Death & the Brewmaster's Widow (16 page)

“Right! We'll be regular detectives! When?”

Wren hesitated. “Let's wait and see what happens this afternoon. I don't want to leave Death alone when he's sick. Wait until he's up and around and I'll tell him we're going shopping or something.”

_____

Wren was in the kitchen cooking lunch when Death finally got up and dragged himself out of bed. He felt hungover and disoriented, but better than he had in several days. He was also hungry again, and he staggered out of the bedroom in his T-shirt and boxer shorts, following the smell of food. There was a salad sitting in the middle of the table, buns warming in the oven, and hamburgers sizzling on the stove. Wren had her phone to her ear and when she saw him she started guiltily and blushed.

“Hey, my invalid's up,” she told the person on the other end of the line. “I've gotta go. I'll call you back in a little bit, okay?”

He dropped into a chair at the table and Wren turned the burner off under the skillet and came over to kiss his cheek and feel his forehead. “I think your fever's gone down. How do you feel?”

“Better. Starving.”

“I've got just the thing for that.” She bustled about the kitchen, fixing their plates and opening the refrigerator to set out pickles and condiments.

Death watched her and marveled, again, at how much his life had changed since she'd come into it. In the months before he'd met her, he'd been fresh out of the VA hospital. He'd been homeless and perpetually broke, dealing with the aftermath of his injuries with scant resources and no one who cared. He was always hungry, often in pain, starkly alone. Now … there had been times in his life when he'd had more people who loved him, but he'd never felt more loved.

“Who were you talking to?”

“Oh, Annie. We were thinking of going shopping this afternoon. I wanted to wait and see how you were feeling, and if you had any plans.”

“Better. I'm feeling better. I thought I'd just hang around and watch TV, maybe start trying to dig my way through those legal papers Cap brought me. You ladies can go do whatever it is you're wanting to do. I'll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure.” He waited while she put the finishing touches on their meal. Weighed his words. “I know there's something you're not telling me,” he said. Wren practically jumped and gave him such a guilty look that he nearly laughed.

“It's okay. Whatever it is. It's okay. I trust you.”

She brought his hamburger over and set it in front of him, then stood beside him for a moment, leaning against him and combing her fingers through his hair. “How did you know?”

“That you were keeping secrets? You're the world's worst liar. Most honest people are.” She sighed and sat down.

“It's just something … weird … that Annie and I stumbled across.”

“More weirdness. Yay.”

“I know, right? Listen, we're trying to find out some more information. It's probably just a wild coincidence, but as soon as we have more than crazy theories, I promise, I'll tell you everything.”

“I know. I trust you. It's okay.”

_____

“Dance with me.”

Andrew turned to find Alaina watching him. He'd been exploring again and it looked like he'd been busted. “The room moved,” he muttered vaguely, feigning confusion.

“It's probably just the medicine. Do you know what today is? It's our anniversary.”

“I don't remember.”

“That's okay. Just dance with me.”

“But the room moved. The little room. Now I don't know where I am.”

“Silly. That was the elevator. This is the ballroom. We have parties here. Or we used to. One day, when you're better, we will again.” She crossed the polished hardwood floor. At the far end was a raised platform for a band or small orchestra, but there was also a high-end music system built into the wall. “You like parties?” he asked.

“I love parties.” Alaina smiled to herself. “I invite fat women with ugly husbands just so I can watch them be jealous.” She fiddled with the music and a song came up. She moved into his arms, tiny, delicate and bird-like, and drew him into the middle of the room.

He recognized “The Lady In Red” by Roy Orbison and an eerie sense of familiarity came over him. For the first time in what seemed like forever, he felt like he'd done this before. Andrew closed his eyes and followed the memory as they swayed in the middle of the room.

He was in a rented reception hall, heavily decorated with flowers and lace. Peach and gold, he remembered. Everything was peach and gold. She was in his arms, exquisite in an elegant and ridiculously expensive wedding gown. He despised her and she knew it, but she'd won. Smug in her victory, she'd demanded that he dance with her. Under the circumstances he couldn't refuse, so he'd gritted his teeth, forced a smile, and complied.

Orbison's voice was rich and haunting and entirely unsuited to his mood as he swayed obediently in time to the music and fantasized about snapping her pretty little neck. So why was he doing this again today?

He stopped abruptly and stepped away. “I don't want to dance with you.”

“Do you want to dance to a different song?”

“I think I'd like to go back downstairs now.”

Still frowning, but gentle, she helped him to the elevator and they descended to the second floor. They left the cage with Andrew leaning more heavily on Alaina than he really needed to. He didn't want her to figure out that he was no longer quite the invalid he had been. The maid was in the hall and she looked up when they emerged.

