The Merlot Murders (6 page)

Directly off the main room an arched wrought iron gate led to the wine library with its deep leather chairs, wine barrel end tables, and our growing collection of books on colonial and contemporary wine making. A heavy door that always reminded me of the entrance to a monk’s cell led to a small corridor and the offices.

I went there first, turning on more lights, to look for the wine Fitz should have collected. It was more likely that it would be here than in the barrel room, which was a bonded wine cellar. We never moved wine out of the cellar until we planned to sell it because we had to pay the sales taxes right away. There was no sliding by that rule thanks to mandatory monthly reports filed with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

I must have been expecting to see Jacques’s office, with its familiar collection of photographs, awards, vintage silver bottle-stoppers, and the antique map of France during the reign of Charlemagne on the wall behind his desk. Instead the room was bare—a small shock—completely devoid of any personal effects belonging to the new winemaker. Maybe Quinn Santori had decided to use the smaller office next door, which had been my mother’s. I looked in and wished I hadn’t. The room had been turned into a dumping ground for cases of wineglasses used for tastings, rolls of labels for our various wines, and a half-filled box of corks. There were also several opened cases of wine, but none with customized labels.

Perhaps Quinn had left the wine behind the bar. I went back to the main room and found it.

So Fitz hadn’t come here after all. Maybe Eli was right that he went for yet another drink after the wake. Alone, except for whatever inner demons he was carrying around.

I was still behind the bar when the door to the tasting room swung open. The man who entered was probably in his mid-forties, wearing a pair of green and brown camouflage trousers, a loud print Hawaiian shirt, and more jewelry than I was. Two heavy gold chains, one with a cross on it, and a thick gold bracelet on his right wrist. No earring though. His military brush cut was mostly gray and he had “don’t-mess-with-me” eyes that were calculating and unnerving.

“Can I help you?” He wasn’t really asking. He was probably wondering what I was doing behind the bar.

“You must be Quinn,” I said. “I’m Lucie Montgomery. I was looking for some cases of wine that you left for Fitz Pico last night.”

“We found ’em,” he said. He sounded grim.

“The wine? Isn’t this it?” I gestured to the cases on the floor.

“Fitz,” he said. “We found Fitz.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He’s in the barrel room. Call 911, will you?”

I had visions of Fitz, passed out on the floor of the barrel room since last night. “Is he all right? Doc Harmon’s outside…I know he’s a vet, but…”

“Yeah, get him in here, too. I got Jesús throwing up all over the place.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The poor kid was in the middle of transferring the Merlot into one of the purged tanks when he realized it wasn’t empty.”

My heart started pounding like war drums. “What do you mean? What are you saying?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I thought you’d know. I’m saying Fitz is deader ’n a doornail. He was inside that tank. Death by almost instant asphyxiation.”

Some people can deliver disastrous news as calmly as if they’re reporting on the weather, blunting the shock and horror of their words. It took a long moment before I understood what he’d just said.

I said numbly, “There would have been pure carbon dioxide in that tank.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My God, what was he thinking? I need to go to him. He’s my godfather.”

“He doesn’t need anything from anyone anymore.” He sounded brusque and businesslike. “Call 911 and get that doc over to the barrel room pronto. My cell phone’s dead or I would have done it already. Then I saw this place lit up like a Christmas tree. Now that I know it’s only you, I need to get back there.”

“I’m coming with you.”

He looked up at the ceiling and I could almost hear him count to ten. “Look, I understand how you must be feeling, but I don’t need two people barfing all over the place. Help me out here. Make that call like a good girl, okay?” He turned and walked out.

So this was our new winemaker.

I called 911 like a good girl.

Doc Harmon and I were on the lawn outside the villa with Jesús, who looked pale and scared, when Bobby Noland drove up in a brown-and-gold Sheriff’s Department cruiser. Fortunately he hadn’t turned on the lights and sirens or it would have alerted everyone at the main house—meaning almost everyone in Atoka—that something was happening at the winery. The place would be a mob scene in no time.

Eli was right behind Bobby in the Jaguar.

I’d switched on the outdoor lights, which included floodlights and fairy lights strung in several of the bushes and trees. Bobby walked across the lawn, caught in the wash of light, still with the swaggering bantam way about him that he’d had in high school. I hadn’t seen much of him in the dozen years since he’d graduated.

He started talking from ten yards away. “What happened? The call came in when I was still over at the house. Y’all got enough food there to last you till the cows come home. The dispatcher said someone was hurt bad at the winery.”

He and Eli reached our little group. Bobby pointed to Jesús. “This the guy?” He nodded to me. “Hey, Lucie. Didn’t get a chance to see you earlier. Sorry for your loss.”

Up close Bobby looked like he’d aged more than he should have, but maybe it was the uniform and the holstered gun on his belt. When he took off his cap his sandy hair was short and bristly as a porcupine’s. In high school it used to hang in his eyes sheepdog style, which always made him look like he was hiding something. Now I could see his eyes. He wasn’t hiding anything, including how tired he looked.

