“Pepper?”
“Neil?”
“Are you OK?” He came over to me and put a hand on my shoulder. His confident presence and warm touch suffused me with calm, and I nodded as my heartbeat slowed. Neil squeezed my shoulder, then turned to the men with an outstretched hand. “We’re a hundred percent ready to work if you want to proceed, but I understand if you don’t.”
So he’d seen Barnie, assessed the situation, maybe even heard the cousins talking as he entered the room.
Travis took Neil’s hand first with a firm handshake. “Good to see you again.”
Dash shook Neil’s hand, too, and his expression of anxiety eased. Somehow, Neil had changed the temperature in the room, the emotional temperature, and the cousins looked more ready to deal with the situation.
“That was Barnard, right?” Neil asked. “I remember meeting him when I toured the distillery.”
“Barnie, yeah. He’s been with us since the beginning,” Dash said.
“He’d want us to go forward,” Travis said. “There’s nothing we can do for him right now. Let’s go downstairs to the event and make this thing happen. The cart’s already loaded—where are your bartenders?”
“Most of them I sent to the ballroom with their kits to squeeze lemons, craft garnishes and do anything Pepper hasn’t gotten to yet,” Neil said, those cool eyes scanning the room, spotting the bottle on the floor. He picked it up and sniffed it. “Luke’s dealing with the check-in and luggage, but he’ll be ready to help in a few minutes.”
Dash seemed to shake himself. “OK. Yes. Let’s do this. Barnie would want us to.”
Travis nodded at seeing his cousin take his words to heart and maneuvered himself behind the cart, pushing it toward the door.
“Wait a minute.” Neil put up a hand to stop him.
“You just said you were ready,” Dash snapped at Neil. “And we don’t have a minute.”
“Exactly.” Travis starting pushing again, but Neil stepped in front of the cart, calmly flipping open the box labeled Beachside Bourbon on top of the stack as the Reynolds cousins looked on in disbelief.
Neil pulled a wine key from his pocket and snapped open the blade, lifted out one of the squat bottles, and made quick work of cutting through the black wax and popping off the top. He looked at me. “Cup?”
I nodded and looked around, grabbed a clean foam cup from the stack by the coffee maker, and handed it to him.
“What the hell?” Travis asked as Neil poured a little brown liquid into the cup. Neil sniffed it, wrinkled his nose and took a sip. He lifted an eyebrow, ignored Travis and handed the cup to Dash.
Dash appeared as puzzled as Travis but took a sniff, then a healthy sip.
He immediately spit it back into the cup. “Something’s not right.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Neil said. “Pepper?”
I held out a fresh cup for his pour. I had a superhero sense of smell, and one whiff revealed the whiskey’s usually pleasant odor had a pungent undertone. I gingerly sipped it. I’d had the Beachside Bourbon before, and it had been rich and delicious, tinged in caramel. This was—off. Metallic? I shook my head. “What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know, but we have a problem,” Neil said. “If this is what made Barnie sick, this could make everyone sick.”
“Travis and I shared a bottle last night, and it was fine,” Dash said.
“Perfect,” Travis agreed.
“From this stash?” I asked.
“Of course,” Travis said. “What are you saying?”
“Are you saying someone tampered with my whiskey?” Dash seemed truly angry now.
Neil shook his head. “I don’t know. Worse would be methanol.”
“A bad batch?” Incredulity raised Dash’s voice. “Impossible. Our methods are perfect. Every process is controlled. Every stage is sampled, tested.”
“And they’re sealed, so tampering is out,” Travis said impatiently. “Look, we have about thirty-five minutes, and then the door is going to open on that ballroom, and we have to be there with whiskey in hand. Bourbon and rye. Cocktails. This is why we hired you guys.”
“I’m well aware of that,” Neil said. “But I personally don’t want a hotel full of sick drinkers.”
“Dead drinkers,” I said, then sort of wished I’d shut my mouth when Dash’s jaw dropped.
But Neil nodded in agreement. “Worst case.”
“I know a liquor store a few blocks away,” I said.