“Mrs. Grey,” she said respectfully, “the gardener has your steamer trunk ready. If you know where you'd like it, I'll have him bring it up.”

“In a little while,” Alaina snapped, taking out on the help the annoyance she'd suppressed for Andrew. Unperturbed, Maria bobbed a quick curtsey and went back to her dusting.

They went into the bedroom and Alaina helped him lower himself into a chair. Outside the window, Andrew could see heat shimmering off the black asphalt roof tiles that topped the kitchen ell. The house was heavily air conditioned, though, and he shivered in the cool air. Alaina brought a quilted throw and tucked it around him.

“I think you've tired yourself out today,” she said, ruffling his hair and feeling his forehead. “Just rest for awhile and I'll have Maria get you your medicine.”

_____

“I feel like Nancy Drew,” Annie said.

“I feel like an idiot.” Wren adjusted her sunglasses and peered through the passenger window of Annie's car at the mansions across the street. They were parked, again, on the Einstadt Brewery lot, with the Grey house two doors down to their left. “What are we even doing here?”

“We're trying to get to see Andrew Grey, to see if he really is Andrew Grey.”

“But how?” They'd been racking their brains about that all day and came up with nothing that Wren considered a viable idea. Annie's definition of “viable” was a lot broader and she had half a dozen wild plans. “Why don't we just go up, ring the bell, and ask to see him?”

“She's not going to just take us in there and introduce us. Especially if there's something shady going on. She didn't offer to let us meet him yesterday, did she? When we were already in the house.”

“Yeah, but we didn't exactly ask, either.”

“Not gonna work, Anners.”

“Hey, Anners! I like that. A new nickname for Annie.”

“Or short for ‘Bananners'. That works too.”

Annie stuck her tongue out. She was in high spirits and Wren knew, with a deep sense of foreboding, that she'd already made up her mind that Andrew Grey was really Randy Bogart. If this backfired, as it was apt to, she was going to be devastated all over again. “Okay, smartass, you don't like my idea, come up with a better one.”

Wren wrinkled her brow in thought. “Maybe we could pretend to be magazine reporters. We're doing a story on … the St. Louis brewing families. Death and I have read up on some of the history, you know. It wasn't just the Einstadt family that lived in this neighborhood. That yellow house belonged to a member of the Pabst family, I think, and the Lemp mansion is just a couple of blocks away.”

“Ooh! The haunted Lemp mansion! Okay, then. Let's do this!”

Annie opened her car door. Wren caught her arm.

“Annie, wait. Is this really a good idea? Death says I'm a terrible liar.”

“Really? I'm a great liar. I lie all the time. ‘Oh, no, honey! I don't think your hairline's receding at all!'” She got out of the car and leaned back in to glare at Wren. “Come
on
! Let's
go
!”

Five minutes later they were back on the sidewalk in front of the Grey house, frustrated and discouraged. Summer had finally asserted itself and Wren felt like she was melting in the damp heat. Her shirt stuck to her back and her hair stuck to her forehead and, even after only a few minutes in the sun, she could feel her fair skin beginning to burn.

The maid who answered the door had been polite, uninformative, and as disinclined to chat as anyone she'd ever met. No, Mrs. Grey wasn't taking visitors at the moment. No, Mr. Grey was not available. No, she didn't know anything about the family history, nor the house's history, nor the brewery's history. Perhaps they could check the library. Good day.

“Now what?” Wren asked.

“I dunno,” Annie admitted. “Maybe we'd have more luck with the neighbors.”

“Yeah …” Wren's eyes sharpened as she watched a uniformed figure approach. “Or maybe we could ask the mail carrier.”

The carrier who delivered to Einstadt Avenue was a woman. Wren judged her to be in her late fifties, but fit. She had wiry hair dyed an unnatural bronze; raw, sunburned features; and freckles on her arms. Her uniform shorts showed off a pair of perfectly toned legs and Wren tried not to be jealous as they approached her.

“Oh, yeah. I've been on this route twenty years next October. I used to see Andrew Grey all the time before his stroke. He'd wait for the mail, every day sometimes, for months at a time. I figured he was having affairs and he didn't want his wife—whichever wife it was at the time—to see the love letters.”

“Have you seen him recently?” Wren asked.

“Not too often. He's been in the garden a couple of times in the past few weeks. That stroke really messed with his head.”

“How so?”

“Well, he's polite now, for one thing. Spoke to me like a human being, and let me tell you, he's never done that before. He asked me who I was and if I knew him. Seemed all vague and discombobulated. I didn't get to talk to him much, though. That wife of his was hovering around him like a little bumblebee. Shooting me dirty looks.” The woman cackled. “Maybe she thought I was after her sugar daddy.”

