Murder on the Rocks Read online

  “Did you know right away that what you heard was a gunshot?”

  I nodded. “Dad owned several guns, including one he kept stashed behind the bar all the time. He used to take me to the shooting range a lot when I was a kid. So not only did I recognize the sound of a gun being fired, I recognized the taste associated with that sound.”

  Albright looked amused and gave me a funny little smile. “What does the sound of gunfire taste like?”

  “It’s like a mix of hot, red pepper and burnt toast. And the smell of the gunpowder creates tiny hot spots on my skin, kind of like the little burns you sometimes get from one of those Fourth of July sparkler things.”

  Albright nodded, still wearing that funny little smile. “Okay,” he said. “What happened next?”

  “I dropped what I was doing and ran out front to see what was going on. The bar appeared to be empty and when I hollered out for my father, he didn’t answer. I noticed a chill in the air and at first I thought it might be one of my synesthetic experiences, but after looking around I discovered that the back door was ajar. I went toward it and looked outside. That’s when I found Dad.”

  My eyes and throat both squeezed closed, simultaneously reacting to the emotion of the memory while trying to shut it out. It did no good. I’d opened the floodgates a little too far and the memories surged forth. I could see it like it was yesterday: the bright red of my father’s blood against the snow, the frightened and disbelieving look in his eyes, and the acrid smell of his life slipping away.

  Something touched my hand and I jerked it back instinctively before realizing it was just Albright trying to reassure me. His touch made me see a soothing ribbon of blue satin, but my body flushed hot and my eyes were wide open now.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No need to apologize. You startled me is all.”

  “Look, I know this must be difficult for you, but if you can find a way to keep going, I’d like you to.”

  I nodded, swallowed hard, and went back to the hell of that night. “I knelt down beside Dad and I could see that he was badly wounded. His chest and all the snow around him was covered with blood. I ran back inside, grabbed the portable phone and some bar towels, and called 9-1-1 as I hurried back out to him.”

  “Was your father still conscious when you found him?”

  “Yes, but just barely. He . . .” I choked, emotion making it difficult to go on. When I felt I could, I continued. “Whenever he tried to speak, blood gushed out of his mouth, making him cough and gasp for air. I was trying to talk to the 9-1-1 operator and use the towels to staunch the blood flow, all the time fighting an onslaught of synesthetic experiences triggered by my stress, the cold, the smell of the blood, the sound of his gasps, the sight of the gun. . . .

  Once again I was forced to stop as emotion strangled me. Albright waited a moment to give me time to collect myself before asking his next question.

  “Did your father say anything at all to you before the police and ambulance arrived?”

  I shook my head. “He was practically drowning in blood when I first found him and he was more or less unresponsive by the time I got back with the phone. The hospital said he briefly regained consciousness once he got there but they lost him minutes later.”

  “So this thing he mentioned, the important thing that he wanted to show you?”

  I shrugged. “He never got the chance.”

  “You mentioned a gun. It was there?”

  I nodded. “He was shot with his own gun, the one he kept under the bar. Whatever happened while I was washing the dishes must have been significant enough for him to pull it out. They found it lying next to him.”

  “No prints on it, I take it,” Albright said.

  I shook my head. “Only mine and my father’s, and most of those were smeared. The cops said either the gun went off in the midst of a struggle or the shooter was wearing gloves . . . maybe both.” There was a third possibility they had hinted at back then—that I had been the shooter—but I left that tidbit out. I figured if Albright did his homework, he’d find out on his own soon enough. In the meantime, I didn’t want to divert his attention from finding the real killer by having him focus on me. That’s what happened when my father was killed and in my opinion, the cops lost some valuable time and evidence because of that initial, narrow-minded focus.

  “So what do you think happened?” Albright asked.

  I shrugged. “The cops said they thought it was a robbery attempt and that my dad fought with the culprit or culprits, getting shot in the process.”

  “You sound skeptical.”

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because all our money for the night was still sitting on the bar untouched. Plus we had the place completely locked up.”

  Albright thought a moment and then said, “Your trash bin is out back. Maybe your dad went out there to dump the trash and the robber or robbers met him at the door.”

  I shook my head. “The bar trash hadn’t been emptied yet. All the cans were still full.”

  “What if someone knocked on the back door? Would he have gone to open it?”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s the theory the investigating cops put forth. But I don’t buy it. Dad wasn’t stupid. He was smart enough to know that anyone in the alley by the back door might be up to something fishy. If someone needed to come into the bar, why wouldn’t they come to the front door, where they could be seen through the window?”

  Albright shrugged and looked thoughtful. “The back door does seem an odd choice,” he said. “But maybe your dad was suspicious. Maybe that’s why he took the gun with him. And then there was a struggle and he got shot in the process.”

  I frowned, unable to counter his argument, but not believing it either. “According to the police, there were signs of a struggle in the snow,” I admitted. “But I’m telling you, my father wouldn’t have opened that door to any stranger. Not with me in the building. He was very cautious and protective that way.”

  “Then maybe it wasn’t a stranger,” Albright suggested.

