Death, Dismay and Rosé

by J. C. Eaton

  With the exception of Charlie going in and out of the doggie door a few times, the house was quiet and still. Too quiet. Too still. I rummaged around the drawer of CDs that Francine and Jason had, and using their old Panasonic, filled all five slots with the Grateful Dead before returning to Vance’s musings.

  I don’t know what I was expecting, but nothing jumped out at me. He was a miserable, picky man who had issues with everyone, it seemed. The only question was which issue got him a ticket to the afterlife.

  Then something hit me. Something I should have thought about earlier, but in all the commotion at Kashong Point followed by that little jaunt Theo and I took last night to the historical society, it totally escaped my mind. Until now.

  Where was Vance Wexler’s car? A bright yellow Karmann Ghia would have stood out among all the SUVs and Jeeps at Kashong Point, yet I didn’t remember seeing one. Cars were parked along the road and in the gravel lot by the campground, but for the life of me, the Karmann Ghia wasn’t one of them. I grabbed the landline since it was near the table and called Godfrey.

  “Hey, Godfrey, it’s me. Norrie. Have you been in touch with Alex?”

  “Uh, not since yesterday when we saw him. Why? Did something happen?”

  “No, but I may be on to something. Do you remember seeing a bright yellow Karmann Ghia parked along the road or in that campground parking lot when we were at Kashong Point yesterday? It’s a mid-century Volkswagen sports car that kind of looks like a Porsche knockoff with big front lights.”

  “I know what a Karmann Ghia looks like. For a while they were pretty popular when I was in school. Why?”

  “Because that’s the car Vance Wexler drove and I don’t remember seeing it. It would’ve stood out like a sore thumb.”

  “I don’t recall seeing it, but then again, I wasn’t looking. Uh, how do you know what kind of car he drove?”

  A little breaking and entering . . . a little snooping around his desk . . .

  “Don’t blow this out of proportion.”

  “Oh, no. What?”

  “Last night Theo and I snuck into Vance’s office at the historical society and there was a photo of it on his desk. It was also the password for his computer.”

  “Breaking and entering? Computer hacking?”

  “More like snooping and sleuthing. Besides, we didn’t get caught.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Godfrey, we walked out of there with information that could lead us to Vance’s killer. That is, if the coroner says the death was a homicide. It would get Alex off the hook.”

  “And you and Theo on it.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious about what we found out?”

  “Petrified as hell is more like it. Whatever you found out could put you in danger if someone were to find out what you did.”

  “There’s no way that will happen. It’s not as if the place was bug— Oh, hell.”

  Chapter 13

  That tingling feeling of little hairs sticking up on my arms and legs engulfed me as I tried to remember if I’d seen anything that remotely resembled a surveillance camera at the historical society. Thoughts of Agnes, Mildred, and Curtis reviewing footage was enough to make me shudder. “It’s an old building. A historical society. Not a bank or a school.”

  Godfrey’s voice got a tad louder. “No. Worse. A museum. A museum with valuable artifacts.”

  “You’re scaring me. Look, let’s say they had surveillance. There wouldn’t be a reason for them to review it unless something was stolen or missing, or broken. Listen, getting back to that Karmann Ghia. Can you call Alex and ask if he or any of his students saw it? Or if it’s still there?”

  “I’ll call his cell right now and let you know. If he doesn’t answer, it means he’s doing something that can’t be interrupted.”

  Wonderful. What do you do with insects that can’t be interrupted?

  Godfrey went on. “If that’s the case I’ll leave you a message. You don’t plan on any more escapades this weekend, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  Not that I know of.

  “Tell me, if that car isn’t at Kashong Point, then what?” he asked.

  “Then I’ve got to find out where it is, because it may be the very clue to Vance’s demise. Either he drove it there and someone made off with it, or he got a ride with someone and the car’s still at his house. Or apartment. Or wherever he lives . . .”

