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

by Nadia Gordon

  “It’s the restaurant life,” said Sunny. “You get off work at eleven and it’s time to go out.”

  “Not if you wake up when the sun comes up.”

  “Do you?” asked Sunny.

  “Every day,” said Alex. He and his brother Gabe were fourth-generation St. Helena natives. Their family had been growing grapes and making them into wine on the same land for over a hundred years. He was a farmer at heart.

  Andre came out of the kitchen in his white jacket and long apron. He gave Sunny a solid, unhesitating kiss and took a drink from her glass of wine.

  “You’re okay if I’m back in five? I want to change.” He held up his hand, reaffirming the five-minute count.

  When he came back out he was wearing a white linen shirt and tan pants. Oh so easy on the eyes, thought Sunny. She’d spent the week obsessing over a theoretical murder and had forgotten. The contrast of white linen on gold skin was working nicely.

  “I hear you came to see Eliot today,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Sunny. “I needed to talk with him. Or I thought I did.”

  “What about?”

  Andre, Rivka, and Alex looked at her with interest.

  “I had an idea,” said Sunny. “As it turns out, it was not a very good one.”

  “What was it?” asked Andre.

  “It was silly. I’d rather not say.”

  “Oh, come on. It can’t be that silly. You thought it was good enough to drive down and tell it to Eliot.”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  Andre frowned. Rivka said, “Is anyone else hungry? I didn’t get dinner and Sunny ate a pile of weeds.”

  “That wasn’t just weeds, that was purslane,” said Sunny, mentally thanking Rivka Chavez, patron saint of those suffering an awkward silence.

  “You find purslane in salads in Greece all the time,” said Andre. “I like it, but there’s some resistance to putting it on our menu. People don’t want to pay at a restaurant for something they spend all day yanking out of their garden, and they don’t want to eat it at home because they’re afraid they’ll eat the wrong weed and end up with a stomachache.”

  “We just need some time to get used to it,” said Sunny. “When I was a kid, I thought garlic was a kind of salt. I didn’t see a clove of garlic until I was about eight and one of our neighbors started showing me how to cook. Now you wouldn’t think of an American kitchen without whole garlic. Purslane will be as common on menus as arugula before too long.”

  Andre gestured to the bartender. “Can you have the kitchen send out something? A few appetizers and things to share.” He looked back at the dining room. “We’re going to sit at twenty,” he said, standing up and leading them to a table.

  A dozen small plates from salt cod to lamb shanks arrived over the course of the next hour. Remy came by several times with wine. He was all poise and grace, though he avoided making eye contact with Sunny. He poured a new wine in their glasses whenever he passed by, saying, “You taste the spice in this one,” and “Now we have something with chocolate and blackberry notes. You see if you can taste it.” Gradually, the frozen moment at the bar and Sunny’s refusal to explain her meeting with Eliot were forgotten, or at least overlooked. Their talk migrated to a discussion of farmed salmon versus wild salmon (no comparison), the best place to eat roasted chestnuts (in front of the Met in New York), and how botrytis wine was discovered (most likely because the harvest in Hungary’s Tokaj region was interrupted one year in the mid-1600s by the possibility of a Turkish invasion). They speculated what Napoléon’s last days on the island of St. Helena were like, prompted by Rivka’s account of the film The Emperor’s New Clothes and the parallels she drew between his exile on the island prison and her life in St. Helena. The stroke of midnight found Andre describing the first time he read The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

  “The title is enough,” he said. “Those five words say everything. He could have stopped right there.”

  Rivka looked at Sunny across the table as if to say, “Didn’t I tell you he was perfect? Aren’t you sorry you nearly blew it?”

  Espressos and a trio of desserts arrived. Sunny thought what a fine evening it would be if a five-hour drive wasn’t waiting for her. Andre caught the surreptitious flicker of her eyes to her wristwatch and checked his own. “It’s getting late. We’ll go soon.”

