Peak Season for Murder

by Gail Lukasik

  “Right,” answered George. “Everyone hold on for a minute.” George walked around the wine bar, reached down and brought out a bottle. Then he approached the man and handed him the wine. “I keep a few bottles around to show people. And as a reminder of how I got started in this business.”

  The bottle was red and the label white with a cluster of cherries below the name Sweet CherryWinery. There was no mistaking that red color. It was the same color as the shard I’d found in the grass near where Brownie died.

  “You’re not making this wine anymore?” I blurted out, suddenly revved up.

  “Someone’s not been paying attention,” George ribbed me.

  I felt heat rush to my face. “Do you know if any other wineries use this color bottle for their cherry wine?”

  George cocked his head quizzically. “Not that I know of. You into cherry wine or just the color of the bottles?” The group tittered.

  I could feel Lydia’s shooting me daggers. “I’m writing an article for Seasons. You know, the Wisconsin magazine. And I was curious about how the Door County wineries got started for the article. When did you stop making cherry wine?” Why was I explaining myself in front of a tour group who looked bored and hungry, waiting for me to shut up so they could eat?

  “Seven years ago,” George said. “If you want to know more about cherry wine, I highly recommend the Cherry Stone Winery. Their cherry wine is one of the best. They’ve been in the cherry wine business since it all began. But they don’t use red bottles.”

  I was about to ask another question when Lydia poked me in my side and whispered, “Leigh, what are you doing?”

  “My job,” I whispered back. Though it wasn’t the job I’d come to do, but another job altogether.

  “So if there are no more questions, lunch is served. Head through that door to the outdoor patio.” George pointed to a door on his right. “After lunch, if you’re interested in any wines, there’ll be staff here who can help you choose the right wine for you. Also, if there’s a wine you’d like to sample, order it with lunch. Everyone gets a free glass.”

  A polite, brief applause ended the tour.

  Lydia grabbed my arm a little too tightly as we walked toward the door to the outdoor patio, “Since when are you writing an article on cherry wine?”

  “You know some tourists think cherry wine is Door County. I’m just covering all my bases.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Even sitting under the green market umbrella, the heat was oppressive. I could feel sweat beading around my hairline, trickling down my chest and back. My dark jeans and black t-shirt were virtual heat-seeking devices. If I became any hotter, you could fry an egg on me.

  To distract myself from the heat, I gazed out at the pastoral landscape. Past the grape vines were rolling umber fields that abutted a two-lane asphalt road. On the other side of the road stood a red barn, farmhouse and stable. The barn’s tin roof reflected the intense sunlight. Everything seemed painterly.

  “This is Leigh,” Lydia began after we’d placed our wine order. Her face was flushed and strained as she fanned herself frantically with her tour program. “And this is Jeff and Steve.”

  Jeff was the younger version of Steve right down to the short-cropped haircut, except Jeff’s hair was black and his nose a little sharper. As if they’d coordinated their clothes, they both wore pocket t-shirts, Steve’s was red and Jeff’s was blue, and khaki shorts and running shoes without socks.

  “Leigh writes for the Door County Gazette,” Lydia explained.

  The two men smiled politely, nodding their heads. “I’ll bet it’s always a slow news day up here,” Steve said. “Not like Detroit, where we’re from.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I answered. Apparently Steve hadn’t heard about Nate Ryan’s death. Or maybe he didn’t consider a famous actor dying suddenly newsworthy.

  “Leigh, don’t go there. It’s too hot for shop talk.” Lydia nudged me under the table.

  “What’s the heat got to do with my job?” I snapped, miffed. She’d been ignoring me the entire tour, then she brings up my job and tells me not to talk about it. As guilty as I felt about not being there for her, I’d had enough. And the heat didn’t help my mood.

  Just then the waitress arrived with water, the antipasto appetizer and our wine. I gulped down half my water before taking a sip of my pinot grigio, then piled my plate with black olives, cheeses, pâté and crackers.

  As we nibbled our appetizers, Lydia and Jeff drifted off into their own conversation, leaving Steve and me to fend for ourselves.

