Sharpshooter

by Nadia Gordon

  3

  Sunny’s office at Wildside looked significantly smaller and messier with Sergeant Harvey standing in it. Suddenly the room that had always felt perfectly spacious and efficient seemed cramped and crowded with furniture and papers. The walls needed painting, the two windows were dusty and fringed with cobwebs in the sunlight, and the walls and desk and even the standup metal filing cabinet were littered with several years’ clutter. Postcards from traveling friends, mailers from wineries and kitchen suppliers, snapshots, souvenirs, shift schedules, supply lists, and long-forgotten reminders were tacked, taped, and held up by magnets in drifts. A bent and corroded metal rooster bought at a flea market in Provence perched on top of the filing cabinet. Every flat surface including the floor was stacked with cookbooks. On the desk next to an old typewriter from the thirties was a piece of driftwood that someone thought was shaped like a trout. There was a ceramic pig from Mexico, a primitive mask from a Burning Man costume made out of an empty bleach jug painted turquoise blue and neon green, and, displayed on the windowsill, a collection of dried chicken feet.

  The comfortable disarray seemed to indicate not a colorful personal history and eclectic interests, but shoddiness and negligence when Sunny saw it through Steve Harvey’s eyes. She glanced at the photograph of the smiling blond woman, a Bordelaise in a deep V-neck sweater holding a seductive armload of Cabernet Sauvignon fruit. The picture, which had once seemed to epitomize the sensuality and abundance of harvest, now looked vaguely incriminating, as though it signaled a bent toward the lascivious or some other warp in character.

  Sunny pushed one of the windows open for fresh air, kicked a bag of dirty gym clothes aside, and dragged her desk chair around toward the coffee table, suggesting that Sergeant Harvey take the more comfortable seat on the couch. He declined. Instead he grabbed a small wood and cane café chair from the corner, which turned out to be, like the rest of the room, far too small for him. He perched on the edge of it stiffly, like a trained bear. It occurred to Sunny that he felt as uncomfortable as she did. He said, “I hate to bother you in the middle of a busy morning, Sunny.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I have a hunch I know why you’re here.”

  “Do you?” said Steve, suddenly stern instead of apologetic. Sunny felt the sting of authority in his voice, and the wooden resolve it always provoked in her. It was like being in the principal’s office or her father’s study all over again, only this was her office, her space, the place she’d spent years getting to. She felt the tingling sensation of rebellion rising up. She told herself to relax, he’s only doing his job. She said, “I was on my way back from Wade Skord’s house when you pulled me over, but I think you know that.”

  She thought she caught a flicker of surprise in his face, maybe even a little amusement. He’d assumed she wouldn’t notice him staking out the base of the turnoff to Howell Mountain. He said, “Then you know about Jack Beroni.”

  “Only that he was found this morning in the gazebo. That someone killed him. Do you have any idea who did it?”

  “We have some leads. It was done sniper style, at night, by somebody who was a good shot with a high-powered rifle.” Sunny thought of Wade, standing up behind the house with his .22 Hornet, using the night-vision scope to sight the glowing yellow golf ball lying in the grass across the ravine. Steve Harvey leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, provoking a vision of him on the toilet. Sunny stifled a giggle. “Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable on the couch?” she said.

  He sat upright again. “No, thanks. Was there a particular reason for your visit to Wade Skord this morning?”

  “He called and asked me to come over. Your visit and Jack’s death had his nerves all jangled. He just needed to see a friend.”

  Steve nodded. “Did he tell you what he did last night?”

  “Yes, but I don’t feel right about speaking for him. I’ll tell you what I know directly. Wade can speak for himself.”

  Steve shot her a hard look and said, “Okay. We can always talk about that stuff later.” He looked around the room as though it were evidence. His eyes settled on the blue and green mask. Fringe made from strands of painted plastic wrap hung down half a foot from the bottom. He said, “Tell me about your day yesterday. You worked here at the restaurant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Until what time?”

  “Around five.”

  “And then what did you do?”

