A Toast to Murder Page 3

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  As Mal pulled out, I held the box in my lap, feeling as if I was holding a ticking time bomb. To distract myself, I looked out my window and tried to focus on the passing scenery.

  A few blocks from my bar, we drove past a restaurant, and I saw a familiar face among the pedestrians. “Mal, look, there’s Duncan.” I pointed to where he was on the opposite side of the street.

  Duncan was standing on the sidewalk talking with a woman—a beautiful woman, with long dark hair, delicate features, and a tall, slender body.

  “Want me to stop?” Mal asked.

  “Sure.”

  Mal turned on his blinker to move over toward a parking spot. I rolled down my window, prepared to holler at Duncan.

  “Don’t call out to him,” Mal cautioned. “We don’t know who might be watching.”

  He was right, and the blast of frigid air gusting into the car made the decision to close the window an easy one. We had taken many precautions over the past few weeks to hide the fact that Duncan and I were still seeing one another, just in case the letter writer was watching. It would be stupid to blow it all on a chance encounter.

  I stared at Duncan, willing him to look our way as Mal maneuvered the car into a parking spot. The woman who was with Duncan suddenly flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. It wasn’t a chaste kiss either. She wrapped her hand around the back of his head, pulled his face toward her, and gave him a long, sensuous lip-lock.

  I turned away quickly, feeling a stab of pain in my chest. The pain was an emotional reaction, I knew, but it felt very real, and for a moment I wondered if I might be having a heart attack. I shook my head, felt the pain dissipate, and looked across the street again. Duncan pulled away from the woman and placed both of his hands on her shoulders. He was saying something to her, and judging from the expression on her face, it was something nice. She gazed up at him all dreamy-eyed, a beatific smile on her lips. Her arms snaked around his waist, her hands lacing behind his back, and she pulled him closer. I looked away again, unable to watch anymore.

  Mal hadn’t seen the romantic display because he had been focused on jockeying into the parking spot. As he turned off the car’s engine, I reached out and touched the hand that held the key. “Start it back up,” I said.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “I changed my mind. It’s too dangerous to contact him out here in the open. Let’s go back to the bar.”

  Mal studied my face for a moment before turning to glance over at the sidewalk where Duncan had been. “Where did he go?”

  I looked over at where he had been moments ago and saw that both he and the woman were gone. Where had they disappeared to? Had they gone into the restaurant? Or had they walked around the corner to the next street? “I don’t know,” I said with a small sense of relief.

  Mal started the car up again, and after signaling and waiting for passing traffic, he pulled out. A few blocks later we were at my bar, and thanks to a bit of serendipitous timing, Mal secured a spot right out front. I placed the boxes inside one of the paper bags Mal had retrieved from his trunk and climbed out of the car. With my right hand, I wrapped my fingers around the handle of the paper bag, and then around the hand support on my crutch, and headed for the front door, the bag swinging and banging against my crutch. Mal shut the car doors—I’d left mine open—and scampered to catch up to me.

  “Whoa,” he said as he came up alongside of me. “Let me help.”

  He tried to take the bag from my hand, but I grumbled, “I got it” at him and refused to let go.

  He reared back as if I’d slapped him, and I instantly regretted both my tone and my actions. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just the cold. I want to get inside where it’s warm.”

  Mal didn’t try again to take the bag from me. I could tell from the way he was eyeing me that he knew something was wrong, but to his credit, he didn’t ask. He held the bar door open for me and followed me inside without another word. I knew he’d say something eventually but figured he’d wait until we were somewhere private. What was I going to tell him? The truth? He and Duncan were friends. Add to that Mal’s feelings for me, and it didn’t exactly make him an objective listener on the subject of my relationship with Duncan. It would be easy enough to lie and say it was something else bothering me—pain in my leg, or irritation over the letter writer, anything. But I didn’t like the idea of lying to Mal.

