Shots in the Dark

Book 4: Mack’s Bar Mysteries

by Allyson K. Abbott

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

It's a week before Christmas, but Milwaukee bar owner Mackenzie "Mack" Dalton is hardly in good spirits. Chilled to the core by the murder of bouncer Gary Gunderson, Mack is determined to use her extra perceptive senses to identify the gunman responsible. Did Gary's patchy past brew up some fatal trouble, or could his death be linked to a series of cryptic letters concocted by Mack's anonymous adversary?

With a second case to crack, innocent lives at stake, and a media frenzy in their midst, Mack and her barstool detectives have little time to mull over the grim details—especially when clues lead dangerously close to home . . .

Release date: July 26, 2016

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

The winter streets of Milwaukee could be tough to negotiate on the best of days, but this was the one time of year when no one seemed to mind. Bright lights reflected off crisp white snow in a kaleidoscope of color and holiday cheer. The air smelled of pine, cinnamon, and a buttery goodness, which helped to ease the bite of the bitter cold air that stung my nose when I breathed. Varying strands of music—some close, some from afar, some secular, some holy, some vocal, and some instrumental—mixed and mingled in my ears. Christmas was right around the corner, and the city streets were filled with happy-looking people, their cheeks flushed red by the cold winter air, their eyes alight with warmth and anticipation, their souls filled with holiday spirit.

My name is Mackenzie Dalton, though most everyone calls me Mack, and as I walked amid the holiday throng, I couldn’t help but feel like an alien, an impostor, a hypocrite. I had no interest in holiday shopping, sharing a wassail, or singing a carol. I wasn’t feeling the holiday spirit. And at that moment I hated the cold, because it reminded me of things frozen, unmoving, and dead. I’d never been a big fan of Christmas, and I was dreading this one in particular, not because I was a bah-humbuggy Scrooge type, but because all those noises, sights, and smells had an overwhelming physical effect on me. I have synesthesia, a neurological disorder that results in my sensory input getting cross-wired. Because of this, I experience every sense in at least two ways. For instance, I may taste something I hear, or see something I smell. Even my emotions come as a two-for-one sale.

My emotions during this holiday season were more intense than usual because I had recently lost someone close to me—several someones, in fact—and hanging over my head was the threat of more to come. It began with my father’s murder back in January, and then his girlfriend, Ginny, was murdered in August. Both deaths occurred in or near my bar, and the Grim Reaper had been a rather persistent companion of mine ever since, so much so that my planned Christmas gift to everyone was to try to prevent any more murders among my circle of friends. It wouldn’t be easy, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.

Mack’s Bar was my father’s legacy to me. He opened it right before I was born and named it after himself. Then he named me Mackenzie, with the assumption that I would one day carry on the business. I grew up in the bar with my father; my mother died right after I was born, due to a traumatic head injury she sustained in a car accident. She was left brain dead from the accident, but the doctors were able to keep her alive long enough for me to grow inside her and make my entrance into the world. My father and I lived in an apartment on the floor above the bar, and now I live there alone. As a result, my childhood days were spent mingling with any number of strangers and “regulars” who patronized the place, and I knew how to mix a slew of drinks before I knew basic math. Up until my father’s death, my life was tidy, predictable and, some might say, boring. I liked it that way.

My father’s death put an end to my comfortable, complacent lifestyle, and Ginny’s death compounded the problem. A lot of new people came into my life, the most noteworthy being Duncan Albright, a homicide detective who was relatively new to Milwaukee at the time. As part of his investigation into Ginny’s murder, he worked undercover in my bar and ended up under the covers on my bed. He discovered my disorder could be useful in helping him solve crimes, and he dragged me into a few cases. I resisted at first because my synesthesia was something I felt a need to hide; it embarrassed me and made me feel like a freak. But when Duncan showed me how I could use it to do something good, my attitude began to change. I opened up my mind to the idea of my synesthesia being something both helpful and useful. And I opened up my heart to Duncan.

Neither change came easily. It seemed the general public and Duncan’s bosses weren’t as open-minded about my synesthesia as Duncan was. When the local press got wind of my involvement in a high-profile case involving a missing child, news pieces about how the local police were using witchcraft, ESP, and voodoo hit the papers and the airwaves. This didn’t go over well with the brass at the Milwaukee Police Department, and Duncan ended up getting suspended. We spent some time apart, hoping the furor would die down, but it didn’t. If anything, it got worse. My life was turned upside down to the point that it became the antithesis of that dull, predictable life I’d had while growing up. This was due in part to other deaths associated with my bar. One of those deaths was that of my bouncer and fill-in bartender, Gary Gunderson, who was murdered just two days ago. And in a way it was my fault.

