by Jen Carter
Not bothering to acknowledge my sister’s question, I went back to my phone. She already knew that her rabbit holes of research were nothing like anyone else’s. Or, at least she should have known that.
“Do you know what the deal is with Pandarus?” I asked while typing who is Pandarus into my phone. I didn’t expect Holly to know, but if she did, her answer would likely be more succinct than anything I found on the internet.
“Yeah,” Holly said. “He wasn’t a good guy, not by today’s standards. He pressured his cousin to hook up with a prince because he knew it would help him achieve status with the royal family. That’s where we get the word pander today. It comes from the character Pandarus.”
Well, that was succinct.
But seriously, how did my sister know this stuff?
I dropped my phone to my side, staring at her for a long moment. She shrugged again and went back to straightening the already-straight wine glasses.
I looked up at Jules, who was still standing next to where I sat on the floor. Her arms were crossed, and her expression was tight. Without a word, she strode toward the front door.
“Can I give this to Fitts?” I called after her, holding up the card.
“Yes,” she said right before disappearing outside.
“She’s really upset, isn’t she?” I asked. “Or did I read that wrong?”
Holly shook her head. “You didn’t read that wrong. She’s not happy.”
I hadn’t ever seen Jules so upset that she shut down. I’d seen her frustrated before, but never to the point where she went silent or left. I ignored the impulse to chase after her. If Jules wanted to talk, she would have stayed. Maybe it would be best to text her after she had time to cool down.
And maybe her reaction was completely appropriate. Maybe I was under-reacting to it.
I shook the thought away and went back to staring at the Sonnet 94 barrel, Uni now cuddled up beside me.
“You okay?”
I looked toward the voice coming from the front door and saw Nico framed by the doorway. Chris was right behind him.
“No,” Holly answered for me. “Jules just got one of those cryptic quotes, and Jill is hoping that the answer to this demented literary puzzle will magically appear on the wine barrels.”
Holly’s explanation might have been delivered with a slightly-snide tone, but it gave me an idea.
I scrambled to my feet.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, heading through the doors at the back of the tasting room, straight for Stella’s office. She was sitting at her computer.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, startled.
Shoot, I was sure she’d be gone. I wanted to grab some paper from her printer without being asked any questions.
“It’s late,” I added. “Where are the boys?”
“They’re having a sleepover at Aldo’s, so I thought I’d get a jumpstart on planning some details of an upcoming wedding at the winery,” she said. “Plus, Jason is still here working on some accounting stuff, so it seemed silly for me to sit at home by myself.”
Fair enough.
“Can I have some printer paper? And some tape? And a Sharpie? In fact, if you have some different colored Sharpies, can I borrow all of them?”
Stella opened her top desk drawer and picked the Sharpies out of the pen tray. “Should I ask why you need these?”
“Do you want to get frustrated with me for being nosy?”
“No.”
“Then you probably shouldn’t ask.”
She placed half a dozen Sharpies, all different colors, on her desk. Then she grabbed a roll of Scotch tape from another drawer and put it with the pens. While she was doing that, I walked over to her printer on the credenza and grabbed a stack of paper from its tray. Then I scooped up the pens and tape from the desk, blew an air kiss at her, and headed back to the tasting room.
When I pushed the door open with my back and walked through, Nico was having a serious-looking conversation with Holly, and Chris was dropping his phone into his pocket.
“I just texted Will and Amy,” he said. “They’re on their way over.”
“Oh?” I said. I sat in the middle of the tasting room again and picked up the blue Sharpie, which was going to be the color used for names.
“Yeah,” he said. “They’re smart. And they like books. All this stuff is about books, right?”
I looked up from where I was writing Ashlyn’s name in block letters across a sheet of paper in time to see Holly give Chris a questioning look.
“So is this what you want to do tonight?” she said. “Hang out here while Jill and Amy and Will talk about a psycho who likes old stories?” Then she added hastily, “Because that’s fine with me. There isn’t any good television on tonight, and I finished re-writing a preliminary draft of chapter three today, so that’s off my plate. I just want to know if I should open a bottle of wine for the extremely-nerdy conversation that’s about to take place.”
“I’m partial to red,” Chris said.
“Do the latest Cab Franc,” I said while writing Gracie in big letters on another piece of paper. “Open two, actually.”
I looked at Nico and wasn’t able to tell if he was unamused or just withholding judgment until he saw how this would play out.
“Since we haven’t trained Uni to use tape dispensers yet, can you help me?” I asked him.
Nico smiled, perhaps a bit reluctantly, but then joined me on the floor and affixed tape to the papers I had already written on.
There was a knock on the door, and Chris crossed the room to answer it.
“So, we’re pulling out the old college textbooks tonight?” Will said as he walked in. He had just gotten his black hair cut really short, which made me do a double take. He almost looked like a less-tan version of Nico. Behind him, Amy, Livy, and Hunter filed in. “How far back in time are we going?”
“Hundreds and hundreds of years,” I said. “Holly’s pouring wine. Go get a glass and then join me.”
“Sorry to intrude,” Livy said as she and Hunter followed Will and Amy to the bar. “We were all finishing up dinner together when Chris’ text to Will came through.”
