Risky Whiskey

by Lucy Lakestone

“Indeed.” Cray donned goggles and gloves and waved us back. I followed Neil’s lead and went to the far side of the next table to watch the mad scientist work.

  First he went to the wall and flipped a switch. I heard a hum and looked up. A powerful vent was at work.

  Cray poured a dollop of the bourbon into a clean beaker, dipped in an eyedropper, and measured out ten drops of the whiskey into a test tube. He went to shelves along the wall and pushed bottles around until he found a small one containing a bright orange liquid.

  “Tang?” I asked as he brought it back to his table.

  Cray chuckled. “Let’s just say I wouldn’t feed this to astronauts. Sodium dichromate solution. Nasty stuff. But we don’t need much.”

  In another test tube, he measured a tiny amount of the orange liquid, then went to the shelves again and brought back a small brown bottle. He measured an even smaller amount into another test tube, then poured it into the tube with the not-Tang.

  “Sulfuric acid,” he explained. He took the tube with the mixture and swirled it around. “Not nearly as fun as an Old-Fashioned. But here’s where it gets interesting.” He took another dropper and filled it from the mixture. Then he leaned over the test tube with the bourbon and began adding drops, counting aloud to ten. He put the additive aside and picked up the toxic cocktail, swirling this one, too.

  Then he held it about a foot from his face and fanned the top.

  His nose scrunched up immediately. “Ugh. No doubt. Methanol. Only a reaction with acidified sodium dichromate would stink this badly.”

  It took me a minute, and then it hit me. “Whew!”

  “You can smell it over there? Well, that’s not good at all,” Cray said. “Neil?”

  “Not really.”

  I held my nose and sounded kind of funny when I replied. “I should mention that I have a doglike sense of smell.”

  Cray was busy capping the tubes. “I didn’t need any special powers, unfortunately. The only thing I can’t tell is if this occurred through the process of making the whiskey or whether it was added later. But I believe the concentration is high, suggesting an additive.”

  Neil frowned. “I’m having my doubts about this having occurred by accident. I’ve gotten to know Dash pretty well, and he has a top-notch operation. Plus the whiskey we’ve bought outside of their event stash has been fine.”

  “Different batch, different results,” Cray said, beginning work on the rye.

  A few minutes later, after the same process, he held out the final concoction and waved his hand over the top. A vaguely fruity odor wafted my way.

  Cray grinned when he saw my reaction. “Ethanal. From ethanol and my witch’s brew. This one isn’t tainted.”

  “Huh,” Neil said. “Maybe it was a product of distilling. A disturbing result.”

  His reasoning clicked in my brain. “Because only the bourbon is affected. At least if these bottles are representative of the whole stash.”

  “It happens all the time in places where regulations aren’t so good,” Cray said as he cleaned up and stoppered everything. “A traveler picks up a bottle from a street vendor and doesn’t even know he’s poisoning himself. A moonshiner who doesn’t know what he’s doing or wants to up the alcohol content can end up killing his customers. Something could have gone wrong in Bohemia. Or perhaps,” he said with a raised eyebrow, “someone just wanted you to think it was an accident.”

  Neil narrowed his gray eyes at the older man, who’d pushed the goggles up onto his head and was pouring himself a generous dollop of the Bohemia Rye in a clean beaker.

  Cray took a sip and sighed. “It’s really very good. Why are you looking at me like that, my friend?”

  “What do you know?”

  Cray tittered. “Come here. Look at the mouth of the bourbon bottle.”

  We both walked over to Cray’s table, and Neil picked up the bottle, held it at a slant and rolled it slowly under the lights.

  “Holy shit. It’s scratched, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “It’s very subtle,” Cray said, “but I believe so. I was very careful in removing the wax to be sure I didn’t scratch it. Of course, a bottle can be damaged any old time, but someone in a hurry to take off the wax and the stopper might not be so careful, especially if they were doctoring several bottles.”

  Neil ran his finger along the neck of the bottle. “And then they could add their poison and stopper it and wax it again.”

  “But who? Why? And how?” I asked. “We need to figure out where this bourbon has been or who might have had access to it.”

