A Food and Wine Club Mystery Boxset Books 1 through 5

by Cat Chandler

  Nicki sat and crossed her arms, her hazel eyes staring up at the chief.

  Chief Turnlow looked at the scattered items on the desk but made no move to touch her jacket. “Key doesn’t seem to be here.” He looked over at her with a ghost of a smile. “And we didn’t see you ditch it anywhere, so I guess you’re in the clear.”

  “Why, thank you, Chief,” Nicki’s voice dripped sweetness as she continued to stare at him.

  “Now then, having settled the nagging question of whether or not you poisoned George Lancer, why don’t you tell me all about this murder board of yours, and I’ll just give you a stern warning about ignoring police tape over potential crime scenes.”

  “There’s nothing much to tell, Chief.” Nicki gave a small shrug. “It’s still in a box, and there isn’t one word on it. I don’t know what we’ll do with it. Why, we might even just return it.”

  “Uh huh.” The chief let out a big sigh. “That might be the best thing to do, so you won’t be tempted to get into any more hot water.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Okay, we’re set.” Jenna stepped back and tapped the wooden frame with the tip of her screwdriver before turning a grin on Nicki. “It looks great.”

  Nodding her agreement, Nicki walked around to the front of the large, dry-erase board stretching across the longest wall of her home office. All four women stared at the big, blank, white space hanging in front of them.

  “We might have gone a tad overboard on the size,” Alex frowned.

  “Nonsense. It’s perfect,” Maxie declared, magically producing a box of felt-tipped markers and pulling out the black one. “Let’s get started.”

  In large, dramatic letters, she neatly printed across the top George Lancer Murder, then divided the board into quarters and put a heading over each column: Facts, Suspects, Motives and To-Do. Stepping back, she handed the marker to Alex before rubbing her hands together. “That should do it.” She turned and walked over to the desk, settling herself into Nicki’s ergonomically correct chair before folding her hands in her lap and giving an exaggerated wink to the others.

  Alex took a step forward and poised her hand over the board’s surface. “Okay. What facts do we know?” She scrawled out George was poisoned. She’d barely finished the last word before Jenna came up behind her and snatched the marker away. “Good grief. The board won’t do us any good if we can’t read what’s on it.”

  Alex turned around and glared at her friend. “I can read it just fine.”

  “Well no one else can,” Jenna declared. “You write like a doctor. Only nurses and cryptologists can read it.

  “Quite a few people read my handwriting every day,” Alex snorted.

  “Doctors’ handwriting is the number one reason computers were invented,” Jenna said. “So the rest of us can actually read what you’ve written.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Alex muttered, but gave up the argument and took a place next to Nicki. She leaned over and whispered to her friend, “Is my handwriting so horrible?”

  Nicki chuckled and raised a hand to her mouth to shield her words from Jenna. “I’m going with the computer nerd on this one. Sorry.”

  “Traitor,” Alex whispered back as she glared at Jenna. “Go ahead. What else do we know as a fact, Sherlock?”

  Jenna raised her hand, ready to write as she looked at Nicki. “I’ll defer to the real Sherlock in our little group. So, Nicki, what else do we know?”

  “If he was poisoned, the most likely substance was nicotine.” Nicki glanced at Alex, who nodded her agreement.

  “Pure nicotine is odorless and colorless, but might have a nasty taste to it. The body would reject it fairly quickly, which is the likely reason for the tobacco smell. But even then, it absorbs so easily into the system it wouldn’t take much to cause the heart attack.” Alex paused for a moment, her gaze fixed on an unknown point outside the office window. “It would fit what else we were told. While the actual cause of death would be the heart attack, it definitely had help if he somehow ingested pure nicotine.”

  Nicki pursed her lips as Jenna wrote a short version of Alex’s explanation on the board. “We know I saw four bottles of wine in the room when we discovered George, three unused wine glasses and one broken one. Everyone who works there said that the room was always kept locked unless George was inside, and his personal key is now in the police evidence file cabinet. And the one kept hanging on a hook in Jim Holland’s office is missing.”