I was being stalked, taunted, and tormented by a diabolical killer. This person kept sending me letters with puzzles I had to figure out by a deadline in order to prevent the death of someone I knew. And just in case I doubted the veracity of that claim, the writer killed one of my customers, Lewis Carmichael, a nurse who worked at a nearby hospital. Lewis was not only a customer but also a member of the Capone Club, a group of crime solvers from a variety of backgrounds who came to my bar on a regular basis.

The first couple of letters that arrived after Lewis’s death I managed to interpret and solve in time, but I stumbled over the last one. My initial interpretation was wrong, and by the time I figured out what it was supposed to be, it was too late. Gary died because of my mistake.

On the heels of Gary’s death, my fear and frustration with the letter writer morphed into a white-hot anger. I became mad as hell and determined to find the person behind it all. I wasn’t alone in my efforts, because I had the help of some of the members of the Capone Club. A handful of them—those I was closest to, those I considered my family now that I had none of my own—knew about the letter writer. Cora Kingsley, a forty-something, redheaded man hunter and computer geek, was like a sister to me. Her skills with computers had proved invaluable, both in interpreting the clues and in logging my synesthetic reactions so I could better use and understand them. And Joe and Frank Signoriello, two retired, seventy-something brothers who were ex–insurance salesmen, were also in the loop. These two men have known me my entire life, and when my father died, they took on the role of advisers, becoming the closest thing to family I had.

These three people and Duncan knew about the letter writer. The others in the Capone Club did not, and this created a dilemma for me since the letter writer had said the victims would be among those I knew. The deaths thus far had proven the truth of this claim, and every hour I debated the wisdom of keeping the others in the dark. But I was afraid that if the news got out about the letters, the writer might seek revenge by going on a killing spree.

While the letter writer hadn’t specifically said I couldn’t use the Capone Club to help me solve the puzzles, I was wary of pushing that envelope. And the instructions did make it clear that I wasn’t allowed to use the help of any cops, with Duncan getting specific mention. This made my decision not to inform the club members about the letter writer a little easier, since some of the local cops participated.

Thus far I’d managed to skirt the no-cops edict by keeping Duncan involved on the sly while making it appear as if the two of us were on the outs. This facade was made easier by the fact that I was pretending to date someone else, a fellow named Mal O’Reilly, who happened to be both an undercover cop and a friend of Duncan’s. I allowed the cops who participated in the Capone Club to help us solve other crimes we were working on, but I kept the letter writer to myself and took care not to involve them in any part of that investigation.

It was a thin wire I walked, because there were lots of cops around at the time, and not just because they liked my coffee. They were also around because they were investigating Gary’s murder by questioning me, my employees, and many of my regular customers. Gary’s death hadn’t occurred at my bar, but the connection to it was clear. Not only had he worked for me, but his body was found with one of my cocktail napkins wadded up and stuffed in his mouth. Because of this, a trio of detectives had been more or less living at my bar since Wednesday night. Duncan was not one of them.

Gary’s death hit me hard, not only because it ramped up my anger and my fear level, but also because I felt indebted to the man. He was an ex-con—a fact I discovered by accident during the investigation into Ginny’s death—and this knowledge had colored my impression of him. When I realized how wrong I was, he not only forgave me, he literally took a bullet for me, saving my life. That put avenging his death high on my list, though my task wouldn’t be an easy one. Not only did I have no clue who the letter writer was, but I was also laid up with a broken leg I’d sustained in a car accident while rushing to get to the correct location indicated in the most recent letter before the deadline. That accident had cost me time and as a result, it had cost Gary his life. Though I was determined not to make the same mistake again, my confidence had flagged. And my investigative efforts had been further hampered by the reporters who were hounding me. Still, I was determined to find a way, to figure it out before another one of my friends, employees, or customers ended up dead.

It was this need that brought me out into the colorful holiday mayhem: I needed to visit the location indicated in the last letter, the location I hadn’t made it to on time. I was heading for the Milwaukee Public Market.

Winter was well established, with a foot or more of snow on the ground and the threat of more to come. For the time being, the snow and cold were welcomed by most as part of the holiday experience, but I knew that once Christmas was done, the real depression of winter would set in: two to three months of cold dreariness with little to break the monotony.

