Lethal Vintage (7 page)

“I ask you for your patience and cooperation in the coming days and weeks,” said Sergeant Harvey. “Several of you may be asked to come into the station to respond to further questions. For those of you who live out of town, I request that you make whatever reasonable changes you can to your travel plans in order to stay in the vicinity for the next week at least. If you do plan to leave, the St. Helena Police Department would appreciate your notifying us of where you will be and how we can reach you.”

The last time Sunny had seen Anna was in the hot tub, kissing Oliver. How long was she alive after that? What time was it when she overheard them fighting? Sunny had gone over it several times with the police. There was no way to know the exact time. Her watch had said one-fifteen when she went to bed and four o’clock when she heard the sobbing from upstairs. Certainly at four Anna was still alive, since Sunny had heard her crying. With a sickening feeling, she thought of the last time she jolted awake, early that morning. What was it that had woken her? Could it have been the sound of
Anna’s body striking the pavement just a few feet from the French doors? Sunny looked around the room. In all probability, someone here knew exactly what had happened. The only one missing was Keith Lachlan.

Sergeant Harvey had stopped to confer with another officer. The room was silent. No one made eye contact or moved, as if doing so would be an admission of guilt. Sunny imagined Anna getting out of the hot tub and going to the master bedroom. What was she wearing when she had the fight with Oliver? A towel? Had she put the white dress back on? Or did she have some kind of negligee she slept in? If they knew what Anna was wearing when the gardener found her, it might suggest something about the minutes leading up to her death. Was she dressed, hair brushed, shoes on, as though ready to leave? Was she naked, torn suddenly from bed?

It was nearly six in the evening when they finally released everyone. Sunny climbed into her beat-up old pickup gratefully and headed down the hill. At a red light near town, her cell phone rang.

“Wade,” she said, picking up with relief.

“What’s up, sunshine? You’ve been off the radar all weekend.”

“Long story.”

“Care to tell it over dinner? Chavez is coming by in a minute and Lenstrom is on his way already.”

“Thank God.”

Wade cleared his throat. “He asked me if I thought it would be okay to ask you to cater the wedding.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I was pretty sure you’d be honored.”

Silence. Their friend Monty Lenstrom had finally asked his longtime girlfriend, Annabelle, to marry him. Sunny had been
dreading the inevitable catering request for weeks. Every time someone she knew got married, they assumed she’d prefer to work the wedding than to be a guest. It was a huge amount of work she always ended up doing at cost.

“Sun, I’m kidding,” said Wade with a chuckle. “I told him to hire somebody and let you relax for a change.”

“Not funny, Skord. Not tonight, anyway. I can’t even think about dealing with Annabelle right now, of all the larger-than-life Bridezillas-to-be. It’s bad enough I’m hosting the engagement dinner. What’d he say?”

“He said he was going to ask you the next chance he got. He was pretty sure you’d love the idea.”

“Is the man blind, deaf, and dumb? Has he not been a witness to the week of sixteen-hour days the last friends’ wedding cost me? All unpaid, I might add.”

“So tell him no.”

“Please. I’ve known him since he had hair.”

“Then suck it up.”

“I’ll do the rehearsal dinner. And the snacks for the bridal party before. But I am not doing the dinner for two hundred people.”

“Whatever. You two will have to sort that out. Get up here as soon as you can. We need to eat it, drink it, and clean it up by ten. It’s a school night.”

“Driving.”

She hung up and accelerated past the string of gourmet-themed boutiques, antique shops, and restaurants, including her own, lined up along Main Street, otherwise known as Highway 29, the road to redemption in the form of Wade Skord and his mountaintop winery.

Sunny felt better already. From the moment she put her turn signal on and began the long chug up Howell Mountain, she felt that maybe the nightmare of the past twenty-four hours would finally end. What would she do without friends like Wade and Rivka and Monty? With a pang she thought of Anna. She’d asked for help and Sunny had failed her. Sunny had listened to her fight with Oliver, a man Anna had said frightened her, and had done nothing. Worse, she’d gone back to sleep as if nothing was wrong. Her instincts had failed her. She’d convinced herself Anna was being emotional and dramatic, when instead she needed help getting away from a dangerous situation. Now the unthinkable had happened and Sunny would have to live the rest of her life with the knowledge that she might have prevented it.

