Seven Sisters (15 page)

Still looking skeptical, he left for work.

Frustrated, I picked up his breakfast plate, throwing a bagel piece to Scout, then stacking the dishes in the dishwasher. That was enough chores for me today. I hadn’t been out to the ranch for a couple of weeks so I pulled on jeans and a pink cotton tank top, since the news said it would be in the upper eighties, and called for Scout.

We dropped by the folk art museum first to check on things. Saturday was usually a big day for both tourists and the artists. Many of our co-op artists worked full-time at other jobs during the week and tried to catch up on their inventory over the weekend. True to form, the gravel parking lot was almost full, and I was forced to park in a space near the empty back field. Out front, D-Daddy, my loyal and very inexpensive assistant, was hosing out two oak half barrels once used to age wine, preparing them for plants. He was a seventy-five-year-old Cajun man who’d spent forty years captaining a fishing boat off the coast of Louisiana and was the most dependable assistant I’d ever hired. His daughter, Evangeline, was a member of our co-op.

“I been thinkin’ maybe some nice red geraniums,” he said, turning one barrel over to drain. “Maybe some impatiens. What do you say, boss lady?” He gifted me with one of his dazzling smiles. With a thick head of white hair he babied with every sort of potion you could imagine, a lean, fit body from years of hauling up fishnets, and the stamina to dance all night, he was, according to Dove, quite in demand down at the Senior Citizen Friday Night Dance Socials.

“Whatever you want, D-Daddy. I know who the
real
boss is around here.”

“The real boss is the boss who bosses the boss.”

“Ha, he doesn’t boss me. Only thinks he does.”

“I was talking about Dove,” he said with a cackle.

“Okay, you got me there. Are you going to the Zin and Zydeco event at the mission?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,
chèr.
Save me a dance.”

“You can have ’em all, D-Daddy.
El patrón’s
got two left feet.”

Inside, all three pottery wheels were churning away with clay artists waiting, a tan snowstorm of wood dust thickened the air in the woodworking room, and two quilts were set up in the large room, a double and a queen size. The double was a log cabin made with retro western prints from the thirties—little buckaroos lassoing cattle that reminded me of the pajamas I wore as a girl. The queen was another wine quilt—this one was an appliquéd silk and taffeta Dresden plate pattern featuring the signatures of local wine-makers. In the middle of each Dresden plate a cluster of grapes was embroidered. The colors were vibrant reds, greens, yellows, blues and burgundies, salmons and pinks. With a black background, the effect had the stark simplicity of an Amish quilt combined with the richness of a Victorian crazy quilt. I stood over the quilt admiring it, looking for names I recognized. I spotted Etta Brown’s neat, small signature in one circle. Two circles away, next to his father’s was Giles’s bold scrawl.

“Quite a tragedy out at Seven Sisters,” a quilter wearing trifocal glasses commented. “Heard you were there.” The women surrounding the quilt all looked at me expectantly.

“It is a tragedy,” I agreed, then turned and walked down the hall to my office, closing the door behind me. I sat down in my chair, resting my chin in my palm, wondering what was going to happen in the Brown family when one of them was charged with murder.

Though I hated admitting it, it appeared that Detective Hudson was right. One of the Brown family had probably killed Giles. And if that was true, there would be repercussions that would follow Sam and Bliss their whole lives. What a way to start a marriage . . . or a family.

A rap on my door interrupted my philosophical thoughts.

“Benni?” JJ’s voice called from the other side.

I jumped up and opened the door. “Come on in.”

She closed the door behind her and shoved an envelope at me. “Read this.” Her voice was high and agitated.

I opened the crumpled envelope and took out a sheet of thick ivory stationery with the Seven Sisters logo printed on top. It read:

I’ll use it if I have to. Tell Cappy.

“It’s Giles’s handwriting,” she said. “There’s more.”

I looked back inside the envelope and pulled out a sheet of cheap white typing paper. It was a crude crayon gravestone rubbing showing a single lily of the valley.

“Where did you get these?” I asked.

She ducked her head. Her hair lay flat and soft today, a deep red/brown merlot color. Without her spikes, she appeared younger, more vulnerable. Her kohl-lined gray eyes glowed with fear. “It was in Bliss’s suitcase. I admit I was snooping, and she’ll never forgive me if she finds out, but she’s been so upset, and I’ve been worried sick. She won’t talk to me, and so I went to Sam, and he says he feels like she’s holding something back from him, too. I have to put it back before she gets off duty at three, but I had to show it to somebody. I’m so afraid this somehow will make the police think Cappy had a reason to kill Giles.”

