by Nadia Gordon
“So you did keep a sample.”
“I believe Officer Dervich thought it prudent to collect samples of the wine on the floor and in the glass, on the off chance they might prove useful.”
“That’s great. How soon do you think you can find out?”
“We’ve got two big problems. One is access. Assuming you’re right, how do you suppose they got the yew into the wine? Second is logic. Assuming you’re right, why wouldn’t the perpetrator remove the evidence?”
“I cover that. Page four, I think. All you’d have to do is inject the extract through the foil and cork. And the perp was befuddled after they failed to remove the evidence without messing up the scene. They panicked and got out of there fast. Besides, with what looks like a natural death, they wouldn’t need to worry too much about leaving the juice on the scene.”
“Sunny, this is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been meaning to talk with you about. I believe we’ve talked about it before, but I find myself forced to remind you that it is illegal to practice criminal investigation in California without a license. It is also stupid. You already found out the hard way once. It can land you in serious trouble.”
“I’m not investigating anything. I’m just a concerned friend trying to help the local authorities.”
“Right now I’m also a concerned friend. I’m concerned that you are far too involved in something that is none of your business.”
“But doesn’t finding out what happened matter?”
“It does. I’d simply like you to observe the appropriate division of labor. You run Wildside, I’ll handle the police work.”
“Fine. I’m done. How long is it going to take?”
“This is the situation. I’m going to go out on a limb to check this out for you. Frankly, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell there’s taxine in that wine. But if it will get you off my back, I’m thrilled to do it. As luck would have it, there’s an officer driving up to Sacramento later today to testify at the capitol and he can drop off the sample. I had to pull in a few favors up there to get them to stop what they’re doing and find a way to identify taxine. Luckily I have a buddy in forensic toxicology who said he’d take a look.”
“You mean you already arranged to have the wine tested? You’re great, Steve. But why did you give me such a hard time just now? Never mind. Thanks.”
“The St. Helena Police Department thanks you for your interest and diligence. You have officially done your duty as a concerned citizen, and now I would like to request that this be our last conversation on the matter.”
“This is the last you’ll hear of it from me. Except, will you let me know the outcome?”
He sighed and she heard the shuffling of papers on the other end of the line. “I’ll have Officer Dervich call as soon as we know.”
18
The certainty of the results was a given in Sunny’s mind. The toxicology, the opportunity, and the logic fit perfectly. The wine would test positive for taxine. The difficulty now was establishing who did it.
Sunny pulled a lump of pizza dough from the batch she was making and smelled it, then added two more large pinches of kosher salt. She attempted to keep her mind on her work, but her thoughts returned again and again to the facts, or the need to connect them. There was a thread called Marceline running from Nathan’s fatal glass of wine to Remy, unfortunately to Andre Morales, and to Dahlia. There was one more person who might be able to shed more light on these people.
“When do you think you’ll hear?” asked Rivka, breaking into Sunny’s thoughts.
“I don’t know.”
“What if it’s positive?”
“I’ll leave it to Steve and I can get back to work. I want to tackle all those projects we talked about, and put together a bunch of menus for special Tuesday lunches. I thought about Monty’s idea of offering a faster, cheaper prix fixe option every day, but that’s not what Wildside is about. I want people who come here to do something they don’t normally do. I like that it takes a couple of hours to eat. I don’t want to change that. But I do want to make it possible for people who only have an hour for lunch to come here. I’m thinking Tuesdays. On Tuesday, you’re not in Pays Basque or Perugia or Haute Provence. You’re in Milan or Paris or London and you’ve got an hour to eat a nice, hot bistro lunch and get back to work.”
“Power Tuesday,” said Rivka.
“That’s getting there,” said Sunny.
“Upwardly Mobile Tuesdays.”
“Maybe it should be Monday.”
The two of them worked in silence. Rivka put the lid on a pot of braised greens. Over the white noise of kitchen appliances, soft piano cords announced the imminent arrival of a Puccini aria.
