A Toast to Murder

by Allyson K. Abbott

  Clay must have heard or seen me approaching—not hard to do since my crutches tend to make me a noisy walker—and he hollered for me to come in as soon as I reached the front door. I reached down, turned the knob, and entered.

  The front door opened directly into a carpeted living room, though there was a small rectangle of vinyl flooring just inside the door that served as sort of a foyer. There was a coat rack to my right, but I ignored it. Until I knew what was going on, I wanted to keep my coat and be prepared to make a quick getaway, though speed of any sort would be hard to come by in my current condition.

  Along the wall to my right beyond the coatrack was a couch. Clay was sitting at one end of it, an afghan covering his lap and legs. There were also two chairs in the room, one perpendicular to each end of the couch, both of them occupied. On the wall across from the sofa was a fireplace with a TV mounted above it. There was a fire going, a warm, crackling respite from the cold outside. A large, dented washtub filled with chopped wood sat on the hearth, and it made me wonder if Clay had started the fire when he got home from the hospital or if someone had done it for him. I realized then that I didn’t know anything about Clay’s personal life. Was he married? Did he have kids? A girlfriend? A roommate?

  The two men occupying the chairs in the room didn’t look like family or, for that matter, friends. Both of them appeared to be in their late forties or early fifties, and both had hard, stern expressions on their faces and stiff, rigid posturing. They were wearing business attire: suits, ties, button-down shirts, and dress shoes.

  “Mack, take your coat off and have a seat,” Clay said, patting the couch next to him. “I apologize for not getting up to greet you, but I’m still pretty slow when it comes to moving around.”

  I ignored his request to remove my coat, but I did move farther into the room. Rather than join Clay on the couch, however, I stopped and stood a few feet in front of the fireplace, facing the three men. I stared at the two older ones, shifting my focus from one to the other. The man in the chair to my left looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him right away. My nerves were triggering a host of distracting synesthetic reactions. The man to my right struck no tone of recognition at all.

  No one said a word for an interminable amount of time, and I found the silence unnerving. Of course, it wasn’t totally silent. There were several synesthetic sounds I experienced that were triggered by the men’s colognes or aftershaves. There was also a faint astringent or antiseptic scent I picked up on, and I wasn’t sure if it was a synesthetic reaction or a real smell emanating from Clay.

  “What is this about, Clay?” I said finally, settling my gaze on him.

  Clay smiled and shook his head slightly, no doubt amused by my refusal to follow his instructions. “It’s about collaboration,” he said. “But first let me make some introductions.” He pointed to his right—my left—and said, “This is Mark Holland, the chief of police here in Milwaukee.”

  Of course. As soon as Clay said the name, the memory came back to me. Holland’s face had been all over the news for several weeks now in conjunction with the uproar surrounding the cases I and the Capone Club had solved. I’d steadfastly avoided watching any of the news, but since it was often on the bar TVs, I’d caught glimpses here and there. Mark Holland was the man who’d threatened Duncan with the loss of his job if he continued to work with me.

  “And to my left,” Clay went on, “is Anthony Dixon, Milwaukee’s chief DA.”

  The second man’s face might not have been familiar, but the name was. He was in the news all the time, not only because of crime stories and issues, but because Dixon had been shortlisted as one of the next gubernatorial candidates.

  “Gentlemen, this is Mackenzie Dalton, otherwise known as Mack.”

  I knew neither of these men were fans of mine, and I feared Clay had set me up for an ambush. I shot him an irritated look.

  “Don’t be angry,” Clay said with a tentative smile. “Hear me out first. I did a little campaigning for you while I was in the hospital, and these two gentlemen would like to chat with you about what you’ve done, how you did it, and where we go from here.”

  “I’m not interested,” I said. I shifted my crutches and started for the door.

  “I think you will be,” Clay said quickly. Then his voice turned pleading. “Please, Mack, just hear what they have to say before you go running out. I think you’ll find that when all is said and done, your life will be a whole lot less complicated.”

