How to Dine on Killer Wine: A Party-Planning Mystery (2 page)

“Ignore her, Presley,” Rocco said, raising an eyebrow at Dee. “She’ll drink to anything.”

Delicia stuck her tongue out at him. That was the kind of relationship my two event-planning assistants shared.

Rocco, rarely out of his chef whites, was dressed in khaki slacks and a brown button-down shirt. He handed the glass to me. “Don’t chug it like you usually do.”

“I don’t chug my wine!” I said. “I’m just not pretentious, like some of those wine snobs.”

“There’s a big difference between gulping and tasting,” Rocco said. “I want you to really
taste
this wine. You have to know these things when you host that upcoming winery event.”

“I know,” I said defensively. As I reached for the glass, I had a sudden flashback to my college days, those days of wine and chugging. Admittedly I could use a few pointers if I wanted to carry off this prestigious party Rocco had snagged for me. I lifted the glass by the stem, like I’d been taught by the
Wine Goddess
cable TV show, then swirled the contents as if I knew what I was doing. Bringing it to my lips, I inhaled the “bouquet.”

It smelled like grape juice. Really good grape juice.

“Okay, now savor it as you take it in,” Rocco said, as Dee looked on, frowning.

“I love it when you talk dirty to me.” I grinned mischievously. Rocco blushed the color of the red wine. Even his balding pate turned rosy.

I took a sip, swishing the liquid over my tongue and palate.

Dee giggled. “You look like a fish.”

“Don’t swish it,” Rocco demanded. “It’s not mouthwash.
Taste
it.”

I swallowed.

“So. What did it taste like?” Rocco asked, both eyebrows raised in anticipation.

“Uh…kinda fruity, kinda spicy. A bit of a woody aftertaste.” I’d learned some of the lingo from the TV show.

“Excellent! You’ve got a good palate, in spite of your tendency to guzzle wine like it was tap water. All right, now hold your glass up to the light. What color do you see?”

I studied it a moment. “Dark maroon.”

Rocco nodded. “Good. Now inhale it and tell me about the aroma.”

I took a quick whiff, then a deeper inhale. “Definitely fruity. Like grapes.”

Rocco sighed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. Apparently “fruity” and “grapes” weren’t the descriptive words he was looking for. “Okay, this time, take a sip and let it rest in your mouth for a few seconds. Notice if it’s tart or sweet.”

I took a second mini-mouthful, let it “play” over my palate, and said, “Both.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dee pulling the bottle of wine toward her.

“Is it rich or lean?” Rocco asked. “Velvety or smooth? Silky or sticky?”

I set the glass down, causing it to clink against the desktop. “I don’t know, Rocco. It tastes like wine. Red wine. How am I supposed to enjoy it if I have to think about it?”

Rocco rolled his eyes, exasperated with his wine-disabled student.

Behind his back, Dee was about to pour wine into her empty coffee cup.

He snatched the bottle from her hand. “That’s a sixty-dollar bottle of wine!”

“Come on!” Delicia said, holding her cup out like a street beggar. “Pour a couple of dollars’ worth in here. I want to get my
drink
on.”

Rocco ignored her. To me he said, “Well? Do you want this job or don’t you?”

“Of course I want it! A wine-tasting event in Napa with a food pairing from the California Culinary College? Anyone would kill to do an event like that. I promise I’ll study up on wines before the event.”

Rocco’s face softened. He looked somewhat satisfied, until he no doubt realized that my definition of “studying wine” was essentially the same as “drinking wine.” “All right, I’ll let my sister Gina know. I’ve really talked you up, so don’t let me down.”

“I won’t, Rocco. I swear. Thank you. I owe you.”

With the wine bottle in hand, Rocco walked out of the office, leaving me to drool over the plum job he’d risked his palate and reputation for. His sister Gina was an instructor at the CCC in Napa and had been asked to cater some
amuse-bouches
—from her best-selling cookbook of the same name at a wine-tasting party. Her longtime friends Rob and Marie Christopher were hosting the event at their up-and-coming boutique winery, the Purple Grape, to announce their newest merlot. They were hoping to make a splash with this inexpensive but hearty wine and thought presenting it at a special tasting would be the best way to launch it.

And I was the lucky party planner who got to put it all together.

