Seven Sisters (16 page)

At the ranch it appeared that Dove was entertaining. A half dozen cars were parked in the circle driveway behind Dove’s new little red Ford Ranger pickup with a vanity license plate: DOVESTRK. The house was empty, but her red-and-white country kitchen showed evidence that supported my theory with the long breakfast counter covered with plastic-wrapped sandwich platters, casseroles, pies, and cakes. After picking through them and nabbing a miniature pecan pie, I went through the back screen door and across the yard to the barn. Crackly music poured out of the open double doors. Inside I found Dove sitting on a kitchen stool shouting through one of my old San Celina High Stallions cheerleading megaphones.

“Step, step, pause, step . . . Emmett, it’s step, step, not step, shuffle! Lift up those feet, old man! You’re supposed to be a teenage gang member! Dang it, Melva, how many times do I have to tell you? You’re a Jet, not a Shark. Get over to your own side.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, coming up behind her.

She turned and frowned at me, her pale peach face disgusted. “Land’s sakes, I swear I’m going to sell myself on the street corner. I’d make more money than we’ll bring in trying to put on a play.”

“First, I think Mac might disapprove just a little of the president of the Women’s Missionary Union hawking her wares down on Lopez Street, good intentions and Mary Magdalene notwithstanding, and second, what possessed you to put on a play, and am I guessing right that it’s
West Side Story
?”

“Ten-minute break, kids. Don’t go too far—we’ve got hours of rehearsing still to go,” she yelled through the megaphone. Emmett Penshaw, apparently the head Shark, made a disparaging gesture with his liver-spotted hand and mumbled something to the snowy-haired Jet next to him.

“I saw that, Emmett,” she called through the megaphone. “Give me ten push-ups.”

He ignored her and shuffled out of the barn toward the house.

Trying not to laugh since I didn’t want her irritation turned on me, I asked calmly, “
West Side Story,
Dove? Are you sure this is the easiest way to make money?”

“No,” she said, setting down the red-and-black megaphone painted with my high school mascot—a fire-breathing stallion. “But I’ve about come to the end of my tether, honeybun. Everyone’s counting on me to think of something, but whenever I do, they fight me the whole way. All these people want to do is eat coffee cake and complain about their bunions. We have to make some money fast or we’ll just have to settle for what the insurance company will pay us, and end up having to turn folks away who need a hot meal. I need to light a fire under their sorry old butts.”

I put my arm around her shoulders and hugged her. “Dove, you know I’ll do anything to help, and so will my friends. Maybe having some younger people involved will help your friends get more excited about it.”

Her mouth turned up slowly into a big, crafty smile. “Out of the mouths of babes. Honeybun, you have just given me an answer to my prayer. I asked the good Lord for a sign, and your suggestion is it.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t sure if it was okay with God, but I’ve got the green light now. Mac told me he thought it was all right, but now, after what you just said, I know it is.”

“What are you talking about?”

Her smile grew wider. “You’ll find out soon enough.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Thanks.”

I followed her back to the house where her friends were indeed already halfway through the refreshments and comparing knee and hip surgeries. I was pleased that I’d helped her, though I had no idea how. After eating a tuna sandwich and a brownie, I went out to the porch and called for Scout. He came bounding down the driveway where he’d gone to mark some of the towering oak trees. Lydia’s shiny Jaguar slowly followed him. I stood on the front porch and watched Gabe step out of the driver’s side and Lydia climb out of the passenger’s side.

“Hi,” Gabe said, coming up the porch and kissing me on the cheek. “Lydia came by the office and wanted to know how to get out to the ranch, and I thought it would be just as easy for me to drive out here with her.”

She smiled at me. “I wanted to see where my son’s been living so happily for the last year.” She wore plum-colored slacks, matching linen top, and black, thin-strap sandals. Her hair was pulled back with large Hopi silver barrettes.

I smiled back, determined to stamp down the jealous feelings of seeing them together
again
with positive thoughts and the assertion that she had always been a part of Gabe’s and Sam’s lives and always would be. I’d better get used to it. It would have helped, though, if my husband hadn’t looked quite so happy.

