Blood Wine

by John Moss

  “Mr. Savage told you to stay inside?” Morgan asked.

  “Yes, he did,” she responded. Her voice quavered with exasperation. She had told him this already.

  “And Mr. Savage owns Bonnydoon Winery?”

  “He built this house for us. They tore down the old house and built this one in its place. Peter never liked it.”

  “No?” said Morgan.

  “We had the parlour and the bedroom downstairs and the kitchen and a bathroom.”

  “But it’s a huge house —”

  “Yes, and they needed the rest.”

  “When did your husband die, Mrs. Oughtred?”

  “Three years ago. I’ve been here alone since then.”

  “With Mr. Savage?”

  “Mr. Savage comes and goes, sometimes by car and sometimes by airplane. He makes sure I have supplies. I can clean up after myself. Peter was ninety-four, I’m ninety six. He was a year older than me but I’m older now.”

  “Does Mr. Savage have a first name?”

  “I’m sure he does.”

  “Would you mind telling me what it is?”

  “No, I would not mind at all.”

  Morgan waited. “Uh, what is it?”

  “I don’t know, dear. Mr. Savage is Mr. Savage.”

  Morgan paused. “Was your husband a vintner?”

  “Oh no, we’re farmers. We had orchards. These vines are only four years old.”

  Morgan looked around at the firefighters. An ambulance had arrived. It was sitting on the edge of the scene in case of an accident. An OPP car was lumbering up the laneway.

  “Police are coming,” said Morgan to Miranda and Elke. “Provincials. There’s an ambulance, let’s get Miranda down there.”

  He stopped and turned back to the ancient Mrs. Oughtred. “My name is Morgan, ma’am. I’d like to talk to you again. We’ll have someone look in on you. I don’t think Mr. Savage will be back.”

  “Well, of course he will, he owns everything here until we both die. He promised me when Peter passed away, Mr. Savage promised I could stay until I died too.”

  “He did. Well, I’m sure you can stay. Don’t worry, we’ll track Mr. Savage down.”

  “He always comes back.”

  “Mrs. Oughtred —”

  “Now you go along with your friends, Mr. Morgan. They don’t look too steady on their feet. And you all should wash up, you know. You don’t make a very good impression.”

  She waved at him with a hankie in her hand, even though he was just on the other side of the gate. Apparently unconcerned about the billowing smoke and flames behind him or the frenetic activities of the emergency crew, she turned and started walking back to the house. Morgan trudged down the walkway, glancing back at the old woman as he caught up with the other two. She was already at her door, and when he looked around next she had gone in and shut it firmly behind her.

  As they emerged out of the gloom of the escarpment a cluster of police, firefighters, and medics surged up the slope towards them.

  “We must really look like we need help,” said Miranda.

  “We do,” said Elke. “We’ve been through hell.”

  They stopped, leaning against each other, waiting for the emergency crew to reach them. Morgan turned and looked back at the house.

  “She was determined to stay,” he said.

  “Mr. Savage told her she could, until she passes away.” Miranda looked back as well.

  “Mr. Savage told her to stay inside.” A tremor of horror crossed his face.

  “Morgan?”

  “My goodness!” he exclaimed.

  “Morgan, no!”

  Miranda shouted at him as he swung around, took a stride back towards the house, stumbled, and as he was rising to his feet the entire escarpment exploded into a blistering, deafening inferno. For an instant the house was outlined in flame, as if it were hovering against a fiery backdrop, then it smashed into a billion points of light as the shock waves hurled Morgan and Miranda and the blond woman down the slope toward the emergency crew huddled on the ground against the blast, with the burning sheds behind them.

  Nothing seemed to move for a suspended instant, until the cicadas resumed their urgent thrumming; then the entire scene burst into a flurry of activity. It was like a war zone in the aftermath of a bombing raid. Flames billowed against the oncoming darkness and smoke curled in mindless strands through the thick, acrid air. Men and women, some still dressed from work, scurried around, drowning smouldering fires, gossiping, trying to figure out what had happened. Told there were two deaths, a body in a tank in the wine-shed debris, and old Mrs. Peter Oughtred in the inferno where the house had been, they summoned the Fire Marshal from Niagara-on-the-Lake, and the OPP officers took charge.

