by Jen Carter
Alex stood and motioned toward his classroom door. “I’m really sorry, Jill, but I have to finish my lunch before the kids get back.”
Dismissed.
I smiled. “Of course, I understand. Thank you for your time. And again, I’m so sorry for your loss.”
He sat down and wrapped up the rest of his sandwich, shoving the leftovers into a blue insulated lunch bag.
I walked down the hallway toward the front office to return my visitor’s badge, thinking. Alex was not interested in claiming a close relationship to either Marlo or Angelia. And he was not interested in talking to me—not even about his chess tables. What artist didn’t like talking about his art? And what teacher didn’t like talking about engaging kids in something meaningful?
Perhaps one whose ex-wife was sabotaging his side business and couldn’t take it anymore.
Hmm.
I dropped off the visitor’s badge and made my way to the school’s main parking lot. The Berke sisters were acting odd this morning, and both the hair clip and the sleeping supplements were fishy. But something about Alex seemed fishy as well.
Maybe the Council of Elders was really onto something.
I pulled out my phone and texted Amy over at Books and Brew.
Hey! Did Will and Chris manage to help Artie this morning with his computer system?
I could have texted Holly since she followed the guys over to Checkmate and would know what happened, but she was notoriously bad at checking her cell phone. And while Amy was likely making coffee or helping customers find old, rare books in her shop, she’d be more likely to respond sooner.
I watched my phone screen for a moment to see if she was going to write back immediately. When there was no indication of response in five seconds, I hopped into my hand-me-down BMW acquired last year from Stella and headed toward the freeway.
***
About twenty minutes into my drive back to Carlsbad, my phone rang, the sound echoing through my car’s bluetooth. I tapped the accept button without glancing at the phone number on the screen.
“Hello?” I said.
“Hey Jill, it’s me.”
Shane. It grated on my nerves when someone said it’s me rather than giving a name—it presumed a level of familiarity that, certainly in the case of Shane, I wasn’t comfortable with.
“Who’s me?” I asked, even though I knew. I wasn’t trying to be funny. I wanted him to know that we didn’t have that level of familiarity.
“It’s Shane. Hey, Toby said you’re still teaching in Carlsbad. Are you back down here for the school year yet?”
“I’m driving down right now.”
“Can you come by our place? Angelia wants to talk to you.”
Really? Why? So she could yell at me again?
I gripped my steering wheel tighter.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have to get home and start prepping for school. Can’t she talk to me on the phone?”
Shane hesitated. “Can you spare ten minutes? We only live five minutes from you. The whole visit will only set you back twenty minutes including travel time.”
I tried to relax my hands on the steering wheel and reminded myself that Angelia’s mom had just died. I could spare twenty minutes.
“Fine,” I said. “I need directions.”
He told me how to get to their place, and I was a little unnerved that they really did live only five minutes from me. When he moved out of my apartment all those years ago, I never bothered to find out where he went. I brushed away the uncomfortable feeling and told him I’d be there in half an hour.
Twenty-eight minutes later, I walked up to their first-floor apartment, bracing myself for an unpleasant scene. I couldn’t really figure out why Angelia wanted to talk face-to-face, but it couldn’t be good. She wasn’t going to make me an additional bridesmaid—that was for sure.
Toby answered the door barely five seconds after I knocked.
“Jill,” he said, looking surprised. “What are you doing here?” He opened the door wider, inviting me in.
“Shane called and asked me to come over. He said Angelia wanted to talk to me. What are you doing here?”
“I live with them. I’m trying to save money while in school.”
I nodded. “Good idea.”
Toby motioned to the red couch in the living area. “Go ahead and have a seat. They’re in the back. I’ll go get them.”
“Thanks.” I walked in and sat down, glancing at the magazines spread across the rustic coffee table. It looked like In Touch and Ok! were favorites in the Albert-Jennings household.
Toby returned from the back of the apartment and sat in the armchair to my left. “They should be out in a minute.” He slumped down, staring toward the hallway and shaking his head, just barely.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
He sighed and shook his head a little more. “They’re so weird,” he mumbled. “I can’t believe my brother is marrying into that family.”
I wondered what brought that on, but I didn’t ask. Instead, I smiled and tried to think of a joke to lighten the mood. But of course, I’m not funny, so nothing came to me. It was probably best to keep quiet anyway—Toby didn’t look like he was in the mood for a joke.
“So what are you taking this semester?” I asked, hoping the subject change would brighten his mood a little.
“English, history—”
“Jill, there you are,” Shane said, walking into the living room. He was smiling in a strained sort of way, and Angelia trailed behind him, her expression sullen. She wore no makeup, and her eyes were puffy. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a messy bun. While the stripped down version of Angelia was probably due to mourning, she looked far more authentically beautiful than she did with full makeup at the bachelorette party.
“Hi Shane. Hi Angelia.” I felt like I should say I was sorry again about Marlo, but somehow the words sounded trite in my head, and I couldn’t imagine them sounding any better out loud.
Toby got up from the armchair and gestured for Angelia to sit down. He walked down the hallway, presumably to his room. Shane stood behind Angelia’s chair.
