A Vintage To Die For (Violet Vineyard Murder Mysteries Book 2) (27 page)

I crossed to the desk. Papers were piled and sticky notes were attached to every surface of the printer, monitor, and computer. I shuffled through the papers, finding rental agreements for the private cellars out back, brochures and price guides for Star Crossed’s auctions, and more brochures for other auction houses in California, Chicago, and New York. There was nothing incriminating, no notes that said ‘steal X’s wine and sell it to Y.” I turned and looked at the filing cabinet and my shoulders sagged. Was I going to go through all of the drawers? And after that? Maybe boot up his computer and search his files? And what about the bookcases? Was I going to search them as well? Dispirited, I turned off the flashlight. There was no way I was sticking around in that creepy old house long enough to do
any
of that. I considered my options, the first one being to get the heck out of there, go back to Violet, lock all the doors, fix a tall scotch, and go to bed. But that wasn’t really an option. I had already risked too much to leave empty handed.

Where would Blake hide evidence of a crime? Probably not here in his office where it could easily be discovered, I decided. Nor would he leave it in the warehouse or cellar out back for exactly the same reason. That meant it was somewhere in the house, but not on the lower floor where deliverymen, clients and friends dropping by for a visit might stumble across it. That meant I could ignore the kitchen and dining room as well.

That conclusion made me feel better, like crossing things off a list, even if I hadn’t done them. I backtracked out of the office and moved down the hallway to the stairway, a pencil-thin shaft of light from the flashlight leading the way.

The stairs creaked and groaned under my feet as I climbed slowly, the flashlight picking out one tread at a time. At the top I paused once again and shone the light down a wide corridor bracketed by four doors. Dust motes danced in the flashlight’s beam and tickled my nose. Cobwebs filled the corners of the eaves, and the carpet looked dingy and faded by wear. Blake needed a housekeeper. I had a good idea why he didn’t have one. No crook would want a maid poking around his lair.

I smiled as I thought the word ‘lair.’ I was starting to be as melodramatic as James Bond in the hideout of some arch criminal. But then I thought of Bartlett and the smile withered on my lips.

I went down the hallway to the first door.

It opened with a screech of protest from long unoiled hinges and I froze stock still, my breath caught in my diaphragm. I waited a moment before I pushed it open another creaking five inches, just enough for me to slip through.

The room was Blake’s parents’ bedroom. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. The windows were clouded and hazed with grime. Henry had died in 1998, Maggie had passed just two years later, and it looked as if the room had not been disturbed since then. Creepy. I backed out and pulled the door closed, wincing at the squealing hinges.

Thankfully the next door opened quietly. A bathroom, neat and orderly. I closed the door and moved on.

The third room was filled with junk. The floor was uncarpeted wood, covered in a layer of dust that had not a single footprint in it. I moved onto the final room; Blake’s bedroom.

Stepping into that room was like stepping into a time capsule from the 1980s. The walls were covered in posters of supermodels who were mothers or even grandmothers by then. The bed was covered with a Transformers bedspread yellowing around the edges. Bookshelves lined the walls, sagging under an impressive load of paperbacks and magazines, the dresser with Transformer toys and Field Day trophies from St. Helena High School. The room was free of dust and the windows were clean, so it was obvious Blake still used it. I wondered if that indicated anything psychologically wrong with him and almost laughed again. The man was a homicidal maniac.

I moved fast, starting at the dresser, opening every drawer to find them filled with clothes. Ditto the closet, shirts and pants hanging from wire hangers and a neat line of shoes on the floor. I turned back to the room and headed for the bed. Nothing under it or sandwiched between the mattress and box springs. I went to the bookshelves and scanned the rows, all old novels and magazines. Disappointed, I returned to the hallway and descended the stairs.

At the bottom I paused and considered searching the kitchen and dining room, but rejected the idea as pure desperation. No, it was time to admit defeat and get out of there before I was caught.

