Ashley clucked her tongue at me. "Really, you shouldn't be surprised when such things happen to you. Didn't your mother ever teach you not to stick your nose into other people's business?"
The murderess was pointing out my bad manners. I bit back a snide retort.
"And what about Jean Luc?" I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. "Where is he now?"
I could have cried in relief when Ashley shrugged. "Haven't the foggiest. Guess he got chicken and ran." She shrugged. "No matter. The police will catch up to him soon enough. They don't look lightly on double murder, you know?"
"Wait—double murder?"
She took a step toward me, pointing the gun ahead of her. "You didn't think I was going to let you live, did you?"
Honestly? No, I hadn't. But a girl could hope.
"The police will never believe Jean Luc would kill me."
"Oh no?" she asked, shaking her head again, those earrings catching the light with each sway. "I'd say desperate men do desperate things. You found Jean Luc hiding out in the wine cellar, there was struggle, and his gun went off."
She took a step forward, pointing said gun out in front of her.
I felt desperation bubble up inside me again and worked my piece of glass back and forth with a fury, attacking the last little bit of plastic. I pulled the bonds taut, feeling plastic dig into my skin.
"You won't get away with this," I said, the phrase lacking conviction even to my own ears.
Ashley's eyes narrowed, her smile grew into a red slash of lipstick across her face, and her voice was low and menacing. "Oh, but I already have."
She put both hands on the gun, leveling it at my head.
Panic surged through every cell in my body, making time stand still. It was now or never.
Clutching the shard of glass in one hand, I pulled with all my might against the zip tie, not caring if she saw me anymore. Almost at once, I heard a soft pop, my arms flew free, and I launched myself forward.
I dove awkwardly with my legs still bound at the ankles, catching her bare arm above the multitude of bracelets with the glass.
Ashley screamed as it dug into her.
The gun went off, and the sound was deafening in the enclosed space as a bullet embedded in the ceiling.
I dropped the glass and grabbed for the gun with both hands. Unfortunately, Ashley still had it in her grip as well, and we fought for it—her teetering on her heels and me barely balancing with my legs stuck together like a mermaid tail. While I was younger, my hands were cut and slippery, and I could feel her starting to win the wrestling match.
Since my head had already taken a heck of beating over the last two days, I decided one more hit was worth it, and I slammed my forehead into hers with as much as force as I could muster, giving her a WrestleMania worthy head butt.
She grunted, stumbling backward.
Unfortunately, without her to lean on for balance, I stumbled right with her, practically falling on top of her as we both hit the ground. She went down butt first, grunting as her tailbone connected with hard stone. I was a split second behind her, slamming into her upper body with a force that knocked her flat.
And must have stunned her, as the gun flew out of her grasp, clattering across the stone floor.
Both of us acted in unison, scrambling toward the gun. Luckily since I was on top of her, I had the upper hand. Unluckily, I had no legs to work with, so belly crawling was all I could do, my back half dragging almost uselessly behind me.
"Oh no you don't…" Ashley yelled, and I felt her fingernails dig into my calf as she grabbed at me, trying to pull me away from the gun.
I kicked upward, catching her jaw with the heels of my feet. I heard her teeth slam together and watched her head jerk back. As her grip loosened, I charged forward again.
The gun was still a few feet away, and Ashley regained her senses before I could reach it, again grabbing at my legs. Only this time she flung her entire body weight on them, immobilizing me so all I could do was wriggle in her grasp.
I strained my arms out in front of me, trying desperately to reach the gun first, but it was no use. Ashley had me totally pinned. Then she grabbed at my hair, yanking me backward, and I heard myself cry out in pain, my scalp feeling like it was on fire. I clawed at her hands, trying to break her grip.
"You stupid little thing," she snarled at me as she switched her grip from my hair to my neck, putting one bangled arm around it and pulling so tightly I felt my breath grow shallow. "You really thought you could outwit me? That you could beat me?"
