Strange Brew (The Tortie Kitten Mystery Trilogy Series Book 2)

by Constance Barker

  His eyes closed. I thought he’d fallen back asleep. A moment later, he nodded. “Yeah, there was something. Their names are weird. But I can’t remember why they were so weird.”

  I took out my notes. “Alf Fardel, Andy Darwin, Eric Rice and Gary Gray. Oh, you’re right,” I suddenly saw it. “E-R-I-C and R-I-C-E. Their anagrams of each other. So is Gary Gray. Hold on a second. If Alf is Alfred...” I ticked off the letters. The same applied to Darwin, if you spelled it D-A-R-W-E-N went with Andrew as a first name.

  “Yeah, that was it.”

  I tapped my notebook with the pencil. “How does that help us?”

  “Are you kidding? I barely remember my own name.”

  Looking him over, I felt guilt rush in. His eyes were red, skin pale, and he barely had the strength to hold a sippy cup. “Sorry, partner, I should just let you sleep.”

  “I’m so tired. But we really need to get this guy.”

  We really did. In my case, we needed to get him soon. I had another investigation furiously demanding my attention.

  “Who else do we have as a suspect?” Shen said.

  I flipped back through my notes. Robert Zachery didn’t look good for it. Neither did the ancient hippy, Sketch Moses, although his name was odd. Darren Strathmore didn’t realize what he had in his collection until after the murder. “Nobody,” I said.

  “Some shadowy figure from an unknown government agency who worked in the late sixties,” Shen said. “Could be anyone. But hardly anyone alive, right?”

  “Well, sure, he’d be old.”

  “What can we make out of Sketch Moses?”

  I set to work, trying to come up with some clue in his name. Turns out, you could make a lot of words from the letters in Sketch Moses’ name. I came up with chest smokes, these smocks, mesh socket, ET mess shock, but nothing that sounded like a name or a clue. Even using CT and ST for court and street, I couldn’t come up with an address.

  “Maybe we could use an online program,” Shen said.

  Not with this phone, I thought. “I’ll run it tomorrow morning, I guess.”

  Shen nodded, eyes closed.

  “I’ll keep you posted.”

  My partner didn’t respond. A moment later, he began to snore.

  IT WAS A LONG DRIVE home. Too much stuff was battering around in my brain. Was the Angle Man in on a con with Kathleen Murphy? It seemed at once impossible, but at the same time, I wouldn’t put it past either one of them.

  The anagram names of the band members—what was that about? The little about the band online hadn’t revealed that these were pseudonyms, or what their real names might be. It had to be some kind of clue. It sounded like spy stuff, like CIA mind games from the sixties. Or maybe I’d seen too many spy movies.

  Sketch Moses didn’t seem like a good suspect. He was the right age, and the hippie thing could well be a cover. Maybe he wasn’t a peacenik back in the day. My gut still said he wasn’t our murderer. Sometimes, people surprise you, but I simply couldn’t imagine the old guy gunning someone down with a shotgun over a record, no matter what record it was.

  I took I5 from the hospital. When I exited, I thought about hitting up Remy’s store, Zelidon Farmacia y Market, but it was too late. The pastrami sandwich still filled me up, and my stomach was quailing a little at the hospital coffee.

  Once inside, I fed the starving cat, who had piles of food around her bowl. Ugly didn’t touch the food. Instead, she wound around and around my ankles, making a growling sound. I crouched down, rubbing my hands down her back, under her chin.

  “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  She made a few noises that seemed odd to be coming from a cat. I put both hands on her, trying to read her feline mind. This was an awkward position, so I sat on the floor. Ugly crawled into my lap. She meowed a sound: ray?

  I kept stroking her, trying to understand. At this point, I was just about tired enough to fall asleep sitting on the linoleum. Although I was supposed to be a witch, and Ugly my familiar, I had much better luck communicating with the cat when I was sleeping.

  “Ray. Ray.”

