by Diane Kelly
Miranda scoffed. “Tell me about it. Do you know how much he owed the appliance company?”
“Forty-five hundred dollars. I’m sure they’d work with you and accept installment payments if you can’t pay the full amount due in a lump sum. As far as Mack Clayton, he’d be thrilled to get paid.” Heath’s eyes cut to me for a brief instant before returning to Miranda. “Mack was furious when O’Keefe stiffed him. He wouldn’t stop talking about it at the chamber of commerce meeting that was held at the end of March. He called for a boycott of Limericks and proposed forming an agreement among the owners of other bars and restaurants in the riverfront area to offer drinks at cost until Limericks went under. He said they’d make up any losses in increased market share when the pub went out of business. I had to advise against it, though. Those types of agreements constitute price fixing, and the participants would risk stiff penalties for an antitrust violation.”
I couldn’t blame Mack for being upset that O’Keefe had stiffed him, but wanting to run Limericks out of business entirely seemed like a big, bold move. I also wondered about Heath’s motives in telling us these details about Mack Clayton. Did he sense that I’d become suspicious of him, and was he trying to deflect my suspicions elsewhere?
Miranda wrapped things up by asking Heath if he could take a look at her lease when she got it from the landlord later today.
“I’d be happy to,” he said with a smile.
Our business concluded, he escorted us back to the foyer. “It was nice talking with you ladies. I have no doubt you two will be the next big successes on the riverfront.”
Miranda and I had made it outside and down the block when I patted the front pocket of my overalls. “Uh-oh. I think I left my phone at Heath’s office.” I was faking. My phone was in my purse. But I had a matter I wanted to discuss with him in private.
“Want me to go back with you?” she asked.
“Nah.” I motioned her ahead. “No sense wasting your time. We’ll catch up later.”
With that, she headed onward and I did an about-face.
Back at the law office, I fed the same story to the receptionist. “I think I left my phone in Heath’s office.” She buzzed him and sent me back to his space.
I entered through the open door and pretended to look around for my phone, feeling around the chair and bending down to look under his desk.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“No.” I raised a finger. “Wait. I think I might have put it in my purse this morning instead of my pocket.” I unzipped my purse and slapped my palm to my forehead in mock self-punishment. “There it is! I must look so stupid.”
He gave me a smile. “No worries. It happens to the best of us.”
I tilted my head. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course. It’s how I make my living.”
“Were you notified about a complaint Cormac filed against you with the Board of Professional Responsibility?”
He went rigid. “You know about that?”
Ace must not have told him how she’d learned of the complaint. Again, she’d held her cards close to her vest.
“It was only a guess,” I told Heath. “I signed for certified mail the board had sent to Limericks.” I cringed as if in self-rebuke. “Given that you’d warned me about Cormac at my grand opening and mentioned the lawsuits later, I figured the mail might address a complaint he’d lodged against you.”
He shifted in his chair, as if uncomfortable. “It did. His complaint was entirely baseless. He alleged I slandered him when I went to the bar and accused him of defrauding the appliance company. He claimed it was a false statement and that some of his customers overheard me make the accusation. He said the sales rep from Backwoods Bootleggers heard my statements, too. He listed the man as a potential witness.”
“Gage Tilley?”
“Yes. You know him?”
“He attended my grand opening,” I said. “Uninvited, I might add.”
“The allegations are ridiculous. Cormac and I spoke privately in his office, and I don’t even recall the sales rep being in the bar at the time. Cormac’s complaint was nothing more than a nuisance case. He probably hoped I’d offer him some money to dismiss it.”
“You’re not alone,” I said. “Cormac accused my grandfather of slandering him, too. My granddad was warning tourists not to go to Limericks because the owner was a crook.”
Heath’s chest heaved. “O’Keefe was creative in his tactics. I’ll give him that. Effective, too. I lost a potential client over that complaint. A big one. Construction company. Their CEO called the board to check my standing and was told a complaint was pending against me. They yanked their retainer and went elsewhere.” His voice rose and so did he, lifting a few inches out of his seat as his hands fisted on the table. “O’Keefe cost me at least forty grand in annual billings over a bald-faced lie!”
My nerves buzzed on seeing the attorney lose his cool. My grandfather had told me that Heath had kicked the leprechaun statue at Limericks and left the little man lying damaged in the dust, but now that I’d seen Heath lose his temper for myself, my suspicions rose. My guess was that Heath had gone to Limericks after he’d learned of the complaint Cormac had lodged with the board and that he’d kicked the statue on leaving. But had he gone back last Friday night to get the satisfaction he’d not gotten earlier? Was Heath the one who had killed Cormac O’Keefe? I feared that the thoughts that were running through my mind were as obvious as if they were running across an LED board on my forehead.
Heath studied me for a moment before seeming to loosen up. “Sorry.” He raised his palms. “I pride myself on my ethics. I tend to get a little incensed when my integrity is questioned.”
“Rightfully so,” I said, hoping to appease him. “Integrity is important. If Cormac O’Keefe had any, he might be alive today.”
