Of Merlot & Murder (A Tangled Vines Mystery) (15 page)

“Jax, you know he doesn’t mean that,” Elise said, but he ignored her. Ross’s barbs had hit a sore spot and this time he couldn’t let it go.

His stare bored into Ross, who’d gone noticeably silent and red in the face. “You say you understand that I have a job to do, that I
have to be careful of perceptions, follow the evidence. Then you turn
right around and question my loyalty, when the people around this table are closer to me than my own blood relatives.”

Jackson stood up and laid his napkin across his plate. “Well, maybe
you’re right, Ross,” he said in a quiet voice. “Maybe I’m not part of this family after all.” With that, he pulled out his keys and turned to the woman who’d practically raised him. “I’m sorry for the trouble, Miss Abby. I’ll let you know if anything else comes up.”

“Jackson, sweetheart, please don’t leave like this,” she pleaded.

He came around the end of the table and placed a kiss on her leathery cheek. It was nearly his undoing when he saw the tears well in her eyes, and he murmured into her ear. “Don’t you dare cry, darlin’. You’ll break my heart. I’ll be back. I just need some space.”

With a brief glance at Elise, he walked out of the room and down the hall. Stepping outside, he hoped the cool night air would clear his head and exorcize all his demons. He’d always considered himself part of this family, had been treated as such as long as he could remember. But he now realized, as much as he’d like it to be, that it just wasn’t true. Ross had made that perfectly clear.

fifteen

Silence reigned for several
moments after Jackson’s abrupt departure from the room, with nobody at the table wanting to make eye contact. To Elise, the sound of the front door slamming shut seemed as loud as a gunshot.

Feeling a bit of her own guilt over the fact that she hadn’t done more to support Jackson, she lashed out at her brother. “Well, nice job, Ross,” she said in disgust. “What the hell is
wrong
with you?”

“I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to make Jax feel bad or suggest that he’s not part of the family.”

“But that’s exactly what you did by questioning his loyalty.” Madison gave him a sad look. “You know he would never let anything happen to any of us if he could help it.”

“I know, I know.” Ross ran a hand through his hair and looked up with regret in his eyes. “This is all just so frustrating, but you’re right. I shouldn’t take out my concerns on Jax. I just want to make sure that Gram is protected.”

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’ve got nothin’ to hide, so I’ll be fine.” Abigail stood up and began to gather the dirty plates from the table. “Jackson’s doing the best he can. We all need to be supportive and let him do his job.”

“Mom’s right.” Laura nodded and rose to help Abigail clear the table. “I know this seems all too familiar. We lived through something similar with your Uncle Edmond’s death only months ago, but we have to give Jackson as much help and understanding as we can.”

“I know,” Ross said. “And I’m sorry that I badgered him.”

Elise wasn’t letting him off the hook so easily. This wasn’t the first
time Ross had behaved badly toward Jackson in recent months, and she wanted to nip it in the bud. “Yeah, well it doesn’t do any good to tell us. You need to talk to him.”

“I will.”

Jumping up, she grabbed her purse. “I mean it, Ross. You fix this.” With that, she started for the door.

“Where are you going, El?” C.C. asked.

“I’m gonna try to catch Jackson. If I can’t, I’m going to his house. I don’t want this to get out of hand.”

She raced down the hall and out the front door, only to be disappointed when she realized his cruiser was gone and that she’d waited too long.

Figuring he only had about a ten-minute start on her Elise got into her car and headed for his house. If he wasn’t at home, she’d check his office, but one way or another, she was going to find him tonight.

Jackson lived in a charming little ranch-style house on the other side of Delphine just on the outskirts of town. The twenty-minute drive there seemed to take forever, but Elise was filled with relief when she turned off the highway and found the cruiser parked in his driveway. She pulled her little sports car in behind it and killed the engine.

With not a little trepidation, she climbed out of the car and went up to the porch. She knocked on the front door, and while
she waited for him, went over what she intended to say. But her mind went completely blank, and her mouth dry as the Gobi desert when he opened the door. He was barefoot and his shirt was unbuttoned. It hung open just enough to reveal a tantalizing glimpse of his muscular chest.

“El?”

At the sound of her name, she snapped her gaze up to his confused face and did her best to focus on the reason she’d followed him home.

