Chapter 2
I peeked out of my office door and did a quick scan of the customers I could see. The place was bustling with business, and most of the tables were full. I didn’t see any obvious reporters among the mix, but some of them had been so clever and clandestine in carrying out their business that I couldn’t be sure.
I thought back to one of the last lines of the letter: I will be watching you. I scanned the unknown faces in the bar, wondering if the letter writer was one of them. Would he or she be brazen enough to patronize my place? I thought about that for a moment and decided that anyone cheeky enough to write such a letter in the first place would have no qualms about coming into the bar to watch me. And if the letter was serious in its threat—meaning the writer would kill someone for what amounted to sport—then anything was possible.
One of my waitresses, Debra Landers, a no-nonsense mother of two teenage boys, saw me and made her way over. I thought about asking her to fetch the people I wanted and bring them to me, but I was feeling claustrophobic and trapped. I needed to get out of the dark recesses of my office and into the open air. I missed my bar, my customers, my life.
“I think you’re safe,” Debra said, interpreting part of my hesitation correctly. “I’ve been watching and listening closely to most of the customers in this section and I don’t think any of them are reporters.”
Most of my employees had been doing watch duty for me these past weeks, and Debra, who had an uncanny ability to sniff out people’s true motives—a trait that had earned her the nickname Ann Landers—was the best of the bunch.
“I can’t be sure about the customers in Missy’s or Linda’s sections,” she added. “So depending on where you’re headed, I’d either avoid the new section or hurry through it.”
“I’m going upstairs to the Capone Club room,” I told her.
“Then just walk fast and avoid eye contact,” Debra said. “If anyone tries to make a move on you, I’ll run interference.”
“Thanks.” I stepped out of my office and hurried through the crowd toward the new section of the bar. Here the tables were less full, and a large portion of the area was taken up by a stage that I had yet to use. I hoped to bring in some live music for the weekends, and maybe even a DJ during the week, in which case part of the area around the stage that was currently occupied by tables would become a dance floor.
Despite Debra’s advice, I continued scanning the faces of my customers. Most of them appeared oblivious to my presence and very involved with their tablemates, but there were a few people who watched my progress with unmasked curiosity. It was hard to interpret the motives behind those watchers. I became something of a local celebrity thanks to the recent news coverage, and my picture had appeared on the news for the better part of a week. As a result, there were people who now recognized me and called to me by name even though I’d never met them before. The media has a way of creating a false sense of intimacy.
I had almost reached the stairs on the far wall when I was waylaid. But it wasn’t a reporter or a curiosity seeker who nabbed me; it was another one of my waitresses, Missy Channing. With her silky blond hair, milky skin, big blue eyes, and curvaceous body, Missy was an attraction for many of my male customers. She was also a hard and dependable worker with an uncanny ability to associate a face with a drink. If you ordered something once, Missy would remember it the next time she saw you. Unfortunately, Missy’s cerebral attributes ended there. She wasn’t very bright when it came to general knowledge or simple, everyday common sense, which is why, at the age of twenty-two, she was a single mother of two kids and living with her parents.
Missy grabbed me by the arm just as I was about to start up the stairs to the second level. Her face was flushed red and her hairline was damp with sweat. “Mack, we need to do something about that new girl, Linda. She’s slow as molasses! Debra put her in this new section because it has fewer tables and customers, but even with the smaller crowd she can’t keep up. I’m having to carry half of her section along with my own. And running up and down these stairs is killing me.”
“Okay,” I told her. “I’ll talk to Debra and see if we can expand Linda’s training time. In the meantime, do the best you can for tonight because I don’t think we have anyone extra we can bring in on such short notice.”
Missy’s shoulders sagged and she looked like she wanted to cry.
“I know this transition hasn’t been easy,” I told her, reaching up and giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “And I appreciate everything you do. Just get through tonight and I promise you I’ll make it better.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Missy said with a sigh, swiping the back of her hand over the beads of sweat on her forehead.
“I know you will. I’ll ask Debra to help Linda out as much as she can, too. And to make it up to you, I’ll pay you time and a half for tonight to compensate you for all the extra work you have to do.”
That brought a smile to Missy’s face. Her current goal in life was to be able to afford to move out of her parents’ house, and that meant money talked. She was a good employee so I considered the time and a half a wise investment to keep her happy. With Missy placated, I headed upstairs, making a mental note to tell Debra to pair Linda up with another waitress for more training after tonight.
