by Avery Aames
“I think he wanted Liberty to keep her nose out of his affairs, or maybe Liberty thought Noelle was acting snooty, you know, with her nose in the air.”
“Don’t forget nose is a wine term, too.”
“What if you’re right, and this is about poor wine quality, and Harold was the one responsible? He is the manager, after all. Maybe Yeats had an inkling. There’s the winery.” I pointed. “Slow down.”
“I see it,” he barked. “Do you think I’m blind?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger.”
The entrance to the Shelton Nelson Winery abutted the main road. The two-story Victorian home, painted with winery colors of moss green and burgundy, stood to the left of the visitors’ room. Lights were turned off in the lower portion of the house. Two lights shone in windows on the second floor. Liberty’s Camry was parked in the semi-circular driveway. I didn’t see Shelton’s Lexus.
“Ready?” Matthew’s shoulders heaved with anticipation.
I laid a hand on his forearm. “Breaking and entering isn’t as easy as it looks. Why don’t we return to town and talk to Urso?”
“And tell him what? We have nothing except suppositions about the missing journal pages and about Noelle running an investigation.” Matthew squeezed the steering wheel like he wanted to wring the life out of it. “No, we’re going in. If the winery was suffering financially or producing inferior wines and Noelle knew and threatened to reveal it to somebody—”
“To whom?”
“The press, a competitor, anybody. Charlotte, she wrote something in that danged journal.”
“We’re not certain of that. We can’t build a case on if.”
“You said Shelton said to Liberty, ‘. . . only when I die,’ which could have meant his daughter demanded an immediate partnership in the winery or she would blab to authorities.”
“Except right after, Shelton said, ‘Noelle is here to stay. Live with it,’ which takes us right back to the lover angle.”
“I don’t buy it. Shelton was not her type.”
I shook my head. Matthew was wearing blinders.
After a moment of silence, I said, “If Shelton and Liberty were arguing about ownership of the winery, then that would provide all the more reason for Liberty to kill him, not Noelle.”
“I hear you. I do.” Matthew’s voice grew thin. “If something illegal is going on, I’m going to find out. You’re either with me or you’re not.” He drove a hundred yards beyond the winery, parked beside a stand of evergreen bushes, and hurried out of the car. Reluctantly, I joined him. I loved him too much to let him take this next step alone.
Both of us pulled the hoods of our rain slickers over our heads and stole up the driveway.
Matthew darted between the house and the winery’s visitors’ room. I followed. Halfway along the building, he threw out an arm to stop me. We scanned the area to see if anyone had detected our arrival. No additional lights switched on in the house.
“Follow me,” Matthew said. Aiming the beam of his flashlight at the ground, he stole beneath the arbor of leafless vines toward the path that led to what Shelton called his hideout. Any remnants of Noelle’s footprints—if this was where she had gone the night she died—had been washed away by the heavy rains.
When we reached the pair of ironwork-studded oak doors, I said, “Are you sure you’re ready to break the law?”
Matthew craned an ear. “I think I hear someone screaming inside, don’t you? It’s our civic duty to offer assistance.”
I moaned. “Rebecca is a bad influence.”
He gestured toward the lock. “Do your magic.”
As I had remembered, the lock was simple. Perhaps Shelton thought the cellar’s hidden entrance was enough to keep thieves at bay.
Using a hook pick and a tension tool, I was able to unlock the door in a matter of seconds. We entered and paused. A string of low-level lights illuminated the casing around the ceiling. Elegant for a dinner. Perfect for reconnaissance.
We tiptoed down the hall, through the brick archway. We passed the wooden cubbies holding bottles of wine and halted outside the iron gates that protected Shelton’s most expensive wines.
Matthew shook his head. “I repeat, Shelton would not have stored his subpar wine in there. It would be mixed in with the large lots of wine. This is not the key Noelle was talking about.”
“Stubborn,” I muttered.
“But right, and you know it.” He focused his flashlight beam at the floor ahead. “Hey, is that the remnant of a muddy footprint near the bookcase?”
“I think it is.” Behind the bookcase was the secret passage leading to the main house. Excitement coursed through me. “It looks small enough to be Noelle’s.”
