An Ale of Two Cities

by Sarah Fox

  Grayson matched my strides easily. “He could show up there anytime. You don’t know how long he’ll stay at the park. Maybe he’s already on his way home.”

  I hesitated.

  Grayson stepped in front of me, blocking my path. “Leo works at the Lockwood Creamery. I think he has an early shift.”

  I considered that. “So first thing in the morning would be safer.”

  “Going to the police would be safer.”

  “What can they do? We overheard a snippet of one side of a conversation. Is that really enough to get a warrant to search his place?”

  “Unlikely.”

  I slipped past him and continued on down the road.

  “Sadie.”

  I spun around, getting tired of his attempts to dissuade me from investigating.

  “I’ll pick you up at four-thirty.”

  “I thought you weren’t interested in being my sidekick,” I said, remembering a conversation we’d had back in the fall.

  A muscle in his jaw twitched. “How about we do this as equal partners?”

  I considered the idea. “I can live with that.”

  “Four-thirty then.”

  I crossed the road and made my way over the footbridge. When I glanced back at the street before unlocking the Inkwell’s front door, I saw Grayson still standing by the snowbank, watching me.

  I waved to him and then hurried through the door, locking up behind me.

  As much as I wanted to find out right away what Leo was hiding, I knew Grayson’s plan was the smart one.

  Hopefully by daybreak we’d know Leo’s secret.

  * * *

  When my alarm went off at the unearthly hour of four o’clock the next morning, I couldn’t help but question my sanity. I wasn’t a morning person, but I could handle waking up early on occasion. Maybe not without a lot of yawning and some good strong coffee, but I could do it.

  This, however, was pushing it. Even Wimsey was still sound asleep, thoughts of breakfast not yet entering his mind. He cracked open one eye as I threw back the covers and swung my feet over the side of the bed. Then he went right back to snoozing.

  I desperately wanted to do the same, especially when my bare feet hit the cold floorboards. With great longing, my gaze drifted back toward my pillow. I almost gave in to the temptation to snuggle back under the covers. The only thing that got me moving off the bed and into the bathroom was my curiosity.

  I really, really wanted to know what Leo didn’t want the police to find.

  When I apprehensively ventured out the Inkwell’s front door into the darkness and frigid cold, I was relieved to see Grayson’s vehicle already by the curb, the engine running. I scurried across the footbridge and climbed into his black sports car as quickly as I could, eager to shut the door on the frosty air.

  “Morning,” I managed to say before I clapped a hand over my mouth to cover up a big yawn.

  Grayson eyed the backpack I was stashing by my feet. “I thought we were going down the road to Leo Mancini’s place, not on a vacation to the Caribbean.”

  I tucked a thermos of coffee into one of the cup holders in the center console. “I figured we’d need snacks and binoculars. I also brought a flashlight and a camera with a much better zoom than my phone. If we’re going on a stakeout, we need to do it right.” I secured my seat belt with a snap. “Besides, I couldn’t go on a Caribbean vacation with one tiny backpack.” I nudged the bag with my foot. “There’s no way I could fit all my swimsuits, sundresses, flip-flops, and reading material in this little thing.”

  Grayson put the car into gear and set off along the dark road.

  “Not that I’m an overpacker,” I said quickly. “Just a . . . sufficient packer.”

  He flicked his gaze my way but said nothing.

  Why had I felt the need to tell him that? It wasn’t like we were ever going on vacation together.

  I sank deeper into my seat and kept quiet as we drove along. Outside the center of town, there were no streetlights, so the road was shrouded in thick darkness. I couldn’t see anything other than what showed up in the beams of the car’s headlights. I spotted a mailbox at the side of a driveway, but otherwise it seemed like there were only trees on either side of the road.

  The car’s headlights illuminated a sharp turn up ahead. I gripped the edge of my seat, only relaxing my fingers once we were safely around the bend.

  “You’ve got winter tires on this thing, right?”