I studied the note, then the gravestone rubbing. “Do you have any idea of the significance of these flowers?,” I asked.

“No,” she said, rubbing her eyes, smearing her makeup.

This would not look good for Cappy if the sheriff’s detectives saw it. Bliss’s question about the importance of job versus family made sense now. “Did you show it to Sam?”

She shook her head no.

“Good, don’t. He doesn’t need to be pulled deeper into this.” I chewed on my bottom lip. To be honest, I wish she hadn’t shown it to me.

Tears welled up in her pale eyes. “Oh, Benni, I’m so sorry to drag you into this. It puts you in an awkward position, but I didn’t know where else to turn. I thought about going to my mom, but she and Cappy have such a prickly relationship that I don’t know what this would set off. I swear, everyone in my family hates each other.” She put her face in her hands and started crying softly. I led her to a chair and sat down next to her, rubbing her back like you would comfort a small child.

“It’s okay,” I lied. “We’ll figure something out.”

I went over to my desk and ran both sheets through my fax machine, making myself passable copies, then handed the originals back to her. I stuck my copies in the pocket of my jeans. “But, JJ, the reality is that someone did kill Giles, and sooner or later the sheriff’s department will figure out who.”

She raised her tear-stained face and looked at me with such trust that I felt like crying myself. “What should we do?”

I sat back down beside her. “Let’s take it one step at a time. It appears from Giles’s note that he knew something about your grandmother that he thought he could use to blackmail her. We need to find out what that is.”

She settled back in the office chair, folding her hands in her lap like a child trying to behave. “I know a few things, Benni, but Susa and Moonie left Seven Sisters before Bliss and I were even a year old. We came back for occasional visits, maybe three in my whole childhood, so there’s a lot that’s happened in the family that Bliss and I don’t know about.”

“Tell me what you do know.”

“Great-Aunt Cappy and Great-Aunt Etta have been fighting over the trust fund since Etta started the winery. Cappy didn’t mind it when Etta’s wine was a hobby. She even seemed proud of Etta’s blue ribbons, but when Etta started wanting money for the winery and it came at the cost of Cappy’s horses, there were fireworks.”

“When did Giles come into the picture?”

“Arcadia met Giles at some wine dinner up in Napa Valley. It was apparently love at first sight for my cousin, and they got married three months later at a huge affair at his father’s estate. About a year or so later I started hearing through Susa’s conversations with Cappy that Giles was making noise about merging the wineries.”

“How did Etta feel about that?”

“I think she was all right with it. All Etta wants is to be left alone to make her wine. It’s more than a job for her. It’s like a calling or something. She’s obsessed with making the perfect bottle of wine.”

“Sort of like producing a champion race horse,” I commented, thinking how much alike the two sisters were. “So where does your great-aunt Willow fit into this?”

“Ever since Arcadia’s parents died when she was nine, Great-Aunt Willow has tried to compensate by treating Arcadia like a little princess. Whatever Arcadia wants is whatever Willow wants, providing it doesn’t hurt her image in San Celina society.”

“So Arcadia marrying into a Napa Valley wine dynasty was definitely something that made Willow happy. That might eliminate her as a suspect. Killing Giles would be like killing the proverbial goose with the golden egg. Besides, I honestly can’t imagine Willow shooting someone.”

“That’s how much you
don’t
know about the Brown women,” JJ said grimly. “All of them were taught to use guns early in their lives by my great-grandfather. That’s one of the reasons my mother moved away so young, I think. She’s always hated guns and anything to do with hunting. Willow and Etta are just as capable of shooting someone as Cappy, believe me.”

I looked at her in surprise, struck dumb for a moment. Then I asked, “What about Chase? Did he and Giles get along?”

“They liked to drink together. And they were hunting buddies. I never saw them argue, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“How did Chase feel about this merger with Giles’s family’s winery?”

“I think that Uncle Chase would be fine as long as no one cut off his allowance.” She said the words without rancor or bitterness, just stating a fact. Then she thought for a moment. “Cappy was counting on him to vote her way at the next family meeting. From what Susa said, the executor of the trust fund said that someone was going to have to start cutting back, that the trust can’t afford to support two unprofitable businesses.”

