Wrecked by Rum Read online

  Wrecked by Rum

  Bohemia Bartenders Mysteries, Book 2

  Lucy Lakestone

  Velvet Petal Press

  Copyright © 2020 by Lucy Lakestone

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters and places are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance they may have to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Cover design: Sky Diary Productions

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  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-943134-24-3

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  First edition

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  Velvet Petal Press, P.O. Box 922, Cocoa, Florida 32923

  Learn more about the author at LucyLakestone.com

  Contents

  About the Book

  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

  Acknowledgments

  Cocktail Recipe

  Books by Lucy Lakestone

  About the Author

  When rum collectors collide …

  When mixologist Pepper Revelle joins the Bohemia Bartenders for what promises to be an entertaining, rum-soaked tiki convention in sultry South Florida, she expects divine ukuleles, sublime swizzles and a chance to know chief bartender Neil a little better. What she gets is chaos — the death of a high-profile rum collector, a cast of sneaky suspects and ten thousand limes to squeeze.

  With one of their own under suspicion, Pepper and Neil set out to find the real killer. But behind the aloha shirts and cocktail parasols is a blender full of secrets. The centerpiece of the convention is a high-dollar tasting of rums that survived a shipwreck and other disasters, and when a precious bottle vanishes from the crime scene, everyone with a ticket is a suspect.

  As Pepper tries to keep the insatiable crowd inebriated and her gregarious dog Astra sober, she finds peril under every palm tree. It seems like everybody’s guilty of something. But who’s guilty of murder? And can she and Neil find the culprit before they’re smacked like the mint in a Mai Tai?

  Wrecked by Rum is the second book in the Bohemia Bartenders Mysteries, funny whodunits with a dash of romance set in a convivial collective of cocktail lovers, eccentrics and mixologists. These cozy culinary comedies contain a hint of heat, a splash of cursing and shots of laughter, served over hand-carved ice.

  The book is dedicated to the tiki 'ohana,

  for your creativity, cocktails, clothes, music,

  and especially your spirit of aloha.

  Mahalo!

  1

  While I looked forward to making rum cocktails at an unpronounceable tiki convention in Fort Lauderdale, I wasn’t fully prepared for a three-hour road trip with the man I couldn’t get out of my head, his lovesick employee and a flatulent dog.

  Neil, the leader of the Bohemia Bartenders, drove his roomy SUV through South Florida’s bonkers traffic the way he did everything else, with cool, calm confidence. That cool was getting to me. On our recent adventure in New Orleans, we’d had a few moments of heat, but they’d all ended up being shaken and chilled over ice. Probably because they’d happened between moments of attempted murder and mayhem.

  That was behind us now, though I still had the leather cord with the alligator tooth wrapped around my wrist, a good-luck token from a voodoo priestess that I hoped would get me through Hookahakaha with nothing more perilous than a hangover.

  “Hey, Pepper. Tell me again why Melody is riding with Barclay?” Luke asked from the back seat, which he shared with my dog.

  “She said she wanted to talk over rums with Barclay, plus she likes his car.” Barclay drove a slick old BMW convertible and was a rum nut.

  “I guess that’s reasonable. He’s a walking rum master class.” Luke’s glum tone belied his words. With his good looks, including shoulder-length, gold-streaked brown hair and tropical tattoos, he could have snagged just about any woman he wanted. Thing is, I was pretty sure he wanted Melody, a knockout blonde and one of my best friends.

  Luke worked for Neil at The Junction Box, one of Bohemia’s favorite craft cocktail bars. I was co-owner of Nola, a New Orleans-themed bar in our coastal Florida town. Barclay worked at a hipster bar in mainland Bohemia and Melody at a crappy hotel bar in Bohemia Beach, where she was the only one who knew what a muddler was.

  Together, we were the Bohemia Bartenders, a group of elite (if I do say so myself) mixologists who went to events and made amazing drinks. As the newest member, I was just happy to be here, even if we did have a ton of work ahead of us at the tiki convention.

  “And what the hell did you feed your dog this morning?” Luke added as Astra, an adorable caramel-and-white cavapoo, grinned up at him with her tongue wagging and released another fart. It wafted throughout the car like an invisible dirigible, bounced about by the vents blasting AC in the eternal struggle against Florida’s June heat.

  “I fed her her normal gourmet dog food. My aunt wouldn’t have it any other way.” I neglected to mention that Astra had jumped up on my chair and snatched half of my eggs and bacon from the table when I was distracted by a phone call this morning. Her vapors were even more painful for me, given my nose had superpowers.

