“You were busy, and we ordered drinks from our table. Very nice.”
“What’d you have?”
“A Sazerac, of course, since it’s a New Orleans-themed bar.” He caught my frown. “What is it?”
“I may have had an excess of Sazeracs last night at the Carousel Bar. Don’t get me wrong. They’re delicious—in small doses.” And it was easier to maintain one’s equilibrium if the bar wasn’t a rotating one like the Carousel.
“I prefer their Vieux Carré.”
“They did invent it there.”
He looked at me for a few seconds as if gauging whether he wanted to ask his next question. “So why did you leave New Orleans when you were—how old were you?”
“Fourteen. My parents shipped me off to my aunt in Bohemia Beach after Katrina.”
“Why didn’t you go back?”
I looked out the window for a minute, trying to find a way to say it. The elegant buildings of the Quarter slid by, lovely brick facades and wrought-iron balconies. This part of town was barely touched by the hurricane all those years ago. “First, the house was trashed, plus the city was trashed, so my parents thought it would be better if I stayed in Bohemia.”
“And then?”
I turned to face him. “My dad was a pastor at a storefront church. My mom was devoted to making it bigger and better, though she had a secretary job to help pay the bills. We had a pretty normal home life before the storm, except for extended trips they took in the summer to Central America or whatever. I’d usually stay with friends or my aunt. But after Katrina, they became all about hurricane recovery—helping parishioners, building up the church. They became a funnel for donations. The hurricane was basically one big membership drive for them. With the money coming in, they doubled the mission work they did abroad. They were always traveling, running some fundraising program, whatever. They always had a reason why I shouldn’t come back.”
Neil’s face didn’t change, but I saw a flicker in his eyes, a warm light that drew me in, calming and sure, the same feeling he’d exuded earlier during the crisis in the hotel room. I just looked at him for a moment and breathed and didn’t think of anything at all.
“We’re here,” our driver said, pulling up to a modern brown-brick high-rise.
I tore my gaze away from Neil’s and got out of the car. I hadn’t meant to tell him so much. Or maybe he just heard more than I was telling.
We checked in at the front desk, then boarded the elevator.
“So what’s the deal with your mustache?” I asked after the doors closed, mostly to hide my awkwardness. “I mean, what was Alastair talking about?”
Neil let out a small chuckle. “It used to look different.”
“Mixologist special?”
He smiled. “Yeah. Handlebar. Some of my regulars told me I might look better without it.”
“Women regulars?”
“Sure. I wouldn’t take that kind of advice from a man. Were they right?” His smile broadened as he rubbed a hand over his closely trimmed beard and ’stache.
“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see you with the handlebars.”
“Ah.” The smile faded.
“But I’m really not a fan of facial hair that you can hang a coat on. You—it looks good.” I smiled shyly, and his grin returned.
This was ridiculous. We were in a hospital elevator going to see a very sick man. Not the place for nerd-on-nerd coquetry or whatever this was.
The elevator dinged. Third floor. Our stop.
Barnie had a room to himself—well, himself and his visitors and the hissing and beeping machines that loomed over the bed. Dash, his hat tilted back on his head, stood next to the bed, staring at Barnie’s unconscious form. Travis leaned against a row of cabinets, looking grim. Barnie was connected to oxygen, had an IV dripping something into his arm, and was hooked up to the monitors. At least beeping was a good thing, based on my limited television-based medical knowledge.
Neil and I stood at the end of the bed and exchanged nods with the Reynolds cousins.
“How’s he doing?” I asked softly.
Dash sighed. “He’s out of the coma for now, but he’s still unconscious.”
“Holy crap,” I whispered.
“Yeah. They’re treating him with ethanol.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Ethanol? Isn’t that like giving him more alcohol?”
“It counteracts the effects of methanol, if that’s what the problem is,” Neil said.
“That’s what they suspect,” Dash said. “I just don’t understand it. There’s nothing wrong with my whiskey.”
