How to Dine on Killer Wine: A Party-Planning Mystery (13 page)

An hour and five losing games later, the caller announced a much-needed break. I stood up, stretched out my back, squeezed together my numb buttocks, and took a stroll around the room to get the circulation going in my legs again. I found myself on the other side of the room, where Javier and Allison sat drinking sodas and eating candy bars.

“Hi!” I said, acting as if I was surprised to see them.

They looked up. Javier stiffened; Allison cocked her head.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“My mother wanted to come and she invited me along. I thought it might be a nice escape from…” I didn’t finish the sentence.

Allison nodded. “Us too,” she said, indicating Javier. “It’s so gloomy over there right now. And there’s really nothing we can do with that crime scene tape all over the place. Right, Javier?”

He nodded and took a bite of his candy bar.

Allison stood up. “Well, time for a potty break,” she said, then dashed off, leaving me alone with Javier, who continued to look uncomfortable.

I sat down in her seat.

“Hey, congratulations on winning the first game! That was exciting.”

Javier broke a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Only wish it was enough to pay the bills, you know?”

I nodded. “Rob said you manage several of the smaller wineries but that some of them have closed down.”

He frowned. “Yeah, bought out by Nap-opoly, thanks to JoAnne and all her green rules. I’m down to two wineries now. I could definitely use a few more bingos, you know?”

“You think JoAnne is responsible for the loss of the small wineries?”

He said nothing, just took another bite of his candy bar and washed it down with soda.

“Because her requirements are too strict?” I said, pursuing the question.

“The small wineries, they can’t compete with the big ones, not with all these rules about restricting expansion and development.”

“Do you think any of the owners were upset enough to kill her?” I asked bluntly.

Javier shot me a look. “I don’t know. Not Rob. He’s a good man. He tried to go along with JoAnne’s demands—we all did. But when he found out—” Javier stopped.

“Found out what, Javier?”

“Nothing. It’s not my place to speak, you know?”

“Javier, JoAnne Douglas is dead, and your boss—your friend—Rob is down at the police station being questioned. If there’s anything you can tell me that would help him…”

Javier bit his lip, glanced around, then said quietly, “Okay, but you didn’t hear this from me, you know? Rob found out JoAnne was selling bottles of her regular wines as ‘new boutique wines,’ marking up the prices and using fake labels. He told her it wasn’t right, but she said there was nothing illegal about it. He reminded her of the Thomas Jefferson fraud a few years ago, but she just ignored him.”

“What fraud?” I asked, puzzled at how our third president could be involved in a wine scandal.

“It was a big scandal. An auction house was selling off limited bordeaux with Thomas Jefferson’s label, but the wines inside the bottle turned out to be something different. If something like that happened here in Napa, it could ruin the reputation of everyone who’s legitimate.”

“Fake wine labels? Wow.”

“Yeah, most vintners today use high-tech fraud prevention—invisible markers, tamper-proof seals, ID chips in the corks, microprinted codes. That’s how they try to prevent counterfeiters, since there are no ‘wine police’ to oversee everything. But all that stuff costs money. Lots of money.”

No wonder Rob had hired Javier as his manager. This guy knew everything there was to know about wine. “Why would JoAnne do that?”

“To cash in on the boutique trend, I guess. I heard her wines haven’t been selling well the past few years. Apparently she just recycled her stock with new labels.”

“Javier, do you think Rob—” I stopped midsentence. Javier was looking over my shoulder. I turned and saw Allison standing behind me.

I got up from her seat. “Sorry. I just wanted to congratulate Javier on his win.”

Javier also stood. “Excuse me,” he said abruptly, and walked away, headed in the direction of the restrooms.

“So, anything new on the murder?” Allison said, taking her seat.

“No. Have you heard from Marie? Or Rob?” I asked.

“I turned my cell phone off during the games,” she said. “Too distracting.”

Wow. This woman was something else.

“Well, good luck.” I started to walk away.

“I don’t need it,” she said. “I’ve always had good luck.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded and made my way back to my seat, tired of trying to find something redeeming in Allison. So far all I could see was a cold, self-centered, wannabe diva.

I wondered if I’d be adding murderer to her list of traits.

I returned to my seat to finish the last bingo games. So far, neither Mother nor I had won. Two elderly gentlemen won the next two games, and I noticed that Allison jumped up from her seat and hustled over to congratulate each of the men personally, with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. When a woman won the next game, however, Allison remained at her place.

“Crap,” Helen said, after her latest loss. “Deanna Mitchell wins a game almost every week. She’s probably cheating somehow.”

Surprised at her language and outburst, I turned to
Helen, who up until this moment had been quietly daubing her sheets with yellow ink.

“You really think she might be cheating?” I asked her.

She shrugged, but her tight lips quivered as if eager to say more.

“Larry says it isn’t easy to cheat at bingo these days,” I said, prompting her.

She leaned over to me and whispered, “Larry is a fool.”

That was harsh,
I thought. Was this about something else? Maybe jealousy over Larry’s interest in my mother? She might have been their same age, in spite of her heavily lined face, graying hair, and formless figure.

I decided to ignore her last comment, but she cursed again when a woman at the front of the hall called out, “Bingo!” after the next game.

“This is all JoAnne Douglas’s fault,” Helen mumbled, throwing down her dauber.

“What did you say?” I said, not sure I heard her correctly over the loud chatter.

“JoAnne Douglas. She’s jinxed the game.”

“What do you mean?” I wondered why this woman thought JoAnne could have anything to do with bingo.

Helen harrumphed. “Like I said, she tried to stop our games. She said gambling was contributing to the decay of the Napa Valley. Made a lot of people mad, me included. Then she goes and gets herself killed. Bad omen.”

