The Merlot Murders wcm-1

by Ellen Crosby

  The silence lengthened and my heart started to pound.

  I felt my way toward the outside door. In the complete, unnatural silence I heard the scraping sound of my brick being moved and the door closing. A second later someone put the lock into the hasp and snapped it shut.

  If I didn’t get out of here soon, the CO2 would build up again and it would kill me.

  Chapter 22

  Carbon dioxide works fast.

  Like Fitz, I could die of asphyxiation. The fermenting wine bubbling merrily around me was filling the enormous room with lethal quantities of toxic gas. While Fitz’s death had been instant—with only pure CO2 in the tank—mine would be slow as the gas gradually sucked all the breathable oxygen out of the air. With no power and no fans there was no fresh supply of oxygen.

  I had no idea how much time I had. More than a few minutes. Less than a few hours.

  Though I knew my way around the barrel room, I had the temporary disadvantage of no night vision. If I made the trip across the room to the steel door—which I already knew was locked—I’d use up oxygen and time. I looked around for other ways to escape, but it isn’t called a “cave” for nothing. My pulse was racing like a rabbit’s and my heart thudded in my chest. I tried to slow my breathing.

  Wine ages and ferments best in a cool, dark place. But for some reason our architect had mistakenly put in three slatlike casement windows located near the ceiling behind the stainless-steel tanks. They were sealed shut after the building inspector showed up and nearly had a coronary, since anything that lets in both air and light doesn’t conform to code. I don’t know how my mother talked him into it but we didn’t have to spend the extra money to brick them up or even paint them over as long as they remained permanently closed.

  The windows were too narrow for me to climb through, and even if I could shimmy through the opening, I’d be doing a swan dive from two stories up onto drought-hardened terrain. But if I could prop our twenty-foot extension ladder below the window and then break the glass with my cane, at least I’d be breathing oxygen instead of CO2.

  My vision was improving and the huge steel tanks became looming shadows lining the far wall. The ladder should have been hanging from an oversized set of hooks on the adjacent wall, near the hoses. I hadn’t noticed if it was there when the lights were on. If it was gone that was it. I’d be dead when someone finally found me in the morning.

  I knew from Jacques’s repeated lectures that one of the early symptoms of CO2 poisoning was anxiety. Later came dizziness, confusion, and finally loss of consciousness and death. Already the room seemed stuffy. Wasn’t it too soon for that to happen? God, who knew?

  The anxiety had started.

  I walked slowly toward the wall using my cane to orient myself as a blind person would. The extension ladder was exactly where it belonged on the hooks. I leaned my cane against the wall so I could use both hands to get it down, just like Jacques and the crew always had. I don’t know why I assumed it would practically float into my arms but it was heavier and more unwieldy than I’d bargained on. My bad foot buckled as I jerked the ladder up and over the hooks. It slipped out of my grip, crashing onto the concrete floor. By some miracle it missed landing on my feet. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, feel it pulsing behind my eyes.

  I half-dragged, half-shoved the ladder along the floor until I was below the bank of windows. Dizziness seeped into my brain. I bit the back of my hand until it hurt to keep from screaming.

  I’d read stories about people who found some kind of superhuman strength that enabled them to pick up a car or move a collapsed wall because it was a matter of life or death. Wherever that burst of strength came from—divine intervention or adrenaline-fueled fear—I picked up the ladder and placed it against the wall like it was suddenly made of balsa wood.

  The metal latch in the extension mechanism clanked against the rungs as I pulled on the rope. The ladder grew toward the window like Jack’s beanstalk. I heard the lock snap into place and tied off the halyard. Then I hung my cane on one of the rungs and gripped the sides of the ladder. My hands were so sweaty they slipped.

