Chapter 35 #2
“We ruled her out, did we not?”
“I will grant you that if Sully thinks that list is complete, I’m inclined to believe him. I knew Sully pretty well in high school. He’s very detail-oriented. Still, we have the guest lists to go over.”
“Tell me, is barkeep Kip’s tavern around here? I am ready to see him.”
“Wait, what? What are you going to say? We can’t tip him off that he’s a suspect until we know more. You’re not thinking of cornering him, are you? We still have five days!”
“You say you want more information. Cornered prey sometimes offers things up without being asked.”
“I feel like that’s a way to say that you want to toy with your food.”
“It is one of the best parts of the hunt. What’s more, it is my understanding that you can look at these lists of Sloane’s anywhere once you insert the thumb thing into your electronic ledger.”
“We should at least wait until we see what’s in the picture before confronting anyone. If Sloane can get it from her BFF soon,” she adds bitterly.
“What happened between you two?”
“Asked and answered: none of your business.”
“It is my business if it affects your duties.”
“I don’t see my past with Sloane as being germane to my duties.”
“It’s germane if your overlord says it’s germane. You were friends once.”
“And now we’re not,” she says. “Look, you know what I’m thinking? I could use a beer. Or two. Maybe three. Let’s see if Kip is at his bar.”
A clumsy ploy to redirect my attention, but I allow it.
She wants to keep her secrets. I can understand that.
Information can always be used against a person; I am pleased that this Renfield understands this.
Indeed, I regret much of what I told Algernon, Duke of Densmere, for that very reason—though he paid dearly for it, and will again, should he ever crawl out of whatever sordid, velvet-draped den he’s hiding in.
It comes to me that he hasn’t made his presence known for some decades now.
Unsettling.
Algernon rarely stays quiet this long. He usually finds a way to slither into my affairs by now. Baroque sabotage is his art form. He doesn’t lash out; he orchestrates.
Not twenty minutes later, we’re on barstools at a tavern called the Muddy Pint.
The place was built too close to the river, and the walls brag about it—photographs of past floods lined up in frames, each one showing the water covering the floors.
The years are scrawled beneath, like tally marks in a long, unfortunate game.
“It is so strange how humans crow about their follies.”
“It shows they got through something together,” Ms. Renfield says.
“Hey there!” A young barmaid sets a napkin in front of each of us. She greets Ms. Renfield like an old acquaintance, but her wide-eyed gaze keeps straying back to me. Instinct warns her to keep her distance even as something in her wants to step closer.
She pours us two beers and sets them in front of us.
“Is barkeep Kip Kidderson here tonight?” I ask.
She straightens. Surprised, perhaps, that she’s being addressed by me. “No, he went off on his Harley. It could be a while.”
I nod. She scurries off.
Ms. Renfield takes a big drink of her beer and smacks her lips. “Aah!”
She then proceeds to write on her electronic ledger with her white pencil, working diligently.
She seems troubled, even a bit wild—I suspect it’s her interaction with Sloane.
She reads, white pencil hovering, then presses the end of it to her lower lip, breathing around it, thinking, that clever brow drawn tight. When she moves the pencil away, there’s a glossy crescent of red from her lips.
Then she puts it back between her lips.
I blink, watching.
All of a sudden, she pulls it out and taps on the screen. Her expression brightens a bit.
She likes what she sees.
She truly is formidable in her own way. I try not to smile, remembering how she yelled at the biker gang.
It’s called a muffler! Look into it!
“Okay, then!” She taps her ledger with a flourish and then turns it to me.
Four names are displayed. “These are the people who were at all of the weddings. We’re going to have to add these names to our suspect list. Though some of the sabotage incidents required access prior to the ceremony, so they’re still a little iffy as suspects.”
“Then why did we go through all the trouble to get these lists?”
“For this reason.” She taps some more and then presents me with another list. “Vendors who were guests. For example, Bo Richardson was a guest at the confetti cannon wedding. I’m going to have to add him to my spreadsheet.
That wedding was photographed by Roy LaRue and a freelance assistant, but we can add Bo in there as a guest.”
“But there are other accident weddings where he wasn’t present.”
“Well, it’s a data point. Our picture is becoming clearer, even if it hasn’t shown us the killer yet. All the little data points will reveal our killer.”
She switches beers with me and drinks from mine, then does more screen tapping.
At one point, she stops and looks over at me. “You love to sit still and stare daggers into nothingness, don’t you?”
“I’m not staring daggers, and it’s not nothingness. It’s a wall of signs and bottles.”
“But isn’t it boring just to look over and over at the same thing?”
“It is my way,” I say.
She mumbles something about a cure for squirrel brain and keeps poking around in the file. “Check this out! Harlan was invited to all but one of the weddings.”
“People do not like Harlan,” I observe. “They invite him to show fealty.”
Ms. Renfield’s eyes sparkle, and in the light of the beer signs, you can see the gold threaded through the brown, like trapped flame. “I say we don’t invite him to our fake wedding, darling.”
The drink is indeed affecting her.
“It really is weird that Harlan warned Serena like that,” she says. “Did he think that would make her tell me to stop? He really doesn’t like us investigating. Very suspicious. I would love it if he turned out to be the killer.”
“Because you don’t like his wealth?” I ask. “Or because you don’t like that he stifled the curtain fire investigation?”
“I don’t like the way he throws his weight around. The way he tries to bulldoze people.”
“People like Chief Knox?”
