Sharpshooter (3 page)

“Not dead,” corrected Rivka, “murdered.” Before they opened, Rivka had changed into her checked pants and tied a triangle kerchief over her braids. Her ears were generously pierced with tiny silver hoops and posts. On the back of each slender brown biceps was a tattoo of a red and blue swallow, one swooping forward, the other back, which gave the impression of birds circling around her. She stood guard over the grill in her long
white apron with tongs poised, watching a collection of husky salmon filets and pork chops sizzle. She repositioned one of the slabs of salmon precisely ninety degrees to the left to complete a neat crosshatch of black grill marks. “I always knew he would mix it up with somebody eventually. He was a troublemaker,” said Rivka, putting the accent on
maker.

“How do you know that? He seemed like an okay guy. Sort of snobby, maybe.”

“Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean I have to start lying about him and saying a lot of phony bullshit. Why do you think so many people hated him? Why did somebody hate him enough to put a bullet through him? Even Alex didn’t like him; he said he was a nightmare of a boss.”

Sunny was quiet. It seemed disrespectful to talk about Jack that way considering what had happened, even if he had been less than a model citizen.

Rivka said, “I’m just saying that there were plenty of people out there who thought how nice it would feel to put their fingers around that fancy-pants neck of his and give a good squeeze.”

“He was just a rich, snobby guy who went to a lot of parties,” said Sunny.

Rivka pointed her tongs at her. “Alex says he was a hothead. You couldn’t do enough to please him. He was always yelling.” She went back to monitoring the grill.

It had been the same all morning. They would work quietly for a while, then return to the shock of Jack’s murder, rehashing some new aspect. One of the waiters said there hadn’t been a murder in St. Helena in more than four years, nor one involving a man as prominent in the community as Jack Beroni for as long as anybody could remember.

Sunny was having trouble concentrating. She hadn’t heard
anyone mention Wade as being involved, but just the talk of murder was unsettling. She was mixing up her third batch of aioli, having ruined two already, when Rivka glanced over at her and asked, “How much of that stuff are you going to make?”

“The usual. Those first two were for practice.”

“Right.”

In the seven years since cooking school, Sunny had gone from sous-chef at a San Francisco monolith to owner and chef of the tiny, best-kept secret in the Napa Valley. But today she couldn’t keep her mind on what she was doing, couldn’t even slip into that automatic efficiency that usually took over when she was distracted by ordinary concerns. She watched her hands as if they were someone else’s. Without any connection to what she was doing, she assembled plates of roasted duck breast with cranberry chutney, sides of grilled vegetables and Gorgonzola mashed potatoes, and shallow dishes of fettuccine with chanterelles. She dropped dollops of crème fraîche and chives into bowls of butternut squash soup and slipped a wedge of garlic crouton in beside it. She arranged slices of pear tart with vanilla bean ice cream and sent out platters of figs, dates, and tangerines for dessert. When the last espresso had been served and the last check put down, Sunny pulled off her chef’s jacket, exhausted.

Rivka said, “Hey, it’s Friday. Are we still on for tonight?”

Sunny looked up, stretching her arms. “Yeah. Maybe it will help get things back to normal.”

“You want me to bring something?”

“No, I’ll get everything from the walk-in. Is Alex coming?” “He’s working late. I’m meeting him after for a drink. What about Monty?”

“He’s coming. And Charlie and Wade.”

“This from the girl who says she can’t get a date. Your house is full of guys every Friday night.”

“Yeah, but it’s like a Roman senate. Purely platonic.” Sunny sat down on the metal stool beside the phone and poured herself a glass of white from an open bottle on the counter. She took a sip to see if it was still okay, then poured a glass for Rivka, who was busy wrapping up cheeses.

“Not so platonic,” said Rivka. “I see the way Charlie looks at you. And Wade’s been in love with you for about a thousand years.”

“That’s silly. Wade loves me, but like a friend.”

Rivka snorted.

