A Catered Birthday Party (23 page)

“How did they know which bottle to put it in?” Marvin asked. “Maybe the poison was meant for someone else?”

Bernie shook her head. “This was the only kind of wine Annabel drank.”

“Who knew that?” Marvin asked.

“Probably just about everyone who was there. I think Annabel told me she’d been drinking it for a year. The bottle was very distinctive. And she didn’t share.”

“Where did the wine come from?” Brandon asked.

“Spain,” Libby answered.

“No. I meant where was it bought?”

“At The Grape,” Libby told him.

“Ah, yes,” Brandon said. “The fancy schmancy liquor store that charges a thousand percent markup.”

“Yes. That one,” Bernie said.

“When was the wine delivered?” Marvin asked.

“Good question,” Libby said. That would give them a timeline. “Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer.”

Bernie whipped out her cell phone. “This is true, but I know someone who might,” she replied.

“And who might that be?” Marvin asked.

“Our man on the inside,” Bernie quipped as she punched in Samantha’s number.

“Sam,” Brandon said.

“Does she come in here?” Libby asked.

“Everyone comes in here,” Marvin said.

“Samantha,” Bernie said. “Samantha, I can’t hear you. The connection’s bad.”

Marvin, Libby, and Brandon stopped talking.

“That’s better,” Bernie said. Then she asked her question. “Sam says they didn’t get any wine deliveries when she was there,” Bernie repeated, for the benefit of everyone else. Then she added, “Since she says she got to the house a little after nine and The Grape doesn’t open until eleven, it’s a fair bet that nothing was sent over.”

“Ask her about the day before,” Libby said.

Bernie did. “She wasn’t there the day before,” Bernie told them after she’d said good-bye to Samantha.

“I have an idea,” Brandon said as he picked up R.J.’s house phone and dialed.

Now it was Marvin, Libby, and Bernie’s turn to wait. There were a fair number of
yups
and
I sees
from Brandon as Peter Mahir checked the invoices after Brandon asked him about deliveries to the Colbert house.

Peter Mahir was the owner of The Grape. A chatty kind of guy, he’d inherited the shop from his dad. It had been the kind of place that specialized in two-dollar wines and three-dollar bottles of the hard stuff. With the help of his wife and assiduous attendance at all the charity functions and balls, Peter had worked the store up to someplace that now catered to the rich and the superrich. Bernie figured it had to generate a million or so a year easy. Not that she was jealous or anything like that. Well, maybe just a tiny bit.

“The Grape has not delivered to the Colbert house in the past three weeks,” Brandon announced after he’d hung up.

“Richard could have ordered from someplace else,” Libby observed.

“Possibly, but unlikely,” Brandon said. “Richard has an account with The Grape and the other places around here don’t carry Annabel’s wine.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment as they digested the latest piece of information.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Libby finally said after eating two handfuls of peanuts. “The salient point here is how did someone reseal the bottles? I saw them in the pantry and they all looked perfectly fine.”

“Would you have noticed if anything had been amiss?” Marvin asked.

“Yes, I would,” Libby declared. “I had to move the bottles to make room for some of the appetizers. And everyone was in the room when Richard opened that bottle of wine.”

“How many bottles of wine were there?” Marvin asked.

“Four altogether,” Libby replied. “And they were all sealed. We’re not talking about cartons’ worth here.”

“So how did they get the insecticides in the bottle?” Marvin asked.

“That’s the easy part,” Brandon said.

Everyone looked at him.

“Truly,” Brandon said.

“I could see how you could get the cork out and put it back in,” Bernie said. “It would be a pain, but with a pump you could do it. What I don’t see is how you could seal the bottle back up so it’s not noticeable.”

“Allow the Great Brandolini…”

Bernie raised her eyebrows. “Brandolini?”

“Do not mock The Great One.”

“The Great One?” she echoed.

“Yes. The Great One,” Brandon said firmly as he rummaged behind the counter and came up with two bottles of wine. The first one’s cork was covered in foil, while the second bottle’s cork was covered in plastic.

As Bernie, Libby, and Marvin watched, Brandon tried to take the foil covering off. It was a no-go. Next he took the bottle with the plastic bottle cover, positioned his hands on either side of the bottle, and gently lifted it off. Then he very carefully put it back on.

“Voila,” he said, holding out his hand. “Presto chango. The Great Brandolini has once again demonstrated his magnificence.”

“Let me try,” Bernie said, leaning over and moving the bottle toward her. “This is easy,” she said after she lifted the cover off and carefully put it back on again.

Brandon nodded. “It works with some bottles but not with others.”