  “I drove over to Wade’s place to have a look at the harvest. It’s getting close up there. He’ll bring them in any day now.”

  “What’s he got up there, Zinfandel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So the two of you were out in the vineyard tasting grapes? What time was that?”

  “Probably around five-thirty. We tasted fruit and took samples from each segment. He has the vineyard divided up into eight segments.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “We went back to the house to drop off the samples and measure the Brix. Wade opened a bottle of ‘96 late harvest and we took glasses of it with us on a walk up the ridge to the top of the vineyard to watch the sunset. That was about six-thirty. After that I was tired, so I went home. I left around seven or seven-fifteen.”

  “Where did you go from there?”

  “I stopped at the supermarket. The Safeway over by the railroad tracks. Then home. I was home all night after that.”

  “Did you talk to anyone? Did anybody call or come over?”

  “Monty Lenstrom called, I think around nine o’clock. And I sent some e-mail around ten.”

  Steve took a tiny notepad out of his breast pocket and used the little pencil that came with it to write something down, probably Monty Lenstrom’s name. As a wine merchant who sold expensive, hard-to-find wines, Lenstrom circulated to all the better parties and seemed to know everybody up valley, at least well enough to call them customers. Steve probably knew who he was. He sat quietly for a moment with the pencil hovering above the pad. Sunny studied his short, neatly combed blond hair, thinking that it was probably stiff to the touch. He’d have to use a strong gel to freeze it into place and have it last all day like that. His fingernails were perfectly clean, too. She glanced at her own hands, which were comparatively barbaric, her nails shaggy along the edges, the strong tendons too pronounced, the skin scarred from things sharp and hot in the kitchen. Catelina Alvarez, the old Portuguese woman who lived across the street the whole time Sunny was growing up, had small, gnarled hands that could take a live chicken strutting around the backyard and turn it into neat pieces arranged in a baking dish in minutes. Sunny had seen her reach into a pot of boiling water, pull out a potato, and start peeling it with the steam coming off in plumes. Sunny’s hands were already more like Catelina’s than like Monty Lenstrom’s girlfriend’s, who had petal-soft skin and long fingers like beautifully shaped twigs; hands best suited to the application of eye makeup.

  Steve returned the notepad to his shirt pocket and put his hands together, fingers interlaced, and stared down at them. After what seemed a painfully long silence, he looked up at Sunny and asked, “How would you characterize your relationship with Wade Skord?”

  Sunny wondered if that was an official question or a personal one, or merely curiosity. Cops are the best source of gossip in a small town, next to the hairdresser and the DA’s office. She said, “We’re friends. Have been for years.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “No. Is that part of this?”

  Steve looked up at her with a new fierceness in his eyes. “Ms. McCoskey, may I remind you that a man has been killed, shot with a rifle not half a mile from Wade Skord’s home. What Wade Skord was doing last night and who he was doing it with are very important pieces of information. People’s lives could depend on it.”

  Wade’s life could depend on it, thought Sunny. She said, “We aren’t lovers. We never have been. We’re friends, and we collaborate in our businesses. I work with him as a consultant in his w
inemaking, he produces wine for Wildside.”

  Steve seemed to relax slightly. He said, “Did he seem upset or agitated about anything last night? Did he mention anything that was bothering him?”

  “No. In fact, he seemed extremely relaxed. It’s been a good growing season; the fruit looks like it will be exceptional, if the weather holds. Assuming nothing goes wrong in the next few days, it will be one of the best harvests in years.” Sunny paused. She’d been trying to ignore the obvious subtext of their conversation, but the time had come to face it. “Steve, Wade Skord isn’t capable of murder.”

  “I’ve never met anyone I thought was, but plenty of murders happen,” said Steve. “People are capable of more than you think.”

  “Not Wade. I’ve known him for years. He thinks about three things: the vines, the grapes, and the wine. He is completely absorbed in his work.”

  “And what if something threatened that work?”