“And Charlie’s cute but he’s just a whippersnapper,” said Sunny. “I couldn’t take myself seriously if I was dating somebody twenty-three.”

The back door opened and Claire Baker shoved her way in, dragging a hand truck loaded with boxes of produce from Hansen Ranch, the organic farm that supplied most of the fruit, vegetables, and herbs for the restaurant.

“Claire, tell Sunny it’s okay to date a younger guy.”

Claire shoved the tower of boxes off the hand truck. Petite and athletic-looking, she wore her blond hair pulled back in a shiny ponytail. Her cheeks glowed with the work of hefting boxes and she puffed slightly as she arranged the paperwork on a clipboard and handed it to Sunny. She was dressed in a burgundy fleece pullover and jeans with hiking boots, her usual uniform for making deliveries. A little pink triangle of T-shirt showed at the open neck of the fleece. This sporty look was about as close as Claire ever came to looking like a farmer. She had two kids and she still did her nails and put on a skirt and blouse when she went to the post office. She said, “Who’s the guy?”

“There’s no guy,” said Sunny, perusing the order.

“Charlie Rhodes,” said Rivka.

“The pest management guy?”

“He’s an entomologist,” said Sunny.

“Cute. But young. What is he, twenty-one, twenty-two?” asked Claire.

“Twenty-three,” said Sunny.

“Old enough,” said Claire, grinning.

Sunny looked in one of the boxes, pulled out a bunch of arugula, and smelled it. She signed the sheet and handed the clipboard back to Claire. “Did that extra celery root make it in there?”

“Ouch, I forgot. You know what, I can drop it off in about an hour. I have to swing back through here anyway. Will you still be around?”

“If I’m not, I’ll leave the back door open.”

“Perfect.”

“It must be great being married,” said Rivka to Claire. “You don’t have to worry about going out on dates with random guys, and you always have Ben right there at home.”

“Yep, I always have Ben right there at home,” said Claire with a mischievous smile. She hung the clipboard on the hand truck and wheeled it toward the door, turning to shove her way out and clanging it down the steps behind her.

Rivka raised her eyebrows. “Sounds like somebody needs to get out of the house more often.”

Sunny nodded but said nothing.

She was working in her office an hour later when the back door swung open and Ben Baker shouldered his way in, carrying a box of celery root. He was tall and well-built, with the loping gait of the long-limbed, and thick, light-brown hair that curled
in big, springy waves across his forehead and around his ears.

“Hey, I thought Claire was going to drop that off,” called Sunny without getting up. “I hope it wasn’t any trouble.”

“No trouble at all,” said Ben, setting the box down and poking his head into the office. “It’s Baker teamwork in action. Claire’s at home trying to figure out a way to stop the deer from eating her herb garden. Last night they ate a whole section of it right down to stubble. I’d hate to be a deer with basil on its breath right now.”

“The deer around here will eat anything.”

“Too bad they don’t eat glassy-winged sharpshooters,” he said, walking out the door.

At eight o’clock sharp
the doorbell rang. From the kitchen, Sunny yelled, “Come in.” She heard the front-door bells jangle and a moment later Monty Lenstrom appeared, carrying two bottles of wine and a small paper bag.

“These arrived today from St.-Emilion,” he said, lifting the bottles. Sunny was kneading pasta dough at the worktable in the middle of the kitchen. Monty came around so they could exchange a kiss on each cheek. He found the wine opener in a drawer and went to work on one of the bottles. “I hear it’s drinking pretty good,” he said, winking.