“I think we should see if they have a bottle of Annabel’s wine at The Grape and find out,” Marvin suggested.

Libby nodded. “But even if it’s true, I don’t see how it helps us that much.”

“Spoilsport,” Brandon said.

“Seriously. I’m guessing that everyone who was at the birthday party had access to that bottle of wine at one time or another. They all either lived in the house or visited fairly frequently. Except for Rick.”

Bernie took another sip of her beer. “I wouldn’t count him out if I were you. He could have been up there with Annabel when everyone else was gone.”

Libby nodded. “I suppose.”

“The bigger question is,” Bernie continued, “how many people know about what Brandon just showed us?”

“Anyone who works in the bar business knows,” Brandon said.

Libby and Bernie looked at each other. “Rick,” they said simultaneously.

“Why Rick?” Marvin asked. “I thought he was an actor.”

“He is,” Bernie said. “But lots of actors either tend bar or wait tables to make ends meet while they’re waiting for their big break. I think it’s time for another chat with Rick Crouse.”

“I think I should come with you,” Brandon said.

Bernie thought for a moment. Considering the way she and Rick had parted company that might not be such a bad idea.

“Here’s my question,” Marvin said before Bernie could answer Brandon.

Everyone waited.

“Why did whoever poisoned Annabel do it then?” Marvin asked.

“I don’t get what you mean,” Libby said.

“Okay. Why did whoever killed Annabel choose to do it then, with all those witnesses? Annabel always drank that wine, right?”

“According to Peter Mahir, she’d been drinking it ever since she and Richard came back from Spain about a year ago,” Brandon said.

Marvin stifled a cough. “So why not try to poison her when no one was around? Then she would have gone into a coma and died and everyone would have thought she died of her heart problems.”

“Maybe whoever killed her had just discovered whatever it was that Annabel had done to piss them off,” Bernie suggested.

“But even then, why not just put it in the bottle and wait? Why make her death a public event?”

“Because someone wanted it witnessed?” Libby said.

Marvin nodded. “That’s the logical conclusion.”

“But why?” Bernie asked.

Marvin shook his head. “I don’t know, but I have a feeling if you find out the answer to that, you’ll discover who your murderer is.”

“I think you’re making this thing way too complicated,” Brandon objected. “I think whoever put the poison in Annabel’s wine did it then because they wanted the pleasure of seeing Annabel die. It’s as simple as that.”

“You may be right,” Bernie said after a moment.

“I always am,” Brandon said smugly.

Bernie laughed and punched him in the arm.

S
amantha dropped her cell back on her lap. “That was your daughter asking me about wine deliveries at the Colbert house the day Annabel was killed,” she informed Sean.

“I know,” he said.

“How did you know?” Samantha asked as she made a one-handed turn onto Applegate.

Sean wished she’d use two hands on the steering wheel, but he decided not to say anything on that topic. He’d noticed that any criticism of her driving seemed to incite Samantha to new heights of recklessness. And, he told himself, things could be worse. She could be driving with her knees and texting at the same time. Thank heavens for small favors.

“You haven’t answered me,” Samantha said as they tore down the block, scattering slush as they went.

“That’s simple—I know because I’m a great detective.”

“Seriously,” Samantha said.

Sean readjusted his legs to get slightly more comfortable before replying. “Seriously,” he said. “I know because you used the name Bernie at least twice in the conversation.”

“I could know other Bernies.”

“You could, but it’s not a very common name, at least not these days.”

Actually, it was a rather old-fashioned name, which was one of the reasons he liked it—not that the name had influenced his younger daughter’s behavior in the least. Sean was on the verge of saying that to Samantha, but when she swerved around an oncoming pickup truck, he lost his train of thought in the ensuing flash of terror he felt.

His next thought when he recovered was that he couldn’t believe he was riding in Samantha’s Mini Cooper again, an idea he’d been trying to repress for the last five minutes or so. And he was riding with her at night, no less.

After all, you could hardly see the thing when it was light out, let alone when it was dark. And Sean didn’t even want to think about what would happen if it snowed. Then the dratted thing would probably be invisible. For the first time, he was happy Esmeralda was painted lime green. The only good thing was that most people were home now eating dinner and watching TV, which meant less traffic on the road.

Not that he had anyone else to blame for his predicament this time but himself. He’d wanted to see how Ines and Trudy were doing together. Okay. He felt slightly guilty about what he’d done and he wanted to make sure everything was okay. He knew if he called, Ines would tell him everything was fine even if it wasn’t. The only way to make sure everything was all right was to go there.

