Shay O'Hanlon Caper 04 - Chip Off the Ice Block Murder Read Online Free

intending to confront my dad with it when I saw him.
    I hit the drawer on the right side of the desk and rifled through it, finding nothing but writing utensils and three tins of peppermint Altoids. I shuddered to look at them, their smell reminding me of all the years my father sucked on the potent little white disks in an attempt to hide the odor of alcohol on his breath.
    Next drawer down I hit the jackpot. I snatched out a blue vinyl-covered checkbook and flipped to the register. There was barely enough in the account to cover the cost of the beer downstairs. Right now, it didn’t matter. I scribbled out the check. With a lift of my shoulder, I scrawled my father’s name and entered the numbers into the register. It would have to do.
    I locked the door and hustled down to the truck where the delivery man was now waiting, his hands stuffed in his armpits. I thrust the check at him, and he pocketed it with a grunt of thanks, white vapor billowing from his mouth.
    “You know where to put the product?” I asked.
    “Sure do,” he rumbled. “Been delivering here the last year or so. I’ll leave some in the cooler and bring the rest down to that aromatic cellar. You wanna do a count?”
    “Nope. Do your thing. Oh—if you don’t mind, stick the invoice on top of the microwave.”
    “Can do.”
    “Thanks so much for your patience.” I started for the back entrance, but I realized I should probably update JT on the current state of affairs—and the probable state of our vacation if my father didn’t pull his head from between his butt cheeks and materialize.
    The humid air of the kitchen blasted me as I stepped across the threshold and blocked the screen door open. A fresh wave of impotent fury fogged my brain. I tried to breathe through the haze while I speed dialed JT. The display on my cell read 5:15 p.m. There was still time to salvage this night.
    Cold tendrils of air wafted in from the open back door, swirling around as the delivery guy hand-trucked in his first load. A shiver worked its way up my spine.
    I leaned against the stainless-steel counter waiting for JT to either pick up or for voicemail to kick in. The phone rang, and something other than cold air hit my nose. There was that smell again—like a sour, backed-up drain. I took another sniff, scanning the floor for the location of the suspect drain. A bucket of water dumped down the pipe should fix that little problem.
    The sound of my girlfriend’s voice jolted me back to awareness. “Babe, hey, I’ve been meaning to call.” JT sounded exasperated and slightly out of breath, and I forgot all about stinky drainpipes.
    “Sorry if I caught you at a bad time.”
    “No. I’m sorry. Trying to tie everything up so we can head out tomorrow, and things aren’t playing out as easily as they should.”
    Here we go. Time to add a healthy portion of guilt to my slow boil. I was truly going to murder my father when he showed up. “Yeah. About that.”
    There was a pause on the line. “Uh-oh. What.”
    I gave her my thirty-five-cent version of the latest events.
    “Shit.”
    “You said it.”
    “Want me to head to the Lep if I ever get done? At least we won’t have to spend the dawn of the New Year apart.”
    “Sure. Thanks. I’ll call you if anything changes.”
    JT rang off, and I headed back into battle.

    The hands on an old Lucky Strike neon clock above the bar read twenty-five after nine. Still no Pete. He was almost certainly holed up in some dingy tavern, shooting Jack or Jim.
    One good thing I hadn’t realized was that my father had actually thought through at least some of the logistics of staffing the Lep for this big-ass holiday. In addition to Jill, he’d scheduled two additional servers to come on at seven. That considerably lightened the work in front of the bar, and Lisa and I had fallen into a comfortable rhythm as we poured beer, popped tops, mixed drinks, and made change.
    The reveler’s mass mood was rowdy but congenial, and