Death & the Brewmaster's Widow (12 page)

“I'd noticed it was drier up here,” Wren said. “I hadn't thought about what that meant, though.”

When Death was recovered to Wren's satisfaction, they went on. The tunnel ran in a straight line, heading southeast. After some twenty minutes of walking they came to a T. The tunnel they intersected was built in the same manner as the one they had been following. To the right, it disappeared into darkness beyond the reach of their headlamps. To the left, it went only ten or fifteen feet before ending at the remains of a steel door in a concrete wall.

The rusted and barely legible “Keep Out” sign on the wall was no longer necessary. The ceiling beyond had fallen and the passage that direction was filled with rubble and impassible.

“Take that as a reminder,” Death said. “We need to step lightly and keep an eye out for any place that looks unstable. This is well-built, but it's still man-made and probably a lot less secure than the caves below.”

Walking more gingerly, they followed the path to the right. It led on for about a hundred yards and ended in another doorway. A rusted door lay to one side, another sign visible on it. This one said, “Authorized personnel only.” Beyond the door the passage became a landing where two staircases met. The one coming in from the right was wide and broad and made of concrete. The rise was shallow and a ramp almost as wide as the steps climbed beside it.

“A freight entrance,” Wren surmised. “They brought cases of beer this way on dollies to go down to the biergartens, or whatever else was going on down in the caves.”

The other staircase was narrower and steeper, built of intricately laid brick with wrought-iron railings still attached to the walls on either side. It was still wide enough for them to climb side-by-side. Holding hands, they followed it up slowly. With ten or fifteen steps left to go, they could see the way was blocked. The staircase's exit had been covered over by a square of ancient plywood.

twelve

“Take your time and
just call out if you see anybody who looks familiar.”

Death turned the big pages slowly. “Not seeing him so far.”

He and Wren had come into the police station at the request of the detective investigating the attempted convenience store robbery. “I know it's Saturday morning,” he'd said apologetically. “Crime fighters don't get weekends, I'm afraid.”

Wren, sitting beside Death and peeking over his shoulder, took a sip of coffee from a cardboard cup and shuddered. “I always thought it was a joke about cops and bad coffee.”

The middle-aged detective sitting across the desk from them grinned at her good-naturedly. “I wish it was, believe me!” He fiddled with his own coffee in a ceramic mug with a cartoon cop on it. “So, I gotta ask, you're Lieutenant Bogart's kid, aren't you?”

Death glanced up, gave him a faint grin. “That'd be me.”

“Yeah, I thought so.”

“Did you know Dad?”

“Not personally, no, but I've heard stories. Your mustard-as-a-weapon thing makes a lot more sense now.” He turned his attention to Wren. “You know, his dad took out a fleeing gunman with a horseshoe once.”

“That doesn't surprise me. How'd he do that?”

Death grinned to himself but let the detective tell the story. “Guy had been stalking his ex-wife.”

“Nasty piece of work,” Death interjected. “I don't know why women get involved with creeps like that in the first place, but—”

“She had a restraining order against him, but he showed up anyway and forced his way into the house. She ran out the back and into a park across the street. He was chasing her, holding the gun but not firing it, when this guy's dad shows up. The lieutenant wanted to take him down as quickly as possible, before he did shoot somebody, but the park was crowded and he didn't want to fire his own weapon if he could avoid it. He was chasing along, just a few yards behind the guy, and the chase led through a game of horseshoes, so he snatched up a horseshoe and nailed the guy with it. Three-point ringer, right to the head.”

“Dad was big on improvising,” Death said.

“And it seems he passed it along to you. Hey, listen, I wanted to tell you I was really sorry to hear about your brother last year.”

“Thanks.” Not really wanting to have this conversation again, Death changed the subject. “So, were you able to trace this guy's gun?”

“It was a dead end. Registered to a woman named Elena Vasquez, a night manager at a fast-food joint. Reported stolen the night before your little adventure. Someone broke into her car when it was in the back parking lot where she worked, stole the gun and her stereo and a twenty dollar bill she kept hidden in the console. No witnesses, no cameras in the area, no fingerprints but her and her sister-in-law.”

_____

The Grey house had an honest-to-God elevator.

It was an old-fashioned affair, an elaborate, gilded cage no more than four feet square but tall enough to allow for a miniature chandelier to hang from the ceiling. The floor was polished hardwood parquet and the walls of the elevator shaft had been painted a rich, dark red. Ceramic buttons, yellowed with age, were set in a polished brass plate beside the door. S, G, 2, 3, 4.