I couldn't see her face, but I heard the maniacal laughter filling The Cave and knew she'd gone so far off the deep end that she was near drowning. She squeezed tighter, and I felt my vision blurring, my lungs gasping for air.
"No one beats me. Not Tyler, not his pretty little groupies, not his slimy lawyer. I always win. I win, you hear me? I win!"
I heard her, but it sounded like it was far away, my hearing going funny, my eyes blurring, everything starting to fade away as oxygen became a scarce commodity in my body. I felt my fingers instinctively clawing at her arm, my control on them slipping away as the fight or flight response took over.
I forced myself to focus through the fog. This was not the way I was going out.
I felt the world closing in as her arm tightened even farther, and I summoned up the last bit of clear thought I could. I made my hands leave her arm and feel on the floor beside me for anything I could use as a weapon. Any lingering shard of glass, any loose stones, anything that would help bring back the flow of air to my lungs.
Just as the room was fading to a dark nothing, my fingers connected with a smooth round object.
A wine bottle. The one that had rolled away from me.
I strained to reach it, feeling it wiggle back and forth in response to my fingers clumsily grasping for it.
"I win! I win! I win!" Ashley was still shouting, yelling like some unhinged cartoon villain.
My fingers finally got a useful grip, and I pulled the bottle toward me. I wrapped my hand around the neck. I said a silent prayer.
And I swung.
"I win! I win! I wi—"
She stopped mid-word as I wielded the bottle backward like a club, connecting with her head with a sickening crack.
Her arms went slack, and I fell forward, gulping in great breaths of sweet, amazing air. Then I scrambled away on my knees, putting some distance between us, before I dared look back at her.
Ashley was slumped on the floor, eyes closed, body limp, and a large red welt in the center of her forehead next to my broken wine bottle.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next few hours were a total blur. I managed to hop to the cellar door and vaguely remembered yelling, screaming, and generally making such a ruckus that Conchita came running from the kitchen to see what was the matter. I'd never forget her face when she saw me, the color draining out in a way that I almost felt bad for soliciting her help. She'd rushed at me, enveloping me in a motherly hug that had all but reduced me to tears. After that, movements blurred. I know someone called 9-1-1, Hector went to the cellar to make sure Ashley stayed put until authorities could arrive, and Ava and Eddie appeared, the pair along with Conchita practically smothering me with attention and affection until EMTs arrived.
Which didn't take long, as a virtual caravan of emergency vehicles descended upon the winery in a symphony of sirens and flashing lights. Uniformed police officers corralled the remaining few festival guests and the jazz band into the tasting room as witnesses, others made for The Cave, and a few hovered near me in the kitchen, waiting for the medical clearance to hound me for a statement. While I'd clearly had better days, the EMTs decided I'd live—which was a relief, considering how close to not living I'd just been—as they dressed the cuts on my hands and told me to ice the lump on my head, take Motrin for the pain, and stay out of trouble in the future. I took all three pieces of advice to heart, hoping to especially stick to the last one.
&
nbsp; I was just recounting my ordeal for the second time to a female uniformed officer who had a distinctly sympathetic manner for a member of law enforcement, clucking and shaking her head every few minutes, when a familiar face caught my attention among the crowd.
He was about an hour past a good five o'clock shadow, broad shoulders tense, muscular frame vibrating with energy as he took in the scene. His eyes scanned the room before finding mine and locking on. Then in a second he was by my side, pulling me up from the chair I'd been shakily seated in and crushing me to him in a warm, strong embrace that I never wanted to end.
"You've got to quit scaring me like that," Grant murmured into my hair.
I nodded, my face pressed against his chest.
"What happened?" he asked, finally pulling me back just enough to see my face. His eyebrows drew down in concern as he took in the new bump and the bruises I felt forming around my neck. I'd yet to see a mirror, but if the way I felt was any indication of how I looked, I imagined it wasn't pretty. Like, just went six rounds with the champ not pretty.
I licked my lips, drawing in a deep breath to collect my thoughts and recount the whole thing again. "It was Ashley," I said.
Grant nodded. "I know."
"Wait, you know?" I asked.
