"Forgiven," I assured her as I surveyed the room. "Any sign of Bridget McAllister?"
Ava pursed her lips. "Hard to say. There are a lot of people here. Oh, thank you," she said, addressing a server who handed us a couple of glasses of red wine.
I sipped, thoroughly expecting to hate it. Unfortunately, it wasn't bad. Not quite like our Pinot Noir, but not altogether terrible. And if the crowd was any indication, Red Duck was doing a heck of a lot more business than Oak Valley. I sipped again, hoping that chrome bars and glossy advertisements weren't indicative of Oak Valley's future.
"There," Ava said, nodding toward a table at the back of the room. "She looks like the pictures we saw, right?"
I glanced in the direction she indicated and spotted three women at the table, all in outfits designed to maximize skin and minimize modesty. Two brunettes and a bleached blonde, who threw her head back to laugh at something one of the others had said, giving me a great view of her face—clearly the same Bridget McAllister we'd seen on social media.
Her natural black roots showed at the scalp of her straw-colored hair, and while her makeup was artfully done, it was applied with a heavy hand. She was dressed in a tight-fitting cheetah print dress that was so skimpy for the season that my skin goose-bumped just looking at it. Though, I supposed with enough alcohol in her system, she wouldn't mind.
And by the way she was throwing her head back and laughing again—loudly enough that the couple at the next table frowned and vacated their seats—it appeared she had a good amount of vino in her veins.
Ava pointed toward the empty table. "Shall we?"
I nodded my agreement, following her and taking a seat next to the trio of girls' weekenders.
"I'm so wine wasted," one of the brunettes, dressed in a low cut purple spandex dress, said.
"Cheers to that, beeeeeaches," Bridget agreed, mangling the word in a slur. Both she and the other brunette—dressed in a bodysuit that looked like it came from Catwoman's closet—raised their glasses.
Ava shot me a devilish look. "This should be easy," she mumbled.
"What do you mean eas—" I didn't get to finish my thought, as Ava turned in her chair and faced the three women.
"You ladies look like you're having fun," she said, a wide friendly smile on her face.
"Heaps of it," Catwoman answered.
"I'm on my fourth glass of fun," Purple Spandex replied, giggling as she held up her wine.
I noticed Bridget didn't say much, her eyes looking a little glassy.
"I'm Ava," my friend said. "And this is my bestie, Emmy. We're having a girls' weekend."
"Oh, us too!" Purple Spandex said. "Ohmigod, Sonoma is the best, right?" She leaned in toward me, mock whispering as if letting us in on a secret. "They give you free wine."
I bit my lower lip to stifle a laugh. "You don't say?"
Purple Spandex nodded vigorously.
"It's not free, you idiot. We paid a tasting fee," Bridget corrected her friend.
Spandex blinked, wide-eyed. "Well, it was practically free," she amended.
"You in town for anything particular?" Ava asked, directing her question to Bridget.
"Whadda ya mean?" Bridget answered, swaying slightly in her seat.
"Oh, just that a lot of events are held in Sonoma. You know, like conventions, parties, weddings…" She let that last one trail off, watching Bridget's face.
Bridget's eyes narrowed, eyelashes practically touching as they fluttered up and down. "No," she said quickly.
"We're just here to get away," Purple Spandex quickly added. "You know, let loose? Bridge is breaking up with her boyfriend."
"Oh?" I said, hoping to cover my clear curiosity with a sip of wine.
"We didn't break up," Bridget denied hotly.
Purple Spandex rolled her eyes. "Well, you should! Geez, I thought we decided he was a rat. Didn't we?" She turned to Catwoman.
"He really is bad news, Bridge," Catwoman agreed.
"I can relate," Ava said, jumping in. "I think my boyfriend, Earl, is cheating on me."
I choked on my sip of wine, coughing up Merlot.
But Ava ignored me, plowing ahead. "Is your guy a cheater, too?" she asked Bridget, all sympathy in her eyes.
Bridget didn't answer, her bright red lips forming a frown.
"Worse!" Purple Spandex answered for her again. "Her guy is married."
"He isn't married," Bridget denied again.