Sunny was restless, but she couldn’t possibly get away until the last of the butternut squash ravioli were made. They took more time than most of the other entrées and she couldn’t leave Rivka with that kind of challenge. She needed to leave soon, though. She was cutting it close. Andre seemed to come in around noon. The later it was in the day, the more likely he was to be at work, and she didn’t want to risk running into him with no good excuse for being at his restaurant.
“You’re intense this morning,” said Rivka, watching her.
“I need to get everything done. I have an appointment at eleven, but I’ll be back before twelve, I promise.”
“Oh no. I thought you were satisfied now that Steve Harvey is testing your theory. Don’t tell me you’re going to go stir up more trouble.”
“Not trouble. Answers.”
Years of practice paid off at times like this. Her hands glided from task to task, and she moved with such speed and focused attention that the clock on the wall seemed frozen. By ten minutes to eleven, the day’s preparations had advanced far enough that she felt comfortable turning the kitchen over to Rivka for the last half hour before they opened. Rivka gave her an imploring look as she opened the door and stepped outside.
Eliot Denby turned from the window in his office at the sound of three gentle knocks on the open door.
“Can I come in?” said Sunny, attempting to sound as casual as possible, as if this surprise visit were a social call compelled only by the desire to strike up a friendship with a fellow restaurateur.
The initial look of annoyance on Eliot’s face was swiftly replaced by a charming smile.
“Come in, come in, of course,” he said in a voice too richly mannered to be sincere. “This is a pleasant surprise.” He stretched out a well-manicured hand and gripped hers briefly in welcome.
“I hate to bother you. I know you are in the middle of a busy morning,” said Sunny. “I have an important matter to speak with you about. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Again! We seem to share so many important matters lately. Have a seat and tell me about it.”
She registered his condescension and pulled up one of the minimalist steel-and-leather chairs set up on her side of the desk. Eliot sat down on the other side, and they stared at each other momentarily across the slab of polished cherry wood. A clear iMac sat at one end next to a high-tech telephone, an architect’s lamp, and a designer calculator with stylishly oversized buttons. The only paperwork in sight, a stack of brown accounting ledgers and a yellow notepad scored with computations, stood out like relics from a bygone era.
The telephone emitted a triple pulse. Eliot glanced at the display and said, “Excuse me for one moment. I’ve been trying to reach this person for days.”
The break was a relief. Sunny wanted to start with Remy but she needed to be cautious, since she didn’t know how close the relationship was between Eliot and Remy, and she wanted to seem to be helping Eliot, not pointing out his mismanagement. And certain as she was that Remy was guilty of selling forged wine, she wasn’t certain enough to be his accuser. What if she was wrong? Even if she was right, was it her place to bring his deeds to everyone’s attention?
Eliot was describing a conversation he’d had with someone named Tom, and what he u
nderstood to be the prospects of some future project. She looked around the room. A matching cherry cabinet with two glass doors displayed artifacts from Eliot’s professional life. There was a framed photo of him with Clint Eastwood in front of the Silverado country club, both of them windblown and dressed for tennis. Based on the length of their shorts, it had been taken sometime in the early eighties. She perused the collection of awards and certificates of official recognition handed out by local auxiliaries, city councils, and commissions. Eliot had been Napa City Businessman of the Year in 1985. There was a photograph of him and another man—Nathan?—looking young and elated, arm in arm with Governor Brown circa 1978. Eliot wore a lush mustache and a velour shirt. Another shot showed the two of them standing proudly to either side of a wooden box labeled “Denby’s Coastal Ridge Pinot Noir 1988.” Next to this photograph stood a bottle of Bandol Rouge from 1991.
Eliot said, “I think that would be wise. I’ll bring him along. Right. Two o’clock on Tuesday. See you then.” He hung up the phone and finished making note of their appointment in his computer. When he was done, he looked back at Sunny with businesslike enthusiasm. “Sorry about that. It’s a shame Nathan didn’t live to see this next phase of the business. It’s going to be very exciting.”
