MURDER on the ROCKS (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  MURDER on the ROCKS

  Allie Griffin Mysteries, Book 2

  L E S L I E L E I G H

  Copyright © 2015

  Published by: Rascal Hearts

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  For questions and comments about this book, please contact us at [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  PART I: STONE CUTTING

  Part II: FISSURES AND BREAKAGE

  PART III: SHAPING

  PART I: STONE CUTTING

  1.

  Taking Main Street all the way west out of Verdenier, Allie Griffin reached the point referred to by natives as "no man's land" and referred to by tourists as "where in hell are we?" Just before she reached the border, she saw the signs for the Verdenier Granite quarry, which meant that she'd be approaching the Flamingos Bar any time.

  She almost drove past it; the bar's neon sign had changed.

  Instead of the buzzing, outdated, semi-script "Flamingos,” there was now a buzzing, outdated, semi-script "Dougie's" in its place.

  "Huh," said Allie Griffin.

  It was four o'clock on a Tuesday in early May and the lot was full of cars.

  "Huh," she said again.

  Entering the bar for the first time since she'd first been there, Allie surveyed the crowd. They looked like a crowd of quarry men for sure. Country music was playing on the juke, and the smell of booze and sweat and chalk and dust permeated the place.

  Allie Griffin was the only woman.

  She looked over at the bar through the sea of revelers and saw Dougie the bartender. She gave him a wave. He flashed a distance-friendly smile and waved her over.

  "As I live and breathe," said the bartender, a burly man with a pockmarked face and watery eyes. "A celebrity in my joint."

  "Oh stop that," Allie said with a dismissive wave. "So what's with all the people? I thought this place didn't fill up until after five."

  "Half day today. Some inspector from the state is here so the guys got off early."

  Allie tried not to show her disappointment. She'd come here to get away from people. Solving the murder of Tori Cardinal had indeed turned her into something of a local celebrity. She'd been profiled on the local news, and the AP wire had picked it up, and then there was that little piece of viral video leaked by a disgruntled cameraman that caught her telling off Detective Harry Tomlin of the Verdenier Police Department. Folks knew Detective Tomlin from his days as a sergeant. Rumor was that he'd issue his own grandmother a ticket given the chance. Variations on that rumor depicted Tomlin engaged in that very act, sometimes embellished with a short scene of the old woman pleading for want of a delayed social security check. Tomlin had responded to the video not by humbling himself in the slightest, but by smugly bolstering his own cause – saying that everyone's got a dirty little secret, and if the town knew the "truth" about Allie Griffin, they wouldn’t be celebrating her as a local hero. He'd missed libel by a nose.

  So Allie had some company today. Looking around, she quickly realized that having a drink at Dougie's with a crowd of quarry men was just as good as drinking alone. No one, save for the bar's namesake, seemed to notice or care that Allie Griffin had walked into the place.

  "So how've you been," Dougie said jovially, his watery eyes lit with star-struck admiration.

  "I've been holding up. You look different. Did you dye your hair?"

  "You like it? The wife likes it. Says I look like Roy Scheider."

  "Roy who?"

  "Roy Scheider. The guy from Jaws."

  "Never seen it. Anyway, you look great." She took a seat and tapped on the bar. "Gin and Fresca on ice with lime, my good man, and be lively."

  The bartender frowned. "Uh, you see, there's a problem there."

  "You don’t have it? You told me on the phone you got a shipment of Fresca."

  "Yeah, well, it's like this." Dougie scratched the back of his ear. "There was a guy in here one day about a month ago. Name Reilly. Good guy. Works as a quality control manager in the quarry. The workers don’t care for him. They call him 'The Clipboard' on accounna he's always walking around with a clipboard under his arm, not to mention he makes six figures doing it. Anyway, Reilly's got his wife with him because the boss wanted to meet her, and there's rumors about that, you know, maybe Reilly's wife and the boss? But I don’t say anything because it's really none of my business. So Reilly comes in and orders a Johnnie Walker Green Label – expensive stuff – and his wife doesn’t know what to get. Now I just happened to have the TV on and there you were. And so we got to talking about you and the case. And I ask Reilly's wife what she'll have and she still doesn’t know because she says she doesn't really drink often. So I mentioned that you once came in to my bar and asked for a gin and Fresca on the rocks with lime. And she says ok, she'll try it. So I make one for her and wouldn’t you know it, she said it was pretty good."

  "Wouldn’t you know it."

  "Yeah. And so Reilly tries it and he says it's pretty good. Then he keeps grabbing sips of it. He finishes his Johnnie Green and orders a gin and Fresca while his wife has a ginger ale and complains about my clientele – they don't measure up to her standards, you see, she's got expensive tastes too. Anyway, next thing I know, other quarry guys are coming in asking for the drink. But not all of ‘em cuz they know The Clipboard drinks it so it can’t be any good. But then I put it on the menu, see, and I name it the Rock Hammer. And I put it on special and say they're secret ingredients and so forth. I keep my back turned when I'm mixing 'em, right? Pretty soon, the Rock Hammer's the drink of choice for these guys, and so..."