  “Ironic, coming from you,” I said, giving Clay awry look, “since you’re responsible for a lot of my current complications.” One other complication, the one with Courtney and Duncan, tried to rear its ugly head, but I shoved it back down.

  “I know,” Clay said. “And I’m sorry about that.”

  “Are you?” I asked, pinning him with my gaze. Based on the taste of his voice, that apology was less than sincere.

  Clay looked abashed. “Right, I forgot you can tell when you’re getting a load of horse crap.” He sighed. “So, okay, I’m not particularly sorry for outing you in my articles, but when you hear what these gentlemen have in mind, I think you’ll see no real harm has been done.”

  He couldn’t be more wrong about that, but I couldn’t tell him about the letter writer.

  I looked over at Holland. “You’ve made it quite clear that you don’t approve of me, my abilities, or what I’ve done with them lately. I didn’t do it to try to make anyone look bad or to cause anyone—”

  “Ms. Dalton, please,” Holland interrupted loudly, holding his hand out toward me like a cop trying to stop traffic. His voice filled my mouth with the flavor of coconut. I stopped talking, and he flashed me a grateful smile. “You don’t need to explain yourself to me, at least not in that regard, and you are wrong about my attitude toward you and your . . . um, abilities. I wasn’t a fan in the beginning—that’s true enough—but I’ve changed my way of thinking. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a little skeptical, but I’ve had a chat or two with Detective Albright about you, and now I’ve spoken to Clay here as well. And both of these men are people I hold in high regard. When they speak, I listen.”

  I recalled then how Duncan had told me a few days ago about a discussion he’d had with Holland about me, and how the man was more open-minded than he had been initially. My thoughts whirled with dozens of things to say, but I kept my mouth shut and waited.

  “Your work, you and this group of yours,” he went on, pausing to clear his throat and shifting his gaze from me to the floor, “you did a phenomenal job with the Ben Middleton case. You have managed to free a man who was wrongly convicted.”

  “Ben Middleton is free?” I asked.

  Holland looked up at me. “He will be,” he answered with a smile. “It’s not something that happens overnight. There are rules and steps to be taken, and paperwork, of course.” He rolled his eyes. “Always the paperwork. But Ben Middleton will be freed and exonerated.”

  “We have already informed him of the process,” Dixon said, speaking for the first time. His voice was strong but mellifluous, and it tasted like melted butter. It and his chiseled good looks would serve him well on the campaign trail if he opted to take that route. “Of course, while this outcome is a very good one for Mr. Middleton, it is a definite black mark for my office,” Dixon went on. “We screwed up and screwed up bad. Depending on who you listen to, we’re either a bunch of dumb hicks with our heads so far up our asses we don’t have a clue what we’re doing, or we’re a cabal of puppeteering masterminds with a future plan to dominate the world.” He paused and let out a mirthless chuckle. “Sometimes you can’t win no matter what you do or how hard you try,” he said. “And that’s a bitter pill to swallow.”

  “It wasn’t my intent to make anyone look bad,” I said again. “All I’m interested in is seeing that justice is served . . . correctly.”

  “And that’s all we’re interested in, as well,” Holland said. “But when the three Ps get involved—the p
ress, the public, and politics—it can be difficult at times to get the job done at all, much less done right. These are hard times for police all across the country, what with all these cop-related shootings, and stories about cops going bad or using unnecessary force. It’s always been a risky job, but the risk factor is definitely amped up of late.” He paused, wincing slightly. “I don’t want to add to that on a local level.”

  I looked over at Dixon, who was leaning forward, watching me intently, his hands laced together, elbows on his knees. “You want me to stop what I’m doing, don’t you?” I said to him. “That’s why you’re here, right?”

  Dixon shook his head. “Quite the contrary,” he said. “We’re here to talk about teaming up with you. We want you to work for us.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but before I could get a word out, Holland corrected Dixon by saying, “With us. We want you to work with us.”