  After learning that Steve was a retired Detroit car designer and wine aficionado who made his own wine, our conversation hit a lull. Steve seemed content to sip his wine and stare out over the burnt fields.

  Lydia, on the other hand, was like a woman on fire, talking animatedly to Jeff about psychic healing. Jeff nodded, but he didn’t look awfully interested. Lydia didn’t seem to notice. She seemed charged, talking too fast about the mind–body connection, the soul and the afterlife. She kept saying, “Don’t you think so?”

  The one time Jeff disagreed, I thought Lydia was going to break in two. She placed her wine glass down on the table so hard, the wine sloshed over the rim and onto her hand.

  At one point, Jeff took in a deep breath as if he were breathing for Lydia. Under the table her four-inch platform wedges tapped as if she were on speed.

  To break our uncomfortable silence, I asked Steve, “If you live in Michigan, how do you get the grapes to make your wine?”

  “I don’t drive to California, pick the grapes at night and then drive them back in refrigerated trucks, like what’s his name,” he teased. “Believe it or not, I mail-order them. Saves on the gas money.”

  “I’ll bet. So what kind of wine do you make?”

  “I do a crisp chardonnay. Dry, full bodied, with a hint of apple.” He went on to explain the machinery he used and how he fermented the wine. He was a vibrant older man, probably just like his wine.

  “You seemed to know a lot about Door County’s cherry wines,” I coaxed, wanting to steer the conversation back to cherry wines and red bottles.

  “Cherry wines, pinots, cabernets, zinfandels, merlots?” Jeff jumped in. He looked relieved to join our conversation. “My dad is like a walking wine encyclopedia.”

  Lydia popped an olive into her mouth and chewed impatiently while Steve beamed.

  “Then maybe Steve, you could help me with something,” I encouraged. “It’s about the cherry wine. George said they’d stopped making his cherry wine seven years ago. Would it be possible that a bottle of it would still be around?”

  Before Steve could answer, the waitress brought our lunch: gourmet croissant sandwiches that were a blend of carved turkey, white Wisconsin cheddar cheese, and avocado, splattered with a creamy sauce and served with a side of sweet potato waffle chips.

  “Looks delicious,” Lydia said, taking a small bite.

  “Any seconds on the wine?” the waitress asked.

  “I’ll try the cabernet sauvignon this time,” Lydia said, putting her sandwich down and dabbing at the corners of her mouth primly.

  I passed on the wine, but Steve and Jeff ordered second glasses. My head was starting to throb from the heat, and another glass of wine might push my throbbing headache into a migraine.

  It took a moment before Steve answered my question, and I thought I’d have to repeat it. “About the cherry wine. I’ve got a few bottles of that sweet cherry wine you asked about stashed in my wine cellar. No longer drinkable, but I keep them as collectors’ items. I imagine a lot of people do. Like a souvenir of their vacation in Door County.”

  “No longer drinkable though?” I pondered the implications of undrinkable wine that was no longer made. Where had Brownie gotten the wine?

  “Not unless you like drinking vinegar.”

  When the luncheon ended, Steve and Jeff said their goodbyes and hightailed it to their cars, not even stopping in the wine-tasting
room to purchase wine.

  “Mind driving me back to Carlsville after I buy some wine?” I asked Lydia, who was staring after the two men.

  “You get the impression they couldn’t wait to leave?” Lydia asked.

  “It’s probably the heat.”

  “I don’t think so.” She slipped her card out from under Jeff’s plate where he’d left it. She tore the card into four pieces and thrust it in his wine glass, the dregs of wine turning the pieces red. “I wasn’t interested anyway. He’s just getting over a divorce. Who wants to be the rebound person? Been there, done that. Sure, I’ll drive you to Carlsville.”

  This was as good a time as any. “Speaking of divorce,” I began.

  Before I could finish, she said, “When?” resting her two arms on the black mesh patio table.

  “Last week. And before you get on my case for not telling you, I wanted to wait a day or two to sort through my feelings, and then this whole thing with Nate Ryan happened. There just didn’t seem like a good time to tell you.”

