“You find anything interesting in your prying?” I asked. I snatched the sheets of paper from his hands and picked up the phone.
“Sally told me what the two of you were doing. I’m just filling in for her.”
I held up my finger for silence when I connected with the bank president’s secretary. “Oh, sorry, Hera. Mr. Claxton waited for fifteen minutes or so, but he had an eleven-thirty tee time with Michael Ramford and Stanley, what’s-his-name, the new brew master there, and they were waiting in the outer office to pick him up. I can have him call you tomorrow. No, wait, next week. He’s off for a short trip to the Bahamas.”
I couldn’t listen any longer. “I know, a short trip to the Bahamas for some golf,” I said and hung up.
Someone rapped at the screen door. I recognized Manuel Diego, one of the workers at Rafe’s. His face was sweaty, as if he’d run several miles in the heat. He looked worried, as well as exhausted. “Mr. Rafe says for you to come quick. He tried to call, but the phone was busy. He sent me through the woods to get you”
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Jake’s cell phone warbled. I opened the door for Manuel and pulled him into the kitchen. Jake listened for several minutes, then flipped the phone closed.
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” Jake said. “Someone tried to kill the brew master at Rafe’s. I’ve got to get over there.” At the door he turned to confront me, his expression drawn in lines of anger. “I don’t know what game you and your buddies are playing here, but next time there’s an attempted murder, I expect the first call to go to my office, not to you and the rest of your beer-brewing gang.”
“I’ll give Rafe your message,” I said, “when I have the opportunity, but right now, one of the beer-brewing gang, as you put it, needs me.” I pushed past him, gesturing for Manuel to follow me to my truck. “Oh, and one more thing. Since you’re pitching in for Sally, would you lock up when you leave?”
Something childish in me wanted my words to aggravate him, and I wasn’t disappointed. My eye caught an old habit of his when he was angry—a barely noticeable facial tic, the result of grinding his teeth to keep from yelling. Good. This round was mine.
I roared off down my drive, in the lead for only several seconds. Jake’s police cruiser, lights flashing and siren howling, blew past me on the straight-of-way, then veered into the road leading to Rafe’s place. As he passed, he waved and smiled. Damn. Now we were even.
Several county sheriffs’ cars, in addition to Jake’s cruiser, stood outside the brewing barn. Two EMTs carried a stretcher with someone on it—I couldn’t see who—to an ambulance idling at the barn door. They loaded the person into it and joined the stretcher. It raced down the drive, rocks and pebbles flying from its tires.
Workers from the brewery and locals, along with Marsh, Teddy, and Stanley, clustered around the entrance to the barn. Jake was right. It looked as if Rafe called the brewers first, then the authorities. No wonder he was so mad.
I jumped from the truck and pushed my way through the crowd of onlookers until I got to Teddy, standing outside the barn arguing with a police officer.
“No one goes in there now. Back off, and we’ll let you know soon enough what’s happening,” the officer said.
Just then, I caught sight of Rafe exiting the far end of the barn through the gift shop door.
“Rafe!” I waved my arms and broke free of the crowd. He signaled me to follow him to the house. Teddy didn’t notice us until we were almost up the steps, then he propelled his rotund frame around the back of the group.
“Wait up. What’s happening?” he asked.
“What did you do, Rafe, call all of us?” I asked.
“He didn’t call me. I monitor the police band,” said Teddy.
“Let’s go inside, and I’ll explain everything to you. Would you mind, Teddy? I’d like a word alone with Hera.”
Teddy’s round faced turned purple, and he appeared about to say something in retort, but he cleared his throat and backed off the steps.
“Sure. Fine. I’ll be around if you need me.”
Rafe showed me into his study and gestured to a leather chair. He moved toward a cabinet and opened it.
“It’s a little early in the day for this, but I could use a brandy. Want one?” I shook my head no. “I wanted us to have some time alone before the authorities got to you.”
“What happened? I heard from Jake someone tried to kill your brew master? Is Henry okay?”
