My first call was to 9-1-1. The next was to Dash, who didn’t answer. “Barnie’s sick,” I said in a message. “Come to the suite, please.” I realized after I hung up that I hadn’t identified myself. I had a feeling he’d figure it out. Next I called the front desk to let them know we had a problem, then turned my attention back to Barnie.
I was pretty sure he was breathing. That was something.
“Wake up, Barnie.” I shook his shoulder again. “Shit. I mean shoot. Aw, shit.” This was probably the wrong time to implement my campaign to cut down on my cursing.
A hotel manager opened the door a few minutes later without knocking, accompanied by a pair of paramedics. The manager wore a suit and a neutral expression of forbearance until he saw that Barnie wasn’t waking up. Then his eyes widened into O’s of real alarm.
The uniformed man and woman chattered in rapid-fire medicalese, checked Barnie out, fixed him up with oxygen, lifted and strapped him to a stretcher and were rolling him out by the time Dash and Travis ran into the room.
“What happened?” Dash croaked, almost as pale as Barnie.
I crossed my arms against the room’s chill and shook my head. “I don’t know. I guess he’s drunk, but I couldn’t wake him up.”
The elevator dinged, signaling the crew’s departure.
“I should cancel this,” Dash said to himself. “Go with him to the hospital.”
“Absolutely not,” Travis said, just before another man walked through the open door.
The newcomer wore a white shirt, red bow tie and black suspenders and had a close-cropped beard and mustache that matched his thick rusty hair. Well, brown with hints of red. Sharp cheekbones. Gray eyes rimmed in navy blue. They caught mine, and I caught my breath.
“Pepper?”
“Neil?”
“Are you OK?” He came over to me and put a hand on my shoulder. His confident presence and warm touch suffused me with calm, and I nodded as my heartbeat slowed. Neil squeezed my shoulder, then turned to the men with an outstretched hand. “We’re a hundred percent ready to work if you want to proceed, but I understand if you don’t.”
So he’d seen Barnie, assessed the situation, maybe even heard the cousins talking as he entered the room.
Travis took Neil’s hand first with a firm handshake. “Good to see you again.”
Dash shook Neil’s hand, too, and his expression of anxiety eased. Somehow, Neil had changed the temperature in the room, the emotional temperature, and the cousins looked more ready to deal with the situation.
“That was Barnard, right?” Neil asked. “I remember meeting him when I toured the distillery.”
“Barnie, yeah. He’s been with us since the beginning,” Dash said.
“He’d want us to go forward,” Travis said. “There’s nothing we can do for him right now. Let’s go downstairs to the event and make this thing happen. The cart’s already loaded—where are your bartenders?”
“Most of them I sent to the ballroom with their kits to squeeze lemons, craft garnishes and do anything Pepper hasn’t gotten to yet,” Neil said, those cool eyes scanning the room, spotting the bottle on the floor. He picked it up and sniffed it. “Luke’s dealing with the check-in and luggage, but he’ll be ready to help in a few minutes.”
Dash seemed to shake himself. “OK. Yes. Let’s do this. Barnie would want us to.”
Travis nodded at seeing his cousin take his words to heart and maneuvered himself behind the cart, pushing it toward the door.
“Wait a minute.” Neil put up a hand to stop him.
“You just said you were ready,” Dash snapped at Neil. “And we don’t have a minute.”
“Exactly.” Travis starting pushing again, but Neil stepped in front of the cart, calmly flipping open the box labeled Beachside Bourbon on top of the stack as the Reynolds cousins looked on in disbelief.
Neil pulled a wine key from his pocket and snapped open the blade, lifted out one of the squat bottles, and made quick work of cutting through the black wax and popping off the top. He looked at me. “Cup?”
I nodded and looked around, grabbed a clean foam cup from the stack by the coffee maker, and handed it to him.
“What the hell?” Travis asked as Neil poured a little brown liquid into the cup. Neil sniffed it, wrinkled his nose and took a sip. He lifted an eyebrow, ignored Travis and handed the cup to Dash.
Dash appeared as puzzled as Travis but took a sniff, then a healthy sip.
He immediately spit it back into the cup. “Something’s not right.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Neil said. “Pepper?”
I held out a fresh cup for his pour. I had a superhero sense of smell, and one whiff revealed the whiskey’s usually pleasant odor had a pungent undertone. I gingerly sipped it. I’d had the Beachside Bourbon before, and it had been rich and delicious, tinged in caramel. This was—off. Metallic? I shook my head. “What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know, but we have a problem,” Neil said. “If this is what made Barnie sick, this could make everyone sick.”
“Travis and I shared a bottle last night, and it was fine,” Dash said.
“Perfect,” Travis agreed.
“From this stash?” I asked.
“Of course,” Travis said. “What are you saying?”
“Are you saying someone tampered with my whiskey?” Dash seemed truly angry now.
Neil shook his head. “I don’t know. Worse would be methanol.”
“A bad batch?” Incredulity raised Dash’s voice. “Impossible. Our methods are perfect. Every process is controlled. Every stage is sampled, tested.”
“And they’re sealed, so tampering is out,” Travis said impatiently. “Look, we have about thirty-five minutes, and then the door is going to open on that ballroom, and we have to be there with whiskey in hand. Bourbon and rye. Cocktails. This is why we hired you guys.”
“I’m well aware of that,” Neil said. “But I personally don’t want a hotel full of sick drinkers.”
“Dead drinkers,” I said, then sort of wished I’d shut my mouth when Dash’s jaw dropped.
But Neil nodded in agreement. “Worst case.”
“I know a liquor store a few blocks away,” I said.
“That was my next question,” Neil said, then turned to Dash. “Your stuff is distributed here, right?”
“Yeah,” Dash said. “My God, you can’t be serious.”
“I can’t be more serious,” Neil said, and I almost smiled.
“Travis and I can go,” I said, thinking he had the muscle to haul the cases. “We’ll be back before the event.”
“There won’t be enough!” Dash said.
“Trust me,” Neil said. “Pepper, call them. Ask what they have.”
A few minutes later I was off the phone. “Two cases of the bourbon, one of the rye,” I said.
“More than enough,” Neil said. “We’re not doing full pours here. Half-ounce samples, four-ounce cocktails. A little shortage never hurts demand. And the people who get them will be talking about the drinks, and that will make the people who didn’t get them want your whiskey even more. Can you do it?” he asked me as Dash mulled Neil’s words.
“With Travis’s help, yes.” My adrenaline had kicked in. The room was quiet. The tuba player had stopped. A good sign.
Travis sighed and looked at Dash. “I have a friend who can go to the hospital with Barnie until we can get away. You OK with us buying the whiskey?”
Dash looked around at all the boxes, at his babies, pain in his expression. “Better to be safe,” he finally said. “Yes. Buy it. I will taste it to be sure. All of it.”
“Of course,” Neil said, then shot me a look that said, Get moving.