The Corpse With the Golden Nose

by Cathy Ace

  Lizzie seemed a little flustered. “Well, you see, my particular hypnosis element focuses on stopping a person from wanting to light a cigarette, or cigar. If you don’t light it, you won’t smoke it. I mean, it’s bad enough as it is, without smoking someone else’s stub.”

  “Ew! True,” I exclaimed. Even I didn’t like the idea of sucking on a butt end that had already been in someone else’s mouth, and a filthy ashtray, to boot.

  Lizzie ploughed on. “Ellen eats at Marcel’s restaurant all the time—it’s pretty much underneath her apartment on the waterfront. She mentioned to me that she’s seen him pick up the discarded butts and take a drag on them before he stubs them out properly. In fact, his wife, Annie, was telling me at breakfast that he’s taken on the duty of ‘making sure the ashtrays are emptied’ with what she called ‘enthusiasm.’ I think I’d better have a quiet word with him, and pretty soon at that. Another failure for me, Grant.”

  “No, no, dear, he’s almost there. If he hadn’t ducked out of that final session with you, you’d have cracked it for him.”

  Lizzie looked somewhat pacified. “Yes, just one more and I’d have been able to fully balance his crown chakra, then he’d have been fine.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, “shame to not finish, really. Probably better to not start, if I can’t finish? I don’t want to go back to work and start following students around campus waiting for them to discard unstubbed cigarette ends.” I tried to add a chuckle, but it all seemed to fall rather flat.

  “We’re here,” announced Grant. We swung off Lakeshore Road and onto an unmade side road that headed straight up the vine-planted hillside to a large, unattractive, corrugated metal structure.

  “That’s the winery?” I must have sounded surprised. “The Mt Dewdney Family Estate Winery? I was expecting—well, not this.” I hadn’t meant to sound rude but it appeared the Jacksons took my comments in their stride.

  Lizzie smiled as she spoke. “The Newmans have kept it basic. Unlike the Souls who’ve turned their place into some sort of pseudo-Provençal monstrosity. They’ve got the golf course as well as the vineyards and orchards to buffer themselves from the rest of us, but all that other stuff they’ve built—the concert hall, the huge clubhouse, and the restaurant, of course. At least the Newman girls keep it simple, and honest. It’s just the working winery, with a small shop attached, and a patio for parties and barbeques in the summer. With them, it’s always been about the wine. With Sammy Soul, well, you never can tell what his next money-making scheme will be. That man’s chakras have probably been totally undermined by all those drugs he took in earlier decades. You’d think he’d listen to me, wouldn’t you, Grant? I mean, all that stuff he wrote about in his music, you’d think he’d understand that I could help him.”

  Grant nodded as we arrived at the front door of the small, unassuming tasting room and store. It abutted the massive green metal structure that housed the winery.

  “Thanks ever so much for the lift,” I said, as I rushed to get out of the car.

  “Sure thing,” called Lizzie, as she handed me a pamphlet about Faceting for Life. “I found it on the floor,” she added, smiling.

  “Thanks again.” I smiled back and waved, hoping they’d take the hint.

  “Quick, let’s escape,” I whispered to Bud.

  “Where do we go? Into the store?” he replied, also waving and smiling at the silently receding car. Creepy how those hybrids do that.

  “I suppose so. Let’s try it anyway,” I said, and pulled him toward the door.

  Inside the small, wooden structure the atmosphere was calm and inviting. It felt homey, somewhere you could linger, and relax. There were no seats, but a high counter ran the entire length of the side wall. Behind it stood a woman in her thirties with cropped chestnut hair and a welcoming expression. She was one of the women I’d missed the chance to meet at the cocktail party.

  “Welcome to Mt Dewdney Family Estate Winery,” she said. “How can I help you today?”

  “We’ve come to see Ellen,” replied Bud. “She’s expecting us, but we’re not sure where to find her office.”

  “Ah, are you Bud and Cait?” she replied. We nodded. “Oh great, I’m Bonnie. Ellen said to send you right up to her office.”

  We dutifully followed her instructions. I didn’t look down as I climbed the unenclosed stairway, ignoring the huge metal containers, miles of pipe work, and rows and rows of barrels below us, and I made it to the top without feeling too giddy. But I wasn’t looking forward to descending the stairs later when, let’s face it, you really do have to look down.

