Lost and Fondue (7 page)

To the left. In the driveway.

Not Winona, who was out for a smoke, fingers absentmindedly stroking her throat. But Sylvie’s Lexus. It was parked beside Matthew’s Jeep.

Rebecca followed my gaze. “Hey, isn’t that Sylvie’s rental car. What’s she doing back?”

“No idea.” But I did my best not to worry. Matthew had proven he could hold his own against her. And I’d seen the girls leave with my grandparents. Sylvie wouldn’t be able to snatch them for another impromptu outing without a fight from my grandmother.

I prodded Rebecca upward. “Back to the game.”

As we bypassed the second floor, where most of the other guests seemed intent on scouring the bedrooms, Rebecca said, “Why did Matthew marry Sylvie?”

“It was love at first sight. He was the sommelier at a high-end restaurant. She was a waitress.”

“Was she always so horrible?”

“She was colorful and unpredictable.” Those were the terms Matthew had used when he’d introduced us. “A month later, they were married.”

“Were they . . .? You know.”

“No, not pregnant. Just impetuous.”

“But he’s not at all like that.”

“Not anymore.” Matthew had learned a costly lesson.

As we reached the third floor, a man said, “That’s far enough!”

Though he wasn’t talking to us, my heart leapt to full throttle. I peeked around the corner and spotted Freddy and Harker, who stood in the middle of the marble-floored ballroom, highlighted by slivers of moonlight that pierced the windows.

Freddy’s gaze was dark, threatening. He stabbed Harker’s chest with his index finger. “Stop jerking my daughter around.”

“She asked for it. She’s the one gallivanting—”

“Enough!” Freddy cuffed Harker on the shoulder. “This is not part of our agreement.”

“Are you reneging?”

“I never renege. But do not think I won’t make you disappear. Got me?” Freddy stabbed the kid one more time in the chest to make his point, then stormed in our direction. Without making eye contact, he hurtled past us and down the stairs. A cartoonist would have drawn hash marks and exclamation points in the bubble over his head.

“Whew,” Rebecca said when Freddy was out of sight. “I thought my father was tough.”

Pépère had delivered a similar showdown to Creep Chef. I’d always wondered whether something he’d said had driven Chip to abandon me for Paris. My life was happier without him, and I had to face it: Charlotte and Chip just didn’t sound good together. Neither did Charlotte and Chippendale, which was his given name. And whenever I added his last name—Cooper—I giggled. We had way too many
Cs
in our combined names. But still, I wondered.

Startled that tears had found their way to the rims of my eyes, I said, “Let’s press on.”

We entered the ballroom, and I could almost imagine the grand balls that had been held there. I envisioned a string quartet playing at the far end. The French doors would have hung open to let in the cool air. Chatter would have revolved around the new harvest and the delicious wine, and gossip would have abounded about Ziegler’s crazy wife. The latter realization doused my musings with icy water.

Eager to move on, I said, “There’s a candle.”

A slender white taper was pressed into a silver candlestick that stood on a lion’s-footed buffet. We snagged it, stowed it in our bag, and hurried out of the room.

Back downstairs, we entered the living room and located a sheet of poetry by Longfellow tucked beneath the old oak desk.

After that, we ventured into a tiny room accessed beneath the staircase—for storage, I imagined.
Vintage Today
had done nothing to the room. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in it. The panels on the walls were painted completely white.

“Bust,” Rebecca said. She turned to leave, but I grasped her elbow.

“Wait. Remember how Meredith said something could be hiding in plain sight? What if there are hidden doors and compartments? You know, like that dumbwaiter in the kitchen, but painted white to fool us.” Feeling like Nancy Drew, I circled the room, pressing every panel. Nothing opened. I was about ready to give up when right behind the entrance door, I found a pencil. A white pencil. “Aha!”

Rebecca edged around to see what I’d found.

“In plain sight,” I said. “Now, let’s head for the cellar. We only need one more—”

“Can we quit?” Rebecca said, her voice small and tentative. “I mean, we don’t have to win, do we?”

I glanced at her. She’d gone pale. Her forehead was beaded with perspiration. “Are you okay?”

“This place is giving me the heebie-jeebies. All the fighting. First Quinn and Harker, then Quinn’s father.”

