Bitter Finish (2 page)

"
Not everyone listens."

"
Labor and production are both skyrocketing. And now advertising costs! And all those new wineries keep springing up! They're going to saturate the market. The little guys have got to stick together."

"How little?" Spraggue asked. "I hear you're getting pretty substantial yourself."

"
Personally or professionally?" Leider stared down at his expansive stomach and laughed. The BMW came perilously close to a dirty white van displaying a SAVE THE WHALES bumper sticker. Spraggue resolved not to speak to Leider while he was within five car-lengths of any other vehicle.

Instead he stared out the window at the parched brown hills. This year's drought hadn't been as severe as last year's, but the visitor expecting lush greenery would have been disappointed. The landscape was broken up by fences and power lines, railroad tracks and distant lonely houses. Spraggue read the signs with their Spanish place names, relived past California vacations, nights in Carmel and Monterey with Kate ....

The fat man let Spraggue scramble for the 40-cent Carquinez Bridge toll.

He'd met her in England, contriving to fall practically into her lap when the crowded underground jerked to a halt at Sloane Square Station. That had been well over a decade ago, when he was still a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

She'd been a tourist, and London was just a stop-over on the way to Paris. That stopover grew into a two-day fling, then into a week, a month, six months. Even now he had only to catch the scent of a certain perfume in the wake of some passing woman to conjure up Kate as she'd been that first day in the tube . . . that short white skirt against long tanned velvet legs ....

Despite the air-conditioning, the car was getting warm. Spraggue cracked the side window down an inch.

After six months she'd moved on to Paris. They wrote letters that scorched the stationery, made wild plans, and met for scattered hurried weekends. Distance had begun to sour their reunions long before Kate met another man. In all the intervening years of anger and friendship, platonic and romantic, they'd never recaptured that initial spark or successfully said good-bye. Their business partnership was only partly the reason.

"Good-bye, darling, " she'd said before hanging up.

Spraggue turned reluctantly back to the present. He wasn't on his way to the county sheriff s office to rekindle old flames.

Leider, now breezing along at a triumphantly illegal seventy-five miles an hour, flashed Spraggue a cheerful grin. They whizzed around an orange VW bug with six inches to spare, and Spraggue decided to risk a question.

"Have you seen Lenny Brent recently?"

Leider started. The steering wheel jumped in his hands. "Isn't he the one—Isn't Kate in jail for——"

"The corpse hasn't been identified."

"Oh. Well, I haven't seen him since he ran off to Holloway Hills—five, six months ago. You got a damn fine winemaker."

"No hard feelings?"

Leider shrugged, took his hands completely off the wheel. "Brent and I were overdue for a split. He's not the easiest guy to work with."

"
He made you some fine wines."

"He helped. I'm not exactly a stranger to winemaking."

"No offense."

"
None taken. I appreciated Lenny's talent more than his personality. In a lot of ways he was a pain to have around. Agreed?"

"You wouldn't find anyone who'd disagree."

"
He gets along with Kate" Leider gave him a side-long glance and turned off the freeway at First Street. The change in roads meant no change in speed. Not to Leider.

"
Kate's not hard to get along with," Spraggue said.

Leider needed silence to negotiate the narrow Napa streets. Spraggue played tourist. Napa had always been a jog to the left on Route 29 for him, never a destination.

The red BMW pulled up sharply in front of a small shop. The sign overhead proclaimed BAIL
BONDSMAN.

"Sheriffs across the street. Want me to drop your bag at Kate's?"

"
I'll take it with me."

With a grunt, Leider freed himself from the steering wheel, stood up, walked around, and opened the trunk. "I won't go in with you. Plenty of work to do. But say hello to Kate for me. And tell her to call when she gets out. About the tasting. She'll know which one."

They shook hands. Leider's was puffy and soft. Spraggue crossed the dusty street and walked up the concrete path.

He hadn't expected the high-rise modern office building. On one of the tall glass doors a hand-lettered sign read JAIL.. The bold arrow underneath pointed off to the left. Spraggue hesitated for a moment, then chose the center door.

