Lethal Vintage (13 page)

“Why is that?”

“Because I can see that you are tired, and that your business is not growing, but I have the impression that you are talented and you work hard. Fortunately and also unfortunately, there is no higher power here so far.”

“You mean Mafia.”

“Those that run things. But in any case you could still take the lesson from Scylla and Charybdis. You could make a powerful partnership in order to expand, so that someday you might not have to work every day. Your employees would be happy then. There would be more business, more opportunity to move up, more money for everyone. You would be happy.”

“My employees are happy now.”

“Don’t be defensive. I’m only trying to help you by suggesting that if an opportunity should come your way, you might be wise to consider it.”

“If one should, I will.”

“Good. Now, why don’t you go into the spa over there and buy yourself a swimsuit so I don’t have to look at denim and a man’s work boots on such a beautiful woman. This is how a woman’s foot should look.”

He leaned over and lifted Jordan’s leg by the ankle, holding it to display the freshly painted nails and high sandal. She laughed and lifted it away.

Sunny shook her head and pulled herself up from the lounge chair. “Thanks, but I need to get going. You’re staying here at the hotel?”

“For the moment,” said Franco. “Why don’t you join me tomorrow for lunch?”

“I’ll be at the restaurant all day.”

“Then we will come to you. I would like to try this restaurant everyone is talking about.”

“Is everyone talking about it?”

“Some people, my dear. And after that, I will attend to the last of my wine business at Taurus Rising and then, with the authorities’ and Oliver’s blessing, I go back to Roma at the end of the week to resume my affairs there.”

Wade Skord sat on his back porch in his work clothes. His face and arms were covered in a powdery film of dust, the same that tinged his jeans and white T-shirt rusty red. Terra-cotta stripes marked creases around the armpits and wherever he’d leaned against a piece of machinery.

“Half man, half mud,” said Sunny.

“Tractor duty,” said Wade, unlacing his boots. Sunny went inside and came back with two glasses of ice water. They sat on the deck and watched the sky turn pink. Rivka’s yellow blip of a car appeared at the top of the hill and inched its way down the slope toward the house, red dust billowing up behind. Rivka and her new boyfriend got out.

“I can’t believe she got all that boy in that little car,” said Wade. “He must have been bent in half.” He excused himself to take a shower. Rivka and Jason, her new crush, joined Sunny on the deck. He was a Jamaican transplant with wide shoulders, narrow hips, and hair like a dandelion who could sell just about anything he dragged to the farmers’ market on Friday mornings. Last year it was wildcrafted blackberries and watercress. This year his stand was mostly selling Bob Marley T-shirts and Jamaican jerk spices and curry powders. Sunny watched Rivka. She was clearly under
his spell. Who could blame her? He was charming, handsome, and had a body that “rocked the house,” as Rivka said.

It was nearly dark when Monty arrived a few minutes later. “Forty bucks to have a car detailed,” he said, slamming the car door, “and look at it. That dust works its way into every crevice and nothing can get it out.” He stomped up the porch stairs, brushing his sleeves and trousers. “What kind of lunatic would live all the way out here with the raccoons?”

“Our dear friend Wade?” said Rivka.

“I rest my case,” said Monty.

They carried groceries inside and Jason got started cooking. Wade came out of the bedroom smelling like soap, wearing clean jeans and a plaid shirt. His gray head of cowlicks was still wet and had been combed neat but was already beginning to break free.

“Sun,” he said.

“Skord.”

“Taste of the evil brew?”

“How evil?”

He sauntered over to the cardboard box that served as the wine cabinet. Wade’s house was randomly but more or less evenly divided between rural spartan and wine country luxury. Half rustic cabin, with splintering wood and an ancient potbellied stove, it also had plank floors any New York loft dweller would die for, million-dollar views, and the occasional piece of Italian modernism just when you least expected it. The house, like the man, was a jumble of non sequiturs and juxtaposed opposites. From her spot near the butcher block where Rivka was cubing potatoes, Sunny could see the entire house except the office and the bathroom. Wade raised his nose and glanced toward the kitchen. The air was already filled with the spicy aroma of garlic, onions, and curry sizzling in olive oil. He held up a bottle.

“Fresh Pinot Noir. Central Otago, New Zealand. Mailman brought it.”

“New World exotic. I’m in.”

“You see the paper tonight?” said Rivka.

Sunny shook her head.

“Apparently Oliver Seth had his computer encrypted. They just cracked the code and there were a bunch of e-mails to some woman he was seeing.”

“It said that in the newspaper?”

“Yep.”

“They find anything else?”

“It said it would take a while to go through everything.”

Wade poured and handed glasses around. “To the newest cook at Skord Mountain.”

Jason picked up a glass to acknowledge the toast, then turned back to a spitting skillet. Rivka went over and peeked around his elbow. “Isn’t your heat a little high?”

