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NORMALLY MURRAY’S PUB would have been half-filled at best on a weeknight in the dead of winter, but this was Wednesday, trivia night, always a popular draw for the locals. Sadly, my team had come in last place, thanks to the fact that my tardy arrival had forced me to join up with a trio of middle-aged Japanese tourists who spoke zero English. And yeah, it would have been nice to get a heads-up about that one in advance. I chose the team name: Gotta Have a Sensei Humor.
Keiko, Akira, and Jinsei had discovered Murray’s in some online list of “iconic American bars that have been doing business in the same spot since well before you or anyone on the planet drew breath.” I know this because they all proudly showed me the site on their phones. What my teammates lacked in language skills, they made up for in enthusiastic participation. The more scotch they knocked back, the louder and more raucous were their random responses to the questions Maxine Baumgartner, the owner of Murray’s Pub, called out.
First-place honors went to a team called Wait, This Isn’t Speed Dating?, who won a fifty-dollar bar tab. They had a ringer in the form of Mayor Sophie Halperin, a certified geography whiz who nailed the round called Countries That Ain’t There No More. She did pretty well with Political Assassins Throughout History, too. The other two rounds were Name That Song (The Monkees edition) and Crazy Moms from Film and TV.
I liked my new Japanese pals. We had a lot of laughs despite the language barrier. They invited me to accompany them to the next stop on their All-American pub crawl. I heard the word “McSorley’s” and deduced they were on their way to the venerable Lower East Side pub, which had been established seven years before Abraham Lincoln took office. I politely declined amid a lot of bowing and watched them stumble happily out into a half foot of snow.
I sidled up to the bar—you’re not allowed to sidle up to anything else; I believe there’s a law on the books—and waited for Martin to finish filling a pitcher of beer for Mal Wallace, Nina’s husband, who was enjoying a boys’ night out with his buddies. He’d probably catch hell later for not staying home and giving Nina a break with the baby. Normally I might be on her side, but I mean, everyone in Crystal Harbor knew that little Laura had been fathered not by Mal but by a notorious figure from the town’s recent past. So I was willing to, you know, cut the guy some slack.
“Here you go.” The padre slid a small cognac glass in front of me, half-filled with a clear golden liquid.
I brought it to my nose and sniffed. “Martin, you know I can’t afford the good stuff.” This was my favorite añejo tequila, and I knew how much Maxine charged for a single shot of it. I shoved the glass back at him. “Give me a shot of well tequila. Plus some salt and lime to kill the taste.”
He slid the glass back across to me. “This is well tequila, Jane. Bottoms up.” Martin was looking particularly studly tonight in a black turtleneck with the sleeves pushed up, which advertised his well-developed forearms. Normally he wore his blond hair buzzed practically to the scalp, but he’d let it grow out since the summer, presumably to keep his head warm. The short strands had an appealingly rumpled look as if he’d just rolled out of bed. My fingers itched to smooth them down.
Instead I took hold of the snifter and glanced around to see if Maxine—Max to her friends—was in the vicinity. The pub’s owner might have something to say about her bartender swapping out cheap well tequila for the kind that costs ten times as much.
“You worry too much.” The padre grinned.
I shrugged. “It’s your job on the line.”
“Max would never can me,” he said. “I bring in the customers.”
What he meant was that he brought in the female customers. Max had known what she was doing when she hired Martin. The man was single-handedly responsible for a startling and no doubt unhealthy increase in alcohol consumption by female residents of Crystal Harbor. I’m sure he was very proud of himself.
I took a sip and groaned from the sheer, sensual perfection of it.
He said, “Say, ‘Thank you, Martin.’”
“Thank you, Martin.” I sipped again.
Bracing his arms on the bar top, he leaned toward me and said in a quiet growl, “Do I know how to take care of you?”
My giggle morphed into a piglike snort which caused a mouthful of hideously expensive liquor to shoot out of my stinging nostrils. Well, I mean, come on. When a guy this hot says something that suggestive, what do you expect me to do?
Okay, you know what? It’s easy for you to sit there now and tell me what I should have said. And for the record, I don’t say things like that. I’m a lady.
And no, it is none of your business when I last had a hot date.
I turned and surveyed the thinning crowd. Only a couple of booths remained occupied, and the customers in one of them were getting ready to leave. It was nearly eleven and most of the bar-trivia contestants had to get up early the next morning for work. I waved to Denny Pinheiro, who was on his way out the door. Denny owned a company that cleaned up crime scenes and other icky stuff. We helped each other out with referrals.