  “File cabinet?” Jenna’s mouth quirked upwards at the corners. “Not an evidence room? Just a file cabinet?”

  “I’m sure that Paul meant it’s in a file locked up in his desk,” Maxie chimed in. “There isn’t enough crime in Soldoff to have a room, or even a file cabinet for that matter.”

  “Except when someone burned the town to the ground,” Jenna said before continuing with her task of listing the facts on the board. “And he was about to introduce a special blend.” Jenna added that as well.

  “I noticed the only way back to those rooms is through the public area, the same way Geri and I went, or through the back hallway to a door leading to the outside, across from the production building…” Nicki trailed off, her forehead wrinkled in thought. Holland’s was closed to the public that morning, and George to Jim who’d told Chief Turnlow that he’d only drawn the wine the night before. Which means the killer must have either been at the event or was one of the staff at the winery.

  “What is it, dear?” Maxie prompted.

  “The winery was only open to event invitees, and George probably only bottled his blend the night before the event,” Nicki said.

  “Which means it was most likely someone on the invitation list?” Alex asked.

  Nicki tilted her head to one side and pursed her lips. “Yes. Or one of the winery employees. A stranger walking around definitely would have been noticed.”

  “Okay,” Jenna said. “Who do we have as a suspect among the invited guests?”

  “Aside from me?” Recalling the crush of humanity at the event, Nicki tapped one finger against her mouth. “There had to be at least seventy-five people there. I’m sure Geri has the invited guest list, but who actually came? I don’t think they kept track, except for maybe the overall number.”

  “You have no motive,” Maxie pointed out. “You didn’t even know the man. Because of the salary he demanded, George only worked at a few of the wineries so perhaps we should concentrate on those first?”

  “As far as I know he only worked at two, and was about to start at a third.”

  Jenna stood ready at the board. “Which ones are they?”

  “Jim Holland of Holland Winery, Bill Stacy of Todos, and Jeremy Brennan. He owns Trax.”

  “What kind of tracks?” Alex’s eyebrows drew together. “And what does that have to do with wine?”

  Nicki chuckled and shook her head. “T-R-A-X. It’s the name of his winery. He said a marketing company came up with it.”

  Alex rolled her eyes in response while Jenna added the name to the board, then stepped back and examined her work.

  “That should give us a good start with the winery owners.”

  Maxie squinted at the board. “I can’t believe Jim Holland murdered George, unless the man threatened to leave entirely and take Holland’s business secrets and major customers with him. Jim hates any kind of disloyalty.”

  “One of the keys was locked up in the safe in his office and Jim’s the only one with the combination. But he keeps a duplicate key on a hook on his office wall to use during the day. Anyone could have grabbed it if they knew it was there,” Nicki pointed out, trying to ease the sudden, distressed look on Maxie’s face.

  The fact was Nicki also had a very hard time imagining the winery owner getting rid of his head winemaker, especially at his own winery. And certainly not at a high-profile event. It would be much smarter to just make the man disappear and bury him in a remote part of the property. With George’s nasty reputation, she doubted anyone would
have spent a lot of time looking for him. Nicki bit her lip and pondered that for a moment.

  “What about employees?” Jenna asked. “From what you said, George didn’t treat them well at all.”

  “The waiter, Kurt, should certainly be on the list. He disappeared right after George yelled at him. But then George didn’t treat Geri very well either, or, I would imagine, most of the employees at Holland’s or at Todos.”

  “But those employees weren’t at the event, were they? So they aren’t suspects,” Alex pointed out.

  Jenna nodded as she added Kurt and Geri’s names to the board. Picking up the cap for her marker, she snapped the top back on and turned to face the group behind her.

  “So, Sherlock. What are the possible motives? I can see Jim Holland not being happy about George selling his new blend over at Trax. It might cost Jim some business.”

