Peril in Paperback (27 page)

“Who doesn’t?”

He smiled. “Good point.”

I maneuvered myself around until my feet were dangling off the side, then slid down onto the floor. Gabriel followed me and we stood side by side and looked around some more.

“That was completely weird,” I said, still a little shaky.

“Are you hurt?”

“No,” I said after mentally surveying myself again. “It’s just a strange feeling, suddenly dropping through space and landing on a big balloon—that’s all. A first, for sure.”

“Not a bad thing.”

Since I’d survived and I had company, I was willing to go along with that. “I guess not.”

The pillow’s surface was at least eight feet across and it was almost three feet high. Plenty of room to catch someone plunging down the chute. I made my way around it and found a hose nozzle sealed in the plastic shell. It snaked across the floor to a small box with a plunger. I recognized it as a pump. A cord from the pump led to an electrical outlet in the wall. A timer was plugged in to the adjacent outlet.

“So they keep the landing pillow pumped up on a regular basis. That’s very good.”

“And Ray comes down here and checks it every few days.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” God forbid if the pillow sprang a leak and collapsed. I couldn’t imagine the damage a person would suffer when she came hurtling out of the chute with nowhere to land but the cold stone floor.

“Here’s the rest of Fowler’s legal document,” Gabriel said, holding up the folded, wrinkled pages.

“I’m sure he’ll be happy you found it.”

“He’s never been happy in his life.”

“True.” I took one last look around and that’s when I noticed a dark smear on the blue surface of the pillow.

“Is that blood?” I shivered and sucked in big gobs of air as I took many baby steps backward. As I’d mentioned before, visible blood marks and I didn’t mix well.

“Easy, babe.” He examined the bloodstains up close. “Looks caked on. Must be Fowler’s. He had a gash on the side of his head that probably bled here.”

“Yeah, I saw it.” My stomach rolled again and I fought the reaction. “Did he say how he hit his head? The fall onto the chute was painless. No sharp edges anywhere. And this balloon pillow couldn’t have hurt him.”

“He was whining that someone attacked him.” Frowning, Gabriel added, “Someone could’ve hit him over the head upstairs, then pushed him down the chute.”

And who could blame him?
I thought, then chastised myself. Stephen Fowler, for all his foulness, didn’t deserve any of this. “Maybe he was attacked once he got down here.”

I worked out both scenarios in my head and neither made a lot of sense. “I don’t suppose you noticed any blood on the chute.”

“It was a pretty quick trip,” he drawled, then turned serious. “My guess is that he was attacked in the upstairs hall, then pushed down the chute. When he woke up several
hours later, it was dark. He was disoriented and couldn’t find his way back upstairs until this morning.”

“That makes the most sense, for what it’s worth.” And since Stephen wasn’t talking, for whatever reason, all we had to go on was our guesswork. But it still didn’t make me feel much better. “How do we get out of here?”

Gabriel turned and pointed. “That door over there leads to Grace’s wine cellar.”

“Really?” I raised my eyebrows. Coming from the Sonoma wine country, those were magic words. And in my own defense, let me just say that after falling through a trapdoor and sliding down into a dungeon, anyone would have wanted a glass of wine. “Let’s check it out.”

I found a book in the wine cellar.

The underground room was even more cavelike than the bouncy-bounce room had been. The walls here were carved out of the bedrock stone beneath the house, too. But the ceiling was even lower, adding to the dark, cold feel of the long, narrow room. Gabriel found the light switch and turned it on, revealing a stone floor and row after row of wooden wine bins, all filled with dusty bottles of red wine.

Having grown up surrounded by vineyards, with parents who co-owned a winery and who had instilled in each of their children an appreciation of fine wines, I was always excited by the prospect of exploring a wine cellar. It felt like I was going on a treasure hunt. I never knew what gems I might unearth.

“Let’s see what we have,” I said, and pulled a bottle from one of the dusty slots. “Holy cow. I haven’t seen a Kosta Browne pinot in over a year.”

“Bring it upstairs,” Gabriel advised as he scanned another row of bins. “We’ll drink it at dinner.”

“I will.” I pushed back on the trickle of guilt I felt over raiding Grace’s wine cellar. After all, everyone at the party would be partaking of our bounty. Plus Grace had at least two cases of Kosta Browne down here. You
couldn’t find that wine anywhere. My father would be giggling and dancing in the street.

