Death By the Glass #2 (12 page)

Rivka scowled. “Now you’re sure Nathan Osborne was murdered?”

“It’s just a theory. Not even a theory. It’s just a feeling.”

“And where Andre got the wine is important to your theory?” said Rivka.

“Very.”

“Listen, as your best friend, I can personally guarantee that Andre is innocent of any association with fraudulent wine.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

Sunny narrowed her eyes. “Rivka Marie Chavez, you’re holding out on me.”

“I swore I wouldn’t tell.”

“We’re not playing secrets. You might have a piece of the puzzle. I have to know.”

Rivka sighed and came closer so she could speak softly. “I want it on record that I disclose this information under protest. I wasn’t going to tell you, but you’re being so weird about Andre and murder that I’m going to do it for your own good.”

“Duly noted.”

“Okay, I went over to Dahlia Zimmerman’s house after work yesterday.”

“Who is Dahlia Zimmerman?”

“Dahlia. The waitress at Vinifera with the turquoise hair and the butterfly.”

“Oh yeah, right.”

“She’s a painter and I wanted to see her work. It’s amazing, by the way. Pretty dark, but really interesting. I took some pictures. I’ll bring the camera in and show you tomorrow.”

Sunny nodded. “And?”

“And she told me some stuff about Nathan Osborne. How she dated him on and off for the last year. He sounded like an okay guy, just really bad in relationships and couldn’t make up his mind. He was always breaking up with her, then coming back and saying he loved her and couldn’t live without her, then breaking up with her again. Total bullshit. Anyway, recently they got back together and things seemed to be going pretty well. She was thinking they might really be falling in love and it’s all great. So he invites her to dinner at his house. He says he’s going to cook something special, because he has something important to talk with her about and he wants it to be just the two of them, not at a restaurant with everyone around. He says he’s picked out a very special bottle of wine and everything. So she’s thinking he’s going to ask her to marry him or move in or something. She gets all dressed up and excited and she goes over to his house, and before they even sit down to eat, she figures out that he’s not going to ask her to marry him, he’s actually breaking up with her so he can go back to his old girlfriend again. He thought that if he made a fancy dinner and opened a pricey bottle of wine she would take it better.”

“That’s awful. But where is this going?”

“She was completely crushed, as well as sizably pissed off. So she tells him to take his dinner and put it where the breeze don’t blow and stormed out. On her way out, she saw the bottle of wine he’d made such a big deal about and decided to take it with her. They were going to drink it that night, and she said she figured she was still entitled.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” said Sunny.

“Right. So, well, she was upset. And hurt. She’s crying and angry. She’s mad at herself for trusting him again, feels foolish, the whole deal. And it’s still early.”

Rivka paused, then went on. “She wanted to hurt Nathan any way she could.”

“And?” said Sunny.

“Right,” said Rivka cautiously. “So she calls up the one person she knows Nathan Osborne is jealous of and asks if she can come over.”

“Oh.”

“Should I stop?”

“No, bring it on. I can take it.”

“Well, there’s not much else to tell. I guess there had always been some chemistry there. She goes to his place with the wine, but they don’t drink it.”

“Because they’re so busy.”

“Or maybe they’re not thirsty,” said Rivka, generously. “You never know.”

“Maybe they just stayed up late talking it through,” said Sunny. “She had a nice cry on his shoulder and he sent her home.”

“You wish! She said they got it on in a huge way.”

“Riv!”

“You said you could take it! Now it’s all out. Besides, it didn’t mean anything to either of them.”

“Somehow that doesn’t make it better. When was this? It couldn’t have been that long ago.”

“Mm, it wasn’t.”

“Oh no. When?”

“Friday night before last.”

“As in a week before he got together with me?”

“A week and two days.”

