The Caspian Wine Mystery/Suspense/Thriller Series

by Maggie Thom

  Tarin nodded but didn’t respond. There seemed to be a whole lot more going on but she wasn’t going to question her boss on her first day. The bell chimed from her purse.

  “You know you can answer your cell phone. We don’t want it to be a habit but it seems someone is really trying to reach you.”

  “Uh... It’s okay. Sorry. I’ll silence it. I leave it on for emergencies and if it is from someone I need to respond to, I have a different sound programmed. I’m really—”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Guy showed her a few more things before it seemed that they were done.

  “I hope this is okay to ask, but I noticed you have some pictures of Caspian Winery on the walls. Can I ask why?”

  Guy leaned back in his chair and watched her for a second. She was used to being scrutinized, so she held his gaze.

  “It belongs to Bailey’s grandmother.”

  Something she’d never had. At least not that she remembered. Her grandmother had passed several years before and she knew that only because she’d found the information by accident on the internet. It had made her wonder if her grandfather would ever want to see her. Her dad had always said he was a vicious old man trying to destroy his business. She’d never really known what to believe but the newspapers didn’t portray him that way. He seemed to be well liked and respected by other businessmen and by his employees—not something her dad could say.

  “Tarin?”

  She kept staring at the picture of an elderly woman, unsure what he’d be able to read in her face. “I take it she’s not very involved in it?”

  “You’d be wrong. She’s eighty and at the helm, steering her ship.”

  “Wow. That’s not something you see too often. Is it a very big operation?” She tried not to sound surprised, but learning an old woman ran it wasn’t what she’d been expecting. Her name was listed on the website as CEO but she’d figured that was just a figurehead title.

  “Yes. They’re one of the top five wineries in Ontario. They ship all over Canada, although mostly in the west and to several places in the United States and a few places in Europe.”

  “I’d say that’s really big. That must keep her very busy. I can’t imagine working like that at her age.”

  “Most can’t at her age. She’s an amazing woman.”

  Tarin smiled but found she couldn’t respond; just once she’d love to be able to talk about someone with that kind of love and affection.

  “Where’s the winery?” She hoped that sounded normal, as though she didn’t already know.

  “Oh, outside of Toronto about an hour or so.” Guy stood up. “You know what? I think your first day is done.”

  She glanced at the time on the computer, shocked to see that it was 5:00 already. “The day went by so fast. Thank you so much for your help.”

  “No problem. Graham’s really an easy-going guy.”

  She prevented herself from rolling her eyes, and instead she nodded as though she understood. He’s a jerk. Not that she said that out loud. She needed the job for longer than a day.

  The inner door flew open. “Jesus Guy, you’ve got to see this.” Graham disappeared as fast as he’d appeared and without a glance in her direction.

  It was time to leave and that was all she cared about. She was proud of herself, although she wondered if Guy thought she had a bladder problem as she went to the washroom every hour on the hour. Since she’d been calling to talk to Chance, she figured she’d done pretty well, considering she’d never been away from him before. The tears in his eyes when she’d left that morning had almost been enough to change her mind.

  Tarin was more than ready to go home. Although the closed door begged her to find out what was so urgent, she headed down the stairs instead. As she exited the building, she was sure she’d seen someone dart around the side of it. Curious, she was about to look when her phone chirped again. Frustrated, she pulled it out to find twenty-three texts from Stephen. She didn’t want to read them but knew that she was going to.

  Dammit Tarin, answer me... Come on, sweetheart.

  I got you a new diamond ring...

  I’ll take you out to your favorite restaurant. Chance can come...

  I miss the little guy, at least let me see him...

  You’re not being fair.

  It’s my right... I’ve had it. I’m sending the cops after you... I’ll find you...

  You bitch. You’ve screwed me for the last time.

