Victim in the Vineyard

by Gemma Halliday

  Let's face it—as a Charlie's Angel, I was sucking big time.

  I licked my fork as I tried not to dwell on that particularly pessimistic thought. I opened my top desk drawer to pull out a notepad and pen that might help me organize my thoughts. Only, as I pulled it open, something else shone up at me.

  Tyler's keys.

  Alec had seemed desperate to get his hands on these yesterday—desperate enough to risk rifling through my office. Was that because he knew something incriminating was in the trailer? Maybe because Alec himself had stashed it there?

  I bit my lip, trying to think what it could be. Jean Luc's stolen gun? Proof of Tyler's embezzling? Or proof that Alec had created some of Tyler's famous recipes? Alec knew as well as anyone who had been at the festival that the police had already gone through Tyler's things. So whatever Alec was after had to be something that the police wouldn't automatically pick up—something that didn't seem incriminating at first. Or that Alec had hidden well.

  On instinct, I grabbed the keys and quickly made my way outside and around to the back of the kitchen where the giant trailer was parked. Tyler's large smile greeted me, feeling almost sad now that his fame was inevitably going to fade into obscurity. I glanced around for any other signs of life, but the vendors were just starting to arrive at their booths, festival guests not yet on the premises. There was no sign of Gabby or her newly acquired glam squad. The only other person I saw was Hector, watering the flowers in some of the planters we'd set up around the festival grounds.

  I took a deep breath and climbed the three steps to the trailer door, inserting the keys with shaky hands. Why I was shaking, I wasn't really sure. I mean, Grant had given me the keys. It wasn't as if I was breaking and entering. Just…opening and entering. There, that only sounded like half a crime now.

  I pulled the door open and quickly slipped inside, closing it behind me. I stood there frozen for a three count, expecting someone to come shouting at me to get out. But the only sound I heard was my own ragged in and out as I tried to get my breathing under control.

  I slowly glanced around the trailer. A small sofa sat on one side and a bathroom and bedroom at the back. Instead of a traditional kitchen, the RV had been gutted out in the middle and a makeup and hair station put in its place. A large mirror with globe lights surrounding it covered one wall, and an adjustable chair like they used in beauty salons sat in front of it. A counter beneath the mirror was littered with makeup in various skin tones, tubes of hair products, and a blow dryer and several brushes. Either Tyler's glam squad were unorganized or the police hadn't been very careful in their search of the trailer.

  I opened a couple of drawers, but all I saw was more cosmetics—nothing that felt incrementing toward either the star or his killer. Unless you counted the fact that Tyler had copious amounts of wrinkle cream and hair dye in his possession.

  I moved on to the bathroom. It was barely larger than one of those airplane bathrooms, just enough to turn around in and do one's business. I opened the small cupboards, but the only things in them were a few over-the-counter pain medications and a prescription stool softener. Hmm. Constipated, going gray, and wrinkled. Maybe the larger-than-life Tyler Daniels had been human after all.

  I left the bathroom and checked the rest of the main cabin. The sofa yielded nothing, though I wasn't really sure what I expected to find in the cushions. Which only left the bedroom. I glanced out the side window at the festival grounds, now filling with the rest of our remaining vendors. I was starting to get antsy that someone might find me. I quickly made the few steps to the bedroom and opened the door.

  Though, as I did, I realized Tyler hadn't so much used it as a place to nap but as a small office. A built-in desk took up one side of the room, and a club chair and a wall of cabinets covered the other. I started with the cabinet, opening cupboard doors to find cookbooks, folders, binders, and notebooks. I pulled a folder out at random, discovering handwritten recipes inside with notes scribbled in the margins like "crisp on high for five minutes first" or "add oregano not thyme." While Tyler may have borrowed some of Alec's techniques—and allegedly personal stories—at least some of his recipes appeared to be his own creations.