  At the mention of Ryan’s name, Lydia shuddered, screeched back on her chair and stood up abruptly. “Didn’t I tell you your life was headed in another direction? See, I was right. Now let’s go buy some wine.”

  That was strangely upbeat, I thought as I stood up and followed Lydia. Where was the sisterly empathy? Was she still steamed at me?

  The cool dimness of the tasting room was a welcome relief from the sweltering outdoor heat. Leaving the hot patio for the cellar-like atmosphere was like stepping from one season to the next instantly, in this case from raging summer to temperate fall. If only I could stay there.

  We each bought a case of wine, Reserve Chardonnay for me and Petite Sirah for Lydia. The wines’ descriptions came uncomfortably close to describing each of us. The chardonnay with its hint of acidity; the Sirah with its intensity. The only part of the description that was off was the well-balanced detail.

  After our wine was loaded into the back hatch of Lydia’s sporty red hybrid car, I climbed into the passenger seat and clicked my seat belt.

  As Lydia pulled onto E heading west, she asked, “So what gives? Why all the questions about seven-year-old cherry wine?”

  For a moment I considered not answering her, not sure where her sudden cheerful curiosity was coming from. Usually Lydia didn’t encourage my investigative forays. Like Jake, she thought they were dangerous and better left to the police. I didn’t want yet another motherly lecture. But she sounded truly interested, so I told her about Brownie’s death, Ken’s arrest and my research into Brownie’s real identity, leaving the red bottle for last. She didn’t say anything until I was finished.

  “Jeez, I’ve seen some pretty nasty alcoholics, but drinking a seven-year-old bottle of wine that tastes like vinegar, especially after being on the wagon for so long? It doesn’t make sense. And if he didn’t drink the wine, why were the empty bottles there? And where did he get them?”

  “That’s what I can’t figure out.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I kept waiting for the lecture, which didn’t come. Maybe her brush with the police regarding Nate Ryan’s death had changed something inside her psyche. Maybe she understood how helpless you felt. How you wanted to do something, anything, to take away that helpless feeling.

  I turned and looked at Lydia. “I’m sorry I haven’t called. How are you doing?”

  Her mouth tightened, and she closed her eyes for a second. “I’ve had several offers from entertainment magazines for my story.”

  That wasn’t what I’d asked, but it was what she wanted to tell me.

  “Are you going to do the interviews?” If she was, I wanted to coach her, to tell her how to see through the reporters’ questions. How she didn’t need to answer them if she didn’t want to. Above all, she needed to protect herself.

  “Well . . .” She took in a long breath and let it out. “I already did it.”

  “When did this happen?” I felt my gut contract with worry.

  “I don’t know, a few days ago.”

  When Lydia was her most vulnerable, and I was nowhere around.

  “A PopQ correspondent interviewed me. Flew out with a photographer, who took photos of where Nate died, me, my studio. Everything.” Her voice trailed off.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have come.”

  “And done what, Leigh? Held my hand, given the interviewer grief, told me it was a bad idea?” Her voice had ratcheted up a notch. “You wouldn’t believe what they paid me. I could shut down the shop and spa for the rest of the summer and take a vacation. I really need a vacation.”

  “I wouldn’t have done any of those things,” I argued, wounded by her accusations.

  She turned into the Solemn Grape winery and pulled up next to my truck. “Yes, you would have. At least be honest with yourself for once.”

  I sat staring at Lydia, who wouldn’t look at me, her eyes straight ahead, riveted to the windshield. “Okay, maybe I would have done all of those things,” I conceded. “But only because I care about you. I’m worried.”

  “You know what I keep wondering?” Her gaze still hadn’t left the windshield. “I keep wondering if you hadn’t left to go rescue that homeless guy, the one you’re still so involved with, if any of this would have happened to me. I know it’s not fair to think that. But I can’t help but wonder.”

  I knew this had nothing to do with me. I was just a convenient target. “I don’t understand why you can’t forgive yourself. You did everything you could to save him.”