  Cringing, she closed her phone. She couldn’t read anymore. She’d meant to piss him off but hadn’t really thought beyond that. The missing clothes, the scissors sticking out of the ten-thousand-dollar dress he’d bought her and her not being at his beck and call, seemed to have pushed him over the edge. It was so out of character for her to have done that. She still cringed when she thought about it but she felt strangely justified when she considered all that Stephen had done to her. She was nothing more to him than a means to an end. She had been his arm candy—having a gorgeous woman on his arm, in his mind, made him the envy of other men.

  It had never dawned on her that he would want to find her. In her mind it was over. He wasn’t one to persevere; if it didn’t come easy, he quit. She’d assumed that would also apply to her, especially since he had a girlfriend with whom he preferred spending time.

  How much effort was he expend to discover her whereabouts?

  Chapter Nineteen

  “That new woman Giselle hired at Wedding Rites, is driving me nuts.” Bailey heaved a heavy sigh.

  “What now? The invitations finally went out, right? Or is it the issue with the flowers?”

  “I think that’s fixed, but now she’s really pushing me to move our wedding to one of the hotels in Toronto. She’s telling me it’s too far for people to drive an hour and a half out to Grandma’s. Do you believe her?” Bailey was pacing back and forth across the room.

  “I’m sure you set her straight.” Guy stopped her and hugged her.

  “Yes. Sorry. She’s so incompetent. I don’t understand what Giselle was thinking. I told her any more screw-ups and I go to Giselle with my list of complaints. She’s promised there won’t be anymore.”

  “See, you should have eloped,” Graham tossed out with a big grin.

  “And who knew, you knew, what you were talking about.” Bailey smiled at him. “Anyway enough of that, we have another issue. Grandma is going to place an ad for an assistant. She fired Sarah, says the girl hasn’t been doing her job. I think this time she’s going to hire someone she can hand over some of the reins to. She wants someone she can groom.” Bailey perched on the edge of Guy’s desk.

  “I’m not surprised. So what do we do?” Guy asked.

  “Oh and did you know that she’s had an offer to buy the winery?” Bailey shook her head.

  “From who?”

  “She didn’t say. And I only know because she was listening to her messages when I got there but I only caught the tail end. She really downplayed it, said it was a prank.”

  “Do we need to keep an eye on that?” Graham looked at them both.

  “Like we don’t have enough on our plates. Let me see if I can get a name and then we can investigate a bit.”

  “In the meantime, we need to clear up a few things. Have you talked to Detmier?” Guy leaned back in his chair.

  Graham’s computer dinged and then dinged again. Soon it sounded as though it was trying to create its own song. Emails were streaming in, one after another. There were twenty before it stopped. “Yeah. He says he’s swamped. He can’t help us. And in fact, he has a couple more cases for us as well. I told him I’m not sure we can take them on as we have more than we can handle right now. Detmier has been a PI for a long time but he’s never been this busy before. ”

  “How are we going to get on top of this? I’ve taken down our contact information from the website. I’ve changed our email account twice.”

  “Why don’t we get Tarin to take all the emails and sort them into categories? S
tart a—”

  “I’m doing that.”

  “I know but your time could be better spent on the cases we know are legit. Have you found out anymore if Mr. Amory is really running an online gambling ring out of his liquor store?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure he is. I didn’t figure out the whole scheme. He had some high end alcohol that he sold for five hundred dollars a bottle. Actually, I think it was cheap whiskey that he slapped a label on to make it look classier. Anyway, clients would buy that bottle. Behind the label was a code for some high stakes, illegal poker games—minimum bid twenty thousand.”

  Guy whistled.

  “It seems the players are from all over the world, which makes it difficult. I’m sure they’ll bring in the CSIS.”

  “It sounds so official. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service. I’m sure most people have never even heard of it.”

  “Yeah, not as well-known as the FBI, the CIA or KGB. Anyway, that website will go down and another will be put up. So if you want to do some research, now might be the time before it turns into a Charlie Brown fest.”