"Well, close enough. He's engaged. To this, like, wealthy chick," Purple Spandex said.
"Oooo…anyone I might have heard of?" Ava asked, leaning in.
But Purple Spandex shrugged. "Dunno. Bridge won't give us a name." She shot her friend an accusatory look, as if she were committing a BFF sin by withholding it.
Bridget scowled in response. "Why don't you mind your own business, Kaitlyn!"
Purple Spandex blinked innocently at her. "Ohmigod, I'm just trying to look out for you."
"Well, nobody asked you to," Bridget shot back.
"Uh, maybe we should go get a refill, huh?" Catwoman interjected, rising from her seat to guide Purple Spandex away from the table.
"What? What did I do?" Purple asked, even as she rose and let herself be led away.
"She's just touchy right now…" I heard Catwoman consoling her as she led her to the bar.
Leaving Bridget alone.
I felt a limited time opportunity calling.
"I'm sorry about your boyfriend," I said, going for Ava's brand of sympathy.
Bridget's watery eyes shot up to meet mine. "What?"
"Uh, I just meant, I'm sorry you're having issues. That…must be hard."
She blinked at me, and I saw the first hint of real emotion behind her eyes. "Yeah." She looked down into her glass.
"Look, I don't mean to pry"—I was such a liar—"but I feel like I've seen you before. Have you been to Oak Valley Vineyards by any chance?"
Her head shot up so fast I feared she'd have whiplash. "What?"
"Oak Valley Vineyards. It's a few miles north."
"I-I…" Her gaze pinged between Ava and me.
"You were there, weren't you," Ava jumped in. "Saturday, maybe?"
Bridget's face paled under her makeup, her mouth moving up and down without any sound coming out.
"For Freddie's wedding," I prompted softly.
At hearing his name, a sob escaped her before she quickly covered her mouth with one hand. I watched her eyes leak over as she nodded.
I reached out and covered her other hand with mine. "I'm so sorry for your loss," I told her, honestly feeling sympathy for the woman. While she might have been on the brash side, I could tell she was genuinely grieving.
"Thank you," she squeaked out when she'd finally composed herself enough to speak. She sniffled loudly, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "How did you know?" she asked, eyes going from Ava to me again.
"Freddie told us," Ava said before I even had a chance to formulate a plausible answer.
"He did?" Bridget squeaked out. "He…he talked about me?"
I bit my lip, hating to lie to her. "Uh, sort of."
"Were you friends of his?" she asked, confusion plain on her face as she sized us both up anew.
"Uh, acquaintances," I said, leaving it at a half truth this time. "So, you were there at the wedding, then, weren't you?"
She took a deep breath in and let it out on a shaking sigh. "I was. I…well, when Freddie told me he was going through with it, I convinced Kaitlyn and Erin we needed a girls' trip to Wine Country." She gestured toward the bar, where her companions were trying to get the sommelier's attention.
"But you were really coming to see Freddie," Ava surmised.
Bridget nodded. "I-I know it's stupid. I mean, he broke it off. Said he was getting married. But I thought if I showed up here, he'd see how much I really loved him, and he'd…well, he'd reconsider. I didn't tell the girls."
"So you crashed the wedding?" Ava asked.
She look
ed down into her glass. "I guess." She let out a sad chuckle. "You should have seen Freddie. He was so frickin' surprised to see me. I thought his eyes were gonna bug out of his head."
"But he wasn't happy to see you," I guessed.
Bridget's face clouded. "No. Not happy."
"What did he say?" I prompted.
"He said I couldn't be there. That I was going to ruin everything."
"This was on the terrace?" I clarified.
Bridget nodded. "Yeah, I guess. Freddie led me to this patio thing. He didn't want anyone to hear us."
"Then what happened?" Ava asked, inching her chair closer to Bridget.
"Well, I-I told him I loved him. That, you know, we'd be alright without Juliet's money." She paused. "I mean, that had to be why he was with her. It's the only thing she had that I didn't, right? Money."
While it was clear the two women came from divergent financial backgrounds, I could see far more differences between the brash Bridget and Juliet the philanthropist. Bridget's taste in cheetah prints, for one. Granted, Bridget seemed like maybe she'd had a harder life than Juliet's own sheltered one, but I couldn't imagine Juliet ever lashing out at her bridesmaids the way Bridget just had at her friends.
