Double Shot (A Top Shelf Mystery) (Top Shelf Mysteries Book 4) Read online

  Copyright 2020 Laurel Heidtman

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ***

  All characters and locations in this work are fictional. Any resemblance to living persons or places is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  About the Author

  Books by the Author

  CHAPTER ON

  E

  You know that saying “when it rains, it pours?” Since it had only been a month since a man had died in my bar thanks to being poisoned, I think it’s safe to say that saying applies here. I mean, unless those two loud bangs that sounded just as Bubba Shot the Jukebox ended on the Top Shelf’s digital jukebox were actually firecrackers. Based on the surprised and worried looks on the faces of my customers, most didn’t believe someone was tossing M-80’s around the parking lot any more than I did. The few in denial changed their minds as we all heard shrill screaming outside the front door.

  In case this is your first time visiting the Top Shelf, my name is Ricki Fontaine. Well, it’s Erica Marie Fontaine to be exact, but I prefer Ricki. You’re in Waterton, Ohio, by the way, and probably surprised you ended up here. Join the crowd. I ended up here by way of New York City, and that’s not easy to do.

  About a year and a half ago, my uncle died of a heart attack and left me his bar, The Top Shelf. Trust me, it wasn’t as classy as its name made it sound. A more accurate name would have been Bucket of Blood, since Friday and Saturday nights usually ended in bleeding and cops. But that was the old Top Shelf. It no longer stands thanks to Mother Nature, but that’s too much to go into here, especially since someone is still screaming outside the door of the current Top Shelf.

  “Uh—Ricki? That sounded like…” Adam’s voice trailed off. Adam is my bartender, tenant, and surrogate brother. He’s also a wimp.

  “Gunshots? Yeah, it did. Call 9-1-1.”

  I lifted the hinged section at one end of the bar and started for the door.

  “Oh, Ricki, you’re not going out there, are you?”

  Ginny, my waitress, was frozen in place, her eyes bigger than the plates we use for burgers. She had a tray of drinks in her hands, but considering the way her hands were shaking, she wasn’t going to have them long. I put my hand on her shoulder and gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

  “Ginny, honey, set the tray down before you drop it. I’ll be okay. It’s probably just firecrackers. If it wasn’t—well, they’re long gone. Otherwise, they’d have shot that screamer, wouldn’t they?”

  “Oh, yeah. I didn’t think of that.”

  It was late on a Tuesday. We’d had a good crowd earlier, but most had already gone to their homes or someone else’s, and for that I was thankful. The ten or so still here were rooted in place and seemed more than happy to let me check on the gunshots—I was positive that’s what they were—and the screamer. Guess they figured I was the only person in the Shelf with experience with that sort of thing. They were wrong, of course. I had experience with ex-husbands killed with knives and customers who’d either drunk poison or had their heads bashed in with a whiskey bottle, but guns? Nope, not really. Well, maybe when they were being held on me…

  As I reached the front door and began to ease it open, I heard Adam telling the police dispatcher in a shaky voice that we needed the police at the Top Shelf.

  “I think someone’s been shot,” he said. “No, no, not in the Shelf. Outside. No, I don’t think it’s firecrackers. Because somebody’s screaming out there, that’s why.”

  I had pushed the door open just enough to squeeze through when something hit the door hard from the outside, smashing me between the door and the jamb, knocking the breath right out of me. The something—a woman I remembered as having just left the Shelf minutes before—was still screaming, and, boy, was she good at it! I pushed back enough to get through the opening, stepped out, and she collapsed in my arms.

  “They shot him!” she screamed the words in my left ear. “They killed him! Oh, my God, they killed Daniel!”

  She was hanging onto me with one arm and pointing with the other. I followed her extended finger to the prone man lying next to a silver Lexus with a shattered back passenger window. Blood was splattered down the passenger side of the car. I didn’t see any on the pavement around him, but I had a pretty good idea that was because his heart wasn’t pumping it out anymore.

  I knew the couple. Well, I didn’t really know them, but I remembered she liked white wine and he preferred bourbon whiskey straight. In fact, he’d ordered a double shot, which seemed creepily prescient. When they’d introduced themselves in the Shelf a half hour before, he’d told me his name was Daniel Fuller, and he was Waterton’s newest developer. He’d waxed rhapsodic about his plans for a luxury condo development that would overlook the river on the edge of town. I’d nodded and acted like I was listening when I really wasn’t. It’s a skill every good bartender should have. He’d introduced the screamer as his fiancée, Shelley Dean.

  “Shelley, right?” I said now, looking into her blue eyes. I remembered thinking Daniel, who hadn’t been the most handsome man in the world, had snagged himself a pretty woman, but Shelley wasn’t looking so pretty now. Her eyes were already starting to swell from crying, and a booger string hung from her right nostril. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “Shelley,” I said again when she nodded in response to my question. “What did you see? You said ‘they’ killed him. Did you see who?”