  Sunny didn’t reply and Steve stood to go. After he left, she sat staring at the card he’d given her with his mobile-phone number penciled on the back. “In case you remember something,” he’d said. Like what? That Wade planned to shoot Jack Beroni later that night after she left?

  Rivka stuck her head in a few minutes later. “What was that all about?” she asked.

  Sunny looked up, feeling suddenly on edge. “Long story.”

  “It wasn’t about Jack Beroni, was it?”

  Sunny hesitated. Rivka came into the office and plopped down on the couch. She took a bunch of Sauvignon Blanc grapes from a bowl on Sunny’s desk and began to eat them, piling the seeds on the corner of an old newspaper lying on the coffee table. After several grapes she said, “Alex called right after you left. He told me about them finding Jack this morning. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said Silvano Cruz, the guy who oversees the vineyard, was driving along in his tractor early this morning when he noticed something red running down the steps of the gazebo. Turned out to be blood. He went up there and found Jack sprawled on his back, dead. About this time, Alex pulls into the winery for work, and here comes Silvano running up the road saying Jack’s been shot, they have to call the police. Alex said he was white as a sheet. So Silvano goes inside to phone while Alex drives down to the gazebo to stand guard until the police get there. He said there was blood all over the place. He sounded pretty shook up about it. He waited around until the police got there, then helped them tape off the area and lift the body onto the stretcher and everything.”

  Sunny rubbed her head with her knuckles, making circles at her temples and working her way back to her neck. The day was getting weirder and weirder, and there was every reason to believe it was only going to get worse. She tried to make it all seem real. Jack Beroni was dead. The police clearly considered Wade a suspect, at least for the moment. And Steve Harvey, perennial big softy about town, was coming on like a big-city cop. “Did he say if they have any ideas about who did it?” she asked Rivka.

  “Nothing so far. Whoever shot him was careful. They never even came near him, just shot him from way off, probably from the trees along the west side of the vineyard. They didn’t find any footprints or anything. They have about a dozen guys out there looking for evidence. They think the killer used a rifle, a powerful one that’s effective from a long way away, probably fitted with a night scope. Alex says those guns are incredibly accurate if you know how to shoot them. The killer could have hit Jack from a hundred yards away and ditched the gun in the forest. The only evidence they found, as far as Alex could tell, was the body and the bullet.”

  “And they could tell exactly what kind of gun was used?”

  “Yeah. They could tell by the bullet. They can even match the bullet to a specific gun, if they find it. Don’t you watch cop shows on TV?”

  “No TV. I’m a recovering addict, remember? I haven’t watched TV since they invented the remote.”

  “Right, I forgot. Anyway, every gun barrel leaves its own particular marks on the bullet when it’s fired, like a fingerprint. They’re threaded, so the bullet spins and the threads make little scratches on the bullet that they can match up to the gun.”

  Sunny felt a wave of relief. This was very good news. The police had the bullet. If there was any real suspicion of Wade, which the rational side of her mind seriously doubted, the police could always check the bullet against his gun. She took a deep breath.

  Rivka looked at her. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You thought something.”

  “No, just thinking about that bullet. How somewhere out there in the world there’s a gun that matches it.”

  Sunny looked at the clock above the couch. It was after ten; they’d have to hurry if they were going to be ready to open in an hour. Rivka went back to the kitchen and Sunny picked up the phone and dialed Wade’s number. She tapped the office door closed with her foot.

  By noon the restaurant buzzed with news of the murder. From her station behind the zinc bar Sunny caught snatches of conversation from the dining room. It seemed as if everyone was talking about Jack Beroni. Each time a waiter or one of the customers encountered someone new, they seemed compelled to establish whether or not the other person had heard the news, and if so, whether every scrap of available information and informed speculation was known. If a reference to the tragedy, what happened last night, or Beroni Vineyards went unacknowledged, the instigator would say, “You haven’t heard?” and then relate in ever increasing detail what had happened.