“There was something wrong with this whiskey,” Travis said.
“Maybe he got sick some other way,” Dash said. “Maybe he drank something else. There are always people at Cocktailia with all kinds of concoctions in their pockets. Some hipster moonshiner might have dosed him up in the elevator.”
“There was that empty bottle next to him,” I said. “Plus you tasted one of the bottles yourself.”
Dash nodded. “I know. You’re right about that. I just can’t believe it.”
“We’re going to throw all of it away. Pour it down the drain so no one else touches it,” Travis said. “And we’ll run more tests at home, make sure everything is good there.”
I shifted from foot to foot and tried to think. A wave of fatigue washed over me. The craziness of the day was starting to hit me. “I hate to ask this, but suppose this was deliberate?”
Dash’s eyes widened in shock. “Poisoning Barnie?”
“Or contaminating the bottles,” I said. “Maybe Barnie wasn’t the target.”
“Then who?” Dash asked. “Me? Travis?”
“Worse,” Neil said. “Everybody at the convention.”
“Like … like terrorism or something?” Dash asked in disbelief.
“Shit,” Travis said. “If that’s true, we should contact the cops. Hotel security. Everybody.”
“I can’t do that,” Dash said hoarsely. “This will ruin me. This will end Bohemia Distillery. And we’re just getting to where I want to be. Everything I have is invested in this.”
“Same here,” said Travis, “but we can’t let anybody else get sick.”
“They won’t,” his cousin said. “Look, I refuse to believe this is terrorism or some nut job trying to poison the convention.”
“That leaves one possibility. A bad batch,” I said.
Dash straightened. “I refuse to believe that either.”
Neil held up a hand. “Let me talk to some of the other distillers and bartenders. See if they’ve noticed anything unusual. I’ll have a word with hotel and convention security, too. We’ll make sure everything’s covered. I’ll try to keep it quiet, but you have to prepare yourself for the idea of going to the police about this.”
“Even if we don’t, word’s going to get out.” Dash closed his eyes, then opened them and glanced at poor, pale Barnie. “You’re right. We can’t let anyone else get sick. See what you can find out. If nobody else has a problem, then maybe we can deal with this ourselves.”
A nurse came in. “We have to get him ready,” she said to all of us.
“Ready?” I asked.
“They’re going to prepare him for emergency hemodialysis to clean up his blood,” Travis said.
“Damn,” I said.
“I know,” he replied.
“Hey,” I said, “where’s your friend?”
Travis raised his eyebrows. “Friend?”
“You said a friend was coming to the hospital with Barnie.”
“She went home.” Travis looked again at Barnie. “I told her to go. She’d seen enough.”
Awkward pause. I was good at generating those.
“We’ll get going, then.” Neil to the rescue. “Let’s touch base first thing in the morning. I’ll have answers by then, before the next round of tastings. Our next event with you is your Distiller Dinner tomorrow night. We’ll make sure we have enough stock.”
<
br /> “Oh, yeah.” Dash shook his head. “Wait. I’ll give you a credit card.”
“No worries. Catch me later,” Neil said.
Geez, that was right. Travis paid for the emergency whiskey earlier, but Neil would be fronting these guys a lot by buying more cases for the dinner. Assuming we could find more cases and they weren’t tainted.
“I hope he feels better,” I said to the cousins. I stood there for another awkward moment, then followed Neil out the door.
He didn’t say anything until we got into the elevator, after I pressed the button and the door closed.
“You have a key to their suite?” he asked.
I nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“I’d like to know what was in those bottles. Know for sure.”
“You mean before Travis makes good on his promise to dump them all out? I’ll drop by and grab a couple.”
“Good. Make sure you mark the bottles and put them aside so they don’t get mixed up with all the booze we’ll be handling this week.”
