by Diane Kelly
“Have you told anyone else about the cameras?”
“No.”
“Don’t. Or else you’ll find yourself in hot water for interfering with a police investigation. Concealing or tampering with evidence is a crime, you know. A felony.”
The thought that I could end up behind bars like Damien Sirakov made me feel queasy and panicked. “But I didn’t tamper with evidence! I didn’t conceal anything, either.” Heck, I’d been the one to initiate this call. “I’m only trying to help.”
“Maybe. But would we be talking right now if the footage had implicated you?”
I had no idea what to say to that. She’d thrown me totally off kilter. Would I have called if something on the feed made me look guilty? I knew I was innocent and that I wasn’t obligated to offer evidence against myself. I also wouldn’t have wanted to send the police on a wild-goose chase, especially if the wild goose they were chasing was me. Still, her question had sent me down a rabbit hole of self-reflection.
Rather than wait for me to sort out the goose and rabbit, she said, “Go on. What did you see?”
“Ashlynn pilfering from the till.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You can see it for yourself. Just after five o’clock last Monday, when I went to Limericks to make my delivery.” I mentioned Gage Tilley, too, how he’d bent down behind the bar. “He might have dropped something, but I couldn’t tell for certain.”
“He didn’t drop anything,” she said. “He tied his shoe.”
“He did?”
“Look at his left sneaker when he comes out of Cormac’s office. It was untied.”
She’s already watched the footage. I should have known she’d be one step ahead of me. I pulled up the video from the night of Cormac’s murder and watched it once more. Again, Tilley emerged from Cormac’s office on the screen. Sure enough, the laces on his left shoe were undone, posing a tripping hazard. I watched as, once again, he bent down and his arms and shoulders moved. The motions seemed consistent with a shoe being tied. When he circled around the bar and his feet became visible again, the shoe was now tied. Looked like Tilley was a dead end, but at least the information I’d fed her about Ashlynn’s theft seemed new. I also told her about the guys from Mu Sigma. “The ones in the video are the same ones who were in my shop just before I closed for the night, the ones I told you about earlier.”
“You sure about that? Mu Sigma is a big fraternity. Those boys are all around the riverfront area on the weekends, dressed in those shirts.”
“I’m one hundred percent sure. I recognize the one who swiped the shine from my store. I know because he has hair like a Ken doll. He uses an excessive amount of styling product. You couldn’t get through that hair with a jackhammer. The short and stocky one sitting next to him at the bar is the one who knocked over the jars in my store.”
She seemed to be thinking aloud. “The boys might have had the jar of your shine with them then.”
“They could have. I noticed Cormac’s jar of cherry moonshine isn’t on the shelf anymore, either.” When she paused, I realized she hadn’t noticed this detail yet. I supposed I had a better eye when it came to spotting my moonshine.
“We need to follow that jar. I’ll track down that sales rep, too. He might have heard or seen something that night that could be helpful.”
“The guy you’re looking for is Gage Tilley. His name and his telephone extension are on the recent invoice from Backwoods Bootleggers.”
“There you go again, teacher’s pet.” With that, she ended the call. I hoped my assistance had earned me some brownie points or, better yet, gotten me off the hook.
* * *
* * *
Granddaddy was waiting in front of the Singing River Retirement Home late that morning when Smoky and I went to pick him up. As I pulled to a stop, he brandished his cane and hollered, “Anybody comes for us, I’m ready!”
I groaned. Benjamin Hayes had once been a formidable force, but those days were far behind him. With his sharp claws and pointed fangs, Smoky was more fearsome than my grandfather. Granddaddy was more likely to get hurt himself if he tried to defend himself or me. But there was no point in arguing with him. Any backtalk and he’d threaten to put me over his knee. It was likely to snap his brittle leg bones in two.
Granddaddy hobbled forward, opened the passenger door, and climbed in.
“No scooter today?” I asked.
“No need,” he said. “My physical therapist has been working on my balance. A few more sessions and I’ll be square dancing around your shop.”