Matthew bolted to the bookcase and pressed the handle that Shelton had used. The wall opened and revealed the secret passage. “Look, there’s another muddy print on the stairs, heading in the opposite direction.” He bent to double-check his findings. “Shelton’s office is where he keeps his financial information. Maybe Noelle stole inside. Using a key, she unlocked his desk or possibly a safe—”
“That’s what Rebecca guessed.”
“Then Noelle made notes about his finances in her journals.”
“She carried her journals with her?”
“She always did.”
“Except the night she died.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I found them hidden in the guest room,” I said. “There was no trace of mud inside my house. Noelle must have stashed the journals there before she soiled her boots.”
“You’re wrong. She could have returned to your house, taken off her boots, concealed the journals, and then put her boots back on. She went to the garage to work on the desk so it would seem like she’d never left.”
Except for the telltale mud.
“The missing journal pages,” I said. “What if the torn-out pages are the key?”
Matthew moved ahead. “That makes sense. Imagine this. Noelle was in Shelton’s office when she heard someone coming. She thought she was going to get caught.” He did a one-eighty and sped back down the stairs. “She escaped, tore out the pages, and found someplace here to hide them. She would come back later to retrieve them.”
Swept up in his enthusiasm, I added, “If anyone nabbed her, they would merely find her journals with normal labels and notes.”
“Exactly. Same goes for if someone found the journals back at your place.” Matthew scanned the wine cave. “Oh my gosh.” He pointed to the heavy wrought iron gate that we had bypassed minutes before. “What if we’re both right? What if key has a dual meaning? What if Noelle took the vault key from Shelton’s office, and she hid the missing pages beneath a fine bottle of wine? Can you pick that lock?”
“Not a chance.”
Matthew raced to the gates and aimed his flashlight beam inside. “We’ve got to get in there.”
“And do what? Search under three thousand bottles?” The wines looked undisturbed.
“Noelle would have chosen the most expensive, believing Shelton wouldn’t drink them,” Matthew reasoned. “Either the Pétrus or the wines from Pauillac. C’mon.” He waved for me to follow him. “Shelton must keep this key in his office.”
“Wait.” I grabbed his arm. “Shelton had the key on him when we visited, and even if Noelle found it, wouldn’t she—”
Something made a scraping sound, whether outside or overhead, I couldn’t be sure.
“Shh,” I whispered.
Matthew didn’t heed the warning. He broke free and hurried up the secret passage.
Safety in numbers, I heard an inner voice insist, and I darted after him.
No one attacked us as we slipped into the hallway. No one appeared as we crept into Shelton’s office. Perhaps all I had heard was a squirrel crawling in the space between the cellar ceiling and the floor above.
Matthew dashed to Shelton’s desk. “The key to the vault has got to be here.”
“N
o, it doesn’t.”
“Why not?” He pulled on a drawer. It didn’t open.
“I tried to tell you a minute ago, even if Noelle did find the key, she was on the run. She would have taken the key with her.”
“You’re right. Shoot.” He spanked the desk. “Hey, I remember seeing an object gleaming outside the cellar, under the vines. Maybe she tossed it there so she could retrieve it later. Find those financials while I search.” He hurried out of the office.
“Come back,” I rasped.
But he didn’t. His footsteps echoed down the hall. Dang.
All the drawers on Shelton’s desk were locked, which made me snicker. Why have security on some of the doors but not all the doors? But then I quieted. I couldn’t point a finger. At Fromagerie Bessette I only had locks on the front and back doors and a combination lock for the safe that held the day’s returns. There were no locks on my cheese cases, refrigerators, cellar door, or office door.
I worked my lock-picking magic on the center drawer and drew it open. Inside were pencils, erasers, fine writing implements, iron stamps that resembled mini branding irons, fresh corks, bottles of ink, and blank labels. Nothing looked like financial data.
I jimmied the lowest drawer on the right. As it clicked open, Matthew howled at the top of his lungs. From the cellar.
“Matthew?” I sprinted from the office, down the stairs, and into the wine cave. I found him lying on his side, arms at an odd angle, legs sprawled. Blood seeped from beneath his head. “Oh no.” I knelt beside him. “Matthew, are you okay?”
He was breathing. His eyes fluttered open. “Catch . . . him.”