Monty Lenstrom always dressed exactly the same way, regardless of the event. In more than six years of friendship, Sunny had never even seen his legs. He probably didn’t own a pair of shorts or a T-shirt. His closet must look like a section of Brooks Brothers, thought Sunny, the one with khakis folded up on shelves and a row of washed denim shirts hanging above it. The other elements of his daily uniform included a TAG Heuer watch, a brown woven leather belt, and matching Timberland loafers. Gold wire-rim glasses sat on top of his nose, sheltering pale eyes. There was a secret about Monty Lenstrom’s glasses.
Sunny had discovered it by accident when she was trying to pick out glasses of her own and asked him if she could try his on. He hesitated, then handed them over with a resigned smile. They were plain glass. Monty Lenstrom didn’t need glasses at all, he only wore them because he wanted to. It wasn’t a fashion statement: He wore them the way some women wear lipstick, as a protective foil between himself and the rest of humanity. It was more than being shy, though that was part of it. Monty’s intuitive interaction with his surroundings was olfactory. If most people saw the world, he smelled it. Eye contact was outside his comfort zone.

“What’s in the little bag?” asked Sunny.

“Late-harvest blackberries from the patch behind the garage.”

“Garage berries. My favorite.”

Monty pulled the cork with a satisfying
ponk!
and set the bottle on the counter to air. “What’s cookin’?” he said.

“Roast chicken with potatoes and carrots, fettuccine with chanterelles and cream, asparagus, and what’s left of a pear tart for dessert.”

Sunny’s shoulders flexed with effort as she worked the heavy round of pasta dough in her hands, throwing her weight into it. She was stronger than she looked. Years of hefting heavy pots and working ingredients had given her strong, wiry arms. She could feel perspiration moistening her forehead.

Monty poured her a glass of wine and slid it in her direction. “I assume you heard all about Jack Beroni.”

“I did. I still can’t believe it.”

Monty ticked his glass against hers still on the table and sipped. The deep ruby red caught the overhead light and threw off a glow like stained glass. He said, “I can’t believe you’re
making fresh pasta. Have I mentioned lately how much I love you?” He quivered his lip Elvis style.

“That’s just the fettuccine talking,” said Sunny.

“Maybe, but that doesn’t make it any less real, does it?”

“Yes, I think it does.”

He leaned toward her, an intense, earnest look on his face. “Listen, the way I see it, we get out of this place. Who ever heard of making any kind of life in a place like this, anyway? It’s nothing but grapes, for God’s sake. We’d go somewhere nice. Maybe buy a secondhand trailer, a double-wide, or get ourselves a yurt, and set it up outside of town, by a river. I’d sit outside in a lawn chair and watch the sunset while you cooked. You could cook dinner for me every day for the rest of our natural lives. What do you say?”

“Jeez, Monty, that sounds pretty great, all right,” said Sunny, breaking into a laugh. “But wouldn’t your girlfriend mind?”

“Annabelle? She’d get over it. We’re not actually that close.”

“You’ve been living together for three years.”

“Three brief, inconsequential years. She’s more of a friend. I’m telling you, McCoskey, you’re letting a good one get away. This kind of offer won’t last forever.”

“Duly noted,” said Sunny with a smile, thumping the dough against the table and sending up a puff of flour. The fact was, this dinner was more involved than it needed to be. She could have served regular pasta out of a box and thrown together a green salad, but she’d plunged into the activity of cooking right after she got home. She needed a distraction from the day’s events. “Speaking of that woman you hardly know, where is Annabelle tonight?”

“Book club.” Monty made quotation marks in the air. “What those women do in the name of literature. It gives reading a bad name.”

The doorbell rang again and Monty went to open it. Sunny heard him greeting Charlie Rhodes in the living room and soon the two of them came in, Monty scrutinizing the label of the bottle of wine Charlie had brought, and Charlie looking brown and ruddy with sun. Handsome boy, thought Sunny. He was wearing a new T-shirt, a turquoise blue one that still had the folding seams along the top of the sleeves.