  She shook her head hard, and the end of the booger string broke off and landed on the front of my shirt. I tried not to flinch. After all, it wasn’t the worst thing that had landed on me since I’d become a bar owner.

  “I didn’t see them,” she managed to get out. “I think I heard a car, but then they started shooting and Daniel fell down and I…”

  She collapsed into me and began sobbing into my shoulder. I gritted my teeth as her tears soaked my shirt, fighting my inclination to push her away and run for my apartment. Not because I thought the shooters might still be
in the parking lot taking aim from behind a parked car but because I can’t stand to be around people when they’re crying. Anyone who knows me knows I believe crying in public should be added to the list of deadly sins. Sure, I know Shelley’s fiancé had just been murdered, but surely she could have saved the tears for later. It was bad enough I had a body in my parking lot and snot on my shirt.

  Okay, I know I sound hardhearted. For that matter, I am hardhearted, but it’s a defense mechanism. When things get unpleasant, I make tasteless jokes or simply shut off my better emotions. It’s worked for me all of my twenty-nine years, and I see no reason to change my MO now.

  In the distance I heard a siren. I let out a sigh of relief. The cavalry was coming.

  “Ricki?” It was Adam, his head sticking halfway out the door, his eyes sweeping the lot. I fought down the urge to shout “boo” just to see him jump. “You okay?”

  “I’m doing better than him.” I nodded toward the dead man and saw Adam’s face go pale.

  “Is he…?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  The sirens grew louder and separated into different tones. I’d heard enough of them since coming to Waterton to know that one was an ambulance, one was police, and the third was a fire truck. I’d asked Gabe once why a fire truck always showed up when an ambulance was called, and he said it was just in case extra help was needed. I’ve always suspected it’s because the guys and gals on the fire truck just like to play with the air horn.

  Thinking of Gabe made my gut clench. Gabriel Russell is a Waterton police detective, but he wouldn’t be showing up at this crime scene. Less than three weeks before he’d told me in this very parking lot that he didn’t think he could take being involved with me anymore and that he was leaving town for a few weeks to think things over. Since then I hadn’t heard one word from him—no phone calls, no texts, no bottles containing messages floating down the Ohio River from wherever he was.

  I shook my head. The poor woman in my arms had just watched her boyfriend die. It was no time for me to be thinking about killing mine—or maybe I should say, the man who used to be mine.

  A marked unit swung around the corner of Harrison onto Water Street, tires squealing, the flashing light bar on top making the buildings on the corner look like the wall of an eighties disco. The lights and siren shut off as the driver turned onto the paved drive leading across the end of the park to the Shelf’s lot. An ambulance followed a few car lengths behind, pulled to a stop, and two paramedics jumped out and ran to Daniel Fuller. I thought about calling out that they didn’t need to hurry but decided that would be tacky.

  They’d just reached him and kneeled at his side when the fire truck turned off McKinley a block farther down. The sudden silence as all the sirens shut off made me feel like I’d gone deaf—but, no, I could still hear Shelley sobbing into my shirt. Dang! I really wished she’d stop that.

  “Uh, Ricki? What should we do about the customers?”

  Adam had stepped all the way out now that protection had arrived. It kind of hurt my feelings that he hadn’t thought I was enough protection, but considering some of the situations I’d found myself in lately, I really couldn’t blame him.

  “I don’t think we should let them leave,” I said. “The police are going to want to talk to them. Offer them a round on the house. That’ll keep ‘em happy. And whatever you do, don’t let them come out here.”

  “Sure thing.” He nodded, looking relieved that he didn’t have to stand outside looking at the dead guy. Or maybe he didn’t want to be around a crying woman either. If I’d thought in time, I’d have handed Shelley off to him and gone inside to pass out the alcohol bribe.

  One of the two uniformed officers went to confer with the three firemen who were manning the truck while the other headed my way. I’d seen both of them around town and at the police station, but I didn’t know either of their names. The one who stopped in front of Shelley and me was a few inches taller than my five feet nine inches. He was kind of cute in a hale and hearty farm boy kind of way that included sun-streaked brown hair, brown eyes, wide shoulders, and an aw-shucks grin that he quickly wiped off his face as he realized smiling under the circumstances was inappropriate. Shelley’s face was still buried in my soaked shoulder, so she didn’t notice. His nametag announced he was R. Williams.

  “Ms. Fontaine, right?” he said to me. “You reported the incident?”

  “My bartender did. But I told him to after we heard the shots and Shelley screaming.” I prodded Shelley away from my shoulder and turned her to face R. Williams. “This is Shelley.”

  Just like that I went blank on her last name, but then I thought I could be allowed a memory slip. Between my boyfriend getting fed up with me and leaving town and two murders in twice that many weeks, it was a miracle I remembered my own name, much less the name of a woman I’d just met that evening.