Unfortunately, “hey” was all she managed to squeak out.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Why don’t you invite me in and I’ll tell you. Or at least try to remember,” she added under her breath. Those glimpses of his sexy, bare chest made it hard to concentrate on anything else. Noticing that the top button of his pants was undone didn’t help, either.

“Okay. Come on in.” He stepped aside, motioning for her to enter.

She moved past him quickly and went into the living room. Tossing her purse into a chair, she steeled herself as she turned around to face him and got right to the point. “First, I want to apologize on behalf of myself and my entire boneheaded family—especially my dumb-ass brother.”

“El—”

“Just hold your water and let me finish, would you?” she said, cutting him off. “I know Ross made it sound like you aren’t a part of our family, but you know that’s not true. You are and always will be. And it shames me to know that we hurt your feelings that way.”

Jackson heaved a sigh and walked over to her. “There’s no need to feel that way,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “People get their feelings hurt all the time. I’ll get over it.”

“But that’s my point.” She jabbed a finger in his direction before spinning away from him. “Families shouldn’t treat each other that way.”

“But they often do, darlin’,” he said in a quiet voice. “So let it go.”

She turned back to him with an exasperated look. “Well, I can’t, and I don’t understand how you can just accept it.”

“What’s the point of railing against it, El? It is what it is.”

“Ooh, that really gets to me,” she said with a growl. “Sometimes you can be so annoyingly bullheaded.”

With his hands fisted on his hips, he stepped right into her bubble and growled back. “And you can be infuriatingly nosy and hard
of hearing. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t love you, in spite of it.”

“Yeah? Well, let me tell you something—wait. What did you just say?”

“You heard me.”

She crossed her arms and cocked a hip. “I think you need to say it again, just so we’re clear.”

“Nuh-uh,” he replied and mirrored her stance. “Not until you spill whatever it is that you failed to tell me about the case before. And don’t say there isn’t anything, because we both know you’d be fibbin’.”

She tried to stare him down, but in the end, threw up her hands in surrender. “Okay. I give. I should’ve told you the other day when we talked about that lyin’ Monique saying that we’d questioned her.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

“Well, in reference to keeping our eyes and ears open, Maddy overheard a conversation between Monique and Philippe Toussaint that I think you’ll find interesting. You might want to clear it up before you let them leave town.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Go on.”

Knowing she would probably regret it, she related everything Madison had told them about what she’d witnessed between the two that day behind Restaurant Row. When she was finished, he simply shook his head.

“What?” she asked, when he continued to stare at her without speaking.

“You guys just never learn, do you?” He paced away and then back. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that could have been for Maddy if it turns out that Monique or Philippe are responsible for Divia’s death? What if they’d caught her listening?”

“I told her the same thing.”

“Oh, please. You did no such thing.”

“Okay, maybe not in so many words,” she remarked.
Good Lord, I’m a horrible liar.

He smirked at her. “I imagine you and the rest of the gang congratulated her on her sleuthing skills.”

Feeling the color rise in her face, she thought back on how they’d done just exactly that. “Well, regardless, trust me when I say that she won’t be doing anything like that again.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that before, too. I’d suggest you don’t make promises you can’t keep.” When she made a show of pouting, he rolled his eyes. “Wow. Pathetic much? I’m not buying the ‘poor pitiful me’ act, either.”

“All right, but you’re going to re-interview all three of the Toussaints, right?”

He stopped and stared at her with an incredulous look, letting out a long-suffering sigh before pinching the bridge of his nose in obvious frustration. “Yes, El. We’d already planned to re-interview them as well as Toby Raymond regarding the suggestion of impropriety with Third Coast’s books. We’re also going to talk to Garrett Larson about his nonexistent alibi.”

“What? Garrett’s alibi fell through?” Jackson’s grimace suggested
that he regretted telling her so much, so she hurried on. “Gram thought
he might have fudged on where he was on Friday night.”

He blinked at that and raised his eyebrows. “She did?”

“Yeah. She said she’d always been able to tell when he was being less than forthcoming with information, and when you spoke with him that first time, she’d noticed it right off.”

“When did she tell you that?”

Elise walked over and plopped down on the sofa. “I stopped by the vineyard on Saturday after closing to talk to my mom, and she told us then.”

“So, let me get this straight,” he began with a frown. “When I came
over to your place on Saturday evening, you already knew this?”

“Yeah,” she answered slowly, feeling like there was a trap somewhere ahead that she wasn’t quite seeing yet. “Like I said, I stopped by there on my way home.”