  His words sent a chill down my spine because the same thought had occurred to me. Had my father been killed by someone he knew and trusted? Had that same person killed Ginny? And was I next?

  Chapter 5

  Our conversation was temporarily halted when the crime scene investigators arrived. Despite the fact that I wasn’t technically open, the bar was doing a thriving business in coffee for the cops and techs. Unfortunately, since I was giving the stuff away, it wasn’t much cause for celebration. Several times I saw folks show up at the front door and peer through the window. A few of them knocked. I waved them all away, optimistically yelling through the glass, “Come back later.”

  I called Debra, my scheduled lunchtime waitress for the day, Helmut, my cook, and Pete, my daytime bartender, and told them not to come in until they heard back from me. Albright listened in on each of the calls and per his instructions I told them only that the police had temporarily closed the bar because a body had been found in the alley. I didn’t mention that I was the one who found the body, or who it was. Next I called my evening staff and told them the same thing, putting them all on standby in hopes of being able to open up later in the day.

  A crime scene tech approached and asked me if he could scrape beneath my fingernails.

  “Can I ask why?”

  Albright answered. “We need to look for traces of blood or tissue.”

  I swallowed hard and offered up my hands for examination. The crime scene tech took pictures of both of them, palms up and then palms down, and then he used an orange stick to scrape beneath each of my nails while I held my hands over a sheet of clean white paper.

  When he was done, Albright said, “I’m sorry but there’s one more thing I need you to do. Please understand that these steps are necessary to the investigation.”

  I figured there was little he could ask of me that would be more humiliating, but I was wrong.

&nbs
p; “I need you to go upstairs to your apartment with one of my female techs and strip for her.”

  “Are you serious?” I said, gaping at him.

  “I’m sorry, but yes, I am. We need to make sure you don’t have any suspicious wounds or injuries on your body. And I’ll need to collect the clothes you’re wearing.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, feeling my ire rise. “I don’t believe this. This is the same crap I had to go through when my father was killed. Why are you wasting time on me when the real killer is out there somewhere?”

  “It’s standard procedure, to rule you out.”

  “Rule me out, my ass,” I snapped, my anger reaching its apex. I saw red, literally, something that always happens when I’m really mad. “You want proof I didn’t do this? Fine, I’ll give it to you.” I grabbed the bottom of my T-shirt, pulled it off over my head, and flung it at him. Next I undid my jeans and dropped them to the floor. I stepped out of them and kicked them toward a crime scene tech standing nearby. Standing there in my bra and panties with my arms outstretched, I spun around. “There, are you satisfied?” I yelled. “Are you happy with what you can see, or do I need to be buck naked?”

  The half dozen crime scene techs scattered throughout the room had all stopped what they were doing to stare at me. Though I expected Albright to be angry or shocked at my action, he merely looked amused. His eyes did a slow scan down my body, then back up again. “I’m satisfied with what I see,” he said with a sly smirk. “And no, naked isn’t necessary, although . . .” He cocked his head to one side and his smile broadened.

  “Then are we done here? Can I go upstairs and get dressed?”

  “Be my guest.”

  I turned and stormed out of the bar with as much dignity as a woman in her underwear could muster, heading for the back stairs to my apartment, well aware that all eyes were on me. I slammed the door closed in my wake and made my way upstairs and into my bedroom, passing a couple of startled crime scene techs along the way. After rooting around in my dresser, I pulled on a clean T-shirt and jeans, and then I sat on my bed, trying to calm down. I knew that what Albright had asked of me was necessary, but it pissed me off nonetheless. It also frightened me. I could hear the crime scene techs outside my bedroom, rooting around through my apartment. Knowing they were going through all my private, personal belongings left me feeling vulnerable and violated. As if to confirm this, a knock came on my bedroom door.

  “Miss?” a female voice called through the door.

  I walked over and opened it to find a bespectacled girl who looked barely old enough to be out of high school standing there with a large, black case in her arms.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we need to process this room yet. May I start now?”

  Part of me wanted to scream no at her and throw her out. After all, they were here only because I’d given permission to Albright. But I knew they’d search the place anyway and that Albright asking if it was okay had been a mere nicety.

  “Sure, have at it,” I said, waving the girl inside. I wasn’t ready to put in an appearance downstairs yet, so I asked her, “Is there a room you’re done with that I can go to?”

  “I finished with the den or office that’s off the living room,” she said.

  The room she was referring to was my father’s office, which was really a small third bedroom. It had remained more or less untouched since the day after my father’s death, when the cops had scoured through the place looking for clues. They had gone through his desk, the file cabinet drawers, the bookcase, and all the billing folders on top of the desk. Other than the bills, which I had been forced to deal with out of necessity, the room looked exactly the way the cops had left it. Since they hadn’t found anything significant or helpful, I’d felt no need to go through any of it again myself, preferring to avoid any painful memories it might trigger.

  Recalling Albright’s theory that my father’s murder and Ginny’s might somehow be connected, I decided it was finally time to look through my father’s papers. While I knew I’d be doing so with an emotional and admittedly unprofessional eye, I could at least look at things from a fresh perspective. And maybe, just maybe, that fresh perspective would allow me to see connections between the two deaths, something that might make someone want to kill them both.