  “Of course.” He shot a brief glance my way. “You can relax. I’m a good driver.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” I said.

  I thought I saw his eyebrows go up a fraction of an inch, but it was hard to tell for sure in the darkness.

  I fell silent again, staying that way for nearly five minutes.

  When the headlights illuminated a driveway with metal numbers attached to a wooden post, I sat up straighter.

  “You missed Leo’s driveway,” I said as we continued along the curving, unlit road.

  Grayson slowed down. At first I thought he was going to turn around, but instead he took a left onto an unpaved road that disappeared between a mixture of bare-limbed trees and evergreens.

  “This road curves around the back of Leo’s property,” he said, just as I was about to ask him what he was doing. “He’d likely notice us if we drove right up to his front door. This way we can check things out more covertly.”

  “Good plan,” I said.

  Grayson drove slowly, the car bumping and jostling as he navigated the uneven surface. The road curved around to the left and he pulled to a stop when a gap through the trees gave us a view of a snow-covered acreage.

  Grayson cut the headlights, but not the engine. I was glad of that. The inside of the car was only just getting comfortably warm.

  Once he’d engaged the parking brake, Grayson leaned my way and reached one arm into the backseat. His face came within inches of mine. My heart flip-flopped, but then he was back on his side of the car, hopefully unaware of the effect he’d had on me.

  I peered at the shadowy object he was holding. “You brought binoculars too?”

  He put them to his eyes, training them on the dark shapes of buildings in the distance. “I’m betting these will be more useful than yours.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked, feeling oddly defensive of the ones I’d brought.

  “I’m guessing yours aren’t night-vision binoculars.”

  “You have night-vision binoculars?” I couldn’t keep a note of awe out of my voice.

  Grayson handed them over to me. I lifted them to my eyes and scanned Leo’s property. It was cool to be able to see so much despite the darkness. In the distance was a small two-story house, all of its windows currently dark. Near the house were a small shed and what I guessed was a detached garage. Closer to us was a larger outbuilding, no visible clues as to its use. At the moment, nothing stirred on the property.

  “These are amazing,” I said as I handed the binoculars back to Grayson. Suspicion overtook my enthusiasm. “Why do you have them?”

  “One of the tools of the trade.”

  I watched him skeptically through the darkness. “Why does a craft brewer need night-vision binoculars?”

  “Tools of my previous trade,” he clarified.

  “Which was?” Before he had a chance to respond, I asked another question. “A less-than-honest trade?”

  I’d heard rumors that he had a criminal past, but when I’d asked him about it back in the fall, he’d laughed and walked away without explanation. My curiosity had remained unsatisfied ever since.

  One of the second-story windows of Leo’s house lit up.

  “Looks like he’s awake,” Grayson said.

  “You’ve never given me a straight answer,” I said, my attention split between him and the house. “Are you a criminal?”

  “If you even suspect that’s a possibility, you shouldn’t be sitting in a car with me on a dark and lonely road.”

 
; “A reformed criminal, I should have said. I don’t believe you’re one now.”

  “That makes a change.”

  I knew he was referring to the time when I’d suspected him of murder and arson.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” I pointed out.

  He kept his eyes on Leo’s house while I studied his shadowed profile.

  “I’m not a criminal,” he said at last.

  I couldn’t leave it at that. “Have you ever been?”

  He faltered—just slightly—before responding, “No.”

  “You hesitated.”

  “I’ve never been arrested.” He raised the binoculars to his eyes.

  “But you’ve broken the law,” I said, interpreting what he’d left out.

  “Haven’t you?”

  “Of course not.” I reconsidered my answer. “Well . . .”

  He lowered the binoculars and focused his gaze on me. The corners of his mouth twitched. “Confession time.”

  I heard a definite note of humor in his voice.

  “Technically, I suppose I stole a gobstopper from a candy store. But it’s not like they could have sold it anyway,” I hurried to add, “because I found it on the floor.”

