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Authors: Jessica Fletcher

BOOK: Blood on the Vine
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“Money. What else?”
“You needed it that badly?”
“I thought I did. No, I didn’t need it to live. But there were things I wanted that I’d never had. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not talking about big-time drug sales—no heroin, no coke, just marijuana, and not a lot of that. And I’m not a drug user except for smoking some weed now and then. I’ve done that all my life.”
“I hadn’t realized,” I said.
“One or two on the weekend when I was alone, especially after Sandy died. Then I came out to Sausalito and tried to play the bohemian writer. I met some people who were selling marijuana and making pretty good money. I guess I rationalized it, Jess. Everybody smokes marijuana now and then.”
I didn’t correct him.
“I started driving up to Napa with small bags of it because I figured there was less chance of being caught there. I met Hubler and Mary Jane—”
“Mary Jane Proll?”
“Yeah.”
I thought for a moment before saying, “You say you’re in trouble with the law? With Sheriff Davis in Napa?”
“He called and said he wanted me to come to his office for questioning concerning drug sales. He asked that I come voluntarily.”
“Which is the best thing you could do—with a lawyer.”
“I know. I intend to do that tomorrow. That list of names in Mary Jane’s address book—the one with my name on it—those were other drug suppliers. Damn, to be included on a list like that is terrible. I mean, the other names on that list are probably hard-core drug dealers and users. That’s not me.”
I didn’t say what I was thinking, that selling drugs is selling drugs—period!
Instead, I said, “You don’t have a criminal background, Neil. I’m sure they’ll be lenient with you when it comes to sentencing.”
“Yeah. But that doesn’t take away the stigma with my daughter and grandkids. God, how could I have been so stupid?”
He was sitting slumped forward in the chair, elbows resting on his knees, head in his hands. I touched one of his hands. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Talk to Sheriff Davis on my behalf. Talk to anybody else involved. Intervene for me. I don’t want to go to jail, Jess. I was a cop, and a good one. I never took a nickel in graft or bribes. But I know what prisons are like. I wouldn’t last.”
I glanced at my watch. We’d been talking for a half hour. I turned and saw George come through the door carrying a book and magazines.
“I had to go outside to smoke my pipe,” he said. “Am I back too early? I can find something else to do.”
“No,” I said, “we’re finished.”
Neil shook George’s hand, wished him a safe trip home, and followed me to the club’s door. I placed my hand on his shoulder. “I’ll make the call, Neil. If there’s anything else I can do, just let me know.”
“Thanks, Jess. I appreciate it.” He looked as though he expected that any attempt to hug me would offend me now that I knew the trouble he was in. I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed hard. “It’ll be all right,” I said. “It’ll be all right.”
A few minutes later I told George what had transpired. His only comment was, “I suppose we’re all capable of being corrupted, Jessica. I’m sure your friend will be okay.”
I passed through Security, gave George a final wave, and felt my eyes tear up.
My flight home arrived on time.
Chapter Thirty-three
Neil received a one-year probationary sentence. He returned to Wisconsin to live with his daughter and grandchildren.
Vanity Fair
canceled his article because the editors felt that his involvement with Hubler and drugs rendered him a partial participant, not an impartial journalist. He was allowed to keep the portion of the advance he’d received, a generous act on the magazine’s part, I thought. I never learned how much of an advance the magazine had agreed to pay Neil, but judging from his illegal actions in California, it wasn’t as much as he’d indicated.
He called me one night to thank me for having put in a good word with the California authorities.
“You kept focusing on the Hubler murder to keep tabs on whether anyone was looking at you as a drug supplier,” I suggested.
“I had the magazine assignment,” he said.
“I know, but there was that parallel motive, wasn’t there?”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m still in denial, I guess. At any rate, Jess, thanks again. I’m a lucky man. I got off easy.”
“And you’re a good man, Neil. Stay in touch.”
Sheriff Davis also called me one evening.
“Mrs. Fletcher, I thought you’d want to know that we’ve identified who tried to poison William Ladington.”
“His wife?”
