Tangled Up in a Brew

by Joyce Tremel

  Dwayne laughed. “For the record, I’m going to be the one taking home that Golden Stein and the thousand buckaroos.”

  “Who’d you steal the recipe from this time?” Dave put a stack of plastic cups down on the table a little harder than necessary. “I know it wasn’t mine. I learned my lesson the hard way.”

  “I never stole anything. Not from you and not from anyone else. It was a coincidence.”

  Dave straightened and put his hands on his hips. “You’re a real piece of work. You expect me to believe you just happened to come up with the same beer I’d been brewing for months. It’s no coincidence. You helped me brew it. You knew exactly what went into it.”

  I braced myself to break up a fight, but instead Dave shook his head and turned away.

  Dwayne looked at me. “I suppose you’ll take his side.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to.

  “Fine. You just wait and see who wins the competition. Everyone will come flocking to my place. I guarantee it.” He strode to the back of his van, yanked open the door, and started unloading.

  I wasn’t about to let Dwayne or anyone else ruin my weekend. Hopefully I’d be so busy serving up samples I wouldn’t even know he was here. I told Dave I’d see him later and moved on to visit some of the other brewers.

  * * *

  An hour later, Jake and I were sitting on folding chairs back in our booth taking a short break. We had been busier than I’d thought we’d be pouring samples for other vendors and some of the festival workers.

  Dwayne Tunstall had stopped at our booth several times and tried to engage me in conversation, asking questions about my brews. I’d tried my best to ignore him without success. I finally ended up answering his questions curtly without telling him much of anything.

  Jake had watched the exchange in silence, then finally said, “Maybe he wants to try a sample.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” I said.

  Dwayne raised his hands in the air. “I know when I’m not wanted.” He spun on his heel, then turned back. “You’re wrong about me, you know.”

  I didn’t say anything and he walked away.

  “What was that all about?” Jake said. “Other than the guy’s a little weird. He seemed harmless.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Jake reached into a cooler and lifted out two bottles of water. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I opened the bottle he passed to me and took a swig. “Dwayne has a bad reputation. Some of the brewers have had problems with him in the past.”

  “What kinds of problems?”

  “Stealing,” I said. “Several years ago, Dwayne worked part-time for Dave, as well as part-time for Cory Dixon over at South Side Brew Works. Neither one of them knew it at the time, but Dwayne was filching the beer recipes. As soon as he got what he needed, he quit. The whole time he worked for Dave and Cory, he was in the process of starting up his own place. Dwayne didn’t even bother to put his own spin on the brews.”

  “What did Dwayne mean when he said you were wrong about him?”

  I recapped my bottle and put it on the ground beside me. “He insists it’s a coincidence that his beer just happens to taste exactly like the others. If they were merely similar, maybe I could buy it. But identical? No way. Every ingredient would have to be the same, and in exactly the same proportions—not to mention the brewing times and the fermentation.”

  Jake finished his water and tossed the bottle into the crate I’d brought for recycling. “Kind of makes you wonder why he’s here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If he’s a pariah in the brewing scene,” he said, “why would he want to be where no one wants to have anything to do with him?”

  “Good point.” I thought about what Dwayne had said earlier. “He’s here for the competition. He told Dave and me he’s going to win the Golden Stein. He sounded sure it was going to be him.”

  “Sounds more like he’s delusional.”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t think so. But I wouldn’t put it past him to do something underhanded to make sure he walks away with that trophy.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jake and I stood as two men carrying clipboards and a woman holding a tablet computer headed our way. I recognized Leonard Wilson, food critic for the Pittsburgh Free Paper. He’d written a wonderful review of my brew house a month ago. Leonard was one of those people with a constant smile on his face. He wasn’t particularly good-looking, but his cheerfulness more than made up for anything he lacked in the looks department. He was tall and skeletal, which was surprising for a food critic. He was balding and I gave him extra credit for not resorting to a comb-over. He shook my hand, and then Jake’s. “I’m so happy to see you both here,” he said, then introduced his companions.

  Phoebe Atwell was a columnist for Midwest Cuisine. Pittsburgh wasn’t exactly the Midwest, but somehow was included in the regional coverage of the magazine. She was taller than me—maybe five foot six or so. I’d guess her age to be midthirties. Her dark blond highlighted hair was cut in a chin-length bob and she was dressed for the heat in a floral shift.

  Marshall Babcock looked more like how I pictured someone who made his living eating and drinking all the time. Ruddy-faced and portly, he appeared older than his forty years. Marshall was a prominent freelance restaurant critic. A Pittsburgh native, he wrote articles published in numerous newspapers and magazines throughout the country. I was impressed Ginger Alvarado had the pull to get someone of his caliber to participate. I doubted there was much money in it for him, but maybe the fact Ginger was married to a city councilman had something to do with it. Rumor had it Edward Alvarado would be running for Allegheny County Executive in the next election. I once tried to explain the local political setup to a friend who had just moved here. She didn’t understand why the city of Pittsburgh had a mayor and a council, and was separate from the county council and executive. I didn’t quite get it, either.

