by Mary Maxwell
I didn’t know Tucker. Or Whitney. But I wasn’t concerned about that; I wanted to hear what Shane had to say about the fight at the Bier Haus.
“Okay, so Whitney Morgenson,” I said. “You guys were drinking and playing pool and having a good time?”
Shane nodded.
“But then Whitney came over and started—what? Making overtures?”
The big guy in my guest chair snorted. “You can call it that,” he said. “She was basically rubbing all over me and asking if I wanted to take a ride in her Maserati.”
“Was she talking about a car?” I asked. “Or was that a euphemism for something else?”
He frowned. “Huh?”
“Never mind.” I smiled and waited until the fog had cleared from his eyes. “So, Whitney asked if you wanted to ride in her fancy sports car?”
Connie scoffed. “More like her husband’s car.”
I smiled. “I take it Tucker’s a wealthy guy?”
“Very much so,” said Shane. “According to his wife, he owns that big spread up on Coldwater.”
Before I could picture which property Shane was talking about, Connie told me it had once belonged to Judge Henry Ashworth. I smiled fondly at the mention of the name. Everyone in Crescent Creek knew the dear departed judge with the snow white hair, flashy diamond rings and a habit of dozing off during especially lengthy late afternoon sessions.
“Oh, my goodness!” I said, suddenly making the connection. “Tucker Morgenson is the Silicon Valley guy?”
“One and the same,” Connie said. “He bought Judge Ashworth’s ranch for about half of what it was worth.”
I remembered hearing about the transaction from my mother a few years earlier. Judge Ashworth had amassed one of the largest estates in the county. After he retired and his wife passed away, he’d sold their house in Crescent Creek and put the ranch on the market. He planned to buy a place in Arizona, but then died suddenly from a heart attack and left the remaining real estate to his children. Since the son and daughter were locked in a bitter feud that had begun when they were much younger, Judge Ashworth’s attorney suggested lowering the asking price on the ranch. In the end, the Ashworth children sold it for far below market value, something my mother told me about in exhaustive detail. “And the buyer’s a hotshot computer whiz from Silicon Valley,” she’d explained. “He made over a hundred million on some website thingy.” I smiled briefly at my mother’s encyclopedic memory of all things Crescent Creek before turning to Shane.
“I guess you never took that spin in the Maserati, huh?”
He laughed, a throaty croak that filled my tiny office. “Never even saw the car,” he said. “Once that dude she was with realized what was happening, he just came on like a freight train. He clocked Jasper with a left hook before we even knew what was going down.”
“Like Jasper?”
Shane squinted. “What?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I meant, like Jasper going down after a wicked punch.”
“Ah, I get it. But you’re wrong; Jasper didn’t hit the floor. He spun around, shook it off and then lunged at the guy.”
“Is that when Eli gave you boys the heave-ho?”
“Basically.” Shane sounded annoyed that the fight had been interrupted. “Although I know we could’ve turned him inside out if we had the chance. And the guy totally deserved it, too. He was calling that woman some terrible names and threatening to dump her for another chick here in town.”
I nodded. “So our John Doe was quite the ladies’ man?”
Connie scoffed. “He sounds like a tool,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean he deserved to die.”
CHAPTER 15
Since I was already going to the bank that afternoon, I decided to make one extra stop to ask Eli Odom about the fight Jasper and Shane had with the man found in the gazebo.
The Bier Haus bartender was exactly as Zack had described him: tall, brawny and bearded. His dark hair was buzzed into a crew cut and he kept the facial hair trimmed. His arms were twin tapestries of art—sleeve tattoos blending red, black and blue ink—and both wrists were looped with wide leather bands.
“Howdy,” Eli said when I walked in the door. “What can I get for ya?”
“How about a few workout tips?”
He tossed a white bar towel over his shoulder and smiled. One of his front teeth was capped with gold; the only thing he was missing was an eye patch, a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder.