“That was my next question,” Neil said, then turned to Dash. “Your stuff is distributed here, right?”
“Yeah,” Dash said. “My God, you can’t be serious.”
“I can’t be more serious,” Neil said, and I almost smiled.
“Travis and I can go,” I said, thinking he had the muscle to haul the cases. “We’ll be back before the event.”
“There won’t be enough!” Dash said.
“Trust me,” Neil said. “Pepper, call them. Ask what they have.”
A few minutes later I was off the phone. “Two cases of the bourbon, one of the rye,” I said.
“More than enough,” Neil said. “We’re not doing full pours here. Half-ounce samples, four-ounce cocktails. A little shortage never hurts demand. And the people who get them will be talking about the drinks, and that will make the people who didn’t get them want your whiskey even more. Can you do it?” he asked me as Dash mulled Neil’s words.
“With Travis’s help, yes.” My adrenaline had kicked in. The room was quiet. The tuba player had stopped. A good sign.
Travis sighed and looked at Dash. “I have a friend who can go to the hospital with Barnie until we can get away. You OK with us buying the whiskey?”
Dash looked around at all the boxes, at his babies, pain in his expression. “Better to be safe,” he finally said. “Yes. Buy it. I will taste it to be sure. All of it.”
“Of course,” Neil said, then shot me a look that said, Get moving.
3
We worked together quickly to unload the cart and took it to the service elevator. Neil and Dash went to the ballroom while Travis and I rolled out of the building and to the closest liquor store to clean them out of Bohemia whiskeys.
Travis made a monosyllabic call on the way, presumably to his friend. Other than that, he said little, if you didn’t count muttering under his breath.
We were back at three fifty-five, pushing into the first-floor ballroom via the catering door. There was a buzz as the distillers got ready. The walls were lined with temporary bars, tables and a few exceptionally elaborate setups; one even had neon lights and Vegas-style signage. We aimed for the one with the beach umbrella and whiskey barrels.
The five people behind the Bohemia Distillery tableau in one corner saw us coming. The bartenders were easy to spot. When they saw us, they lit up like a bunch of kids who’d just discovered the veggie drawer was full of cupcakes.
The two guys leapt out from behind the props and rushed over to speed the cart to the bar, cutting open boxes and pulling out bottles.
Melody beckoned me and gave me a quick hug. A girl-next-door blue-eyed blonde, she worked at a lame hotel bar in Bohemia Beach. She was my movie date when both of us were between guys. A tattoo of music notes and flowers danced up her arm in pretty colors.
“Just a second,” Neil called out. As he’d done before, he popped the top off a bourbon, poured a small sample and handed it to Dash.
Dash, his face creased with tension, sipped it. Then he downed the whole thing and smiled. “That’s my whiskey. How about the rye?”
Neil smiled, too, a lovely thing to behold, and went through the same ritual with the rye. Dash was satisfied, and Neil tried it, too.
“I think we’re OK,” Neil told the bartenders, “but Dash is going to sample every bottle we open. Got it?”
“Yes!” we answered, and the two other mixologists and Melody started mixing and pouring just as the double doors were thrown open and ticket-holders streame
d in like fish thrown wide of a busted dam. I ran to the restroom to wash my hands, fought the crowd to get back to our booth with the others, and asked Neil what I should do.
“Help Melody,” he said, shaking a drink with ice in two shiny metal shakers at once. Shaka-shaka-shaka. God, I loved that sound. He saw my expression of bliss and winked. “And thank you.” I nodded, and my face heated a little. Geez, and I hadn’t even had anything to drink yet.
“Pepper!” Melody added bourbon to the batch cocktail she’d made in a pitcher and stirred. One of Neil’s creations. “We’d have been screwed without you.” She handed me the pitcher. “Fill those little cups and add the lemon spirals and Bohemia swizzles, OK?”
