1 Died On The Vine

by Joyce Harmon

  I patted his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Luther. It hasn’t exactly been pleasant for us, either.”

  “Hell, I know that. But if the paper starts running any of those No Leads In Murder of Prominent Virginian headlines, then the shit will really hit the fan.”

  “Maybe I can help. Can you get me the reports on all these people and what they say they were doing, and when, and who verifies them?”

  “You aren’t going to rest until you get me into trouble, is that right?”

  “Now, Luther, I’m just trying to save your department from the multi-million dollar lawsuit that Jack and I will file if we’re arrested and cleared.”

  “I’ll get the darn things copied and over to you. But remember this,” he leveled a finger at me for emphasis. “If you’re caught with those reports, I’ll say you broke into the computer. I won’t know a thing about it.”

  “Gotcha. No computer is safe from Cissy the Cyberterrorist.”

  Janie was waving at Luther from the other side of the enclosure. They had another customer. Luther waved back and turned to me. “Got to go. But if you have any bright ideas, I’d sure like to hear them.”

  “You’ll be the first to know,” I assured him sincerely.

  I walked back to the firehouse thinking gloomy thoughts.

  “What’s the matter?” Julia asked. “Won’t Luther help?”

  I sat down behind our bake sale table. “Oh, he’ll give me the reports. But I don’t think it will do any good. The only people who could have done all the things we’re assuming the murderer did are me and Jack. And if I’m caught with the reports, Luther will ‘disavow all knowledge of my actions’.”

  Julia was momentarily diverted. “Oh, I loved that show. Dibs on the Barbara Bain role.”

  “It’s yours. I always thought you were miscast as Woodward anyway. But this really is starting to look like a Mission Impossible.”

  “Oh, pooh. Look, if it isn’t possible for anyone we’ve currently identified to have done all these things, there are several other good possibilities.”

  “Such as?”

  “Number one, maybe we’re wrong about what the murderer did when. Or number two, maybe several people are involved and we’ve got a conspiracy. Or number three, there’s someone else that we don’t know about yet. Those alibi reports will help us, anyway.”

  “How?”

  “Well, let’s say conspiracy. I think Calgary and Harkey would make a good choice. The scam victim and the disillusioned employee. Let’s see if the two of them together could have done everything.”

  “I still think motive is pretty shaky.”

  “We’ll worry about that when we figure out which combinations could have done the deed, or sequence of deeds. Anyway, keep your chin up. There’s plenty we still can do.”

  She produced two quarters and dropped them in the change box, selected the two largest brownies and handed me one. Chocolate helps.

  FIFTEEN

  Sunday was my day of rest.

  Like most Sundays, a good chunk of the day was devoted to the Post. I noticed that Mary had not been idle. A profile of Winslow in the Style section was headed “Merchant of False Hope” and bylined “by Mary Nguyen, Special to the Washington Post.”

  It did not read like the typical daughter’s eulogy. To say the least.

  Some time in the afternoon, I heard tires on the gravel at the front and Polly galloped eagerly to the door. But whoever it was drove off again.

  Later I found an unmarked envelope in the mailbox. It was the alibi data. Luther was still maintaining plausible deniability.

  I walked slowly back to the house, paging through the reports. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. This would have to go on Julia’s timeline, which had become a sheaf of index cards and then transferred to a long swath of pin-feed computer paper.

  Back in the kitchen, I called Julia. “Agent X has come through with intel on subjects’ movements,” I reported.

  “Excellent!” said Julia. “Can I come get it?”

  “Be my guest. It gives me a headache.”

  A few minutes later, Julia breezed in and made landing at the coffee pot. “How old is this?” she asked. The answer must not have been important, since she downed half the cup before I answered.

  “That’s only been there since Thanksgiving.”

  “Wonderful.” She never listens to me.

  I handed her the reports and she leafed through them. “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Ah-ha.”

  “Are you picking up anything in all that verbiage?” I asked in astonishment.