  It was over quickly. A few minutes later he had signed for the bill and they were standing outside, watching Rivka and Alex walk away. Andre stepped closer and slipped an arm around her waist, grazing her cheek with his lips. “I brought the car. We could go for a drive,” he said.

  She bit her lip. “I have to go.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes. I have to meet a friend early in the morning.”

  “It’s not that late. I can have you home in bed by two,” he said, grinning.

  “There’s nothing I’d like better, believe me, but I can’t.” Adding an apology or making up an excuse would only make it worse, she thought. The less she said now, the less there would be to explain later.

  His expression hardened. “You’re sure?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “I guess, if you have to go, you have to go.”

  She nodded. He went with her to her car, gave her hand a squeeze, and walked back inside the restaurant without turning around.

  22

  Sunny was south of Chowchilla when the sun came up over the flatlands. It was the kind of morning that gave sunglasses and aspirin a reason for being. The truck was no way to ride the long Central Valley miles. All night she’d wondered if this was the trip when some aging pin, belt, or piston would finally give out, leaving her stranded by the side of the road in the middle of the darkness. Otherwise, her mind had been surprisingly quiet.

  If she was right, she would hand everything over to Steve and be done with the matter. And if she was wrong, she vowed—again—to shut the topic out of her thoughts and this time she meant it. As for Andre, she vacillated back and forth between annoyance for his assuming she would spend the night with him, and regret that she hadn’t done so. It didn’t take long to decide not to think about that topic either. The rest of the trip was spent almost pleasantly listening to CDs.

  An hour after sunup, she pulled into a Denny’s, where the parking lot was full of shiny new pickups that dwarfed hers. Inside, the place was spotted with ranchers in stay-pressed pants and Western shirts. At the counter, she ordered pancakes and eggs fried over-medium, orange juice, and coffee. She thought how not sleeping is as addicting as sleeping. The fuzzy head like a mild hangover relaxed her, made her care less. She didn’t need anything to read or anyone to talk to. It was nice just to sit there and listen to the waitresses calling orders back to the kitchen and snippets of conversation from two truckers down the counter. She was back on the road quickly.

  Charlie Rhodes was sitting on the front stoop of his house drinking coffee and reading the paper when she pulled up.

  “I wondered if you’d make it,” he said. “I worried about the truck.”

  “Me too, but she did fine.”

  They exchanged an enthusiastic hug. Charlie hadn’t changed much, not that she’d expected him to in the few months since he’d been gone. He looked every bit as tan and easy as she remembered. He had flaws, but they were endearing and only served to increase his good looks. He was smiling and bright eyed.

  “You’re dressed pretty swank for a road trip.”

  “Chavez insisted I join her for a fancy dinner before I left.” She realized for the first time she must have stuck out at the Denny’s.

  “It’s nice to know Rivka is still calling the shots. Have you eaten?” he asked. “You want coffee?”

  “I stopped on the way. I needed pancakes to make sense of the morning. I’d drink a cup of coffee.”

  “Come inside. You can tell me what you’ve got yourself into this time.”

  They sat at his kitchen table and Sunny went over everything again,
relating what she’d learned about Nathan Osborne’s death, and her theory about the taxine.

  “I’ve got a friend who’s a professor of clinical diagnostic toxicology. He’ll be at the avian diagnostic lab all morning. I gave him a call last night and he said we could swing by and hopefully get your alkaloid screen done in a couple of hours. Are you going to stick around after?”

  “I’d love to, but I think I’d better head back. If it’s positive, I’m going to need to talk to Steve Harvey, and I’d like to do that in person. If it’s negative, I’d like to take off these shoes and get some sleep, then try to forget any of this happened.”

  “We’ve got some beautiful mountains around here,” said Charlie. “I was hoping I might get to show you around. I haven’t had a chance to make too many friends down here yet.”

  “You will. I mean you will get to show me around. And I’m sure you’ll make friends, too.” She sighed. “I’m so tired. What I mean is, I’d like to come back when I’m not attempting to make a tremendous ass of myself based on the most threadbare evidence of malicious activity directed at someone I never even met.”

