by Libby Kirsch
Before Frank could react, Cindy Lou said, “Frank, honey, after her table’s ready, I’ll need your help changin’ out a keg. Thank you.” She tried to hide her grin but failed.
Frank huffed out something rude that Janet couldn’t quite hear before he stalked past her to wipe down the table and set out some coasters.
“What do you want? Bloody Mary’s on special tonight.” Janet steered Larsa through the bar.
“Oh, I don’t drink,” Larsa said in that same dreamy voice. “Alcohol’s the devil’s work, clear as day. I’ve been sober for eight and a half years and counting.”
“Devil’s work. Ah, right,” Janet said, fixing Frank with a death stare when she caught him smirking. “Can I . . . can I get you anything? Water? Tea?”
“Well, I guess I’d love a glass of sweet tea.”
“Cindy Lou, one sweet tea for Ms. Freeman. First one’s on the house.”
She left the whole lot of them behind and walked into the office, flung herself into a chair, and threw an arm over her eyes. A teetotaling, antialcohol prayer warrior was going to be taking up prime real estate inside the bar—or causing a scene outside of it—until Ike’s killer was caught. As much as she hated to admit it, she was stuck. She would either have to help Detective O’Dell with this case or slowly lose customers until she was out of business. People didn’t go to a bar to be reminded of murder, death, and sadness, but to escape all of that. She had to hope the police would find the killer—and soon.
By eight o’clock that night, the Spot was standing room only. Customers were four deep around the bar and people hovered aggressively by the tables, ready to jump in as soon as a seat opened up. They were officially over capacity for the first time ever, and Frank had a crowd waiting outside the door.
“Two out, one in,” he called to Janet as she passed by with a tray full of beer.
She nodded but didn’t slow down, and a moment later, she set the drinks down with a flourish. “Anything else, guys?” They were new customers—their first time there, Janet guessed. They’d asked for some kind of fancy microbrew she’d never even heard of and had then gleefully asked for the menu after she told them their five choices.
“Menu?” she’d said. “There isn’t a menu. We have five beers on tap; I don’t need to write them down, for God’s sake!”
They’d chortled at that and then ordered five light beers. Now they were drinking them with a kind of curiosity she reserved for the zoo.
“How is it?” she asked, already wishing she hadn’t.
“It . . . it just doesn’t really taste like anything, does it?” said a man with a pencil-thin beard that rimmed his jawline. “It’s not hoppy, it’s not malty. What is it?”
“It’s light,” Janet snapped. On her way back to the bar, she stopped by Larsa’s table. The soft flickering glow of her tea candles made the woman look fuzzy. “Can I get you anything?”
“Maybe some more hot water with lemon?”
Janet bustled back up to the bar and grabbed a mug from the shelf.
“Is she drinkin’ more free hot water?” Cindy Lou asked grumpily as she pulled two pints of beer at once.
Janet didn’t have time to answer—the bar was busier than she’d ever seen it, and they were down a bartender, since Elizabeth hadn’t shown for her shift again.
The stack of dirty glasses took up half the lower counter space, and Janet’s eye twitched when a nearby customer missed his table and a full glass of beer splashed onto the ground.
“Need some help?”
Janet turned to find Mel, her new tenant, standing opposite. “What can I get you?”
“I’m serious—I used to be a bartender. I can bar-back for you or deliver drinks. It looks like you could use more hands.”
“Oh . . . well I, uh . . .”
The cacophony of requests being shouted at her made her agree before she could really consider the offer; soon, Mel was behind the bar, cleaning glasses and pulling pints next to Cindy Lou.
It took three more hours for the crowd to finally thin.
“What’s the matter, boss? You look grumpier than a one-handed acrobat!” Cindy Lou grinned. “You’ll be able to pay all your bills for the month from this one night!”