  “You okay?” asked Bud, concerned. He knows I have a bit of a thing about heights.

  I nodded. I was fine. We knocked, then entered Ellen’s office.

  The room was large, and lined with that dreadful synthetic wood-paneling that was so popular in the 1980s. My first impression was that it was creaking at the seams. Wine bottles—some full, others empty, some labeled, some unmarked—stood in among neatly stacked boxes and crates, with little piles of labels dotted about everywhere. At the center of the stacks was an immaculately well-ordered desk. There sat Ellen, her back to the window that overlooked the serried ranks of vines on the hillsides beyond. She was facing the boxes, angled away from the door. Odd choice!

  Looking up, she smiled weakly. “Hi,” she said quietly.

  She rose and nodded toward a laminate shelf that held some pretty complex coffee-making equipment.

  “Coffee?” she asked us both. “It’s kopi luwak,” she added.

  “You’re kidding?” I exclaimed. “Just your everyday coffee then, eh?”

  “It’s my little indulgence,” Ellen replied, looking a bit guilty.

  I eagerly accepted the cup Ellen offered. Bud less so.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it,” I said brightly, “that the folks who gather the beans for this coffee are quite happy to go poking around in civet dung just to harvest them?” As I spoke, I wafted the steam upward, then I took tiny sips of the piping hot fluid. It was magnificent: robust yet mellow, earthy but at the same time almost chocolatey, and syrupy, in an intriguing way.

  Bud had already placed his emptied cup back onto the desk. “Dung-harvested beans? Ugh!”

  “If it makes it any easier to swallow,” my eyebrow was playing around my face by now, “it’s the world’s most expensive coffee bean. Running at hundreds of dollars a pound, right, Ellen?”

  “Like I said, my indulgence,” she said.

  “Do you roast it yourself?” I asked.

  Ellen glowed. “Every morning, at home. I have an old batch roaster there, from the 1940s, and it does a great job. I just roast enough for the day, though I roasted some extra for you guys this morning.”

  “Where’d you manage to find an old roaster like that? They can’t be easy to come by.” I knew they weren’t.

  “Well, it’s funny you should ask, because I actually got it from Grant Jackson. When he sold his antiques business to come here, he brought a bunch of stuff he thought he might find useful, or decorative, you know, for the restaurant. When I saw the coffee roaster on display, just for show, we both agreed I could give it a better home, so he let me have it at a very reasonable price.”

  “Lucky,” I nodded. “Was that the sort of stuff he used to sell, then?” I asked. “Kitchenalia?”

  “Oh no, that was more luck. Someone had brought it in to him, trying to sell it, just when he’d decided to close down and open the restaurant here. He usually dealt in silver—you know, candlesticks and such like. Apparently he was very good at it, very knowledgeable. Not that you’d think it to look at him—all that jibber-jabber he’s into these days.”

  Bud decided, in my moment of contemplation, to take the bull by the horns and said boldly, “Ellen, were you able to dig up Annette’s will, the coroner’s file, her note, and another sample of her signature?” Way to go, Bud!

  Ellen reached into a drawer near her feet and passed two folders, plus a si
ngle sheet of paper to Bud. She also handed me a large board that was clearly the artwork for the label for the Annette Pinot Noir Ice Wine: a part of the label was Annette’s signature. “That signature was taken from Annette’s last birthday card to me. It’s definitely hers,” she said, grappling with the board. I looked at the board, then placed it carefully back on the desk. Bud handed all the other papers directly to me, then engaged Ellen in a bit of small talk about the office and its contents, as well as the winery below, earnestly leaning on the desk as he did so.

  As Bud chattered, I popped on my glasses and read through the paperwork, in my usual manner. At one point I stuck my nose into their conversation. Bud had asked Ellen why she had so many bottles of wine in the room, and then asked how many she had. I couldn’t resist, could I?

  “There are eighty-three bottles, sixty-seven of which are full.”

  Ellen stared at me.

  “It’s a thing I can do,” I said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have interrupted, but sometimes I can’t help myself. Okay, back to my reading.” A glance at Bud showed me he was displeased. Breaking eye contact with me, he tried to re-engaged Ellen with more fervor, but with no luck this time.