  “The timing could be better, I guess.”

  “Can you imagine me hiking in the mountains in these shoes?” She held up a stiletto-heeled boot.

  She dropped Charlie off at his office, thanked him for his help, and made her way back to Highway 99 and eventually Interstate 5, headed north. The security was tight at the lab and she hadn’t been allowed in. Charlie came out and said they might as well go relax somewhere. It would be a couple of hours. The results were there when they checked back after a ramble around campus: no trace of taxine A or B. That was it. Sunny was going to keep her bargain with herself. Nathan Osborne died of natural causes. She’d wasted a week worrying herself and others to the contrary, but it was over. The nagging voice that suggested Dahlia or someone else might have swapped out the contents of the bottle was to be ignored. It was Saturday and she would be home by mid-afternoon. There was still plenty of weekend ahead. She could relax, get some sleep, and forget about all of this. On Monday, she would turn her attention back where it belonged: her own life and Wildside.

  The drive home seemed to take forever. She was genuinely tired now, and her spirits dragged her down. The radio played generic country music, nothing with soul, and the bleached yellow sky seemed to suggest despair. A white haze gathered during the drive north, culminating in dense blue-gray clouds as she reached the Bay Area. The first drops fell at Oakville just before three, a lonely rain that seemed to promise nothing.

  At home, she lay down on the couch and fell into a restless sleep, haunted by dilemmas. If the poison wasn’t in the wine Nathan drank at home, why did someone go to the trouble of removing it? The poison could have been put directly in the glass of Armagnac at Vinifera, only there was no good way to get it in there unseen. If Dahlia was in love with Nathan, why did she sleep with Andre, and why was she kissing Nick? If Nathan was dealing in phony wine way back when Denby’s was opened, why would it matter if he found out about Remy’s work on the wine club’s Marceline? Wouldn’t he have taken it in stride? Or would Remy have been careful to keep it secret, lest his boss have even more leverage over him?

  Gradually she came to the idea that none of it mattered, and that Rivka was right. It was possible the entire obsessive act of chasing theories and details had been an elaborate ruse by the subconscious in an effort to protect herself from falling for Andre Morales and risking getting hurt.

  It was no use trying to sleep anymore. She’d never been good at naps. Besides, if she took one now it would throw off her inner clock even more. It was getting close to time for dinner. She went over to the phone and dialed the number written on the pad beside it. Andre’s mobile line rang. After six rings, it went to voice mail and she hung up. She stood over the phone, thinking, then opened her planner and found Steve Harvey’s number.

  “McCoskey,” said Steve. “I hesitate to ask. What can I do for you?”

  She paused but was not deterred. “Well, I had an idea.”

  “Which is?”

  “A much more direct route than checking possible delivery mechanisms of the poison. It makes much more sense to check the repository. Then we know if there’s any point in checking for sources. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

  “Let me make a note of this. You would like me to dig up Nathan Osborne and test his body for yew tree,” said Steve.

  “He’s already buried?”

  “This morning. And I’m not real excited about exhuming the body just because you had a brainstorm—another brainstorm.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “Thank you. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “No, I think that’s it.”

  “Good. Nice talking with you, Sunny.”

  “You too, Steve.”

  Disappointed but not surprised by Steve’s response, she checked her messages. One from Monty, nothing from Andre. She felt both exhausted and agitated. A bath might help, or food, but she wasn’t hungry. She looked up at the clock in the kitchen. If she hurried, she could make the last yoga class of the day in Calistoga. That, at last, was a good idea. She needed peace, control, and a nice mellow workout. Yoga was the answer.

  The sound of rain on the Quonset hut’s corrugated metal roof blended with the soft chanting music and the participants’ intentionally loud, slow breathing. Gradually the noise of her own thoughts lifted and everything began to come together. She could let all of it go. The insatiable desire to know what had happened to Nathan Osborne could be held over the cliff of oblivion and released, to drift away, never to be thought of again. She sank deep into the practice, listening only to the language of tendon and muscle. A feeling of safety washed over her, encouraged by the instructor’s final words. Peace. The equilibrium reestablished, she stepped into rain boots in the yoga studio’s foyer, filled with renewed confidence and a sense of security, her faith in the prevailing benevolence of the universe restored.