  6

  The Rocking Chair

  Three hours later, Morgan and Elke Sturmberg were sitting in an interrogation room at Police Headquarters in Toronto. They looked like they had been soaked in a red-wine marinade.

  “Miranda’s on her way,” said Spivak. “They’re just getting her bandaged up. She’s got a change of clothes in her locker. You want coffees, I’ll get you coffees.” He sidled out of the room, letting the door swing sharply closed behind him.

  Morgan smiled across the table at the young blond.

  “Don’t confess to crimes you’re not proud of,” he said. “We’re being observed. Of course, they know I know we’re being observed, so maybe they’re not bothering. Sometimes a room like this is just a good place to talk.”

  “Do you ever torture people here?” she asked.

  “For confessions? No, not often.”

  “Good,” she said. After a moment, she declared, “I remember pretty well everything, but I don’t remember driving to Toronto. Why would I go to Miranda’s?”

  “It’s a mystery,” said Morgan. Then looking up at the mirrored wall, he said, “Spivak, where’s the coffee?”

  The door opened and Miranda hobbled in on her own. Then Eeyore Stritch came in, carrying three coffees precariously balanced, and set them on the table.

  “I’m gonna live,” said Miranda as she sat down.

  “Good,” said Morgan. “Saves me the trouble of finding a replacement.”

  “Detective Quin,” said Eeyore Stritch in a funereal tone once they got settled. Miranda braced herself for whatever was coming. “The hand, the man in the vat, he wasn’t the one.”

  “The one what?” she responded.

  “The one who raped you.”

  Miranda flinched. Nobody had used the word rape. Philip may have got her into bed under false pretenses, but that fell into the realm of seduction. As for the semen deposited by his killer, that had somehow seemed more an infusion, absolutely disgusting but not sexual assault. She was, as she told Morgan, fucked. Rape seemed something else, demanding at the very least the awareness of the victim.

  “It wasn’t him?” She was baffled.

  “We did a rush job on the DNA. It shows the man in the vat and the man who — did that to you — were different people.”

  “Why did you assume they weren’t?” said Spivak, who had just come into he room. He knew by the ensuing silence he had asked a compromising question. “Explanation?” he demanded.

  Miranda fished into her purse for the gold ring and dropped it with a resounding clang on the table.

  “What’s this?” said Spivak.

  “The waiter at the Imperial Room told me the man with Philip was wearing a gold ring, very ostentatious, an eye-popper.”

  “So …?”

  “Well, this ring,” said Morgan, cocking his head towards the ring on the table, “it might have been, how would you say this, on the hand that came in by itself.”

  “My hand?” exclaimed Elke.

  “Not yours exactly,” said Morgan. “The one in your Monica Lewinsky handbag.”

  “It’s a knock-off.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Morgan? You saying this ring was on the dead guy’s finger?”
>
  “On his severed hand, not the one still attached. The guy in the vat and the guy at the Royal York are one and the same. And the hand in the bag, it was obviously his.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Morgan. You took a ring off a dead man’s hand, you gave it to your partner for a keepsake. What! What’s going on here? You’re both sick.”

  “A severed hand. We didn’t know for sure he was dead,” said Morgan. “It was a connection. We thought sooner or later it might give us a lead. Apparently it’s not going to.”

  “I thought we were in this together,” said Spivak.

  “Yeah,” said Morgan. “Sorry. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Jesus, Jesus, Morgan.”

  “Expletive,” said Miranda to Morgan. “Not prayer.”

  “What the hell am I going to do with you two! Lady,” he turned to Elke, “do you know who you are yet? That would be helpful.”

  “I seem to have been abducted.”

  “No shit,” he said. “Do you know who the hell you are? Where do you come from?”

  “She does,” said Morgan. “But not how she got to Toronto.”