  I looked at Holland, my eyes narrowing. “And what, exactly, does that mean?”

  “It means we want to bring you on board as a consultant. What you’ve managed to accomplish so far on your own speaks to the ability you have. Clay assures me you have a talent we can make use of, one that might help us prevent any more mistakes like the ones made with Ben Middleton.”

  This made Dixon shift uncomfortably in his seat.

  “We would pay you, of course,” Holland went on. “The terms can be ironed out later.” He paused and leaned back in his seat. “But we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. First, we would like to see this ability in practice. Clay said you can demonstrate it for us.”

  I sighed and gave Clay a perturbed look. I was starting to feel like a circus freak show.

  “We discussed having you test them the same way you tested me,” Clay said. “You know, have them make three statements, one of which is false, and you tell them which ones are which. I prepped them ahead of time and had them think of some obscure things to use in these statements, things that wouldn’t be found in a Google or other online search. And at their insistence, I also didn’t tell you who was going to be here to make sure you couldn’t do any research ahead of time.”

  “Clay swears you are something of a human lie detector,” Holland said. “He says you can hear subtle changes in people’s voices.”

  I looked at him and gave him a wan smile. “I do have the ability to tell when most people are lying,” I said. “But it’s not what I hear as much as what I taste or see in their voice.” Holland’s brow furrowed, and off on my periphery, I saw Dixon shift in his seat again. “And it doesn’t work with everyone,” I went on. “The exceptions are rare, but they’re out there.”

  “Okay then,” Dixon said. He ran his hands over his thighs. “Let’s start, shall we? Clay said we were to come up with three statements, but I think those odds are a little too easy, and I’d like to give you five statements instead.”

  There was a definite tone of skepticism in his voice that made the buttery taste saltier. It made me wonder if he was here voluntarily or because someone else, someone higher up, made him come.

  “Suit yourself,” I said.

  “Okay.” He reached into his pocket and took out a sheet of paper that he then unfolded. “I wrote them down,” he said, holding the paper up, “so I wouldn’t forget them. Ready?”

  I nodded, and he began to read, in a slow, mechanical voice devoid of emotion that made me think he was trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible in an effort to trip me up.

  “The first girl I ever kissed was named Carla,” he began. “I had a paddle ball when I was a child, and I once hit the ball two hundred and two times in a row before I missed one. My favorite color is yellow. I slept with a teddy bear until I was thirteen years old. I burned a house down when I was five years old.”

  The taste of his voice didn’t change during this recitation. Either everything he was telling me was true, or he was one of those people I couldn’t read. Then another idea occurred to me.

  “I don’t know if reading the statements like that works the same way as simply stating them,” I told him. “I’m not picking up on any significant differences between them.”

  Dixon shot Clay an I-told-you-so look.

  “May I see the paper you wrote them on?” I asked him.

  He considered this a moment and then handed me the paper. I eyed the statements he had written down, examining each one closely. He had written them on basic unlined paper, the same generic type of paper you could find in thousands of copiers and printers—and ironically, the same type of paper the letter writer used—using a basic blue ink pen. Each statement was written on its own line, and there was a slight downward slant to the sentences. I blurred the words and focused instead on the individual strokes Dixon had made in writing the sentences down. As I did so, I began to detect subtle differences here and there, clues that eventually spoke to me clearer than his voice had.

  When I looked up I saw that everyone’s eyes were on me. I smiled at Dixon and shook my head. “You men . . . you don’t like to follow the rules, do you?” Dixon raised his eyebrows at me, challenging me. “Clay pulled the same thing on me,” I went on. “You were supposed to give me only one false statement, but you’ve given me two.”

  Dixon flashed a tentative smile, his brow furrowing.

