Chapter Twenty
Things at the shop were slow on Wednesday. Midweek meant fewer tourists. People weren’t yet planning for the weekend, either, and hadn’t thought of the moonshine they might want to have on hand for relaxing or entertaining. With little else to do, I was tempted to belt myself to a rocking chair out front and take a nap alongside Granddaddy. Instead, I plunked down in the chair next to him and asked him to teach me how to whittle.
“All righty.” He handed me a chunk of wood and a small tool. “Now you listen, and listen good. Whittling is a fine art. You can’t get in a hurry.”
“Same as making moonshine.”
“Exactly.” He proceeded to instruct me on the finer points of wood carving. First, he reviewed the different blades and told me what they were for. There was a straight blade, a curved blade, a V-shaped chisel, and one for gouging wood. Once we’d reviewed the types of blades and the purposes of each, he showed me how to properly hold the small knives. “Careful now,” he said. “You don’t want to cut your finger.”
I certainly didn’t. There’d been enough blood spilled out here in front of my shop already.
Over the next hour, I worked on the chunk of wood, slowly transforming it into a rudimentary cat sitting on its haunches. I could see why my grandfather was so taken with the hobby. Whittling was somehow relaxing, yet took quite a bit of concentration. Focusing on something other than the murder investigation was freeing. The end result of my efforts was a catawampus cat, but he was cute even if a little cockeyed.
Around four o’clock, Kiki zipped up in her Mini, cut the engine, and hopped out.
“Look.” I held up my cat. “Granddaddy taught me how to whittle. What do you think?”
She stepped over and took a look. “Nice kangaroo.”
“It’s a cat.”
“No, it most definitely is not.”
I blew her a raspberry. “Not everyone can be a professional artist.”
“Obviously.”
Granddaddy gestured with his knife. “You need to sand it now. Use the fine-grade paper.”
I reached down to his little toolbox and fished out a small square of sandpaper.
Kiki nudged my grandfather’s cowboy boot with the toe of her high-top sneaker. “You up for teaching another lesson, old man?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I might be if you ask nicely.”
She spread her lips in a big smile. “Pretty please with sugar and sprinkles and a cherry on top?”
“All right.” He reached down, grabbed another hunk of wood, and tossed it to her.
She caught the wood in one hand and dragged one of the chairs over from the game table with the other. Over the next few minutes, my grandfather went through his whittling lessons a second time. When he finished, Kiki bobbed her head. “I think I’ve got it.”
Much to my chagrin and, as expected, she was a natural. In a mere twenty minutes, she’d carved a miniature jug of shine, complete with a tiny hole in the handle and three Xs across the front. In comparison, my cat looked like a child had made it. She went on to whittle a firefly in flight, its wings spread out.
At five o’clock, noise across the street caught our attention. The doors to the Irish pub opened. Miranda waved a hand and called out to us. “Hey, y’all!”
We waved back, and Kiki stood. “I need to see if the paint has dried on her sign.”
With that, she scurried across the street and disappeared into the bar. A few minutes later, she emerged with the sign and leaned it against the brick next to the chipped but still smiling leprechaun. She went back inside for a moment, emerging again with the stepstool she’d borrowed from me. Miranda came outside, too, and stood at the curb watching as Kiki hung the sign she’d painted for Tipperary Tavern. She posed for a photo under her sign, then took Miranda’s camera and snapped one of her standing under it.
I stood and cupped my hands around my mouth. “It looks perfect!” Kiki had done a bang-up job.
My friend disappeared into the pub a final time, her Radio Flyer wagon coming along with her when she ventured out a few seconds later. Her sketch pad and my stepstool lay atop the cans of paint. She wheeled the wagon down to the corner, crossed with the light, and rolled up to the ’Shine Shack. After returning my stepstool to the storeroom, she fished some small brushes out of the bucket in her wagon. “We should paint our little sculptures.”
We proceeded to do just that. I painted my kangaroo/cat gray, like my precious Smoky. Granddaddy painted his most recent horse to look like Charlotte. Kiki painted the firefly black and red on its back, and fluorescent green underneath. We blew on the paint to help it dry faster. My breath worked much better at drying the paint today than it had worked on cooling my burrito the night before.