“He’s going to be fine. I called the ambulance first, then had a quick look around the place. Tried your phone, but when I got the busy signal, I sent Manuel. I can’t say how everyone else found out.” Rafe poured a shot of brandy in a snifter and took a quick gulp of it.
“Someone locked Henry in the fermentation room. I found him there unconscious and pulled him out.”
“Why would anyone want to hurt Henry?”
Rafe gave a short snort. “Henry? No. I think someone wanted to get to me. Maybe they thought without Henry I couldn’t continue to brew, or, at the very least, finding another brew master would slow me down. But there’s something else, something I haven’t told the authorities. Not yet anyway.”
He tossed down the rest of the contents of the snifter, then took a seat across from mine.
“I like you very much, my dear, but I have to ask you some painful questions before the authorities do. I need to know your answers now.”
I’d never seen Rafe this way, his face dark with anger, his lips set in a grim line. I wiggled in my chair under his scrutiny. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I haven’t been too forthcoming with the other brewers since I bought this operation. I know all of you think I’m a rich dilettante with little knowledge of the brewing process. That’s not strictly true. I was brewing ales in England before you were born, but I had to leave there suddenly. A small problem with the owner’s wife. So I wandered around the continent, taking brewing jobs here and there. In those years, I had a tendency to take short cuts. A competitor of the brewery I was working for called in the police and accused me of stealing his recipe for a winter ale.” He looked across at the brandy bottle sitting on the sideboard, shrugged his shoulders, and got up. This time he poured the liquor halfway up the glass.
“Did you steal the recipe?”
“Well, yes, but the brew I was making for my boss wasn’t that recipe. I kept the competitor’s recipe in reserve. I was brewing another one I had lifted years before. I may have been a thief, but I wasn’t altogether without intelligence.”
I looked at the handsome and sophisticated man sitting across from me and found it difficult to believe he was anything but the gentleman he appeared to be. A thief? No. Then there was his present occupation and the money it required for him to purchase this brewery.
“But what about this brewery?”
“As I was dodging the authorities in Germany, the gods smiled upon me for no good reason. Gods can be whimsical, it appears. The lady I had had a friendship with years before in England? Her husband had died and left her quite a fortune. Then she died soon after and left it to me. I guess I made a lasting impression on her.” He raised his glass and saluted the woman or the gods. “I decided to look at it as a sign of some kind and go straight. Changed my name, lost my criminal past, and looked around for a brewery. This one came up for sale, and here I am, a respectable English gentleman.”
Throughout his speech, Rafe continued to sip from the snifter and smile as if he found his past life amusing. Maybe he did.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“To let you know I understand people, especially people who have brewing beer in their blood. People like you. When you want something enough, you may take short cuts.” He set the snifter on the desk and leaned toward me. “Not only has my brew master been harmed, but I’m missing some yeast, Hera, some very special yeast.”
The confession about his past was over. I suddenly realized he was accusing me of theft. “Me
? You think I would copy your ales and steal your yeast? I thought you liked me. How can you possibly think I would harm Henry and then steal something of yours? Those aren’t short cuts, as you called them.” I gripped the arms of the chair to prevent myself from flying out of it. I wanted to run from the room. No, I wanted to slap Rafe. How dare he suggest I might do harm to him or to Henry?
“No, they aren’t. That’s attempted murder.” Jake stood in the doorway to the study. Neither Rafe nor I had heard him enter the house. “You said nothing about a theft to me, Mr. Oxley.”
“How much did you hear?” Rafe asked. “The conversation was supposed to be private.”
“Enough to know your criminal past could be related to what’s going on around here, and that’s my business, not some private matter between you and Hera.”
“Hera and I share a passion for brewing beer. You might find our particular zeal odd. As I told her, passion can sometimes encourage people to do unusual things, especially when they don’t have the means to carry out their plans. Nothing against you, my dear,” Rafe continued, turning to me, “but we’re too alike for me not to give you a chance to come clean about the yeast.”