“I can’t guarantee the cleanliness of the bunkhouse,” I said. “Dove stays on them, but between him and the other hands, it can get pretty grungy.”

She laughed, touching her smooth throat with her hand. A large diamond dinner ring flashed in the sunlight. “Benni, you don’t have to tell
me
that. I lived with his grime for eighteen years.”

That made me feel really stupid. Of course she knew what it was like to have a boy around. Better than me. The obvious fact that she was a mother and I wasn’t reared its head again.

“I have to get back to the museum,” I said to Gabe. “Do you need a ride back?”

“No, I’ll drive back with Lydia so she doesn’t get lost. You go on to work.”

I tried to quell the slow boil inside me. “Guess I’ll see you this evening at the wine thing.”

“Wine thing?” Lydia asked.

Gabe turned to her, his face animated. “It’s one of the harvest events. Zin and Zydeco. You might still be able to get a ticket. What do you think, Benni?”

“I have no idea. I suppose you can try.”

“Don’t worry,” he said to Lydia. “I am not without influence in this town. I’ll get you in.”

“Wonderful,” she said, beaming at him.

Oh, yes, wonderful,
I thought.

“I am not without influence in this town. I’ll get you in,” I mocked Gabe to Scout while driving back to town. “What a pompous thing to say.” I growled and made a face at my dog. Scout whined and loyally licked my hand. I ruffled his head and blew him a noisy kiss. “You’re the guy for me, Scout. Always and forever.”

I drove past the museum, not feeling like facing either paperwork or the million and one questions and requests that always dogged me at work. Before I realized it, I found myself turning off on the road that led to the Seven Sisters ranch.

You’re not snooping,
I told myself.
You’re just going out to visit Bliss, see the horses, maybe tour the winetasting room that you missed the night of the engagement party.

It was almost three o’clock when I stopped at the stables where things were pretty quiet. A Mexican groom was preparing to wrap the legs of a bay mare with a swollen fetlock. Figaro, the masked barn cat, greeted me by weaving around my legs. I bent down and stroked the long black stripe on his back.

“Donde
Senorita Bliss?” I asked the groom.

He shrugged his answer—I don’t know.

“Señora Cappy?”

He jerked a thumb up the road.
“En la casa grande.”

In the big house.
“Gracias.”

I wandered around, petting the horses, then decided to walk the quarter mile to the wine-tasting room and the rose garden, which was quite famous among San Celina’s flower set. It was a warm, pleasant afternoon, the temperature hovering around eighty. Walking through the garden might give me the time and solitude I needed to think about what I should do with this new information I’d acquired. The one person I was definitely going to avoid was Detective Hudson, who seemed to have an uncanny ability to sense when I was holding something back. I’d give this information to Gabe and let him talk to the sheriff’s detective.

It was a smart move leaving my car at the stable, because the parking lot was completely full and the winetasting bar as crowded as an airport at Christmas. Tourists were well into their wine weekend on this Saturday afternoon. There were two dark red limousines from Will’s Winetasting Tours parked in front of the rugged adobe tasting room. Chase, Etta, and two female employees were all pouring wine and chatting with customers. It appeared Emory was right. The murder had only caused business to pick up. Either that or a lot of these obviously out-of-town customers hadn’t heard about it yet. I left Scout comfortably situated under the shade of an ash tree with the command to stay and stepped inside the cool, spicy-scented tasting room.

Though the outside was adobe, the gift shop and winetasting room duplicated the Montana lodge theme of the big house. The gift items ran the gamut of pewter wine corks shaped like horse heads to glassware etched with the Seven Sisters logo to local salsas and hand-tinted postcards of the magnificent Brown house and rose gardens. I picked up a brochure that explained the history of the adobe structure and the rose gardens.

The long dark oak tasting bar with a brass foot rail and brown-and-white cowhide barstools must have set the family trust back a pretty penny. Hanging behind the bar, an original Donna Howell-Sickles watercolor of three cowgirls with strong thighs and sky-sized grins also told me no expense had been spared. A built-in fireplace was at one end with a dozen or so padded mission-style chairs surrounding it. Over the carved mantel was a professional portrait of the entire Brown family. I weaved my way through the chattering wine tasters and stared up at the photograph. Everyone’s smile was flawless and I couldn’t help but wonder how many shots it took the photographer to achieve this polished picture. I stepped closer. The smiles were perfect, but there wasn’t a genuine bit of emotion in one of them.

