by Harvey, JM
Edwards is a tree-lined street of small bungalows and prairie style homes built between the late 1800s and the 1930s. Most of the homes are brightly painted in white or yellow or green and their yards are lush and dense with plantings of eucalyptus, hibiscus, and thick green hedges, but Samson’s home is as drab and dated as his wardrobe, while his lawn is as precise and bleak as his personality - a postage stamp of green bounded by a gray picket fence. The lawn fronts a small, gray two bedroom home with a narrow front porch and a front door painted, you guessed it, gray. A one-car garage sat at the end of a driveway so clean it looked as if it had never been parked on. I turned the Jeep in, parked, and climbed out.
Despite the chill of the morning, it had turned into a warm day for fall, close to ninety degrees down here in the Valley. Edwards Street, though lined with cars, was somnolent and silent under the midday sun, not a person in sight. The only sounds that Monday were the plaintive wail of the Wine Train that plies the Napa Valley - separating tourists from their money, the whir of insects in the flowering shrubs next door, and the sound of a sprinkler system hissing across the street, filling the gutter with a steady stream despite the watering restrictions which are an omnipresent part of California these days.
I went through the gate and up the front steps, into the shade of the porch. I knocked but got no answer, so I stood on tiptoe and peered through the front door glass into a living room straight out of 1968. The sofa and chairs were low and thin-cushioned, and the coffee table and end tables were fake mahogany perched on long skinny legs. The TV was an old console model with a stereo built in. I think my parents had one just like it when I was in junior high. The only adornment on the walls was a lithograph of Mary with the Sacred Heart of Jesus at her breast.
I had a key and I didn’t hesitate to use it.
“Samson!” I yelled as I came through the door.
I heard a shuffling noise and then a door opening at the back of the house.
“Samson!” I yelled again, going from concerned to angry in a nanosecond. I banged the front door closed behind me and headed briskly toward the kitchen. If he had been hiding here all day avoiding my calls he was going to get an earful.
The kitchen was empty, the back door hanging ajar. He was running from me!
I hurried to the door and jerked it all the way open. “Samson, what are you—”
The yard was empty, but I caught a glimpse of someone running around the corner of the house - not enough to recognize the person, but enough to tell it wasn’t Samson.
I froze. My first thought was I had interrupted a burglary in progress. A sensible person would have felt fear at that, but in that instant it only made me furious. Perhaps it was the unreality of the situation, the beautiful day, and the quiet street that masked the potential danger, but I didn’t pause to consider my actions - I went after them on the run, my purse pounding me in the kidney with every step.
I reached the driveway and caught another glimpse of someone making the corner at the front of the house at top speed. Someone tall with blond hair. I pounded after them, but when I reached the front yard it was empty, so I kept running all the way to the curb out front.
“Stop!” I yelled, but I was screaming down a deserted street. There was not a person in sight - just twin rows of cars and trucks parked bumper-to-bumper, their windshields and chrome reflecting the sun’s brilliant glare. And then a van parked at the end of the block roared to life and I was running again. But I wasn’t going to catch them. I was still fifty feet away when the van lunged out of its spot and the driver stomped the gas. It squealed around the corner onto Hunt Street without stopping, but not before I caught a glimpse of a green and blue logo stenciled on the door. The logo of Star Crossed Wine Cellars & Auctions.
Blake! But why was he here? Inside Samson’s house? But was it even Blake? All I had seen was a glimpse of blond hair. But the van was a Star Crossed—
A car horn gave a short ‘bleep’ behind me and I jumped three feet in the air, letting out a bleep of my own. An aging Cadillac with two elderly women was behind me, their heads barely peeking over the dash. I waved at them in apology as I stepped out of the way, but they only scowled at me and continued slowly down the street. They paused at the spot the van had just vacated and started to back in. I heard the screech of bending metal and a tinkle of glass.
The run had me breathing hard as I turned and retraced my steps. I entered Samson’s home more cautiously this time, though Blake, or whoever had been in the kitchen, was obviously gone. But now I was frightened of what I might find. My heart was pounding as I made a quick run through the house, all one thousand square feet of it, and ended up back in the living room. No Samson and no more burglars. My heart rate slowed, but not to normal levels; it was still thudding loudly in my chest.
I went back through the house again, looking for whatever the thief had taken, starting in the living room and passing through the dining room, though there was no dining table or chairs or sideboard, just a rolltop desk, a half dozen old wooden file cabinets and row of bookshelves weighted down with two tons of wine reference books and old Wine Spectator magazines. My eyes got stuck on the bookcase. The stacks of magazines were crooked and the spines of the books were not aligned. Samson is as obsessive-compulsive about his living space as he is slovenly in his appearance. I turned to the desk and noticed the top drawer was open a quarter-inch. I pulled it out and found papers jumbled together, mixed in with pens and rubber bands spilled from their tray.
