Dolled Up to Die (17 page)

“Cate, hi. Look, I’m not going to be able to do the vineyard thing.”

“You promised!”

“I know. But I was cutting some flower stems, and the knife slipped and cut my hand. I’m at the emergency room at the hospital.”

Cate’s first indignant thought was,
You chopped yourself in the hand just to get out of this vineyard tour with me?
Then she guiltily discarded that petty reasoning. Even Robyn wouldn’t go that far. “I’m so sorry. Is it going to be okay?”

“I need stitches, and it really hurts, but I won’t lose fingers or anything. But now I’m hearing Lodge Hill may close and we’ll have to move the wedding somewhere else. Everything is just turning into a-a disaster.”

“I’m sure everything will be all right,” Cate soothed, although she decided she’d do a full commiseration with Robyn later. Right now she’d just zip on out of here. Rolf wasn’t here anyway. Or, if he did show up, she didn’t want to be alone with him. Maybe he’d see past the red hair and freckles to long brown hair and jet-wing eyebrows.

“I’ll see if I can find out anything about the wedding situation and Lodge Hill,” Cate said. “Thanks for calling. Get that hand stitched up, and I’ll check with you later.”

Cate dropped the phone back in her purse, and a moment later a big green tractor rumbled around the far side of the cottage.

 14 

Rolf Wildrider, of course. Bundled in jacket, gloves, and a stocking cap that covered him like a Batman costume. He could have tattoos from his ears to his toenails, and she wouldn’t be able to see them. He could also be carrying a whole arsenal of guns under that bulky jacket. Maybe a sword or two.

Reluctantly Cate opened the car door. Time to say adios, adieu, so long, Mr. God’s-Gift-to-Women.

“Hi,” he called when she slid out and stood behind the protective barrier of door. He swung down from the open cab of the tractor, leaving the engine running. “Sorry I’m late. I’m working with the crew putting up some new trellising. You’re here to see the vineyard?”

“You’re busy, so I won’t bother you today,” Cate called back. “I can come back some other time.”

“No better time than right now. I don’t have to be with the crew every minute. Didn’t you say there’d be two of you?”

“My friend couldn’t make it after all.”

He walked up and half-circled the car, so the door wasn’t protectively between them. “You know, you look familiar.”

Because he’d seen her through the beaded strands of a curtain at the Mystic Mirage? Clamped his hand around her
throat? Panic made Cate wish she had a curtain of steel to draw between them right now. Sometimes it was flattering to be remembered. This was not one of those times.

“I don’t think so,” Cate said. “I’m sure we’ve never met.”

“Hey, yeah, I remember.” His eyes lit up. Dark eyes, she noted. Interested, not venomous. “You were going into the wedding office the other day. Who could forget that red hair?” His grin suggested that surely she’d remember him too. He stuck out a hand. “I’m Rolf Wildrider, vineyard manager.”

She stepped slowly out from behind the car door and automatically started to shake the hand he held out to her. A squeamish thought stopped the movement, like a gunslinger in middraw. Was this a hand that had pawed around in her briefcase, run fingers through her nightgown? More importantly, was this a hand that had thrust a sword into Celeste’s chest? And tried to choke her? If it was him she’d clobbered with the briefcase, the blow hadn’t done any noticeable damage. Or was that a hint of bruise on the side of his neck?

Reluctantly she shook the still-gloved hand. “Cate Kinkaid.”

She always carried business cards in her pocket, but she wasn’t about to give him one that identified her as a private investigator. Right now, she needed to reinforce the idea that the brief meeting outside LeAnne’s office was the only time they’d ever met. Maybe it actually
was
the only time. Looking at him now, Cate wasn’t any more certain if his was or wasn’t the eye behind the curtain.

“We did meet outside LeAnne’s office, didn’t we? I was going in to talk to her about my friend’s wedding. I’m a bridesmaid.”

“Not a bride after all? Maybe there’s hope for me yet.”

Maybe she should have given his name to the police. If nothing else, he deserved indictment for bad pickup lines.

“Okay, then, let’s get on with the tour,” he said. “Since there’s just you, we can go on the tractor.”