The barstools were now empty except for a couple who sat at the far end. The back of the woman’s head was toward me. Black hair. Fake tan. Sparkly top. Short, tight skirt. Spike-heeled boots. I recognized Skye Guthrie’s voice before she turned and polished off her drink. It was only after she signaled Martin for a refill and I saw him tip a bottle of rum into her glass that I realized she was downing something with a heftier kick than straight cola.
Okay, I’m not the preggers police or anything, but really? That was not cool, no matter how far along she was. Did she think that just because she wasn’t showing yet, it was okay to get hammered?
The padre was well aware of Skye’s delicate condition. He served the drink and rejoined me, accurately interpreting my questioning look. He leaned in closer, keeping his voice low. “I can’t do anything about it, Jane, it’s the law. I can’t refuse to serve her unless she’s visibly intoxicated, which she’s not.” He appeared none too happy about the situation. And yes, there was one of those signs behind the bar that read DRINKING ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES DURING PREGNANCY CAN CAUSE BIRTH DEFECTS.
“How many of those has she had?” I asked, as Skye leaned toward her date to snap a grinning selfie.
“That’s her third.”
The woman could hold her liquor, I’d give her that. Sure, she was laughing shrilly and playfully smacking her companion’s shoulder, but I chalked that up to her personality, not the booze. The guy was tipsier, probably trying to match her drink for drink. I didn’t recognize him and wondered if she’d met him using one of those hookup apps, the kind where you swipe left (ugh, no) or right (oh yeah, baby) on a prospective date’s picture.
“Oh good,” Martin said dryly, “I was hoping there’d be at least one messy scene tonight.”
I followed his gaze and saw Nick striding purposefully from the entrance toward where Skye sat cozying up to her date. I hadn’t thought the handsome young widower had it in him to look haggard, but that’s the word that popped into my head at that moment. There were puffy circles under his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept, or shaved, since the funeral four days earlier. He didn’t appear to notice me or Martin, or the other two remaining customers chatting quietly in a booth.
One of those customers was Howie Werker, a friend of mine who’d been promoted to detective during the recent shakeup in the police department. He was with a woman I didn’t recognize. She wasn’t his wife, Lillian, and Howie wasn’t the type to cheat, and even if this crackerjack detective were the type to cheat, he sure as heck wouldn’t do it on trivia night at Murray’s Pub in full view of dozens of his friends and neighbors.
Drawing on my own vaunted powers of detection—hey, I’ve been known to make a few good guesses!—I concluded that this lady just might be Crystal Harbor’s newest police detective. I knew the department had hired someone from the outside and that she was named Sugar or Candy or something like that. She certainly didn’t look like a Sugar or a Candy. Which is to say she appeared more professional than a cloying name like that would suggest. Her curly brown hair was pulled back into a messy bun. She wore eyeglasses with fashionable burgundy-colored frames, and funky little brass-and-glass earrings shaped like owls. Okay, not too professional.
Nick grabbed Skye’s shoulder and spun her to face him. “What the hell are you doing, Skye?” His bloodshot gaze took in her drink, her date, her swipe-right getup. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. You keep dumping my calls, ignoring my texts.”
She jerked out of his grasp. “You don’t own me, Nick.”
Martin’s body language was deceptively calm as he wiped down the bar near the squabbling pair. I knew him well enough to discern he was on high alert, prepared to leap over the bar if this dreary little scene threatened to escalate into violence. He caught Howie’s eye and I saw something pass between the two men, an unspoken communication. The female detective—Honey? Cupcake? Pumpkin Spice Donut?—appeared just as watchful.
If Skye expected her drinking buddy to confront the interloper and toss him out of the pub, she was to be disappointed. The fellow frowned at her. “You told me you’re single.”
“I am single!” She jerked her thumb toward Nick. “This guy’s out of my life.”
“How can you say that?” Nick demanded. “You’re having my baby, in case it slipped your mind.”
The barstool Skye’s date was sitting on became suddenly electrified. What else could explain the speed with which he sprang off of it?
She latched on to his arm. “Don’t go!”
