G'Day to Die (15 page)

“Proper tasting is a six-step prociss,” our hostess continued. “See, swirl, sniff, sip, swish, and spit.” She decanted a small amount of a straw-colored wine into a glass. “I’ll go over these steps with you briefly, then we’ll git right to it. You can till a great deal about a wine simply by looking at it, or ‘seeing’ it.”

I tuned her out as I jotted down the coordinates I’d seen on Roger’s GPS.

“If those are potential wedding dates,” Duncan said over my shoulder, “I’m available, and I know for a fact that Miceli happens to be busy, so why don’t you pencil me in?”

I closed my little notebook and dropped it back in my shoulder bag. “How do you know Etienne is busy?”

“He’s retired, Em. Trust me, he already has an appointment with his sofa and big-screen TV on those dates. Miceli is a nice guy, but don’t you think you’re a little young to hang up the dancing shoes? Marry me, Em.” He intertwined his fingers with mine and drew me close. “We can travel to every corner of the world together. We can see it all; do it all. I love you. How many languages would you like me to translate that into for you?”

“Nixt, we swirl the wine to release the bouquet, then we sniff deeply,” our hostess announced, demonstrating the procedure.

I lowered my voice to a whisper as I surveyed the crowded room. “I’m not sure this is the place to be discussing love and marriage, Duncan.”

“Where is the place? Tell me. We can ditch Miceli and—” His expression soured as he glanced beyond me. “Damn.”

I followed his gaze to find Etienne threading his way through the crowd toward us.

“Remimber that your taste buds are on the front
and
back of your tongue,” said our hostess, “so once you’ve sipped, swish the wine around to awaken your sinses. If you draw in a little air at the same time, you’ll enhance the flavor even more.”

“Emily, darling,” whispered Etienne as he brushed his thumb down my cheek, “why is there a balloon hanging from your grandmother’s ear?”

“Shoot, the hairpins must have fallen out. Where is she? I’ll need to fix it.” I went up on tiptoe. “And it’s not a balloon, it’s a glove—or it used to be, before I cut off four of the fingers.”

“Of course.” Etienne nodded his understanding. “A glove makes much more sense than a balloon.”

“Have you talked to her about earmuffs?” asked Duncan.

Our hostess’s voice grew louder. “After you’ve swished, I suggist you spit out your wine in any of the barrels provided throughout the room. If you prefer not to spit, it’s perfectly acciptable to swallow after you
gurgle
it a little at the back of your mouth to release more flavor. See, swirl, sniff, sip, swish, and spit. Are you riddy to begin? Billy up to the bar, mates. I’ll pour samples of our nineteen-ninety-eight chardonnay for each of you.”

A crushing wave of humanity pressed forward, arms extended and fingers grabbing. It reminded me of a recent customer appreciation day at Fareway Foods when the hot giveaway item had been pork-flavored minimarshmallows.

“Wine anyone?” asked Duncan.

I gazed at the mayhem. “I value my life too much.”

“Not as much as I value it,” said Etienne, lifting my hand to his mouth and placing a soft kiss on my inner wrist that tingled all the way to my shoulder.

Eh
!

“I don’t mean to pry, Imily,” Henry said as he joined us, “but why is your grandmother wearing a condom on her ear?”

“Whin you sniff this chardonnay,” our hostess yelled above the clinking, slurping, and spitting, “you’ll note it has a stunning nose with a palate of ripe, tropical fruit, coconut, milon, and spicy oak. Does anyone ilse want a sample?”

“That’s my cue,” said Duncan. “Samples all around?”

“Not for me.” Henry held up his hand. “The company frowns on their drivers gitting hammered, especially whin they’re on the job.”

Which reminded me in a roundabout sort of way—“Are either of you familiar with global positioning systems?”

“Those new personal units are pretty expinsive,” said Henry, “but they make great toys for the hard-to-buy-for bloke. I have one on my Amazon wish list.”

“My department was in the process of installing them in our police cars when I left,” said Etienne.

“If I had latitude and longitude for an unknown location, but didn’t have a GPS unit, do you know where I could look that would tell me where the location was?”

“A gazetteer,” said Henry. “It would at least git you in the right ballpark.”