  I am, unfortunately, acrophobic. An accident involving me and a rickety tree house when I was eight. I wiped my wet hands on my skirt and looked up. The windows seemed to float above me. I shook my head and blinked hard until they finally stopped moving. Then I put my foot on the first rung—and climbed. After a couple of rungs I hooked my cane over my arm so I wouldn’t keep bumping against it. I’d made it to the fifteenth rung before the cane hit the side of the ladder. It slipped, ricocheting off one of the steel tanks before clanking on the concrete below. I rested my head against one of the rungs and sobbed.

  CO2 pools in low places. The top of the ladder was better than the bottom and I was nearly there. There was no climbing down to get the cane. I counted four more rungs, then I was at eye level with one of the windows and moonlight was glinting through the caked-on grime. I rubbed the glass with my hand even though I knew there would be nothing to see except a field leading to the woods. This was the far side of the building. Anyone who strolled by below was somewhere they didn’t belong.

  My head ached. Concentrating was a chore. Open the window. That’s all I had to remember. Just one thing.

  I banged on the glass with my fist but it might as well have been steel. Nothing moved. I tried the joint between the glass and the frame, running my finger along the caulked seal.

  The caulk was old and brittle and there was a piece missing. I dug at the hole with my fingernail and another long chalklike piece fell out. My breathing was more labored now but I kept pulling at new ragged edges, as more and more caulk broke off. CO2 poisoning is supposed to leave an acid taste in your mouth. By the time I finished mine tasted of blood from biting the tip of my tongue.

  I pushed on the glass again, willing it to move. It was stuck as firmly as when I’d started. The window was caulked on the outside, too.

  I thumped the glass again with my fist, this time beginning in the lower right-hand corner and working my way around the perimeter of the window. If there was one spot where the caulk had fallen out, maybe I could shove the glass out of the frame. I heard a small crack and something gave way. I pounded some more.

  The glass swung like a hinge, about two inches out of the frame. I put my mouth and nose to the opening and gulped fresh air. My head throbbed and my heart felt like there was a vise around it, but at least I wasn’t going to die yet.

  In the distance, music from the jazz concert floated across the sultry stillness and the cicadas sang to me. There were no other sounds. I was alone.

  Unless whoever kicked that brick away from the door was still around. If I called out now he’d know I was alive. Then he’d come back and rattle the ladder until I landed like Humpty Dumpty on the concrete floor below.

  I clung to the window ledge and listened to a jazz riff that sounded like someone trying to sound like Mangione. All I had to do was stay here until morning when Quinn or Hector opened the door to the barrel room and discovered me perched atop the ladder like a bird in a treetop. Guarding a warm room filled with tanks of very expensive vinegar.

  I hooked one arm through the rung of the ladder and held on to the windowsill with the other. And waited.

  The voices came after what seemed like hours. At first I thought I was dreaming them. Then they grew closer. Coming my way.

  “I can’t imagine what happened to her.” Kit, sounding worried. “We agreed to meet at the villa at eight-fifteen.”

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Look up! I’m here!”

  “Why in the hell don’t I hear the air conditioner and the equipment?” Quinn was with her. “Something’s wrong. I’ve got to get inside and find out what’s going on. Come on! Let’s go!”

  Their voices grew fainter as they moved away from under the eaves. I saw—or maybe hoped for—darker shadows in my line of vision that meant they had moved to where they could finally see the sliver of my barely opened window.


  Quinn’s voice again. “Holy shit, look up there! There’s a window open. Someone’s in there. With the power off the place will be full of carbon dioxide. Run!”

  “Yes,” I shouted uselessly. “I’m in here. Please come get me!”

  I suppose, in retrospect, Quinn did the right thing taking care of the wine first before he got to me. The lights came on and the air-conditioning started with a roar. The fans began whirring and I blinked in the hard, sudden brightness.

  The door opened and I heard Kit scream my name.

  “Kit! Don’t move,” Quinn ordered. “Let the CO2 clear out first.”

