Last of the Vintage

by Kerry J Charles

  At last she spoke in a very low, clear voice. “Brendan. Are you aware that someone died last night?”

  Brendan looked surprised. “From your stern look here lass, I’m assuming it’s someone we know? I’m sure a lot of people died last night somewhere on the planet.” He chuckled at his joke.

  Dulcie simply nodded. She wasn’t smiling.

  Brendan cleared his throat. “What happened? Did one of the old codgers kick the bucket right here in the museum? Maybe it isn’t so bad – they could have left a legacy for your little museum in their will.”

  Dulcie was beyond the point of irritation but somehow maintained her composure. “No, it was not some ‘old codger’ as you put it. It was someone quite young. Our sommelier, as a matter of fact. He was found this morning.” She chose not to mention how or where he was found.

  “No! You don’t say!” Brendan exclaimed. “So young, too, as you say! Was it an accident? Or some freak medical condition perhaps?”

  Dulcie felt as though Brendan was not being quite genuine with this response but she let it go. “I don’t know the details,” she said simply. “But I do know that it happened sometime last night. He was found this morning.” For some reason she felt compelled to withhold all of the facts.

  “My goodness!” Brendan said. “What a tragedy! How is his beautiful wife taking it?”

  Dulcie bristled slightly when he called Samantha ‘beautiful.’ There was no doubt that she was, but why did he feel the need to say it just now? And why was she reacting in this stupid way? Was it a tinge of jealousy? She didn’t think so. It just seemed inappropriate to mention such a thing when the poor woman’s husband was suddenly dead.

  “I believe she’s mostly in shock, from what I understand.” At that moment Dulcie remembered that Brendan had barged in without warning. Why? “Brendan, what brings you here?” she asked sharply.

  He looked away with a half-smile. Dulcie realized then that she’d caught him off guard. He had forgotten how well she knew him.

  “Just wanted to chat about events last night,” he muttered. “But sounds like matters have taken a rather serious turn, so I’d best be off.”

  She said nothing as he stood.

  “But there is one thing,” he added. “Just if you think of it, could you jot down a few of the names of our fellow revelers? Perhaps an address or two? I think it’s always best, after all, to send a proper thank you.”

  So that’s what he wanted. Inside information. Her policy was strict on that. She shook her head. “Brendan, I’m sure you realize that I can’t just go giving out names and addresses of any of our donors, let alone the wealthiest ones. Rest assured that I will be sending a thank you note to each and every one, and I will be sure to mention your thanks as well.”

  It was all he could do not to swear out loud. He needed to drum up interest in the wine quickly. His plan had altered. He didn’t, in fact, want to send the remaining wine to auction. He wanted to sell the bottles directly, in a somewhat more clandestine fashion. It would certainly benefit everyone involved. Those pesky authorities who liked to collect taxes and such really need never know.

  Regaining his composure, he said, “Of course. Stupid of me, really. Please pass on my hearty thanks, and do tell them what a pleasure it was to meet them.”

  “I will, Brendan.” Dulcie stood now, ushering him out of her office.

  As she opened the door, he leaned over and brushed her cheek with his lips. Neither of them realized that Detective Nicholas Black was standing immediately on the other side, his hand raised in a fist to knock.

  Dulcie jumped back with a gasp.

  Brendan looked startled, then broke out in a boisterous laugh. “Ah the long arm of the law! Quite literally, I see!”

  Nick quickly lowered his arm. It was all he could do to keep it at his side and not let it spring forward, punching the smug Scottish bastard in the jaw. He turned to Dulcie. “I wanted to ask you a few questions, about what we were, um,” he glanced at Brendan now, “What we were discussing earlier?”

  “Ah now! Would this be the death of the young man?” Brendan interjected. “I thought there was something to that, but our lassie here was cagey!” He reached over and tousled a lock of her hair on her shoulder. “But then, she does cagey very well, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Seething. There was no other word for Nick’s emotions at that moment. He forced a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Dulcie does a lot of things very well. Especially her job.” He turned to her. “Do you have a moment?” he asked, effectively dismissing Brendan.