“Google Earth,” said Etienne. “Type in your coordinates, and you can zoom in on a dime you dropped in your driveway.” He narrowed his blue eyes at me. “Why is it that you always put the fear of God in me when you ask questions like that,
bella
?”

“Ask and you shall receive,” said Duncan, handing Etienne and me glasses half-filled with straw-colored wine. “I’d like to offer a toast.” He raised his glass.

“Enjoy,” said Henry as he left us.

Duncan clinked his glass against ours and gave Etienne a meaningful look. “What do you say, Miceli? May the best man win?”

“Farabutto,”
spat Etienne.

“Imbroglione,”
hissed Duncan.

I rolled my eyes. Not again. I knocked back my chardonnay and toasted them with my empty glass. “You two keep up the friendly dialogue. I’m going back for a refill.”

I skirted the perimeter until I found a path through the crowd, then inched my way toward the counter, where our hostess was brandishing a new bottle in the air. “This is our nineteen-ninety-siven Riesling with a lovely nose of limes, marmalade, and apricots.”

I spied Heath and Nora at the far end of the counter, wineglasses extended for a hit of the Riesling, while Roger and Diana brandished their stemware erratically and yapped at them like schnauzers. Huh, that was odd. What was Roger doing waving a glass around? Had he decided to drink the wine despite all the toxins he’d been fussing about? Jake lurked beside the group, looking ridiculously sinister as he cradled his wineglass against his chest. His proximity to Heath boded trouble, so I was glad Henry was close by so he could break up—

“CAN YOU BREATHE, DICK?” Helen Teig thumped her husband between his shoulder blades.

“Is he okay?” I asked anxiously.

“Yeah, he accidentally combined ‘swish’ and ‘swallow’ and got ‘choke.’”

“The savory palate of the Riesling is a blend of spice and honey,” our hostess informed us as she filled empty glasses.

“The lady said to
swirl
the wine, Dick,” Grace Stolee scolded. “
Swirl,
not slosh. The idea is to release the aroma—not run through a spin cycle! You’ll never get that stain out.”

I heard a sound like a toy motorboat and glanced across my shoulder to find Osmond Chelsvig with his head thrown back, acting as if he had a mouth full of Listerine. I made a slight detour toward him.

“Osmond?”

He gulped down what was in his mouth and smiled at me. “This tastes much better than my regular mouthwash.”

“Why are you gargling?”

“That’s what the lady said to do. Gargle before swallowing.”

I shook my head. “Watch my lips. G
urrr
gle. Gurgle before swallowing.” I tapped my earlobe. “Check your batteries, okay?”

I placed my glass on the counter and tried to avoid getting crushed as I waited for it to be filled.

“Emily, dear! Yoo-hoo!” Nana plowed through the crowd with Tilly, Margi, and Bernice in tow. “Wasn’t that chardonnay somethin’? I couldn’t taste no coconut, though.”

“That’s because you have to sip
before
you spit,” Bernice said dully.

Nana shrugged impishly. “I got my steps outta order.”

“Bernice should talk,” Margi balked. “She went directly from see to swallow. I don’t know what happened to swirl, sniff, sip, and swish.”

I cuddled up to Nana and gave her a hug. “Did no one bother to tell you that your hairpins came loose? Henry asked why you’re wearing a condom in your ear.”

“No kiddin’? What size?”

I pinned the remnants of the glove back under her hair while the other ladies placed their glasses on the counter.

“Have any of you seen Connie?” Ellie asked, looking like a lost soul as she bumped into us. “One minute he’s spitting into a barrel, and the next minute he’s gone.”

Tilly scanned the room. That’s one of the advantages of being six feet tall in your stocking feet. “There he is. Look for Jake Silverthorn’s hat, and you’ll be right on target.”

“Party time!” said Bernice, grabbing a newly filled glass off the counter.

“Wait a minute,” said Margi. “That’s my glass.”

“Is not.”

“Is so. I put mine next to the one that’s smeared with lipstick.”

“That would be mine,” I said, snatching it up.

“I’m keeping this glass,” vowed Bernice.

“Well, I’m not drinking after you,” said Margi. “I want a new one. S’cuse me! Can I get a clean glass over here?”

