The Corpse With the Golden Nose (8 page)

“And I'm even more certain that it was murder,” I replied, cockily puffing toward Bud.

“
Why?
” he cried. “What are you hearing or seeing that I'm not?”

“Who stood to gain by her death, Bud? Ask yourself that. Not Ellen, she's lost control of the family business. But this Raj character does. In Ellen's notes, he's almost the only one about whom she didn't write a bad word. I reckon he's trying to worm his way into her affections, and that he's succeeding. It sounds like he's as good as running things now—it's all about ‘his vision.' I don't get the impression Ellen would argue against him if he said black was white. It's a pretty good motive, Bud, you have to admit. He sounds dodgy to me.”

Bud was tapping his foot. “Dodgy, eh? Is that another of your ‘technical terms?'” he sighed. “Finished that thing yet?” he asked crossly.

“Hey, you're the one who used my ‘filthy habit' to give us a chance to vent about Ellen. Don't you go venting at me instead!”

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly.

“Me too,” I said, puffing hard.

Ellen emerged from the house and made her way to the waiting taxi. I ground the remains of my tiny cigarette into the sparklingly-clean ashtray that stood on the plastic table tucked beneath the roof of the porch.

“Time to go?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“Time to go,” replied Bud. “You'd better be sharp tonight, Cait. You know how much I value your skills, and we'll need them all. You can read people against the notes that Ellen has given us and you can use your wonderful photographic memory to conjure up the events of the evening for us to discuss at leisure afterwards.
And
you can make me proud to be the man who's bringing the best looking woman in the world to the party.” He smiled.

“Thanks, Bud. That's kind of you.”

“No, it's not ‘kind' of me, I really mean it,” he replied abruptly.

“Oh, but my hair . . .”

“Oh, for goodness sake, shut up about your damned hair. It looks great! Just learn to accept a compliment, Cait.”

“I can't help it. I haven't had a lot of experience at receiving them.”

“Well, get used to it, or I'll stop giving them to you.”

I was beaten, and knew it. I sighed.

“Okay. Thanks for the hair comment. Let's just hope it stays where I've put it,” I sulked.

Bud lost it. “Oh, good grief,” he tutted and began to walk away.

“Don't go, Bud. I'll be good.” I added, “Let's try and have a good time, even though we're sort of working. I
am
looking forward to the food, after all. Is that bad of me?”

Bud didn't answer. Instead, he opened the door of the taxi, I wriggled my way inside, he followed, and we all set off for what was to turn out to be a very eventful evening. And
not
in a good way.

THE “COCKTAILS AND CANAPÉS” LAUNCH
event for the Moveable Feast wasn't quite what I'd expected. For some reason, I'd imagined an elegantly attired gathering bubbling along wittily, in something akin to the great hall of an historic English manor house. What I got was a small, almost rag-tag group of people rattling around under the beautiful but yawning wood-beamed glass atrium of a very modern building in downtown Kelowna. To be fair, the organizers had installed drapes to contain about half the room, and had provided dim lighting instead of overhead fluorescent, but our voices floated up to the glass that arced above us, then bounced back. Most people tried to talk in hushed tones, as though in a cathedral.

I declined a cocktail in favor of a glass of fruity gamay noir, one of Ellen's, of course, which had a good body, but wouldn't be too heavy to drink for an entire evening. And the canapés were exquisite: tiny little martini glasses filled with cold, savory soups—the strawberry and basil was particularly wonderful; tender local meats, marinated in tongue-tingling herbs or rubbed with nose-tickling spices, presented on pretty bamboo skewers; little pastry packages full of flavor that burst in my mouth with cheesy, fishy, or mushroomy delights. Oh, it was wonderful. I was sorry that I had to give my attention to the folks Ellen was keen to introduce to Bud and me.