  “It seems to me,” Ellen said coolly, “that Cait does all your reading for you, Bud, which makes perfect sense, given her background.”

  Bud and I exchanged a glance. A glance which could not have gone unnoticed.

  “I ‘googled’ you,” said Ellen, looking at me. “Why on earth did you say that you teach marketing, when you’re actually quite well known as a criminal psychologist?”

  “I panicked,” I said, panicking.

  “I don’t think it was very nice of you to lie to me,” continued Ellen, sounding more than a little hurt. “I thought we trusted each other, Bud. I thought that meant something.”

  Bud was blushing too. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Cait thought it would be better if she was incognito, so to speak, if she and I were going to be on the lookout for murder suspects. The folks here might all know I’m a retired cop, but, if they thought that Cait was just my ‘plus one’ they might open up to her, more than they’d open up to me.”

  “And have they?” asked Ellen, reasonably enough.

  “Not so much,” I said, not straying too far from the truth. “It seems there isn’t that much to open up about.”

  “I see.” She added, “And what about those files? I’d rather you didn’t take them out of this office. Would you like some time to read them?” She asked pleasantly enough.

  I smiled. “No thanks, all done. Would you like them back?” I pushed them across the desk in her direction.

  Ellen looked at the papers, then me, then Bud. “Well, if you were only going to glance at them . . .” She sounded quite disgruntled.

  “Sorry, Ellen. I have a few questions, if you don’t mind?”

  “About what?” she asked, still obviously miffed.

  “Let’s start with the coroner’s file,” I began.

  “Okay,” she said, but added curiously, “How can you have read it all so quickly?”

  I hate discussing my special skills with anyone, so I just muttered, “I read fast, but that’s beside the point.” I continued. “First of all, because this was a clear case of suicide, there was no autopsy, right?” Ellen nodded, and Bud looked a little surprised. I turned to him. “It’s apparently quite usual, Bud, in this region. In these times of tight budgets, the coroner works closely with the family and the physicians of the deceased to understand their general state of mental and physical well-being at the time of death, to help decide if an autopsy’s needed or not.” Bud still looked unconvinced. I sighed. “Come on, Bud, you’ve been with homicide and the gang squad for so long now. When was it you were last involved with a suicide? Ten, fifteen years ago?”

  “I guess it must be about that,” he grudgingly agreed.

  “Times change, and policies change. Nowadays, if it’s clearly a suicide, and there’s no reason for the coroner to suspect anything else, there doesn’t need to be an autopsy.” Bud shrugged. I continued, “The file says your family physician reported that he hadn’t seen Annette in over a year, and that he wasn’t aware of any medical issues, and that you weren’t either. Is that right? Annette was in good health at the time of her death, as far as you knew?” Ellen nodded again. “The file also makes it clear that your sister’s body bore no marks of violence, restraint, or trauma. She hadn’t been held against her will, beaten, hit, or wounded at all, right?”

  “Correct,” replied Ellen, sounding apprehensive.

  “The coroner’s examination confirms that she died of carbon monoxide poisoning, and wasn’t moved after death: blood tests prove the CO levels, and rosy lividity on the rump, lower back, and the lower portions of the legs and feet was evident. She definitely died in the truck. So, if she didn’t kill herself, Ellen, how do you think someone convinced her to sit in that truck until she died?”

  I’d decided to tackle the toughest question first.

  Ellen thought for a moment, then said quietly, “I don’t know. She could have been drugged.”

  “The coroner did a normal toxicology test. They took samples of blood, urine, and vitreous fluid, and discovered alcohol in Annette’s blood, but that was it. No drugs, no other toxins.”

  Ellen pounced. “Well, maybe she was so drunk that she passed out and they carried her to the truck and placed her in it.”

  “You’d expect to see some marks on the body if that’s what happened, Ellen. It’s terribly difficult to carry an unconscious person without banging or bumping some part of the body, and she’d have been alive long enough for some bruising to have formed. Besides, it says here that Annette weighed one hundred and sixty pounds. It’s no mean feat to lift that weight. You’d either need to be very strong . . .”