“I’d never take a thing from you. Maybe I can understand how you could suspect me of theft, given my financial situation, but trying to do harm to Henry?” After what Rafe told me, I wondered how well I knew this man and how much I liked him or could trust him.
“I had hoped the two events were unrelated, if you were the one helping yourself to the yeast,” Rafe said. “I can’t think the deputy sheriff here would think you capable of murder.”
“To cover a crime? People do all kinds of things when they feel threatened,” said Jake.
There he goes again, thinking the worst of me. “I’m not just people here. I’m Henry’s friend and his colleague. I don’t go around shoving people into rooms where there’s no oxygen.”
“Well, you do have the perfect alibi, at least for some of the morning. There’s Sally, and you and I were together part of it.” Jake turned his attention from me to Rafe. “You say your yeast is missing? When did you last notice it?”
“I ordered yeast specially constructed for my summer gold ale. It arrived yesterday. Now it’s gone.”
“Who knew it was here? You, Hera?”
“Of course I knew it was here. I was discussing ales with Rafe when the truck delivered it.”
“Discussing ales?”
“Yes, I told Rafe I was considering new ales, and he was giving me some pointers.”
“Doesn’t adding to your line of brews require money, new equipment and additional products? Didn’t I hear you were a bit pressed for investment capital?” Jake was smiling again, probably delighted he had found I had a motive for taking the yeast. I was safe on this one. I had no motive for murder, but I should have known Jake wouldn’t stop there.
“So earlier this morning, you sneaked over here, took the yeast, and got caught by Henry. You shoved him into the fermentation room and locked the door from the outside.” Jake’s green eyes looked as hard as arctic ice as they met my own.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You’re more than welcome to search my place for the yeast. You won’t find it there.”
“I intend to search all of the breweries around here. I’ll find it. You can bet I will.” The freeze in those eyes dropped another ten degrees.
After Jake left the two of us in the study, Rafe said, “He knows something is going on in the brewing community, and you and I know he’s right. Murder, attempted murder, and theft in our ranks. Obviously the culprit or culprits must be one of us.”
“He thinks he has good reason to suspect me. I hope now you don’t.”
“I don’t, but I had to ask you the question, didn’t I? Please don’t think too badly of me, my dear, but over the years I’ve become the suspicious type, and sometimes I forget many people are just as they appear.” He smiled at me. “Like you.”
“He’ll dog you because of what he overheard. He’s smart. He’ll begin looking into all our pasts, and some of us won’t hold up well to his scrutiny.”
“You know something about the others?” asked Rafe.
Some of the others, I thought as I left Rafe’s place. I wondered if the prodigal son, Ronald Ramford, had turned up yet. Jake was certain the family would be looking for him, and so was Jake. I hoped he wouldn’t be asking me any questions about Ronald. I wanted the past to stay buried. Or did I? I thought about the letters lying on the kitchen table at home. I wanted closure on my father’s death. Maybe the letters would provide a clue to the past.
Six
Damn! I had so smugly asked Jake to lock up when we both took off for Rafe’s place. Now I’d have to pay for that moment of arrogance. I forgot my house keys. No matter. I hid another key in the brew barn on the door sill leading into the bottling and storage area.
As I entered the barn, I heard the conveyer line start up, the bottles clacking against the metal sides guiding them down the belt and toward the hopper dispensing the brew. My employee, Jeremiah Standish, stuck his head out of the bottling area as I approached. When we were in grade school, the other kids gave him a hard time about his looks, calling him lab rat and giving him the nickname of “Whitey.” Jeremiah accepted all of this with his usual calm, even embracing the nickname and often introducing himself by using it.
“Might as well,” he once said to me. “It ain’t gonna go away.” I thought him very clever to confiscate the ammunition others would use and turn it to his advantage, and it worked. There was almost no one who didn’t like Jeremiah with his easy-going nature.
