Death By the Glass #2

death by the glass

nadia gordon

a sunny mccoskey napa valley mystery

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  Heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped with the creation of this book, especially Judy Balmain, who read and commented on drafts as they were written. Further thanks to Dorian Asch, Rebecca Carter, Dave Chapman, Derek Chen, Patrick Comiskey, Dale Crowley, Kelly Duane, the folks at Longmeadow Ranch, Lauren Lyle, Erin McMahon, Lore and Maya Olds, Norm Ross, and Jonathan Waters, who variously shared their input, expertise, good company, and opinions on topics from vintage port to police procedure. While their assistance has been valuable, any errors or oversights in the text are entirely my own. I am particularly grateful to my editor, Jay Schaefer, for his patience, insight, and ongoing support.  
—
NG

Copyright © 2003 by Chronicle Books LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Though Napa Valley and the adjacent regions are full of characters, none of them are in this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, places, persons, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Gordon, Nadia.
   Death by the glass : a Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley mystery / Nadia Gordon.
        p. cm.
   
ISBN
0-8118-4180-4 (hc) —
ISBN
0-8118-3678-9 (pb)
1. Napa Valley (Calif.)—Fiction. 2. Wine and wine making—Fiction. 3. Restaurants —Fiction. 4. Women cooks—Fiction. 5. Cookery—Fiction. I. Title.
   PS3607.O594D43 2003
   813′.6—dc21
                                                              2003009591

Manufactured in the United States of America
Book and cover design by Benjamin Shaykin
Cover photo by Untitled/Nonstock
Composition by Kristen Wurz
Typeset in Miller and Bodoni 6
Distributed in Canada
by Raincoast Books
9050 Shaughnessy Street
Vancouver, British Columbia V6P 6E5

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Chronicle Books LLC
85 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94105
www.chroniclebooks.com

For Josephine

“He had a weak point—this Fortunato—
although in other regards he was a man to
be respected and even feared. He prided
himself on his connoisseurship in wine.”

—The Cask of Amontillado,
    Edgar Allan Poe

death by the glass

The last of the wait staff
did rock, paper, scissors to see who would take Nathan Osborne home. Nick Ambrosi, the bartender, lost. Now he stood outside the restaurant and waited, watching his breath. It was past midnight and cold, the clear night sprayed with white pinprick stars. He could hear Osborne inside talking loudly, ranting about some culinary detail that had offended him, and the soft murmur of Dahlia Zimmerman’s voice as she coaxed him to put his arms through the sleeves of his coat so she could button him up.

“If she’s so concerned, why doesn’t she take him home,” muttered Nick to himself. Half an hour round-trip at least, he figured, and that wouldn’t put him in bed until after two. He let out a sigh of disgust. After a minute, the door swung out and disgorged Nathan Osborne into the night.

Nick had already pulled the car around. The Mercedes was idling, its diesel engine purring like a sewing machine. Nick held the passenger door for his boss and closed it after him, then went around to the driver’s side. He pulled out of Vinifera’s parking lot and headed toward the hills that overlooked Yountville. A sliver of moon lit the way.

“Morales is going to fucking ruin me,” said Osborne, puffing as he settled his briefcase and groped for the seat belt. “He’s trying to destroy my restaurant.” He waited for a response but didn’t get one. “Who eats Moroccan food, anyway? Who wants to eat Moroccan food?”

“Moroccans?” said Nick.

“Nobody comes to Napa Valley to eat Moroccan food,” said Osborne dismissively. “We’re supposed to be in Provence. Or Tuscany. Nobody in Napa wants to eat preserved lemon rinds and couscous.”

“You’re sure about that?” said Nick, tapping his ring on the steering wheel. “Seems to me Andre knows what he’s doing.”

“Is that what they’re teaching you at that phony college of yours?” said Osborne. “How to run a restaurant?”

“
Hire the best and then let them do their job
. Isn’t that what they say?” said Nick. “You did the first part right.”

“Mafia,” said Osborne. “You’re all organized against me. That whole staff is like a mafia, with its secrets and its little cliques. I see you with your looks behind my back. I ought to fire every last one of you. I’ve been in the food and wine business for twenty years. Twenty-five. And I have to fight every one of you on every decision.”

Nick looked at him and turned up the volume on the stereo.

“What is that?” said Osborne.

“Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

Osborne ejected the CD and tossed it in the backseat. “Have you seen next week’s menu?” he said.

“I saw it.”

“And?”

“I think it’s genius, like always.” Nick shook his head, smiling. “You keep badgering him like he doesn’t know how to run his
kitchen, and one of these days Andre Morales is going to get fed up and walk, and you’re gonna have no one to blame but yourself. That is not going to be a pretty day.”

“It’s a mafia,” muttered Osborne, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “I have been run out of my own restaurant.”

