by Jen Carter
“Hello?”
I looked up from my phone. “Jason?” I called back. I stood and took a step toward the lobby, but when he appeared in the doorway, I stayed where I was. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
His eyebrows furrowed. “What happened? Why didn’t you answer my call?”
I stepped back to the table and sat down again. I was glad to explain what had just happened one more time—it helped relieve some of the burden. I figured the Berkes might need a good lawyer, but what needed to be done beyond that? I didn’t know, but my brother-in-law would know.
When I was done recounting the story, Jason nodded. He said, “I’ll call Stella and tell her where we are. When I left, I didn’t tell them I was trying to find you. They would have worried. Then I’ll call the lawyer. You call Janelle.” He glanced around the room. “Fitts probably just wanted to question them—that’s probably it. But it doesn’t hurt to be prepared. Right now, the biggest issue is what to do about Snapdragon being unattended since we don’t know how long the Berkes will be gone.”
I nodded. I felt a twinge of guilt that Jason had been worried and likely had searched every shop on Via del Corso to find me, but I could circle back to that feeling and apologize later. There were more important issues to deal with first.
TWENTY-TWO
The lawyer instructed Jason to meet him at the police station, so I was left on my own at Snapdragon again. Once my sisters heard the story, they both wanted to come down to help me look after the inn for the evening, but I declined the offer. It would be bath time and bedtime for Stella’s sons before long, and they needed their mommy. Aldo would certainly be worried, and I’d rather Holly spend time with him to keep his mind off the situation—at least until eight o’clock when she typically fell asleep on the couch. Besides, there wasn’t that much to do at Snapdragon.
Behind the front desk, the Berkes had framed the “house rules,” which I imagined were explained to each guest upon arrival as well. Rule five stated that the front lobby would be locked for the night at ten o’clock. Guests would need to use their own keys for entrance and exit after that time. It would be unlocked again at seven o’clock in the morning, and it would remain open the rest of the day. Anyone needing assistance in the evening could call the number listed at the bottom of the page. I assumed that it was one of the sister’s cell phones.
I decided to hang out until ten—if the sisters weren’t back by then—and give my cell phone number to any guests who came through the lobby in case they needed something that night. I texted Amy and Jules to see if they’d bring over coffee and pastries in the morning if the Berkes weren’t back to feed the guests. Of course they said they’d be happy to. And when I told them I’d meet them at Snapdragon at seven o’clock to help, just in case, they said no. They could handle it on their own.
Thank goodness for good friends.
I called Janelle, and she vaguely remembered the Berke sisters talking about sleep aids. I asked her to call Detective Fitts, but I wasn’t sure that she would be helpful.
After being at the front desk for about an hour, Shane texted me. Three of Angelia’s friends had memories of Saturday’s afternoon spread of cheeses, wines, and sleep aids. They were going to call the police station. I had my doubts about how convincing and credible they’d come across, but their calls couldn’t hurt. I hoped.
There was no computer at the front desk, so I looked through the handwritten files that Carolina and Katia kept in drawers below. According to their records, all ten rooms were occupied for the night. By ten o’clock, six guests came in, and I gave them my number in case they needed anything. Then I wrote out four notes on Snapdragon stationary with my number and slipped those under the doors of the remaining guests.
With luck, I also found a spare front door key taped to the inside of a drawer, so locking up wouldn’t be a problem.
No computer and no alarm. Just stationary and a barely-hidden spare key. The Berkes had not eased into the twenty-first century gracefully by embracing the digital age, but today I was grateful. It made helping out a lot easier.
By the time I locked the front door, I was exhausted. Between the morning training at school, the afternoon memorial, and the evening craziness with the Burkes, the day had been quite eventful—and not in a way that I’d like.
Knowing Jules and Amy needed a way into the inn the next morning, I walked down to Jules’ bakery and hid Snapdragon’s key in a potted plant near the door. Then I texted her about it, figuring she’d probably get the message when she awoke in the morning.
I got back to Aldo’s house at ten-fifteen. My grandfather was washing dishes when I got home.
“Hi Nonno,” I said, sitting down at the kitchen table. “Were you waiting up for me?”
“Maybe,” he said. A tight-lipped smile crossed his face as he dried a plate. I wondered if he had been rewashing dishes for hours just to keep himself busy while I was away. He was a creature of habit. For countless years, we all were at his house for dinner on Fridays. Missing a Friday meal—even for emergencies like tonight—threw off the routine, and he wasn’t comfortable with that. “Everything okay now?” he asked.
I wrinkled my nose and drew circles with my index finger on the table. “I don’t know. Snapdragon should be settled for the night. No word from the Berkes yet. Did Jason tell you that he called your lawyer down to the police station for them?”
He slid the plate into a cabinet and nodded. “Yes. I hope it helps.”
“Me too.” I paused. “And then Angelia’s bachelorette party friends were supposed to call Fitts to vouch for Katia and Carolina, but I don’t know how that went.”
Aldo came around the kitchen counter and sat down across the table. “Let’s hope for the best.” He reached over and patted my hand. “And how was your week at school?”
