Last of the Vintage

by Kerry J Charles

  “I didn’t really notice. We got through the tricky part of the evening, then we had that little scene with the weather girl screeching at that guy. Hey…!” Dan looked up at Johnson. “That’s the guy you have locked up right now, right?”

  “Yes, it is. We’re trying to keep it quiet.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that. The gossip mill in Portland is faster than a greased pig,” he grinned. “Was that the right metaphor? You get my meaning. Anyway,” he said, standing. “I can’t be of much help I’m afraid, but I know who, or should I say ‘what,’ can.”

  “Yeah?” Johnson said hopefully.

  “Yup. Hang on.” Dan went up on the bridge and Johnson heard him rummaging through something. He came back down with a laptop. “Here’s the thing. While I was away, I set up a camera on the boat. I just wanted to keep an eye on things. I forgot to shut it off until the day after Dulcie’s party.” He tapped a few keys. A black and white image of the Dan’s boat appeared.

  Johnson groaned. For a brief moment he’d been excited thinking that this could be the break they needed. A camera that recorded exactly who pulled Jeremy Plunkett’s body down the dock. Unfortunately, the camera was set up on the bow and faced down the length of the yacht. Very little of the wharf beside it could be seen. “Thanks Dan, but I don’t think this’ll help us any,” Johnson said.

  “Yeah, I see what you mean,” Dan added. “Bummer.” He toyed with the controls of the video playback anyway, moving the playback time to that evening. “Worth a look maybe. I’ll speed this up so we won’t be sitting here all afternoon,” he said.

  Johnson breathed a sigh of relief. Claustrophobia was beginning to set in at this point. They watched the empty boat bob up and down, slowly rising beside the wharf as the tide came in. The clock ticked through the minutes. It reached eleven o’clock. Nothing happened.

  Suddenly, the camera jumped. Nothing else changed, but it was as though the boat had been nudged. A moment later it happened again.

  What followed next made both men lean forward and stare at the screen intently. A large shadow moved across the boat. “What the hell was that?” Johnson exclaimed.

  Dan backed up the video and they watched again, this time in slow motion. It looked very much like a person dragging something down the dock. They replayed it several times.

  “Is this just wishful thinking, or are we actually seeing…,” Dan didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Can I take this?” Johnson said, pointing to the laptop.

  “Wait, let me just copy the video for you. Hang on.” Within moments he had the video on a tiny drive that he handed to Johnson.

  “I’ll get one of the kids to bring this up for me,” Johnson said.

  “You’re not tech savvy, I take it?” Dan smiled. “Let me do this, too. I’ll email it to you and Nick. What’s your address?” he asked.

  Johnson just stared at him. “Um, wait. I think I know. Uh, dammit. Hold on.” He pulled out his phone and dialed.

  “Yeah?” Nick answered after the first ring.

  “Hey, you sound better!” Johnson replied.

  “Feel better. That’s what twelve solid hours of sleep can do, evidently. Those were some good drugs you gave me!”

  “Spoken like one true cop to another,” Johnson quipped. “Hey, I’ve got Dan here. Can I put him on?”

  “Yeah sure,” Nick said.

  Johnson handed the phone to Dan.

  “Hey dude. Glad you’re feeling better. We’re trying to get a video to you but your partner is having trouble on the tech side,” Dan said.

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” Nick replied.

  “I’ll just email it to you. What’s your address?”

  Nick gave it to him, then Dan handed back the phone to Johnson.

  “What’s this about?” Nick asked his partner.

  “Tell you when I get to the station. Where are you?” he asked.

  “At the station,” Nick said.

  “Okay, stay put and look at that video. Tell me what you think it is.” He hung up. “Dan, you may have helped us immensely or you may have given us total crap,” he said, standing up in a slightly hunched posture. He was always afraid he would hit his head on boats.

  “Story of my life,” Dan mused. “Glad I could help, maybe.”

  Johnson grunted, shook his hand, and climbed onto the dock carefully.

  Nick was scowling at the computer screen when Johnson arrived back at the station. “Thoughts?” he asked.