Sunny shook her head and tried to go back to what she’d been doing, but the knife in her hand suddenly felt like a foreign object that she had no idea how to use. A loud noise seemed to fill her head, like aluminum siding being dragged across asphalt. She tried to think logically. Sure, she might have all kinds of feelings now, but a week ago she hardly knew Andre Morales. How could she be jealous about something that happened before she was even part of his life? Dahlia Zimmerman was a preexisting condition. Nothing to be upset about. So it was a little nauseating. Suggested some excessively flexible standards on Andre’s part. Other than that, what was the problem?

“Not that I really want to know, but what happened after that?” asked Sunny.

“Nothing. It was just a night and then it was over,” said Rivka, munching on a carrot.

“They’re not still seeing each other.”

“No, it’s over. They’re friends. She said they both think of it as an overstep brought about by traumatic circumstances. I wouldn’t have told you about it at all, except you kept going on about where that wine came from. Now you know. Andre never knew it was phony.”

“And she’s not interested in him? Or him in her?”

“Not at all. She’s still pretty shook up about Nathan. She was hardly over his last change of heart, then he died. That’s all she talked about the whole time I was there. She said there was a point when she actually hated him. Apparently he flip-flopped on her several times. Said he loved her, wanted to be with her, then broke up over some little thing and went back to his previous girlfriend. Then a couple of months later he’d come back
saying that she was the one he really loved, yadda yadda. She still wasn’t talking to him the night he died. She said she felt horrible about it, that they never got a chance to make up. I think she still loved him. But she’s starting to deal with it all now. She made a shrine for him. She built a wooden box and painted little tableaux on each panel, inside and out, and filled it with things associated with him. It’s incredible looking. She’s really talented.”

“A shrine? She’s worshiping him?”

“No, it’s more like the shrines they make in Mexico when someone dies. You know, with candles and paper flowers and
milagros
. It’s to honor the person’s memory and wish them well on their spirit journey in the afterlife. She wants his soul to be at peace.”

“Or so she says. Are you sure she hadn’t made her voodoo shrine
before
he died? The guy dumped her.”

“That’s jealousy talking. She can’t help that she knew Andre before you did.”

“Everyone I talk to paints a completely different picture of Nathan Osborne and has a whole other reason to hate him—at the same time they profess to love him.”

Something about the maître d’s
tone of voice made Sunny look up just in time to see Andre Morales walking toward the counter where she was working at the end of Wildside’s lunch rush. It was a snapshot she would remember for years to come, him unwrapping a black scarf from around his neck, smiling at her as he approached. She finished firing a shot of espresso, set a tiny spoon on the saucer, and curled a strip of lemon zest on top, then put it up for the waiter to take. When she was done she wiped her hands on a towel and leaned across the zinc bar to give Andre a kiss on each cheek. Instead he touched her chin and brought her mouth to his for a real kiss.

“I called you last night,” he said, “but you must have been asleep already. Nick said you weren’t feeling well.”

He looked into her eyes and she felt her face begin to heat up.

“Or maybe you weren’t home yet,” he said, giving her a mischievous grin. “You look pretty healthy to me.”

“I must not have heard it ring,” said Sunny. She looked back at Rivka, who was giving more attention than necessary to the arrangement of a poached pear with chocolate sauce and trying not to look like she was listening. Sunny walked around the counter and gestured to an empty table.

A few stragglers dotted the room, lingering over coffee and dessert. Andre sat down and she took a seat opposite him, smoothing the sleeves of her jacket. He watched her, not in a hurry to say anything. He looked clean and rested, and she thought of her own appearance with regret. Her uniform was baggy and unflattering in the best of conditions, and now it was sticky with sweat and notably worse for the day’s wear. The rest of her was no more presentable. She was covered head to toe in a thin layer of oil atomized from the grill so that the smell of grilled salmon and halibut, duck breasts, and pork loin seemed to ooze from her pores. Her face was shiny with grease and her short hair was tied up in little bunches all over her head, except for the very back, which lay against her neck like she’d styled it with aioli. She had the urge to pull her jacket up over her head and slink away, but a twinge of irritation saved her. Andre knew what a cook looked and smelled and felt like at the end of a shift. He should have known better than to arrive unannounced at the close of a long day, after she’d had a hectic, sleepless night. The fact that he didn’t know she’d had a sleepless night or a harrowing morning at Remy Castels’ house was no excuse.

