Death By the Glass #2 (25 page)

“Absolutely true. So Dahlia might be off the hook. Maybe the real killer didn’t expect the victim’s ex-girlfriend to lift the bottle
before they had a chance to get rid of it. Regardless of how it happened, there is the bottle in Dahlia’s shrine.”

“I still don’t think there was a killer,” Rivka said.

“Riv, I want that bottle. It may have poison in it. We can’t risk alerting Dahlia, just in case she is involved, so we’re going to have to go out there and remove it ourselves, and the sooner the better. If Steve Harvey wasn’t hostile to my suggestions we could call him and he could get a search warrant. She’s at the restaurant tonight, right?”

“Are you insane? What are you talking about search warrants for? Dahlia hasn’t done anything. If you want the bottle of Armagnac so badly, ask her for it. She might think you’re an obsessed weirdo, but if you tell her you think it’s important, she’ll give it to you. She only took it because it’s something Nathan liked.”

“That’s one theory,” Sunny said.

Rivka took a lipstick out of her purse and went over to the mirror above the dresser. She coated her lips in fiery red and pressed them together once. Satisfied, she turned around and faced Sunny. “Let’s strike a bargain. I will call Dahlia right now. If she agrees to let us go out there and pick up that bottle, you relinquish all suspicion of her, both because it makes sense and as a personal favor to me, your best friend.”

“And if she doesn’t?” asked Sunny.

“I’ll change into my camos and we commit some breaking and entering.”

“The bottle’s worth enough, it will be a felony.”

“Deal or no deal?”

“Deal.”

“Now what?”
said Rivka, examining the bottle.

They sat down on the sofa in Dahlia’s cabin. The quiet crept up around them. They still felt like intruders, even though Dahlia had given them her permission. Sunny took the bottle and held it up, letting the light from the lamp shine through the dark auburn liquid. She half expected to see murky signs of tampering.

“So?” Rivka asked.

“Well, I think it needs to be tested.”

“You think Steve Harvey’s going to go for it again?”

“No, and I wouldn’t ask him. I don’t have anything concrete. I was thinking I’d call Charlie Rhodes. I checked it out and they have a diagnostic laboratory down there at Fresno State. If he can’t do it himself, I’m sure he knows somebody who can do the test for us. The only other way is to send a sample to the veterinary lab all the way out at Purdue in Indiana, and then it takes three days to get the results.”

“When was the last time you talked to Charlie?”

“Right after he moved.”

Rivka stood up and smoothed her dress. “Do you think he’ll do it?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t been teaching there very long. It’s a big favor to ask, but he owes me one.”

Rivka checked her watch. “Let’s get going. I don’t want to leave Alex sitting at Vinifera alone. He already feels weird about tonight because we’re supposed to be not seeing each other and getting a fresh perspective on our relationship.”

“So why are you doing it?”

“I miss him.”

They drove back down the mountain in silence with the bottle riding between them like a prisoner in custody. When they arrived at Vinifera, Sunny said she’d be in after she made a quick call. She wanted to try to reach Charlie before it got too late. Rivka gave her a look. She knew Sunny was more focused on getting the bottle tested than she was on meeting Alex and Andre. Rivka shut the truck door meaningfully and gave Sunny another wary look through the glass.

Charlie Rhodes picked up quickly. “Sunny! This is a pleasant surprise.”

They exchanged the usual greetings of friends who hadn’t spoken in several months.

“Are you at work at this hour on a Friday night?” asked Sunny, hearing the murmur of professional voices in the background.

“Yeah. I’ve got a project on the fast track. I’m practically living at the lab these days.”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk with you about,” said Sunny. She explained what she needed.

“An alkaloid screen. That’s not too big a deal. I think they can do it over at the avian diagnostics lab. Did somebody’s horse die?”

“Horse?”

“It’s usually horses and cows that get yew poisoning, sometimes dogs.”

“How does that happen?”

“The grazers seem to like the way yew tastes and it’s widely available. People plant all kinds of yew trees and shrubs in their yards. The typical scenario is a friendly neighbor brings over the lawn and hedge clippings as a treat for the livestock. It only takes a few mouthfuls and they drop dead. It’s a fairly common problem, especially in the transition zones between ag use and suburb, when you mix horse and cattle ranches and semi-rural ranchettes. The horse nibbles on a hedge for five minutes and that’s it for the horse.”

