Reluctantly she shook the still-gloved hand. “Cate Kinkaid.”
She always carried business cards in her pocket, but she wasn’t about to give him one that identified her as a private investigator. Right now, she needed to reinforce the idea that the brief meeting outside LeAnne’s office was the only time they’d ever met. Maybe it actually was the only time. Looking at him now, Cate wasn’t any more certain if his was or wasn’t the eye behind the curtain.
“We did meet outside LeAnne’s office, didn’t we? I was going in to talk to her about my friend’s wedding. I’m a bridesmaid.”
“Not a bride after all? Maybe there’s hope for me yet.”
Maybe she should have given his name to the police. If nothing else, he deserved indictment for bad pickup lines.
“Okay, then, let’s get on with the tour,” he said. “Since there’s just you, we can go on the tractor.”
Cate glanced over at the rumbling green machine. “There isn’t enough room for two people.”
“Sure there is.” Another grin. “It may be a tight squeeze, but we can make it work.”
Cate started to say no thanks. A tight squeeze with Rolf was not on her agenda for the day. But he stripped off a glove, and she caught a flash of something dark above his wrist. Tractor grease? Vineyard dirt? Or maybe a tattoo? If she could just see a little farther up his arm …
They wouldn’t be totally alone. In broad daylight, with a crew working nearby, she surely wasn’t going to find herself buried under a grapevine. “I’ll get my camera so I can take some photos for Robyn.”
She’d brought the camera along mostly as a prop, but now she reached back into the car and grabbed it. Rolf boosted her into the open cab of the tractor, using a little more familiarity than Cate thought necessary.
The open cab was an even tighter squeeze than Cate had anticipated. There was no space for an extra person to stand, so Rolf gave her half the metal seat and squeezed into the other half himself. Cate squirmed to get as far away from him as possible and found herself precariously perched on the metal rim of the seat.
They bumped over the rough ground out to the first row of grapes, with Cate thinking she was going to have the shape of the hard edge of a tractor seat permanently embedded in her anatomy.
Actually, as both LeAnne and Robyn had pointed out, there wasn’t much to see in the vineyard. Rolf kept up a running stream of information, however. The vineyard grew chardonnay and pinot noir grapes, and he pointed out which was which. He spoke knowledgeably about how the rainfall, sunshine, humidity, and temperatures of this area were conducive to grape growing. He wanted to get a new type of trellising system started, something called the Geneva Double Curtain, which would improve the exposure of the grapes to sunlight. He mentioned concerns about a grape mite called phylloxera that could devastate a vineyard, and the problems they also had with scavenging birds.
He sounded informed, even enthusiastic. He never mentioned either Ed Kieferson or Celeste, or any uncertainties about future operation of the vineyard. Cate was curious about the possibility of a marijuana-growing sideline, but if there were such an area, it wasn’t included in the tour. She took some photos, but she spent most of her time trying to balance on the edge of the seat and get a look at Rolf’s arm. Once, rounding the end of a row of grapes, she surreptitiously tried to slide his jacket sleeve up a few inches, but a sudden jolt landed her hand on his thigh instead.
Appalled, Cate yanked her hand back, but Rolf’s smirky grin told her he knew she’d really done it on purpose.
In the area where the crew was working on a new support trellis to replace a section that had collapsed, Rolf jumped down to inspect their work. In the distance Cate spotted a barn and several sheds. She asked Rolf about them, and he said they were left over from a time when the vineyard had also been used as a dairy, and they were just used for storage now.
Back at the cottage, Cate didn’t wait for a helping hand to get down from the tractor. She jumped by herself, an exit not rivaling Octavia’s land-on-her-feet grace, but at least she wasn’t cozied up beside Rolf any longer.
“Thanks for the tour,” she called up to him. The wind was getting colder. She shoved her hands in her pockets and turned toward her car.
He jumped down beside her. “Maybe you can bring your friend some other time. The one who’s getting married at Lodge Hill.”
