A Vintage To Die For (Violet Vineyard Murder Mysteries Book 2) (9 page)

“A witch’s ladder,” Blake said from behind me and Midge’s gaze jumped to him.

“A what?” she asked.

“A witch’s ladder,” Blake said. “Dimitri found one under his bed last week. He brought it to the office,” he said, staring at the object. “Supposed to be able to curse a person if they sleep above it.”

“Did he know who put it under his bed?” Midge asked.

Blake shot me a guilty look before replying. “Dimitri thought Samson put it there.”

“That’s crazy—” I began, but Midge wasn’t listening.

“Is this the one he found?” Midge asked, staring unblinkingly at Blake.

Blake shook his head. “He burned that one in the parking lot at work,” he said. “And then he buried it.” Blake shifted uncomfortable under Midge’s steady gaze. “I know it sounds crazy,” he added helplessly.

“Samson is no witch,” I said.

Blake said nothing; he just continued to stare at the hair and bone ladder until Midge set the ghastly thing back down on the tarp and resumed pawing through the must. Conversation over. But the damage had been done. One more finger had been pointed at Samson.

I turned to Blake. “Let's get the wine loaded,” I said more tersely than was necessary. I headed for the cellar and he followed. I pointed out the wine he was to take. Blake nodded and his eyes drifted over to the tank Midge had just drained. Through the access port, I could see there was still a thick mat of must in the bottom of the tank. The deputies still had some work ahead of them.

Blake’s gaze continued back into the dimness of the crowded wine cave. “You should really let me store more of this for you,” he said. “I have a larger cellar open. We could move your personal stock into it and you’d have plenty of room to store what you have bottle aging.”

I wasn’t interested. I would hold onto the rest of my wine. Self-reliance is my byword. If you’re a woman with a runaway husband, you’ll understand. I was even feeling a little doubtful about letting him have the fifty cases I had agreed to auction off through Star Crossed. If Angela’s accusations about Star Crossed were accurate…

I kept those thoughts to myself. “No, but thanks,” I told him as I headed for the stairs. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me. I retreated upstairs to the kitchen where Charlie and Jessica were still swooning and mooning. I left them to it and went into the tasting room to my computer. I needed to log the wine being taken by Blake and print the address labels for sixteen cases of the 2011 I was shipping to four different restaurants in San Francisco the following day.

I hate paperwork, but that day it was an escape that made the drudgery almost worthwhile.

By the time I
had the shipping labels printed and the accounting spreadsheet updated, Charlie and Blake were gone and Jessica was out in the rows with Victor and the two laborers, trimming vines and cleaning up debris from the rushed harvest last week. The back yard had been cleared, the tent was down in an untidy pile and the battered chairs and tables were stacked together like a weary group of soldiers after a battle. I headed outside.

The hose I had attached to the wine tank was still stretched across the yard, a sticky pile of debris the only remains of more than two hundred liters of wine. Midge's partners were gone, and she was stowing the tarp and the sieve in the trunk of her car. She looked up at me as I approached. Her gaze was flat and unfriendly, a look I’d had more than enough of. Midge and I had not been friends before the incidents of the previous year, but we had not been enemies either. It was time to confront the issue head on.

I reached the sheriff’s car as she thumped the trunk lid closed.

“We're done,” she said. She circled the car, popped the door open and started to duck inside.

“I'm as sorry as you are about what happened last year,” I said abruptly, not bothering with any preliminaries. “But it wasn't my fault.”

She stood with one foot in the car and glared at me for a moment. And then her expression softened. “No,” she said tiredly, “It was my fault. Mine and Hunter’s. If we had done our jobs better—”

“It was
his
fault,” I said, and we both knew who I was talking about, and it wasn't Hunter. The words sounded harsh and bitter, but they were true.

She nodded, but not like she was agreeing with me, more like she was considering the possibility. “Maybe it was all of our faults,” she said.

I sighed and my shoulders slumped. I nodded. “Maybe. Truce?” I asked and she gave me her tight little smile.

“Sure,” she replied. “Until you start playing Sherlock Holmes again,” she added, her smile widening a notch.

I laughed. “Those days are over,” I promised her. “I learned my lesson the hard way.”

Midge dropped behind the wheel and backed away. I watched her go, then turned and headed down the slope to the pile of must.

