How to Dine on Killer Wine: A Party-Planning Mystery (14 page)

She reached over and patted my leg back. “I’m so dry I’m spitting cotton,” she said, quoting Marilyn Monroe from
Bus Stop
.

I started the engine.

I found the Douglas Family Winery location using my iPhone GPS app. We pulled up in front of an aging but still charming Victorian house a mile or so from the Purple Grape. The sign that welcomed visitors read, “Open Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.,” but a makeshift sign that had been propped on a sawhorse at the driveway entrance announced, “Closed.”

“You know I don’t drink, Presley,” Mother said. “Not since my third husband died. And you shouldn’t either. Besides, this winery is closed. See the sign?”

“I’m not surprised, considering they’ve had a death in the family.” I opened my car door, stepped out, and walked around to my mother’s side.

“Presley! Is this that poor woman’s place?” she asked when I opened her door.

“It sure is. Shall we have a look around?”

Mother eyed me, then reluctantly stepped out of the car. “I don’t like this…”

“It’ll be okay. Come on. I just want to see if any of
her employees are around. Maybe I can find out more about JoAnne Douglas.”

Mother followed me down the stone-paved path to the Victorian’s double doors, her heels clicking on the hard surface. A sign overhead read, “Welcome to the Douglas Family Winery, Since 1923.” I knocked, then tried one of the ornately carved doors. No response. I stood back, scanning the large, gingerbread-laced house, and spotted a small cottage off to the side that looked like a miniature version of the grand home.

I headed over with Mother in tow, wondering if there might be someone living there. Had JoAnne stayed in the cottage rather than the large house? I knocked on the door. Again, no answer.

“Hey!” I heard a voice call from the double-door entrance where we’d just been. We walked back over.

“Hi,” I said, shading my eyes from the late afternoon sun. “Sorry to bother you. I’m Presley Parker and this is my mother—”

“We’re closed,” the twentysomething woman said, cutting me off. She stood in the doorway wearing a white shirt, black skirt, and low, sensible pumps. The black stitching on the shirt read “Douglas Family Winery.” I guessed it to be a uniform. Underneath was a name tag that read “Natalie.” “Didn’t you see the sign?”

“Yes, but—”

She started to close the door.

“Wait!” I rushed forward and held the door. “I’m not here for wine tasting. I’d like to talk to…uh, JoAnne.”

Natalie’s eyes narrowed. “Who did you say you were?”

I gave her my name again and introduced my mother.

“How did you know Jo?”

I decided not to reveal my hand too soon. “I…met her the other night, at the culinary college. She told us to…stop by, and she’d show me around her winery.”

Mother looked away, no doubt unable to face her lying, conniving daughter. I just hoped she didn’t blurt out something and give me away.

“Well, I’m sorry, but Jo…she was killed last night. Her lawyer advised us to close the winery until he can review her will and figure out what we need to do.”

“Oh my God. What happened?” I asked, trying to look taken aback. I’d learned that feigning ignorance garnered more information that bluntly asking for it. “Was it an accident?”

Natalie shook her head. Her long dark hair rippled and she tucked one side behind her ear. “The police said she was murdered.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Are you the one who talked to the cops?”

“Yes, they were here. Asking questions. Snooping around. They took our neighbor in for questioning, but I haven’t heard anything more.” She paused. “You look familiar…”

“Presley,” Mother interrupted, “I’m feeling a little light-headed…”

I glanced at her. She looked fine, especially with that twinkle in her eyes. Apparently she could be just as sneaky and conniving as her daughter.

I turned back to Natalie. “Do you think we could
come in for a glass of water? My mother’s not feeling well.”

Natalie paused for a moment, then opened the door wide enough to allow us in. I inhaled the intoxicating scent of wine mixed with oak barrels and nearly salivated. The wood-paneled tasting room was large enough to hold at least fifty people and featured a square bar in the middle with room for a dozen tasters along each side. Inside, fresh glasses hung upside-down from a wooden structure overheard, within arm’s reach of the pourers.

