A Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mystery 2: Death by the Glass

by Nadia Gordon

  He smoothed back his hair with both hands, gazing up at her from his black turtleneck. He was well dressed. She took in the charcoal trousers and the expensive designer shoes. Even his belt was pristine and lustrous. Most guys she knew wore whatever was within reach.

  “The place looks great,” he said, glancing around.

  Wildside had only one room and a weather-permitting patio out French doors at one end, but it was a very pretty room, with stone walls and burnished concrete floors. She’d put up a show of moody but finely rendered oil landscapes by a local artist, and in the entry there was an arrangement of branches decked with kumquats. At one end of the counter, a tall wire vase overflowed with tangerines and a citrus bowl was heaped with Meyer lemons, the deeply saturated yellow of their skins luminous.

  “And you look great,” he said.

  “The place looks great. I look terrible,” she said.

  “No, you look great. It’s good to see you in your element.”

  The scent of woodsy cologne drifted across the table. Andre looked at her with a half smile and she felt a jolt of sense memory. For an instant, every cell in her body seemed to leap out of its chair at the thought of the night they’d spent together. His face had the creamy look of a very close shave and she would have leaned across and kissed it if she’d had the guts. He was wearing the same watch he’d had on the night they spent together, a heavy one with lots of dials. She remembered him releasing the steel band with a tug and dropping it on the bedside table. It made her catch her breath to think of it, his arm stretching across her to reach the nightstand. She lingered over the memory of the stretch of biceps, the seductive hollow of armpit.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Fine,” said Sunny. “Never better. Do you want something to drink? Are you hungry?”

  “No, I can’t stay. I just thought I would stop by since I hadn’t heard from you.”

  She nodded. His face was serious, waiting for her to say something. If she ever wanted to see him take that watch off again, she needed to come up with a decent explanation for standing him up, and quickly.

  “I’m sorry I bolted last night,” she said. “I thought I was coming down with something, but I think I was just dead tired.”

  It was his turn to nod silently. They both knew it wasn’t much of an excuse. She couldn’t think of anything more convincing short of telling an all-out lie, and she didn’t want to do that. They were off to a rocky enough start as it was, and that last bit of intelligence about his night with Dahlia hadn’t helped matters. She’d assumed Andre was a man of some experience when it came to the ladies, but the close proximity of his last connection was more than a little unsettling. He was waiting for her to go on, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I brought you something,” he said finally, taking a small package out of his jacket pocket. He set it on the table in front of her.

  She picked it up. It was too light for a book, too thick for a CD. The package was wrapped in brown paper with a brown and tan striped feather on top, sewn in place with red thread. The Valley was full of peregrine falcons. The feather looked like it might be from one of them, or some other predatory bird. She often saw them standing watch from telephone lines and fence posts along the highway.

  “I found that in the vineyard up at Mayacamas,” he said. “Have you been there?”

  “Once, a long time ago. Did you sew it?”

  “I did,” he said, sheepishly.

  “Very crafty.”

  She eased the paper open. Inside was a glass-framed butterfly with gray and violet wings edged in black. It was very pretty and she was about to say so when she remembered another butterfly. Her expression froze.

  “You don’t like it,” he said, looking worried.

  “No, I absolutely like it. I love it. It’s beautiful.”

  There was another silence while she tried to figure out how to respond to what seemed to be a symbol of his night with another woman. Was it just a coincidence? Her head filled with images of Dahlia Zimmerman lounging next to Andre, his fingers tracing the outline of wings. She knew it was silly to get upset about it, but it was too vivid to ignore.

  “You really have a thing for butterflies, don’t you,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. Just that you seem to really like butterflies.”

  “This one is beautiful. What others are you thinking of?” he asked.

  Why not just come out and ask him about Dahlia? Find out what that night meant to him, if anything? She couldn’t do it, just like she couldn’t ask him about the wine. Too many suspicions, too many seeming accusations so early in their relationship. It was a lose-lose undertaking. Either her fears would be justified, or he would be insulted.

  She turned the butterfly to the light and examined its intricate wings dusted with color. Despite the complications, something about Andre Morales made her happy. Why was she rushing to condemn him based on extrapolation, inference, and hearsay? She had accepted Dahlia’s story, told to her secondhand, as irrefutable truth. Of course Rivka wouldn’t lie, but accepting such an account secondhand meant she’d lost the opportunity to watch Dahlia tell her story. She’d missed the details and the tone that would have told her what to make of it. A secondhand account was practically worthless. It was gossip. What Rivka said might not be entirely true, or might be missing some important piece of information that could change everything. As far as she knew, it was even theoretically possible, though she couldn’t imagine why, that Dahlia had made the whole story up.

  Andre sighed. “I knew it, it’s the animal cruelty issue. I worried about that. You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

  She laughed. “I’m not a vegetarian. Far from it. But you don’t expect me to eat this, do you?”

  “Not unless you want to.”

  “I think I’ll pass.”

  “And the animal cruelty doesn’t bother you?” he said.

