Death by a 45 - a mystery thriller

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

 

 

The neon lights fought a valiant battle against the sunlight, but failed.

"When did you clean the windows?"

Jake Burbank sat on his stool at the end of the well worn bar and nursed a half tumbler full of amber whiskey.

This particular vintage was from Rock Town Distillery in Little Rock, up the road from where they were by forty five minutes or so, depending on the drive.

"Yesterday," Amber said to him.

She had introduced him to Rock Town, as she called it, as was her prerogative as owner of the bar and number one contact for any salesperson who stepped through the door, whether they represented liquor or credit card point of sales systems or the latest, a wave of knock off perfume salesmen staying at the Holiday Inn on the Interstate.

"You can tell?" she asked.

Amber was always busy doing something.

She had to be.

Working a bar was an exercise in manual labor and psychology.

There were always glasses to be cleaned, and though her little honky tonk was small, there were still three tables, a flat top grill, and accoutrements that went with it all.

Bar tools, cooking tools, eating tools.

She wasn't quite OCD, though that level of ability to attend detail would help. But she was a person who liked a clean place for her clientele to drink.

Jake squinted at the glass.

"I think I liked the tint better."

"That wasn't tint," she told him.

He made a gesture for a refill, then leaned across the bar to retrieve the bottle himself so she wouldn't have to stop wiping.

Plus, he was a little more generous with the pour than she might have been.

"It was smoke stains."

Jake took another sip of the Rock Town bourbon rolled it across his tongue.

"No one smokes in here."

She shook her head.

"They haven't been cleaned in that long?"

Again, the head shook.

"You're slacking."

She grinned and dropped her dirty bar rag into a bucket that would make it's way to the washing machine back at her place.  Amber replaced it with another.

"I thought it was tint too," she told him. "One accidental smudge told the truth."

Jake studied her small bar in the increased daylight leaking through the windows.

At the moment, it belonged to the two of them, but that was no surprise.

She opened the doors at eleven to start serving a very small lunch crowd who worked at the Court House and a few buildings around downtown, but the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the area was still under way.

Which kept the crowds to a minimum during the daytime, and that's the way Jake liked it.

Except, he mused, he liked it after dark too, when the neon flickered and the people inside were there for one reason.

Drinking.

It was his favorite pastime.

The door to the sidewalk cracked open and a head peeked in.

"Are you open yet?"

Which sounded meek coming from the man who made it.

Jake eyeballed Detective Travis and wondered at the source of meekness. The man had, after all, attempted to arrest him for murder, extortion and any other charge he could think of on more than one occasion.

Jake was his favorite suspect, and if he could lay all the sins of Pine Bluff on his feet, he would.

Amber waved the detective in and noted how he stared at Jake.

"I've got your bail money in the safe."

"I won't need it today," Jake faked a smile. "Will I Travis?"

The man moved across the clean wooden floors and fumbled himself up on the farthest stool away from Jake.

"I'm not here to arrest you," he mumbled.

"Are you here to eat or just take up space from my paying lunch crowd?" Amber spun a cardboard coaster in front of the man and waited.

He scanned the simple printed food menu taped over the row of bottles on the wall.

"Cheeseburger," he said.

"You want one?" Amber glanced at Jake as she retrieved patties from a refrigerator under the back bar.

Jake swirled the bourbon in her direction.

"I'm on a diet."

She put a hand on her hip.

"Did you eat last night?"

He tilted his head and considered the question for a moment, then shrugged. He didn't know.

"You had lunch yesterday," she put a second patty on the grill. "I know that cause I made it for you. Jesus Jake, man can't live on bourbon alone."

"Has anyone ever tried?" he cracked a smile.

"Yeah, you," she scraped a metal spatula under the sizzling meat and flipped it. The smell of burgers wafted through the tiny bar and his stomach gave a loud gurgle of pleasured anticipation that they all heard.

"Never heard your stomach growl for bourbon like that," Amber giggled.

"I guess I could eat," he snickered back.

Travis sat hunched over a bottle of beer, one hand holding the neck like he wanted to choke it, the other peeling the label into small shreds on the bar.

He glared at the bottle, glared at Jake, and took a deep breath, like he had reached a decision.

"I’m not here to arrest you," he growled and gripped the bottle tighter. "I'm here to hire you."