A Vintage To Die For (Violet Vineyard Murder Mysteries Book 2) (32 page)

“Armand!” I said. “That’s enough. Her father is in ICU.”

Armand raised both hands. His palms were still black with soot. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He looked at Alexandra and started to say something else, but I stepped between the two and put my back to Armand.

“Why don’t we go to my place and get cleaned up?” I said to her. “There’s nothing we can do until morning, and I need a ride home.”

Alexandra nodded.

I turned back to Armand. “We won’t know anything until morning,” I said tersely. “Go home and get some sleep.”

Armand went, but he shot Alexandra a glare before he exited the room.

“What was that about?” I asked her after I heard the ‘ding’ of the elevator’s bell.

She shook her head. “Nothing. He is upset. He has gone through a great deal today.”

“We all have,” I said. “That’s no excuse for being a jerk.” I heaved a sigh and mustered a smile. “But I guess I’m being a bit of a jerk, too,” I added.

“You, too, have been through very much. You love Samson a great deal.”

“Most of the time,” I said in a lame attempt at lightening the mood. I glanced over at Marjory. “Let’s wake up sleeping beauty,” I said, “and get the heck out of here.”

Chapter 33

Marjory refused to leave
the hospital. As Alexandra and I departed, she was slipping through the ICU doors, looking haggard, rumpled, and impossibly sad. I have to admit I wanted to stay as well, but Alexandra was in rough shape. She needed rest.

I was thinking of Armand as we headed out into the cool of the night to Alexandra’s Mercedes. The fog had begun to creep in from the ocean, hazing the parking lot’s lights into golden halos. I tried to be forgiving, but his buttonholing Alexandra outside the ICU really made me angry. It was more than rude; it was crass and unfeeling. Alexandra was as much a victim of Blake Becker as Armand. And, in the final analysis, Alexandra had lost a great deal more than wine. She had lost a husband, and she just might lose her father.

Alexandra was quiet as she drove out of the parking lot and turned east toward Violet, but her face in the backwash of the green dash-lights was drawn and troubled.

“I hope Armand didn’t upset you too much,” I said.

She shook her head and kept her eyes on the road ahead. The fog was thickening, even down here in the valley. Gray tendrils spun in front of the headlights and denser clouds filled the roadside ditches.

At that point, I told her about the phone call Samson had received claiming she had been kidnapped.

“It must have been Blake Becker,” she said. “He must have thought if he could kill Samson, the lawsuit over Dimitri’s wine would be dropped.” That made sense, and if I hadn’t been so exhausted I might have drawn the same conclusion on my own. Still, it was hard for me to envision the Blake I knew as a calculating killer, despite overwhelming evidence.

We passed Star Crossed – where the fire was now out, though smoke still hung in the air, drifting over the charred ruins of the house, the orchard, and the warehouse. A solitary fire truck stood vigil in the ruins. But the fire truck wasn’t alone. More than a dozen vehicles were parked along the narrow shoulders of the road – everything from battered pickups to a solitary limousine - and even more cars were parked haphazardly in the mouth of the driveway, just short of a pair of County Sheriff’s cars blocking access to the property.

Hunter and a trio of his deputies were standing beyond the patrol cars, facing a cluster of people whose expressions varied from shell-shocked and grieving to rage. I recognized probably half of those faces – all vineyard owners. Armand and I were not the only people who had suffered a financial loss that day, and it saddened me to look over the crowd. Many of those people would be ruined by the fire, and many more would have lost collections that had taken a lifetime to build.

While I stared at the angry mob and at the blackened landscape as we rolled past, Alexandra did not turn her head. Her expression had fixed itself into a grim mask and, though I wanted to reach out to her, to say something to comfort her, no words came.

We made the turn up the narrow road that leads to my perch in the foothills of the Mayacamas Mountains. The fog grew denser as we climbed up the twisting ribbon of asphalt, and Alexandra was driving too fast for the conditions, her fingers white-knuckling the steering wheel as she made the corners hard and fast. We could barely see fifty feet down the road, and that visibility was reduced more and more as we went higher and higher.

“The road is very narrow,” I said diplomatically as I gripped the armrest, my entire body rigid with tension.  “You might want to slow down.”

“Of course,” Alexandra said as she slowed to forty-five, which was still far too fast.