Janet frowned. She didn’t want to complain, but she didn’t like all the chaos. She’d had to stop those hipster fools from drinking and dashing; the ringleader of the group had nearly come to blows with Frank in the parking lot until she’d stepped in and Pencil Beard’s girlfriend finally pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. They’d drained two different kegs before the rowdiest of the crowd had left, and the ice machine couldn’t keep up with demand, forcing Janet to institute a three-cube cap around ten o’clock. “We just weren’t ready for it, that’s all. We need to grow slowly enough that we can handle it. I don’t want people trying us out and never coming back because they got bad service,” she finally answered.
Cindy Lou turned to look at Janet for a long moment and finally asked, “You all right, sweetheart?”
“Stress,” Mel said. “Her eye’s twitching from stress.” Janet slapped a hand over her eye and Mel said, “I’m taking off. I told Kat I was heading out for one beer,” she added with a smile.
“How are you both settling in?”
“Good. We weren’t sure it was going to work out, moving in and all, and I wanted to thank you for that, and talk to you about—”
“Frank!” Janet shouted over Mel when she saw her bouncer sipping from a can of beer. “You’re not allowed to drink until your shift is over!”
He grumbled but put the beer down on the table next to him. Distracted, she said, “Thanks, Mel. We’ll work out what to pay you tomorrow.”
Mel didn’t move for a moment, but she finally nodded and walked away.
“You haven’t heard from our sweet Elizabeth yet?” Cindy Lou asked when Janet took her post behind the bar.
“Nope. You?” Janet frowned when Cindy Lou shook her head. “I understand taking a sick day, but at least have the courtesy to call in with an excuse!”
“Ain’t you worried, boss?”
Worried she’s got my money, Janet thought darkly, finally dropping her hand from her no-longer-pulsing eye. “No,” she said aloud, “I’m not worried. I think she’s just taking some time off.”
“It ain’t really like her, though, is it?” Cindy Lou asked as she topped off the bowls of trail mix from a bag under the counter. “And the timin’? I mean, she’s one of the last people to have seen Ike alive. Now he’s dead and she’s missin’?”
“She’s not missing!” Janet said. “She’s an inconsiderate employee who couldn’t be bothered to tell anyone she was taking some days off.” She slammed the cooler lid up and rearranged the bottles inside for something to do. “And it’s not the first time, either. Remember a couple of years ago?”
Cindy Lou chewed on her lip but didn’t say anything.
“It was the same thing! She took a week off with no word to anyone, then came right back in like nothing happened. No explanation or anything!”
Cindy Lou’s worried expression didn’t waver, and after a moment, she turned away from Janet, in either resignation or disappointment.
Janet stared moodily at the tap and then shifted her focus to Larsa. “What are we going to do about that?” she asked Cindy Lou.
The other woman shrugged. “Beats me why you even invited her in here.”
Janet frowned at the grieving daughter, but when Larsa looked up and they locked eyes, she forced a neutral expression back onto her face. She scooped some trail mix into a clean plastic bowl and headed toward her guest, determined to have a tough conversation about Larsa’s future at the Spot.
“Need a snack?” she asked, sitting down across from Ike’s daughter.
Larsa blew out a breath before plunging her hand into the bowl and plucking out two cashews. “I know I can’t stay here—your bouncer has made that perfectly clear.”
Janet’s left eye pulsed in warning
. “Did he say something to you?” His arrogance was starting to do more than just annoy her. Her face heated up. This was her bar—she could invite whomever she wanted, and Frank had no business interfering.
“Let’s just say I know not to come back.”
Janet’s temper flared, and before she could stop herself, she was saying the exact opposite of what she’d planned to when she walked over. “Larsa, you are my guest. You will be here as long as you want, and I’ll make sure Frank knows that, along with the rest of the staff.” Her glare landed on Frank, who was sipping surreptitiously from his beer can again.
“Well, that’s so . . . that’s just so . . .” As Larsa teared up at the offer, Janet inched away, preparing to stand. “Wait.” Larsa hiccupped and took a gulp of water from the mug. “Wait, I’m sorry. It’s just, you’re being so nice. It means a lot, you know?” Janet stuck one leg out from under the table and shifted her weight, but Larsa laid a hand on her arm. “I know my father was in here a lot. I hope he wasn’t too much trouble?”
