Of Merlot & Murder (A Tangled Vines Mystery)

by Joni Folger

  He held onto C.C. in a virtual bear hug as she struggled to free herself and tears began to stream down her cheeks. When she finally stopped fighting him, he held her close while she clung to him, sobbing against his shoulder. Looking over her head, his gaze connected with Elise’s and he read the heartbreak in her eyes. She pressed her fingers to her trembling lips as she struggled to hold back her own tears.

  “Darlin’, I’m so sorry,” he murmured again next to C.C.’s ear. “I’m going to find the bastard who did this. I promise.”

  Madison and Ross walked up at that moment, and both wore concerned looks.

  “What’s going on?” Ross asked when he saw C.C. crying on Jackson’s shoulder. “Good Lord, what’s happened now?”

  “Grace Vanderhouse was killed,” Elise told them in a quiet voice filled with sorrow.

  “What?” Madison turned to Jackson, and her shock was clear. “When? How?”

  “We haven’t gotten many details yet,” he said before shaking his head. “It looks like she was strangled in the women’s restroom, but we’ll have to wait for confirmation. Doc Nagle came in with the ambulance and estimates time of death to be within the last couple of hours, three at the outside. Couldn’t have been more than that, since C.C. had lunch with her. But again, we’ll have to take statements, put together a timeline.”

  “What the hell is going on around here, Jax?” Ross asked in anger. “This is crazy. First Divia Larson and now Grace? This is a small community. How does something like this happen in a venue crowded with people? And in broad daylight?”

  “I don’t know. These are public restrooms, but they’re fairly secluded back here behind the restaurant booths.” Jackson handed his handkerchief to C.C. to wipe her eyes. “Regardless, someone had to have seen or heard something. We’ll follow the evidence from there, see where it takes us.”

  “Jax, do you think this could have been some sort of coincidence?” Elise asked. “I mean, it just seems odd that Divia and Grace were so closely related in the past, and both have died violently within days of each other.”

  “I don’t know that either, and although I’m not going to speculate, you know how I feel about coincidences. In my limited experience, when it comes to homicide, they’re a very rare thing,” he replied. “But again, we’ll wait and see what the evidence tells us.”

  C.C. sniffed and seemed to get herself under control. “Jackson, you said you would find the bastard who did this. Does that mean you think a man killed her, or is it possible that a woman committed this crime?”

  “Well, Grace was a fairly small woman,” he answered with a shrug. “I suppose someone larger—man or woman—could have done the deed, but they would’ve had to have been pretty strong. Why do you ask, C.C.? Do you know something I don’t?”

  He narrowed his eyes as he watched her shift a glance to Elise before answering. There was obviously something going on there—something he was pretty certain he wasn’t going to like.

  She shook her head after a brief pause. “I was just wondering, that’s all.”

  Elise gave him a resigned look when he raised his eyebrows at her. “You know we’re having the usual Sunday dinner way late tonight because it’s the last day of the festival and closing wasn’t until four o’clock. Gram wants to sit down at the table about eight. Are you coming by? There are a few things we should probably talk about.”

  More like a few things you feel the need to confess?

  He stared at her a moment longer as he worked through his annoyance before nodding. “I’m hoping to make dinner. We’ll see how it goes, but for now, I need y’all to clear out. Go home. Please. The less people milling around, the faster we can wrap up here at the scene.”

  He turned and put a hand on C.C.’s shoulder. “I don’t know exactly what your relationship was or how close you were with Grace, but I won’t rest until I find the person responsible for her death.”

  “Thanks, Jax.” She dabbed at a fresh round of tears with his hankie before continuing. “I’d known her a few years and considered her a good friend.” When she looked up at him, her drenched eyes nearly broke his heart. “I trust you to bring the person who did this terrible thing to justice.”

  _____

  By the time Jackson and Deputy Stockton had wrapped their investigation out at the fairgrounds and left the crime scene crew to do their thing, most of the vendors had closed up shop and headed home or gone back to their motels.