  “We can trace its history,” Neil said, pouring a little rye into two small glasses Cray produced and handing me one, “but it comes down to the hotel problem. Anyone can get into a hotel room if they really want to.”

  “But Barnie was guarding the stuff.”

  “Was he? The whole time? We’re going to have to ask him.”

  I sipped the rye, savoring its peppery sweetness, but in the back of my mind, I couldn’t get over the nagging worry that it might be tainted, in spite of overwhelming proof this bottle was fine. It was a creepy feeling. I shook my head. “I don’t like this. We have almost four more days of events, and we’re going to have to guard any whiskey we’ve got 24/7.”

  “The smart thing might be to go ahead and store our stuff with everyone else’s,” Neil said. “Cocktailia’s security isn’t screwing around. They’ve got at least two beefy guys watching that room at all times. Forget the private suite.”

  “Good plan,” I said. “Though I’m not sure how Dash is going to take all of this.”

  “If I were him,” Cray said, “I’d be pissing in my pantaloons.”

  “Exactly. He has a problem.” Neil sipped his rye and shot me a look. “We all do.”

  7

  Neil was right. Bohemia Bartenders’ reputation was on the line as much as Dash’s was. And I wanted this event to be great for the Bohemia Bartenders. For Neil. For me. I liked these guys. And I needed this, a way to stretch my wings, get out of Bohemia once in a while, prove myself.

  Of course, this wasn’t just about being great. We had to make sure we weren’t the bartenders who poisoned the entire convention. That could’ve been us last night, if Neil hadn’t taken a moment to test the bourbon. Everyone was in such a hurry to get to the tasting, it all might have ended very differently. Suppose it had been just me getting the bottles to the floor? Would it have occurred to me that Barnie might be more than just dangerously drunk? Methanol would’ve been a lot harder to detect once the whiskey was mixed up in our cocktails.

  “You OK?” Neil asked. “You look pale.”

  “Sure,” I said, but I set what was left of the rye down on the metal tabletop. “I’m just thinking about tonight. I’d like to see the restaurant and maybe taste the whiskey.”

  “If you have any more to test, let me know,” Cray said. “Or if you come across any interesting rums I simply must have.”

  He showed us downstairs and had us wait a moment under the monster chandelier while he vanished into the parlor. He came out with the bottle from Spain and handed it to me with a wink. “Take this and think of me when you drink it.”

  “Oh, I can’t—”

  “Thanks so much,” Neil said, shaking Cray’s hand. “Will we see you at Hookahakaha?”

  “Can an old rum man resist?” He waved us out the door and shut it.

  I shot Neil a look as we headed down the sidewalk toward the gate. “I didn’t appreciate your speaking for me back there.”

  “I’m sorry, but if I hadn’t just thanked him, we would have been there all day arguing with him. This is what he does. He’s generous. I never leave his presence without some kind of rum.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t flirt with you.”

  “He might’ve if you weren’t there hogging all his attention.”

  My mouth dropped open, and then I saw the twinkle in his eye. “Oh, I get it. You’re messing with me, right?”

  Nei
l grinned. “Maybe. He knows not to flirt with me, but I think he’d have trouble resisting Barclay.”

  “Oh, is Barclay—”

  “Barclay likes girls,” Neil said. “But that doesn’t stop guys from drooling all over him, too.”

  “Well, he is rather picturesque,” I said as we went through the gate and Neil started tapping on his phone to summon an Uber.

  “You think so?” Neil’s face was impassive as he tapped, but there was an edge to his voice.

  Suddenly I discovered that I wanted nothing more than to get under his skin. To break that eternal composure. “Yeah, Barclay’s pretty.” I sighed dramatically. “Those green eyes? That bone structure? Then again, Luke is nothing short of gorgeous.”

  Neil huffed, put his phone away and stared down the street as if willing our ride to materialize. “All the girls think so,” he said resignedly.

  I burst out laughing, and Neil looked over at me. He quirked his mouth. “You’re messing with me?”

  “Maybe. But they are pretty.”

