Strange Brew Part 22

I thought about how uncomfortable Jackson Poole had looked the one time I'd seen him; Halloween night at the Yacht Club, with the mob of drunken partiers.

"That's odd," I commented. "Somebody in the hospitality business who doesn't like people."

"He never called it hospitality," Anna offered. "It was the food business.

"Is there anything else? Do you know who killed him?"

"I've got an idea," I said. "Keep looking through the papers at the restaurant. Jackson made a five-thousand-dollar payment to somebody. It would help if we knew who."

After Anna hung up, I took out the packet of papers I'd found among Wuvvy's belongings and called her landlord at Restoration Properties, Inc.

The woman who answered the phone said she was Rutledge Gross, and, yes, she'd gotten the message that I was interested in the building at 362 Euclid Avenue.

Ms. Gross was a cautious lady. Good business practice. Made me repeat my name twice, spell it, and read off the serial number on my private investigator's license.

"I'm interested in anything you can tell me about your dealings with Virginia Lee Mincey," I said.

"Oh," she said. "Her."

"She's dead," I pointed out. "So there shouldn't be a confidentiality issue."

"I realize she's dead," Ms. Gross said briskly. "We evicted her, you know. I don't have the file on that property in front of me, but I can tell you that she was in arrears on her rent, and had been for some time. Before that, she didn't actually miss payments, but she was always a late pay. The owner was fed up and directed us to start eviction procedures."

She'd taken me by surprise. "You're not the owner?"

"No," Ms. Gross said. "We manage the property. Or we did until recently."

"Who is the owner?"

"That's not really something I can discuss," Ms. Gross said.

"Did you handle the transaction with the Blind Possum brewpub?" I kept at her.

"No," she said regretfully. "The owner handled all that. I've driven by since it changed hands," she added. "Looks like a money-maker. A good deal. YoYos was a marginal tenant at best. Hardly worth the trouble. Retail s.p.a.ce over there is renting now for eighteen dollars a square foot. She was paying a quarter of that and she still had three years to run on the lease, or would have, if she hadn't defaulted."

"Who was the owner, Ms. Gross?" I repeated. "It's really important."

She sighed. "Gemini Properties. We don't manage anything for them anymore. I dealt with the secretary. Miranda something."

"Miranda?" I knew a Miranda. Hap's girlfriend. His business partner. What was her last name? I couldn't remember if I'd ever known Miranda's last name. Last names weren't an issue in Little Five Points.

I looked down at the crime statistics, and another business name popped up. "Ms. Gross, did Gemini Properties own any other buildings in Little Five Points?"

"Everything they own is in that area, as far as I know," she said. "I don't have the file, but there were several parcels."

"What about the building that housed a place called Lolita's? Does Gemini Properties own Lolita's?"

"Another marginal tenant," she sighed. "Vacant since the fire. Not our fault, but again, we no longer manage the property."

30.

Gemini Properties. Was Miranda into astrology? I was trying to look up the phone number for Gemini when the phone rang. The connection was a bad one, the line full of static, the voice far-off. Or maybe it was just that Mac and I had found yet another way to put distance between us.

"I need a favor," he said, cutting right to the chase. "Are you still mad at me?"

"To tell you the truth, I haven't had a lot of time to think about you in the past two days," I said evenly. "You're not the only thing going on in my life, McAuliffe. I'm working a case, you know. And I've got a cleaning business I'm trying to run."

"I know that," he said, his voice tense. "And I wouldn't ask if it wasn't an emergency."

"What kind of an emergency?" I asked. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he said. "I'm in Tifton for a planning conference. It's Maybelline I'm worried about. She was acting funny when I got ready to leave this morning. I put some blankets out, and some extra food, but I've worried about her the whole way down here. I'm wondering if she isn't getting ready to have the puppies."

"Did you call your vet?" I asked.

"He just called me back," Mac said. "I think he thinks I'm another hysterical owner. Dogs have puppies by themselves all the time. But not Maybelline. And she's so big. There must be at least eight puppies."