When I felt I'd taken the edge off my appetite a little, and had managed to grab a second glass of wine, Sammy Soul was high on the list of people I wanted to meet, but for personal reasons rather than murderous ones. He'd supplied parts of the soundtrack to my teen years with the string of hits from his San Francisco-sound band, Soul Rockers. His wailing guitar riffs had sounded wonderfully raw and dangerous to a young girl listening to her transistor radio under the sheets long after bedtime, in 1970s Swansea. I'd have recognized him even without Ellen's notes, because he hadn't changed a bit—except now he was in his seventies, was completely bald, had filled out somewhat, and was more ruddy in his complexion. Otherwise, it seemed that Sammy Soul had decided to ignore the ageing process and was still dressed in tight snakeskin jeans, with a magenta silk shirt—straining at its buttons—and more earrings than you would think is possible for the human ear to carry. The earring thing was helped by the fact that, as with most older men, his lobes had lengthened. It seemed he'd taken this as a sign to add even more gold hoops. My heart sank when I saw him: my youthful idol, now a pastiche of himself.

After Ellen had introduced us, I reached out to shake his hand. When he replied with a peace sign and drawled “Yeah, man,” in a slightly nasal voice, higher-pitched than I'd imagined, my heart sank even further. And then, when he slapped Bud on the arm and added, “Ex-cop. Wow, man. Lost your wife? Downer,” I could have groaned out loud. Could this sad, pathetic figure, clinging to past glories, have wanted to kill Annette Newman? First I'd have to find a motive, and, surprise, surprise, his wife all but handed me one on a plate.

“Hey, meet the missus,” said Sammy Soul as he waved in the general direction of a woman's back. “Hey guys, this is Suzie, my Soul-Mate . . . ha, ha!”

I saw the back of a short, slim but curvaceous, beautifully coiffed long-haired blonde, wearing an immaculately cut, bronzy pantsuit, and leopard-skin Louboutin heels. Elegantly holding a martini glass, her perfectly manicured left hand was bedecked with umpteen carats of bling and sported long, curving nails encrusted with diamanté.

When Suzie Soul turned, what I saw was a shock: the woman was in her sixties—you can always tell because of the neck—and had the cat-like features that scream
bad plastic surgery
. She was caked in layers of carefully applied but woefully obvious makeup, and, as if to add insult to injury, her lips had been plumped to alarming proportions and were the color of dried blood. I tried to hide my shock as she flashed a perfect porcelain smile at me and extended her other equally decorated hand in my direction. As she allowed me to shake her fingertips she was looking at Bud—
or should I say eating him alive with her eyes?
I bristled.

Bud beamed.

“Hi. Always happy to meet friends of Ellen's,” she purred in gravelly tones. “I didn't catch y'rrrr name,” she drawled provocatively, directly at Bud.

“That's 'cos I didn't throw it, Babe,” replied Sammy Soul, laughing too loudly at his own joke. “He's an ex-cop, would you believe, Babe? Doesn't look like any cops
I
know. And, jeez, there've been a few over the years,” he added.

“So pleased to meet you, uh . . . ?” As she waited for Bud to respond with his name, she actually ran her tongue along the edge of her upper teeth.

Bud, ever polite, took her extended hand and said, “Bud. Bud Anderson.” Was he blushing? Good grief, men can be pathetic—and predictable!

“And what brings you to these parts, Bud?” She was tilting her head by now. She'd have been playing with her hair too, if Bud hadn't still been hanging on to her free hand. She was in full-on flirting mode. I gritted my teeth. “Have you come to arrest Sammy for making his
oh-so delicious
cannabis wine?” she added coquettishly. “Oh,
please
don't, Bud. He
is
my husband, you know. And it's
lovely
wine, whatever that bitch Annette might have said about it.”

I was on full alert. So no one ever had a bad word to say about Annette, eh? Well, here was one woman who did. She spat out the word
bitch
with true hatred. And he husband
was
already making cannabis wine? Very interesting.

“No, no,” replied Bud, looking like a deer in headlights. “I'm retired now, you know. Quite retired.”

“His wife got shot, Babe. Shot dead. That's how he met Ellen. They're, like, ‘death buddies' or something.”

I judged that Suzie Soul was more disappointed that Bud had finally relinquished his grasp on her talons than sad that he'd lost his wife. She made a pouty face, then proved me right. “Oh Bud,” she sighed, “I'm
so
sorry. So you're
single
now?”

“No, he's not. He's with me,” I inserted abruptly.

Bud looked surprised.

Sammy Soul smiled and said, “Oh yeah, Babe, he's with her,” as though this thought was occurring to him for the first time.

