How to Dine on Killer Wine: A Party-Planning Mystery (21 page)

I frowned. “Was that really an issue?”

A beep sounded from the parking lot. Natalie glanced over and waved to someone. I assumed it was her boyfriend, growing impatient. “Oh, you don’t know the wine industry. The old-school vintners think wines should only be corked. But the new school wants to use screw tops. It’s a quality-versus-style argument.”

“What’s the difference?”

“JoAnne said the screw caps affected the Mediterranean cork industry. That’s where most of the cork is grown. She said losing the cork forests could threaten ecosystems.”

“Interesting. I thought they were just considered tacky.”

“I know, right? But vintners who switched to screw caps said they did it because they had problems with cork taint.”

“Cork taint?”

“Yeah, it’s a kind of mold that ruins the wine. You don’t get it with screw caps. But then screw caps are made from nonrenewable material.” She shook her head. “You can’t win in this business.”

“Wow. All these battles in the war of the wines,” I said. It made sense that old-school JoAnne would be a corker while new-school Rob would be a screw capper. Was the corkscrew used to kill JoAnne some symbolic message? It had certainly screwed Rob.

The guy on the motorcycle raced his engine, signaling to Natalie that her time was up. She took a step toward him, indicating she was ready to go. I followed.

“Thanks, Natalie,” I said. “Is there some way I can contact you if I have more questions?”

She lifted her skirt a little, hopped on the back of the bike, put on her helmet, and wrapped her arms around Will. “You can reach me at natloveswine at yahoo dot com.”

“That’s easy to remember,” I said, and pulled out a Killer Parties business card. “Here’s my card. Call me if you think of anything else. I appreciate your help.”

“Sure,” she said. She took my card and tucked it into her mini–shoulder bag, just before the two roared off into the night.

“What did she say?” Brad asked as I burrowed my way back into the rear seat.

“I’m not sure,” I said. Before I could add anything, Mother gave a brief history of the Napa Wine Train. I don’t know why I needed the Internet for background information when I had Mother.

We pulled up to the Purple Grape and followed the garden lighting to the front of the house. I used the key Rob had given me and I switched on the hall light as we entered the dark foyer. Obviously Allison and Marie weren’t home from the hospital yet. I escorted Mother to her room, then joined Brad in our room next to hers.

I changed into my PJs, while Brad just dropped his clothes; then we snuggled into bed. He switched on the TV to catch the ten o’clock news. JoAnne’s death and Rob’s arrest were the lead stories, but thankfully there was no mention of Marie’s so-called suicide attempt. The reporter, a young African American man, gave a brief history of JoAnne’s life, mentioning the
“many controversies she’d been engaged in ‘trying make a better tomorrow for the Napa Valley.’”

The screen shot changed to a large, red-faced man standing in front of what looked like a rustic cabin, leaning on a cane. Next to him was a female reporter holding a microphone near his lips as he spoke.

“JoAnne’s death is a great loss to our community,”
he said in a gruff voice,
“but our fine police department has arrested the heinous person responsible for her murder, and justice will be served. That’s all I have to say.”
The man pressed his lips together in a gesture of finality.

The name captioned at the bottom of the screen read, “Angus McLaughlin, President and CEO of Napology Corporation.”

Why had they interviewed the head of Napology for the story? I wondered. What did he have to do with JoAnne Douglas?

I didn’t have time to ponder that. Brad turned off the TV and temporarily helped me forget about JoAnne Douglas, Rob Christopher, and everything else associated with murder. And he did it better than any bottle of wine could ever do.

When I woke up the next morning, Brad was already up, dressed, and packed. He held two Fiestaware coffee mugs in his hands.

“What time is it?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“Seven thirty,” he said, handing me a coffee.

“Too early,” I muttered, setting the mug on the nightstand. “Need more sleep…”

“I got a cleanup call, so I’m heading back to the city now. I’ll see you when you get back to the island. Drive safely.” He leaned over and kissed me.

“Don’t go!” I whined, then grabbed his arm. “Come back to bed…”

Brad laughed.
Could he be any cuter?
I thought.

“If I do, I might never get up again,” he said. “Besides, I want to get out of here before I’m caught shacking up with the hired help.”

“I think that ship has sailed,” I murmured.

He rubbed my bed hair. “Come on. Marie’s in the kitchen. I’m sure you want to see her.”

That did it. I sat up, patted down my hair, retrieved my coffee, and took a sip.

“Okay. Call me when your job’s done.”

He bent down and kissed my coffee mouth, tousled
my hair again as if I were an impish child, and left the room with his overnight backpack. I took a few more sips of coffee—enough to make me human—then got in the shower, dressed in black jeans and a lavender Purple Grape T-shirt Rob had given me, and checked on Mother. Still asleep, she was softly snoring. Lucky girl.

I headed for the kitchen with my nearly empty coffee mug and found Marie sitting over a plate of untouched toast, staring out a window. Allison was nowhere in sight.

“Marie, I’m so glad you’re back,” I said. What do you say to a person who may have tried to commit suicide the night before? “Life is good”?

My presence seemed to bring her back from wherever her thoughts had wandered. “Morning, Presley. Did you sleep well?”

In spite of everything, the pleasantries continued.

“Great, thanks. How’re
you
doing this morning?”

“Better, thanks, although my throat still hurts from that darn tube.” She looked down at her cold toast.

“Can I get you something else? Yogurt, maybe? Some fruit?”

“No, I’m not hungry. I’m waiting for a call from Kyle about Rob. He said he’d let me know what’s going on.”

I nodded. “Well, Mother and I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

Marie reached across the table for my hand. “Presley, don’t go,” she said. “I meant what I said last night. You’re no trouble at all. And I could use the company now that Rob’s…” She left the sentence unfinished but implied.