Not only was I looking forward to planning the event; I was also excited about spending a few extra days in the world-famous California wine country. I planned to indulge in a spa treatment, maybe take a balloon ride, and hopefully enjoy some personal time with my boyfriend, Brad Matthews—if he could get the time off. As a crime scene cleaner, he never knew when he’d be called to clean up after a messy homicide, suicide, or accidental demise. Unlike a party, death had a way of arriving unplanned.

I’d also decided to take my mother along. She could always use a getaway from her care facility and had mentioned that she had an “old paramour” who lived in the Napa area. I just hoped her early-onset Alzheimer’s wasn’t playing tricks with her mind again.

“So, Dee,” I said to my friend, who was still holding an empty coffee cup. Even pouting, she looked adorable in a ruffly white blouse, short black skirt, and red peep-toe platform heels that raised her from a short five feet to a towering five-three. “How’d you like to play the wine goddess at the party, like that girl on TV?”

She sat up, grinning. “Sweet! I’ll wear a big flowered skirt and puffy peasant top and put on a crown made from grapes and—”

I nodded as she continued the seemingly endless description of her planned costume. It sounded like something out of that old
I Love Lucy
episode where Lucy stomped grapes for a laugh. My mind wandered further as I thought about how I might use my other
part-time crew members for the wine-tasting event. Gamer/computer whiz Duncan Grant could DJ and help out with the entertainment I’d planned, which included grape stomping, barrel rolling, and of course wine-tasting contests. Berkeley Wong, rising indie filmmaker, would videotape the event for my Web site. And I could always use Treasure Island, or TI as we liked to say, security guard Raj Reddy. You never knew when you might be dealing with intoxicated guests who became obnoxious, especially at an event like this.

As for Brad, I’d bring him along for personal use.

The six of us, all with offices on TI, had become friends over the past year. Everyone seemed to enjoy helping out at my bigger events—but then, who wouldn’t want to go to a cool party
and
get paid? Amazingly, after several recent headlining functions, my Killer Parties event-planning business was growing like a well-tended grapevine. Good thing, since the rent was rising on my office space, my condo, and my mother’s care facility.

When Delicia’s motor finally ran down, I asked her to book a few rooms for the crew at a bed-and-breakfast near the Purple Grape.

“Seriously?” she asked, lighting up again. “You’re comping our weekend?”

“Of course,” I said, feeling magnanimous. “That’s one of the perks you get when you work for an event planner like me. Besides, the Christophers have offered my mother and me a room at their ‘villa,’ but I’d like to find a place nearby for you, Duncan, Berk, and Raj.”

“What about Brad? You shacking up with him at the winery—in front of your mother?”

My mother was no prude. She’d had a series of love affairs
in between marrying five husbands. In fact, even now as her Alzheimer’s had slowly progressed, she seemed to be getting more…amorous. Apparently she had an endless supply of paramours.

I wasn’t a thing like my mother in that department. I’d had one long relationship with one of the professors at San Francisco State, where I’d taught abnormal psychology. But I dumped him when I found out he’d been cheating on me with a cliché—one of his students. When the university dumped me—budget cuts—and I moved to the island, I met Brad. He was the only other guy I’d really been with since then. And I was taking that relationship very slowly.

“Hmm,” I said. “That could be awkward. I was planning to sneak him into my room. But maybe you should get him a room too, just in case.”

“I’m on it!” As an underemployed actress, Dee spoke mostly in exclamation points. “This is going to be so off the hook!”

With the party only a month away, much of the preliminary work had been done, but I still had lots to do. I pulled out the Killer Parties planning sheet I’d been working on and read over the entries under the who, what, when, where, and why sections. That was the fun part—brainstorming ideas to match the theme and then watching it all come to life.

Ahhh, a wine-tasting party in Napa, an “adventure” for my mother, and a romantic weekend with Brad. I couldn’t wait to get my party on.

I spent the next few weeks juggling the wine-tasting plans with several other parties I’d been hired to do,
including a Come as Your Favorite Author party—a fund-raiser for the San Francisco Library—and a Red Hat Funvention for a group of women who wore red hats and purple outfits and liked to party. By the end of the month I was more than ready for a peaceful break in the serene wine country.