  Outside it was raining hard. She ran across the street to the truck with her yoga mat tucked under her arm, clutching her umbrella, purse on the other arm, keys in hand. There was a note under the windshield wiper. She grabbed it, collapsed the umbrella, and hopped in the truck as fast as she could. Several pages had been torn out of a college-ruled notebook and the blue lines ran. Inside them, another page had been folded up. She unfolded it, smudging the pale blue lines with wet fingers. A single sentence had been scratched out in awkward back-slanting angles with heavy black ink, probably written with the left hand. A drop fell from her chin and hit the word hurt. She read the note again. Stop snooping around and leave well enough alone before you get hurt.

  The paper on the inside wasn’t wet, so it hadn’t been there very long. She got out of the truck and stood in the rain, scanning the darkened street. A few others exited the Quonset hut and dashed toward their cars. She studied the row of parked cars on either side of the street. They sat empty as far as she could see. The real estate agency she’d parked in front of was locked up, lights off. Whoever left the note was gone, and so was her tranquillity.

  23

  She locked both doors, put her mobile in her pocket, and ran a bath as soon as she got home. She sank into the hot water, staring straight ahead, and distractedly ran her fingers over the star-shaped keloid scar on the back of her thigh. The note did not necessarily have to be premeditated. It could have been left on impulse. That would be good. It was nicer to think someone had seen her car and had a sudden nasty idea rather than had a nasty idea and followed her, waiting for their chance to leave their threat.

  All the locals recognized the Ranger with the root beer–colored side panels. She’d driven it for five years, and her father drove it for twenty before that. Maybe the killer saw it parked outside yoga and decided to give her a scare, since they just happened to be passing by. It didn’t have to mean they were watching her every move. More important, it didn’t
have to mean they were watching her house now.

  She stepped out of the bath and toweled off. She could stay home and wonder who was threatening her, or she could go to Vinifera and face them, whoever them was. The note had been left some time between quarter to six and quarter to eight. It was therefore unlikely to have been anyone working tonight, since anyone on staff couldn’t have been hanging around Calistoga when dinner service was starting in Yountville, twenty-five minutes away. Nick and Andre would have been at Vinifera by then for sure, as would Dahlia, assuming she was working tonight. That left Eliot, and to a lesser extent Remy, who had more freedom to come and go as they liked, but whose absence would be noted.

  Of course, who was to say that the note had been left by a Vinifera staffer? There was still so much she didn’t know. Who was to say that Pel and Sharon Rastburn didn’t have more to do with Nathan’s last hours than they let on? And there were others at Vinifera—bussers, barbacks, waiters, line cooks, a hostess, even a PR person and executive assistant. Any of them could be involved. No, thought Sunny, it’s someone close to me, somebody aware of my investigation of Nathan’s death.

  Based on what she’d seen in Andre’s eyes last night, he was not capable of murder. She was clearing him of all suspicion. She wanted to see him again, but not to grill him about his relationship with Nathan or his knowledge of Marceline.

  The note intended to frighten her off had only renewed her conviction that a murderer lurked at Vinifera.

  “Dressed to kill,” said Nick when she walked up to the bar.

  “It’s just a skirt,” said Sunny.

  “It’s never just a skirt,” said Nick. “Want me to tell him you’re here?”

  “Please.”

  It was getting late and the restaurant was slowing down. A handful of tables were occupied. A few more customers sat at the small tables near the bar. Nick waved over a busser and spoke to him. Sunny waited. She watched Remy help himself to two glasses down at the other end of the bar. He filled one from an open bottle of Mason Sauvignon Blanc, emptying it in the other. He pulled up each of the open bottles sitting on ice to check the label, but none was Mason. Finally, after a second’s hesitation, he topped up the glass with a bottle of what looked like Cakebread and carried the two glasses out.