But I kept those thoughts to myself, just nodding sympathetically as the other woman went on.
"It was useless, though. Freddie said it didn't matter. That he was marrying Juliet. That he loved her, and he wasn't going to let me ruin it. Then he…" She paused, more tears leaking down her cheeks. "He told me to leave. That he was done with me for good. He just wanted Juliet." She sniffed loudly and looked up the ceiling, dabbing under her eye makeup.
"I bet that didn't feel good," Ava noted.
Bridget shot her a look of disdain through her tears. "Yeah, it was a friggin' picnic. What do you think?"
"I think I would have been devastated," I added. "Felt used. Angry, even…" I trailed off.
Bridget spun her scowl on me. I blame it on the wine that it took a second before the frown morphed into a look of fear and she caught on to what I was implying. "Wait—you don't mean…? Oh, no. No, no, no, no, NO!"
The last word was uttered so loudly, a few patrons turned our way to see what the commotion was.
"We don't mean anything," I said softly, trying to calm her down.
"Look, Freddie was alive when I left him on that patio. He told me to get out, so I got out."
"Did anyone see you leave?"
"I…I don't know. But I didn't kill Freddie! I didn't even know he was dead until I saw it on the news that night!"
A thought occurred to me. "Did anyone else know you and Freddie were seeing each other? His cousin? Or Baker maybe?"
"Baker?" She scrunched up her nose. "God, why would Freddie tell him? I mean, honestly, I don't even know why he hung around that guy. He was such a loser."
"What about Freddie's cousin? Natalie?" Ava asked.
But Bridget just blinked at her. "I didn't know Freddie had a cousin."
"Where did you go when you left Freddie?" I asked, switching tactics.
"I went back to the hotel to fix my makeup. I'd been cryin', okay? I was a wreck. I freshened up. Then I caught up with the girls at Buena Vista." She looked from Ava to me again, as if trying to gauge if we believed her story. "I would never hurt Freddie. I mean, why would I? I loved him."
"And he rejected you," Ava pointed out.
"No, y-you have it all wrong. It wasn't me. It was them!"
"Them?" I asked. I glanced over my shoulder, making sure her friends weren't coming back to the table yet. I didn't see them at the bar anymore, but they weren't hovering near us either, so I took it as good sign. "Who is 'them'?"
"Those…people," she spat out. "Those rich guys he was hanging out with. They did this to him, not me."
"Why do you think they killed Freddie?" Ava asked. I saw her eyes cut to mine, and I could tell she was thinking the same thing: which they?
Bridget snorted, and I resisted the urge to get her a tissue. "Because he knew all their dirty little secrets," she said, her words starting to slur together again as anger subsided.
"Like what?" I asked.
But Bridget just laughed at me. "Yeah, right. Like I'm gonna tell you." She looked me up and down again. "You're probably one of them."
"One of…the Somersbys?" I wasn't sure if I should be insulted at the way she said it with a sneer or flattered that she thought my net worth had several more zeros behind it than in reality.
"All of them! That whole friggin wedding party. Thinking they're better than me. They made Freddie think he was better than me. Well, how do they like things now, huh? Freddie told me everything. Yeah, that's right," she said, nodding her head up and down like a bobble doll. "Oh yeah, now I know all the dirty little secrets too. And guess what? I'm not going to forget what you people did to Freddie." She abruptly switched from nodding to wagging her head back and forth in a negative. "No sireeee, all of you people are going to be sorry you ever—"
"Bridge?"
I startled at the sound of the two brunettes coming back to the table and looked up to find Catwoman frowning down at her friend, a look of concern in her eyes.
"Everything okay?" she asked.
"Oh, sure," Bridget slurred. "These two—"
"Were just leaving," I cut in, quickly pushing my chair away from the table.
"Nice to have met you," Ava mumbled quickly as we made a hasty exit.
I could feel all three pairs of eyes on my back until we'd pushed outside, the cool breeze hitting me in the face.
"Wow," Ava said, once we were out of earshot. "What do you think of that?"
