The Caspian Wine Mystery/Suspense/Thriller Series

by Maggie Thom

  Bailey wasn’t sure what had hit her harder—her mom being dead, or her mom having health problems and not sharing them with her.

  Straightening, she squared her shoulders. “Just tell me who paid the money for her funeral. Who organized it? It doesn’t make any sense.” She stopped short of telling him that her mom had no friends, just Bailey.

  Mr. Sommervold pushed up his round wire-rimmed glasses from where they’d slid down his nose.

  “I’m not leaving without answers.”

  The door opened as his assistant, a stunning auburn-haired woman, poked her head in. “Mr. Sommervold, the Greenings are here. They have a few things they’d like to discuss with you before the funeral this afternoon.”

  Solemn-faced, he nodded then turned to face Bailey. “I don’t know who paid for it. Mr. Lund sent me a letter stating her wishes. He also provided a second letter.” He opened the folder in front of him, pulled out an envelope, closed the file and dropped it into the bottom drawer of his desk. After a short hesitation, he slid the envelope across to Bailey.

  She stared at him for a moment before picking it up. Her name was scrawled across it in her mother’s handwriting. She pressed it between her palms.

  “I’m sure this will answer some of your questions. For any others you have, you’ll need to talk to Mr. Lund. Here’s his business card.”

  Bailey stared at the envelope. Would it give her the answers she needed?

  “Now if you’ll excuse me. I have other clients I need to see.”

  She jerked up her head. Mr. Sommervold was standing in the open doorway, obviously waiting for her to leave. A bit dazed, she stood shakily and walked past him to the main foyer, where she stopped.

  Everything seemed surreal. Even the rich, immaculate oak entranceway was too perfect, too daunting. Soft hymn music drifted through the building. Quiet voices drifted to her in whispered, reverent tones heard only at solemn times. They made everything feel more unnatural.

  She felt like a character in dream—no; a nightmare. An unexpected shiver shook her out of her reverie.

  She strode out of the building to her rented Hyundai. Once inside she stared at the paper clenched in her left hand. There were designs and pictures covering the back of the envelope. Many would dismiss them as doodles but Bailey knew better. She just wasn’t prepared to decipher what her mom couldn’t tell her straight out. Tracing her finger absently over the heart that had three stick figures within it made her pause, for it looked like a family.

  Are you saying you’d wished Dad had been in my life? Whoever he was.

  Realizing that she wasn’t in any space to deal with what that could mean, she shook off those thoughts. Sliding her finger under the edge she worked her way across the top, peeling it open. She pulled out the slim, folded piece of paper inside.

  Bailey, I know you have a lot of questions. That’s just the way you are. You deserve the answers but I can only give you some. I planned my own funeral so it would be one less worry for you. Just go back to the life you had. Keep helping the poor families. I am very proud of you, Bailey. I’m sorry for all the misunderstandings between us. They’re all my fault. Not yours. You’re a good girl, one any family would be proud of. It’s a miracle that you came into my life. I love you... although I don’t really have the right.

  Mom

  Bailey crumpled the paper in one hand as her tears obscured her vision. Why had she never cleared up that lie about her career?

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I found her.”

  “Oh?”

  Guy fought back a smile and wondered how one person could convey so much information in such a short word—doubt... disdain... disbelief.

  “Yes Gramama, I did.” He allowed himself a full grin, mostly because his not-even-related-grandmother wasn’t with him to see it and give him hell. He was the only person who could get away with calling Dorothea Lindell that affectionate name. He’d never understood why she’d opened her arms to him anyway, given his dubious heritage.

  “Wipe that smirk off your face. I’m not too old to still take a round out of you.” Her indrawn breath sounded like a shop vacuum sucking up a pool of water.

  Oooh, I’m scared, Grams. He waited her out.

  “How do you know it’s her?”