I generally don’t mind the winter weather, but negotiating slippery sidewalks and streets on crutches, with one leg in a cast, had given me new insight. I nearly fell twice on the way to my car, and getting into it proved a nearly equal challenge as I fumbled with the crutches. Fortunately, the leg I broke was my left one, and I was still able to drive, but I was forced to position my legs awkwardly to make room for my plaster encasement.

The Public Market was less than a mile from my bar as the crow flies, but it took me fifteen minutes to get there, thanks to heavy holiday traffic, slippery roads, and bad stoplight karma. It was a Saturday, a busy day for the market, and the closest parking space I could find was two blocks away, forcing me to negotiate the slippery terrain again. In retrospect, I realized I probably should have had someone tag along, if for no other reason than to drop me off and drive around until I was done so I wouldn’t have to deal with parking and the treacherous walk.

The Public Market is a vast, high-ceilinged warehouse-type building filled with a variety of shops. Floor-to-ceiling windows keep the place well lit during the day, and at night the overhead lighting, combined with the individual shops’ lighting, creates a cozy ambience. It was mid-afternoon, and despite the bitter cold, the day was bright, with a blue, cloudless sky.

The onslaught of sights, sounds, and smells as I entered the place triggered a synesthetic frenzy of reactions that nearly overwhelmed me. But I was used to it—it happened every time I came here—and I knew what to do. Just inside the door I stopped, closed my eyes, and took a minute to suppress all the ancillary sensory experiences I was having, including the visuals, which didn’t stop simply because I had my eyes closed. Images flashed across the backs of my eyelids like a movie in a darkened theater. Over the years I had learned how to deal with these situations, and after a minute or so of suppressive efforts, I felt comfortable enough to open my eyes and venture deeper into the building.

The synesthetic reactions I had to the smells proved the hardest to ignore because there were so many different aromas mingling and mixing together, many of them quite strong. The salty smell of fish mixed with the fragrant aroma of freshly ground coffee, and the sugary smell of just-baked cookies mingled with the perfumed scent of hothouse flowers. Since all the shops were basically open stalls of some sort, all the smells were free to infiltrate the building. On top of that, there were the people smells: perfumes, shampoos, aftershaves, laundry detergents, even the occasional whiff of body odor. Given that each of these smells triggered either a sound or a physical sensation in me, it was a constant struggle to dampen my senses and stay focused.

The last letter I received, the one that led to Gary’s death, had contained a number of small items—a tiny portion of a map, magazine clippings with pictures of a faucet and a Broadway marquee, fish scales, a single flower petal, some ground cinnamon, a piece of coffee-soaked filter paper, a tiny piece of green terry cloth that had been soaked in wine, and a small piece of bread—multiple clues that, when put together, pointed to the Public Market. But Cora and I had put them together in a way that seemed to point to another location, a local church. By the time we realized our mistake and I headed for the market, time had run out.

Even though it was too late to save Gary, I desperately wanted to get my hands on the next clue. Over the past two days I’d been thinking about how to go about this task, and I knew I needed to start with the market vendors. I had no way of knowing if any of them were the target the letter writer had singled out, but based on past experience with the clues and the fact that the vendors were the one constant during the window of time I’d been given in the letter, I assumed one of them would prove to be key. Several specific vendors had been referenced in the clues, and I figured I’d start with them first. Duncan’s surreptitious analysis of those clues using the police lab had uncovered some flower pollen mixed in with the cinnamon, something that might have been intentional or accidental. If it was intentional, it meant the florist shop was referenced more than the other shops, so I decided to start there. Granted, it was little more than a hunch, but I had to start somewhere, and it made as much sense as anything else.

The florist shop was located near the spice store, so my olfactory senses were working overtime as I approached. A white-haired, grandmotherly type woman was standing behind the counter, and she smiled warmly at me as I hobbled up.

“You look like you could use a little something to brighten up your day,” she said, no doubt in preparation for her sales pitch. Her voice triggered a citrusy taste in my mouth.

I smiled back and gave her a half nod of agreement. I had a backstory I’d used when I’d approached others about the clues, and since it had worked before, I decided to stick to it. “I do need something, but I’m not sure exactly where it is, and I may be too late. There’s this scavenger hunt game I participate in online. Well, you sign up for it online, but the hunt part is in the real world. Anyway, you get these clues that are delivered to people and places out and about, and you have to decipher the clues in a limited amount of time in order to get the next clue. My last clue led me here, but on the way I was hit by another car, which ran a stop sign, and I ended up with this.” I waved a hand toward my leg. “Because of that, I missed my deadline, but I’m hoping someone might still have my next clue. Any chance you had a package delivered here to your shop with instructions to give it to someone who looked like me or to someone with the name Mackenzie Dalton?”