“I don’t mean to confuse the issue,” said Tilly, “but I could have sworn I put
my
glass next to the one with the lipstick print.”

At birthday parties you played musical chairs; at wine-tasting parties it was musical glasses.

The sound of shattering glass echoed through the room, followed by a
boom
that vibrated the floor-boards.

“What was that?” asked Nana.

“Call an ambulance!” a man shouted.

Our hostess slammed her bottle of Reisling onto the counter in disgust. “That’s it! I’ve had it with you flaming tour groups. The idea is to
taste
the wine, not drink yoursilves into a bloody coma!”

O
smond read from his tally sheet as we huddled next to the building where paramedics had been administering to Nora Acres. “Five people think she collapsed from the heat. One person thinks it was a heart attack. One person thinks she fainted from thirst. I reckon that’d be Lucille. Three people say she collapsed from old age, and one person says she’s faking it to draw attention to herself.” We all stared at Bernice.

“What? You’ve never heard of Munchausen’s Syndrome? Don’t you people ever watch
ER
?”

“She wasn’t faking it,” Tilly chided. “Did you see the poor woman when they took her away? She looked as if she were on her deathbed.”

And if it was possible, Heath had looked even worse.

A local ambulance had arrived in record time and whisked them away. I hoped their efforts to stabilize Nora had been successful.

“How old a woman you s’pose she is?” asked Nana.

“A hundred and ten,” said Bernice.

“They probably shouldn’t let folks that old sign up for these trips,” said Osmond, who was a birthday short of ninety. “I’ve heard that once you reach a hundred, things really start falling apart.”

“That young man with her should have known better,” Helen affirmed. “You think he’s a relative?”

“That’s her son,” I said, not surprised by the drop-mouth expressions that stared back at me.

“No way,” said Dick Teig. “Great-grandson, maybe.”

“Do you suppose she had him late in life?” asked Alice.

“Yeah, like when she was eighty,” said Dick.

“It’s her son,” I repeated. “He told me himself.”

Henry walked our way, lips moving and finger waving in the air as he counted heads. “That’s everyone. You can reboard the bus in about tin minutes. Sorry for the excitement, but I hope you won’t let it affict the rist of your day. There’s plinty more wine for you to taste at the other vineyards, kangaroo with plum sauce to dine on for lunch, and you can relax knowing that Mrs. Acres is receiving the bist midical care that South Australia has to offer. I’m sure she’ll be up and about in no time and anxious to rejoin us.”

“How old a woman do you think she is?” Dick Stolee called out.

Henry unfolded a paper from his breast pocket and scanned the text. “She was born in forty-three, so that would make her—what? Fifty-siven going on fifty-eight?”

Gasps of disbelief. “No way is she only fifty-seven,” argued Bernice.

“Says so right here on her midical form. She was born on St. Patrick’s Day in nineteen-forty-three.”

“Maybe she’s got that disease what makes people look real old,” said Nana. “What’s it called?”

“Wrinkles,” said Grace.

Uff da!
Nora Acres was younger than my mom? I guess that’s what happened when you lived in a place with too much sun and not enough drugstores selling sunblock with high SPF.

A digital tone rang out from Henry’s hip. He walked out of earshot to answer it.

“If she’s fifty-seven, I’ll eat my—” Bernice gave herself a once-over in search of digestible clothing.

“Why don’t you eat Dick’s shirt?” suggested Grace. “It’s made in China, and you like Chinese.”

Henry walked back to us, a hitch in his normally fluid gait. “That’s a call I wasn’t expicting.” He inhaled deeply, his cell phone still cradled in his palm. “I’m afraid I painted too rosy a picture about Mrs. Acres’s recovery. That was Heath. His mother died on the way to hospital.”

“What was it?” asked Dick Teig. “Heart attack?”

“I bet it was heatstroke,” said Margi. “If people get too hot, their insides can cook like peas in one of those boiling pouches, and that can do them in real quick. The old and infirm are especially vulnerable.”

“She wasn’t old,” objected Tilly. “She was only fifty-seven!”

“If she was fifty-seven, I’ll eat—” Bernice looked around. “You got anything better than Dick’s shirt?”