I still had Eli’s handkerchief from earlier in the evening, damp again from fresh use. I twisted it around my fingers like a strand of rope. “Thanks, Bobby. It’s Fitz. Jesús here’s the one who found him.”

He’d been unwrapping a piece of bubble gum, which he was about to put in his mouth. He stopped and said, “Fitz Pico? Where is he?”

“In the barrel room.”

“What was Fitz doing in the barrel room?” Eli asked.

“I don’t know. But he was in one of the stainless-steel tanks. It had been purged. Injected with pure carbon dioxide.”

“Oh my God,” Eli made a small choking sound and coughed. Our eyes met for a second before he turned away. He looked upset. But not grief-stricken.

“Fitz was in one of those big silver tanks?” Even in the artificial light, I could see Bobby go pale under his dark reddish suntan. He spoke into a microphone attached to a shoulder strap. “Send backup. Montgomery Vineyard.” He turned away and muttered again into the microphone. Then he said, “Where’s that winemaker of yours? Santini?”

“Santori. Quinn Santori,” Eli said as I added, “In the barrel room.”

“Shit. He better not of messed anything up.” He turned to Doc Harmon. “I could use some help, Elvis.”

“Sure thing. You all right, son?” Doc looked at Jesús, who nodded.

After they left Eli grabbed my elbow, dragging me next to a small border garden of red salvia and white impatiens where Jesús couldn’t hear us.

“Goddamn it!” A tiny vein pulsed in his temple. “Do you know what this is going to do to our asking price when we put the place on the market?”

I jabbed my index finger against his chest. “Fitz is
dead,
Eli! Do you still have a heart in there or did you swap it for a cash register? How can you be so cold?”

“Cold? Give me a damn break. I feel as bad as you do.” He ran a hand through his overgelled hair. “Just because I’m being realistic doesn’t mean I’m not sorry about Fitz.”

“Sure. I can tell it’s tearing you apart.”

He had changed from his monogrammed dress shirt and tie into a monogrammed peach-colored polo shirt. There was a time when he refused to wear clothing that had someone’s name printed or sewn on it, even his own. And I’d never seen him wear anything peach.

“Knock it off. Don’t act so damned sanctimonious, okay? You haven’t got a monopoly on grief, Lucie. This isn’t only happening to you.”

“I never said it was,” I said. “But you can at least spend a few seconds mourning him before you start talking about money.”

I smacked my cane against the ground as I walked over to Jesús and sat down. We’d scrapped like a normal brother and sister when we were kids. But this was something more. Eli was driven in a way I didn’t remember—his concern about money, the designer wardrobe, the palace he was building. How much debt was he in, anyway?

I fanned myself with my hand and unstuck my dress, which clung to me like I’d showered in it. It got this hot in the south of France, but it was a dry heat, cooled and tempered by the mistral and scented with the powerful fragrances of lavender, thyme, and rosemary. Here the air was so thick I could practically see it and the smell was the dank chemical odor of soil and plants and grass decomposing.

An ambulance showed up, along with a fire truck and two other official-looking cars. Though they didn’t use their sirens, their red and blue strobe lights pulsed in the nighttime blackness, adding to the surreal feeling that was slowly taking hold of me.

Eli caught up with one of the fireman who walked quickly toward the courtyard to the barrel room. He wore a dirty yellow jacket with orange reflective stripes, overalls, boots, and a helmet. On the back of the jacket, large luminescent letters spelled out “Gleason.” He stopped and shoved the helmet off his forehead, listening to what my brother told him. He shook his head and moved on.

Eli saw me watching and strode over. “This is absurd. We’re not allowed in our own place.”

“Let them do their work, Eli.”

He glared at me but said nothing.

It was a while before Bobby finished. Jesús had wandered over to the stone wall by the parking lot, leaning against it and chain-smoking. Doc Harmon left on a veterinary emergency. “Maybe I can save a life somewhere else,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do here.”

Eli and I sat on the villa steps, not speaking. We got up when Bobby finally walked through the courtyard archway carrying a small notebook. He kept clicking his ballpoint pen like he was counting something.

“Well, Santini says there wasn’t any oxygen in that tank. It was pure carbon dioxide. He says Fitz would have suffocated instantly.”

I shuddered.

“Santori,” Eli said. “And he’s right. Jacques was strict as hell about not letting anybody work around the tanks without a buddy when they were cleaning them. Climbing into a purged stainless-steel tank is like climbing into a shark tank. There have been accidents just like this out in California.” He shrugged. “Making wine has its occupational hazards.”

Bobby blew a bubble and popped it. “Jesus, Eli. Are you trying to pass this off as an accident? You think Fitz took a wrong detour and ended up in your tank of wine?”