I rolled my eyes. “Ugh, awful. We have a new principal, and all he cares about are test scores. He’s so different from what we’re used to. Everything about this week was—” I stopped myself as a memory of Wednesday morning flashed in my mind. “Oh no.” I groaned. “I forgot to do something before I left school. I was supposed to email the principal my teaching philosophy before the end of the day.” I opened my eyes and shook my head at the ceiling. “Great. The principal already doesn’t like me because I had to take half the day off, and then I forgot this.”
“Can you send it to him tonight?” Aldo asked.
“It’s on my computer at home.”
“Not in the, eh, what is it? The sky? The cloud?”
If I hadn’t been so upset with myself, I would have grinned at hearing my seventy-five-year-old grandfather talking about the cloud. I wondered if he learned that word from his buddies as they were trying to hack into Morrie’s computer system Sunday night.
I shook my head. “No. I never signed up for the cloud backup system that Jason keeps telling me about, and I don’t have it in my email.” I groaned again, louder.
Aldo nodded. “It’s too late to go back home tonight. In the morning, before the festival, maybe?”
I considered the suggestion. I had promised to help set up for the festival, and I didn’t want to flake on my family at the last minute—especially since I hadn’t been there to help the last couple days.
Maybe I could go after the festival. It ended at five o’clock. After an hour of clean up, I could leave Otto Viti by six o’clock, get down to Carlsbad to email the teaching philosophy by seven o’clock, and be back in OV by eight o’clock. The philosophy was already late, and I had no idea if Dr. Stevens checked his email on the weekends. It probably wouldn’t matter if I sent it morning or night. A couple extra hours wouldn’t make a difference.
That plan would have to do.
“I’ll do it after the festival tomorrow evening,” I said. “Maybe I can get Holly or Stella to ride down to Carlsbad with me for company.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Aldo said.
I looked around the Tuscan-style kitch
en as another wave of exhaustion came over me. The smell of garlic and onion from Stella’s meat sauce hung in the air, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten dinner. I wasn’t hungry, though. I was too tired to eat.
“How do you think the festival is going to go tomorrow?” I asked.
Aldo nodded. “I think good. It will go well.”
“You’re not worried about those articles the reporter has been writing?”
“Eh, no.” He shook his head. “I checked out this Lucy Argyle. I read other articles she writes. They are all negative. They all say boycott this, boycott that. I don’t think anyone can take her seriously. The people who do, well, they wouldn’t come to Otto Viti anyway.”
I smiled at my grandfather and then stood up. “You are wise beyond your years, Signore D’Angelo. If only I could be half as wise.”
Aldo smiled and then waved me toward the back hallway. “Go. Get some sleep.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I walked to the back of the house, hearing Holly snoring as I passed her closed door. I bet she had been asleep for at least two hours.
As I brushed my teeth and washed my face, I thought about the festival. Could I feasibly get a run in before crush set up? The festival began at eleven o’clock, and we normally started setting up by eight. If I was up by six, I could squeeze in a run. The question, really, was whether I wanted to be up by six.
As I pulled the covers back from my bed, my cell phone rang. I glanced toward my nightstand where I had just set it down and saw Nico’s name displayed across the screen. I did some quick math to calculate the time in Italy.
“Good morning,” I said into the phone. “You sure are up early.”
He chuckled. “I sure am. Got a long day ahead of me—getting ready for the big move and all.”
I flopped down on the bed and looked at the ceiling. “Only one more week.” I refrained from saying that I wished he could be here for the festival. He already knew that’s what I wished, and I already knew he was getting here as soon as he could.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d be up, but I thought I’d give it a shot before I headed into town to finalize more paperwork,” he said.
“If you called five minutes later, I’d probably be asleep and snoring just as loudly as Holly is down the hall. It was a long day.”
I rattled off a quick version of the day’s events. My brain was turning to mush, and in my fog of exhaustion, I knew I was probably leaving out important details, but I forged on. I wanted to talk to him. Hearing his voice was comforting, and I needed that.
By the time I finished telling him about the Council of Elders showing up for self-defense, my eyes were getting difficult to keep open. And then halfway through telling him about Fitts showing up at Snapdragon, I caught myself drifting off and reawakening mid-sentence, over and over.
“I don’t know, Jill,” I heard Nico say after I told him about locking up the inn. His voice seemed to be echoing far off in the back of my mind. “I think you’re on to something about Angelia. Maybe you ought to make a list of her strange behaviors. Same for Shane—he’s an odd guy. Who’s his brother again? The guy who says Angelia’s family is weird? Don’t you think it’s. . .none of them were. . .after. . .that night. . .”
I was missing half the words Nico said as I drifted off again.
“. . .each other’s alibi. . .how late. . .Jill? Jill?”
My name barely registered in my head, and it was the last word I heard Nico say before I slipped into sleep entirely.
TWENTY-THREE
“Wake up, buttercup,” Holly said, poking her head through my bedroom door. “Rise and shine, sister of mine.”
I opened my eyes, suddenly aware of the sunlight streaming through the window and the pain in my shoulder where I had been sleeping on my cell phone all night.