Since he'd started spitting out the pills, Andrew's level of lucidity had improved daily. Paranoia kept him from revealing that to Alaina or the doctor, or even to the maid. A little voice in his head pointed out to him that paranoia could be a side effect of not taking his medicine, and even be a part of the reason he needed it. To that, another voice replied that, if he were being drugged unnecessarily, paranoia was probably a reasonable response.

Affecting a harmless, bumbling demeanor, he was using his improved balance and stamina to explore the house. The first thing he'd determined was that it was a fire trap. There were two staircases—an elaborate grand stair that coiled down to come out in the foyer and a narrow, steep servants' stair that led to the kitchen—but they rose within a few feet of one another. A fire in that part of the house would cut them both off, and he'd seen no sign of fire escapes, though the old building had been retrofitted with a very good fire-suppression system.

Leaning heavily on his cane, Andrew hobbled into the elevator and eased the cage door closed behind him. He still tired easily. Propping himself on the wall next to the control panel, he chose button number four first. The cage glided up, the shaft wall sliding past a few inches from his shoulder, slowly passed an opening into an enormous, elaborate ballroom and came to a stop in a narrow hall.

He opened the door and looked both ways, but didn't step out. The room across from the elevator stood ajar. It was a tiny, spartan bedroom. The mattress on the twin bed was bare, the mirror above the plain little dresser speckled with age.

Servants' quarters, he thought, for live-in servants they no longer had. A heavy coating of dust on the floor testified that this part of the house was not in use. It was cramped and stark, with the ceiling only inches above his six-foot frame and the walls at either end of the hallway slanting to follow the gables. He ducked back into the elevator and considered the control panel again.

He knew now what was on three—a ballroom—and he'd spent what seemed like forever confined to two. “G” was undoubtedly the ground floor, where he was apt to be intercepted and sent back up to bed. That left “S,” which he was guessing stood for “sub-basement” or “subterranean” or “sub-something.”

“Let's see what's in the basement,” he said to himself and punched the button.

Alaina was in the parlor on the ground floor, watching TV, doing her nails, and talking on her phone. He could see her through the open doorway, off to his left, as the elevator cage descended. He held his breath, but she didn't look up and notice him. The light dimmed as he dropped lower and he sighed and wondered where he could get a flashlight, reasoning that the basement would be dark.

It was in deep shadow when he came to a stop, but there were windows along the top of the wall, long, horizontal slits heavily
fortified with burglar bars. He could see the lower branches of
shrubbery through them, but they let in enough light that the blackness wasn
't absolute.

The elevator had landed in a short, paved passage that led to an old, wooden door emblazoned with the Einstadt logo. Andrew recognized it because it was on bookplates in all the books in the first floor library and he'd asked about it. It seemed to him that something so intimately connected to his family should feel more familiar than it did, but there it was. A second, simpler door stood ajar on his left. As he passed it, he noted that age and humidity had warped the wood so that it no longer sat firmly in its frame.

He tried the Einstadt door first, but it was locked and solid so he turned to the second door. It led to a typical basement room, with a furnace and A/C unit squatting in the far corner and the rest of the space crammed with broken and cast-off belongings from the house upstairs. One of the windows was almost unblocked and the light was stronger here than out in the passage.

Andrew's nose caught the scent of smoke. Mindful of his earlier observations about the house being a fire trap, he went looking for the source. Like a bloodhound, he followed his sense of smell to a battered metal footlocker shoved against the wall to his right. He felt the sides for heat first, but it was cool to the touch. It was also unlocked. He popped it open and knelt next to it, pulling out the contents so he could examine them.

It was a heavy set of clothing. There was a bulky coat and a pair of pants, boots and a firefighter's helmet. The name “Bogart” was stenciled on the back of the coat and on the helmet was a leather badge, number 4103.

_____

Death's cough, even as he tried to stifle it, echoed like thunder in
the quiet library. Wren, sitting beside him, pressed her arm up against his. “You're starting to get a fever,” she said, without looking up.
“That damp cave wasn't good for you.”

“It's just a cold,” he said dismissively. His attempt to play it off was undermined by another cough. He could feel Wren's eyes on him and, when he looked over to meet her stare, he shuddered. “Jeez. Don't do that. That's the same look Gran used to give when she was in District Attorney mode.”

“Do you have a doctor in the city you can see?”

“It's just a cold,” he tried again.

“And what would your grandmother say to that?”

