A Vintage To Die For (Violet Vineyard Murder Mysteries Book 2) (26 page)

“I don’t know if he set out to kill me,” I finally replied. “But he was definitely trying to kill Armand Rivincita.”

He sat there bouncing on his chair spring, staring at me for a long time before he finally said, “We need to take this to the police.”

“I’ve talked to the police,” I told him. “They don’t believe me. All I have is speculation. Theories. I need evidence. But I have a plan.”

“A plan?” he said doubtfully. “What kind of plan?”

“It’s better if you don’t know,” I replied cryptically. “Just give me two days.”

He thought about that for a minute. “Okay.
If
you’ll sell me two cases of the 2009 at cost.”

I almost started laughing, but he was absolutely serious.

“Not a chance. But I’d go twenty-five percent below list.”

“Done.” He stood and put out his hand. Making a deal seemed to have satisfied the businessman in him. For the moment.

It was a long reach across the desk for me, but we shook on it. When I started to pull away he held onto my hand for a moment.

“Be careful,” he said, looking me in the eye with genuine concern.

“I will be,” I said.

But I knew it was a promise I wasn’t going to be able to keep.

Victor
was in the rows
stretching the new trellis wire with a hand winch when I drove around the back of the house and parked beside his ragged old truck. He stopped what he was doing and looked curiously at the rental truck until I stepped down. He placed the hand winch on the freshly tilled ground and started my way, but I waved him off. I wasn’t up for conversation. He waved back and went back to work.

I was starving, my stomach empty as a gourd, but I didn’t think I would be able to keep anything down. And what I wanted most was a bath and a bed…

I climbed the stairs to my master bathroom and turned the water on extra hot. For the first time in my life, I locked both my bedroom door and the bathroom door behind me before I climbed into the tub. That made me feel marginally safer, and even more angry. I was not going to live my life in fear.

I had promised Peter I would have proof of Blake’s crimes in two days, but my goal was a little more ambitious.

This would end tonight.

Chapter 26

I
awoke to darkness,
still exhausted, my head throbbing with a hangover-sized headache. A glance at the bedside clock told me it was 9:14PM. I flopped back against my pillow and closed my eyes, drowsiness dragging me back toward the oblivion of sleep.

Then I remembered what I had planned to do that evening and I sat bolt upright, instantly wide awake, my heart pounding. What had seemed like a clever plan in broad daylight now seemed like lunacy. Especially when I thought of Bartlett with his hard little eyes, bullet-shaped head and massive frame fairly radiating menace. I felt cold all over. Just as cold as I had felt when the water was rising above my neck, filling my mouth, choking off my air—

“No!” I said, but it wasn’t fear driving that single explosive word, it was a fresh rush of rage. I would not live my life this way! I’d see Blake and his bully boy behind bars first.

I turned out of bed, clicked on the bedside lamp and crossed to my closet. From it, I took black jeans and my darkest sweatshirt, a deep purple with black lettering that spelled ‘Life Is Short! Drink Up!’ From the clutter of shoes at the bottom of the closet, I chose a pair of dark tennis shoes. A dark purple baseball cap to cover my hair was the final addition. I carried it all to the bathroom and dressed swiftly.

Before I left my bedroom, I briefly considered the pistol in my bedside table. It had been my father’s. He had taught me to shoot it when I was thirteen, though I hadn’t fired it in ten years. I actually slid out the drawer and reached for the box before I decided against it. I didn’t think I could shoot anyone - not even Blake or Bartlett. And I vaguely remembered from some news program that carrying a firearm while committing a crime increased the penalty severely…

That was a sobering thought. Until that moment I hadn’t really thought of what I was doing as a crime. But I shook it off.
I
wasn’t the criminal. I was trying to
stop
the criminals. A pair of men I felt sure had killed Agnes, Dimitri, and Jorge, and faked Angela Zorn’s suicide.

I headed downstairs, through the kitchen, stopping to grab a pocket-sized flashlight from the hutch in the office, then went out into the night.

The moon was a pale sliver low on the horizon, lending barely any light to the landscape. It was cool, almost cold. This high in the mountains winter comes more quickly than it does in the valley below, and it looked like our Indian summer was over.

My breath plumed in front of me as I looked down the slope at Star Crossed’s huge warehouse several hundred feet below. From that height it was just a bright spot of light in the darkness, but I experienced a deep moment of unease before I tore my eyes away and headed for my rental truck.

Blake’s
house was dark -
not even a porch light burning - when I rolled past it on the highway at thirty-five miles per hour. Only the metal building that topped the wine cellar was ablaze with light. The only vehicles in sight were four Star Crossed vans lined up in a neat row in front of the house. I accelerated and flew past the copse of old apple trees. In the darkness, the trees looked spectral, their gray bark like old bones. That thought made me shiver all the way to my core. But I didn’t consider turning around.