While the group debated the cause of Nora Acres’s death, I slipped back into the tasting room, which was eerily quiet minus the sipping and spitting. The staff had cleared away the dirty stemware and swept Nora’s shattered glass off the floor, so the room sparkled once more with pre-tour group tidiness. You’d never know someone had just died here.

Okay, maybe not technically, but she might as well have died here. And if she had, I imagined things would be very different right now. The medical examiner might be snooping around, looking for evidence that might cast Nora’s death in a suspicious light. He might have called in the crime scene unit, who would have gathered the pieces of her broken glass into an evidence bag, taken photos, and subjected us to lengthy interviews about where we were when the incident happened and what we’d seen.

I peered out the window, where I could see people straggling back to the bus, and wondered if any of the guests who’d been in her vicinity would have owned up to what had been going on. Heath wanting to cuckold Jake. Roger wanting to best Diana. Heath wanting to blow off Roger and Diana. Jake wanting to punish Heath. Diana wanting to destroy Roger. Roger and Diana wanting to break Heath. And Nora stuck in the middle of it all. Had she been aware of all the undercurrents? Or had her mind been so detached from reality that someone could have come at her with the business end of a corkscrew and she would have missed the intent?

Poor Nora. She’d seemed such a sad, lost soul. She’d probably never hurt a thing in her life, other than Jake’s leaping spider. Why was it that people who were quiet and unassuming ended up dead while the obnoxious ones always managed to survive? It didn’t seem fair. God obviously knew what He was doing, but on occasion, I wish He’d err on the side of the obnoxious ones.

But He was God. God didn’t make mistakes. Only people made mistakes.

Turning to leave, I glanced at the shelves of sparkling stemware behind the counter and felt my pulse quicken as an absurd thought hit me.

Only people made mistakes.

Damn. What if—

Whoa! Was it possible that—

Holy crap. If what I was thinking proved true, Claire Bellows’s killer had struck again, but he might have killed the wrong person.

“You don’t think it was a heart attack?” asked Nana, when we were back at the hotel. “What about a ruptured gallbladder, or kidney stones? I don’t think you die from stones, though. You just wish you could.”

We’d finished our day of wine tasting, despite what had happened to Nora. Henry had suggested we return to Adelaide, but the seventy-and-over crowd had voted to continue with the schedule. Few people had bonded with Nora. The majority didn’t even know what she looked like. So the loudest voices had convinced Henry to press on. As one man had articulated so eloquently, “I paid an arm and a leg for this tour, so I damned well better see what the brochure promised. I’m sorry about the old girl dying, but life goes on, and so should the tour.”

I slid open our patio door to let in the cool evening air. “I think Nora was poisoned. We’ve seen this kind of thing before. You know how easy it is.”

“Why would anyone want to poison Mrs. Acres?” asked Tilly.

“I don’t think anyone wanted to.” I sat down on the sofa while the ladies yanked off their boots. “I think the poison was intended for someone else. You saw all the confusion with the glasses in the tasting room. I’ll bet you anything Nora drank from the wrong glass and died because of it.”

Tilly leaned back in her chair, rubbing her feet. “So if Nora wasn’t the killer’s target, who was?”

“I’ll give you my short list: either Heath, Roger, Jake, or Diana. And did I tell you that Conrad changed his plane reservations? He’s going to be staying on after the tour ends.”

“Long enough to return to Port Campbell and look for your grandmother’s plant?” asked Tilly.

“Ellie didn’t say how long they’d be staying. She was more upset about where the money was going to come from to foot the bill.”

“Are you thinkin’ the same person what killed Claire Bellows killed Nora?” asked Nana.

“That’s my current theory. Why, do you think it sounds stupid?”

“Nope, but there’s somethin’ I don’t get, dear. Makes sense to me that Roger, Diana, or Conrad might a killed Claire ’cause a the plant business. Even makes sense why they’d wanna kill each other. But what’s got me stumped is why Jake or Heath woulda killed Claire when they got no connection to her.”

“Perhaps they didn’t need a connection,” said Tilly. “Have you considered the possibility that we might be dealing with a sociopath who kills for no reason at all?”