"Well, I do now ." He shot me a wry grin. "Came over the radio on my way here."
"Oh." I let out a long breath. "She attacked me and tied me up in The Cave."
Grant's jaw clenched, but he said nothing, waiting for me to go on.
Which I did, giving him the entire rundown of events, including Ashley's full confession. His stony cop face was in place the entire time, and when I was finished, he just shook his head.
"You could have been killed," he finally said, his voice low, barely more than a whisper.
"Hello, Captain Obvious." I gave him a grin, trying to make light of the whole thing. Truth was, it would take me a while to actually feel light about it, but just smiling helped a bit.
He answered it with a small lift to the corner of his mouth. "You're a tough cookie, aren't you, Oak?"
I swallowed, not wanting to admit even to myself how close to crumbling that cookie had been.
Luckily, Grant cleared his throat, changing the subject. "I was actually already on my way here when I got the call."
"You were?"
He nodded. "I wanted to let you know we picked up Jean Luc about an hour ago."
I sucked in a breath. "Is he okay?"
"He's fine. Shaken up by everything, but fine."
"Where was he?"
"A motel in Fremont," Grant answered. "He said when his fingerprints were found in Tyler's place, he panicked. He thought the police were trying to frame him by planting evidence. So, he ran."
"But you found him."
He nodded again. "Truth is, it's pretty hard to actually disappear. An ATM camera got a hit with facial recognition a few blocks from his place last night."
"So much for cash keeping you under the radar."
He shrugged. "We probably would have found him sooner if he'd used his credit cards, but in this day and age, any activity is pretty traceable. Luckily, the camera also caught a glimpse of the Uber car he was in, and from there, we had traffic cams follow the vehicle to the motel."
I shook my head. "Remind me never to try to hide from you."
That corner of his lips quirked up again. "You wouldn't dare," he said, infusing the phrase with meaning.
I cleared my throat, shaking it off. "How is Jean Luc now?" I asked. "Have the police released him?"
Grant sighed, running a hand through his hair. "No."
"No?" I blinked at him, some of the anger I'd been harboring the past week seeping back in. "What do you mean, no?"
"I mean I never arrested him."
"B-but you had a warrant," I said, confusion replacing anger. In my defense, I'd had two near concussions in a row, so I was allowed to be a bit slow on the uptake.
"I did have a warrant. And I should have executed it."
"But you didn't," I said, finishing for him. I tried to read the golden flecks slowly dancing near his irises now, but they were giving nothing away.
He shook his head. "I just couldn't."
I felt a genuine smile take hold of my features, the grin unstoppable even if I'd wanted to try. "Thank you," I told him simply.
He gave me a slow nod. I knew if he'd really thought Jean Luc was a killer, he'd have done his job. But the fact that he'd trusted me, had had faith enough in my judgment to hold off, meant a lot. More than I could properly articulate in that moment.
Luckily, Grant was a man of few words himself, and the warmth in his eyes as he stared down at me radiated with a mutual understanding.
"Grant!" A uniformed officer hailed him from the door.
He turned, giving the officer the universal one-finger wait sign.
"You going to be okay?" he asked me.
I nodded. "Between Ava, Conchita, and Eddie, I'll be lucky to have a second to myself."
He grinned. "Good. I'll call you later, then."
And with that, he turned and joined the hordes of law enforcement that seemed to have taken over Oak Valley Vineyards.
* * *
"There's one thing I don't understand," Eddie said two days later as we gathered around the large wooden table on the back terrace, enjoying a family style dinner of spicy pesto fettuccini as the sun sank into the vine covered hills on the horizon. "Why did Ashley attack you the first time?"
"I think she was scared," I answered, twirling a strand of pasta around my fork. "She knew I'd caught her lying to the police about Tyler having fired Jean Luc."
"So that wasn't a mistake?" Eddie asked.