  “Well, Gramama, I know because I’m good at looking at a picture and seeing similar details in someone else’s face. That’s why you hired me to find her. Of course my charm and good looks had to have played a part in that.” He had shown her the facial recognition software they’d used to confirm Bailey was a match. It had confirmed Dorothea’s request that he find her.

  She snorted in mock disgust while Guy continued to smile. He loved his relationship with her. He was very fortunate to have it or any acknowledged connection with her. She was a lot softer than people knew but he didn’t plan to share that bit of news.

  “Are you sure it’s her?”

  He could hear the hope and the fear of what that meant and what it could mean. “I am.”

  There was a long silence. He couldn’t imagine how difficult this was for her. Even though she’d sent him to find her, the shock after all these years had to devastating. Especially with all it implied—someone had stolen her granddaughter.

  “Just a moment.”

  He could hear his grandmother’s muffled voice along with a man’s. Uncle Geoffrey—or at least that was what his step-grandmother had hoped Guy would come to know him as—was angry as usual. Guy flinched, an automatic response. They’d never gotten along. Geoffrey had hated Guy from the moment they’d met.

  “What the hell do you mean to bring that brat into this family?”

  “Watch your mouth, Geoffrey. He is my grandson and will be treated as such.”

  “He’s no blood relative of mine.”

  “No he’s not but he’s important to me. If nothing else, you owe me the respect I deserve and you need to trust me. I’m asking you to accept this boy.”

  “You want me to accept the grandchild of a maid, whose daughter swears she was raped here, on our property? Hasn’t she brought enough embarrassment to this family? You want to raise that brat as one of us?”

  “You ever talk like that to me again and you’re out.”

  Geoffrey had backed down immediately but he’d seemed angry enough to strike her. And he’d never accepted Guy, treating him the same way he treated chewing gum clinging to the bottom of his five-hundred-dollar shoes, doing whatever he had to do to get rid of it.

  Many years later, Guy realized that his grandma held the reins at Caspian Winery. She’d given them to Geoffrey when someone had leaked to the media that her husband, Joseph, was his father. Guy would have loved that. The real reason she’d given up the reins for a while was because Joseph had cancer. He’d been fighting for his life and she’d been right there beside him. Once he’d pulled through all the chemotherapy and radiation and seemed to be on the mend, she’d taken back the CEO position but Geoff remained her right-hand person and had continued to act as though he owned the place.

  And nothing had changed. Guy had learned to stay out of Geoff’s way.

  “Guy, we’ve got a problem,” his grandmother said.

  Guy shook off that horrid memory of meeting Geoff. What else was new? Geoffrey always had something crawling up his butt. Guy just hoped his grandmother hadn’t shared with him what he was really doing. “What do you mean a problem?”

  “Geoffrey just told me we’re having issues with our new acquisition in Southern California. They want more money. Since I’ve been bragging about your skills as a negotiator, he seems to think I should hire you to run our south shore winery. Well, the one that will be ours if he doesn’t screw up the deal. You’d be very good at least when I got done with you, anyway.” She huffed.

  “Thanks but I don’t—”

  “Of course you don’t have time right now. I need you to keep working this case.”

  Guy shuddered. He wished he had the nerve to tell her outrig
ht there was no way he would be going into the family business. Ever. Definitely not while Geoff was there.

  After a short silence, she said, “Send me a report on all you’ve found out already. And no, don’t email it to me. And yes, I do know how to use it. I just don’t trust it. You can tell me all the firewalls and antiviruses that keep it safe but I believe if someone wants the information they’ll find a way to hack in. Fax it to me. Make sure it’s her, Guy. Make sure.”

  He tapped his index finger on his chin, a quirk he’d involuntarily picked up from his grandfather. He chuckled, remembering his grandfather always done that whenever his grandmother challenged him. “It’s her, Gramama. If you could see her, you’d know it too. Don’t worry, I know what I need to do. I’ll keep this quiet as long as I can. You need to prepare Gina and Daniel, though. They need to hear this from you.”