“Glad you’re here. In fact,” I glanced at Holly behind the bar. “When you’re done pouring wine, can you go in the back and get Stella and Jason. It’s like we have a little party going. I don’t want to leave them out.”
Holly gave me a look that said really? She had probably been hoping this whole thing would wind down in fifteen minutes, but with everyone showing up, that wasn’t likely. Even so, I could tell that she was going to do what I asked.
“Should I text Jules and tell her to come back, too?” she asked.
“Please,” I said.
“How about Elita?”
At once, more than half of the people in the room—maybe even everyone—answered with a resounding no.
Holly tried to mask a sideways smile by looking down at her phone. “Tell me how you really feel,” she muttered, pulling up Jules’ number.
Livy and Amy sat down next to me. Uni immediately jumped into Livy’s lap, of course.
“Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking,” I said.
NINETEEN
Within a couple minutes, I had all the pieces of information color coded. The names of high school kids who got script notes were in blue, the names of adults who got notecards were in green, and then the actual quotes were in an assortment of colors, depending on which great literary figure wrote them. Thankfully I had been taking pictures of all the quotes.
Well, I’m not sure everyone in the tasting room was thankful for that, but I was.
We taped the papers to the barrel faces, moving them around as needed to see if any patterns emerged. We tried grouping them by age of recipient, age of quote, and order in which the quotes were received. Then we tried arranging them according to how creepy the quotes were. After all, if these notes were in any way related to Fleming’s death, maybe the level of creep
iness mattered.
That last method prompted a debate that I never would have expected, particularly among the guys. Nico was adamant that the quotes about Hell—the ones Lucy had received—were the worst. They were about going to Hell, for goodness sakes. Will thought that the Sonnet 94 quote was the worst because deception on Earth represented something about free will and the kind of evil that led to Dante’s Hell. I didn’t fully understand the way he explained it. His argument was over my head and far too philosophical for me. But Holly sided with him, and since she was the smartest person I knew, there must have been something there. Hunter said the Romeo and Juliet stuff was the worst because he personally thought it was the worst play ever written.
Chris and Jason, bless their hearts, just sat back and drank wine. Good for them.
Livy looked bored, Amy thought she’d have an opinion in two or three days, and Stella spent the time emailing from her phone. Apparently a bride whose wedding would be at the vineyard in a month wanted to change the buffet menu.
Fitts texted me just as Will decided that the origin of the word fester might be important. I didn’t know why, so I turned my attention to Fitts’ text.
Sorry it’s late and I’m just getting to you, he wrote. Long day. Can I swing by and get that card from your car?
I tapped out a response.
Sure. I’m in the D’Angelo tasting room.
Three dots almost immediately appeared below the text, so I waited for his next message to pop up.
Great. I’m in OV now. Just walking down the street and will be there in a minute.
I didn’t reply. I dropped my phone to the floor, sipped my Cab Franc, and stared at the barrels with papers taped to them. What was I missing?
Holly had left the front door unlocked in case Jules showed up again—which she hadn’t—so Fitts blustered right in when he got here. He looked at us, all holding wine glasses and staring at the wall of wine barrels. Then he looked at the wine barrels.
“What the hell are you all doing?” he asked. It wasn’t quite the bark that he used when I first met him, but it certainly wasn’t a casual, light tone either.
“You don’t like all this school-ish, literature stuff, right?” I said. “So we’ve assembled the brightest literary minds in all of Temecula to take care of it for you.” I smiled a huge, fake, please-believe-me smile.
He scanned the group of us, then glanced at the wine barrels, and then zeroed in on me. “Is that true?”
I half shrugged and let my head bob from side to side slightly. As if the gesture hadn’t already implied that my answer was not really, I said, “Well, maybe not all of Temecula, and maybe not even all of OV, but there are some brains here.” I craned my neck toward Holly who was sitting with Chris at one of the high-top tables behind me. “Hol, let’s get Sandie Oakes over here. That Ph.D. in literature of hers is probably what we really need.”
Fitts grunted. “This is ridiculous.”
Stella, who was sitting at the table closest to Fitts, looked up from her phone with an expression of pure hatred. Jason, sitting next to her, put his hand on her shoulder and whispered something in her ear.
“Ridiculous, or exceedingly helpful?” I said with another huge, fake, please-believe-me smile.
“Where’s that note, D’Angelo?” Fitts asked.
“I have no idea,” Holly said.
Fitts turned his attention to my younger sister. I did as well and saw her lip twitch slightly as though she was trying not to smile.
“Oh, you don’t mean me?” she said innocently. “Sorry. You said D’Angelo, so I thought any one of us sisters could answer.”
Smart aleck.
“It’s still in my car,” I said. “Up at my grandpa’s house.”
“Why don’t you have it now?” Fitts said. “I told you I was coming for it.”
“You got here before I could go get it,” I said.
“How about we call it a night?” Jason said. “We can save these papers for later if need be.”
I was sure that he just wanted Fitts out of the tasting room and away from Stella, but pushing that aside, he was probably right. It had to be at least nine o’clock. And when I thought about it, I was pretty tired.
