by Diana DuMont
“Violet, I think you’ll be happy to know that we’ve discovered that you were not the cause of Caitlin’s death. The autopsy report came back today, and it turns out that she was poisoned.”
Apparently, this was the first time that Josie and Todd were learning of this. Their eyes widened, and they looked at each other in astonishment. Then they both started talking at once. They demanded that Mitch explain himself, and he was all too happy to do so. He didn’t say anything that Scott hadn’t already told me, although he was much wordier about saying it than Scott had been.
The bottom line was that Caitlin’s death looked suspiciously like a murder, and Mitch suspected that someone in the room had committed the murder. I didn’t think I should be one of the top suspects. When you stopped to think about it, I had no motive. I opened my mouth to say that, but before I could get any words out, Mitch was pointing his finger at Todd, Josie, and me.
“All three of you,” he said with great flourish, “Are now officially under arrest for the murder of Caitlin Dixon.”
The others shrieked, Grams started yelling, and Violet looked like she might faint again. But the only reaction I could manage was a gaping jaw.
This had not been the welcome to Sunshine Springs that I’d been hoping for.
Chapter Five
Grams stood to her feet and slammed her fist on the table. My heart leapt. I knew Grams was going to stick up for me! Even Mitch looked frightened for a moment.
But when Grams spoke, it wasn’t me she was worried about.
“Mitch, this is ridiculous. Violet has already been through so much, and now you’re putting her in the middle of this hyper-sensationalized murder investigation. If you need a statement from her, fine. Get a statement. But do it away from this circus, and then let her go home.”
To his credit, Mitch looked sufficiently chastened. “I suppose you’re right, Agnes.”
He motioned to one of his officers. “Smith, take Violet out front where it’s more comfortable. Get a quick statement from her on what happened and what she remembers, and then let her go home.”
Smith nodded and stood, and Grams stood to help Violet.
“Wait a minute!” I said. “Grams, aren’t you going to stay and help me?”
Grams waved her hand, as though my being accused of murder was nothing more bothersome than a fly buzzing around her face.
“You’ll be fine, Izzy. I know you didn’t do it, so you don’t have anything to worry about.”
And with that, she disappeared into the hallway, leaving me staring after her in shock. Of course I hadn’t done anything, and I was glad that my grandmother believed that. But didn’t she know that people were wrongly accused of murder all the time! What if I ended up in jail for the rest of my life? I put my head in my hands. Moving to Sunshine Springs seemed like it had been the worst decision of my life. I should’ve listened to my friend Betsy back in San Francisco, one of the few who had stood by me while my marriage was falling apart. She’d told me that the middle of a divorce was a bad time to make any big life changes, but I hadn’t listened. I’d told her that I’d been thinking of the pie shop for a long time anyway, so it wasn’t really all that sudden of a decision. But now, I was wishing that I had stayed at my boring lawyer job, reviewing contracts that made me want to cry from how tedious they were.
Too late now.
Mitch was looking at me with a gleeful expression. “Nice that your grandmother is so supportive of you. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re a prime suspect, and there’s a lot of evidence against you.”
“What evidence?” I asked angrily. “So Caitlin ate at my café. That doesn’t prove anything. She ate the exact same thing that Josie and Todd ate. If it was poisoned, then why aren’t they dead, too?”
Mitch wasn’t going to be put off that easily. “Perhaps you slipped poison into just her slice of pie, or just into her drink. Just because they had the same kind of pie doesn’t mean you didn’t have an opportunity to poison it.”
“No, you’re wrong. They ordered a full pie, and a full bottle of wine. I didn’t choose which piece each one of them ate. They cut up the pie themselves. And they all drank from the same bottle of wine that they poured out themselves. Go ahead. Ask them.”
Mitch looked at Josie and Todd. “Is that true?”
I held my breath, half expecting them to lie. After all, anything they could do to throw suspicion on me was a good thing for them. But I guess Josie wasn’t thinking that way, thankfully for me.
She nodded sadly. “That’s right. We all ate from the same pie and same wine bottle. It’s pretty obvious the poison didn’t come from that food, but then where did it come from?”
“You idiot!” Todd said.
Josie looked at him in surprise, not seeming to understand that she had just given testimony that strongly acquitted me.
I was happy, of course. But now, my own suspicions were veering toward Todd. Why was he so upset that Josie had told the truth? Did that mean that he was trying to hide something?
Mitch frowned. “Well, there still might have been a way for you to poison just one part of the pie and make sure that Caitlin was the one who ate that portion.”
I gawked at him. Was he serious? He clearly wanted to pin this on me, even when the evidence suggested otherwise.
“That’s right!” Josie said, seeing a chance to redeem herself in Todd’s eyes. “And if I remember correctly, she was strangely trying to position the pie a certain way when she set it down at our table. She must have been trying to position it so that the poisoned part was in front of Caitlin.”
I groaned. I had been positioning the pie a certain way. I’d been trying to present it at the most attractive angle to some of my few customers of the day.