“I think we should drink one of these.”

Gabriel looked up. “Take it with us.”

“Okay.” I pulled one bottle out and held it close. Then I scanned more bins and pulled out several more bottles, not to take but merely to identify the wineries. They were all excellent wines. “She’s got great taste in wine.”

“Yeah, she does.”

I was almost finished with my hunt when something odd caught my attention. “No way.” I reached inside one of the slots and pulled out a book. A
book
? Had someone actually stashed a book in a wine bin?

“This is getting ridiculous.” I held up the book for Gabriel to see. “Who would be reading a book in a cold, dank wine cellar?”

“A book lover?”

“Very funny,” I said, scowling as I studied the small book, a nicely bound volume of poetry called
The Open Road
. “If it had been a real book lover, he wouldn’t have shoved it in a wine bin and left it to mold. He’s lucky it’s not covered in parasites.”

“Babe, you’re giving me the creeps.”

“Really? That may be another first.” I stuck the book in my pocket to examine more closely in the brighter light of the library.

A minute later, Gabriel held up two more bottles of wine. “I just discovered two Jordan cabs I’m taking upstairs. Now let’s get out of here.”

“I’m with you.”

An hour later, I sat at the library reading table, flipping through my portfolio of leather and cloth I’d brought with me for making or repairing book bindings. While searching the wine cellar earlier, I had come up with a brilliant idea for another birthday gift for Grace. I had brought her a set of bookends that I knew she would like. They were shaped like large brass pinecones, so
apropos when you lived on the edge of a forest, I had thought. But the sad fact was, bookends would get lost in this giant house of books. So now I had an even better idea. I was going to construct a book box for her manuscript.

I cleared one end of the reading table and laid out my tools.

“What are you doing?”

I looked up and saw Nathan standing a foot behind me. I explained my plan and he decided to watch what I was doing.

“This’ll take a while,” I cautioned. “If you feel like dozing off, I won’t be insulted if you leave.”

“Fair enough, but I doubt I will.” He pulled a chair closer. “It’s always good to learn a new skill. Something to impress the girls back home.”

I laughed. He was good-looking enough that all he had to do was walk into a room and he would impress plenty of girls. But I didn’t say so, for fear he would think I was making a move on him.

I found a beautiful pale Japanese rice cloth with fragile cherry blossom limbs dotted with red flowers and buds. I measured it out and was happy I had enough material for what I had in mind.

“The steps for making this box are similar to making a book cover. Except that once you’ve covered the boards and spine as you would a book, you make two three-walled boxes and paste them onto each cover. One side is slightly smaller than the other, so they fit inside one another, forming the box. So when you close the book, the two boxes envelope the manuscript completely.”

I simulated the box closing with my hands.

“Makes sense,” he said. “I’m just missing the artistic ability to carry it off.”

“Well, watch what I do and maybe you’ll get the hang of it.”

I showed him how to measure the size and shape of
each piece, and then I cut them all from the heavy pieces of board I always brought with me. After everything was cut, I laid the pieces out in place on the table.

“The tricky part is in cutting the cloth to fit the walls. When you’re making a flat book it’s a lot more straightforward. But because we’re constructing walls for this box there are lots of angles and edges. The cloth has to bend around the curves and the measurements have to be precise.”

I continued to work, stopping occasionally to explain a particularly intricate step, such as creating the matching dust strip that was fitted over the spine. We used the same glass-topped table to press each side of the box, but we didn’t have weights for the dust strip, so Nathan ran to the kitchen and brought back a heavy iron trivet to use. It worked just fine.

After two hours, the box was finished. I slipped the manuscript inside and folded the two sides together. And felt complete satisfaction at hearing the whisper of cloth against cloth.

“Fantastic,” Nathan said.

“Thanks. I’m kind of thrilled that it worked out.” Then I looked around at the mess I’d made and sighed. “And I just realized I’m exhausted.”

“You probably have time to take a nap before dinner.”

“I might do that,” I admitted, and began the task of cleaning off the table and packing up my tools.

Dinner that night was a low-key affair. Stephen Fowler had insisted on dining alone in his room—until Gabriel suggested he would be safer if he was with the rest of us.

