by Bush, Nancy
All September needed to do was ask him.
What did she know about him today?
Nigel had started his own winery shortly after Kathryn’s death, his fight with Braden, and his subsequent dismissal from Rafferty Enterprises. September had asked her sister July about the Westerly winery at July’s birthday party, which had taken place at The Willows. She’d learned that Nigel’s sons, Jake and Colin, had taken over the business, which was known as Westerly Vale Vineyard. Though September had pressed for more details, July hadn’t seemed to be interested in anything but her “date,” Dashiell Vogt, who stood on the fringes of the outdoor party, a glass of wine in hand, surveying the crowd but not really a part of it. Though July’s attention seemed riveted on him, September didn’t get the same hit from him. He was too aloof, his attention more often on Braden and March than July or any of the other women invitees. But September hadn’t seen July since and didn’t know what the current status was between them.
Another trip to The Willows might be in order, she decided now. And maybe one to nearby Westerly Vale Vineyard. Maybe that was the way to contact Jake.
Jake Westerly. Good God. Her mind wanted to slip to their time together, but she wouldn’t let it. With a sound of frustration, she dragged it back to the present. It was an effort to put thoughts of Jake aside, but she managed.
She put in a call to Detective Wes “Weasel” Pelligree and, after chatting with him about the state of his injury, which was healing fine and pissing him off more than anything because it was keeping him away from work, she asked, “You met Greg Dempsey face-to-face, right? Sheila’s husband?”
“Eh . . . I only went to The Barn Door a few times, especially after eating that seventy-two-ounce steak,” he said. “Dempsey was there once with Sheila, and they were in a corner, havin’ a big fight. He was mad ’cause she was there and he had to go to work. He told her to go home and she told him where he could stick that. Got kinda ugly and I was startin’ their way, when he stalked out.”
“You called him a narcissist,” September reminded him.
“Yep. From what Sheila said. You know the type: they’re only thinkin’ about what’s next for them. They’re bored with everythin’ you say. Don’t even hear ya. And everythin’ that comes out of their mouth is about them.”
“I know the type,” September agreed, thinking about both her current and ex-stepmother.
“You lookin’ at Dempsey for Do Unto Others?” he asked.
“Well, he sure can’t say anything nice about Sheila.”
“His kind can’t say anythin’ nice about anyone. Much as I’d like to take it to that guy, he didn’t kill Emmy Decatur, and if you check, he was probably puttin’ in the hours at work when the Tripp homicide went down, too.”
“You sound just like I feel.”
“How’s that?”
“Depressed. I want it to be Dempsey, too.”
They talked for a few more minutes, then September hung up, a smile lingering on her lips. Her cell phone rang a few minutes later and she recognized the ring tone as the one she’d assigned to her brother. She’d put a call into him and it had taken him a while to call back. She answered, “So you are still on the planet.”
“I’ve been busy. Portland’s got another task force and they want me to be a part of it.”
“It’s hell to be popular.”
“Yeah, well . . . you know what I want to do.”
“And you know what I said about that,” she responded.
“Don’t worry. It ain’t gonna happen. D’Annibal’s practically assigned me to the task force before I was asked. You guys are down to a skeleton crew with Weasel laid up.”
“Wes is getting better. I just talked to him.”
“Huh. Well, what’s the big news you alluded to?”
September smiled faintly and said, “Just checking to see if you’re ready for another sister.”
“Another sister? What do you mean?”
“Our current stepmama is pregnant with a girl.”
There was a suspended moment, and then he barked, “Rosamund? No way!”
“’Fraid so, Bro.”
“What month?”
September grinned. All of them always went to the same place. “January. But never fear, she’s naming it Gilda.”
“Bullshit.”
“That’s pretty much what I said.”
“This isn’t some kind of joke, is it?”
“No joke.”