Chapter Eighteen
After picking up Granddaddy at Singing River, I swung by the Smoky Mountains Smokehouse. My mission was twofold. One, procure information. Two, procure potato salad. Unfortunately, while I was given a pint of the latter, I was given little of the former.
Mack wasn’t working the counter when Granddaddy and I went inside, and I was forced to place my order with the middle-aged woman at the register. I decided to push the issue. “Any chance I can get a word with Mack?” I asked. “He’s been putting our moonshine in his special shine sauce and I need to see how his supply is holding up.”
She stepped back and pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen, releasing a waft of warm molasses, onions, and peppers. “Mack? You got a minute? The woman from the ’Shine Shack is here, wants to talk about your sauce.”
Although Mack came out from the kitchen, he wore oven mitts on both hands and a harried expression on his face. I’d caught him as they were preparing for the lunch rush.
“Sorry to bother you at such a busy time,” I said, “but I figured while I was here getting lunch I’d see if you needed more shine.”
“Still got a full jug from my last order.”
No surprise there. It had only been three days since I’d delivered two jugs to him.
He glanced back into the kitchen, where the sounds of utensils clanging, a fryer sizzling, and the kitchen staff calling to one another came through the door. I’d better make this fast.
“Let me know when you get low,” I said. “By the way, it’s too bad your boycott didn’t work out.”
His head spun back around and his eyes flashed in alarm, but he said nothing.
“Against Limericks?” I prodded. “Heath Delaney mentioned it during an appointment I had with him this morning.” To make sure it didn’t sound like the lawyer had spoken out of turn, I added, “He said you brought up the idea of a boycott at a chamber of commerce meeting.”
“I did,” Mack admitted. “Delaney said it wouldn’t fly.” He glanced away again
before returning his focus to me. His eyes appeared softer now, the crinkles in the corners gone. “I feel kind of bad about it now. You know, in light of what’s happened.”
Granddaddy grunted. “What goes around comes around.”
There’s that sentiment again. As much as I’d like to believe completely in karma, to see everyone get their due, I didn’t fully trust the sentiment. What goes around comes around might apply to the spinning teacups at Disneyland or the Tilt-A-Whirl at the county fair, but some scumbags seemed to escape their just deserts in life. They went around without ever coming around.
Voices came from behind us as a group of customers entered the restaurant. It would be rude to keep Mack from his work any longer. Besides, the odds of me learning anything new were minimal. I bade him goodbye and we carried our bags of food out to my van. Still, I had to wonder. Had that look I’d seen in Mack’s eyes when his head swung around been surprise? Or had it been guilt?
When we arrived at the Moonshine Shack, I texted Marlon. I know I owe you dinner, but we’ve got extra BBQ at the shop if you haven’t had lunch yet.
A text came back immediately. On my way.
I fixed Granddaddy a paper plate and settled him in a rocker. Marlon arrived and tied Charlotte to the post out front. “Howdy, Ben.”
My grandfather scowled up at him. “Come to collect your granny fee?”
“What’s that?”
“A bribe,” I told him. “Moonshiners paid what they called a ‘granny fee’ to law enforcement back in the day to be let go.” I turned to my grandfather. “A lunch invitation is not a bribe. It’s called being polite and mannerly. You should try it sometime.”
He merely harrumphed.
Marlon joined me at the chess table. “Bribe or not, this meal is a nice surprise.”
“Speaking of surprises,” I said, “Miranda and I had one at Limericks this morning.”
As he filled his plate, I told him what I’d discovered—or more precisely, what I had not discovered. “At least five cases of Backwoods Bootleggers moonshine are missing from the bar. I don’t know if they have anything to do with Cormac’s murder, but it caught my attention. Miranda said she doesn’t know anything about them. Any chance they were in his apartment or car?”
“Assume for the sake of this conversation that we didn’t find the missing cases of moonshine, or that we didn’t find all of them. What’s your theory?”
“I’m thinking Cormac might have been buying the bottles from the distributor under the exclusivity discount, and then reselling them at a markup to some of his customers. It would be a win-win. He’d make a profit and they’d get the bottles at far less than the retail price the liquor stores charge. Miranda had told me that the bikers and the boys of Mu Sigma seemed to be especially partial to the brand. Cormac might have sold the bottles to them.”
“A frat or biker gang could go through a lot of bottles,” he mused in apparent agreement. “Maybe the boys or the bikers got in a squabble over the pricing and that’s how Cormac ended up with a severed artery.”
He pulled out his phone. “I’m going to fill Ace in on this development.” He placed a call to her, repeated what I’d told him, and ended the conversation, exchanging his phone for a fork and digging into the potato salad. “She wants to talk to you. She’s on her way.”
We chatted over lunch and were finishing up when Ace’s Impala pulled up in front of my shop. She climbed out and came up the curb.
“Want some barbecue?” I asked. “We’ve got plenty.”
She thanked me but declined my offer. “I just finished a salad at my desk.” She proceeded to ask me some questions about the time I’d spent with Miranda at the bar that morning.
