A Tainted Finish: A Sydney McGrath Mystery (13 page)

Syd awoke early the next morning with a hangover. She hadn't remembered drinking so much the night before, but she had very little to eat during the day and she had nearly finished a bottle of her uncle's library reserve, a Rhȏne style blend. She was unable to get up out of bed, which added to her wretchedness but she decided to deal with her nagging guilt for sleeping in and letting Olivier and Alejandro do all the punchdowns another day. Besides, she was still really pissed at both of them. She imagined them glancing meaningfully behind her back all last week while she continued on ignorantly. And she imagined that they must pity her, which infuriated her even more. Really it would be the only empathetic thing to do. She pitied herself, lying in bed, despising herself for not answering her phone all those times she saw his name on her caller ID. She had ignored him for many weeks, while he was dying. And she had denied him his last wishes in doing so. Because she was mad at him, indulging in her own juvenile vanity.
Because she had been right all along and she wanted to rub his nose in it.

She lay in bed for hours, falling in and out of a haunting sleep filled with strange images and a mood of despair. She wanted to hide in her dark room forever. She woke up from time to time, alarmed at the heavy presence of shame and guilt, which were so much more consuming than the grief she felt the past week. Grief was a numbing pain; a full body shadow of senses and a hollow hole in her chest. Grief was painful in a steady, weighted way, but this new feeling was excruciating. She had never felt the burden of such shame. She had known loss before. It was like a worn old blanket in a way; a relic of childhood memories with faded details and only wispy emotions coloring the present. But shame was entirely new to her. And she deserved all of it.

Her phone sat on the nightstand and vibrated loudly for the fifth time, dragging her out of a fitful sleep. She wildly flung her arm over to the table to shut it off, but she answered it instead, her guilt over not answering phone calls overtaking her.

“Hello?” she said in a hollow voice.

“Hey, Syd,” said Charlie. “Where have you been? I've been trying to call you all morning!” She sounded exasperated and relieved.

Syd’s mouth was dry and she couldn’t find her voice.

“Syd? You there? Are you okay?” Charlie asked, sounding more alarmed than ever. Syd’s reply sounded more like a grunt than words.

“Where are you?” Charlie yelled into the phone.

“Bed.” Syd croaked. She wondered if her throat was swollen shut.

“Are you sick?”

Syd reached for the glass of water on her table. It was full, but she didn't remember filling it up. She drained the glass. “I think I'm okay.”

“Uh, jesus, Syd. You sound terrible. I can't get down there today. I've got Michelle's magazine launch to go to. I'm so sorry, but they'll have my hide if I bail.”

“It's okay. I'm okay, really.” She vaguely understood that she was making Charlie more worried than ever.

“Listen, I'm going to be there tomorrow. Thursday morning, right?”

“Okay. He had cancer, Charlie.” Her voice sounded thin and lost.

“Who had cancer, baby?”

“Clarence. Clarence had cancer. Clarence had Stage IV pancreatic cancer.” Charlie was silent. Syd waited, feeling her throat close up again. “Charlie?” she choked out.

“Yeah, I'm here. Fuck, Syd. Fuck.”

“Yeah, and I ignored his calls.” Syd squeaked out of a dangerously closing throat. She gasped for air and sat up to catch her breath. Her eyes darted toward the door. The light in the crack beneath the door had darkened. Syd pulled her legs out from beneath the tangled sheets.

“Do me a favor, Charles? Bring me some clothes.” She pressed her phone to end the call and shuffled over to the door. Whoever was there before had gone.

~

Syd stayed curled up in bed for the remainder of the afternoon. Her visitor had left some water and a bottle of Advil, which she swallowed down over a sore throat every few hours. Her head throbbed and every joint hurt. She vaguely wondered if she was more than just hungover. She may have manifested a flu in her wretchedness. She slept fitfully, wandering in and out of strange dreams and painful awakenings. She preferred the strange surreal dreams of sleep to the purgatory of waking and the slow remembrance of her current reality.