I rewound the rubber hose, closed the tank’s valve and disconnected the hose. The hose went straight into the trash, fittings and all. I stood there for a moment, looking around the cellar. The police had left it almost as neat as they found it - which isn’t saying much. The back of the cellar is cluttered, but picturesque; the front is all industry. Canvas-cloaked machinery lines the walls two rows deep. The bottling line, which includes the corking machinery, the bottle conveyor, the sterilizing equipment, the encapsulater, and an ancient labeler, fills half the floor while stacked cases of empty bottles, foil capsules, and new corks are wedged in wherever they’ll fit.

I crossed to the tank and ducked to look through the access port. Almost all of the must had been removed, but there was still a mess of sticky fluid and skins and seeds inside. I hooked up the garden hose, got out the sanitizing solution, and climbed up on top of the catwalk where Samson had perched just the night before, I went to work, hosing down the tank, letting the effluent run into the drain set into the concrete floor as I thought about Midge Tidwell and the promise I had just made to mind my own business.

I had meant it when I said it, but, sadly, it was a promise I was not going to be able to keep. 

I
spent a fitful
evening on my own. Both Jessica and Victor begged off on my dinner invitation, but I didn’t resent them for their departure. I was not fit company. The shock of Dimitri’s death was wearing off and the reality was sinking in. It seemed impossible another person had been murdered on my property.

As the sun set over the Pacific, the mottled yellow carbon-haze over the freeways far to the west turned into an impressionistic painting of pinks and blues. I sat on my patio drinking a very short scotch, trying to let the beauty of the view and the knowledge of a completed harvest ease my dark mood. It didn’t work. My gaze drifted to the Harlans’ converted barn and the vineyard that hugged the slope below it. The home was well tended by a yard service, but it looked dusty and deserted. Not just empty, but void of life. The vineyard behind the house, trellised like a green waterfall down the side of the steep slope, was shaggy and unkempt. It had been picked by one of the big winemakers for their low price cabernet, but little had been done to prepare the new canes for next year’s growing season. It was sad Kevin had worked so hard to create rows that were being left to wither.

Is it any wonder Jess and Victor abandoned me? I was even sick of myself. I dumped out the rest of the scotch and went up to bed.

Chapter 10

The phone in the
cellar, Violet’s business line, rang at 7:10AM while I was slipping on a pair of gloves and scanning the almost empty pegboard for something to use as a pruning blade. A few hours in the rows seemed like good therapy. Not to mention the vines offered a perfect hiding place from Samson, who would arrive shortly and immediately notice the missing fifty cases of wine. I could imagine the explosion that would follow when I told him I had signed an auction deal with Star Crossed. It was going to be a big one, the biggest ever. He might even become the first Greek in outer space.

I thought of letting the call go to voicemail then reconsidered. It could be Hunter with an update.

I wish I had let it ring.

“Claire,” Angela Zorn breathed in my ear then continued in a rush. “The police were just here. They told me about Dimitri and Jorge. What happened? They wouldn’t give me any details.”

I told her, keeping it short and simple. Dimitri had been murdered and Jorge arrested. By the time I had finished she was past being curious; she was angry.

“I’m glad that man is dead,” she said viciously and I winced. I definitely heard a little whiskey-slur in her voice.

“Angela—” I began but she wasn’t listening.

“He deserved what he got,” she said. “And worse.” She and Samson could start an anti-fan club for Dimitri.

“No one deserves that,” I pointed out, getting angry myself and letting it show. I wasn’t in the mood for this. “Someone
murdered
him.”

“Jorge was too drunk to kill anyone,” she said, and I couldn’t argue with that. “Hunter was just angry about Jorge’s dinner conversation.”

“Jorge had blood on his sleeve. And he hated Dimitri,” I said. While I doubted Jorge was a killer, I still leapt to Hunter’s defense.

“A nosebleed. He gets them all the time,” she said heatedly.

“If that’s true, he’ll be released.”

She sighed, suddenly sounding deflated. “I hope that’s true. I can’t afford to bail him out again.”

“Jorge can take care of himself,” I assured her. He had been getting in and out of scrapes for more than forty years.

Angela made a noncommittal sound that was neither assent nor dissent, then changed course. “I want to apologize for Saturday night. You’ve always been a friend to me and I’m sorry I repaid that by ruining your party. Most of the Valley natives act like we newcomers are an invading army, but you’ve always gone out of your way to be gracious and helpful.”

“There’s no need to apologize or thank me, Angela,” I said, surprised by the ‘friend’ comment. Angela and I had had maybe a dozen conversations in those ten years, mainly about harvests, weather, and the hundreds of other concerns that plague a winemaker, certainly nothing intimate or personal. “Saturday was a trial for all of us. And I’ve always enjoyed your company, too.” I glanced at my watch. Samson would be arriving soon and I wanted to be far from the cellar by then. “I guess I’ll see you at the next Vintners’ association Meeting,” I added, trying to end the call gracefully.