Mother sat down on a stool at the bar, while Natalie ducked under the bar and pulled out a bottle of water from a small refrigerator in the center. She poured the water into a wineglass and passed it to Mom, looking at her with caring brown eyes.

“Thank you, miss,” Mother said, taking the glass. She sipped the water.

“It’s Natalie. Natalie Mattos.” I guessed her to be about twenty-five or so, well spoken, intelligent, and attractive, with light makeup and full lips.

“You work here?” I asked, taking a seat beside my mother.

“For about a year,” she said. “Right out of college. Got my degree in oenology but couldn’t find a job as an associate wine maker, so I ended up serving wine. This is a competitive market and tough to get hired.”

“Sounds like a fun job,” I said, “pouring wine all day, meeting people…”

“It’s not, believe me,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Most of the tourists just want free wine. We’re one of the few that doesn’t charge for tastings. They don’t buy much—at least not here—probably because we don’t
have cute wine labels with funny sayings on them. The college kids and bachelorette partiers just get drunk, become obnoxious, and throw up in the bushes on their way out.”

I remembered those days fondly.

“What was JoAnne like to work for?”

“She was okay. A real stickler for everything being green. The cabernets she produces are certified organic, using only sustainable farming. She’s got over a hundred solar panels on the roof, which reduces the greenhouse gases and air pollutants. She never used any synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, just compost and stuff like that. Everything has to be socially responsible and environmentally sound to preserve the ecosystem,” she said. Lacking any facial expression as she spoke, she came off like a tour guide spewing a memorized speech.

She must have caught the tiny smile on my face. “We have to tell everyone that stuff. Jo makes us. Made us, I should say. We were even encouraged—I should say highly encouraged—to drive hybrid cars to work or we might find ourselves suddenly laid off.”

Wow, JoAnne Douglas really was a fanatic. Remembering something I’d heard at the bingo hall, I asked Natalie, “Did she sell any specialty wines here? I heard she had some boutique wines available.”

Natalie’s dark eyebrows furrowed. “Not that I know of. Where did you hear that?”

“Oh, just a rumor,” I said.

“Well, don’t believe everything you hear,” she said. “Some people have nothing better to do than to gossip about other people.”

Mother pushed her glass toward Natalie and got off
her stool. “Thank you,” she said to the young woman; then to me she announced, “I’m feeling better, Presley.”

I stood. “Thank goodness, Mom. You had me worried.”

Mother rolled her eyes at my acting skills.

“My pleasure,” Natalie said. She took the glass, set it in a sink under the counter, and wiped the bar clean of moisture droplets. Ducking out from under the bar, she led us to the double doors. She opened them, letting bright afternoon sunlight into the dark, sensuous tasting room. The aroma of wine was overwhelmed by the scents of spring flowers that lined the walkway.

“Thanks again,” I said to Natalie before we headed down the front steps. At the bottom, I turned back.

“Natalie, any idea who might have killed JoAnne?”

“No clue,” she said. “It could have been anyone, I suppose. She had more enemies than friends, it seemed. I felt sorry for her. She just wanted to protect the environment, but to most people, she went about it the wrong way. And now I’m out of a job again—with a hybrid car to pay for.”

I checked my watch. Too early for dinner—unless you were part of the bingo set, maybe. Not too early for a glass of wine. At least, not today. If I could have started drinking when the body was found this morning, I would have.

“You were great back there, Mom!” I said, giving her arm a squeeze as I drove us out of the Douglas Family Winery drive. “That little fainting spell—brilliant! Thanks to you, I found out a little more about JoAnne Douglas.”

My mother actually blushed. “I learned it from watching
Murder, She Wrote
. One time Jessica Fletcher
pretended to need a glass of water, and when the suspect left the room to get it, she snooped around and found some valuable evidence.”