  Sunny plated a row of salads from an enormous aluminum mixing bowl full of dressed baby greens and added a disk of pistachio-crusted goat cheese and a fan of date slivers to each. Like the rest of the town, she couldn’t get used to the idea of somebody like Jack being gone all of a sudden. He’d been a fixture in the valley as much as Beroni Vineyards itself. Every party and charitable event had to include an appearance by Jack Beroni in a tuxedo. The man wore a tux more often than most movie stars. Around St. Helena, he was everywhere. She’d see him coming out of the hardware store on Railroad Avenue, having coffee at Bismark’s, getting a sandwich at the Oakville Grocery. It wasn’t that she knew him well, it was more that he was part of the fauna of the valley, like the quail and the coyotes and the rattlesnakes—creatures she assumed were there and saw occasionally, but who otherwise went about their business well outside the range of her familiarity. “I just can’t believe he’s dead,” she said to Rivka, who was working the grill behind her.

  “Not dead,” corrected Rivka, “murdered.” Before they opened, Rivka had changed into her checked pants and tied a triangle kerchief over her braids. Her ears were generously pierced with tiny silver hoops and posts. On the back of each slender brown biceps was a tattoo of a red and blue swallow, one swooping forward, the other back, which gave the impression of birds circling around her. She stood guard over the grill in her long white apron with tongs poised, watching a collection of husky salmon filets and pork chops sizzle. She repositioned one of the slabs of salmon precisely ninety degrees to the left to complete a neat crosshatch of black grill marks. “I always knew he would mix it up with somebody eventually. He was a troublemaker,” said Rivka, putting the accent on maker.

  “How do you know that? He seemed like an okay guy. Sort of snobby, maybe.”

  “Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean I have to start lying about him and saying a lot of phony bullshit. Why do you think so many people hated him? Why did somebody hate him enough to put a bullet through him? Even Alex didn’t like him; he said he was a nightmare of a boss.”

  Sunny was quiet. It seemed disrespectful to talk about Jack that way considering what had happened, even if he had been less than a model citizen.

  Rivka said, “I’m just saying that there were plenty of people out there who thought how nice it would feel to put their fingers around that fancy-pants neck of his and give a good squeeze.”

  “He was just a rich, snobby guy wh
o went to a lot of parties,” said Sunny.

  Rivka pointed her tongs at her. “Alex says he was a hothead. You couldn’t do enough to please him. He was always yelling.” She went back to monitoring the grill.

  It had been the same all morning. They would work quietly for a while, then return to the shock of Jack’s murder, rehashing some new aspect. One of the waiters said there hadn’t been a murder in St. Helena in more than four years, nor one involving a man as prominent in the community as Jack Beroni for as long as anybody could remember.

  Sunny was having trouble concentrating. She hadn’t heard anyone mention Wade as being involved, but just the talk of murder was unsettling. She was mixing up her third batch of aioli, having ruined two already, when Rivka glanced over at her and asked, “How much of that stuff are you going to make?”

  “The usual. Those first two were for practice.”

  “Right.”

  In the seven years since cooking school, Sunny had gone from sous-chef at a San Francisco monolith to owner and chef of the tiny, best-kept secret in the Napa Valley. But today she couldn’t keep her mind on what she was doing, couldn’t even slip into that automatic efficiency that usually took over when she was distracted by ordinary concerns. She watched her hands as if they were someone else’s. Without any connection to what she was doing, she assembled plates of roasted duck breast with cranberry chutney, sides of grilled vegetables and Gorgonzola mashed potatoes, and shallow dishes of fettuccine with chanterelles. She dropped dollops of crème fraîche and chives into bowls of butternut squash soup and slipped a wedge of garlic crouton in beside it. She arranged slices of pear tart with vanilla bean ice cream and sent out platters of figs, dates, and tangerines for dessert. When the last espresso had been served and the last check put down, Sunny pulled off her chef’s jacket, exhausted.

  Rivka said, “Hey, it’s Friday. Are we still on for tonight?”

  Sunny looked up, stretching her arms. “Yeah. Maybe it will help get things back to normal.”