Sharpshooter (8 page)

“No, but he was certainly a good deal more affectionate with her than he ever was with Larissa. I never saw him take Larissa Richards in his arms the way he would this woman. Frankly, I worried about him. There was a sadness to it. I can’t explain, but you could see it. Forbidden love, if you ask me.”

Sunny thanked him and walked back out toward the truck. Nesto followed. When they were crossing the front yard, a white Toyota truck with the Beroni logo stenciled on the side roared
past, sending up a cloud of dust behind it. The driver raised a hand in an expressionless salute as he sped by, which Nesto halfheartedly returned.

“Was that Gabe?” she asked.

Nesto nodded and walked back toward the garden.

Bothe State Park was full of rattlers
this time of year and dusk was their favorite time of day to stretch out across the trail, looking for warmth. Even so, Sunny was going for a hike. She pulled off and parked the truck, skipping the day-use fee since the ranger was nowhere to be seen. She needed to think, and this was a good place to do it. She started down the trail toward the redwoods, listening to the buzz and tick of evening insects. Up ahead a good-sized hawk cruised low, hunting the same field mice that kept the rattlesnakes in business.

She was no closer to figuring out who stole Wade’s rifle, let alone who murdered Jack Beroni, but she was sure that Nesto was lying about something—either where he was on the night of the murder or where Gabe was or maybe both. For his part, Silvano Cruz had been entirely too forthright about his suspicions to be taken at face value. Why would he want to send Sunny chasing after Nesto and Gabe Campaglia? Did he genuinely suspect them? Or did he have some other reason to imply that the Campaglias may have been involved?

A sliding movement caught Sunny’s eye and she jumped back, sucking in her breath. A couple of feet ahead, a gopher snake cruised across the trail, vanishing back into the dry weeds
on the other side without a sound. He’d better watch out for that hawk. Several times while out hiking or driving she had seen a hawk dive and come up with the long, curving J of a snake hanging from its talons. It was the kind of sight, dramatic and unusual and a little scary, that would keep popping back into her head for months. Another image was a swarming nest of ladybugs she’d seen one misty fall day deep in the woods by the coast. They’d bubbled up and overflowed from a rotten stump by the millions, like lava spilling onto the forest floor of damp leaves.

Sunny took in a slow, deep breath, savoring the layers of weedy sweetness coming off the sunbaked earth. As she walked, she went over the list of people she and Wade had put together at the jail. It was not as long a list as she had hoped. In fact, she could only hope they had overlooked the guilty party, because it read like the guest list for a get-together of their dearest friends. Dozens of people had helped out with harvest and crush at Skord Mountain over the years, but the vast majority were acquaintances who never even set foot in the winery. Friends of friends, visiting enology and viticulture students, wine aficionados, and chefs and sommeliers with a taste for the basics would show up at three or four in the morning for duty. It was a grueling drill. They’d take a wooden crate, trudge out into the vineyard, fill the crate with grapes, lug it back to the lean-to where the crusher-destemmer was set up, grab another empty crate, and head back into the vineyard. It was exhausting, back-wrenching work, and they generally staggered home and collapsed after a late lunch, often with a bottle of Skord Mountain Zin riding shotgun.

But none of those people would have seen the Hornet or played Assault Golf. In fact, Wade almost always played alone.
It was an eccentric loner’s ritual in defiant celebration of freedom, or at least that was Sunny’s theory. Freedom was the most obvious benefit of a solitary rural life. He might suffer loneliness at times, but at least he could do whatever he wanted, when he wanted. She suspected that Ellie may have disapproved of Wade’s target practice. What better demonstration and enjoyment of his complete personal freedom than a round of Assault Golf before bed? The half-dozen times Sunny had joined him, she’d felt an exhilarating power over the night. Monty Lenstrom had shot with them several times as well, and a friend of Wade’s, a vintner named Josh Freelander, had played a couple of times. Wade couldn’t think of any other person who had shot his gun. Napa Valley’s residents were divided into those who thought shooting for sport was an acceptable way to spend a Saturday afternoon and those who considered it the vice of ruffians. Like smoking and drinking French wine, it was best left unmentioned, unless the company were known initiates.

There had been, nevertheless, one notably excessive dinner party that ended with a game of after-hours Assault Golf. Half of the group had stayed at the house talking and drinking wine while Wade, Sunny, and four others had bundled up and walked down to the winery, ostensibly to work off the weight of dinner. They’d stood by while Wade reached behind the fermentation tank for the gun. The group was made up exclusively of close friends and included Rivka, Monty, Charlie Rhodes, and Josh Freelander. Josh had since moved to Washington State to manage a new winery.