September had left a message on Auggie’s cell when she’d gotten back from seeing Rosamund and March and told him to call her. She was glad Auggie was so sought after and unavailable so he would quit bugging her about Do Unto Others. Especially now, when Jake Westerly’s name had cropped up.
“I’m going to have to talk to our father,” he said in a long-suffering tone.
“Ah, you can skate for a while more. Rosamund’s already pregnant. A little late for changing anyone’s mind.”
“Man, I don’t want to deal with him.”
“Then don’t,” was September’s advice. “You’ve got along this far without him, let it go. Maybe after the blessed event you might want to meet your new sibling, but I wouldn’t sweat it till then. Me, I’ve got to go back. Rosamund barred me from the attic and basement, so until I talk to Dad, I can’t get to my grade school artwork short of pushing her out of the way and making a run for it.”
“Pregnant . . .”
“Ruminate on that some more. Meanwhile, I’ve got some interviews to take care of.”
“What interviews?”
“I’ve got three homicides. You know the drill. There are always interviews.”
“Who, specifically?”
“Good-bye, Auggie.”
“Damn it, Nine!”
“I can’t hear you. I think my cell’s breaking up. . . .” She clicked off and took a deep breath.
Jake Westerly.
Chapter 4
Jake Westerly shaded his eyes against a blasting September sun and thought about grapes. Specifically Pinot Noir grapes. Fall was harvest time and this lingering heat was helping the sugar levels as long as the damn sun didn’t blister the hell out of them.
Westerly Vale Vineyards grew and processed their own grapes, but the greater portion of the wine they produced was from grapes from other vineyards. That was the bulk of their business. His current personal favorite was a blend of three: Malbec, Pinot Noir, and Merlot.
But then don’t ask him about wine. He could drink Three-Buck Chuck—Charles Shaw—and be happy as long as the company he was with was good. The true wine connoisseurs were his brother, Colin, and Colin’s wife, Neela, and they were the ones who sweated over the weather (this year’s cold and wet spring had put the growing season back a few weeks), the grape harvesting (handpicking was best so the grapes weren’t smushed but gently split, releasing more of the juice), and the running of their B&B, a rambling early 1900s farmhouse that they’d rehabbed and added to and was Neela’s pride and joy.
Not that he would tell anyone that. He was in partnership with Colin—the financial end of the operation—and people in the business expected him to know something about wine. Saying he was the numbers guy didn’t cut any ice with those who worshiped the grape.
The grape.
Nigel had been a worshipper, too, though it had taken being summarily fired by that rat bastard, Braden Rafferty, for him to finally realize his own dream. His father sure knew the business, though, and he’d passed that knowledge on to Colin who’d sucked it up with the same fervency Jake had sucked up Three-Buck Chuck—which he’d heard was Two-Buck Chuck in California.
Pricing . . . that’s what Jake knew. And loan mongering with skinflint bankers. And the cost of every aspect of wine-producing down to the cute little coasters and napkins and wine corks and glasses in the gift shop—another of Neela’s specialties, along with running the Westerly Vale Bed & Breakfast with Colin.
What Jake didn’t know was how his brother could
stand it out here. Sure, the scenery was gorgeous. But Oregon wine country was too bucolic and the pace was extraordinarily sssllloowww and whenever Jake came to the vineyard, a clock started in his head, counting down the minutes until he could race back to Portland and his downtown office and think in terms of stocks, and bonds, and accruing interest and maybe even a commercial real estate deal or two. Colin professed to like living here, but then, Jake thought, maybe it was marriage that had made his brother slightly mental. Jake lived in Laurelton, in a dumpy, 1950s two-bedroom rambler with mahogany-stained board and bat siding, a driveway that really needed to be rid of the tree whose roots were popping it up near the two-car garage—the right side of which had been added on sometime during the rambler’s life and now was about an inch below the edge of the drive—and a neighbor dog that liked to sleep on Jake’s front porch and bark at any bird that flew overhead, apparently designated a “no fly zone” according to his canine brain. The dog was a lab and every other breed mix, and had a habit of pulling its lips back in a smile and panting, even when the temperature wasn’t this high.