Mitch was starting to turn slightly purple again. I think he knew he was losing control of this little investigation. “Listen, all of you are under suspicion, and all of you are under arrest. You all were there, and you all had contact with the pie and the wine. That means that it had to be one of you who killed Caitlin. The judge and jury can decide who’s telling the truth and who’s not.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “How do you even know that the pie and wine were what was poisoned? You have no proof of that. Caitlin could have had something to eat or drink before coming into the pie shop that poisoned her. In fact, that seems a lot more likely to me. She hadn’t been eating the pie for all that long, so it would’ve had to have been some strong, quick-working poison for her to die that quickly.”
“That’s right!” Todd said, happy to grab a hold of any little shred of information that might clear his name. Never mind the fact that if it wasn’t the pie, it could easily have been something he’d given to her himself over the course of the day. I was assuming they’d been together all day researching the winery. Mitch must have realized this too, because he only rolled his eyes at Todd.
“All three of you are under arrest, and that’s not changing tonight. Isabelle, it was the pie you baked or the wine you sold that killed Caitlin. Josie and Todd, you had the opportunity to put poison in Caitlin’s drink or food. Besides, witnesses say that you were having a huge argument right before Caitlin died. Clearly, there was some bad blood between the three of you.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Josie said. “Caitlin didn’t agree with the fact that I was dating Todd, but so what? Older sisters never think anyone is good enough for their younger sisters. I know that. I wouldn’t have killed her just because she didn’t like my choice of boyfriend!”
“Will you shut up?” Todd exclaimed. Josie gave him a hurt look, but he didn’t back down. “Just keep your mouth shut. You’re not supposed to say anything until a lawyer comes.”
He was right about that, at least. I had already said too much. I knew that Mitch had been carefully noting everything we said, figuring out as he listened how he was going to use it in the case against us. But he had made me so mad that I hadn’t been able to completely keep my mouth
shut. As far as Mitch was concerned, it didn’t matter whether he hung one, two, or all three of us. He just wanted to pin this on an outsider.
Well, he might pin it on an outsider, but that outsider wasn’t going to be me. For one thing, I was determined to become a local in Sunshine Springs, not an outsider. And for another thing, I was innocent.
Now, I was just going to have to figure out how to prove that. And that meant that I was going to have to figure out who really killed Caitlin Dixon.
Chapter Six
Three hours later, I had posted bail and was finally walking out the front entrance of the police station. Josie and Todd had posted bail and were leaving as well, but I didn’t want to even look at them right now. I was convinced that one of them was responsible for Caitlin’s death—probably Todd—and I was angry that my life was being disrupted because of their crimes. If I were a better detective, I would have used the opportunity of walking out of the police station with them to ask questions and try to get some sort of lead on how to prove that they were the guilty ones. But right then, I was too exhausted to be a detective. I was too exhausted to do anything other than see red from anger.
But my anger faded quickly when a horn honking caused me to look in the direction of a little red sports car. In the front seat of that sports car, Sprinkles sat next to Molly.
“Hey, over here,” Molly yelled.
As soon as Sprinkles saw me, he barked and jumped right over Molly’s lap. He catapulted through her open driver’s side window and ran toward me at full speed. I had never been so happy to see my sweet dog as I was right then. This trumped even the night that I’d found out my ex-husband was cheating on me, and Sprinkles had cuddled next to me in bed all night. I didn’t know what I would do without that dog and his ever-faithful wagging tail.
“Your grandma was quite busy with Violet,” Molly said. “So I told her I’d take care of Sprinkles for you, and come pick you up once you posted bail.”
“Thanks. I really appreciate it, although it would have been nice of my grandma to come. I mean, I understand Violet is having a rough time. But I’m her granddaughter, and I’ve been accused of murder!”
Molly sighed. “Well, your grandma isn’t really taking any of this seriously, because she knows you’re innocent. She doesn’t see what the big deal is if you have to stay at the station and argue with Mitch for a few hours. You have to understand that almost everyone in Sunshine Springs ends up at the station arguing with Mitch at one point or another. It’s almost a hazing ritual that you have to pass to become a Sunshine Springs resident. Think of it as being one step closer to not being an outsider.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t really make me feel better. What would make me feel better is if Mitch would focus on catching the real killer instead of me. And I’m pretty sure that real killer is Todd.”
Molly raised an eyebrow. “Todd? The photographer?”
“Yeah. You should have seen him in there. He seemed awfully guilty. He was way too defensive.”
“Hmm. Well, I obviously wasn’t in there, so I didn’t see the way Todd was behaving. But aren’t you missing the most obvious suspect in all of this?”
I rubbed my forehead, confused. “Josie? You think Caitlin’s own sister would kill her? I know that sort of thing happens, and they did have a big fight. But it didn’t seem like that big of a fight. At least not when they were in my pie shop.”
“No, not Josie,” Molly interrupted. “Theo.”
For a few heartbeats, I just stared at Molly. Why hadn’t I thought of that myself? It was so obvious, now that she said it. Some great detective I was. Of course Theo was a likely suspect. He had a ton of money—money that all came from his winery as far as I knew—and Caitlin was threatening his winery’s reputation, therefore threatening his money. I slapped my forehead with my palm.