“You got to fry curry hot so it sits right in the belly. We’re under control out here. Go relax.”

Sunny took a drink of the pomegranate-red wine. It had a pleasantly astringent taste that woke her up after the long day. “I found out something else today, too,” she said. “I went to see Franco Bertinotti, the guy who—”

“That’s the guy I met,” interrupted Monty. “So he got ahold of you. Good. I gave him your number. Interesting guy. Turns out he had a hand in a couple of my favorite Barolos going way back.”

“Why didn’t you give him my cell number?”

“He said he needed to reach you right away, before he left town. You don’t answer your cell at work, and nobody picks up the office phone when you’re open.”

“So call the main restaurant number. It’s in the phone book. The bat phone is for family.”

“I’ll make a note, Frau Diva. Since when is it so hard to escape your fans? He wanted a quick way to reach you and I gave it to him.”

“Who is this guy?” said Rivka.

“He called today during lunch rush. The winemaker who works for Oliver Seth. Sicilian, lives in Rome. I went to see him tonight and he told me that Anna had marks on her throat and mouth. Or at least that’s what the police told him. I think there’s a chance they could have been lying, trying to trip him up if he was guilty, but I think she must have had some kind of marks on her somewhere.”

“What kind of marks?”

“I’m not sure. Bruises, I assume. On her mouth it was an abrasion. She was suffocated or strangled.”

“And we still have no idea who did it,” said Rivka.

“No, but something will turn up. I’ve been thinking about something Steve said. ‘There’s always physical evidence, it’s just a matter of how much.’ Anna was intoxicated, tired, maybe even asleep when it happened. It would have been relatively easy to come into her room and smother her without much noise or struggle. But she didn’t just slip lightly into the great beyond. She was murdered. It was a violent act. If you were planning to do such a thing, wouldn’t you take a few precautions?”

“Such as?” said Monty.

“Let’s say it was me. I know I’m stronger than she is, and I have the advantage because I’m the aggressor. But she still might scream before I could cover her mouth. And I don’t want her to scratch me and get my DNA under her fingernails. If you smother someone, even if she’s asleep or drugged, there could still be a fight.” Sunny looked around the group. “If you were planning to overpower and
suffocate someone in a houseful of people without anyone knowing, what would you bring with you?”

“A gag,” said Rivka.

“Gloves,” said Wade.

“Wouldn’t you just knock them out?” said Monty. “Otherwise they might overpower you and get away.”

“Too risky, too messy,” said Sunny. “And in this case, not necessary. That’s where the opportunity comes in. With all the wine and God knows what else that was in Anna’s system, I think just about anyone could have overpowered her, especially if they got to her when she was asleep and prevented her from breathing. It would have been a fairly easy job. If you smash someone over the head, you’re bound to do it too hard, in which case you’re going to get blood everywhere, or not hard enough, in which case you’re in even bigger trouble.”

“The whole thing is so disgusting if you really think about it,” said Rivka. “Can you imagine holding someone down and not letting them breathe until they died? It turns my stomach.”

“It’s called burking,” said Wade. “Very tidy. You get somebody drunk, wait for them to pass out, and then hold your hand over their mouth and nose. Fast, simple, clean.”

“So our guy wasn’t so clever,” said Sunny. “He put something over or in her mouth that did some damage and he left some bruises.”

Jason came at them brandishing a spatula. “Hey, hey, hey. Enough of this talk or you are going to ruin my supper. We’re a happy occasion here. We’ve got good food, good wine. Enough of this murder business. You’re going to spoil my curry with all this bad talk.”

“Duct tape!” said Monty. “They always use duct tape to cover the person’s mouth.”

“Exactly,” said Sunny. “And duct tape could leave an abrasion on her mouth when you take it off.”

“Jason is right,” said Wade. “All this talk about suffocating helpless victims is depressing. Can’t it wait until after dinner?”

“Just one more minute,” said Sunny. “I’m getting to the point. Let’s go through it from the beginning. You get what you need from somewhere on the estate. Garage, kitchen, whatever. Maybe you even brought it with you, who knows. So let’s say you get something to use as a gag or to cover her mouth—maybe Monty’s duct tape—and you wear gloves so you don’t leave any fingerprints or get scratched. You suffocate Anna in her sleep and push her body out the window, where you hope her death may be construed as an accident. Maybe you do it so it will take longer to find her, presuming, as the murderer might, that she will be found sooner in bed than she would outside. Whatever the reason, now you just have to dispose of the evidence. It’s four in the morning, maybe five. You don’t have much time. You’ve got a ball of used duct tape, a pair of rubber gloves, and who knows what else to get rid of. You can’t leave that stuff around because it could have your DNA on it. What do you do with it? You can’t risk leaving the property—you might be seen or caught by the security camera at the gate. The police will check all the obvious places like trash cans and under the bed. You can’t flush rubber gloves and duct tape—what if they get stuck? You have to find a safe hiding place without making any noise. Somewhere so safe the cops can tear the house apart and not find it.”