I doubted he’d be doing the do-si-do anytime soon, but I was glad he was feeling more confident on his feet.
As we drove to the Moonshine Shack, I asked my grandfather how he knew about Cormac’s death. I’d planned to tell him today, but someone had apparently beat me to it.
Granddaddy said, “Your father filled me in over supper yesterday. Looks like things caught up with that Cormac fella. You can’t do people wrong without consequences.”
“That’s true. But he didn’t deserve to die.”
“No, he didn’t. Someone took things too far.” He tsked in disapproval. “But that’s the odds. The more people you mess with, the more likely you are to mess with the wrong one.”
He had a point. His comment about odds also got me thinking. Miranda had mentioned that Cormac liked to gamble at the casino in North Carolina. Could Cormac have made some bets locally that he failed to pay up on? Maybe a bookie had sent goons after Cormac to collect. But why would professional kneecap breakers kill Cormac with a jar of my shine? A gun would have been less messy and run less risk of leaving fingerprints. Hmm . . . Could it be possible that the goon had come into the Moonshine Shack before or after visiting Cormac at Limericks? Maybe he was one of the customers who’d bought cherry shine with cash. Maybe he’d left the jar in his car and, when he’d come back to whack Cormac, he’d realized the glass would make an easy improvised weapon that would be much less noisy than a gunshot. Or maybe he’d simply been sipping the shine straight from the jar and Cormac had said something that made the killer lose his temper.
Another related thought crossed my mind. With my grandfather sitting out in front of the Moonshine Shack all week, he might have spotted someone suspicious without realizing it at the time. Maybe he’d seen a goon or two come to the bar to warn Cormac that his debt had come due.
As I slowed for a red light, I asked, “Did you notice anybody coming or going from Limericks last week who looked angry?”
“Besides you?”
Cheese and grits. It was a good thing Detective Pearce hadn’t interviewed my grandfather. I’d probably be behind bars right now. “Yes, Granddaddy. Besides me.”
He looked up in thought. “I saw that young man with the light-colored hair who came to your grand opening. The one wearing glasses and a hearing aid.”
Only one person fit that description, though the “hearing aid” had actually been a wireless Bluetooth earpiece. “Heath Delaney?”
Granddaddy shrugged. “Never learned his name. Can’t say which day it was that he went into Limericks, either, but it was around half past five when he left the bar. I remember because right after you came outside and told me my dinner was ready.”
A mini fridge and a microwave had been in the back room when I’d rented my shop, and I’d since put them to good use. I’d filled the fridge with drinks, snacks, and simple meals like cooked pasta and vegetable stew that could be easily warmed in the microwave. Heating up leftovers was cheaper and more convenient than ordering takeout for dinner every day. “How could you tell Heath was angry?”
“Because he kicked over that leprechaun statue by the front door. Left the little guy lying there on the sidewalk and stormed off. Didn’t seem right to take things out on the fairy. Whatever had made the man angry, the leprechaun had nothing to do wit
h it.”
No wonder the little statue had been chipped and scraped. I was even more eager now to attend Miranda’s meeting with Heath tomorrow. If the guy had killed Cormac, maybe he’d say something that would give it away while we discussed the bar. My mind went back to the death glare Heath had locked on the side of Cormac’s face as they stood at my sample table during my grand opening. Heath had seemed relatively calm and collected, but perhaps it was a practiced calm. While Heath hadn’t appeared overly emotional that night, it seemed clear he had a lot of animosity bottled up inside him just waiting to be uncapped. Did he unbottle that rage in front of my shop last Friday?
* * *
* * *
Immediately after we entered the shop and I’d disabled the alarm, I went to the front door and opened it to see if my security cameras and panic button had been delivered. They had. Relief surged through me. I picked up the package and brought it inside.
Granddaddy gestured to them. “Whatcha got there?”
“Security cameras and an alarm,” I said. “Kiki’s got a friend coming by later to install the cameras.”
