Blood on the Vine (22 page)

“No. She looks to me as though she is, but I could be mistaken.”

“I’d like to know with certainty.”

“I suppose I can ask her, although I’d feel a little awkward probing an area that personal.”

“Play it by the proverbial ear, Jessica. Tell me about your meeting with Sheriff Davis.”

“Interesting,” I said, sitting on the bench with him. “A poisonous substance was found in Bill Ladington, some sort of a rare poison found in puffer fish.”

“I’ve read about puffer fish. They serve them as sushi in Japan, I believe.”

“That’s right, but they’re only served by chefs licensed by the government. The medical examiner here, a very nice chap named Bill Ayala, sent the samples to the forensic lab in Sacramento. He gave Sheriff Davis a copy of the preliminary report.”

I handed him the photocopy Sheriff Davis had given me. George chewed his cheek as he read.

He handed the paper back to me and asked, “Did the medical examiner indicate how quickly the poison acts?”

“No. I meant to ask but forgot.”

“That would be useful information. I have a close friend in Edinburgh, an expert in toxic substances. His book on the subject is required reading in every criminal justice class. Our MEs consider it a bible. I can call him.”

“Please do. Sheriff Davis also showed me Ladington’s supposed suicide note.”

“Supposed? You don’t buy it?”

“Not at all. It was typewritten and not signed. It was addressed to whom it may concern. All it said was something like ‘Life has become unbearable and I don’t want to live any longer.’ That was it.”

“You’ve had a busy day.”

“More than you know. Sheriff Davis and I went to Calistoga to talk with Mary Jane Proll, the young woman from the spa.”

“And?”

“She didn’t show for work, We went to her apartment. Her roommate said Ms. Proll tossed some clothing in a bag and took off this morning. The roommate confirmed in a roundabout way that the murdered waiter, Louis Hubler, used drugs and might have sold them. Oh, and I learned from the ME that there was a heavy level of marijuana in Hubler’s body at the time of death.”

“Let’s go in,” he suggested. “I’ll call my friend in Edinburgh.”

As we stood, I again looked to where Wade Grosso had been talking with Ladington’s neighbor and competitor, Robert Jenkins. They were gone.

“I’d like to speak with the neighbor,” I said as we headed back to the castle.

“I agree,” George said. He walked stiffly, bent slightly forward.

“It still hurts,” I observed.

“Yes, but nothing like this morning. Clumsy of me, falling into that moat.”

“At least you didn’t hit your head on those rocks. Dr. Ayala told me the autopsy on Ladington showed an injury to the left side of his head that caused internal bleeding. There were bone splinters, he said.”

George’s laugh caused him to grimace. “I wish you worked for me at the Yard,” he said. “You collect more information in less time than any of my senior investigators.”

“Thanks for the compliment, but I didn’t have to work very hard for it. It’s Dr. Ayala’s opinion that the blow to Ladington’s head was the proximate cause of death. The amount of poison in his body was small, although the doctor also says that if Ladington had lived longer—hadn’t hit his head—the poison might have eventually done its job. Between Louis Hubler’s murder, and Bill Ladington’s death, murder, or suicide, the sheriff seems desperate for any help he can get. I told him about the rumor that Tennessee and Hubler had been having an affair. Mary Jane Proll’s roommate was aware of it because Mary Jane told her about it.”

We entered the castle and went to the small office from which I’d made calls before. I handed George my AT&T credit card. He called his friend’s number, and said, “Rufus, George Sutherland.” After some preliminary chat, George started asking questions, jotting the answers on a pad. Fifteen minutes later he said, “Much obliged, Rufus. My best to your wife.” He hung up.

“Well?” I asked.