Chill, refrigerated air hit him in the face. The whole first floor of the place seemed, at first glance, to be a reception area. A counter topped with a slab of orange formica kept outsiders at bay. "Restricted" signs decorated the doors behind the counter.

"
Yes?"

"
Sheriff . . ." What the hell had Leider said his name was? "Sheriff Hughes, please." That was it.

"
The sheriff's not in at the moment. What is it in regard to?"

They must have taught her that phrase when they hired her, Spraggue thought. "I'm here at the request of Kate Holloway."

"
Holloway." The woman tucked the tip of her tongue firmly between her teeth, ran her finger down a list affixed to a clipboard. "Deputy Enright is handling that investigation."

"Then I'd like to see Deputy Enright."

"
I believe he's using the sheriff's office. Why don't you go in there—that door marked ADMINISTRATION—and see if his secretary can help you?"

"
Thanks."

A glass window peered in at the sheriff's outer office. That, too, had an orange counter blocking access. The decor was Holiday Inn: gold carpet, spindly turquoise chairs. Wall-to-wall vulgarity. Spraggue pushed open the door.

The room had its own atmosphere, a bluish haze of cigar, cigarette, and pipe smoke. The lone secretary's desk boasted two huge ashtrays, one jammed with butts, the other issuing smoke signals from a lipstick-stained filter tip.

Spraggue gave his name to the sweet-faced graying woman behind the desk and asked for information about Kate. She nodded, puffed her cigarette, and pointed vaguely to a chair. He set down his carry-on bag and moved a chair upwind of the desk, to a vantage point where he could almost see around the corner of the L-shaped office. The secretary frowned at his rearrangement, but refrained from speaking.

"
Are you going to tell someone I'm here, or do you use telepathy?" he asked mildly after a f1ve-minute silence. He'd finished checking out a two-by-four board on which someone had mounted every imaginable kind of illegal drug paraphernalia. A larger board decorated with illegal weapons, from sawed- off shotguns to wicked-looking spiked chains, kept it company.

"I pushed the bell," the secretary said firmly. "Did you know that all those weapons were confiscated right in this county?"

"
Push it again," Spraggue said. "Use the code for hostile people in a hurry."

She puffed furiously at her cigarette. "Are you the Holloway woman's lawyer?"

"No."

"
Oh." There must have been a special code for lawyers. She shook her head sadly. "I've informed the deputy in charge. I'm sure he'll be glad to see you as soon as he's available."

"
Give me a hint," Spraggue said. "Is he eating lunch? Manicuring his toenails? Is somebody else in there with him?"

She retreated behind a wall of smoke, leaving Spraggue to work on a new approach. Sometimes making yourself unpleasant in waiting rooms got you into main offices faster—the get-rid-of-the-nuisance response. Sometimes the offended secretary kept you cooling your heels even longer—the get-even response. Sometimes the only effect was an inner one: you felt better. Or you felt like a fool. Spraggue got up, marched to the window, opened it.

"
The windows in these offices are to remain closed. Open windows interfere with the air-conditioning system."

"Cigarettes interfere with breathing. Would you care for an earful of insights from an intriguing Japanese study on the harmful effects of nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide——"

She stalked away from her desk, disappeared around the bend in the L. Spraggue strained to hear distant whispers.

He leaned out the window, took a deep breath. No California health freaks in this office. No bean-sprout sandwiches in the sheriff's domain.

It was lucky there was no doorway between the sheriff s office and his secretary's. The man who entered the room would have taken the sides of the door down with his shoulders. Maybe the transom, too, with one blow from his shiny-domed forehead. Probably never notice the destruction in his wake either. Whereas Phil Leider was fat, this man was just big. He was the source of the cigar smell. Didn't have one on him now, but the stink came into the room like a cloud around his massive body.

"
Name?" he asked, towering over Spraggue. His voice was tenor, rather than the bass it should have been. From his tone, Spraggue expected a speeding ticket.