“I’m sorry I accused you of playing a role in my mother’s death,” Angelia said, her head bowed.
“Oh, you don’t have to apologize,” I said, caught a little off guard. “It was a horrible situation. It is a horrible situation.”
Angelia nodded at her feet, and Shane put his hand on her shoulder.
“A reporter came by here about an hour ago,” Shane said.
Involuntarily, I raised an eyebrow. “Blonde, short, and really nosy?”
Angelia looked up at me. She and Shane both nodded.
“She was making rounds in OV this morning,” I said. Do you know who she is?”
“She introduced herself as Lucy Argyle from that little local paper in Temecula.” Shane shrugged. “I don’t remember the paper’s name.”
“Temecula Sunrise?” I asked.
He and Angelia nodded again.
“She said my mom’s death wasn’t an accident,” Angelia said. “She said my mom had injuries that could have only been sustained through an attack.”
I thought about how Holly suggested that Marlo might have fallen down during a drunken stupor. Then I thought about the Berke’s hair clip in the wine. Though I wished Holly was right, it didn’t seem plausible—not with the missing clump of hair and whatever else Fitts wasn’t telling us about.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Have you talked to the detective about this yet?”
She shook her head at her feet. “Not since yesterday. He’s called and left messages, but I don’t want to talk to him.”
“You have to,” Shane said softly. “Don’t you want to know what happened to your mom?”
Angelia didn’t answer right away. Her shoulders began to shake, and I realized she was crying. “It won’t bring her back,” she said. “She’s still gone.”
Shane crouched down next to her and wrapped
her in his arms. She leaned into him.
“Angelia, I know this is really hard,” I said. I debated over my next words, unsure if what I wanted to say would help or hurt. I went for it. “When my parents died, we never found out what happened—we never found out what caused the boating accident. Finding out wouldn’t have brought them back, but it would have helped with a tiny bit of closure. It might have helped me and my sisters come to grips with the situation sooner.” I paused. Angelia hadn’t flown into a rage yet or given me one of those weird fake smiles, so I pressed on. “Do you have any idea about who might have done this to your mom? Anyone she had a contentious relationship with?”
She didn’t answer. Shane said, “Ang? Anyone you can think of?”
She looked up, took a deep breath, and wiped her eyes.
“My mom and Janelle were mean girls. When they got together, they were the kind of people who would have teased nerds in high school and called skinny girls fat. Last night, I found myself wondering if Janelle could have done it. Between the alcohol and her meanness, maybe the two of them got into a really bad fight, one thing led to another, and this happened.”
I nodded slowly, trying to appear as though this possibility rang true for me, even though it didn’t. “Two of my friends walked Janelle back to Snapdragon that night. Do you think she could have left the inn afterward and caught up with your mom?”
Angelia dropped her head again. “I don’t know.”
“What about Alex? Your mom’s ex-husband?” I asked.
Angelia’s head snapped up and her eyes narrowed. “No way. He could never hurt her. She was awful to him—she had no respect for his teaching and no respect for his artwork—the two things that mattered to him most. She always found ways to twist his words and play the victim. If anything, he was the victim. It was the hardest thing for me to watch growing up.”
So he did love art and teaching. And yet, he wouldn’t talk to me about either when I visited him earlier.
Wouldn’t that be all the more reason to suspect him?
I kept the thought to myself and nodded again. “If you think of anything that might help Detective Fitts in this case, please call him. I know it’s hard, but it’s so important.”
No one spoke, and I got the feeling that our little meeting was coming to a close. I stood and made my way to the door. Angelia remained in the armchair, but Shane followed me.
“There is going to be a memorial service on Friday,” he said as I reached for the doorknob. “Can you come?”
Me at the memorial service? I hadn’t planned to go. But then, suddenly it seemed appropriate for someone from my family to go pay our respects, if for no other reason than the accident happened at our winery. And since I knew Shane, I was as good as anyone else.
“I’m back at school on Friday for a staff development day,” I said, looking back at Shane as I pulled open the door and stepped outside. “Send me the information about when and where the service will be, and I’ll try to take a half day.”
Shane nodded, mouthed the words thank you, and closed the door behind me.
FIFTEEN
“Wow,” Nico said through the phone. “So you feel pretty certain that it was either the Berke sisters or the ex-husband, Alex.”
I paced around my little home office—otherwise known as a corner in the living room of my apartment. I was supposed to be preparing my first unit of English 12, but instead I opted to call Nico and update him on the situation. That included recounting our little break-in at the crime scene and my interviews with the Berkes, Alex, and Angelia. I couldn’t say he was impressed with my exploits, but he refrained from lecturing me.
“Yes,” I said. “Angelia thinks Janelle could have done it, but I’m not sure I buy that theory. She had way too much wine that night and couldn’t walk straight. I doubt she could have summoned the strength to hurt Marlo.”
“So what are your strongest pieces of evidence against the Berkes?”
“The hair clip found in the wine, the sleep aids they bought from Livy, their threat to take care of the noise if I didn’t, and their jumpiness when I talked to them this morning.”