“The man is a walking encyclopedia on poisons,” George said. “Let me see.” He consulted his notes. “Puffer fish are found in warm waters, Central America, Australia, South Affica. There are numerous species—Rufus says as many as ninety—the poison is found in the fish’s ovaries. The problem, according to Rufus, is that cooking doesn’t destroy the poison. It has to be removed before cooking and serving. It effects the central nervous system, first manifests itself as difficulty in speaking, then moves on to cause respiratory arrest. It can produce a reaction in as little as ten minutes, or as long as three hours. If a person survives for as long as twenty-four hours, it usually means he’ll make it. More than fifteen hundred people in Japan died from puffer fish poison in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. An interesting aside from my learned friend—Haitians, at least those devoted to voodoo and the zombie ritual, sometimes use poison from the puffer fish.”

“Remind me never to take part in a Haitian voodoo ritual,” I said.

“Should we ever end up together in Haiti, I’ll do that. By the way, Rufus also said there’s been a recent problem with the poison from puffer fish infecting other marine life. Sea urchins have been dying off in droves in the Caribbean, especially off the coast of Curacao. There are people who enjoy the roe from sea urchin, and are dying from the poison.”

“Curaçao,” I said. “Ladington, and Edith Saison and Yves Legrand, have homes there. I think that most everyone at the castle has spent some time there recently.”

“Something else to consider,” he said. He handed me his notes. “We should destroy these.”

I put them in my jacket pocket.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he said.

He opened the door. Standing close to it was Tennessee Ladington.

“I was just passing,” she said.

George and I glanced at each other. She’d been standing there listening through the door.

“Excuse me,” she said, and walked away.

We sat in George’s room sipping sparkling water that Laura had brought him earlier in the day.

“An interesting scenario,” George said. “Ladington ingests this poison found in puffer fish, then goes to the edge of the moat and falls in, either because the poison had began to take effect, or because he was a clumsy fool like yours truly.”

“The assumption has been all along that he took whatever killed him in his study. But that empty pill bottle doesn’t make any sense, does it? He didn’t take some prescription medicine, an overdose of an anti-anxiety drug or similar medication. I can’t imagine that the puffer fish poison—or poison from sea urchins infected with it—would be in an amber pill bottle. The lab tests on the bottle revealed nothing, no trace of any substance.”

“Someone put that bottle there to make it appear at first glance to have been a suicide. The same with the so-called suicide note.”

“All right, let’s go on that assumption. If someone did place those things on the desk in an attempt to make it appear that Ladington took his own life, he or she wasn’t thinking very clearly. That person should have known that the autopsy would reveal the type of poison that was used. Whoever killed Bill Ladington was a bit of a bumbler.”

“A real
fouter.”

“Pardon?”

“Scottish for bumbler.”

“Oh. It’s also unlikely that someone planning to kill himself would choose such a poison.”

“Why?”

“Too exotic, too unsure. Ladington wasn’t an expert on poisons. He had a pharmaceutical guide in his study. No, he would have chosen a more mundane drug or combination of drugs. Someone fed it to him, most likely through food.”

I went to the window, looked out, and said without turning, “Your friend in Edinburgh said the poison could take effect in as soon as ten minutes, or might take as long as three hours.”

“Correct. Did the medical examiner give an approximate time of death?”

“Between nine-thirty and eleven. They discovered his body at ten-thirty.”

“What time was dinner served that night?”

“Cocktails at seven, dinner at eight, I assume. It seems never to vary.”

“Within the time frame for a reaction to the poison, according to your friend.”

“Exactly.”

“George, who found Ladington in the moat?”

“Bruce.”

“How did that come about?”

“He told me he went looking for his father because he wanted to discuss a business issue with him.”

“I thought Ladington kept Bruce
out
of the business.”

“I remember him saying that, but it doesn’t mean it applied to everything. Bruce told us he sometimes works in the wine-tasting room. He might have wanted to talk to his father about that. What’s next, Jessica?”

I turned from the window. “It’s a pretty day, George. How about paying a neighborly visit to Mr. Jenkins next door? Is your back up to it?”

“I’ll manage.”

We went to the front of the castle where George’s rental car was parked. Although Jenkins’s vineyard abutted Ladington Creek, it was a long way around to reach its entrance. Considering George’s back problems, it wouldn’t have been prudent to walk.

I was halfway in the car when I said, “I just thought of something. Wait here a minute.”