“That’s not exactly the situation here.” Then she explained what exactly the situation was. There was silence on the other end of the line. After a while she said, “Charlie?”

“I’m here.” He cleared his throat. “Is this at all legal?”

“What?”

“Testing this stuff?”

“A friend gave me a bottle of brandy. I’d like to test it for the alkaloids taxine A and B. What could be illegal about that?”

“Right. I suppose that’s okay.”

“How soon do you think you could do it?”

“It’s too bad you couldn’t have made the afternoon Fed Ex pickup. If it was here tomorrow morning we could do it first thing. The lab is open from eight to eleven on Saturday mornings. After that they’re closed until eight on Monday.”

“What if I brought it down myself tonight?”

“You’d drive it down? It’s that urgent?”

“If I’m wrong, time’s not an issue, but if I’m right, there’s a murderer strolling around Vinifera right now.”

There was another silence, then he said, “You can stay at my place.”

“Great.”

Charlie explained how to find his house and where the key would be so she could let herself in if he was already asleep or not back from the lab yet.

“Are you sure you can stay awake that long?” asked Charlie skeptically. “There’s a mind-numbing stretch on Interstate 5.”

“Sleeping is the problem. Staying awake is my specialty.”

There was still the issue of what to do about the rest of the evening. The drive would take four or five hours at least, and it was already past ten o’clock. If she was going to make it there tonight, she needed to leave right now. The bottle was right there on the seat beside her, and her purse contained everything she really needed other than a toothbrush. All she had to do was find some way out of her date with Andre and she could hit the road. The trouble was, she couldn’t tell him where she was going or why, and what possible explanation could there be otherwise? There wasn’t one. She’d already feigned illness. This was it. This was the end of the world’s briefest romance. Could it even be called a romance? It would have to be recorded as a one-night stand. What else could you call it? And was there any hope Andre would have any desire to see her again after she stood him up twice? She would be lucky if Rivka would talk to her. Going inside would only make matters worse. She started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, feeling like a criminal escaping the scene of the crime. She waited until she was on the highway to call Rivka’s mobile.

“No,” Rivka said, picking up. “No, no, no. You have to come in here.”

“I can’t,” said Sunny. “I’m on the road already.”

There was a pause, the sound of heels striking the floor, then the susurrus of diners in the background stopped. Rivka must have walked outside. “Where are you?” she hissed.

“I’m headed to Fresno. The lab opens at eight in the morning. I can be back by tomorrow afternoon. I’m sorry, Riv. I couldn’t think of any excuse that would get me out of there in a timely manner and I needed to get started. I can’t stay up all night driving.”

“Yes, you can. You stay up all night all the time. You are the world’s most dedicated insomniac. You’ve stayed up all night to bake cookies, to make sausage, to cure salmon, make wine, devil eggs, knit a scarf, read a book, and wallpaper your bedroom. This is not about Nathan Osborne. This is about your terror of facing Andre Morales. I don’t care if you’re halfway to Denver, turn around right now and get back here or I will never, and I mean
never,
speak to you again, except perhaps to point out what a weasel maneuver this is.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Sunny. “You expect me to spend the next two hours sipping wine, then drive five hours to Fresno.”

“Yes, I do. If it was anyone else, no, of course not. But you, yes.” Sunny heard the unmistakable sound of a match being struck. A moment later there was a long exhale, then: “In the first place, you are totally inured to a lack of sleep. In the second place, you are in desperate need of a boyfriend exactly like the man who is about to walk out of his kitchen expecting to see you waiting for him. And third, you can drink a couple of triple espressos. Now turn around and get back here right now or I am going to throw a Jewish-Latina hissy fit that’s gonna make you wish you never knew such a thing existed.”

Sunny pulled off where 29 met 121 and headed back the other direction. Minutes later she walked into Vinifera, where Rivka leaped up to give her a delighted embrace.

“So, did you leave it on?” she asked a little theatrically but convincingly. “Every time I think I left a burner on, it turns out I actually didn’t. So, did you?”

“No, you were right,” said Sunny. “It wasn’t on after all. But I feel much better that I checked.”

“Good. Now you can relax.”