Osborne’s breathing deepened, and after a pause he started to snore.

Nick felt the sedan take charge of the curves leading into the hills. It wasn’t all bad driving Osborne home. At the turnoff to the house, Nick lowered the window and punched the key code into the pad by the gate. It buzzed and swung open, and Osborne snorted awake. They drove up the driveway in silence. At the house, Osborne climbed out and waited while Nick opened the front door and switched on the lights, setting Osborne’s briefcase down inside. Osborne moved slowly. His legs were bothering him again.

“Damn gout,” he said, puffing.

“What about the car?” said Nick.

“Put it in the usual spot. I’ll call tomorrow when I need it.”

After Nick left, Osborne rested his briefcase on the counter and removed the bottle of wine, running a finger over the label. His movements slow and steady with reverence, he circled the lip of the foil with a knife, then inserted the corkscrew, being careful to set it precisely enough off center to accommodate the twist. He pulled the cork and took down the decanter, then changed his mind and put it back. It was too late to bother with formalities, and besides, a little sediment wouldn’t hurt him. He poured himself a glass and went into the living room, taking the bottle with him. The same Chet Baker album had been on the turntable for a week and he was getting sick of it, but he started it anyway, too tired to make a new selection.

He sat on the couch and drank, then poured himself another glass. He would have expected more sediment from a Burgundy that old, but you could never tell about these things. Every wine was different. Could be the sediment was all stuck together along one side or at the bottom, depending how long it had been standing up. He held up the bottle to see, but the room was too dark. He set it back down and put his feet up on the coffee table and his hands on his belly, trying to relax. Andre Morales took life too seriously. He couldn’t wait to be famous, as if that would change anything. He already had everything a guy could want. Osborne thought of what it would be like to be young and handsome and unaware that one day life might be lived in a state of more or less constant pain.

He tried not to think about anything and just listen to the music. The sound of it both lulled and excited him. How could anybody be sick of Chet Baker? Especially when he was playing “Tenderly” the way he did that first time he recorded it in Paris. It would have been around 1955. Baker was what, twenty-five at the time? Younger? Just a kid in Paris with his trumpet.

He poured another glass of wine. When he himself had been twenty-five, he was island-hopping and hanging out in Greece and Key West, and on a little strip of sand and palm trees his girlfriend found just a short boat ride off Samoa. That was some kind of place. Osborne’s head grew pleasantly foggy as he drifted into the past.

After a while, a funny feeling came over him and he came back to the present. He couldn’t quite place the feeling. He put down his glass and looked around the room as though he expected something to happen. The lamps seemed to flicker and his eyes widened with fear. He gasped once, gurgled, and slid down off the couch. Just that quickly, Nathan Osborne was dead.

Sunny McCoskey had a nose
for wild mushrooms. That morning she’d spent four hours collecting a bagful of fresh chanterelles from her favorite spot. Now they sat on the passenger side of her pickup, filling the cab with a smell like damp leaves.

She rolled down the window to let in the cold air. The afternoon sky was a low, velvety gray. It was winter in Napa Valley and the hills were carpeted in new grass, the grapevines bare, yellow sprays of mustard between the rows. She hit fourth gear and the truck sailed down Highway 29, rocking gently on its old shocks.

At Yountville, she turned off and in a couple of minutes pulled into the parking lot of Vinifera. Banging her door shut, she went around to the passenger side to collect her knives, uniform, and bag of mushrooms. The parking lot was mostly empty. Near the front, parked under a tree, was a Mercedes sedan the color of vanilla ice cream. A black 911, too new to have license plates, sat nearby showing a tease of cherry-red disk brakes through the silver wheel covers. At this time of day, they had to belong to the owners, maybe the chef. Sunny peeked in the window of the 911. Could this be Andre Morales’s car? She shook her
head. She’d made her choices, keeping her own café small and manageable. No eighty-hour work week, no six-figure profits, no racy little Porsche. She glanced back at her 1978 Ford Ranger, with its root-beer side panels and its body nicked up like an ancient whale’s. The truck had its virtues: it could hold a cord of firewood, for one thing, or six wine barrels. To each her own.

Inside the grand stone entrance to Vinifera, she slipped past a heavy curtain into the dining room, where a few staffers were getting organized for the night. The scope of the place was impressive, especially compared to Wildside, the ten-table restaurant Sunny owned, and where she was the chef. At Vinifera, a veritable soccer field of tables and booths stretched toward the kitchen doors. A mahogany bar ran the length of the room off to the right. Behind it, an enormous mirror reached for the ceiling, and glass shelves glowed with scores of bottles and their clear or amber liquids. Across the room, a staircase went up to a balcony with more seating. To the left, a catwalk led past several closed doors. Straight above, dangling from the ceiling by cables that looked far too slender for the job, was an aluminum dragonfly as big as a hang glider. Art.