“For sure.” The image of a passed-out maid or bellhop crossed my mind. What if all the bottles really were tainted? What if the booze had gotten out into the wild? I shuddered. “How are we going to test the whiskey? If Dash doesn’t want the cops involved, it’s not like we can turn the whiskey over to CSI or whatever the nonfiction version of it is here.”
“The cops are probably going to be involved no matter what, though I didn’t want to lay that on him in there. But it could be weeks before they do a proper test. That’s OK. I have a guy.”
“I have another thought,” I said as we stepped out of the elevator and made our way outside. “Let’s have another few cases of the bourbon and the rye shipped here from Bohemia by courier.”
“Sounds expensive,” Neil said, but he was smiling.
“But worth it. First, we can test the stuff right from the plant, make sure everything is good there. Second, if it’s OK, we won’t be running all over NOLA trying to find bottles of the stuff.”
“I like it.” Neil hailed a cab, a regular cab this time, and we got in, heading back to the Hotel Lebeau. “I’ll talk to their warehouse manager, have him get the cases ready and tell him not to ship out anything else this week until we know what’s going on. Probably the Reynoldses are too distraught right now to think about that.”
“Is he going to freak out? What if the warehouse guy is responsible?”
“I’ve known Tim for a long time. We used to bartend together, before I bought The Junction Box, and I trust him implicitly. Can you call Millie and have her arrange a courier for, say, 5 a.m.? Then we can have the booze in hand by tomorrow evening.”
“That’s cutting it close.”
“That’s why I’m counting on you to scrape together a few more cases before the dinner.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Great.”
Neil laughed. I liked his laugh. It was rich, deep and sweet, like a barrel-aged Manhattan with a hint of chocolate bitters. I had a thing for chocolate bitters.
We both watched the revelers roaming the streets as the cab navigated the maze and brought us back to our home for the next few days.
“I guess our exploration of the Quarter’s cocktail haunts will have to wait until another night,” Neil said as we stepped out onto the busy sidewalk in front of the hotel. “I’m dying to visit the French 75 Bar, but I’ve got a lot of people to talk to before morning.” He stood there staring at me, and I started to wonder if I had lemon seeds in my hair or something before he spoke again. “You did a great job today under rough circumstances. Hang in there, and we’ll get on track by tomorrow. Want to meet me for breakfast at nine in the hotel restaurant? We can go over everything then.”
“Um, sure, but—why me?”
“Because I told the others they could party tonight, and they’ll want to sleep in. And they don’t know as much as you do about what’s happening here. I’ll update them tomorrow, but it’s probably better I keep this on the QT tonight.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“I’m nothing if not reasonable. It’s one of my faults. Everyone finds me too reasonable.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Like that’s a thing.”
“You have no idea.”
A noise somewhere between a bellow and a honk made me jump. I turned around. The tuba player had set up directly across the street and had launched into a jaunty rendition of “Basin Street Blues.”
I shook my head. “That guy must have lips made of platinum. He plays around the clock.”
“Maybe he has a twin,” Neil said.
“God, I hope there’s not another one.”
He chuckled. “Get some dinner and some sleep. The drugstore on the corner should have earplugs.”
“Maybe later. I’m ordering room service right after I acquire a few bottles of whiskey.”
Neil’s eyes seemed to darken in the glow of the streetlights. “Acquire evidence, you mean. That sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it?”
“Evidence of what? Tampering? Terrorism? Bad practices? I just hope Barnie gets better, or it’s going to be evidence of something I don’t want to think about.”
Manslaughter. Or murder.
5
When I woke up the next morning, the first thing I heard when I popped out the earplugs was—nothing. Well, no, not nothing. There were city sounds: beeping, honking, trucks, construction, a hell of a lot more than I heard back at home in Bohemia Beach. But there was no tuba. It had stopped about three in the morning. Unfortunately, I knew that because my earplugs were no defense against Tuba Guy.
