In the Drink

Book 3: Mack’s Bar Mysteries

by Allyson K. Abbott

Genres: Mystery; Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

By day, Mackenzie "Mack" Dalton is the proprietress of a popular Milwaukee watering hole. But after last call, she uses her unique cocktail of extra perceptive senses to help solve some of the city's most grisly homicides. Now, Mack and her barstool detectives are happy to help when Tiny, one of the bar's newest patrons, asks them to look into his sister's murder. Though the case has gone cold, Mack's heightened senses quickly put her on the killer's trail. But when a throng of reporters intrigued by her talents descends on Mack's Bar, her efforts are muddled as a real-life Moriarty begins putting her infamous skills to the test, leaving Mack feeling shaken and stirred . . .

Release date: July 28, 2015

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

I read the letter three times in a row, slower each time, unwilling to believe what I was seeing. Then I picked up the envelope, convinced there had been a mix-up and I wasn’t the intended recipient. But there was no mix-up. It was addressed to Mackenzie Dalton and the address of my bar appeared below the name. There was no return address—hardly surprising given the contents and nature of the letter—but there was a Milwaukee postage meter stamp.

With shaking hands I set both the letter and the envelope down on my desk, realizing too late that I had contaminated both by touching them. I studied the letter some more, this time focusing on the structure and design as opposed to the words. The handwritten letters were done in a simple calligraphic style with varying widths in the strokes, suggesting the use of a fountain pen. The paper was basic and white, the kind sold in hundreds of stores for use in copiers, printers, and the like. The envelope was equally as generic. In fact, I had identical ones in my own desk: business-sized, plain white, with an adhesive strip on the flap covered by a removable piece of paper. This eliminated the need to lick an envelope, and based on what I had learned watching the occasional crime show, it also eliminated a potential source for DNA.

I read the letter again, stopping when I reached the imposed deadline. I glanced at my watch, saw that it was just past four in the afternoon, and cursed under my breath. Since it was Friday the eleventh of December, I had less than thirty hours to figure things out. Another look at the meter stamp told me that the letter had been posted three days ago, meaning it had likely been sitting on my desk for two. I might have had more time if I hadn’t procrastinated on opening my mail, but I’d received way more than the usual amount of late. That’s because I was getting a lot of personal letters and cards mixed in among the bills and sale flyers that made up my usual deliveries.

The sudden spate of personal mail was from people who had heard about me in the news over the past few weeks when my involvement with the local police during a recent high-profile kidnapping and murder case had become known. While many of the letters were supportive, some had been skeptical, and a few had been downright mean. As a result, I’d stopped opening them after the first couple of weeks and began tossing them into a pile instead. Today was the day I’d decided to tackle them, though for one brief moment I considered simply throwing all of them away unopened. Fortunately, or unfortunately—I wasn’t sure yet—I hadn’t done that.

I ran my hands through my hair and then immediately regretted doing so as one long fiery-red strand fell onto the offending letter.

Way to go, Mack. Like you haven’t contaminated this thing enough already.

I leaned back in my chair, distancing myself—at least physically—from the letter, and indulging in a moment of self-pity. Why this? Why now? Wasn’t my life stressful enough already? I wished I could climb into a time machine and go back a year, knowing what I knew now. Maybe then I could fix things, prevent things, change the future. Maybe my father would still be alive, and his girlfriend, Ginny, would still be alive, and the man I considered both a blessing and a curse wouldn’t have entered my life yet. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t have entered it at all. Would that have been a good thing?

The man is Duncan Albright, a homicide detective here in Milwaukee. He entered my life around two months ago when I found Ginny’s body in the alley behind the bar I own, the bar my father bought back before I was born. My father named it after himself—Mack’s Bar—and then gave me the name Mackenzie so I could carry on the legacy. Some might have been annoyed by such presumptuousness, but I was always content with the assumption that I would carry on both the name and the business. This was made easier by the fact that I literally grew up in the bar; my father and I lived in an apartment above it. But the legacy became a little harder to bear when the bar became mine alone last January after my father was murdered in that same back alley where I found Ginny.

