“Yes. And so are you. Usually. A little more thought and a bit less feeling would be a help here, don’t you think?” Juliet made her voice hard. “This is very unprofessional.”
Talbert sighed.
“I know. It’s just….”
“You got involved in spite of your knowing that you shouldn’t. It happens. I get it.” And she did get it. Was she not feeling protective toward Edward? Hadn’t she half-crippled herself trying to save Trefoil’s crop though she had nothing to gain from it except satisfaction that a historical institution would survive? “But it isn’t a help in tracking down the killer. Now buck up and have some dessert. It’s delicious. Then you need to go out and start beating other bushes. I have this angle covered. Frankly, I am doubtful that Owens’ and Carissa’s killings had anything to do with his former occupation, but we need to rule it out and you are the best person to do it.”
And it would get Talbert out of her hair so she could see to her own tasks without interference.
“It’s a waste of time,” he said.
“Do it anyway. You’re only in the way here,” she said bluntly.
Chapter 13
Edward and Schneider were already at the house when they arrived at Trefoil for dinner. That evening they were doing the country cocktail style which was a long way from elegant—except on Raphael—but certainly dressier than what they had worn the day before.
Seamus was welcoming but his mood was restrained and a bit distracted. Perhaps he was tired, Juliet thought. Yesterday had been physically taxing. Perhaps the breach in the retaining wall had been worsened by the storm and he had needed to repair it.
Or maybe having two neighbors murdered in as many days had disturbed him.
If Seamus was an exhausted collection of wrinkles, Moira was a waxwork. Never expressive, the level line of her mouth moved neither up nor down and her eyes were as blank as the dark windows. Juliet wondered if she were on drugs.
There was an offer of cocktails but everyone declined and they moved quickly to the dining room which had been set with mismatched patterns of old china and crystal flutes. There were mixed flowers in small vases. The effect was charming but largely lost on those gathering to partake of the baked meats. The dinner certainly had more the feel of a wake than a party. And they apparently weren’t there to praise Caesar but to bury him.
The lovely crown moldings pulled the eyes upward where they were inclined to linger. Or perhaps this just wasn’t the night for looking to closely at one’s companions, Juliet thought. Just in case their thoughts were too like one’s own: Thou too art mortal. Or, who would be next?
The meal was served family style. Chicken cacciatore, focaccia, and salad. Moira was a good cook but no one was reaching for seconds and not even the excellent wine poured by their host helped. Voices were muted when they spoke at all, and at times Juliet could actually hear bees in the flowering shrub outside the open window. Everyone was preoccupied and neither Esteban nor Raphael tried to force conversation. There was a lot to be learned from the silence.
Juliet’s eyes moved round the table. Her host was staring at his plate, rousing himself every so often to offer more wine. Had Seamus spent the day crushing his precious grapes? Or did he send them somewhere? Perhaps to Blue Period since their own crush was done? They hadn’t covered that on their tour. Should she ask, or was making him speak an unkindness when he looked so exhausted?
Schneider had a frown between his uneven brows and she got the impression that he was busy with some dark, internal monologue.
She looked down at Edward and Moira seated at the end of the long table. They might have been—perhaps should have been—mother and son. She listened to them talk. It was innocent, bland. But nothing said that night by any of the guests could be dismissed as meaningless however non-sequitur some of their conversation seemed to be. Chances were that someone at that table was a killer and eventually word or deed would give them away.
Edward began speaking about his mother and how he thought she would approve of the idea of doing a winery within the winery. A tiny amount of enthusiasm entered his voice and Moira finally smiled.
The past and the present were never that far apart, not for the people who had shared the experience of a life-altering trauma. Time was like a series of rooms off the same corridor, all with connecting doors. Sometimes, all one needed was a glimpse into one of the rooms to understand what came before and after. That night, a door had been left open, just a crack, and Juliet could see inside the lives of a younger Edward Owens and Moira and Seamus Mulligan.
Carl Owens hadn’t been a good man. He had been a robber baron, a barbarian intruder into the elegant and civilized world his wife had come from. He didn’t understand her or his son or his neighbors. The wineries of Napa were like city-states, small fiefdoms run by a few families. The usurper Owens had supplied enough dry tinder of animosity, business and personal, that eventually it had caught fire and he had died early because of it.
And Carissa? She had probably supplied some of the fuel for her pyre, but Juliet was pretty sure that what had happened to her was mainly because of earlier actions by her husband. Owens had brought death on himself. Had she deserved to die too? Juliet thought not. She had been smug and as fat around the brain as around her augmented ass, evading deep thinking all of her life and instead counting on her ability to lure rich men to do her bidding. She wasn’t burdened with generous impulses and had in fact been the kind of woman who plucked the pennies off a corpse’s eyes if no one was looking. Still, unpleasant as that made her, that should not bring a death sentence.
And yet, she was dead.
Juliet’s eyes traveled around the table again.
How frustrating for the killer to have murdered Owens only to discover that Carissa was in the way and that she would have to die too. It doubled the risk and the homicidal workload. How would they have managed the killing if there hadn’t been the crisis of the sudden rain? Time had been of the essence once she went to the attorney.