  “Does anyone?” said Eeyore Stritch.

  “What?” demanded Spivak, wheeling on him. “What?”

  “Know how they end up in Toronto …” Whatever wit there might have been in his comment dissipated like unacknowledged flatulence. He chuckled to himself. Miranda liked him for that.

  “Okay,” said Spivak. “Either we’re working together or we’re not working together.”

  “We’re working together,” said Eeyore Stritch, who thought Spivak was addressing him.

  “Yeah,” said Morgan. “Sorry, I thought — recovered memory syndrome. If she held onto it, maybe she’d remember things.”

  “And I do,” said Miranda. They waited.

  Miranda shut her eyes for an uncomfortably long period, then flashed them open. “His face, in the wine tank, that was the man with the ring. Philip met me in the lobby of the Royal York. He was there first, reading a paper. We didn’t have reservations. We never made reservations. We went in for dinner. Halfway through, the man, the other man, joined us. He didn’t eat. Philip ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon. The two men, they weren’t friends. They knew each other, and they were keyed up about something. Maybe they quarrelled.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Spivak, who seemed to have forgotten the purloined ring.

  “Was there any evidence of her door being jimmied?” Morgan asked.

  “Her apartment door? Miranda’s? No,” said Stritch. “But a pro wouldn’t leave any marks.”

  “So here’s what happened,” said Morgan. “The ring-man doctors Miranda’s drink. Philip thinks it’s the Dom Pérignon, he walks her out of the dining room with as little fuss as possible. They get her to a car, a taxi. Have we checked taxis? Philip takes her home. The other man disappears.”

  “How do you know?” said Miranda.

  “The semen, it wasn’t his. Now let’s say Philip takes you home. You make love … correction, he has sex. Remember, he doesn’t know you’re drugged. He just thinks you’ve had too much champagne. You pass out … but, you know, maybe you’re already doing it by then —”

  “Doing it!”

  “Making love … pathetic, but not totally degenerate —”

  “Says you,” said Miranda. “I think it’s despicable.”

  “He falls asleep beside you. Someone else, apparently not the man with the ring, another man breaks into your apartment —”

  “Condo.”

  “Condo, right. You two are out cold. The third man gets Miranda’s gun from her desk —”

  “How did he know it was there?” asked Miranda.

  “Where else would it be? He jimmies the drawer, takes out your Glock in its holster, right?”

  “Right.”

  “He puts a slug through Philip’s head, another through his gut —”

  “Through his gut?” Spivak interjected, not anticipating Morgan’s hypothesis.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay. To this point, he’s been neat and efficient.”

  “Right,” said Spivak.

  “Then he — he fucks Miranda.”

  “Steady,” said Stritch.

  “Okay, it’s my word,” said Miranda. “Go on, Morgan.”

  “It’s not too messy, at this point. The sex, it’s not about writhing around, he makes a deposit.…”

  “Yes,” said Miranda, envisioning it happening to someone else. “Then?”

  “Okay,” said Morgan. “No, at this point he hadn’t shot Philip in the gut. Just through the head. Using the pillow to muffle the sound. Now he takes Miranda’s hand, he puts the Glock, which he’d wiped clean, in her hand, he twists her arm around and pulls her finger on the trigger — the gun goes off against Philip Carter’s abdomen.”

  “And?” said Miranda.

  “The intruder, he puts the gun on the bedside table. It’s not convincing, he thinks. He needs it to look like she did it. Why would she shoot him in the gut? He gets a bullet from the desk drawer, puts it in the clip. Sets the gun back down on the table with only one bullet missing. We know two were fired. He’s smart and cold, he’s a foreigner, he wouldn’t know the extent of forensic discovery. He rolls Philip’s body away from Miranda, on top of the sheet, and with a knife he’s carrying he goes after the slug inside the corpse. He’s wearing one of Miranda’s plastic aprons. Check, I’ll bet there’s one missing. When he gets the bullet, Philip’s guts are slopping out of his body. The guy thinks the mess will reinforce that she’s crazy. He goes to the bathroom, washes meticulously. Gets her kitchen knife, slicks it with blood. Dumps it under the bed, not too obvious, he thinks. Goes back into the bedroom, covers the two of them. Starts to leave. Sees the holster where he set it beside the bed. Returns it to the desk, sees it’s flecked with blood — no, he fired one of his shots through the holster. That’s it. The other was through the pillow. He has to take the holster with him.”