  “Norrie, whatever you do, don’t go breaking into his house.”

  “I can’t. I have no idea where he lives.”

  “Good. Keep it that way. Let the sheriff’s office deal with it.”

  “Aargh.”

  When I got off the phone with Godfrey, I called Theo and Don to remind them that we were going to meet after work in order to discuss our findings from Vance’s notes. I offered to pick up a giant pizza with all the works from Cam’s in Geneva and Don said they’d bring a blueberry cobbler he had made earlier in the day.

  By seven thirty, as we were stuffing ourselves with pizza, I suddenly remembered that I never returned Lorraine Stuyvesant’s call from 8 ROC. And in fact, Godfrey hadn’t returned mine with the info from Alex.

  “Think it’s too late to call that programming director?” I asked Theo and Don.

  They both shrugged and Don replied, “You have nothing to lose. If it’s the station number, she’ll get back to you. If it’s her cell, you might catch her.”

  As it turned out, it was her cell. Either that or the woman worked awfully long hours. She was more than pleased I was willing to grant them an interview about the Two Witches curse, although I wasn’t quite sure what I could tell them other than what they already knew. Still, it might be good publicity for the winery if I handled it right.

  We arranged for her to chat with me at the winery on Wednesday morning and have one of her production assistants film it. I thought back to the last time something was filmed at our winery and recoiled. At least this wasn’t a major movie production, or any production for that matter. Only a simple interview.

  “We might as well get started on Vance’s notes,” Theo said, “then we can dive into the dessert.”

  Just then the landline rang, and it was Godfrey. “Sorry it took so long, Norrie, but Alex and his crew spotted the Tipula paludosa, an exotic species of the European crane fly, and, well, you can’t imagine the paperwork it entailed.”

  Thank goodness.

  “Anyway, he said to tell you that one of his students saw that car when he came back from a snack run late Friday afternoon. It was gone the next morning when Vance’s body was discovered. Guess this is another part of the puzzle going unsolved, huh?”

  “Unsolved but not untouched. It’s on my list. But I don’t think it’s on Deputy Hickman’s radar. Maybe I can get one step ahead.”

  I thought I heard Godfrey groan before I thanked him and told him that I was reviewing the “ill-obtained notes”—his words, not mine—with Don and Theo.

  When I got off the phone, I explained about the car and how it could hold a piece of valuable evidence considering it was, after all, Vance’s password on his computer and showcased in a frame on his desk.

  “Good grief, Norrie,” Theo said. “You’re piling more stuff into this investigation of yours than Don does at a salad bar.”

  Don immediately jumped in. “I heard that! I’m right here.”

  “Fine, fine. Let’s get back to what we were originally doing. I made a good dent in the pile of notes Theo and I printed out but didn’t have a chance to finish reading them. If you ask me, Vance saw the residents and taxpayers more like enemy combatants than citizens. Just give me a second.”

  I put the two leftover pizza slices in the fridge and carried the box to the garage, where we kept the garbage cans. When I got back, Don had already organized their pile of papers into three stacks, and I noticed he had marked them with red, yellow, and green dots on top.

  “The green dots are notes that are fairly benig
n,” he said. “The others are sorted into higher levels of intensity.”

  “Start with the one that’s nuclear,” I said, “and we can go from there. Although I don’t remember anything that sent up a red flare. Then again, I still had a small stack to go.”

  “It’s a short note that Vance wrote,” Don said, “and refers to someone with the initials R.S. Here, let me read it to you. It says: ‘thought of taking out a restraining order but he’d get even. Got too much invested already.’ What do you suppose that means?”

  My reaction was immediate. “Sounds like he was being threatened and maybe even blackmailed. Question is . . . by who? And why? You know, this note could be Alex’s salvation, but we can’t very well offer it up.”