Later, after a bizarre dream of waves churning in an endless sea, she awoke abruptly in the darkened room and shot up in bed. Her head throbbed, and she saw stars swirling around her head. She braced herself with her arms and lay down gently. She did not want to pass out again, even if it was on her own pillow. As she lay trying to hold on to consciousness, she smelled food and some other soothing aroma. Tea. She turned her head and saw a plate of hot buttered toast and mug of steaming tea next to her. Someone was looking after her. She vaguely remembered her conversation with Charlie on the phone. But it wasn’t Charlie taking care of her; she was in Seattle.

She gingerly sat up in bed and propped herself up on her pillows. She reached for the hot mug of tea, held it near her face, sipping it occasionally. She noted that her sinuses were blocked and she had a sore throat. The steam from the tea helped her breathe easier, but she felt her lungs rattle and wheeze with every breath. Her head was another story.

“Great,” she said out loud. She had come down with some kind of bug; a cold maybe. It was the bane of every winemaker and sommelier. She was utterly useless without her ability to smell properly, and during Crush it was a detrimental occupational hazard. She was even more useless to Olivier now. She felt herself sink into the sheets a bit, the weight of fresh shame bearing down on her. She savagely bit into some of the toast, and tried to wash it down with hot tea. Chewing the toast strangely amplified in her stuffy head and she hardly heard the voices in the other room above her chewing. Male voices talking softly. She stopped chewing and strained to catch bits of the conversation. Maybe three of them? She swallowed hard, her painful throat protesting. They were at the table in the dining room. Their conversation was intense, but not heated. She caught a trilled high-pitched voice through the walls fading in and out. It was Rosa. She must have been walking in and out of the kitchen. She listened harder for the sound of soft footsteps walking between the rooms. Syd inhaled in rasps, feeling weight in her lungs. She wanted to get up and see what was going on, but she also wanted to hide in bed.
Hide
. She realized she was embarrassed to show her face to whoever was out there. Rosa had known about her uncle's cancer. She stayed and took care of him while he was ill. And she must have known Syd had stubbornly stayed away. Olivier had told her that her uncle was holding on just to see Syd back at home. He was waiting for her to forgive him and move on, and she ignorantly and foolishly held on to her juvenile pride, as if she had all the time in the world. What really shamed her was that she truly had no plans to visit the winery at all that fall. She intended to forgo the drive down to the Gorge until after Crush. The intention was a deliberate punishment, a direct defiance of what she knew Clarence wanted. How could she face Rosa now?

She threw back her mother's quilt and pushed herself to the side of the bed with unexpected effort. She was fueled by guilt and curiosity that couldn't sit still any longer. Her feet found the cool wood floorboards, and she pushed herself up with her hands. She was dizzy and her entire head throbbed, but she held herself steady and found she could stand well enough after a few moments. After finding her bearings she gathered her jeans and a sweatshirt and slowly dressed herself with difficulty. She felt wretched.

She shuffled out into the kitchen only to be greeted by a cast of staring eyes. Jim and Olivier sat at the table, while Alejandro and Rosa stood in the kitchen doorway, their low and somber conversation having ground to a halt. They watched her approach to the table in slow motion with their mouths open.

“
Oh, mi hija!
You look awful!” Rosa said. She floated over to her and gently held the back of her hand to Syd's forehead. “You are burning up!” She turned and hurried off to the kitchen.

Syd shrugged and squinted at the men sitting at the table.

“What's going on?” she asked, sounding hoarse and foreign. Olivier got up and guided her to his chair. He stared at her with alarm.

“You are unwell?” he whispered with furrowed brows.

“I think I'm hungover,” she said thickly, straining to smile.

“You have a fever,” Rosa interjected. She said the
v
in a softened
b
that made Syd smile. She slid a thermometer into Syd’s mouth. Syd sat at the table with the others staring silently at her, feeling foolish and childlike with the thermometer poking painfully under her tongue. A moment later the table bulged strangely in the middle and started to move like boiling mud.