  She huffed again. “Don’t tell me how to handle my daughter. I’ll let them know when I’m good and ready. And when I am as convinced as you are that she is the one. I won’t have her hurt this family again. When I meet her I’ll decide what’s right.”

  He shook his head. He understood her anger but she couldn’t blame it on a kidnapped baby, the only innocent party in the mess.

  “Take care of yourself,” she said as she rang off.

  He wished she hadn’t said that. She wasn’t sentimental, so a strong sense of foreboding hit him like a smack in the face with a newly caught fish. Uneasy, he stared at the phone as he tapped the end button on his Smartphone and then searched for his business partner’s number.

  He watched the woman known as Bailey Saunders walk out of the funeral home, looking dazed and confused. He had to add to her burdens and regret struck him, along with sheer fatigue. He almost wished he’d taken that vacation he’d been putting off. And off. And off. But as soon as this was done he was going to go far away and lie on a beach.

  Despite the hard work, he loved being a computer geek. Although he’d only been at it for a little more than a year with his partner, Graham Knight, Guy had excelled. Knights Associates had been tough slugging for a while to get clients. And when they had business, the hours had been long and grueling.

  Their other cases tended to involve cheating spouses but the work was impersonal. The private investigators who hired them wanted any online traces of emails and pictures that would support their theories of infidelity. He and Graham didn’t care for those jobs but they had paid the bills in the beginning. Some interesting cases had come along from the police department, wanting them to check fraudulent activity in a few companies. Then Guy’s grandma had approached him with finding the lost baby, a task way outside their normal work. Finding someone who was stolen almost thirty years before wasn’t their usual assignment and although it fascinated him, he hadn’t wanted to take it. In fact, he’d begged Graham to do it. Graham had just smiled that knowing smile and had shaken his head.

  The tears that had filled his grandmother’s eyes when she’d asked had really been his undoing. He’d never seen her shed a tear or even come close. And she’d had plenty of reasons to over the years, especially when he’d been brought into the fold—an offspring from an ugly situation and no relation to her at all. But she hadn’t turned him away and had insisted that he consider her his grandmother. She hadn’t turned him away when his mother had died in a car accident, nor when the scandal of rape had hit the newspapers, for a second time. Nor when his grandfather, her husband, her friend, had died suddenly.

  She’d taken it all in stride. Her one goal had been to protect him at all costs. She’d known he was innocent and would not let the media nor his maternal money-grabbing grandmother use him to smear the Lindell name and gain fortune.

  He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He would do anything for Dorothea. She’d been the one to save him from a life of hell in foster homes; for that alone, he'd have helped her.

  Hitting the number two on his favorites, he waited for it to be answered.

  “Are you calling because you need advice, you miss me or your grandma is giving you a hard time?” Graham asked.

  Guy smiled. “Kiss mine.”

  “Ah but then one would presume that I wanted to and after catching Mr. Simon doing that exact deed with Mr. Traemont, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to get that vision out of my head. I think the only thing worse was telling Mr. Simon’s wife, ‘yes, he was cheating but no, it wasn’t a younger woman but a younger man.’ Not cool, especially when we are talking underage. And catching anyone in the act, is not a vision I care to carry around.”

  Guy burst out laughing. Graham had worked as a private investigator for a large company for a few years. He’d been hired on to do computer work for them but he’d soon found that they’d really needed an extra body to do legwork and he’d been it. Investigations had never been something he’d wanted to do but he loved to share the stories of the stakeouts he’d been on.

  “How’s it going? Any luck?”

  “Well, after covertly entering the plane and flying all the way across country, I landed in the airport. After several hours of sleuthing—”

  “Don’t tell me you got some dumb luck and found her right away?”

  “You won’t believe it. This case might be over before it starts.”

  “What happened?”

  “I get off the airplane at Victoria Airport, walk into the terminal and guess what? There she is in line getting on a plane. So I get in line, buy a ticket and now I’m in Calgary.”