  “Pretty much what you’re thinking, I’d say,” Nick said. “At the very least we have the time established. That’s more progress than we’ve made since we started, I think.”

  “Yeah. I was also wondering if there’s any way the forensic crew can look at this and figure out how tall the guy is dragging the body? Triangulate the shadows and such?”

  Nick nodded. “Good idea. I’ll send it to them. They love stuff like this,” he chuckled. “Meanwhile, let’s go through the file and see exactly when everybody said that they left the party.”

  Johnson nodded. “You know, I was thinking. Whoever did this took a hell of a risk dragging the body down to the end of the wharf like that. Anybody could have come by and seen them.”

  “It’s pretty dark. Only that one light that’s giving us our shadow. But still…,” Nick agreed.

  “Must have been someone pretty stupid or pretty desperate,” Johnson said. “Okay, lets go back through statements. We may have to call in some folks again. Nobody’ll be happy about that,” he added.

  Nick had already pulled up the files on his computer. He kept the video running in a continuous loop in the corner of the screen.

  #

  Samantha ran to the bathroom and heaved into the toilet for the second time in an hour. The waves of nausea had been horrific. It was a futile exercise – there was nothing left in her stomach – but for some reason her body didn’t seem to know that. She sat down on the cold tile floor, leaning against the door of the towel closet.

  When she felt almost normal again she staggered to her feet, opened her computer, and typed in ‘morning sickness.’ “Although it’s afternoon, ironically,” she said aloud. She scrolled through the gibberish about why it happens then found information on ‘relief from.’

  Peppermint or ginger. Either was supposed to help. She decided to try the peppermint. She’d had peppermint tea a while back. Maybe it was still in the cupboard?

  She turned on the kettle then looked through the cupboard. Thankfully, it was still there. As she put it on the counter and reached for a mug, she heard a knock at the door. She froze.

  Samantha tiptoed over to the door and looked through the peephole. The two detectives stood outside. She took a deep breath and opened the door.

  “Sorry to bother you. We tried to contact you on the phone but didn’t get an answer,” Nick said. “Could we ask just a couple of quick questions?”

  Samantha managed to say, “Yes, give me a moment,” before hurtling through the door of the bathroom again. Thankfully the distress was brief this time. And quiet. She splashed cold water on her face, then returned to her guests.

  “Sorry about that,” she said as nonchalantly as possible. “What can I help you with?”

  Johnson eyed her intently. Nick said, “Quick question. Do you remember what time you left the party the other night?”

  The kettle reached a boil. Samantha went into the kitchen, thankful to have a moment to think. “Would you like some tea?” she called out.

  “No, thanks,” the two men said in unison.

  Samantha came through to the living room cradling the mug in her hands. “Have a seat,” she gestured. The two men sat uneasily. “Jeremy called me a cab. It was right after the wine tasting. I was glad to get out of there. I just can’t believe that Patrick could have… well…,” She looked down into the steam from her tea. “If only I had stayed, it would have been different,” she concluded with wide eyes.

  “I know this has been hard,” Ni
ck said. He couldn’t count the number of times he had said that exact sentence over the past few years. He hoped that it still sounded sincere.

  “Did you stay home for the rest of the night?” Nick asked.

  Samantha looked at him with surprise. “Yes, of course I did! Where would I have gone?” If it was possible, her eyes were now even wider.

  “It’s just routine to ask,” Nick reassured her. “How have you been holding up?” he inquired.

  “Not terribly well,” she said. “And now I’m under the weather it seems. My mother is coming tomorrow to stay for a few days. We have to arrange the funer…,” she choked back a sob on the last word and quickly swallowed a large mouthful of tea.

  “I understand,” Nick said. “Well, we won’t take up any more of your time,” he added. “We can see ourselves out.”

  Samantha simply nodded as they quietly left.

  Neither of them spoke until the reached the street again. It was getting dark but fortunately the air was still. Their breath floated around them in large clouds. “You were quiet,” Nick observed.

  “I was looking around,” Johnson said. “Did you notice anything different?”