  “Oh, shut up. So is Melody.”

  “If you like Barbie, sure.” Don’t get me wrong, Melody was a friend, but Neil needed a kick in the ass.

  “Ha!” was all Neil said as a purple SUV rounded the corner and pulled up next to us. We got in, and the driver said hello and confirmed the address of the restaurant. Jazz was playing on the radio: “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?”

  “Louis Armstrong!” I said with a happy sigh.

  “Yeah, my mama says he’s my very distant cousin, about ten times removed, but talent runs in the family,” the driver said as he rolled away from Cray’s house.

  Something was bugging me. The driver looked familiar. And I felt a presence behind me. I turned around and looked in the far back of the car, where a big, black shape crouched.

  “Is that an instrument case?” I asked.

  “Tuba,” the driver said. “I make a few bucks down on Royal Street at night with it. People love the tuba.”

  Back in the busy French Quarter, we walked to a café near our destination to grab lunch before thinking about the real work of the day. It had a checkerboard tile floor and scary machines swirling with neon-colored frozen drinks. Neil got a shrimp po’boy, and I ordered a muffuletta. We both got Cokes. Neil made a brief phone call to Dash to update him on what we’d learned and to tell him that we should have fresh whiskey straight from the distillery no later than tomorrow.

  Neil nodded at my lunch. “That thing’s bigger than your head,” he said as he added some Crystal hot sauce to his sandwich.

  “Ginormosity is a requirement for a muffuletta. I’ll find someone to give the other half to. I have to have one every time I come to town. With a handful of Tums, usually. For heartburn,” I said to his curious expression.

  “Stress?”

  “Sometimes.” I shrugged.

  “I hear you. It’s hard running a business. And then I decided to run two, for some reason. Millie’s been a godsend, though.”

  “Oh, yeah. She arranged today’s shipment. She seemed really efficient. Half the work I was supposed to do for you here was already done. She’d placed a lot of the orders for yesterday’s garnishes and stuff in advance.”

  “She’s great. And I appreciate you, too. That you could help us out this week.”

  Uh-oh. We were back to just “this week.” And I wanted to go to that next event in Fort Lauderdale. “What was that Hooka-whata-whata you mentioned to Cray?”

  “The tiki convention in Fort Lauderdale in June. Hookahakaha. I think you’ll love it.” Neil moved on to the second half of his sandwich.

  Pshew. I was still in. “Sounds great. Emphasis on tiki drinks, right?”

  “I can’t wait. But tonight, it’s whiskey.” He went on to describe the four cocktails we’d be making to go with each course of the dinner, plus a welcome drink.

  “By the way,” I said after I’d finished the first and only half of my sandwich that I was capable of eating. “Will we be doing the welcome drink before or after the press conference?”

  Neil stopped chewing and stared at me. He finished chewing and swallowed. “What?”

  “The press conference. Actually, I think it’s a just a few of the bloggers who’ve signed up for this particular Distiller Dinner.”

  Neil put down his sandwich and chased it with a big gulp of soda and a frown. “I didn’t know there was a press conference.”

  “I helped set it up at Dash’s request earlier this week. But I think I know what you’re thinking.”

  “That this is a really terrible idea?” Neil said.

  “I know. If someone heard something and gets the wrong idea about the bad bottles—”

  “Or the right idea.”

  “I know. It’s a risk. But Dash is here to promote his brand. And if any kind of rumor comes up, he has a chance to defuse it.”

  Neil nodded slowly. “Maybe. I want you to brief him. Help him find the right words to say, just in case.”

  “What? Why me?”

  “Because you have an idea of how to do it. Right?”

  I took my own sip of cola and tried to look intelligent. The eyeglasses helped, I think.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  8

  We found our team had already delivered the fruit, garnish fodder and liquor-store whiskey to La Bonne Vie, along with a hefty canvas bar tool bag. They’d left again, probably to get dressed for tonight. I didn’t have to change, but I wrapped myself in a big apron I found hanging in the kitchen before I went to work.