Kiki begged off. She’d been hired to paint a mural of a team mascot at a local high school tomorrow and needed to go home and get her supplies organized. She pulled the wagon back over to her car, and I helped her load the wagon in the cargo bay. She raised her hand out the window and tapped her horn as she drove off. Beep-beep!
Shortly thereafter, I sold a single jar of peach shine to a woman who was on her way to meet friends for dinner at an Italian place down the block. Smoky was snoozing away in the window, so I went back outside to keep my grandfather company. Unfortunately, he was snoozing away, too. I sat down in the rocker beside him, alone with my thoughts. Being that most of my thoughts centered on a bloody murder that had taken place only three feet away from where I now sat, those thoughts didn’t make good company.
A clop-clop-clop drew my eyes to Marlon as he rode up the street. I scurried inside and filled Charlotte’s bucket with fresh water from the sink. I grabbed her some carrot sticks from the refrigerator as well. By the time I carried them out front, Marlon had her tied to the post and had taken a seat in the porch swing, one arm stretched in a curve along the back as if waiting for his lover to fill in the space. It took everything in me not to take a seat there.
I set the bucket down in front of Charlotte and she took a long drink. I held up the carrots, showing them to Marlon. “Okay if I feed her these?”
“Sure,” he said. “But not too many. She’s watching her weight.”
I cupped the carrots in my hands as I’d been taught at summer camp all those years ago. Charlotte nuzzled my palms with her velvety chin, her whiskers tickling my skin. Once she’d crunched her way through the carrots, I ran a hand down her nose and turned to Marlon. “Got any news for me?”
He glanced at my grandfather, as if wondering whether he should share in front of him, but decided the sleeping man wasn’t likely to blow the case. Still, when he spoke, he kept his voice low so as not to wake my granddad or be overheard by passersby. “The security footage showed Gage bringing only one case of liquor into Limericks last Tuesday.”
“One case?” I repeated. “What happened to the other five?” I’d assumed Cormac had eventually taken them to his car or apartment, but had they never made it into the bar at all?
He raised a shoulder. “Your guess is as good as mine. Ace got in touch with him by phone, but she didn’t ask him about any specifics. She wants to speak to him in person. He’s based out of Memphis, but he’ll be arriving in town on Friday for a couple days of sales calls. She’s arranged to speak with him Friday afternoon at the station. She also had me review the video and find the footage from when Heath Delaney came to the bar to talk about the dishwasher. Tilley wasn’t in Limericks at the time, though he did come by later that evening. Cormac might have gotten confused, remembered things wrong. ’Course, he could have just flat-out lied about Gage Tilley overhearing Heath disparaging him. Ace also spoke to the three boys from Mu Sigma. They said neither Tristan nor Dane told them anything about buying bottled liquor directly from Limericks, but they confirmed that Tristan is the head of their frat’s party planning team. That means he’s in charge of arranging for the kegs of beer to be delivered and buying the other alcohol and drinks. Could be he planned to buy the moonshine from Cormac and just didn’t mention it to the other guys.”
In other words, the police still had no concrete answers, but they seemed to at least be edging closer. That gave me some hope. “I hope Gage Tilley can shed some light on things. I’d like this case to be solved so I can stop worrying every time someone comes near my shop. My gut has been in knots since I found Cormac’s body.”
Marlon cut me some side-eye and a smile. “I’d like this case to be solved so you can take me out for that dinner you owe me.”
His words caused a different sensation in my gut, one that was far more pleasant.
With a sigh, he stood and untied Charlotte. “I’d better get back out on patrol. I’ll be in touch once I know more.”
I hoped he’d be back in touch very soon.
As we drove away from the shop after closing on Wednesday night, my nose detected a delectable scent coming from Bar Celona. Knowing Kate and Parker had their hands full with their new bundle of joy, I decided to take some food to them. Kiki and I had loved the tapas I’d picked up at the place before. Why not take some tapas to the new parents?
I pulled up in front of the restaurant and placed a takeout order from my phone so I could keep my grandfather company in the van while the food was being prepared. I swiveled the microphone away from my mouth. “Do you want something, too, Granddaddy?”
“You choose for me,” he said. “I don’t even know what a tapa is.”
I added an order of the patatas bravas for him. He could enjoy it as a late-night snack tonight or save it for the weekend. When I got off the phone, I said, “Tapas is essentially Spanish for appetizers.”
