Killer Among the Vines (Wine & Dine Mysteries Book 7)

by Gemma Halliday

  "Who is one of our suspects in Buckley's murder," Eddie added.

  I shot him a glance. I wasn't sure when they'd become "our" suspects, but I was pretty sure that if Grant heard him talking like that, it would do nothing to mend the fences we'd trampled the night before.

  "I've been thinking about that," Ava said, sitting back at the counter and grabbing another muffin. "And I'm honestly not convinced Buckley's death has anything to do with his former police life."

  "Really?" I sat on the stool beside her, taking a bite of my muffin. I was momentarily distracted by the sweet vanilla mingling with plump tart cherries bursting in my mouth. I'd missed Conchita.

  "Really," Ava said, nodded emphatically. "Like Buckley's lawyer pointed out, there's really only one person who benefits from his death."

  "The ex-wife!" Eddie said, stabbing the air with his index finger.

  "Exactly," Ava said. "Carmen's halfway to being a millionaire with her—what did she call him?—'putz' of an ex-husband out of the picture."

  I pursed my lips. "I wonder if she owns a Long Rifle."

  Ava raised an eyebrow at me. "Is that the type of gun that killed Buckley?"

  I nodded and quickly filled them in on the sparse few details Grant had given me the night before. Including the fact that a .22 LR was the type of gun one would use to hunt small game. "Like the rabbits Buckley's partner Eckhart hunts."

  "See, I knew he was our number one suspect," Eddie said.

  "I don't know," Ava said. "I mean, what does Eckhart have to gain by killing Buckley now?"

  "Nothing," Conchita answered. "But maybe he had something to lose if Buckley remained alive."

  "Like what?" Eddie asked, frowning.

  Conchita chewed on that a moment before finally shrugging. "You got me."

  "I still like Carmen," Ava decided, licking crumbs off her fingers. "She hated him, she has a non-alibi alibi, and she had a lot to gain by him kicking the bucket."

  I had to admit, she made three very good points. And it would be a lot easier on my relationship with Grant if Carmen were the guilty party and not his former friend and fellow officer. "She was conveniently missing from work yesterday," I agreed.

  "I wonder if she's in today," Eddie said, eyeing Ava's phone suggestively.

  She grinned, taking the hint and picking it up to scroll through her recent calls. She tapped Nadia's Nails' number and put the phone on speaker, setting it on the counter as we all listened to it ring.

  Four in I was beginning to think maybe we were calling too early for them to be open, when a familiar voice picked up on the other end.

  "Nadia's Nails, how may I help you?" the same nasally receptionist answered.

  "Hi. This is Ava calling again for Carmen. Is she in today?"

  The woman on the other end sighed. "No. She's not."

  "Out sick again?" Ava asked, sending me a knowing look.

  "Beats me. She had a nine thirty appointment and just didn't show. Didn't even bother to call in today."

  "Really?" Ava asked, wiggling her eyebrow up and down at us.

  "Yeah. Really. So if she really is some friend of yours, when you see her, tell her she's fired if she doesn't show up tomorrow." With that, Nasally hung up.

  "I'm beginning to think you might be right about Carmen," I said as Ava put her phone back into her pocket.

  "You think she's hiding out at home?" Eddie asked.

  I shrugged. "It's possible. The receptionist wouldn't give us her number."

  Conchita blew out a puff of air between her lips in a pft sound. "Are you kidding me? You can find anyone on the internet these days."

  I stifled a grin. Conchita had only discovered the internet about two decades after the rest of the world.

  "Here, give me your phone." Conchita made a waving motion, indicating Ava should hand it over.

  Which she did. One did not argue with the purveyor of the muffins in her own kitchen. "Why don't you use yours?" Ava asked as she forked it over.

  Conchita waved her off. "I don't have a data plan. Too rich for my blood."

  Was that a subtle dig at how much (or little) I paid her? I was beginning to feel like a scrooge in the boss department—minus the piles of cash.

  "See, all you have to do is google the name and city of the person you want to find," Conchita went on, "and something will show up. A property record, a phone number, social media. It always does." She let her fingers do the walking, squinting at the screen to see the small print.