The door to Shelton’s hideout stood ajar. Grabbing a bottle of Shelton Nelson chardonnay from a cubby and wielding it like a cudgel, I flew to the door and arced my flashlight into the gloom outside. Rain pelted the area, obscuring my view; I couldn’t see a soul. An engine sputtered to life and tires screeched. Whoever had hit Matthew was fleeing. Dang.
I rushed back to him. He had raised himself to a sitting position; he was rubbing the back of his head. I said, “I’m calling 911.”
“No. And have Urso find us here? Uh-uh. I can stand.”
I replaced the bottle of chardonnay and helped Matthew to his feet. “Did you see who hit you?”
“No.”
“You said, ‘Catch him.’ Was it a man?”
“I can’t be sure.”
Well, I was sure of one thing. Meredith was going to kill me.
CHAPTER
23
Meredith didn’t want to kill me, but she sure wanted to throttle me. Sitting next to Matthew on the bench outside the hospital emergency room near the reception desk, she—and he—held an ice pack to his head. From where I stood a safe distance away, I could swear I saw angry fumes rising from her scalp.
“What were you thinking?” she hissed. Not at him. At me. I couldn’t remember ever hearing her hiss. It wasn’t pretty. Her sun-kissed nose was scrunched; her eyes blazed with fury. “Why didn’t you call U-ey?”
“Because . . .” What could I say without getting my cousin in trouble?
“You investigated on your own,” she continued. “And you dragged my husband along.”
My husband. What happened to We’re best friends forever; no man will ever come between us? So much for an eight-year-old’s vows.
“It’s my fault.” Matthew offered a weak smile. “I dragged Charlotte.”
“Are you nuts?” Meredith responded.
Certifiable, I wanted to say, but I wasn’t a licensed therapist. I muttered, “Meredith, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t good enough.”
A nurse, who looked like she swallowed a daily dose of starch, rushed from the reception desk. “Hush, all of you. We have real patients who need quiet.”
“I won’t hush,” Meredith roared like a tigress protecting her cub. “This woman—my best friend—endangered my husband. Her cousin. And he’s a real patient, too.”
“Meredith, honey, relax. I’m going to be fine.” Matthew patted her thigh. “It’s nothing that a couple of aspirin won’t fix.”
“How can you be sure? How do you know there isn’t bleeding on the brain? What was the weapon, a brick?”
“Whoa, honey, slow down. I’m fine. Really. I figure it was a wine bottle,” he said.
“A wine bottle?” Her voice skated up an octave.
“One that didn’t shatter.” He kissed her forehead then rapped his knuckles on his own. “Hard head.”
On the way to the hospital, I had kept Matthew talking so I could make sure he was all right. We discussed the weapon and decided that a wine bottle made the most sense. It also suggested that the assailant had come unarmed and had chosen a weapon on the spur of the moment. Even though Matthew had said Chase him, and my first suspicions had flown to Boyd, Harold, Ashley, and Shelton—even though Shelton didn’t seem the kind that would get his hands dirty by using blunt force; he’d carry a gun—we had determined that Liberty Nelson was the one that attacked him. She had been at home; she would have been justified as a woman protecting her property. On the other hand, would Liberty have run from the scene? I had heard an engine start. Whoever hit Matthew had fled. Flustered and anxious to race Matthew to the hospital, I had failed to check whether Liberty’s Camry was still in the driveway or not.
“Chérie.” Grandmère sat nestled on the bench beside Meredith. While driving, I had called her and asked her to fetch Meredith and the girls and meet us at the hospital. “Crois-moi.” She slung an arm around Meredith’s shoulders. “Il va guérir cent pour cent.” The fact that my grandmother spoke French to Meredith meant she was as nervous as my best friend.
I hurried to translate. “What Grandmère said—”
“I know what she said,” Meredith cut me off. “‘Believe me, he’ll heal one hundred percent.’ Have you forgotten I took French and aced it?”
“Ouch.” I raised my arms and backed up a space. “I’m not the enemy.”
“I’m sorry. It’s only . . .” Meredith released her hold on the ice pack and threw herself into Grandmère’s embrace.
Pépère, who was standing to the side holding hands with the twins, said, “Charlotte, mon amie, tend to the young ones.”