  “I’m Officer Williams, ma’m,” R. Williams said to Shelley in a soothing voice. “I’m sorry to have to bother you at a time like this, but do you know the man there?”

  He nodded his head in the direction of Daniel Fuller and the paramedics. I noticed they had already stood up and were talking, making no move to load Fuller onto a gurney. I knew enough about crime scenes to know that they’d wait for the detectives to tell them it was okay to take the body.

  “He’s—oh, God, he’s my fiancé! Daniel!”

  The last came out as a wail. I winced, but I saw a look of sympathy pass over R. Williams’s face. I hazarded a guess that he hadn’t been on the force long. The ones who had tended to be stone-faced when confronted with grief. Detachment is a form of self-preservation, too.

  “Daniel. And his last name?” he asked Shelley in a gentle voice.

  “Fuller.” She managed to get it out between sobs.

  “And your full name?”

  She told him, and he jotted the information down.

  “Did you see what happened, Ms. Dean?”

  “Oh, God, yes—no—not exactly. We were walking to the car and there were shots and Daniel just fell and the car window broke and…and…”

  Shelley started crying again. Adam took that moment to stick his head out the door again, and I whispered to him to get some napkins for Shelley. He gave me a sympathetic look and hurried back inside. Adam knows how much I hate to be around crying, but while I appreciated the sympathy, I’d have appreciated him volunteering to take my place more.

  “Did you see anyone when the shots happened?”

  Shelley shook her head.

  “I just heard them. I didn’t know what they were until Daniel…until he…”

  “I understand,” R. Williams said. “But try to think back for a minute. When you first stepped out of Ms. Fontaine’s establishment”—he gave me a little smile—“did you notice anyone else in the lot? Or maybe a car idling? Someone in the park—or just anything that didn’t look right?”

  Shelley stopped crying as she tried to remember what she had seen when she came out the door. While she thought, Adam stepped back out, handed me a wad of napkins, and stepped back inside. I peeled a few off the top and handed them to Shelley.

  “Thank you,” she managed in a strained whisper. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and then shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. I can’t think of anything, but I wasn’t looking around either. Danny and I were talking—he was saying how much he liked this place”—she waved her hand at the Shelf and managed to give me a weak smile—“and how he thought Waterton was going to be good for us. Then there were those bangs and…”

  She began sobbing again. R. Williams turned to me.

  “Did you see anything?”

  “Nope, sorry. I was inside working.”

  “What about anyone who left around the same time Mr. Fuller and Ms. Dean did?”

  “No one,” I said. “We haven’t been very busy for the last couple of hours. I think the last person to leave—I mean, before Shelley and her fiancé—was at least an hour ago.”


  “Who was that?”

  “I don’t know his last name, but his first name is Steve and he’s a professor at OU. He lives in town.”

  Ohio University is slightly less than an hour’s drive from Waterton. About the time I came to town, Waterton had started attracting the attention of some of the professors and staff who preferred living in a town that wasn’t overrun with drunk teens just learning to be adults. More than a few of those Waterton newcomers had become regulars at the Shelf since they already knew how to be drunk adults.

  “Adam might know his last name,” I added, “but I doubt he’s got anything to do with this. He left before Shelley and Mr. Fuller came in.”

  I saw headlights turn off Harrison onto Water Street, and as the vehicle moved under a street lamp, I recognized it as the silver Ford Fusion hybrid that Lenny and Gabe drove. My gut clenched again. I wondered how long it would be before I’d stop having physical reactions every time something reminded me of Gabe.

  The unmarked pulled to a stop at the edge of the parking lot. Lenny got out of the driver’s side and Ted Carter unrolled his long, lanky frame out of the passenger side. Although I’d seen Carter around, I hadn’t met him until he’d interrogated me after the pre-party collapse of the Shelf’s last dead guy. Lenny Passwater, on the other hand, had been a regular in my life since I’d come to town. We hadn’t liked each other at first. He’d thought I was a cold-blooded murderer, and I’d thought he was a weasel with an awful last name, but after my innocence was confirmed and he got a good look at Ginny, everything changed. He and Ginny had become inseparable, and I hoped it would stay that way. They both deserved it. But since Gabe and I had once been inseparable and now we weren’t, I no longer felt sure of anything.

  “Hey, Ricki,” Lenny said. He glanced at the door and back at me. He didn’t have to voice his question—he wanted to know if Ginny was okay. I nodded slightly and gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile and saw him relax. He turned to R. Williams. “Ron?”

  The three of them moved off to the side where Officer Williams filled them in on what little he’d learned so far from talking to Shelley and me. It didn’t take long. Lenny said something to Carter, and the latter headed in the direction of Daniel Fuller’s body and the paramedics. Lenny turned to me.