“You look pretty fit to me, ma’am,” he said.
I eased up onto a bar stool, introduced myself and ordered a glass of club soda with lime.
“Comin’ right up,” Eli replied.
It was my first visit to Bier Haus, so I glanced around the room. A guy from Salt Lake City had opened three locations in Colorado within the past year. The one in Crescent Creek was a few months old, but it had already earned a stellar reputation for cold beer, hot sourdough pretzels and a laidback vibe. Since it was around four o’clock, there were only a couple of guys sipping their brews at a high-top near the pool tables.
“Here you go,” Eli said, sliding a glass in my direction. “Care for a pretzel to go with that?”
I shook my head. “I’m cutting back on carbs,” I said, digging for my wallet. “But I’ve heard all about them.”
He smiled. “Yeah, we got written up in some paper down in Denver. One of those freebie deals. They pretty much raved about the pretzels and mustard selection.”
“Was it Westword?”
“Could be. I’m not much of a reader.”
I nodded. “Business good?”
“Yep. Friday and Saturday nights are wall-to-wall. We do karaoke on Monday and Tuesday. Half-priced ale and pretzels on Thursday.”
“What about Wednesday?”
He laughed. “Ale’s still cold,” he said. “But there’s no discount.”
We made small talk for a few more minutes about dealing with unruly customers and tending bar in a small town. Then I asked if we could talk about the fight from earlier in the week.
“Which one?”
“Seriously?”
Eli pulled the towel from his shoulder and idly polished the oak bar. “Yeah. This has been a crazy week. I blame it on the full moon.”
“Tends to make some people nuttier than normal.”
He smiled. “Of course, some people are just born that way.”
“Like the guy who was here with Whitney Morgenson?”
The smile disappeared. “I got no comment on that,” he said.
“Because…”
He shrugged. “On account of the guy’s dead now.”
“Has Detective Kincaid stopped by to see you?”
“Some guy named Walsh,” Eli said. “Deputy dog or whatever.”
I nodded. “Or whatever.”
“I mean, don’t get me wrong. As far as cops go, the dude was fine. But I don’t know anything about some guy getting killed over at the hotel.”
“Any chance I could take a look at the surveillance footage from that night?”
Eli grunted. “Yeah, sure. If there was any. Our system got jacked a couple days before that. I called the service tech, but the soonest he could come fix it is next Wednesday.”
“That’s a long time to go without security cameras,” I said.
He reached under the bar and came back with a weathered baseball bat. “I got Babe Ruth here in the meantime.”
“Your bat’s name is Babe Ruth?”
He nodded. “My old man used to talk about him all the time. I did some checking around and found out he wasn’t blowin’ smoke. There really was a baseball player back in the day named Babe Ruth. Before then I thought it was just a candy bar name that got misspelled.”
“Right,” I said. “The name can be sort of confusing. Good thing your dad clued you in about the real deal.”
He stowed the bat and asked again if I wanted to try a sourdough pretzel.
“Not today,” I said. “But I like
the atmosphere in here. And it’s been forever since I played pool. I’ll definitely be back to shoot a few.”
“Nice,” he said. “That’s what I like to hear.”
“Okay, so no video of the fight?”
He shrugged. “Sorry.”
“But you witnessed it, right?”
He lifted one arm to reveal four parallel red marks down the back of his meaty bicep. “I witnessed the whole thing,” he said. “And I got the souvenirs to show for it.”
“Did Whitney Morgenson do that to your arm?”
“Whatever her name is,” he said. “She’s a mess, man. I saw it the first time she came in here.”
“Was she with John Doe?”
He frowned. “Who?”
“The gentleman that was with her the night of the fight,” I explained. “The guy that was found in the gazebo at Crescent Creek Lodge.”
“Oh, sorry! No, the first time she was with some dude that had orange skin, like he sleeps in a tanning bed. Cheech told me that’s her husband.”
