Blood on the Vine (15 page)

“Do you know what problems existed between the waiter and Mr. Ladington?” I asked.

“I used to work there,” she said flatly.

“I know,” I said. “Were you friendly with Louis?”

“Who are you?”

“Jessica Fletcher. I write crime novels. I’m—”

“I don’t have to talk to you.”

“Of course you don’t,” I said. “All I wanted to ask you was—”

“I don’t know anything. Excuse me.”

She stood and left the room. I decided to try to extricate myself from the tub in her absence, but she was back before I could even start.

“What do you
really
want?” she asked, again on her knees and moving mud over me.

“Look,” I said, “I didn’t mean to upset you. I don’t have any official reason for asking questions. Mr. Ladington’s son asked me to help prove that his father was murdered.”

“He killed himself. I read about it.”

“Yes, he might have. I won’t ask any more questions. Just help me out and I’ll be on my way.”

The mud was now up under my chin, and movement was difficult. The mud also seemed to have gotten hotter, and my discomfort level was rising with it. She made a sudden, forceful move with the paddle, causing some of the hot mud to splash on my cheek and lip. The temperature of the mud continued to rise, and I realized it was reaching a dangerous point. My flesh was on fire, and my head pounded.

“Could you make the mud cooler?” I asked.

“That’s not possible,” she said. Her bitter, angry expression said she had no intention of doing that even if she could, and it occurred to me that when she’d left the room, it might have been to raise the temperature.

“I have to get out now,” I said, attempting to sit up, but the mud blanket was too heavy. Mary Jane placed her hands—strong hands—through the mud on my shoulders which, combined with the weight of the mud, rendered me incapable of moving. “Let me up!” I snapped. “I’ve had enough.”

“What do you know about Louis?” she asked, continuing the pressure on my shoulders.

“Nothing, just that he was murdered.” I now yelled:
“Let me out, damn it!”

For a moment I thought she was about to push me under, submerge my face in the mud—drown me in it. If so, I was helpless to prevent it. Sweat poured down my forehead into my eyes. The heat was unbearable.

“Please,” I said. “Don’t do this to me.”

I actually believed I was going to die in that tub filled with mud. But then she released her grip on me, knelt, and began scraping the mud from my body into the side of the tub. “Come on. Get out before you boil,” she said.

She held up a clean sheet as I struggled to pull myself free of the mud’s sucking grip. She extended a hand, and I managed to first sit up, then pull my legs over the side of the tub and finally stand. She wrapped the sheet around me. “The shower is in that room,” she said, pointing to a door.

I was furious as I stood there, shaking with anger and fear. I glared at her; she locked eyes with me and never wavered. I drew a series of deep breaths before being able to say, “Coming here was foolish. Trying to ask you questions under false pretenses was even more foolish. But what you just did to me is inexcusable.”

She said nothing. I entered the shower room and washed the hot mud from me. My skin, every inch of it, was fire-engine red; I felt as though thousands of tiny needles had been injected into me. My robe and slippers were there. I put them on and returned to the mudroom where Mary Jane sat in the chair, leaning forward, elbows on her knees, face cradled in her hands, hair in disarray. I intended to say nothing else, simply ask for my clothes and leave.

But she said, “I don’t know you or why you’re interested in Louis’s murder, and I don’t care. Who sent you?”

“No one sent me. My friend, George, and I are staying at the Ladington winery. We’re interested in determining whether Bill Ladington was a suicide or a murder victim. The murder of your friend was probably just a coincidence.”

“Ladington hated Louis.”

“Hated him? An employee? Why did he hire him?”

“He didn’t hate him when he hired him. It was after.”

“What caused it?” I asked, pleased that she’d begun to open up.

“Ask the bitch.”

“Pardon?”

“That old hag, Ladington’s wife.”

It was true that Tennessee Ladington was older than the young woman in the room with me, but she was hardly an “old hag.” I suppose it was all a matter of perspective.

“What about Mrs. Ladington?” I asked.

“She was after Louis.”

“I see.”