“Things are going well?”
“Very well. We’re starting our own line of gourmet products. They’ll be in all the high-end markets. Dean & DeLuca, Oakville Grocery, Andronico’s. We’re shopping a cookbook around, and there’s interest in a television show on the Food Network. They can’t get enough of Andre.”
“That’s terrific.” She was losing her nerve. Eliot met her eyes, waiting for her to speak. She looked at the cabinet, searching for an entrée to the topic on her mind.
“That’s one of my favorite wines,” she said, indicating the bottle of Bandol.
“That bottle is special.” He stood up, walked over to the cabinet, and removed the bottle, handing it to Sunny with ceremonial reverence. It was a wine she had served dozens of times at dinner parties, and she instinctively held it by the punt—the indentation in the bottom of the bottle—casually, familiarly, as if about to pour herself a glass. She stopped and looked more closely at the label, reading each word. Nothing seemed to have changed since 1991. She rubbed her thumb against the end of the punt, tracing its contours, then handed the bottle back to Eliot, who gazed at it for a moment before putting it back.
“Nathan and I had a wine bar together called Denby’s,” he said, with obvious pride. “It was in a beautiful old building downtown in Mill Valley, by the theater. We had more fun running that place. Everybody would come in. It was like having a party seven days a week, in both the good and the bad sense. I hardly slept for five years. Nathan had just started Osborne Wines, and he gave me that bottle the day Denby’s opened. He said we would drink it on the ten-year anniversary. We never got to.”
“It burned down, didn’t it?”
“Stupidly. There was a gas heater with a grate in the floor in the office. Somebody put a stack of newspapers on top of it. We never found out who. They caught fire and the place was a heap of smoldering wreckage within half an hour. That bottle was the only one that survived intact. It was in the safe, not the cellar.”
“That’s terrible. You didn’t have insurance?”
“We did. The fire put us out of business all the same. It’s a long story.” He went back around the desk and sat down, thinking. Finally he said, “The business was heavily in debt to Osborne Wines. We were in it for the long haul. We had invested in an extensive inventory of new wines, which we planned to age in the cellar at Denby’s. It was a risky strategy. We bought fantastic stuff. At that time, not that many people knew about the very good Rhône wines and the really great wines from Provence. It was all still fairly new here. You could introduce people to it. After the fire, the insurance payment was just enough to keep Osborne Wines in the black. We walked away with almost nothing. After all those years in business, our only profit was memories.”
“And the two of you teamed up again to open Vinifera.”
“We thought we’d give it one more try.”
“Was Remy Castels the wine steward at Denby’s?”
The vertical line between Eliot’s eyebrows deepened. “Only for about the last year. We didn’t have a sommelier before that. Nathan handled the cellar and the servers sold and poured.” He checked his wristwatch. “What was the important matter you wanted to discuss? I need to leave for a meeting in about five minutes.”
“It’s a hard topic for me to bring up,” she said, “and I think it’s going to take more than five minutes to explain. I’d rather wait and discuss it later.”
“I don’t understand.”
Sunny stood up. “It’s okay. Humor me. I’ll give you a call to set up a better time.”
Eliot looked doubtful. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. Completely fine. I’ll be in touch.”
“You do that,” said Eliot.
She left him and stepped out onto the catwalk overlooking the dining room. She was almost eye level with the aluminum dragonfly hanging from the ceiling like a light aircraft. She turned and looked back. A single glass block was embedded in the wall between the walkway and Eliot’s office. As she watched, a shadow passed in front of it, then back again: Eliot pacing from one side of the room to the other.