“And what’s your strongest evidence against Alex?”
I stopped pacing and sat down in my desk chair, purposely turning away from the blank Word document on my computer screen, which should have had at least a couple ideas for lesson plans filling it by now. “He was fighting on the phone with Marlo the night of the accident. He was really wary when I showed up to talk to him at school, even when I tried to make small talk about school and art—which Angelia says he’s passionate about. The old men in OV think he could have done it, too.”
“Wait, what?” Nico asked. Before I could repeat myself, he continued. “Rewind a little. First, lots of people fight on the phone. Marlo and Alex were divorced, so they didn’t necessarily get along, and fighting isn’t strange for people who don’t get along. Second, I would be wary if you showed up to talk to me at my workplace right after a meddling reporter was there. Third, the old guys in OV don’t seem like legit investigators, and anything they say needs to be taken with a grain of salt.”
I spun in my desk chair. My case against Alex had seriously thinned in the last fifteen seconds.
“How many more days till you get here?” I asked with a sigh.
“With the delay? Eleven. The countdown has begun. Again.”
“Eleven? Not soon enough.”
“I know. You know what else I know? That you probably ought to leave this investigation to the police and get back to preparing for the school year. Yes?”
I smiled. “Probably. You’re definitely right that I’ve got to get back to prepping English 12. I’ve got nothing since I didn’t teach it last year.”
“I’ll let you get back to that. Stay out of trouble, got it?”
“I promise all I will do tonight is reread Antigone for class.”
We said our goodbyes and hung up. Before turning back to my computer for some serious planning, I checked my messages one more time to see if Amy had responded to my last text. Nothing yet.
***
The next morning, I was just getting back from a run on the beach when Holly called. I glanced at the time before answering. Seven-fifteen.
“What are you doing up so early?” I said into the phone.
“Our oldest sister woke me up.” Holly yawned. “She’s freaking out, Stella-style. You know, acting like she’s not freaking out, but panicking on the inside and taking years off her life in the process.”
In the background, I could hear Stella. Hol, you’re not helping the situation.
“Why?” I asked.
“Remember that reporter from yesterday? She published an article about Marlo’s death. It’s on the front page of the Temecula Sunrise this morning.”
“And Stella is freaking out because the article is bad?”
“You guessed it.” Holly yawned again, probably for dramatic effect. She did not like being woken up, no matter what. “Anyway, we wanted you to be in the loop.”
“Is the article online, too?” I asked.
“Yep. Take a look. Oh, and don’t worry about Aldo. I’m going to leash him to me today so that he can’t slip away and talk to any more reporters.”
Don’t even joke about that, Stella said in the background. He doesn’t need to be treated like a four-year-old.
“Who said I’m joking?” Holly responded to Stella. “Clearly he does need to be treated like a four-year-old.”
I interrupted my bickering sisters. “Okay, I’m going to go read the article. I’ll call you back.”
“Do me a favor,” Holly said. “Don’t call back. I love you, but don’t call back. Let’s just move on.”
I hung up and sat down on the curb outside my apartment complex. After opening the web browser on my phone, it only took a couple seconds to find the article on the Temecula Sunrise’s home page.
The Murder and the Must
By Lucy Argyle
> Sunday morning saw the heartbreaking end to what would have otherwise been a wonderful bachelorette party. Instead of the bride-to-be awaking with no more than a splitting headache as her biggest worry, she awoke to the news of her mother’s untimely death: a woman not even in her fifties found drowned and floating in the must of fermenting wine at the D’Angelo Winery in Otto Viti.
Otto Viti—literally “eight vines” in Italian—has been a Temecula enclave long known for its hoity-toity attitude, complete with over-priced food and shops selling useless trinkets. It touts eight wine tasting rooms along the single-street (with no bus parking like we see at other wineries) where patrons can sit and talk with wine experts. This supposedly differentiates Otto Viti from the big, popular Temecula wineries where the wine pourers are too busy for idle chit-chat when they have thirsty guests waiting to get their fill of Cab Sav and Chardonnay.
A dead body in a vat of wine should knock OV down a peg or two, shouldn’t it?
Oh no.
“This is an unfortunate event,” says Aldo D’Angelo, owner of D’Angelo winery. His words come slowly as though carefully calculating how to frame the tragedy. When asked how this could happen, he shakes his head and says, “My heart, it is broken for the family. Come, we sit and talk with Merlot.”
Could this be a way of deflecting his winery’s responsibility in this death?
But Mr. D’Angelo isn’t the only one who doesn’t know how this happened.
Neither does the lead detective on the case.
When asked about rumors that this death wasn’t accidental, Jared Fitts responded with, “Get out of here! I have nothing to say to you. When we’ve solved this case, we’ll let you know.”
When will that be?
I sought answers from people all along Otto Viti’s main road, but no one would talk to me.
Why write an article about something no one wants to talk about? Precisely because no one wants to talk about it.
Because this must be murder.
Otto Viti’s reputation has been tarnished. It’s not the safe, pristine place that shop owners would like you to believe it is, and they’ll go down swinging, trying to hold onto a reputation that is no longer deserved.