Linda Manko was one of several new hires I had brought on to help staff the expanded bar areas. She was twenty-one, single, and starting school in the spring with hopes of becoming a dental hygienist. I almost didn’t hire her because of her quiet, shy demeanor and mousy, bespectacled appearance. She also had no previous experience, and while waiting tables isn’t exactly rocket science, it does require some social and organizational skills, skills I wasn’t sure Linda possessed. But there was something about her, an underlying sadness or pensiveness that pulled at me and made me want to give her a chance. My father had always told me not to let my emotions rule my decisions when it came to hiring or firing staff, but that was a lesson I never quite learned. I didn’t know if Linda was going to work out, but I was willing to give her a little more time to prove herself.
I climbed the stairs two at a time, eager to move on. The second floor in the original portion of the building above the bar was my apartment, but I decided to use the second floor in the new section for some special rooms. The first one I came to was the game room, or what many of my customers had dubbed the Man Cave. It was equipped with a pool table, two large-screen TVs, a foosball table, a dartboard, a putting green, computers with gaming systems, and some comfy recliner chairs. Not surprisingly, this room had been a big hit so far. What did surprise me was how many women used it. At first I thought the women were in there because they were single and looking, and figured that’s where they could find the men. But at least half the women in the room on any given day or night were married or playing games with other women, simply enjoying a girls’ night out.
Just past the game room was the room that had been taken over by the Capone Club. There was a third room, as well, but at the moment it was closed off. I intended to use it for extra-busy nights as simple overflow seating, and for special group functions. There was also a second bar on this level, one that could be locked behind a drop-down, garage door when I didn’t need to use it. I had opened it a handful of times in the preceding weeks, mostly on Thursday nights and weekends—my busiest times—and twice when the third room was being used for some specialty events: a retirement party for an employee of a local company and a bridal shower. My original intent was to keep the second bar closed the rest of the time, but both the Capone Club room and the Man Cave were being used steadily, and my staff started to complain about having to climb the stairs to serve people on the second level. So I made the decision last night to staff both bars for now and provide dedicated waitstaff for the second floor to see how it played out. It wasn’t a perfect solution because the kitchen was on the first floor and that meant there was still plenty of stair climbing involved whenever there were food orders. Tonight the second-floor bar was manned by Curtis Donovan, a new bartender I’d recently hired. Curtis was in his mid-thirties and came with several years of experience. He was a big guy with a big personality, soulful brown eyes, and a dimpled chin. He was also refreshingly and unapologetically gay. There was a group of women crowded around his bar, watching as Curtis entertained them with a mixing show worthy of Tom Cruise in Cocktail. He winked at me as I walked by and headed for the Capone Club room.
The Capone Club room was by far my favorite part of the additional space. The walls were wood paneled like an old-fashioned library or den, and there were bookshelves where I had placed a sampling of both novels and nonfiction books that could be swapped out using an honor system. It had taken less than a week for those shelves to be filled in by my customers with all manner of mystery novels and crime-related texts: forensic books, true crime novels, reference books on poisons, guns, crime scene analysis, and police procedures, and the requisite smattering of Sherlock Holmes tales. Scattered about the room were a dozen small round tables and an assortment of cozy chairs that could be pulled into a conversation circle, or hauled into a corner if someone wanted some privacy. A combination of recessed lighting and table lamps gave the room a warm feel while still providing enough light to read by. The star feature of the room at the time, given that it was mid-December, was the gas fireplace. Its heat and ambience made it a magnet for anyone who came into the room, so it wasn’t too surprising to see that most of the Capone Club group was gathered around it. I did a quick scan, looking for any new or suspicious faces that might be reporters or crazed murderers in disguise, but everyone in the room at that moment was someone I knew.
Cora Kingsley was the first to see and greet me. “Mack!” she hollered, waving me into the room. “It’s about time you ventured out of that cave you call an office.” Cora was forty-something, single, and an incurable flirt. She had a saucy personality, hair almost the same flaming color as mine—although hers came from a bottle—and a bosom that most men couldn’t resist staring at. Cora didn’t discourage such leers or ogles; in fact she seemed to invite and enjoy them. Her voluptuous build and flirty personality were mere window dressing for a very sharp mind and business acumen. The temptation to label Cora as a femme fatale was a big one, but the fact that she was a computer geek didn’t quite fit into this mold. She owned her own company, which offered development and troubleshooting services for both computer hardware and software. One of her pet projects of late was a program she and one of her employees were working on that would help solve crimes. It operated much like the game Clue, and while it had so far proven to be too flawed to be of any real use, the Capone Club group enjoyed using it to come up with crime riddles they would then try to solve.
