Bar None (A Piper Harris Mystery, Volume 3), page 3
The man smiled, nodded, and placed a couple of dollar bills on the counter.
“Whoa,” Edie said, all the while watching me. “It’s like you’ve been doing this forever.”
She was right about that.
“Would you like to have a drink?” I asked her and hoped to put her at ease with that. “Come on, enjoy your night out. Have you ever been to a dive bar?”
Edie shook her head vigorously then leaned over, but still attentive enough not to touch the counter. “I ran a four-star kitchen, remember? What the heck would I go to a seedy bar for?”
A guy on a nearby barstool turned his head around. He was wearing a black cap with some sort of company name on it, and a gray T-shirt. His facial expression was kind of blank. Edie felt someone watching her and froze. She swiveled her head slowly and gave the man a shy wave. The man showed no reaction and went back to his beer.
“I know, but still,” I said and threw the rag over my shoulder again. “Dive bars are more relaxed. More chill. Nobody expects much of you in dive bars. You don’t have to dress up when you go to a dive bar. You can stop by after work, have a cold one—you don’t even need to talk to anybody. Just . . . relax.”
“Yeah, relax and wait to be the next victim for whatever creep is there that night,” Edie said.
The man in the black cap turned to Edie again. Again with no reaction.
Edie felt it and stopped talking. Then she whispered to me, “It’s not safe to talk here.”
Gran shook her head, her eyes looking off into the distance, not fixated on anything.
“Come on, have something,” I said to Edie. “It’s on me.”
Edie sighed. “Fine. I’ll have one of those apple martinis as well.”
I started the process once more. “So how did you get here anyhow?” I asked Edie.
Gran instantly let out a low snarl.
“What?” I said, my eyes doing the ping-pong between Gran and Edie. “Sore subject?”
A second later, I knew why the subject was raw.
“We took a cab,” Edie said.
I laughed. “Yup, figures.”
“Well, I didn’t want to drive my baby”—then she lowered her voice and said—“here.”
Her baby meaning her 1967 shiny candy-apple-red Chevrolet Impala. That, I understood.
“Dorothy put up some resistance,” Edie said, “but I told her under no circumstance would I drive my car in this part of town. I might as well just give it away to some stranger with a bow on it.”
The reason why Gran and Edie had trouble car-wise was that Gran and I shared a car, an older-model silver Ford Taurus that I had already driven here for work.
Edie fished a napkin out of her purse. With a look of dismay, she wiped the area on the counter in front of her. I shook my head. Gran was probably ashamed to have come here with Edie, not the other way around.
I finished preparing Edie’s drink and, just before she sipped out of the glass, Cap Guy silently moved over. Edie froze again. Cap Guy nodded and gave Edie a tap on her shoulder, as if to say, Everything is going to be okay, then clinked his beer mug to Edie’s glass, chugged the rest of his beer, slammed the mug on the counter, let out a burp, tipped his cap, and headed for the restroom.
Gran watched the guy from the corner of her eye. I just watched, amused. And Edie almost fainted off the barstool with her mouth wide open.
Then she took a big swig of her martini as if to calm her nerves. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked Gran, but I didn’t think she expected a reply. Which never came, anyway.
“You came here to visit me,” I said. “To see where I work.”
“Yes, and I’d rather I didn’t know that,” Edie said. “You know I was happy when you told me you got a job, but I never expected this.”
Neither did I, and here I was.
One hour later, the place got even more crowded, but nothing I couldn’t handle. It was a Thursday, not a weekend night, and only one bartender was scheduled. One was enough. I could confirm that.
Edie was on her second apple martini and Gran switched over to beer. Every time the door opened, Edie started and held on to her purse that much tighter.
I still had a couple of hours to go until closing time, and Edie told me she would finish her drink and go home. Gran was undecided about going to her house with Edie or waiting for me. Edie didn’t understand how Gran intended to stay in the seedy bar for a couple more hours. Edie would probably immediately take a shower as soon as she got home, washing off the seedy bar cooties.
I made sure every patron had a drink in front of them, then I gathered some small garbage bags that were full, and wrapped them tightly at the neck.
“I’m going to take the trash out,” I said to Gran and Edie. “Be back in a second.”
They both nodded.
I headed for the metal back door of Ginny’s that connected the bar to the alley where the dumpsters were. I opened the door with my back, since I had the garbage bags in both my hands. When I turned around, warm air hit me straight in the face. I set the bags down for a second, while I took the brick next to the wall and put it in front of the door so it wouldn’t close.
I had on blue jeans and my black biker boots with a black tank top. Which was a great outfit to be inside Ginny’s, where the AC was running. My wavy, long, dark-brown hair was up in a ponytail, as I wore it nowadays here in Florida with its inhumane humidity.
It was shortly after 9:00 p.m. and it was dark outside. The only light came from the streetlamps on Amherst Street. The street seemed pretty quiet; only a couple of voices carried in the air.
The alley was narrow, and the dumpsters were on the right side of the adjacent building. Garbage bags flowed in and around the dumpsters. A couple of rats found their meal of the night in some of those bags. I stepped heavily on the ground and shooed the rats away.