“What time is it?” I said, sitting up.
“Seven. You want to jump in the shower first?”
I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. “No, you go first.”
Holly disappeared from my doorway. I could hear her walking down the hall saying, “Let this go down in history as the one and only day I woke up before Jill and got in the shower first.”
I was too groggy to congratulate her or come back with a silly remark.
So much for a morning run. Maybe my fixation on Marlo’s death was taking its toll. Goodness I was tired.
I picked up my phone, staring at its face and trying to remember the end of my conversation with Nico the night before. He had expressed concern about something, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. I thought about calling him, but it was afternoon in Italy, and he was probably in the middle of working. It wasn’t that important. I’d just talk to him later.
At eight o’clock, I walked with Holly down to the winery where we could see shop owners preparing for the day. Amy had her coffee bar set up outside her shop, and she had invited a local author to do a reading and book signing later in the afternoon. Livy was doing her “food for your face” activity, which included face treatments made mostly from fruits for the adults and face painting—again, the paint made from food—for the kids. Issley’s was selling jewelry and doing bead crafts. Some wineries were doing straight wine tastings in front of their shops, and some were partnering with restaurants to do wine-and-food pairing tastings—and all of them were moving tables and supplies outside in preparation. There was a lot of hustle.
I didn’t see any hoteliers out and about, but I knew they’d make their appearances after their guests headed to the festival. Often they helped out with the street-wide activities happening in the parks and courtyards, like the wine-stomping contest, the kids’ potato sack race, and the grapevine wreath making.
We spotted Stella helping Jason haul crates of grapes from the tasting room to the barn. When she saw us, she tilted her head back to the tasting room.
“These were misplaced and need to be moved back to the barn,” she said over her shoulder. “There are two more. Can you grab them?”
Holly saluted her, and I answered with a straightforward yes. I assumed that the grapes were for the grape stomp events later in the day, but I didn’t ask. It didn’t really matter. I was there to help—not to ask questions. Into the tasting room we went, immediately seeing the two crates by the door. I picked up one. As Holly grabbed the handles of hers, she huffed.
“Oof, this is heavy,” she grumbled. “How does that twiggy sister of ours have such super human strength? Did you see her out there? She was practically running.”
I pushed the front door open with my back and waited for Holly to pass through before following her. “Well, she can’t write a book on long-lost Baroque masterpieces—or whatever it is you study—so I think we all have our own strengths,” I said.
Stella was waiting for us by the opened barn doors. “Everything go okay last night?” she asked as we neared her. “What time did you get back to Aldo’s?”
“A little after ten,” I said. “Everything was okay at Snapdragon. I don’t know what’s happened with the Berkes, though. I hope they’re back already.”
Holly and I walked into the barn and put our grape crates on the floor next to the others. When we rejoined Stella at the door, Jason was walking out of the tasting room with his cell phone to his ear. We watched him near us, nodding into the phone a couple times before hanging up.
“Looks like the sisters might be released today,” he said. “That was Aldo’s lawyer, Herb Weston. Apparently, one of the bachelorettes has video evidence that supports Berkes’ claim. But Fitts needs to verify it first.”
“Video?” I asked. I planted my hands on my hips. “So the sisters were gone all night?”
Jason nodded. “The bachelorettes were having cheese and wine that afternoon in the dining room, and apparently one of them was a really picky eater and grew up only eating American cheese. So another girl videoed the picky eater trying each kind of cheese. Supposedly her facial expressions were hilarious. And in the background of the
video, something was happening that could help the Berkes.”
“So they might be off the hook?” Holly asked.
Jason shrugged. “I’m not a lawyer, but I guess it’s looking better for them than it did yesterday.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Stella said. She put her hand on my shoulder. “Could you help me pull the tables from the tasting room out here?” She looked at Holly. “And can you hold the door open?”
Jason disappeared into the barn, and Stella led the way back to the tasting room. Inside, I grabbed one side of a high top table while she grabbed the other. Holly held the door open as instructed, allowing sunlight to stream through the otherwise-dim room.
“Thank goodness for Jason,” I said as we shuffled with the table toward the door. “He runs this winery, helps law enforcement solve mysteries, and is a doting father and husband—all in a day’s work.”
Stella’s eyebrows rose high. “He never ceases to amaze me.”
Outside, Stella nodded to the spot where she wanted the table.
“So what’s today’s plan?” I asked as we set it down.
“You and Holly will pour wine out here.” She patted the tabletop. “Dazzle them with your brilliance. I’ll have Aldo over here with you, too. He’s always fun for the guests. I’m going to have Thatcher and Hudson with me, and we’re going to make our rounds up and down the street, inviting kids to the games in the park. The rest of the staff will be working with Jason to keep everything going smoothly behind the scenes.”
“Are the boys up at the house with Aldo now?” I asked.
Stella nodded. “I dropped them off when you were still sleeping. Aldo took them to play hide-and-seek in his little vineyard out back so they wouldn’t wake you.” She pointed to the tasting room. “Let’s get another table.”