Grenache and Graves

by Sandra Woffington

  Valerie threw up a hand to stifle a laugh. “I understand. I’m new at this too.”

  Joy asked, “What led you down this path?”

  Valerie’s expression fell flat. Air left her lungs as if something had pressed on her chest and expelled it. “My father passed away years ago, but my mother died a few months ago. Neither of them were particularly religious. I guess I felt lost. I suppose the Celestial Moon Circle seems weird to you folks, but paganism is as old as mankind—and womankind—the focus is on the elements, natural energies. I also liked the idea of duality and a balance of male and female—god and goddess.”

  Max asked, “Did you see Jared acting strangely during the ceremony?”

  Valerie laughed but caught herself. “I’m sorry, but we stood in a circle, calling down the moon, while Ruby is slipping into a trance, and her voice changes, and you want to know if I saw anything strange. Sure—plenty!”

  “That was my thought, too,” said Max.

  Valerie wrinkled her forehead. “You know, now that I think of it, Jared did seem kinda woozy. But I thought it was just that he was entering a trance too.”

  “Did you see who was near him?” asked Joy.

  Valerie shook her head. “We had our eyes closed and just had our hands out touching Jared or Ruby. A minute later, someone screamed. Then I screamed and dove out of the circle.”

  Joy asked, “You were at the Ayahuasca ceremony on Friday night?”

  Valerie nodded. She pursed her lips. “It was going to be my first. Jared and Gunner and I were supposed to take it. And Gregor and Alizon were our sitters.”

  “Sitters?” asked Max.

  Valerie explained. “If all goes well, you throw up. Someone needs to sit with you to make sure you don’t gag or die. Or to be there if it’s a bad trip.” She paused. “I chickened out. Gregor was so kind, Alizon too. They said I could assist them and observe. So I did.”

  “Not my cup of tea—pun intended,” said Max.

  “Me too,” said Valerie. “You know, while we waited for Alizon to show up, Gunner and Jared stepped outside onto Gunner’s patio. I thought I’d join them. They were laughing. I asked what was so funny, and Gunner said, ‘Life is funny.’ Jared mocked him and told me, ‘Gunner is in love.’ Gunner said, ‘I admit it. I am in love. I never thought it would happen again.’ I congratulated him. I caught Alizon out of the corner of my eye. She stood in the doorway. She called us in. Said everything was ready.”

  “What about Alizon and Drew?” Max tapped his pen against his notebook. “What can you tell us about them?”

  Valerie bit her lip. “Not much—first impressions. I’d just met them maybe a month ago. Ruby gave me some instruction, but it mostly came from Gregor. The Mabon celebration was my first time with the entire circle. Ruby is super sweet; Alizon likes to wear her crown—if you know what I mean—queen bee; Crystal can swing from nice one minute, and if she feels threatened, to mean the next. Out of them all, Gunner and I hit it off right away, but I got to know Jared too.”

  Max couldn’t put his finger on it, but Valerie seemed ill at ease. Her leg bobbed. But it wasn’t unusual either. Many people felt intimidated or anxious in a police station. Valerie’s voice and tone carried a confident air.

  Joy said, “Tell us about Jared.”

  Valerie hesitated. Her chin dropped. “He’s so handsome—you know—I thought he didn’t care about anyone but himself, but he did. He really did. He’s a decent man.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell us?” Max realized his voice sounded desperate. They rarely had so many witnesses, yet no one saw what had happened.

  Valerie shook her head and dropped her eyes to the floor.

  “Thanks for coming in,” said Joy.

  Valerie rose to her feet. “I wish I could be more help.” She crossed the squad room and stepped through the doorway leading to the exit.

  Joy leaned back in her chair. “That was a waste of time. She barely knows any of them.”

  “She knows more than she’s telling us.” Max’s phone rang. “Hi, Angelo.” Max listened. “You got it. See you in a bit.” Max disconnected. “That was Angelo. He wants to see us pronto.”

  Max drove north on the freeway for a little over half an hour. The golden hills stretched out on either side, like lions basking in the sun. California’s coastal hills might be too small to impress inhabitants of other states who had bigger ranges to view, but Max saw the valley as golden walls of protection and the mountain tops as a ridgeline of defense. To the east lay the San Jacinto range, named after a black friar, Saint Hyacinth in English. A hop over the hills to the west led to the Pacific Ocean.