“I don’t know what your game is,” he said as he extricated himself and grabbed his coat off one of the hooks near the entrance, “but I didn’t sign on for any baby.” He had his phone out of his pocket before he’d even opened the door. He was either opening a rideshare app or, more likely, on the prowl for another, more reliable late-night hookup. One without a bun in the oven and a baby daddy stalking her.
“Hey!” Skye called after him. “Who’s going to pay for these drinks?” She followed this up with a string of ripe cussing as the door closed on her date’s back.
“Skye, come on,” Nick pleaded. “You should be taking better care of yourself. You shouldn’t even be here.”
“Now you’re telling me where I can go? What I can do?” She tossed back the last of her rum and Coke and turned to Martin. “Give me another.”
“I’ll need you to take care of the tab first,” the padre said. “Sixty-one bucks.”
This triggered a fresh bout of foul language. Nick produced his wallet and slapped a few bills on the bar. “You’re just upset, bunny,” he told Skye, “and confused. Let’s get out of here. Come home with me. We can finally stay together all night in my bed. Won’t that be nice? And in the morning I’ll make you breakfast, something good for the baby like, uh, ham and eggs or something. The baby needs protein, right?”
“I’m not going anywhere with a loser like you,” she said. “Hey, bartender! Where’s my drink?”
Martin gave Nick his change. “Ran out of rum. I can give you plain Coke if you like.”
“Don’t lie to me, scumbag.” Skye pointed to the half-full bottle he’d recently poured from. “There’s plenty left.”
Martin turned to me. “Jane, do you see any rum in that bottle?”
I squinted at it. “Looks empty to me.”
“Me too,” Howie volunteered from across the room.
“Ditto,” said Cream Puff.
Having initially appeared perplexed by the sudden epidemic of Booze Blindness, Nick finally caught on. “There’s no more rum, bunny. Come on, let’s go.”
“You idiots all think you’re so smart,” she said. “Give me bourbon. Make it a double. On the rocks.”
“Okay, I’m getting you out of here,” Nick said in a surprising display of assertiveness. He tried to ease Skye off her barstool, but she fought him, punching and kicking and even biting him in response to his gentle coaxing.
Apple Fritter slid out of her booth and approached Skye. She flipped open her badge wallet to display the gold shield. “Miss, I’m Detective Cookie Kaplan.”
“Thank God you’re here,” Skye crowed. “This bastard refuses to serve me. That’s against the law, right?”
“I just witnessed you assaulting this gentleman.” Cookie indicated Nick.
“He assaulted me! Didn’t you see? He’s trying to force me to leave. I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here and drink.” She turned to Martin again. “Bourbon. Now!”
The padre busied himself arranging glassware.
“I’m going to fight that prenup, bunny,” Nick said. “I’ve got a new lawyer and he’s working an angle. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“How are you going to pay for a lawyer?” Skye sneered.
“That’s the best part,” he said. “I don’t have to pay him now. He’ll take a piece of whatever I end up with.”
“How big a piece?”
“Uh... I think he said thirty percent,” he said. “Maybe forty.”
Skye thought about this. I could almost hear the calculator in her head clicking away. “And that’s all you’ll owe him? The rest is yours?”
“Yeah!” He wore a proud grin. “Once that prenup is out of the way, I’ll get my one third, minus the lawyer’s cut. Not bad, huh?”
Skye faced him directly, as if to claim his full attention. “And you’re sure he doesn’t want any money up front? No retainer or anything?”
“Well, I mean, the guy has expenses, you know? I have to cover whatever he lays out. It’s only fair. Dispensations, I think he called it.”
Martin said, “Disbursements.”
“Right!” Nick said. “Disbursements.”
Skye’s expression hardened. I sensed she had not had an easy life and was accustomed to bad news. “How much?”
“Just fifteen thousand. That’ll cover every—”
“Fifteen grand?” She gaped at him. “Where are you going to come up with that kind of bread?”
“I thought... well, you said you had some money put aside...”
“You have seriously lost it if you think I’m handing over my life savings to some crooked lawyer who’s just out to fleece you.”
“It’s an investment,” Nick whined. “Can’t you see that, bunny? Think about how much we’ll have once that prenup is history.”
Skye’s face contorted with disgust. “After Allison died, all you could talk about was how rich we were going to be. I should’ve known all along it would never happen, not with a loser like you calling the shots. Story of my life.”