Back when we were investigating Ginny’s murder, and I was trying to understand and interpret my synesthetic reactions to help solve it, Cora offered to be in charge of cataloging my reactions. They tend to be consistent and repeatable, but there are so many of them, and I’ve spent so many years trying to ignore them, that it was hard at times for me to accurately interpret them. Cora has built and maintained a searchable database of my cross-wired reactions to things. It has helped immensely because I can tell her what type of reaction I have to something and often as not she can look it up and tell me what it means if I don’t already know. Though now, with the kibosh put on my services by the police department, the database might not serve much of a purpose.
Tad Amundsen followed up Cora’s chastising greeting with “Given the way the press has been hounding Mack, can you blame her for hiding?”
Tad, like Cora, was a long-standing patron and member of the Capone Club. He was a financial advisor who owned his own company, though most of his revenue these days came from the friends of his very wealthy wife. Tad was a trophy husband and his ambivalence about it—he wasn’t happy in his marriage, but was unwilling to give up the money—had him frequenting my bar often under the pretense of working late.
“I’m hoping my hiding days are almost over,” I told the group. “Sooner or later the press will find a new story to move on to.”
“I’m truly sorry about all dat,” said Tiny Gruber, an ironically nicknamed, huge hulk of a man whose real first name was Jürgen. Tiny was a construction worker and Cora’s latest beau. He was new to both the group and my bar a few weeks ago when the publicity firestorm started. In fact, it was Tiny who started it. His younger sister Lori and her best friend, Anna Hermann, had disappeared and been found murdered twelve years ago when they were both fourteen years old. The crime had never been solved, and when Tiny saw what I was doing for the police, and the involvement and success the Capone Club had in helping to solve both real and made-up crimes, he went to the press and told them about it, not knowing the complications it would cause. He didn’t do it maliciously; he merely wanted to generate some interest in his sister’s long-cold case. It was a sentiment I understood all too well given that my father’s murder went unsolved for many months, so I couldn’t begrudge him his actions.
“It’s okay, Tiny,” I assured him. “I think the press is starting to lose interest in me.”
“Oh, good,” he said. “It made me mad because dat dere woman I talked to told me she would highlight Lori’s case and she never did.” Despite Tiny’s towering size and his age, which I guessed to be in his mid- to late thirties, he seemed childlike with his ponytailed blond hair, big blue eyes, and cherubic cheeks. And when he pouted, like he was doing now, he looked even younger.
“Just don’t share anything else with them unless you run it by the group here, okay?” I cautioned him.
He nodded vigorously, still pouting, and said, “I won’t talk to dem dere newspeople ever again.”
Cora looked over at me and winked. “I have him reined in,” she said. “And we’re going to start looking into his sister’s case, so that’s made him happy.”
“Any progress yet?” I asked.
“Not really,” Cora said. “We’re just getting started and so far all we’ve done is go over some of the info Tiny has in his own file. It’s kind of limited and it would help if we could get our hands on the official police file, or at least some tidbits of official information, but I don’t suppose Duncan or anyone else over there is going to be very amenable to such sharing right now.”
“No, I suppose not.”
The Signoriello brothers, Joe and Frank, were kicked back in cushy chairs pushed up as close to the fireplace as they could get without combusting from the heat. They each had a beer in hand and two empty sandwich plates sat on the table in front of them. A hint of a smile graced both faces and it made me smile, too, seeing how comfortable, cozy, and relaxed they looked. They weren’t as spry as they used to be, given that their combined ages hit just shy of one-fifty, though their grizzled, wrinkled faces and salt-and-pepper hair hadn’t changed much in the past twenty years. Now that my father was gone, Frank and Joe were the closest thing to family I had. My mother died shortly after giving birth to me, not from the birth, but from a head injury she sustained in a traffic accident weeks before I was born. She was kept alive on machines until I could safely be delivered, and then the machines were removed and she was allowed to die. My father raised me, and given that the bar was his life, it became mine as well. A number of women served as temporary, surrogate mothers as I grew up, offering me advice on girly stuff like bras, clothing, hairstyles, menstruation, and dating . . . subjects my father didn’t feel comfortable discussing or was hopelessly uninformed on. But over time most of them moved on. The Signoriello brothers, however, have been there since before I was born, and they’re like two kindly, doting uncles, offering advice, watching out for my interests, even screening potential boyfriends for me, something they’ve been doing since my high school days. Since they are both retired insurance salesmen, they are also a great asset for the Capone Club.
