A Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mystery 4: Lethal Vintage

by Nadia Gordon

  Franco moved on to his chest and shoulders, rubbing the lotion in with brisk, glancing blows to his deeply tanned skin.

  “You must learn to face it,” he said, “because this is not going to end today. We are all in for a bit of trouble over this poor girl’s death.”

  Sunny was silent.

  “Do you think I’m wrong?” he continued. “They interrogate us, keep us here like we are under house arrest. I am not to leave the country or even this town until otherwise informed or else they will find some way to make my life difficult.”

  The police couldn’t keep them from leaving, but they had firmly suggested it would be better if everyone stayed until they were done gathering as much preliminary information and evidence as possible. It was a polite and hospitable prison, but a prison nonetheless. Out front, it looked like a major operation. The police had moved their headquarters to the “command van” parked in the driveway, and a truck had arrived in addition to several police cars. Officers were busy removing items from the house and loading them into the truck.

  “It is quite clear the police have decided little Anna’s death was no accident,” said Franco. He settled into his chaise. “I hope Oliver has a good lawyer.”

  “He has Keith,” said Sunny.

  “I mean a criminal lawyer. Keith is a businessman.”

  “Do you think they will accuse him?”

  “They always accuse the lover. Besides, you heard them fighting. Everyone heard them. It doesn’t look good to people.”

  “How well do you know Oliver?”

  “Well enough.”

  “Do you think he loved her?”

  “Anna? Of course. But I’m not so sure she loved him.”

  “She thought he was unfaithful to her.”

  Franco chuckled. “Who knows? And was she faithful to him? I find it difficult to imagine.” He looked at Sunny with the alarming blue eyes that had startled her when they first met. “Faithfulness is overrated. If the love is there, that’s the important part.”

  She felt her face flush with embarrassment. So, it was known. Everyone must know by now. Everyone except Keith Lachlan. He was back in San Francisco, blissfully ignorant of both Anna’s death and his girlfriend’s unfaithfulness. Now she and Keith Lachlan had something in common.

  “That is an interesting philosophy,” said Sunny. “The European approach to relationships, right? I don’t think it would work in America.”

  “It is the old man’s approach. Believe what you want, people are nothing more or less than human. But if the love is not there”—again, he looked into her eyes—”then it doesn’t matter, does it? A husband and wife should be first in each other’s hearts. After that, you just live and hope and try not to hurt each other.”

  “But Anna and Oliver weren’t married.”

  “They would have been eventually. He talked about getting married. I told him to marry her, or choose someone else. I don’t agree with this American propensity to delay adulthood. What is so great about adolescence? Only in America do they prolong it to middle age. Everywhere else in the world, young people can’t wait to grow up. To make their own decisions and become independent. All the best pleasures of life happen to adults, and take it from me, they’re better enjoyed in youth. To be the young husband of a young wife is the greatest pleasure in the world. To be a young father, a young mother. To buy your first house, take your first vacation as a family. I honestly do not understand why Americans work so hard to avoid adulthood. Are movie theaters and nightclubs so much fun? You would think they would die of boredom by the time they’re thirty.”

  He offered her a cigarette and she shook her head. No more of that. Yesterday she’d let go of her own better judgment from start to finish, thinking maybe someone else knew better. Maybe all those rules could be broken and everything would still be fine.

  Franco looked at her. “How old are you?”

  “I’ll be thirty-three in a week.”

  “Too old to marry in Italy and most of the world. In America there’s still time. This guy you’re with now, he’s nothing. You need to find someone more substantial. Someone who isn’t afraid to be a man and give his word. You don’t want to end up like this poor girl we’re going to bury.”

  “You don’t look too shook up about it,” said Sunny irritably.

  “I’m like you. I don’t show my emotions. They attack me later when I least expect it. Over coffee on a nice new morning when I’m not thinking of anything remotely sad. They wait until I let my guard down and then they clobber me like a robber in a dark alley.”

  * * *

  On the subject of Andre Morales, Sunny’s mind went blank. No feelings, no words, nothing. Her mind was as simple and white as a boiled egg when it came to her boyfriend of six months standing in a bedroom with a scantily clad Guamanian princess. Andre, for his part, was nonchalant. Earlier he had pulled up a chair next to her and sat overlooking the vineyard and peeling an orange as though nothing had changed. He offered Sunny half.

  “Don’t you want to save some for Marissa?” she said. “Maybe you should divide it into thirds.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “I don’t think there is a word for what I am, but anger is certainly part of it. Does that surprise you?”

  “Look, Sunny, I’m sorry this happened. I certainly didn’t plan for this to happen.”

  Sunny held up her hand. “Not now. Don’t do this right now while Anna is stretched out somewhere on a gurney thanks to exactly this sort of thinking.”

  “What do you mean by that? I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Anna. I’ve never even met her.”

