A Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mystery 4: Lethal Vintage

by Nadia Gordon

  “What if he was the one who opened the door on you and some guy?” said Rivka. “Would you let him wonder what he’d seen for a day or two before you showed up unannounced at his house and assumed you could turn on the charm, take him to bed, and all would be forgiven? Come on, Sunny.”

  “He admitted he was wrong.”

  “And that’s enough for you?”

  Sunny picked up a bunch of red mustard and gently pried apart the leaves, rinsing away streaks of fine black soil between them. “If it’s sincere, yes. I’m willing to give this one more shot. He says he’s going to make some changes and I believe him.”

  “Time will tell,” said Rivka, sounding skeptical. “At least you had a fun night.”

  A knock at the back door interrupted them. Sunny saw Sergeant Harvey through the screen door and dried her hands. “You’re up early.”

  “I was in the neighborhood. You have a minute to talk?”

  “Let’s go in my office.”

  Sergeant Harvey made the cluttered little room look especially puny, as if he’d drunk the wrong potion and his head might hit the ceiling any minute.

  “Sorry about the mess.”

  “The McCoskey roost never changes.”

  He sat on the couch between a stack of cookbooks and an old wooden Bandol wine box filled with pieces of driftwood. Sunny moved it to the floor to give him some room and put a pile of vintage cooking magazines on top of it so she could sit in the chair opposite him. In the kitchen, order reigned. This room was for daydreaming. She had the impression that Sergeant Harvey did not approve. He was staring at her desk. Under a river rock was a rumpled heap of notes written on yellowed and stained scraps of paper.

  “What’s all that?”

  “My inspiration. Whenever I have an idea for a new variation on a dish or a new combination of flavors or something, I write it down and stick it in the pile.”

  Sergeant Harvey leaned forward and extracted a few from under the rock. “Some of these must be three or four years old. ‘Basil is as good sweet as it is savory. Basil and candied lemon. Basil panna cotta. Basil and strawberry. Basil and watermelon. Basil and lindenberry? Basil and aniseed?’”

  “When it’s time to do a new menu, if I need ideas, I look through there.”

  “‘Simple tomato and cucumber salad, whole fish grilled with olive oil and lemon, mash of split peas on crusty bread, grilled eggplant, grilled calamari with capers and lemon, crackling dry white.’”

  “Greece. The wrong side of Paros, to be precise. Best vacation food I’ve ever eaten.”

  That was what this office was for, thought Sunny, sense memories and inspiration. It was a place for layers of experience to settle over one another, mix, meld, and become something new. And for periodically attempting to keep the federal, state, county, and city bureaucracies at bay and, every other week, for calculating and dispensing the modest wages paid to the Wildside staff, now less one server who had given notice recently in order to spend three months doing yoga and having colonics in Thailand.

  Sergeant Harvey grunted and put the slips back. He shifted around, trying to get comfortable on the Victorian relic of a couch, its velvet cushions sagging under the Harvey strain. Behind him was a still life of radiant yellow lemons in a dark bowl on a dark table. There was something almost more human about the lemons. It was that crew cut he wore. And the plateau of eyebrow pinched together in the middle. And the igneous chin. The man was like a squared-off and chiseled statue of himself.

  “I’m glad you stopped by,” said Sunny. “I was going to give you a call. Something odd happened last night after we talked.”

  “What was that?”

  “Oliver Seth was at my house waiting for me when I got home. He was there to ask me not to show you the e-mails I gave you.”

  “Interesting. He say why?”

  “He said it was just personal stuff that would make a scandal and wouldn’t help with the investigation. What puzzles me is why he would bother. I mean, you have his computer by now, I assume. He knows that. You therefore have the e-mails, and he knows that, too.”