Monty took down another glass and poured, holding the wine bottle by the punt and the glass by the foot like a sommelier. Charlie took the glass. He was listening to Monty chatter about tannins and maceration, but his attention turned to the glass long enough to look, smell, and taste at least that first sip. It always interested Sunny to see how a person reacted to a glass of wine or a new food. It was a one-second preview of how they would act when faced with the unpredictable, a snapshot of how they approached experience. Some people were hardly aware they had a glass in their hand, and the wine in it would be gone before they realized they were drinking. Charlie wasn’t a connoisseur and didn’t pretend to be one, but he was clearly interested enough to want to stop and taste what he was drinking. Meanwhile, Monty was explaining why the rocky soil in St.-Emilion, France, was superior to the rocky soil anywhere else in the world, and why this particular wine displayed its qualities better than most.

Charlie told them how he’d spent the afternoon riding his mountain bike around the Stag’s Leap district, checking insect traps. Monty asked about the condition of the vines. Charlie said the harvest was going well; it looked like all of the Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc was in already, as well as some of the Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Zinfandel growing low.

“I haven’t had a look lately, but I assume the stuff up in the hills is getting close, too,” Charlie said.

The doorbell rang again. This time it was Wade, who walked in looking haggard and unshaven. He’s worried, thought Sunny. Still, she could tell by the waft of soap when he kissed her that he’d showered before coming over and had put on his best shirt, a wrinkled gray linen button-down with the sleeves rolled up, a gift from his last girlfriend. He clicked on the light in the oven to see what was roasting, inspected the mushroom sauce simmering on the stove, and stared in awe at the silver pasta crank clamped to the table where Sunny was twisting pasta dough into long strands. “Wow, is it my birthday? You’re making all my favorites.”

“It’s Wade Skord Appreciation Day,” said Sunny, smiling. “We’ve declared a new international holiday. From now on, children will look forward to Wade Day every September, when they get to eat all the noodles, wild mushrooms, and garlic chicken they can hold.”

“It’s about time,” said Wade. “I’ve been lobbying for Wade Day for years.”

Monty Lenstrom handed him a glass of the St.-Emilion. “How’s the fruit?”

“Impeccable, as always,” said Wade, extracting a bunch of deep-purple grapes from a knotted kerchief and depositing them on the table. “Taste for yourself.”

Sunny rinsed her hands and came over. They’d been waiting for exactly the right moment to harvest. Today had been warm and the fruit would have ripened a good deal in just a few hours. At this time of year, what locals called crush, Wade took samples from each quadrant every few hours while the sun was out. He
had to be ready. If he let the grapes get too sweet by staying on the vine, there would be too much alcohol in the wine, and if they weren’t ripe enough, the wine would lack flavor. Monty plucked a grape and examined it as if it were a diamond, holding it up to the light. Sunny took a handful and squeezed them gently, inhaling the fragrance they released. She crushed one between her thumb and forefinger, scrutinized the color of the skin, juice, and seed, then popped the whole handful into her mouth and chewed carefully, running the juice over her tongue. The rich, fruity sweetness with a hint of plum and cherry was delicious. “They’re close,” she said, spitting several seeds into her palm. They were still slightly green. When they were completely ripe, the seeds would be nut-brown and oaky-tasting.

“Getting there,” said Wade. “Depends on how hot it gets tomorrow. They say it’s going to cool off again. If that happens, we’ll have to wait.”

“Have you thought any more, or any differently I should say, about taking on that extra Zin from Deer Park?” asked Monty.

“I’m not interested. I’m just going to keep it simple for a while. I don’t need any new headaches.”

“Simple and small,” said Monty.

“Small is beautiful,” said Wade.

“If you won’t expand your Zin production, why not team up with somebody growing Cab and see what you can do with it in a partnership? I’d love to taste a Skord Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon,” said Monty.

“I’d still have to hire people, expand the winery. And I’d lose control of the quality. The way I’m doing things right now suits me just fine.”

“But imagine if you teamed up with one of the better growers up my way, for example. Somebody on Mount Veeder who really
knows what they’re doing. They do all the work, you just come in and tell them what you like and what you don’t like. The Cabernet up there is getting better every year. That land is starting to talk and it has some very interesting things to say.”

Wade shook his head. “I’m too much of a control freak. I couldn’t have somebody else making my wine.”