He found himself imagining the cross-examination he'd get from Gran if she were still alive. A bittersweet pang of nostalgia joined the ache in his chest. Wren's stern face softened and she gave him the gentle, loving, doe-eyed expression he could never refuse anything. “Gah! Don't look at me like that! You know I can never resist when you look at me like that! If you looked at me like that and asked for a pet grizzly bear, I swear, I'd go out grizzly bear shopping!”

“Grizzlies are pretty high maintenance,” she said. “A koala would be adorable, though. What are we going to do about that cold?”

Death glowered, then brightened as a thought struck him. “Maybe use it to our advantage?”

“How so?”

“Andrew Grey's brother-in-law, you remember I told you I met him outside the Greys' house? He's a doctor. If I can get an appointment with him, it'll give me a chance to ask him about his sister's husband. He's close to the family; maybe he can give me some inside information.”

“You think the Greys are involved?” Wren's voice was doubtful. “The passage that must have led to their house was blocked a long time ago. Anyone could have found the opening into the octagonal room.”

Death glanced around quickly before answering. They were in a library; he expected someone to shush them, or at least give them a dirty look. There was no one there, though. They were at the University of Missouri-St. Louis library, sitting at a table by a window in the stacks—the 800s. It was a Saturday afternoon during summer semester and they might well have been the only people in the building.

“Anyone could have found the passage, yes, but think it through. Someone had to get into the brewery before the fire to take the nails out of the plywood so it could be opened, and someone had to get back in afterward, to nail it down again. I looked at the windows when I went there alone and later when you and I went in with Barrows. There are some broken windows, but they're pretty high. There are shards of glass still in the frames. If someone entered the brewery before the fire last year, chances are it was someone with a key.”

He fiddled with the heavy local-history book that lay open before him. “Besides, finding the passage and the staircase wouldn't tell someone where it led. The Einstadt Brewery sign on the wall is so faded, you almost have to know what it says in order to read it.”

“You argue a compelling case,” Wren conceded. “But it's Saturday. His office will be closed. And even when you can call, it can take weeks to get a doctor to see a new patient. What are you going to do in the meantime?”

Death gave her a worried, sideways look and wondered if she really was, somehow, channeling his grandmother. “I can hold out until Monday morning. I'll try to talk him into fitting me in. I can pay cash, I've found that's very persuasive. If I can't get in to see him Monday, and if I'm still coughing, I'll go find a walk-in clinic. Happy?”

“Delirious.”

“I know that,” he teased. “But are you happy?”

She punched him lightly in the arm and he made a show of pretending to be hurt before they settled back down to their reading.

“Got it!” Wren said finally, a note of triumph in her voice. She slid the book she was looking at closer to him and they bent their heads together. It was a compilation of old newspaper articles, put together sometime in the 1940s. “That gully was part of a water ride. There was a water channel running through there and around the park, with swan-shaped boats. It wasn't a service entrance. The steps led down to a landing for the swan boats and a gate into the underground attractions.”

“Huh,” Death said. “I'll be damned.”

Wren leaned against him, eyes distant and hands clasped under her chin. “It must have been so romantic! The gentlemen in their top hats and tails and the ladies in their summer frocks, gliding through the park on a summer night, like riding on the back of a giant swan. And then they'd go down into the caves. They must have looked fantastic, all lit up, with jazz and laughter and voices echoing through the passages.”

“Would you like to go dancing?” he asked suddenly. “I've never taken you anywhere really nice. This is a big city. We could find someplace fancy, get dressed up, and make a night of it.”

Wren put her arms around him and rubbed a palm against his chest. “Someday,” she said, “that'd be nice. But not when you sound like you're trying to breathe through mud and gravel.”

_____

When they returned to Randy's house they found Captain Cairn, dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, just getting ready to drive away. “I thought I'd missed you,” he said. “Though I could see you were still in the city.” He nodded toward Wren's truck parked in the driveway. “I was wondering if you'd done anything toward getting your brother's estate settled? You know, I can give you any help you need with that.”

Death gestured toward the house, unlocked the front door, and ushered Cap and Wren inside before answering. “Honestly, I've been more focused on trying to figure out what's going on with Randy's badge than anything.”

“Who wants what to drink?” Wren asked. “I can make coffee or there's a pitcher of iced tea in the fridge.”

“How about a beer?” Death suggested.

She gave him a long, appraising look. “Are you taking over-the-counter cold medicine?” His chagrined look answered for him.