  With the family dinner postponed until early evening, he thought he could actually attend if no other calamities materialized before then. He could use one of Miss Abby’s home-cooked meals, and the possibility of dragging a bit more information out of Elise was enticing. From the look on her face earlier, he had a sneaking suspicion that she’d left out several crucial details during their previous chat.

  Shaking his head, a ghost of a smile touched his lips. The woman drove him to distraction on most days. He may have known her for a large chunk of his life, but now that they were dating, the dynamics of their relationship had changed in subtle ways. And he was more than ready to take it to the next level.

  However, the latest report had just come back from the crime lab, and it wasn’t good news. He worried about how it was going to affect not just his relationship with Elise, but with the entire Beckett family.

  Jackson and Jim drove back to the department in silence, each with their own thoughts. When they walked into Jackson’s office twenty minutes later, the deputy spoke up as if clearly reading the troubling thoughts swirling around in Jackson’s head.

  “So, are you going out to River Bend tonight?”

  Jackson sighed. “Looks that way, unless something else comes up in the next hour or so.”

  “What are you going to tell the Becketts? About the report findings, I mean?”

  “I’m going to tell them the truth, though I know it won’t be taken well. Finding Miss Abby’s fingerprints on the wine bottle isn’t a smoking gun, but—”

  “It makes the situation sticky,” Jim finished for him.

  Jackson nodded and opened the report on his desk. “Yes, it does. It helps that we could verify the phone call and the texts that Miss Abby said she received from Mrs. Larson that night. But the Becketts are very tight-knit, so they won’t like the rest of what I have to tell them.”

  Jim leaned back in the chair on the other side of the desk and stretched out his legs in front of him. “They have to know that you’ve got to follow all the leads, right?”

  “Laura and Miss Abby understand that, but I’m sure that at least one of them will see it as an attack on the family the minute that I bring it up.”

  “Even coming from you?”

  “Especially coming from me,” Jackson replied with a laugh. “Trust me, that’ll be Ross’s slant.”

  “But for all intents and purposes, you’re part of the family, right? I thought he was supposed to be your best friend—like a brother.”

  “Yes. He is.” Jackson paused and rubbed his eyes, thinking he really needed a solid eight hours of sleep sometime soon.

  “Then what’s his problem?”

  “Come on, Jim. We went through this dance back during Edmond Beckett’s murder investigation. Remember? Ross accused me of being disloyal, of not protecting the family.”

  “Oh yeah. Wow. That’s harsh. But then, you and I both know that there’s no way Abigail DeVries killed anyone.”

  “No, I don’t think she killed Divia Larson, if that’s what you mean.” He grinned at the other deputy. “But that’s not to say that I don’t think Miss Abby is perfectly capable of committing the crime. Because I spent a lot of time at River Bend growing up, I know that woman would take someone out in a New York minute if she thought her family was being threatened. However, she wouldn’t use poison, I can tell you that.”

  Jim chuckled. “No. I don’t imagine she wo
uld. I expect she’d use something with a little more muscle behind it—like a shotgun.”

  “Yeah. And she’d proudly take ownership of the act.” Pursing his lips, he perused the report again briefly. “Most of these findings are circumstantial, anyway. Miss Abby manned the festival booth all day Thursday, and then worked out at the Wine Barrel on Friday. She could have sold the killer that bottle of wine at either place, anytime, on one day or the other.”

  “Which would account for her fingerprints being the only prints on the bottle,” Jim added. “She puts the wine in a paper bag when she sells it and hands it to the perp. He or she, being careful not to add their own prints to the bottle, then leaves it in the room after the Larson woman is dead.”

  “Yeah, that fits.” Jackson nodded. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t look great that Miss Abby was the one to find the body, or that she has access to cyanide out at the vineyard where they use it for rodent control and the like. She has a romantic past with Garrett Larson and a contentious history with the dead woman. And, to make matters worse, she and Divia had words on Thursday afternoon in front of witnesses.”