“I’d love to, Marie, but I need to get my mother back to her facility,” I said, feeling a twinge of guilt at the thought of abandoning Marie. “But listen. I’m going to do more background research and I promise to come back in a day or two.”

She looked glum but forced a smile onto her sad face. “I understand. I just don’t know what’s going to happen with Rob. You’re such a take-charge kind of woman—I was hoping you’d help me find out who really killed JoAnne. I know he’s innocent.” A tear rolled down her pale cheek.

I’m a sucker for tears. “I promise—I’ll do what I can, Marie. I’ve already talked to quite a few people who were at the party. Now it’s time to do some background research—and that I can do from my office. But I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry.”

More tears. “Thank you, Presley.”

She reached out to take my hand and suddenly froze, looking over my shoulder.

I turned to see what had caused her to tense up so abruptly.

Allison stood in the doorway holding a cup of coffee. She was wearing an oversized blue madras camp shirt, unbuttoned, over a too-small white tank top and too-tight jeans. The shirt looked vaguely familiar. “Good morning, ladies,” she said.

Marie rose from the table, her face twisted in anger.

“Take that off!” she screamed at her sister. “That’s Rob’s shirt!”

On the drive back to San Francisco, I thought about the significance of Allison wearing Rob’s shirt—and Marie’s angry reaction to seeing her in it. Why had a shirt provoked such a visceral response?

By the time we reached Mother’s care facility, I still didn’t have an answer. And while I’d had an “interesting” time in the wine country, I was eager to resume my real life back in the city. I missed my cats, my condo, and my co-workers. I dropped Mother off with a promise to take her to lunch soon, and drove home to Treasure Island.

After taking the exit off the Bay Bridge, I opened the
sunroof on the MINI Cooper and inhaled the familiar salt air. TI sits in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, completely surrounded by water, a floating relic of the city’s past. The location was convenient, the rent cheap, and I loved the nearly three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view.

I drove by the huge rusty anchor left by the navy when it departed in 1997 and past the concave Building One that once housed exhibits during the 1939 Golden Gate Expo and now served as my office building.

I whizzed by the ginormous hangars once harboring the Pan Am Clipper Ships—now rented by movie studios—and on beyond the skeletal remains of naval housing that was soon to be demolished. High-rises were planned for the future of Treasure Island, something I could not imagine for this gem of the sea.

Turning into the small housing area, I pulled up to my condo, parked the MINI in the carport, got out of the car, and unlocked the front door of my home, hoping my neighbor had remembered to feed my three cats.

The moment the door opened I was attacked.

Thursby, my black watch-cat, leapt at my feet and tried to kill them. Fatman, my white longhair who could live on his fat for a month if no one fed him, tried to trip me while dodging between my ankles. And Cairo, my orange scaredy-cat, hightailed it for cover under the living room futon. He wasn’t a cat; he was a chicken.

“My babies!” I said, hoisting Fatman and snuggling my face into his fur. I set him down, scratched Thursby’s back, then called to Cairo, cajoling him into facing
his fears. The sound of cat food rattling into bowls eventually brought him out from his hiding place.

“I missed you guys! Were you good boys while I was gone?”

What was it about cats that turned a grown, independent woman into a mushy, baby-talking idiot? While contemplating that, I refreshed the cats’ water, made a mental note to thank my neighbor (a bottle of wine from Napa?), and threw my suitcase on the bed.

An hour and three cat massages later, I drove back to my office at Building One, a homemade latte in hand. I parked the MINI and walked up the steps to the glass entry doors, past the Rubenesque statues that had stood guard over the building for seven decades.

“Hey, Raj,” I said to the TI security guard currently manning the front desk. “Have you recovered from the party the other night?”

He raised his animated dark eyebrows. “I am no longer surprised at what’s happening at your parties, Ms. Presley. By the way, are you catching the killer?”

“Not yet,” I said. “The police have Rob Christopher in custody, but his wife is certain he didn’t do it. Frankly, I don’t think he did either, but I have no idea who did.”

“You are helping him, I suppose?”

“I’m doing what I can,” I said, then moved on to my office a few steps beyond the desk.

The door stood open and I found Delicia, dressed in leggings, a denim skirt, and a long, gauzy top, working at her laptop.

“You’re back!” she said with theatrical delight. As a
part-time actress, she couldn’t help adding drama whenever she could.

“Finally,” I said, plopping my purse down and picking up the “while you were out” forms piled on my desk.

“Those are just the ones I took for you while you were gone. You’ve got a dozen more messages on your machine.”

I dropped into the seat at my desk, which faced hers. “Great. Getting back to callers should keep me busy for the next year. So what are you up to? Looking for an acting job?”

“I’m looking for wine. That merlot at the Purple Grape was awesome, but I can’t afford it. Someone told me about this site called ‘
CheapbutGood.­com
,’ where they have all kinds of name brands at way lower prices.”

“Name brands…,” I said, remembering the rumor that JoAnne was selling wines online under a different name—and a lower price. I turned on my laptop. “I wonder…”

“Believe it or not,” Dee said, “I found Two-Buck Chuck for a buck!”

I typed in “
CheapbutGood.­com
” and the site appeared. The opening page showed a wine bottle with a dollar sign on the label, circled in red with a line through it. I did an on-site search for Douglas Family Wines, but nothing came up. Of course, she wouldn’t use the name of the winery, not if she was trying to sell her wine cheaply on the Internet. So what was her “boutique” wine called?

No clue. But before I left the site, I typed in the name
“Purple Grape,” just to see what might happen. Seconds later a link to “Purple Great” came up.