Beer Money (A Burr Ashland Mystery)

by Dani Amore

  "Local significance, I assume?" he asked.

  "Probably."

  He murmured a "hmm." He tapped the surface of his desk with his short, thick fingers. At last, he said, "I have good news and bad news for you."

  Out of habit, I asked for the bad.

  "The bad news is, and forgive me my immodesty here, even with my encyclopedic knowledge of local history, I can't tell you offhand who these people are. The girl," he tapped the photo, "the girl definitely looks familiar. But the man, no."

  He looked again at the picture, as if a second glance would give him more information.

  I waited and then said, "The good?"

  "The good news is, I'm intrigued. I will look into this for you, but first, you must pay a dollar, unless of course you are Society member.”

  Luckily, I had a single, which I pressed into his hand. I gave him my name and phone number and he said he would get back to me when he knew something.

  Eleven

  The Wauwatosa Memorial Cemetery was located just off of 76th and Center. It was behind Roosevelt elementary school and across from a nursing home. A short, albeit inevitable trip for the elderly. The area was small, marked by a rolling hill and a few towering pine trees.

  It was a crisp, cold morning, with bright blue skies and a sharp wind that would occasionally pick up, dropping the wind chill into the teens.

  I parked on an adjacent street and walked through the winding path toward the small group gathered near the back of the cemetery. I passed by markers with names I didn't recognize, and absently checked the time elapsed between the dates. Mentally, I did Tim's.

  Thirty-five years.

  The wind whipped down from the pine trees above and I hurried to Tim's gravesite.

  The service itself had been simple. A very small group in the church. Both of Tim's parents were dead, and he was an only child.

  The group standing around the open grave in the middle of the cemetery huddled against the wind, their faces wrapped in scarves, their long coats doing little to protect them from the wind. The casket stood next to the grave. There would be no headstone until spring, when the ground was soft enough to pour the concrete. Until then, Tim would be buried in an unmarked grave.

  Emily was there. Her black dress was simple, a black hat with a white flower was perched on top of her head.

  As I watched, she looked up directly into my eyes and gave a gentle nod of acknowledgment. I nodded back to her.

  I moved to get a better vantage point of the crowd. I scanned the group and picked out faces that seemed vaguely familiar: a woman who attended a faculty party, a man both Tim and I knew in college, one of Tim's neighbors.

  Fred appeared next to me.

  "It's cold," he said to me.

  I turned to look at him. His nose was red, his eyes watery behind the big glasses. He was visibly shivering.

  I caught sight of a pale young woman with blonde hair. She had on jeans and a leather jacket and stood apart from the rest of the group. She was young; I guessed her to be in her early to mid-twenties and was probably a student. Tim had been a popular professor, one of the few who cared about as much about teaching as he did about publishing.

  The girl pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped a tear from her eye. I would have to go back to the funeral home and go over the names of people who signed the guestbook.

  Finally, the priest began reading a passage from the Bible. I could barely hear him. I could see his breath form words as they hung, frozen, in the air. At last, the priest blessed the casket and Tim was lowered into the ground. Someone threw the first shovel of dirt after him. The mourners turned as one to go. It had been a short ceremony, the bitter cold chasing Tim into his grave.

  I stayed, looked at the hole in the ground. The wind whipped around my head, stung my eyes, but I stayed. I wanted to remember it. Remember what it felt like to stand next to my friend’s grave.

  At last, a hand tugged on my arm. Fred was standing there.

  “That’s enough,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  He was right, but I knew that my true mourning would come later. After I’d found out who had done this. When that person was also fitted into a custom-made hole in the ground.

  I walked toward the parking lot, saw that the young girl had waited, too. She seemed to be lost in thought. I could see she was crying. As the crowd thinned out around her, I made my way over to her.

  "Excuse me," I said.

  She turned, startled. Her eyes were a brilliant, deep green, rimmed by red. Her nose was running and her lips were chapped.