  The ladder shook as Quinn climbed toward me. I clung to it, white-knuckled, too scared to look down where Kit stood twenty feet below, praying I wouldn’t fall off in the process of being rescued after the near-death miracle of surviving poisoning by carbon dioxide. He stopped just below me and put an arm around my waist. He smelled of perspiration and something tropical, like coconut. “Are you strong enough to climb down on your own if I stay right here with you? I don’t think the ladder’s sturdy enough for me to carry you and I don’t want to find out the hard way.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Take your time.”

  We went down slowly, and then he jumped off a few rungs from the bottom and reached up and pulled me into his arms like he was grabbing a sack of potatoes. “Let’s get her out of here,” he said. “She looks like a ghost.”

  He carried me outside and set me down on the grass.

  “Is she going to live?” Kit asked.

  “She’ll be okay, but she’s probably got a headache the size of Pittsburgh.”

  “Why are you talking about me in the third person?” I mumbled. “I can hear what you’re saying.”

  “Hush,” Kit said. “We probably ought to get her to the hospital.”

  “She doesn’t want to go to the hospital,” I said. “And she means it.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Kit said. “You’ve got to let someone check you out.”

  “No! I’ll be fine.”

  “Well, then, you’re coming home with me,” Kit said.

  “No, she’s coming home with me.” Quinn stood up. “Keep her quiet. I’m going to call Hector and get him to stay here tonight in case there are more equipment problems.”

  “Lucie,” Kit said urgently after Quinn left, “do you know how lucky you are to be alive? Jesus Lord. What are the odds that your power and your backup would fail at the same time?”

  I tried to sit up on my elbows but my head felt like Fourth of July fireworks exploding and the ground started to spin so I lay down again. “They didn’t. Someone shut down the power and the generator. Then they put the lock through the hasp so I couldn’t open it from inside.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Where was Quinn when you found him?”

  “You don’t think Quinn…? Oh, no. Not him.” She put her hand on my forehead, checking apparently for a fever or signs I was delirious. “I ran into him as he was coming back from the Ruins. I’d been looking for you for a while. I saw the look on his face when he realized what had happened. He was trying to calculate how long it had been since he was last there, when he knew the power was on. It wasn’t him.”

  I tried to sit up again and groaned.

  “Lie down,” she said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Unless I roll away. I get vertigo just being two inches off the ground.” I lay on my back again. “When you called you said you had something to tell me.”

  “It can wait.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “I found out who tried to buy the vineyard from your father.”

  “I already know. Mason told me tonight.”

  “I think it stinks.”

  I made one more attempt to lever myself to a semi-sitting position. The aurora borealis was still going on inside my head, but I was lucid enough to figure out that we weren’t talking about the same thing. “What stinks?”

  “Building a Civil War theme park. Here, of all places. It’s disgusting.”

  “What are you talking about? The Blue Ridge Consortium offered to buy it, presumably to turn it into parkland, not theme-park land. Besides, who would want to build a Civil War theme park here, anyway? How dumb can you be to invent something when you’ve got the real McCoy?”

  “That’s not what I heard,” she said. “Leland was approached by someone on behalf of a group of developers. They want to get in under the radar, get the land first. Then they’d work on bribing whoever they needed to in Richmond to get the zoning laws changed.”

  “How do you know about this?”

  “I’m a reporter. It’s my business to know.”

  “Well,” I said, “it doesn’t matter anymore, anyway. The vineyard’s not for sale.”

  “They’ll buy something else. You’re not the only fish in the pond.”

  “The Blue Ridge Consortium will stop them, once they get wind of it. Besides, who do you know around here who’d like to have their farm back up on a theme park?”

  “Don’t be naïve,” she said. “For enough money some people will do anything.” I opened my mouth to reply, but Kit shook her head. Quinn was walking toward us. She said in a low voice, “Don’t say anything about this. For once in my life, it would be nice to have a scoop and not get beat by the Post.”