“You’re just hormonal,” he said. “It’s normal. I’ve been reading up on pregnancy. Your emotions are all over the place. I get that. I’m here for you, bunny. We’re in this together. Don’t pull away from me now. I need you. We need each other. And the baby needs—”
“I’m so sick of hearing about the baby!” She punched him in the chest. He stood there and took it.
“Miss,” Detective Cookie Kaplan said, “if you don’t want to be arrested for assault, you’ll need to leave the premises immediately.”
“This is police brutality!” Skye hollered back, while Nick struggled to shove her arms into her coat. “I’m going to report you to your boss. They’ll take away your badge. Yours, too,” she told Howie, who was still sitting in the booth, serenely sipping his beer and munching on Cajun curly fries. “For not doing anything to stop this blatant injustice.”
She continued to squawk as Nick escorted her out of the pub. The only remaining patrons were the two detectives.
“We’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes,” Howie told Martin.
“No rush, take your time.”
I introduced myself to Cookie, who had a firm handshake and a ready smile. She asked me to join them and became my friend forever by pushing the basket of fries in front of me as I took a seat across from her.
“Beer, Jane?” the padre asked from behind the bar, where he was shutting down the register.
“No, thanks. I’m still working on this.” I indicated my tequila.
“I’ve heard of you,” Cookie said. “The Death Diva, right?”
“Yeah, well, it’s not as gross as most people think.” You can imagine the reactions I was accustomed to dealing with.
“Oh, I think it’s really cool,” she said. “You saw a need and you created a whole career out of it. Totally original. What’s not to love?”
I decided I really liked Detective Cookie Kaplan.
“You know,” I said, “I’m glad I ran into you guys. There’s something that’s kind of bothering me. It’s probably nothing.”
Howie said, “Usually when I hear those words, it’s not nothing.” He gestured for me to continue. Howie Werker was a tall, tasty, dark-skinned man in his early forties. Not to mention buff: He ran marathons in his spare time.
Okay, don’t get too excited. He’s married, remember? And I happen to really like his wife. Not that I’d mess around with a married man under any circumstances. I sort of had the chance a couple of months ago with Dom and I put on the brakes. Not that Dom is married, but he’s engaged. More or less. To my knowledge, he and Bonnie have yet to set the date. And no, I don’t know what that means or how I feel about it, so let’s just drop the subject, okay? Sheesh.
“It’s about Allison Zaleski.” I popped a curly fry into my mouth.
“What a tragedy, to die so young and in such a horrible way.” Cookie shook her head. “I never met her, but everyone who did says she was nice.”
Howie said, “That had to be rough for you, finding her like that. How are you doing, Jane? Are you all right?”
My eyes stung with a burst of raw emotion I was helpless to suppress. My reaction shocked me. I thought I had this whole thing under control. It’s not as if I were a stranger to death and dead bodies. But this was different. Allison haunted me. I saw her when I closed my eyes to sleep. I saw how she looked under the ice, almost like one of her own photographs. A figure under glass, serene, unmoving.
And then there were her videos. Just a couple of gal pals schmoozing, sharing confidences. That’s what it felt like anyway, watching them.
I grabbed a paper napkin and dabbed the corners of my eyes, mumbling an apology.
Howie slid his arm around my shoulders and gave me a brisk, wordless hug. He glanced up and said, “You were there too.”
Only then did I notice Martin had joined us, sliding onto the bench next to Cookie. He nodded grimly.
I cleared my throat. “So, um, here’s the thing. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“Our favorite words,” Cookie said, lightening the mood. “Do proceed.”
“Well, I’ve been watching these, um, video diaries Allison made.” I didn’t tell them how I’d come across the videos and I hoped they wouldn’t ask. I mean, they were cops, and I was in possession of something that didn’t strictly belong to me. But I’d known Howie a long time. He’d had my back during a couple of sticky situations. So I figured I wasn’t about to get hauled to the hoosegow. This despite the bar-trivia team name these two had assigned themselves: Let Us Win or We’ll Arrest You.
“So when you say ‘video diaries,’” Cookie said, “that means, what, she made them for herself?”
“Yeah, I guess so. She’s the only one in them and she’s just, you know, talking. Well, it’s like she’s addressing this guy Jim, but he’s definitely past tense. I think he’s dead. Anyway, one of these videos contains something that’s kind of disturbing.”
“Disturbing how?” she said.
“Something was left in her mailbox,” I said. “A Barbie doll. Headless. Well, that’s not accurate. The head was there, it just wasn’t attached to the doll’s body.”