  “You don’t get it.” She turned to look to me. “I’m a nurse. I should have recognized the signs.”

  “What signs? What are you talking about? I thought he just collapsed.” This was the first I’d heard of signs.

  “When I thought back on it. There were signs. I didn’t recognize them for what they were. I did see them, and if he had been anyone else, I wouldn’t have ignored them. I was . . . I don’t know what I was. In awe, afraid he’d leave, clinging to my good luck that he, Nate Ryan, big, big star, was in my crummy studio. So I kept going, ignoring his agitation, the flushing, his tiredness and confusion, and then it was too late. He was in full cardiac arrest.”

  “You did try to save him,” I offered again. “What about him? Why didn’t he say something about what was going on with him?” I tried to deflect some of the guilt away from her.

  “He did. He said he was tired and his stomach was killing him. That he hadn’t been feeling himself for days. I just thought it was the play, his drinking, his smoking marijuana. He was really drunk the night of the after-party.”

  “Was he smoking marijuana too?”

  “He smoked a joint before we started. He said it would calm his nerves. And it did seem to at first. But then later, he went into cardiac arrest while in corpse pose. Maybe the joint masked his symptoms.”

  Now I understood. “And when you didn’t object when he smoked a joint, you went against your better judgment?”

  She nodded. “But I didn’t know about him spiking his water bottle until after he collapsed. That guy was such a mess.”

  “He was drinking the morning he died?” I asked.

  She stared at me, taking in a long deep breath, then letting it out slowly. “When I tried to resuscitate him I smelled alcohol on his breath. Before the police got there I sniffed his water bottle and it reeked of booze. Listen, you can’t say anything about the joint, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said half-heartedly.

  “No, I mean it, Leigh. Until the tox results are in, no one can know about this. Chet would have my head on a platter.”

  I raised my right hand. “I swear. But Lydia, it’s going to come out in the tox screen.”

  “That he smoked a joint—yes. That I knew about it—no. He could have smoked it before he got to my studio. If it comes out I knew, I’ll forever be the nurse who contributed to Nate Ryan’s death.”

  “None of this is your fault,” I re
assured her. “So he smoked a joint. That didn’t kill him. He died of a heart attack. And you didn’t know about the alcohol. Like you said, he was a mess.”

  She shook her head sadly. “There’s this phrase in medicine, ‘the first golden hour.’ If you can get a cardiac patient to the hospital in that first hour, sometimes he can be saved. That first hour I was moving Nate through yoga poses. And he was busy dying.”

  “You said sometimes,” I reminded her. “Sometimes a person can be saved in that golden hour.” Her guilt seemed beyond reason to me. But then, I’d never lost a patient. As Joe said, you never get used to it.

  “Yeah, there’s no way to know, is there? That’s what I told the interviewer from PopQ.”

  “You told the interviewer Nate smoked a joint and was drinking?” I asked, incredulous.

  “No, of course not. I told her about the signs and the golden hour.”

  “Look, Nate might not have died of a heart attack. The cause of death hasn’t been determined yet. You’ve got to stop beating yourself up.”

  “You weren’t there. I was. I know what I know.”

  There wasn’t anything to say after that. Lydia had been her own judge and jury, and now everyone would know. I wondered if she’d feel better or worse. Guilt was a heavy burden not always relieved by atonement.

  “Are you back home yet?”

  “Can’t. It’s too soon. I’m still at Joe’s.”

  I got out of the car, retrieved my case of wine and went to my truck. Before I could open the door, the dust of Lydia’s departure filled the air.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: SUNDAY, JULY 16

  My intention was to finish my article on Ryan at the Gazette office, basking in the air conditioning and the quietness of a Sunday. For all its charm, the cabin didn’t have A/C and even the dense woods didn’t provide enough coolness when the temps were hovering near a hundred degrees. By noon the cabin would be stifling.

  But when I stepped inside the Gazette office, all the windows were open and a box fan whirled around hot air and grit to the tune of fluttering papers. The A/C must be out again.