  Max turned off of the freeway, cruised down a main boulevard, and turned into the coroner’s forensic facility, a two-story building of beige stone with a dark bank of windows that ran the length of the building.

  Max and Joy walked toward the visitor’s entrance of olive-green. The building held an administrative wing, visitor’s check-in and waiting area, and offices for the medical examiners; a bio-hazard wing held the autopsy suite, corpse holding rooms, and laboratory suites.

  Before they even stepped inside, Max prepared himself for the assault on his nostrils: the stench of chemicals and death. He’d smelled the forensic suite again and again, just like people who worked in hospitals or at other jobs where strong smells cracked a whip on the senses day-after-day. But he had a hard time ignoring them. The whip cracked every time. He braced for it.

  Max and Joy found Angelo in an autopsy suite filled with stainless steel tables, jars of formalin, bone-cutting saws and dissection tools, vials with colored stoppers, scales, polished steel sinks, and a freezer that created a grisly workbench of sorts. The fluorescent fixtures hummed overhead.

  Angelo greeted them. His large gloved hands almost looked cartoonish jutting out of his white lab coat. “This has been a day of surprises. Come.” Angelo led them over to a body on a steel table covered by a blue sterile body sheet. Angelo peeled back the sheet.

  Max and Joy stared at Jared. Even in death, his model-like features and wavy, shoulder-length blond hair gave him presence.

  Joy noticed too. “That’s the best-looking dead man I’ve ever seen.”

  Angelo shot her a confused glance. “Hmmm. I hadn’t noticed. I guess I’m more focused on what’s under the hood. As suspected, the knife killed him. It penetrated his heart. I’m not happy with the angle of penetration, but not so unhappy, I can say it was foul play. He’s got a slew of broken ribs. It’s a mess in there. But I did find a puncture wound in the heart. That’s what killed him.”

  With gloved hands, Angelo held his finger at an angle. “From what was in your report, these people pointed the blade at their chest for some kind of ritual channeling. Like I said before, this blade rushed up under his rib cage. Either it was a freak accident or someone holding the knife set it just under the notch of his ribs and shoved upward, killing him instantly. If that’s the case, the killer was most likely shorter than Jared, because he’s six-foot-six, a tall man. The blade itself is worthless—too many prints to count. But it’s sharp on both sides, so to be blunt, the force necessary to thrust the blade upward would be easy for anyone.”

  “Drugs?” asked Max.

  “Too soon to know, but he’d taken a capsule of some kind. It was partially digested in his small intestine. The lab has it.”

  Joy mused, “Perhaps Gregor’s herbal anxiety capsules.”

  “Possible,” added Max.

  Angelo covered Jared’s face. “I saved the best for last.” He stepped over to another metal table and turned down the blue sheet. “Mercy Summerfield. I sent hair and nail samples to the lab. We have to wait on those, but I wanted to give her a thorough exam, so I used the portable ultrasound machine. Mercy Summerfield is pregnant. Maybe twelve or fourteen weeks. I extracted the baby’s DNA, but it’s not much help without a family comparison.”

  Max and Joy gasped at the same time. Max said it first, “Belle knows a love
story, more of a legend, about one of her relatives, Little Wolf, an Indian who worked for Mercy’s father. Mercy supposedly fell in love with him.”

  Angelo’s Italian nature came out. “Amore.” He glanced down at the dead girl. “Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Even worse,” said Joy. “Juliet and an unsuitable pauper from a different ethnic group, who worked for her tyrannical father.”

  “We need that tox screen ASAP,” reminded Max.

  Angelo promised, “I’ll call you as soon as I have it.”

  “We’ll bring Belle in. You can take a blood test, right?” asked Max.

  “That I can. We can match her DNA to the baby’s and see if they’re related.”

  Max and Joy left the building.

  As they hopped into Max’s car and buckled up, Max grew angry. “How could a father, mother, brother, or cook poison Mercy, watch her suffer in agony, and bury her, just because she fell in love—Joy, there’s nothing honorable about that! We have to stop calling this sort of thing an ‘honor’ killing—it’s murder—cold-blooded—despicable murder!” He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine fired up.