I shook my head. "No, she'd deliberately been trying to make Jean Luc look guilty. Then after Ava and I," I went on, nodding toward my partner in crime who sat to my right, sipping Pinot Blanc, "visited Mark Black and told him we knew about the embezzling, the first thing he did was call Ashley. Turns out the two were closer than she'd let on, their mutual issues with Tyler making them confidants of a sort."
I'd learned as much from Mark Black when he'd shown up at the winery the day after Ashley's arrest. He said as soon as he'd seen it in the news, all the pieces had fallen into place, and he'd come to apologize for inadvertently keeping Ashley appraised of all my findings, painting a big red target on my back. He said he should have disputed the false alibi she'd given him, but at the time he'd honestly thought the two were just looking out for each other, trying to keep Tyler's secrets under wraps to avoid a financial hit after his death. Only Mark hadn't had a clue that Ashley had her sights set on Tyler's embezzled money. In fact, Mark had honestly thought Tyler had spent it all already.
He'd been more than surprised when, using the credentials the police had found on Ashley Daniels, he'd cashed out of cryptocurrency with enough profits on the transaction to pay for the IRS penalties for owing the back taxes from Tyler's falsely reported expenses. It looked like Tyler's Place would keep its doors open after all. Though, whether it stayed Tyler's Place or became Mark's Place remained to be seen. Either way, Mark had felt so bad about the entire thing that he'd agreed to stock Oak Valley's wines in not only the Sonoma restaurant but all four locations. Those orders alone took our little festival from disaster to profitable. With enough left over than I might even be able to get my oven fixed.
"So Ashley was blowing smoke when she pointed you in Gabby's direction, then," my third dinner guest, David Allen, added, leaning back on his wooden chair. He had one arm splayed across the back of Ava's chair in a casual pose as he swirled the contents of his wineglass in the other hand.
"Mostly," I said, lifting my fork to my mouth. I waited until I'd swallowed the bite before continuing. "I mean, Gabby and Tyler had been having an affair. And it had ended badly. How much of that Ashley had really known or guessed at, I'm not sure."
"So she's not telling the police much, huh?" Ava asked.
I shook my head. As chat
ty as she'd been in the cellar when she'd thought I was going to end up six feet under, she'd clammed up the second the police had taken her into custody, refusing to speak to anyone other than her lawyer. At least according to Bradley Wu, who had done a full series of articles on the "Victim in the Vineyard" over the last few days.
True to my word, I'd given the reporter the exclusive interview I'd promised when he'd called me bright and early the following morning. He'd been practically giddy to get what he called the only firsthand account of the confession from the "perilously potential second victim of the crazed critic." I'd just been happy the winery had been painted in a positive light for once…not just the place where a man had been killed, but a place where a killer had been brought to justice. At least by Bradley Wu's column in the Sonoma Index-Tribune .
Needless to say, there would be no glowing review of the Sonoma Fall Food and Wine Festival printed in the LA Times.
Or the Sonoma Truth Tellers , for that matter. Though Ava and I had both felt bad enough about that little white lie that we'd taken Mandy a thank-you gift of a couple bottles of Chardonnay and a silver charm bracelet, letting her know we appreciated her honesty but we'd decided not to print the article after all, feeling it would compromise our sources too much. Whether we came off as believable, I wasn't sure. But at least she'd said the mourners had died down at the restaurant, bringing her work environment back to a normal level of crazy.
"And Jean Luc?" David asked, his eyes roving lazily toward the twinkling fairy lights strung above us. "How is he taking all of this?"
I bit my lip. Honestly, I wasn't sure. I'd invited Jean Luc to join us for dinner that evening, but he'd declined, saying he wasn't quite up to socializing yet. I'd be hard pressed to say if it was more about the embarrassment of having been caught on the run or the betrayal he'd felt from Ashley Daniels singling him out as her scapegoat for murder.
"Oh, Jean Luc's back to his old self," Eddie answered for me. "Yesterday I left a cork foil on the bar, and he about bit my head off over the 'unsanitary conditions.' I mean, it wasn't like I licked it or anything!"
I swallowed a smirk as Eddie shook his head, forking pasta into his mouth with gusto.
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