The woman gave me a bemused smile. “Are you saying someone bought you flowers that you’re supposed to pick up here?”

“No. I don’t think so. It would be an envelope of some sort.” I wasn’t certain of this, but that was the format used with the previous connections, so I was inclined to believe this one would be the same.

“Sorry, honey, but I don’t have anything like that.”

“You didn’t receive a package or an envelope of some sort with instructions to destroy it if it wasn’t picked up by a certain time?”

Her smile never wavered, but there was a wary look in her eye, which told me she was beginning to think I might not be firing on all cylinders. “Sorry,” she said with an apologetic smile and a shrug.

One of the perks of my synesthesia—though some might call it a quirk—is that I can often tell if people are lying. My synesthetic reaction to the sound of their voice changes in some way. But in order to use it, I have to have a baseline lie for comparison, something I know is an untruth. I thought about asking the woman to lie to me on purpose, but I couldn’t think of a way to broach the subject without her thinking I was a lunatic. Momentarily stymied, I decided to let it pass for now and to come back to her later if I struck out with the other vendors.

I thanked her and moved on to the neighboring spice shop. A woman who looked to be in her late forties was standing behind a small desk.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked with a sales-friendly smile. Her voice triggered the taste of coffee with an underlay of cinnamon, although the cinnamon taste might have come from a real smell. Sometimes I can’t tell my synesthetic experiences from the real ones.

“Perhaps, Trudy,” I said, reading her name tag. I repeated my story about the scavenger hunt, my accident, and how I’d missed my deadline. As I talked, her demeanor shifted 180 degrees. Her smile faded, her body language screamed wariness, and the way she chewed on her lip told me she was nervous. I feared she recognized me from some of the recent news coverage.

“Any chance you received an envelope or a package with instructions to destroy it after a certain time if no one claimed it?” I asked.

Trudy crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at me. She was chewing on a piece of gum, and her cheek muscles twitched and popped as she chomped on it. “I didn’t get any unusual package,” she said, and the taste of her voice turned burnt and bitter, like coffee that’s been left on the heat too long. Even without this synesthetic cue, I knew she was lying just from her body language. What I didn’t know was why, but what she said next gave me a good idea. “I told those cops who came around Thursday the same thing.”

I cursed under my breath but continued to smile warmly, hoping to put her at ease. Duncan was part of the investigative team looking into Gary’s death, and since Gary’s body had been found in his car, which had been parked in the Public Market lot, Duncan had volunteered to do the market queries, hoping he might get a lead on the letter writer.

“Cops?” I said, looking and sounding amused and befuddled. “They don’t have anything to do with this. It’s just a game I play.”

“I don’t know anything about any game,” she said, tight-lipped.

“Are there other employees who work here? Maybe someone else got it.”

She didn’t respond right away, and when she finally did, it wasn’t an answer to my question. It was verification of my earlier fear. “You’re that bar owner who’s been on the news,” she said. “That man they found here the other night, the one that was killed, he worked for you, didn’t he?”

I knew at that point there was little to be gained by continuing my ruse, so I bowed my head and sighed. “Yes, I’m that woman,” I said. “And yes, Gary worked for me.”

“Sorry for your loss,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. Her face was set and determined. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”

She turned and started to move away from me, but I grabbed her sleeve to stop her. “Please,” I said in my best pleading tone. She glared pointedly at my hand on her sleeve, and I let it go. “Look, I’m sorry I lied to you about my reason for inquiring. All I can tell you is that I’m not working for or with the police, and any package that might have come here for me is private, personal, and extremely important.”

Something in how I looked or sounded must have broken through her determination, because her stony expression softened a tad. But she wasn’t softened enough. She slowly shook her head, her arms still crossed over her chest. “Sorry. I can’t help you.”

Feeling frustrated, I shifted gears. “I know you got a letter,” I said. “And I know you’re lying to me about it. I don’t want to play hardball with you, but you have to understand how important this is. It’s literally a matter of life and death.” At that point, the pain and guilt I felt over Gary’s death overwhelmed me, and tears flooded my eyes. I glanced around to see if anyone was in earshot, and then leaned in closer. “Gary died because I didn’t get here in time to get that letter. I need to get to the bottom of this. Please, help me, Trudy.”