At the mailbox marked skord mountain vineyard, she turned off the pavement and plunged down a steep ravine on a road rutted with potholes. Dust billowed up around the truck, chalking the air pale red in the failing light. At the bottom was Wake Skord’s cabin. Judging by the collection of vehicles nosed around it, Rivka Chavez and Monty Lenstrom had already arrived. So much the better. Tonight Sunny wanted her friends close.

Wade’s cat, Farber, leaped down from the railing with a thud and waited for her on the deck. Sunny scratched him between the ears and he bit her hand affectionately. Inside, they were already eating. Monty poured Sunny a glass of something ruby red. One of his pet Sonoma Coast Pinots. Rivka brought Sunny a plate and loaded it with salad, rice, and Chicken à la Wade.

Sunny had eaten dinner at Wade’s plank table at least once a week for half a decade, more or less. During that time, he never cooked anything but the specialty of the house, which changed every year or so. In the beginning, it was a rib-sticking ground beef and potato concoction with raisins and green olives called Shepherd’s Pie à la Wade, served with a jumbo bottle of green Tabasco. Later it was Tibetan Ginger Tofu Soup à la Wade. A few months ago, Chicken à la Wade started turning up. It involved a Dutch oven, stewed tomatoes, cubed prosciutto, fresh rosemary, and plenty of dry white wine. Comfort food. Tonight it had its work cut out for it.

“The specialty of the house,” said Sunny. “My favorite.”

“What’d you expect?” said Wade.

“Toast, fried eggs, and sardines?” said Sunny.

“Only for breakfast and lunch.”

“I don’t know how you keep from getting scurvy,” said Monty.

“Chicken à la Wade has rosemary,” said Wade. “That’s green.”

“I just realized something,” said Rivka. “Shouldn’t it be Chicken au Wade? Or Chicken al Wade. You being, for what it’s worth, male.”

“Cooking brings out my feminine side. Besides, no one calls me Al, and au Wade doesn’t roll off the tongue the way à la Wade does.”

“I’m ready for it to roll off my tongue for good,” said Monty. “We’ve eaten this three times in as many weeks.”

“That sounds like an invitation,” said Wade. “Dinner at Monty’s next Sunday.”

Monty acquiesced. “Fine, I’ll cook next time. We can do a roast chicken or pork loin with fennel pollen. I staked out a great new patch of wild fennel over the weekend. Easy access. No fence, no rabid dogs, no exhaust fumes. It’s a good hundred yards from the road. Tall as my head.”

“We should go big this year and package up a bunch to sell at the farmers’ market,” said Rivka.

“How big can you go with fennel pollen?” said Monty. “It takes a grocery bag full of flowers to make a spoonful of the stuff.”

“So we do small packages. Everyone was asking me for more last year.” Rivka looked at Sunny for support and her eyes lingered on her friend’s face. “You got some color. Did you go biking?”

“I went to a pool party yesterday.”

“And you’re still wearing your swimsuit? That must have been some party.”

Sunny looked down at the bikini and gauzy cover-up she was wearing. She’d forgotten. “Long story.”

Rivka’s eyes lit up. “I’ll bet! Come on, dish. I want details. I need to live vicariously. I slept and pulled weeds most of the weekend.”

“A pool party,” said Monty. “That’s so L.A. Were there cabana boys?”

“It wasn’t a party exactly,” said Sunny. “Just people over for a swim and lunch. No cabana boys, but they had just about everything else, including a full-time private chef and a kitchen that looked like something out of a design magazine and a huge Rothko in the living room. The real thing. Not to mention some pretty crazy wines. They must have pulled the cork on about three thousand dollars’ worth of wine by the time the night was over, which was the least of what happened. I’m wiped out.” For a moment she was tempted to leave it at that. A pool party at some rich friend’s luxurious wine country getaway. Simple.

“And?” said Rivka. “There’s more, I can tell.”

“Not until after dinner,” said Sunny. “I’m afraid it has a very unhappy ending.”

“The old McCoskey knack for unhappy endings,” said Monty. “Remind me not to invite you to my wedding. People have an uncanny tendency to drop dead when you’re around.”

