Bar none a piper harris.., p.1
Bar None (A Piper Harris Mystery, Volume 3), page 1
Bar None
by
Deany Ray
Copyright © 2023 Deany Ray
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real names, characters, places, events, and incidents is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise without prior consent from the author.
www.deanyray.com
Before You Start . . .
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Other books by Deany Ray
Piper Harris Mystery Series – Novels
Coming in Hot
Fool Me Once
Bar None
Hailey Webb Mystery Series - Novels
Hot Off the Press
Act it Out
Off Target
Dead Man’s Float
Pretty Dead
The Hailey Webb Mysteries: Volumes 1-3
Charlie Cooper Mystery Series - Novels
Jammed
Pickled
Diced
Glazed
Dazzled
Berried
Juiced
Truffled
The Charlie Cooper Mysteries: Volumes 1-3
The Charlie Cooper Mysteries: Volumes 4-6
Jingled (A Charlie Cooper Christmas Short Story)
Ouna Bay Cozy Mystery - Novellas
A Sweet Chunk of Madness
Vanilla Bean Murder
Cake Contest Murder
Peanut Butter Crumble Murder
Ouna Bay Cozy Mystery Box Set (4-Book Bundle)
CONTENTS
Before You Start . . .
Other books by Deany Ray
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter One
The witness protection program is serious business. And I mean dead serious. One slipup and you’re out. One screwup and you’re dead.
Thankfully, I was still alive.
But oh, so very close to really screwing up.
I was leaning against the counter and polishing a glass. The same glass for five minutes now, while I was staring at the floor at nothing in particular. But I was thinking. I was processing. I was feeling a pang of nostalgia deep in my soul that almost hurt. But isn’t it always like this with nostalgia? It always hurts, doesn’t it?
Not too long ago, I was standing behind the counter at my favorite bar, Choppers. Not only was it my favorite bar, but it was also the place I used to work at. That was in Oregon, where my home was. I spent almost my entire adult life working at Choppers, mixing up the best cocktails, dealing with rowdies and putting them straight, and also being responsible for the books. What I did with those books was my little secret. Let’s just say any business that can take in a lot of cash is perfect for laundering said cash. Getting money in and getting it out clean on the other side.
It was a good life that I enjoyed back home in Oregon. I loved the coolness of the mountains, I loved my family and friends, and I loved the freedom that I had. And believe you me—I had a lot more freedom than anyone could imagine.
Until I got yanked out of that dream life.
Fifteen months later, here I was. At the polar-opposite end of my previous life. Well, except for the fact that I was now again working at a bar. But other than that, I couldn’t have conjured up my current life even in my worst nightmare.
Together with my grandmother, I entered WITSEC, the witness protection program. The program is no joke. I firmly believed it took a bigger toll on your mind and soul than working as a SWAT team member.
First of all, you didn’t get any preparation time. Nobody sent you a notice that you were going to enter the program in one year, or in six months, or whatever deadline. It just happened. From one second to the other.
I was in my home, cooking meatballs, nice and crispy meatballs, when three US marshals burst in, almost making me have a heart attack. They explained in two sentences that my grandmother had been arrested, that we had to go, that blah blah blah. I didn’t quite get what they were saying. I was sure we were going to get Gran, and I needed bail money for her. In retrospect, I should have known how serious the situation was. I mean, the US Marshals came to my house. Not some regular cops who wouldn’t have even dared to come knocking.
So anyway, the marshals told me we had to leave at that exact moment. Literally. Their body language exuded urgency as well. They weren’t calm. Not at all. They twitched, their eyes darted left and right; one of them even looked out the window from behind the curtains, as if to see if anybody was out there. Watching us.
I guessed I was too shocked to realize it was a whopper of a situation. Not that I would have done anything else, even if I understood immediately how serious the situation was. What would I have done? Throw knives at the US Marshals? Shoot them? I couldn’t have afforded that.
But boy oh boy, I would have sure shot them later on. When I found out what my life was going to look like from that moment on. It was like this: Gran got arrested for tax evasion and money laundering. But since she had coveted membership in the motorcycle club, Oregon Falcons, who didn’t exactly play by the rules of the law, Gran was offered a deal. Testify against the Falcons and skip jail time. However, testifying against the Falcons was like testifying against the mob. You would have to have a death wish. Sure, your testimony puts a couple of the big guys from the upper ladder in jail, but the others would finish you off. Even those bigger guys had medium guys who did the dirty laundry for them. Didn’t matter that they were in prison.
In conclusion, Gran was offered a new life in exchange for her testimony. A new identity, a new location to live, everything all shiny and new. Since I lived with Gran in the same house and I was a member of the Falcons as well, I had to go with her. It was clear what would have happened if I stayed behind. The Falcons would have used me and hurt me to get to Gran. Typical mob approach. Which we kind of were.