“She seduced him. That’s what always happens, I guess, when a woman marries an old guy with megabucks but has to get her sex somewhere else, like from a young waiter at her husband’s restaurant.”

“Are you certain they were having an affair?” I asked.

“Of course I am. Louis told me all about it.”

“He bragged about it to you?”

“He wasn’t bragging. He said he was breaking it off, wasn’t going to see her anymore. He promised me.”

She averted her eyes. She had obviously been involved with Louis Hubler too.

“That’s right,” she said, reading my thoughts, “Louis and I were going out. It got pretty serious. At least I thought it was, until I found out about Ladington’s wife. God, guys can be so stupid, falling for some bleached-blonde bimbo because she wears clothes cut down to here and lots of lipstick. What a jerk he was. Look what it got him.” She lifted a trembling hand and smoothed her hair.

“Yes,” I said sadly. “Why did you leave the restaurant?”

“To get away. If Ladington knew that I knew about his wife and Louis, he’d come after me, too.”

“After you too? Are you saying Ladington murdered Hubler?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? He killed Louis because he was climbing under the covers with his wife. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.”

If Louis had, indeed, broken off the affair with Tennessee, I thought, she too might have had reason to kill him, either because her heart was broken—unlikely—or because he’d threatened to tell her husband about her sexual dalliance.

“You can’t be afraid of Bill Ladington anymore,” I said. “He’s dead.”

“Not him personally,” she replied. “He’s dead, and I couldn’t care less about that. But there’re the others.”

“Who?”

“Everybody, including that bitch Tennessee, his stupid son, that thug Raoul who drove him everywhere. Don’t think I’m paranoid. But I am smart enough to know that knowing too much about Bill Ladington can get you killed. I used to work in the spas up here in Calistoga, and got back as fast as I could after Louis was killed. Satisfied? Do you want the rest of the treatment? Massage?”

“No.”

She retrieved my clothes and handed them to me.

“Know what I’m going to do?” she said.

“What?”

“Calistoga isn’t far enough away. I’m getting out of here, maybe Hawaii, Russia, someplace at the opposite end of the earth.”

“Did Louis use drugs?” I asked.

“Why don’t you just get out of here,” she said. “And don’t bother coming back. I won’t be here.”

I stepped into the fresh air and said a little prayer of thanks for being out of that infernal cauldron called a mud bath. Maybe it would have been therapeutic if a slightly deranged young woman hadn’t decided to turn me into a french fry. But for me, it would be one of those first-time experiences never to be repeated.

I looked down the road toward the center of town, which wasn’t more than a quarter of a mile away. The silver Taurus was gone, as I expected it would be. I looked at my watch. I’d been in the spa for an hour, thirty minutes less than I’d told George. Nothing to do, I decided, but to walk into town and look for him.

I checked cars parked along the curb and eventually spotted ours in front of an art gallery. I entered. No George. I eventually found him in another gallery specializing in local contemporary artists. He was admiring a particular painting, head cocked, eyes half narrowed, when I walked up to him.

“Nice,” I said.

He turned and his eyes widened. “Good Lord, Jessica, what happened to you?”

“Do I look that bad?”

“Like a lobster just out of boiling water.”

“I had a mud bath.”

“I know that, but you didn’t say the purpose was to sauté you.”

“Frankly, I thought it was going to end up even worse.”

“Does it hurt? Like a sunburn?”

“A little. Unless you’re seriously considering buying that painting, I suggest we leave.”

The gallery owner, a stout woman wearing a floor-length black dress and multiple gold chains around her neck, intercepted us. “If you’d like to buy that painting today, I can give you a substantial discount. The artist is ill and needs the money.”

“Thank you, no,” George said, ushering me out of the gallery. When we were on the sidewalk, he said, “I heard her give that line to another browser about a different painting. The going-out-of-business approach.”

We got in the car. George started the engine, turned and asked, “Care to tell me what happened at the spa?”

“Every minute detail of it. Oh, look, there’s Neil Schwartz coming out of that restaurant.” He was heading on foot in our direction.

“Your writer friend?”

“Yes.”