"I think Bridget has had way too much to drink."
"You think she was telling the truth about the 'dirty little secrets'?" Ava asked, doing air quotes.
I shrugged. "Honestly? Hard to know. I think she might have been a little crazy with grief."
"Or maybe just crazy," Ava added with a grin.
I couldn't help a chuckle as we got back in the car. "That too," I agreed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
By the time we arrived back at Oak Valley, the sun was setting, creating a pastel watercolor of the sky in brilliant pinks, purples, and dusky blues. As I got out of the car, I took a moment to appreciate its beauty, watching the sun sink behind the hillside dotted with our dormant vines just starting to hint at the promise of green, before I led the way through the winery doors. I immediately heard voices in the tasting room. Glad to hear we had paying customers, I peeked my head into the room and spotted two men at the bar.
And my dreams of paying customers vanished into thin air.
"What's David doing here?" Ava asked, a step behind me.
"That's what I'd like to know," I said.
David Allen was perched on a stool sipping a glass of my Pinot Noir (again) as he laughed at something a tall, redheaded man had just said. As David spotted us and glanced in our direction, the redhead turned around, and I recognized him as Juliet's bridesman, Andrew.
"Ems!" David said, hailing us over with a wave. "And Ava, my darling! I was just having a drink with Andrew Phillips. You remember him, of course?"
"Of course," I replied, approaching the pair and shaking hands with Andrew. "Nice to see you again," I told him.
"Hope I'm not taking advantage of your hospitality—" he began.
"Not at all," David cut him off, assuring him heartily, "Emmy loves visitors."
"Some more than others," I mumbled, giving him a pointed look.
"I, uh, just stopped by," Andrew continued, "because I promised Juliet I'd come pick up the rest of the wedding decorations." He paused. "Not that she has a use for them now, but she thought maybe I could donate them to the Y or something. You know, for events or parties."
"That's very generous of her," I said.
"Well, that's Jules." Andrew sent me a sad smile, and I could tell he genuinely cared about her.
"How is she?" Ava asked, perching on the stool beside Dav
id.
Andrew shrugged. "As well as can be expected, I suppose." He shook his head. "That police detective had her down at the station today."
I bit my lip. That, I knew. "She okay?" I asked, glad at least it didn't sound like she was in handcuffs.
Andrew nodded. "She will be. She was sleeping when I left her. But I have a bad feeling that guy thinks she had something to do with Freddie's death."
That made two of us. "Did Juliet tell you what the detective asked her?"
Andrew shook his head. "Not specifically." His focus was momentarily taken away as Jean Luc walked through the room, a case of wine in his arms to stock the bar.
"Andrew here was telling me he and Juliet go way back," David cut in. "In fact, he was even there when Juliet and Freddie met." David sent me a meaningful look.
I leaned against the bar beside Andrew. "Oh really? Where did they meet?"
Andrew tore his gaze way from Jean Luc's thin frame with difficulty. "Uh, yeah, it was at a cocktail reception. One of the fundraisers Jules had put together."
"Freddie was a donor?"
Andrew snorted. "I doubt it. But Freddie liked to mingle with those who had money."
"You weren't a big fan of Freddie's, were you?" Ava asked.
I watched his reaction carefully.
But Andrew just smiled widely. "Gee, what gave it away?" he asked, heavy on the sarcasm.
"Any particular reason?" I fished.
"I can think of several. All female," Andrew said, emphasizing the word, even as his eyes wandered to my sommelier leaning down to retrieve a glass from below a low cupboard. It took him a beat to tear his gaze away and finish his thought. "If you know what I mean."
I did. In fact, I'd just been talking to one of those reasons, but I kept that to myself for now. If Andrew and Juliet were as tight as they seemed, I didn't necessarily want word getting back to Juliet about the mistress. At least not now while she was grieving.
"Any women in particular?" Ava asked, catching my eyes in a way that let me know she was thinking the same thing I was.
Andrew shrugged. "I don't know. But I know Freddie was taking advantage of Jules. Freddie was with her for one thing only, and it wasn't love."
Marriage, Merlot & Murder (Wine & Dine Mysteries Book 4) Page 11