He smoothed back his hair with both hands, gazing up at her from his black turtleneck. He was well dressed. She took in the charcoal trousers and the expensive designer shoes. Even his belt was pristine and lustrous. Most guys she knew wore whatever was within reach.

“The place looks great,” he said, glancing around.

Wildside had only one room and a weather-permitting patio out French doors at one end, but it was a very pretty room, with stone walls and burnished concrete floors. She’d put up a show of moody but finely rendered oil landscapes by a local artist, and in the entry there was an arrangement of branches decked with
kumquats. At one end of the counter, a tall wire vase overflowed with tangerines and a citrus bowl was heaped with Meyer lemons, the deeply saturated yellow of their skins luminous.

“And you look great,” he said.

“The place looks great. I look terrible,” she said.

“No, you look great. It’s good to see you in your element.”

The scent of woodsy cologne drifted across the table. Andre looked at her with a half smile and she felt a jolt of sense memory. For an instant, every cell in her body seemed to leap out of its chair at the thought of the night they’d spent together. His face had the creamy look of a very close shave and she would have leaned across and kissed it if she’d had the guts. He was wearing the same watch he’d had on the night they spent together, a heavy one with lots of dials. She remembered him releasing the steel band with a tug and dropping it on the bedside table. It made her catch her breath to think of it, his arm stretching across her to reach the nightstand. She lingered over the memory of the stretch of biceps, the seductive hollow of armpit.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” said Sunny. “Never better. Do you want something to drink? Are you hungry?”

“No, I can’t stay. I just thought I would stop by since I hadn’t heard from you.”

She nodded. His face was serious, waiting for her to say something. If she ever wanted to see him take that watch off again, she needed to come up with a decent explanation for standing him up, and quickly.

“I’m sorry I bolted last night,” she said. “I thought I was coming down with something, but I think I was just dead tired.”

It was his turn to nod silently. They both knew it wasn’t much of an excuse. She couldn’t think of anything more convincing
short of telling an all-out lie, and she didn’t want to do that. They were off to a rocky enough start as it was, and that last bit of intelligence about his night with Dahlia hadn’t helped matters. She’d assumed Andre was a man of some experience when it came to the ladies, but the close proximity of his last connection was more than a little unsettling. He was waiting for her to go on, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I brought you something,” he said finally, taking a small package out of his jacket pocket. He set it on the table in front of her.

She picked it up. It was too light for a book, too thick for a CD. The package was wrapped in brown paper with a brown and tan striped feather on top, sewn in place with red thread. The Valley was full of peregrine falcons. The feather looked like it might be from one of them, or some other predatory bird. She often saw them standing watch from telephone lines and fence posts along the highway.

“I found that in the vineyard up at Mayacamas,” he said. “Have you been there?”

“Once, a long time ago. Did you sew it?”

“I did,” he said, sheepishly.

“Very crafty.”

She eased the paper open. Inside was a glass-framed butterfly with gray and violet wings edged in black. It was very pretty and she was about to say so when she remembered another butterfly. Her expression froze.

“You don’t like it,” he said, looking worried.

“No, I absolutely like it. I love it. It’s beautiful.”

There was another silence while she tried to figure out how to respond to what seemed to be a symbol of his night with another woman. Was it just a coincidence? Her head filled with
images of Dahlia Zimmerman lounging next to Andre, his fingers tracing the outline of wings. She knew it was silly to get upset about it, but it was too vivid to ignore.

“You really have a thing for butterflies, don’t you,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Just that you seem to really like butterflies.”

“This one is beautiful. What others are you thinking of?” he asked.

Why not just come out and ask him about Dahlia? Find out what that night meant to him, if anything? She couldn’t do it, just like she couldn’t ask him about the wine. Too many suspicions, too many seeming accusations so early in their relationship. It was a lose-lose undertaking. Either her fears would be justified, or he would be insulted.