  Julia flipped the pages closed. “Not really,” she admitted. “But it is odd how little is known about Winslow’s movements that week. Of course, all these other people are alive to ask, and what they say may not be true. And Winslow was his own boss and single besides, so no one would be keeping track of him, except a housekeeper who apparently didn’t like him very much.”

  “And that suggests what?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest. But if we knew what he was up to with this Jimmy scam, it might tell us why he was murdered. You know, if I were writing this mystery, I certainly wouldn’t have made him the victim! He’s much more plausible as the villain of the piece.”

  “Can’t be helped. The Lord moves in mysterious ways and so on.”

  “I find it very unsatisfactory,” Julia said with a sniff. She sat down at the table and pulled out her roll of paper. “And if that young snip of a Commonwealth’s Attorney thinks he can pin this on you or Jack, all I can say is Likely Story!”

  She began transferring data from the reports to her roll, which she spread from one side of the table to the other.

  I got back to work on the kitchen countertops. Both cats are such messy eaters.

  After a few minutes, Julia looked up. “You know what I’ve been thinking? I could really go for some Vietnamese food.”

  “Really? I’ve never had any. Is it like Chinese? Or Thai? I like Thai.”

  “I’ve never tried it either. Don’t you think it’s about time we did?” She gave me a meaningful look.

  So I’m slow. I was finally catching on. “Where do you suggest we go?”

  “Where’s that place that Mary’s mother owns?”

  “Falls Church, I think.”

  “Why don’t we try that? Tomorrow?”

  “I take it we’ll be spying on that poor woman.”

  “Honestly, Cissy. You have to admit she’s got a stake of some sort in this. And we’ve never met her. Come on, what harm can a little dinner do?”

  “Okay, it’s a date.”

  That evening, Jack was understandably skeptical. “You girls are going to drive four hours to try a new restaurant? Right!”

  I snuggled up to him in the recliner and said pitifully, “Come on, hon, we have to do something.”

  “And what do you expect to find out?”

  “I have no idea! But what am I supposed to do, sit around and wait for Sheriff Peters to come arrest you? Luther Dawson as good as told me they’re out of ideas. I think he even wants me to snoop around.”

  “Boy, he must be desperate.”

  I stroked his neck; that usually works. “Look, you can at least work in the vineyard. I’m all caught up on my work and have nothing to do but worry. At least let me do something.”

  “Did I say you couldn’t go? And when did you ever do what I said anyway? Go. Have a great time. Bring me back an egg roll. But don’t give that poor lady too much grief. I’d say that Winslow gave her enough.”

  I kissed the top of his head. “You’re a good man, Jack.”

  The following afternoon, Julia and I set out on our restaurant excursion.

  The Café Hue was located in a small strip mall along Route 7. It was an unpretentious little place in an area well furnished with Asian groceries and palm readers.

  Julia and I studied the menu in the window for a moment and then entered. The café wasn’t the overwhelmingly oriental that you see in small town Chines
e restaurants. No paper lanterns or snarling dragons. The main items of décor were large framed photographs of the travel poster variety. And I noticed that the small Buddha on the floor by the cash register had been given a cup of tea. I liked that.

  A man looked out from the kitchen and invited us to “sit anywhere”.

  We took a table beside one of the posters. I liked the scene. The fields were extremely green and the mountains surprisingly vertical. It looked like a place I would like to go on vacation.

  The young girl who brought our menus was obviously not Mary’s mother. She was probably ten years younger than Mary.

  I took my menu and hissed to Julia, “Now what?”

  Julia was already engrossed in the menu. “Look, Cissy! Vietnamese beer. Let’s try that.”

  “Might as well,” I grumbled. “All the wine is Californian.”

  “I’m not saying they should carry Passatonnack,” I said. “We’re a small place and can’t supply every restaurant. But there are larger wineries, every bit as good as California. Why not show a little local pride? How about some Prince Michel or Ingleside Plantation?”

  “Oh, take a vacation, Cis.” Julia waved the waitress over and ordered two beers.

  “Say, this is pretty good,” she said after her first sip. “Do you suppose Jimmy ever tried this beer?”