  Theo took the note from Don, studied it for a second and put it down. “Agreed, but rest assured the Ontario and Yates County sheriff’s offices will have their teams of techie experts cracking into Vance’s computer without needing his password. They’ll find that note along with number two on the nuclear list.”

  “Who’s the second-place winner?”

  “Madeline,” Theo and Don answered in unison.

  “Okay, fine. Who’s on third?”

  Don removed two pieces of paper from the pile and shifted his gaze from one to the other. “It’s a tie. A letter from a woman on Snell Road threatening to have him neutered if he didn’t acquiesce and grant her request for window planters in the front of her house.”

  “Yeesh. And the other one?”

  “A very similar note from someone on Armstrong Road. It says, “Carport my ass. We need to build a garage. I suggest you reconsider this or you’ll be speaking in falsetto permanently.”

  I clasped my hands together and tightened them. “The trouble with those two notes is that they’re so over-the-top as to lose their credibility. What about the others? The yellow and green dots? All I saw were normal requests that were blown out of proportion.”

  Don put the papers back on the table. “That about sums it up. Too bad there’s no one on that historical society board with the initials R.S.”

  “Probably listed in his cell phone, which those deputies must have by now if it was anywhere near the body,” I said. “Maybe Godfrey and Bradley are right. Maybe those deputies will put two and two together and find out who really was responsible, but I’m not counting on it. The only Hail Mary we have is if the autopsy report shows the real and hopefully natural cause of death.”

  • • •

  It didn’t. The preliminary autopsy report on Vance Wexler was released to the media on Tuesday following notification to next of kin, whoever and wherever they lived. All I knew was Vance was single. It hit the noon news on all of the TV stations in Rochester and Syracuse. I know, because it was also on a Facebook feed that I was monkeying around with, having taken a break from my screenplay proposal.

  The minute I saw the feed, I plopped the laptop on the coffee table and turned on the TV. Then I moved from channel to channel. Thirteen, ten, eight, and some channels I didn’t even know we had. The news was all the same—Vance Wexler succumbed to asphyxiation.

  Asphyxiation. What the heck was that supposed to mean? The news anchors danced around the differences between suffocation and asphyxiation, but it all wound up in the same nebulous place. Vance died because his oxygen supply was cut off, and that could have been from natural causes or an outside source. However, there were no indications that his death was caused by the deliberate action on the part of anyone. At least until “further evaluative studies” are conducted. Nice way of saying no one had the slightest idea what did the jerk in.

  The news anchors went on to say that toxicology reports were bound to shed more light on this suspicious, for lack of a better word, death. Those results weren’t expected for another two weeks, and even then they would be preliminary results because that kind of thing can take months.

  Following that announcement about Vance’s cause of death, I had a sinking feeling those news anchors would latch on to the full moon summer solstice curse like those crane flies did with broccoli. Good thing I had that interview tomorrow with Lorraine from 8 ROC. Maybe I could water it down so as to diffuse it altogether. Boy, was I wrong.

  Chapter 14

  Madeline left a message for me at the winery on Wednesday morning to remind me we had a WOW meeting at her place the next day. Something about the winemakers dinner. I made a mental note to show up on time and left it at that. I was way too preoccupied with the interview I was about to have in twenty minutes with Lorraine Stuyvesant, the programming director at 8 ROC. I was petrified about what I was going to tell her, and the hundreds of viewers who were mesmerized about a local curse on Seneca Lake.

  Thankfully, I’d snuck away from my screenplay proposal on Monday morning and had gone to the Yates County Historical Society in order to find out more about Adeliza and Derella Marsten, aka our personal answer to Samantha and Endora. Too bad our witches weren’t quite as charming as the ones on that old TV sitcom. From what Gladys had told me, the sisters were known to dabble in spells and were somewhat shunned by the churchgoing community. All rumors, of course. However, Gladys had found out one verifiable piece of information. The sisters bought property on our hill in 1797, and that meant there had to be town records dating back to that time.