The first thing I saw was the whiskey sitting on the credenza under the television. Two bottles of bourbon. Two bottles of rye. This would look like breakfast to some of the people at Cocktailia, except for the fact that I’d used paper and markers and tape from the drugstore to wrap them up and label each CONTAMINATED! TOXIC! DO NOT DRINK! With a skull and crossbones just for good measure.
I took my phone off mute and glanced at the screen.
There was a text from Millie: “Whiskey on its way.”
And a text from Neil: “I thought you were coming to breakfast?”
“Shit!” I threw off the covers and looked at the clock. Nine twenty. Could be worse. I pulled off my nightshirt, yanked on jeans and fresh undies and a black T-shirt, ran a brush through my hair and threw on some dangly silver earrings and my glasses. I grabbed my badge and was out the door.
Three minutes later, I strolled into the hotel restaurant. Pleasant natural light from the historic floor-to-ceiling windows spilled into the traditional-meets-modern sage and cream décor. The eatery had a literary theme, with typewriters, books and other props in niches and a few well-placed quotes in script on the walls. The biggest was attributed to Faulkner: “Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.”
“Or they’re too busy drinking,” came a mellow voice in my ear, and I jumped and turned around. Neil looked fresh in a sapphire-blue button-up shirt, sleeves rolled up, and jeans.
“You scared me to death.”
“I can see why you might be jumpy given what happened yesterday,” he said, leading me to sit at a table by a window. “I know I’ll be jumpy because I’ve already had two cups of coffee.”
“I’m sorry I’m late. I meant to set my alarm, but I just passed out instead.”
“Sazeracs?”
“Exhaustion.” A dapper man in a sage-green bow tie came over, filled my coffee cup and handed me a menu before scooting to another table. “But Millie says the booze is on the way.”
He nodded. “She texted me, too.”
“What did you find out last night?” I poured a packet of raw sugar into my cup and stirred.
“Nobody has seen anything unusual. Mark at Fairyland—they make the gin Alastair is helping push this weekend—said their shipment got put in the wrong room. Something about someone else storing their booze in the Fairyland Distillery room. But it was intact and
fine. Just the kind of mixup that happens here. I talked to security and the coordinators, and everyone is on hyper-alert for weirdness.”
“And I guess no one has been hauled off by an ambulance?”
“There was one drunk girl who slipped on the stairs and broke her arm.” Neil sipped his coffee. “Other than that, nothing, according to the manager.”
“And the Bloody Mary bar is doing even more business today,” I said.
“Cocktailia as usual. It will get busier as we get closer to the weekend. It’s only Thursday.”
I tried my coffee. Still a little too hot, but nice. “So you’ve been to this event before?”
“A couple of times.”
“So have I. And I never saw you here.”
“It’s a big convention. Plus I had that handlebar mustache.”
I chuckled. “Right. No wonder I didn’t recognize you. Speaking of which, you grew up in Bohemia?”
“Bohemia Beach. Yeah.”
“How did I miss you there? I went to Bohemia High once I got shipped off to Florida.”
Neil looked uncomfortable for the first time since I’d met him. “I went to private school.”
“Well, la-di-da. Private school and Oxford.”
He quirked his mouth into a funny expression. “My parents don’t have a ton of money, but my grandfather does. He wanted me and my brother to have the best. He’s kind of a character.”
“I envy you. My grandparents are gone.” I looked up as the server approached. “Crab Cakes Benedict, please,” I told him.
“I’ll have the NOLA Breakfast,” Neil said.
“Sure thing,” our guy said, and he was off.
“So you have a brother?” I asked.
Neil’s features assumed that cool, still look he so often had. “I did. He died.”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry. Damn it. I always say the wrong thing.”
“It’s OK. So do you know where you’re getting those cases today?”
I didn’t blame him for changing the subject. “I called a few stores last night and had them put some aside. It should be enough for the dinner if the courier doesn’t get here in time.” Movement caught my eye, and I turned to see the other Bohemia Bartenders, all of them in T-shirts and jeans, heading our way.
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