  “You ate a gobstopper you found on the floor of a store?” he asked with a strange mixture of amazement and disgust.

  “I was six!” I defended myself. “Of course I wouldn’t do that now.”

  “Really?”

  I punched him lightly in the arm. “You’re trying to distract me, but it’s not working. It’s your turn to confess.”

  “All right.” The amusement had disappeared from his voice. “But this stays between you and me.”

  Despite the rumors I’d heard about him, I wasn’t expecting what he said next.

  “I was involved in the drug trade.”

  Chapter 20

  I gaped at Grayson in the darkness. “Dealing drugs? Smuggling?” I had trouble believing either could be possible. A few months ago, maybe, but not now.

  “Nothing so nefarious,” he said, to my relief. “The Chicago neighborhood I grew up in wasn’t the worst, but it also wasn’t anywhere close to the best. When I was twelve, I got recruited by some older kids. Sometimes I delivered packages, other times I acted as a lookout.”

  “Did you know what you were doing? What they were doing?”

  “Sure. I wasn’t completely naive at that age. What I didn’t understand back then was the devastating effect of drugs on people’s lives, on the community. To me it was an easy way to earn some money and get attention from the older kids.”

  “But you never got caught?”

  “Not by the cops. My mom got wind of what I was doing through the neighborhood grapevine and whisked us both off to Syracuse to live with my grandmother.” He trained the binoculars on Leo’s house. “Best thing she could have done for me.”

  “Was she a single mother?”

  Grayson lowered the binoculars and nodded. “So was my grandmother. The two strongest women I’ve ever known.”

  He shut off the car’s engine. It was toasty warm inside, so we’d probably be okay for a while without the heater on.

  I picked up the thermos of coffee and unscrewed the lid. “So that’s why there’s a rumor that you have a criminal past?”

  “It can’t be. No one in this town but me and Jason knew about that until now.”

  I felt a flicker of warmth in my chest from the knowledge that he’d confided in me. “So how did the rumor start then?”

  “I could make a guess.”

  I poured coffee into the mug that was nestled into the lid of the thermos. “Want some?”

  He accepted the steaming drink. “Thanks.” He took a sip before saying anything further. “I was taken home by a police officer once when I was fourteen. I was friends with Jason by then and he’s never let me live it down. Someone probably overheard him teasing me about it one day. He likes to make it sound worse than it was.”

  “You’ve known Jason a long time then.”

  “Twenty years.”

  I tried to picture the two men as gangly teenagers, but somehow couldn’t quite manage it.

  “So why did the police officer take you home?” I asked, determined to get the whole story out of him.

  One side of Grayson’s mouth angled up in a grin. “I was playing street hockey with Jason and some other friends when I accidentally shot a puck right through Old Man McGregor’s front window.”

  “I’m guessing he was no Mr. Rogers.”

  “Not even close. He made your standard grumpy old man seem like a happy-go-lucky angel. And I made the shot just as a police car was cruising down the street.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “Old Man McGregor would have liked to tar and feather me right there on his front lawn, so I was actually lucky the officer was there to step in. My mom paid for the damage to the window and I spent the rest of the summer mowing lawns to earn enough money to pay her back.”

  “And that’s the extent of your criminal history?”

  “That’s it. Nothing quite as gross as eating a gobstopper stolen off a sticky, dirty floor where hundreds of feet had tramped.”

  “I was six!”

  He laughed and I busied myself with pouring another cup of coffee, trying to ignore the way the sound of his laughter set off a flutter of butterfly wings in my stomach.

  I checked the time on my phone as I sipped at my coffee. It was well after five now. The second-story light in Leo’s house had switched off a few minutes earlier. A downstairs window had lit up seconds later, but no one had emerged from the house. We couldn’t see the front door from our vantage point, but the detached garage was within view. Leo wouldn’t be able to get to his vehicle without us seeing him, and the Lockwood Creamery was too far away for him to go to work on foot.