I stared a little longer at Giles’s face. What had he done that caused one of these people to murder him? Was it blackmail like his letter implied, or something else? Maybe Arcadia, as dramatic as her reaction had been that night, had, in reality, become fed up with his philandering. The switching of the guns did sound planned, as Detective Hudson said, but it could just as well have been a quick recovery by her grandmother and great-aunts who by no means lacked the nerve to pull it off.

I made a note to call my friend Amanda Landry, who was also the volunteer attorney for the folk art museum, to see if I could finagle her into loaning me her investigator, Leilani, for a day to see what kind of history she could find on Giles Norton, his family, and his extracurricular activities.

“Can I help you with something, Benni?”

The man’s voice startled me, and I turned, laughing nervously, to face Chase Brown. His face was already flushed with the explosive red color of a habitual drinker. Like his picture in the portrait above us, his lips smiled, but his eyes remained blank. He held a glass of dark red wine. “Are you here for a tasting?”

I shook my head no. “I came to watch Bliss work with the horses, but she’s not here, or at least the groom doesn’t know where she is. I was going to go on up to the house, but I decided to walk over and see the wine-tasting room and garden since I missed it the other night . . . ” I paused, suddenly aware that a small group of people were inching closer, listening to us.

“Why don’t we go outside?” he said in a low voice, taking my elbow. I tried pulling away politely, having always hated that controlling gesture, especially in men I didn’t know well. He let go when we got outside. “People are bottom feeders,” he said, taking a big gulp from the wineglass.

“I guess it’s been hard on everyone,” I said.

“You said it,” he said, gesturing toward the tasting room with the wineglass. A bit splashed out, staining his hand. He impatiently wiped it on his dark slacks. “Giles was basically a pain in the ass when he was alive, and he’s proving to be even more so now that he’s dead.”

I didn’t answer, hoping he’d continue. It was a well-known fact that Chase was half drunk most of the time, and there was no better place to get information than a partially drunk, irritated person.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, looking down at me out of red-veined eyes. “We had us some good times, me and Giles. The guy could shoot, no doubt about it. And hold his whiskey. He could hold his friggin’ whiskey.”

I nodded, as if agreeing that it was indeed a legacy to be proud of, the ability of one’s liver not to completely collapse while drowning in alcohol.

“But he was pushy,” Chase said, “and didn’t know when to take no for an answer. The man hated the word no.”

“I heard he wanted to take the winery international,” I said, trying to make it sound like casual chitchat.

“You heard right. Would’ve been a real coup for Seven Sisters. Lots more money. Lots more prestige. I could see the advantages better than some people.”

“So,” I said, hesitating only for a moment before barging in with my question, knowing this might be the only time I’d ever get a chance to ask. “You were going to vote in favor of the merger?”

He drank from his glass again, emptying it. “Where are my manners? Did you want any wine?”

“Not this early for me, thanks.”

He laughed and twirled the stem of the glass in his thick fingers. “There’s no cocktail hour for wine, honey. Why, there are places in Europe where people drink it for breakfast.”

“Well, I’ve never claimed to be a sophisticate. About the merger . . . ”

“It pissed off the Amazon queen, no doubt about it. But the last few days he had her almost convinced to vote for the merger. Willow and Etta, too. Don’t know how he got the queen to even think about changing her mind, but he did.”

“The Amazon queen?”

“My dear mother, Capitola, herself. That’s what we call her. Not to her face, of course. The queen and her consorts. Giles and I did have our laughs. He was the only man who’d come into this family in a long time who wasn’t ball-stripped and beat into compliance by the women in this spider’s web. Caused him a good deal of grief, and if I had some wine, I’d toast him.” He held up his empty glass.

Before I could answer, a twentyish woman in tight red Wranglers and a silky print blouse walked up to us. “Chase, someone wants a taste of the ’92 Merlot, and you said no one’s supposed to pour that but you.”