“What’s that gonna cost you?” he asked, knowing my funds were stretched.
“A case of moonshine.”
He bobbed his head. “Best currency there is.”
Luckily, I could install the simple panic button myself. All I had to do was plug the speaker into the wall and install the battery in the tiny handheld device. I proceeded to do just that. I slid the button into my pocket. Over the course of the morning, I found myself sticking my hand in my pocket and running my thumb over the gadget to assure myself it was there and ready for action if needed.
The Moonshine Shack had been open for a couple of hours when a familiar clop-clop-clop met my ears. Through the glass, I saw Marlon ride up. He slid down from the saddle and tied Charlotte’s reins to one of the porch posts. He murmured sweet nothings to her and ran a loving hand down her neck and back. Lucky horse. Marlon looked up and caught me watching him. I raised a hand in greeting.
The bells on the door tinkled as he stepped inside. “Hey, Hattie.” He turned to my grandfather, who’d taken a seat atop one of my stools and was hard at work, whittling away on a small chunk of wood, the shavings falling to his feet, where Smoky sat, batting at them. “How you doing today, Ben?”
Granddaddy scowled at him. “I plead the fifth.”
“Goodness gracious, Granddaddy,” I scolded. “Marlon’s not asking you to incriminate yourself. He’s just asking you how you’re doing.”
“How I am is none of his business.” My grandfather slashed at the wood in his hand with his little tool, sending a shaving flying through the air.
I wagged a finger at him. “You’re acting like a child.”
Proving my point, he stuck out his tongue at me and kept right on whittling.
Fortunately, Marlon seemed unfazed. “I’ll win you over yet, Ben.”
My grandfather huffed. “We’ll see about that.”
Marlon returned his attention to me. “Your call to Ace kept me busy this morning. She had me review the footage with her.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the bar had security cameras? I only found out when I was going through the bookkeeping records.”
His expression tightened. “I’m walking a fine line, Hattie. I believe in you, but I answer to Ace.”
“Understood.” It wasn’t fair for me to press him, to put him in an awkward position.
Luckily for me, he volunteered some information on his own. “That said, since you’ve already seen the security camera video and talked to Ace about it, we can discuss it without incurring her wrath.”
“Good.” The last thing I wanted was to get Marlon in trouble with his superiors.
“The crime scene technicians discovered the cameras on Saturday. Cormac hadn’t put a shortcut to the cloud storage site on his computer. He probably didn’t want to clue anyone in that he was secretly watching them. But Ace found the web address in his browsing history.”
“Why would Cormac choose a concealed system? Isn’t it better to have the cameras visible so they’ll act as a deterrent?”
“Generally, yes,” he agreed. “My guess is that Cormac was more concerned about his staff stealing from him than he was about a robbery. With hidden cameras, he could keep a clandestine eye on his employees. He probably placed the one directly above the cash register so he could see if anyone was skimming from the till. It was made to look like a smoke alarm. Same for the one in the back room. He’d probably chosen to position it over the employees’ lockers so he could see what they were putting in and taking out.”
Given the prevalence of employee theft in many establishments, I supposed I couldn’t blame him. Besides the cash in the register, the stockroom would be full of liquor, some of it quite valuable. An employee might be tempted to filch a bottle or two. It seemed ironic that Cormac had worried about his staff stealing cash or liquor from him when he’d been the one to use Miranda to her financial detriment. I supposed his lack of trust was projection. He knew he couldn’t be trusted, so therefore he didn’t trust others.
Marlon continued. “After you called Ace this morning, she had me look at the camera footage and track the jar of cherry moonshine Cormac got at your party. The darn thing got moved about a hundred times over the course of the week. It started out next to the other moonshine, where Miranda put it. When Cormac arrived at the bar on Tuesday, he took it down from the shelf and stuck it in a cabinet underneath. Ashlynn brought it back out later that night. On Wednesday, another bartender moved it over to the shelf where they keep the limoncello and Grand Marnier and other fruit-flavored liqueurs. Isabella moved it again on Thursday when she was dusting the shelves before the bar opened. She put it by the bottles of schnapps, but not until she tried some of it herself.”