“Not alone. She was in it with the vineyard’s business manager, Roger Stockdale. They were evidently cozy, Mrs. Fletcher, lovers.”
“Have they been arrested?”
“We’ve charged them with attempted murder and conspiracy. Stockdale skipped town right after you and the inspector left, but was picked up in Texas.”
“How did you come up with them?”
“I did what you suggested, followed the puffer fish trail. The housekeeper, Mercedes, came forward after she left the castle to live in Oregon. She knew that the wife had brought the poison into the castle from the restaurant, and knew where the wife had hidden it. She noticed it was gone the night Ladington died. I confronted Tennessee and she did what lots of accused do when they’re involved with a conspirator. She pointed the finger at Stockdale, and he accused her when we questioned him alone. No honor among thieves, as they say.
“We pieced together that Stockdale was promised some sort of financial participation in the vineyard by Ladington, but only after he died. Tennessee wanted that to happen sooner than later.”
“Well, Sheriff, I appreciate the call.”
“My pleasure. How’s your friend, Neil?”
I filled him in on Neil’s life after his plea bargain of guilty, and his probation. The sheriff and I promised to stay in touch.
Bruce Ladington was originally charged with murder, but a plea bargain reduced it to manslaughter; he was sentenced to fourteen years, with the possibility of parole after four years. I can only assume that the prosecutors, as well as the judge, were as sympathetic as I’d been after hearing what had driven Bruce to push his father into the moat.
I have no idea what happened with Laura and the child she carried. I only hope that she’s able to put her life together and give the child a decent upbringing.
 
 
Not long after returning to Cabot Cove from Napa Valley, I spent an evening with Seth Hazlitt and other friends. After dinner, I recounted in exquisite detail what had transpired while I was in California. One of my guests was John St. Clair, Cabot Cove’s resident wine expert. He’d insisted upon bringing the wine for the dinner party, and included two bottles of Ladington Creek cabernet. After his first taste, he proclaimed, “Heavenly, with a husky, fleshy-mouthed taste that oozes across the palate.”
“Hruumph,” Seth muttered.
“I only hope,” St. Clair said, “that the death of William Ladington, and the turmoil it’s created at Ladington Creek, doesn’t ruin the crop there. That would be a tragedy of immense proportions.”
Later, talk turned to the novel I’d just started.
“What’s it called?” asked Richard Koser, who shoots the photos for my book jackets.
“Blood on the Vine,” I replied. “I’m setting it in a winery in Northern California.”
“Based upon the Ladington incident?” someone asked.
“Oh, no,” I quickly said. “That’s too real. Actual murders scare me. I prefer the fictitious kind.”
“Wouldn’t know it from the way you keep getting yourself involved with real murders,” Seth said. “You should take my advice and stick close to home, make up murders in your mind and stay away from the real thing. By the way, heard lately from
your friend
in London, the inspector?”
I smiled. George and I had talked the night before about my flying to London to spend a few days with him, and I’d hung a note on my kitchen bulletin board to remind me to make travel arrangements the next morning.
“Well?” Seth said, bushy eyebrows raised waiting for my answer.
“I would love another glass of that Ladington Creek cabernet,” I said, handing my glass to St. Clair. “It is absolutely heavenly, with a succulent nose of black currents, violets, and spices, gorgeous ripeness, and chewy fruit.”
Seth winced.
I winked at him, raised my glass, and said, “Salute!”
Here’s a preview of the next
Murder, She Wrote
mystery,
Murder in a Minor Key,
available now from Signet.
I hadn’t seen Wayne Copely since Friday, when he’d graciously escorted our colleague, Doris Burns, and me to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Wayne was a nationally syndicated jazz columnist and native of New Orleans, Doris and I were visitors to The Big Easy—one of many nicknames for the city—she from Princeton, New Jersey, where she was the youngest history professor on staff at the university, and I from Cabot Cove, Maine, where I plied my trade as a writer of murder mysteries. We’d all met as members of an authors’ panel, promoting our latest works at a Book Club Breakfast hosted by the
Times-Picayune,
the city’s only daily newpaper. Wayne had used the occasion to announce his longtime search for wax cylinder recordings by New Orleans musical legend Little Red LeCoeur.