I crossed to the front door and was reaching for the knob when I thought of one more place to search. Actually, it was the most likely location of all - but one that immediately inspired a chill, oily dread in the pit of my stomach - the basement.

Maybe I had seen too many horror movies, but the thought of descending to the lower level of the house made me feel panicky.

No, worse than panicky; I was terrified.

But I was still going to do it.

Chapter 27

I opened the basement
door onto damp, murky darkness and the smell of rotten food so overpowering it reminded me of a restaurant’s dumpster. I shone the flashlight down splintery old steps ending at a cement floor. Cobwebs clung to the ceiling joists, curling down in gray tendrils ripe for a massive spider population. A single window was set high in the cinderblock wall, just under the joists, its glass so hazed with grime it let in barely a trickle of moonlight. Shelves lined the walls, most of them filled with moldy old cardboard boxes, but the two shelves on the far wall bracketing the single window were loaded down with rows of bell jars filled with fruits and vegetables Maggie had canned sometime in the last century. Their contents were dark and clumpy like body parts preserved in a nineteenth century autopsy room.

All in all, it was the creepiest basement I had ever seen.

I willed my feet forward, but they were stuck like glue on the landing. It took a massive effort for me to calm my jittery nerves and take that first step, as tentatively as a child entering a Halloween spook-house.

A sound from outside the house made me freeze rock-solid on the top step. I cocked my head at the door. Someone was coming up the path to the front door! The tread was slow and ponderous. I knew in my heart it was Bartlett.

My pulse was throbbing in my ears so loudly it almost drowned out the sound of a key being inserted in the front door’s lock. My heart rate went up another twenty beats a minute and my breath caught in my throat. Suddenly the basement didn’t seem all that bad. I went down one step, turned, and eased the door closed behind me until it clicked, then went down the steps swiftly on cat-feet, the tiny gleam of the flashlight leading the way. I reached the bottom and circled the steps, planning to hide in the open space beneath them, but there was no room. The space was stuffed with cardboard boxes far newer than the ones filling the shelves. It was also the spot where the dumpster-smell originated - wafting up from a mound of wet-looking dirt covered in mold. A half-dozen empty wine bottles jutted up from the center of the pile.

The carrion stench of rotten meat was so overwhelming it made my stomach heave. But that was the least of my worries, as heavy footsteps entered the hallway above my head and the front door banged closed. A sliver of light splashed under the basement door and down the steps as the hallway light was turned on.

I dropped to a crouch beside the boxes and aimed the flashlight at my feet. I knew I should turn it off, but the thought of hiding there in the darkness was just too much to bear.

I held my breath as the footsteps lumbered down the hallway to the office/living room. The heavy tread echoing through the wooden floor confirmed for me it was Bartlett up there. Not good news. In fact, it was the worst news ever. The last thing I wanted was another confrontation with that goon. He had tried to kill me once already.

I listened as he moved around the office, then on to the kitchen. He wasn’t there long before he came back down the hallway to the dining room. As I listened, I was staring at the wine bottles jutting up from the pile of festering dirt near my feet. What were they doing there? Holding my breath against the smell, I leaned closer and pulled a bottle free. It made a wet, sucking sound as it came loose, and the smell got worse.

Much worse.

I backed away, covering my mouth with my free hand, repressing a gag reflex that clenched my empty stomach into knots, and peered at the bottle’s label in the light of the flash light. It was mottled and stained from its time in the dirt pile, but I could read it well enough: Château Margaux, vintage 1925.

I forgot about Bartlett prowling the house as I stared at that bottle. If that bottle, and its mates in the dirt pile, were real - and filled with wine - they would have been worth thousands. But I knew they were fakes, stashed in the compost pile to create a false patina on the labels and the bottles in preparation for filling with something other than Château Margaux 1925. A patina that would fool some collector into believing he had the real thing.

Bartlett’s footsteps grew louder as he came back down the hallway toward the front door. But he didn’t exit the house - he paused just outside the cellar door, at the foot of the steps that led up to the second floor.

