Murder Uncorked (5 page)

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Authors: Michele Scott

BOOK: Murder Uncorked
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“I had no idea. I know about tastes and what wine goes with what, but I’ve never really given much thought to the entire process, from the growth stage on.” She crossed her legs and saw that Derek’s eyes followed them, right to the hemline of her black skirt, above her knee. She’d paired the skirt with a teal V-necked sweater hoping it would complement her eyes. Her palms grew sweaty.
“You’re going to learn a lot around here, then.” He pulled the Range Rover up next to a cottage that was about half a mile away from what she assumed was the main house. It sat on a small knoll, surrounded by oak trees covered in Spanish moss. The cottage was a craftsman creation, with a porch and white picket fence to match. “This will be your home. For as long as you need it, in order to make a decision about the job.”
Nikki got out of the car and looked around, noticing a pond behind the house surrounded by more oaks. Two Muscovy ducks were enjoying a swim. For a brief moment, the scene reminded her of back
home
—the trees and ducks, anyway. Although the cottage didn’t look very large, it was larger by far and a thousand times nicer than the home where she’d spent her first several years in the foothills of Tennessee. “This is amazing,” she said.
He opened up the back hatch of the SUV and took out her suitcase. “Come on, I’ll show you the inside.”
The porch had so much charm in and of itself, including a swing and roses on a trellis on each side, that if it hadn’t been real, it would have had to be part of a Norman Rock-well painting.
The interior of the cottage carried the quaintness throughout, decorated in French-country plaids and florals in colors of black, peach, pink, cream, and green. A small kitchen opened into a nook with bench seating. Off to the side of the kitchen table was a small telephone table. On the other side of the kitchen was the family room with a pinewood entertainment unit complete with TV, stereo, and all the entertainment accoutrements one might desire. A fireplace in front of the sofa balanced out the room. There was one bedroom.
“Wow!” Nikki exclaimed when she opened the bedroom door. The room was an absolute dream, decorated in pink with black-and-white traditional toile. Pink roses filled several vases on the dresser, along with an antique bookcase containing the classics. “Consider me your new tenant.”
Derek laughed and pointed to the French doors, which opened out onto a balcony overlooking the pond. “Look through there. You see that?”
Nikki went to the window and saw across the pond another home, similar in style, but more like an old barn. “The barn?”
“Not a barn,” he replied.
“No?”
“My house. I renovated it when I came home from college.” He crossed his arms and leaned back on his heels. “By myself, I might add.”
“No kidding? But why? Why don’t you live in the mansion I saw up on the hill as we drove in?”
“You mean the insane asylum?”
He said it so seriously that for a second Nikki wasn’t sure if he were joking or not. “What’s behind that statement?”
“Trust me, you’ll see. I’m hosting a charity event for the Leukemia Foundation tomorrow night. You’ll get to meet the inmates who live in the mansion, otherwise the people who I loosely refer to as my family. They’re a
special
bunch.” His reply heavily laden with sarcasm was not lost on Nikki. “There’s my half brother, Simon, my stepmother, Patrice, and my ex-wife, Meredith. Oh, did I forget Simon’s partner, Marco? He’s at least got a sense of humor.”
“You should have told me about the party. I’m sure your family isn’t that bad, but it’s bad for me that I don’t have anything dressy to wear.”
“As long as you have something black, you’ll fit right in.”
She did have that. The every-woman’s requisite simple black dress was packed away, and though it was nothing to be worn to a charity event, it would have to do.
“Why don’t you get settled in, and I’ll be back by in half an hour. I need to make sure everything is on schedule for tomorrow. I’d like to show you around the place and have you meet my winemaker, Gabriel Asanti. He’s amazing. What he can do with a handful of grapes is nothing short of a miracle. I assure you, your taste buds will never be the same.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” Nikki locked the door behind Derek after he left, and then laughed out loud for the ridiculous act. What could happen in a place like this?
She started to unpack her suitcase in the bedroom when, out of the corner of one eye she caught something moving outside by the pond. She went to the doors and saw a rustling in the bushes across the way, but then it stopped, as if someone were there and knew they’d been spotted. Nikki locked the French doors, and once again laughed at herself. “My overactive imagination. Maybe I should be writing screenplays instead of trying to star in them.” She looked at herself in the mirror over the dresser, and ran her fingertips over the tiny fine lines on either side of her eyes. “Yuck.”
She went back to unpacking. Once again she noticed movement from outside, but all she saw was the pair of ducks. “Ducks, dingbat. That’s all it is. Ducks.” She went to the French doors and peered out. The ducks flew off, leaving ripples in their wake on the pond’s surface. She started to turn back around, and there it was again. This time it was unmistakable; she saw a flash of green, and it wasn’t leaves on a bush. This was green fabric, like someone’s shirt.
She opened the door, stepping out into the cool air. A frenzy of goose bumps ran down her arms, and she rubbed her hands briskly over them. She sang out, “Hello. Anyone there?” Curious by nature, she took a step outside and called out again, to no avail. “I know I saw someone,” she muttered under her breath. Screw it. Nikki wasn’t a fraidy cat. Besides, she did Tae Bo, and if Billy Blanks had taught her anything, he’d taught her how to throw one damned good roundhouse kick.