Duncan wasn’t involved with the investigation into my father’s murder because he didn’t live or work in Milwaukee then. When I met him he was relatively new in town, having arrived only months before Ginny’s murder, a fact that came into play while he was investigating the crime. Because he was not well-known in town, he decided to do a little undercover work by pretending to be an employee in my bar. I wasn’t very keen on the idea at first, but Duncan’s threats to shut me down if I didn’t cooperate helped me decide to go along. Still, I didn’t like it for several reasons. For one, he was convinced the killer was one of my employees or customers, and to me that idea was unfathomable. My employees and some of my long-term customers were like family to me. The idea that one of them might be a cold-blooded killer was an idea I could hardly bear to consider.

Another reason I wasn’t too keen on having a homicide detective watching my every move was because of my disorder. I’m a synesthete, which sounds worse than it is . . . at least most of the time. Synesthesia is a neurological disorder in which the senses are cross-wired. I don’t experience the world around me the way most people do. Every sense I experience is multifaceted and complex. For instance, I may taste or see things that I hear, or I may experience a smell or tactile sensation when I look at certain things or people. Both smells and tastes are typically accompanied by sounds or some sort of physical sensation. In addition to this cross-wiring, my senses are also highly acute and I’m able to smell things others can’t, or hear things others can’t, presumably because of my synesthesia.

I’m not alone in having this condition. There are a number of people in the general population who have it, though there are varying degrees of the disorder. People with artistic inclinations seem to have a higher incidence of synesthesia than other groups of people, and there are theories that the synesthesia plays a role in artistic ability. For instance, there are musicians who not only hear music but see it in their minds as colors, shapes, or some combination of these. The “rightness” of the colors and shapes helps the musician sense when the music is right. I have a similar experience with numbers and letters. They all appear to me with colors attached, and the rightness of those colors makes me very good at both math and spelling. Defining the “rightness,” however, is something I’m not good at. It’s an intuitive thing, something I know but can’t seem to explain to other people.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to hide my synesthesia. There was a time when members of the medical profession thought my sensory experiences were manifestations of a severe psychological disorder, and I started getting slapped with labels like schizophrenia. When I was a child, my classmates and friends would often tease me, calling me weird or crazy whenever I said things like this music appears too green, or this apple tastes like a blaring trumpet. It didn’t take me long to realize I was different, and when you’re a kid, different is the kiss of death. So I learned to keep my experiences to myself.

For many years I was perfectly content to maintain my secret, sharing it only with my father. Over time I told a few close friends about it, but for the most part no one knew. Then Duncan Albright came into my life and everything changed. I was forced to tell him about my synesthesia and try to explain how it worked because my experiences were a key element in solving Ginny’s murder. And since I was a suspect, solving Ginny’s murder became my main focus. In some ways my synesthesia made things more difficult, but for the most part it not only aided the investigation, it helped to solve it.

I was impressed by the fact that Duncan didn’t have the same skeptical attitude many people have when they first hear me describe my synesthesia. Not that he bought into it right away, but he didn’t dismiss it immediately either. Nor did he declare me crazy. And by the time we solved the case, he was beginning to think my synesthesia might be of some use to him in his job. He spent several weeks testing me, setting up scenarios and asking me to identify a certain smell from something he would briefly bring into a room and then remove, or having me enter a room and tell him if something had recently been moved or changed. I’d been playing such parlor tricks with my father most of my life, so I passed this part of Duncan’s test with flying colors. And I mean this literally. The happiness I felt whenever Duncan praised my efforts made me see swirling, floating bands of color.

Parlor tricks don’t solve crimes, however, so some of the customers in my bar decided to help me develop my deductive reasoning. They did this by forming a crime-solving group dubbed the Capone Club that discussed and analyzed both real and made-up riddles and crimes. The group has proven to be quite popular and it, combined with some of the publicity surrounding Ginny’s murder, attracted a lot of new clientele to my bar. I thought the increased business might be transitory—the latest gimmick for people’s entertainment until something more interesting came along—but so far both my business and the Capone Club have grown.