“No, Claire, you won’t. I’m through fighting and scraping by. It’s over and it’s time for me to face it.”

“Oh, no, Angela,” I said as my eyes involuntarily drifted up the flanks of the shortest fermentation tank, climbing to the rim where Dimitri had been hanging, his eyes open, blood dripping— I abruptly turned away as the memory came, vivid and unwanted.

“I hope he hasn’t suckered you in, too, Claire,” Angela was saying. “Blake has signed up a lot of the small growers for his auctions. He promises high returns, but the checks rarely come and when they do they’re a pittance.”

“Blake has to account for the auction sales—”

“He always has some excuse. A mix up in a delivery, a restaurant owner behind on his payments, a slow economy. Then, when you’re right on the edge of losing it all, Armand Rivincita shows up with his checkbook. It’s happened a half-dozen times in the last two years. Always to the small guys, like us. The ones too poor to say no. Blake is the setup guy and Armand moves in for the kill.”

I made no reply. My thoughts were too muddled and confused. Blake had said the quality of Angela’s wine had caused sales to drop off and the case-price to plummet. That could be true, but her insistence that something crooked was going on was making me nervous. And Armand
had
been buying up small vineyards in the two years since he’d arrived in the Valley.

I was so lost in my own thoughts I didn’t notice Angela was crying until she spoke, her voice quavering.

“I’ve had enough,” was all she said, but there was a depth of pain in those words that made my heart race.

“Don’t do anything foolish,” I told her.

She said nothing, just wheezed and sniffled in my ear.

“Angela—”

“Goodbye, Claire. Remember what I said about Becker and Armand.”

The line went dead.

Angela’s parting ‘goodbye,’ innocuous on the surface, had such a chill finality to it a shiver went through me. I hit End Call and started to dial 911 then stopped. Had Angela meant what I thought she meant? That she was ready to kill herself? Had I misinterpreted her? And what if I hadn’t? What if she was looking for a gun, or wolfing down a bottle of pills? Sending in the police if she was only drunk and ranting was just going to escalate her situation, but leaving her alone was unthinkable.

I banged down the phone, ran up the stairs, snatched my purse off the kitchen table and was out the door thirty seconds later, into the chill damp of the morning air, still laced with a tracery of fog from the night before.

Victor was crossing the lawn toward the house, probably to mooch breakfast, but I didn’t pause to talk to him. I gave him a wave as I climbed into my red Jeep Wrangler.

I had taken the Jeep’s canvas top off yesterday and hadn’t put it back on. The seats were dappled with a cold dew that soaked through my pants, turning them clammy as I slid behind the wheel and cranked the engine. I backed around, slammed the Jeep into second gear and shot a rooster tail of gravel from the driveway as I accelerated out to the highway and headed west.

Angela’s winery and home,
at the western end of the Valley, was beautiful. The home site had been built on a flat spot cut out of the steeply sloped foothills of the Mayacamas mountains, but the Zinfandel vines rode the slopes in perpendicular rows, undulating across the terrain like green waves until they dead-ended in an almost vertical slope of crumbling shale dotted with scrub brush, brambles, and skinny loblolly pines in danger of toppling in the first high wind. I drove up a concrete drive that curved through a small grove of almond trees whose leaves were already turning brown at the edges.

The house was a substantial colonial, but not ostentatious. It was two stories tall, painted white with a red brick foundation. The large red door was fronted by a wide portico and covered by a shingled awning supported by fluted columns. I parked in the loop of the cul-de-sac drive and trotted to the door. There was no bell, just a large brass knocker set below a fan-shaped leaded glass window. I banged it three times and heard it echo through the house. I waited five minutes and then did it again.

A few minutes later, when I was about to bang the knocker again, my heart pounding in fear I had come too late, Angela Zorn’s face appeared on the center pane of the window. She looked bad. Wild blonde hair and a pair of red and frightened eyes ringed in last night’s mascara. Eyes that narrowed into a scowl when they saw me on the doorstep.

She jerked the door open. Her dishevelment didn’t stop with the ruined makeup and tangled hair. She was wearing the same yellow dress she’d had on at my party Saturday night. It was wrinkled from neckline to hem and sagging at the hips. The bodice was dotted with wine stains and there was a gaping tear at the shoulder. She had a whiskey glass in one hand, amber liquor slopping over the rim. She didn’t say hello, and she didn’t seem surprised to see me.