“He has the motive for sure. And Caitlin was at the winery earlier in the day, according to what Scott said. Theo must have slipped something into a wine she tasted.”
“Bingo.”
I frowned. “But I thought you said that you couldn’t believe that Theo would take money from the city. If he’s so upstanding that he wouldn’t even take money from the city, how can you believe that he would commit murder?”
Molly shrugged sheepishly. “Like you said, people can surprise you. I never would have believed it about him, but you have to admit that the circumstances seem awfully damning. It’s the only explanation that really makes sense.”
“Well, I obviously don’t know him well. But you’re right: it seems to make the most sense. So what do we do about it? We should tell Mitch, right?”
Molly laughed. “Get in the car.”
Feeling somewhat confused, I did as she said.
“But what about Mitch?” I asked as I buckled my seatbelt and Sprinkles hopped into the small backseat. He didn’t seem to mind how squashed it was. His tail wagged furiously, and he happily stuck his head in between the driver’s seat and passenger’s seat, looking back and forth between Molly and me. He gave me a giant, sloppy wet kiss on the cheek, and I had to laugh despite the difficult circumstances I was in.
“Listen,” Molly said. “There’s a reason that Mitch hasn’t contacted Theo, and it’s not that he hasn’t considered the fact that Theo might be guilty.”
Understanding slowly dawned on me, and it only made the sick feeling in my stomach worse. “You mean…”
“Yes. I mean that Mitch is not going to confront Theo. Theo is a wealthy, powerful man. And Mitch, well, he’s one of those all bark and no bite kind of people. He talks a big talk, and likes to act like he’s some sort of tough Wild West Sheriff. But when it comes down to it, he’s sort of a fraidy-cat. He knows that crossing Theo would mean having to stand up to Theo. He knows it means facing down Theo’s lawyers, who I promise you are the best that money can buy. And he knows that accusing Theo would make him unpopular in town. Most of all, if it’s true that Theo is doing some shady money dealings, then it wouldn’t surprise me if Mitch was getting some sort of kickback too. In that case, Mitch definitely isn’t going to accuse Theo.”
None of this boded well for me. “If Theo is so powerful, and has so many people in the town in his back pocket, how are we ever going to prove what he did?”
I was hoping that Molly had some sort of grand plan. She seemed like the sort of person who easily came up with grand plans.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have much of a plan at all. She was shaking her head at me, and shrugging her shoulders in that carefree way she had.
“I don’t really know the best way to go about this,” she said. “But my grandpa always used to say that if you don’t know which way to move, sometimes the best thing to do is to just get moving. Maybe you’ll go the right way, but if you don’t, at least you’ve eliminated one of the wrong ways.”
I stared at her. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“I mean that we should just get moving. We should just go down to the Sunshine Springs Winery, confront Theo, and see what he says. I figure if he’s guilty, it’ll probably be pretty obvious by his reaction.”
I stared at her some more. “Are you serious? I’m accused of murder, and your best suggestion is to randomly show up at the prime suspect’s winery to see if he happens to look guilty?”
Molly chewed her lower lip. “Yeah, that sounded better in my head than it did saying it out loud. But anyway, if you don’t have a better suggestion, then I stand by mine. We need to just get moving. Haven’t you ever seen any of those crime shows? Evidence disappears quickly. If you want to catch the killer, you have to take action right away.”
I hated to admit it, but I supposed she was right. I didn’t have a better suggestion, and I was afraid of evidence disappearing. Besides, I was so angry at Theo for potentially ruining my life that I wanted to go confront him and let out some of my anger, even if that confrontation turned out to be pointless.
“Okay. But, right now? It’s past nine o’clock at nig
ht.”
“Exactly. It’s perfect timing. We’ll catch Theo off guard. He’s probably sitting at home in his big fancy villa thinking he got away with murder. He’ll be so surprised to see us show up that he might not be able to hide his guilt.”
The more we talked about this, the more I had a feeling it wasn’t going to go anywhere. But then again, if what Molly was saying about Mitch was true, then sending the police in there was unlikely to be helpful either.
“Okay. Whatever. No time like the present, I guess.”
“Atta girl,” Molly said as she revved up the engine and peeled out of the police station’s parking lot. “Let’s go catch us a murderer.”
I still couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling in my stomach. Were we going to catch a murderer? Or were we going to stir up a hornet’s nest and make a murderer very, very angry at us?
I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that the latter option was more likely.
Chapter Seven
I’ve always thought that wineries were magical places. Call me one of those big city crazy folks if you want, but it’s true. When you’re usually surrounded by sky-high buildings, dirty sidewalks, and endless honking horns, the peacefulness of green vines loaded down with juicy grapes, shimmering under the brilliant, hot sun…well, what can I say except that it’s magical?
Sunshine Springs Winery seemed more magical than any other winery I’d ever been to. The way the place took my breath away caught me quite by surprise. For one thing, I was coming here for a reason that was anything but magical. That alone should have been enough to temper my enthusiasm for wineries. For another thing, the sun had long since set, leaving the grapevines in darkness. I’d always thought that the sunshine was what really made these places look magical.
I was wrong.