Shay O'Hanlon Caper 04 - Chip Off the Ice Block Murder

by Jessie Chandler

  Coop crinkled his nose. “What’s that smell?”

  Eddy said, “That stench is coming up from the basement. When more people are in here, it’s not very noticeable, but right now it’s pretty horrid.”

  I said, “One more thing for Dad to deal with. I think it’s a cracked sewer line or something.”

  Lisa silently watched our exchange and took a pull from her beer. “This year isn’t starting off very well for you guys, is it?”

  That was a bit obvious, but I bit my tongue. When I was tired, I was prone to sarcasm. I didn’t think it was a very good idea to lip off to the person who had bailed my caboose out for a second day in a row.

  Coop said, “I think we’ve all had better moments. Mind scoring me a Bud?”

  Lisa kicked off the counter and pulled a bottle from the cooler. She popped the top, and as she handed it to Coop, she shot me a quick, questioning glance. Somehow I knew she was wondering if she should charge him. I subtly shook my head. She acknowledged with a quirk of an eyebrow.

  How the hell had Lisa read me so well? I closed my eyes and let a feeling of odd familiarity wash over me. Had Lisa and I suddenly become clairvoyant, or whatever the hell the term was? I hadn’t had that kind of nonverbal clarity—or maybe it was simple silent comprehension—that fast with anyone. Well, not since I met JT, anyway.

  Eddy startled me back to awareness with a pointed jab of her bony elbow. “Shay? Answer Lisa.”

  My head snapped up and I met Lisa’s eyes. They were greenish-hazel, depending which way she turned in the hit-and-miss lighting of the bar, and they were currently boring into me.

  Oh my god. Were we having a moment? Whoa. Slam on the air brakes a minute. What was I thinking? I cashed in my player’s ticket when I got serious with JT. Jesus. Get your mind back in the game, Shay. I felt bewildered and speechless.

  Frowning at me, Eddy saved the day. “She’ll have one of those sissy drink-like things. You know, with that syrupy peach cough medicine and some OJ.”

  “Fuzzy navel,” Lisa said. The corners of her mouth curled, but she didn’t say anything as she got busy mixing my admittedly girly concoction.

  I let out a bark that was meant to be a laugh. “Right. Thanks, Eddy.” I suddenly found the gleaming surface of the bar top highly absorbing. I had no idea what my brain was doing. I should have big red neon letters attached to my forehead that blinked off and on, flashing Overload Alert.

  Eddy again applied her elbow none-too-gently to my ribs. I was going to be bruised after this. “You learn anything we can sink our dentures into?”

  I suppressed a grunt and scrambled to pull my jack-rabbiting thoughts together. “Not exactly. Like I said, Dad was nowhere. I checked all the usual spots. Nada.”

  Coop tilted his bottle at Eddy and said, “I ran up to the cabin. Locked up tight. Didn’t look like anyone had been around recently. There weren’t any tire tracks in the driveway since at least the last snow.”

  We hadn’t been up to the cabin since early winter, so that made sense.

  Lisa set the glass containing my cough syrup concoction on a napkin in front of me.

  I gave her a semi-stiff, businesslike thank you and said, “JT went in to work this morning, and she called a bit ago.” I wasn’t completely comfortable discussing my father’s potential problems in front of Lisa, but after all she’d done for us, I wasn’t going to kick her to the proverbial curb. She was a big girl, and if she wanted to escape the nut house, she knew where the exit was.

  Eddy straightened, shifting her position on the stool to face me more fully. “What’d JT have to say?”

  Oh boy. “Nothing you want to hear.”

  “Child, what is it?”

  This was one secret I knew I couldn’t keep. “She found out that Dad’s handgun was found frozen in a block of ice.”

  “Ice?” Eddy asked. “That doesn’t sound too ominous, so why you still have a donkey face?”

  Coop momentarily covered his eyes, waiting for the reveal and the inevitable explosion. Lisa looked between Eddy and me and shot a questioning glance at Coop, who shrugged.