  “I’m talking about rules, or the lack thereof. There are no rules in this house and now Anna is dead. I don’t want to hear your excuses. You broke the most basic rule of being together and you know it.” She sounded slightly hysterical even to her own ears.

  “What, are you going to tell the teacher on me? Sunny, please grow up. I’m not going to apologize for unwinding with friends after a long night. If you want to make more of it than that at a time when we all have more important things to think about, be my guest.”

  “And I’m not going to listen to you pretend to be honest. I want to be with a man who isn’t afraid to give me his word and stand behind it.”

  * * *

  In the late afternoon, Sergeant Harvey called them into the living room, where the crimson Rothko and the nudes presided. Cynthia had been the last to give her statement and her eyes were bloodshot. She blew her nose and pressed a wadded-up Kleenex to her eyes. Molly Seth and Jared Bollinger sat next to her on the couch. Jared’s boyish face looked sad and sweet, as if he was eager to help but didn’t know how. Molly had pulled her blond hair back in a tight bun. She had her arm around Cynthia, rocking her like a child. Marissa, Andre, and Troy sat off to the side in chairs around a coffee table. Sunny chose a place as far away from Andre as possible, slumped in the same armchair as last night, still in her bikini and cover-up and flimsy skirt. Franco and Jordan sat on the oversized ottoman in front of her, holding hands. There were several police officers Sunny didn’t know, and a man she assumed was Mike Sayudo, the gardener who’d found Anna. Oliver Seth stood in back by the fireplace with his arms crossed. He seemed to have grown thinner and paler in the night. His eyes were rimmed in red and a purplish shadow lay beneath them. He looked extremely tired.

  “Before we let you go today, I wanted to take a moment to reiterate that this is an open investigation,” said Sergeant Harvey, pacing in front of them like the principal of a school for derelict students. “While we won’t know exactly what we’re dealing with until the autopsy report and preliminary investigation are complete, I would like to ask your cooperation in not speaking about this matter any more than absolutely necessary, whether to each other or to people outside this room. Some facts will become public knowledge soon, such as the fact that a death occurred and the cause of death is being investigated. I would appreciate you keeping
more detail than that to yourselves until further notice. Meanwhile, rest assured we will pursue every aspect of the case in order to establish exactly what transpired last night and this morning, and how those events may have contributed to the death of Ms. Wilson. We have more than fifteen officers dedicated to investigating the matter, and there may be more as leads come in, evidence is analyzed, and theories are developed.”

  “Does that mean you think she was killed?” asked Molly.

  “It’s too soon to determine anything right now. For the moment, we’re just gathering information, trying to establish exactly what might have occurred.”

  “But you know how she died,” she persisted.

  “We’ll have a better idea once the autopsy comes back in a day or two.” He looked around the room at each of them. “Before you leave, you will be given a card with an officer’s name and contact information on it. You should feel free, and depending on the situation, obligated, to contact this officer immediately should you learn of or recall any new piece of information you think might prove useful to the investigation.”

  Sunny’s mind was awash with emotion. Anna’s death and Andre’s betrayal folded into each other and it was impossible to know where her response to one left off and the other began. She only wanted to go home to her own kitchen. She’d had enough of the cloying softness of the chair she was sitting in and the carpet underfoot and all the other soft and shiny and luxuriously unmarred and unused surfaces of Oliver Seth’s home. She wanted to go to work. She did not arrive at the restaurant each day hoping lunch would appear. She made it happen. If there were impediments, she overcame them. At Wildside, she reigned supreme, god of a small kitchen. Here she could do nothing but wait, wonder, regret. Anna, what happened to you?

  “I ask you for your patience and cooperation in the coming days and weeks,” said Sergeant Harvey. “Several of you may be asked to come into the station to respond to further questions. For those of you who live out of town, I request that you make whatever reasonable changes you can to your travel plans in order to stay in the vicinity for the next week at least. If you do plan to leave, the St. Helena Police Department would appreciate your notifying us of where you will be and how we can reach you.”

  The last time Sunny had seen Anna was in the hot tub, kissing Oliver. How long was she alive after that? What time was it when she overheard them fighting? Sunny had gone over it several times with the police. There was no way to know the exact time. Her watch had said one-fifteen when she went to bed and four o’clock when she heard the sobbing from upstairs. Certainly at four Anna was still alive, since Sunny had heard her crying. With a sickening feeling, she thought of the last time she jolted awake, early that morning. What was it that had woken her? Could it have been the sound of Anna’s body striking the pavement just a few feet from the French doors? Sunny looked around the room. In all probability, someone here knew exactly what had happened. The only one missing was Keith Lachlan.

  Sergeant Harvey had stopped to confer with another officer. The room was silent. No one made eye contact or moved, as if doing so would be an admission of guilt. Sunny imagined Anna getting out of the hot tub and going to the master bedroom. What was she wearing when she had the fight with Oliver? A towel? Had she put the white dress back on? Or did she have some kind of negligee she slept in? If they knew what Anna was wearing when the gardener found her, it might suggest something about the minutes leading up to her death. Was she dressed, hair brushed, shoes on, as though ready to leave? Was she naked, torn suddenly from bed?