Rosa took the thermometer out of her mouth. “104,” she said loudly. She clucked her tongue and padded into of the kitchen. Syd glared at the faces in the room through glazed eyes. The light was harsh and the men looked like caricatures of themselves. Jim sat stoically with his hands folded in front of him. His face was waxy and stern, and yet his emotion was seamlessly buttoned up, only revealing itself in the crease of his eyes and his knit brow. Olivier looked slight and impish next to Jim, his chiseled face contorted with genuine concern and surrounded by a halo of dark curls. Alejandro stood with his hands knitted over his rounded belly, patiently waiting with feigned placidity. All three men were fighting their own battles to hold it together and figure out the next step. Syd observed and noted each man's inner workings like geared clockworks. They watched her for what felt like an hour, but which must have been only enough time for Rosa to return with a bottle of Tylenol.

“I took some Advil already,” Syd said, brushing Rosa off with a drunken hand gesture. “Four.”

Rosa put a cool washcloth on Syd's head, and leaned Syd back against her torso, cradling her hot head. Syd closed her eyes, knowing that the roomful of men were watching her surrender to Rosa's competent hands.

“Well, that adds to it,” a deep voice muttered next to her. Was it Jim?

“Alejandro and me are his alibi,
también
,” Rosa said. “So there is no need to take him.” Syd could feel Rosa's voice vibrating through her sternum and through the back of her own head.

“I understand the position you are in,” Olivier said. “But you need to trust me that I will not be leaving the winery, especially not now with Sydney feeling ill. I know you have your investigation. But I have a winery to run. She cannot do it alone now, most certainly.” Syd pried one eye open to watch Olivier gesturing toward her, wincing.

Jim sighed. He splayed his hands out on the table. “In the meantime we will have the car looked into,” Jim said. “I don't think I need to tell you how important it is for
you two
to stay put. I have to get over to the hospital and get a statement. He's still in ICU. Rosa, you take care of her, will you? Olivier, it would be best if you leave the house and stay in the trailer.”

Olivier nodded and turned sharply on his heels. Syd followed his boot taps as they left the kitchen and pounded a steady bass on the deck outside.

“Rosa, he may have an alibi, but you need to understand that this is a murder investigation. And potentially attempted murder, now.” Jim raised his hand in protest before she could speak. “I don't want to jeopardize the winery, understand?” He looked up at Alejandro. “But this could be far more dangerous than we thought.” Syd made out a subtle jerk of his head in her direction.

Alejandro nodded. “I'll stay in the house,” he said.

Jim got up with a wrenching scrape of the chair and with a groan of his own. He leaned over and kissed Syd's hot head.

“See you later, kiddo. Drink lots of fluids. Charlie will be back tomorrow. Oh, she said to tell you that the Bahamas are lovely this time of year.” He shrugged.

The room suddenly felt like a window had opened when Jim Yesler left them huddled around the table. Rosa had been holding her breath and let out a deep sigh, while Alejandro sat down in Jim's empty seat. Syd tried to work out the last five minutes of conversation through her delirium. She realized her entrance had been timely and that her current state of health may have saved Olivier from a trip to sheriff's office. She also noted that Alejandro and Rosa were still not exactly on Olivier's side. Although they both genuinely liked Olivier – she was certain they did – she recognized a new degree of mistrust among them.

“Who’s in ICU?” she asked.

“Shhhh,
mi hija
,” Rosa answered, caressing her forehead.

“No, Rosa! What happened? Who’s in ICU?” She shrugged off the cloth on her head.

“Jack Bristol,” Alejandro said. “He was in a car accident. His brakes went out on Highway 141 and he went off the edge. His car was fifty feet down. It was held up by trees. He was lucky. It's a 300 foot drop to the river.”

“Jesus, is he okay?”

“He's in ICU. Doctors say he’ll be alright.”

“When did It happen?” she asked.

“Last night, around 8,” he said. “Jim came to ask about Olivier's whereabouts last night. Both Rosa and I saw him here. He was here all day. Jim thinks the car was tampered with. The brakes or something. Or maybe the computer.”