I filled her in. “We set up a new bookkeeping account, and then we took inventory. That’s when we realized the bottles of Backwoods moonshine that Cormac had ordered weren’t on the shelves. It crossed my mind that fraternities consume a lot of alcohol.”
“That’s why I’ll be heading to the Mu Sigma house when I leave here.”
I think she’s finally starting to trust me.
She turned and stared off into the distance, her jaw flexing. “It’s frustrating. Frat boys commit a lot of the same crimes as gang members. Petty thievery. Vandalism. Recreational drug use and underage drinking. Assaults. But because they do it with Greek letters on their chest rather than a gang tattoo on their arm, they get only a slap on the wrist while the gang members do time or probation. It’s the same with white-collar criminals. A man in a business suit can rip off thousands of dollars from the government in tax fraud, or bilk investors or customers in one way or another, and he’ll get only a bill and a fine. But a blue-collar type pockets a package of hot dogs and he’s hauled off in handcuffs.” She sighed. “Sometimes, it feels like there’s not enough justice in our ‘justice system.’ ”
I attempted to be encouraging. “Maybe you can change that.”
“I’m trying,” she said. “In fact, that’s why I joined the force all those years ago. It’s not easy, though.”
Given that we couldn’t solve the larger, overarching problems today, I focused on what we could do, which was trying to put Cormac O’Keefe’s killer behind bars. “What do you think about Gage Tilley being named as a witness in the defamation complaint?”
She gave me a pointed look. “You’re butting into the investigation again.”
“But I gave you information,” I pleaded. “Don’t I deserve a little quid pro quo?”
She groaned but said, “The defamation case is another thing for me to ask Gage Tilley about. Surely, he must have wondered why Cormac placed such a large order of moonshine. I’ll take another look at the video, too, see what happened to the cases after Tilley delivered them.”
First, they’d had to use the video to track the jar of Firefly cherry shine. Now, they’d be tracking cases of Backwoods Bootleggers. The security footage from Limericks was getting more views than that silly Baby Shark video on YouTube.
I pushed my luck and asked her what she thought about Mack Clayton’s call for a boycott of Limericks and a price-fixing arrangement to push the business over the brink. They say where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But was there a fire where the Smoky Mountains Smokehouse was concerned?
Ace was noncommittal, but Marlon seemed to think there could be. “If Mack Clayton couldn’t get his money, maybe he decided to take a pound of flesh instead.”
“But wait,” I said. “There’s even more.”
Ace issued a soft snort. “You’re beginning to sound like an infomercial.”
I told her about Heath’s response when I brought up Cormac’s slander complaint with the Board of Professional Responsibility. “He came up out of his seat. He said Cormac claimed that several customers and Gage Tilley overheard Heath’s accusations, but Heath said they spoke privately in Cormac’s office and he doesn’t even remember Tilley being in the bar. This took place weeks ago so his memory could be hazy, I suppose. At any rate, he said he lost a big client and around forty thousand in yearly billings because of the pending complaint. You think the lost income gives Heath sufficient motive for killing Cormac?”
“People usually kill for love or money,” the detective said sourly. “Cormac O’Keefe didn’t inspire a lot of love.”
Chapter Nineteen
Marlon took me aside before he left and chastised me. “As much as I appreciate the information you gave us today, you need to stop poking around. You might ask the wrong person the wrong question and end up getting hurt. Leave the investigating to the professionals, okay?”
I found myself conflicted again. His concern was sweet, but how could he fault me for wanting to help, especially when I wanted to clear my name? Rather than resist and start an argument, I figured it was best to agree, even if my agreement might be insincere. “All right,” I said, mentally crossing my fingers. “I’ll
butt out.”
“Good.” He ran his gaze over my face, smiling softly.
I pointed down the street. “Get out of here.”
Chuckling, he untied Charlotte’s reins and swung himself up into the saddle. He tipped his helmet to me before giving her a “Yah!” and trotting off.
At the shop later that afternoon, I looked out front to see my grandfather strapping a belt around both himself and the rocking chair. He pulled it up to his armpits and buckled it tight at his solar plexus. What in the world is he doing?
I went out front and confronted him, gesturing to the belt he’d buckled around his chest. “What’s that all about?”
“You were worried about me dozing off and falling out of the chair, so I came up with a solution.” He raised his arms and wriggled in the chair. “See? With this belt around me, I’m not going anywhere.”
“You might be going to the funny farm,” I told him. “Or adult protective services might take one look and take you into custody.”
He frowned. “I put it on myself for my own good. A man ought to have a right to wear a belt if he wants to.”
He had a point, but what would customers think if they saw him out here strapped to the rocking chair like an inmate convicted of a capital crime about to be zapped into oblivion? I proposed a solution to both of our problems. “How about I run the belt through the back of your overalls and buckle it behind the slats? That way it won’t show and scare the customers.”
“Fine with me.” He raised his arms again, like a child waiting for their mommy to pull a sweater up over their head.
I reached down, unbuckled the belt, and slipped it behind his back, between his shirt and overalls. After slipping it through the slats on either side of the rocker, I pulled the belt as tight as I could behind the rocking chair and buckled it. Finished, I stepped back. “How’s that?”