  "Yes?" she said. Her lower lip quivered slightly.

  "My name's Michael Ashland and..."

  I stopped as her eyes grew wide, a startled expression on her face.

  "Burr?" It came out like a whisper.

  Now it was my turn to be surprised. "Yes and you-"

  "Look," she said. "I'd like to talk to you, but I've got to get going." Her face had paled. Her voice was unsteady. She started to move off.

  I fished a card out of my pocket.

  "Here, call me when you get a chance." But by then, it was too late and she was walking away.

  My eyes followed her down to the small parking lot just off the entrance to the cemetery. She turned a corner and walked off, disappearing among the small crowd.

  As I looked over the crowd departing, I once again caught sight of Emily. She was shaking hands with several people. A woman put her arm around her and gave a half-hearted hug.

  I walked toward my car, keeping Emily in sight.

  The last of the well wishers said their good-byes and Emily walked along a row of parked cars to a dark green Explorer.

  She reached for the passenger door, and I saw the silhouette of a man in the driver's seat.

  Emily stopped and threw a quick glance over her shoulder before getting inside. As she did, I stopped behind a tree and waited for the door to open wide enough to give a glimpse of the driver.

  William Vanderkin sat at the wheel, a cigarette in his mouth and a bored look on his face. Emily plopped down on the passenger seat and slammed the door closed.

  The Explorer pulled an illegal U-turn and headed back out onto 76th street, then roared back up past the cemetery. I watched it pass over the top of the hill, and when it vanished out of sight, I looked toward the foreground, to the sight of Tim's freshly dug grave.

  Twelve

  I accepted another beer from Fred, who was busy acting as the gracious host of his infamous Christmas Eve party.

  Fred lives in the ghetto, in a section known as The Core. He is The Lone White Guy in a sea of black faces. Fred's neighborhood, near 4th and North, is quite possibly the worst, most dangerous neighborhood in Milwaukee. Murder, mayhem, and plenty of crack are the cornerstones of social activities for Fred's home turf.

  His house was a dilapidated Victorian with a grand turret and fish scale shingles. It desperately needed a wrecking ball right between the eyes.

  New visitors to Fred's house usually come with the stereotypical expectation that because Fred is gay and an artist of sorts, that the interior will be done in impeccable taste. Straight out of Architectural Digest. They are surprised to discover that the interior looks like it came straight out of Agricultural Digest. Scenes from the Dust Bowl.

  Once through the small entryway, there was a large living room, with a door to a bedroom on one side, and a hallway that led to the kitchen. It looked like either a work in progress, or an abandonment in progress. Where there were once baseboards there was nothing but long, empty trenches. Holes in the walls were scattered around, like someone turned a pitching machine loose and it flung baseballs every which way. Not exactly Martha Stewart.

  "Where's Ordell?" I asked Fred.

  He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, 'who knows?'

  Ordell Lewis was a light-skinned black man, Fred's latest lover. Ordell was easily 6' 4", two-twenty, and didn't have an ounce of fat on his body. Fred had told me that he was
bright, articulate, and an incorrigible crackhead. He had no job, but lived off of a trust fund set up by a wealthy relative in Chicago.

  "What did you ask Santa for?" Fred asked, trying to inject some degree of normalcy into the occasion.

  I thought about that answer. The name of Tim's real killer. A chance to put a bullet in that person's head.

  Instead of answering, I just held out my empty beer.

  When he replaced it wish a fresh one, I drank the whole thing in about the same amount of time it took him to get rid of the empty. He gave me a look of parental disdain, then left to cater to his guests' needs.

  I got myself another beer and sat in a big chair with worn fabric that revealed the white padding underneath. As I sat, a faint smell of body odor wafted up. Thoroughly unpleasant.

  The house was filling up fast. Most of the partygoers were white, their faces flushed by the idea of partying in a neighborhood they normally would avoid like the plague, drinking champagne while wondering if their cars were being stripped for parts.