A turn-of-the-century trumpet player, Little Red’s place in the pantheon of early jazz greats was well established in New Orleans, but virtually nonexistent outside that city. Old-timers remembered him as a ginger-haired prodigy with a red-hot temper to match, but one whose music reached heights never claimed before, a sweet sound encompassing the panoramic jazz experience in blues, rag-time, and Dixieland, and presaging the music to come decades later.
“Some said Little Red was possessed by a voodoo spirit,” Wayne had told the Book Club audience, “and when he was under its spell, magic notes poured from his horn—melodic, inventive music, which drew the other musicians of his day like ants following a trail of honey. They were hungry for his sound, in awe of his skill, and jealous of his talent.”
If Wayne were successful in his quest for the recordings, he would gain international recognition for the memory of this long-neglected musical genius, and elevate Little Red to the same plateau in the history of jazz as Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong. But so far, the cylinders had eluded him. In desperation, he made his public plea for help in finding them.
 
 
“Has anyone come forward with information for you?” I asked him as we strolled around the jazz festival, where the air fairly hummed with the strains of gospel, zydeco, bebop, Dixieland, and virtually every other variation of jazz, which drifted out of the tents and rose on the breeze in a delightful cacophony.
“I have a few leads,” he said, twirling a pencil between his fingers, “and the paper mentioned it in the article covering our panel.” He pulled a much thumbed copy of the magazine
Wavelength
from under his arm. “I’ve also got a classified ad in here that should churn the waters.”
Since then, I’d left two messages on his answering machine and was concerned that he hadn’t called back. He’d already missed one appointment with me, and we were supposed to be dining with his sister in the Garden District that afternoon.
Wayne’s house in the French Quarter was not far from my hotel, and I walked there Sunday morning. The evening before, the street had been mobbed with people celebrating Saturday night with Hurricanes, a favorite libation in local establishments. Carrying their drinks in go-cups, they hopped in and out of the nightclubs and barrooms, dancing on the
banquettes
—what New Orleanians call sidewalks—and gathering around impromptu performances by freelance jazz ensembles. Now, the Quarter was eerily quiet, the only sound a janitor sweeping up the crushed cups and other debris that littered the street.
I checked my address book for the number of Wayne’s apartment house. An old brown Ford was angled into the curb under a NO PARKING sign in front of the building, which had a facade painted in a soft pink. Iron lacework outlined the balconies that ran the length of each floor, and on which I could see a profusion of green plants and a series of tables and chairs demarcating the individual apartments.
Surprisingly, the double doors leading inside were open. I checked the directory for the number of Wayne’s apartment, climbed the stairs to the third floor, and pulled on a brass knocker in the shape of an alligator. The door swung open and a man in a brown suit frowned at me.
“Who’re you?” he asked gruffly.
“Perhaps I have the wrong apartment,” I said, taken aback. “I’m looking for Wayne Copely.”
“What’s he to you?”
“I’m a friend, and I haven’t heard from him. I was concerned. Are you an acquaintance of his?”
I knew the answer before he gave it, and felt my stomach drop. Men like him have a certain look. It’s in the eyes, a world-weariness, a cool appraisal, an unbending attitude worn like a carapace on their backs meant to protect them from the brutalities of life.
“I’m a cop.”
“What’s happened to Wayne?”
“You look a little pale. Come in and sit down, and I’ll tell you.”
Numb, I entered Wayne’s apartment and slumped down on his green damask sofa. The policeman remained standing on the other side of the glass-topped steel box that served as a coffee table. He tugged at his belt, trying to draw the waistline of his trousers over a protuberant stomach.
“Is he dead?” I asked, trying to regain some semblance of control.
“How did you know?”
His question was like a slap, startling me back to conscious thought. I sat up, alert. After all, I’d had experience with death before.
“I didn’t know,” I said briskly, “but it’s obvious that if the police are here and Wayne’s not, then something is drastically wrong.”

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