  “You must have been quite the wizard with a paddle ball,” I said to him. “Yellow is an unusual favorite color for a man, by the way, so you stand out in that regard. And I’m dying to hear the story about the house you burned down. I don’t know the name of the first girl you ever kissed, but I know it wasn’t Carla. And you didn’t sleep with a teddy bear up until age thirteen, although . . .” I glanced back at that particular statement on the paper. “I think you did sleep with a teddy bear for several years, just not thirteen of them.”

  Dixon raised his eyebrows again, this time with astonishment. A blush crept over his cheeks, and I wasn’t sure if it was my success in interpreting his statements or the mention of him sleeping with a teddy bear for several years that caused it.

  “Wow,” Dixon said with a grudging smile. “You are absolutely right. How did you know?”

  “Normally, I pick up on subtle changes in a person’s voice, but with you I didn’t detect any. I think it was because you were reading them off the paper. It’s like reading a book. Your mind processes the words, but it doesn’t perceive the words you’re speaking as statements about you. That’s why I asked to look at your paper. Your handwriting gave it away. When you wrote those statements down, they were about you, and whenever you wrote down an untruth your hand altered the writing.” I turned the paper around so he could see it and pointed to the statement about the first girl he kissed. “If I look at this sentence, I can see that the name Carla smells different than the rest of the words.”

  Dixon arched a brow at me. “It smells different,” he repeated, deadpan.

  I nodded. “It smells peppery, whereas the other words smell buttery.”

  Dixon rolled his eyes.

  “Am I wrong about the name Carla?” I asked him.

  “No,” he admitted grudgingly.

  I moved on. “In the line about the teddy bear, everything smells buttery until I look at the word thirteen. It, too, smells peppery. If the whole sentence smelled peppery, I’d think you never slept with a teddy bear at all, but only the word thirteen smells different. So my assumption is that you did sleep with one, just not until the age of thirteen.”

  “You burned down a house?” Holland said to Dixon, a complete non sequitur.

  Dixon shot him an exasperated look. “For the record, I was only five at the time, and the place was vacant and run-down. I and two other kids were playing with matches on the back porch, trying to get warm. It was a windy day and before we knew it, the fire had spread across the floor and started climbing up a wall. We tried to put it out, and when we couldn’t, we ran.”

  “And the teddy bear?” Clay asked, sounding and looking amused. “What’s the truth there?
Did you sleep with it until you were twenty-one?”

  Holland and Dixon both chuckled.

  “I slept with it well into grade school,” Dixon admitted with a frown. “Fourth grade, I think. Then one night my father came into my room, took it away, and told me it was time to grow up and be a man.” Dixon paused, gazing off into the past, his expression bittersweet. After a few seconds, he shook it off and returned to the present. “I cried myself to sleep for weeks after that,” he told us. “Eventually, I learned to sleep without it. I don’t know what my father did with it, but I never saw that teddy bear again.”

  “Okay, my turn,” Holland said, rubbing his hands together. He looked both intrigued and excited. “Are you ready, Ms. Dalton?”

  Resigned to my freak-show status, I said, “Sure.”

  “Okay, I’m going to give you four statements, and I promise only one will be false. And I won’t read them because I didn’t write them down.” He kept rubbing his hands together like an excited kid. “Here we go. My first pet was a turtle named Twinkie. My first love was a girl named DeeAnn. I used to steal candy bars from the local convenience mart near my house. And I like to read romance novels.”

  Dixon snorted. “Hell, Holland, could you make it any easier for her? Romance novels?” he said with a huff of dismissive amusement. “That’s a good one.”

  “It’s true,” I said.

  Dixon’s smirk faded, but it went out slowly, like the glow from a firefly when it hits your windshield.

  “It’s also true that he stole those candy bars,” I went on. “And his first love really was a girl named DeeAnn. But there was no turtle named Twinkie.”

  Dixon looked over at Holland, who shrugged and smiled grudgingly. “She’s right,” he said. “That’s a nifty little trick you do, Ms. Dalton.”