  “Shouldn’t he have left by now?” I asked.

  Grayson glanced at his phone. “I thought he’d be gone by five.”

  “Don’t tell me he’s taking the day off.” I didn’t like to think that I might have robbed myself of several hours of sleep for nothing.

  “Maybe he’ll leave soon,” Grayson said.

  “Hopefully.” I took a sip of coffee as I sifted back through everything we’d talked about. “What trade?”

  Grayson was about to take a drink of his own coffee but stopped. “Sorry?”

  “You said the night-vision binoculars were a tool of your former trade,” I reminded him.

  He swallowed a sip of coffee and set the cup down on the center console. “I was a private investigator before I took up brewing beer.”

  “Really?”

  That intrigued me to no end, but before I could ask him anything more about his previous profession, my phone rang.

  “It’s my mom,” I said apologetically, once I’d checked the device.

  My mother was of the view that any minute spent sleeping after five o’clock was a minute wasted. She often called me early with the intention of leaving a voice mail, knowing I’d still be asleep. She hated texting and refused to have any part of it, so she always called when she wanted to talk to me.

  I hesitated, wondering if I should let the call go to voice mail.

  “It’s all right,” Grayson said. “Go ahead and answer.”

  I did so, but not without a hint of apprehension. My mom was most likely calling because she wasn’t pleased with my holiday plans. She’d already let me know that during previous calls.

  “Morning, Mom,” I said into my phone.

  “Sadie, you’re awake?”

  I couldn’t blame her for sounding so shocked. I didn’t usually answer my phone before nine in the morning.

  “I’m up early today,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t ask me why.

  “Have you changed your mind about coming to Michael’s for Christmas?”

  “No,” I said, wishing she hadn’t asked me that either. I repeated the explanation I’d given her at least twice already. “I’m only
closing the Inkwell for one day, so it’s really not possible.”

  “I don’t see why you can’t close the place for a few more days. Christmas is a time to be spent with family, not in some drinking establishment.”

  “Mom, it’s my business, not some rowdy dive bar.”

  I glanced Grayson’s way and caught a hint of a smile on his face as he watched Leo’s house.

  My mom let out a long-suffering sigh on the other end of the line. Her disapproval of the course I’d recently set for my life wasn’t anything new. If she had things her way, I’d be living in Knoxville, working as a lawyer like Michael. The mere thought made me want to cringe. I wasn’t lawyer material.

  I was steeling myself for another one of my mom’s lectures about how foolish I’d been to buy a pub, so I was immensely relieved when she changed the subject.

  “Taylor came by for dinner yesterday. Did you know he’s off to Costa Rica later this month?”

  “Yes, he told me.”

  There was still a note of disapproval in her voice. She definitely didn’t think Christmas was a time to be going on vacation away from family.

  “Did you also know that he got another tattoo? Why does he keep doing that to himself?”

  I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes heavenward. “He’s a tattoo artist, Mom. Of course he has tattoos.”

  “He’s ruining his skin!”

  “It’s art, Mom. A form of self-expression.” I could picture the frown on her face.

  “Sadie, please tell me you haven’t allowed him to carve up your skin.”

  “Of course I haven’t,” I said quickly. “If I let him give me a tattoo, he’d probably do something ridiculous so he could laugh about it for the rest of his life.”

  This time when I glanced Grayson’s way, he was definitely grinning.

  A twinge of embarrassment left me eager to get off the phone. “Mom, I should go. I’m kind of in the middle of something right now.”

  I hoped she wouldn’t ask what. If I told her I was on a stakeout, waiting for a chance to snoop around someone’s private property, she’d hop into her car, drive to Shady Creek, tie me up, and take me back to Knoxville with her. She’d probably get me one of those electronic ankle bracelets too.

  “I hope you’ll change your mind about Christmas,” she said.