  “I couldn’t agree more. I’m with Jaxon on this one—we may not find out who, Max—but we will find out the truth. Did Mercy die of natural causes? Or was she poisoned?”

  “Call Belle. We’re getting her back to the lab. Now, if she can break away.”

  “Can I see her, Max?” Belle sat in a chair in the lab, while Rose, a middle-aged lab technician and phlebotomist withdrew vial after vial of blood from Belle’s arm. Rose wore a hair cover, gloves, blue booties, and a white lab coat.

  Max called Angelo on his cell phone. “Belle wants to see her.”

  “Bring her over,” said Angelo.

  The technician withdrew the needle and put a cotton ball and a band-aid in the crook of Belle’s arm. “Keep pressure on it.”

  “I know the drill,” said Belle.

  Max and Joy escorted Belle from the lab and to the autopsy suite. Angelo led her over to a stainless steel table covered with a blue body sheet.

  Belle stood beside the table, peering down and anxiously awaiting the big reveal.

  Angelo warned her. “She’s pretty desiccated. Although, I have to say, she’s probably better preserved if she had been poisoned. Odd fact about arsenic.”

  Belle gave Angelo a gentle nod. “If she was Little Wolf’s love and his child’s mother, I want to see her. She’s my family.”

  “You can’t touch her,” Angelo reminded as he lifted the sheet.

  Belle stared at Mercy’s taut skin pulled tight over her facial bones, her scrawny delicate neck, and her long, faded hair. “I think she’s smiling. At all of us. Because we know she’s someone’s mama.” Belle, rarely emotional, cleared her throat. Her eyes welled, but she refused to turn away and refused to let a tear drop.

  Max put a gentle arm around Belle’s shoulders. “We’ll find out what happened to her.”

  Belle smiled up at Max. Her fierce brown eyes met his soft blue ones. “Her spirit won’t rest until we do.” Belle’s eyes dropped back to the corpse. “Her spirit speaks. I hear you, Mercy.”

  Joy added, “We all hear her, Belle.”

  Angelo concurred. “That we do.”

  Belle nodded, and Angelo pulled the sheet up over Mercy’s face.

  On the drive back to town, Belle stared out the window. “I owe Jaxon Summerfield a lifetime supply of hamburgers.”

  Joy cautioned her, “We don’t have the answers yet.”

  Belle let out a sigh of acknowledgement. “Time will tell. The baby might not be any kin of mine. But Mercy’s spirit is free—so is her baby’s. That secret can’t be stuffed back in her grave.”

  Max and Joy could not refuse Belle’s offer of a free lunch, not because it was free, but because Belle needed them to stay. She needed to cook for others and maintain her routine.

  For the first time Max could remember, she got their orders wrong. Max had ordered a Rustler Burger, two patties of beef, but she brought him the Bronco Bacon burger, which he did eat pretty often. Joy ordered the Sissy Burger, a meat patty with no bun and a side salad, but she got her usual fruit and nut salad instead. They ate and didn’t complain.

  “Let’s see what we can find on the Summerfield family,” suggested Joy.

  Max bit into his burger, relishing Belle’s homemade barbecue sauce with just the right amount of sweet and kick—the perfect companion to bacon cooked just right, crunchy but not over-cooked.

  Max swallowed and washed down his burger with iced tea. He hated to admit that Joy was right about his sugar habit—donuts, ice cream shakes, root beer floats, and colas. He’d made a concerted effort to make healthier choices, but as he belted back his tea, he eyed the sugar packets with longing. “I’ll call our librarian friend. Maybe she knows where to start.” Max and Joy had met Sophia on another case.

  “Ah, Sophia. Good idea. I’ll see what I can find online too.”

  As they waited for their check, Max called the Wine Valley Library. “Can I speak to Sophia Hansen? This is Detective Max King of the Wine Valley P.D.”

  Sophia picked up the phone. “Detective King? Is everything all right?”

  “I’m in need of a knowledgeable librarian. You probably heard about the opening of Mercy Summerfield’s tomb. I need to know the history of her family. Where would I start?”

