by P. Creeden
After trying a few things, like Merlot and Chardonnay, Felicity pulled her messenger bag closer to herself and pulled out the leather-bound journal. She flipped through the pages she’d read, looking for words her mother tended to use often and seemed to put special emphasis on.
Even though one word often had flowers and other swirly objects decorating it on every other page, it didn’t seem much like Liz to use it as a password. On a whim, Felicity typed it in. Gratitude.
Immediately, the laptop unlocked.
She blinked at the screen. The background of her computer was an aerial picture of the winery, which on the back side went all the way out to cliffs overlooking the ocean. Seemed amazing that a woman who talked a lot about gratitude in her journal and even used it as her laptop password wouldn’t be likely to take her own life. None of it made sense to Felicity yet. She started going through the computer, starting with the latest photographs stored in it and moving on to the last documents and spreadsheets that Liz had opened. From what she could see, Dorma Valley Wine had been doing fabulously well and was a success after pulling through some rough times during the last recession. Everything was looking up for the business.
After a few hours of browsing Liz’s computer, Felicity leaned back, rolling her head and shoulders to get the tension out. Her stomach growled. She glanced at her smartphone and found that it was already nearly four o’clock. Since the oversized donut that she and Georgia had shared that morning, she hadn’t eaten. Jay stood with her as she stretched and closed the laptop. The sun shone brightly through the window. Jay followed her toward the stairs.
As she reached the landing midway down the steps, she noticed Miss Kim heading toward the front door with a few cleaning supplies. Felicity called out to her, “Oh, are you done for the day?”
She nodded and bowed again. “Yeah.”
Felicity hopped down the remainder of the steps. “How often do you come to clean the house?”
“Miss Liz say two days a week. Tuesday and Friday. I come yesterday, but no can clean, so I come today.” The housekeeper’s hands were clasped in front of her; she looked both sad and nervous. “You moving into Miss Liz’s house?”
Felicity shook her head. “No, I have a place of my own.” She frowned as she drew conclusions. “Does this mean that you won’t be needed to clean on Friday this week, since there won’t be anyone living here?”
The woman shrugged. “I don’ know. Mr. Page say come today. I wait for Mr. Page to tell me.”
“Does Mr. Page run the day to day stuff around the winery?”
Miss Kim shook her head and shrugged as though she didn’t know.
While she had the woman here, she still wanted to ask her a few questions if she could. “Did anything seem unusual or out of place here as you were cleaning? I know it was your first day, but did you happen to see anything strange?”
Wrinkles appeared in the Asian woman’s forehead as she shook her head again. “I don’ know.”
Felicity’s stomach growled again. She hated the idea of raiding Liz’s refrigerator, but right now she didn’t have much choice. She wanted to keep searching through her mother’s things for clues and she didn’t have much time left before the “end of the day.” If she couldn’t find anything substantial, Darren would close the case.
“Is there anything good to eat in the kitchen?” she asked the housekeeper.
Chapter Seven
“Have you closed that case yet at the winery?” The police lieutenant sat on the corner of Darren’s desk and eyed him with his icy blue glare.
Darren’s gaze slipped to the clock on the wall to his right before returning. “There is a bit of circumstantial evidence that there may have been foul play involved. I’m following all the leads.”
One of the lieutenant’s eyebrows went up his forehead. “Circumstantial evidence, eh? This case shouldn’t have been so hard as to take you two days. I’d like to see it closed if things don’t become more solid. You have other cases.” He tapped at the four other folders sitting on top of Darren’s desk.
“Yes, sir.” Darren nodded. “I plan to.”
The lieutenant ran a hand through his short-cropped graying hair and stood up. “I know you’re new at this so I’m trying to be easy-going about it. However, if you drag your feet, the rest of your cases will pile up. Understood?”
Darren nodded again. “Understood, sir.”
He blew out a breath as the lieutenant walked toward his office. Darren had been out all day, trying to avoid this conversation. While giving Felicity time to find clues concerning Liz’s death, he’d met up with the coroner and found that the tox-screen had come back and Liz had over ten sleeping pills in her stomach contents, mixed with both wine and cold medication. The interaction was deadly, but without question, not an accident. Either Liz had tried to kill herself, as the suicide note suggested, or she was murdered—but Darren would need substantial evidence if he was going to upgrade this to a murder investigation.
Although his ringtone was set to silent, he felt it vibrate in his back pocket. He pulled it up and found Felicity’s name on the screen. He glanced at the clock again. It was nearly 4:30. She was cutting it close. “Hello, this is Darren Willis.”
“Hi Darren, it’s Felicity.” Her voice had a melodious quality to it, and his body reacted as though shaken by a cold chill.
He frowned. Hadn’t he already decided he wasn’t going to chase that rabbit down that hole? “So, did you find anything of substance?”
She groaned slightly. “I’m not sure, but I’ll tell you what I have found. Just now I opened the fridge and found a roast marinating in it. I talked to the housekeeper, and she said that it seemed like Liz had started the roast marinating yesterday, in the morning.”