  I put the folder back, not feeling like it contained any smoking gun, and moved on to the next cupboard. This one contained a variety of offices supplies—stapler, tape dispenser, paper clips. The next one held similar items, and the third was empty except for a couple of power cords. I realized with a sinking feeling it could have been where Tyler had kept his laptop—now the property of the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, no doubt.

  I was about to give up, deciding that the trailer didn't hold anything more exciting than recipe notebooks, when I tried the final cupboard at the bottom of the cabinet and found the door locked.

  Now that was interesting.

  I pulled the keys from my pocket on the off chance they might be one size fits all locks, but they were both a no-go. I quickly retraced my steps, opening every drawer and cabinet in the entire trailer a second time, searching for a key that might fit the lock. Unfortunately, as I felt time tick by, I came up empty. The nerves I'd initially had at entering the trailer had multiplied with each passing moment, the more time I spent in the trailer upping the chance someone would find me. I was nearly in panic mode by the time I'd torn apart the makeup area, office, and bathroom again. No keys.

  I was just contemplating the jar of paperclips as the means to a lock picking miracle when I heard a sound outside the door.

  Footsteps on the metal stairs.

  I froze, even my breath stopping for a split second.

  Then I instinctively ducked down, crouching behind the club chair as I heard someone jiggling the locked door handle from the outside. Then a scraping sound, like metal coming up against metal. It took me a moment to realize what I was hearing, but when I did, I felt my pulse pick up to somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred times its normal rate.

  Someone else was trying to break into Tyler's trailer.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  My breath came out hard and fast as I whipped my gaze around the small trailer for anywhere to hide. Unfortunately, everything in it was built to be tiny, slim, and utilitarian. Nothing bulky to hide behind that wouldn't give me away faster than a two-year-old playing hide and seek with her eyes covered. If whoever was scraping away at the trailer lock made it inside, I'd be totally exposed.

  Which meant I had to keep them outside.

  If they were anything like me, they were probably afraid of getting caught right now. I had to bank on that. I took a deep breath, taking a gamble, and called out in a loud voice.

  "Okay, Grant! Thanks for checking the trailer with me!"

  The scraping stopped. I listened in the silence, my heart pounding.

  Nothing for a second. Then I heard two quick, pounding steps on the metal stairs and the soft thud of footsteps quickly retreating from the trailer.

  I made a beeline for the door, unlocking it and throwing it open in hopes of getting a glimpse of whoever was attempting the break-in.

  I caught sight of the back of a figure rounding the building toward the parking lot. They were booking it, and all I could tell in that split second was that they were wearing a cap and jeans. Male, female, age—I had no idea.

  On instinct, I took off running after them. And I might have caught up too, if I hadn't dressed that morning for fashion and not running after bad guys. My heel caught on a stray tree root jutting up from the earth, causing me to stumble forward as I caught my balance. Luckily, I did without face planting into the dirt, but by the time I made it around the corner of the building, my mystery figure was nowhere to be seen.

  My eyes pinged from one person to the next as the first of our festival guests exited their cars. Several wore jeans. A couple of hats. None were running away in a guilty fashion.

  As I stood there, breathing hard, I realized it was too late.

  Whoever had tried to break in had faded into the cr
owd.

  * * *

  I couldn't help scrutinizing every person I passed as I made my way back to the trailer to lock it up, hoping to somehow recognize the would-be breaker-and-enterer. What had they been after in Tyler's trailer? Had it been Alec, taking matters into his own hands after I refused to give him the keys? Or was it someone else—someone who maybe knew what was in the locked cupboard in Tyler's trailer? My mind immediately went to the embezzled funds, but that felt too easy. Would Tyler really just hide a stack of cash in his trailer? He'd gone through a lot of trouble to cover his tracks on the company books, and using this as a hiding place just felt sloppy.

  I itched to ask Grant if the police had opened the cupboard, but no way was I crawling back to him with my tail between my legs after my stand the previous evening. Instead, I tried to tell myself that it probably held nothing—the locked cupboard was just home to Tyler's checkbooks or Rolex. Just a convenient place to store his valuables that had nothing to do with his death.