  I said, “There was a body in the ice along with the gun. And no,” I added quickly, “the body isn’t Dad’s. But the gun is.”

  Eddy’s smooth forehead crinkled and one eye got squinty. “A gun? A body? Like one of those department store mannequin things?”

  I shook my head.

  Lisa’s eyes widened, but she didn’t utter a sound.

  “No, Eddy,” I said quietly. “A dead human body. And the cops want to talk to Dad because his handgun was in the ice with the deceased. So that makes him a person of interest in the murder.”

  “Murder?” Eddy jolted and nearly toppled over. I grabbed her elbow.

  “Easy, Eddy,” Coop said.

  In the space of three seconds, Eddy’s confusion melted into indignation. There were times she channeled my Tenacious Protector pretty damn well. “There’s no way your father shot anyone. Granted he’s a hothead. But no sir-ee, he’s not a murderer.” She paused a beat, her lips pursed. “I don’t think he’d kill anyone. Unless someone pushed him too far.”

  My thought exactly. I could see the gears in Eddy’s head grinding along, interpreting what she’d just uttered. “Um, maybe I better keep my trap shut.”

  Up to this point Lisa had followed our exchange without comment. Now she said quietly, “I think maybe it’s time to close up shop.” She pointedly gazed at the two customers in the back booth. “They each only had one drink—Cokes, not alcohol—so their tab should be under ten bucks. Hang on—”

  “Don’t worry.” I waved her off. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Lisa had a good point. Not the greatest idea to be discussing a potentially homicidal father in front of the clientele, especially when the AWOL parent was the owner of the joint. Subtlety wasn’t always my strong suit, and god knew my brain wasn’t banging away on all cylinders right now. Besides, it wasn’t like there was going to be a run on drinks this evening anyway.

  I stood and stretched, then ambled over to the couple. They were middle-aged, dressed in somber, dark clothes, and the woman’s eyes looked puffy while the man’s face was grim. I wondered what crisis I’d interrupted as I explained we were closing early.

  The man said, “No problem. We’re done.”

  I wondered if I’d caught them in the middle of a fight, if maybe I needed to try to get the lady away from the dude to make sure she was okay. I’d done that more than once when I was worried someone was getting heavy-handed with their companion. You never knew, and when you added booze into the mix, it could get ugly in a hurry. Then again, these two hadn’t gotten drunk on a couple of soft drinks.

  The gal groped for something on the seat beside her. She pulled up a black handbag and set it on the table. As she rummaged through its contents, she said, “It was nice to find a quiet bar this evening. Our mother passed away today, and this was a perfect place hide to out for a while.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” I was relieved I hadn’t stepped into the middle of a domestic thing, but saddened to hear the reason for their distress. It struck me that it could easily be me in their shoes. The fear-fueled ache in my belly flared, along with that horrible feeling of being entirely out of control.

  The woman handed me a twenty. “Keep the change.”

  “No ma’am, you’ve got enough to deal with. Let me treat you to a New Year’s Day drink.” I handed back the twenty. I could see she was about to protest, so I added with a gentle smile, “Every once in awhile we all deserve a break. It’s your turn. Don’t argue, keep it.”

  With the wind taken out of the sails of her argument, she smiled tiredly at me and stood to pull on a thigh-length black tweed coat. The man patted me on the shoulder. I followed them up to the front door. They exited, I threw the deadbolt and turned off the OPEN sign.

/>   I resettled myself at the bar and said, “Okay, where were we?”

  Eddy said, “We were figuring out how to find your father and get him out of this mistake. When’s the last time someone saw Pete?”

  I scooped up my fuzzy navel and held it tightly. Condensation on the glass was cold against my palm. “Agnes saw him Friday night at his weekly poker game. Said he was planning for New Year’s Eve the next day. Doesn’t exactly sound like he was hell-bent on a bender.” I sucked a chunk of ice from my glass and pinned it between my molars. “But that doesn’t mean a whole lot. It’s not like he ever plans on falling off the wagon.”

  Lisa said, “Maybe someone at the game noticed something weird.” She raised a brow, her eyes steady on me.

