Murder with a Twist

by Allyson K. Abbott

  “I agree. Our last attempt didn’t work out so well.”

  He shot me a sidelong glance, looking worried.

  “I mean, it went very well for what we did,” I said, feeling my face flush hot. I imagined it was probably the same color as my hair by now. “But we never did get to eat.”

  Duncan smiled and looked relieved.

  “If you’re not up for a BLT, Jon was going to make a batch of his famous five-alarm chili today,” I said, mentioning my new cook.

  “That sounds good, but I was hoping we might be able to go somewhere else, somewhere a little more private.”

  My heartbeat sped up a notch at his suggestion. “Did you have somewhere in mind?”

  “Yeah . . . my place. I make a mean takeout.”

  This was a big step. I hadn’t yet been to Duncan’s place and, in fact, had no idea where he lived other than a vague “in the neighborhood” comment he’d made once. “I could go for that,” I said, letting all the implications ride with the words. We shared a moment of staring at one another, our eyes smoldering, our hearts pounding, our breaths quickened. I could hear, see, smell, and taste Duncan’s desire mixing with my own bodily sensations and it was the most exhilarating, exciting, mind-numbingly awesome thing I had ever felt before in my life. I felt pretty certain food would once again be low on the list of priorities.

  I wasn’t sure my stomach—or my heart—would survive it.

  And I didn’t much care.

  Chapter 9

  As it turned out, we did get to eat, but only because Duncan ordered the food with his cell phone and we picked it up along the way, right after he called Jimmy to have him invite Will, Theo, Cindy, and Shelly to meet us at Dan’s apartment in two hours. He instructed Jimmy to tell the group that we thought some items might have been taken from Dan’s apartment, and that since all four of them admitted to being in the place from time to time, we needed their help in determining what, if anything, might be missing. Along the way, I asked Duncan about George Weber, the senior partner, and why we weren’t talking to him, too.

  “Several reasons,” Duncan said. “First, he’s stinking rich already and doesn’t need to steal funds from the business. Second, he’s in Europe right now, so we know he couldn’t have killed Thornton. Jimmy Skyped with Weber earlier today and saw the Eiffel Tower out his hotel-room window, so unless he set up a very elaborate scam, there’s no way he could have killed Thornton in the wee hours this morning and made it to Paris a few hours later. Eventually, we’ll check his tickets and passport to verify everything, but it’s not a high priority.”

  Duncan’s house was a surprise. For some reason, I had pictured him in one of the many apartment buildings or condos in the area, but he lived in a turn-of-the-century bungalow in an older residential section of town. The place was small and the inside was tidy and definitely lacking any female touch. The curtains were bedsheets strung on rods, the furniture was well used and mismatched—most likely yard sale stuff or rentals—and the kitchen was so bare it looked like whoever lived there had been on vacation for weeks. While Duncan might not have been big on décor, he was, thankfully, clean. The place was neat, the surfaces all shined, and there were no stray whiskers, spilled toothpaste, or funky specks on the mirror in the bathroom. I haven’t been in many bachelor-pad bathrooms in my life, but those I have seen were always a mess. Duncan’s was both a relief and a delight by comparison . . . a pleasant surprise.

  We ate our takeout Chinese on the coffee table in the small living room using mismatched plates. The food was delicious and a welcome change for me. I almost always eat my own bar food and don’t get out as often as I should. Hopefully that will change soon, because I’ve been able to hire on some extra help.

  “Do you own this house?” I asked Duncan.

  “Sort of,” he said cryptically. “My grandparents bought it years ago when they first migrated here from Scotland. When they died, my parents lived in it for a short time, but then they moved to Chicago. They kept the house and used it as a rental until last year. When I got a job offer here with the Milwaukee PD, my parents said I could live in it rent free in exchange for fixing up what the renters destroyed. I did most of the major fixes in the month before I started working and I’ve been doing bits and pieces ever since.” He looked around the room as if seeing the place for the first time. “It looks pretty bare, doesn’t it?”