“Oh, well . . . I mean, he was one of our regulars, that’s for sure.” Janet tried to stay vague, she didn’t want to be the one to tell Larsa they’d had to send Ike home—and suffer his anger and yelling when they did—almost as often as not.
“He wasn’t always so hateful, you know. He used to be . . . well, better, I guess.”
“Weren’t we all?” Larsa’s lower lip quivered as she attempted a smile. Janet settled into her seat; she knew a thing or two about dads who didn’t live up to expectations. “What went wrong?” she asked, realizing not only that Larsa needed to talk this one out, but also that she might not have had anyone else to turn to.
“Listen, I’m not saying he ever would’ve won Dad of the Year or anything. He always drank too much, and he was never around as much as he should’ve been, but he was never the same after the accident.”
“What accident?” Janet settled back into the seat and focused on the other woman.
“I guess it was just about ten years ago. He was driving home, probably drunk, and hit someone.”
“God, how terrible. What happened?”
“The first cop on the scene drove Dad home. They didn’t come talk to him about the, uh, the accident until that night. By then, he’d slept off whatever alcohol was in his system.”
“Wow,” Janet said. “What happened to the other driver?”
Larsa blanched. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t another car. It was a guy on a bike.” Janet gasped and Larsa said, “He was killed. My dad hit and killed a college kid who was riding his bike to class.”
Janet’s mouth twisted in shock, but when she saw Larsa’s face fall, she racked her brain, trying to find something redeemable about the situation. “Well, I mean . . . maybe the kid wasn’t riding with a headlight. Cyclists can be hard to see, sometimes. Maybe it wasn’t your dad’s fault.”
“It was nine thirty in the morning.” Larsa’s wide blue eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “The boy was heading to an early-morning biology class and my dad was already drunk—or still drunk from the night before. At any rate, he shouldn’t have been driving, and he shouldn’t have gotten off without charges.”
That information startled Janet into silence. Finally, she said, “He didn’t get charged at all? He hit and killed a person and didn’t face any charges?”
“Not as far as the law went, no, but believe me, there were consequences. He was never the same. He drank more and talked less. He and my mom had a huge fight one night and he walked out. I hadn’t really talked to him since.”
“When was that?”
“Ten years ago.”
“You didn’t talk to your dad for ten years—and now he’s dead? You must feel . . .” Janet let the sentence trail off, unable to put her thoughts into words.
“Unsettled, like there’s no closure. It’s just . . .”
“Awful,” they said together.
“Thanks for letting me sit here. I don’t know why, but it makes me feel better to think I’m doing something that might help.” She dropped her gaze to the mug of hot water between her hands and fell quiet.
Janet didn’t ask the other woman exactly how sitting in her bar was going to help. Instead she stood, taking two empty water glasses with her.
On her way back to the bar, she nearly ran headlong into Detective Finch. The frown she had been trying to hold off finally came through. Finch waved off Frank’s handshake attempt, nodded briskly at Janet, and then walked toward the bar without a word.
Janet smacked the beer out of Frank’s hand as she passed and felt a satisfied grin cross her face when he curled his lips and crossed his arms but remained silent. She dumped the trash into the can behind the bar, set the glasses into the sink, and stifled another smile when she overheard Nell, clearly answering one of Finch’s questions.
“I don’t know, Officer, I guess I’d say Ike was an insufferable fool who had no friends, no manners, and no idea of how to be a good human—but I’m sure somebody out there is sorry he’s dead.”
Nell’s glasses took up half of her face. The large black frames would have made anyone else resemble a fly, but with her silvery-white hair pulled back into a low bun and dark red lipstick, Nell oozed sophistication, even as she sat on the bar stool drinking well vodka on the rocks.
Janet tried to listen in as she dipped two dirty glasses into the spinning brushes on the left side of the sink and then dunked them into the basin of cold, mostly clean water on the right.
Finch, his voice low, said, “We’re trying to find out where Ike’s car might be. Do you remember seeing it Wednesday night?”