“You want a drink?” she asked and waved the glass at me. Whiskey splattered the brick porch. She didn’t wait for an answer. She turned and went through an archway on the left, leaving me on the stoop.

It had only been twenty minutes since I had talked to Angela on the phone, and I could see she had used those twenty minutes to get plastered. She didn’t seem so forlorn or sad now - she had a drunk’s surly belligerence. I hesitated for just a moment, considering beating a hasty retreat, but I was still concerned about her. I entered her home and followed in her footsteps.

The interior of the house was as impressive and understated as the exterior. The furniture was tasteful and functional: warm wood and plush seating. The walls were covered in art a bit stodgy by modern tastes – mostly landscapes and seascapes - and every tabletop and surface was covered in silver-framed photos, vases, and bric-a-brac that lent the large space a homey quality. The American dream home circa 1950.

Angela had settled herself on a footstool by the fireplace in the living room. A small blaze was burning, just enough to cut the chill in the air. She looked up as I entered the room.

“Bar’s over there,” she said and waved her glass at the far side of the room.

“No, thanks,” I said as I settled myself on the sofa near her. The cushion beside me was piled with a jumble of paperwork, though the rest of the room was immaculate.

I decided not to beat around the bush. Angela seemed in no mood for pleasantries, anyway. “I was concerned by your phone call,” I told her. “I was worried that you might do something drastic.”

“Like shoot myself?” she asked, giving me a level-eyed stare, though she was having trouble holding her head steady on her neck. Her chin was bobbing and weaving.

There was no backing away from it now. “Something like that.”

She laughed at that, a harsh, bitter sound. “If I was going to start shooting I’d be the last to go,” she said. “There’re six bullets in my pistol, more than enough to do the job.”

“Blake?” I asked.

She waved her glass at the cushion beside me. “It’s all right there,” she said and gave that bitter laugh again. “Read ‘em and weep.”

I looked down at the paperwork and saw the Star Crossed logo on the top page. It was a listing of sales. The amount at the bottom was just over three thousand dollars.

I looked up.

“Ten cases,” she said. “That’s the sum total of last month’s auction sales. I was selling five times that at twice the price with Silus Auctioneers.”  She stood and crossed to the bar. Her tread was purposeful and steady, the trait of a well-practiced drunk. She poured more whiskey, came back, and retook her seat. “And with Dimitri’s interview and his whisperings to the wine critics and restaurant owners, I’m lucky I can sell at that price.” She took a huge swallow of her drink.

“Whisperings?”

“Dimitri has been telling everyone I overproduce the vines. That the wine is weak and won’t hold in the bottle. He suggested they sell fast and cheap.”

“How do you know that?” I asked, but I was not stunned by the allegations. Dimitri had seemed to pride himself on his bluntness and cruel honesty. And comments like that from a man like him would certainly have driven the price down into the dirt.

“I have friends too, Claire,” she said. “It’s funny, sometimes you find them in the strangest places…” she trailed off and a crooked grin bloomed on her face.

“You should see an attorney. Maybe your agreement with Star Crossed can be nullified,” I said, but I was thinking selfishly of my own fifty cases of wine. If what Angela said was true, then I had made a very grave mistake in signing an agreement with Blake.

“That would leave me just as broke and just as homeless,” she said.

I didn’t say anything to that. It seemed obvious Angela was not going to kill herself, and I doubted she was going to head for Star Crossed with a gun. And placating her as she wallowed in self-pity was not how I wanted to spend my morning. It was time for me to leave.

“Do you need anything?” I asked as I stood and collected my purse. I slung it over my shoulder.

Angela shook her head. She placed her glass down on the hearth.

“Thank you for coming, Claire,” she said in a curiously formal voice. “It was very kind. I’m sorry I worried you needlessly.”

“I’m glad you’re okay,” I replied and went toward the archway. Angela made no move to follow, but she spoke as I exited.

“Claire,” she said, and I turned back. “Be careful of Blake.” The whiskey was gone from her voice - she was deadly serious. “And don’t worry about me. I always land on my feet.” She mustered a brave smile that broke my heart.

I had been dancing on the precipice of financial ruin with Violet for more than twenty years. I didn’t have to imagine what she was feeling; I knew intimately.

“If I can help, call me. I’m just down the road,” I said.

“Goodbye, Claire.”

I waved, feeling awkward and sad, as if I was leaving the sickbed of a dying relative.

But I wasn’t going to get away from Angela’s that easily. I closed the front door behind me and was heading for my Jeep when I spotted Jorge McCullers trudging up the driveway on foot.