  “I doubt it. He was flying off a carrier and never even set foot in Viet Nam. Until his plane crashed, which isn’t really setting foot.” I was suddenly terribly saddened by the thought. “Doesn’t that seem awful? Your final resting place being a place you’d never even visited? At least the Yankees buried in Virginia actually were on the ground before getting shot.”

  “I don’t think they had much time for sight-seeing, anyway,” Julia said practically. She was examining the bottle label. “But I doubt if Jimmy would have had any of this – it says ‘Made In Hanoi’.”

  I laughed and shook off my gloomy mood. “And I remember one of the Marine wives telling me that all the bars in Saigon sold American beer.”

  Julia shook her head ominously. “Well, if we can’t fight a war without shipping our own beer halfway around the world, no wonder we lost.”

  “That’s a thought.”

  We turned our attentions to the menu. The selections were accompanied by English descriptions but that didn’t help much.

  “What on earth are funny noodles?” Julia asked.

  “I don’t know. What about camp-fired chicken?”

  “I guess there’s one way to find out.”

  So Julia ordered the beef with funny noodles (Bun bo xao) and I ordered the camp-fired chicken (ga xao lua hong).

  Funny noodles turned out to be lovely little rice noodles. And my camp-fired chicken arrived bubbling fiercely in a stone pot.

  Julia dug into her funny noodles, deploying her chopsticks with more gusto than accuracy. “This is fun!” she said. Maybe she really was in the mood for Vietnamese food.

  I sampled my chicken cautiously. Spicy. Julia was right - this was fun.

  Julia looked up from her large bowl. “What wine would Jack recommend with this?”

  “I don’t know about Vietnamese, but he always says the correct wine for Chinese food is beer.” I waved at the waitress and pointed at our beer bottles. Two new bottles were produced.

  “Attagirl,” said Julia. She looked up as the door opened. “Uh-oh.”

  I was facing away from the door and turned around. Mary was just coming in, with Andrew.

  You can’t really hide in these little strip mall restaurants, so there was nothing to do but brazen it out.

  Mary smiled at us, but it wasn’t exactly a warm smile. “Well, if it isn’t the Snoop Sisters.”

  Julia waved her chopsticks. “That’s us. These funny noodles are great.”

  “I’m glad you approve.” She didn’t really sound like she meant it.

  Mary and Andrew took seats several tables over, and Mary parked her purse and went into the back. She returned with a middle-aged woman and introduced her to Andrew. So here was Mary’s mother. The top of her head didn’t even reach Mary’s shoulder. She smiled at Andrew and took a seat with the couple. I noticed that they didn’t have menus; it seemed that Mom was telling them what they were having for dinner.

  After a few minutes, she returned to the back of the restaurant.

  Andrew spoke over the intervening space to us. “Well, this is nice.”

  “Isn’t it?” Julia agreed enthusiastically. “Try that Vietnamese beer.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  Mary said, “Oh, what the hell,” and the two of them relocated to our table.

  She shook a finger under Julia’s nose. “You’d better leave my mother alone.”

  Julia was unflappable. “We do have to be thorough, dear. Do you want Cissy or Jack to go to prison?”

  “No, of course not. But I don’t see what Mom can do for you.”

  “I don’t know either. But maybe she knows some background. Who knows? – maybe the motive for the whole thing is from something that happened during the war.”

  Mary chuckled. “I hardly think so. Read your history books. If someone had wanted to kill Obie during the war, they wouldn’t have waited this long. Plenty of unpopular officers met with unfortunate accidents in that war.”

  I said, “The truth is that we’re fresh out of ideas. And the Commonwealth’s Attorney is getting restless. So we’re just poking around.”

  Mary’s mother returned with huge bowls for Andrew and Mary. I peered into their bowls with interest. It seemed to be some sort of soup, with meat and vegetables and noodles. There were bean sprouts on the side and a leafy sprig of something. Mary saw my curiosity and tore off a leaf for me. “Sweet basil,” she said.

  Andrew was following Mary’s lead. It seemed the soup was to be eaten with both the chopsticks and the spoon. I admired his skill with chopsticks. I needed practice myself.