  Fred's pit bull, Tasha, came up and stood before me. She was a dark brown brindle, with a head and neck that accounted for at least half of her total body weight. I had babysat Tasha before so she recognized me. I scratched her ears, and her throat. Fred had found her one day, adopted her, and now she was his second best friend and protector.

  "You're slippin' Burr, if that's the best you can do."

  I looked up, and Ordell was standing before me, a glass of champagne in his hand. He had on white high-top basketball shoes, black sweatpants and a black turtleneck. He had a diamond stud earring in his right ear and his eyes were a watery red. Ordell had a high, elegant forehead, sharp nose and chiseled cheekbones.

  "Yeah, but I can feel a certain chemistry between us,” I said. I stood and shook hands with him. My hand looked small, thin and pale in his.

  "Man," Ordell said. "I was sorry to hear about Tim-he was a good guy."

  "Yes he was." The past tense had never pissed me off more.

  "Fred says you're lookin' into the...uh...circumstances."

  "Couldn't hurt, could it?"

  Ordell didn't answer.

  "So what's up with you?" I asked.

  "Same old, same old." I thought about the trust fund and Ordell's penchant for watching reruns of the television show That’s So Raven for hours on end.

  "Well," Ordell said, "I better see who's got Fred tied up. That's my job, after all." He shot me what was meant to be a lascivious wink, but came off as more of some kind of drug-induced facial tic.

  I polished off my beer, got another one, and started thinking that I was very close to the legal limit should I have to drive home soon. It was cold in Fred’s living room. The door opening and closing had let out a lot of heat. I folded my arms across my chest, felt something in my shirt pocket.

  I reached in, pulled out the thumb drive I’d taken from Tim’s office. As good as my computer system was at home, Fred’s was a million times better. He had every software program known to man. So before coming over for the party, I’d slipped the drive into my pocket, hoping I’d get a chance to try to crack it open on Fred’s computer.

  Looking around the empty room and the fresh beer in my hand, I figured there was no better time than the present. I picked up the bottle, and went to Fred’s computer room.

  Thirteen

  Although he knew he would pay more in the long run, Fred leased his computer equipment. His strategy was that he upgraded so often, it was better to be able to trade in his computer every two years than have a basement full of two-year old Macs that woud be worth next to nothing. Plus, Fred was the kind of guy who loved toys, who made a game out of having the latest and greatest computer equipment.

  I stepped into his cramped office. It was dominated by a simple desk on which sat a 22-inch monitor. Tower hard drives had been placed beneath the desk. A scanner, printer, and other accessories were stacked around the monitor.

  I fired up the hard drives. My beer was empty. I hated that. My head definitely felt lighter than it ought to. My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t had dinner.

  Finally, the desktop icons appeared one by one. I didn’t know what any of them meant, I didn’t have anything like it on my computer at home. When it appeared to be done, I pushed the drive into the appropriate port.

  The hard drive whirred briefly and the drive’s icon appeared on the desktop. I double-clicked on it. A folder opened up.

  It was empty.

  I sat back in the chair. How could it be empty? Tim had told me he'd been working hard on the documentary, although he wouldn't tell me what it was about. So how could the folder be empty?

  I moved the cursor to the top of the screen and changed the status of the folder from icon to name. But it was still empty. There had to be something I was missing. It just didn’t make sense.

  My fingers went to the keyboard, found the option key and the Y key. Command Y would eject the drive and put away the icon. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, anyway. A note telling me what was going on? Doubtful. It seemed like Tim had sent Fred the films and hadn’t had time to even include a note explaining it all.

  No, there wouldn’t have been anything on the drive anyway. My fingers went to the keys and I was about to eject the drive when I stopped. I remembered something Fred had shown me.

  There was an invisibility feature on most computers. You could make a folder or a document invisible, in the sense that it wouldn’t show up on the desktop.