Nana gave that careful thought. “Where would you write ‘Sociopath’ on them medical forms we filled out? Under ‘Pre-existing Conditions’ or ‘Other?’”

Unh-oh. I felt an acid indigestion moment coming on. “Umm, I never mentioned this before because I didn’t want to scare you, but Jake could have had a hand in Claire’s death. He didn’t do anything deliberately, but there’s a chance he might have killed her.” I dropped my voice to a raspy whisper. “Accidentally.”

“With poison?” asked Nana.

The words shot from my mouth like speeding bullets. “When he let his redback spider escape on the bus the other day.” I held my breath, waiting for their reaction.

Nana looked at Tilly. Tilly looked at Nana. They both looked at me, Nana’s eyes rounding to the size of half-dollars. “He let one a them poison spiders loose?”

“Accidentally.”

“And he didn’t tell no one?”

“He told Lola. That’s who told me.”

“Are you thinking the spider could have hidden in Claire’s hair or clothing and bitten her right before she died?” asked Tilly.

“It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Any chance the critter could still be on the bus?” Nana asked, dry-mouthed.

“Uhhhhh, I’m guessing if it’s still on the bus, it’s dead. Someone probably stepped on it long ago. I mean, we didn’t notice anyone twitching abnormally, discharging all their body fluids, and dying a grisly death while we were on the bus, did we?”

“What about Nora?” asked Tilly.

Nora? Shoot, I was so sure she’d been poisoned, I never considered she might have died from a spider bite. “Did anyone notice Nora twitching?”

“Could be the twitchin’ didn’t kick in ’til she was on the ambulance,” said Nana as she examined the bottom of her boots for squished spiders.

“Or it could be that there’s no twitching, fluid discharge, or grisly death involved at all,” Tilly speculated. “Emily said that Jake is a fear monger. How do we know he was telling us the truth about a person’s reaction to a redback bite?”

Nana sucked noisily on her dentures. “I’ll find out.” She stuffed her feet back into her boots, marched to the desk, and powered up her laptop.

Knock, knock, knock
.

“You do your search,” I said to Nana as I stood up. “I’ll get that.”

“I can’t come in, but I have news for your grandmother,” Conrad said when I opened the door. “The team of zoologists the university sent to Sovereign Hill are beating the bushes in search of the rat kangaroo, but they’ve asked if you could fax your grandmother’s photo to them at this number.” He handed me a slip of paper. “I know what they should be looking for, but I’m not sure
they
know what they should be looking for. They might be embarrassed that a creature they’d misplaced for sixty-five years might have been living right under their noses, and it took a Yank to find it.”

I arched a brow at the number. “What about the angiosperm photo? Should I fax that to the university’s botany department? That might give them a better idea of what they’re looking for, too.”

“No, no.” He took an awkward step back. “Sadly, the botany team has given up their search, so it would do you no good. Just the rat kangaroo, please. I must get back now. Ellie isn’t feeling so well. I think it was the last Shiraz. Much too peppery for her.”

I hoped it was the Shiraz and not something more sinister. I wasn’t sure how much I trusted Conrad anymore.

I returned to the room and hovered over Nana’s shoulder. “Conrad would like us to fax your photo of the rat kangaroo to the university zoologists at Sovereign Hill. Seems that after sixty-five years, no one is quite sure what the little guy looks like. Here’s the number. How’s it going?”

“Says here the initial redback bite isn’t painful and sometimes you don’t see no puncture marks. Pain sets in after about five minutes and some common symptoms are localized swellin’, sweatin’, muscular weakness, paralysis, stiffness, loss of coordination, and tremors.”

“Claire was sweating when she was in the visitor center,” I recalled. “And she was complaining about stiffness.”

“Nora obviously lost coordination when she collapsed,” added Tilly.

“Here’s the kicker,” said Nana. “‘Redback venom is slow-actin’ and serious illness shouldn’t develop for at least three hours.’ It don’t say nothin’ about anyone dyin’. It says the symptoms can sometimes clear within a week.” She snorted in disgust. “We been had. You was right, Emily. All Jake was hankerin’ to do was scare us.”

“And make fun of our reaction.” Tilly looked down at her boots. “Do you suppose that little boutique in Melbourne accepts returns on slightly used sale items?”