Cate glanced over at the rumbling green machine. “There isn’t enough room for two people.”

“Sure there is.” Another grin. “It may be a tight squeeze, but we can make it work.”

Cate started to say no thanks. A tight squeeze with Rolf was not on her agenda for the day. But he stripped off a glove, and she caught a flash of something dark above his wrist. Tractor grease? Vineyard dirt? Or maybe a tattoo? If she could just see a little farther up his arm . . .

They wouldn’t be totally alone. In broad daylight, with a crew working nearby, she surely wasn’t going to find herself buried under a grapevine. “I’ll get my camera so I can take some photos for Robyn.”

She’d brought the camera along mostly as a prop, but now she reached back into the car and grabbed it. Rolf boosted her into the open cab of the tractor, using a little more familiarity than Cate thought necessary.

The open cab was an even tighter squeeze than Cate had anticipated. There was no space for an extra person to stand, so Rolf gave her half the metal seat and squeezed into the other half himself. Cate squirmed to get as far away from him as possible and found herself precariously perched on the metal rim of the seat.

They bumped over the rough ground out to the first row of grapes, with Cate thinking she was going to have the shape of the hard edge of a tractor seat permanently embedded in her anatomy.

Actually, as both LeAnne and Robyn had pointed out, there wasn’t much to see in the vineyard. Rolf kept up a running stream of information, however. The vineyard grew chardonnay and pinot noir grapes, and he pointed out which
was which. He spoke knowledgeably about how the rainfall, sunshine, humidity, and temperatures of this area were conducive to grape growing. He wanted to get a new type of trellising system started, something called the Geneva Double Curtain, which would improve the exposure of the grapes to sunlight. He mentioned concerns about a grape mite called phylloxera that could devastate a vineyard, and the problems they also had with scavenging birds.

He sounded informed, even enthusiastic. He never mentioned either Ed Kieferson or Celeste, or any uncertainties about future operation of the vineyard. Cate was curious about the possibility of a marijuana-growing sideline, but if there were such an area, it wasn’t included in the tour. She took some photos, but she spent most of her time trying to balance on the edge of the seat and get a look at Rolf’s arm. Once, rounding the end of a row of grapes, she surreptitiously tried to slide his jacket sleeve up a few inches, but a sudden jolt landed her hand on his thigh instead.

Appalled, Cate yanked her hand back, but Rolf’s smirky grin told her he knew she’d really done it on purpose.

In the area where the crew was working on a new support trellis to replace a section that had collapsed, Rolf jumped down to inspect their work. In the distance Cate spotted a barn and several sheds. She asked Rolf about them, and he said they were left over from a time when the vineyard had also been used as a dairy, and they were just used for storage now.

Back at the cottage, Cate didn’t wait for a helping hand to get down from the tractor. She jumped by herself, an exit not rivaling Octavia’s land-on-her-feet grace, but at least she wasn’t cozied up beside Rolf any longer.

“Thanks for the tour,” she called up to him. The wind was getting colder. She shoved her hands in her pockets and turned toward her car.

He jumped down beside her. “Maybe you can bring your friend some other time. The one who’s getting married at Lodge Hill.”

The conditions weren’t ideal, but here was an unexpected opening to ask Rolf a few questions without giving away her own involvement. She hunched her shoulders and moved over to where the big tractor offered some shelter from the wind.

“Actually, Robyn was telling me she’d heard Lodge Hill might close. A death in the family, I think. She’s wondering if her wedding will be affected. Do you know anything about that?”

“Two deaths, actually. The owner first, and then his wife’s mother just a few days ago. It’s going to be rough for Kim . . . Mrs. Kieferson.”

Cate noted the correction from Kim to the less personal Mrs. Kieferson. It gave her a mental
hmm
. “Does she have other family?”

“I don’t think so.”

“The wedding business and vineyard, along with the restaurant too, will be a lot for her to keep going alone. Do you think she can manage?”

“She’s going to need all the help she can get, that’s for sure.”

Cate heard concern and even a hint of protectiveness in Rolf’s comment and tone of voice. Maybe even a suggestion of intimacy beyond an employer-employee relationship?