I stopped and searched for a good place to dump the bags. Was there ever a good place for it? Finally, I decided to set them right by the first dumpster. I took a few steps when I thought I saw something between the bags on the ground. Was that . . . a shoe? I took a closer look. The shoe was connected to . . . a leg?
Oh crap.
After another step, I stood in front of a person, who was lying on the ground squished between the garbage bags. He was lying at an odd angle, spread-eagle between the bags.
I bent and took a closer look. Dark liquid was oozing from his chest. Blood. Definitely blood.
Then I took an even closer look. The man seemed familiar.
Salt-and-pepper hair.
Then it dawned on me.
It was the man I’d played five-finger fillet with.
Chapter Three
Aw, crap.
Really?
Another dead body?
Is the universe freaking kidding me?
Not that it was my first time ever seeing a corpse, but it was just too many of them in the last couple of weeks. I assumed entering the witness protection program would mean I would see less of this.
I looked around but didn’t see anybody. I looked up and scanned the surroundings, but I didn’t see any surveillance cameras. Not that it meant there weren’t any hidden ones. But this town didn’t exactly go with the times regarding surveillance, so my guess was there really weren’t any. Especially in this part of town. I was also in the shadows right now, so any camera would make it harder to identify me.
Because there was no way in hell I would call the cops and report this.
I looked down at the man again. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. Pity? Did he have it coming? By the way he’d acted before, inside the bar, he didn’t exactly come off as Prince Charming. I guessed nobody deserved to die for whatever they did, but still, I couldn’t find any empathy for this man right here.
I was pretty sure he was stabbed, although I couldn’t see a knife or anything sharp still planted in his body.
Was it the woman he was with? She went outside shortly after he left the bar. She didn’t strike me as the murdering type, but then again, murderers don’t walk around with a piece of paper glued to their forehead saying, I’m gonna kill somebody today.
No matter who did it, I didn’t care. It was not my problem. It was not my business. And since my history with the cops and my perspective on law enforcement wasn’t exactly of the regular kind, I would just go inside now and let somebody else find the body and report it.
Back in Oregon, the Falcons had the cops in their pocket. We didn’t really value law enforcement, to put it mildly. They were just an annoyance, and they were so often in the way. But being in WITSEC now, I had to be extra careful not to bump heads with the cops. If I called them now, this would be the third time in two months reporting a dead body. Sooner or later, they were going to look into me—Who is that woman who’s attracting all these dead bodies? I thought it was Edie who was the dead-body magnet; the last two were discovered by her as well.
But it was just me now. So I knew what I had to do.
I set the garbage bags farther away from the dead guy and turned and headed for the back door. Then I stopped in my tracks, realizing something. I gave this man one of the matchboxes from the bar. He put the matchbox in his chest pocket. I had scribbled doodles on every matchbox in the bar, so this meant that every single one had my fingerprints all over them.
Damn it.
If this was going to be a murder case—which, come on, of course it would—then the cops would take every item they found on the body and run fingerprints. They wouldn’t find my fingerprints in their criminal database, because the government took care that my rap sheet was deleted since they gave me a new identity. But if someone would search more thoroughly, they wouldn’t find much about my past. Through WITSEC, Gran and I got new last names. They were legally changed, and the documents were sealed by a judge. We got new Social Security numbers, new driver’s licenses, and new birth certificates. But all the other stuff that make up proof of a normal human being’s existence in society, like prior banking records, cell phone contracts, any other financial documentation, mortgage at a bank—those were nonexistent. That in itself would be highly suspicious.
I walked back to the dead guy, still on alert if somebody should come. I moved like a cat, without making any sound. I bent over the dead body, careful not to get blood all over me. Then I realized I didn’t have any gloves with me. Geez, how could a normal working shift at the bar have gotten so complicated? I still had the rag over my shoulder, so I wrapped it around my hand and slipped it in the guy’s chest pocket. I felt something and took it out. It was the matchbox. Yes, success! I stood and slipped it in the back pocket of my jeans then threw the rag over my shoulder again.
But another item slipped out of the dead guy’s pocket: a small and crumpled piece of paper. With the rag, I picked up the paper. I planned on slipping it back into his pocket, but out of plain curiosity, I unfolded it. It wasn’t that easy with the rag around my hand. I held the paper up to the light from the streetlamp.
What I saw written on that paper made my blood freeze in my veins.
There were three names scribbled on it. In front of each name there was an amount in dollars.
I didn’t know two of the names. But the third one I knew.
It was my name!
I did a double take.
My name? What the hell?
I honestly couldn’t really process it. I took a few steps toward the street where there was more light, but still making sure nobody was walking past the alley.
I frowned, my eyes almost glued to the paper.
No, I was not having a nightmare.
There it was, in black and white:
Piper Harris.
And next to it was the dollar amount $3,750.
I moved back next to the dead guy and looked down at him again. Then I returned the paper. Then my heartbeat ticked up a notch.
Holy crap! Was this person sent here to kill me? Was this man hired by the Falcons to hunt me down? That was the only explanation I could come up with.