“I’ve noticed,” she said.

The conversation went on without her. When they’d finished eating, Wade said, “Now I want to hear why Sunny is all sunburned and silent, if she’ll tell us.”

Sunny nodded.

“If we’re in for a long one, we have to clear the dishes first,” said Rivka. “I can’t concentrate with a plate of chicken bones staring at me.”

When the table was cleared and their wineglasses filled, they settled into the living room, where Sunny told the basics of what had happened, starting with Anna Wilson’s phone call Saturday morning inviting her over and ending with the gathering in the living room she’d just come from, in which Sergeant Harvey had suggested that none of them leave town or discuss details of the case until the initial investigation was complete. She left Andre Morales out of it, and skipped Sergeant Harvey’s theory that Anna had been dead before the fall. A stunned silence followed.

“I thought I was joking,” said Monty, removing his spectacles to polish them on a little cloth he took from his wallet. “You are definitely off the guest list.”

Rivka gave Monty a look. “It has nothing to do with Sunny.”

“Au contraire,” said Wade. “It has everything to do with Sunny. This girl knew she was in danger. She said as much, right, Sun?”

“I guess so. It depends. She said she didn’t know who her boyfriend was anymore, it was over, and she just wanted to get out of
there. But a few hours later she was kissing him like everything was fine, and a couple hours after that they were fighting up a storm. At the time, it seemed like the usual ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ stuff to me. But none of that may have anything to do with her death, anyway. They don’t even know how she died yet.”

“They say they don’t,” said Monty. “I’ll bet they know exactly how she died. They want the killer to slip up and reveal something only he would know.”

“If she wanted a shoulder to cry on, she had this girl Jordan on the premises already,” said Wade. “You guys hadn’t talked in years. She’s up there at the country house sweating bullets for whatever reason. She reads in the paper that her old pal McCoskey recently kicked the stuffing out of the most dangerous killer to come through town in decades. That’s just the sort of friend a girl likes to have around when she’s in the soup.” Wade picked up a cookie from a plate Rivka put in front of him and aimed it at Sunny. “I say you were called in as reinforcements. This girl was scared. And for good reason, it turns out.”

“And I let her down. Not only did I fail to help, I did absolutely nothing but drink her wine, eat her food, and go to sleep when she needed me. I heard enough to know there was some major domestic strife taking place upstairs and I did absolutely nothing.”

“If you really think the boyfriend killed her, I’m glad you didn’t go up there and get in the middle of it,” said Rivka, getting up and going into the kitchen. She put water on to boil and came back. “In fact, if she weren’t dead, rest her soul, I’d be cussing her out right now. She knew the guy. She knew he was dangerous. And she pulled you into it without so much as a warning. A good friend goes to the movie you want to see instead of the one she wants to see. A good friend does not ask you to stand between her and her homicidal boyfriend. Please. Who is this person?”

“You’re assuming he killed her,” said Sunny. “We don’t know that. I assumed she OD’d, but the police are not treating it like an accidental death.”

“Like I said,” said Monty, “they know exactly what happened, but they don’t want to show their hand.”

“I still say it’s not your job to straighten out somebody’s life just because you knew them years ago,” said Rivka, “and it was crummy of her to pull you into it in the first place. I don’t get why you hung around.”

“I kept asking myself that. It was just like the old days. I felt responsible for her. Like, as the sensible one, I should try to make sure everything was okay. Besides, she creates this aura of exclusivity—you feel privileged to be there. And it was hot and the pool was beautiful and they were serving good food and wine. Then after a while I was too sloppy to drive and I figured I might as well relax. I just wish I’d done something. Even just call the police before it was too late.”

“It sounds like she made it her business to take risks,” said Rivka. “Are you supposed to bodily prevent her from smoking and drinking and doing drugs? She’s a grown-up. She had a noisy fight with her boyfriend that ended in tears. Happens every day. Who died and made you her guardian angel? Oh, sorry. Strike that. I just mean you shouldn’t feel guilty for not saving her from herself.”

“Yes, but everyone needs help sometimes. If I’d gone up there to see what was going on, she might be alive.”