  Then another thought occurred to me. He and Duncan were friends, and friends often share things about themselves. Maybe Mal knew who the woman was. Maybe he’d known Duncan was seeing someone else all along. Maybe he had been lying to me all this time by omitting this key information.

  I decided a frank discussion was called for and figured I’d deal with it once we were alone. First, I needed to make sure my bar was running smoothly. It was early enough in the day that the crowd was thin. Most of the tables just inside the door were empty, but I knew there would be a handful of people—maybe more—upstairs in the Capone Club room. The day after Christmas isn’t usually a super busy day, but a lot of people do go out shopping in hopes of getting first dibs on some of the after-holiday sales, and that tends to bring people into the bar. By later this afternoon and into the evening, I expected a healthy crowd.

  Billy Hughes, who is usually my evening and weekend bartender—hours that work well around his law school schedule—was on duty. My regular day bartender, Pete Hanson, was home sick with a stomach bug. Since Billy was on a break from school due to the holiday, he generously offered to fill in for Pete, pulling double duty that would end up giving him a fifteen-hour shift. My newly hired bouncer, Theodore Berenson, aka Teddy Bear, who also knew how to tend bar, was willing to put in some extra hours as well. Teddy was a friend of Billy’s who had recently been cut off from his extremely wealthy family because he opted to pursue an art degree instead of the MBA his shipping magnate father, Harley Berenson, wanted him to have. As a result of that, he had labeled himself the black sheep of the family, and he was desperate for employment and willing to work extra hours so he could make his own money. He was determined to prove to his father that he could survive just fine on his own, and his stubborn resolve was a definite boon for me. Teddy had prior training as a bartender, and between him and Billy, they managed the bar quite nicely. And Teddy’s huge size— six-six and about three hundred pounds—made him perfect for stepping in as a bouncer.

  Both of them were behind the bar when we came in, and they acknowledged our arrival with nods as we entered.

  “Hey, boss,” Billy said once I was within speaking distance. “Things are slow so far.”

  “It will pick up later.” I looked over at Teddy. “Is everything going okay with you? Are you liking the job?”

  “Things are going great,” Teddy said. “I love it here. Thanks again for hiring me.”

  “You’re welcome. Let me know if you need anything.”

  I headed for my office with Mal on my heels. Once inside, I set the bag on my desk, shrugged off my coat while balancing on my crutches, and then fell onto my couch. “I’m not feeling all that well at the moment,” I said. “Do you think we could postpone opening this until later?”

  Mal eyed me with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. Ironically, I’d spent more time with him, my fake beau, than I had with Duncan, my real one, so Mal knew me well enough at this point to know something was bothering me. I could tell he didn’t buy into my trumped-up excuse, but I hoped he’d accept it anyway and leave. No such luck.

  He cocked his head to one side and pinned me with his laser-blue eyes. “What’s going on, Mack? You’ve been acting kind of weird ever since we saw Duncan.”

  I stared at him, once again tempted to use a lie as an excuse because I didn’t want to tell him what was bothering me; it made me look like an insecure ninny. But it was what it was, so I decided to go for it. “Did you see the woman Duncan was talking to?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “I caught
a glimpse, but I didn’t get a good look. I was too focused on parking the car. Why?”

  “Why? Because she was gorgeous.”

  “So are you, silly.” He said this as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Is that what this is about? Are you feeling a little jealous?” He huffed a small, dismissive laugh. “Just because Duncan was talking to a pretty woman doesn’t mean—”

  “He kissed her, Mal. And not one of those friendly, old acquaintance or I’m your sister kind of kisses, either. I’m talking about a romantic kiss.” I looked away from him, not wanting him to see the tears I felt forming in my eyes despite my best efforts to quell them.

  “You think Duncan is seeing someone else?” Mal said.

  “What would you think?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “I think it doesn’t sound like Duncan,” he said eventually. “He’s a pretty straightforward guy. And I know how much he cares for you.”

  “That doesn’t mean he can’t care about someone else. Or that he hasn’t grown frustrated and bored with this sneaking around relationship we’ve had. Hell, I’ve been frustrated by it. Why wouldn’t he be?”

