Lethal Vintage (9 page)

Rivka changed the wooden sign to closed and locked the door. She went over to the zinc bar that separated the tiny dining room from the kitchen and lay her cheek down on the cool surface. “That has to be a record,” she said. “I’ve never cooked so much or so fast in my life.”

Sunny stood on the other side, eating a plate of poached salmon. “I should testify in murder trials more often.”

“Careful what you wish for. Do you think it’s going to keep up like this?”

“I thought you wanted more business. You’re the one who wants to open on nights and weekends,” said Sunny.

“Doesn’t more help usually go along with more business?” said Rivka.

“You have to make the money to pay for it first. If everything goes well and you survive long enough, then you hire more people. They call it sweat equity.”

Bertrand, the slender, white-shirted maître d’, sommelier, and gardener at Wildside, walked by Rivka and swatted her arm with a damp rag. “Up, slave girl. You haven’t finished your chores.”

“I can’t move. I need a glass of white wine with two ice cubes in it. Please.”

He went behind the bar and poured a glass. “I’ll serve, but I’m not putting ice cubes in it. It’s chilled, for God’s sake.”

“Cubes, please, I beg you.”

“Pauvre petite fille riche,” crooned Bertrand. “Here are your damn cubes. You want a scoop of ice cream in there to go with it?”

Sunny turned up the music. It had been a grueling day and the end was the hardest, when there was so much cleaning to do. She hefted a tub of ice out of the oyster bar, dumped it in the back sink, and came back for the next one. When that was done, she started wiping down the workstations. Rivka tackled the grill, scraping the hot surface with water and a metal spatula. Greasy steam billowed up around her. When the grit was gone, she sliced lemons in half and rubbed down the hot stainless steel until it was silver and shiny.

“You want to get a drink after this?” said Sunny. She’d been quiet all day about the e-mails and Andre and everything else on her mind. It was easy while the restaurant was busy. Between the two of them, they could just keep up if there were no distractions. Now the restaurant was empty and she needed to talk.

“As long as it’s not alcohol,” said Rivka. “I’m on the one-drink-a-day plan all week and I just finished it.”

“Taylor’s?”

“Perfect.”

It took another hour to finish up and get out of there. The dishwashers were still hosing down the floor mats and mopping the tile when they left. They rode their bikes single file past stalled rush-hour traffic for a mile on Highway 29, provoking the occasional appreciative hoot from guys stuck in their pickup trucks. At Taylor’s, Rivka staked out a picnic table on the grass while Sunny ordered green-tea milkshakes and garlic fries. They ate and brushed away flies, soaking up the last of the late-afternoon sun.

“How you holding up?” said Rivka.

“Okay,” said Sunny.

“And? You look like you have something on your mind.”

“I do. Something happened over the weekend. I left it out last night. So much happened all at once.”

Rivka ate fries and waited.

Sunny looked around at the trampled grass and picnic tables under the big trees. The loudspeaker squawked someone’s order number.

“Well, are you going to tell me?”

Sunny nodded.

Rivka ate a few more fries. Finally she dug in her knapsack and handed Sunny a folded-up newspaper. “I wasn’t going to show you this, but maybe it will help. There’s no need to keep things secret now.”

The headline across the valley’s daily paper read Drug-Fueled Sex Party Ends in Suspicious Death. It described how Anna Wilson was found and listed the names of those involved, including “acclaimed local chefs and restaurateurs Andre Morales of Yountville’s Vinifera and Sonya ‘Sunny’ McCoskey of Wildside in St. Helena.”

“That’s it. I’m going to have to move. Wildside has been weird enough since the last incident.”

“You mean the Liberty Dock murder?”

“You’ve seen what’s been going on. People used to ask to see me so they could give their compliments to the chef, say a lot of nice things about how they’ve been looking forward to having lunch at Wildside for their anniversary for the last three years, all that. Now they want to talk about Ronald Fetcher’s trial.”

“It’ll pass. Nobody remembers that stuff for very long.”

Sunny put her hand over her eyes. “It’s going to be a freak show where the nymphomaniac drug addict chef performs daily.”

“Hmm…That could be a problem. Not terribly appetizing. You’ll have to make a big show of washing your hands.”

Sunny folded the paper and pushed it away.