The conditions weren’t ideal, but here was an unexpected opening to ask Rolf a few questions without giving away her own involvement. She hunched her shoulders and moved over to where the big tractor offered some shelter from the wind.
“Actually, Robyn was telling me she’d heard Lodge Hill might close. A death in the family, I think. She’s wondering if her wedding will be affected. Do you know anything about that?”
“Two deaths, actually. The owner first, and then his wife’s mother just a few days ago. It’s going to be rough for Kim … Mrs. Kieferson.”
Cate noted the correction from Kim to the less personal Mrs. Kieferson. It gave her a mental hmm. “Does she have other family?”
“I don’t think so.”
“The wedding business and vineyard, along with the restaurant too, will be a lot for her to keep going alone. Do you think she can manage?”
“She’s going to need all the help she can get, that’s for sure.”
Cate heard concern and even a hint of protectiveness in Rolf’s comment and tone of voice. Maybe even a suggestion of intimacy beyond an employer-employee relationship?
“Have you known the Kiefersons long?”
“I knew Mrs. Kieferson way back when. They lived just down the street from us in Tigard a long time ago.”
“Kim was an old girlfriend?” Cate purposely put a playful tease into the question. She didn’t want him to know she was really digging for information.
“Not a girlfriend.” Rolf sounded unexpectedly serious. “Kim is younger. She was just a skinny little mousy-haired kid in grade school then. With a mother everyone thought was uppity and weird. She had Kim taking private lessons in everything from gymnastics to ballet, even drove her into Portland for some special modeling classes.”
Early lessons in how to be a trophy wife?
“I’d left Tigard by the time Kim finished high school, but I heard one time when I went back that right after graduation she married that Travis Beauchamp jerk. They’d moved to Portland or somewhere by then.”
Cate made a mental note of the name. Travis Beauchamp. “You knew him too?”
“He was bad news even in high school. In trouble for everything from bullying to swiping pills from a neighbor’s medicine cabinet. But I guess Kim saw something in him. Although sometimes I wondered if she married him just to get out from under her mother’s thumb.”
“The relationship between Kim and her mother was, um, strained?” Cate asked.
“I guess they’ve been on better terms since the breakup with Travis.”
Cate noted that Rolf didn’t mention Kim and Celeste being in business together. Maybe he wanted to stay far away from the subject of the Mystic Mirage?
“What became of the ex-husband?”
“He just walked out, I guess. Although Kim told me once … this is strictly confidential, of course.” His heavy eyebrows lifted sharply. “Just between friends.”
Cate prudently didn’t argue the “friends” designation. “Of course.”
“She was afraid the guy might show up and try to mess up her marriage to Kieferson.”
Someone had obviously “messed up” the marriage. Ed Kieferson was dead. “Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Just a bad dude, from what I remember of him.”
“Did knowing Kim help you get this job at the vineyard?”
Rolf looked surprised at the blunt question. His shoulders snapped back. “No way. I got this job on my own merits. I have a degree in viticulture. Kim and I were both surprised when we ran into each other here. I didn’t even recognize her right off, with
her hair blonde now. How come you’re so curious about all this anyway?” he suddenly demanded.
Cate noticed that he’d upgraded his education in grape-growing to a college-degree level, but she didn’t point that out. “Oh, you know how nosy and curious women are,” she said. “In fact, you really know women, don’t you?” She added a playful smile to emphasize the blatant flattery about his male expertise. Anything to diffuse his curiosity.
Apparently it worked because his own smile was also playful when he said, “I like to think I do.”
“Well, thanks for the tour and information about grapes and all. It was very interesting.” Cate headed toward the car.
Rolf caught up with her in a long stride. “Hey, wait, I wanted to ask you something.”
Cate started to make an elaborate pretense of looking at her watch to suggest she was in a big hurry, but a better idea jumped into her head. “Do you know what time it is?”