  “What are you going to do with her while we’re working?” Neil asked. Was he annoyed with me? I didn’t find out till last night that my aunt was flying off to some natural healing conference in Arizona for the week and couldn’t watch Astra. Or maybe I selectively forgot her telling me that. Aunt Celestine and I lived in adjoining halves of a duplex and shared custody of the dog, but I’d been hyper-focused on my business as Nola launched a new food menu.

  “My partner at Nola said his younger sister would watch Astra while we’re busy,” I said. “She’s a software genius in Miami with tons of vacation to burn, so it all worked out. I had to give up the tower room and book a double by the pool to accommodate both of us and the dog, but the hotel didn’t mind. There’s a waiting list for the tower rooms.”

  “Hmm,” Neil said. “That’s too bad. I have a tower room.”

  I looked at him sharply. Was he suggesting that it might be convenient for my room to be near his?

  “They have great views from up there,” he continued. “You can see the Intracoastal and the city from one side and the ocean from the other.”

  Ah. He was talking about views. Not us. Not that there was an us.

  I had to remember that Neil had been preoccupied lately, too. His grandfather had been missing for a couple of months, and the family was in a holding pattern, waiting for news. Police had given up se
arching, even suggesting that his grandfather might have just gone on a trip, pointing out that there was no sign of foul play at his house. Its extensive collection of artifacts from his treasure-diving days was untouched, up to and including the ancient dildo collection. Not that I would go around touching ancient dildos voluntarily.

  Neil seemed to take the situation in stride, but I knew he was worried. Whenever I asked him about it, he didn’t say much. Not that he ever said much.

  I really needed to stop chasing him. I’d had plenty of guys before I met him, and there were plenty more out there. And this weekend, I needed to focus on the cocktails. I wanted to build my reputation. Neil already had an award-winning cocktail book. Nobody knew who I was.

  “So, what’s first on the agenda?” I asked.

  “We drop our stuff at the hotel and then go right to Pau Hana for the opening presentation,” Neil said. “We’ve got to whip up a welcome cocktail, and then we enjoy the program. But not you, Luke.”

  I glanced back at Luke, who was grinning. “Are you kidding? I can’t wait to be Fizz Martin’s personal errand boy.”

  Neil laughed. “If you’re ever as famous as Fizz Martin, you can have an errand boy, too.”

  Fizz Martin was one of the best-known tiki bar impresarios in the country. A transplant from Australia, he’d started with a bar in San Diego during the early tiki revival and had expanded to locations in Chicago, Kansas City, Atlanta and New York, each venue unique and fantastic. He’d won all kinds of awards.

  “He’s been hinting on social media that he’s about to sign up for a reality show,” Luke said. “Maybe you should do something like that.”

  Neil made a noise that sounded like a dragon blowing its nose. “Never in a million years.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  He shot me a sidelong glance that was so full of irony, I winced. Right. Neil could do a seminar or present a cocktail with a great sense of theater, but he was an intensely private person. Maybe that’s why I wanted to crack that coconut so badly. You know what they say about opposites.

  I was much more of an extrovert than Neil was—just look at the differences in our clothes. Today I wore a colorful, low-cut dress that made no secret of my curves. It was patterned in parrots, tropical flowers and palm fronds that brought out my gray-green eyes, and I had a flamboyant floral adornment in my hair (complete with parrot), along with candy-red lipstick and my geeky cat’s-eye glasses.

  He was in khakis and a gray-blue guayabera shirt with a subtle pattern of tan palm fronds that ran down the front. His dark, red-flecked brown beard and mustache were trim—though at one time he’d had the bartender’s handlebar ’stache, and people never stopped teasing him about it.

  More to the point, he was a handsome nerd who loved making cocktails. And I couldn’t get enough of him.

  We were definitely opposite sides of a coin. But even though I was more of a mingler than he was, I had to admit I wouldn’t want a camera crew following me around night and day either.

  “Is that Barclay?” Luke asked. Amid the thickening traffic on I-95, we’d crept up on the little black convertible, whose cloth roof was wisely enclosed, given the June heat.

  “They must’ve just stopped and gotten back on the highway, because Barclay drives a lot faster than you do,” I said to Neil.

  He gave me another look, this one seeming to ask, And how do you know how fast Barclay drives? Maybe because we’d taken a couple of field trips to Sanford to check out the drinks at Bitters & Brass and Suffering Bastard, but let Neil wonder.

  Barclay had slowed down a bit more to let us pull up in the lane next to him. He was the kind of handsome magazines kill for, with short, wavy black hair, light-brown skin, amber-green eyes and a sly smile.

  Melody gave us a thumbs-up from the passenger seat. Barclay waved and hit the accelerator, shooting away from Neil’s SUV like a rocket leaving Cape Canaveral.

  Astra barked.

  “They look like they’re having fun.” Luke sighed.