Those who stayed behind might have stood on the deck and seen Wade and the others return from the winery with the gun, and in theory could have searched the structure until they found
it. The group at the house was made up of Monty’s girlfriend, Annabelle; Josh’s wife, Susan; Claire and Ben Baker; Sandy Furrier, a professor of linguistics at Sonoma State and Wade’s nearest neighbor other than the Beronis; and Soren, who waited tables at Wildside three days a week. Sunny ran through the list in her head several times, picturing each face and thinking of what Charlie had said, that there was always “behind-theback stuff” you didn’t know about a person. What didn’t she know about Charlie? Could there be anything significant that she didn’t already know about dear Rivka or Monty? And for that matter, what about Wade? Clearly, someone she knew well and trusted implicitly was not what they seemed. They were dangerous.

The setting sun warmed her arms and she glanced around at the trees covering the hillsides. Their steady acceptance of the elements, their permanence and predictability, acted on Sunny’s frazzled nerves like a balm. Up ahead, the trail dipped into a shady grove of coast redwoods made shadier by the waning sun. This, plus the empty spot in her belly where a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and a mushroom crepe ought to have been, caused her to turn back toward the car. Making her way up the hill, she wondered again what it was that Nesto Campaglia was trying to hide. And what, if anything, was going on between the Beronis and the Campaglias. She thought of Gabe Campaglia’s expressionless face, the stony straight-ahead look as he drove by, his father’s halfhearted wave. Whatever it was that Nesto was trying to hide, Gabe would know what it was, and he might be surly enough not to bother indulging his father’s cover-up. She decided she would go see him first thing in the morning.

It was dark by the time Sunny got home. She opened a bottle of Vieux Télégraphe and let its contents chug into a wide-bellied glass while the phone messages played. Harry, Wade’s lawyer, called to say that they had an appointment to see the judge on Monday morning. Assuming the judge set a reasonable bail, he’d have Wade out of there by noon. That was the good news. Rivka phoned to say that most of the fruit on Skord Mountain had hit 20 degrees Brix, which was dangerously close to a full load of sugar. They would need to harvest Monday or Tuesday unless the weather cooled.

She sautéed a handful of mushrooms in butter, a splash of cream, and a hit of white wine, then whipped up a minibatch of crepe batter and shredded some Jarlsberg. The problem with sleeping through half the day, aside from sleeping away half the day, was that she wouldn’t be ready to go to bed until midnight. It was just as well, since she still needed to go over to Wade’s place to check on a few things. It could wait until the morning, except there were already too many things to be done tomorrow. She took her dinner to the table. The day’s mail held nothing of particular interest, so she unfolded the Saturday
Napa Register
while she ate. The headline on the top of the front page shouted,

JACK BERONI, 36, SHOT DEAD, and featured a photograph of the

victim in his signature tuxedo, looking undeniably dashing in a menacing, swarthy sort of way. The article outlined the facts of the murder but offered nothing she hadn’t already heard.

By seven-thirty Sunny had finished eating and put the dishes in the sink. She pulled on a sweater, grabbed her jacket, and headed out the door before she could think of a reason not to go. Outside, a three-quarter harvest moon had come up big and white and bright as a lantern, with Venus sparkling just below it. It was a remarkable night. With that moon shining down, it
wasn’t dark out so much as a strange kind of daylight stripped of color, a black-and-white world. Sunny looked up, feeling the strong light bathe her face. On the ground, her shadow was as dark as in the daytime.

The drive to Wade’s didn’t take long on the empty roads. Fifty yards from his house she turned off the headlights, cut the engine, and coasted up next to Wade’s old beige Volvo hatchback. Other than the truck’s engine ticking, it was completely silent. Normally, when Wade was home, he turned on the light outside above the door. Now the house stood dark against the night landscape. She grabbed a flashlight from behind the seat of the truck and went over to check the Volvo first, though she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for. Something out of the ordinary. Something so close that Wade wouldn’t see it. She clicked the flashlight on, then off again. She could see more easily by moonlight. The gun wasn’t in the car, assuming it wasn’t bolted to the underside of the chassis. There were gum wrappers and change in the ashtray, and the usual maps and dried up pens in the glove compartment. She flipped down the driver’s-side visor. Nothing.