  It took a bit of doing, but I was able to convince one of the docents at the Yates County Historical Society to take a gander at what’s behind door number three and track down those records, which were bound to be lurking around in their basement.

  While the woman didn’t seem to find my sense of humor pleasing, she stopped sorting mailers and agreed to have a look downstairs. Had I known that “have a look” meant donning white gloves while rummaging around dusty shelves and sweeping away pill bugs every few seconds, I might have changed my mind. At least there weren’t any visible cobwebs.

  Finally she uncovered a worn yellowed book whose binding was falling apart. If that wasn’t bad enough, it looked as if it had been recovered from a fire, burnt pages and all.

  “Be very careful with this,” she said as she handed it to me. “It’s irreplaceable. It documents the Town of Benton records from eighteen ten to eighteen fifteen.”

  “Nothing sooner? Like the late seventeen hundreds?”

  She shook her head. “Although the town came into existence in eighteen oh three, the records don’t begin until eighteen ten.”

  Wonderful. Go figure what those two witches were up to between 1797 and 1810. If they even lived that long.

  I took the book from her and walked back upstairs, where I spent the next hour trying to make sense of it. Mostly references to creating a mail station and a grist mill, although I did spy what I believed to be one note pertaining to the Marsten sisters in reference to their cultivation of grapes and subsequent wine making, or “spirits of the devil,” as the notation said. Then, the clincher—it was dated June eighteenth. A few days before a summer solstice.

  Did those two put a curse on someone because they tried to stop them from producing a little homemade wine? If that was the case, it wasn’t documented in the town records. I pulled out my iPhone and snapped a photo of the page for future reference and called it a day. At least I’d have some tidbit of truth to embellish during my interview for 8 ROC.

  Suddenly I felt a familiar vibration in the pocket of my pants and it shook me out of my reverie about my visit to the Yates County Historical Society on Monday. It was a text message from Godfrey and it said, “Alex at YCPSB. More questioning. Talk to you later.” More questioning. That couldn’t be good. Cold beads of sweat trickled down the back of my neck while the palms of my hands felt sticky and clammy.

  “Are you all right, Norrie?” Cammy asked. She rapped on my office door and stuck her head inside. “You haven’t said a word since you walked in here an hour ago. I wouldn’t have bothered you in your office but Lizzie said you looked as if you were in a daze when you came in this morning.”

  “Come on in a
nd close the door. Lorraine Stuyvesant from 8 ROC is going to be here any second with a production assistant. I must have temporarily lost my mind because I agreed to be interviewed by her in reference to the Two Witches curse.”

  “So you agreed after all. I thought you’d adamantly refuse. Whatever possessed you?”

  “Possessed is a good word. And didn’t you say it would be better if I put a spin on the situation so it would end all the speculation about Vance’s death being caused by a curse that emanated from our hill? But now I’ve got to do exactly what I promised myself I wouldn’t.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Without the curse, Vance’s death may point to the murder unless some underlying cause is found. So far, no go. The news just said asphyxiation. That means poor Alex Bollinger is about to be offered up as the number-one suspect. The poor guy is sweating it out right now in the county public safety building. Godfrey sent me a text a few minutes ago. Face it, Alex had motive, means, and opportunity. But he couldn’t possibly have murdered Vance. Trouble is, they need a suspect.”

  “Uh-oh. Are you about to do what I think you are?”

  “If you mean am I going to point the finger at those two witches, then the answer is—hell yes! Don’t look at me like that. I need to find a way to shift the attention. True, up until now I was concerned that all this witch nonsense would lead to a bunch of lookie-loos traipsing all over the vineyards, but John’s got that pretty well under control with ropes and signs.”

  “If you say so.” Cammy opened the office door and quickly shut it. “You may not have to work that hard. Your opening act is in the corridor. I can hear Glenda’s voice. Shh . . .”

  I stood from my desk and along with Cammy opened the door by a sliver and listened to the conversation.