  After seeing that everyone was well occupied, Mary’s mother smiled at us all and went to a table in the corner, where she joined an Asian man in a three-piece suit. He was elegant and middle-aged, and my first thought was ‘diplomat’.

  “That’s Rene,” Mary said, following my glance. “He’s the chef at Grand Folly.”

  “Grand Folly!” Andrew was impressed. “That’s one of the best restaurants in the District. Certainly one of the most expensive.”

  “Before the war, he ran the best restaurant in Saigon,” Mary said. “He moved here a long time ago. Before the war ended, anyway. No leaky boat for Rene; he flew first class. He’s been wanting to marry Mom for years. Now maybe he’ll have his chance.”

  “Why now?” Andrew wanted to know.

  “Mom always insisted she was married to Obie. She’s Catholic, you know, so as far as she was concerned, they were married ‘till death do us part’.”

  “Despite the inconvenient American wife?” Julia asked.

  “Believe it or not. Mom and Obie were married in the cathedral in Hue, so I guess Mom always figured that made it legal. Or at least that God was watching and taking notes.”

  “Hue,” Andrew said. “That wasn’t a good place to be a Catholic during the war. I’ve been doing some reading,” he explained.

  “You’re right about that,” Mary told him. “Mom and Obie were married, and then along came the Tet Offensive and that’s when things really got confused. Obie was off with his unit, wherever they were, and the Communists took Hue and all the Catholics that were smart and lucky got out of there in a hurry. Mom never did track Obie down after that, and I came along just a few months later. I wasn’t exactly a nine-month baby, as they say.”

  Julia leaned forward. “What’s Rene’s last name?”

  “Phan,” Mary replied. Seeing Julia make an entry in her little notebook, she asked suspiciously, “Why?”

  Julia flipped the notebook closed with a regretful head shake. “Well, dear, it is a motive.”

  SIXTEEN

  “You’d better
be joking,” Mary said.

  Andrew patted her hand. “Now, Mary – “

  She jerked her hand away. “Now nothing! And don’t you pat at me!”

  Julia just sat it out. Finally she said, “So we should just sit back and let the police arrest Cissy’s husband, is that what we should do?”

  “No, of course not,” Mary said sulkily. “But I don’t like the idea of you picking on my mother’s sweet old beau.”

  “I’m sorry,” Julia said, “but his name goes in the pot right along with the rest of us.”

  And on that less than amicable note, our outing ended.

  The next day I walked Polly down to Julia’s where we puzzled over the timeline like ancient diviners studying the entrails of a sheep. The timeline probably smelled better, but the signs were just as cryptic.

  It was discouraging. But it was hard to stay discouraged on the walk back. The honeysuckle was in bloom, Polly was being bouncy and irrepressible, and it looked as if the eagles’ nest might have a few more sticks to it. And as we walked up the hill, I was passed at high speed by what seemed to be a large insect. It took me a moment to realize it was a hummingbird.

  I made a mental note to get the hummingbird feeder out of winter storage and mix up a batch of nectar, and puffed on up the hill.

  The back yard was occupied. Craig was at the picnic table, sitting at one end so he could keep his stiff leg straight. He was eating a bologna sandwich. And sitting opposite him was Andrew, who was questioning him about the VA hospital.

  “No, they really did a good job,” Craig was saying. “Things got pretty crowded after Tet, but it wasn’t near as bad as some of the other places. Oh, hi, Miz Rayburn.”

  Andrew turned and said, “Hello, Cissy. I’m just hearing about the VA hospital in my district.” (‘My district’, already! The kid’s pretty cocky!)

  “They had some pretty old stuff back then, but they’ve been modernized,” Craig told him. “I’ve been back a few times, never had any problem with them.”

  I took a seat at the table and Polly approached Craig to see if there was any bologna with her name on it. Craig scratched her ears. “Funny old Pol,” he told her and handed her a corner of his sandwich. She accepted it delicately and turned away to consume it. Then she returned to his side, her eyes beaming her total devotion.