I continued for a half mile past the orchard and made a right hand turn onto an old dirt farm road that climbed up into the hills beside Star Crossed. The road was narrow and rutted, crowded by large old oaks, their bases obscured by brambles and dense, spiky brush that looked like a medieval barricade in the deep darkness. It was obvious very few people used this road anymore, though I remembered it led to the old Hillman farm. But the Hillmans were long dead, and the farm had been purchased by the Federal Government and added to the sprawling National Forest that covered much of the Mayacamas.

I drove slowly, bobbing and jouncing over the ruts, catching glimpses of Blake’s warehouse down below through small openings in the trees. Then I spotted an overgrown gravel driveway that led off into a field dotted with brush and trees. The old Hillman farm. I turned in and sped up, stopping just short of a square of stones once the foundation of the Hillman home.

I parked and doused the lights, then sat there, listening to the engine tick, gathering my nerve. At that point I really wished I
had
brought my father’s pistol. But it was too late for second guessing - it was time to act. Still I sat there, looking at the spot where the Hillmans had raised three children, all of whom had departed the Valley long ago. The Valley had changed so much since then. As newcomers flocked in, the old guard sold out, packed up, and moved away. There was little profit in the small family farms anymore. But a few of us had stayed and carved out new lives, myself and Blake Becker included.

Blake. I remembered him from back then. The shy, awkward, fussy child I had babysat all those years ago. And now I was convinced he was a murderer and a thief…

I glanced at my watch. 10:00PM. I had to move. I just hoped Maggie Becker’s spare house key was still in the flowerpot.

And if it wasn’t? Then I’d break a window. This had gone too far. Too many people had died.

I opened the door, slid out, and clicked it softly closed. I hurried back down the driveway to the road. I held the small flashlight in my hand, but I didn’t turn it on. As a kid I had roamed these hills like Pippi Longstocking, looking for adventure, and I was thankful for that now as I turned up the roadway and walked uphill, searching the verge of the road for an old deer trail that had connected the Hillman place to Becker’s. At the center of that trail, on the edge of the Becker property, was a little shed where Blake used to hide from the rest of us kids, his nose buried in a book. The shed had probably rotted to the ground by now but I was hopeful the trail was still there.

It was so dark and the brush so overgrown I missed the path the first time through. I had to backtrack fifty yards and turn on the flashlight, poking its yellow beam into the woods, before I spotted the overgrown track. I turned the flashlight off, crossed the ditch and slipped into the woods.

Despite the chill of the night, I began to sweat as I picked my way down the meandering trail. The deer must have abandoned this track long ago - probably after the bulk of Becker’s old orchard had been cut down to make room for Star Crossed’s warehouse - because the path was overgrown with vines and brush that tangled my feet and beat at my shins as I blundered forward. A limb slapped me in the face, scratching my cheek, and a tangle of hanging vines almost ripped the flashlight out of my hand, tearing at my skin like a paper cut.

I didn’t see the old shed until I was right on top of it, and I wouldn’t have seen it at all if I hadn’t caught the odor of fresh paint. I stopped on the trail, spread my fingers over the flashlight’s lens, and flicked it on, allowing only a narrow beam of light to escape. I played the beam over the shed and found it had been freshly painted a deep green that blended almost seamlessly with the woods. A new padlock was threaded through a hasp on the door. I stepped to the single window and shined the light inside. The small space was filled by a neatly made bed, a metal dresser, and three bookshelves loaded down with paperback novels. A portable radio sat on a card table where a single chair was placed. It looked like Blake was still using it as a reading retreat.

I turned the light off and continued down the path, the grade steepening as I neared Becker’s.

I had assumed I could make the walk in fifteen minutes, but it was closer to thirty before I began to see the pale glow from the warehouse through the trees. I slowed down then, moving as quietly as possible, taking a parallel path to the house and warehouse, keeping to the woods until I reached the edge of the old orchard. There, I dropped to my knees in the weeds and looked up toward the house.

The windows were still dark and the vans still parked out front. The only light was the reflected glow from the security lights circling the warehouse, but that glow did not reach as far as the house, which was robed in inky shadow. I let my eyes scan the open ground from the highway to the steep slope behind the warehouse. There was no one in sight. No sound disturbed the rustle of the wind. It appeared Star Crossed was deserted.