19
Rivka didn’t say a word when Sunny walked into the restaurant, a sure indication that she was not pleased to have been left to sink or swim in a small but demanding sea of hungry diners. Sunny fell to work firing salmon fillets and rib-eye steaks, sautéing chicken breasts, panfrying trout with bacon, warming duck legs, and coaxing the delicious charred black edge onto leeks, slabs of fennel, and marinated portobello mushrooms. Three hours later she plated the last order of grilled polenta and walked up front to check the dining room. Half the tables were full with parties near the end of their meals. A familiar face caught her eye and she noticed Pel and Sharon Rastburn sitting at a two-top by the French doors. Sharon waved. Sunny took off her apron and went over to say hello.
“Marvelous!” said Sharon. “That was a marvelous meal. Exquisite. You’re going to be seeing a lot of us from now on.”
Sunny expressed her pleasure that they’d enjoyed their meal, and her appreciation that they’d stopped by. Bertrand appeared bearing digestifs.
“It isn’t the 1944, and it isn’t Domaine de Mahu,” he said, “but it is Francis Darroze Bas-Armagnac. This one is a Domaine de Pinas 1981, which I find very enjoyable. You can see it is very deeply colored, rich. It’s younger, but just as virile.”
“I’d be more impressed if it was older but just as virile,” said Pel.
Sharon gasped happily and laid a hand on his. “You read my mind.”
“Pull up a chair and have a glass with us,” said Pel to Sunny. “We’re just indulging in a little tribute to Nathan. He loved his Armagnac even more than wine, but not any Armagnac, mind you. He got sentimental in his middle age and developed a strong attachment to Francis Darroze Bas-Armagnac made the year he was born, 1944. His favorite was the one from a little patch of land called Domaine de Mahu. Terribly expensive stuff, of course. He always had a glass of it after dinner. A ritual commemoration of the passing of another day.”
“It’s understandable,” said Sharon. “Each birthday marked another year of his life, but also another year that his father had been dead. His father died the same year Nathan was born, fighting the Nazis in Normandy. He was a draft card baby. His father married his high school sweetheart when he was eighteen, took her on a furlough honeymoon, then shipped out. Four months later she got a telegram, five months after that a baby.”
“Join us, Sonya. Nathan would like it,” said Pel.
Bertrand slipped away and returned a moment later with another glass and a bottle half full of liquor the color of honey.
“To the joy of life, and the inevitability of death. May it bring release,” said Pel.
“To Nathan,” said Sharon, “and the velvet flame.”
They toasted and Sunny took a sip of the fiery brandy. It smelled and tasted of spice and fruit. Fruitcake in a bottle. Then came wood and hazelnuts, vanilla and leather, British libraries and French restaurants.
“Heavenly,” said Sunny. “I don’t know why we don’t drink this more often.”
“It’s best to observe moderation with the hard liquors, I always think,” said Sharon. “Wine is one thing, brandy another.”
“I never developed a taste for it,” said Pel. “I stick to red wine.”
“Eliot doesn’t go in for brandies either,” said Sharon. “He agrees with me. Too strong.”
“Nathan swore by it. Said it brought him good luck. Besides, he was too much of a Francophile not to adopt the postprandial habit of Cognac and Armagnac. The French love their digestifs.”
“That’s true,” said Bertrand, still standing beside the table. “A small digestif is beneficial to the heart and digestion. Like the name says. A small drink in the evening after a good meal. I don’t think it does any damage.” He showed the label to the three of them. “This one is good, but the other, the one your friend drinks, is exceptional. And very difficult to find. I would imagine there is an extremely limited supply by this time. And it is very expensive. Close to a thousand dollars a bottle, perhaps.”
“Money was no object with Nathan,” said Pel.
“There was a time when we half expected him to end up living in our guest room,” said Sharon candidly. “Needless to say, I was relieved when Osborne Wines turned out to be a success.” She sighed and gave Sunny a resigned smile. “He will be missed.”
Hearing a familiar voice, Sunny turned around and was surprised to see Sergeant Harvey standing in the kitchen talking to Rivka. Their eyes met and he lifted his chin at her. She took leave of the Rastburns.
In the kitchen, she laid a finger on Sergeant Harvey’s sleeve and said, “Let’s go in the office.”