Alex Campaglia, Rivka’s boyfriend, stood up from the bar and gripped Sunny’s shoulders like he was going to head-butt her. Instead he gave her a loud kiss on each cheek. He seemed even taller than usual and towered over her.

“We thought we lost you,” he said, casting a shy glance around the room.

“Not a chance,” said Sunny. Nick Ambrosi was working the crowded bar farther down. There wouldn’t be time for him to ask her why she’d been so interested in Nathan’s missing bottle of Armagnac. One of the other bartenders came over to Sunny and held up an open bottle of Acacia Pinot Noir. She nodded. When all of them had a drink, Alex raised his glass. “Safety first.”

They toasted and drank. “Has Andre checked in?” asked Sunny.

“He said he’d be out in about ten. That was about fifteen ago,” said Rivka.

Alex yawned. “I can’t keep up with the late-drink crowd anymore,” he said. “I’m ready for bed.”

“It’s the restaurant life,” said Sunny. “You get off work at eleven and it’s time to go out.”

“Not if you wake up when the sun comes up.”

“Do you?” asked Sunny.

“Every day,” said Alex. He and his brother Gabe were fourth-generation St. Helena natives. Their family had been growing grapes and making them into wine on the same land for over a hundred years. He was a farmer at heart.

Andre came out of the kitchen in his white jacket and long apron. He gave Sunny a solid, unhesitating kiss and took a drink from her glass of wine.

“You’re okay if I’m back in five? I want to change.” He held up his hand, reaffirming the five-minute count.

When he came back out he was wearing a white linen shirt and tan pants. Oh so easy on the eyes, thought Sunny. She’d spent the week obsessing over a theoretical murder and had forgotten. The contrast of white linen on gold skin was working nicely.

“I hear you came to see Eliot today,” he said.

“Yes,” said Sunny. “I needed to talk with him. Or I thought I did.”

“What about?”

Andre, Rivka, and Alex looked at her with interest.

“I had an idea,” said Sunny. “As it turns out, it was not a very good one.”

“What was it?” asked Andre.

“It was silly. I’d rather not say.”

“Oh, come on. It can’t be that silly. You thought it was good enough to drive down and tell it to Eliot.”

“I’ll tell you later.”

Andre frowned. Rivka said, “Is anyone else hungry? I didn’t get dinner and Sunny ate a pile of weeds.”

“That wasn’t just weeds, that was purslane,” said Sunny, mentally thanking Rivka Chavez, patron saint of those suffering an awkward silence.

“You find purslane in salads in Greece all the time,” said Andre. “I like it, but there’s some resistance to putting it on our menu. People don’t want to pay at a restaurant for something they spend all day yanking out of their garden, and they don’t want to eat it at home because they’re afraid they’ll eat the wrong weed and end up with a stomachache.”

“We just need some time to get used to it,” said Sunny. “When I was a kid, I thought garlic was a kind of salt. I didn’t see a clove of garlic until I was about eight and one of our neighbors started showing me how to cook. Now you wouldn’t think of an American kitchen without whole garlic. Purslane will be as common on menus as arugula before too long.”

Andre gestured to the bartender. “Can you have the kitchen send out something? A few appetizers and things to share.” He looked back at the dining room. “We’re going to sit at twenty,” he said, standing up and leading them to a table.

A dozen small plates from salt cod to lamb shanks arrived over the course of the next hour. Remy came by several times with wine. He was all poise and grace, though he avoided making eye contact with Sunny. He poured a new wine in their glasses whenever he passed by, saying, “You taste the spice in this one,” and “Now we have something with chocolate and blackberry notes. You see if you can taste it.” Gradually, the frozen moment at the bar and Sunny’s refusal to explain her meeting with Eliot were forgotten, or at least overlooked. Their talk migrated to a discussion of farmed salmon versus wild salmon (no comparison), the best place to eat roasted chestnuts (in front of the Met in New York), and how botrytis wine was discovered (most likely because the harvest in Hungary’s Tokaj region was interrupted one year in the mid-1600s by the possibility of a Turkish invasion). They speculated what Napoléon’s last days on the island of St. Helena were like, prompted by Rivka’s account of the film
The Emperor’s New Clothes
and the parallels she drew between his exile on the island prison and her life in St. Helena. The stroke of midnight found Andre describing the first time he read
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
.