“OK.” As soon as I garnished a row of cocktails and pushed them to the edge of the bar, they were gone, snatched up by thirsty browsers. The same was happening with the tiny liquor samples one of our guys was pouring at the table. I didn’t know him, but his looks were arresting—gold-streaked brown hair that just touched his shoulders, intense brown eyes, an inviting mouth pursed in concentration. A swirl of tattoos of monkeys and parrots and tropical foliage sneaked up his arms and under his rolled-up sleeves, suggesting more ink under the fabric. With his good looks, he might’ve escaped one of those TV shows about vampires in high school.
“That’s Luke,” Melody said, catching me watching. “He’s working at The Junction Box with Neil now. And this is Barclay. He just moved to Bohemia from South Florida two months ago.”
Hearing their names, the guys looked up and nodded and smiled at me briefly, and I waved. “Hi. I’m Pepper.”
“We know,” Luke said, and Barclay barked out a laugh. Probably at my name. It did that to people. Anybody named Barclay—pronounced Bark-lee—didn’t have much room to talk.
I’d seen Barclay behind the bar at one of the newer clubs in downtown Bohemia. He was striking in a different way from Luke, taller, with tightly cropped wavy black hair, a hint of scruff around his mouth and chin, and light brown skin. His narrow eyes were a beautiful swirl of amber and green. He also had tattoos—a dragon curling around one arm and characters written on the other—Korean, maybe? I’d have to ask him what they meant. Barclay muddled a few raspberries in the bottom of each small, clear plastic cup, then topped them with sprigs of mint after Neil filled them with the rye mixture.
Together, they were damned efficient. I tried to up my game and match their pace.
When we had a brief pause in the traffic to the table, Neil passed me one of the rye drinks. “You’re the only one who didn’t get to try it.”
“Thanks.” The others watched as I took a healthy sip. A burst of lemon and raspberry popped through the peppery sweetness of the rye—and something else. “Wow. What is that? Lemongrass?”
“And I thought I was being obscure.” Neil grinned. “Lemongrass simple syrup. This is my variation on a whiskey smash. We muddle the fruit first, and then I shake the rest.”
“Delicious,” I said.
“Smashing,” Barclay intoned, and the others chortled as the next wave of drinkers crowded our corner.
Dash seemed more relaxed once he saw the drinks and samples going out, and he and Travis shared enthusiastic tales of their origin story with visitors. Dash and Travis’s fathers were brothers and owned an old factory building together in downtown Bohemia. The older men had a paint business, and when Travis’s father died when Travis was in high school, Dash’s dad took over. He retired from the paint business and, before he died, helped Dash and Travis launch the distillery.
It was a great family story, and the added allure of nearby Bohemia Beach gave them a unique image in this big room of small distillers. Travis was especially good at telling it, which was probably a good thing, because the more Dash tested the whiskey—and then tasted some of the cocktails just for fun—he became happier and less coherent. As his eyes drooped, our bartenders all exchanged glances, made sure Neil was tasting the last bottles for purity, and breathed a collective sigh of relief when we finally ran out of booze.
A toasted forty-something woman in bare feet and disheveled hair ran off with our beach umbrella thirty seconds before the doors closed.
“Did you see that?” Melody asked.
I shrugged as we started the cleanup. “What happens at Cocktailia, stays at Cocktailia. But nothing stays at Cocktailia if it’s not nailed down.”
“Neil, you bastard, what happened to your bloody mustache?” boomed a voice in a cut-glass English accent. We all looked up to see an angular guy who looked to be about thirty approach the booth. He wore tweed trousers and vest and a cream button-up shirt, and his straw-colored hair, cut short on the sides, seemed to overflow on top and curl out over his forehead. He looked like a model who’d fallen off the runway after one too many glasses of champagne.
“Alastair,” Neil said evenly, but his usual cool tone sounded a bit edgy to me.
“Your mustache was everything!” Alastair bellowed, coming up close to Neil and reaching out for a pinch of our leader’s tightly trimmed facial hair.
Neil slapped his hand away. “Back off, man. It was time.”
“But the handlebars. The handlebars! You must be saving considerably on wax.”
“This from the guy who spends the budget of a small country on hair products. How many chickens you have nesting in there?”