  Pray, I heard in my mind. And then I thought about it. If cats had religion, it was beyond my comprehension. Not pray, but prey.

  Prey, Ugly said in my brain. Heard. Prey. Unseen.

  At some point, as cats do, Ugly would get over sensitized and probably bite me. I tried to tune in, almost getting into a trance-like state.

  Prey, heard, prey, unseen.

  What did it mean? Who had I heard, but not seen?

  Ugly kept enjoying the attention, purring, her cat brain vaguely attached to mine. I tried to think about what she was telling me without thinking about it directly. I’d heard someone, someone I hadn’t seen...

  I’d heard of someone. I hadn’t interviewed him. Frankly, I didn’t know if he existed. Not only was he the right age, but he was involved directly with the band. Tom Rathers.

  With a chomp that tore the skin, Ugly wriggled out of my lap and padded away. Tom Rathers. I picked at the letters in my head, still in a half-trance, still sitting on the hard floor. Suddenly I jumped up. The letters had come together in the name of a suspect.

  Chapter 19

  “It’s so late. Jimmy Fallon is over.”

  “Sorry about the time, but I really need to speak with your husband.”

  The old woman made a face and shook her head. “Well, he’s up anyway, tinkering with something in the garage as usual. It’s not locked.”

  “Thanks.”

  I knew my way around, even in the dark. As she said, the garage door was unlocked. I knocked and entered.

  An old man looked up at me. I hadn’t met him before, but his face still looked familiar—a family resemblance. I had heard about him. A man who collected psychedelic records back in the day. A man who worked for the government, although with the Ag Department. And a man who managed a certain rock band that created an album worth killing for. He stared back at me from behind the pile of audio gear Shen had coveted.

  “What gave it away? The stupid anagrams?” He made a disgusted noise. “It was all mind games back then, secret code names, what a bunch of crap.”

  “It was the anagrams. Tom Rathers. Same letters as in the name Strathmore.” I put my hand on my gun. “You’re under arrest for the murder of John Vandermoot.”

  His face smiled, all save his eyes. He lifted up a cardboard square. There was an old fashioned anatomical drawing of a brain. On the top half, The Peerless Scarlet Jack Explosion; on the bottom, Sonic Lobotomy: Or, the Portable Brainwave Installation Kit. “Caught red handed, huh?”

  “Why kill him over it?”

  “I’m too old, I couldn’t beat him up and take it. Even a wimpy nerd like that. Too chancy. And he would never have given it up voluntarily. Not a legendary album that no one had ever seen before. No one can know this record exists. But you and your damned partner papered it all over the student union.”

  There were still questions. “It’s still hard to believe you’ve been sitting here, waiting all this time to see if the record turned up. Not just you, but enough guys to toss Vandermoot’s place. All for a brainwashing record that didn’t work.”

  “Oh, it worked. That’s the reason we’re standing sentinel. It worked so well, the plan had to change. Who cares about a bunch of pinko college students when you could actually control people? My superiors saw it work. They knew if we broadcast the recording, the Russkies would catch on that we stole their spooky hocus pocus and made it functional. If they reverse-engineered it, we were talking about a whole different kind of cold war. Maybe they could turn our tank divisions on our allies. Maybe they could stop a nuclear counter-strike.”

  “But it didn’t work,” I said. “The pressings were faulty. They were all re-called.”

  “We monkeyed with the pressing. Acetates more than proved the dangerous functionality of the process. It had to be weaponized in a different way, with different technologies. In the meanwhile, we hadn’t k
ept proper inventory on the test pressings. Most of them went to the Pentagon, of course. But any one of us could’ve created an acetate.”

  “Anyone—like you?” I said.

  Strathmore’s, Tom Rathers’, eyes went cold. “My son must have taken it from my collection. I had long forgotten about it. We have ways of tracking the signal now. That record-picking bum played the acetate on an old portable record player. It set everything in motion.”

  “That’s a nice euphemism for following him and shooting him in the head with a shotgun.”

