Death By the Glass #2 (16 page)

“We’re talking about the bottle of wine that was broken, the one with the cork still in it, right?” asked Sunny.

“That’s right. The neck of the bottle broke off in one piece. The cork and foil were still in place because it hadn’t been opened. The foil was definitely green. Is that significant to you for some reason?”

“I had a theory, but it sounds like it was wrong,” said Sunny.

“What kind of a theory?”

“Oh, I just had an idea about where that wine could have come from, but I was wrong. Thanks for checking. Any word on the wine he was drinking and where that bottle went?”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally Officer Dervich said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to refer you to Sergeant Harvey with any further questions.”

Sunny thanked her and hung up. When she looked up, Rivka was leaning against the doorjamb, watching her and eating gingersnaps out of a plastic container.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Are you going to eat all of those?” said Sunny, eyeing the container.

“They’re last week’s. You said you were going to talk to Steve yesterday and then butt out.”

“And I did talk to him.”

“But you didn’t butt out. Don’t you remember a certain traumatic incident that I spent about a grand on therapy trying to process? And how you promised never to get involved in that kind of thing again?”

“Yeah, I remember,” said Sunny. “I think it had something to do with one of my best friends not being tried for murder.”

“Point taken, but no one needs rescuing now. How about giving Wildside some of your attention for a change? We haven’t
done any of the stuff we talked about at New Year’s. The garden is still a mess, the back fence needs replacing, we haven’t gone out to see the suppliers, and racks in the walk-in need to be rebuilt.”

“We still have plenty of year left.”

Rivka let out an exasperated sigh and flopped down on the couch. “If you won’t give it up, at least fill me in. What’s all this business about foil?”

Sunny came around from behind her desk and moved aside a stack of cookbooks so she could sit down on a café chair next to the couch. She was about to explain when her mobile phone vibrated against the desktop, caller unidentified.

“It’s too early for the telemarketers.” She picked up and Pel Rastburn greeted her in the polished tone of a lifelong executive.

“Ms. McCoskey, I wanted to let you know that my wife and I have discussed the request you made last night and we would like to invite you to lunch with us today, or at your convenience.”

Sunny thanked him and explained the difficulty of being away from work at lunch time.

“Then you could come for tea this afternoon if you like, around four o’clock.”

“Perfect.”

She took down directions to their house and hung up. Evidently they hadn’t mentioned her name to Eliot, who would certainly have taken the opportunity to tell them she’d never even met Nathan.

Rivka raised her eyebrows. “Okay, spill.”

Sunny looked at the clock. “Let’s get on it. I’ll explain while we work.”

They dug into the morning prep routine. Between making sure the day’s beets were roasted, trays of vegetables were
caramelizing, and potatoes and celery root were well on their way to a rendezvous with the food mill and more butter than anyone cared to admit, and checking deliveries of produce, wine, cedar planks, and salmon, it was well after nine before Sunny had a chance to say anything more about Nathan Osborne. Finally she recounted what she’d learned the previous day, including how Remy had accused Nathan of forging the wine, and what Eliot had said about Andre wanting to buy into the business.

“The green foil this morning was a setback,” Sunny said.

“Because . . .” asked Rivka.

“Because the phony Marceline has red foil. The Grand Cru should be topped with green foil according to Monty, not red. But the bottles I saw in the cellar at Vinifera had red foil, even though the label said Grand Cru. There were two bottles missing from that case. We know where one went. I presumed the other was on the floor at Nathan’s. I figured it had to be the other bogus bottle.”

“But it turned out to be the real thing.”

“Right.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It means that somebody didn’t get to drink a seven-hundred-dollar bottle of wine. Beyond that, I’m not exactly sure,” said Sunny.