I didn’t hesitate any longer. I rose to a crouch and went quickly through the scrub growth to the nearest apple tree. I stopped behind it, pressed tight to the trunk, and looked toward the house and warehouse again. Still no one in sight. I moved on to the next tree. And the next. In that way, I passed almost silently through the orchard, stepping over dead limbs and skirting larger deadfalls where several of the neglected old trees had collapsed under their own weight. Finally, I reached the edge of the orchard, still twenty yards from Blake’s front door, separated from it by the neatly trimmed lawn that encircled the old house.

I was breathing hard and fast by that point, more from stress than exertion. Despite the chill in the air and the cool breeze rustling through the trees, the sweat was dripping off my brow. I swiped at it with the sleeve of my sweatshirt then bolted across the open lawn, running all out, my old legs churning. I reached the side of the house and threw myself to the ground beside the shrubbery, gasping for breath.

I lay there, listening, straining for sound, my ears burning with the effort. I heard only the quiet creaks and groans of the old home, a spooky counterpoint to the sigh of the breeze through the apple trees. When I had regained my breath, I stood and skirted the house, sticking close enough to its gray siding my sweatshirt whispered over the warped old wood. At the corner of the house, just ten feet from Blake’s front door, I dropped to my knees again and stuck my head around the corner like a mole testing the air. I could see the front stoop and the flowerpot just feet away.

I went around the corner on hands and knees and stayed that way until I reached the flowerpot. I dug into the dry old soil, shoving cigarette butts aside as I dug deeper and deeper. I couldn’t find the key! Finally, I just grabbed the pot and dumped it out on the grass into a pile. And, atop that pile, I saw the glint of something old and tarnished, mottled by rust. I fished it out.

Maggie’s key.

I scooped the loose soil back into the pot, stood, and tried the key on the door. It was so rusted it was hard to fit into the keyhole, but I jammed it in and it worked. It was another struggle to pull the key from the lock - it was wedged in tightly. I had a moment of panic before I finally managed to rip it free. I turned the knob and pushed the door open, but didn’t immediately enter. I just stood there, holding my breath, waiting for the shriek of a home security alarm. The silence continued.

I slipped inside, drew the door softly closed behind me, and locked it. Again I remained motionless, my shoulders pressed against the inside of the door as my eyes adjusted to the deeper gloom of the interior. Not a nightlight or lamp burned, the darkness almost complete. Ahead of me, the hallway was as dark as a cave at midnight, but at the far end of it I could barely make out the doorway into the home’s family room where Blake now kept his office. On my left, a flight of carpeted stairs led up into the darkness of the second floor. On my right was the dining room filled with the black silhouettes of a table and chairs.

Despite the deep darkness, I left the flashlight off as I moved stealthily down the corridor toward the office, making barely a sound.

Until my feet got tangled with the hall rug.

I did a jerky little two-step, trying to maintain my balance, but I lost that battle and toppled to the floor with a bone-jarring thump. The flashlight flew out of my hand and clattered across the floor with a sound as loud as a machine gun. My heart sounded just as loud as it thumped in my ears at an impossible rate for a woman my age.

For a long moment I stayed there, flat on my face, waiting to be discovered. But nothing happened and, slowly, my heart rate decelerated to a steady gallop. I felt around on the floor for the flashlight. I was sure I had heard it rolling to my right…so I crawled in that direction, sweeping my hands in front of me. It wasn’t there! I reached the wall and turned around, widening my search, re-crossing the hallway, moving faster now, desperate for light. And that’s why I bashed my head into the stairway’s newel post.

The blow knocked me back and set off fireworks inside my head. I slumped sideways and my right buttock came down on the flashlight, turning it on and lighting the hallway like a roadside flare. I gasped and snatched up the light, fumbling for the off switch, and dropped it again, sending it rolling down the hallway and through the office door, lighting up the room clearly for anyone who happened to be passing by out front.

I was on my feet and running before it had stopped moving. And this time I got it off the floor and quickly turned it off.

My heart was racing again and the sweat that had slicked my body during the walk through the woods had gone chill on my skin.  Wandering around in the dark was clearly out of the question - I had to use the flashlight. I turned it on again - keeping my fingers splayed across the small lens - and let a trickle of light splash onto the floor at my feet. I kept it aimed at the floor as I looked around the room.

A cheap, battered old metal filing cabinet stood by itself against the far wall, directly behind an old kitchen table doing duty as a desk. The table was covered in stacks of paperwork. A computer monitor stood at its center, a printer and fax on the corner, all of them connected by a tangle of wires. A crowded cluster of old living room furniture was parked in front of a cold fireplace bracketed by bookshelves filled with books that looked dusty and long unread. The rest of the walls were lined with old photographs of sober faced people in dark clothes, their black eyes looking depthless and cold in the dim glow of the flashlight, all of them staring straight at me.