I flicked off the flashlight and held my breath for almost a minute before his footsteps continued, slowly climbing the stairs up to the top floor. You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out he was searching the house. And that could mean only one thing: he had spotted the flashlight’s beam through the windows.

I had to get moving.

But I couldn’t leave yet. What I held in my hand was enough proof for me that Blake was counterfeiting wine, but it wouldn’t be enough for Hunter or for the Willingham brothers. I needed more…

I turned the flashlight back on and aimed it at the dirt pile. Something shiny glimmered in the muck at the bottom of the hole left by the bottle in my hand. Loathe as I was to touch the pile, I didn’t hesitate. I put the empty bottle down on the concrete, reached down and pulled out a label from a 1926 Château Lafitte Rothschild – the wine Dimitri Pappos had been an avid collector of. The label looked very old, though I knew it was not. I started digging, ignoring the smell, and found a dozen more labels just like it. By then the stench was choking thick, but I kept going until I hit the concrete floor where my fingers found a lump of something cold and slimy. I dragged it out and held it up to the light.

It was a dead rat, covered in soil and crawling with mold.

I dropped the horrible thing, spun away, and started gagging, covering my mouth with my clean hand as bile seared the back of my throat. I retched and gasped like a drunken sailor, sure I was about to vomit. Only my fear of Bartlett kept me from it. Still, it was several long moments before I had my stomach back under control.

Quickly, I stuffed a few of the nasty labels into the pocket of my jeans and turned to the boxes under the steps. The lids weren’t sealed - they had merely been folded over. I opened the top of the one nearest me and looked inside. It was half filled with corks that were old and gray, the bases stained by wine, though none of them showed signs of a corkscrew. I closed the lid and opened the next box. It was filled with labels neatly bundled like stacks of cash. I picked up a stack and looked at it, then another and another. All of them were labels of premium wines, some were cult wines from here in Napa, Sonoma, and Calistoga, but most of them were Bordeaux and Burgundies. All of the vintages - as far as I could tell with a quick scan – were from exceedingly rare or desirable years, though they were obviously brand new. I peeled off a few and stuffed them into my pockets with the filthy ones from the dirt pile and opened the final box. It held a lead melting pot, a hotplate, an old hand-corker covered in rust, and bricks of wax in black and red. The type of wax used to seal corked wine bottles before foil capsules were invented.

And that settled it: Blake had everything he would need to fake bottles of premium wines for auction.
Or
to steal, sell, and replace wine stolen from his customers’ private cellars. There was no way Hunter could ignore me now.

I reclosed the box, kicked the dead rat back into the pile, replaced the bottle of Margaux with its fellows and swept the moldy dirt back into a neat mound with the edge of my shoe.

I stood there for a moment and cocked my ear at the ceiling. I couldn’t hear Bartlett, though I knew he was still on the second floor. I assumed that Bartlett’s final stop would be the basement.

That was a terrifying thought. Time to go.

I turned off the flashlight, stashed it in my pocket, crossed the room quickly and looked up at the window high above my head. The window was the old transom variety, hinged at the top. It was rusty and covered in a thick layer of dust. It looked like it hadn’t been opened since the house was built. My heart fell. It was probably painted or rusted closed. I doubted if I could even get it open. But I had to try.

The shelves that bracketed the window - filled with ancient jars of canned goods - were old and rickety - something slapped together with scraps of plywood and two by fours. They were meant to support a collection of jars, not a middle-aged woman, but the one on the left was close enough to the window I could climb up, reach out. and drag myself through the narrow gap…
if
the window would open and
if
I could shimmy my middle-aged fanny through it.

I stepped on the second shelf, took a grip on the two by four support and tried my weight. The shelf sagged and groaned and the jars shimmied. I hopped back down. If one of those shelves collapsed, the noise of breaking glass would immediately alert Bartlett to my presence. Maybe I should try for the front door? No, the very thought made my blood turn to ice. If Bartlett caught me, he would kill me.