“Where?” said Rikva.

“That’s the question. And more important, is it still there?”

“Of course not,” said Monty.

“Why ‘of course’?” said Sunny. “If you hide it well enough to keep it from the cops during their big scavenger hunt, why risk moving it later and being seen?”

“If you put a curse on my curry with all your death talk, I’m not cooking for you people ever again,” said Jason loudly from the
kitchen. “That’s it. No more curry. No jerk chicken. No plantains, no ackee and saltfish.”

“You could bury it,” said Monty.

“And leave a fresh pile of dirt?” said Sunny. “The police know to look for that kind of thing. I thought of the compost heap down at the garden, but I’m sure they went through there as well.”

“You could eat it, like they do with drugs,” said Monty.

“Who could eat a rubber glove?” said Rivka.

“You could put it, uh, where the sun don’t shine,” said Monty.

“You’re lucky the police didn’t pursue this line of thinking over the weekend,” said Rivka. “Could have made for some interesting searches.”

“In theory, I guess that could work,” said Sunny. “If a person was in a desperate frame of mind.”

“Or feeling adventuresome,” said Monty.

Wade shook his head. “Nobody in his right mind would keep that kind of evidence on his person where it might be found, especially in a place it would be pretty damn hard to explain. He’d burn it. Or bury it. Or stick it somewhere in the house where it would take a while to find. The cops can’t look everywhere.”

“They had a pig. Maybe you could rub it with peanut butter and feed it to the pig,” said Sunny.

“A pig won’t eat duct tape no matter what you rub on it,” said Wade. “If they had a goat, I’d say maybe. A goat’ll eat the siding right off your house. Pigs are finicky. I had a pig that wouldn’t eat a cookie if it had a bite out of it. He liked ‘em round.”

“So if there is any evidence, it could be anywhere,” said Sunny. She walked over to the sliding glass doors and looked out at darkness, across the dry grass, light as milk in the moonlight, at the sagging barn where Wade made some of the best Zinfandel the Howell Mountain appellation had to offer. Farber, Wade’s cat, was stalking
toward the overgrown patch of rhubarb and asparagus that grew on the other side of the winery. Off to hunt mice and wood rats.

They gathered at the plank table. Jason set a steaming bowl of rice and a Dutch oven full of curry chicken on the table. Sunny brought out an heirloom tomato, basil, and fava bean salad. Monty added baguettes from the bakery in Yountville and several bottles of wine. There was a Mayacamas Chardonnay to start, then a couple of local Pinots to compare. Everyone was hungry. Wade put João Gilberto on the dust-encrusted boom box he carried out to work every day, and they ate listening to the music and saying little until plates began to go around for seconds. The days since Anna’s death had been stressful. It felt good to eat, drink, and relax.

Wade held the bowl of rice and Sunny passed her plate. He dished up seconds, ladling the rich yellow curry chicken with onions and potatoes over it. She inhaled deeply. “Spicy. Is that Habanero?”

“Scotch bonnet. Same thing, more or less,” said Jason.

“Where did you learn to cook?”

“At home growing up. We cooked every day. I never ate in a restaurant until I worked in one.”

“I think this might be what’s been missing from my life,” said Sunny, looking at Rivka. “Spice. We need more spice. Is there anything spicy on the menu at Wildside?”

“Loads of flavor, not much spicy.”

“That’s right. No spice. Nothing hot. We need more hot. Or at least a little bit of hot.”

Truth be known, she was a sip or two over the top. It felt great to unwind, even if she had to use the sledgehammer approach of alcohol to do it.

“Anything but more salmon and I’m happy,” said Rivka.

“So this guy Smith,” said Monty, pausing to take a drink of wine as though he’d just noticed the glass in his hand, “is mega-rich.”

“Seth. More money than anybody I’ve ever known. Billions, apparently,” said Sunny. “He had real art in his house. Like art you see in museums. It was like staying at the Bellagio.”

“When did you ever stay at the Bellagio?” said Rivka.

“You know what I mean. Art. Decadence.”

“Millions and billions sound alike, but a billion dollars is a serious pile of cash,” said Jason. “I heard this thing one time. You think about all the time that’s passed since Jesus Christ was born. Sixty minutes in an hour, so—what’s that?—six hundred twice plus a hundred and twenty twice, that’s a thousand four hundred and forty-four minutes in a day. That makes about ten thousand in a week and about forty thousand in a month, so let’s say roughly four hundred eighty thousand in a year. You with me? Multiply that by a couple thousand years and you get pretty close to a billion minutes since the time of Christ.” He pointed to each of the faces around the table with his fork in turn. “If somebody gave you one dollar for every minute that has passed since Jesus was over there in Bethlehem sawing wood and hammering nails, you’d have about a billion dollars.”