Eli reddened. “Of course not. But when he showed up at Leland’s wake last night he was stinking drunk. He told Lucie he needed to stop here to pick up some wine. I don’t know…maybe he got disoriented or something.”

Bobby opened his notebook and clicked the pen once more. He started writing. “He said he was coming here, did he?”

“To pick up some special cases of wine for a wedding,” I said.

“Santini says there’s a bunch of money missing from your safe,” Bobby flipped back through a few pages. “More’n four thousand bucks. You got some migrant workers here who just show up for harvest. Not the same guys every year. Not the same guys every day, for that matter.” He looked at us. “And someone cut the lock to the barrel room door. You’ll need to replace it.”

“Robbery?” I asked. “You think he surprised someone trying to rob us?”

“Dunno,” he said. “We’re talking to all your crew. It’s taking a while, though, because nobody speaks English. Hector just showed up. He and Santini are doing the translating for us.” He blew another bubble. “So when was the last time you all saw Fitz?”

“Shortly before the wake ended,” I said. “He left when Thelma started singing.”

“Wise move.” Bobby chewed thoughtfully. “So what time was that, about?”

“Nine-thirty?” I guessed.

“Closer to nine-forty,” Eli said.

Bobby looked up from the notes he’d been writing and frowned. Then his face lightened. “Oh right. You’ve got that nuclear watch. Must come in handy sometimes. So nine-forty, then.” He did some calculating. “That’d put him here about nine-fifty, nine-fifty-five. Kind of late at night to be working, isn’t it?”

“Restaurants and vineyards don’t work eight-hour day shifts, Bobby. Just like you guys,” Eli said.

“That so?” Bobby squinted at us. “So where were the both of you last night?”

Eli looked incredulous. “At Leland’s wake, of course.”

“I meant afterwards. When did you leave and what did you do?”

There was something different in his voice that changed him from the kid who had a regular seat in detention hall to a cop who had the authority to pry into the details of our lives. He looked at both of us and, when his eyes met mine, they were opaque and unreadable. A cop’s eyes.

Eli looked annoyed. “Oh, come on, Bobby. Brandi and I went home. To bed.”

“You’re saying you didn’t spend any time here? This place or the big house?”

“Only to drop Lucie off,” Eli said. “Brandi was exhausted. We went straight home after that. To Leesburg.”

“Did you drive by the winery?”

“Nope.”

“What about you, Lucie?”

“I went to bed after Eli took me home. I had just gotten off a plane from France yesterday afternoon. I was really beat, Bobby.”

“Who else was there? Mia? Dominique?”

“Mia stayed with Greg Knight and Dominique slept over at Joe’s,” Eli said.

“I’ll check that out, too.” He didn’t look up from his notebook, but the bubble he blew this time was lopsided and deflated instantly.

“Yo, Bobby!” Another uniformed officer stood in the courtyard archway. “We need you.”

“Coming.” The three of us walked toward him. “You two stay put,” Bobby said. “I don’t suppose I have to tell you that this place is now a crime scene. No one goes in there until we take the yellow tape down. Understood?”

“Your guys shouldn’t leave the door open like that. The place is climate-controlled.” Eli sounded irritated. “You know, harvest starts next week, Bobby. You can’t shut us down.”

“Actually, Eli, I’m afraid we can.” Bobby was short. “And the place is gonna stay shut down while we go over everything for evidence. So if anybody gets any cute ideas about sneaking back in and contaminating the site before I give the all clear, you’ll be hearing about it from hell to breakfast. Understand?”

He left for the barrel room without waiting for an answer, his heavy-soled shoes crunching on the gravel.

“Damnit,” Eli said. He picked up a handful of stones and pitched them, one by one, at nothing in particular.

“Why did you have to be so hard on him? Maybe we could have worked something out, if only you hadn’t treated him like he was Barney Fife, straight out of Mayberry.”

Eli’s eyes were cool. “I’m starting to wonder whose side you’re on, Luce.”

I heard the car coming before it pulled into the floodlit parking lot. A blonde woman driving a khaki-colored Jeep with the top down parked next to Eli’s Jag.

“Oh God,” Eli said. “What’s
she
doing here?”

Katherine Eastman opened the door to the Jeep and climbed out, a large leather purse slung over one shoulder. She was dressed in a black mini-skirt and clingy red tank top that had either shrunk in the dryer or she was kidding herself. She must have gained twenty-five pounds since the last time I’d seen her.

“I came as soon as I heard,” she said. She was wearing lipstick to match the fire-engine-red tank top, eye makeup that looked like it had been applied by a road marking gang, and her hair, which had once been a flatteringly warm shade of auburn, was Marilyn Monroe blonde. “Is it really true?”

“You shouldn’t have bothered,” Eli said. “We could do without the press.”

“I’m surprised to see you here, Eli. I didn’t realize your leash extended this far.” She hugged me. “Hey, kiddo. It’s good to see you again. I’m so sorry about your dad.”