“Have you known the Kiefersons long?”

“I knew Mrs. Kieferson way back when. They lived just down the street from us in Tigard a long time ago.”

“Kim was an old girlfriend?” Cate purposely put a playful tease into the question. She didn’t want him to know she was really digging for information.

“Not a girlfriend.” Rolf sounded unexpectedly serious. “Kim is younger. She was just a skinny little mousy-haired
kid in grade school then. With a mother everyone thought was uppity and weird. She had Kim taking private lessons in everything from gymnastics to ballet, even drove her into Portland for some special modeling classes.”

Early lessons in how to be a trophy wife?

“I’d left Tigard by the time Kim finished high school, but I heard one time when I went back that right after graduation she married that Travis Beauchamp jerk. They’d moved to Portland or somewhere by then.”

Cate made a mental note of the name. Travis Beauchamp. “You knew him too?”

“He was bad news even in high school. In trouble for everything from bullying to swiping pills from a neighbor’s medicine cabinet. But I guess Kim saw something in him. Although sometimes I wondered if she married him just to get out from under her mother’s thumb.”

“The relationship between Kim and her mother was, um, strained?” Cate asked.

“I guess they’ve been on better terms since the breakup with Travis.”

Cate noted that Rolf didn’t mention Kim and Celeste being in business together. Maybe he wanted to stay far away from the subject of the Mystic Mirage?

“What became of the ex-husband?”

“He just walked out, I guess. Although Kim told me once . . . this is strictly confidential, of course.” His heavy eyebrows lifted sharply. “Just between friends.”

Cate prudently didn’t argue the “friends” designation. “Of course.”

“She was afraid the guy might show up and try to mess up her marriage to Kieferson.”

Someone had obviously “messed up” the marriage. Ed Kieferson was dead. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. Just a bad dude, from what I remember of him.”

“Did knowing Kim help you get this job at the vineyard?”

Rolf looked surprised at the blunt question. His shoulders snapped back. “No way. I got this job on my own merits. I have a degree in viticulture. Kim and I were both surprised when we ran into each other here. I didn’t even recognize her right off, with her hair blonde now. How come you’re so curious about all this anyway?” he suddenly demanded.

Cate noticed that he’d upgraded his education in grape-growing to a college-degree level, but she didn’t point that out. “Oh, you know how nosy and curious women are,” she said. “In fact, you really know women, don’t you?” She added a playful smile to emphasize the blatant flattery about his male expertise. Anything to diffuse his curiosity.

Apparently it worked because his own smile was also playful when he said, “I like to think I do.”

“Well, thanks for the tour and information about grapes and all. It was very interesting.” Cate headed toward the car.

Rolf caught up with her in a long stride. “Hey, wait, I wanted to ask you something.”

Cate started to make an elaborate pretense of looking at her watch to suggest she was in a big hurry, but a better idea jumped into her head. “Do you know what time it is?”

She waited expectantly for a last-minute unveiling of the arm when he pushed up the sleeve of his jacket to look at a watch.

Except he didn’t. He pulled a broken-banded watch out of his pocket and held it up. “Snagged it on a grapevine.” He turned the watch to see the face. “It’s only 11:45.”

“Looks like you’re a leftie.” And maybe he’d snagged the watch somewhere other than on a grapevine? Like on a sword at the Mystic Mirage?

Another grin. “Oh, I’m ambidextrous. Very good with both hands.”

There was a double entendre in that, Cate was certain, but she wasn’t about to pause and examine it for details. “It’s later than I thought. So—”

“Look, I have to go back out with the crew now, so I can’t make lunch, but how about dinner tonight?”

“Oh, thanks, no.”

“C’mon, you know you’re interested. You give me a song-and-dance about two of you coming, and then you show up alone?” Another of his frequent lady-killer grins. “Not that I’m objecting, you understand. It’s been a fun morning. You can share a tractor seat with me anytime.” He patted his thigh to remind her of her touch there.

Cate was reasonably certain Rolf had no clue she was checking him out as a murder suspect. He thought she had an amorous interest in his body. Time to get out before he came up with some suggestion more outrageous than dinner. Or figured out the truth about her interest.