  “I just hope he doesn’t get a ticket on the way down,” Neil said.

  I waved away the possibility. “We’re past the biggest speed trap and officially in South Florida. He’s not even driving fast enough to overtake your average Miami granny.”

  “Which means I’m not driving fast enough to pass a six-year-old on a skateboard,” Neil said.

  I chuckled. Astra barked again, and I let her clamber up to the front seat and get in my lap. Maybe she should’ve been secured in the back, but she was happy looking out the window as I ran my hands through her curly, silky fur. She made me happy, too.

  About an hour later, we pulled up under the overhang at Wicker Wharf.

  The hotel sat at one end of the causeway that led to the beach, across the Intracoastal Waterway from Fort Lauderdale. Long, two-story buildings wrapped around a landscape of pools and lush tropical greenery. On one side of this massive courtyard was the main building with the lobby, restaurants, meeting spaces and a retro tower that dominated the space. Room balconies poked out at angles all around the vaguely cylindrical tower, bringing to mind a giant game of Jenga. At the top, a spiky roof that resembled a UFO capped a round, glassed-in party space with a rotating floor. It used to be a restaurant, or so said the website that described all these amenities. I couldn’t wait for our big event there tomorrow.

  But for now, we had to check in and get our bartender butts over to Pau Hana.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Neil announced as we got out of the car. My glasses immediately fogged up as the tropical heat smacked us in the face.

  Neil and Luke started yanking suitcases out of the back while Astra dragged me over to a pygmy date palm and watered it thoroughly.

  A moment later, Melody popped out of the lobby doors brandishing key cards. Her wiggle dress, blue splashed with red hibiscus flowers, flattered her annoyingly slender figure perfectly. Her blond hair was piled high and adorned with an arch of tropical flowers.

  “Where’s Barclay?” Luke asked.

  “He went to park and load his stuff into y’all’s room,” Melody said, handing him and Neil their cards. “Can we all ride over together?”

  “Sure!” Luke said, his mood brightening. Neil lifted an eyebrow at his enthusiasm, but the car was plenty big enough to take all of us.

  I grabbed my key card from her. “Thanks. Has Gina checked in?”

  “Yeah, she met me at the desk to give me your key. Ohhh, look at this sweet puppy,” Melody cooed, bending over to scratch behind Astra’s floppy ears. The Cavapoo panted happily. “Can I help you get her to the room?” Melody asked me.

  “That would be awesome.” I handed her Astra’s leash. Then I slung my canvas messenger bag over my shoulder and grabbed the handle of my huge roller suitcase with one hand and the folded dog crate with the other before turning to Neil. “I’ve got to brief Gina on the doggy drill. I’ll see you guys in a few.”

  “Fifteen minutes!” Neil said again.

  I narrowed my eyes at him, and he laughed.

  2

  “Still no joy in the pursuit of Mr. Rockaway?” Melody murmured after we left the guys and made our way through the vast lobby, whose wall of windows offered tantalizing glimpses of palms and pools.

  “I’ve just about given up. He’s pretty distracted, anyway.”

  “I know. I hope his grandfather turns up soon. But I still think he’s interested. It’s in the way he looks at you.”

  “Or laughs at me,” I scoffed.

  “He’s laughing with you!” Melody grinned.

  We passed through double doors that led to the corridor on the second floor of the first long hotel building. It wasn’t so much a hallway as an outdoor walkway, open to the sky, and rooms flanked the endless passage. Occasional staircases led down to the first floor and the courtyard.

  By the time we made a right turn for the next leg, I was out of breath.

  “Here it is,” Melody said halfway down the second eternal stretch of concrete. r />
  “Thank Dionysus.”

  Astra barked as I dipped my card in the lock and pushed the door open.

  “Hello?” I called. “Gina?”

  “In here,” came a soft voice.

  I left my suitcase and the crate by the closet and headed down the narrow entryway, which opened up into a nice, big tiled room with two queen beds and the usual hotel furniture. Gina, whom I knew only from a phone call and my business partner Jorge’s description, was sitting up against the pillows on one bed, legs outstretched, tapping away on a laptop computer. She looked up and smiled. She and her brother shared the same big, brown eyes that crinkled at the corners and the same long nose, but she was more slender. And younger, of course—the youngest of Jorge’s four Listo siblings—early twenties, I guessed, so maybe four or five years younger than me.

  I really needed to get Jorge to one of these cocktail events, but co-owning Nola was about as wild as he got. He was an engineer at the space center, and apparently his sister had the same techie tendencies.

  “You’re not supposed to be working. There are like three swimming pools out there.” I returned Gina’s smile and gestured to the sliding doors, where the inviting water sparkled under the palm trees. “I’m Pepper, by the way.”