  Still, the fact that I was not the only person looking through Tyler's things was unnerving.

  Once I'd locked the trailer and was confident it was a secure as it could be, I made my way to the tasting room, hoping Jean Luc had come in. Only, as I approached the bar, it was my erstwhile winery manager Eddie in his pink slacks pouring our brunch special, Champagne Mules , for the first guests of the day. I cringed as he over poured the vodka and under poured the champagne, hoping the guests weren't as finicky about proportions as Jean Luc usually was.

  I watched Eddie serve the two drinks to the couple as I approached.

  "Has Jean Luc been in yet?" I asked.

  Eddie shrugged. "Still haven't seen him. Late, I guess."

  Or incarcerated.

  He sent me a big smile that reminded me of Dopey in the Seven Dwarfs as he added, "But don't worry. I've got the bar covered!"

  "That's what I'm worried about," I mumbled.

  "What was that?"

  "Nothing. I'll ask Hector to come in and help you pour," I promised, my eyes cutting to where the couple was sipping at the cocktails. No one spit theirs back out. So far so good.

  Eddie nodded. "Maybe a good idea. I mean, if you think Jean Luc might be taking a sick day or something."

  It was the or something that had my stomach knotting over itself.

  I left Eddie as another couple came in looking for a sample of our brunch specials.

  Once back outside, I could see that guests were still filtering into the festival grounds. If I had to guess, there were a few more than the previous day, which I took as a good omen. I found an out-of-the-way spot on the low stone wall under an oak tree and dialed Jean Luc's number again. Six rings in, it went to voice mail again. I left a brief message, just letting him know that I had Schultz tracking down a lawyer for him—you know, if he needed one—and to call me when he got this.

  I hung up, feeling useless and unsatisfied. I contemplated calling the sheriff's office and just asking if he'd been arrested yet, but that was only stirring the pot. I was trying to talk myself out of jumping into my Jeep and checking Jean Luc's place for any sign of the Frenchman again when I spotted something a few paces away in the brush—a flash of red.

  I put my phone in my pocket and took a couple of steps off the pathway. Then it flashed again, and I realized it was a red dress I was seeing—specifically one worn by Gabriela Genova. She was pacing back and forth in the shade of another oak tree with what I assumed was a glass of wine in one hand, as she stopped to sip every few paces.

  Wait—scratch that. It was a bottle of wine, I realized as she gave a half turn to the left and I spotted our label on the dark green bottle being lifted by the neck to her lips. I glanced at my watch. Just past noon. Wow. Must have had a heck of a morning.

  While the wise thing to do might have been to leave the ill-tempered woman sucking down Chardonnay alone, the fact that she had a cooking demonstration to give in half an hour prompted me to approach her. As I did, I noticed she was not only pacing but also cursing and crying. Even the glam squad's mascara was no match for the sobbing tears that streaked down her face in dark, sad lines.

  "Gabby?" I said.

  She spun on me as if caught with a hand in the cookie jar. Or in a bottle, as the case may be.

  "Are you okay?" I asked.

  "Do I look okay?" she responded, throwing her hands wide to encompass the mascara streaking, the wine going down her throat like water, and—I now noticed up close—the broken heel of her right shoe she was hobbling back and forth on.

  "No," I told her honestly. "You look like you could use a friend."

  She scoffed. "Great. Let me know when you find one." She paused, focusing on me for the first time. "Whoa. What happened to you ?"

  I put a hand to my cheek. "Nothing. I, uh, had a rough night."

  "Well, that makes two of us," she said, choking back a sob on the last word and turning to her bottle again.

  "Oh?" I took a step closer to her. "Do you want to talk about it?"

  "What are you, my therapist?" she shot back.

  "Is it Alec again?" I pressed.

  She pursed her lips together, eyes leaking more mascara-stained tears. But instead of sending another snide remark my way, she nodded.