I should sell the place and buy a downtown, high-rise condo, he thought, the same thought that circled his brain every time he pulled into the rambler’s driveway. He’d bought it because he knew the previous owners, and they were having serious financial problems and he liked them and they needed help and . . . well . . . he just . . . bought it. He could afford to fix the place up, but he just couldn’t seem to find the energy or time or inclination. Neela teased him that all he needed was a woman to push him. Maybe it was true.
Sheila’s image superseded the view of the vines that rose across the field and up the terraced hillside, heavy with fruit. Four months after her murder he was still having trouble processing that she was gone. It was weird. He’d known her some during elementary school—she went to Twin Oaks; he was at Sunset—then about six months earlier he’d walked into a unisex Laurelton hair salon, His and Hers, recognized Sheila, and had become one of her clients. She’d learned he was associated with Westerly Vale Vineyard and had made a “date” with him to meet there one Saturday afternoon with some of her friends. From that, he’d shared a couple of get-togethers with her and these same friends at The Barn Door, a shitkicker kind of bar off Highway 26. He’d thought she was divorced, the way she talked about Dempsey, but he’d learned later that they were separated and living apart but still married.
Not that anything had happened between them, but it almost had. He’d been certain that Dempsey had killed her; he’d encountered the man once and learned Greg Dempsey was a crazed, jealous maniac with control issues.
But just when Jake had decided the authorities were a bunch of idiots who couldn’t tell their ass from a hole in the ground for not arresting Dempsey, another body was discovered in a field and it was rumored that maybe a serial killer was at work. As much as Jake thought Dempsey could have killed Sheila, he wasn’t as convinced the guy was some kind of random killer.
And then September Rafferty did a segment on the news with Channel Seven’s Pauline Kirby. Detective September Rafferty, who was involved with several high-profile homicides and happened to be the daughter of Braden Rafferty, his father’s ex-employer, and the same girl Jake had spent one reckless night with amongst the grape vines of her father’s vineyard.
Nine Rafferty. Everyone called her Nine.
She was investigating the death of another young woman who’d been left in a field. Something Decatur. Emily . . . no, Emmy. Emmy Decatur. He’d been fascinated at seeing Nine on the news for a couple of reasons. First, she looked great. So young and serious and her body was compact and muscular, like a gymnast’s, or Sheila’s, for that matter. Second, Nine was a Rafferty and from what he knew of the Raffertys, they sure wouldn’t normally choose law enforcement as a profession, so that was an anomaly. He wondered what had happened there.
Nine . . . He and his friends had sure given her a lot of crap about her wealth when they were growing up. Her brother, Auggie, had been around, too; Jake had played sports with him and had known him well enough, though it was Nine with whom he shared the most classes. The Rafferty twins, and their older sister, May, had been sent to public school instead of private for reasons still unclear to Jake. He also still remembered vividly when Nine’s sister May, and her friend, Erin, were killed in a robbery attempt while working at a local burger place, Louie’s. The tragedy had swept the school and community, and Nine had looked shell-shocked for months. Maybe May’s death was a reason for Nine’s choice.
Or, maybe Nine just felt the same anger and injustice that surged through him when he thought of a life taken by someone else’s hand.
Who killed Sheila? Was it that asshole Dempsey? Was it?
Jake shook his head and turned toward the house. He’d already walked through the tasting room and gift shop, which were both full of enthusiasts, looking for Colin, but apart from the young man with the trimmed beard and discreet diamond stud in his nose who was pouring, no one else was working.
There were two middle-aged couples sitting in the roughly-hewn fir rockers, each pair holding hands and gazing across the vineyards, so he did a quick turn and angled around the back of the house, opening the side door to the kitchen, which was verboten for guests. Jake didn’t count on that score, and wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if he did.