  “You’re right. It doesn’t look great. And it doesn’t sound all that good when you say it out loud, either. But, like you said, it’s still entirely circumstantial, and it does help that the poison was only found in the Larson woman’s glass and not the bottle itself.”

  “I guess. I just wish there weren’t as many issues to clear up there—circumstantial or not.”

  Jim frowned and scratched his head. “There are other suspects. What about the Toussaints? You gonna cut ’em loose?”

  Jackson leaned back in his own chair and stared at the ceiling in contemplation. “I’d planned to earlier, but nearly everything about their interviews just rubs me wrong.”

  “You mean, the way they all alibied each other?” Jim shook his head. “I wasn’t buying what they were selling, either. No two people tell exactly the same story, even if they’re together the whole time and witness the same things. All three of the Toussaints told an identical tale—almost word for word. In my opinion, it had bullshit written all over it.”

  “Plus Monique Toussaint smoothly glossed over the whole cat-fight deal with the vic, but from all other accounts, the squabble was about what Monique suspected was going on between her husband and Divia Larson.”

  “So if Alain Toussaint and Mrs. Larson were heatin’ up the sheets—and Monique Toussaint found out—do you think she let Mr. Larson in on the fun?”

  “Or did he already know?” Jackson asked as he pulled up his email on the computer screen. “And that part about Toby Raymond’s ‘funny business with the books’? I want to know exactly what she meant by that.”

  “Yeah, if Toby was cookin’ the books out at Larson’s vineyard, how did Monique find out, and who else knew about it?”

  Jim stared at the wall for a moment, and Jackson could almost see the wheels turning in the man’s head. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Well, the other thing that bothered me about the Toussaint interviews was Philippe Toussaint’s attitude toward his sister-in-law. Did you pick up on that? The way he kept watching her, casually touching her from time to time.” Jim shook his head and wrinkled his nose. “Gave me the creeps, but his brother didn’t seem to even notice. I couldn’t help wondering if there was something going on there as well.”

  “I know what you mean.” Jackson heaved a sigh. The entire sordid affair was beginning to give him a headache. “Anyway, it looks like this thing has a whole lot more goin’ on underneath, but the question is how to get to the bottom of it in a short amount of time.”

  “Definitely a quandary, that’s for sure. We can’t keep them in town forever, so we need to find out where they were and what they were really up to, PDQ.”

  “Mmm-hmm. And here’s another problem,” Jackson said pointing at the monitor. “I just got an email back from the sponsor of the conference Garrett Larson said he was attending in Austin.”

  “And?”

  “They say he was registered, but never checked in or picked up his conference packet.”

  Jim’s eyebrows shot up. “Uh-oh. That’s not good. Now where would Mr. Larson have gone if he didn’t go to his conference, and he wasn’t with his wife?”

  “Good question. And why would he feel the need to lie about it to the police when he came back to the motel late Friday night only to find his wife dead, possibly murdered?”

  “Think he’s having an affair?”

  “Oh, man.” Jackson made a face. “The dude’s, what? Like, mid-seventies?”

  “Doesn’t mean the drive’s not there or the equipment’s stopped working.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not something I wanted in my head. Thanks for putting it there.”

  “You’re welcome.” The other deputy snickered. “Besides, the late Mrs. Larson was twenty years his junior, right?”

  “True.” Jackson opened his notebook and jotted down a few reminders. “So, we’ve got the three Toussaints, Toby Raymond, and Garrett Larson to re-interview.”

  “Yeah, and to figure out how these two murders are related. Because you and I both know they’re connected in some way.”

  “Have to be.” Shutting down his computer, Jackson grimaced. “Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us tomorrow. In the meantime, I guess I’d better stop procrastinating and head out to River Bend. Though I think I’d rather have a root canal at this point.”