  “All right. I’ll see what I can find out. How are you making out finding Mr. Hamilton?”

  “I’m not. He’s vanished—no sign, nothing. The heirs are like vultures waiting to rip apart his estate the minute he’s declared dead. I haven’t told them that could take years. They are nasty.”

  Graham shook his head as he started to go through the many incoming emails. He skimmed each one and when he had a sense of about the scope of work, he’d file it into urgent, important or non-important/non-urgent. Then he’d determine whether it was something they wanted to take on. Sadly, all he felt he’d been doing lately was filing. As soon as he’d get through all the ones that had come in and maybe do a bit of checking on one or two, he had to get back to their current caseload.

  “So back to my original question, why did we hire Tarin if you aren’t going to let her do any work?”

  Graham propped his elbows on his desk and pressed his fingers to his forehead, massaging away a threatening headache. “I’m not trying to be an ass. I don’t want someone coming in and messing with this.”

  Guy laughed. “Look, these incoming requests are wasting your time. You go through each one methodically—which I know needs to happen but you have several cases that you have to complete. You keep getting sidetracked by each funky new challenge. “

  “I know, I know. I have to figure out what to give her.”

  “You set up that other email address, but all you’ve been sending so far is what we’re sure is spam and you’re already having issues about her touching that. Forward some of these new ones but clear them so they look as though they went directly to that account. Set some limits and see how she does. She seems to have figured out what we’ve sent her so far is pretty much all crap.”

  “Fine. I’m sending her a whole bunch.” He did it quickly because he knew he would talk himself out of it again, like he had ten other times. “What do we really know about her?”

  “I don’t know, fill me in.”

  He grimaced at his friend before realizing the sarcastic remark was warranted. “She’s twenty-eight. She used to work for C-Lite Hotels. She had a good career, well respected there. She quit about three years ago, went to work for herself doing some freelance work—set up computers, fixed bugs or worked on other issues the owners were having. Sounds as though she had quite a business. Quit a month or two ago to move out here to take care of a friend or relative, not sure which. I can’t remember what she said in the interview to be perfectly honest. I found an article she wrote for the Vancouver Sun from a few years ago about the computer industry and where it’s going. Pretty interesting.”

  “So, you did a thorough check.”

  “Yes and No. I went back ten years. All seems to be hunky-dory.”

  “And nothing came up. No jail time? No parking tickets? No man in her life?”

  “Funny. No, nothing in her adult life—criminal record check was clear, no arrests, no warrants, nothing suspicious. I didn’t dig into her younger years or childhood or family background. Yet. I did all the security checks and nothing shows up. Her references were awesome.” Graham rocked back in his chair.

  “If this is really bugging you, I can do some digging. Or we could ask Walters to check through the police database, see if there are any juvenile records? And yes, I know you can hack it but sometimes it doesn’t hurt for us to follow the rules. Well, sort of anyway. Shelby, the head of homicide, is not sure how you do it but he knows it’s you and he’s determined to catch you. And it’s not worth explaining that we only do it when requests come in that are over his pay grade.”

  “All right. Forget it for now. Do you have a good feeling about her?”

  “Yes, I do. I know there’s something but she doesn’t strike me as the type of person to be involved in anything bad. She’s a little too straight-laced, uptight, by-the-rules. And we could stop being so paranoid and accept that she’s legit. Cripes, the guys we hire downstairs to work on other people’s computers don’t go through this much security. You’ve done all the checks and have a bunch of safety nets in place. Keep an eye on her but let her do her job.”

  Graham shrugged before he stared into space. An unsettling feeling pressed against his breastbone. He wasn’t sure what it meant, though. He’d never been all that good with judging a person’s character. His reaction to Tarin was different. One thing he was good at was telling when someone was holding back and she definitely was.

  The sound of another email coming in caused him to automatically lean forward to check it.

