Board Stiff (An Elliott Lisbon Mystery) (17 page)

I flipped through my notebook. Something else Ransom said. The weekly withdrawals. I connected them to the weekly poker game, but what about the deposits? Even a mediocre player wins sometimes or at least breaks even. Why wasn’t Leo putting the money back into his account? Either a) he was spending large chunks of cash on something each week or b) he sucked at poker.

I looked up Milo Hickey’s address in the phone book. According to Bebe, Milo hosted the game on Saturday nights. I checked the map on my wall. It listed every street on the island, even color coding each plantation. I found his address in Haverhill Plantation. Very swank.

My desk phone rang. No more stalling. I took a deep breath and picked it up on the third ring. “Elliott Lisbon.”

“Elli, my dear!” Mr. Ballantyne shouted into the phone. “So glad to catch you!”

“Yes, sir,” I shouted back, then lowered my voice to normal. “Just getting ready for the Gatsby. Looking forward to having you home.”

“Indeed. Which is why I’m calling. I fear we’ve been away too long. I’ve received disturbing news from the Charlotte Observer. Seems our Jane is at the heart of a scurrilous article.”

How did they track him down in freaking India? Scoundrels. I grabbed my earlier press notes and starting scribbling. “I’m composing a statement as we speak, sir. Nothing to worry about. I’m working with several media outlets, expressing Jane’s cooperation working with the police to find those responsible for Leo’s death.”

“On that front, too, Elli. I thought you would’ve made more progress. He deserves justice, he deserves everything we’ve got.”

“Agreed, sir. I’m making serious headway. Discreetly, of course.”

“Discretion! The school board fears this murder investigation will overshadow their participation in the Gatsby, and I must say, my dear, I do worry.”

The school board was an ally we couldn’t afford to lose. “I’m on it, sir. I’ll work with the coaches, make sure we have plenty of students on hand for the Gatsby celebration. It will be fantastic.”

“Very good, my dear. Very good!” Mr. Ballantyne hollered, sounding relieved. “Just what I wanted to hear. Anything else you need to tell me?”

I stopped pacing and stared at the phone, quickly debating about Reena. Should I tell him I got in a food fight with the head of his pet project? Wrecked her rug, destroyed her desserts, called her names? I hated being indebted to that nasty woman, but Mr. Ballantyne was already stressed at the state of the Ballantyne. No sense worrying him needlessly. Better to wait until things eased up.

“All’s well, sir. Just looking forward to having you home.”

“Tally-ho!”

“Tally-ho,” I said and clicked off. 

I immediately called the coach at the middle school with invitations for the entire softball team plus their parents. Then armed with my freshly scratched out statement and a pitch for a fabulous photo op, I grabbed the stack of press messages and started dialing. I slapped a smile on my face so my voice would sparkle with confidence and grace. An hour later, hassled and drained, I hung up with the last out-of-state reporter. My hand cramped and my ear burned, but I felt pretty confident the media was on my side.

Three minutes later, my phone rang.

“I knew you’d be working,” Sid said.

“A friendly voice. I’m so grateful, I may never hang up.”

“Listen, I only have a minute. But my darling Dr. Marco canceled for tonight and I don’t feel like staying home. Care to come out for margaritas? I made reservations at the Mariposa for eight.”

“I’d love to. But awfully presumptuous to assume I’d be free.”

She laughed. “Of course you’re free. What else would you do on a Saturday night? It’s not like you’re going out with Matty on a date night.”

“How little you know, Sigrid Bassi. Matty’s changed the rules.”

“Ooh. I like the sound of that.”

“I’ll tell you all about it tonight, my dear. See you at eight.”

But I was going to need more than margaritas to explain about Matty and my twin breakdowns with Ransom. Definitely sangria or tequila shots.

Sangria? I flipped to the last page of notes. Wine futures. Sid didn’t know which board member was involved, but it wasn’t a stretch to connect it to Leo. A big hush-hush investment scheme and a murder. Quite a coincidence for one small board.

Leo could’ve invested his weekly poker take on wine futures. Maybe a deal gone bad? Do wine futures deals go bad? I didn’t know what they were, but I knew two wine-drinking chefs who might.