As his dad used to say to his mom whenever he was about to do something she disapproved of, sometimes a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, which in this case had entailed calling up Samantha and asking her for a lift over to Ines’s house. Given the circumstances, she was the only person he could turn to.

And this time, to be on the safe side, he’d left a note for his daughters telling them he’d gone out. That way they wouldn’t start looking for him, like they had the last time—or even worse, perish the thought, call the police. How embarrassing would that be? He didn’t even want to think about it. If that happened, he’d hear about it from Clyde every day for the rest of his life. He repressed a shudder and considered the conversation he’d just heard.

“Were there any deliveries at all that day?” Sean asked, picking up on the line of questioning Bernie had initiated with Samantha.

Samantha chewed on her bottom lip while she thought. “No,” she finally said. “No one.”

“How about the florist?”

Samantha shook her head. “Annabel wasn’t having flowers. She thought the Puggables were enough in the decoration department.”

“Cleaning crew?”

Samantha shook her head. “They were there two days before.”

“Could they have had access to where the wine was kept?”

Samantha shook her head again. “Richard keeps the wine in this wine-safe thing under lock and key. I think it makes him feel important.”

Scratch that line of inquiry, Sean thought. “Any food deliveries?”

“Except for your daughters, no.” Samantha frowned as an idea occurred to her.

“What?” Sean asked.

“I’m just thinking that maybe I should have told Bernie that you’re with me,” Samantha mused, changing the subject. “It didn’t occur to me. But maybe I should have. It feels kind of weird not saying anything. I don’t know why, but it does. Maybe I should call her back.”

“No,” Sean answered quickly. “You don’t have to call her. It’s not necessary. It’s not necessary at all.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why isn’t it necessary?”

“Because it’s just not,” Sean snapped.

He felt foolish explaining to Samantha that he didn’t want his daughters to know where he was going. In truth, there was no reason they shouldn’t know. In fact, he knew that Bernie and Libby would be perfectly happy to hear he was at Ines’s. Actually, to be honest, they’d probably be overjoyed.

They’d been trying to bring them together for years. They liked Ines and she liked them. Maybe he just couldn’t bear admitting that they’d been right. Maybe it was the Trudy issue, which he didn’t want them to have any official knowledge of. Or maybe it was that he just liked to have a space of his own where his children couldn’t intrude. He knew he was being ridiculous and pigheaded and all those other words his wife used to call him. But there it was. And there it would stay.

“Are you always this grumpy?” Samantha asked.

“Always,” Sean retorted. “I make it a point of honor.”

Samantha laughed, and after a few seconds Sean laughed with her.

“You know,” she said, “the police came to my house and asked me about Trudy, just like you told me they would.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“What you told me to say.”

“And what happened?” Sean asked.

“Nothing happened. They took my statement and left. I don’t think my father believed me when I told him I didn’t know anything about Trudy, but tough beans on him. He doesn’t believe anything I say anyway. Neither does my Nazi stepmother and her spoiled-rotten little spawn.”

“Spawn?” Sean repeated. “How many children does your stepmother have?”

“Two spoiled brats. Why?”

“Because spawn implies lots.” God, he thought as that sentence left his lips. He’d been infected by the Bernie virus.

Samantha shrugged. Sean noted that she seemed unimpressed with his linguistic differentiation.

“Whatever,” she said as she zoomed into a parking space in front of The Right Paws.

The Right Paws was a high-end pet shop that specialized in things like real pearl collars and cashmere sweaters for “companion animals,” also known as pets in a less PC time.

“Why are we stopping here?” Sean asked once they came to a full halt.

Looking in the window, which featured a rhinestone collar, a mohair doggie bed, and an all-leather cat carrier, Sean couldn’t help thinking that some people in this town definitely had way, way too much money in their bank accounts.

Samantha’s eyes widened in astonishment. “To get Trudy a little something, of course. You wouldn’t want to go there empty-handed, would you?”

Sean snorted. “Perish the idea. Trudy is a dog. Trudy won’t care.”

“Of course she will. Even dogs have feelings.”

“Up to a point,” Sean said “Only up to a point.”

“What point? They get scared, they miss people, they get excited, they get depressed.”

“Fine,” said Sean, conceding the issue.

“They have birthday parties,” Samantha continued.

“Not most of them.”

“My mom always used to buy our bassett hound Victor two Big Macs and a large order of French fries on his birthday. And he liked to watch reruns of
Sea Hunt
.”

Sean threw up his hands. “I get it. I get it. But then, what’s wrong with Petco or Sam’s Club?” he asked. “Why can’t we get something there instead?”