I slid the drawer closed and moved on to the tiny kitchen, clean and white and empty except for a Formica-topped table and chairs straight out of an old Sears catalog. I checked the back door. There were scratches on the lock plate, but no sign of forced entry. I did a slow turn in the middle of the room looking for signs of disturbance. Several of the cabinets were ajar, their contents neat, but not as neat as Samson would have left them. I turned back and went down the narrow hallway. There were two bedrooms and a bathroom off the hall. One bedroom contained a neatly made bed, a dresser and an end table, all devoid of anything personal. The other bedroom was filled with more bookshelves that looked as if they had been shuffled through. I went back to the living room and stood there for a minute, listening to the background hum of the empty house, not really looking at anything.
The sound of my cell phone ringing startled me so bad I almost screamed. I dug it out, hoping it was Samson, but it was Hunter.
“Where are you?” he asked without a hello.
“Samson's,” I said. “He didn't—”
“Is he there?” he interrupted.
“No. That's what I'm here look—”
“Where is he, Claire?” he asked impatiently.
“What's going on, Hunter?” His abrupt manner was making me even more anxious.
“Where is he?” Hunter snapped at me. “Don’t jerk me around, Claire, I'm not in the mood. This is serious.”
“Don't jerk you around?” I snapped right back. Was this the same Hunter who had been dancing with me the other night? The man I was actually considering letting back into my life? No one talks to me like that without getting an earful. “I don't know where Samson is,” I said through gritted teeth. “He didn’t come to work and he isn’t answering his phone. And I just caught Blake Becker searching his home. He was in the kitchen—”
“Hold on,” Hunter said and I heard buttons being pushed. A moment later he was talking to someone else. “Send a car over to the Xenos house. Possible burglary.” He came back to me. “You saw Becker inside the house?” he asked abruptly. “Did he take anything?”
“I didn’t really see him, but I chased him and he took off in a van with a Star Crossed logo on the door.”
“But you don’t know for sure that it was Blake?” He asked. “You just saw some guy run out of Samson’s place, jump into a Star Crossed van and take off?”
I hesitated. “Well, I didn’t actually see him jump into the van. When I got to the street I didn’t see a
nyone. But a minute later the van started up and took off. Fast. Very fast…” I trailed off.
Hunter sighed. “So you don’t know that the van had anything to do with the guy in Samson’s kitchen?”
“I doubt it was a coincidence,” I said, though I could see how transparent my theory had become even as I defended it.
Hunter was happy to point out just how ridiculous I was. “Lots of restaurants down there,” he said dryly. “And parking is bad. Lots of people complaining about the residential streets being used by commercial trucks.”
“Hunter, don’t—”
He continued, talking right over me. “Star Crossed delivers to and picks up wine from customers all over the Valley, Claire. And there are a lot of wine shops and restaurants down there.”
My teeth gnashed. “There was someone in the house when I got here. And the house has been searched,” I said, sticking to the one irrefutable point of my story.
Hunter was silent for a long moment.
“Hunter—”
“Midge and I searched the house this morning,” he told me.
A startled “What?” blasted out of my mouth, sounding huge in the stillness of the empty house. “Why? What did you find?”
Another lengthy pause made me want to crawl through the phone and shake the information out of him.
“I can’t talk about that,” he said. “But it's serious.”
I barked a harsh peal of laughter. “Wow! Thanks, Hunt! That makes me feel a lot better!” He started to say something, but I plowed right over him. “A man was murdered two days ago in my wine cellar and now Samson is missing! And you're acting like this is some kind of cop show on TV.” I dropped my voice into a fake baritone. “Back away little lady, let the big man do his job.”
Then it was Hunter's turn to get angry. “Damn it, Claire, this is official business. If you hear from Samson I need you to call me. Immediately. And don’t go acting like Nancy Drew again. That didn't work out too well for you last time with the Harlans.”
That last line was one step too far. Not only did it make me angry, it hurt my feelings as well. And it was far from the truth.
“If you had done your job last time I wouldn't have had to do it for you,” I said stiffly then continued before he could reply. “I'm not some criminal you can just bark orders at, sheriff.”
Hunt blew out another exasperated breath. “Claire, just stay there and wait for my guys. They’ll take your statement and then I want you to go home.” he said pointedly.
“Why should I stay here?” I asked. “As you pointed out, I didn’t actually see anything, did I?”
“Claire—” he began, but it didn’t sound like he was going to apologize so I hung up on him and stowed my phone in my purse. It rang almost immediately. I checked the caller ID. Hunter. Right. I hit DECLINE and dropped the phone back into my purse.
I locked Samson's front and back doors and returned to my Jeep. I sat behind the wheel for a long moment staring at the house. What did Hunter want Samson for? That didn't take me long to work out. Jorge had been released and that must have moved Samson up to suspect number one. I couldn't fault that logic, but Hunter had known Samson for years! Samson was a crotchety, often mean-spirited old buzzard, but he was no killer. And Hunt should know that.
Hunter and I had been estranged for over a year, and this was a perfect example of why. His failure to detect a murder cover up when he was a sergeant on the Napa County Sheriff’s Department had led to a series of murders and the false arrest of a person I loved more than life itself. And now he was doing it again! But I sure wasn't going to help him.
And if I never saw Hunter again, that would be just fine with me.