Early Friday morning I picked up my mother at her care facility. Although the party wasn’t until Saturday, I’d been invited to join the Christophers and Rocco and Gina for a pre-party thank-you dinner at the California Culinary College and meet a couple of their neighbors. Brad couldn’t make it, so I’d asked if my mother could join us.

“Oh, Presley dear, I’m so looking forward to this,” she said after I stuffed her large designer suitcase into the mini-backseat of my MINI Cooper. I pulled up the directions on my iPhone GPS, we fastened our seat belts, and off we went for what I hoped would be a tasty and relaxing evening, with lots and lots of wine.

The forty-plus-mile drive passed quickly, thanks to my mother’s tour-guide lecture about the Napa Valley. As a native San Franciscan, she knew the history of nearly every place within a three-hour radius. The breathtaking view of mustard fields and perfectly aligned vineyards offered eye candy, along with rolling hills, fields of wildflowers, and wineries in every style of architecture, from modern to medieval. My mouth watered just thinking about the bottles of wine those vineyards produced.

“Presley?” I heard my mother say, and retreated from the recesses of my brain. “Are you listening to
me? You were such a distractible child with your ADHD, and you haven’t changed.”

“I was listening, Mother,” I lied. “You were talking about the history of Napa.” I’d heard the speech before during the several trips we’d made over the years when she hosted her own parties there. My mother, the grande dame of San Francisco café society, had planned events for such resident luminaries as the Smothers Brothers, Pat Paulsen, and Francis Ford Coppola.

“So as I was saying,” she continued, “when Prohibition came along, it hurt the industry terribly.”

While she talked on, I thought about the evening ahead. Although Rob and Marie had meant for it to be a thank-you evening, I figured it would give me a chance to go over last-minute changes and nail down final details, as well as make sure they’d be donating a percentage of the money they raised selling wine at the event. I’d chosen Alcoholics Anonymous, since my second stepfather had died of the disease and it seemed appropriate.

But most of all, I looked forward to another preview of Gina’s
amuse-bouches
. Everything sounded better in French. Merlot, cabernet, chardonnay…

“…then many of the wineries shut down,” I caught Mother saying. “But after the Second World War, they picked up again, and that was the beginning of those big monopolies like Napology that now churn out huge quantities for less money.”

Rocco had mentioned something about how the large wineries were changing the valley, causing rumblings from the smaller boutique wineries as well as environmental groups. “Rob said there have been protests,”
Rocco had told me, “from a group called the Green Grape Association. They’ve been complaining about all the special events, the noise and traffic, the crowds and litter. They claim these events are harming the environment.”

“Are they protesting smaller wineries like Rob’s?” I’d asked, thinking of the Purple Grape.

“They’re going after any winery that isn’t green enough to suit them.”

Rocco had mentioned a woman named JoAnne Douglas, president of the Green Grape Association. He said Rob had called her a “fanatic for her radical methods” in trying to stem growth in the valley. Needless to say, although she owned a neighboring winery, she had not been invited to the party like the other neighbors.

“…and today,” Mother said, interrupting my thoughts again, “more than five million people visit the three hundred wineries here.”

The personal audio tour stopped when we pulled up to the Purple Grape estate. Mother was finally speechless—thank God—as she gazed at the Tuscan-style mansion nestled in the Napa hills and surrounded by rows of vineyards.

“My goodness,” she whispered. “We’re staying here? I feel like I’m in Italy.”

Before I could comment, a tall, good-looking man in jeans and a blue madras camp shirt appeared at the double front doors a few yards from the circular driveway. His casual attire didn’t fit the setting, but I was relieved, since I’d also worn jeans—black—with a red Killer Parties logo T-shirt and my favorite black Mary Janes. Mother, of course, had dressed as if a trip to
the country were a formal affair, in a yellow pantsuit, matching pumps, and a lacy wrap.

The man smiled pleasantly and waved, then started toward us, following a stone path that wound through an impeccably landscaped flower garden. Noting his graying temples and his lean but muscular physical shape, I guessed him to be a young fortysomething. Out of habit, I checked his shoes as he reached the car. Brown leather Ferragamo loafers. Italian to match the villa?

“Welcome to the Purple Grape!” he said, opening my mother’s car door. “You must be Presley,” he said to me, “and this must be your charming mother, Veronica.”