  “Not bare, so much,” I said. “More like early college student, first apartment, bachelor pad.”

  Duncan sighed. “I suppose it could use a bit of a female touch.”

  “Not female, necessarily, but maybe a little something to warm it up, make it cozier. At the very least, you might want to hire someone to give you suggestions on décor, paint colors, that sort of thing.” I glanced at my watch and said, “You know, you haven’t seen the new section of the bar for several weeks now and it’s almost done. All the walls are painted, the woodwork is finished, and other than a few pieces of furniture, everything is ready to go. I’m planning on opening it next weekend if the last stuff arrives like it’s supposed to next week. Why don’t we go look at it? It might give you some ideas.”

  “Okay. We have the time and I have to admit I’ve been curious about what’s going on back there.”

  Just under twenty minutes later, we arrived at the bar and headed inside. The place was crowded—a good thing for my bottom line, though it made me feel guilty that I hadn’t been there to help. Fortunately, my staff had everything under control and the members of the Capone Club were in their usual spot, with several tables pushed together near one end of the bar. If business stayed at this level through the winter, I’d be looking good.

  When I’d discovered that Ginny Rifkin—my father’s murdered girlfriend—had listed me as the beneficiary on her life insurance policy, it had come as a total surprise. It also nearly landed me in jail since it gave me a stellar motive for her murder. Lucky for me, that didn’t happen. What’s more, the money couldn’t have come at a better time. I’d been living week to week with my cash flows after some costly problems that had come up, and Ginny’s money not only allowed me to get caught up on the bills so I had some breathing room, it was enough for me to expand the bar by buying the recently vacated space next door, something I considered a risky but necessary decision. If I was going to continue to make a living off my profits in the years to come, I needed to invest some money in the place.

  I’d had some misgivings about the whole Capone Club, crime-solving thing in the beginning, but it had attracted a lot of new business—customers who came from a variety of knowledgeable backgrounds. While we seemed to have developed a core group of regulars for the Capone Club, other customers in the bar would often join in on the discussions, too. The cops who frequent my bar like the Capone Club because it provides them with a variety of expert consultants for free. On any given night, I might have customers with finance experience, science experience, computer experience, medical experience, psychology experience, and plenty of folks with passels of simple human nature experience.

  I led Duncan through an opening along the side where there used to be a shared wall with the neighboring building I bought. Now it was scaffolding with plastic sheeting that hid a metal gate that kept people from entering the new area without permission. I unlocked the gate and led Duncan into the next room, relocking it behind us. It was one big open area with a platform stage at the back.

  “I’m thinking I’m going to start bringing in live music on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights,” I told Duncan. “There’s a local band I like that does Irish music. And maybe down the road, I’ll look at bringing in a DJ on some of the other nights.”

  “That ought to liven up the place.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  “Just tell me you aren’t going to do a polka night. I hate the polka and it seems like I hear it everywhere I go up here.”

  “Sorry to tell you, but here in Milwaukee it’s practically a tradition,
particularly given the large German and Polish populations we have. And you might be surprised to learn that Ireland was introduced to the polka in the late 1800s and it’s the base for some of the most popular Irish folk dances.”

  Duncan looked skeptical but he apparently decided to let the matter drop. “You’ve done a nice job of blending the new area into the old,” he said. “You’ve matched up the wood and the general décor really well.”

  “Thanks. It cost me a little extra to do it that way, but I wanted the addition to look as seamless as possible, like it had always been there.”

  “You have good taste. Maybe I should hire you to recommend a décor and paint colors for my house.”

  I didn’t respond right away because I couldn’t think of anything to say. On the one hand, I was flattered that he thought I had good taste. I was also excited about the long-term relationship it hinted at. But a split second later, I was second-guessing myself, wondering if I was reading too much into it. Was he even serious? Or was he just spouting out random thoughts that he would later regret or forget? Finally I said, “I’d be happy to give you some ideas, or help you pick stuff out. That sort of thing is fun. But I think doing one extra job for you is enough for right now.”