Darren frowned. “That can’t be right. The time of death on the coroner’s report is between 8 and 10 a.m. The housekeeper found the body and called it in at 11:20. She’d arrived at the house at 10 a.m., saw Liz’s back in the kitchen, called out to her, and then went upstairs to start cleaning. When she came back down about an hour later, she entered the kitchen and discovered the body.”
“But the marinade was started yesterday, and the housekeeper said she didn’t do it. Who would think to start a marinade and then take their own life? It doesn’t make any sense.” Her voice had grown a little higher pitched, and she rushed through her words as though afraid Darren might interrupt her.
“I agree with you that it doesn’t make sense, but you have to understand something. The coroner’s report has ruled this as no accident. If your birthmother didn’t commit suicide, it was murder. And right now, I’ve got a suicide note. A marinating piece of meat cannot refute that.”
Felicity hmphed on the other side of the line. “Is there any chance I could see that note? Is it handwritten?”
“Yes, but it’s in my evidence folder. I can’t remove it.” He peered down at the yellow folder on his desk, opening it past his original report and looking at the rumpled note in the plastic bag.
“Would you be willing to take a picture of it and send it to me?” she asked.
Darren’s back teeth tightened. Her request wasn’t usual protocol, so he glanced up at the lieutenant’s office and saw the man had his back turned. He set his phone up to take a picture of the note and then sent it to Felicity. “Do you have any other evidence? Something more substantial that would say this was a murder?”
Felicity drew in a long breath. “I’ve been through the financial records on Liz’s laptop, and the business was going very well. If she was going to kill herself due to financial reasons, it would have been during the recession when she would struggle through the winter without a paycheck of any kind. Now wouldn’t have been the best time. Also, according to her journal, the break-up was mutual, and Heath confirmed that. Nothing in her writings seemed to suggest that she was especially sad about it.”
“You were able to get into her laptop? It was password protected.”
“I fi
gured it out. Her password was Gratitude.”
Darren’s chest tightened. Felicity was making a lot of good points. This didn’t seem like such an open and shut case of suicide. Her mother didn’t seem to show signs of depression, and though she was on several medications, none of them were for emotional support. The business was doing well, and it seemed the woman had been getting things prepared for dinner only less than two or three hours before taking her own life. It didn’t add up, but nothing was substantial enough to provide evidence of murder. “Are you still at the winery now?”
“I am.”
“Stay there. I’m on my way. I’d like to see what you found on her laptop and maybe question a few people about things. We can’t make this a murder case until we have more evidence. I’ll be there in about an hour.”
“Okay.”
He hung up the phone, feeling the tightness in his chest get a little worse. His gut feeling was aligned with Felicity’s. Nothing about Liz’s suicide case seemed open and shut.
Felicity took a deep breath as she hung up the phone and bowed slightly to the Asian woman sitting across from her at the kitchen table. “Thank you for your help. I’m sorry I kept you.”
“Okay,” she said with a smile and stood up. “I go now?”
With a nod, Felicity said, “Yes, and thank you again.”
She led the housekeeper to the front door and Jay followed them both. The woman was very humble, bowing again before she left. Felicity watched through the screen door as the woman walked down the path from the house to the wine store. Her stomach grumbled again, and she remembered that she hadn’t gotten something to eat yet. With a frown, she peered toward the kitchen. The idea of going back in there and raiding Liz’s kitchen was even less appealing this time than it was earlier.
“What do you think, Jay? You want to go down to the wine store and see what they have for sale down there? If I remember right, they make sandwiches, at least.”
Jay smiled up at her and wagged his tail.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She opened the screen door and let Jay run outside and around the front yard a bit, with his nose to the ground, sniffing. The short bit of freedom was good for a dog who’d been cooped up all afternoon with her, lying on the floor as she searched through Liz’s laptop.
A mild breeze blew through, carrying on it a bit of the salty taste of the ocean. She wondered what the scale had been in the aerial photograph. How far exactly was it actually across the vineyards to the cliffs facing the ocean? The blue sky above her had only a smattering of clouds pulled apart in all directions like cotton candy. She walked along the path with her gaze toward the sky again. Somehow the short fields opened up the view to the heavens. The sunsets would be beautiful here. The environment of the vineyard was inspiring, making her almost feel like writing poetry or something. Her heart swelled. If this place had the same effect on Liz, Felicity could add it as one more reason that would make it unlikely that the woman would take her own life.
“I thought I told you to keep that dog on a leash,” a harsh, deep voice interrupted her thoughts.
She snapped her gaze from the sky and looked into the narrowed brown eyes of Curtis Page, leaning on the fence right by the gate where the path she was walking led. She blinked at him, her heart lurching in her chest at his icy glare.
“So, you going to put him on a leash or what? We got customers on the tour around through the fields right now, but when they get back for the tasting, the last thing they need is a mutt shoving his nose in their business and jumping all over them.”
She blinked at him a few more times, her cheeks heating as anger welled up. “JJ is not a mutt. He’s a Golden Retriever. He’s been trained as a therapy dog and would never jump all over a bunch of people. In fact, he’s also trained to walk and behave well off-leash.”