But he did startle Bronwyn, the kitchen and all-around B&B helper, who slapped a hand to her chest and gasped as Jake entered unannounced.
“Sorry,” he said. “Colin or Neela here?”
“Umm . . . no.”
“Do you know where they are?” he asked.
“Uh . . . no.”
A conversationalist she was not.
“All right,” he said, then walked through the kitchen and into the hallway that led past Colin and Neela’s apartment on its way to the door to the general rooms at the front of the house. He took a cursory look around their apartment—nobody around—then opened the door to the greeting room, which was a great room of sorts for the guests. In the winter, a fire would be blazing in the stone fireplace and a tray of cookies would be set on the oak side table. Today, though, fans lazily moved the air overhead, more for decoration than effect as there was air conditioning throughout. No cookies, but Neela would put out wine, cheese, crackers, and grapes for snacking as the afternoon wore on. The dining room was a rectangular offshoot with a swinging door to the kitchen that was locked except during breakfast.
The B&B was entirely Colin and Neela’s operation; Jake wasn’t any part of it. Personally, he thought it was a lot of work and kind of a money-suck, but each to his or her own. He’d spent most of his twenties in the financial arena and had made enough money before everything went to hell to put down a hefty chunk toward buying the vineyard from his father and the house that came with it. Colin had then struck a deal with Jake to turn it into a B&B and everybody was happy.
Sort of.
Lately, Jake had felt restless, and he knew it was an existential thing that had no real answer: Why am I here? Where am I going? What is the meaning of life?
The restlessness had started almost immediately following his final breakup with Loni, his on again/off again girlfriend since high school. He wasn’t sorry that the relationship was finally over. Hell, no. It had been on life support for a long time and for a lot of reasons. But he was sorry for letting it go on so long. Way, way too long.
He and Loni had dated for thirteen, almost fourteen years—Jesus, was it really that long?—and at times they’d been exclusive and happy; at other times they’d been apart for months, once for nearly two years when Loni was in one of her low periods. Loni was bipolar but at the time neither he, nor she, realized what was wrong. Or maybe she had an idea, but tried to hide it from him. All he really was sure about was that by the time her condition was named, they’d invested a lot of years together, which made leaving her especially difficult.
And it wasn’t all bad. After college Loni had gone into real est
ate while Jake was in the hedge fund/real estate game. For a while they’d been a power couple, wheeling and dealing like they knew what the hell they were doing. In the end Jake’s basic conservatism had saved him, but Loni was hit much harder when the economy tanked. That’s when the depth of her problem was impossible to hide. The only time he saw the bright young woman he’d once known was when they were talking marriage, either about some friend’s upcoming nuptials, or better yet, the possibility of their own. Jake tried to steer clear of wedding talk, and finally this past January, Loni got fed up with his wishy-washy ways and laid down the law: either they were getting married this year or it was over.
So . . . it was over.
The ultimatum should have been a gift to Jake; it forced their final breakup. But the fight that followed, and Loni’s subsequent spiral downward, had nearly made him change his mind. Guilt gnawed at him though he knew that it was his one chance to be true to himself. To do the right thing, really, for both of them. He held firm even though Loni called him, incessantly in the beginning, begging to put things back together. Finally, she’d quit calling.
He shook his head. He still felt low about it, though he wouldn’t go back.
And then, just as he was beginning to look around at other women, ready to take a stab at the dating scene again, his hairdresser, Sheila, was murdered.
He couldn’t believe it, even now. Sheila and her friends had come to Westerly Vale on a wine-tasting junket with some women she knew from work. It was then that she revealed she and her friends liked to go to The Barn Door, and she invited him to join them. It was in The Barn Door parking lot that things heated up between them, and he, four months out of his relationship with Loni, had been more than eager to indulge in a heavy make-out session with Sheila in the backseat of his Tahoe . . . until she’d revealed that she was married, a fact she hadn’t mentioned while cutting his hair.