  Instead of responding to what I said, Duncan came back with a non sequitur. “It’s going to get loud down here if you have live music. That will make it harder for your Capone Club members to do their thing.”

  “I already thought of that. I’ve made accommodations for them in the upstairs area. Come and see.”

  I led him up to the second floor where I had structured the expanded area by creating smaller rooms, each one with limited seating, a cozy feel, and something of a theme. One of the rooms was set up as a library with wood-paneled walls, bookshelves filled with both novels and nonfiction books that could be swapped out using an honor system, and large, cozy chairs that could be set up in small conversation circles or left alone in a corner. I’d splurged on recessed lighting and lots of lamps to create a cozy feel as well as the ability to see well enough to read, and a gas fireplace for both heat and ambience. While several people told me I was crazy for doing the fireplace, now that the weather was turning colder and winter was just around the corner, those same people were asking me how soon it would be functional. It was this room that I had in mind for the Capone Club.

  I also had a room set up to be a sports and gaming spot—my regular customers had already nicknamed it the Man Cave—replete with large-screen TVs, a pool table, a foosball table, a dart board, a putting green, and computers with game systems. I had some large, comfy reclining chairs on order that were supposed to come in next week.

  The third room was more ordinary, a smaller version of the bar area downstairs, with several small tables that could be pushed together to form larger ones. This room could be rented out to local companies for meetings or small parties. To service the rooms, I had set aside a spot in the common area for a second bar, which was contained in its own room. It had a garage-style door that could be opened or closed, depending on whether or not it was being used and staffed.

  “This all looks very nice,” Duncan said. “Just be careful that you don’t overdo it.”

  “I will,” I said, hoping this was true. “It just feels like the right thing to do.”

  Despite my optimistic posturing, Duncan’s words echoed my own fears. I now had enough money to survive even if the business went belly-up, but my entire life was the bar. If it closed, I’d be heartbroken. I’d hoped the expansion would prevent that and provide me with a future nest egg of sorts, but I was leery for a couple of reasons. One was the investment I was making and the gamble it carried with it. Though my business was definitely on the rise at the moment, I worried that the publicity surrounding the recent murders and the whole CSI Bar thing might yet prove to be transitory.

  The second reason I was leery was because I wanted to keep a neighborhood feel to the bar. Wisconsin is third in the country in the number of taverns and bars it has per capita, falling behind only Montana and North Dakota. And Iron County, Wisconsin, has the highest per capita bar rate of anywhere, with one bar for every 240 people. Small watering holes are a way of life for Wisconsinites, and people in many places treat them like a home away from home. That’s fine if you live in a small town, but here in Milwaukee, where more than a million other people share your air, achieving that small, cozy neighborhood feel can be a bit of a challenge. Plus, my location means that I frequently pull in tourists or visitors to the downtown area who are here on business, or I might pull in some distant locals, folks who come into town for the night to see a show or a game at the Bradley Center, which is walking distance away.

  My hope was to find a happy medium between expanding the business enough to keep my revenues flowing while still keeping that home-away-from-home feel. That was easy enough for me since it really was my home. And now, with both of my parents dead and no other relatives I knew of, many of my regular customers were my family.

  We finished the tour and after checking in with my staff, Duncan and I headed back to Thornton’s place to meet up with Dan’s coworkers.

  “Will it be okay for them to go into the apartment?” I asked.

  “Sure, as long as we’re with them and control where they go, what they do, and what they touch. The techs are done processing the place.”

  “I had some reactions earlier that I couldn’t identify, one of which was Cindy Whitaker’s perfume. So I’m curious to see what the apartment is like for me without them in there first.”