Cora had become like a sister to me in recent months, and thanks to the nature of her business and her independent employees, she could work anywhere she wanted to as long as she had a laptop with Internet access. She had set up a Wi-Fi Internet system in the bar several years ago, and this allowed her to spend a good portion of her day—sometimes her entire day—in my bar rather than in her office, which was just around the corner.
It was Cora and the Signoriello brothers whom I wanted to pull aside; they were my family, my most trusted confidantes, and the people I hoped would have the wisdom to tell me what to do about that letter in my office. But I didn’t want anyone to know the reason why I was about to summon them to my office, so I made up some stories.
“Cora, I’m having some problems with the Wi-Fi access. Can you come down to my office and look at it?”
“I sure can,” she said, picking up the laptop she never went anywhere without.
“Joe, Frank, I need to talk to both of you, too, if you don’t mind. I need you to go over my new insurance policy on the bar. I’m worried that I don’t have enough coverage, what with the new expansion.”
“We’ll be right down,” Joe said, stretching and then slowly easing out of his chair. “Though I hate to leave this fireplace,” he added. “That heat feels awful good on these cranky old joints.”
“That it does,” Frank said, mimicking his brother’s slow movements.
Cora and I headed for my office, leaving the brothers to come along at their own pace. Normally, I would have waited and escorted the brothers down the stairs but I wanted a minute or two to talk to Cora in private.
I led the way, scurrying across the main floor, keeping my head down to avoid any eye contact with the customers, and breathing a sigh of relief as soon as we were safe and secure behind my office door.
“What’s the real reason you called me in here?’ Cora asked.
“Am I that transparent?”
“To me you are. I know you well enough by now to know when something is bothering you. And besides, the Wi-Fi is working just fine. Is it Duncan?”
“Sort of,” I said with a shrug and a little waggle of my head.
“Still no hint of romance in your discussions?”
“Not much. He returned to work this week and I hoped he might pop in to say hi, but he hasn’t.”
“Maybe he feels like they’re still watching him.”
“Plenty of other cops come in here every day. Several of them even participate in the Capone Club.”
“Those other cops didn’t get a suspension. Give him a little more time.”
I nodded, frowning. I wasn’t convinced that more time would make any difference. “That’s not the main reason I wanted to talk to you,” I said. “This is.” I pointed to the letter, which was still sitting on top of my desk where I’d left it. “Read it but please don’t touch it.”
Cora set down her laptop in a nearby chair and walked around to my side of the desk to read the letter. I watched her facial expressions change as she did so, from disbelief to skepticism, horror, and finally fear.
“Do you think this is legit?” she asked.
“If it’s a practical joke, it’s not a very funny one.”
The Signoriello brothers walked in at that point, and I explained the real reason I’d asked them into my office and repeated the instructions I’d given to Cora. She joined me on the opposite side of the desk and watched along with me as the brothers read the letter, their facial expressions mirroring the ones Cora had exhibited moments ago.
When they were done, Joe shot me a worried look while Frank simply looked skeptical.
“It came in the mail yesterday or maybe the day before,” I told the others. “I thought it was going to be another fan letter.” The skepticism in my voice when I said the word fan was heavy.
All three of them looked at me questioningly, not surprising since I hadn’t yet told anyone other than Duncan about the letters. So I explained. “Ever since that big media storm three weeks ago, I’ve been receiving letters from folks in and around the Milwaukee area that have seen or read the news reports about me. Many of the letter writers have been supportive or at least neutral, and a few even asked if I would provide private fortunetelling services for them. Two letters came with checks and questions the senders wanted me to answer. I returned those, along with the money and an explanation that I’m not a fortune-teller. Those were amusing, but several other letters I’ve received have been anything but. For instance, I got one last week from a religious fanatic who calls himself Apostle Mike. He thinks I’m an abomination in desperate need of saving and redemption if I’m to have any hope of ascending to heaven. Another letter that came a few days ago accused me of being a charlatan who’s trying to sucker poor unsuspecting people into paying money so I can scam them with some made-up prophecies.”
“Geez,” Cora said, frowning. “Why didn’t you tell us about these letters?”
“I didn’t see any reason to. I’ve discussed them with Duncan, though only in general terms, and he feels they’re harmless. I haven’t told him about this one yet, though,” I said, pointing to the latest letter. “Do you think I should?”
Frank said, “Do you think it’s real? It could be nothing more than a practical joke, a sick one, I’ll grant you, but still . . .”
“I don’t think she can ignore it,” Joe said. “The stakes are too high.”