He rolled his eyes. “It makes no difference; it’s still a health code issue. We serve food and wine here. Can’t have a dog running around loose, shedding and spreading germs.”
Before she knew it, her hands fisted, her fingernails biting into her palms. Her back molars ground against each other, and she was trying to organize her thoughts on how to respond without letting her anger spill over.
“Curtis! She’s fine. The dog is very well-behaved. I’ve witnessed it myself.” Heath walked up, smiling at Felicity and then raising a brow at Mr. Page. “Instead of standing there bugging the lovely lady about how she does things on her mother’s property, how about you go out to the fields and hunt down the rattlesnake one of the guests claimed they saw on the tour? If you want to know what will ruin a guest’s experience faster, a snake bite or a dog hair, I’d be willing to bet it’s the former.”
“There’s more than one snake around here,” Curtis mumbled under his breath as he marched away toward the all-terrain vehicle parked nearby. He hopped into the seat of the four-wheeled green and yellow cart-truck and started the engine. He burned out of his parking lot fast enough to throw gravel toward Heath as he peeled away.
Heath jumped to side, frowning at the man in the ATV. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he did that on purpose.”
Jay rushed up to Heath, wagging his tail and putting the top of his head in Heath’s hand. Heath smiled down at the Golden and pet him. It warmed the ice around Felicity’s heart that Curtis Page had left behind and cooled her cheeks. She blew out her cheeks, as though she was pushing the anger out with the air. “It wouldn’t surprise me. That man sure is surly.”
With a shrug, Heath said, “He’s a bit short-tempered and hard to work with. I’ve told Liz several times that we should replace him.”
“Maybe she finally did. It would be motive to kill her, and he seems like the type who would do it.” Felicity’s heart sunk. Had she just said that out loud?
Heath’s eyes widened. “But Liz wasn’t murdered, right? It was suicide.”
Felicity chewed on her bottom lip, the blood rushing to her cheeks again. How stupid could she be? She spoke poorly about a person she barely knew—her mother would have been mortified. Felicity had been raised to try to understand why people behaved the way they did and help shape people into becoming better. To judge someone based on how they behaved was against everything her mother had taught her. Hurting people said hurtful things. She felt ashamed.
And worse, she’d just hinted at the possibility of murder to Heath. But he seemed trustworthy and was the only person out of town when the murder had happened, right? She pulled in a breath and peered around. “Actually, I don’t believe Liz would take her own life. It wasn’t like her. I’ve found a few things that back my theory, and the detective, Darren Willis, is actually coming out to meet me here and see what I’ve discovered.”
He blinked and looked around as Felicity did to make sure no one was around. The wrinkles over his eyebrows deepened. “I really hope you’re wrong. I’d hate to think that anyone here would do such a thing. Liz was generally well-liked.”
She shrugged. “There’s no substantial evidence to it yet, but I found enough for the detective to come out and take a look.”
He nodded, leaning back, still looking perturbed by the idea that there might be a murder on the property. And at that moment in time, Felicity’s stomach decided to growl again, louder than it had done before. She covered her waist with her arms. He laughed and shook his head. “Was that you?”
“Sorry,” she said as she frowned up at him. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I was heading to the wine store to see if there was something there I could buy.”
“Absolutely, I think the staff has already closed up the kitchen, but what would be the point in being vice president of the vineyard if I couldn’t at least open the kitchen to make a sandwich.” He opened the gate in the fence for her and she let him lead her out. “Do you mind if we keep your dog in the fenced yard of the house? Will he behave? Curtis was right when he said it would be a health code violation to have the dog in the bar.”
“Of course! JJ will s
tay in the yard happily.”
Heath’s smile widened. “Great.”
He led her through the wine store, peering toward the fields. “The tour group will be back shortly, and they will raid the store area for wines, trinkets, and memorabilia, but we shouldn’t be disturbed in the kitchen.”
“I’m really sorry to impose. I should have brought something to eat instead of trying to bum something from you now.” A frown tugged at her lip as she looked up at him.
He smiled down at her, his green eyes sparkling in the low light from the chandelier overhead. A warm hand rested on her shoulder, and he squeezed it slightly. “I’m happy to take care of Liz’s daughter in her stead. I’m sure that she wouldn’t have wanted you to starve.”
They entered the industrial, restaurant-style kitchen. Stainless steel counters, pots, pans, and appliances combined with the white walls and white stone flooring to give the place an immaculate feel. The only splash of color she found was in the red brick oven.
“I’m not much of one for cooking, but we can easily make a few sandwiches. Our chef bakes the bread fresh daily, but always sets a loaf or two to the side at the end of the day for employees to take home. I’ll slice up some if you’ll head into the cooler and get some meat and toppings?” He gestured in the direction of the large silver door in the wall. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find everything we need.”
Felicity nodded. “I can do that.”
“Great,” he said as he grabbed a loaf of bread from the counter and a large bread knife.