The fog had become an almost impenetrable soup. I pressed my foot into the floorboard on an imaginary brake while picturing us flying off one of the curves to plummet into the boulder-strewn slopes below. But, despite my concern, we made it to the straightaway that fronts Violet without crashing and burning.

Alexandra showed no signs of slowing down as we neared my home.

“It’s just ahead on the left,” I said and she hit the brakes so hard the car’s tires lost their grip and we lurched to the right. She managed to get it under control, then took the corner into the driveway too fast. We skidded in the loose gravel before the car came to a sudden stop, its tires on my front lawn.

The fog was swirling around us like something in a horror movie. I could barely see the front porch light through the haze.

I opened the door and started to climb out – promising myself I would never ride with Alexandra again – but she remained seated behind the wheel, staring through the windshield, her face an inscrutable mask.

“Alexandra,” I said, dropping back into the passenger seat. “It’s going to be okay.” I reached out and touched her shoulder. She looked up at me, her dusky complexion having turned the color of oatmeal.

“It’s going to be okay,” I repeated, and squeezed her shoulder, but she shook her head.

“No, it is not.” She said and her eyes shifted off my face. She looked past me, out into the fog, staring so intently I turned my head and followed her gaze.

With the combination of the darkness and the swirling fog, I could barely see fifteen feet in front of me. A damp, chilly wind gusted through my open door and I shivered, and not just because of the cold. Staring out into the night instantly stirred up the old primeval fear of the dark. But I had a real fear as well; Bartlett was still out there somewhere.

“Let’s go inside. It’s cold out here,” I said and her eyes came back to my face. “It’s over, Alexandra. Samson will be fine,” I added, and then I repeated what Victor had said to me at Star Crossed: “He’s too mean to die.”

Alexandra nodded and reached for the door handle. She popped the door open and the wind gusted through the car. The wet, icy fingers of the fog almost took my breath. It really had gotten cold. I climbed out and led the way to the house. I unlocked the door, ushered her inside and pointed her toward the living room. I locked the front door and secured the deadbolt before I followed.

I waved her at the sofa and she slumped down onto it, her eyes on the coffee-table.

“Scotch?” I asked, already heading for the bar, but she shook her head.

“No, thank you. I have to drive back to the hospital tonight.”

I started to protest against that, but decided to play a delaying gambit for the moment. “Coffee?” I asked, really wishing she had accepted the scotch. It would have given me an excuse to make her stay the night. She didn’t need to be alone - in my opinion - and she certainly didn’t need to be driving off into the fog again.

“That would be nice,” she said.

I went to the kitchen, ditched my purse on the table and got down the coffee. I measured out enough for half a pot and put water into the antique coffeemaker’s reservoir. I turned it on, then crossed to the window over the sink and looked out into the fog bank that shrouded my rows in a ghostly haze. The wind was stiffening. It tore small gaps in the fogbank through which I caught glimpses of my vines, and the eucalyptus and oak trees that clung to the rocky slope beyond them, glimpses swallowed as quickly as they were revealed.

The coffee pot sputtered and spewed for ten minutes before it spat and gasped and gurgled its way through the last few drops. I got down two cups and filled them from the small spigot on the bottom of the pot. As the second cup filled, I looked toward the window again. From that distance I could see nothing but my own image reflected back at me - a wraithlike figure dressed in smoke-blackened clothes, the eyes ringed by dark hollows. A shiver went through me like an intravenous injection of ice water.

And then my phone rang, startling me out of my reverie. I limped over to my purse and pulled out my new phone. It was Hunter.

“Where are you?” he asked abruptly.

“I’m at home,” I said, fear instantly crawling all over me. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Is Armand with you?” he demanded without answering my question, and my fear flashed over into annoyance.

“No,” I snapped in exasperation. “Of course not. There’s
nothing
going on with me and Armand, Hunter! He’s just a friend. And I don’t appreciate the innuendo—”

“We just hauled Blake’s body out of the cellar,” Hunter cut me off.

“Then it really is over,” I said.

“No,” Hunter replied, “It isn’t. I need to see Armand, but he’s not at his home or the hospital.”

“What’s going on?”

Hunter was silent for a protracted moment before he said, “Armand told me Blake shot himself.”

“He told me the same thing,” I said, getting another gruesome mental image.