  “I think you should at least give him the benefit of the doubt before you hang him,” Mal said carefully. “Maybe there’s a perfectly logical and innocent explanation for it.”

  He was right, and I knew it, but that didn’t make what I had seen any easier to swallow. The two of us shifted awkwardly in the minute of silence that followed. Finally, I said, “I think I need some time to digest this, Mal.”

  “And the letter? Are you going to wait on that?” The tone of disbelief—and yes, judgment—I heard in his voice made me shrink up inside. Like I said, he knew me well. He knew I wouldn’t be able to stand the curiosity nagging at me. Nor would I risk the lives of any of my friends over my own broken heart.

  I squeezed my eyes closed and let my head fall back against the couch. “No, I don’t suppose we should wait on that,” I said with resignation. I lifted my head and looked at him. “But I don’t want to involve Duncan yet, either. Since he was with that woman, he’s clearly not going to be available now anyway. So let’s you and I do it. And I’ll get Cora. Does that sound reasonable?”

  “Sure,” Mal said slowly after a second of thought, dragging the word out into nearly two syllables. I sensed he was carefully weighing everything I’d said, searching for some hidden meaning or trapdoor phrase, tiptoeing around my emotions.

  “Good.” I pushed myself up from the couch and headed for the door. “Let’s go upstairs to my apartment and do it. I’ll call Cora when we get there. I’m sure she’s up in the Capone Club room, so it shouldn’t take her long to get to us.”

  With that, I headed out of my office and down the hall to the door that led to my apartment. I didn’t look back to see if Mal was coming with me—I didn’t need to because I could hear him behind me: the gentle swish of his clothing, the soft-padded fall of his shoes, the light crinkling sound of the bag containing the boxes, the faint, rhythmic whoosh of his every exhalation. Even if I couldn’t hear those things, I could feel his presence behind me like a subtle pulling force, as if he were a magnet and I were made of metal. So far, I’d fought that feeling every time I sensed it, as if to give in to the pull of that magnet would be crossing a bridge that would burn behind me.

  But after what I saw between Duncan and the woman on the street, I was beginning to rethink my caution. Maybe it was time to burn some bridges.

  Chapter 3

  I was breathless by the time I reached my apartment, and I wasn’t sure if it was from my exertions, my emotions, or some combination of the two. Once I reached my dining room table, which had become an evidence-processing center of late, I took out my phone and sent a text to Cora. As expected, she answered me seconds later, and also as expected, she was in the Capone Club room. Mal dropped the box with the letter on the table and went back downstairs to await Cora’s knock. I went into my father’s office and grabbed several sheets of plain white printer paper we would use to help us detect any small bits of evidence that might drop from any of the boxes or the letter. By the time I carried the papers out and placed them on the table, I heard Cora and Mal conversing at the bottom of the stairs.

  Cora looked excited and flushed as she entered the room carrying her ubiquitous companion—her laptop. “You found something? That’s great!” she said as she settled into a chair and opened up her laptop. “Should I call Duncan to see if he can video chat with us?”

  “No!” As soon as the word left my mouth, I realized that my answer was more strident than necessary. Cora shot me a look, then she gave Mal one. He simply shrugged, and Cora, looking wary, turned back to me. “So it’s just us three?”

  “Yes. Duncan is tied up right now, so there’s no reason to try to raise him. And Mal is a cop, so it’s not like we don’t have representation from that quarter here.” I could feel Mal’s eyes on me, and I studiously ignored him. “We’ve done this enough times to know what we’re doing and how to do it. Not to mention the fact that, so far, we haven’t found a single piece of usable evidence on any of these letters, their containers, or their contents. If it is Suzanne Collier who is sending them, she has an uncanny knowledge of forensic processes.”

  “Perhaps she picked it up from Tad talking about the Capone Club,” Cora said.