  * * *

  It was nearly six in the evening when they finally released everyone. Sunny climbed into her beat-up old pickup gratefully and headed down the hill. At a red light near town, her cell phone rang.

  “Wade,” she said, picking up with relief.

  “What’s up, sunshine? You’ve been off the radar all weekend.”

  “Long story.”

  “Care to tell it over dinner? Chavez is coming by in a minute and Lenstrom is on his way already.”

  “Thank God.”

  Wade cleared his throat. “He asked me if I thought it would be okay to ask you to cater the wedding.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I was pretty sure you’d be honored.”

  Silence. Their friend Monty Lenstrom had finally asked his longtime girlfriend, Annabelle, to marry him. Sunny had been dreading the inevitable catering request for weeks. Every time someone she knew got married, they assumed she’d prefer to work the wedding than to be a guest. It was a huge amount of work she always ended up doing at cost.

  “Sun, I’m kidding,” said Wade with a chuckle. “I told him to hire somebody and let you relax for a change.”

  “Not funny, Skord. Not tonight, anyway. I can’t even think about dealing with Annabelle right now, of all the larger-than-life Bridezillas-to-be. It’s bad enough I’m hosting the engagement dinner. What’d he say?”

  “He said he was going to ask you the next chance he got. He was pretty sure you’d love the idea.”

  “Is the man blind, deaf, and dumb? Has he not been a witness to the week of sixteen-hour days the last friends’ wedding cost me? All unpaid, I might add.”

  “So tell him no.”

  “Please. I’ve known him since he had hair.”

  “Then suck it up.”

  “I’ll do the rehearsal dinner. And the snacks for the bridal party before. But I am not doing the dinner for two hundred people.”

  “Whatever. You two will have to sort that out. Get up here as soon as you can. We need to eat it, drink it, and clean it up by ten. It’s a school night.”

  “Driving.”

  She hung up and accelerated past the string of gourmet-themed boutiques, antique shops, and restaurants, including her own, lined up along Main Street, otherwise known as Highway 29, the road to redemption in the form of Wade Skord and his mountaintop winery.

  7

  Sunny felt better already. From the moment she put her turn signal on and began the long chug up Howell Mountain, she felt that maybe the nightmare of the past twenty-four hours would finally end. What would she do without friends like Wade and Rivka and Monty? With a pang she thought of Anna. She’d asked for help and Sunny had failed her. Sunny had listened to her fight with Oliver, a man Anna had said frightened her, and had done nothing. Worse, she’d gone back to sleep as if nothing was wrong. Her instincts had failed her. She’d convinced herself Anna was being emotional and dramatic, when instead she needed help getting away from a dangerous situation. Now the unthinkable had happened and Sunny would have to live the rest of her life with the knowledge that she might have prevented it.

  At the mailbox marked skord mountain vineyard, she turned off the pavement and plunged down a steep ravine on a road rutted with potholes. Dust billowed up around the truck, chalking the air pale red in the failing light. At the bottom was Wake Skord’s cabin. Judging by the collection of vehicles nosed around it, Rivka Chavez and Monty Lenstrom had already arrived. So much the better. Tonight Sunny wanted her friends close.

  Wade’s cat, Farber, leaped down from the railing with a thud and waited for her on the deck. Sunny scratched him between the ears and he bit her hand affectionately. Inside, they were already eating. Monty poured Sunny a glass of something ruby red. One of his pet Sonoma Coast Pinots. Rivka brought Sunny a plate and loaded it with salad, rice, and Chicken à la Wade.

  Sunny had eaten dinner at Wade’s plank table at least once a week for half a decade, more or less. During that time, he never cooked anything but the specialty of the house, which changed every year or so. In the beginning, it was a rib-sticking ground beef and potato concoction with raisins and green olives called Shepherd’s Pie à la Wade, served with a jumbo bottle of green Tabasco. Later it was Tibetan Ginger Tofu Soup à la Wade. A few months ago, Chicken à la Wade started turning up. It involved a Dutch oven, stewed tomatoes, cubed prosciutto, fresh rosemary, and plenty of dry white wine. Comfort food. Tonight
it had its work cut out for it.

  “The specialty of the house,” said Sunny. “My favorite.”

  “What’d you expect?” said Wade.

  “Toast, fried eggs, and sardines?” said Sunny.

  “Only for breakfast and lunch.”

  “I don’t know how you keep from getting scurvy,” said Monty.

  “Chicken à la Wade has rosemary,” said Wade. “That’s green.”

  “I just realized something,” said Rivka. “Shouldn’t it be Chicken au Wade? Or Chicken al Wade. You being, for what it’s worth, male.”

  “Cooking brings out my feminine side. Besides, no one calls me Al, and au Wade doesn’t roll off the tongue the way à la Wade does.”