On the deck, she tipped the potted rosemary up, hoping that Rivka had remembered to put the key back, and was relieved to find it was there. A dense thud at her side announced that Farber had given up his lonely vigil on the roof. He threw himself against her legs and made a hiccup noise that sounded like he said, “Ike!”

Sunny took care of her chores quickly: She fed the cat, deposited the mail on the kitchen table, listened to the phone messages. There was one message from Ellie, saying she’d heard what had happened and asking if she could do anything to help. Another was from a customer requesting to be added
to the Skord Mountain mailing list, an entity that Sunny happened to know existed only on Wade’s list of things he would like to do if he were the sort of person who had time to do that kind of thing. Other permanent items on Wade’s to-do list were
learn to speak Spanish, build seaworthy canoe,
and
live in Burgundy for one year (become fluent in French, study cooperage).

She examined the notepad beside the phone, looked in the refrigerator, and used barbecue tongs to prod the contents of the trash cans in the kitchen, office, and bathroom. Stinky sardine tins, orange peels, and coffee grounds in the kitchen, junk mail in the office, tissue in the bathroom. If there was any doubt that her activities had crossed the line from helpful inquiry to invasive search, they were put to rest when she pulled back the sheets and groped under them, expecting to find…what? Something, anything, to show that his life had taken a turn, or else that it hadn’t and all was perfectly well, perfectly normal. Wade subscribed to three magazines: the
Zinfandel Growers Association Monthly, National Geographic,
and
Wooden Boat.
Well-thumbed issues of each were layered on his nightstand. She checked the pockets of the dirty jeans in the hamper and the jackets hanging on hooks in the hallway.

In the office, she sat at his desk. She examined the papers scattered over it and opened the drawers, then started his computer. At the password prompt she tried
skordwine
without success, then
skordmountain, ellie, farber, zinlover, wadelicious,
and finally
skordelicious. Skordelicious
hit the jackpot and the system started to boot. When it was up, she opened and began to peruse his e-mail, a breach of trust even in their profoundly permissive friendship, even given the circumstances. He was engaged in a witty flirtation with a Parisienne who had visited
in the spring with her husband, a cookbook editor with one of France’s better publishing houses. He’d also been corresponding with Josh Freelander, but their exchanges consisted of the usual forwarded jokes and shoptalk.

Sunny opened his Web browser and perused the history folders. He’d been to various farm supply sites, CNN.com, Land’s End, Amazon, the home page for Zinfandel Advocates and Producers, and a few travel sites where he’d searched for flights to Costa Rica and looked at a bargain trip to Hawaii and a golf vacation in Sedona. His computer files were equally innocuous. In fact, she couldn’t find anything anywhere in the house to indicate anything other than a modest life lived as usual. There was nothing to hint at a demented secret loathing of Jack Beroni, a grand plot against his wealthy neighbors, or the sort of conflict that could produce an enemy willing to frame him for murder. There was nothing suggesting that Wade led a double life or had hidden blood lust, dementia, paranoia, or criminal ties.

She dropped Farber outside, locked up the house, and stopped in at the workshop for Rivka’s notes on the afternoon Brix readings. Farber chugged along after her, and she stopped to scratch his fur. What would Wade say if he knew what she had just spent the last forty-five minutes doing? He might tell himself she was trying to help him, but he would know somewhere down deep, just as she did, that she’d needed to confirm in her own mind that he was innocent.

On her way back from the workshop, she sat on the stairs to the deck, taking Farber onto her lap for a good scruffing. The night was remarkably bright and peaceful. It would have been even brighter on Thursday, when the moon was nearly full. If it had been a night this wondrous, wouldn’t she have noticed? Maybe not. She’d driven to Wade’s in the daylight, and on the drive home the rising moon would have been behind her.

She tried to figure how difficult it would have been for someone to take Wade’s gun from the winery and walk to the base of Beroni Vineyards. Could it be done without being seen? That would mean without using a flashlight, but a flashlight wouldn’t have been necessary on a night like this.

Sunny disrupted Farber’s kneading and purring and put him aside. He stared at her with an appalled look of indignation. She walked out past the truck. The winery stood gray and solemn at the bottom of the hill, clearly visible, the woods crowding up behind it. As far as she could tell, a person could reach Beroni Vineyards by hiking through the forest to the east of Skord’s vineyard, heading northeast up over the ridge, then continuing on over the next rise. The bottom of that furthest hill would most likely run into the southwestern edge of the Beroni estate, facing the artificial lake. From there, the gazebo ought to be in plain view. She looked at her watch. Ten minutes past nine.