  The old man hiked a shoulder. “Had to be done. For the sake of national security.”

  “Except lots of people know about it now,” I said.

  “There’s a cure for that.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” My hand found the grip of my weapon. “I’m the one with the gun, Mr. Strathmore.”

  Again, that expressionless smile. “I’m not going to kill you. I am going to discredit you. You might be the one with the gun, but I have something bigger than an atom bomb.”

  It wasn’t until then that I realized my heart was racing, sweat running down my back. I felt someone was watching me, but I didn’t dare turn from Strathmore. He turned his head, pointing with his finger. I saw a device in his ear, bigger than a hearing aid.

  “Take out your gun with your left hand,” he said. “Put it on the floor.”

  Like I was really going to do that. But I had to stop my reaching left with a force of will. I heard a thump, a hiss, some staticky crackles. On a turntable behind the old spy, I saw a record spinning.

  “Take out your gun with your left hand,” he said again, “And put it on the floor.”

  Speakers suddenly burst out a dual guitar riff, mirrored by the bass. I’d heard that sound before, that same tune. It was the tweedly-tweedly I’d heard coming from Shen’s phone.

  “You recognize it, right?” Strathmore turned up the volume. “Given another few seconds, I would’ve had your partner crawl right into my line of fire. He would’ve dragged you with him. Take out your gun with your left hand. Put it on the floor.”

  “No...”

  “After I leave, you will take your gun home with you and kill yourself. You have to be discredited, Inspector. Take out your gun with your left hand. Put it on the floor.”

  I could do nothing but stand stock still, fighting my left hand. Still, it reached for the gun. I caught it with my right. This was insane.

  “The sonic architecture is designed to affect the Brodmann-19 area of the brain. Part of the prefrontal cortex. An unfortunate side effect is that it also impacts Area BA-9. While the one leaves you utterly susceptible to suggestion, the other impinges on your higher decision-making functions and your ability to inhibit violent behavior. Something we learned from Gary Gray. Take out your gun with your left hand. Put it on the floor.”

  Vocals blasted out from the speakers. I couldn’t’ understand the words. They were just a series of vowels, like a chant in an ancient tongue.

  “Not exactly suitable for American Bandstand, is it?” Strathmore said. “Take out your gun with your left hand. Put it on the floor.”

  That tweedling riff sounded again. I felt like I was floating in darkness. Strathmore’s words filled my mind completely. Or maybe I had come to the conclusion myself. It seemed perfectly logical to take out my gun with my left hand. I would put in on the floor. After Strathmore, left, I would take my gun home with me and blow my brains out. I felt the fingers of my left hand touch the butt of my revolver.

  TWANG-WHUP!

  Twang-whup!

  Twang-whup!

  I was jarred back to consciousness. The acetate was skipping. Sketch Moses said the acetates were made of soft material. They couldn’t be played too many times. My right hand yanked my sidearm free. I shot the turntable. The shot was thunderous in the garage, as was the sound of the record player dying in the speakers. “Put your hands on your head. Interlace your fingers. Turn around,” I ordered, turning the weapon on Strathmore.

  “You don’t seriously think I’ll let you take me in. Contingencies have been in the works for years. Do you believe I have no backup plan? Put down your weapon, Inspector.”

  I heard an engine hum, the garage door behind me rattled, gears ground and pulled the door up. But I didn’t turn to look. Instead, I kept my gun on Strathmore, watching his face.

  At first, the shock of surprise opened his features. His eyes darted side to side. Then, he looked at me, face burning in rage. Blue and red light flashed on the garage walls.

  “I knew you were tracking Shen and me out in the Delta, but I didn’t know how. But after getting shot at, I had to come up with contingencies of my own. You didn’t seriously think I came here alone, did you?” I waved the gun. “Hands on head, interlace fingers, turn around!”

  Fury quivered his face, but Strathmore complied. I put my hand on the collar of his shirt and took him to his knees. My ears were ringing from all the noise, but when the cuffs clicked home, I found the sound satisfying.