  He held up his hand to indicate the sea of workers all around. Allie swiveled around to have a close look at them. Virtually every one of them held an old fashioned glass.

  "You're kidding me," she said. She looked over to her side and, sure enough, there was another quarry man nursing an old fashioned glass. She squinted her eyes at it. "Is that what I think it is?"

  "Yeah, it's a piece of granite I throw in there for garnish. One of the guys got me a whole bunch. My own little touch. Makes the drink, you know, a little more manly."

  "So," Allie said, "bottom line is, you're telling me—"

  "We're out of Fresca."

  "Terrific. What was that drink you made me last time?"

  "A grapefruit gin fizz?"

  "One of those."

  Dougie gave her the thumbs up and sprang into action. It gave Allie a chance to observe the crowd. Here was the pulsing lifeblood of Verdenier that she rarely got a chance to see. Here were the folks whose ancestors had founded the town, grew it as best they could. Now their descendants kept things afloat anonymously from the edges of society. It was a strange feeling for Allie sitting here; she actually felt at home.

  "Excuse me," said a man to her right who seemed to have snuck up beside her. He was a small man with a shock of curly hair cropped close to the scalp. He was dressed well, yet looked as though someone had thrown the clothes at him at great speeds, for his suit hung on him to the point where it nearly swayed on its own when he moved.

  "Are you Allie Griffin?" said this human hanger.

  "I'm afraid so," she said with a smile.

  A smiled brightened on the man's clean-shaven face. "I thought so. Listen, my wife is in the ladies room right now; she would love to meet you. Is it alright
if I introduce her when she comes out?"

  There was the fleeting thought that crossed her mind of telling the man she had some serious case of something awful, anything that would render her unfit for social interaction. Allie Griffin's better angels won, as they did often in these cases.

  "Sure," she said.

  He offered his hand. "Name's Bennett Reilly."

  "Please to mee—, did you say Reilly? The Cli— ? Do you work here– I mean, at the quarry?"

  "I do indeed. Has someone been talking?" He shot a glance over at Dougie, who'd just turned around.

  "Well son of a gun," bellowed the bartender. "Speak of the devil. Your ears must have been burning. How was the inspection?"

  "Piece of cake. We just have to make sure the paperwork's clean. Get me a club soda for the wife." He nodded toward the end of the bar and added dryly, "And it looks like you have other customers." With this one curt phrase, Allie could see what it was the workers didn’t like about Bennett Reilly.

  Dougie got him a soda and left to tend to his patrons. Bennett watched him for a moment, then turned back to Allie and spoke quickly.

  "Listen, there's a reason I'm glad to meet you here. I was going to try and contact you sooner. After seeing you on the news and reading about you and your..." he searched for the word, "... talents, I realized you may be just the person to help me. I...have a problem, and it concerns my wife."

  "Ok," said Allie cautiously.

  "She'll be out in a second and I don’t want her to know I've been talking to you, I mean about this. Here. Take my card. Call me, please, at your earliest convenience. I'll set up a time and place when we can talk." He suddenly raised his voice to an oily, sing-song professional tone. "Ah, here she comes now!"

  The woman who cut through the crowd from the back of the room may very well have been the one person Allie would have bet her house and all its possessions, including the cat, was not married to Bennett Reilly. It was a study in perfect mismatching. She towered over Bennett by a good five inches. She wore a glowering smirk on her face that would have been a bemused smile were it not for the contempt that twisted it. She walked as one would through a tunnel with dirty walls: arms in, her body stiff and straight. She was dressed for a weekend at a ski lodge, in a style Allie called "Vermont formal" – a.k.a. designer fleece.

  "Honey, honey, I'd like you meet someone. This is Allie Griffin. Allie, my wife, Honey Reilly."

  The woman took the glass her husband offered and untwisted her smirk for a phony moment. "Well, now, delighted."

  "Hello... um, Honey," said Allie, thoroughly uncomfortable with the greeting. A few seconds of terribly awkward silence followed, broken only by a burst of raucous laughter at some punchline a few tables down.

  Honey Reilly turned her head toward the sound and took a sip from her glass. "Usually I wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this. So uncouth. A bunch of dirty quarry rats that smell like blackboard erasers. At any rate, I don’t even drink often. A glass of pinot noir once in a blue moon. Did you know it's supposed to be good for the heart?"

  "I've heard that," said Allie.

  "Mmm. Well, it's poppycock. Show me any guy or gal who guzzles the stuff by the gallon, and you can be sure they're not running any marathons. At any rate, I don’t smoke either. Never ingested anything of the sort."

  "I see."

  "Not many people can say that I bet. Ugh! These men are truly horrific." She handed her glass to her husband. "And this is flat. Can we please not linger here? I feel like I'm going to catch something."

  Bennett Reilly smiled a bogus smile. "Well, you heard the woman. Very nice to have met you."

  Mrs. Reilly extended her hand. "It was charming to say the least."

  Allie watched them as they left the bar; Honey first, her husband right behind. He shouted a goodbye to Dougie with a quick, "You look different."

  Dougie answered, "Two weeks ago."

  "Really! How did I not notice?"

  Honey Reilly walked on ahead without a word and Bennett scurried behind her, extending his arm to the breaking point holding the door open for her from his subordinate position in back.