“I can’t remember the last time I went to a drug-fueled sex party,” said Rivka. “I never get invited to the good stuff.”

“Don’t believe everything you read.”

“So there weren’t drugs?”

“I don’t know. Probably there were. I didn’t see any. But Keith Lachlan, Oliver’s lawyer, offered me coke. And I’m pretty sure Anna and a few others were on something. Coke, maybe Ecstasy, who knows. Anna was acting very strangely. No one seemed interested in sleeping even though it was really late. And they got very, uh, affectionate at a certain point. That’s Ecstasy, right?”

“Could be. But it seems unlikely if they were drinking. You don’t mix vitamin E with alcohol or you’re in for a very unpleasant ride. If they do drugs, they would know that.”

“They were definitely drinking wine and cognac earlier in the evening, not so much later on. The chemistry changed. Nobody seemed drunk. Just, you know, festive.”

“Festive.”

“Around midnight they were all in the hot tub, like I told you about last night. It was crazy. There were tongues everywhere.”

“They?” Rivka raised her eyebrows.

“Okay, we.”

“I’m sure that went over well with the patented McCoskey fear of intimacy.”

“I got out of there pretty quickly.”

“I’ll bet.” Rivka tapped the newspaper with her finger. “You didn’t say Andre was there.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. After all the hot-tub business, the next morning I go hunting for my clothes—”

“Uh, sounds like you left something out.”

“I went to bed. My clothes got hijacked by Seth’s sister and her boyfriend.”

“Explain.”

“That part doesn’t matter. Just listen. It’s hard enough to talk about it.”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

“So the next morning I go looking for my clothes. I knock on the door of the room where I left them, and guess who opens the door.”

“Don’t say it,” said Rivka.

Sunny nodded.

“Alone?”

Sunny shook her head. “He was with the Guamanian princess.”

“Wait, which one is she?”

“The one who came late. The lawyer’s girlfriend.”

“The coke dealer’s girl?”

Sunny nodded.

“You’re sure.”

“He answered the door in a towel. Though, in all fairness, I knocked on the door in a sheet.” Sunny gave a weak laugh.

Rivka dragged another garlic fry through ketchup and put it in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “Well, damn. That was some party.”

“I don’t know where I am anymore. It’s like I’m living in some sleazy parallel universe where everything is completely messed up.”

“Don’t worry, you’re still right here in wineland, Auntie Em. Even if things have gotten a little weird.” She shook her head sympathetically. “And you can’t even get upset about it because your friend upstaged your breakup by going off and getting herself killed.”

Sunny looked away.

“Was he there all day yesterday?”

“In the same room.”

“And you didn’t say anything to him or kick him in the shins or anything?”

“How could I? Anna is dead. There were cops there trying to figure out who killed her. It was not the best time for relationship drama.”

“I would have lost it.”

“We Vulcans cannot relate to you illogical humans,” said Sunny.

Rivka sighed. “And just when we were beginning to pry little Sonya from her shell. It’s a shame.”

“I’m almost glad I’m too exhausted and traumatized to think about it,” said Sunny. “Maybe it was all a misunderstanding, anyway. Maybe she’s his long-lost sister.”

“Maybe you can work it out.”

“You think so?”

“Do you?”

They finished their milkshakes. After a while Rivka said, “I know you’re not feeling very good about this right now, but Andre Morales isn’t exactly the Prince Charming we want for our Sunny. The guy is a player. He may be hot, but he’s been an inconsiderate ass all along, if you want my opinion. When all this blows over, you’re going to be better off without him. You know that, right?”

Sunny made a face and took a napkin. She pressed it into her eyes and blew her nose, telling herself she was not, not going to fall apart at Taylor’s like a jerk.

“You okay?”

“Close enough.”

Rivka looked at her watch. “I have to get going. The Jamaican herbalist is going to be waiting for me.” Recently Rivka had been dating a guy with big curls and a stall at the farmers’ market.

“Now he’s an herbalist?”

“He wants to start selling healing herbs from the mountains down there. He’s got some growing in his backyard. I’ve been trying them out. Pretty good stuff.”

“Not the usual herb, I hope.”

“That market is pretty well saturated. These are teas you drink if you get a cold or a stomachache.”

“The coke dealer—I mean Oliver’s lawyer, Keith—is Caribbean, too. From Barbados.”

