Dead on the Vine: (Violet Vineyard Murder Mysteries #1 (A Cozy Mystery)) (34 page)

Midge didn’t call me back, Detective Doug Priest did, an hour after my conversation with Midge.

“Mrs. de Montagne, my hero,” he said, officious with a touch of sarcasm. “I wanted to thank you for
all
your help. The print matched. Thought you’d like to know.”

Energy left my body in a flash flood and I had to grab the back of a chair to keep from dropping.  I had hoped so much that I was wrong that the news hit me like a punch to the chest. I couldn’t reply, I just stood there in shaky shock, eyes pinched closed, phone to my ear.

“Did you hear me?” Priest said, grinding the knife into my back.

“It was him,” I said idiotically and tears burned my cheeks.

“Damned right! I knew the son of a bitch was crooked,” Priest was gleeful in his triumph. I could almost see him clicking his Gucci heels and dancing around his desk. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Is Ben under arrest?” I cut in, swallowing hard.

“Not yet. It takes time to get the DA off his ass to issue a warrant for the Sheriff’s arrest. But it’s coming. Any minute now and it‘ll be on the wire. We’ll need a statement from you and—”

“Thank you for calling,” I cut him off, barely able to choke the words out. I sat down at the kitchen table, hung my head and let the tears come. “Oh, Ben,” I whispered into my hands. “How could you?”

Eventually I managed to get myself together and get in the shower. I dressed in faded jeans and a sweatshirt because the day had turned misty and cold. I drove Victor’s truck to the hospital, barely aware of the road. I felt wrung-out and old. My knee was purple and screamed bloody murder every time I put weight on it. My side had a yellow-green boot-print where Laurel had kicked me, and my ribs felt creaky but I didn’t think anything was broken. I had four large adhesive bandages on each hand, and my knuckles were bruised. I was so stiff that it took me a few minutes to climb out of the truck. I limped into the hospital and took the elevator upstairs.

Victor was sleeping, looking thin and vulnerable swaddled in hospital sheets, only his straggly mustache hinting that he was older than fifteen. Careful not to wake him, I eased into the chair at the head of the bed. The doctor had assured me on my way in that Victor would be fine, but seeing him there almost broke my heart. This was the third time I had visited someone I loved at this hospital in
one week.
It was too much. Much too much. I couldn’t stop the tears from welling up in my already bloodshot eyes. I took a tissue from my bag, sniffling quietly.

“Why ya crying?” Victor whispered. “Somebody die?”

“Oh, God, Victor,” I wheezed and wiped my nose.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, trying to rise. He winced and eased back into the bed. “What is it?”

“It’s Ben,” I said. “He murdered Kevin.”

“What?!” Victor tried to sit up again, grimaced in pain and fell back, out of breath.

“Don’t do that,” I ordered sharply. “You’ll start bleeding again!”

“Ben?” Victor asked through ashen lips.

“He was having an affair with Laurel,” I explained, watching Victor, concerned by his color and labored breathing. “He helped her cover up Winter’s death. He killed Kevin when Kevin figured it out.”

Victor didn’t get a chance to reply. The door burst open and a heavyset nurse with a long black braid slapping the middle of her plump behind hustled in. Her eyes glued themselves to the heart rate monitor.

“You’ll have to leave,” she told me in a tight voice as she hurried to Victor’s side. She grabbed Victor’s wrist and then looked at me again. “Now.”

“Is he all right?” I asked as I gathered my purse.

“I’m fine,” Victor said before the nurse shushed him.

“He’d
be
fine without this aggravation,” the nurse snapped. “Now go. Come back later.”

I said a quick goodbye and hurried into the hall, anxious for Victor and feeling guilty. I should have waited until he was feeling better. In a half-daze I left the hospital by a side door and went to Victor’s truck. I started the engine and sat there as it ran, slumped over the steering wheel. My whole world had fallen apart. Things couldn’t be any worse, I thought.

I was wrong.

A tapping at the truck window snapped me out of my fugue. I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand and stared up at a shape made fuzzy by the tears. I blinked and the shape solidified into a disheveled Ben Stoltze. Before I could react, he jerked the door open and shoved me across the seat, sliding in right behind me. I grabbed the passenger door handle, but Ben snatched me by the hair and jerked me back. He had his revolver in his hand. My mouth formed a scream but my lungs had clamped down tight and wouldn’t supply the air.