Monty had been trying unsuccessfully to get Wade to produce more wine for years. As it was, Skord Mountain Zinfandel was almost always sold out in futures; the entire supply, other than what Wade kept around for friends, was sold a couple of years in advance. Monty had a contract for a good portion of it, but he always said he could sell as much wine as Wade could make, which wasn’t much.

Sunny cranked the last of the dough through the pasta machine and folded the noodles into a pot of boiling water.

“You should have seen this guy I had in today,” said Monty. “He’s opening a restaurant in Chicago and he heard about Skord Zin. I told him if he wanted anything under four hundred dollars a bottle retail, he’d have to go with a recent vintage, and you know what that means.”

“His tongue’s about to get run over by the Skord Express,” said Sunny.

“I told him, ‘Here’s what you do. You buy a few cases of something recent enough to be affordable and you sit on them. Then in a few years you put them on your list for what they’re worth, which will be a lot.’ But of course he can’t wait, he doesn’t know if his restaurant is going to fly or not, so I open last year’s release for him to taste.”

“And?” said Wade.

“Tasted like an unbathed raccoon got loose in a blackberry patch,” said Monty.

“My finest work,” said Wade. “If drinking my wine was easy, everyone would do it.”

The bells on the front door jangled loudly and Rivka walked in, looking ready for a big date. She’d let her hair down and it fell in a long sweep to the middle of her back, slightly wavy from being braided. She was wearing a dress that showed off the golden skin of her shoulders when she slipped out of her jacket. She looked at Monty and took a deep breath. “Isn’t it awful about Jack Beroni?”

“Unbelievable,” said Monty. “I’m still in shock.”

For some reason Sunny had hoped to avoid this conversation. She would feel much more like talking about Jack Beroni once the ballistics tests on Wade’s rifle had cleared him of all suspicion.

“What about Jack Beroni?” said Charlie.

“You haven’t heard?” said Rivka. “How could you not have heard?”

Rivka recounted the story, beginning with how Silvano Cruz had found the body. She included all the details she’d collected throughout the day, Alex helping to carry the body to the ambulance, Al and Louisa Beroni’s stunned anguish. She paused to push a strand of hair back over her shoulder. “The cops even came to question Sunny.”

From the oven, where she had just bent down to stick a fork in the roast chicken, Sunny looked back at the faces staring at her. The smell of garlic and rosemary filled the kitchen. “They did not come to
question
me. Steve Harvey stopped by to find out if I saw anything suspicious last night when I left Wade’s house.” Phrasing things properly helped keep events in the right perspective; she certainly didn’t want things to get any more out of control than they already were.

“What time did you leave?” asked Monty.

“Way before it happened. Around seven,” said Sunny.

A cell phone started ringing and Rivka groped in her handbag.

Monty scowled. “Turn it off! This is a no-phone zone!”

“All right, fine,” said Rivka, killing it and dropping it back in her bag. “Feeling a bit edgy?”

“I just liked life better before we all had to carry mobile tracking devices.”

“Do they have any idea who did it?” Charlie asked Sunny.

“Nothing yet. They have the bullet and the body but no weapon and not much to go on, as far as I can tell.” She pulled the heavy crockery dish out of the oven. “Everyone to table, we’re on. Monty, take that plate for me? Wade, if you’ll bring the pasta.”

The large wooden table occupied much of one half of the cozy living room, which was painted a warm shade of golden yellow. Sunny put the chicken down and moved a rusted iron candelabra to the middle of the table, straightened the tall candles, and lit them. The other half of the room held a small couch—formerly the love seat to her mother’s living-room set—a leather chair as weathered as an old tree stump, a coffee table made out of industrial ceramic chimney blocks with a sheet of glass on top, and an Art Nouveau–style torchier with a tulip-shaped shade. A painting of pears on a blue plate hung over a small brick fireplace. The guests took their seats on the hodgepodge of wooden chairs. Platters were passed, wine poured, glasses ticked.