“Let’s not get them together,” said Rivka, turning her bike around. “That guy sounds like trouble. Speaking of Jason, he’s cooking Ital food at Wade’s tomorrow night. You in?”

“I wouldn’t miss it. What’s an Ital?”

“In this case, oxtail and plantains. Or maybe curry chicken.”

“On it.”

She watched Rivka bump across the lawn to a side street and disappear down the road. She’d forgotten to tell her about the e-mail from Anna.

The traffic was still in a snarl on Main. Between people in parked cars opening doors and people pulling out of parking spots and frustrated drivers deciding at the last second to shoot down a side street, it was too dangerous to try on a bike. Sunny took the side streets toward home and kept going to the police station just outside of town. The woman behind the bulletproof glass had a swimmer’s physique and greenish-blond hair. She told Sunny to take a seat while she tried to find Sergeant Harvey. Sunny heard her radio his car and Sergeant Harvey respond that he was a couple of blocks away and to ask Sunny to sit tight. The woman looked up. “Got it,” said Sunny. She stared at the door, waiting for Sergeant
Harvey to come through it. He came from the offices behind her instead and made her jump.

“McCoskey! What can I do for you?” He had a manila folder in one hand and was working his pager with the other.

“Sorry to drop in on you,” said Sunny. “I know you’re busy with the new case. Do you have a few minutes to talk in private?”

“Come on back into the office. How you doing? You get any sleep yet?”

“Not much.”

“Me neither.”

They walked down a hall and into a tiny office, where he offered her a pinkish-gray metal folding chair. The filing cabinets were a pinkish, fleshy brown, too, like certain kinds of intestines and the underbellies of a couple of inedible mushrooms she could think of. The room’s only window looked back on the murky hallway and the offices opposite. Spending more than a few minutes in a room like this would drive anyone to suicide, thought Sunny, or a life of crime. Most of the furniture was the color of some sort of offal. Even the telephone was a muddy beige. It was like being inside a giant gut. It was tragedy so maudlin it was almost funny. One more chip out of the dirty coffee mug on the faux-walnut desk with its laminate buckling, one more stack of yellowing paperwork on top of the scratched-up filing cabinets, and the room would achieve comedy through farce. She shifted in the miserable chair and it gave a metallic groan. Was St. Helena really so bad off that they couldn’t afford a real chair for Sergeant Harvey’s visitors to sit in? Couldn’t the department pool their funds, rent a van one Saturday, and go requisitioning at the nearest Ikea? Sergeant Harvey grabbed a stack of pink phone messages left on his desk and shuffled through them. Probably he never gave the surroundings a second thought.
Or he might even like making his visitors suffer. Certainly no one would be tempted to linger.

“Chop-chop, McCoskey. I’m up to my ears,” he said without looking up.

“Right. So, as you might imagine, it’s about Anna Wilson.”

“She have a drug problem as far as you know? Addict?”

“Recreational. Nothing serious, at least back when I hung out with her enough to say for sure.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About four years.”

“What happened? Why’d you lose contact?”

“We both lived in San Francisco. Then she went to Europe and I came up here. We talked and e-mailed a couple of times since then, but Saturday was the first time I’d seen her.”

“What made her call you up all of a sudden after so long?”

“Like I said yesterday, I’m not exactly sure. Maybe just a friendly visit, maybe something more.”

“Such as?”

“She seemed to be having some difficulties with her boyfriend and she needed moral support from her friends.”

“Is that what she said, ‘moral support’?”

“She didn’t use those exact words.”

“So she might have been interested in actual support, as in a buffer between her and someone else who had become abusive or who she considered potentially violent. A witness, at least.”

“It’s possible, but there were plenty of people around, if that’s what she was after. The guy she shares a place with in Barcelona, Troy Stevens, was staying there at the house. And Franco, the winemaker for Taurus Rising, Seth’s winery. He wasn’t particularly a friend of hers, more of Oliver’s, but he was staying with them, too. And her friend Jordan was there when I arrived, though I think
she’d just driven up for the day from the city. Even without inviting me up, she knew she wasn’t going to be alone in the house with Oliver anytime soon.” Sunny waited until he looked up from the papers on his desk. “We went over all this yesterday, didn’t we?”