Ben spoke in a curiously calm voice. “Hey, Claire,” he said, “Don’t rush off. Hate to have to shoot you.” His face was covered with thick stubble and his breath smelled of whiskey. His clothes were rumpled and dirty, his eyes bloodshot. He didn’t look like a sheriff, he looked like a prison escapee.

I stopped struggling.

“Move your feet please,” he asked politely and I dragged them over to my side of the truck. “And lock your door.”

I clicked the lock and Ben let go of my hair. He put the revolver between his thighs, slipped the truck into reverse, checked the mirrors calmly and backed out. Unhurriedly, we left the parking lot and turned out on the foggy highway. He turned on the headlights and snapped off the radio.

“Wh—where are you taking me?” I stammered after five minutes of silent driving. By then my heart had settled down to a life threatening thump.

Ben shot me a glance. And it wasn’t friendly. “Why, I’m gonna answer all your questions, Claire,” he said. “Isn’t that what you want?”

“I don’t have any questions.” I said stupidly, hating the fear in my voice.

“Sure you do,” Ben said. “Don’t you want to ask me anything?”

I truly believed that he was going to kill me. But, if I was going to die, I wanted to know the truth.

“Why did you kill Kevin?” I asked.

“You know why,” he said. “He found out about Winter. From Michelle.”

“He found out that Laurel had murdered Winter,” I said with the reckless anger of the doomed.

“I didn’t think it was murder,” he snapped. “Thought it was an accident. And Buford Logan deserved to go to jail. For Jenna…” Ben trailed off into silence. “I loved Laurel,” he added after a protracted moment.

“Enough to kill Kevin and send an innocent woman to prison?” I demanded.   

“Michelle isn’t innocent,” Ben said. “She’s trash. The world will be a better place without her.”

“And Kevin? What about him, you arrogant bastard? You beat his head in with a shovel!”

“I wasn’t trying to kill him. He punched me and I hit him with the shovel. Instinct. I didn’t plan it. He fell back but didn’t go down. So, I hit him again. I don’t know how many times I hit him before I realized he was hung up on the grape trellis.” Ben blew out a long breath and ran his free hand through his hair. He shook his head once. “I’m sorry about Kevin. And Jenna. About all the suffering her parents went through,” he admitted. “Things got out of hand.” Ben flipped on the blinker and exited the highway. He turned north on black asphalt and began the climb out of the fog. “But I’m going to set it right.”

I laughed a short, unbelieving bark. “By killing me?”

“I’m not going to kill you,” he said, giving me an amused glance. “I like you, Claire, but after all the trouble you’ve caused I’m half tempted to shoot you. But, I need a witness. Besides, I know you’ll want to see the ending.”

“A witness?” I said, not believing he would let me live. Not after all he had done to hide his secret. “A witness to what?”

“You’ll see,” Ben said. “Loose ends need to be tied up before I go.”

“The only place you’re going is prison,” I snapped at him and he laughed good and long.

“You’ve been right about a lot of things, Claire, but you’re wrong about that.”

We drove in silence for fifteen minutes, climbing higher into the sun, into the mountains. The tops of the peaks shimmered with clouds while the valley below was slowly shedding its misty shroud to reveal the green of fields and the mini-forests of trees in the unincorporated areas.

“Why did you have to frame Michelle?” I finally broke the silence, though I thought I knew the answer.

“Michelle buried Winter,” Ben replied matter-of-factly. “Laurel called her the day the accident happened. Bad idea. Michelle didn’t know when to stop. After she ran Jessica off the road, I knew she was out of control.”

“You told her to blow up the truck,” I interrupted.

“Hell no!” Ben said. “I’m not that stupid. I told her to get rid of it, but I didn’t tell her to blow the thing up with a hundred witnesses watching.”

“You really are a bastard,” I said, and Ben shrugged and scratched at his grungy cheek.

“She feels guilty about Winter. She wants to go to jail,” Ben told me, wiping his hands clean with a few casual words. “She used to visit Winter’s grave. Late at night,” Ben said. “Bet you didn’t know that. Wouldn’t stop going, no matter what I said. Crazy.”

“And what about Laurel?” I asked. He didn’t reply, but I didn’t let it drop. “Why did you kill her?”

“I had no choice,” Ben scowled. “I had to kill her.”

“Bullshit. You killed her because she was sleeping with Doug Priest,” I said and Ben flinched.

“She was using him.”

“Like she used you.”

Ben didn’t speak. His eyes remained grimly fixed on the road winding between farms and fields as it climbed higher and higher into the mountains.

“She loved me,” he finally said. “Things just didn’t work out.”