  "What do you mean 'it always does'?" Eddie asked, narrowing his eyes at her. "How often are you invading someone's privacy?"

  Conchita made the pft sound again. "Please. You think anything is private now? Alexa hears all, and Facebook practically reads my mind with their ads."

  I chuckled. "So, any hits for Carmen Buckley in Napa?"

  Conchita frowned. "Give me a minute. I'm not a miracle worker."

  Eddie stifled a grin, sipping his coffee. "No, just nosy."

  Conchita shot him a look. "You behave. Or the next time Curtis wants to know how much you paid for those fancy Italian shoes of yours, I'll show him how to search your browsing history."

  Eddie gasp. "You wouldn't!"

  Conchita grinned and winked at me. Clearly, she would not.

  "You think Grant's looked at Carmen as a suspect yet?" Ava asked, rising to refill her coffee cup.

  I shrugged. "He hasn't said anything to me." I paused. "Not that I'm sure he would." I shoved that uncomfortable thought down. "Why?"

  "Just wondering if maybe that's why Carmen's hiding out. You know, afraid the police might suspect her and stop her insurance payment," Ava said as the coffee machine did its thing, gurgling and brewing.

  "Could they do that?" Eddie asked.

  "Oh yeah." Ava nodded. "If it turns out Carmen killed Buckley she wouldn't get the money at all."

  "Really?" Eddie asked. "Who benefits from the insurance policy then?"

  Ava shrugged. "I guess the insurance company. Someone had to be paying the premiums the last two years. But, yeah, if she killed him, she can't profit from the death. It's called…" She trailed off, looking at the ceiling as if trying to remember.

  "Slayer Rule," Conchita supplied.

  "How did you know that?" I asked.

  "I just googled it." She held up Ava's phone.

  "I thought you were googling Carmen's address," Ava chided.

  "Give me a minute…" Conchita went back to squinting at the screen. I was about to offer to go get her reading glasses for her, when she let out a triumphant, "Ah-ha!"

  "You find her?" Ava asked, coming to look over Conchita's shoulder.

  "I did." She turned the phone around so we could all see the screen. She had a website called RapidPeopleSearch.com pulled up, with a listing page displayed for a Carmen S. Buckley nee Santiago, complete with a current address.

  "How did you do that?" Eddie asked, appropriately impressed.

  Conchita blew on her nails and buffed them against her collar. "I may be old, but I got skills."

  I clicked on the address to show a map with a little red pinpoint near the freeway. "Looks like it's about halfway between Sonoma and Napa." I glanced up at Ava. "Kind of in the middle of nowhere."

  "Sounds like a great place for a killer to hide out," Ava said, eyes shining with that unmistakable Charlie's Angels look. "Who wants to go for a drive?"

  * * *

  Half an hour later, Ava, Eddie, and I pulled off the freeway in my Jeep and into open farmland. And as we pulled onto Carmen's street, I instantly understood how badly she needed money. It was a one lane road, flanked on either side by small, dilapidated homes that looked like they'd originally been constructed for migrant workers who'd picked the grapes in this region by hand. Each dwelling was the same size and shape—little more than a squat square building with a front stoop and a roof—but they were a variety of dull, peeling paint colors, as if several people had tried over the years to cheer them up. Clearly none had succeede
d, as every hue of blue, red, yellow, and even pale pink was dull and dingy in a way that said it had been years since anything had looked cheery here.

  Carmen's number was halfway down the block, on a house that was part burgundy and part grey, just depending on how much of the old paint colors had been exposed in places. The cement stoop was cracked, the roof missing a few tiles in front, and the grass long ago dried and given way to hard packed dirt. A flowerpot sat to one side under a closed window, though the only thing planted in it was a couple of dead sticks and a faded flag that said Happy Thanksgiving. It was spring. Clearly Carmen had given up on décor as well. From the faded looks of it, the flag could have been there since last fall or Thanksgiving 1998.