When they were back in the car, Annie started the engine and cranked the A/C and they sat for a moment staring at the Grey house.

“Could he be … hypnotized?” Annie asked. “Like, maybe someone hypnotized him ahead of time so that all they had to do was say some trigger word and he'd think he was Andrew Grey?”

“I don't know.” Wren thought the idea was bizarre, but then there wasn't much about this situation that wasn't bizarre. “Or drugged maybe? Is that possible? Are there drugs you could give someone to confuse them and make them forget who they are?”

_____

Talia was not happy with the question.

“How can you ask me that?”

She was at home with her girlfriend when they found her. Trinka was a small, spry woman with sharp, elvish features and frizzy hair. She'd greeted them with a broad, puckish grin, but now she watched them all, moist-eyed with sympathy.

“I can understand Wren coming up with these wild ideas,” Tal said, “she never knew Bogie. But he was my friend and he died on my watch and you want to make up silly, fantastic stories about him?”

“Tal, honey,” Annie said. “We're not asking you this to hurt you. We know it's farfetched, but it's the only thing we can think of that would explain the mystery with the badges and the tunnel to the brewery.”

“I know you're not
trying
to hurt anyone. But that's the only thing that can come out of this. Not just me, but Rowdy and Cap and Bogie's brother, all the guys at the station. Dead people don't come back to life. Bogie's gone. You've got to accept that.” She walked away from them, into the other room. Wren gave Trinka an embarrassed, apologetic glance and Trinka smiled at her sympathetically in return.

Tal stopped in the doorway and spoke once more, without looking back.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, they could. There are drugs that would do that. It's possible.”

sixteen

“I know why Alaina
needs Andrew alive!”

Death frowned. “What?
”

There was a long silence from the other end of the phone line. “Cameron? Hello?”

“Wren?” Cam said finally. “Your voice sounds funny.”

“This isn't Wren. It's Death. Wren's in the shower. What are you talking about?”

“Why are you answering Wren's phone? This is Wren's phone, isn't it?”

“Yes, it's Wren's phone. I answered it because you've called three times in the last five minutes. I thought it must be urgent and Wren's in the shower.”

“Oh. You tricked me!”

“I didn't trick you. You started talking before I could say hello.”

Behind Death, the bathroom door opened. He turned as Wren emerged in shorts and a T-shirt, a towel wrapped around her head. She gave him a questioning look and he held up her phone. “It's Cameron. He knows why Alaina needs Andrew alive?”

Wren's mouth tightened and she took the phone. “You suck at conspiracy, Cam.” She listened. “Tricked you how?” She tucked the phone against her shoulder and addressed Death. “He says it's a voodoo, ex-Marine, mojo thing.”

“Right. Well,” he gestured vaguely behind him, “I'll just take my mojo in the kitchen, if you need anything.”

He went in the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. He was just pouring out the first cup when Wren came in carrying her laptop and sat at the table. Death gave her the cup of coffee he'd just poured and fixed himself another one. She waited until he took the chair across from her to speak.

“I didn't want you to go off half-cocked, come up with a bunch of wild ideas, get your hopes up, and set yourself up for a fall. That's all.”

“And you thought I would?”

“Well, that's what Annie and I have been doing.”

“You still don't have to tell me if you don't want to,” he said, though the curiosity was eating at him.

“I think it's maybe hit the point where you need to know.”

“Okay, then.”

She opened her computer and fiddled with the keys for a few seconds.

“That auction Annie and I went to was just up the street from the Greys' house. Alaina was there. She bought an antique steamer trunk and Annie and I carried it home for her. To get a peek inside her house, you know?”

“Nosy girls,” he teased. “What did you see?”

“Andrew and Alaina's wedding portrait. This is the photograph it was painted from.”

She turned the computer so he could see the screen and Death's breath caught in his throat. He was sure his heart skipped at least one beat. “Randy?”

He took several long minutes to process this. “Andrew Grey looks … a lot … like Randy.”

Wren got up, came around the table, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He leaned into her and she rubbed his back. “So what kind of half-cocked, wild ideas did you come up with?” he finally asked her.

“Oh, all kinds. DNA experiments, cloning, Randy being a secret Einstadt heir, space aliens, body snatchers …” She went back to her seat and pulled the computer aside so she could look at him directly. “We've been researching Andrew and Alaina Grey. She's his fifth wife. He has a reputation for not being a very nice person, but she's stayed married to him for almost ten years. Part of that, or all of that, is probably because she signed a really stupid pre-nup. It said that, if she left him, she had to be able to prove infidelity or cruelty on his part or she'd get nothing. And even if she did prove something, she'd have to return everything he'd ever given her and pay back any money he'd let her have. One source suggests that he paid her brother's way through medical school, so we're probably talking a couple of hundred thousand dollars.”