“And if a butterfly in the Amazon had flapped its wings a little harder, maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all,” said Rivka. “You can’t hold yourself responsible for this. No matter what happened to her, there is no guarantee you could have saved her even if you’d broken down the door like freakin’ Batgirl. You might even have gotten yourself killed. Who knows.”

“You’re getting off track,” said Monty. “Batgirl wouldn’t break down a door and McCoskey herself said the cops are not treating this like an accident. Ergo, suspicious death, as in murder. This is not about what McCoskey might have done. It’s not that cute. This is murder. Somebody at the nice little pool party decided to off the hostess. Who? Sun, run through the guest list again.”

“I bet it takes weeks for them to figure out what happened,” said Wade. “It will take days just to figure out what drugs she was on, if any, right, Sun?”

“I suppose so. I don’t know why this stuff keeps happening to me.”

“Competence,” said Wade. “That’s one of the ironies of life. The more competent you are, the more trouble you attract because people come to you for help.”

“The guest list,” said Monty.

“Me. Anna Wilson. Oliver Seth,” said Sunny. “That’s Anna’s boyfriend.”

“He’s the guy who owned the house.”

“Right.”

“Person of interest number one,” said Monty. “What’s he like? Fat, old, and hairy in all the wrong places, no doubt.”

“Hardly. Young, thin, good looking. But not nice. Cold. And I’d say he has a temper.”

“Like I said, person of interest numero uno. Next.”

The kettle whistled and Rivka went to make tea. Wade interrupted to continue his line of thinking. “I’ve been noticing lately that irony explains some of the more puzzling truths in life. Only the good die young. Ironic. The wealthy are notoriously cheap. Ironic. The gentlest guys are the great big dudes with biceps like tree trunks. Ironic. Revolutionaries eventually start to act like dictators. Ironic. It goes on and on.” He searched their faces for
encouragement, got none, and continued anyway. “What if the core nature of the universe isn’t love, as the movies would have it, but irony? It is the one sure way to keep things balanced. If one side gets too dominant, it flips over and becomes its opposite. If God has a sense of humor—and you don’t have to look very far to see that must be the case—then irony is the ideal way to jerk the rug out from under the bullies. It’s a great way to mess with people. You can search and strive and fight and scratch your way along for thirty years looking for a treasure, and you’ll only find it when you give up and decide treasure is worthless, anyway. Irony. The great cosmic equalizer.”

“Skord, you are making my head hurt,” said Monty.

Rivka returned with a teapot and honey and went back for cups and spoons. Monty followed her and returned carrying a white pastry box tied with a pink silk ribbon. “Ironically, considering I don’t even like dessert,” he said, “I was down at the Ferry Building in the city today and brought back one of those chocolate cakes with the marshmallow puddle on top. No frosting, no pain. Anyone have room?”

“Always,” said Rivka.

“We can circle back to the irony angle,” said Sunny, looking at Wade dubiously. “I like Monty’s approach. I need to think this through.”

“Exactly,” said Monty, heading back to the kitchen. He returned with a knife, plates, and forks. “Who’s next?”

“Franco Bertinotti, the winemaker at Oliver Seth’s winery. He and Seth seemed to be friends as well as employer and employee. He’s about a century older than Anna’s friend Jordan, but he kept holding her hand. He was holding her hand when we were all together in the living room this afternoon.”

“Stranger things have happened,” said Wade.

“Here’s one of them,” said Sunny. “She was also snuggled up in the hot tub with Keith Lachlan and the Guamanian princess.”

“Ménage à trois?” said Rivka, gasping.

“At least,” said Sunny. “Things were definitely getting interesting when I got out.”

“Good thing you left,” said Wade, looking askance.

“You lost me with the Guamanian princess,” said Monty.

“Oliver’s lawyer, Keith Lachlan, has a girlfriend, Marissa, who comes from Guam. She arrived at Oliver’s house late last night. Not a real princess, or at least she wasn’t wearing her tiara, and she certainly didn’t kill anybody. She couldn’t overpower a turnip. Tiny little thing with wrists like celery sticks. Next. Molly Seth, Oliver’s sister, was there with her boyfriend, a guy named Jared. Bollinger, I think. Who turned out to be some kind of ex-boyfriend of Anna’s, but she didn’t know it.”