Neil pushed aside the palm fronds and stood next to me, and I exhaled in relief. He’d freaked me out for a second, surprising me like that, but maybe it was good to have backup, especially since we had Arnold Preiss cornered. I wondered if the CEO had one of his security guys lurking behind a palm tree. Better make this quick.
“Why would you attack Winston?” I asked Arnold. “Did he have a bottle you wanted? Just couldn’t wait to get your hands on it?”
He shook his head and laughed a bitter laugh. “God, you’re clueless.”
“So make us less clueless,” Neil said. “I’m sure the police would be very interested in why you attacked Winston and stole his rum. We can just pass the evidence on to them.”
Oooo, evidence sounded good. Like it was more than a stinky backpack my dog had pulled out of the bushes.
Arnold shook his head. “I don’t particularly want the world to know about my private dealings with Reckel. You or the police. I’d appreciate it if you keep this fairy tale to yourself.”
“But we know everyone in the tiki world.” I pointed to the swizzle sticks in my crown, and Arnold smirked. “Even if the police don’t get involved, we could tell everyone we know in two seconds in the right online forum that you’re a thief.”
Arnold really looked smug now. “Have you ever heard of libel, little Pepper?”
“Hey!” I poked him in the chest. “That’s enough of that, Mr. Supercomputer. We have an ‘in’ with the cops. We have a personal interest in what’s happening here, and we are not taking no for an answer.”
Neil had placed a hand on my shoulder, like he was trying to pull me back to sanity, but I was already over the edge.
Arnold seemed to respond well to me in bitch mode, because his smirk softened and his shoulders slumped. “Believe me, you would’ve wanted to beat up Winston, too. Not that I’m saying I did it.”
“What’s the deal with you and Winston?” Neil asked.
“He ripped me off.”
“How?” I asked.
Arnold looked around, but no one was interested in our conversation. “He sold me bad rum.”
My brow furrowed. “You mean like collectible rum? Isn’t it expected that some of the antique stuff doesn’t taste very good?”
Arnold lowered his voice even more. “If it were actually antique, I would’ve been perfectly fine with it tasting like muck. But it wasn’t. Almost everything he’s sold me is fake—at least the most expensive stuff. Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of counterfeit bottles. He owes me.”
Well, damn Dionysus. Winston was dealing in counterfeit rum on a grand scale. Not just a case of bad bottles to Davy Jones’s Locker or an innocent error. Big-ticket rum to big-ticket guys like Arnold Preiss.
“Are you the only one who’s been ripped off?” I asked.
Arnold smiled ruefully. “I have no way of knowing. I was particularly eager and particularly rich, so I was probably a lush target. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he had other victims. Reckel seems to have an awful lot of rare rums, doesn’t he?”
“But why did you steal bottles from him if they’re fake?” Neil asked.
“Leverage.” Arnold had apparently given up denying he was the thief. “I want my money back or the real rum. I feel sure he’s had some of the real stuff at some point. He had to base the forgeries on something, right? I’ve threatened to go to the police with what he’s sold me, so I needed some of that shipwreck rum he’s hawking to every dork with a hard-on for collecting pirate treasure.”
“You didn’t have any of the Lord Archibald rum before today?” I asked.
“I hadn’t bought any of it yet, though I was thinking about it before an expert told me a couple of my other bottles were fake. After that, I went to an appraiser who knew about forgery and was very disappointed to learn that more than a dozen different ‘rare’ rums I’d bought from Reckel were knockoffs.”
“Why not just go to the cops for real instead of blackmailing Winston Reckel?” I asked.
“Because it’s embarrassing, OK?” Arnold kicked at a lime slice someone had left in the grass. “First, in the tiki community, I’m trying to get some traction as a rum collector. I’ll look like a fool. And can you imagine the headlines? If I look like an idiot, my company looks stupid, too. My stock dives. This is serious stuff for me. And Winston doesn’t know I don’t want to go to the cops. Like I said, I just want him to make it right. He stays out of jail, and I stay out of Inside Edition.”
“But it wasn’t exactly smart to beat up Winston either, was it?” Neil pointed out.
“I wasn’t planning on it. I was just going to duck in, take what I wanted and leave. But then he showed up, and I was so angry, I lost control. And then you showed up, and I ended up losing one of the three bottles when I jumped. So, thanks.” Arnold oozed sarcasm.
“I have to admit, that jump was impressive,” I said. “How’d you get into his room?”
“Hacking a hotel key? Ha,” Arnold scoffed, but he looked a little bit proud too. “Child’s play. And I worked out escape routes in case I got caught. Unfortunate I had to use the most extreme one.”
I looked him in the eye. “Are you smart enough to create an untraceable burner phone?”
“Please. That’s easy. But you can go down to the corner store and buy one right now if you want.” He crossed his arms. “And we’re done here.”
I couldn’t agree more. But I had other questions. A lot of other questions. And he needed to know he couldn’t mess with us, either.
“OK, here’s the deal,” I said. “We’ll keep your secret until we have a reason not to. Don’t give us that reason, OK?”
Arnold looked from me to Neil and back to me again. “Pepper, I have the power to make your little, tiny life evaporate. But that’s not who I am. I’m just a guy who wants justice. Justice is what I was imparting today. If you can accept that, I’m willing to keep this civil.”
I was about to object to his not-so-veiled threat, but Neil cut in first. “Watch your manners, Preiss. Or the tiki gods will burn down your grass hut.”
Neil grabbed me by the hand and pulled me away as Arnold stared after us. He didn’t seem like much of a threat just then. More like an outcast who’d had a “kick me” note taped to his back at school and wanted revenge on the bully who put it there. In this case, the bully was Winston Reckel. I had to hope he wouldn’t go after us.
Anyway, given what we’d learned, we had another barrel of rum to uncork, so to speak.
Neil and I headed through the jungle to the shady end of the path, just outside the stage door, where no one was around. He let go of my hand, which made me a little sad, but I liked how close he was to me as we leaned against the windows of the back dining area. Inside, a surf band wearing black suits with skinny ties, surrounded by a densely packed crowd, tore into a song that made the glass vibrate.
“The Intoxicators,” Neil remarked.
“They rock! They make me want to dance.” I looked from the scene behind the glass back to Neil. “So if Winston Reckel was selling or trading rum to Fizz, as he said …”
“Given what Arnold Preiss just told us, I wonder how much of Fizz’s rum was fake.”
“Exactly. Kim has the bottles now, right?”
“Yes. The shipwreck rum and the Wray & Nephew 17 are slated for the tasting tomorrow.”
I winced. “It wouldn’t look good if the world’s most avid rum fans realized that the headliner bottles for their Gold Tooth Tasting were all swill like that stuff at Davy Jones’s Locker.”
“Will they know?”
“They’ll know it’s not real. That’s all that matters. It won’t look good for Hookahakaha or the charity.”
Neil rubbed his beard. “You know what we have to do …”
“Taste it,” we said at the same time.
“Right now,” I added.
He nodded. “I’m going to find Cray.”