But why the dollar amount next to my name? That couldn’t have possibly been the guy’s fee for killing me. Come on, I deserved way more than a lousy thirty-seven hundred bucks. And while we were at it, shouldn’t Gran’s name have been on that paper as well? Or better yet, just her name. She was the one who testified against the Falcons. Not that I wouldn’t have been just as alarmed if it were her name on the paper.
But the guy was killed. If he really was the Falcon’s hit man, why the hell was he murdered? And most importantly, by whom? Did whoever kill him know about me? Was there someone else looking for me? Did this mean Gran and I had to move and be relocated somewhere else? Okay, I needed to take a deep breath and calm down.
The other two names on the paper were Bill Doyle and Wes Brand, with the dollar amounts of $1,500 and $2,550. I thought about that for a second. Nope, didn’t know the names. Just the third one.
This was bad. So, so bad. Something didn’t compute with my assumption that this was the Falcon’s hit man, and yet, something was terribly wrong with my name on that paper. What would the cops do if they found this paper with my name on it?
The heck with it. I slipped the paper in my jeans pocket next to the matchbox.
Time to find out who this guy was.
With the rag around my hand, I bent down and searched the dead guy’s pockets. I shook my head. A few hours ago, when I started my shift at Ginny’s, if somebody had told me that I would be in the alley only a couple of hours later searching a dead guy with a rag around my hand, I would have laughed in their face. And to think I played five-finger fillet with this guy who got stabbed on the same night. Really awesome.
In the front pocket of his jeans, I found his wallet. I was so careful not to get his blood on me. I also tried not moving him too much, or else I would be charged with tampering with the crime scene if there were any hidden cameras around here after all. But I had already decided I was going to roll that dice.
I was just about to open his wallet when I heard footsteps approaching.
Crap.
I froze and glued myself to the wall, then bent down and hid behind one huge garbage pile. Three guys passed by on the street, but they were clearly inebriated. They were laughing, talking loudly, and hadn't noticed anything surrounding them. Then they disappeared from view.
I needed to be fast. I moved again closer to the street, where I could see better, and opened the guy’s wallet. The first thing I saw was a driver’s license in the name of Mortimer Hix-Tucker. Wow, what a name.
I flipped through his wallet and found some dollar bills, three credit cards with the same name, and that was about it. No pictures of a wife or a kid. No gym card. No library card.
I shoved his wallet back into his pocket and stood.
I put my hands on my hips and looked down at the dead guy again.
Think, Piper. Was there something else? No, I think that was it.
There shouldn’t have been any other prints on him. Not any of my own fingerprints. To be honest, I had rather nobody found the body. A million scenarios ran through my head about why this guy had my name on that piece of paper. Did he even know who I was? Did he even know we'd had an interaction a while ago? This was very disturbing and alarming. I wanted to know right then what was going on so I could remove myself from it.
But I did do one thing. I placed a few of the garbage bags even closer around him, until he was almost buried in them. I intended to prolong someone finding him and reporting it to the cops. Maybe somehow I would find out who this person was and why he had my name on him.
I realized I was sweating like hell, and that I was gone for a while and people in the bar would start to ask questions. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down, although my heartbeat almost went through the roof. The thought alone that the Falcons had found us was enough to make me hyperventilate.
But there was nothing more I could do right now. I power-walked to the back door. I kicked the brick away and went inside.
Once behind the bar again, Edie said, “What took you so long? I started to get worried.”
“I just took the trash out, Edie,” I said. “Nothing to get overly excited about.”
Oh, but how excited it all was. Excited and terrifying! I tried to hide it as best I could. Edie would probably flip knowing what I’d just discovered. But somebody else was going to discover the body sooner or later and report it. I just needed to do my best lying ever. Which wasn’t that hard to do, since I’d had a lifetime of practice.
Gran raised an eyebrow at me while my mind was running on steroids. It was like she knew that I knew something. How the hell did she do that?
“Everything good?” Gran asked me, making sure Edie was busy with something else. Like watching Cap Guy closely, who was again sitting at the bar, this time closer to her.
Needless to say, I would tell Gran what I just found, just not now. But it was hard to keep my mouth shut. It almost burst out of me.
“Everything good,” I said. “Just had a hard time opening that dumpster.”
Gran nodded but I had the feeling she already knew I was lying.
About ten minutes later, Edie decided to call a cab and go home. She told Gran and me to be careful when closing up and going out in the dark. I told Edie everything would be fine, and she shouldn’t worry that much. I was the one who worried now. Worried about the dead guy, worried about my name on that paper, worried about what it all meant.
Gran went outside with Edie to wait for her cab, because Edie was a scaredy-cat and wouldn’t wait for the cab alone on this street at night.
I got to working again and served some more drinks, but I was working on autopilot. The more I thought about what just happened, the more scenarios flashed in my mind. And they were all not good. It was like every scenario was more and more terrifying. And I had zero explanation about everything.
Gran came back inside and sat down on her barstool again.
“Did Edie get into the cab okay?” I asked her.