“Yes, of course.” I reached for the girls. “I’m so sorry, Amy and Clair, but don’t worry. Your daddy is going to be fine.” My words did not do the trick. They squinted skeptically at their father, who appeared about as healthy as a zombie in a horror movie. “Really,” I assured them. “Grandmère is right. Your dad is going to heal one hundred percent.”
“Can we kiss him?” Clair asked.
“Yes,” Matthew said. “I won’t break.”
He bent forward and moaned slightly as the girls pressed their lips against either cheek. I ached at the sound. His injury was my fault. I should have talked him out of breaking into Shelton’s cellar and office. I knew the risks. How could I have let him browbeat me into being a follower?
“We brought you a sandwich, Daddy,” Amy said. “Your favorite. Turkey and Swiss cheese with pesto sauce.” She pulled a sandwich wrapped in foil from her backpack and offered it to him. “It’s a little squished.”
Matthew cradled it in his lap. “I’m sure it’s delicious.”
Meredith edged away from my grandmother. “Matthew, if something horrible had happened . . .”
Grandmère said, “Chérie, as King Lear would say, ‘The worst is not, so long as we can say, “This is the worst.” ’ Non?”
Meredith sobbed some more.
But not nearly as loudly as Sylvie. She tore into the hospital looking and bleating like a fire engine. “Matthew,” she cried, arms outstretched, her blazing red raincoat flying open, the soles of her Dalmatian faux fur boots slapping the linoleum. “Matthew, sweet, sweet Matthew.”
Matthew put up a hand to block her. “Don’t touch me.” His ex-wife’s distress might have been real, but he didn’t need a hug from her to add to the headache with his
bride. “I’m fine, Sylvie.”
“But you’re so pale.”
“Who called you?”
“Why, Nurse Nenette, love.” She glanced over her shoulder at the starched nurse. “She’s been so wonderful with the girls, and she adores me.”
Matthew cut a look at the nurse and back to Sylvie. “How does Nurse Nenette know the girls?”
Sylvie bit her lip. “There have been a few scrapes and bruises I haven’t told you about.”
“What?” Meredith yelped.
Amy fudged her foot. “Don’t blame Mum. It was me. I’m the klutz. I ran too fast on our outing the other day. I was showing off to Clair.”
“To Mr. Yeats, you mean,” Clair said.
“I slid down the hill and scraped my arms.” Amy’s tone was so plaintive I wanted to scoop her up. “I didn’t want to tell you—”
“You have to tell us,” Meredith said. “You—”
Matthew grabbed her arm to rein her in. “It’s okay, girls,” he said gently. “You’re not to blame. But from now on your mother and you have to agree to full disclosure.”
“Yes, sir,” Amy and Clair chimed.
Sylvie held up a hand as if on the witness stand. “I promise, too. Oh, love, I’m so glad you’ve got your tough guy demeanor back. That relieves me.”
Meredith rolled her eyes. I smirked. Yeah, Matthew was a tough guy, all right. Mr. Pussycat.
“Whatever were you doing at Shelton Nelson’s place, anyway?” Sylvie asked.
“How did you—”
“Nurse Nenette has ears, love.”
Meredith shot another if-looks-could-kill glare at the nurse.
So did Matthew. “I ought to report her for eavesdropping.”
The prim nurse wisely ducked out of sight.
Sylvie hitched her Dalmatian faux fur purse higher on her shoulder. “So, what were you doing there?”
“We were checking out Shelton’s wine collection,” Matthew lied.
My grandparents exchanged a look. Neither said a word.
“Ooh, I’ve heard it’s quite extensive,” Sylvie said in an animated voice that indicated she’d forgotten all about Matthew’s pain. “Ashley showed me the article he’s writing about Shelton Nelson. He has an incredible stash of wine. Did you know I’ve tasted one of them? A French wine. The Château Haut-Brion Blanc.” She flourished a hand. “Back in the days when Mumsie and Dad were flush, they entertained so much.” Her parents had invested poorly in the past few years. Both had needed to return to work. “My father hobnobbed with some of the most vigorous investors in Europe. We had lavish dinners and wine tastings like you throw, love. I remember the wine had the flavor of ambrosia and pineapple with hints of honey and melon. It was so sweet.”