  “We can do that. You and I will go in first and once you’ve absorbed it all, we’ll bring the others in.”

  I was skeptical of this idea but also curious. Knowing the dead body was no longer there made it easier for me to face the idea of going back. And what Duncan was suggesting was more along the lines of the sort of games he—and my father—would play with me from time to time.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let the games begin.”

  Chapter 10

  We beat Jimmy and the others to Dan Thornton’s apartment. There was a uniformed police officer sitting in a chair in the hallway and the door was now sealed with crime scene tape. Duncan greeted the officer and then sliced through the tape so we could go inside.

  I felt a definite difference when we entered that I suspect was because of the time that had elapsed between my first visit and now. Many, if not most, of the smells and sounds that I experienced before were either diminished or absent, but I also experienced some new reactions to things like the fingerprint dust. I recognized this one because the cops had dusted my bar with the stuff when both my father and Ginny were murdered, and I knew from my previous exposure that it triggered a chalky, slightly bitter taste if I came into contact with it. And the sight of it—at least the black powder kind, though I learned that it comes in a multitude of colors—made me taste dirt. I think it was the color that triggered this last reaction because black in general always triggers a dirt taste to some degree, often overlaid with other tastes. And I also noticed some lighter-colored fingerprint dust—white and pink—on the dark wood credenza and the tabletop, and those spots didn’t trigger the dirt taste.

  I realized right away that things were missing. I could sense some of the voids and figured out what some of them were—the chair Dan Thornton had supposedly stood on, the laptop, the suicide note, the glasses and other dishes that had been in the dish rack—by using a combination of my memory and my synesthesia. I wandered into the half bathroom and could tell things were missing here, too: the trash, the hand soap, the towel. Every surface appeared to have been dusted for prints: the countertop, the light switch, the sink surfaces, the mirror, the toilet handle . . . even the underside of the toilet seat, which was now in the up position. That struck me as clever, as I might never have thought to look there for prints, given that we women typically only lift the seat if we are cleaning the bowl. I logged this fact away, thinking that it might help in my deductive train
ing.

  The techs had left behind the toilet paper, however, which looked to be a nearly full roll. At first I thought this was so the crew could use the bathroom if they needed to. Then I realized that would most likely be considered scene contamination and would therefore be forbidden. Yet something about that toilet paper bothered me. I thought back to earlier in the day and recalled the irregular sensation I had felt on the back of my neck when looking at the bathroom. Such sensations are typically a response to something that has been moved or removed. Occasionally smells will register as a physical reaction, but most of the time they come across as sounds. That irritating tag feeling on my neck was gone now, though other sensations had occurred as the result of the stuff that was missing. As I stared at the toilet paper and thought about that nagging tag reaction, I finally realized what it related to.

  I called Duncan over to the bathroom doorway. “Why didn’t the techs collect the toilet paper in here along with everything else?”

  He looked over at the roll. “It’s that quilted stuff with the patterns in it. It’s pretty much useless for getting any usable prints. We would have to spray it with ninhydrin and the tissue is so absorbent and textured that the end result would be an unusable mess. I suppose there is a faint possibility of DNA being on it, but most of what gets touched gets used and flushed. So there isn’t much evidentiary value to it.”

  “What about the cardboard tube inside the roll, or the little roller thingy that goes through that cardboard tube? How would they be for prints?”

  Duncan smiled at that. “Little roller thingy?” he teased. Then his smile froze and his eyes narrowed, I suspect because he saw where I was headed. “I imagine either one of those would be a good surface for prints,” he said slowly.

  “Well, that’s a brand-new roll, or close to it,” I said. “And if my hunch is right about my earlier reaction to looking at it and the lack of any similar reaction now, I’d venture to guess that it was changed pretty close to the time that we were all here earlier. Maybe the victim changed it before he was killed, but given how much time I imagine it must have taken to stage his supposed suicide, and how long we know my reactions typically last for something like this, I doubt it.”