  Two uniforms came into the garage to take custody of Strathmore, Senior, AKA Tom Rathers. I watched them lead him out. Black-and-whites congested the sleepy street. I saw officers closest to the garage lean down and pick up the weapons they’d laid down.

  Three other old guys faced a tactical van, hands cuffed behind them. One of them turned to me over his shoulder. “This will never make it to court.”

  Perhaps it wouldn’t. I couldn’t even comprehend the black corridors guys like this operated out of. But for me, it was all over but the shouting. The case was solved.

  THE PAPERWORK LASTED a couple days. Lieutenant Dan took me out of rotation, considering my partner was recovering and rehabilitating from his wounds. Sweating in my Walmart clothes, I stood at the upstairs side of a Formica-topped kitchen table. Remy had the downstairs side, not even breathing hard. We walked it down to the first floor. Following, Agent Drusilla Harald and Echo Hutchison carried matching chairs.

  “Why the change of heart, Mary?” Drusilla asked.

  “Because I want her safe. I want Memorie safe,” I panted. “I’ve seen fear-generating technology that’s fifty years old. Strathmore said they stole some of it from the Russians. Back in the day, Lithuania was part of the Soviet Bloc. I think they’ve been using it on me to con me out of all my money.”

  “That’s why you want us to track down the Soul Brokers?”

  We reached the ground floor and turned toward the kitchen. Light streamed in the front windows, plywood removed. The big, old console TV stood against a wall, quietly playing a local broadcast. Opposite, a mirror hung on the wall. I caught a slight motion in the glass.

  “I have to know for sure,” I said. “Get me a lead, and I’ll follow it myself.”

  The table looked like it had always stood in the eat-in-kitchen. Dru and Echo parked their chairs. “What about your ex, Murph?”

  “I have someone working that in Florida.”

  “My cousin?” Drusilla asked.

  I nodded. “If anyone can find Murph, Everett Klein can.”

  Remy leaned against the fridge. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Why not get the other two chairs?” Echo said.

  “Huh.” His lips pressed together for a moment.

  Echo rolled her eyes. “C’mon, you big scaredy cat. I’ll go with you.” She punched him in the shoulder. I was happy Remy had come over at all. He was still a little shaken by the appearance of Grammy Epi in the dresser mirror. But one thing at a time.

  When they walked back up to the attic, I turned to Dru. “I was raised sort of Catholic, but I have no idea what it means to sell a soul, or what happens if your soul is taken. I mean, does that mean death? Or do you walk around like a zombie? Maybe that’s why I bought into it. I just don’t understand it. All I know is, it sounds really bad.”

  Drusilla helped herself to a Coke in the fridge. “I’ll go over the little we have on the Soul Brokers. If there’s a lead,
I’ll follow it with you. The Lithuania Mob is desperate, which makes them dangerous. While I’m sure their gloating over conning a cop, who knows what they’ll stoop to if you come gunning for them.”

  Who knew? Not me. For the first time, though, I wasn’t afraid of them. Now, I was pissed off. Whether the Soul Brokers really could collect their prize or not, I wasn’t going to let them have Memorie’s soul. Even if I couldn’t get custody of my girl again, I would at least do that for her.

  It didn’t take long for the attic to empty out. For a while, I stood in the second floor hall, looking into the spare bedroom. For a moment, I fantasized what it would look like painted purple. Dinosaur bedspread, Peggy the Stegosaurus keeping watch, a little girl sleeping peacefully. Could I make it happen? I sure as hell was going to try.

  Don’t miss the second book in the Tortie Kitten Mystery Series:

  Strange Brew

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  Catalog of Books

  The Tortie Kitten Mystery Series

  Bound for Magic

  Strange Brew

  Wandering Eye

  THE FARMER’S MARKET Witch Mystery Series

  Charmed to Death

  Third Crime’s a Charm