  Eddy asked, “Did Agnes tell you who was playing, child?”

  I dragged my gaze from Lisa and ran down the list of players Agnes told me about.

  When I finished, Eddy told Lisa, “These folks are all friends of Pete’s—that’s Shay’s dad—and they often come play poker in the back room after Pete closes the bar.”

  “You know,” Lisa wiped her hands on a damp rag, “it’s getting late and I should probably get outta here.” She stooped and grabbed her jacket from under the bar.

  “Hey,” I said, “Lisa, you’ve helped us—me, actually, out so much in the last two days, and I feel like I owe you an explanation and likely some funds.”

  “Oh no, you don’t owe me a thing. I happened to be in a position to be able to help and that’s what I did. Think of it as my good deed for the year.”

  “Cool your jets, girl,” Eddy told Lisa. “You put that coat right back down.” The tone in Eddy’s voice left no room for argument. With wide eyes, Lisa tossed her jacket aside.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know how you feel, Lisa. You do whatever she says when she talks like that.” I’d been on the receiving end of Eddy’s bossiness more times than I could count.

  Eddy said, “In for a penny, in for a peso. Or something like that. Lisa, after what you’ve done for my Shay … ’Sides, you’re rather handy.”

  Lisa gave a slightly strained laugh. “Guess I can stick around.”

  “Good, good.” Eddy clapped her hands like a delighted little kid. She sprang from giddy to ferocious in a blink. “Now, Shay, supposing your father is still AWOL tomorrow, you see if you can track down the poker buddies and have a chat. Maybe he said something to one of them that’ll help clear this up.”

  I didn’t know how anyone was going to explain away my father’s gun chilling in a block of frozen water, but at this point, I was willing try anything.

  “Shay,” Eddy continued, “I’d come with you if I could, but the Knitters are doing a tour of the Mill City Museum. I’m a chaperone.” She leaned conspiratorially toward Lisa. “You gotta watch some of those old ladies real careful-like. They can get into all kinds of trouble.”

  Lisa, eyebrows hiked high, slowly nodded.

  Eddy turned her sights on Coop. “You go with Shay. Keep her out of trouble.”

  He literally cringed. “I’m sorry, Eddy. You know I would. But I can’t until I wrap up my latest contract. It’s due to the state in a couple days, and I’m a bit behind. New Year celebrations kind of got in the way.”

  Coop would be there anytime and anywhere if I truly needed him. In this case I was certainly fine to do a solo chitchat with my dad’s poker playing pals.

  Lisa asked, “What do you do, Coop?”

  “I’m sort of a computer geek—”

  “Hacker,” I coughed into my hand.

  Eddy thwapped me in the back of the head. “Fixer,” she corrected.

  “Ignore them,” Coop said. “The simplified version is the state hired me to map projected income from electronic pulltabs and how those proceeds might be used to help fund a new Vikings stadium.”

  The longer, unspoken story was that for the last year or so, Coop had been designing and implementing player reward systems for bingo halls and local casinos, along with other computer-type jobs on a contract basis.

  His reputation as a highly skilled, out-of-the-box systems developer caught the attention of some muckety-muck in state government. They contacted him to see if he’d be interested in working with some high-level, hush-hush video gaming software company to assess the potential for re-creating and marketing electronic pulltabs to increase state revenue. Pulltabs were a Minnesota bar and bingo tradition, and I supposed it seemed natural to see what more sales could do.

  But Coop’s computer talents encompassed much more than simple player reward systems. If the government wasn’t careful, Coop could hack into their systems so fast they’d have no idea what hit them. He had the ability to seriously mess with any mainframe’s inner workings. It was a very bright idea to keep Coop on your good side.

  Lisa leaned against the back counter again and crossed her arms. “What are you finding in your research?”

  Coop smirked. “It’s confidential, and they might kill me for sharing, but the one thing I can tell you is that they need to dial back their expectations.”