“You killed her because she was with Priest.”

“I saved your life.”

I laughed at that. “If she hadn’t been sleeping with Priest, you’d have let her kill me.”

“We’ll never know, will we?” Ben said.

“I think—“ I began but Ben cut me off. He grabbed the revolver and pointed it across the seat at me without taking his eyes off the road.

“Shut up, Claire,” he said through clenched teeth.

I shut up.

Ben turned on a narrow, pot-holed asphalt road that wound up the mountains, almost circling itself at points. I knew this was the road that led to Bethel Fields Cemetery, where Kevin Harlan now lay under six feet of rocky soil. I had buried both of my parents there, and my grandparents before them. I was unsurprised when Ben turned in under the rusty wrought iron arch wilting under the weight of a mass of creeper vines. The Falconè family plot, containing a dozen of my ancestors, was near the front entrance, surrounded by a wrought iron fence. I needed to come up and pull weeds and wipe down the stones; it had been too long since I had tended it. Would I ever get the chance?

The cemetery was small and looked more like a park with its trees, flowering shrubs and untended tulip beds thick with weeds. Most of the headstones were weathered and crumbling with a few newer additions scattered about. Ben drove to the back of the cemetery and stopped on the grass under a copse of elm trees. He turned off the engine.

For a long moment we sat in the shade listening to the engine tick while Ben stared straight ahead at a plot surrounded by a rust-red iron fence. The wrought iron gate had the word STOLTZE in fancy script at its center. The plot was large enough for twenty, but held only four gravestones, one of them fairly recent: Sarah, Ben’s wife. Why had he brought me here? I could think of only one reason for coming to a graveyard: to bury someone. That thought kicked my fear up to bone chilling levels.

“My mom and dad are buried there,” Ben startled me out of my thoughts. He indicated the plot with a tilt of his head. “Sarah too,” he referred to his wife. “She died hard, Claire. She died and there was nothing I could do.” 

I didn’t know what to say. Somehow I was sure that none of this would have happened if Sarah had lived. No, that’s not true. Laurel would have killed Winter, but maybe she would have gone to prison for it and Kevin would still be alive.

“I should have pulled the trigger,” Ben said. “Every night while she lay dying in that hospital I’d sit with this gun and try to think of reasons not to put it in my mouth. Then I met Laurel.” Ben shrugged. “I’m sorry for my kids.”

“Ben,” I said, trying for a placating tone that was hard to produce with fear clotting my throat. “It doesn’t have to be like this. We can—”

“Shut up,” he said sharply, gripping the door handle, eyes on the rearview mirror. He stepped quickly out of the truck as I craned my head around to see.

A Napa Valley Sheriff’s cruiser was turning in at the gate, the driver just a shape behind the sun-glare bouncing off the windshield. Ben slipped behind one of the elms, out of sight from the patrol car, but where he could still see me. He held a finger to his lips and tipped the gun barrel in my direction. I got the point.

The patrol car crept slowly toward Victor’s truck, gravel popping and churning under its wheels. Whoever was driving wasn’t in a hurry, or they were being very cautious. Not cautious enough. The car rolled to a stop twenty feet behind the truck. The car’s engine died and Doug Priest stepped out, squinting into the sun.

The next few seconds passed so quickly I didn’t have time to think, which was probably a good thing. I jerked at the door handle, a mewl squeezing through my fear-constricted throat, and shoved the door open. My leg went out from under me, sending pain up my thigh. I flopped out onto the grass screaming, “Gun! Gun! Gun!” My mind couldn’t form clear sentences. It seemed to be frozen on that one word. “Gun! Gun!” I shouted as I shoved myself up and ran on my half-crippled leg for the Stoltze’s family plot, the nearest form of cover.

A gunshot fragmented the silence of the cemetery and a bullet whipped past my head as I dove over the rusty fence, forcing my hobbled knee to work. I had barely cleared the low fence when Ben’s second shot ripped through my left heel. I slammed into the ground, pain scorching up my leg as hot blood flooded my shoe.  My fear made the pain a tiny thing. And compared to death it was. I scrambled on all fours for the cover of the pink granite monument carved with Sarah Stoltze’s name.

A half dozen gunshots echoed and overlapped like rolling thunder. I heard a muffled scream followed by a curse and glass shattering, then a volley of shots so tightly spaced it sounded like one long roar. I had to look, had to know what was happening. Gripping the cold marble for support, I peeked around the side of the headstone, careful to keep as much of myself as possible hidden.