Following Ginny’s murder, the secret of my synesthesia became known by more and more people, and for a while I was okay with that. For the first time in my life, it didn’t feel like something I had to hide or be embarrassed about. Many people found it fascinating, and Duncan’s interest in using it to help him solve real crimes made me feel like it was a valuable trait, something that could be used for good. After several weeks of Duncan’s test scenarios, I was given the chance to prove my mettle with some real crimes. Unfortunately, the last one I helped him with became a top news item. It was the headline story for days, and through some incidental events and careless slips of the tongue, my participation in helping to solve the crime became public knowledge.

This did not sit well with Duncan’s bosses, particularly after the press and the newscasters claimed the local police were using voodoo, fortune-tellers, witchcraft, and hocus-pocus to help them solve their cases. In addition to the embarrassing public relations nightmare, Duncan was chastised for putting a civilian—namely me—in harm’s way. He was placed on suspension for two weeks while the powers decided his fate, and then their two-week decision stretched into three. I’d begun to fear Duncan would lose his job, but this past Monday he was finally allowed to return to work. Because of his suspension, Duncan had deemed it wise for us to keep our distance until the furor died down, so I haven’t seen him for several weeks, though we’ve spoken on the phone a handful of times. It’s been hard for me because Duncan and I were starting to explore a more intimate relationship when all this happened, and the sudden separation left me with some emotional baggage. It was also hard for me because the local reporters were determined to get a story highlighting the strange barkeep with the weird ability, and for the past two weeks they have stalked me relentlessly. Some of them have been professional enough to be up-front about the reason they were hounding me, but others have come into the bar pretending to be customers, hoping to pry a story loose from me, or from some of my employees, close friends, and patrons. Fortunately, those folks in the know are devoted and reliable, and as far as I know no one has discussed me, my synesthesia, or my involvement with the police with anyone. I thought the press would quickly lose interest, and that their inability to get anything out of anyone in the bar would deter them from writing their stories, but that wasn’t the case. What they didn’t know they made up, sensationalizing and speculating along the way. They turned me into a Milwaukee freak show.

So while I’m normally a very present and hands-on owner when it comes to running my bar, the recent publicity storm has forced me into hiding either in my office or my apartment much of the time. Fortunately I have a group of capable and dependable employees who can run things just fine without me, though I’m rarely more than one locked door or text message away.

Unfortunately, this need to hide coincided with the grand opening of my new expansion. After Ginny’s death, I learned I was the sole beneficiary in her will. I went from counting pennies and barely scraping by, wondering from one day to the next if I was going to be able to keep the bar open, to a degree of financial independence. I bought an empty building that shared a wall with my bar, and doubled the size of my place. It was a risky move, but one I felt I needed to make to stay competitive and keep the bar alive. In an ironic twist, all the publicity helped because it kept a steady stream of curiosity seekers coming in, hoping for a glimpse of the crime-solving, psychic fortune-teller who also happened to own a bar. So while I hated all the media attention focused on me, the weeks since the mediafest began have been the busiest ever at Mack’s Bar. I know some of the traffic might be transient, but I hope that once things do finally die down, there will continue to be enough business to maintain a healthy bottom line.

I was hugely relieved that Duncan didn’t lose his job, but his return to work didn’t help our personal relationship any. He was brought back on duty with the caveat that he wasn’t to get any help with his cases from “that woman.” This edict upset Duncan because he genuinely believed my synesthesia was an asset that could help him solve cases. I wanted to think it also upset him because of the strain it put on our relationship, but our last few phone conversations had been blandly polite and benignly social with little to no hint of romance or intimacy. I told myself it was because Duncan was distracted and worried about his job, but I’d harbored a fear from day one that his interest in me was more because of what I could do for him and his career than it was anything he liked about me personally. Not that there wasn’t a genuine attraction between us; there was. But I wasn’t convinced it was strong enough on his end to keep him interested if I was no longer of any use to him careerwise. Time would tell, I supposed, so I kept reminding myself to be patient.

But now I had this letter to deal with. If it was real—and I had no reason to think it wasn’t—it was going to complicate my relationship with Duncan even more. My gut told me to tell him about the letter regardless of the writer’s warning. Handling it alone was out of the question, and I had faith in Duncan’s ability to help me sort it out while keeping it secret. But before I took that leap, I wanted to run it by a few other people who were among my core group of regulars, people who were the heart and soul of the Capone Club: my makeshift, substitute family.

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. . .