  I nodded, but I also frowned. I didn’t want to believe Tad was in on this with his wife, but I couldn’t deny the possibility. I felt it was more likely he was as much of a pawn in this as I was, and his wife was trying to discredit me and disband the Capone Club because she thought her husband was devoting too much time and attention to both. I supposed it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibilities to think she might have picked up some of her forensic knowledge simply from listening to Tad talk about the group and the cases we’ve been involved with.

  “Can you record this, Cora?” I asked. “That way we have documentation.”

  “Sure. I can do it on my phone.” She took it out of a pocket, tapped the face a couple of times, and then said, “Ready when you are.”

  Mal and I donned latex gloves, and while he held on to the bag, I took out the main box, opened it and removed the shoe box, and then took out the puzzle box. As I removed this last piece, Cora looked at it with arched brows and, in an apprehensive tone, said, “Oh, dear.”

  “Worry not,” Mal said. “Watch her.”

  Once again, I examined and felt along the box’s edges, managing to open it more quickly this time because the moves were preserved in my memory.

  Cora smiled and shook her head. “You never cease to amaze me, Mack.”

  “It’s just the way my world is,” I said with a shrug. I set the opened box down on top of the papers and then took out the final, jeweled box. Taking the key from my pocket, I unlocked it, opened it, and took out the letter, carefully unfolding it.

  There was nothing inside the folded paper, at least nothing we could see. I expected to find the same calligraphic writing on the paper that had been used in most of the other letters, but this letter appeared to have been written on a computer in a basic font—Times New Roman, my brain told me—and printed out with a computer printer of some sort.

  Dear Ms. Dalton,

  This game is getting old, but fortunately for you, I like old things. I’m also smarter than you, and as long as I can continue to exhibit my greater intellect, I will continue to play. But make no bones about it, if you fail another test, someone will die, and that someone might very well be you. The stakes are huge, and if you hope to avoid extinction, you may have to dig deep for the answer to this one.

  I’m hoping this latest letter will light a fire under your feet, though it may also dampen your spirits. Just remember to open the door to all possibilities lest someone else’s life be extinguished.

  Once again, I caution you to remember the rules of our engagement. No police assistance is to be used in solving my puzzles. You are not to involve any members of the police de
partment in any way, particularly Detective Duncan Albright. I am watching you very closely, and I assure you that any violation of the rules will be met with swift and serious consequences. You have been walking a narrow line up until now, and I suggest you be more circumspect in the future. Let the history of our time together be a lesson to you.

  You have until five p.m. on Sunday, December 29, to figure this one out.

  Yours in skepticism,

  A fading fan

  I stared at the letter, my mind reeling. No one said anything for several seconds. Then Mal finally spoke.

  “If there are clues in there, I’m not sure I see them. Is there anything unusual in the printing, Mack?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “The paper?” Cora asked hopefully, but I shook my head. Just to be sure, I held it closer to my face so I could see and smell it better. I could tell from the smell of the ink that it was the kind used in an ink jet printer, and said so. But that didn’t help us much.

  “Then we need to focus on the words,” Cora said.

  “Maybe there isn’t a clue in here,” I said, suddenly feeling frustrated and disconsolate. “Maybe the game is over, or it’s down to the final play.”

  We all exchanged looks of fear, doubt, and worry.

  “Let’s study it for a while,” Mal said. “We’ll take it apart one sentence at a time. If this is indeed coming to a close, we need to figure out what the endgame is supposed to be.”

  “It’s supposed to be death,” I said glumly, feeling my frustration rise. I gave Mal a pleading look. “Can’t we arrest Suzanne Collier? Wouldn’t that put an end to this?”

  Mal grimaced. “There isn’t enough evidence to arrest her—or anyone, for that matter. Particularly Suzanne Collier. Someone with that sort of money and influence can worm their way out of things even when the evidence is solid. And we’re far from having that. She has enough money to post any amount of bail, assuming it’s offered, and given the dearth of evidence we have here, I imagine it would be. And that’s assuming the DA would even consider an arrest, which he won’t, because all we have on Collier is coincidence and supposition.”