Janet froze. Of course! Where was Ike’s car? In the chaos of finding his body, it hadn’t occurred to her that it was missing. Just as she wondered whether the police were thinking it might have been a carjacking or theft gone wrong that left Ike dead, Nell answered.
“No, but I do remember Elizabeth taking his keys. He was fit to be tied when she snatched them off the bar.”
“Elizabeth, the other bartender? She had Ike’s car keys?” He whipped out his notebook and scribbled down a few words.
“Mmm-hmm.” Nell swirled the ice cubes in her glass with a straw. “If I recall, Ike told her to eff off, but he actually said the word, if you know what I mean.”
Finch nodded seriously. “Was he often angry like that?”
The brushes on the automatic glass washer spun, cleaning lipstick and sediment from the two new glasses in Janet’s hand while she focused on the conversation.
“Every time he got kicked out, he swore it would be his last time here.” Nell worried at a bracelet. “He always came back, though—had nowhere else to go, I’d guess.”
“His behavior must have made people angry. How did Elizabeth react?”
“She was calm. I mean, it wasn’t the first time.” Nell took a sip of her drink and winced. Cheap vodka never went down smoothly, but Nell wouldn’t spring for top shelf. Instead, she squeezed the wedge of lime that had balanced on the rim of her glass and motioned to Cindy Lou for another.
Finch was quiet until Cindy Lou moved down the bar again. The drying rack was full, but there were still a dozen dirty glasses, so Janet kept at it, glad for the mindless task while Finch was asking questions.
“Was everyone always so calm? What about Janet?” the detective asked Nell.
“Well, Janet doesn’t suffer fools. If Ike yelled at her, she yelled back. That’s just how she is, though—she doesn’t mean anything by it. She’d probably give you the shirt off her back if you needed it,” Nell added.
“Did her boyfriend let that pass?”
“Did Jason let what pass? He’s not going to pick a fight with every jerk here, I mean, that’d be a full-time job.” Nell’s glass clunked against the bar as she set it down. “Is that all? You’re cramping my style tonight. I’ve got my eye set on that tall drink of water at the corner table—he’s new. I think I’ve got a shot. What do you think?”
Finch’s eyebrows
arched comically, and his mouth opened but no words came out.
“What, you don’t think an old woman’s got game? You’d be surprised.” She straightened her massive glasses. “You just gotta be direct and tell the man what you’re interested in. They almost always bite.”
“Oh . . . uh . . .” Finch stumbled back a step in his hurry to get away. “Well, thanks for your, uh . . . candor, Nell.”
He hastily walked to the back corner of the bar and looked down at his notebook—maybe gathering his thoughts after the visual Nell had put there.
Janet moved down the bar with a grin. “You had to go there, Nell?”
The older woman set her glass down primly. “What do you mean? If someone’s going to ask me so many questions, I’d like them to remember me at the end of the day. Oh, and by the way, you might want to tell your new guest over there to pipe down. She was just regaling some new customers about her sobriety. ‘One thousand eight hundred twenty-seven days sober and counting’ just seems like a lot of information for a casual customer, you know?
Janet blew out a sigh at Larsa’s tendency to over-share, patted Nell’s hand, and moved down the bar until she faced the side door. The condiment container was running low on cherries and limes, so she set to work refilling it from the bin of prepped fruit in the cooler.
As she worked, she pondered the new information from Detective Finch. Ike’s car was missing and Elizabeth had taken Ike’s keys before he left the building. Now he was dead, his keys and car were missing, and no one had heard from Elizabeth since.
She tried to swallow but her mouth was completely dry.
Where was Elizabeth? Had she killed Ike and left with his car? If she was having money trouble—and Janet suspected something was going on with her if she was stealing from the till—was it too much of a leap to think she might have been desperate enough to kill?
“Would that be okay, Janet?” Nell stood across the bar, her eyebrows raised.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t hear you. What?”
“I was just saying I wonder if you could pour me a sweet tea. The vodka’s tearin’ me up tonight, for some reason.”