  “I owe you one for your discretion. Leave it with me. When do you need it by?”

  “I’ll take it as fast as you can get it to me,” said Max.

  “I have a friend who knows a lot about the family. Local history buff. Let me see what he knows.”

  “Thanks. Call me when you have something.”

  “I will.”

  Joy put cash on the tray to pay for her meal. “Next on the list?”

  Max added his cash to the tray. “The queen bee and her drones.”

  10

  Max enjoyed the drive to the creek, a sparsely populated, wild region south of Vinoville. Goldrush Creek—an offshoot of a river that ran southwest from Riverside and through Wine Valley—veered west and eventually spilled into the vast Pacific Ocean.

  On the way to Ruby’s house, Joy commented, “Ironic that Moon is really their last name—Alizon’s and Ruby’s, at least.”

  “I know. I thought it might be a kind of stage name, a pseudonym.”

  “These people live an in-the-circle kind of life, so I’m thinking it’s better to split them up for the cognitive interviews, but let’s see what they can tell us together, and then let’s split them up.”

  “Dibs on Drew.” Max drove past the equestrian center on the left, a sign they would soon leave the city behind them.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to piss off a witchy woman. Or two.”

  “Superstitious?”

  “A little. Hexes. Curses. Spells. Dark magic. Light magic. Flying ointment. Poison frogs. Drew seems like the mild-mannered one of the bunch. ‘Hell hath no fury,’ as they say.”

  “They do say that. ‘Like a woman scorned.’ Okay. I’ll take Alizon first and Ruby second. But you do know what they say about the quiet ones, right? He might be the killer.”

  “If you can’t find me later, but you come across a hideous toad, take it home.”

  Max parked in front of a quaint home, surrounded by spruce, oak, and other native trees, tall grasses, chaparral, and wild shrubs. A small garden grew along the side of the house. Rippling water and chirping birds created a peaceful, natural song.

  Max knocked on the door of the single-story modest home painted pale green and trimmed in white. A small white car sat in front. It had a green logo with a vine and green leaves that read, “Over the Moon, Holistic Healing.” A second car, a silver SUV, had vanity plates that read “QUEENBE.”

  Drew swung open the door. “Detectives, please come in.”

  Max and Joy stepped into a tranquil indoor garden—pastel green walls, forest green carpet, and furnit
ure with green and white fabric, alive with tropical vines and leaves. Woven baskets contained large and small living plants, bringing the outside in. Soothing scents filled the air.

  Ruby and Alizon prepared concoctions in the kitchen. Small bottles with toppers lined the white tile counter. They both stopped upon seeing Max and Joy.

  Drew pointed to the two armchairs. Max sat in one.

  Joy sat in the other. “How are you, Ruby?”

  Ruby wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. “Not at all well.” She untied her apron, set it on the counter, stepped into the living room, and sat beside her father on the sofa. “I lost my best friend in the world.” Upon saying it, her eyes welled up. Alizon, taking a seat beside her, handed Ruby a kitchen towel still clutched in her hand.

  Ruby wiped a falling tear. Her puffy red eyes showed she’d cried heavily and steadily. Max surmised that Alizon had attemped to keep her busy in the kitchen as a distraction. Ruby pushed back her unkept dark tresses. She wore no makeup. Her eyes barely held focus. She’d most likely not been sleeping well.

  Joy commented, “Valerie mentioned that Jared seemed woozy during the ceremony. Did any of you notice that?”

  Alizon jumped in first. “We all probably looked woozy chanting and dancing.” Alizon wore a tie-dyed black-and-white tank dress reminiscent of a spiderweb pattern. It dipped low enough in front to show her cleavage. Silver pentagrams hung from her ears. A large silver ring with a black stone carved with a scorpion added to her pagan attire. Her short-cropped hair feathered in various directions, giving her a stereotypical visage of a modern-day witch. She sported her paganism with pride.

  Keep your mind open, Max. He needed to take it in, every word. Only then could he figure out what had happened to Jared. This case challenged his ability to do that, which was the other reason he’d selected Drew, presupposing that at least they had their maleness in common.

  Drew, wearing casual slacks and a tan cotton shirt, shook his head. “I was focused on Ruby, on channeling energy to her trance.”