  Jim gave him a commiserative look, but his response was anything but sympathetic. “Better you than me, pal. Better you than me.”

  fourteen

  After procrastinating as long as he could, Jackson ended up cutting it pretty damn close. It was going on seven forty-five when he turned through the gates at River Bend. And by stewing about how he was going to approach the family with his latest news, he’d managed to add fuel to the headache that was already brewing on the twenty-minute drive from town.

  What he’d told Jim about Laura and Miss Abby understanding that he had a job to do was true—at least, he hoped it was. The Becketts were as close to a second family as he would ever get, and while he didn’t want to let them down, he had to be as transparent as possible where the investigation was concerned. It was his only way to protect them. Any whiff of partiality or impropriety could get him bounced off the case, and then where would they all be? Nobody in the department knew or understood the lot of them like he did.

  He pulled his cruiser in next to C.C.’s pickup and shut down the engine. Lights from inside the main residence spilled from the windows in the gathering twilight, giving off a warm, inviting glow. Being the only child of a pair of archeologists who sometimes forgot they even had a son, he’d often spent more time in this house than he had in his own. And Abigail DeVries had always treated him no differently than any of her other grandchildren, which made this whole deal that much harder for him.

  Just as he climbed out of the vehicle, the front door opened and Elise stepped out onto the porch. She strolled over to the top of the steps and slapped a hand on her hip.

  “It’s about time you got here, pal,” she said with a smirk. “You know, Gram would have skinned you alive if you’d have walked in after she’d said grace.”

  He nodded as he went up the steps to meet her. “I got hung up at the office. Grace’s murder dovetails with Divia’s in a very disturbing way, and I don’t have a good feeling about where it’s going.”

  “Aw, poor baby.” She gave him a welcoming kiss before slipping her arm through his. “You’d better come on in. Dinner is about to be served. We can eat and later you can tell me all about it.”

  He raised an eyebrow as he opened the door for her. “Yeah? Well, somebody’s gonna be talking, but we’ll see who tells who what.”

  “Very funny.” She gave him a cheesy smile when she preceded him into the foyer. “You
know I love it when you go all macho cop on me. But we’ll save that for later as well. Everyone’s already at the table.”

  Following her down the hall toward the dining room, he tried to put the investigation out of his mind for the time being. He’d delayed the inevitable this long, another hour or so wasn’t gonna hurt anything.

  “Have a seat, you two,” Abigail said when they entered the room. She pointed toward the empty chairs on the far side of the table. “We weren’t sure you’d be able to make it with all the recent hubbub and such, Jackson. But I made sure your place was set just the same.”

  “Thanks, Miss Abby. You’re the best.”

  She gave him a brilliant grin then turned to snap at Ross. “Quit hogging those mashed potatoes, boy. Pass them around to Jackson.”

  Ross’s mouth dropped open. “Geez, Gram. I just got ’em. Give me a minute to get some on my own plate. Besides, he hasn’t even sat down yet.” Ross threw Jackson a dirty look. “Gram’s favorite,” he muttered.

  Jackson laughed and shook his head. “It’s not so much that I’m her favorite, buddy. It’s just that she doesn’t like you at all.”

  “Bite me, Jax.”

  “Ross Alexander … manners? What have I told you about your language at my table,” Laura said as she entered the room and sat down at the end with him to her left and Jackson to her right.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered.

  If Jackson thought he was off the hook, he was mistaken. When she turned to him, it was with a stern look. “And no baiting at the table, either, Jackson Christopher.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.”

  She smiled and patted his hand. “Besides, Mom loves all her little darlins equally—right, Mom?”

  Abigail set a steaming bowl of mixed vegetables down next to the brisket and took her seat at the other end of the spread. “Nope,” she said with a straight face as she passed the basket of dinner rolls to Madison. “They’re both right. Jackson’s my favorite, and I really don’t like Ross.”