Lethal Vintage (20 page)

The coals, gnarled old vine stock chopped into briquette-size hunks, glowed orange under a thin coating of silvery gray. Rivka arranged lines of herbed quail on the grill and stood guard over them with her tongs. A willowy figure strode past her toward the parking lot, the sleeves of her apricot kimono dress rippling behind her.

“Where is she going?” said Rivka.

Sunny paused on her way to the table. “Annabelle? Monty said she forgot her earrings.”

“And she’s going to go get them? Can’t she do without, or send someone else? She can’t leave her own engagement dinner. We’re just about to sit down!”

“I know,” said Sunny with a shrug. “You want to try to stop her?”

Rivka hung the tongs on the grill and crossed her arms indignantly. “She’s going to miss it. These birds are going to be ready in five. I can’t take them off now.”

“I told her that. It’s her party; she can miss it if she wants to.”

Sunny carried the last of the salads out through the mix of friends clustered around Wildside’s backyard and gave the table one last glance, moving a glass half an inch closer to a plate, tucking a flower a bit deeper into its vase. Search warrants, shattered
windows, murder investigations—it was all behind them now, thought Sunny with satisfaction. Cynthia Meyers was in jail awaiting trial for homicide, among other charges. Wildside’s waitstaff glided among the guests, offering pristine little shrimps, toasts with a smear of goat cheese, and diced ahi tartare with fresh ginger and blackened sesame seeds on rice crisps. A gloss of chatter floated over the scene, punctuated by laughter and mixed with the jazz string quartet playing acoustic off to one side.

Most of the restaurant’s staff was on hand to help. That morning, they’d carried half a dozen four-tops out the back door of Wildside and set them up next to the garden, under the olive trees, and covered them with white linen to make one long table. Down the center were half a dozen candelabra and as many vases overflowing with roses from Sunny’s yard and the rosebushes that grew at the end of each row of vines across the street.

It was a perfect night: still, warm, and golden. Monty Lenstrom was nervous. Already he’d had too much of the local bubbly and was standing by Rivka with a champagne flute in his hand, looking dazed in his linen summer suit. Wade Skord clapped him on the back.

“You finally did it. And before retirement,” he said.

“I am in love with an extremely neurotic woman,” said Monty. “And I’m going to marry her. That’s what I’m doing.”

Wade took the tongs and lifted a quail. “Looks like we’re almost ready. I could eat about, oh, seven of these guys myself.”

“You get one,” said Rivka.

“You’ve gotta be kidding. That’s a Scooby snack, not dinner.”

“Relax, it’s just the starter. Everybody gets a salad and a quail to start. Then bouillabaisse avec garden tomatoes, garlic, white fish, and whatever else Sunny threw in there with a big tasty crouton floating on top and a dollop of Mama McCoskey’s spicy rouille. Nobody is going to go home hungry.”

“Good. Then let’s get this thing started, I’m starved.”

Sunny came up beside them. “I think we’re about ready. Annabelle back yet?”

“Of course not,” said Rivka. “She’s probably still gassing up the car and having her nails done. It’s fifteen minutes each way at least.”

“Well, we can’t wait. We’ll just have to start without her. Everyone knows how she is, anyway.” Sunny glanced at Monty. “I mean, I’m sure she’ll be back soon. What do you think?”

“Let’s do it. I don’t want people eating cold bird. We can make a toast when she gets here,” said Monty.

“Is that who I think it is?” said Wade, pointing a shrimp tail at the parking lot, where Franco Bertinotti and Keith Lachlan were getting out of Oliver Seth’s convertible BMW. “That guy must be, what, seven feet tall? Where did he find a suit that big?”

“Not quite, but tall enough,” said Sunny. “It’s good to see him walking again. It’s funny to think what might have happened if he hadn’t shown up that night. I might not be here.”

“She wouldn’t have done it,” said Monty. “There’s no way she would have gone through with it.”

“Of course she would have,” said Rivka. “After you’ve smothered someone in their sleep, pulling the trigger on a gun is nothing. Besides, she had no choice. What’s she going to do, just walk out and go home? Once you break into somebody’s house and pull a gun on them, you’re sort of committed.”

“Steve was right behind him,” said Sunny. “But he might have been too late.”

Franco and Keith walked toward the group. Sunny was the first to greet them. “How is the leg?” she asked, standing back. “Looks okay from here.”