Because of her plucky attitude, I tended to forget how innocent my assistant was. Raised Amish, Rebecca had rarely seen anyone argue.

“On
Ghost Whisperer
,” Rebecca went on, “a whole town of ghosts lived in the basement of a building. They sent out bad vibes. What if there’s an evil spirit living here, you know, a pirate ghost making all these people argumentative?”

I shuddered. I wasn’t a TV nut like she was, but I had watched tons of films. I’d seen something like what she described in
Ghostbusters
. The
slime
made them do it. Yet I didn’t believe in hoodoo voodoo, and I certainly didn’t believe pirates had buried treasure at the Ziegler Winery. The only way to prove my point was to keep going.

“Buck up,” I said. “One more item. We’re bound to find a wine box in the cellar. Item twenty-nine. C’mon, we’re a team.”

“Couldn’t we scour the tasting rooms?” Rebecca chewed on her lip then, digging deep for an iota of bravery, shrugged her acquiescence. “Okay. Cellar first.”

We blazed through the halls, passing other guests, looking for the door leading to the cellar. As we rounded a corner, a gust of cold air hit us. The lights went out.

Partygoers gasped.

“Ghosts!” Rebecca clutched my arm with a death grip.

“There’re no ghosts, you ninny. Don’t panic. I’ll fix it.” I rummaged through the scavenger hunt bag and withdrew the wooden match and the candle. I scraped the match on the stone floor. It ignited. I lit the candlewick. The flame danced in front of Rebecca’s face. She breathed easier.

As other guests followed my lead and lit their candles, the door leading to the cellar swung open.

Dane bolted through the door, his face as white as parchment paper. “Have you seen Quinn?”

I said, “She’s with Edsel.”

“No, she ditched him. She was with me then charged off. She got spooked.”

Why did I suspect he’d scared her? On purpose. After the scarf incident, what was I supposed to believe?

“I’ve got to find her.” Dane raced toward the observatory. “She hates the dark.”

At the same time, somebody screamed from someplace below us. Female. A bloodcurdling scream.

Dane skidded to a stop and spun around. “Quinn!”

Rebecca moaned with fear.

I said, “Stay here.”

She clutched a handful of my sweater. “Don’t leave me.”

With Rebecca clinging to me, we hurried down the creaky stairs.
Vintage Today
hadn’t done a stitch of refurbishing in the cellar. There were only the candles Meredith had mentioned, stuck into rusted iron sconces. Cobwebs hung from the stone ceilings. The smell of wet mildew filled my nostrils—not the yummy, earthy kind of smell I associated with cheese caves, but rather dank decay.

When we reached the bottom, shouts swelled to our right. I held the candle out. Its flame cast a soft arc of light across the flagstone floor. With Rebecca still gripping my sweater, I followed the sound, passing huge oak vats and deteriorating winepresses, until I reached a knot of people hovering in the far corner. They circled a stone wine cellar that was guarded by metal bars.

I ordered Rebecca to stay put, then pushed through the crowd. When I caught a glimpse of what they were staring at, my stomach knotted up.

A partial brick wall stood in the middle of the wine cellar. The tail of a multicolored knit scarf poked out from behind the wall.

Quinn’s scarf.

“Quinn!” I yelled. My voice echoed off the cellar walls. So did the gasps of the crowd. “Quinn!” I repeated.

Maybe she’d fainted.

I skirted the brick wall and stopped in my tracks. Quinn wasn’t lying on the flagstone floor; Harker was, with Quinn’s scarf pulled tightly around his neck. I darted to his side. In the dim light, his face looked the color of an overripe blue cheese. I loosened the scarf and pressed my fingertips to his neck. No pulse.

In the past few years, I’d started to worry about my grandparents’ health. Though they were spry and sassy, I had taken some CPR classes in order to be prepared for an emergency. I straddled Harker, placed palm over palm on his sternum, and thrust hard in an effort to force breath back into him. Ten thrusts. He didn’t budge. I pinched his nose and blew into his mouth. Three quick bursts. I sat back and listened for breathing. Nothing.

I repeated the process but, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t revive him.

Coated with perspiration and riddled with sadness, I stumbled to my feet and fell backward. Rebecca braced me.

“Is Mr. Harker dead?”