  “Will have.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The system is encrypted. We collected three laptops and some servers from his place. The lab can’t get anything off them but gibberish. They’re working on decoding it now.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “Encryption? It’s a bit of a gray area, but yeah. He has a right to store his personal documents however he chooses, just like the rest of us. He can write them backward in pig Latin if he wants to. We’re working on a way to persuade him to help us out voluntarily with translating them. We’ll get it ironed out, but for now it’s definitely slowing us down.”

  “So in fact you didn’t have the information I gave you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And he knew it. I wonder what’s in those e-mails that is so important. He’s involved with some woman halfway around the world named Astrid. So what. That’s not exactly earth-shattering news. What?”

  Sergeant Harvey looked irritated. “Sunny, I’d tread lightly on this one if I were you. You’re in this thing up to your eyeballs and the heat is on. I’ve got half of St. Helena from the mayor on down to the guy bagging groceries at the Safeway breathing down my neck, checking up to see if I’m doing everything I should be doing to figure out what happened to your girlfriend. I do not need the McCoskey touch to complicate matters. If you get the impulse to start asking your own questions, I’d advise you to think twice this time.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t call me with stuff like you brought in last night. If you come into possession of a piece of evidence, or if you remember something that might be important, by all means get in touch. But do not go looking for trouble on this one or you just might find it. You cook, I’ll investigate. ¿Comprende?”

  “Capisco.”

  He checked his watch. “I gotta get going, so I’ll be quick. The reason I came by is we need you to come down to the station sometime in the next day or so to be swabbed. We need to get a sample.”

  “A sample of what?”

  “DNA. They swab the inside of your cheek. Takes about ten seconds, no big deal. Routine stuff, don’t worry. You were at the scene at the time of death. We gotta collect and compare with whatever physical evidence we find elsewhere. Process of elimination.”

  “What physical evidence? I thought there wasn’t any.”

  “There’s always physical evidence. It’s only a matter of what kind and how much. Just drop by the station. It’ll take five minutes.” He looked around the room. “You’re not going to be happy about this next bit, but I can’t get around it.”

  “Something worse than taking a swab of my DNA for police records? I find that hard to imagine.”

  “I need to take your computer for evidence. That e-mail Anna sent you. We’re going to need it.”

  “I already gave it to you.”

  “Yeah, that’s a start, but we’d like to take a closer look.”

  “At my computer.”

  “Yes.”

  “Steve, this is my only computer. This is it. This is what I use to run the restaurant. I have all my records on there. The payroll. I can’t even write a check without it.”

  Sergeant Harvey nodded but his look was uncompromising. “I realize it’s an inconvenience, but it may be important to our investigation.”

  “All my recipes. My archives. All my e-mails. Everything.”

  “You must back everything up somewhere.”

  “Yes. Well, not lately. Some stuff is backed up, some isn’t. I’m not, uh, the best with computers.” She sighed and shook her head. “How long will you need it?”

  “It would be considered evidence in the investigation into Anna Wilson’s death.”

  “Meaning you’re going to keep it for months. Years. I might never get it back.” She rubbed her eyes, trying to remember what her rights were, if she ever knew them.
“Steve, you know how much I hate to do this, but if you want my computer, you’re going to have to come back with a search warrant.”

  Sergeant Harvey’s cheeks flushed red. “We can do it that way if you prefer.”

  “I do.”

  “Okay.”

  Sunny’s heart was beating fast and she could tell her cheeks were as red as his. “I can’t just let you take it right now. I have my business to think of.”

  “I’d think you’d want to find out what happened to your friend.”

  “I do, but there’s nothing on my computer that will help you. I gave you the e-mail she sent already.”

  “Well, then, if you change your mind, let me know.”

  “I will.”

  Sergeant Harvey left and she heard him stomp down the back steps. Her hands were shaking when she went back to work, and she shaved a chunk of her fingernail off with the lemon zester. “Dammit!”

  “Breathe, McCoskey,” said Rivka over the sizzle of the grill.