Juliet’s feline friend passed by under the table, stropping at her ankles and breaking in on her thoughts. A moment later, a weight landed in her lap. Juliet casually lowered her hands and stroked the cat beneath the chin and felt him begin to purr.
“Seamus,” she said softly and her host looked up slowly. Clearly his mind was miles and perhaps years away. “I meant to ask before if I might buy some of your colored lavenders. I have a friend who makes stationary out of the petals of flowers. Lavender is a favorite because it is small and hardy, and I am sure she would love some to experiment with.”
“Aye, of course, of course. But you must let it be a gift. I insist.” His smile was genuine and warm if a shadow of the one he had the day before. Perhaps he was happy to have someone break in on his contemplations and pull him back to the present. “I’ll fetch some back before you go. We’ve a grand selection of colors this year. And you must have some of the purple as well. It makes a wonderful sachet that discourages moths.”
“Thank you so much. It will be a nice souvenir from my stay.”
“Hopefully you will take away a bit more than that. A wee bird has told me that you have sold some paintings.”
Juliet blinked.
“I have? That’s … very nice. I’ve been too distracted to pay much attention to the show. There have been visitors?”
“Aye, well, at least two have sold and one is hanging in my office as we speak.”
Juliet smiled.
“You didn’t have to.”
“Aye, but I did. Lake Tahoe has always seemed a drear place to me, cold and dark as any grave, and your painting caught that like none other I’ve seen.”
Juliet nodded, not explaining that the painting had been so foreboding because she had spent that Christmas stalking and being stalked by a killer. She did not look at Raphael or Esteban.
Dinner finally ended. Raphael, Esteban, and Juliet were the first to leave.
“So, you know who killed Owens
and his wife?” Raphael asked as they got settled in Esteban’s Outback. Parking being at a premium, they had come in one car.
Juliet sniffed her lavender sachet. The bundles of colored flowers had been slipped in an organza bag and tied with a silk ribbon.
“Yes, we don’t have enough for the police to act on though.”
“And you want to involve the police?” Esteban asked, starting the car and rolling down the windows to let in the cool, misty air. “I rather had the feeling that you didn’t want to find the killer.”
Juliet hesitated.
“If the killings had stopped with Owens maybe I wouldn’t have pressed on…. But they didn’t stop. Two murders is a pattern. We can’t sit around waiting for someone else to be killed so that Edward can have his winery.”
“So we agree that this is the reason for the murders?” Raphael asked.
“But you are not happy to act?” This was Esteban. She wondered why he was being so insistent.
Juliet turned and looked out the back window. The house’s upper windows were only just visible over the wall that circled the winery.
“No, I’m not happy. I like the people back there. All of them. I wish this cup had passed us by.”
But the cup never did pass by. There was an old Chinese proverb that asked: Who must do the difficult thing? And the answer was: The one who can.
That meant Juliet.
“Shall we sleep on it?” Raphael asked.
“Yes.” She knew Esteban was impatient and hoping for action but Juliet didn’t want to think about the murderer any more that night. She didn’t make good decisions when tired.
She was silent on the trip back to Blue Period, letting the swaying curves rock her toward sleep. Was someone else lying down with bitter thoughts in their heads? And how many of the others would lie sleepless with worry as they asked themselves who among them was a killer?
Chapter 14
The moon was being obstinate, hanging about the morning sky while Juliet had her coffee out on the terrace. The fog had burned off early and the dew and the sun were busy distilling the odors of the earth and grapes and dying leaves into the perfect autumn day. There was no sign of life at Schneider’s cottage and she assumed that he was with Edward.
Raphael had also gone out early and without disturbing her. She was being allowed time to think without added pressure. Or perhaps not so much to think as to accept what must be done.
Juliet pushed the thought away, determined to enjoy her coffee before grappling with moral dilemmas. She noticed that the yellow jackets had gone away, perhaps warned off by the sudden cold weather, or perhaps chasing prey that had moved on once the grapes were gone.
The sound of hammering came from the distance. Carissa’s death had not slowed restoration of the old Blue Period buildings. Men scurried in the parking lot. Their voices were happy. Labor that might have moved on to other vineyards in the south was willing to stay for a better wage. Money, that might have gone to a clothing manufacturer, could instead buy contractors and building permits, supposing any were necessary for repair work. Juliet didn’t know anything about the local ordinances.
Raphael and Esteban finally joined her. Esteban had brought brioche and a lemon tart. For a while they didn’t speak, just enjoyed the morning.
But eventually the matter of what to do had to come up. Juliet ran through her reasoning once more, double-checking her logic, though it was just an exercise since Esteban and Raphael had also reached the same conclusions about who was the guilty party. They couldn’t all be wrong.