“It’s a lie,” Hunter said. “Blake was shot three times in the back of the head. It wasn’t a suicide.”

“Oh,” I said, my knees suddenly wobbly.

“I’m at the hospital now. I just spoke to Samson. He’s groggy, barely coherent, but I asked him if Blake shot him. He said no, and then he muttered something about the devil. He’s really out of it, but I think Armand shot both of them, Samson and Blake.”

I dropped into a kitchen chair and hung my head. “My God,” I whispered.

“It gets worse,” Hunt said. “We’ve been doing some background work on Bartlett. Did you know he worked for Armand in Venezuela?”

“For Armand?” I said, but I wasn’t really asking a question anymore; my mind was reeling as I mentally connected the dots, fitting this new information into the puzzle. I had been a fool. All along I had struggled with the notion of Blake Becker as the criminal mastermind, but I had little trouble in fitting Armand into that role. Armand would be capable of orchestrating a sophisticated wine forgery scheme - a scheme far beyond the capabilities of the blundering Blake. But would Armand be capable of killing Dimitri, Jorge, and Angela to avoid exposure?

Yes, I decided. The Armand I had seen today would be more than capable. I considered the charade he had put on that morning - waving the gun around like a crazy man, feigning surprise at the wine forgery I had uncovered. Armand had probably decided at that moment to kill Blake and set the fire to cover up the fraud.

But Armand needed more than Blake’s death and the destruction of the wine cellar; he needed Dimitri’s murder investigation closed. So he called Samson and claimed Blake had kidnapped Alexandra, luring Samson to Star Crossed. With Samson dead, there would be no messy trial or continuing investigation…

But what about the port spiked with methanol? Had Blake suspected he was next and tried a preemptive strike? I thought it possible, even likely. And sadly, I could imagine Blake trying to poison his enemies. It was the weapon of choice of the weak.

Hunter was talking, but I missed the first part of what he was saying.

“…the doors and stay inside. Go to your bedroom, get your gun out and lock that door too. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Okay,” I said woodenly.

“I’m coming to you, Claire,” he told me. “Don’t leave the house. Turn off the lights and stay low. There’s no telling what this guy will do. He’s already killed four people.”

“Okay,” I whispered and he was gone.

I kept my phone in my hand as I went to the kitchen window again and looked out into the fog. The darkness was even more sinister than before. More frightening.

I doused the kitchen light, left the coffee behind, and hurried down the hallway.

Alexandra was sitting on the sofa. She jumped up with a start when I barreled in and flipped off the lights.

“Hunter just called me. It looks like Armand is behind the fire at Star Crossed…” I hesitated, but I had to let her know, “and Dimitri’s death.”

Perhaps it was all too much to take in, but she didn’t even flinch at the news. She just stared at me.

“I need you to go upstairs to my bedroom, the first door on the right. There’s a gun in the bedside table, get it out and stay there. I’m going to lock up down here and then I’ll join you. Hunter will be here in twenty minutes.”

Alexandra still said nothing, she merely nodded. She looked shaky and scared, but no shakier or more frightened than I felt. And not just of Armand. As much as I now feared him, I felt I could understand him - he was making a lot of money with a very low risk of punishment – but his henchman Bartlett was another story. He was a coldblooded animal capable of anything.

I watched Alexandra climb the stairs before I hurried down the hallway and made a quick circuit of the lower floor, checking all the windows and locks. That left only the cellar. I felt sure the cellar’s outside door was locked, but I needed to be sure.

I flicked on the light and took the steps down two at a time. The overhead light was bright, but the clutter of equipment and stacked cases of wine cast sinister shadows. I crossed the floor quickly and checked the back door - it was locked – and was heading back to the stairs when my eyes fell on the pegboard of tools. Many of the tools were still missing - impounded by the Sheriff’s Office - but there was a short pry bar hanging there. I normally use it to pry open wooden crates, but I took it down and stuffed it in my rear pocket under the tail of my shirt and instantly felt a little safer. It was less than a foot long, but it had a wickedly curved nail-puller that would take a nasty bite out of anything I swung it at. Or anyone.

I went back up the stairs, locked the cellar door behind me, and went toward the front of the house. I had done all I could, but I was anxious to get to the bedroom and lock that door as well…and to trade in the pry bar for my father’s gun.