  12

  The game was to hold all the little bits of information in her head long enough to execute whatever was supposed to be on the rows of plates in front of her, then forget everything and start over with the next batch. Four salads, one without cheese, one with dressing on the side, a request she despised but was willing to indulge, one vanilla bean crème brûlée, one slice of Mama McCoskey’s pineapple cake, one nectarine tartlet. Two peach-and-prosciutto plates. After that one salmon tartar, thank God; if Bertrand and the waitstaff could only try to move a little more of that, please, thought Sunny. A loud jangle from the back of the room broke her concentration.

  The black phone on the back wall of the kitchen was so old it looked as if it was made of Bakelite and probably was. It had two real bells with a tiny metal hammer between them and a rotary dial. Only a handful of people had the number, among them Sunny’s parents, Monty, and Wade. None of them used it unless it was some kind of emergency. She looked at the bowl of salad she had just started dressing. A couple extra minutes in the oil before it hit the table would make the greens too soft, their architecture beginning to sag. But there wasn’t time to finish the plates the way she liked. Just twenty more seconds, that’s all she needed. Again the jangle from the back of the room. She looked around. Rivka was busy with a full grill; besides, it wouldn’t be for her. Bertrand was occupied on the floor. Sunny abandoned the greens.

  “Wildside.”

  “Is this Ms. Sunny McCoskey?”

  “Speaking. Who’s this?”

  “Franco Bertinotti.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Franco Bertinotti. Don’t tell me you have forgotten already! It’s been only three days since we met.”

  Sunny stared past the kitchen at the zinc bar and dining room beyond it. Waiters, both of them, glided between the bar and the tables, depositing a fork here, an espresso there, pausing to hear a request. One of them breezed by the bar, checking to see if his order was up. Bertrand, maître d’ and de facto sommelier, was presenting a bottle to a client with his usual matter-of-fact authority. She wondered why Franco Bertinotti would be calling, and on the bat phone in the middle of lunch rush. “How did you get this number?”

  “That is a funny story. I ran into a friend of yours at a business luncheon. A wine tasting for some Italian wines with whom I have a sort of relationship. This guy was called Monterey Lenstrom. You know him? We discovered we had you in common and I suggested to him that it was very important that I reach you urgently. He gave me this number. I hope you don’t mind the intrusion.”

  “We’re in the middle of the lunch rush. Can this wait until after three?”

  “I will be brief. I was hoping we could get together. To talk a little about this terrible business.”

  “I finish at five.”

  “I am staying at the new hotel with the little bungalows in the Carneros. You know it? You will find me having my evening cocktail by the pool between five and seven.”

  One of the waiters cruised the zinc bar a second time looking for his salads. These people certainly loved their pools, thought Sunny. “See you then.”

  She went back to her station and scraped the bowl of greens into the garbage.

  * * *

  At five o’clock, Sunny left the restaurant’s closing chores undone and rode her bike home to collect the truck. She headed back down Highway 29 toward the Carneros in the slow and steady evening rush. Half an hour later, she drove up a dusty slope past a ramshackle house and a horse trailer to the incongruously chic hotel entrance. She parked facing a couple of Appaloosas grazing on the other side of a barbed-wire fence. Both horses and hotel had a wide-open view of the Vaca Mountains to the east.

  Sunny walked through the lobby with its high ceilings and fireplace sitting room and headed down to the pool, a blue rectangle laid bare to the sun and view. A handful of bathers soaked up the last of the day’s heat. A lone swimmer moved quietly through the water. Sunny scanned the umbrellas and chairs for the Sicilian’s black trunks. A strikingly beautiful woman walked past her in heels and sunglasses, her black hair shining. She sat down next to a handsome-looking older gentleman with a European tan and white hair styled short. Sunny looked again. It was Franco Bertinotti. The girl stepping out of her sundress to reveal a black bikini was Jordan Crowley. Sunny went over and Franco half stood to kiss her on both cheeks. “You remember Miss Crowley?”

  “Of course.”