  I went to the menu bar and scrolled around the different commands. I couldn’t find anything that could make an invisible folder visible. I saved the folder in several different applications, and tried the same thing. Nothing. Finally, I saved the document as a graphics file.

  Suddenly, a file name appeared.

  I double-clicked on the file icon. The computer hummed. I took the opportunity to get another beer. By the time I sat back down, a dozen documents had appeared. Research. Initial thoughts. Outlines. Bios. Interviews. Archives. Crime scene notes. Players. First draft. Addresses. Phone numbers. Contacts.

  Even with the alcohol deadening my senses, I could feel my heart start to pound. Crime scene notes? What the hell did that mean?

  I double-clicked the first document.

  A message popped up: ALIAS - ORIGINAL FILE NOT FOUND.

  I banged the top of Fred's desk. Goddamnit! Alias documents were essentially shortcuts - icons used to speed up the process of document retrieval. If the original documents were deleted - the aliases were essentially useless. Tim might have made these without ever thinking that the original files were deleted.

  I looked back at the list of documents. They were the only clues I had to help me find out what Tim's project was all about. Crime scene notes. I couldn't get past that one.

  What crime scene?

  A brush of fabric against the door behind me broke me from my reverie. I hit Command W and the file closed.

  The door opened.

  “Burr,” said Fred. “I’d like you to meet someone.”

  Fourteen

  Her skin was tanned, her hair dark and short, slightly longer in back, pulled behind her ears. She wore a simple black dress. A small pearl necklace lay against her throat.

  “This is Eve Rochelle,” Fred said.

  She smiled, showing even white teeth and held out her hand which I took in mine. She had a firm grip, with long slender fingers that wrapped around my hand.

  "Are you working?” she asked, and gestured toward the computer.

  “No, I…”

  “He was probably looking at naughty Web sites,” Fred offered.

  She laughed and I said, “Hey, you need a beer.”

  I stood, remembered the thumb drive, and slipped it into my pocket.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Fred said. “I don’t want my party ending up in the office - how boring.”

  I shut off the lights and we went back into the living room.

  “Eve owns Lakeside Brewe
ry,” Fred said. He was standing behind Eve, and he raised his eyebrows at me. I was surprised he didn’t wink and give me the okay sign. “And Burr, well, Burr loves beer.”

  “Thank you, Fred,” I said.

  He backed away from us. “I’ve really got to run,” he said. “I’ll catch up with you two later.”

  Eve turned to me. “So I hear you’re a private investigator," she said.

  “I am,” I said. I raised my new beer that Fred had given me. Eve clinked her champagne glass again my bottle.

  “Are you working on an interesting case now?”

  Maybe it was the booze, but I found myself staring at Eve. At her full lips, her smooth skin. Either she was beautiful or I was drunk. Maybe both.

  I said, “Not really. I’m more interested in your brewery.” I held up the bottle. “Beer is a passion of mine.”

  She laughed. “Mine too.”

  “So how did you come to own a brewery?” I said. “And I’d be happy to boost your sales. From consumption, of course.”

  Just then, someone called out to her from the other room. “Sorry, I’ve got some girlfriends that are dragging me to another party. Can I take a raincheck on telling you my story?”

  She gave me a quick hug and then she disappeared back into the midst of the party. I sat down on the couch, feeling stupid. And more than a little drunk.

  Tasha the pit bull came and sniffed around my feet. She looked up at me and wagged her tail.

  Fifteen

  The doorbell awoke me from a dream in Eve Rochelle kept me pouring me beers. While she was naked.

  My eyes snapped open. I hurried to the bathroom where I rinsed my mouth out with Scope, ran my fingers through my hair, then went into the bedroom and threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. I went to the front door and opened it.

  The blonde woman with the green eyes looked back at me.

  "Mr. Ashland?" she asked. She looked scared. Tired and scared.