  “Yes, I do,” she answered, stepping back from the door. She nodded at Brendan. “I’ll let you know when the thank-you notes have been sent. Good luck with the wine sales.” She knew that Brendan would wince inwardly as she said that in front of a police detective. Brendan never did anything above board. She closed the door on Brendan as soon as Nick entered.

  “You’re quite chummy,” Nick said quietly.

  Indignation began to rise within Dulcie for at least the second time in less than twenty-four hours. What was it about the presence of these two men in the same room that made her so annoyed? The fact that they each seemed to lay claim to her, as though she were simply a piece of chattel? Some women may enjoy that sort of thing, but she was not one of them.

  “I’ll ignore that comment,” she bristled. “Brendan and I have a past. You do as well, as I recall.” The words slipped out before she could stop them.

  “Yes, but my past is just that. Past. I have had no direct contact for years,” he retorted.

  “Nor have I until that hulk simply reappeared. Short of being completely rude and unappreciative of his generous gift, what am I supposed to do?”

  “Oh please, Dulcie! You know as well as I do that he didn’t give you that wine as a gift. It was a sales pitch. A marketing tool. He’s going to sell most of that wine illegally, under the table, to the people in that boardroom last night!” Nick couldn’t stop himself. He was angry that Brendan MacArthur had reappeared in Dulcie’s life when they were just kindling a relationship and establishing trust.

  “What bothers you more, the fact that he’s selling antiquities illegally or the fact that he’s flirting with me?” There. She’d said it.

  “Both, now that you mention it!” he stammered.

  Dulcie shook her head and walked back to her desk. “Did you want to talk about something, Nick? I mean, other than this?” she asked pointedly.

  Nick just shook his head. “I did, but it can wait. I mostly just wanted to make sure that you were okay, but I can see that you are.”

  “Look Nick, I didn’t invite him here,” Dulcie began.

  “No,” Nick interjected. “Let’s just stop. We’re not making any sense and to be honest, I can’t think straight right now.”

  Dulcie exhaled forcefully. She felt the same way but she wasn’t going to admit it. “All right. We both probably have too much on our minds right now. Do you want to get together for coffee later?”

  Nick visibly relaxed. He felt the knots in his back easing away. “Yes. Yes I do. That’s a great idea. Can you call me when you have time?”

  Dulcie nodded and found herself fully exhaling for the first time since he had come in the room. “I will,” she said simply.

  Nick gave her a serious look, then left, closing the door quietly behind him.

  “Men!” Dulcie said out loud once he was gone, shaking her head vigorously. But in this case it was only one man that was the problem. Nothing had gone right since Brendan MacArthur had walked back into her life.

  #

  Samantha had called her mother, but it would take at least an hour for her to arrive. As soon as she had put down the phone she’d gone into the bathroom splashed cold water on her face for several minutes, then pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail. She stared at herself in the mirror.

  What the hell had she done? Why had she married him in the first place? How could she have let her life spin so far out o
f control like this? She had no idea what was happening anymore.

  She walked slowly into the kitchen. Tea. That’s what she needed. A strong cup of tea. She filled the electric kettle and switched it on, then scrounged through the cupboard for a box of teabags. Some of Jeremy’s unopened wine bottles clanked against each other. Samantha froze, startled by the sound.

  She took the first one down and gently placed it on the counter. She set the second down a bit more forcefully. The third slammed on to the Formica, followed by the fourth, fifth, sixth... She yanked open a drawer, pulled out a corkscrew and shoved it into the top of the nearest bottle. The cork came out more easily than she anticipated sending her backwards and nearly sloshing wine on her shirt. She lunged forward again, held the bottle upside-down over the sink and watched the wine glug out onto the stainless steel and swirl down the drain. She turned on the faucet, then repeated the process with every single bottle. She even went through the other cupboards locating more.