Jason looked at me. “We’ll clean up here,” he said. “You go with the detective to get what he needs.”
Yes, Jason was definitely trying to get Fitts away from Stella. Smart man.
Nico, who had been sitting at a table with Will and Hunter, was the first one on his feet. He walked to me and held out a hand to help me up. Then he and I said goodbye to our friends and were the first ones out the door. Uni and Fitts were on our heels. We rounded the winery toward the path cutting through the vineyard. It was dark—not just a little dark, but the kind of midnight dark that made rocks and twigs along the path hard to see. The porch light on Aldo’s house at the top of the hill was on, but that didn’t help. Nico and I both turned on our phone flashlights and shone them on the path.
“You don’t drive down to the winery from your grandfather’s house?” Fitts said behind us.
“Why would we?” I asked. “It’s less than a five-minute walk.”
“I would drive,” he said.
That sounded about right.
A bright light from behind suddenly lit the path. I looked over my shoulder and saw Fitts pressing buttons on a high-powered flashlight. He grinned and waved it back and forth across the length of the vineyard.
“Now this is a flashlight,” he said.
“Hey, what’s over there?” Nico said, pointing to the right as he continued up the path. “Detective, can you shine your light in that direction again?”
Fitts swept his mega light to the east end of the vineyard as Nico requested. There, a car was parked along the road. My mind leapt back to another instance a couple months ago when I saw a car parked in that very same spot.
Lucy Argyle.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. I turned down the next row of grapevines toward the car.
Could it really be Lucy again? What in the world would she be doing parked along the edge of the vineyard again?
Nico, Uni, and Fitts followed me.
“Jill?” Nico said. “What are you doing? It’s just a car.”
“I bet you a thousand dollars that it’s Lucy Argyle,” I said. “And she’s snooping, somehow.”
Everything about my last statement sounded dumb, and I could admit that. Silently, at least. I did not have a thousand dollars to bet Nico, and even if I did, he wouldn’t be interested in it. And if it was Lucy, how could she possibly be snooping in a dark car along the side of the road late at night when nothing was happening? But I was sure that was exactly what she was doing.
“D’Angelo, don’t be crazy,” Fitts said. “I just want to get that note from your car and be on my way. I don’t care who’s over there.”
I ignored him.
We neared the car, and I was right. It was Lucy’s dark blue Honda Civic.
She really was a strange person. We all had a little bit of crazy in us, but Lucy had more than a normal amount of crazy. Why she parked on this side street, I’d never know.
Especially after she got a note implying that she belonged outside the entrance of Hell and should spend all of eternity being stung by wasps and hornets. Normal people would take that as a sign to stop being snoopy, underhanded, and vindictive.
But Lucy was in a class of her own.
“Yep, that’s Lucy’s car,” I said. “She’s done this before.”
“Why?” Nico said. “What’s she doing?”
That was a really good question.
“Well, last time she was sleeping,” I said.
“I’ll take care of this,” Fitts said. He pointed his flashlight down and pressed a couple buttons on its side. “Stand back.”
TWENTY
As we stepped aside, Fitts walked up to the driver’s side window and peered in. Then he gave us a look that said, yep, the nutcase is sleeping. H
e pressed another button on his flashlight and then held it right next to the window. Within a second, a siren was blaring and a red light was flashing.
I covered my ears. Oh my goodness, Fitts had a siren on his flashlight. A really loud siren.
Lucy threw the car door open and stumbled out.
“What the hell, Jared!?!” she yelled.
Fitts switched off the red light and siren, returning to the extra-bright regular light. “Miss Argyle,” he said shining the light at her, “that’s not how you were taught to address law enforcement, is it? You may refer to me as Detective Fitts. Please.”
I was still so stunned by the siren and flashing red light that I could barely register the scene unfolding in front of me. Fitts waking up Lucy, Lucy yelling at Fitts, Fitts responding in a calm, albeit condescending way—it was all too much.
Lucy recoiled from the light. “Shut up, Jared,” she spat. “What are you doing here?”
Fitts let out a dramatic sigh. Then he turned and handed off his flashlight to me. It was remarkably small and light for something so bright and loud. Turning back to Lucy, Fitts said, “I’m afraid I’m here to give you bad news.” He pulled something out of his shirt pocket.
Nico raised his phone flashlight just slightly so we could see what the detective was doing.
Fitts sucked his teeth at Lucy. Tsk, tsk, tsk. “You’re parked here illegally, old girl. So, because of the oath I took to uphold the law, I must give you a ticket. So sorry.”
In the ugliest, throatiest possible voice that could have come from a tiny, little woman named Lucy, she said, “Ugh! You’ve got to be kidding me! A ticket?”
“Yes ma’am,” Fitts said. He was writing on the paper that he had drawn from his pocket. “You see here we’ve got a red curb. If you recall from the driver’s education class you took probably thirty or forty years ago, parking in the red is illegal.”
Oh my goodness. Lucy couldn’t have been more than thirty years old in the first place, and I knew that she put a lot of effort into looking her most beautiful with those fancy outfits and that perfect makeup everyday. Fitts really knew how to dig in to someone’s weak spot when he wanted to.