She waited expectantly for a last-minute unveiling of the arm when he pushed up the sleeve of his jacket to look at a watch.
Except he didn’t. He pulled a broken-banded watch out of his pocket and held it up. “Snagged it on a grapevine.” He turned the watch to see the face. “It’s only 11:45.”
“Looks like you’re a leftie.” And maybe he’d snagged the watch somewhere other than on a grapevine? Like on a sword at the Mystic Mirage?
Another grin. “Oh, I’m ambidextrous. Very good with both hands.”
There was a double entendre in that, Cate was certain, but she wasn’t about to pause and examine it for details. “It’s later than I thought. So—”
“Look, I have to go back out with the crew now, so I can’t make lunch, but how about dinner tonight?”
“Oh, thanks, no.”
“C’mon, you know you’re interested. You give me a song-and-dance about two of you coming, and then you show up alone?” Another of his frequent lady-killer grins. “Not that I’m objecting, you understand. It’s been a fun morning. You can share a tractor seat with me anytime.” He patted his thigh to remind her of her touch there.
Cate was reasonably certain Rolf had no clue she was checking him out as a murder suspect. He thought she had an amorous interest in his body. Time to get out before he came up with some suggestion more outrageous than dinner. Or figured out the truth about her interest.
“Thanks for the invitation, but I’m, oh, you know, involved.”
He overdid a crestfallen look. “Oh. Well, okay then. I should have guessed. But if you’re ever uninvolved, or just want a little fun on the side …” Meaningful smile. “I’m a sucker for redheads.”
She took one hand out of her pocket to give him a little fingertip wave of good-bye, then scurried to the car and slid inside.
It wasn’t until she’d started the engine that she realized he’d picked up something from the ground where she’d been standing.
A Belmont Investigations business card. She’d accidentally pulled one out of her pocket when she waved at him.
He looked up from reading the card, and their eyes met. He wasn’t giving her any God’s-gift-to-women grin now. Instead his hard gaze asked, Just what was she investigating?
Outside the gate Cate kept telling herself there was no reason Rolf would connect a private investigator’s card with a brown-haired woman at the Mystic Mirage. Unfortunately, there was also no reason for her to go to the police with new information about Rolf. She still didn’t know if he had a tattooed arm. Now what? Bad-investigation days were even worse than bad-hair days.
Although she wasn’t too sure of that when she got home and decided she should do something with the snarled wig. She tried combing it. Brushing it. Shaking it. No use. It still looked like something a cat had attacked with all claws unleashed. Which it was, of course. Octavia watched with an interest that suggested she’d like a second chance at the wig.
Cate finally jammed the brown tangle into another plastic bag and headed for the salon where Robyn had purchased it. There, she told the woman she’d like to have the wig repaired and styled. The woman held up the snarled mess and gave Cate an accusing look that put her in some category of felonious wig abusers.
Cate apologized for the condition of the wig and added, “My cat accidentally got hold of it.”
The woman gave her a look that put that statement on a level with “my dog ate my homework.”
“It doesn’t have to look as good as it did before, just wearable.”
“It’s beyond repair. And we don’t have another wig of this model in stock. We can order another one, but it will probably take from ten days to two weeks to get it.”
The wedding was in less than two weeks, so that was cutting it close. Especially when the woman sounded as if she’d really like to blackball Cate from wig ownership for the foreseeable future.
“Okay.” Cate paid for the new wig in advance. “Just call me the minute the new one comes in.”
15
Back home, Cate called Robyn from the office phone to ask about the injured hand.
“It’s okay, I guess. They stitched it up. It’s covered with a bandage the size of a watermelon now.”
That was rather hard to picture, but Cate murmured sympathies. “I hope it isn’t hurting.”
“They gave me some pain pills. But I’m not sure it will heal by the wedding. Oh, Cate, I can’t march down the aisle with my hand like this. I’ll look like a-a walking mummy! I won’t even have a finger to put the ring on.”