“That’s just one example. He’s also trying to build this residential office complex on the river, where there’s currently a park that everybody loves. People keep voting it down, and he keeps bringing it back up. Such a jerk.”
“He showed his hand with that warning,” I say. “He is up to something.”
The barmaid comes by, and Ms. Renfield asks for a glass of water. The barmaid puts it down on a little napkin.
“So, how do you like working here?” she asks the girl.
“It’s fine.”
“Kip seems like he’d be a fun person to work for.”
“He’s fun enough,” she says, wiping down the counter. “I mean, as much fun as a boss can be. A boss is a boss.”
Ms. Renfield points her thumb at me. “Don’t I know?”
The barmaid looks alarmed. “I didn’t mean all bosses.”
“I am not her boss. I am her overlord.”
The barmaid smiles uncertainly.
“There. You see what I’m dealing with?”
“I understand Mr. Kidderson is quite the motorcycle aficionado,” I say.
“You have no idea.” The barmaid shakes her head darkly.
“You’re not a fan?” Ms. Renfield says.
“I got no problem with motorcycles. It’s some of the dudes who ride them I’m not a fan of.”
I lean in. “What do you mean?”
She glances around and lowers her voice.
“You know. The Snag Tooth Riders? Kip gets really excited when they come in here. He’s even been encouraging it, but they completely suck.
They make a mess. They do not tip. They scare the tourists who actually do tip, and they take up all the good tables—and all the best parking spaces. ”
“I guess I have been seeing motorcycles here a lot this spring,” Ms. Renfield says. “Why do you think he encourages it? Considering it’s so bad for business.”
“He’s into them. He’s always talking about how he’d like to wear the colors and knock some heads around and all that. You see that nachos item on the menu up there? The Widowmaker nachos?”
Ms. Renfield squints at the menu posted on the wall. “Double-fried tortilla chips layered with smokehouse brisket, pork belly burnt ends, and crumbled hot sausage with an American cheese drizzle and bacon fat crema. Whoa.”
“Gross, right? He created that for them. It’s their favorite thing ever, and it’s disgusting. They get it all over their beards. We’re talking bacon fat crema here. I don’t even know what bacon fat crema is or where Kip gets it. The normal restaurant supply place would never have that.”
She grabs a napkin and heads down to the other end of the bar.
Ms. Renfield turns to me, eyes bright. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I think you’re thinking about the stairway collapse. Most of the villagers blame it on this Snag Tooth Riders motorcycle gang.”
“Yes.” She smiles conspiratorially. “But what if it’s the Snag Tooth Riders’ biggest superfan who wants to be in their club? Maybe he thought if he killed the mayor or deputy mayor on their behalf, they’d let him in?”
“But what about the accidents before that?”
“Maybe he was responsible for the sabotage all along and decided this latest one was for what he saw as a good cause?”
I consider this. “There was a man during the Wallachian campaigns—Iancu of Moldavia. He wanted to defect to the Ottomans, but they didn’t trust him. So he began delivering heads—their enemies’ heads. Left them on pikes at the enemy gates. As proof of worth.”
“Proof of worth,” she murmurs. “Did it work?”
“No. They killed him.”
She laughs. “That’s not even funny! But it is.”
I tilt my head. “What, precisely, does a motorcycle gang do?”
“They brawl. They drink too much. They hook up with each other’s girlfriends and ride around acting like they’re in high school. They sell drugs and guns and apparently eat gross nachos.”
I push my glass away. “Kip would not want to join a gang such as that.”
She blinks. “What do you mean? He’s clearly doing everything he can to get in with them.”
“Kip’s the sort of man who wants the look of belonging. He wants to orbit danger; he does not want to live it.”
Ms. Renfield’s eyes shine, and she taps a forefinger upon her faintly smiling lips, something she does when pieces of our puzzle come together. She really is so different from past Renfields, who would just seem relieved when something went their way.
“Thoughts?” I ask.
“I’m thinking you’re right. Kip is one hundred percent not the brawling type. And he’s not a giant beard guy, either. He’s a fashionable-stubble guy who wants a whiff of danger, but not the actual danger. Not an actual beard.”
I nod.
“But that doesn’t rule him out. Maybe he did it as a favor to the gang.”
I meet her gaze. “If Kip is our saboteur, then he’s no fool.
He’s gotten away with it this long, which suggests a healthy sense of self-preservation and calculation.
If he caused the stairs to collapse as a favor to the gang, he would have to let them know he did it.
A careful man like that does not confide his crimes to a pack of drunken brawlers who owe him no loyalty. ”
She toys with her necklace pendant, a small gold key. “Good point. He’s a showboater. Snag Tooth guys eating nachos in his bar is probably gang-adjacent enough for him.”
“He could still be our culprit, of course,” I say, thinking again of his rapt expression. “He loves a show.”
Ms. Renfield calls the barmaid over and asks if Kip ever went to the Friday night fights out at the Snag Tooth Riders’ farm.
“Oh yeah. He loved them,” she says.
“Was he upset when Fight Nights got shut down?” Ms. Renfield asks.
“Very.” The barmaid wanders off to serve another customer.
Ms. Renfield takes a sip of beer and then licks a stray bit of foam from her lips. “So maybe he targeted the mayor as an anonymous favor to the Snag Tooth Riders but didn’t intend to ever let them know.”
“Perhaps,” I say.
She lowers her voice. “If that’s what happened, it backfired, because he kind of got them in trouble. Everybody really does think it’s them.”