“Tucker Morgenson.”
Eli shrugged. “If you say so. I don’t remember what he said the guy’s name was.”
“And Cheech is…”
“My weeknight bartender,” he said. “Good dude. Real funny and takes excellent care of the customers.”
“Including Tucker and Whitney Morgenson?”
“Yeah, that guy only came in here with her the once. She’s been back a bunch of times, but always with another dude on her arm.”
“Maybe a brother?” I suggested. “Or a good friend of the family?”
He answered with another snort. “More like a Romeo she’d met on one of them dating sites.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, or one time it was with a married guy.”
“How do you know he was married?”
Eli’s smile was laced with mischief. “Because his wife blew through the door while Whitney and her date were whispering to each other in that booth over there.” He tipped his head toward the far side of the bar. “The wife made a beeline across the room, grabbed her husband by one ear and yanked the guy outside while everybody watched.”
“Do you know their name by any chance?”
He answered with a frown. “Nope, sorry.”
“Are they regulars?”
Another frown. “Nah, but I heard the guy ended up filing for divorce.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” I said.
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Eli grumbled. “What’s that statistic they’re always quoting? Fifty percent of marriages are doomed?”
I smiled. “Which means fifty percent are happily ever after.”
“There ya go,” he said. “Always look on the bright side.”
“I try to.”
The door opened and I glanced over my shoulder. It was Theo Fry, a regular at Sky High Pies. He saw me and waved. I returned the greeting.
“Did you happen to hear how Whitney met John Doe?” I asked. “You said something a second ago about meeting Romeos online.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s what Cheech thinks, but I don’t know for sure. And I don’t wanna know.” He flashed another smile; a quick sparkle of white and gold. “Know what I mean?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “So Cheech thinks Whitney met John Doe online?”
“Could be,” he said. “But, like I already told you—I don’t wanna know. None of my business.”
“But it sort of became your business the other night?” I suggested. “When John Doe got into a brawl with Jasper and Shane from the Lodge?”
“She started it,” Eli muttered. “Just an airhead with fake boobs and a big diamond ring. Wanna know my opinion? If I was her husband, I’d drop her so fast the dye would fly off her hair.”
“Bottle blonde?” I asked.
“You got that right! Fake hair, fake tan, fake boobs. The only real thing about that chick is the fact that she cheats on her husband with a new guy every few weeks.”
I frowned. “I’m really sorry to hear that.”
Eli howled. “Ah, c’mon! The rich dude has to know what’s going on.”
“Maybe yes,” I said. “And maybe no. Either way, it’s an unfortunate situation.”
“Yeah, I suppose so. But that particular situation was coming to a close.”
I asked what he meant by the comment—the Morgenson’s marriage or Whitney’s dalliance with John Doe.
Eli chuckled again. “Dalliance,” he said, giving me another peek at his showy gold tooth. “That’s a funny word.” He took my glass and refilled it. “But I was talking about the affair,” he said, putting a new coaster under my club soda. “As I escorted the lady and her boy toy out the back door, I heard her telling him she was thinking about being loyal to her husband again.”
“Ouch,” I said. “How’d John Doe take that?”
“Wanna know the truth?”
“Always,” I said.
“I think it actually broke the guy’s heart,” Eli said. “From what he said that night, the sucker didn’t even know she was married.”
CHAPTER 16
After talking with Eli Odom, I got back in my car in the Bier Haus parking lot and dialed Dina’s number at the station. When it went to voicemail, I tried her cell.
“I saw your name on my desk phone,” she said, still sounding worn-out and grumpy. “But my heel got caught on the…” She sighed heavily. “Sorry, Katie. You don’t need the nitty-gritty of my shoe snafu. I just couldn’t grab the phone in time.”
“I can call later if you’re busy.”
She sighed. “I doubt if things will be any calmer then,” she said. “What’s going on?
“I was wondering if you’ve talked with Whitney Morgenson.”
