It's the dead season in Leavenworth, Washington. The throngs of Oktoberfest crowds have headed home, and the charming Bavarian streets are quiet and calm—momentarily. Villagers use the reprieve to drink in the crisp fall mountain air and prepare for the upcoming winter light festival. Soon the German-inspired shops and restaurants will be aglow with thousands of twinkling lights. Visitors will return to the northern Cascades to drink warm mulled cider and peruse the holiday markets. Brewer, Sloan Krause and her partner in crime Garrett Strong are using the slowdown to stock up on a new line of their signature craft beers at Nitro.
Sloan is in her element. She loves the creativity and lowkey atmosphere at Nitro. Only that is soon threatened by the incumbent city councilmember Kristopher Cooper. Kristopher is running for re-election on a platform of making Leavenworth dry. Everyone in beertopia is fuming. Kristopher wants to banish beer, a policy that might just bankrupt the entire village. However, Kristopher turns up dead days before election night. Friends, family, and every other business owner had a motive to kill him, including none other than April Ablin, Leavenworth's self-described ambassador of all things German. Sloan finds herself defending April and trying to sleuth out a killer amongst a group of familiar faces.
Release date:
September 29, 2020
Publisher:
St. Martin's Publishing Group
Print pages:
336
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“CAN YOU HEAR THAT?” I asked Garrett as I dumped a box of fresh Chinook hops into the shiny stainless-steel fermenting tank. The hops were grown here in Washington State and had become highly sought after by professional and home brewers for their spicy pine and grapefruit aromas. Garrett and I had procured the popular hop to use in a new hybrid beer we’d been working on together. Adding hops at this stage of fermentation was known as dry hopping. The process would infuse hop aroma into the beer without any of the bitterness that gets extracted when boiling hops.
“Hear what?” Garrett cupped his hand over his ear.
“Nothing,” I replied with a broad smile. “Nothing.”
For the first time in many weeks, our alpine village was quiet. I closed my eyes. “Isn’t it wonderful? The silence. The sweet sound of silence.”
Garrett chuckled. “Didn’t you tell me that I shouldn’t get used to it?” He removed a pair of chemistry goggles and pressed them on the top of his head.
“True.” I opened my eyes. “But we might as well relish it for the moment.” Our small Bavarian village, Leavenworth, had recently hosted the biggest brewfest west of the Mississippi—Oktoberfest. Unlike smaller beer celebrations that might last for a long weekend, Leavenworth’s Oktoberfest was a monthlong party. Every weekend saw a new round of revelers, the constant sound of oompah music, street parades, and flowing taps. It was an exciting time, but equally exhausting. Many business owners in Leavenworth made enough profit during the month of October to keep them in the black for the remainder of the year. Typically, Leavenworth’s population holds steady at around two thousand residents, but during Oktoberfest that number swells to two hundred thousand over the course of the month. Each week in October, our cobblestone streets and German-style chalets would be packed with tourists from throughout the Pacific Northwest and nearly every continent. I appreciated having an opportunity to showcase the place I loved and our new line of NW beers with visitors from all over the world, but knowing that we had a reprieve from the throng of crowds for a while was a welcome relief.
“If Kristopher Cooper has his way, Leavenworth might be quiet forever,” Garrett said, balancing on the ladder attached to one of the massive stainless-steel fermenting tanks. His dark hair was disheveled. He pushed it from his eyes as he hopped off the ladder. Garrett was tall and lanky with a casual style. Today he wore his usual brewery uniform—a T-shirt with a beer pun. Today’s read BEER CURES WHAT ALES YOU.
“I hope not.” I brushed hop residue from my hands. There’s nothing like the smell of fresh hops, in my opinion. I snapped off one of the hop heads and rubbed it between my fingers. The pungent scent of citrus and sappy pine brought an instant calm to my body. “I can’t imagine how anyone in Leavenworth would consider voting for him.”
Garrett removed a dry-erase pen from his jeans pocket. “It’s a stumper. The craft beer industry has put Leavenworth on the map, and he wants to ban it? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Agreed.” I scanned the brewery to make sure that everything was clean and tidy. “Every business owner I’ve spoken with is dumping every dime into Valerie Hedy’s campaign.”
Valerie Hedy was running for city council against the incumbent, Kristopher Cooper. Kristopher had served as a council member for years, but as of late he had taken a drastic stance against Oktoberfest and every other festival that revolved around Leavenworth’s thriving beer culture. He was fed up with the aftermath of these events, citing exorbitant cleaning costs that the city had to endure and claiming that petty crime skyrocketed with the influx of “strangers” in town. He had even gone so far as campaigning to make Leavenworth completely dry. His campaign posters were plastered on every light post and street corner in the village. He had designed them to resemble prohibition-era propaganda. They were easy to spot with their sepia-tone paper and black-and-white lettering with sayings like THAT MONEY YOU SPENT ON BOOZE COULD BUY A KID SHOES and DRUNKS DESERVE JAIL. The poster that turned my stomach every time I saw it had a skull and crossbones and read ALCOHOL IS POISON.
I had wanted to engage Kristopher in a debate over the health benefits of consuming craft beer in moderation. For example, there were promising studies that had indicated that craft beer contained healthy nutrients and antioxidants. Drinking beer in moderation might improve cholesterol levels, reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, and boost bone density. Not to mention the psychological effects of one of beer’s main ingredients—hops, which were a known relaxant.
There was no point in trying to argue with Kristopher. He had taken to picketing in front the gazebo every day with a small group of faithfuls. They chanted, “Prohibition now!” His so-called “temperance” rallies had turned the village into a throwback to the 1920s.
Business owners were up in arms. Leavenworth’s economy would crumble without tourists’ dollars, but Kristopher was undeterred. He was convinced that the only way to preserve Leavenworth’s charm was to outlaw alcohol and shift the focus of festivals like Oktoberfest, Maifest, and the winter light fest to center on German traditions and heritage other than imbibing hoppy beverages.
Garrett and I walked to our shared office, where he made a few notes about recipe adjustments on the far wall. He had created a dry-erase wall to keep track of current beers in production and to brainstorm new flavor combinations. It reminded me of a chemistry classroom with formulas and ratios scribbled in colorful pens. Fortunately, Garrett had taught me how to decipher his notes. To anyone else, the dry-erase board probably looked like the work of a madman.
“Have you heard how Valerie is faring?” he asked, drawing a picture of a hop with a green pen and writing “Chinook” next to it.
The smell of the dry-erase pen was overwhelming. I shook my head and waved away the synthetic scent. “Not exactly. I know she has the support of the business community. Have you seen how many shops have her campaign posters propped in their windows?”
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