  “Why through the holster?” asked Eeyore, who was mesmerized by Morgan’s narrative.

  “To muffle the sound. His first shot was through the holster. Otherwise he would have used the pillow for both.”

  “What about the blood on the walls?” Miranda asked. “How does that fit into your grand scenario?”

  Morgan’s face took on an introspective scowl, brow furrowed, eyes squinting, then he pronounced it was one of two possibilities.

  “Either he was trying to show how hysterical Miranda was when she killed the guy, I mean, something to go along with disembowelling him and then climbing back in beside him with his guts hanging out. Or. I think there’s another side to this guy. Fastidious, yes, and absolutely cold-blooded. But pathologically driven to assert his own personality, no matter how necessary it was to conceal himself from discovery.”

  Spivak started a deep-chest rumbling smoker’s cough. Conforming to social custom, the others tried to ignore him, despite the fact that he was dying by increments.

  “It wasn’t a matter of hiding, it was important to direct our sole attention to Miranda as the killer.”

  “Why?” said Eeyore Stritch.

  “Don’t know.”

  “I’d say it was both,” said Miranda.

  “Both?”

  “Yeah, leaving an indecipherable scrawl — that would imply my dementia. I think you’re right, Morgan. It’s not a message, it’s a signature.”

  “Sounds likely,” said Spivak, whose face was now flushed red.

  “That’s exactly how it was!” exclaimed Elke.

  The four detectives turned to her simultaneously, surprised she was still in the room. They had forgotten about her as Morgan’s account unfolded, and now she seemed incongruous, an outsider, her presence compromising. Spivak began coughing again.

  “Pardon?” said Stritch. “How what was?”

  “The way you described him,” she said to Morgan, “that’s the
man they took me to, after they picked me up in Rochester —”

  “Picked you up!” exclaimed Spivak.

  “Abducted. In the parking lot outside Millennium Wines. I was driven to Buffalo. We met someone in Buffalo, they dumped me into a plane, they flew me across the border to Bonnydoon. The man there, I know it was the same man who was at Miranda’s, he moved exactly the way you described him. I didn’t see him, my eyes were covered. They taped me to the chair, then the man in charge, the man you described, he chopped off the ring-man’s hand. He touched me. They dumped the ring-man in the vat, someone shot him. I know it was him. You described him exactly.”

  “He didn’t actually describe him at all,” said Spivak.

  “She knows it was the same man,” said Miranda with strident authority. “It was him.”

  “So then how did you get to Toronto?” asked Stritch.

  She looked at him blankly.

  Spivak arranged for a car to drive Miranda and Morgan home, after dropping off Elke Sturmberg at The Four Seasons on Avenue Road. It was midnight when they pulled up in front of Miranda’s condo. Morgan insisted on helping her in and told the officer who was driving to go ahead. He would walk home from there.

  “That’s how we get a reputation, Morgan. It’ll be all over Headquarters by morning.”

  “Do we have a reputation?”

  “You know we do.”

  She buzzed her own number at the door before turning the key in the lock to open it. He looked at her quizzically.

  “You’re very strange,” he said.

  “It scares the burglars away.”

  “Have you ever been burgled?”

  “No, see, it works.” She leaned on his arm as they made their way slowly up the worn marble stairs. “The apartment never seems so empty when I get there, knowing the buzzer’s already been buzzing. It’s like I envision a warm, welcoming space with sound waves still reverberating, even when it’s dark.”

  Morgan smiled at the poignancy. In common with anyone who lives alone, he knew the exact moment of loneliness that waits like a chilling embrace when you first return to an empty home.