The detectives looked at me. They looked at each other, then they looked back at me. “Okay,” Howie said, “that’s creepy, sure, but...” He shrugged, and I read his mind. What are you getting yourself so worked up about? Maybe he thought finding Allison’s body really had sent me over the edge. He added, “That’s the kind of prank a kid might pull.”
“Okay.” Cookie leaned forward, forearms on the table. “Tell me more about this Barbie.”
Thank you! I was liking this woman more and more.
“Had someone messed with it in any way?” she asked. “Altered it? I mean, besides yanking the head off.”
Howie looked suddenly interested. I could tell this possibility hadn’t occurred to him, and that bothered him. Martin, meanwhile, simply sat and listened. I knew I could trust him not to spill the beans about how he’d helped me hack into Allison’s flash drive.
“Well, that’s the thing,” I said. “Someone had messed with it. It was a blonde Barbie, but the hair had been colored black.”
“Dyed?” Howie asked.
“No, like with a Sharpie. It was crudely done. And they chopped off some of the hair to make bangs.”
I didn’t have to state the obvious. The doll had been changed to look like Allison Zaleski.
“Okay, I have to say this,” Cookie said. “That woman who was here a little while ago? Beating up on her boyfriend?”
“Ex-boyfriend, by the looks of it,” Howie said. “That was Allison’s husband, by the way, the guy that hustled her out. Nick Birch. I notified him when her body was found.”
“No kidding.” Cookie’s eyebrows shot up. “Looks like Nick’s been a very bad boy. Anyway, that woman obviously did the same thing to her hair that someone did to that doll. The dye job, the bangs.”
“Her name is Skye Guthrie,” I said. “She was a friend of Allison’s. She wants everyone to believe she was her best friend, but I’ve watched a bunch of these videos and Allison only mentioned her a couple of times, and not in a best-friend kind of way. More like a ‘here’s this hanger-on I have to tolerate’ kind of way.”
Cookie said, “A hanger-on who claims to be your bestie and makes a baby with your husband. Lovely.”
“So you can see why I was concerned, right?” I said. “I mean, someone made this doll look like Allison—a decapitated Allison—and left it in her mailbox.”
Howie and Cookie consulted each other via silent detective woo-woo.
“That’s kind of threatening, right?” I said. “It rattled Allison, I’ll tell you that.”
“Well,” Howie said, “she didn’t report it to the police, as far as I know.”
“No,” I said, “she threw the doll away. It’s long gone. She thought you guys wouldn’t take it seriously.”
“When did this happen?” Cookie asked.
“The video’s date-stamped November twentieth,” I said, “so probably that same day.”
She said, “Do you know if she showed the doll to anyone else?”
“Just Nick, as far as I know. He told her he knew nothing about it.”
“You know that Allison’s death was an accident, right?” Howie said. “I mean, I think I know where you’re going with this.”
“I’m not going anywhere with it,” I said. “It’s just disturbing, like I said.”
Martin finally spoke up, addressing Howie. “Question. How did Nick react when you gave him the news? About Allison.”
“He was stunned,” Howie said. “Distraught.”
“You do know he’s a professional actor,” Martin said.
“I know he’s an actor. As for how professional...” Howie rocked his hand. “From what I hear, Leonardo DiCaprio has nothing to worry about.”
“Still,” Martin said, “it’s something to keep in mind.”
Cookie turned to me. “What would you like us to do, Jane?”
Now that she was asking me directly, I felt a little embarrassed. What Howie had said was true. The authorities had judged Allison’s death to be purely accidental. She’d drowned. There’d been no evidence of trauma or anything suspicious. She’d been alone in the woods and had made the fateful decision to walk across ice that turned out to be too thin to support her weight. Then she’d fallen through and had been unable to make it out.
Only a sip remained of my tequila. I lifted the snifter and drained it. “Would it be possible for you guys to look into this a little? Like ask a few questions, see if anyone, I don’t know, had it in for Allison?”
Howie leaned back. He was thinking about it.
Cookie didn’t have to give it much thought. “Sure, no problem. I don’t know how much time I can give it, but I’ll make some discreet inquiries.” She gave Howie a significant look.
“Sure, okay,” he grumbled. “I’d only do this for you, Jane. Don’t expect anything to come of it.”
“I know, I know,” I said. “It was an accident.”