  “It’s very nice to meet you,” Marshall Babcock said after the introductions had been made. “I’m looking forward to sampling your brews.”

  “Would you like to try some now?”

  Marshall shook his head. “We’ll have plenty of time for that. Right now we’re just introducing ourselves to everyone and making notes on what you’ll be serving.”

  As Leonard and Marshall made those notes, Phoebe Atwell was sizing Jake up like he was a lobster on a plate. “I’ve heard all about you,” she purred, ignoring me altogether.

  “All good, I hope,” Jake said.

  “Down, Phoebe,” Leonard said. “I believe the young man is taken.”

  “What a shame,” she said, not taking her gaze off Jake.

  Women flirted with Jake all the time, especially when they found out he had been a professional hockey player. The fact that he’d played with the New York Rangers and not the Pittsburgh Penguins didn’t seem to deter many of them. I was getting used to it. When he put his arm around my shoulders, I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at her. I smiled instead.

  “We don’t want to take up too much of your time,” Marshall said, looking up from his clipboard. “But we do want to go over how the judging will take place.”

  Ginger had already gone over most of this, but Jake and I listened closely in case there was something new. It seemed pretty cut-and-dried to me. They would taste the beers and check off qualities on their score sheets. Near the end of the festival, the scores would be tallied and added together with the online votes from festival attendees. The online voting was a smart idea. I couldn’t imagine how many volunteers they would have needed to count paper votes. The judging for the chefs would proceed differently. It wasn’t possible to make enough burgers for all the festivalgoers, so only Leonard, Phoebe, and Marshall would be involved in the tasting.

  We chatted for a few more minutes and th
ey moved on to the next tent. It was one in the afternoon by this time, and I suggested to Jake we go back to the brew house, grab a bite to eat, and return after lunch. We needed to refresh the ice in the coolers anyway. A few of the other brewers had mini-refrigeration systems set up, but I didn’t have anything like that. I’d be keeping my beer cold the old-fashioned way.

  * * *

  The Allegheny Brew House was situated in a single-story, redbrick building that had once housed the offices for the long-closed Steel City Brewing Company. The large windows faced Butler Street, the main street that ran through Lawrenceville.

  Nicole Clark, my newly promoted manager, had everything under control inside the pub. Not that I was worried, but it was the first time I’d left her in charge. Nicole was a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. We’d become fast friends since I’d hired her. Her major was chemistry—the same as mine had been. It was fun to talk about the chemistry of the brewing process with someone who really understood it. Jake was learning brewing as well, but when Nicole and I talked, we might as well be speaking another language as far as he was concerned.

  The lunch crowd had waned and only two tables were occupied at the moment. Nicole was behind the bar, stocking glasses for the evening rush. Jake headed to the kitchen to check on things there and grab us a bite, while I slid onto one of the oak stools at the bar.

  “How is it going so far?” Nicole asked.

  “Not bad. It should be an interesting weekend.” I told her a little about the setup, the brewers, and the judges. When I finished, I said, “Are you sure you don’t mind keeping things going here?”

  “Not at all. Besides, I’ll get to the festival on Sunday.”

  I’d chosen to keep the brew house closed on Sundays. More for family reasons than religious ones. I was the youngest of six—and the only girl—in an Irish Catholic family. My oldest brother, Sean, was a priest and he made sure I didn’t neglect my weekly obligation to attend Mass. Dinner on Sundays at my parents’ house was an event, and Mom expected us to be there. Three of my brothers lived out of town, so they got an exemption. The only other one who got a pass was my dad. He was a homicide detective with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, so if he got a call, there wasn’t much Mom could do about it.

  Despite my complaints at times, I loved the family get-togethers. I’d missed them terribly during my years in Germany learning brewing. Sometimes Mom would call and put everyone on the phone, but it wasn’t the same. You couldn’t play backyard football long-distance. Since I’d be at the festival this weekend, Mom and Dad, and my brother Mike and his family, were planning on spending the afternoon there, too.

  “Any problems so far today?” I asked.

  “None at all,” Nicole said. “Lunch was busy, but not crazy like it is sometimes.”

  Jake returned from the kitchen just then with two club sandwiches. He placed one of the plates on the bar in front of me, then took a seat beside me. I noticed his mound of fries was twice the size of mine. I reached over and lifted several from the pile.

  “Hey!” He slid his plate out of my reach. “Hands off the lunch.”

  “You have more than me.” I stuffed a fry into my mouth.

  “Do not.”

  I gave him the same look my mother used to give us.

  “Okay. You caught me. I didn’t think you’d notice.”

  I laughed. “Don’t do it again, Lambert.”

  Jake grinned. “Yes, boss.”

  Nicole shook her head. “You two crack me up.”

  “Happy to oblige,” Jake said.

  The battle of the French fries had been settled, so I ate quickly, then headed into the brewery to check on the lager in one of the fermentation tanks. I brewed more ale than I did lager, mainly because it took only about two weeks for an ale to be ready to serve. Lagers fermented for four to six weeks, and at a lower temperature. But I did like to serve a variety of brews, including some seasonal ones. The summery citrus ale I’d developed had turned out to be very popular. It was the first time I’d used Citra hops, which gave the beer a strong citrus aroma. It was a wheat ale, so the slight sweetness balanced out the stronger hops. It was one of the beers I hoped would do well in the competition.