“Well, instead of getting her
out
of the room, you got us
into
the room. I’ll have to try that trick myself sometime.”

“Where are we going next?” Mother asked, suddenly full of energy.

I looked at her. “You’re not too tired?”

“Not now. This is fun.” She pulled down the passenger visor and checked her teeth and lipstick in the small mirror.

“Well, I was thinking we’d drop in on the Purple Grape’s two neighbors and see how they’re coping with the news. You up for that?”

“Bring it!” Mom said, closing the visor.

Bring it?
Where had that come from? Was I creating a monster, dragging my mother around the valley looking for suspects in a murder? What the hell. She’d turned me into a party planner. I could turn her into an amateur sleuth.

The two neighbors’ wineries flanked the Purple Grape. The Madeiras’ Castello de Vino was on the left and the Briens’ Governor’s Mansion Winery was on the right. And they were as different from each other as Marie was from her sister, Allison. While the Christophers’ home resembled an Italian villa, the Madeiras’ place looked like a stone castle, something out of Transylvanian horror films, the kind that Nick Madeira was known for producing. As for the Briens’ winery, it stood like a mini-replica of the state capitol building in Sacramento. No surprise there.

I pulled into the stone driveway that led to the medieval castle. My first thought, looking at the sprawling structure, was
Great place for a party!
Medieval theme, obviously, with knights and maidens, bowls of wassail and giant turkey legs, maybe some horses and a little jousting.

Good God. What was I thinking?

We headed for the winery entrance and stepped through arched doorways into the past. Stone walls in the tasting room were lined with costumes of kings and queens, armored knights and fair maidens, along with crossbows and chain mail, swords and shields, and family crests. The dim lighting from the high wrought-iron sconces transported me immediately to the Dark Ages. A long wooden bar—maybe twenty feet—ran from one side of the tasting room to the other, manned by pourers wearing anachronistic Castello de Vino T-shirts. About a dozen people in normal clothing had bellied up to the bar and were enjoying the latest pour. After drinking all that water, my mother excused herself to use the facilities. I squeezed in between a group of young women and an older couple and looked over the printed list of today’s samples.

“Would you like to taste our newest sangiovese?” a cute guy in a T-shirt covered with a coat-of-arms-emblazoned vest asked. Blond short hair, lightly freckled face, muscular arms, about thirty, I guessed. His name tag read, “Joe Van Houten.”

“Sure,” I said.

“It’s five dollars for three tastings,” he said. “And you get to keep the commemorative glass.”

I shelled out five bucks while Joe poured a couple of
ounces into a wineglass inscribed, “Wassail,” which he explained was Middle English for “good health.” I inhaled the bouquet like Rocco had taught me, then tasted the cool liquid, all the while glancing around for Nick or his wife—what was her name? Claudia? Claudette.

Joe Van Houten looked at me expectantly after I put the glass down.

“Good!” I said, forgetting all the vocabulary words Rocco had tried to implant in my brain. “Uh…fruity,” I added.

Joe grinned politely. I was sure he saw right through me. I deflected with a question. “Is Nick or Claudette around?”

“You know the owners? I’d be glad to let them know you’re here. What’s your name?”

I leaned into the bar and turned on the charm. “That would be great. I’m Presley Parker,” I said, reaching out a hand. Joe shook it, said, “Nice to meet you,” then picked up a phone hidden under the bar. I spotted Mother returning from the restroom, a small bag in her hand.

“Did you buy something?” I asked her.

“They have a delightful little gift shop right near the restrooms!” Mother said. Leave it to her to find a gift shop everywhere she went, including Alcatraz, the de Young Museum, and the Winchester Mystery House. She opened the bag and pulled out a set of wine charms—tiny pewter images of grapes, leaves, a wine bottle, a goblet, a wheel of cheese, and a corkscrew—one for each of six guests to personalize their wineglasses.