  The restaurant was an old-school New Orleans kind of place, with lots of red drapery and gold trim and white marble. The main dining area was downstairs, with an adjoining bar. The restaurant would be closed tonight because of the special event, though the bar was open already. Closing the bar would be akin to sacrilege in the Quarter.

  The Distiller Dinner was slated for the upstairs dining room, which sat about sixty. We set up in the small upstairs kitchen while the staff cooked downstairs in the big kitchen for the four-course meal.

  Neil began by opening the upstairs freezer and removing a large block of ice. After he let it sit for a few minutes so it would be more friendly to his tools, it was beautiful and clear. I was distracted from all of my juice-squeezing and peeling as he scored the big block with his hand saw, then used a mallet and chisel to break away a chunk. He repeated the process with smaller chunks and still smaller ones until he had lovely fat cubes, and then he chipped the corners off those. All of them went back in the freezer for use in the bourbon cocktail we were serving with the steak course. Which meant we had a bunch of lemon twists to do.

  By the time he was done with a second block of ice, I’d squeezed a ton of grapefruits thanks to a thundering industrial-size squeezer, and my glasses were spattered with droplets of juice. I stacked up lots of grapefruit twists on layers of wax paper—curly strips of peel for garnish in the Blinker we were making as the welcome drink. We’d shake the juice up with raspberry syrup and rye whiskey later.

  We were taking a quick water break when we heard a commotion downstairs.

  “Guess who’s here!” Luke said as he entered the kitchen, hauling two cases of bourbon.

  “Besides you?” I asked. Then behind him came Barclay and Melody, each hauling whiskey. “But we already have whiskey.”

  A woman with round cheeks and dark hair, cropped Betty Boop style, was right behind them struggling with another box.

  “Millie!” Neil exclaimed, rushing over to take it from her. He set it down and gave her a hug. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “It was proving difficult to get the courier you wanted on such short notice, and I figured it might be fun to do a weekend in New Orleans with Bennett. So I got started early.”

  “This is above and beyond,” Neil said, shaking his head and smiling.

  “We were glad to do it,” came another voice. A guy with unruly brownish hair and a scruffy bear
d entered into the room, hauling a couple more boxes. “I’m Bennett.”

  Ah. The boyfriend. I’d heard of him. He was usually traveling the world doing sand sculptures at festivals. Quick introductions were made all around.

  “There’s a lot more in the car,” Millie said.

  “We’ll take care of that,” Barclay said.

  Neil held up a hand. “I think we have plenty here for now. Millie, can you and Bennett take the rest to the hotel and talk to the Cocktailia staff about stowing them in the guarded storage room that everyone else is using? But first, take one bottle of the bourbon and one of the rye to this address. It’s in the Garden District.” He texted the information to Millie. “I’ll let him know it’s coming. Wait for an answer, then text me the result.”

  Millie looked puzzled, but she didn’t hesitate. “We’re on it. Let’s go, Bennett!”

  “Anything, my love,” her boyfriend said with a twinkle, and they were off.

  Neil gestured to the newly arrived boxes. “Put them in the corner, separate from the stuff you bought earlier today. I don’t want to use them until we hear back from Cray. We’re going to have Dash sample the stuff you got at the liquor stores just to be sure. He knows his whiskey better than anyone, and I’m confident they’re OK anyway or we would’ve heard of other people getting sick.”

  With that, Neil made a quick call to Cray to give him a heads-up, and everyone pitched in to squeeze juices and make garnishes for the other four drinks. We batched what we could, but some stuff would be shaken or stirred as we mixed and poured on the fly.

  Dash and Travis strolled in at five, both looking dapper. Dash sported a light-blue suit and a white hat with a blue band, while Travis wore a black vest over a dark blue button-up shirt, black pants and fun sky-blue high-top sneakers.

  “Your sponsors have arrived,” Travis declared with a grin and a bow.

  “I hope that smile means Barnie is doing better,” I said.

  Dash’s smile faltered a bit, but he still looked a lot better than he had the previous night. “The doctors say there’s slight improvement. He was briefly awake while we were there but didn’t make much sense, and then he was out again.”