  Dougie the bartender sidled over, the remnants of a shared laugh with his patrons still burbling out of his throat. "So, whaddaya think of the Reillys?"

  Allie held up her glass to him. "They're an interesting couple, I give 'em that."

  "Yeah," said Dougie, broodingly swabbing the bar with a wet rag. "Some wife he's got himself there, huh?"

  Allie took a swig of her drink followed by a hard swallow. "She's thoroughly passive aggressive, with an accent on the aggressive. And she's a liar to boot."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "She said she never smoked or drank. Did you see the way she held her glass?"

  "How do you mean?"

  "Like this." Allie demonstrated by taking her glass with her thumb, ring finger, and pinky, leaving her first two fingers that extended in the air. "Perfect for holding a cigarette. Men puff with their left hands and drink with their right. Women usually hold the cig and the drink in the same hand. It looks classier."

  "Now ain't that something?"

  "She's still holds her fingers in that position, like it's vestigial or, you know, leftover from an old habit, or whatever— this is strong stuff."

  "I gave you top shelf. No jug of double X for Allie Griffin."

  "Dougie my man, you're a big sweet lug. I can’t finish this. I have to drive." She pointed to the cash she left for him. "Aren’t you gonna take that?"

  He brought his hand up in a flourish and traced his jaw. "Your smile is enough."

  "Ohhh, now really! I owe you one."

  "No you don't," he said.

  "Then I'll be seeing you then." She slung her bag over her shoulder and pointed at him. "Get some Fresca in this joint."

  He smiled and pointed back.

  2.

  "Ou est ma chatte?" she said upon entering her house. A quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was always a syllable away on her tongue, although these days it was merely out of habit rather than out of any desire to celebrate her favorite book. She'd had a bit much of it from the murder she found herself in the midst of not more than two months before.

  Dinah the cat came galumphing out, all meows and purrs.

  "Baby cat, we met a funny little fellow and his off-putting wife today. What do you think of that?"

  Dinah responded with a meow that more likely came out of an empty belly rather than any cognitive assessment of her human's inquiry.

  "Yep, he sure was. You want food?"

  The cat responded accordingly.

  "Ok, food coming up. And then you get to have a shot."

  Having a diabetic cat was a chore at times. But it gave Allie Griffin something to care about and attend to. And it gave her a chance to care for a living thing outside of herself, and she needed that. Dinah was the best thing that had ever happened to her since her husband, Tom, passed away.

  But something else had crept into her life recently and made itself known.

  For the last two months, in the wake of the murder she herself had helped solve, Allie felt her mind stagnating. She'd turned to logic puzzles, which helped a little. But she found that what she really needed was the stimulation of helping real people.

  She looked at Bennett Reilly's card, thought about the encounter and its unsettling undertones, and then tossed it aside. She wasn't ready to get involved in some stranger's life like this.

  It wasn't until one week later. Exactly one week. One week of milling about, planning her next book club; another week of not being able to shake the restless feeling, the need for mental stimulation. Even a dive into one of her beloved books was not diversion enough. No, Allie Griffin needed people. Real, live people with real problems. It was when a friend in need solicited advice that she felt most alive, useful...herself.

  She dialed the number on the card. Bennett picked up, "Hi, can I— I can’t talk now. I don’t even know
why I picked up the phone." His voice was trembling.

  "Uh, ok. Is everything ok?"

  "No... My wife... I can’t..."

  And hung up.

  She felt an old, familiar feeling stirring inside her. A thing she'd not felt for at least two months now. Every nerve was on edge. She went into her contacts and found the number of the Flamingos Bar. Got to remember to change that name, she thought.

  "Yello?"

  "Dougie? It's Allie Griffin."

  "Well, well! Hello there!"

  "Hi. Listen. Do you know where the Reillys live by any chance?"

  "They lived in this nice place right up on Castle Avenue. Beautiful place, with these high ceilings. I never been there, but Reilly used to come in and show me pictures. The guys hated when he did that. They sweated it out during the day and went home to these leaky, paneled refrigerators in rundown developments, and meanwhile The Clipboard went home to a mansion. Well maybe Karma got him – or else one of the quarrymen tossed a lit cigarette in the wrong direction while driving by – I'm not incinerating anything here, I'm just saying some of these guys get to talking when they come into my place and knock back a few. At any rate, he and the missus got a big, meaty settlement out of it and bought one of those houses in the new development by the creek. You know those developments where they got eight or ten mansions to a block, and each one has a yard that couldn’t support a rabbit even if it hadn’t been mowed for a month? They live in one of those."

  "Oh my, Douglas. Thank you."

  "Douglas. I like that. You can call me that from now on. Only you, Miss Griffin."

  "Allie. Goodbye, Douglas."

  3.

  She drove around the area the bartender had told her about. It was exactly the way he described it. Here on the northwest side of Verdenier, someone in his or her infinite wisdom had decided to take a tiny swatch of land by the mouth of Wayne's Creek and develop it into a neighborhood crammed to the bursting point with McMansions. The road wound left and right, and the houses all turned from one another as if ashamed to be seen on that street.