  I parked next to the patch of dead grass on the right side of the road and got out of my Jeep, locking the doors after Ava and Eddie did the same.

  "This is depressing," Eddie said, eyeing the building.

  "No car in the driveway," Ava noted, nodding to the left of the building. Though "driveway" might have been overstating it a bit. There was a patch of dirt at the side of the building, where a shiny black puddle of oil indicated a car had recently sat.

  Ava led the way to the front door and rapped hard enough that I feared the faded wood might split in two.

  I strained to listen, but no sign of life came back to us. No footsteps, no TV blaring, no shift of fabric as someone moved to peek out the peep hole.

  Ava tried again for good measure, knocking loudly as I stepped to the left and peered in the window. Not that I could see much. The curtains were drawn so that only a sliver of the room was visible between them. I could make out a sofa, a coffee table, and a rug on the floor. No lights on. No movement.

  "I don't think she's here," Eddie decided, coming to stand next to me. He squinted, pressing his pudgy face close to the window. "See anything?"

  I shook my head. "Not really."

  "Which means she's clearly not home sick," Ava said, giving me a pointed look.

  "Maybe she went to the doctor's office?" I offered. "Or pharmacy?"

  "Sure." Ava nodded. "Or maybe she's halfway to the Bahamas right now with the insurance money from offing her ex-husband."

  "That is highly unlikely," I told her. Then added, "Insurance doesn't pay up that fast."

  "Maybe she's just running scared," Eddie offered. "No cash, on the run, knowing her alibi stinks and it's only a matter of time before—hey, where are you going?"

  Ava moved around the back of the house, ducking beneath a clothesline. "I just want to take a peek in the back windows."

  "What if she has a dog or something?" Eddie asked, looking nervous as he followed a step behind us. Eddie had a teacup Pomeranian named Winky, but that was about as ferocious an animal as Eddie could stomach. I'd even seen him blanch at a feral cat once.

  "Relax. If she had a dog, she'd have a fence."

  "If she could afford a fence," I said, stepping over broken pottery and a lawn chair with a large hole where the derrière went.

  "Lucky us—looks like she can't afford decent window coverings either." Ava nodded toward the back window—singular—which was adorned in crooked vertical blinds that had bent away from the window on the right side.

  She took a step closer, putting both hands up to shield her eyes from the sun as she looked through the dusty pane.

  "Any sign of Carmen?" I asked, starting to feel antsy standing in her unfenced yard where any of her neighbors could see us and report suspicious trespassers.

  "Negative. In fact, no sign of anything really. Place looks dark."

  "I think we should go," Eddie said, his gaze going to the next shack over on the right.

  I followed his line of sight to find the face of a young girl staring out at us through a side window. "I agree."

  Ava sighed but straightened up and followed our lead back around to the front of the house. Only, as she walked across the dead lawn back to the Jeep, she paused at Carmen's mailbox.

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  She didn't answer, instead doing an over-the-shoulder glance before quickly pulling open the box and extracting its contents.

  "Ava! Tampering with the mail is a federal offense," Eddie hissed at her.

  "I'm not tampering. Just looking," she protested. "And look at this." She held out a bill from the water company.

  "She has bills." I shrugged.

  "Look at the postmark." Ava pointed to it. "Five days ago. From a local address. It would take three at max to arrive here."

  "Which means it's been sitting in Carmen's mailbox for at least two days," I said, working it out in my head as I spoke.

  "Which means Carmen hasn't been home in two days," Eddie said.

  I met Ava's gaze as she voiced the same thing I was thinking.

  "It looks like Carmen's skipped town."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  At a dead end with Carmen, we drove back to the winery, where I dropped Eddie off to get some actual work done that day (feeling almost guilty that he may not have a job to work soon if I didn't fix our finances), and I followed Ava out to her car in the parking lot.

  "You think we should tell Grant about Carmen leaving town?" Ava asked as she beeped her car locks open.

  I shrugged. "I think he's still looking at all of this as a random shooting." I paused. "But, yeah, maybe we should send him a text or something."

  I must have looked as enthused about that as I felt as Ava shook her head. "I'll do it."