I hit the kitchen hoping for lunch and information. I wasn’t disappointed on either front. Carla asked me to set the table in the solarium, a bright square room behind the kitchen. It had floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides and a flat glass ceiling. It overlooked the vegetable garden. Metal Folk Art chickens pecked in the dirt between tall leafy bell pepper plants and garlic going to seed. In the distance, the gardener scooped a lone frog from the pool. Every night a battalion of tiny green chorus frogs no bigger than walnuts dove into the pool. They swam. They frolicked. They got caught in the filter. By morning, they clung to the side tile, unable to make it over the lip of the pool, waiting to be scooped out and set free.

Chef Carmichael poured the wine (white for me, red for them) while Carla served plates of sliced beef tenderloin with grilled grape tomatoes. She added a loaf of crusty French bread and an almond-fried brie topped with cranberry chutney. The filet was so tender, it practically melted in my mouth. I needed these two to fight all the time. I love eating like royalty without doing any of the cooking.

“What can you tell me about wine futures?” I asked.

“I’m afraid you got me there, Elli,” Carla said. “I’ve never invested in them.”

“Neither have I,” Carmichael said.

“But you can explain them?”

“Sure,” Carmichael said. “Wait one moment.” He left the table and returned with an empty red wine glass. He poured a small amount from the decanter. “Here, taste.”

“It’s nice,” I said.

It wasn’t really, not to me anyway. But only because all red wines taste like communion wine to me. Although maybe it’s not so bad to have little reminders of faith. But I didn’t think that’s what Chef Carmichael was going for.

“This bottle of Punto Final Malbec was grown in 2010, the vintage year on the label,” he said. “But that’s not the year it was bottled, it’s the year the grapes were harvested. Simply put, after the harvest, it’s made into wine, then stored in wooden barrels to age. At that stage, the wine is young, not fully developed. Vintners bring investors in—connoisseurs, retailers, and collectors—to taste the wine from the barrel.”

He swished the wine in his glass, then slowly inhaled the fragrance. “These investors purchase the wine right then, at the barrel tasting, before it’s bottled.”

“What’s the advantage?” I asked.

“Price and availability. Say you buy a case at fifty dollars a bottle. Two years later when it hits the shelves, it’s at two hundred dollars a bottle. You receive your case at the same time as the stores, but you’ve paid almost two thousand less. Also, some vintages produce fewer bottles, which means less availability. Good old-fashioned supply and demand. More demand, the price rises again. If you purchased two, three, five cases, your investment pays off in spades.”

“And the disadvantages?” I spread a layer of brie on a chunk of bread and popped it into my mouth.

“If the wine doesn’t improve with age, basically it’s not much better than when you tasted it two years earlier. Its shelf price is fifty dollars a bottle or less. Even if you break even, you end up with cases of wine crowding your wine cellar, wine you could’ve bought by the bottle at your local liquor store.”

“Can investing in wine futures be dangerous?”

“It can certainly be risky. It started in the Bordeaux region. They’ve been doing it for centuries, but it’s relatively new in the U.S. Very few wineries even offer wine futures. One or two in Santa Barbara, Napa. You must choose highly reputable, established wineries. With any investment opportunity, you must watch out for sleazy ventures. Worst case scenario, you invest thousands of dollars in wine that’s worth less than hundreds.”

I tasted the red wine again. It made me wonder. Did Leo stumble onto a phony wine futures scheme? Or was he running one?

SIXTEEN

After we cleaned up lunch, I rode my bike home and spent the day at the beach recharging my batteries and crafting a plan. But two hours of sun netted me nothing but a splotchy burn. I sketched out seventeen theories on Leo’s murder and damn it if every last one didn’t end with Jane in handcuffs. Thank God there were margaritas in my immediate future.

The Mariposa was located mid-island in Locke Harbor, a one-hundred boat marina with shops and restaurants overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway. I parked near the center entrance. A band playing Beach Boys favorites entertained a small crowd around an enormous statue of Poseidon. I cut to the left, walking along the boardwalk. A miniature amphitheater faced the harbor to my right where folks gather on Tuesday nights for a colorful fireworks display.