“It’s healing up pretty well,” said Keith. “I can’t complain. I’ll never model with that leg again, but I still have the pretty face.”

Sunny turned to Franco and let him pull her to him for a kiss on each cheek. “I’m glad you decided to stay. I was hoping you would,” she said.

“Had to,” said Franco, winking at the others. “I have to finish hammering out the deal with the new boss.”

Monty and Wade looked at Sunny.

“We are considering…I am considering,” she said, “the possibility of potentially, if all the details are exactly right, taking on a financial partner so we could expand the business, if that’s what we decide to do, and we may not. There are still a lot of details to work out.”

“You’ve got talent and guts,” said Franco, “not to mention a great team.” He nodded to Rivka. “With a little backing, Wildside could expand into a nice little franchise.”

“It’s already a nice little franchise,” said Sunny.

“But we’re ready to grow,” said Rikva, leaning into her.

“We’re ready to consider it,” said Sunny. “I’ve always handled the business on my own, on my own terms. It’s not an easy thing to give that freedom up.”

“Sometimes you have to trust your fate,” said Keith. “Everything is negotiable.”

Rivka beamed. “Look out, Andre Morales, here we come.”

“It’s about time,” said Wade. “You know,” he said, pausing to finish chewing a shrimp, “I find it ironic that the person who wasn’t looking for a backer found one and the person who was looking for one lost one.”

“You mean Andre?” said Keith. “Oliver may still do something with him. It might just be on a slower time line.”

“You mean he’ll have to fit it in in between federal corruption investigations?” said Sunny. “He’s going to be busy with his
lawyers for a while. Oh, sorry. I guess you’re caught up in that whole mess, too.”

“Not me. I had no part in any of it,” said Keith, raising his hands. “I just execute the contracts, I don’t vet the strategy. That’s his boat to sink. I’m just the lawyer.”

“Come on,” said Sunny. “You’re not named on any of the indictments?”

“Oh, I’m named, all right. Everyone is named. Even this guy.” Keith jerked his thumb at Franco. “But Seth and Taurian will bear the brunt of it. It’ll be fine. This is a problem money can fix.”

“Are you sure?” said Sunny. “Won’t he go to jail?”

Keith looked incredulous. “Oliver Seth? No way. He might pay a hell of a fine and a fortune in legal fees, but he can afford it. He’s made way too many people too much money to go down for something as minor as doctoring the books.”

“But wasn’t it more than that?” said Sunny. “Cynthia was sure it would ruin him.”

Keith turned his hands up as if to say there was nothing he could do. “Inconvenient, certainly. Expensive, definitely. Embarrassing? A little. Ultimately not that big a crisis. He’ll live to deal again. Or at least retire somewhere hospitable.”

Sunny frowned and was about to say something, then decided it was a good time to call everyone to the table.

In the deep blue of late twilight, the last of the rusty orange bouillabaisse was ladled out and the last of the dinner wines poured. Ripples of laugher rose up, and happy shouts punctuated the coming of night. Wraps appeared on bare shoulders and Monty emerged from the kitchen with his arms full of fresh bottles.
Decades earlier he’d started buying ports from the best years to shore up against future celebrations. He smiled knowing those days were here at last.

“I’ve been meaning to thank you,” said Keith, taking the seat next to Sunny.

“For letting you come to my rescue?”

“I guess you didn’t know the police had an arrest warrant out for me that night. If it weren’t for you, I might have gone to jail for Anna’s murder.”

“How do you know?”

“The guy who put the bullet in my leg told me.”

“Back up, folks,” said Rivka. “Sunny keeps telling me she doesn’t remember exactly what happened that night. It’s all some kind of blur to her. But you were there. What exactly happened, anyway?”

“And while you’re at it,” said Sunny, “why don’t you explain how you ended up at my house in the first place. I’ve been wondering about that.”

“It’s pretty simple,” said Keith. “I was at Oliver’s house when you called. I saw Cynthia listening in, and when she took off right afterward, I figured I’d follow her and see what she was up to. I knew things were getting thick. Jordan had already called me after you talked to her, so I had my suspicions about what was going on.

“I followed her over to your place and watched her jimmy the bathroom window. Trouble is, I didn’t have a plan. I figured she had some kind of weapon. Nine-one-one would have been too slow. Then I remembered something this guy told me about.” He grabbed Franco as he walked past. “The trusty old Sicilian paper-bag trick.”