“For crying out loud, El. Why the hell didn’t you tell me this that
night?”

She sat forward and stared at him with her mouth hanging open. “Seriously?” she sputtered when she found her voice. “In the first place, as I recall, I was busy trying to defend myself against Monique’s unfounded accusations which you were spouting like gospel. So you’ll excuse me if an earlier conversation with Gram slipped my mind.”

“Yeah, but—” he began before she cut him off.

“And secondly, every time I’ve come to you with any information that I’ve collected, I’ve been chewed out for poking my nose into your precious investigations. Can you really blame me for not being as quick to share information as you’d like me to be?”

She took a breath and mentally counted to ten in an effort to defuse
her frustration. “Look, I’m sorry, but you can’t have it both ways, Jax. Make up your mind, already.”

After a moment, he came over to sit beside her on the sofa. “Okay.
You have a point, and I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the information, El. Or the help, for that matter. I do.” He took her hand and linked their fingers. “It’s just that I worry about you guys. And when you take risks like Maddy did to listen in on a conversation like that, it makes me crazy. I think about all the things that could go wrong.”

“I know, I know. And I promise to do my best not to cause you any more worry than necessary,” she said, with a mischievous smile.

“Gee, thanks. That makes me feel
so
much better.”

“At least Gram will be happy to know that she can still read Garrett Larson like a book, even after all these years.”

“Evidently. I just wish she would have said something the day I interviewed him.”

“I think Gram’s in a bit of denial because of their history. It’s like
she refuses to believe that Garrett could have anything to do with something as heinous as murder. I figure she didn’t want to get him into hot water.”

“Yeah, well, people change. And sometimes they disappoint you when you least expect it.”

She got the feeling he was no longer talking about Garrett Larson, but perhaps about those a little closer to home. Still, she let it go. That was a sore subject at the moment and would probably open up another heated debate when she felt they’d just gotten back onto an even footing.

“So, how did you find out that Garrett’s alibi was bogus? Wasn’t he supposed to be at some conference in Austin on Friday?”

She thought Jackson might not answer at first, but then he nodded. “Yes. He gave me very detailed information about the Central Texas Mead-Makers conference he was supposedly attending on Friday night. And that surprises me, because he strikes me as a very shrewd man. He had to know we would check out his story. If he was going to lie about his movements, you’d think he would have made sure his tracks were covered.”

“How did you confirm that he wasn’t at the conference? There’s a growing interest in honey wines here in Central Texas, so I’m guessing there was a big crowd.”

Jackson pursed his lips in thought before speaking. “Well, I can’t really prove he wasn’t there because he was registered and had paid his fee. It’s just that he never checked in and—”

“If he was there, why didn’t he sign in and pick up his packet?” she asked, finishing his thought.

“Exactly. That’s what I intend to ask the man tomorrow when I talk to him again.” When he turned to her, she recognized the determination in his eyes. “And this time, we’re going to have our conversation in an interview room at the station.”

“Wow. Sometimes you can be a very scary man, Deputy Landry.” Her comment elicited a smile, which is what it had been intended to do. “Are you going to talk to Toby at the station, too?”

“Yes. I’m through playin’ around with these people. Somebody killed both Divia Larson and Grace Vanderhouse on my turf. And
I’m gonna get some straight answers, because I think there’s a whole
lot more going on under the surface here.”

“You think Toby was cooking the books at Third Coast?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, but so far, that’s the impression I’ve gotten from a few folks I’ve interviewed. We’ll see what he has to say about it. I also want to ask him about Grace. She said on Saturday that he’d come looking for her when he found out she was here. She thought it was through Toby that Divia learned of her presence as well. I want to know what his meeting with her was about, what was said.”

“You think both murders are connected, don’t you?” she asked, knowing the answer she was certain to get.

“My gut says yes. I don’t know how exactly
…
yet. But, yes, I think
we’re going to find that they’re tightly linked. And I think it’s the key to solving both cases.”

They sat there on the sofa together for a few moments, both in silent thought, before Elise finally stood up. “It’s late. I should probably get going and let you get some sleep. Sounds like you have a pretty full day tomorrow.”

Before she could walk away, Jackson grabbed her hand and pulled
her down onto his lap. “Or you could stay,” he murmured as his lips claimed hers in a steamy kiss.