  I nodded as Quinn reached us. “Hector’s on his way. I found him talking to Eli when they were clearing up after the concert.” He leaned down and scooped me up. “Put your arms around my neck.”

  He was settling me into the front seat of his Toyota when a black Corvette pulled into the parking lot and Hector got out.

  “Stay here,” Quinn ordered, “while I talk to Hector.”

  Eli said he wasn’t coming to any more festival events because of some deadline at work. At least, that was his story. Why did he change his plans?

  “Do you still think Eli’s involved in this?” She read my mind.

  “He wasn’t supposed to be here tonight. I want to talk to him.”

  “About what? Maybe trying to kill you tonight in the barrel room? Come on, Lucie,” Kit said. “I think we ought to get Bobby over here.”

  “Absolutely not…I need to talk to Eli, Kit. It’ll turn into a three-ring circus when Bobby gets involved.”

  Quinn’s footsteps crunched on the gravel.

  “Tomorrow,” Kit said. “I’m calling Bobby tomorrow. At least tonight I know you’re with Quinn.”

  “Give me twenty-four hours. Then I’ll call Bobby myself. I promise.”

  She nodded imperceptibly as Quinn said, “All right. It’s all set up with Hector. Why don’t we get out of here? We’ve got harvest again tomorrow morning.”

  Kit left in the Jeep before we did, driving fast enough to churn up a cloud of dust. Her way of letting me know she was not happy with the way our conversation had gone. The Toyota started, sounding like a dentist’s drill that just hit something bad.

  I leaned my head back against the vibrating seat. Who tried to kill me tonight?

  Someone who knew his way around the winery and how to work all the equipment. Eli?

  Not him. He was too concerned about any more “accidents” happening at the winery and what it might do to discourage prospective buyers. However much I stood in his way, he wouldn’t have picked the winery as a place for yet another murder.

  Then who?

  Quinn? He could have shut the power off, then gone back to the concert. Maybe Kit met him on a return trip to the barrel room, double-checking to make sure I was dead and his “concern,” as Kit called it, was part of the ruse. Now he was adamant that I go home with him, instead of her.

  Hanging out at Mom’s Place watching Angela, he could have gotten to know Sara Rust. Sure. He could be a suspect.

  And now here I was going home with him. Alone.

  Maybe I’d just played right into his hands.

  Chapter 23

  Quinn’s cottage was
on the same dirt spur as Hector and Sera’s place, about a half-mile in the other direction. The last time I’d visited, Jacques lived there.

  Quinn hadn’t left any lights on and, with the heavy tree canopy overhead, no ambient light permeated the woods. His cottage seemed smaller than I remembered, but perhaps it was the deceptive way places have of shrinking when memory is finally confronted by reality, as though you’re looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

  He stopped the car. “I’ll come ’round and get you.”

  “I can manage.”

  “No, you can’t,” he said. “I found your cane on the floor in the barrel room. It’s got a big dent in it. You can’t use it the way it is. Hector said he’d try to straighten it out, but he’s not sure he can do it without breaking it. You got another one?”

  “No.”

  “Then sit still. I don’t need you falling on your face.” He sounded annoyed, more than anything else.

  He nudged open the screen door with his foot and flipped on the light switch with his elbow. We were in the middle of the living room. It was as soulless as a hotel room. This was a man without a past or a present.

  “You take my bed,” he said. “You’ll be comfortable there.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you.”

  “The sheets are clean. I’ve been sleeping at the summerhouse. Or at Angie’s.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Nevertheless, I’d prefer to have you there.”

  “In your bed.”

  “I was thinking more in terms of you not being on the couch because it’s in a room with a door to the outside.”

  “You think I might run away?”

  “I think someone’s looking for you,” he said. “At least this way, they’d have to get past me first.”

  He spoke in his characteristically blunt and unemotional way so it was hard to tell if he considered being my human shield as part of the maintenance responsibilities that came with his job or if he really cared what happened to me. Either way, his words were disturbing.