  The temperature gauge on the tank where the lager was fermenting read forty-eight degrees, which was perfect. It had only another week or two to go, so I didn’t want to mess it up now. It would be a month of work down the drain. Literally. I checked the other tanks one by one and found no problems. I remembered I wanted to dress up our booth a little, so I grabbed one of our black dry-erase menu boards and some neon markers. While I did that, Jake loaded up the coolers with ice; then we headed back to the festival.

  * * *

  “Oh, this is terrible!” Ginger Alvarado said.

  She’d dashed by our tent twice while talking into her cell phone and waving her free hand frantically in the air. The third time she passed by, she’d just shoved her phone into her pocket. I called her name.

  “This is terrible,” she said again. “What am I going to do?”

  “What happened?” I said, thinking there had been some kind of catastrophe.

  Ginger tucked a strand of hair that had come loose from her ponytail behind her ear. “We lost one of our judges.”

  “Lost?” Surely she didn’t mean one of them had died.

  She let out a big sigh. “Phoebe just let me know she’s been called away on a family emergency.”

  “Is there anything we can do?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Thank you for asking, though.” Her phone rang again and she reached into her pocket. She took a few steps away and in less than a minute she was smiling again. When she finished the call, she said, “I’m so relieved. There’s nothing to worry about after all. That was Phoebe. She has arranged a replacement for us.”

  Before I could ask her who it was, she hurried away. I turned to Jake. “I guess we’ll find out who it is soon enough.”

  It didn’t take long. The news began with a murmur on the far side of the festival grounds and swelled to a crescendo of groans and obscenities by the time it reached Dave Shipley, two booths over from us. He stormed past Dwayne Tunstall’s tent.

  “Did you hear the news?” he asked when he reached us.

  Judging by his expression, it couldn’t be good.

  “We heard that Phoebe had to bow out, but that’s it,” Jake said. “What’s going on?”

  Dave jammed his hands into his pockets. “We’ve gone from a man-eater judge to a business-ruining one.”

  Oh no. If he meant who I thought he did, it was definitely bad news. “Not—”

  Dave didn’t let me finish. “The one and only. I may as well just pack it up now.”

  “Crap,” I said. “Maybe he’ll be fair for a change.”

  Dave snorted. “You don’t really believe that.”

  “Not for a minute.”

  Jake looked from me to Dave, and back again. “Who are you talking about?”

  “You tell him,” Dave said.

  “Reginald Mobley, the food and beverage critic for the Pittsburgh Times,” I said. “As far as I know, he’s never given a good review for as long as he’s been with the paper.”

  “And I know for a fact,” Dave chimed in, “that he’s driven more than one restaurant out of business.”

  Jake was skeptical. “One person couldn’t possibly be that powerful.”

  “He shouldn’t be, but he is.” I went on to explain how a former restaurant in my own neighborhood of Lawrenceville had closed up overnight because of Mobley’s scathing review. “Somehow he manages to not only attack the food, but the owner’s family and friends as well.”

  “He’s a mean SOB,” Dave said. “I won’t let him near the Fourth Base. He came in wearing a disguise once and I tossed him out. His piece in the paper
wasn’t much of a review, but he ranted on about me having something to hide and dropped hints about cockroaches and rats. Fortunately, I have a reputation for cleanliness and lots of customers came to my defense in the online comments section and refuted everything he said. Others aren’t so lucky.”

  Jake shook his head. “How does he get away with it? You’d think the paper would fire him.”

  “Not if it gets them more readers,” I said. “People eat up the bad stuff and it doesn’t have to be true. He’s the local dining scene’s equivalent to that guy on national talk radio.”

  “So what can we do about it?” Jake asked.

  “Not a damn thing, bro.” Dave slapped Jake on the back and turned to me. “You might want to tell your brother to start a new novena. We could use all the help we can get.”

  I watched Dave return to his tent, then plopped down into my folding chair. I’d been so looking forward to this festival and having a good chance to win the Golden Stein, and now all my hopes were down the toilet. “Great. Just great.”

  Jake took the seat beside me. “Maybe it won’t be that bad.”

  “That’s like telling someone a root canal isn’t so bad.”

  “I’ve had a root canal. It’s not all that painful.”

  “Yeah, but you played hockey. You’re used to getting whacked in the face with a puck or a stick. Take my word for it—Mobley is going to ruin the festival and probably a few careers as well.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  I treated him to my best glare.

  He laughed. “You can’t scare me, O’Hara.” He took my hand. “It will be fine. So what if the guy’s a jerk? Everyone here seems to be onto him. We can deal with anything he dishes out.”

  Jake was right. We were all here to showcase our products and have a good time. We shouldn’t let one person ruin the entire festival. There were two other judges who could surely balance out anything bad Mobley came up with. I certainly hoped so, anyway.

  Dwayne Tunstall left his booth and strolled over to ours. “I don’t get what everyone’s so worked up about,” he said. “Reggie is perfect for this gig.”