A hostess greeted me, but I spotted Sid at a table to the right of a massive bar and joined her. High-backed barstools surrounded it on all four sides with a take-out section at the far end.

“Hey, sweetie,” I said. I kissed her cheeks and plopped into an empty chair. A fresh frozen margarita in a cobalt blue glass awaited me. I handed her a bag containing my cake-stained tunic and pants. “I need your help with a small stain. I spilled punch on my new outfit and I’m hoping you can salvage it.”

“Oh, a little punch shouldn’t be hard.” She pulled the tunic from the bag. It was crumpled and deep red splotches and colorful cake smears coated the once bright white background topped with brown flowers. “Elliott, sweetie, what in the world did you do?”

“Just a minor mishap involving a punch bowl and a platter of petit fours. I may have taken a wee tumble.” I snorted out a laugh. “You should see the other guy.”

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

The combination of her shock and awe made me rethink dishing up the details. I had a feeling they were actually worse than she imagined. “Um, not exactly. But I changed my mind. I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Cleaning this will take a miracle,” Sid said. “But if I succeed, you’re going to tell me everything. You got me?”

After I agreed, we spent the next hour and a half eating enchiladas and catching up on life. Sid bemoaned the problems on the board at the hospice. But since no one was murdered or accused of murder, my board troubles trumped hers. For now, anyway. And she sold two houses this month, which in this economy is like finding a golden nugget the size of a gumball in your pan two years after the Gold Rush ended. You didn’t strike it rich, but it was enough to keep you in pans and picks until you did.

“Speaking of real estate,” Sid said. “I found the new Buffalo Bill’s location. Five acres in Summerton near the river, just like you thought. I can take you to see it this week if you like.”

“I like,” I said. “Anything special about it?”

“Depends on who you ask. In real estate, one man’s paradise is another man’s money pit.”

“Worth a peek. I’m not making much progress with anything else. And the media is killing me. I’ve called in every favor I ever earned to keep Tate Keating calm. The last article dragged out every Ballantyne scandal back to when the senior Mr. Ballantyne wore short pants on the golf course.”

Sid scraped the last of her enchilada from the colorful plate and cleaned the spoon. “So not going well, huh?”

“I have no faith in Jane Hatting’s innocence and Nick Ransom doesn’t play fair.”

“What’s the deal with you two anyway?”

I took a long sip of my melting margarita and my tongue tingled as I thought about Ransom. “Pure chemistry. He picked me up for our first date, but we never made it to the restaurant. From that night on, we spent every minute together. All talking and touching and kissing and dreaming. Then he was gone. Like Keyser Söze into the night. Now when I see him, I’m torn between the desire to hate him forever and the desire to finish what we started.”

“Geez, sweetie, that’s a lot to carry around.”

“Tell me about it. And then there’s Matty. He gave me a toe-curling, throw-me-against-the-truck, hand-under-my-shirt goodnight kiss that said I don’t want to go home, I want to go inside. One more minute, I would’ve dragged him ass over teakettle into the back seat of his cruiser, Ransom be damned.”

“Matty did that? Holy shit. Definitely a game-changer.”

“I know! And I think I
like-him
, like-him, and I never even knew it. As if someone turned the kaleidoscope one click and now everything’s all sparkly and bright. And my emotions are running super high. I’m all awkward and blurty and inappropriate.” I took a gulp of margarita. “Hence the pudding pants.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with getting a little dirty.” She patted my hand. “Just load up on the sanitizer and stay in the game. You might have some fun.”

“I don’t know. Even one of them is more than I can handle. Matty doesn’t appreciate Ransom and Ransom doesn’t appreciate my investigative efforts.”

“Be careful. The killer may not appreciate them either,” Sid said. “Remember the shoes? That ended badly, Elli.”

“She was crazy, Sid.”

“Murder’s crazy. The gal only stole shoes. You’re investigating a killer. They won’t like your poking around and they might let you know it.”

“I’ll be super careful and stay away from dangerous situations,” I promised.

Sid glanced at her watch. “We should get the check. It’s late.”

“Good idea. There’s a guy at a secret poker game I need to question. I think Leo was involved in something.”

Sid stared at me.

“What?”

“Can you even
recognize
a dangerous situation?”