“How did you hear about JoAnne?”

She grunted. “It’s all over town. There are no secrets for long around here. Word spreads faster than a vineyard fire.” She crossed herself and kissed her fingertips.

Helen appeared to be full of superstition, but I wondered if she had more to say that could be important. I decided to poke the bear. “It seems like quite a few people had a grudge against JoAnne.”

“More like who didn’t—other than her shyster lawyer. Thinks he’s a rock star with all those billboard and bus-bench pictures of his mug around town.”

Billboards? “You don’t mean Kyle Bennett?”

She nodded. “That bloodsucker made money off everyone, including her.”

These were probably the words of an angry, aging woman blowing off steam because she was losing at bingo, I thought. So far she’d spoken in generalities. Did she have something specific to say? I tried a different approach in my questioning.

“So Kyle worked for JoAnne?” It sounded like Kyle, now representing Rob, might have had a conflict of interest.

“Tight as a cork in a bottle, those two,” Helen said, pulling at the side of her hair. When one side seemed to hang down farther than the other side, I realized she was wearing a wig, and the gray hair at the temples was her real hair poking out from underneath. “He helped her with all her political crap, and she paid him well for it. Bought himself a fancy car and a fancy suit. Too bad the killer didn’t get him too.”

Whoa.
I hoped there wasn’t a gun in her bingo caddy.

“Any idea why JoAnne had it in for the Christophers?”
This chatty woman was becoming a gold mine of information.

Helen daubed the free spaces on her next bingo sheet as she talked. “JoAnne never stopped yapping about the Christophers. And his neighbors—that movie guy and the ex-governor. She accused them all of using ‘marginal land’—the hillsides, the streams.” Helen used stiff finger quotes for the term. “She claimed they were ‘ruining the wine country.’” More finger quotes.

The movie guy and the ex-governor? Apparently Nick Madeira’s and Dennis Brien’s vineyards were also targets of JoAnne’s political agenda. And if that was the case, perhaps they should be considered suspects in her death.

“You’re talking about the Madeiras and Briens?” I asked to confirm. I didn’t want to go around putting random suspects on my list.

Helen set down her dauber and rubbed her hands. Arthritis, I suspected. Maybe this woman was older than I’d originally guessed. “Yep. JoAnne claimed those vineyards would endanger the trees, then the hillsides would erode, and then the streams would be polluted with their pesticides. Yak, yak, yak. I heard she sued all three of them because they weren’t ‘green enough’ for her. Accused them of fouling the streams and reservoirs for their own ‘personal gain.’” In spite of her arthritis, she loved using those finger quotes.

“Really?”

She shrugged. “Hell, everyone uses pesticides. There wouldn’t be any wine if they didn’t. A little pesticide ain’t gonna kill you.”

I smiled at her attitude toward health. “Did any of them try to stop JoAnne somehow?”
Besides murder,
I thought.

Helen snorted. “I heard they all ‘donated’ to her cause, which means they paid her off. That’s when she supposedly dropped the lawsuits.”

The announcer’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “The last game of the day will be another Postage Stamp Bingo. Everyone ready?”

Helen focused her attention on her sheets, hovering over them as if they were already winners. I missed hearing the first ball, too busy thinking about what Helen had said. I tried to focus on the next couple, but my mind kept fleeing back to her words. The woman may have been getting on in years, but she was still as bright as her yellow dauber. I wondered if there was some other agenda behind her anger toward JoAnne, other than the fact that the dead woman had tried to interfere with Helen’s bingo life.

“Cee-five,” the caller said.

“Bingo!” Larry shouted while I was still trying to catch up with the last three numbers called.

Mother clapped and squealed with delight. Constance leaned over and said, “Congratulations,” to Larry, while Helen mumbled something—no doubt the word “crap.”

A man wearing a waist apron came over to Larry, took his winning bingo sheet, and handed it to a player at a different table. The player confirmed the winning numbers and returned it to the apron man, who pulled out an envelope. He counted out two hundred and fifty dollars and gave it to Larry with a “congratulations.”
Larry gave the apron man a five-dollar tip, then turned to Mother and handed her a twenty. She grinned with delight.

I glanced over at Allison and Javier to see their reaction to the win. Javier was eating another candy bar. But Allison had disappeared.

“Do you ever worry about being robbed?” I asked Larry as he escorted us to the parking lot. His arm was around Mother’s waist, guiding her along, a big, jovial grin on his face. This man was a happy winner.

He shook his head. “Not here. Karna, the security guard, watches the door and parking lot. She’s good about making sure we’re all safe in our cars until we drive off. After that, we’re on our own.”

I looked back at the building. Sure enough, Karna the guard stood watching as the crowd, mostly elderly, dispersed in the lot, entered their cars, and left the premises. I wondered if Larry had tipped her too. Apparently it was protocol to share a little of the wealth, and he’d been very generous.

“Larry,” I said, after he helped Mother into my car. “That woman sitting next to me—Helen? Does—did—she have any kind of grudge against JoAnne Douglas? She seemed to imply that JoAnne sued some of the winery owners and then dropped the suit when they ‘donated’ to her political cause. Do you know anything about this?”

Larry’s beaming smile drooped. “Don’t listen to Helen. She’s a cantankerous old lady who’s still angry that JoAnne tried to bust up bingo. Helen takes her game very seriously, in case you didn’t notice.”

“I sensed that,” I said. I opened my car door and got in, then turned to Mother.

She waved to Larry as he headed for his own car, an aging Volvo; then she looked at me blankly, as if she’d forgotten where we were.

I smiled at her and patted her leg. Glancing at the clock on the MINI’s dashboard—four p.m.—I asked, “Thirsty?”