Moira and her brother had not been at the party the night Owens died, but they—no, she wouldn’t pretend—Moira could have bypassed the security at the gate by using the back door in the bottling facility which abutted Trefoil land. All that would be needed for her to gain entrance was for someone to leave the door unlocked—perhaps Edward or Carissa—or to obtain a key. Again from Edward or Carissa who would either have one or know where to get one. Or she might have unlocked it herself if she visited earlier in the day. For that matter, perhaps Moira still had a key from the days when Edward’s mother was alive.
Juliet thought about this, consulting her brain but also her gut. Her gut insisted that Carissa was the other party to this crime, the brain said it didn’t know. Juliet was hoping that it was neither and that Moira had acted alone. Absent any proof she was going to go with that theory.
The wound that killed Carl Owens hadn’t been clean and the weapon, still missing, hadn’t been a high-powered one. Had it been a panicked shot from someone with shaking hands? Someone who was theoretically ready to do murder, but not practiced in a practical way? Like Moira.
If she had done it, would she claim it was a crime of opportunity or even self-defense, in spite of the damning fact of her carrying a gun? There would be no defense if the gun came from her home. But if it was one from Carl’s house? Perhaps a weapon left by the door of the bottling facility in the cupboard Esteban had found?
It would be farfetched but not impossible to claim that Carl had gone out with both a pistol and a rifle. That there had been a struggle out in the vineyard and she had managed to wrest one of the guns away and shot him because she felt her life was in danger. Carl’s pistol had been discharged so he had shot at something.
The guns might provide more forensic information, but Juliet was betting the weapon would never be found. There were too many bodies of water and too many fields where a gun could be buried and no one would ever notice that the soil had been disturbed. And now that Carissa was dead, she would be an idiot to keep the weapon, especially if ballistics could prove a match.
Owens’ death might be explained away as self-defense. That didn’t work with Carissa’s murder.
So what were the whys and wherefores of Carissa’s killing? The how was plain enough. Moira had been in and out, supplying people with coffee and food the day of the storm. It wouldn’t take long to get over to Blue Period if she went by the old bottling facility that abutted Trefoil’s vineyard. She could have dropped off some sandwiches and then kept walking. No one would think it odd to see her in the fields carrying a basket which could have a pistol as well as ham and truffle sandwiches. Nor would it have been difficult to convince Carissa to talk to her. All she would have to do is say she wanted to talk Edward out of his scheme to open a new line for the winery and Carissa would let her into the house.
It was a risk, since there were bound to be some workers around. But the weather had been bad and chances were fair that they had stayed indoors. And even if they had seen her, she was just one more person huddling in a shapeless coat as she hurried on her way.
Of course, the police would point out that Moira wasn’t the only suspect. Where were Talbert and Schneider and Edward? Or Seamus? They all had opportunity and motive too.
“Can we force a confession from her?” Raphael asked quietly, opening the conversation.
“By confronting her?” Esteban asked. He shook his head. “That might just force another murder. This time Juliet’s.”
“Not if we were all there,” Raphael objected.
Juliet shook her head back.
“She won’t confess to all of us. But I think that she may talk to me. If she believes me to be alone.”
“But you won’t be alone?” Raphael insisted. “Because she might just decide to kill you too if she thinks she can get away with it.”
“I know, so I don’t plan on being alone. To that end, I think we need to choose somewhere out in the open. Someplace with nearby cover.”
“Somewhere where I can keep her in my sights.” Esteban wasn’t speaking figuratively.
“You brought a rifle?” Juliet asked.
“Of course.”
That made her feel better. They began to plan.
Chapter 15
In the distance there was a wind chime playing an indistinct song that would go on until the last breeze died. Juliet hated the loneliness of the sound. It made her feel friendless,
though that wasn’t true. Raphael—armed with a pistol—was sitting on the terrace watching with a set of binoculars.
Even closer, Esteban was waiting with a hunting rifle and a very high-tech scope that would let him count the hairs of Moira’s head.
Movement among the creaking vines. Juliet watched Moira coming toward her. She was wearing baggy pants and a shapeless cardigan along with her gardening hat, tipped low to shade her face. Part of her had the insane urge to get out her sketchbook and try to capture the moment.
Juliet stepped forward a few feet to meet her but was careful to stay in plain view of both Esteban and Raphael. In plain view and out of the line of sight.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Juliet said. It was a strange way to open the conversation they were about to have, but as she had noted before, she and Moira were of a generation that expected the niceties to be observed.
Behind them came the sounds of renewed hammering.
“Edward is going to make a job of his winery,” she answered back. “Now that he has a chance.”
“I think he will do a good job,” Juliet agreed. “Because of you.”
Down the road, a slow-moving truck changed gears and began droning its way south. Juliet wondered if it would take the detour or just wait for its turn at the one open lane.
“Because of me,” she agreed. Moira pretended to look at the hills. “You don’t ask me why or how?”
“I can probably guess. I’ve met men like Owens before.”
“Some people don’t recognize where their selfishness must stop,” Moira said quietly and then rolled her head from side to side, as though feeling the weight of her acts beginning to settle on her neck.
Juliet nodded. She knew what the woman was trying to say. Enough little things, pains, indignities, and injustices, could collect into one giant, if nebulous, reason for finally acting out against your tormentors.
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