  My synesthetic sensibilities made me aware of all the things the crime scene tech had moved or disturbed, but any ordinary person could have done the same thing simply by noticing the fingerprint dust left behind, the drawers left ajar, and the disorganized stacks of papers on the desk.

  I settled in behind the desk and went through its drawers, looking at what the tech had looked at and straightening things that had been left askew. Aside from some old bill receipts, letters, and other miscellaneous papers, I didn’t find anything of interest. The file cabinet revealed more of the same, along with some old magazines, minutes from the city Chamber of Commerce meetings, and newsletters from both the Wisconsin and American Bartenders Associations. After half an hour or so of sifting through files and papers, I closed the bottom drawer of the file cabinet and moved to the bookcase. There were no smoking guns, but I also realized that if the tech had found something of interest, she had most likely taken it with her.

  I turned and leaned back against the wall, looking at the room. Over by the window there was an easy chair with a floor lamp and small side table, and as I looked at it I could almost see my father sitting there, his head bent over whatever his reading choice for the moment happened to be, a drink on the table beside him. I flashed back on childhood memories of sitting in his lap in that same chair while he read me a story, the smell of his aftershave triggering a soothing hum in my ear not unlike a meditator’s chant.

  Smiling at the memory, I walked over and sat in the chair for the first time since my father died. It was an old but comfortable thing, and as I sank into it a faint, lingering scent of his aftershave wafted up from the cushions. It triggered the same soothing hum and I hugged myself, getting lost in the memory of his warmth and love. I glanced over at the side table and wondered what kind of drink he’d have sitting there if he were here now. I knew it wouldn’t be any of my coffee drinks because while Dad indulged my artistic bent by letting me mix, experiment, and serve both my vodka infusions and my coffee creations, he wasn’t a coffee fan. He leaned more toward the basic highballs.

  My eyes drifted from the top of the side table to the small drawer in its front. I couldn’t remember what the cops had found in it when they went through the room months earlier, even though I’d been in here while they searched. Curious, I reached over and pulled the drawer open. The only thing in it was a book about Al Capone and I started to close the drawer when something made me take the book out. I noticed a piece of folded paper stuffed inside its pages, and when I turned to the section it marked I found a chapter highlighting Capone’s escapades in Milwaukee. I saw that the folded paper had something typed on the inside, so I took it out of the book and opened it, bookmarking the chapter with a finger.

  The paper was a printout of an e-mail that I vaguely remembered reading months ago when the cops had first searched the room. It hadn’t seemed important then, and it still wouldn’t have if not for one tiny thing: it was from Ginny to my father, sent two days before he was murdered. The message itself was brief, a simple one-liner:

  Here is that other info I mentioned:

  Following this was a list of titles and Internet sites, all of which appeared to have something to do with Capone’s history. At the bottom, she had signed off with Love, Ginny.

  The closing salutation made me wince and then I mentally slapped myself for feeling jealous of a dead woman. For so many years it was just my dad and me, and though some of our regular customers became like an extended family, my relationship with my father remained very insular. Ginny took some of that away from me and I resented it. Though I’d had no rational reason to think Ginny had anything to do with my father’s death back when it happ
ened, I still found myself blaming her for it. And despite the attempts Ginny made to stay in touch and maintain some level of a relationship with me after Dad died, I had made it clear with my polite but firm disinterest that her efforts were a waste of time.

  I felt guilty about that now. Yet as I sat there holding a reminder of my prior resentment—Ginny’s e-mail, with its affectionate closing and suggested shared interest in a topic my father never discussed with me—I felt that irrational stab of jealousy again.

  I refolded the e-mail, shoved it inside the book, and put the book back in the drawer. I went to close the drawer but hesitated. As connections between my father and Ginny went, the e-mail and the book weren’t much of one, and I couldn’t think of any reason it would be relevant to the investigation. But it was all I had for the moment and I figured I should at least give it a healthy consideration.

  I took the book back out and flipped through its pages twice—backward and forward—looking for any other little notes that might have been tucked inside. I found nothing and, just to be sure, I held the book by its covers with the pages hanging down and shook it. I settled into the chair and began going through the book a page at a time, skimming most of the text, more interested in seeing if there were any notes scribbled in the margins than in the actual content of the book. I didn’t find anything, so I went back to the chapter of the book that had been marked by the e-mail. The page opposite the first page of the marked chapter was a blowup of a Milwaukee city map, showing an area that included my neighborhood. Curious, I started reading.

  I knew, as did most folks who lived in Milwaukee for any length of time, that Capone once owned a house near here and ran a lot of his bootlegging business in town. The author of this particular book speculated that several bars in the city participated in the bootlegging business, and he offered up largely anecdotal evidence supported by a few historical documents to support this claim. None of it was proof positive of anything, but it was a captivating analysis of an intriguing and somewhat notorious period in the city’s history, particularly since my bar was smack in the middle of the rumored bootlegging territory.