“So the winery isn’t doing well either?”

“It’s up and down, I guess. They had a bad year a couple of years ago, lost sixty percent of their grapes to an early frost. It’s a business that’s always on the edge.”

“Like horsebreeding and racing.”

She nodded, her hands still grasped tightly in her lap. Her skin was pale under its bright makeup. A sheen of tears brightened her eyes.

I thought for a moment. “Okay, what about Arcadia? How were things between her and Giles?”

“They had their fights from what Bliss told me. He wasn’t exactly faithful.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“From what I hear, he wasn’t particular. Bliss once said that he and Chase hunted more than just wild boar together, but she never went into detail. The only thing I ever heard about was she caught him a few months back with one of the tasting room girls. Grandma Cappy and my aunts put a stop to that, though I heard they didn’t fire the girl. That surprised me, actually. I guess Giles had more power in the family than I realized ’cause Arcadia is Willow’s little darling. Bliss said Cappy wouldn’t let them fire her. I have no idea what
that
was about.”

“So, Arcadia certainly had a motive and as much opportunity as anyone at the party. Can she shoot? Do you think she’d have the nerve to do it?”

“I have no idea. It seems like I remember Susa saying Arcadia’s father fit into the Brown family perfectly, that he was a gun nut like everyone else in the family. But she was nine when he died, so I don’t know if he ever taught her to shoot.”

“Just out of curiosity, what’s the story on the men in this family?”

She held out a hand and started counting them off on her blue-tipped fingernails. “My dad’s up north. Cappy’s husband, Stephen . . . ”

“You mean your grandfather.”

“Right. I never met him, so he’s only a name to me. Anyway, he ran off to Taos in the late fifties to be a painter. My mom was just a little girl. He died in the sixties, I think. Aunt Willow’s husband . . . ”

“Arcadia’s grandfather.”

“Right. He was a rodeo rider. The story is he was gored to death by a bull in Reno, but the truth is he was shot by a jealous husband in Barstow.”

“Prim and proper Willow Brown was married to a rodeo rider?” I couldn’t help laughing at that incongruous picture.

JJ joined my laughter. “I guess we all have our weak moments, and he was Great-Aunt Willow’s. Cappy apparently teased her unmercifully about it until Willow flew to Taos and seduced my grandfather and made sure Cappy heard all the details. There’s a family rumor that there’s a nude painting of Willow painted by my grandfather somewhere, but I’ve never seen it.”

“So there’s no love lost between Cappy and Willow.”

“Not much, though they mostly stay out of each other’s lives. Aunt Etta is the peacemaker, but Giles moving in on her territory caused some friction between her and Willow at times. He must have been really obnoxious about the merger, because Etta’s not someone who gets mad easily. But nothing’s ever meant as much to her as the winery.”

I looked into her eyes. “How much of this did you tell the sheriff’s detectives?”

She gazed squarely back at me, unflinching. “Why, none of it. It’s personal. I couldn’t tell family problems to one of those detectives. Cappy and the rest would kill me.” She swallowed hard, her face blanching when she realized the double entendre in her words.

I was beginning to see just how difficult investigating a crime within a family could be. As Detective Hudson suspected, there was much more to this situation than met the eye, and this family was expert at covering up and making things look good on the surface.

“You realize I have to tell Gabe what you told me, and he’ll probably tell Detective Hudson. I can’t hide anything from my husband.”

She scrubbed at her eyes, causing her mascara to smear. “I wouldn’t expect you to. I just feel better that someone knows. But can you at least not tell them where you heard it? I don’t think I could face talking to that detective about all this stuff.”

I contemplated her for a moment, wanting to reach over and stroke her nervous hands quiet. “I’ll do my best. That’s all I can promise.”

She nodded and stood up to leave. “Thanks.”

On the drive out to the ranch, I tried to sort out all the information she’d given me. I’d heard the saying that the rich were different, and there was no doubt that the Seven Sisters clan had their problems involving money, but I also knew that families had squabbled and killed over two hundred dollars just as much as twenty million. The amount of money didn’t seem to matter; the power struggle was the same, and that was formed when the family members were children, scripts written and parts assigned often before people were even born.