Samantha shot him a disapproving look. “Most of the stuff in those places is made in China. Do you want Trudy to get sick?”

“No. But surely not all—”

“Do you want to take that chance?” Samantha said, cutting Sean off.

He decided it wasn’t worth the trouble finishing his sentence. He wasn’t having much luck in that department with Samantha. Actually, she was worse than Bernie in that way. Or maybe he didn’t want to pursue the topic because he was having trouble thinking.

Every time he looked at Samantha’s orange hair, bright pink T-shirt, red leather jacket, and pink-and-purple-striped mittens, he got a mild case of vertigo. That was another thing he liked about Ines. He could count on her clothes being…well…just regular clothes. They made her look nice without calling attention to themselves.

“Anyway,” Samantha continued, “my friend in there will give us a discount.”

“Super,” Sean muttered as he began to extract himself from the Mini Cooper.

Now a box of dog biscuits would probably cost him only fifteen dollars instead of seventeen. When he was a kid, his mom had gone to the butcher and gotten the scraps. That’s what their dogs had eaten. They didn’t have any dog food. They didn’t have any treats. They ate what everyone else ate and got along just fine. Now they had ninety-seven varieties of dog food on the market. It was ridiculous.

“You’re doing better getting out of Esmeralda,” Samantha said as Sean exited the car.

Sean grunted. He didn’t say anything, but secretly he was delighted that that was the case. Either he was getting better physically or he was learning the technique of exiting a car built for a midget. Both were acceptable to him. His feeling of satisfaction, however, vanished when he got in the store and saw a poster tacked up on the bulletin board near the cash register. There was a picture of Trudy front and center. Underneath, in twenty-point type, were the words
Lost Dog. Reward: $1,000 for information leading to her return
. And then it gave a phone number to call.

Sean was about to ask who had put up the poster when Samantha started talking.

“Wow,” she said to Sean. “A thousand bucks. That’s a lot of money. Maybe we should start looking for that dog. Whaddaya think?”

Sean reflected that she did everything but nudge him in the ribs and wink at him. “Sure,” he said as he gritted his teeth. “Why not?”

Samantha tugged at a lock of her hair. “I sure could use the money.”

“Me too,” the girl behind the counter said.

She has to be the friend Samantha was talking about
, Sean decided. He knew this because the girl’s hair was green, her nose was pierced, and she was wearing overalls and a black T-shirt. This is what made him a great detective. He noticed the details.

“Megan, this is Mr. Simmons. Mr. Simmons, this is Megan,” Samantha said as she introduced them to each other. “Mr. Simmons used to be the police chief here.”

“Cool,” Megan said. “Did you arrest any bad guys?”

“Lots,” Sean said.

“Do you carry a gun?”

“Not anymore,” Sean said.

“Pooh,” Megan said, making a face.

“Megan is my best friend,” Samantha announced.

“Her only friend,” Megan corrected.

“That is so not true.”

“I meant here in Longely.”

“There’s Jenn,” Samantha protested.

“Not since she’s been going out with J.T.”

“True,” Samantha said. “She’s gone over to the dark side.”

She plopped her bag on the counter, knocking over a bunch of business cards sitting next to the register.

“Drats,” Samantha said as they tumbled onto the floor.

She bent down and began picking them up and handing them to Sean, who glanced at them before handing them to Megan, who restacked them neatly.

There was a whole cottage industry here he wasn’t aware of, Sean reflected as he watched Megan rearranging the cards. There were dog walkers and dog groomers and doggie dental hygienists. There were dog sitters and dog breeders, dog behaviorists, doggie psychics, and doggie daycares, as well as nutritional consultants and people who offered to cook meals for dogs and deliver them directly to your house.

“I think my daughters are in the wrong business,” he commented as he handed Megan several cards.

“A lot of these people are deeply weird,” Megan said. “They don’t relate to people at all.”

“Do they make a good living doing this?” Sean asked, thinking of Melissa, Trudy’s dog breeder, and her trainer, Ramona.

Megan thought for a moment. “Some do, but not most,” she said.

Samantha straightened up and began looking in her bag for some bubble gum. “The weird thing is most of them don’t like dogs. Or maybe they do—maybe that’s why they go into it—but they become kinda hardened….”

“Like doctors with their patients,” Megan said.

Samantha nodded. “It’s like their career and they don’t think about what’s best for the dog. Like Ramona with Trudy. Got it,” she said, holding up her gum. “Want some?” Samantha asked Sean as she took out a piece of bubble gum, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth.