by Aames, Avery
Drive him home? Was I loco?
Harold muttered, “I can drive.”
“Promise you won’t take out your anger on Velma.” I eyed the knife.
“On Velma? I would never . . .” His gaze zipped from the knife, to me, and back to the knife. He seemed to be wondering where he had found the darned thing. He hurled it to the floor, then stormed out of the kitchen toward the front of the house. When the door slammed, I picked up the knife and reinserted it into the knife block.
Seconds later, Rags scooted from the pantry and sprang into my arms. He mewled his fear and support. His throbbing heart matched mine.
CHAPTER
29
With Rags in my arms, I jogged to the front of the house and peeked through the window that flanked the door. A car peeled away from the house, tires screeching with venom. As my pulse returned to normal, I retrieved the power screwdriver and hurried to the office. What had Noelle hidden?
The room appeared the same as when Matthew and I had left it—the secretary desk on the carpet, the Queen Anne chairs in their places, and the floor lamp in the corner. Piles of used tarps and paint cans were shoved to one side. I would clean up tomorrow. Right now, I craved a peek inside the desk’s legs.
I set Rags on the Queen Anne chair and scruffed his head behind the ears to calm him. He was no watchdog, but he was a wonderful companion. The sound of his steady breathing calmed me. “Maybe I should call U-ey first.” I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and started to punch in Urso’s number but stopped after hitting the third button, wondering whether I should call him before I had concrete—or paper—proof of something. Hearing from me otherwise might irritate him.
“Of course, I should,” I whispered. I had information to impart. At the very least, I should alert him to Harold’s distressed state of mind.
I continued inputting the number while working through the conversation in my head. I would start by saying, “Don’t get mad,” though, of course, Urso would. How could he not? He had asked me to keep my nose out of his investigation, and yet Harold had invaded my house. And I had learned Boyd was hounding Delilah. And Ashley had out-and-out lied about who and what he was. And now I was in search of evidence to prove that the Shelton Nelson Winery was trying to dupe the public.
The phone rang once and Urso answered. “I’m on it, Charlotte,” he carped. Apparently my name had appeared in his caller I.D. “Truly, I am. I went to Cleveland today. I followed up on Noelle’s past. I spoke to the nuns at the orphanage where she grew up. I tracked down a few of her parents’ dissatisfied customers. Happy?” He sighed. “You know what? I don’t care if you’re happy. I’m tired. I’m heading to my folks for a plate of Mama’s lasagna. If it’s not important, can it wait until tomorrow?”
Heat flooded my chest, neck, and cheeks. Honestly, if I’d had hackles at the back of my neck, they would have risen. I had never felt so dismissed in my life. I muttered, “Never mind,” and hung up. If I was wrong about Noelle’s hiding place, Urso would never let me hear the end of it. For all I knew, the desk’s legs were empty. I mean, after the killer’s second foray into my garage/workshop, he or she must have found what Noelle had hidden, right? That’s why there wasn’t a third incursion. Or maybe the killer had given up the search.
Holding on to that hope, I dialed Matthew and filled him in. He sounded as excited as a schoolboy. “I’m just wrapping up the wine tasting, then I’ll be right over,” he said.
“Great.” However, I wasn’t in the mood to wait.
Tipping over the desk without help was going to be a challenge, but I could do it. First, I removed all the items from the top: the pen set, the blotter, the lamp, and the picture frames of my parents, my grandparents, and a wedding picture of Matthew, Meredith, and the twins. Next, I moved the other Queen Anne chair to the far side of the desk and anchored the arms beneath the ledge of the desk. Then I plucked a couple of books from the mahogany shelves and set them on the carpet where I thought the edge of the desk would come to rest.
Returning to the drawer side, I pushed the edge. The secretary desk tilted and balanced against the chair; the desk’s front legs rose off the floor, exactly as I’d planned.
Rags sat up on his perch and eyeballed me.
“I’ve got it,” I assured him as I skirted around the desk and gripped the desk’s edge on the other side. After nudging the chair out of the way with my hip and heel, I guided the desk to the array of books I’d rested on the floor. Carefully, I slid the books out from under. The desk landed with a soft thud, its legs free. “Done, Ragsie. You can relax.”
Rags settled back down.
I grabbed the power screwdriver, set it in reverse, and removed the screws of the uppermost left leg. I pulled the leg free and inspected the inside. Empty. I did the same with the uppermost right and lowermost right legs. All were empty. Frustration gripped me as I lit into the screws on the fourth leg. Had I been wrong? As the leg came off, I drew in a deep breath and peered inside. Something was in the leg, all right—stuffed way at the bottom. I turned the leg upside down and a shiny blue object about two inches long fell out. Elation swept through me. It had to be the thumb drive that I had seen Noelle pull from her computer. A thumb drive was a type of key. You slotted it into a hole; it opened up a set of files. Was there anything else in the leg? I fetched a flashlight and trained the beam down the inside. Papers clung to the sides. I turned the leg upside down again and shook. The papers didn’t budge. I needed long—super-long—tweezers. I sprinted to the kitchen. Cooking tongs were too short, but a barbecue fork might be long enough. I grabbed it and raced back to the office.
I dropped to my knees and, carefully, so as not to poke holes in the paper, ran the fork along the inside of the leg. I twisted. I toyed. The papers loosened.
The front door squeaked opened, and I said, “In here,” to Matthew.
I turned the leg on its end a second time, and papers spilled to the carpet. I stared at wine labels affixed to torn pages from Noelle’s journals. I snatched them up and peered at the notes along the edges. On one she had written, Phony, fresh, soft, no complexity. On a second note she wrote: Same as HBB at Le Parq. Le Parq was one of the restaurants where she had worked as a sommelier. HBB? Haut-Brion Blanc, perhaps. And yet the label was a Shelton Nelson white Burgundy. Excitement jetted through me. Was I right? Had Shelton Nelson substituted his wine for a Haut-Brion Blanc? Was he counterfeiting wine? Had he made other switches? The labels, coupled with the information on the thumb drive, had to be what Noelle had referred to as hell’s or Shel’s key, a log or code breaker, if you will, of all his swaps.
“Hand those over,” a woman said. Not a man. Not Matthew.
Rags leaped to the ground and ran to my side. Still perched on my knees, I gazed at Liberty Nelson, clad in an ecru turtleneck, jeans, and a caramel-colored leather coat. She stood beneath the arch, her arms limp at her sides, her face sallow and drawn. I thought of Alexis’s warning to keep away from a person in sheep’s clothing. Was Liberty the one Alexis had envisioned and not Shelton? Without her typical strut, Liberty appeared about as forbidding as a lamb.
“Give them to me.” Liberty moved into the room, her hand extended.
“Do you know what they are?”
“Of course I do.” She shook her hand. “I want them now.”
“Why should I give them to you?”
“Because.”
“Because you want to destroy them. If the police see them, your winery will be ruined. Noelle knew what was going on. You were pretending you had all the expensive wines, but you had drunk them and put your own wines in the bottles. You were selling counterfeited Haut-Brion Blanc at auction.”
Liberty didn’t have a weapon that I could see. Maybe if I acted reasonably, she would do the same. I set the barbecue fork on the carpet and scrambled to my feet. “Your father’s treasure trove of wine is phony. Noelle found out. You saw her sneaking around. You saw her writing notes in a journal. You followed her to my ho
use.”
“That’s not true.”
“You killed her to keep the secret. Whether to protect the winery’s reputation or your inheritance, it doesn’t matter. You can’t claim it was self-defense.”
“It wasn’t self-defense,” a man said from the foyer.
Relief swept through me. Matthew had arrived. My calm was short-lived.
Shelton Nelson strode through the doorway. In his shearling coat, jeans, boots, and cowboy hat, he appeared formidable. “Don’t say anything more, Liberty.”
“Daddy.” Liberty gulped. “What are you—”
“You were about to confess, weren’t you? I knew it. That’s why I followed you.”
“I can’t keep the secret any longer, Daddy.” Liberty sobbed. “I told you if your lover found out about the phony wine, then the vineyard would be ruined.”
Lover, phony, charted for disaster.
“So it was true?” I said. “You and Noelle were lovers, Shelton?”
“No.” He grabbed Liberty’s arm. “I’ve told you a dozen times, you fool. Noelle and I were never involved.”
“You wanted her,” Liberty cried. “Everyone saw you fawning over her. It made you blind to her plan.”
Did Noelle play up the lover angle? Did she scam Shelton, letting him think he had a chance with her so she could get closer to the truth about his wines?
Liberty twisted free with a fierceness I hadn’t expected and dashed to me. “It wasn’t my fault, Charlotte.” She clutched my hands. “You’ve got to believe me.”
Shelton growled. “Damn that darned fiancé of yours, Liberty. He’s hypnotized you. He put you up to this. He wants you to cleanse your soul. He probably convinced you that Charlotte has pull with the police, and she’ll be your advocate. Think again. You’re as guilty as I am.”
Liberty glanced over her shoulder. “I didn’t kill Noelle, Daddy. You did.” She turned back to me. “You’re right. For years, Daddy has been filling empty rare French bottles with our wine and auctioning them at extravagant prices.”
“Hush,” Shelton ordered.
“Noelle figured it out. That’s why she wanted the job. She needed evidence. I begged Daddy not to hire her, but he was in it for the game. He said if he could fool her, he could fool everyone. He got a kick out of hiding our wine in plain sight.”
“I told you to stop talking, Liberty.” Shelton took a menacing step toward his daughter, his hands balled into fists.
But Liberty continued, her words streaming together. “Mainly he sold the wines in China. It’s a huge international scam.”
“Shut your trap, girl.”
“Bottles of Haut-Brion Blanc could go for thousands of dollars. We didn’t try selling reds, only whites. The really savvy wine guys know the difference, but the general public doesn’t. When the price of goods is expensive”—she wiggled her hand—“the buyer pretends to take more time to contemplate the purchase, but really they don’t. Daddy collected Haut-Brion Blanc bottles for years. When those ran out, he found a talented glassblower who could duplicate the bottles with the crest. We put aged labels on them and sealed them with corks that we branded.”
“We,” Shelton brayed. “She said, ‘We.’ Did you hear her? She’s in this as much as I am.”
Liberty spun around; her curls whipped her face. “You killed Noelle, Daddy, to keep her from revealing your scheme.”
Shelton’s jaw twitched. “Charlotte, Liberty isn’t right in the head. She’s been under a lot of stress with the wedding.”
“I’m fine, Daddy.”
“Darlin’, you seem to have forgotten that I have an alibi. You heard me singing in the shower. Maybe you lied because you were the one who was out of the house. Did you kill Noelle?”
I gaped. Would he turn the table on his own daughter? What kind of monster was he?
Liberty sputtered. “What? No, I don’t lie. Never again. I made a vow to Leonard.” Her fiancé. “You’re the one that’s lying.” She shot a finger at her father. “I was home reading. And yes, I heard you singing, but . . .” She swung around to me. “It could have been a soundtrack.”
I knew her guess was right. Shelton had built a recording studio in his office to make commercials. Why hadn’t I considered that his alibi could be a recording? Or why hadn’t Rebecca thought of the possibility? She always came up with off-the-wall theories like that.
Shelton scowled. “Liberty, darlin’, think about what you’re saying.”
“I have. I am.” She turned to me. “At first, I wasn’t sure Daddy did it. I thought maybe that reporter or Noelle’s ex-boyfriend killed her, so I kept quiet. But my fiancé”—she hiccupped—“told me I needed to face the truth, the whole truth . . .”
And nothing but the truth, so help you God.
I said, “The day we were at the winery, you argued with your father. You were trying to convince him to stop.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” Liberty whirled on her father. “Please stop, Daddy. Turn yourself in.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “I won’t throw away my business or ruin my reputation because you have a flash of conscience. Go out to my car and wait for me.” He lasered me with an ominous gaze. What did he have in mind? Why, in heaven’s name, had I set down the barbecue fork?
“No, Daddy.” Liberty stamped her foot. “I’m not leaving Charlotte.”
“What has gotten into you, girl? You are as guilty as I am. You are every bit a part of this operation.”
“No-o-o-o.” Liberty ran at her father.