"
Michael Spraggue?

"
Your interest here?"

"Prisoner Holloway, sir." Spraggue stopped short of saluting. He clicked his heels together silently.

The secretary noticed.

"Miss Kate Holloway? Just what would that interest be? Boyfriend?"

"Business."

"
Oh."

Spraggue waited.

"
Do you have a business connection with a Mr. Leonard Brent?"

"He's an employee."

"
Ah." The big man stared down at him, and Spraggue felt as if he'd been filed and cross-indexed.

"Then you knew him personally?"

"
Yes."

"
Would you mind trying to identify him?"

"
I came to see Kate Holloway. Is she here?"

"
You'll see her a lot faster if you cooperate."

"If Holloway couldn't identify your corpse, I don't see how I could. She knew him better."

"
I don't doubt that. It's just that the little lady turned squeamish on us."

The little lady. Spraggue bit the inside of his cheek. If anybody tried that one on Kate, he'd better do his talking through iron bars.

"
If I check out your corpse, I get to speak with her," Spraggue said.

"For a few minutes. I think I can arrange it."

"
Has she been charged?"

"Just a material witness. So far."

"I wouldn't mind taking a look at your corpse."

"
Fine. Got a car outside?"

"
No."

"I'll drive then."

"All right if I leave my bag here?"

"
Nobody'll steal it."

The huge man led Spraggue into the sheriff's office and out through a back door barely big enough for him. They wound through a corridor to an exit and a squad car.

"
Morgue far from here?"

"
No morgue. Not many murders. Couple car crashes every year right after high school lets out. That's about it. We've got arrangements with local funeral parlors. This corpse is up at Morrison's. Right next door to the police station in St. Helena."

"And why isn't Kate at the police station in St. Helena? Why the county sheriff s office?"

"
Body was found on unincorporated land. That's county."

They took First Street back to Route 29, traveling well within the speed limit. The deputy made a point of slowing down at each small town they passed through: Oak Knoll, Yountville, Oakville, Rutherford. On the outskirts of St. Helena he broke the silence with a statement that turned up at the end like a question.

"So you're Kate Holloway's partner?"

Spraggue didn't think it needed an answer. Instead he said, "And you are?"

"Captain Enright. Head of the detective bureau."

He paused a moment, then continued with satisfaction in his voice. "So you're the one the little lady calls to come and get her out of trouble."

"Holloway called to tell me she'd have a hard time taking care of the crush from the inside of a cell. I'm here to hire a temporary winemaker. Until Lenny turns up."

"
If Lenny turns up."

"
Yeah."

"
You call her 'Holloway'?"

"She calls me Spraggue."

"Seems disrespectful somehow. 'Course, ‘Miss' is a funny thing to call her too. Couldn't rightly say she's a maiden lady."

"
I'd be very careful what I called her, if I were you," Spraggue said.

Abruptly, the captain pulled the car over to the curb, right in front of a fire plug. "Out," he said gruff1y.

The sign in front of the Spanish-style white stucco said MORRISON FUNERAL CHAPEL. The roof was red tile.

Enright banged on the side door.

It flew open immediately, revealing a smiling blond man with a ruddy face. Only the deep creases at the corners of his eyes kept him from looking like some gawky out-of-place teenager. And the badge on his tan shirt.

"Hi, Captain," he drawled cheerfully, a trace of the South in his deep voice. "Got somebody else to take a peek?"

Enright shouldered the younger officer aside and they entered a small waiting room. Spraggue counted to one hundred, tried to relax; his stomach was gearing up for the ordeal.

"
Stay here," said the young man. "Only be a minute. I'll get the body ready for viewing. Got to keep it refrigerated—"

"
Quit gabbing," said Enright.

"Right."

Spraggue watched the second hand on a wall clock go around twice. This was no waiting room for families and friends of the deceased. No statues, no flowers, no straitlaced formal furnishings. Just a delivery room: corpses in, corpses out.