  “Was this butterfly tortured?”

  “Well, not intentionally.”

  “You mean it may have been inadvertently tortured?” she said.

  “Well, it is dead. It probably didn’t go willingly.”

  “Yes,” she said tentatively. “What exactly are we talking about here?”

  “We’re talking about why you don’t like my present.”

  “I do like it. I love it.”

  “No, you don’t. I can tell. It’s the morbidity, isn’t it? I knew that would be a problem. Taxidermy is always a risky gift, especially at the beginning of a relationship.”

  She laughed again. It was reassuring to see him worry. “It’s beautiful. I love it. Really. It’s perfect.”

  “I’m glad. I thought of you when I saw it. Its wings are the same color as your eyes.”

  She frowned, then gave him a wry smile. “That would be true if this butterfly were green,” she said slowly.

  Andre cleared his throat. “Let me see.”

  She looked at him intently, widening her eyes.

  “Um, I see what you’re saying. Did I mention I’m color-blind?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I am. I swear. You can ask Nick. That’s why I always wear black.”

  “Then that was a pretty risky line to use.”

  “I thought there were more colors in the wings. But it really did make me think of you—and actually, to me, the wings are the same color as your eyes.”

  She laughed and he leaned across the table for another kiss. There seemed to be a good deal of kissing in this visit, and not without effect. This last one convinced her that there couldn’t be anything to the butterfly. It was an unfortunate coincidence, that was all.

  They chatted easily for the next few minutes, Sunny watching her own feelings with dismay. A few hours earlier she’d felt miles away from him. He’d seemed so unknowable as to be capable of anything, of lying, stealing, even of murder. Now it was like she knew everything there was to know about him, and
that anything wrong had to be an accident or a misunderstanding. How quickly the love goggles descended, how securely they fell into place, making everything look so sweet and easy. Another silence seized them, a romantic one this time. It was interrupted by Bertrand, the maître d’, who came over to whisper in her ear. Apparently one of the customers had cut his tongue on a piece of caramel lattice and was demanding something be done about it.

  “Badly?” asked Sunny, not in a whisper.

  He looked at her with the flat expression of a man accustomed to dealing with the public.

  “He is still breathing,” said Bertrand dryly. “I thought we could comp his dessert and offer him a digestif to ease the mental and physical anguish of his experience.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “What do you think? There’s that bottle of pear brandy from Nîmes that’s really nice. I’d forget just about anything after a glass of that.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Bertrand.

  “I guess we probably ought to warn people about the caramel,” said Sunny.

  “We do.” Bertrand stalked away and Andre raised his eyebrows inquisitively.

  “Someone cut himself on a shard of spun sugar.”

  “Eating is dangerous,” Andre said.

  “It is like glass until it melts,” Sunny said. She lowered her voice. “Still, what happened to the days when people who injured themselves eating dessert were embarrassed to admit it? We have lost all dignity. Sometimes I think there will actually come a time when I have to ask my customers to sign a waiver stating that they understand and accept the hazards of fine dining.”

  “You think you’re joking,” said Andre. “Eliot wanted the wait staff at Vinifera to warn anyone ordering the Caesar salad that it has raw eggs and they could get salmonella.”

  “And?”

  “I said no way. It’s ridiculous. Next we’ll need plates printed with a warning that the food could be hot, and it must be chewed in order to be digested. You can’t worry about that stuff. This is America, we’ll all end up in court someday.”

  “I think full disclosure printed on the menu is the way to go,” Sunny said. “Warning: The stuff under the peppercorn sauce is actually a hunk of dead cow. Warning: Organic carrots are grown in dirt fertilized with chicken poop.”

  “Warning: This cheese has been made from juice squeezed out of a goat’s ta-tas and left to mold in a musty cave,” Andre countered.

  “Warning: Earwigs, ants, and spiders were crushed along with the grapes that made your wine,” said Sunny.

  Andre’s brown eyes sparkled. “When?” he said, holding his hands out for hers across the table. “When do I get to see you again?”

  There was no denying it, the guy made her melt like gelato on a warm night. After some scheduling back and forth they agreed to meet Friday night at Vinifera after he finished work. That gave her just over two days to figure out what was going on at Vinifera and how much Andre knew about it.

  As they stood up and Andre put on his jacket, she realized she couldn’t wait any longer. She certainly couldn’t wait until Friday night. She had to ask, even if it was awkward.

  “That Marceline was a remarkable bottle of wine,” she said, as casually as possible. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “They don’t come along very often,” he said. “I’m glad you were there to share it with me.”

  “Had you had it a long time?”

  “Not that long. I don’t cellar wine at home. I’m too impatient.” He gave her a conspiratorial smile. “A good bottle of wine doesn’t last a week around my house, let alone years.”

  “Where did you get it, anyway?” she asked, watching his eyes.

  “Oh, it just appeared one day. Strangest thing. Happens sometimes with very old, good wine,” he said.