I groaned. “So all of their prints could be on the jar.”
“They are, in fact. Plus some prints that haven’t been matched yet.”
“The killer’s?”
“Maybe, but not necessarily. Could be the prints belong to someone who touched the jar while it sat on the shelf of your shop. For all we know at this point, the killer could have been wearing gloves and left no prints at all.”
“But all the prints on the cherry shine mean the jar used to kill Cormac was the one that had been in his bar.” After all, Ashlynn had never been in my store, so she couldn’t have left her prints on another jar. “That narrows things down.”
“It does,” he agreed, “but only so far.” Marlon wrapped up his move-by-move replay. “Last time we saw the jar for sure was on Thursday evening. Ashlynn fixed herself a shot and slid it under the bar.”
“Did she put it in the recycling bin?”
“I can’t say for certain, but it looks that way. It appeared to be nearly empty, and we didn’t find the jar under the shelf. Friday was a busy night and Cormac emptied several other bottles that he put in the bin. They could have easily obscured the shine jar.”
“If the jar was in the recycling bin,” I mused aloud, “and Cormac took the recycling outside as he left, anyone could have had access to the jar.” That meant Miranda, Ashlynn, Isabella, Heath, Mack, and Damien were all still in play, as were the boys from Mu Sigma. It could also mean a random person wandering down the alley might have spotted the envelope of cash tucked into Cormac’s back pocket, grabbed the jar from the bin to use as a weapon, and chased him out of the alley and around to the street. Though it was plausible, I had to wonder about the choice of weapon. Wouldn’t it have been smarter to grab a bottle with a longer neck that could be more easily wielded? Then again, maybe the attacker had simply reached into the bin and grabbed the first bottle they touched.
Marlon agreed with my assessment. “You’re right. The video didn’t narrow down the list of potential suspects. It did show us something quite interesting, though.”
<
br /> Granddaddy looked up from his whittling. “What was it?”
After the rude treatment my grandfather had given him, Marlon could have accused my grandfather of eavesdropping, but he didn’t. Rather, he included the old man in the conversation. “Ashlynn. She slid an extra forty or fifty bucks up her sleeve every shift.”
“That often?” I said. “I’m surprised Cormac didn’t notice. Seems he would have reviewed the security camera footage on occasion.”
“She was sneaky about it,” Marlon said. “If you hadn’t pointed it out to Ace, we wouldn’t have known. We had to watch really close. She always wore those loose long-sleeved flowered shirts with the elastic around the wrists that held the bills in place. I think Ace called them ‘bumpkin blouses.’ ”
“The term is ‘peasant blouse.’ ”
Marlon chuckled. “Yeah. I suppose that’s a better name. I don’t know squat about women’s clothing. Anyway, Ashlynn didn’t steal every time she was at the register, of course. She looked for opportune moments. I missed her doing it the first few times, but once I caught on to her little trick I went back and reviewed the footage again. She had a tell. Before she’d take the cash, she’d reach up to straighten a bottle on a shelf. What she was really doing was checking the mirror to make sure nobody was watching her. She was so sly, someone could’ve been standing right next to her and not noticed.”
“Do you think Cormac might have realized she was stealing from him?”
Granddaddy held his whittling tool aloft and chimed in. “Maybe she was afraid he’d report it to the police, so she killed him.”
“I had that same thought,” Marlon said, “but there’s nothing in the footage to suggest Cormac caught her in the act. If the till came up short after each of her shifts, he might have put two and two together, realized she was up to something. She might have been out back when he left Limericks on Friday, maybe making a phone call from her car, or waiting there for some other reason. He could have seen her removing the stolen cash from her sleeve, or maybe he saw some fall out. Things could have escalated, gotten physical. Who knows?” He lifted his shoulders. “Without a video recording, we can’t say.”