As if to punctuate that gruesome thought, I heard his heavy footsteps descending the stairs from the second floor. He reached the bottom and turned back toward the office, the sound of his tread fading as he moved away from me.

I turned back to the shelf and climbed hand over hand. The shelf swayed and the jars rattled and clacked against each other. I stopped with my feet on the third shelf, my head just below the ceiling joists. Cobwebs tickled my ears and neck and made my skin crawl as I stretched out to reach the latching lever on the bottom of the window and tug it toward me. Miraculously, it opened with a mournful squeal, rust flakes showering down to the floor below like orange snow, but the movement made the shelves rock dangerously out from the wall, tilting into the room. I had an instantaneous vision of myself buried under an avalanche of broken glass. I threw my weight in the opposite direction, and the shelves thumped back against the wall with a sound that seemed huge in the confined space.

I froze, clinging to the shelves, and cocked my ear toward the ceiling again. Bartlett wasn’t moving around, but I felt sure I had little time left.

I reached for the U-shaped handle at the bottom of the window and tugged. Nothing happened. I gave it another tug, putting my back into it and the window opened an inch with a mournful squeal. The shelves rocked dangerously beneath me, but I kept pulling, the screech of the unoiled hinges growing louder and louder, but it was too late to back away now. When I had it open six inches, I grabbed the frame and shoved it all the way open until it banged against the metal brackets. I froze again and listened.

Bartlett’s footsteps were coming quickly toward the cellar door, pounding the floorboards so hard dust sifted down from the rafters.

Terror goosed me with a hot-shot of adrenaline. I went up one more shelf fast, and my forehead banged one of the joists so hard I almost lost my grip. The shelves rocked wildly with the abruptness of the movement and a Ball jar hit the floor with an explosive crash, the pressurized contents erupting like a hand grenade. And then another jar hit the floor and exploded. And another. Each one made my heart jump as I balanced my weight on the shelf, leaned out over the gap, and grabbed the window’s metal lip. I braced myself and then pushed off hard with my feet as I pulled forward with my hands, aiming my head at the open window.

My chest hit the ledge, knocking the breath out of me, and I slipped backwards, almost losing my grip. The shelf teetered beside me, rocking back and forth, banging the wall. It tilted out into the room, angling farther and farther from the wall until an entire shelf of jars slid off and hit the floor in a chain of explosions that peppered my dangling legs with broken glass and rotten vegetables.

My center of balance was well below the ledge, but there was no going back. I dug my toes into the wall and pushed and pulled with all my strength, inching my chin then my chest over the ledge. I was panting with effort by the time I got my elbows planted on the window ledge. By then the shelf had reached the apex of its outward arc. The remaining jars fell as a mass, rupturing on the concrete in a crescendo of explosions a split second before the shelves came crashing down.

The door at the top of the basement stairs burst open and the overhead light came on with the brilliance and suddenness of a camera flash. I didn’t turn to look back. I heaved harder and pulled myself up into the window frame. I got my hips over the ledge and thrust my head out into the cool night air, my feet gyrating wildly behind me as I tried to squeeze my fanny through.

“Stop!” Bartlett yelled as he came down the stairs at a run. By then, my butt was wedged firmly in the window frame, but there was no way I was going to stop trying to get free. I heard his feet slap the concrete floor behind me, all the impetus I needed for one more desperate heave. My butt popped through the window frame like a cork coming out of a champagne bottle, my feet still pedaling air behind me. I grabbed handfuls of the shaggy grass and tugged myself forward.

I was almost free when a hand grabbed my ankle and jerked me backward.

I felt something pop in my ankle and I let out a yelp of pain as the hand wrenched my leg downward, hyperextending my knee. But the pain was nothing compared to the terror that had every nerve in my body screaming for escape. I kicked backward with my free foot and connected with something solid. Bartlett grunted and his grip on my ankle loosened slightly. I kicked back again and was rewarded with a bellow of pain. I did it again and again, each blow connecting solidly, each one slackening his grip on my ankle. With one final kick my ankle was free and he was cursing bitterly.