  “That’s funny, the exact opposite seems to happen at my place,” she said. “Wine, especially good wine, seems to disappear before you know it.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m familiar with that phenomenon as well.”

  She bit her lower lip and studied him. “So the wine fairy up and left you a bottle of forty-year-old Burgundy from one of the best terroirs in France, just like that.”

  “Hey, hey, hey, watch the calculations there. That wine was not forty years old. Far from it. It was born the same year as me.”

  “I’m sorry,” she laughed. “I mean, what exactly did you do for your wine fairy that led her to leave you a thirty-something-year-old bottle of the world’s best Burgundy?”

  He gave her a charming smile. “If you must know, I guess you could call that bottle the fortuitous product of a mutually beneficial exchange.”

  Evasion. She’d learned from running a business that the best way to get someone to answer your question is to say nothing yourself after their lame answer. They would feel compelled to say more, if only to fill the silence.

  “It doesn’t matter where I got it,” he said a moment later. His tone was serious. “What matters is that we had fun drinking it together.”

  He wrapped his scarf around his neck and kissed her on each cheek, then put the back of his hand to her forehead, feeling her temperature. “You better get some rest before Friday,” he said. “You look pale.”

  PART TWO

  Still Life

  12

  Muscular types like Steve Harvey didn’t generally sit in the full lotus position, at least not comfortably.

  “The man has incredibly open hips,” Rivka said to Sunny, peeking in the window of the corrugated metal Quonset hut where Sergeant Harvey was practicing yoga. The class was almost over. From the cinder blocks they were standing on, they could see Harvey sitting in the front row, his legs crossed with each foot on the opposite thigh and his eyes closed, a peaceful expression on his normally tense face. Rivka stepped down and brushed off her hands.

  “How did you know he’d be here?” asked Sunny, doing likewise.

  “He’s always coming out when I’m going in. He does the four-thirty full primary series every Monday and Wednesday. I do rocket at six. You’d know that if you came more often.”

  “What, and get all relaxed?”

  “It wouldn’t kill you.”

  “I need my stress to keep me motivated.”

  Rivka shook her head and they waited in silence. After a few minutes the door opened and a handful of flushed and sweaty participants walked out.

  Rivka shouldered her mat. “You sure you won’t come?” she asked.

  “No can do. I’ve got to get all up in Harvey’s business.”

  Rivka flashed her the peace sign and went in. A few minutes later Sergeant Harvey emerged looking satisfied. His expression changed when he saw Sunny waiting for him.

  “Sunny.”

  “Steve.”

  “Don’t tell me,” he said, continuing up the sidewalk. “You’re here on official police business.”

  “More or less,” she said, following him.

  “McCoskey, do the words day off mean anything to you?”

  “Two of my favorite words.”

  “Mine too. I happen to be enjoying my day off right now. Or at least I was.”

  “I’d love to leave you in peace, Steve. Really, I would. But it’s important.” She looked around to see if anyone was within earshot. “It’ll only take a minute. It’s about Nathan Osborne, and that bottle of wine that was broken at his house the night he died.”

  Steve frowned. “What about it?”

  “Well, for one thing, I wondered if you’d figured out how it got broken. If somebody dropped it, and if so, who.”

  “No comment. Next question.”

  “Okay, how about fingerprints? Did you find any on the broken glass?”

  “I’d rather not talk about that stuff, Sunny. In fact, I can’t talk about it.”

  “Does that mean you didn’t find anything or you didn’t check or they didn’t match anybody we know?”

  They stopped in front of Steve’s car, an old GMC Jimmy from the late sevent
ies painted primer gray. His dog, a chesty mix of what Sunny guessed was black lab and pit bull, with markings like a black-and-white cow, barked at him from the cab, and he held up his finger for her to be quiet. The dog transferred the bark into zealous tail-wagging. Steve stood in the twilight holding his car keys. Sunny could tell she wasn’t going to get much more of his time.

  “It means I can’t give out information about a case like we’re going through the daily sports wrap-up,” he said. “Listen, you got lucky last time helping Skord, now you need to keep out of police business. I hate to be rude, but you’re way out of your league here, McCoskey. You don’t have a league. You’ve got no business in this matter whatsoever, as far as I can tell. We’ve got your information about the mushrooms. That’s the extent of your involvement as far as I’m concerned.”

  “What about the alarm?” she said. “Do you have any leads on who might have disabled it that night?”

  Steve shook his head. “How’d you know about that?”

  She smiled. “I have my sources. It’s no secret anyway. Your people told everybody at Vinifera about it.”

  The dog yipped and Steve opened the door and let her out. She wagged and panted back and forth between them and he squatted down to greet her with rough scratches and swats, putting powerful shoulders on display in the process. Sunny wondered if he lifted weights or if yoga did more than she thought. He said, “That’s a good girl! Zuma, meet Sunny.”

  Steve stood up and Zuma trotted off, nose to the ground.

  “What’s got you interested in all this, anyway?” he said.

  “I’m just curious,” said Sunny. “I mean, you must be curious too. About who dropped that wine.”