  “Walters says Mrs. Neilson wants to know when he’s going to nail her son for fraud. Which means, where are we at?”

  Guy shook his head. “I have to say when Walters first approached us with this I thought it was silly. But it appears that faking her death was the key to catching him. He stole the dog she left her fortune to; the mutt was supposed to go to her sister. That was what I was going to tell you when I came in. That all went down last night. I guess the son got caught hacking into her account and draining off the money. It appears the dog was tied up and not in good shape; no food or water for days. Obvious he was going to kill it. I guess he was waiting until he’d made sure he didn’t need it anymore. Totally warped. Kind of makes you want to lock the son in a cage with a few starving dogs doesn’t it?”

  “What an ass. The dog’s okay?” Guy nodded. “Okay, I’ll make sure Walters gets our report so he can let her know.”

  The computer started dinging nonstop.

  “My ol’ boy, we got a flood a happenin’.” Graham sat back so Guy could see the ten emails that came in one behind the other.

  “That’s why you need to start using Tarin. She seems to know computers. She doesn’t know all that we do, so what if she goes through these and determine whether they’re legit?”

  “Look. I’m being cautious.”

  “Oh man. Is that what you’re telling yourself? You’ve been spending a minimum of four hours a night going through everything you’ve asked her to do during the day. And it’s stuff we know is crap. I thought we hired her to take some of the load off not to add to it.”

  “Well, don’t you think it’s just a little too perfect that we need an assistant and we get the mother of all assistants? I think there’s a thing or two she could teach me.”

  Guy gasped, clutching his chest in mock pain. “What? You’ve got to be kidding. Oh my—”

  Graham chucked a paperclip at him, nailing him in the forehead. They burst out laughing.

  “Okay. Maybe I am a bit overprotective of my baby.” He patted his computer. “But I don’t want to get taken for a ride. The thing that freaks me out the most is all of a sudden those email requests that were coming in like gangbusters slowed down to a trickle and then boom.”

  “Meaning... you think she has something to do with that and it’s not just timing? Don’t forget we went through this a couple of times a
lready this year—the volume is cyclical.”

  “Yeah-yeah. I know but—”

  “So give her a break. Have you found anything yet?”

  Graham looked away in disgust before quietly saying, “No. But come on, you have to admit there’s something.”

  “She’s harmless but she’s been hurt. Someone did a number on her,” Bailey said as she entered the office.

  “And if anyone has good instincts about people, it’s Bailey. Kind of reminds me of someone else.”

  “Get out. Melinda—”

  “—was a bitch and hurt you badly. Used you. Kicked you to the curb. Stomped on—”

  “All right for crap sakes, man. I hear ya. And I got over her,” he said in his best Sean Connery voice.

  “Sorry, I haven’t been in the office much.”

  “Forget it. I know you’ve got all the lovey-dovey wedding stuff to go through.” Graham pursed his lips and mimicked in a high-pitched voice, “My god Guy, what do you think of this frilly white stuff? Oh and these crab cakes? Oh and the scent of Freesia?”

  “I do not sound like that, Graham.” Bailey lowered her voice to mock his. “And I sure as hell don’t give a damn about frilly things. And I really think this is about a woman who is not only very attractive but is smart too.”

  Guy chuckled. “Maybe I should talk to his mom, let her know he doesn’t like beautiful, intelligent women—”

  “All right. All right. I’ll back off the poor thing.”

  “Me thinks he doth protest too much.” All three laughed.

  There was something about Tarin that grabbed his attention. And it wasn’t just her form-fitting skirts. What really got to him was her computer was wiped clean every night. There was no trace of her even having used it. But why?

  Chapter Twenty

  “Tarin, can you come in here?”

  She took in a deep breath as she walked over and stood in the open doorway.

  “We’ve decided—” He stopped and looked at Guy and Bailey, who were watching him expectantly.

  Tarin glanced back and forth between them, wishing she could read the unspoken messages.