So after thirteen months of hiding out in motel rooms all over the country while the trial was happening, Gran and I were relocated to Bitter End in Florida. I couldn’t decide what was worse: the irony of the name or the location itself. I hated the heat. Gran hated the heat. This would have been the last place I'd have chosen to hide out. Which was exactly why this place was chosen for us. Absolutely no one from our former lives would ever think to look for us here because of this reason.
We were even asked at some point where we'd like to be relocated. Our answer was somewhere up north, where the air was crisp and the scent of the Douglas firs smelled like Christmas. But the marshals did their homework. They knew who they were dealing with. They knew what we liked and what we disliked. They knew they couldn’t relocate us somewhere with sixty degrees max, as per our request. The reason was that there was a good chance Gran and I had mentioned some of our favorite places to someone in our past, making it more probable for someone to find us there. Obviously, everyone in our former lives knew we hated the heat.
So we got relocated to Florida. Which is when I almost went to jail voluntarily.
“I think that glass is pretty clean now,” a voice said and brought me back to reality. The voice was deep, gruff, and had a hint of a Brooklyn accent.
I looked up and saw the only other person in the bar besides me. The only patron. He was sitting at a high table in a corner of the barely lit room, hugging his huge glass of beer and sipping. He looked to be in his fifties, but he didn’t exactly inspire a healthy lifestyle, so he could have been thirty-five, for all I knew.
He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt in a busy pattern, the color of mustard with brown. He had way too many buttons loose, showing off a bit of cleavage. Hairy cleavage. He was wearing blue slacks that matched zero with his shirt and had on brown pointy and shiny dress shoes. His hair was dark brown and slicked back. He had a Mediterranean complexion. When he ordered the beer at the counter a while ago, I thought I saw the glimpse of a front-tooth gap. I saw that he had a small, round, silver earring in his left lobe, and a golden, chunky necklace around his neck. Surprisingly, the necklace matched the manly, shiny watch on his wrist. Also surprisingly, he didn’t wear any bracelets.
All in all, he looked like a pimp.
Which didn’t surprise me, considering where we were.
“Gee, thanks for stating the obvious,” I replied to Cleavage Guy.
One week ago, I took a job at this dive bar. I was their newest bartender. I had the skills, and I knew what I was doing. But I didn’t want to do it. Taking this job was more out of necessity. The financial typ
e of necessity. Like there was any other.
WITSEC offers their members, aka the witnesses, monthly subsistence checks. In layman’s terms, the government paid for my living expenses. All of them. Which was totally ironic, considering where I was coming from and what my rap sheet was. But anyway, rules were rules. The problem was, the government wouldn’t deal out the cash forever. At some point, I needed to get a job, play the lottery, stumble into a truckload of money—do anything to sustain myself financially.
Which was easier said than done. Which brought me back to that horrendous toll on my soul. I was in a funk. A deep funk. Leaving your life as you know it behind, knowing you are not allowed to ever go back, starting somewhere new under the guise of being someone else, left a person absolutely drained. It scarred that person forever. It would be impossible to just carry on like nothing happened.
I felt the pressure of finding a job but I just couldn’t go out and look for one. I felt worse, as a matter of fact.
Until one week ago, when I realized money was running out. And the one thing I knew best was bartending and handling the bar scene.
It was pure luck that I found this place, Ginny’s. Well, luck was a bit exaggerated. After what happened to Gran and me, I could always roll my eyes at the word luck. But I was aimlessly driving around town, trying to figure out what to do for a job. I didn’t even know what employment websites there were out there to search for a job. I knew absolutely nothing about the subject. I never had to really look for a job. It was always kind of . . . there.
I was cruising down Amherst Street in a not-so-fancy part of town, when I saw a sign on a black wooden door that read, We’re Hiring. The front of the place was black, kind of looked like black wooden tiles, and the windows were blackened out as well. Above the door there was a neon Open sign flickering, as if on its last legs. If it weren’t for the sign, I’d have said the place was abandoned.
The building the bar was in—a three-story-high nondescript chunk of concrete—as well as the buildings next to it, were worn and dingy, with peeling paint and cracked cement steps leading to the entrance.
Jackpot.
I immediately hit the brakes and double-parked. Although I didn’t have the desire to start another job as a bartender, I also felt an instinct pulling me to that bar. It felt familiar.
So I marched inside, spoke to the owner, Paddy Snyder—a sixty-six-year-old gaffer who owned the bar since forever and named it after his wife, Ginny. He raised an eyebrow over his lowered reading glasses and looked me up and down. I understood his reaction. What did a woman of thirty-one want working here? Was she totally delusional?