“Chickens, nah,” said the dapper Brit, his cheeks glowing with drink, “but the chicks, as you call them—they love running their fingers through it.” He looked around and grinned at Melody and me. “Wouldn’t you, love?”
“Which one of us is he talking to?” I whispered to Melody.
“Beats me,” she murmured back.
Luke had moved around us and now stood in front of the table, arms crossed. “Get out of here, Alastair. We’ve got work to do.”
“Don’t we all?” he said. “Did you try the Frilly Fairy? Delicate. Delightful.”
“Yeah,” Neil said. “Mark sent me a bottle.”
“Oh.” Alastair sounded disappointed.
“It’s a really nice gin,” Neil acknowledged. “What’d you make with it?”
“Only the best bloody gin and tonic you’ve ever had, but this was amateur night,” Alastair said, dismissing our whole team with a sniff. “There will be more to come. Trade secrets. You’ll just have to wait for the contest, won’t you? I have my eye on you, Neil Rockaway, and I’ll make you sorry you ever decided to leave your galaxies behind.” He pulled down on one eye with his middle finger, shooting drunken malice at Neil, then bounded off laughing.
“Who was that asshole?” Travis asked. “And what was he talking about?”
Neil shook his head as he methodically stacked shakers and stowed bar tools in his bag. “Someone I knew in school. He’s a bartender now. Toast of London, at least in his own mind.”
“Good riddance.” Dash took a deep breath. He’d recovered a bit from his round of quality samplings and was only partly cloudy now. At least he wasn’t passing out cold.
Travis’s phone rang. “How is he?” he asked first thing. “OK. We’ll be right there.” He looked up at us. “Barnie’s in a coma. He might not make it.”
A collective gasp escaped us.
Dash blanched and turned to Neil. “Can you clean up here? Pepper has the key to the suite so you can stow the props and swag and whatever else you need.”
“No problem,” Neil said. “We’ll catch up with you shortly. Text us the hospital room number.” He caught my gaze, and I got the feeling I was included in the “us.” Which was good. Because I wanted to see Barnie in the hospital, too—and find out what sent him there before it was too late.
4
Neil left the other bartenders to settle into their rooms and get some rest—or more likely to go out and sample the pleasures of the Quarter’s better bars and restaurants—while we took an Uber to the medical center. The streets were crowded as evening settled in and the lights came on, and the young guy behind the wheel of the Toyota drov
e at a leisurely pace to match the incongruous new-age music blaring from the stereo.
“So how do you know Alastair?” I asked Neil over the din of dreamy piano arpeggios. “Is he your frenemy?”
Neil grimaced. “That’s one way to put it. We knew each other at Oxford.”
“Oxford?” I was pretty sure my eyes bugged out behind my glasses. “You went to Oxford?”
He smiled at my expression. “Only for a couple of years, until I realized my true calling was cocktails.”
“That’s funny. Most people start out as bartenders, then get serious about something else.”
“Yeah, well. My other calling was astronomy. I’m still fascinated by it, but a well-made drink can be as beautiful as a nebula.”
“Plus you get to drink it.”
He laughed. “That too. Though I’m not into drinking per se. I’m into drinking well.”
“That’s what separates a great bartender from any old drink slinger. I mean, look at that. That’s not pretty at all.”
Our eyes followed a group of half a dozen tourists staggering in front of our car, toting bright plastic drink cups a yard long.
“That’s a shitty hangover right there,” Neil said.
“When I think of how many great places there are in this city to get a really good hangover, that just makes me sad.”
Neil chuckled. “You’ll have to show me some of your favorites.”
“Um.” I swallowed. “I have a confession. I don’t know much more than you do about what’s hot in NOLA. I visit occasionally, but I’ve lived in Bohemia for thirteen years.”
“What? How come I never see you in my bar?”
“Probably because I’m always working in my bar. I’ve been to The Junction Box, but you weren’t working.”
He nodded. “Touché. But I’ve been to yours when you were working.”
“No, you haven’t! I would’ve remembered.” Whoops. Did I just confess that I found him—memorable?
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