What a worker he was. In the five years he had been with me, he never was late one minute, never took sick leave, and had some kind of mystical relationship with my aging machinery. Whatever demands I put on the kettles and hoses, burners and bottler, Jeremiah could meet them. Where someone else would have turned his back on the ancient equipment, Jeremiah made it perform to perfection. But there was a limit, he reminded me, and I knew the old bottling line, purchased second-hand from the Ramford Brewery, would deliver a last gasp soon. I had Jeremiah’s word on that.
“Didn’t expect to see you here today. I thought you were going into town to meet with the bankers. Sure would be nice to get some new bottling equipment in here. This line is slow today, and it’s under-filling bottles.”
“Soon, soon,” I said. I reached above my head, my hand searching for the spare key I placed on the door sill.
“Here. Let me get that for you,” Jeremiah said. “Hey, it’s gone.”
“Looking for something?” I hadn’t heard Jake’s approach because of the noise. How many times had this guy sneaked up on me and heard something I preferred he not? Jeremiah seemed as surprised by his presence as I. The two men nodded hello to one another. Before I could say anything to Jake, the racket from the machine stopped.
“Line’s jammed,” said Jeremiah. He ran into the bottling room, leaving Jake and me to confront each other.
“You have a nasty habit of sneaking up on people, you know. That’s very unpleasant, especially on private property and during personal conversations.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been working on that. You hear interesting things when no one knows you’re around. By the way, that’s a dumb place to keep a key. How many people know it’s there?”
“No one, just me,” I said, but that wasn’t true, and Jake had just seen why not. “Okay. So Jeremiah knows.” There were others. Michael, Sally, others. “Nice of you to lock up as I asked you to, but I left my house key on the kitchen table.”
“I know,” he said. He was dangling the key by its chain between his fingers. “I picked this up on my way out of the house and thought you might need it.”
“Anything else?” I heard the line start up again, then as quickly shudder to a stop.
Jeremiah called through the door, “Well, she’s done for. I hope you were successful talking the bank into giving you a loan.”
Jeremiah shook his head. “Maybe. This equipment was trash when Ramford palmed it off on you. The old man never kept his machinery in good repair. Lucky he found a customer in you and you found me.” Odd. There was a note of bitterness in his voice, something I’d never heard from Jeremiah before. Jake was quick to pick up on his tone.
“Sounds like you didn’t much like Ramford Senior,” said Jake.
“Wasn’t I didn’t like him. Wasn’t much to like. I just didn’t respect the man. Didn’t treat his family any better than he treated his machinery. Probably less well.”
“Jake,” I said, “just back off a little.”
“Never mind. I know what he’s doing. He’s sniffing around, trying to find out who might have had a reason to do in the old man. You might as well count me in as a suspect. I went to him for a job before Ms. Knightsbridge hired me. Ramford said no way was he going to hire a freak.”
“So you didn’t like him,” Jake said.
“He lied to me. It wasn’t because I was a freak he wouldn’t hire me. It was because of my sister. I knew about the two of them, and he didn’t want me around, afraid I’d open my mouth to the wrong people.”
“I didn’t know Mr. Ramford and your sister were, uh, seeing one another,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a look on Jake’s face saying he already knew the story Jeremiah was telling. Returning my keys. Ha! Just more interrogation.
“They weren’t. She was sixteen at the time. She thought he was going to get a divorce and marry her. I took her into the clinic when she got the abortion. He was nowhere around. Sent her some money.” Jeremiah paused and looked Jake in the eye with a gaze daring him to comment. “I gotta get back to this machinery.” He approached the line and resumed his work.
Jake used my key to let me into the house.
“You locked up, but you didn’t close the window. Now look at the mess,” I said. The letters and other papers which had been on the table were blown around the room. We gathered them up, bumping heads once in the process and colliding with one another several other times. Each time we touched, the physical contact sent tingly waves through my chest, and I found it difficult to catch my breath. I was crawling under the table to retrieve the final envelope and happened to look around and up. Jake was standing behind me with his hands on his hips, staring at my rear.
A Deadly Draught Page 5