  “Sit down, join us.” He waved to the waiter and asked for another chair, then held up the bottle of Etude Rosé he was drinking. “Another of these. And two more glasses, thank you.”

  “You drink the pink,” said Sunny. Back before everyone had suddenly become frenzied Californios with no time, plenty of long, do-nothing afternoons had been spent with friends at a makeshift table in her backyard eating funky cheeses, grilled sausages, and raw oysters and drinking lots and lots of pink wine. Not the sweet stuff, but the crisp mineral kind, chilled cool but not cold. Once in a while, in the middle of the pale days of winter, with the table loaded with risotto and Parmesan and chanterelle salad, someone would open an incongruous Bandol pink and for a few sips it would be summer again.

  “Always,” said Franco, raising his glass.

  “We’re just starting to appreciate rosés here. Californians were traumatized by Cold Duck in the seventies. People are still getting over it.”

  “The Germans! Always finding ways to save money.”

  A couple of Napa high-school boys in waiters’ uniforms carried another chaise up next to Franco’s and adjusted the back. Sunny sat down in her jeans and put her feet up, displaying a pair of well-worn cowboy boots.

  “Miss Crowley was good enough to join me here,” said Franco, “before I got too bored. The police officers asked me to stay in place through the end of the week so they can be sure I didn’t murder our friend Anna.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Jordan. “She wasn’t murdered.”

  “Do you think she strangled herself?”

  “I just don’t like hearing those words. I don’t want to think about how she died.”

  “Well, we’d all better think about it unless you want to see our friend Oliver spend the rest of his days in jail.”

  “I don’t care where they put him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the one who killed her, anyway.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Franco. “He didn’t kill her. On the contrary. He did everything in his power to improve her life.”

  The waiter returned with the wine. They were quiet while he finished pouring out the first bottle and opened the second. Franco raised his glass. “Long life.”

  “Long life,” said Jordan.

  “Long life,” Sunny echoed, and drank. “Why do you say she was strangled?”

  “It is a fact. There were marks here, and here.” He touched his throat and lips. “Probably someone put a gag in her mouth to keep her quiet while they did it.”

  Jordan stared straight ahead in her sunglasses
. She must have heard this bit of news already, thought Sunny. “How do you know there were marks?”

  “The police revealed as much during one of our more colorful interviews, when the guy in charge was trying to shame me into a confession. He’s lucky I didn’t do it. Your California police would have absolutely no chance against a Sicilian. They kidnap people and keep them in caves in the mountains for years where I come from just to make a few bucks. In Sicily we know how to keep quiet. It is a matter of survival. It is in the genes.”

  The waning sun was surprisingly warm. Sunny started to sweat in her boots and jeans. A woman across from them got up and stepped down the stairs into the pale, sparkling water. Sunny envied her. “What do you think happened to Anna?”

  “You mean who killed her?” said Franco.

  “I guess so, yes.”

  “Even if I knew, or thought I did, I certainly wouldn’t say. Murder is a dangerous business.”

  “Oliver killed her,” said Jordan, “directly or indirectly.”

  “You must stop saying that,” said Franco, holding up a finger. “They may have had a quarrel, but Oliver didn’t kill her. Why would he? The man is not a monster. Besides, if he wanted her gone, there were much easier ways of accomplishing it than to make himself a murder suspect with all the danger and inconvenience that presents. He’s more intelligent than that, if nothing else.”

  “Maybe he didn’t plan it. Maybe it just happened,” said Jordan.

  “Oliver Seth did not murder his girlfriend. The idea is ridiculous.”

  “Stop saying that word,” said Jordan. “I really can’t think of her dying that way.”

  “He did not put an end to his girlfriend,” said Franco. “Is that better?”

  “It would be better if it hadn’t happened at all.”

  “With that I agree.”

  “If you’re so sure about what didn’t happen, you must have some idea what did,” said Sunny.

  “I honestly don’t know,” said Franco. “I wish I did. I was hoping you might share your insights on the matter.”