“You are insane. I still can’t believe you actually used the paper-bag trick,” sputtered Franco, choking on a mouthful of bread and wine.

“What is the Sicilian paper-bag trick?” said Rivka.

“It’s absolutely nothing,” exclaimed Franco, taking a seat. “That is the insanity of it! I told him a little story of something funny that happened when I was a boy in the countryside in Sicily. How one of my cousins hid outside an uncle’s house who was a notorious hothead and pretended to be an angry neighbor on attack. He had a paper bag that he blew up with air and then popped to make a sound like a gunshot. It worked just the same way as for Lachlan, here.” He laughed breathlessly. “Ha! Only my cousin got buckshot in his behind, not a bullet in the leg.”

“It was that or nothing,” said Keith, his face lit by candlelight, the long fingers of his big, graceful hands interlaced on the table. Overhead, little Moroccan tin lanterns filled with tea lights flickered from the olive branches.

“So you’re outside Sunny’s house,” said Rivka, “and you see Cynthia climb in the bathroom window and you decide there isn’t time to call for help.”

“No, I called. I just figured it would be too late by the time they came. I knew I had to do something in the meantime. There was an old McDonald’s bag in the car. I decided that was the best I could do. So I take it and go up to the front door and I listen. I can hear them talking inside, which is better than not hearing anything, but I figure I’d better get on with whatever I’m going to do or it’s going to be too late. So I blow up the bag and yell something like, ‘Freeze! Police!’ Then I pop the bag and hit the door with everything I’ve got. At first I thought a splinter from the door must have got me. One of the shots—I don’t know if it was the cop’s or Cynthia’s—shattered the front window. There was glass everywhere, then the cops stormed the place. The next thing I know, Cynthia was running toward me and then bam!, she goes down. Then Morales gets the sucker punch and he’s down. You know the rest. Cynthia goes to jail. I get seventy-eight stitches in my thigh.”

“Andre and I spent the next three hours explaining everything at the police station,” said Sunny.

“But I still don’t get how you knew to follow Cynthia in the first place,” said Rivka.

“The same reason Sunny knew it was her who killed Anna. Because I knew it wasn’t me. I had a general idea I was about to get set up, but I didn’t realize how close I was until I saw Oliver’s face after he hung up the phone. I knew then he thought I did it. I started thinking about that night. Oliver and I had spoken, late, about what Anna had found, and how she was threatening to go to the press with it. He was upset and concerned. To tell the truth, part of me always thought maybe he did it. I didn’t want to think that, of course, but who else could it have been? No one else knew what was going on. No one else would care enough about Anna to go to the trouble of killing her. Then when I saw his face, I knew he felt the same way. He’d been thinking maybe it was me who killed her. Then it hit me. The only other person Oliver really trusted was Cynthia. All of a sudden I knew what had happened.”

“That’s exactly how it was with me,” said Sunny. “At first I thought it had to be you. That Oliver confided in you and you decided to take care of the problem yourself, to save your own skin as well as his. When I found out all that business about the pie, I realized it could have been Cynthia, too. You guys were like a family. You, Oliver, Anna, and Cynthia. It had to be one of you. I wanted to see Oliver to find out if he had told Cynthia about what happened with Anna.”

“But even if he told her, it wouldn’t prove she did it,” said Rivka.

“That’s right,” said Sunny. “That’s why I told Sergeant Harvey to go up to Oliver’s and get the pie.”

“Which she had already disposed of,” said Keith.

“What pie?” said Monty.

“Cynthia was making a pie that night. She wore rubber gloves when she killed Anna, and covered Anna’s mouth with duct tape. Afterward she needed to stash them somewhere, so she put them in the pie and put it in the freezer. It was gone by the time I figured it out.”

“So if she hadn’t panicked and come after you that night, she might have gotten away with it,” said Rivka. “Keith might even have been accused of Anna’s murder.”

“And it would have been ugly. As it turns out, I was driving down the hill about the time Cynthia killed Anna. I wouldn’t have had an alibi. In fact, I would have been in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, and what’s worse, I’d already lied about it.”

“That is extremely ironic,” said Wade, waggling a forefinger. “The real killer gets caught because she’s trying too hard not to get caught. And the guy who everyone thinks is a killer turns out to be the hero who saves the day.”