A standoff ensued as Trudy eyed me with indecision. “You swear you’re not working with the cops?” she said after several long seconds.

“I swear.” I held up one hand to affirm my words. Then I positioned both hands so that it looked like I was praying, feeling a glimmer of hope. “Please,” I begged.

She sighed, looked around the same way I had a moment ago, and then in a low voice she said, “I did get something. A large envelope was propped up against my door when I went to leave for work last Sunday.” The taste of her voice at this point was smooth and mellow, like a light-roast coffee. I felt certain she was being honest with me now.

“You mean at your home?”

She nodded.

“What did it look like?”

“It was a plain manila envelope with my name written on it in big block letters. No address or anything. Inside the outer envelope was a note and another, smaller envelope, one of those number ten business-size things. The second envelope didn’t have anything written on it.”

“The note was instructions to you, yes?”

She nodded, and something about her expression told me she was holding something back. I took a stab at what it might be.

“There was money in the envelope, too, right? Money for you?”

She hesitated a second or two before nodding.

“That’s fine,” I said, smiling. “I have no interest in the money.”

Her shoulders relaxed.

“What were your instructions?”

“The note said I was supposed to hand the envelope over to a woman named Mackenzie Dalton if she came asking for it. If you didn’t show by eight o’clock Wednesday night, I was supposed to take the envelope home and burn it in my fireplace without opening it.”

“And did you do that?” I asked, praying she hadn’t.

To my chagrin, she nodded. “I was curious about it,” she admitted. “I thought maybe it was some kind of secret note between lovers involved in a tryst or something.” She scoffed and shook her head. “I’m a hopeless romantic at times. But then I started thinking it might be something darker, like drugs, or even a poison of some sort. What a perfect way to murder someone, right?” she said with a half grin. Then she seemed to realize how inappropriate that comment might be, and she winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”

“It’s okay,” I said with a little smile. I reached over and patted her arm as extra reassurance. “Can you tell me anything else about the outer envelope? Or the handwriting? Was there anything distinctive about any of it?”

She thought a moment but shook her head. “The envelopes were the same kind you can buy at any grocery or office supply store. And the writing was block printing . . . with a felt-tipped marker, I think. My name was on the outer envelope, and the instructions in the note were written out in the same block letters.”

“Did it have both your first and last name on it?”

She nodded, looking a little worried. I assumed she was just now realizing the implications this had. Someone was dead because of that letter, and whoever had written it and sent it knew her full name and address.

“Anything else?” I asked.

She shook her head, still looking concerned. Her gaze cast anxiously about, as if she thought someone might be lurking nearby, ready to kill us both. When she finally looked back at me, she said, “I’m sorry about your friend.” Her voice tasted sincere.

“Thank you.”

Then she finally voiced her fears. “Am I in any kind of trouble or danger with this thing?”

I didn’t know if she was worried about legal trouble or something more sinister, but it didn’t matter either way. I shook my head and gave her a reassuring smile. “Other people before you have received packages. The person sending them has been picking people more or less at random, I think. You were nothing more than a conduit.”

As I said this, I started wondering about how the letter writer chose those conduits and knew so much about the recipients. That gave me an idea that imbued me with a renewed sense of hope. I thanked Trudy for her honesty, promised again that our conversation would go no further, and then bought a bottle of seafood seasoning as both a gesture of goodwill and a way to explain why we’d just spent several minutes in conversation.

I don’t think it did much to reassure her because as I left, I felt her worried stare following me down the aisle.

I stopped at another shop to buy some cheeses I could use in my bar kitchen before I made my way back to my car. The return drive was as slow as the drive to the market, and my trek from my parking place to the bar—two blocks away was the closest I could get—was just as treacherous, and complicated by the bag of purchases I had to carry as I crutched my way along. The warmth of the bar was a welcome relief, and after briefly greeting the staff on duty out front, I headed into the kitchen to drop off my cheeses and spices. During the week my main full-time cook was Jon, a new hire I’d brought on when my longtime cook, Helmut, quit after his wife threatened to leave him if he didn’t. She felt two murders in less than a year’s time made my bar a dangerous workplace, the likes of which OSHA was unable to fix. I couldn’t blame her for her concerns, and to be honest, Helmut had been well past retirement age and kind of set in his ways. Every time I made any changes to the menu, it seemed to overwhelm him. So while I missed the old curmudgeon at times, I wasn’t sorry to see him go. So far Jon had proven to be a good fit. . .