  “Not really,” Nick said. “You did?”

  “Ummm hmmm. When we were there before, the day we broke the news, there was a wine rack with glasses on it. It was in the living room behind the chair where she was sitting. It’s gone now.”

  “Huh. That’s interesting. Maybe she gave it to a friend? A remembrance kind of thing?” Nick guessed.

  “Yeah, maybe. But here’s another thing. She’s preggars for sure,” Johnson stated.

  Nick turned and gave his partner an incredulous look.

  “She is, I tell you,” Johnson maintained. “She had that little episode when we first got there. Then she was drinking peppermint tea,” he paused.

  “Yeah, it smelled good,” Nick said. He stopped. “Hey, I can breathe through my nose again!”

  Johnson shook his head and kept walking. Nick hustled and caught up with him. “And also,” Johnson added, “She has that rounder look to her face.”

  “What?” Nick said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Look, you ask Dulcie,” Johnson told him.

  “Who has most decidedly not, to my knowledge, ever been ‘preggars’ as you say.”

  “You sure about that?” Johnson goaded his partner.

  Nick glared at him.

  “Look, I’m just saying that when Maria was pregnant, that pretty much described her for a while. Suddenly sick as a dog, always had peppermint something, and her face looked rounder even before her belly did. Oh, and like Dulcie said before, Maria would always put her hand on her belly.”

  “So what you’re saying is that Samantha could have taken a cab home, then gone back to the museum, waited for her husband, whacked him on the head, then dragged him off the wharf.”

  “Yup,” Johnson replied.

  “You’re right. It’s entirely possible.”

  “And, I think that marriage wasn’t as rosy as she’d have folks believe,” Johnson added.

  “Plus, half a million dollars is pretty good incentive,” Nick replied.

  “And she is conveniently preggar…I mean pregnant. With child.” Johnson concluded.

  They were both silent.

  “So who else have we got?” Nick asked. He stuffed his hands deeper into this pockets. They were already numb from the cold. “Patrick, the ex-boyfriend who someone pointed the finger at. What about Patrick’s uncle? That note he wrote to Samantha seemed like both the uncle and Patrick wanted them to get back together.”

  “True,” Johnson said. “What did Geoffrey Spratt say about what he was doing that night?”

  “He says that he and Patrick left around ten-thirty.”

  “To his mansion on the West End,” Johnson added.

  “Correct,” Nick replied.

  “So he could have pretty easily come back down to Commercial Street, parked, and waited for our poor friend to come out of the museum.”

  “Then smack him on the head and drag him over the edge,” Nick finished. “Something just doesn’t add up though. It doesn’t feel right. If it’s a crime of passion, where’s the passion? Nobody seems to have had that much of it in them. But at the same time, it doesn’t really feel calculated, either. Clearly it was opportunistic.” He groaned in annoyance, but then had another thought. “Hey, what’d we find out about that bottle?” he asked Johnson.

  “I heard back from the lab and the piece of glass is old, for sure. Dulcie hasn’t said if they found it when they cleaned up the room, right?” Johnson replied.

  Both men looked at each other, then turned in unison down the next street toward the museum. Johnson pulled his coat sleeve up with a gloved hand and looked at his watch. “Ten to six. Think she’s heading home now?” he asked.

  Nick laughed ruefully. “Nope. She’s still there. Hope she’s not in a meeting or something though.”

  They reached the museum and tromped into the foyer. Rachel was just walking through. “Ah, gentlemen! You always bring us happiness and good cheer!”

  They both snickered. “Can we just go straight in?” Nick asked.

  “Be my guest,” Rachel gestured.

  “That’s what we call ‘sass’,” Johnson lisped.

  Dulcie looked up as they came through the open door of her office. “Ah! To what do I owe the pleasure? And Nick, glad to see you, um, non-comatose!”

  Johnson slapped him on the back, making him cough. “Modern medicine, my friends! Modern medicine!” he announced.

  They both sat, loosening their coats. “We were just going by and wondered if you’d found out anything about the bottle?”