Rivka ran a bulb of fennel across a mandoline meditatively while Sunny prepared a tray of winter squash and slid it into the oven. She tossed a handful of walnuts in a saucepan with butter, sugar, and spices, thinking. Finally she said, “If we choose to believe Dahlia, then we know that Nathan took possession of one of the forged bottles last week. That bottle eventually made its way from him to Dahlia to Andre and me. It stands to reason
that Nathan might have taken a second bottle. He knew where they were kept, and he didn’t actually get to drink the one he took home for his breakup dinner with Dahlia. So let’s imagine that he opens forged bottle number two, pours himself a glass or two or three, has his heart attack, and dies. Then the mysterious stranger lets himself in, smashes the unopened bottle, and removes the open one.”

“And why would they do that?”

Sunny removed the walnuts and set them aside to cool, then loaded the saucepan with another batch. “The smashing, I think it is safe to assume, occurs unintentionally. I don’t see why someone would set out to do it. It doesn’t seem to serve any purpose and it lends suspicion to what would otherwise be a perfect murder, in the sense of not appearing to be murder at all.” She flipped the walnuts in the pan with a deft flick of the wrist.

“So the real bottle gets broken by accident.”

“Right.”

“And the fake bottle, forged bottle number two, is removed.”

“Yes.”

“Because?”

“I can only think of two reasons: because it was phony or because it was poison. The poison argument doesn’t hold up because they left wine in the glass Nathan had been drinking from. If it had poison, it seems logical that they would have gotten rid of the glass. So it had to be because the bottle was phony and the crook was scared Nathan would figure it out and bust them.”

Rivka thought about it. “They were hoping to sneak in and replace the fake bottle with the real one, only they didn’t plan on finding Nathan dead.”

“Exactly,” said Sunny, removing the second batch of walnuts and tossing more in the pan.

“If that’s the case, Remy has to be lying about Nathan forging the wines,” said Rivka.

“That’s what I’m thinking. He has to be lying. How convenient is it to be able to blame the dead guy? It’s ideal. Only the dead guy has no reason to commit the fraud. If Nathan was behind the forged wine, he wouldn’t have been running around taking bottles home with him, that would be a waste of time and valuable counterfeiting profits. Would he go to all the trouble and risk of doctoring up a case of wine, then drink a couple of bottles himself when he could drink any wine in Vinifera’s cellar or Osborne Wines’ warehouse? Remy said Nathan was out of control, drinking all the time, and a chronic liar who forgot what was real and what wasn’t. I don’t buy it. You can’t run two businesses of that magnitude if you’re totally out of control. I can barely run this place, and I think I have a pretty solid grip on reality.”

“Except when it comes to Andre,” Rivka said.

“Stick to the subject,” Sunny replied.

“Wildside is so small you have to do everything yourself. Nathan probably only handled big-picture stuff and could get by being bombed.”

“Even the big-picture stuff gets out of control if you’re drunk all day. If we accept that Nathan perpetrated the fraud, I don’t think we can also accept that he forgot he’d done so. Replacing those labels was the work of someone meticulous, refined, and obsessed with detail.”

“Remy.”

Sunny threw in more walnuts. “It fits. Since Remy and Osborne are the only two who could profit by selling fake wine to
the wine club, I’m prepared to bet that Remy forged that wine himself unbeknownst to Nathan. When he realized Nathan had taken a bottle home, he decided he had to break into his house to get it back before Nathan sobered up and figured it out.”

“Because if Nathan found out and fired him, Remy wouldn’t be able to get a job serving grape juice at a Taco Bell.”

“He could go to jail.”

“So he probably assumes you’ll get this far in your thinking eventually. Don’t you think that might make him a little edgy?” Rivka said.

“I’d say he’s already about as close to the edge as a person can get without going over,” said Sunny. “I’ve been wondering if he’s going to stick around. I bet a beach blanket in Rio is sounding pretty good to him right about now.”

Rivka looked at her. “You expecting a really big crowd for lunch?”

“Not especially, why?”

“You just candied enough walnuts for every frisée salad north of Los Angeles.”