"Maybe she'll wait until tonight," I said.

"Our agenda just got pushed back by two hours," Mac said. "There's no way I'll be home before ten o'clock at the earliest."

Poor Maybelline. Mac had pushed my agenda back lots of times. I knew what it felt like. "What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"Could you go out to the cabin and stay with her?" he asked. "Make sure she's all right? You've got the key. And the vet's phone number is on the refrigerator door. He's part of a twenty-four-hour clinic, so if Maybelline looks like she's in trouble, you could take her over there. It's on Old Alabama Road."

I bit my lip. I had enough on my platter without playing midwife to a skittish black Lab. My fingers were itching to call Gemini Properties and find out who and what they were, and what their connection was to Wuvvy and Jackson Poole. I was so close. And yet the thought of Maybelline alone tugged at my conscience. Mac and I had a lot of stuff we needed to work out yet, but that wasn't her fault.

"I'll go out there," I said finally. "You'll be home by ten?"

"Absolutely," he promised.

I hung up and sat at the kitchen table, brooding. On Halloween night, Wuvvy had accused her old friends of greed and betrayal. I'd written it off as part of Wuvvy's paranoia. She'd had too much to drink, too much to smoke. Maybe so. One thing was certain-once again she'd been too loyal and too trusting of the wrong people. Now she was dead. She'd trusted me, too.

Why, I wondered, what was it about me that made people count on me for things I couldn't deliver? I started throwing my files into a shopping bag. I could make my phone calls from Mac's house, call Deavers and try to persuade him I'd unraveled at least part of the puzzle. I wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table for Edna and was outside, locking the back door, when the phone's insistent ringing brought me running back inside.

"Callahan?" With the crackling on the line, I could barely make out the voice. "It's Anna. You told me to call you back if I found anything."

"What?" I said. "What did you find?"

"A list of the vendors for the restaurant," Anna said. "It might not be anything. But Jackson was using a different beer distributor over here. Not the same one we use out in Roswell."

"Is that unusual?" I asked.

She sounded uncertain. "Maybe. Well, sort of. Beer distributors divide the market into territories. One distributor handles certain brands in his territory. If you want Coors, you have to deal with the Coors guy in Atlanta. And he can make you take the five or six other beers he handles, too. But the distributor Jackson signed with over here doesn't really make sense for us. It's a lot of imports we don't need."

It didn't make sense to me, either.

"There's something else, though," Anna said. "Listen. I think I figured out what was bothering Jackson the night he was killed."

She paused to let that sink in. "It's the water pipes. They're useless."

I sat up straight and tried to concentrate.

"What do you mean?"

"The water lines," Anna said. "I've been here all morning. The Southern Bell guys were here right after I talked to you, putting in another line. While they were rooting around in the walls, I got to looking at the plumbing fittings and the other stuff, and that's when I figured it out. The water lines are all wrong. There's no way I could make beer here."

"Why not?" I said, trying to remember our conversation about the niceties of brewing. "You said you use mountain spring water, trucked in."

"We do," Anna said. "For the end brew. But we use city water for the other processes. It takes a three-inch main. I can only see a three-quarter-inch main stubbed out from the wall here. And I came over here, to the Yacht Club, to ask Hap about it. He's out running an errand. I told Miranda you'd asked me to check on that kind of thing. Miranda says she doesn't know anything about the water pipes, but Hap is on his way back."

Miranda. The woman who'd engineered Wuvvy's ruin. Who had been the one to discover Wuvvy's body.

"Anna?" I took a deep breath. "Where are you now?"

"I'm at the Yacht Club," Anna said. "Miranda gave me a sandwich and some iced tea for lunch. What's wrong with you, Callahan? You don't sound right."

Anna was the one who didn't sound right. She'd been so emotional earlier. Now her voice was oddly buoyant. As though she were just a little drunk, even.

"Is Miranda standing there? Can she hear what you're saying?"

"No," Anna said. "She went back to the office."