Even though it was probably true, I kind of wished Gabriel had let him go. Fowler’s presence put even more of a damper on the evening than usual. Whatever frivolity we might have been tempted to enjoy on the occasion of Grace’s birthday eve was effectively snuffed out by the obnoxious lawyer’s gripes and groans.

They were accompanied by much eye rolling from the rest of us.

Fowler’s snorts were bad enough, but we were also being treated to even more of Madge’s unsubtle sniffs of disapproval this evening. I finally turned to Nathan for some work-related yet civilized dinner conversation. “If you’re available, maybe you could show me that catalog program tomorrow.”

He gritted his teeth in a grimace, but switched to a smile so fast, I thought I’d imagined it.

“Sure thing,” he said, but that halfhearted attempt at a smile didn’t fool me. He wasn’t happy. Before I could ask him what was wrong, he turned his back on me to speak with Grace.

He wouldn’t make eye contact with me after that. I tried not to take it personally as I twirled a few delicate strands of homemade fettuccine onto my fork and savored the mix of cream, butter, and pungent Parmesan cheese. Spectacular pasta, as usual, and the Kosta Browne pinot noir I’d found in the wine cellar was an exquisite pairing.

Fantastic food, wonderful wine. A darling new baby in our midst. Who could be unhappy when we had all that to celebrate and enjoy?

So why was Nathan so irritable? Was his computer still on the fritz? Maybe, but I was pretty sure his chilly response to me had nothing to do with his computer. He’d made it more than clear that he didn’t want to talk to me. Was it something I’d said? Or was I just being overly sensitive?

Fowler’s presence had cast a dark cloud over the table, but this change in Nathan wasn’t related to Fowler.

And just like that, I was suspicious again. Was Nathan not speaking to me because of what Vinnie and Suzie had said about my detecting skills last night? Maybe that’s why he’d decided to stay and watch me build that book box. Maybe he’d been keeping an eye on me. Was
he worried? Or fearful of my tendency toward rooting out bad guys and bringing them to justice?

Even if Nathan was afraid or guilt ridden, I was tired of being suspicious of everyone. Tired and fed up. Why couldn’t I just relax and enjoy life? Why was suspicion my semipermanent state these days?

Well, there
had
been a murder, I reminded myself, along with any number of suspicious acts since then. Who
wouldn’t
be suspicious?

Fine. I couldn’t snap my fingers and make my suspicions go away, so I decided to fiercely embrace them. All through the salad course, I pondered what might be wrong with Nathan. What had changed? Why was he avoiding me? Did he have something to hide? Like, say, a cassava root mixed in with his gym shorts?

For most of the meal, I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He was distracted tonight, overly friendly one minute, moody the next. When Marko asked him about a football game airing that weekend, Nathan scowled and told him football wasn’t everything. Huh? The world’s biggest football fan was turning down an invitation to watch the game? Was he angry at Marko, too?

Strangely enough, it comforted me to know that it wasn’t just me he was angry with. The only person he was genuinely happy to talk to was Merrilee. But that didn’t mean anything. Everyone was friendly with Merrilee. Except for Sybil. And Madge, of course. It went without saying that Madge didn’t like anyone, but Merrilee seemed to garner a large portion of her wrath. Probably because she was so nice. Or maybe it was because she was “the help.”

Now, Madge was a person who deserved my suspicion. She hated everyone and everything. She criticized the staff, whined about the weather, even complained about the pasta. The pasta! Oh, it didn’t taste
bad
, she insisted. There was just too damn much of it.

The fact that she’d asked for second helpings two
nights in a row wasn’t a detail anyone was willing to mention.

She was bad tempered, condescending, and not very bright. A deadly trifecta. Sadly, though, I couldn’t see her experimenting with a cassava root. I wasn’t even sure she’d know how to pronounce it.

It made me wonder all over again just what Harrison saw in her. But then, the reasons why couples got together and stayed together were a mystery for the ages.

That thought made me glance at Peter and Sybil Brinker. In a way, Sybil was almost worse than Madge. Her passive-aggressive reaction to events was creepy. She tried to come across as pleasant, but she was just plain icky. There was no other word I could come up with. At least not after drinking two glasses of wine.