Chapter 12
I drove home, resisting the urge to use my cell phone as I made the trip back to Violet, driving fast, but not fast enough to draw police attention. I pulled up behind my home to find Hunter’s khaki colored Ford pickup parked on the far side of the gravel. I could see him sitting in the shade on my patio, a cigarette in his fist, the smoke curling up through the wisteria vines.
I set my jaw, stepped down from the Jeep, and headed up the path as he stubbed out the cigarette on the heel of his shoe.
“Give me one of those,” I said as I walked under the trellis, side-stepping a long tendril of green vine dangling from the arbor.
He shook his head. “No.”
I didn’t argue, even though the lingering haze from Hunter’s Winston was making me salivate. Cancer, I reminded myself. Heart attack and stroke. Ruined clothes and smelly hair.
I dumped my purse on the metal table and dropped into the chair directly opposite Hunter’s.
Hunter started round two of our argument.
“If you know where he is, you need to tell me,” he said.
I crossed my arms over my chest and said nothing.
“Claire,” he said, his tone taking on a warning edge.
“I don’t know!” I barked at him. “He isn’t answering his phone. That’s why I went to his house. I haven’t seen him since the party.”
Hunter looked at me speculatively for a moment. And then his shoulders slumped and he looked away from me, out across the valley, a gold-green picture postcard under a canopy of pure blue.
“Did you know Samson had threatened to kill Dimitri if he didn’t sell out and leave the Valley?” he asked, his gaze still on the view. “Multiple times. In writing.”
I shot up straight in my seat. “What?”
Hunt still didn’t look at me as he nodded. “We found the letters at Star Crossed. In Dimitri’s desk. They’re in Greek, but I had a grad student over at UC Davis translate them for us.” Hunter turned his head and looked at me, his gaze piercing. “There are three letters, each one worse than the last.”
I laughed, but it had an edge of hysteria. “My God, Hunter, you know Samson. He’s volatile, a little crazy, but he’s not violent.”
“I’d like to believe that,” Hunter said, but his tone belied the words.
“A couple of crank letters don't mean—” I said but Hunt was shaking his head before I could finish.
“There’s more than that,” he said.
My heart fell. “What?” I asked with dread, but he replied with another question.
“Did you know Samson and Dimitri come from the same village in Greece? Naousa?”
I knew that Samson was from Naousa, of course. The town and the region are famous for a red wine that the Greeks call Xinomavro, literally translated as ‘sour black.’ It was in the arid vineyards outside of that town Samson had learned his craft, working his way up from the dirt, literally. But Samson had never mentioned he knew Dimitri from Greece.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “Naousa isn’t a village, it’s a small city. Thousands of people. They might never have met.” I felt like I was grasping at straws, but straws were all I had at that moment.
“They knew each other,” Hunter said. “I spoke to the chief of police there. His English isn’t that good, but better than my Greek. They still have an open warrant on Samson for shooting Dimitri thirty-two years ago.”
“What?” I lunged up out of my chair, my thighs banging painfully on the metal lip of the table. “He shot Dimitri?”
Hunter nodded and I dropped back down in my seat.
“Why?”
Hunter shrugged. “The chief didn’t know. And he didn’t act like he was all that anxious to find out. Or to find Samson. Not much interest in pursuing a thirty year old assault case. But it sure made the Napa County prosecutor salivate. He’s requested the files from the Greek Consulate.”
I sat there in stunned silence.
“I called Samson yesterday after he missed his appointment with me,” Hunter continued. “I asked him to come in and discuss that and a couple of other things. He hung up on me and took off. He hasn’t been home, Marjory hasn’t seen him and now, you tell me you haven’t either.” He let that hang in the air for a moment then added, “It looks bad.”<
br />
That was the understatement of the year. My stomach was knotted and I felt cold. The sun was halfway through its descending arc and the cool air of the mountains above had begun to seep downslope. When night fell, the fog would come in from the coast and the temperature would dip to sweater weather.
I shook my head more to clear it than in response to Hunter. “I don’t know where he is,” I said. “I wish I did.” At that point, I just wanted Hunter to go so I could make some calls. My anxiety over Samson’s MIA status was reaching critical mass. I knew Samson was no killer, but there was a killer on the loose. And for all I knew Samson might be the next target. But I wasn’t going to try to track him down with Hunter listening in.
Hunter must have read my mind. The look he gave me was filled with distrust. “I just want to talk to him. Straighten some things out,” he said as he stood, tall and lean, dressed in Levi’s and a khaki shirt with a tin badge pinned to the left breast. He could have been a marshal in the California of 1880, except the gun strapped to his hip wasn’t a Colt .45. “If you hear from him, call me immediately.” he said.
I nodded, all out of words.
Hunt crossed the patio, but stopped at the edge and looked back at me, half of him illuminated in the light of the setting sun, his dark hair haloed in gold. “I’m sorry this is happening now,” he said, and I knew he wasn’t just talking about Samson’s problems. I wanted to say something, to leave an opening for him, but I didn’t know what to say. I nodded mutely and I saw the flicker of hurt and uncertainty in his eyes. He turned and went down the path, his boots crunching gravel. He didn’t look back at me, just cranked his truck and drove away.