  “Alberta? What in the world are you doing there? Are you sure you didn’t just decide to take that vacation you keep saying you will and are actually calling me from Cancun after one too many rum punches?”

  He tapped his finger on his chin as he took a deep breath. Things were good. “I seriously am doing that once this case is over. In fact, I should get Sherry to book me a trip for next week.”

  “You think it’ll be over that fast?”

  He’d thought a lot about it. His role was to find her and tell her who she really was which made him uncomfortable. How would she feel? Then he’d hand her over to his step-grandmother who would decide how to handle the rest. He’d already done half the job. “Yeah, it’s looking like it.”

  “So what’s in Calgary?”

  “Her mother. And unfortunately her mother’s funeral.”

  “Shit. Sorry to hear that. It’ll make it tough telling her she’s not who she thinks she is.”

  You have no idea. “I’ve got to go. Tell Sherry to check out some prices for me. Hmm... Hawaii, I think.”

  “Good choice, ol’ boy. Ta ta for now.”

  Guy chuckled as he ended the conversation. Graham’s snobby British accent was bad but it sure lifted Guy’s spirits.

  Glancing out his window, he noted that Bailey was finally on the move. He started his SUV and pulled into traffic four cars behind her. His gut clenched, twisting his insides. This case might not to have the quick finish he wanted.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Mr. Lund? Miss Bailey Saunders is here to see you.”

  Bailey stood by the reception desk tapping her fingernails on the polished wood surface. The secretary glared, sniffed indignantly and then shifted sideways, her hand cupped around the phone mike resting against her cheek. She talked quietly into the phone receiver. A brash, no nonsense voice on the other end of that phone though, came through the earpiece, loud and clear.

  “Right. Uhm, I need the file on Donna Za—. No. No, forget it. I’ll get it. Give me twenty minutes.”

  “Okay.” The receptionist turned toward Bailey with an insincere smile. “Please have a seat. He’ll be a while. That’s why you should have an appointment.”

  Although Bailey wanted to slam her hands on the desk, she slid them to her sides and slowly curled her fingers into her palms until her nails pressed into the flesh. She pasted on as sincere a smile as the receptionist. “I’m sorry; I didn't get your name?”

  “Isabel.”

  I’d h
ave guessed miserable... Bailey squared her shoulders. “Isabel, look, I really need to see Mr. Lund. My mom just died and I...”

  Isabel’s demeanor changed like the flip of a coin. “I’m so sorry. That’s got to be really tough.”

  Unsure of what to do, Bailey nodded and instinctively took a step back. Something in her actions must have gotten through to the other woman because she switched back to her professional self but with a softer edge.

  “You have a seat and I’ll see if I can speed up Mr. Lund. Can I get you something to drink?”

  Bailey shook her head before walking across the expansive chrome and glass lobby. A picture of the CN Tower in Toronto caught her eye. As she got closer she realized it was a painting, not a print as she had first thought. It was an incredible picture. She glanced at the name of the artist. D. Zajic. Hmmm. Never heard of him.

  She had jumped to the conclusion that the painter was male and smiled ruefully at that slip. She wanted to ask the secretary about it but was concerned the woman would continue talking to her. Wandering around the office, she looked at all the artworks displayed. Some carried the same theme of high rises in Ottawa or Toronto while a couple were nature scenes. The rest of the pictures adorning the walls were nature photographs. Someone had an eye for seeing the beauty in the mountains and in streams flowing over a rock. The scenes were amazing.

  She studied one directly opposite the receptionist’s desk which depicted a lake with overhanging trees in the foreground. On its left was a painting of a river and mountains. She cocked her head. The scenery looked familiar... too familiar. An icy chill crawled up her neck and wrapped around to brush at her temples. She jerked back.

  “Excuse me, Miss Saunders. Mr. Lund will see you now.”

  Bailey glanced over her shoulder at the starched and pressed receptionist.

  Shaking off her unease which she attributed to fatigue and stress, she snapped out of her trance and followed.