His already wrinkled face wrinkled further as it drew inward. He pointed out the window. “You mean to tell me this here restaurant serves nothing but appetizers? No main dish?” He shook his head. “What will they think of next?”
After waiting a few minutes, I went inside to check on my order. The same middle-aged man as before was working the bar where I sat down to wait. After consulting the kitchen, he said, “It’ll be just a few more minutes.”
As I waited, I heard the servers and kitchen staff speaking in Spanish. It was such a pretty language, rolling off the tongue the way it did. I glanced out the window to check on my grandfather. He’d fallen asleep in the van, his wrinkled cheek squished against the window. Beyond him, headlights flashed as a car left the paid parking lot on the other side of the street.
I shot bolt upright as a thought hit me. Damien Sirakov claimed that last Friday, around the time Cormac O’Keefe was killed, he was dealing with a dead battery in a nearby parking lot. He’d claimed that a man with a Spanish accent had helped him. Could it be true? Could one of the staff of Bar Celona have helped Damien get his battery up and running again?
“Excuse me,” I said to the man. “This may sound like an odd question, but did someone who works here help a man jump-start a battery late last Friday night? A little after two o’clock?”
“Not me.” He hiked a thumb toward the kitchen door. “Would you like me to check with the staff?”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” I said. “It’s important.”
The man went into the kitchen and returned a minute later with a bag containing my takeout order and a middle-aged man in a white cook’s uniform. A woman with long, golden-blond hair followed them out with a tray of food in her hands, but I didn’t pay her much attention. The maître d’ angled his head to indicate the cook. “Benicio says he helped a man with his car battery.”
I introduced myself to Benicio and told him that I ran the Moonshine Shack. “Can you tell me what the man you helped looked like?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Just like a regular guy,” he said with a thick Spanish accent.
“What color was his hair?”
“Dark,” he said. “Darker than mine even.”
“Did you notice anything else about him?”
“He had a tattoo here.” Benicio pointed to his neck. “A black animal. Maybe a panther? I couldn’t tell. It wasn’t good. The mouth was open like it was growling.” He opened his own mouth, as if to demonstrate, even offering a growl. “Grrr.”
The man he’d seen had to be Damien Sirakov. How many men with neck tattoos of an openmouthed indeterminate black beast could there be downtown at that hour, let alone a man of that description with a dead car battery?
“The police might want to talk to you,” I said. “The man got into some trouble.” Benicio might be able to get him out of it.
“What kind of trouble?” Benicio asked.
I figured the specifics would be best addressed by Detective Pearce. I left it at “Serious trouble.”
While Benicio returned to the kitchen, I handed my credit card to the maître d’ and sent a text to Detective Pearce with the relevant information while he ran it through the machine. A moment later, the detective replied with the thumbs-up emoji and, a moment after that, the phone behind the bar rang.
The maître d’ picked up the receiver. “Bar Celona,” he said as he returned my card. He used his shoulder to hold the phone in place as he handed me a ballpoint pen and the receipt to sign. “How may I help you?” After a short pause to listen, he looked my way and said, “Yes, she told us you might be in touch. Of course, you may come now. We close soon, but Benicio and I will wait for you.”
He ended the call as I scrawled my name on the receipt. I separated the two copies and handed the restaurant’s copy to him. As I did, a blonde walked up behind the bar. Our eyes met. Hers squinted slightly, as if she was trying to place me. But I didn’t need to squint to remember who she was. She wore pretty pink shimmering lipstick and a loose, long-sleeved peasant blouse with elastic around the wrists. Ashlynn. Looked like she’d landed the job.
She grabbed a bottle of wine and walked off without greeting me. As soon as she was gone, I leaned in to the maître d’ and whispered, “Check her sleeves.”
He glanced her way before returning his gaze to me. “You know something?”
Rather than risk a slander lawsuit myself, I said, “Ask the detective when she arrives. She’ll fill you in.”
He gave me a discreet nod.
Remembering how Ashlynn had gone after Miranda, and knowing she was still a suspect in Cormac’s murder, I said, “Don’t tell her I said anything, okay?”
He gave me a nearly imperceptible nod. “Thank you,” he said loudly. “Please come again.”
I picked up my bag and went out the door. I knew I’d left a thief behind. But had I left a killer, too?