When Neil was almost abreast of the car, I lowered my window and called his name. He stopped, leaned forward to see who it was, broke into a grin, and came to me. “Jessica,” he said enthusiastically. “What are you doing here?”

“I took a mud bath.”

“Really? Where?”

“Hampton Spa. Neil, this is George Sutherland.”

“Heard lots about you,” he said to George. “Jessica, I need to talk to you. Hey, you look funny.”

“Thank you.”

“No, I mean, sort of—sort of red. Is that from the mud bath?”

“Yes. Very unpleasant. The young woman at the spa raised the temperature to almost the boiling point.”

“Deliberately?” George exclaimed.

“Yes, deliberately. George, maybe we’d better skip the tram ride and find a quiet place where we can talk.”

“Follow me,” Neil said, taking off in the direction of his car, a champagne-colored Lexus.

“I’d say your friend does quite well,” George said as we fell in behind the Lexus.

“I’m so pleased for him. He’s always struggled. He was a New York City police officer, you know. Retired from the force and moved to Cabot Cove. His financial picture seems to have improved dramatically, although I can’t imagine one magazine piece doing it. But I’m out of touch with magazines and what they pay.”

“I didn’t realize magazines paid that well, either. Chaps I know who write for magazines for a living are always complaining about low rates.”

Fifteen minutes later we’d pulled into a parking lot for a restaurant and bar on the outskirts of St. Helena. It was three o’clock; the parking lot was empty. Inside, the cleanup from lunch was underway, and tables were being set for the dinner crowd. A rosy-cheeked young man stood behind the bar washing glasses and squeezing lemons.

“Are you serving?” Neil asked.

“Yes,” the bartender replied.

We took a table in a far corner of the bar area and were served frosty mugs of draft beer.

“Seems like sacrilege ordering beer in wine country,” George said, raising his mug. “Cheers!”

After George and Neil exchanged getting-to-know-you pleasantries, Neil and I looked at each other. “You first,” he said.

“I haven’t gotten very far,” I said. “George and I went to Ladington’s restaurant. A waitress told us about another waitress who used to work there, Mary Jane Proll.”

“You found her?” Neil asked.

“Yes. At Hampton Spa. Do you know who she is?”

“I heard something about her.”

“Didn’t people at the restaurant mention her to you?” I asked. “I assume you’ve interviewed everyone there for your article.”

“Her name did come up, just in passing. Go on. What did she tell you?”

“Well, I signed up for a mud bath, figuring if I had her one-on-one, I could get her to open up. But when I started asking questions—I was in the mud bath at the time, captive in it is more apt—she became upset and raised the temperature on me.”

“You might have died,” George said.

“That crossed my mind.”

“What did she tell you?” Neil repeated.

“Not very much. She’s afraid of Bill Ladington. Or was. She thinks he killed the waiter, Louis Hubler.”

“What does she base it on?” Neil asked.

“Supposition. Nothing more than that. She’d dated Hubler.”

“She said that?”

“Yes.”

I sat back and pretended to be enjoying my beer. What I was really doing was taking a break from the conversation to decide how much to share with Neil. On the one hand, I wanted to be helpful to him for his article. On the other hand, George and I had been drawn into the situation at the behest of Bill Ladington’s son, and it was obvious that neither he nor any other member of the household wanted to cooperate with the press.

“What’s going on inside the castle?” Neil asked. “I called this morning and asked for an interview. My ear still hurts from the hang up.”

“They’re not interested in talking to reporters,” I said,

“Fine,” said Neil, “but you’re on the inside. What’s going on there? I’ve been talking with people, regular folks, in St. Helena. They laugh about the story that Ladington killed himself. Got to be murder, is what they tell me. What does his family say?”

George sensed my discomfort and answered for me. “Obviously, Jessica is in an awkward position. We’re houseguests at the castle and—”

Neil regarded me with disappointed eyes. “Look, Jessica, if you don’t want to help me, that’s okay. I mean, I just thought that because we go back a long way as friends, and are both writers, that you’d, well, that you’d be happy to share things with me.”