There was just barely time after lunch service for Sunny to change into jeans and a clean T-shirt and race up-Valley to the Rastburns’. The directions said to turn at the sign marked “No wineries this road,” a narrow lane that ran straight west through bottomland vineyard. Just visible at the end was the terra-cotta roof of a terra-cotta home mostly shielded by a grand eucalyptus. Sunny pulled up in front of the house and got out. Off to the right, an assortment of Defenders and Four-Runners with the Rastburns’ galloping Morgan motif stenciled on the doors were parked under a carport, a vine-clad shelter that looked more
suitable for a bacchanalian feast than a fleet of four-wheel drives. To the east, vineyards filled the view for a hundred and eighty degrees. The house sat back invitingly from the drive, sheltered by rosemary and lavender hedges with cedar trees overhanging the western edge of the garden and Diamond Mountain for a backdrop. It was all more Tuscan than anything she’d seen in Tuscany. Napa was getting just a little big for its knickers, Sunny thought. Pel Rastburn opened the front door as she reached the landing.

“Ms. McCoskey, welcome. You found it without any trouble, I hope?”

“None at all. Please, call me Sonya.”

Pel was dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, tucked in tidily and finished with a smooth leather belt. Sunny followed him into the living room, where Sharon Rastburn appeared as they were settling into seats. She seemed greatly invigorated by the passage of a day, her smile much more youthful than the night before and her cheeks touched with a blush of color to match her pink turtleneck. She sat down in an armchair between them and said it would be just a moment for tea. A grandfather clock ticked from the wall behind them. Sunny glanced at a side table loaded with family photographs showing a trio of handsome blond daughters at various ages. Sharon gave Pel a meaningful glance and he cleared his throat.

“Ms. McCoskey,” he said. “I’m afraid I must apologize for my manner last night. I assumed you were one of Nathan’s lady friends. We’ve had some trouble in that department in the past and I do not wish to make any further associations.” He smiled at Sharon. “Over dinner, my wife assured me that she has comprehensive knowledge of Nathan’s romantic affiliations and you are not among them.”

“That’s true,” said Sunny. “I never dated Nathan.” She paused, considering how to continue. Coming clean would not be easy, but the world, or at least the wine country, was too small to start complicating it with lies.

“Since we’re apologizing,” she said, “I think I owe you one as well. I said I was a friend of Nathan’s. I’m not. To be perfectly honest, I never met him. But I am a friend of Andre Morales.”

They stared. “The cook?” said Sharon.

“Yes. And because of that friendship, I’ve learned some things that have made me wonder if the police have taken all the possibilities into consideration regarding Nathan’s death.”

“What do you mean by that?” said Pel.

“She means she thinks Nathan was killed,” said Sharon breathlessly.

“I wouldn’t state it that categorically,” said Sunny. “I’d just feel better if I knew a bit more about his last night.”

“What makes you think somebody would want to hurt Nathan?” said Pel.

“I can’t tell you everything,” said Sunny carefully. “There may be other crimes involved, and I don’t want to make trouble for anyone, especially if I’m wrong.”

“That’s very convenient for you,” said Pel. “We invite you, a complete stranger, into our home, and you tell us you are in fact not a friend of Nathan’s, and yet you can’t tell us why you misrepresented yourself, or why you want to worry my wife and me by introducing the hunch, and I suspect that is all it is, that our dearest friend was murdered.”

“I know it sounds strange,” said Sunny. “I assure you I have only Nathan’s interests—the interests of Nathan’s friends—at heart.”

“What about your interests?” said Pel.

“If Nathan was killed, it’s not exactly wise to let the murderer continue to go about their business like nothing happened—especially if it has to do with the restaurant business, which is my business. Others could be at risk. I don’t think all the facts have come out yet, and I’d like to know all there is to know.”

“A purist,” said Pel, skeptically. He stood up and walked across the room to a Japanese cabinet with stair-step drawers and removed a pipe and a pouch of tobacco. He turned to Sunny, holding up the pipe. “Will it bother you?”