His wife looked me up and down, slowly and unkindly, tried to curl one of her unnatural lips, and said coolly, “Oh
really
? I wonder
why
 . . .” Then she turned on her nine-hundred-dollar heels and walked away throwing the words “See you boys later—especially
you
, Bud Anderson” in our direction, with a wink, a nod, and a shrug of one shoulder.

I wondered if Bud could see the steam coming out of my ears. His smile suggested he couldn't.

“Hasn't changed a bit in thirty-six years, my Suzie. That's how long we've been together,” said Sammy Soul, smiling like the village idiot. He was clearly besotted. Though how he'd put up with her for that long, I didn't know. He became even more pathetic in my eyes, for letting himself be walked all over by that . . .

“I'm sure she hasn't,” Bud remarked cryptically, which cut across my less than charitable thoughts. He smiled at me when he said it, which helped. “And that's a fantastic marriage to have had, in your business,” he added.

“Sure is,” Sammy replied, still beaming. “Married her when she was in her twenties, just before we had Serendipity, our beautiful, magical girl. But, hey, you know man, she's not just the mother of my child, she's a forgiving woman, and I'm a forgiving man,” observed Sammy, his eyes gazing into the nothingness ahead of him. “Forgiveness is important, right, man? You gotta forgive to be forgiven, you know?
Gotta
forgive. I'd forgive that woman anything . . .”

“And I bet you have, many times,” I said. Aloud.

Bud glared at me. Sammy just nodded. He looked resigned.

“Sure have, man, sure have. Man—I'd even forgive her icing someone, if it was, like, to save my hide, or something.” He seemed to be in his own little world, then it was as though a light came on and he snapped back to our shared reality. “Not that she would, cop-guy, not that she
would
. Ha, ha! Hey, gotta go.
Gotta
see my man Grant over there,” he said, waving at nothing in particular but ambling off in the direction of a short, very thin man wearing a burgundy-colored Nehru jacket.

I wanted to take my chance to have a few private words with Bud, but he was quicker off the mark than me.

“What do you think?” he whispered.

“She should have spent more money on a better plastic surgeon?” I replied somewhat wickedly.

Bud shoved me and looked shocked, “Oh stop it, you devil. Be
serious
!” Then he broke into a smile. “Oh, Cait—you do make me laugh.” And he did.

He leaned toward me as though to plant a kiss on my cheek, but Ellen's imminent return meant I pulled away and hissed “Stop it,” then giggled like a schoolgirl.

Ellen was beaming, maybe a little too brightly, when she rejoined us. “They're a real couple of characters, eh?” she said, nodding her head in the general direction of the Souls. “Do you think one of
them
did it?” Her eyes gleamed conspiratorially in the dim lights.

I thought about the way Ellen had described Sammy and Suzie Soul in her notes. She'd been spot-on with her physical descriptions—though rather more kind than I had been about Suzie—and I was beginning to think she wasn't far off the mark when it came to her assessments of their characters, too.

“They could have done it together, you know,” she continued, her zeal unabated. “Annette said she didn't trust Sammy when he was negotiating for Marechal Foch grapes from us. That he was manipulative, and bossy.” I had a hard time picturing the chilled out Sammy Soul as either.

“You sell grapes to SoulVine Wines?” I was puzzled.

“Oh yes,” replied Ellen, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “Mom and Poppa started by just growing grapes to sell to other people, which is why we have some of the more unusual varieties, like Foch—we have malbec and zweigelt too—then, eventually, they began to make Anen Wines. Some years we have more than we need of several varieties, so we'll sell them off to other wineries for them to use. Of course, we keep everything we want for ourselves first, though
some
people would like us to be actively growing on their part, like SoulVine Wines. Sammy argued that we could apportion part of our crop to him each year even before we knew what the yield and quality were going to be. Annette said no, Anen would always come first. That's why he's playing around with all these crazy ideas like cannabis wine, and wine in guitar-shaped bottles. It's nuts. It's all just
marketing
stuff. You know, the sort of thing
you
do.” Ellen made it sound as though it was
my
fault that Sammy Soul was jeopardizing the purity of winemaking. It seemed that choosing the fake role of a marketing professor was going to bring me in for some hearty criticism.
Who knew!?