"Hang up the phone. Tell Miranda you left a message, that I was out. Then I want you to leave there. Right away. Do you understand? Get in your car and drive over to my house." I gave her the address and directions.

"All right," Anna said gaily.

31.

I gave Anna fifteen minutes. When she didn't show up I called Jeffrey Kaczynski at Zone Six. I got his voice mail. Left a message that there was a crime in progress at the Blind Possum Brewery on Euclid. I tried to beep Bucky, left my number on his pager. Then I put a clip of bullets in my Smith & Wesson, pulled on my hooded rain slicker and ran for the Lincoln.

Maybe Anna wasn't clear on my address. My right hand rested lightly on the Smith & Wesson I'd placed so carefully on the front seat. Maybe Anna was already dead, and I'd helped get her that way.

I parked the Lincoln at the end of the alley. The black pickup truck with the FOP sticker was parked behind the Yacht Club. I stuck the pistol in the waist of my jeans and ran for the shelter of the garbage Dumpster. The Blind Possum's back door was propped open. There was a two-foot s.p.a.ce between the building and the Dumpster, and the building's eaves jutted out just enough to keep the rain off. I squeezed into the gap, sc.r.a.ping my hip against the rough brick of the wall.

Voices inside. My hand went to the gun.

Hap's voice, strained somewhat. "I've got a customer next door. She's had too much to drink. You could give her a ride home."

"s.h.i.t!" It was Miranda. "Hap, she just threw up all over the place. I can't get her to keep it down."

The third voice must have belonged to Hap's enforcer.

"I don't want somebody puking all over my truck. Forget about it."

"We'll give you a towel," Miranda said. "Hap, tell him what he needs to do."

Rain dripped from the eaves onto the hood of my jacket and under my collar. I pulled the collar tighter and squeezed forward. What had they done to Anna?

Hap's voice lowered. "She's taken a lot of pills. She's depressed. Suicidal. All you have to do is take her to Poole's condo in Midtown, walk her in, and dump her."

Pills. They'd found drugs in Wuvvy's system after she committed suicide. I wondered if these were the same kind of pills. If they took Anna away, I knew, she'd die, too.

"No way," the other voice insisted.

"Make him do it," Miranda said shrilly.

It was now or never. I pulled the pistol out of my waistband, said a prayer, and made the move for the doorway.

I would have had the drop on them all, could have been a big hero. If I hadn't stepped on a beer can as I made the dash for the back door.

The hollow sound of aluminum squashing underfoot seemed to echo louder than a thunderclap.

The blond cop met me at the door. He didn't even have a gun. Just a fancy tae kwan do kick that sent my gun spinning into the alley, and me howling with pain.

He yanked me inside the restaurant.

Hap and Miranda stood over Anna, who sat on the floor, her head drooped between her knees, eyes dilated. Miranda looked more annoyed than surprised to see me. "I told Hap you'd be snooping around here somewhere. He didn't think you'd put it all together. Hap has a surprisingly low opinion of women, don't you think?"

Hap stepped into the alley and came back with my pistol. "You dropped something, Callahan."

I looked him in the eye. "b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

He winked at me, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Like he'd just played some big practical joke. "Look here, Jimmy," he said, turning to the cop. "Here's another customer."

Jimmy wouldn't look at me. He had wavy dark blond hair, a wispy goatee, and the overdeveloped bulges of a career bodybuilder, his black T-shirt stretched taut over the pecs and biceps. "Not me, man," he said. "She's got cop friends. Deavers has already been hanging around, asking questions about me. I'm out of this. You want her done, do it yourself."

He turned and walked out the door. A second later I heard the truck's engine roar, and then go splashing down the alley.

"Why'd you let him go?" Miranda asked, turning on Hap. "He knows everything."

"Davis can't touch us," Hap said. He stroked her arm. "Don't worry, baby. I'll take care of it."

Anna Frisch groaned and pitched forward, limp as a rag doll. Miranda stepped away from her body, as though she might be contaminated by it.

"Good stuff, huh?" Hap said.