“About what?” she said. “The fight in the bar or the body in the gazebo?”
“How about all of the above?”
She found the energy to snicker. “Thanks, Katie. I needed a little break from the monotony of watching surveillance videos from the Lodge.”
“Did you find anything useful yet?”
“I learned that Ralph Gordon is a litterbug,” she said. “And a sudden gust of wind showed me that his wife doesn’t always wear panties.”
I winced at the thought of Maureen Gordon’s roomy caboose on display for the world to see.
“And it also revealed that she has a tattoo on her left cheek,” Dina added. “Want to know what it is?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Neither did I,” she groused. “But it’s a unicorn.” She paused for a second. “Or a seahorse. I couldn’t exactly tell and the zoom feature made it too blurry.”
“Well, those are all truly interesting little factoids,” I joked. “But I was referring to things that might help ID the man in the gazebo.”
“I haven’t seen anything helpful yet,” Dina reported. “But there are many hours of mind-numbing footage to watch before I call it quits.”
“In that case, I won’t keep you long. After my conversation with Connie and Shane Scott earlier, I was wondering if you thought Whitney Morgenson might be—”
“A bimbo?”
I stifled a laugh. “Involved in John Doe’s death,” I continued. “She was with him the night he got into it with Shane and Jasper.”
“And she was with her husband on the afternoon that Mr. Doe died.”
“Is that confirmed?” I asked.
“Done and done,” said Dina. “Tucker Morgenson is getting ready to make a large donation to the city of Crescent Creek for a new park. He and his bride were with two members of the city council yesterday from noon until five in the afternoon.”
“Which means Whitney has an alibi,” I said.
“Yes, indeed! She has an alibi, a very wealthy husband and one of the strangest marriages I’ve ever heard about.”
“Does her husband know that she’s cheating on him?”
“Yes,” Dina said. “And she knows that he’s got a girlfriend in Miami.”
I didn’t say anything in response to the news.
“And that means Tucker and Whitney Morgenson are two peas in a pod,” Dina added. “A very, very, very strange pod.”
CHAPTER 17
Zack and I were in my kitchen making dinner for one of our cherished date nights while I told him about my visit to see Eli Odom. I was fixing a garden salad, he was chopping tomatoes for Manicotti a la Granny Hutton and there were six Oatmeal Cranberry Bars with Honey-Maple Glaze in a plastic container on the counter. We also had a bottle of merlot and an old James Bond movie on DVD. When I explained that John Doe was in the dark about Whitney Morgenson’s marital status, Zack put down the knife and spun around.
“You’ve got to be joking!” he exclaimed in disbelief. “The guy didn’t know she was married?”
“Apparently not,” I answered. “I guess she takes off her wedding ring whenever she goes out on the prowl.”
Zack muttered a few more zingers before asking if I liked Eli Odom.
I smiled. “Besides being the most powerfully-built bartender I’d ever seen,” I answered, “Eli reminded me of Stallone. If, that is, Stallone had a beard, sleeve tattoos and a witty sense of humor.”
“How do you know Sly isn’t witty?”
“Point taken,” I said, pinching the tip of Zack’s nose between my thumb and forefinger. “And Eli actually had some very interesting things to say about Whitney Morgenson.”
“The blonde with the big—”
I tweaked his nose again. “Yes, that’s her. Some people put their money in stocks and bonds; Whitney funnels it into silicone pillows and tummy tucks.”
“It looks like she’s getting a good return on her investment,” Zack said. “I saw her climb out of a Maserati the other night.”
“Uh-huh. But her name isn’t on the title; that little beauty belongs to her husband.”
“Well, I figured as much,” he said. “But still…what the husband has, the wife can enjoy.”
“I suppose so. That sort of high-dollar lifestyle is completely foreign to me. I’m more the old-fashioned kind of girl. I like the innocence of courtship, the intrigue of romance…”