Death drained his coffee. He reached back to the counter and snagged the pot so he could refill his cup. He had a feeling he was going to be needing a lot of coffee. “Go on.”

“Andrew collapsed at his country club almost fifteen months ago. He was rushed to a private hospital and Alaina's brother was his personal physician. For four months he was kept completely incommunicado. No one saw him but Alaina and his private medical team.”

“That's not entirely unusual.”

“No, I know. But his third wife, Leilani Moran, thought it was suspicious. So much so that she filed a lawsuit demanding access to him. She's the mother of his only two children and she claimed that as giving her the right to know how he was. They settled the lawsuit out of court when Alaina finally let her visit Andrew, three days after Randy died.”

“So you're thinking—let me see if I follow you—you're thinking that Andrew died but Alaina didn't want anyone to know about it. She saw Randy's picture in the paper, saw the resemblance, and arranged to have Randy kidnapped and Andrew's body left in his place.”

“There are a whole lot of logistic problems with that. I know there are. But, yeah. That's what we were thinking.”

“How would she kidnap him? How would she keep him prisoner all this time? Randy's a smart guy. He'd figure out a way to get out, or to get a message out.”

Wren gave him a worried, pitying look, and he knew she'd caught the present tense. He'd used it on purpose though, not so much latching onto a new idea as finally surrendering to an old one. This is what he'd been thinking since the moment he knew about the second badge. It wasn't his brother's body. It was an imposter. His brother was alive.

“Annie suggested hypnosis, but I thought drugs were more likely. We talked to the mail carrier who delivers on that street. She's seen him in the garden a couple of times. She says he acts vague and confused, and he's changed. He seems nice now. But she hasn't really talked to him. Alaina never lets him out of her sight.”

“But why would Alaina need Andrew alive?”

“I didn't know,” Wren said.

“But now you do?”

“Leilani's lawsuit. Cameron got copies of the transcript from one of the hearings. See, Andrew figured the women were only marrying him for his money, so he decided to make it a competition. He gave Alaina and each of his exes a copy of his will. The one who stayed married to him the longest is the one who inherits.”

“And that's Leilani?”

“It is right now. Tomorrow Alaina ties her record and Thursday Alaina becomes the heir.”

_____

Wren sniffed. Something was starting to burn. There was flour on the counter and a mixing bowl in the sink and Death's grandmother's rolling pin lay in the dish drainer, wiped clean rather than submersed, to protect the ball bearings. She jumped up and grabbed a hot pad and pulled a pan of biscuits out of the oven. They were a little dark, but still perfectly edible. She found a trivet for the hot pan and set it down to cool.

Death, staring off into space, didn't seem to notice.

She transferred the hot biscuits to a plate and set it on the table, got butter and jam and honey out to go with them, and returned to her seat. “What do we do now?” she asked.

Death shook himself. “We've got to find out if it's really Randy and, if it is, we've got to rescue him. They can't be planning to keep him around as Andrew forever, and after Thursday they won't need him any more.”

“You think they'd kill him?”

“I wouldn't take a chance that they might not.”

“So how do we find out if it's really him? Couldn't we just call the police and tell them what we suspect? Because if it's really him then it's kidnapping and that's a crime. They'd have to investigate a crime, wouldn't they?”

“Would they?” Death sighed. “It's a farfetched theory. You said that yourself. Don't you think the police would think I was just grasping at straws? That I couldn't cope with losing my brother and latched on to the physical resemblance between him and Andrew to hatch some wild fantasy that he was still alive.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But? Dad was a cop, Wren. Believe me when I tell you this. Cops hear everything, from ghosts to aliens to government conspiracies. They get pretty skeptical pretty fast.” He saw the plate on the table in front of him. “Oh, you made biscuits!” he said, snagging one.

“Um, no, actually, you made biscuits.”

“Oh, yeah. I did. I forgot.” He opened it and buttered it and Wren helped herself to one. “The Greys are rich, too. That gives Alaina a lot of leverage. It probably shouldn't, but realistically, it does. We need to find some way to prove that it's him.”

“Maybe we could get Leilani involved?” Wren suggested. “If Andrew really is dead, then she's being swindled out of her inheritance. Plus, she's rich too, so that'd give her leverage.”

“Maybe. But I still think a judge is more apt to think she's just being mercenary.”