  I raised an eyebrow at her. "You?"

  "It doesn't matter if he's mad at me," she reasoned. "I'll tell him I was that early nail appointment she skipped out on or something. I can leave you out of it."

  "I hate all these half truths," I mumbled, thinking as much about what we were saying as how Grant had kept me in the dark about his relationship with Buckley.

  "Grant's a good guy," Ava said as she pulled her phone out, fingers flying over the keyboard. "You guys will get through this."

  I sent her a wan smile as I keyed Grant's number in for her, not confident she was right.

  However, then I gave myself a mental shake. Moping around wasn't going to help anyone. "You know, there's one thing about all this that's been bothering me this morning," I said, changing gears.

  "Oh? Just one?" Ava teased, glancing up from her text.

  I grinned. "Okay, one other thing. I can't stop thinking about those photos that Buckley had in his files."

  "Of Katy Kline and James Atherton," Ava clarified.

  "And Grant," I added my stomach clenching at the thought.

  "They could be nothing," Ava said. "I mean, totally unrelated. I have lots of random pictures on my phone," she said, holding up her pink sparkly case as if to prove her point.

  "Yeah, but I bet you only print the important ones."

  "Okay, you got me there." She hit the button to send her text and put her phone back in her pocket. "So, what do you think was important about those photos?"

  "I don't know. But I'm wondering if maybe it would be worth talking to James Atherton. At least maybe ask him how he knew Buckley."

  Ava glanced at her watch. "I don't have to be at the shop for another couple of hours. Wanna ride into town with me?"

  * * *

  James Atherton was a sales rep for Bay Cellars, and he and I had an almost civil relationship. I knew him through his ex-wife Leah, who I considered a close friend. James, on the other hand, I did not. I'd had the misfortune to meet him after his second wife had been killed, and James, along with the police, had put Leah in the role of prime suspect. I'd done everything I could at the time to try to help her clear her name, which had even at one point included looking at James as his wife's possible killer. In the end he'd been guilty of selfishness and poor judgment but innocent of her murder. We'd parted ways on tentative terms, and I wasn't totally certain he'd be happy to see me.

  A thought I tried not to dwell on as we pulled up to Bay Cellars. It was one of the biggest wineries in the region, cov
ering several sprawling acres just outside of town. Their employees numbered in the hundreds and, unlike mine, all had dental and 401K plans. Their wines were in every grocery chain in America, at moderate prices that just about every household could afford. They were the type of corporate winery that every small place like Oak Valley simultaneously envied and feared. More than once Bay Cellars in general, and James Atherton in particular, had offered to buy Oak Valley but at a fraction of what it was worth. And more than once I'd hesitated before saying no. Though that hesitation was longer and longer as my debt grew bigger and bigger.

  I steeled myself against the green-eyed monster as Ava parked her GTO in the lot, and we made our way to the main entrance. Displays of beautifully labeled bottles and national ad campaigns covered the walls of the lobby, and to our right I could see several people mingling in the massive tasting room, laughing, sipping, and generally having a great time, even though it was barely noon.

  A dark haired woman dressed in a sleek little black dress and thigh high boots stepped out from behind the stone reception counter as we approached.

  "Welcome to Bay Cellars," she said, her voice pleasant and welcoming to match her smile. "Are you here for a tour or a tasting?"

  "I was actually hoping to speak with one of your sales representatives. James Atherton."

  "Do you have an appointment?"

  "No." I shook my head, wondering if we should have called ahead. Of course, then it would have given him ample time to make an excuse not to see me. "But we're here from Oak Valley Vineyards," I added, hoping that lent us some credibility in her eyes.

  "Of course," she replied, even though I could tell the name was lost on her. "Can I have your name please?"

  "Emmy Oak. And Ava Barnett," I said, gesturing to my friend.

  "Just a moment, please." She stepped back behind the counter and picked up a white telephone receiver, mumbling quietly into it. After a couple of exchanges, she set it down and turned back to us.

  "I'm so sorry, but Mr. Atherton is just finishing up with another client right now," she informed us.