  "What happened?" I asked softly, honestly feeling sorry for her.

  "He left me!" She did a hiccup-sob, putting the back of her hand to her mouth. "Can you believe it? Me!"

  "I'm so sorry," I told her.

  She shook her head. "He said he knew everything."

  "Everything?" I clarified.

  "About Tyler. That I'd been s-s-sleeping with him," she wailed. "And you!" she added, turning to me, her grief suddenly morphing into anger as she trained her eyes on me. "It's all your fault!"

  "Me?" I took one giant step back at the crazed look in her eyes.

  "Yes, you! You had to go asking questions, had to go nosing into everyone's business. Dragging our lives through the mud!"

  Oops. I thought back to my conversation with Alec. "I-I thought he already knew. Didn't you say you thought he knew?"

  "No!" She paused, nose scrunching up as if she was thinking back. "I mean, I don't know. I thought maybe he guessed." She paused again, and I wondered just how much of that bottle she'd ingested already. "But it was your big fat stupid mouth that confirmed it for him!"

  "I'm so sorry, Gabby," I said, meaning it. While she wasn't exactly on my list of top ten people who gave me warm fuzzies, I hadn't meant to put a wrench in her relationship either.

  "You should be!" she yelled, shaking the bottle at me.

  The flash in her eyes, the venomous tone to her voice—in that moment I could easily see her being angry enough to want to hurt someone who had been, say, dragging her life through the mud. I suddenly wondered where Gabby had been last night around midnight when I'd been laid out in The Cave.

  "Gabby, I honestly think Alec already knew," I told her.

  "Well, he certainly knows now!" She let out more Italian curses to the treetops.

  I bit my lip. "Gabby, is it possible Alec found out from Tyler?"

  She spun toward me, almost toppling over from the uneven height of her broken heel. "What? How? When?"

  "Well, maybe Alec suspected something. And confronted Tyler before he died."

  Gabby took another fortifying sip from the bottle in her hands before shaking her head. "No. No, we've been over this before, remember?" She stabbed a manicured nail at me, though I could see it had a jagged edge where it had recently been broken. When Gabby went on a bender, apparently she didn't mess around. "Alec didn't know then. He couldn't. H-he just came to me about it last night." She hiccup-sobbed again and slid down to the ground, landing hard on her backside in the dirt as she took another swig.

  While I feared what the dirt would do to my jeans, I sat down beside her, feeling her hard demeanor cracking.

  "What happened last night?" I asked.

  "Alec was angry. He said…he said I ruined everything.
That I didn't deserve love. That I was a leech."

  "Ouch."

  "Yeah, no kidding," she said sarcastically before sipping again. "Me, the leech? No, I did everything for that man. I planned everything, I prepared everything, I was the backbone. He was the leech!"

  "Alec?"

  "No, Tyler! Aren't you paying attention?" she asked. Which might have had more punch if she hadn't slurred the last few words. "And then what does he do to me? He takes away my Alec." She tuned to me, tears falling again. "I love Alec."

  While she was the biggest pain Hollywood could have sent me, I couldn't help feeling sympathy for her. "Did you tell him that?"

  She nodded. "He didn't care. He just said Tyler and I deserved each other, and he left."

  "When was this?"

  "Last night." She sniffed. "Right after we got back from the festival."

  "And what time did he come back?" I asked, wondering if Alec had had enough time to come back to the winery and bash me on the head before returning to the hotel.

  But Gabby shook her head. "He didn't. I waited all night, but he never came back. I think he's really gone." She hiccup-sobbed again.

  While I felt for her, that also left Alec's evening wide open for attacking yours truly. After the threat in my office, it wasn't a stretch to picture him sneaking around the winery after dark.

  "Have you tried calling him?" I asked Gabby.

  She nodded. "He won't pick up. I know he has a webcast he's doing from the festival today. I was hoping I'd see him here this morning. But I think he's avoiding me."

  "Maybe he just needs some time to cool off," I suggested.