No, I was not. Little did the man know what experience I brought with me. So I showed him. That night, I worked behind the bar for a couple of hours. I felt a bit rusty at first—who wouldn’t after not working for the last fifteen months—but it all came back to me pretty quickly. It was like riding a bike. I got the hang of where everything was, fast: gin bottle here, vodka bottle there, beer tap in the middle, ice and lemon slices placed with logic and in reach so you didn’t have to turn around a million times to get to them. That would waste valuable seconds that added up when the place was packed, and everybody wanted a drink.
Paddy hired me on the spot.
I wasn’t sure how long I would be working there, though. But what other job would I do?
So here I was, on my third shift of the week. It was 6:00 p.m. on a Thursday in October. Ginny’s just opened so I expected a fuller crowd only later on. Cleavage Guy came in two minutes after I unlocked the front door. That was the thing with showing how competent you were. Sometimes you skipped a few levels and went straight to the owner-giving-you-the-key-to-the-damn-place level. That and there was no one else to do it. Paddy was short on staff.
Besides, he lived in the same building, above the bar. There was something about the proximity that made people feel safer and more trustworthy toward other people.
I placed the clean glass next to the others on a rag on the counter and picked up another one from the sink. Then I leaned back and started polishing again, slowly, glancing in the direction of Cleavage Guy. He sneered and took another swig of his beer.
It was either keeping this place super clean, or continuing scribbling doodles on every matchbox in the bar. Which was not so easy to do, considering the lighting in the place. The inside of the bar looked kind of exactly what you would expect it to look like after seeing the front. Dark wood, no sunlight, scratched walls . . . the perfect definition of a dive bar.
The door swung open, letting the remaining daylight sweep inside for just a few seconds, before the door shut closed again. A woman and a man in their forties stepped inside, guffawing and chattering away with evident merriment.
Whoa. Seemed like they already came from a party.
The man had salt-and-pepper hair that looked like it had never seen a comb. He wore a pair of faded jeans and a faded T-shirt over his prominent beer belly. The woman was taller than him and wore a dark-green short skirt combined with a black short-sleeve shirt. She had dirty blonde hair that was up in a messy bun. She was dressed like she just came from an office, but weirdly, I sensed she was more low-class, only pretending to be higher class.
“Jesus, it’s dark in here,” the woman said, squinting.
“Don’t worry, darling, I’ll protect you,” the man said and tickled the sides of her waist. She laughed and swatted his hands away.
They both took a seat at the bar, and he helped her get on the barstool. She was pulling down at her short skirt and leaning toward him.
Clearly, they were both a bit tipsy. Probably she was more than him.
Cleavage Guy did not look happy. Probably figured his evening alone was disturbed, so he pulled out his phone and started scrolling.
The lovebird man raised his finger, looking for me, just as I made my way to them.
“Hi, what can I get ya?” I asked.
“I’ll have a beer, whatever you have on tap, and for the lady”—he turned and grinned at her, then turned back around to face me—“a Sex on the Beach.”
She giggled and gave him a light slap on his arm.
I inwardly rolled my eyes.
The man reached for a cigarette behind his ear and patted his chest pocket. “Say, where’s my lighter?”
“There’s no smoking in here,” I said to him and nodded to the door. “Only outside.”
He gave me a dark stare and gruffed.
I grabbed a matchbox from the counter and threw it to him. “Here.”
His look of dismay hadn’t changed as he slipped his cigarette back behind his ear and the matchbox in his chest pocket.
I started making the cocktail and added a second orange slice as glass-garnish. Then I drew the man’s beer to perfection and placed the drinks before them.
The man took a sip and scrunched his face up in disgust.
“What is this crap?” he asked. “Gimme a real beer.”
I raised an eyebrow. “This is a real beer,” I said. “It’s an ale. I can give you a lager if you wish.”
“Yeah, whatever, gimme one of those,” he said, dismissively.
I sure wanted to give it to him. But then I thought that causing bloodshed in my first work week was not the best way to go.
I drew him another beer and placed it in front of him. Then I waited for him to try it.
He took a long guzzle and shrugged. “Only marginally better.” He threw down some dollar bills on the counter in a disgusted way, then he ignored me again and turned his attention back to the woman.
“Oh, boobie, you’re bad,” the woman giggled and slapped his thigh this time.
Yeah, boobie was bad all right.
This time I rolled my eyes for real and moved a few feet to the other end of the bar, leaving the lovebirds doing their thing. I picked up another glass to polish. Cleavage Guy was still scrolling through his phone, looking up at the nauseating couple every now and then.
Fifteen minutes later, the woman and the man were still chatting and giggling and only had eyes for each other. They were nose to nose, flirting. The woman kept touching his hand or arm, and the man’s hand flew to her waist now and then.