  “Pshaw.” Disgust colored Eddy’s tone. “Those yahoos. Why should I—a geezerly taxpayer who has nothing to do with football, help fund a ridiculous roofless stadium—in Minnesota, of all places, when they have a perfectly good one now? Well,” she added, “as long as the roof don’t cave in again. ’Sides, those millionaire owners could stand to drop a wad of their own dough for their cause. The state shouldn’t have anything to do with how businesses run their affairs, ’specially when it’s all about dopey football.”

  “Let’s not get her started or we’ll be here all night,” I said.

  Eddy ignored me. “Lisa, can you go with Shay tomorrow? I’d feel a lot better if someone were with her. She’s got a bit of a temper—”

  “I do not,” I interrupted indignantly.

  Coop whacked me. “Yeah, you do.”

  I made a face at him.

  Eddy gave us her patented settle-your-asses-down-before-I-whup-’em evil eye. That look worked as well now as it did back when we were knee-high like the corn in July.

  “See what I mean about her temper?” she said to Lisa.

  Lisa laughed. I wondered if she thought we were all whackadoodles. But honestly, I didn’t need to wonder; we were all whacka-

  doodles.

  “I’m doing an internship at the Walker Art Center,” Lisa said. “I’m on vacation for another week. I certainly can help out tomorrow if you like.” She drilled me with an intense look. “But only if Shay doesn’t mind.”

  There was something disturbing yet mesmerizing in those eyes. If she did come along tomorrow, we were definitely going to have to have a heart-to-heart. I needed to make damn sure she was clear on the fact that I was completely and thoroughly attached. I mentally smacked myself. I didn’t even know for sure the woman was gay, and here I was jumping to some probably very wrong conclusions.

  I mentally heaved a peevish sigh and rearranged my expression into something a little more inviting. “Whoever would like to accompany me on tomorrow’s fact-finding mission, meet me at the Rabbit Hole at ten a.m.”

  It was almost midnight when Lisa and I finished up at the Lep. Coop left to take Eddy home, and Lisa restocked the bar while I tried to tie out the day’s receipts. In all, the weekend had been a good one for my father. He was damn lucky we’d all been around to help him.

  My fury at his bailing out on such a huge weekend was tempered by the knowledge that something else very unseemly was going on. There was no other explanation. Maybe this cluster was all tied into one massive booze orgy. His track record was full of them, so there was no discounting the possibility.

  After some fits and starts, I managed to bumble through the maze of paperwork and prepare the deposit. Luckily, like the safe combination, nothing had changed since he opened the place.

  I
shut off the light to the office and pulled the door closed. I double-checked the front door to make sure it was locked and killed the lights in the front of the bar.

  My phone vibrated with an incoming message. A quick check showed that JT was on her way home. One beautiful, bright spot to end my evening.

  In the kitchen Lisa was tucking away the last of the dishes, her back facing me.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Lisa let out a startled yip and spun, hand to chest. “Oh my god. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “Sorry about that.” It wasn’t good manners to kill the help.

  “It’s okay. Whew. My heart’s still working.” She patted her shirtfront a couple of times, probably just to make sure.

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “No, I think I’ve got it all. Not sure where your dad puts everything away, but I did what I could.”

  “And that is good enough. Let’s get out of here.”

  Lisa glanced at the closed basement door. “I think that smell is getting worse. I ran down there earlier when I restocked, and shit’s really oozing.” She paused and grimaced. “No pun intended.”

  Said smell wafted beneath my nose. “I know. I’m going to call someone tomorrow. I don’t know why my dad didn’t do it sooner, but it’s got to be fixed.”

  We bundled up and I doused the kitchen lights. Lisa stepped outside and I followed, pulling the door closed behind me, keying the deadbolt. It was cold and clear, and a few stars sparkled overhead. Without much wind, it wasn’t half bad.

  “Where are you parked?”

  “On the street, down the block.”

  “Come on, I’ll give you a lift.” I bobbed my head toward my vehicle, which was almost swallowed up by the darkness.

  “Cool.” She angled around one side of the SUV. I headed for the driver’s side and unlocked the doors with the fob.