“I’m with Joe,” Cora said. “I think we should run it by Duncan.”
Part of me was glad they felt Duncan needed to be involved, if only because I wanted so badly to see him.
Frank frowned and shook his head. “I’m not convinced it’s real. It’s probably someone’s perverted idea of a joke. Or maybe it’s someone in the Capone Club, trying out a new crime puzzle on us.”
“I don’t think anyone in our group would be this twisted,” Joe said. “Real or not.”
“Do you think it’s legit?” Cora asked me.
I thought a minute before I answered. “I do, mainly because there is something unusual about the letter. And that makes me think that whoever wrote it is serious about testing me. If they’re crazy enough to do that, who’s to say what else they might do?”
“What’s unusual about it?” Joe asked.
“It’s written by hand in a fancy, calligraphic style, but the ink sounds unusual.”
“It sounds unusual?” Cora said, settling onto the couch and opening her laptop.
“Yes,” I said. “All inks come with sounds for me. For instance, when I look at a typed-out letter of any sort, I can tell if the ink is from an ink jet printer or a laser printer because the ink sounds different. I think it’s because they smell different. The ink used in the majority of pens is distinctive, too, and they all have underlying associated sounds. But this ink doesn’t sound like any I’ve ever heard before.”
Cora started tapping the keys on her laptop. “I don’t think we’ve cataloged any of your reactions related to ink or paper before, but let me search through what we’ve recorded in the database so far to make sure.”
“In the meantime, you should call Duncan,” Joe said.
“But the letter makes it clear I shouldn’t do that. If I do, it puts all of you in danger.”
“If it’s serious,” Frank said. “I suspect it’s a lot of bluff and blunder. Besides, Joe and I can take care of ourselves. And I suspect Cora here can, too.”
“I can’t risk that on a guess. What if the sender targets someone else, like one of my employees, or someone else in the Capone Club?” I shook my head. “I couldn’t live with that.”
Cora said, “If you don’t involve Duncan, your chances of figuring this out on your own are much slimmer, even with our help. And if you don’t figure it out and it’s legit, someone will die anyway.”
I looked at all of them with a pleading expression. “So what should I do? If I don’t involve Duncan, someone might die, and if I do involve him someone might die. I can’t win.”
“Then we should find a way to involve Duncan without anyone knowing,” Joe said. “What if you call him, read him the letter, and then arrange to meet him somewhere on the sly?”
Cora brightened up then and said, “And in the meantime, maybe we can use all this press attention you’ve been getting to your advantage.”
“How so?” I asked, curious.
“The next time one of them comes into the bar, mention that you and Duncan are a thing of the past, and that you don’t want anything more to do with him. Don’t make it obvious. Just let them overhear a discussion you have with someone.”
Joe said, “If we’re careful about it, maybe we can use some of the other cops who come in here as secret go-betweens for you and Duncan. There should be a couple of cops you can trust to do that, right?”
“Maybe,” I said, not sure if I liked the idea. “Though it seems to me that the more people we involve in this, the more likely it is something will leak. That’s why I decided to share this with you three only and not the rest of the group. I trust you guys to keep it to yourselves, at least for now.”
“And you know we will,” Joe said. “But I think we’re overlooking an even more important issue here.” He paused to see if anyone could guess what he was referring to but we all stared blankly at him. “Your safety,” he said. “Clearly this nut-job has a bone to pick with you. He’s fixated on you, and that means you’re in jeopardy.”
I frowned at this, staring at the letter. “I suppose,” I said. “But I don’t get a sense of imminent danger toward me. Instead I feel like whoever wrote this wants to hurt me in other ways, by killing people, people I know and care about. It feels like it’s a game to him . . . or her, because I suppose it could be a woman who wrote it.”
“Statistics don’t bear that out,” Cora said, “but you’re right. We shouldn’t harbor any biases or jump to any conclusions that might blind us to the facts.”
“I’m all for involving Duncan,” Frank said. “I’m still not convinced this isn’t some kind of sick prank, but I agree that the stakes are too high for us to simply shrug it off or ignore it.”
I nodded my agreement. “If we can involve Duncan and keep it from being known, that would be my preference, too. I could have him come down here and enter through the back door in the alley behind the new section. There’s no way to be sure it isn’t being watched, but I think if Duncan understands the need to be secretive, he can pull it off.”
“That works for me,” Cora said, and the two brothers nodded their agreement.
“Then we’re agreed,” I said. I took out my cell phone and after a deep, bracing breath, I added, “Here goes nothing.”