  By the time the kettle had reached a boil, Samantha had managed to empty twenty bottles. She poured hot water over the teabag and, while waiting for it to steep, put the bottles into neat, orderly rows. They looked like soldiers, rank and file. Dead soldiers. It was all gone and it wasn’t coming back.

  The emotions are sometimes so strong

  that I work without knowing it.

  The strokes come like speech.

  ― Vincent van Gogh

  CHAPTER 8

  “Blow to the head,” the doctor said. “That’s what knocked him out. The blow to the head. But I don’t think that’s what killed him. More likely he died of exposure. It wouldn’t take long with these temperatures we’ve been having.”

  Nick glanced down at the sheet that covered the body of Jeremy Plunkett. It looked cold. Everything in the room was cold. Nick felt like the whole world had gone cold.

  Evidently, the doctor did not. She stepped closer to Nick, eyeing him coyly. “How’s the investigating going, detective?” She said. “I’d be happy to help if you need to go over any case notes.” She batted her eyelashes at him.

  Either Nick didn’t notice her overt attempt at flirtation, or he concealed his response well. He simply pulled out his notebook, flipped through it, then put it back in his pocket.

  “No other pieces of glass or anything on him?” Nick asked.

  The doctor let out a decided huff before replying, “Nothing else.” She stepped back away from Nick.

  Johnson tried not to grin at the spectacle. He’d been noticing a lot more women paying attention to Nick. When he’d first joined the force the rumors had been that his preference was not for women, but that was before the whisperings about his recent divorce. No one had known he’d been married. Of course the fact that Nick already seemed to be favoring someone new was of little consequence. “All’s fair!” as many of them said.

  “Okay, thanks Christina. I think we’re done here,” Nick said without looking at her.

  She turned without saying a word and went back into her office.

  “Nuthin’ like a little lust over a stiff,” Johnson quipped. “Body, I mean.”

  Nick rolled his eyes. “Really, Johnson. There wasn’t any…”

  Johnson chuckled under his breath. “Save it. There was. You’re just too dense to notice.”

  Nick was instantly reminded of the argument he had had with Dulcie. “I’m starting to think that women are more trouble than they’re worth.”

  “Spoken like a man who’s been screwed over in the past,” Johnson observed. “But I thought it was going well now with Dulcie. What’s up? Not that brutish boyfriend back in town?” He smirked at his alliteration.

  “Ex-boyfriend,” Nick corrected. He glanced toward Christina’s office, then nodded toward the morgue door. “Let’s get a coffee. I’m freezing.”

  They wound through the corridor then out the front door. Both men zipped up their jackets and pulled out knit hats and gloves from their pockets, jamming them on as quickly as they could.

  “Holy Jesus, it takes your breath away, doesn’t it. And not in a good way,” Johnson complained.

  “Yeah. Remind me why we live here?” Nick replied, his voice muffled by his collar. They tramped down the street at a steady clip. Johnson’s breath heaved in great white clouds as they finally reached their ‘other office’ as they called it, the coffee shop Roasters.

  They gave their order at the counter then found a booth. Johnson preferred the booths. He didn’t like how ‘spindly’ the chairs looked, as he put it.

  “Okay, so first things first, then we’ll get down to business. What’s up with you and Dulcie. I’m sensing tension,” Johnson said as he pulled off his hat. What was left of his hair now topped his head in a messy swirl. Johnson dragged a quick hand through it which did nothing to help.

  “Nick left his hat on. He hunkered down more on the seat. “Yeah, you could say that,” he muttered.

  “And…” Johnson prompted.

  Nick sighed and shook his head. “It was stupid, really. I went over to talk with her about our dead guy since she knew him. I had just reached her door when the slimy Scotsman was leaving and I saw him kiss her.”

  Johnson’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? Right on the smacker?”

  Nick frowned. “No, on the cheek.”

  Johnson leaned across the table and whacked his partner on the forehead. “You got sore because he kissed her on the cheek?”