“You're right.” Wren fiddled with her own biscuit. “They'd probably accuse her of playing on your grief to further her own ends. I wish Madeline hadn't had the body cremated.”

“You and me both.”

“There must be something.”

They lapsed into a companionable silence, eating biscuits and drinking coffee, both thinking but neither coming up with anything. When Death's phone rang, they both jumped. He glanced at the caller ID and looked up, meeting Wren's eyes.

“Sophie Depardieu.” He answered it. “Hello?” Wren listened in on his end of the conversation.

“Yeah, great … the sooner, the better … okay, we'll be there. See you then.”

He hung up and set the phone down carefully. “That might have been our break right there.”

“Oh?”

“The autopsy report is ready. Sophie can meet us at two this afternoon to review it. We'll go over it with a fine-tooth comb. If it was really Andrew Grey and not Randy who died, there must be something in that report that will tell us so.”

_____

“Before we start,” Death said, “we have something to show you.”

Wren had printed out Andrew and Alaina's wedding picture and the picture of Andrew that Annie had Photoshopped and she handed them across the desk one at a time.

“The man in this picture is Andrew Grey,” Death told Sophie as she studied the first one. “His family owns the Einstadt Brewery and there is a secret tunnel that leads to the room where Randy supposedly died.”

Sophie frowned. “Supposedly? Death—”

“Wait,” Wren said, “there's more. The plywood hiding the tunnel has been disturbed within the last year or so. Andrew collapsed four months before Randy died and hasn't been seen publicly since. We've also learned that, because of the terms of his will, if he died before tomorrow his third wife would inherit his estate instead of his current wife.”

“Rowdy's wife ran Andrew's picture through Photoshop,” Death said. “This is what he'd look like without a beard and with Randy's hair color and uniform.” Sophie gasped audibly upon seeing the picture, but then she lay both photographs face down on her desk and clasped her hands on top of them.

“You said that Andrew collapsed four months before Randy died,” she pointed out. “Don't you think we would have noticed if we were looking at a four-month-old corpse?”

“We figured he must have just been very ill for that time, or maybe they were keeping him on life support.”

She was already shaking her head before he'd finished speaking.

“I can tell you right now, that's not the case. I know how much you want for your brother to not be dead, Death. I understand. But, I'm sorry, frankly I think you've gone completely off the rails. First of all, the aortic aneurysm that killed Randy was not something that would cause a long, lingering illness. It was pretty much instantly fatal. And any sort of long-term medical intervention would have been very, very obvious. Weight loss, changes in skin tone and coloring, needle marks, the presence of a feeding tube … anyone in this building would have spotted it a mile away. Hell, even the paramedics who tried to revive Randy would have seen it.

“I'm sorry,” her voice was firm, sympathetic but intractable. “It's just not possible. You're going to have to accept that Randy's gone.”

“Then there's some other explanation,” Death said stubbornly. “That body was Andrew Grey. It's the only thing that makes sense.”

Sophie opened her mouth to argue, but Wren intervened. “Why don't we just go over the autopsy report and see if there's anything in there that stands out?”

The ME glanced at her, then gave her a small nod. She pulled a file folder over to the center of her desk, deliberately placing it on top of the pictures, and opened it. “Well,” she said, “first off, Randy was a regular blood donor, so we know his blood type. That matches.”

“Randy was O+,” Death said. “It's the most common blood type in the U.S.”

“True,” Sophie conceded. She read farther down the page. “He was in good health apart from the aneurysm. Do you know what that is, by the way?”

Death nodded, but Wren hesitated. “I'm not entirely clear on that,” she admitted.

“An aortic aneurysm is when the aorta dilates to more than one-and-a-half times its normal size. This weakens the walls of the aorta and if it ruptures, as Randy's did, massive hemorrhaging can lead to shock and death within minutes.”

“Shouldn't there have been some signs or symptoms?”

“He might have experienced a little pain from time to time, but if he did he probably shrugged it off as a pulled muscle or a cramp or something.” She went back to the file. “His blood sugar was really high, but that's probably because he had nothing in his stomach but a little alcohol and a lot of sweet tea.”

“No, that's wrong!” Wren pounced. “He spent the night before at Annie and Rowdy's house and they made him eat breakfast.”

“They might have served him breakfast,” Sophie said, “but he didn't eat it. Wren, it doesn't mean anything. Randy was a champion at getting rid of food without eating it. He came to dinner at my house once when my aunt was visiting. She has this horrible cabbage casserole she always makes and he totally charmed her by apparently putting away three helpings of it. I didn't figure out what he'd done until the next day, when I suddenly had the gassiest dog in the universe.”