He swung out, smashing her across the head with his forearm. She stumbled backward and crashed against the wall. She slumped to the floor.
“Liberty.” I raced to her. Her chest was moving, but her head and neck were fixed at an awful angle and her eyes were closed; she seemed unconscious.
At the same time, footsteps pounded the foyer floor. “Charlotte,” Matthew called as he charged into the office. “I heard a—”
Shelton wheeled backward and pulled a gun from his pocket. He aimed it at Matthew. “I didn’t want to have to use this, but it seems I’m outnumbered.”
I had assumed right the other day. Shelton was the kind of man to pack a pistol. He was, as Tyanne would say, all hat with no cattle.
Matthew held up his hands. “Whoa, Shelton, take a deep breath. What’s going on?”
I quickly explained. Matthew whistled. “Noelle had documented evidence.” I gestured to the thumb drive and the labels lying beside the secretary desk.
Shelton said, “Pick them up, Charlotte, and give them to me.”
“No.”
He brandished the gun. “Do it.”
“I’ve called Chief Urso,” Matthew said.
“Liar,” Shelton said. “You had no reason to call him. You didn’t know Liberty or I were coming here. You have nothing. I was trying to avoid any confrontation, but I can see that’s impossible. This ends. Right here. Right now. The goods, Charlotte.”
I inched across the room, trying to figure out what I could do to quash Shelton. Rags poked his head out from behind the desk. I gave him an eye signal to keep hidden. As I spied the detached legs near him, the memory of the twins racing around the theater’s foyer, attacking each other with the fake roasted turkey leg, flickered through my mind, and an idea came to me.
“Matthew,” I said. “Tell Shelton about all the pictures we took at the cellar when we stole in the other night.”
“The pictures? Ah, the pictures,” Matthew said, vamping. “Yes, we have dozens of photographs. Of documents. And wine bottles and your secret passage.”
“Pictures won’t prove anything.”
“Sure they will.”
I drew near to the desk. I crouched down, as if to pick up the thumb drive and labels. Instead, I grabbed the desk leg. Before Shelton realized what I’d done, I charged him, swinging the desk leg like a sledgehammer. He fired. Luckily for me he wasn’t a crack shot. A bullet whizzed past me and spit into the wall.
I swung
out and connected with Shelton’s forearm. He yelped with pain. The gun flew out of his hand. Wielding the desk leg like a baseball bat, I hit his torso. He caved in on himself and dropped to his knees.
At the same time, Matthew crawled across the carpet and retrieved the gun. While he trained the weapon on Shelton, his hand trembling as much as mine would have, I dialed Urso.
For the first time in an eon, the man was happy to hear from me.
CHAPTER
30
Standing with my grandmother, Delilah, and Alexis in the doorway connecting the foyer and the theater of the Providence Playhouse, we watched the children take their bows onstage. What a difference ten days could make. The play was a smash hit. The flying duck had soared across the stage to wild applause.
“You look très bonne, mon amie,” Grandmère said to me. “Rested.”
“Merci.”
“It’s nice what you did for Noelle,” Delilah said.
“Yes, putting together a funeral and burying her properly,” Alexis said. “It helps the spirit move onward and upward.” She clutched my forearm, and I felt a tingling of something shimmy all the way to the roots of my hair. “Good things are coming for you, too, Charlotte. You’ll see.”
“Mother, stop.” Delilah peeled her mother’s hand off of me. “Charlotte’s fine.”
I knew, now, that I couldn’t have saved Noelle. She had set her own drama in action, but at least she could rest in peace; her sacrifice was not in vain. She had stopped a scam, one that could have damaged the reputation of so many of Providence’s vintners. I had to admit that, because of my involvement in the resolution, I felt stronger than I ever had. Surviving a confrontation with Shelton Nelson that had turned from verbal to physical in a matter of seconds made me a little giddy, almost jubilant. When I arrived at The Cheese Shop the next morning, Rebecca smacked my shoulder with pride. I was growing into a smart sleuth, she told me. What she didn’t add, and didn’t realize, was that something in me had changed. I didn’t feel like my impulses controlled me any longer; I felt clearheaded and discerning. I liked the transformation.