  “Yes, the Lafite bottle,” Dulcie replied. “I talked to Rachel. She remembers seeing it as people were leaving, but does not remember it being there when she was cleaning up.”

  “Does that mean it might have been there but she doesn’t recall, or that it wasn’t there because she would have remembered?” Nick asked.

  Dulcie’s eyes lit up. “Astute question! The latter. Rachel is also very astute.”

  “Thank you!” They heard a voice call out from the hallway.

  Johnson got up and shut the door. He sat back down. “Here’s why that’s interesting. The piece of glass in Jeremy’s collar was clearly from an old bottle. The lab told me that older ones often still had bubbles in the glass. He couldn’t tell me how old, but definitely not one of our modern, machine-made ones.”

  “So we’re now concluding that Jeremy was hit with the empty bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild?” Dulcie asked.

  “Looks like it,” Johnson said.

  “That just seems strange,” Dulcie said, leaning forward on her desk. “Why would someone take that bottle, and why would they hit him over the head with it?”

  “Maybe it was what they had on hand at the time?” Nick said.

  “No, they would have had to go back up there after everyone had left. That’s not opportunistic. But why?” Dulcie asked.

  Both men shook their heads.

  “We do have one lead thanks to your brother though. We’ve got a shadow of someone dragging something down the dock. It happened at four minutes after eleven that night,” said Johnson.

  “That’s actually right after I remember seeing Jeremy leaving. He was one of the last to go. I think he liked mingling with the well-to-do wine aficionados.” Dulcie added.

  “Don’t we all,” Johnson quipped. “Oh, and I’m with you on the weather girl being pregnant thing.”

  “Forecaster,” Nick and Dulcie chorused.

  “Huh?” said Johnson.

  “Never mind,” Dulcie interjected. “Did you find out for sure?”

  “No but she was briefly sick in the bathroom, then had peppermint tea, and her face looks rounder,” Johnson said.

  “I’d say you nailed it, Adam,” Dulcie agreed.

  Nick looked from one to the other. He took a deep breath. “W
hy do I feel like we’re going in circles?”

  “Because we are and we’re missing something,” Dulcie replied.

  There was a tap on the door. Rachel poked her head in. “Are you guys going to have your clandestine meeting for much longer? Security is going to lock up. You’ll have to let these gentlemen out with your key,” she said to Dulcie.

  “Nope, that’s fine. We were just leaving,” Johnson said. He glanced back at Nick. “Er, I mean, I was leaving anyway.”

  “You’re right. Me too. I have to catch up doing what I should have done when I was sleeping in this morning,” Nick said.

  “You do look better!” Dulcie complimented.

  “I feel so much better. Johnson’s magic pills. I should still get more rest though. Don’t want it coming back,” Nick replied.

  “Right. Good idea,” Dulcie said. “I’ll see you two later then.”

  They nodded as they pulled their coats up high around their necks and bustled out. Dulcie heard the security guard locking the door behind them. His footsteps echoed across the marble floor as he went back downstairs to his office lined with video screens showing the entire museum. Dulcie stood and leaned out around her doorframe. Rachel had gone home as well.

  It was only six o’clock but the sky was already black. Winter nights were long in Maine. Long and cold. Dulcie walked through the quiet, cavernous main hall and went in to the Little Ice Age exhibit.

  The lights had been dimmed. The paintings, mostly white, wintery scenes, seemed to eerily glow. Dulcie loved being alone in a museum. It seemed as though the artists were there with her, talking to her.

  Snow, ice, cold. People trying to make the best of things when year after year they had meager food, cramped living quarters, perhaps too little firewood. And yet some of the greatest works in history were created because of this. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was the result of a competition among Shelley and her friends when they were stuck indoors during the infamous ‘Year Without a Summer.’ Antonio Stradivari’s violins were thought to produce such beautiful sound because their wood was the result of the slow growth of trees during the overly cold years. Monet’s The Magpie was yet another example, an exploration of light and color that took place because of the snow. She stopped in front of it, marveling once again at the hues.