“His name’s Harker Fontanne.” I recalled seeing his last name in his signature on the painting in the library. “And, yes, he’s dead.”

“What’re those rocks on the ground?” she asked.

In my haste, I hadn’t noticed them, but they looked like jewels. Emeralds, rubies, and sapphires. Six to ten of them. They lay near Harker’s hands. Had Harker discovered the rumored treasure, or had he interrupted someone else’s search? I scanned the crowd that swarmed the area to get a view beyond the brick wall. Was the murderer among them? Winona and Wolford hovered at the forefront, each holding a candle. The flames danced and flickered in front of their faces. Winona’s mouth was working, but I couldn’t catch what she was saying. Dane had slipped in on the other side of her. His eyes fluttered, like he wanted to shut them to block out the sight. Other guests stood near them, mouths hanging open, all of them reminding me of the sufferers in Rodin’s astounding sculpture
The Gates of Hell
.

Edsel pushed past the front row of people and swallowed back a groan. “Oh, man, no!”

I broke free from Rebecca and said, “Somebody find Chief Urso.”

“Don’t bother, I’m here,” Urso said. “Back up, people, to the edges of the room.” His footsteps resonated as he crossed the flagstone. He marched around the brick wall to the body, crouched down, and checked for a pulse. He eyed me with concern, stood up, and grazed the sleeve of my sweater with his fingertips. “You okay?”

My mouth and chin started to quiver. No, I wasn’t okay. I was horrified.

Urso gave a little nod. He understood my silence. “What happened? Take it slow. Who is this?”

“Harker Fontanne.” It hit me that the artwork upstairs would be Harker’s last piece, and a wave of sorrow rolled through me. I took a deep breath and worked my tongue around the inside of my mouth. When I calmed, I told Urso about the lights going out, Dane running past looking for Quinn, the scream, finding Harker. Once I started, the words wouldn’t stop.

“There’s a breeze coming from that stone wall, Chief,” Rebecca cut in.

“What’s your point, Miss Zook?” Urso preferred using surnames when conducting an investigation. He felt it helped him maintain objectivity.

Rebecca toyed with her ponytail. She wanted to be bold around Urso, but she told me in private that his mere size cowed her. “I’m just saying it might be worth checking out. See, I saw this TV show,
Bones,
and there were hidden compartments behind some walls—”

Urso held up a hand to stop her. Treading lightly, he moved beyond Harker and peered at the wall. I gazed back at the iron bars that protected the space. Why were they there? Maybe stealing wine had been a problem back in the late eighteen hundreds or during Prohibition. The thought gave me a jolt.

Urso fingered the wall. He tried to wiggle a stone free. None of them budged. He found a chunk of loose mortar on the floor and used it to draw an outline around the crime scene, then radioed his deputy.

Rebecca scooted beside me. “Poor Meredith,” she murmured.

My heart ached for my friend. Meredith’s hopes for making the winery into a new college would be dashed when news of the murder got out. Donors would withdraw funding. No one would want to send a kid to school here. Our current self-appointed society goddess, Prudence Hart, who wanted to micromanage every facet of the locals’ lives, would relish the failure. If she didn’t come up with the idea, it wasn’t an idea worthy of Providence.

Urso returned to my side.

“What about the jewels?” I asked. “Do you think they’re part of the treasure?”

Urso knew about the rumored treasure. He’d been one of the kids in high school who’d dared me to steal inside the winery. He peered down at me. He couldn’t help himself; he was a whole head taller. He said, “Do you think Mr. Fontanne found it?”

“And someone murdered him to get it.”

“But left some?” Urso shook his head. “That’s a little sloppy.”

“There were lots of people moving about on the scavenger hunt. Maybe he or she was in a hurry.”

“If the killer was a she, she would have had to be pretty darned strong. Mr. Fontanne looks buff.” Urso bent to retrieve one of the jewels and pinched it between two fingers. “Hmm. Paste.”

He would know if the jewels were real or crafted. In high school during the summer, he’d helped out at the Silver Trader, an eclectic jewelry store in Providence.

“Why would the killer strew cut glass around Harker’s head?” I asked.

“I’m not sure.” Urso rose to his full height and faced the crowd. “Anybody see anything?”