  Nick simply nodded.

  “Well then, let’s break this down. First, the guy is an old boyfriend, so they knew each other well, probably in the Biblical sen…,”

  “Don’t need to mention that,” Nick interjected.

  “Oh. Sorry. Well moving right along… Second, he’s from another country with different customs.”

  “I’ve never heard of the Scottish people as a whole being overwhelmingly affectionate,” Nick countered.

  Johnson paid no attention to him. “And third, what was Dulcie’s reaction to it? Was she annoyed or didn’t she seem to mind?”

  Nick thought for a moment. “Now that you mention it, she seemed annoyed. But then she could have been annoyed just because I showed up at an inopportune moment.”

  Johnson reached out to smack his partner again but Nick dodged out of the way this time.

  “I thought I had trained you better than this,” Johnson announced to the universe at large. “Let’s cast our minds back, shall we? I recall that at a certain event which happened only last night our girl Dulcie was annoyed, perhaps even concerned, with the so-called slimy Scotsman. In fact, she requested and received our assistance to keep him under control. Does that sound like someone that she’s warming up to again, after all these years?”

  Nick was silent.

  “Now I want you to think very carefully,” Johnson continued. “When the aforementioned kiss on the cheek was taking place, what exactly did Dulcie do? Did she stretch up to him? Lean in?”

  “Um, well, not really…” Nick stammered.

  Johnson sat back and took a tentative sip of coffee. “I rest my case,” he concluded.

  Nick felt ashamed that he had assumed Dulcie was welcoming her old boyfriend’s advances. He suddenly felt very embarrassed as well. “I suppose it’s just a case of old-fashioned jealousy,” he admitted.

  “I’d say so,” Johnson said, eyeing the pastries behind the counter longingly. He sighed heavily and turned back to Nick. “Think you might owe her a small apology?” he said.

  “Probably a big one,” Nick replied. “What’s the name of that flower shop across the street from the museum?” he asked.

  Johnson grinned. “Good man!” Then he shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t remember. You’ll have to look it up.”

  Nick nodded. “All right. Well. Now that that’s settled, there’s the other matter of the body in the morgue. Any thoughts?”

  Johnson put down his coffee cup. “Seemed a respectable type from what we know, which isn’t much. Someone may have had a grudge.”<
br />
  “It wasn’t a mugging or they’d have taken his wallet,” Nick replied. “Something tells me that it had to be someone at that party. Trouble is, I don’t think that many people actually knew him.”

  “No, but they sure knew his wife,” Johnson mused. “Think she’s worth killing for?”

  It was a good question. Nick thought for a moment. Would he kill to have Dulcie? No, that was ridiculous. But he would certainly fight for her. He remembered how hotheaded he had felt earlier when he saw her with Brendan. Even a sane person able to maintain moderate self-control most of the time could snap. Was that what had happened? Had someone confronted Jeremy Plunkett and snapped, hitting him on the head? Then could they have panicked, dragged him down the dock, and rolled him onto the ice below?

  “You’re thinking what I’m thinking,” Johnson said eyeing his partner intently. “Furthermore, think about the timeframe. He was found early this morning when it was low tide. When our killer did their work, it would have been high tide. Maybe they thought the body would float away in an ice sheet in the meantime when the tide went out? It’s about a ten foot difference between high and low. That’s a lot of water moving around.”

  “Yeah, but the ice. It was just packed in. Even if the water is moving around, the ice hasn’t been very much,” Nick protested.

  “True, but it seemed more like a spur-of-the-moment hot-headed kind of murder. Whoever it was probably wasn’t really thinking about the ice,” Johnson replied. “Or maybe they were thinking about it but they just weren’t much of an oceanographer or meteorologist or whatever those scientists are that study that stuff.”

  Both men looked at each other, a thought dawning on them at the same instant.

  “Didn’t that weather girl go home early?” Johnson asked.

  “Forecaster,” Nick corrected.