchenko was beat up right around that time for supposedly stealing drugs from Wonderlich.”

  Now I got it. “Ooh, so you think Three Pants may be our drug thief who’s been letting Dmitri take the blame.”

  Ryder glanced over at me. “Wouldn’t put it past him. Would you?”

  “No. He’s a weasel.” I noticed we were driving in the opposite direction from Three Pants’s house. “Are we not going back to talk to him?”

  “I want to squeeze all I can out of his friend and then come at him with everything we’ve got.”

  —

  Three Pants’s friend, Cal DiMarco, wasn’t home, but his very helpful (very drooling over Ryder) girlfriend was happy to tell us he’d gone to the gym. She said we could easily find him there, unless Ryder would want to come in and hang with her until Cal got back. I was not part of her invitation.

  After Ryder politely declined her offer, we went to Cal’s run-down gym. Ryder badged us in and with his charm and good looks managed to talk the grumpy receptionist into taking us straight to Cal, who was bench-pressing a ridiculous amount of weights without a spotter in an empty room. Cal had to be a juicehead. I liked muscly men as much as the next girl, but this dude bordered on cartoonish.

  Ryder said, “Cal DiMarco, I’m Detective Hamilton with the MNPD, and this is my partner, Ms. Langley. We need to speak with you about your friend Josh Cleary.”

  Cal glanced up at us but didn’t stop pumping iron. “I’m busy.”

  Ryder replied, “So are we, so we’re going to get right to the point.”

  When Cal brought the barbell down toward his chest, Ryder put both of his hands on the bar and pressed down, pinning Cal beneath the weight. Cal’s eyes got huge, and he started to grunt and sputter.

  I rolled my eyes. “Seriously? You’re like some bad TV cop.”

  Unfazed, Ryder said, “I’ve talked to idiots all day, and I don’t have the patience left for this shit. He’s going to talk now.”

  I stared at Cal’s beet-red face as he struggled to push up the weight and Ryder’s added pressure. “Not if he passes out, he’s not.”

  Cal gasped, “I’ll talk…I’ll talk.”

  Grinning at me as he helped Cal lift the barbell safely onto the bar holder, Ryder said, “See how fast that was?”

  I shook my head. “Cal, Three—um, I mean Josh, talked to you about his drug dealer dying earlier this month. Can y
ou tell us as much as you remember from that conversation?”

  Rubbing his chest where the barbell had been pinned against him, he said, “I don’t want to snitch on my friend.”

  Ryder said, “Would you rather go to jail for obstruction? Your PO might not like that.”

  Cal swallowed. “Don’t call my parole officer. But…can you not tell Josh I was the one who talked?”

  Nodding, Ryder said, “We’ll do what we can to keep your name out of it.”

  Cal said, “First of all, Josh’s dealer is—was an idiot stoner who only dealt weed, mainly to feed his own habit. He was too stupid to be cautious of a package of powder someone brought to him out of the blue.”

  “So Josh was the one who brought it to him?” I asked.

  “Sort of. Josh got a meeting between his dealer and his dad. His dad found the stuff and wanted to know what it was and how much it was worth. The dumbass dealer tore open one of the bags and got some powder out, then stuck it in his mouth. Josh said he started gasping for air and then dropped.” That sounded like the dealer Candace Monroe had told me about. Small world.

  Ryder said, “Wait. Who’s Josh’s dad?”

  “Our boss. Mr. Gentry.”

  Ryder and I gaped at each other in horror.

  —

  At a nerve-wracking meeting with Cromwell, Ryder, and their captain, I had to give the equivalent of a formal dissertation on what all Maya and I had done in the way of investigating and hand over every last scrap of our findings on the Wonder-Gen case. The captain actually offered to let me watch Ryder and Cromwell interrogate Thomas Gentry from the next room. Needless to say, I was euphoric over being included like that.

  Once Cal had spilled the beans about Gentry and the drugs, the police started digging through Gentry’s life. Josh Cleary was his son by his former mistress. Gentry only found out about the kid a few years ago and was now trying to make up for lost time. In regard to the case, they found that Gentry had been the one who’d not only tipped off Dmitri that he needed to get out of town, but that he’d also paid for a hotel room for Dmitri and his family in Chattanooga. Ryder assumed Gentry must have felt bad about Dmitri taking the blame for his theft. Regardless, Dmitri was going to be in some hot water for omitting that little nugget when Ryder had questioned him.