I entered the castle through the front door and went down the hall to the small office from which George had called his friend in Edinburgh. The pad of paper that had been on the desk was gone. I’d hoped to head that off, but I was obviously too late. My concern was that the pressure of George’s pen might have left an indentation of what he’d written on the blank sheets. Since Tennessee seemed to be the only one who knew we were using that office, it was fair to assume that she’d taken the pad. Too late to worry about it now. I fingered the notes I’d put in my jacket pocket and made a mental note to discard them somewhere away from Ladington Creek.

“What did you forget?” George asked when I rejoined him.

I told him.

“I should have thought of that myself,” he said. “But I suppose my scribbling won’t mean much to Mrs. Ladington.”

“Just the fact that we were asking about poison will mean something to her,” I said. “Are you able to drive?”

“Of course. Just point the way.”

The entranceway to Shelton Reserve Vineyards was considerably shorter than Ladington Creek’s, and was paved with red brick. A sign in front heralded free wine tasting; I wondered whether the owner had decided not to charge as a competitive move against Ladington’s fee-for-tasting. The main building was not nearly as large or lavish as the Ladington castle, but it was not unimpressive. It sprawled long and low, with lots of glass and stone.

We parked in a space near the entrance, got out, and entered through the visitor’s door. There were quite a few tourists gathered in a gift shop, and we could see into the tasting room where two young women served tiny glasses of wine to tasters lined up along a lengthy counter.

“Over there,” I said, pointing to a sign indicating where the offices were located.

We entered a reception area; a middle-aged woman sat behind a desk talking on a phone. She glanced up, indicated with a finger that she’d only be a minute, and finished her conversation.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“We’d like to speak with Mr. Jenkins,” I said.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No, we don’t,” I said. “We’re staying next door at Ladington Creek. My name is Jessica Fletcher. This is George Sutherland.”

“Jessica Fletcher. Oh, yes, I should have recognized you. I have many of your books.”

“That’s always good to hear.”

She turned to George. “And you must be the Scotland Yard detective I’ve been hearing about.”

“You’ve been hearing about me?”

“Absolutely. Everyone’s talking about Scotland Yard being involved in the investigation of Bill Ladington’s murder.”

“I’m afraid these people are wrong,” George said. “I’m simply here as a tourist and friend of Mrs. Fletcher.”

The woman’s expression said she wasn’t buying it.

“Would it be possible to meet with Mr. Jenkins?” I asked.

“Let me see if I can find him,” she said, holding down a button on the elaborate phone on her desk: “Bob Jenkins, please contact the office.”

A moment later a man’s voice came through the phone’s tiny speaker. “What’s up?”

“Two people to see you, Bob. Jessica Fletcher and the Scotland Yard inspector, Mr. Sutherland.”

“What do
they
want?”

“They’re right here with me, Bob—
listening.”

Jenkins’s sigh could be heard over the speaker. “All right,” he said. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

We chatted with the woman behind the desk until Robert Jenkins arrived. He was of medium height, with floppy brown hair tinged with silver combed back along his temples; the top of his head was bald. His face was long and angular, Lincolnesque, with green eyes set deep beneath prominent salt-and-pepper eyebrows. He wore chinos, a plaid shirt, leather jacket, and brown-and-black running shoes. I judged him to be in his early fifties. He exuded energy and impatience.

I introduced George and myself.

“What can I do for you?”

“We’re staying next door at Ladington Creek. We—”

“I know all about you,” Jenkins said in a surprisingly high voice. “You’re trying to prove Ladington didn’t commit suicide.”

“That’s hardly true,” I said. “What we
are
doing is looking for the truth.”

His thin mouth twisted into a crooked, cynical smile. “The truth?” he said. “The truth is that Mr. William Ladington got what he deserved. There wasn’t anybody in the valley who liked him or his gang over there at the castle. He threatened half the population here, including me. You know what, Mrs. Fletcher? It doesn’t matter why Ladington died. It doesn’t matter whether he poisoned himself, or whether somebody else did the deed. Everybody’s better off with him gone.”