  “Perhaps.” Maxie clasped her hands even harder in her lap and frowned. “But he’s built a strong brand with a large following which I’m sure could stand on its own without George’s new, special blend. I simply can’t see that as a motive for Jim. He isn’t the type. Now if one of his employees didn’t choose to do what’s best for the winery, he might treat them the way he did Stella.”

  “Who’s Stella?” Alex asked.

  The older woman smiled. “She was the assistant winemaker before Geri, and as I told Nicki and Jenna, she and George were also an item for a while.”

  Nicki still had no idea where this Stella was, but at the moment anyone could be a suspect. Especially an old girlfriend. “Are they still an item?”

  “Heavens, no. They broke up quite a while ago. I haven’t heard about Stella for many years since she’s no longer a part of the wine community,” Maxie said.

  “So Geri took her place at Holland Winery?” Nicki asked.

  “That’s right. But not with George, I can assure you. I understand he didn’t treat Geri nicely at all.”

  Nicki nodded her agreement and went back to studying the board. “Unless this Stella pops up somewhere, she’s probably not a suspect.”

  “But Geri’s motive might be the way George treated her,” Jenna declared, scribbling away once more.

  “And the waiter because of the same poor treatment. George thoroughly humiliated the guy during the event,” Nicki said. “And Jeremy hadn’t finalized the deal with George and was definitely on edge about that. Maybe because he thought George intended to back out of their agreement.”

  “Got it,” Jenna called out.

  “What about the last winery owner, Bill Stacy?” Alex stood on her tiptoes to peer over Jenna’s shoulder at the list of names. “What’s his motive?”

  “I’m not sure,” Nicki admitted. “But there was the old business of George contributing to the failure of Bill’s first winery, and he did say something about what he called a ‘bad turn’ George had done to him. Bill was also the only one who wasn’t at the table when I got there. He came up behind me and claimed he’d just arrived. But now that I think about it, I didn’t see him in the parking lot when I was walking in with Geri.”

  “Okay. I’ll split that between the motive column and the fact column,” Jenna said. “Which leaves the to-do list the only one that’s completely bare.” She swiped a stray lock of tightly curled, dark hair off her face and looked at Nicki. “Got any ideas?”

  “Time to go talk to some winery owners,” Nicki said as the cell phone in her pocket rang out with Carole King’s voice singing So Far Away. She glanced at her watch. It wasn’t Rob’s usual time to call, which meant he was probably cancelling their weekend plans. Again. “But right now, I need to answer the phone.”

  “Tell lover-boy we said ‘hi’,” Alex winked at her.

  Nicki smiled. Alex wasn’t all that fond of Rob. She considered Nicki’s constantly traveling boyfriend not really a boyfriend at all. But as long as Nicki liked him, Alex made an effort to keep an open mind and be polite. Jenna, on the other hand…

  “Yeah, tell Mr. It’s-all-about-me I said hello.” Jenna added a loud sniff before giving Maxie a big wink.

  “He does sound a bit challenging,” Maxie added as she got to her feet. “We should give Nicki a little privacy.”

  “I could use something to drink,” Alex said, grabbing Jenna by the arm and hauling her out of the room as Nicki pressed the answer button on her phone.

  “Hi, Rob,” she said into the phone, turning her back so she wouldn’t break out into laughter over the comical face Jenna was making. She didn’t feel like coming up with an explanation for why she was giggling. “How’s your trip going?”

  Rob worked for Catalan House, a well-known restaurant with at least one location in every state. Rob liked to mention he was the national wine buyer for the chain, when technically he was the assistant to Mario Rossi, his boss, who really was the head wine buyer for Catalan House. But Nicki never bothered to correct him.

  Rob took great pains to look the part of the head guy, with his classic features and blond hair shot through with even lighter streaks. He made sure they looked natural by investing in regular stops at a high-end salon in New York. Determined to claim the title of the six-foot, handsome, up-and-comer with a great body thrown in, Rob made a point of working out at every hotel stop and augmenting his 5-foot-11-inch height by always wearing one-inch lifts in his shoes.