  “. . . or there were two people!” Ellen seemed quite excited.

  “So now we’re looking for a murderous team?” Bud asked. I knew he thought I was playing right into his “it was suicide” corner.

  “Oh dear,” said Ellen, looking confused.

  “We come to the coroner’s search of Anen House. He found nothing to indicate that there’d been a struggle, nothing out of place or broken. You yourself told him there was nothing missing.”

  “No, there wasn’t. Nothing missing,” replied Ellen distractedly.

  “That’s not all you told him, is it, Ellen?” I added. Bud was on the edge of his seat now.

  Ellen shook her head. She must have known what was coming next.

  I sat back in my chair and spoke softly. “Ellen, that morning, when you found your sister’s body and the coroner interviewed you, you told him that Annette had been acting oddly for weeks, didn’t you?” Ellen nodded, her eyes downcast. “You told him that you weren’t surprised that she’d killed herself, didn’t you?” Again, Ellen nodded. She seemed to be shrinking in her seat as I spoke. “You told him you were in no doubt that the signature on the note was your sister’s and that it didn’t surprise you that she’d typed it, right?”

  Bud was almost wriggling with anticipation next to me.

  “You also told the coroner that she must have planned to kill herself that way because she’d specifically borrowed your truck that evening.”

  Ellen broke down and sobbed.

  “I don’t get it,” whispered Bud as Ellen scrabbled around in her desk drawers, trying to find a tissue. “What’s that about borrowing Ellen’s truck?”

  “Annette drove a hybrid, Bud. Can you imagine how long it would take to kill yourself with the carbon monoxide coming out of one of those things?”

  “Right!” he exclaimed, looking triumphant. He cleared his throat. “Oh dear, come on Ellen. I think you’ve just got to face it, Annette meant to do it. She’d been planning it for weeks. She changed her will, borrowed your truck, prepared the note, drank the wine, and waited. I’m so sorry.” He got up and walked around the desk. Ellen rose from her seat, blubbing and shaking as she sobbed.
Bud put his safe arms around her. “There, there. It’s difficult, I know Ellen. You must see it now. Poor Annette meant to kill herself. It’s really quite clear.” He pulled back to let Ellen take some deep breaths. She looked completely deflated.

  “Oh God. Oh Annette, poor Annette,” she sobbed. “I wish I’d asked her what was wrong. I knew she was acting weirdly. I knew something wasn’t right, but she wouldn’t talk to me about it. And then, when she . . . when I found her, it was such a shock. But afterwards, when I thought about it . . . I just couldn’t believe it!” she drew a breath, and blew her nose. “Oh Bud, Cait, I’m so sorry. So very sorry. You’re right. I have to come to terms with it. I must. If I’d known what she was planning, maybe I could have talked her out of it. If only I’d gone to the house earlier . . .”

  “Ellen, you’ve read that file, like I have,” I said in my most sympathetic voice. “You know she was dead before midnight, and you got there at eight in the morning. So that’s that. An hour here or there wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  “Alright then,” replied Ellen angrily, “if I’d gone there the night before. If I’d gone then, I could have saved her.”

  “No, Ellen,” I said, more firmly this time, “It wouldn’t have made a difference. You told the coroner that Annette specifically asked if she could borrow your truck that night, so she must have had a plan, right?” Ellen nodded. “We know that she was having a bitter argument with someone on her phone as she drove up to the house that evening . . .”

  “What?!” exploded Ellen. “What do you mean? What argument? With who? Who saw the truck?” The words tumbled out of her, then she stopped and blew her nose.

  “It doesn’t matter who saw Annette,” I said. “All that matters is we know she was having a row with someone, and she was very upset . . .” I tried to continue, but Ellen interrupted me, angrily.

  “I bet it was Marlene Wiser, or Gordy. They’re always sticking their noses in where they aren’t wanted. Typical!” Ellen was clenching her little fists.

  She was clearly very angry, and I was just about to tell her that it was Colin who’d seen Annette that evening, not the Wisers, when Bud piped up. “Ellen, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you have to try to come to terms with things. You know what we learned about the stages of grieving?” Ellen nodded in Bud’s direction. “I suggest you take some time to gather yourself and think through how they apply to you, and Annette’s suicide.”