She walked the hundred or so yards around the pond where she knew someone had been only moments before. The brush grew dense and grabbed at the skin on her bare arms, scratching her. A mosquito landed on her, biting her before heading off to its next victim. She slapped her neck, but missed. “Ouch.” She knew she should turn around and go back to the guest house. But she’d grown up reading Nancy Drew books, and she’d be damned if she’d turn back now. Nancy wouldn’t walk away. She’d pursue.
Her shoe got bogged down in some mud, and she had to yank to pull her foot out, losing her shoe in the greenish muck. “Damn!” Her foot covered in mud, her arms scratched up, and mosquito bites rising along her neck, she was foolishly looking for some phantom juvenile delinquent who got his
cojones
off spying on unsuspecting women. Could it get any worse? Only if Derek found her like this.
But even worse than that was when her bare foot brushed against something that didn’t feel like a prickly bush. It tickled, but not in the way a bush would. She looked down and saw a hand. She screamed as her eyes followed the hand deeper into the bushes. There was the body of a man with thick grape vines pulled tautly around his neck, his brown eyes bulging out of his purplish face. His dark, longish hair covered in mud. He wore a green shirt, and across the right side of his chest on the shirt was his name—Gabriel Asanti. With a flash of recognition, Nikki knew she’d just met the winemaker.
Chapter 4
“I am so sorry,” Derek murmured, taking off his navy blue knit sweater and pulling it over Nikki, who hadn’t realized until she felt its warmth that she was trembling. His Rhodesian Ridgeback, named Oliver, lounged in between the two wicker chairs, where they were seated on Derek’s porch. Every once in awhile, the dog lifted his head to watch the commotion going on in the distance across the pond.
“If you’d like, I can call my pilot and have you flown home.”
“Afraid you can’t do that,” a young woman police officer said, approaching them. Oliver barked as she walked forward.
Derek stretched his arm over the chair and stroked his dog’s head. “It’s okay.” The dog quieted down, and the officer climbed the steps. “Nikki, Jeanine Wiley. Or Officer Wiley.”
Officer Wiley stretched out her hand to shake Nikki’s, and they greeted each other. “Miss Sands has to stay until the chief says that she can leave. She’s a critical part of this investigation.” The freckle-faced redhead pulled out a pocket-sized notepad. “Mr. Malveaux, I hate to seem rude, but I need to ask Miss Sands a few more questions, and it’s important we have some privacy.”
Derek looked questioningly at Nikki.
She shook her head. “I’ll be fine. I planned on staying anyway. We still have a job interview.”
He gave her a warm smile. “Can I get you anything? A cup of tea, coffee, wine?”
“Tea would be nice.”
“Officer Wiley?”
The policewoman, whose face was already ruddy, turned bright red. Such a deliciously good-looking man had obviously never asked her anything so kind. “No. No, thank you.”
Derek went back into the house, Oliver in tow, while Officer Wiley opened up the notepad and took a pen from her shirt pocket. “I know you went over this before with one of the other officers, but, now that you’ve had some time to relax a little and think about it, perhaps other details have come to mind.”
Nikki shook her head and told Officer Wiley the same story she’d explained when the police first arrived. She looked past Officer Wiley’s shoulder and saw Gabriel’s body being wheeled into the back of the coroner’s van.
“You didn’t know the victim?”
“No. As I’ve already explained, I arrived this morning.”
“What compelled you, if you were frightened by seeing something move in the bushes, to take a walk to check out what it might have been?”
Nikki eyed the young cop. Was she insinuating something, or was Nikki simply being paranoid because she’d been the one to find the body? She sighed, worn out from the freakish experience.
“Here’s the deal. I wasn’t exactly scared. It bugged me, yes, when I saw the bushes move, and I had a creepy feeling that maybe someone was watching me. The last thing on my mind was that someone might actually be killing someone else.”
“Uh-huh.” The officer jotted something down.
Nikki got the distinct feeling that the officer was keeping something from her, but that was what the police were supposed to do—keep the details of a murder investigation under wraps. Nikki knew that much from her short-lived TV show.
“Can I ask you something?” Officer Wiley asked.
Nikki nodded.
She hesitated and glanced around. “Um, are you by any chance
the
Nikki Sands, the one who did that show about Detective Sydney Martini?”
Nikki shrunk down in the wicker chair and wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. She gave a slight nod.
Officer Wiley lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “I
loved
that show. I was so mad when they took it off the air. I mean, there were only what, five episodes?”
“Four.”
“It was
so
good. You were awesome.”
Great. Nikki had actually come across one of her ten fans, and she
had
to be a policewoman investigating this murder.
“I loved the way you kicked butt on the bad guys. You can throw some great kicks.”
“Tae Bo. Get the advanced tapes. Look, you know that character I played wasn’t really me. Shouldn’t we finish here?”
“Right. Sorry, I’m just really excited to meet you,” she gushed.
“Thanks, Officer Wiley.”
“Call me Jeanine, except you know . . .” She glanced around. “Except when one of the other officers is present. One other thing, would you mind giving me an autograph?”
Derek walked out in time to witness this, and handed Nikki her tea. “It’s kind of hot, so be careful. Are we about done here, Jeanine?” he asked.
A blushing Jeanine Wiley nodded and stood up to go. “Thanks for your cooperation. As I said before, we need you to hang around for a bit.”
“No problem,” Nikki replied. “Am I a suspect?”
“Miss Sands, we have to look at all the angles.”
Nikki and Derek watched as the policewoman descended the porch steps. Nikki put down the cup of tea that had been warming her hands nicely. “Did you say you had wine?”

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