“Maybe the bandage will be off by then. Or at least the bandage will be smaller.”
“My ring finger is all swollen. I had to take my engagement ring off and put it on a chain around my neck.”
“Surely the swelling will go down by the time of the wedding,” Cate soothed.
“By then my whole hand could be infected. You can get this scary red line, you know, going right up your arm toward your heart. And who knows if there will even be a wedding, since no one seems to know what’s going to happen with Lodge Hill,” Robyn added with an ominous the-world-is-doomed gloom.
Cate decided there was no point adding to Robyn’s doom-and-gloom by mentioning the cat-and-wig disaster. She also realized that at the moment Robyn didn’t want sunshiny predictions; she wanted to wallow in her gloom. So Cate spent the next several minutes making sympathetic sounds while Robyn rambled through various dire possibilities. Robyn didn’t quite get to hand amputation, but close to it.
Finally, apparently realizing herself that none of the grim possibilities were apt to materialize, Robyn gave a self-conscious laugh. “Listen to me. Pretty soon I’ll be obsessing about the building collapsing. The dinner being hijacked. Another murder right there at the wedding.”
Collapse of the building or hijacking of the dinner bounced off Cate as unlikely, but a murder at the wedding? That hit her like a sneak snowball attack. With a rock inside. With two murders already, maybe a third was all too possible. Wasn’t there some old cliché, the kind of saying Mitch might come up with, about trouble coming in threes?
Robyn didn’t seem to notice Cate’s sudden silence. “Thanks for listening, Cate. You’re a real friend. I feel much better now. My hand probably won’t have any more than a Band-Aid on it by the time of the wedding. And surely Lodge Hill won’t close down.”
“Good thinking.”
Cate’s hand stayed on the phone when she set it down, her mind stalled on a third-murder possibility. No, not possible. The killer was running out of victims, for one thing.
A chilling truth clobbered her with another sneak attack. Killers never run out of victims.
The phone in the office rang under Cate’s hand. That’s what phones did, ring, but she jumped anyway. She picked it up, and, without preliminaries, Jo-Jo’s agitated voice pounced on her.
“You heard about Kim’s mother, didn’t you? That she’s dead? Murdered.”
“It’s been in the news.”
“Cate, would you believe, the police have been here to question
me about her death?”
“They think you had something to do with it?”
Jo-Jo couldn’t have been the killer herself. It was definitely a male arm that had shot out of the curtain and grabbed Cate’s throat. But even gray-haired little old ladies had been known to hire killers. And Jo-Jo had all that money coming from Eddie the Ex’s insurance.
“They didn’t come right out and say that, but that must be what they’re thinking. Though I can’t imagine why they’d think I had anything to do with it.”
How about Jo-Jo taking vengeance on Celeste for killing Eddie? Cate had thought Jo-Jo was the sole suspect in Eddie’s killing, but maybe the police had an eye on Celeste too. So the possibility of Jo-Jo hiring a tattooed killer to kill the person who’d killed her ex-husband also loomed for them.
“Pretty soon they’ll be digging up cold cases from ten years ago and blaming me for those too,” Jo-Jo fretted.
“I’m sure they’re just checking out anyone who’s ever had any connection with Celeste,” Cate soothed. “And you do have a roundabout connection.”
“Well, yes. And there wasn’t any love lost between us, that’s for sure. But what happened to her … that’s really awful. No one deserves that, not even Celeste. But the police shouldn’t be wasting time on me.”
Cate repeated her earlier statement about confidence in the competence of the local police.
“If they’re so competent, how come they haven’t caught Eddie’s killer yet?” Jo-Jo retorted. Then in a quick change of subject she added, “Oh, I don’t think I told you. I bought a car! A nice 2011 Chevy Malibu. Now I can run out to the house every day to visit and feed Maude.”
Dolled Up to Die Page 14