  Nicki had to admit he made very good eye candy, and she didn’t mind the envious looks they always drew on the very rare occasions they managed to go out on a date. And she’d have to disagree with Maxie. He wasn’t a challenge at all. She put very little time into their relationship. She didn’t have to. His conversation ran to topics that interested him, which mostly meant himself, and although San Francisco was his home base and he was supposed to spend every other weekend there, he usually chose to make a side trip or extend his stay somewhere else.

  Which is why she fully expected him to cancel their plans.

  And that was just as well. She had her hands full at the moment, and wasn’t in the mood to go out to see and be seen by whoever it was Rob felt a need to impress. She also had an article to finish for Matt.

  “Hi, babe. It’s good to hear your voice,” Rob said into her ear. “How’s your week going?”

  “Fine.” Nicki thought the single word answer would suffice to cover the subject for Rob. “How’s the trip to…” She hesitated, searching for the name of the city Rob had told her he’d be traveling to this week.

  “Seattle, honey. I’m in Seattle.”

  Since he sounded hurt, Nicki was quick to give an apology. “I’m sorry. I knew that, I’ve just been distracted the last few days.”

  “With what?” Rob asked. “I thought you said everything is fine.”

  “It is,” Nicki said. “But I was at a wine tasting event for George Lancer when he ended up dead, and I happened to be one of the people who discovered his body.”

  “Who? Did you say Lancer?”

  “Lanciere,” Nicki corrected since Rob would only recognize the French version George had used.

  “Lanciere is dead?” Rob’s astonishment sounded clearly through the phone.

  “Yes, he is. And I’m pretty sure he was murdered.”

  “Wasn’t he about to announce a new blend?”

  Nicki closed her eyes and sent up a small prayer for patience. “Yes, he was, but he never got a chance because someone killed him.”

  “Who will have the rights to his new blend? It would be a great coup for Catalan House if we could snag the whole pressing.”

  For you, too, Nicki thought, but she kept it to herself. No use starting an argument with a voice on the phone.

  “I’m not sure who his closest relative is,” was all she said. “Really, Rob. The man just died and all you can say is ‘who gets his wine’?”

  Looks like I’m going to start that fight after all. Nicki closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. It didn’t help much.

  “Sorry, babe. Didn’t mean to sound so insensitiv
e, but it isn’t as if he has any more use for that blend.”

  Nicki was sure her snort of disbelief gave him a warning to change the subject.

  “I’m sure the police there in Sandstone will handle it just fine.”

  “Soldoff, Rob. I live in Soldoff.”

  “I’m only teasing, babe. I knew that. The news about Lanciere’s death rattled me.” On the other end of the line Rob took a deep breath. “I really wanted to talk to you about a couple of things.”

  She stopped pacing the room and headed for her desk chair, intending to get comfortable while she listened to all the usual excuses he was about to offer for not keeping their date this weekend, then blinked twice when she barely caught the word “company dinner”.

  “Dinner?” she repeated as she settled for sitting on the edge of her desk simply because it was a step closer. “What dinner?”

  “The one I told you about it a couple of weeks ago. It’s at the Fairmont hotel in the city and being given by the chairman of the board of directors. It’s pretty much a ‘must attend’ if you want to be taken seriously in this industry. And I need to make an appearance with my hot girlfriend on my arm.”

  “Rob, you know how I feel about those things, and I don’t have time right now to make the drive into San Francisco.” Nicki tapped her fingers on her desktop and rolled her eyes at Alex who’d made a sudden appearance in the doorway.

  “It’s not for another month and you need to make the time, babe. Please do this for me. And for yourself and future career prospects.”

  When she remained silent, he tried a different tack. “Promise me you’ll come, and I promise a VIP dinner at Catalan House in the city the minute I get back. You know you like those dinners with just the two of us.”

  Busy trying to decipher the hand signals Alex was sending her, Nicki said an absent “fine” as she stared at Alex who was now silently mouthing the words “lemon cake”.

  “But I can’t take you out this weekend,” the disembodied voice on the phone stated. “I can’t get out of Seattle that soon. But…”