by J. C. Eaton
When Godfrey and I had reached the door to the lobby, I turned and glanced back. Allete and Stanislav were face-to-face and the auburn-haired woman had returned.
“Don’t even think it,” Godfrey said when we were a few feet out the door. “We got Allete to agree not to walk out on her demonstration tomorrow, and if you go back in there to try and find out that woman’s name, you run the risk of undoing everything.”
“Aargh. You’re right. But it’s really tempting.”
“It’s also really late, and didn’t I hear you tell Allete you were going to call Rosalee and Catherine about having extra security tomorrow?”
“Yeesh. I’ll call them as soon as I get home. Well, one thing’s for sure, those deputies aren’t making any headway with the investigation into Jules Leurant’s death.”
Godfrey held the door open for me. “What makes you say that?”
“Because if they were, they wouldn’t be harping on Allete about what she saw or didn’t see. I don’t think they have anything except the report from the coroner and that was pretty sketchy, if you ask me. ‘Contributing factors leading to suffocation’ leaves the field wide open for interpretation.”
“Or speculation in your case. The news media mentioned Ambien spray on the wineglass. That didn’t get there by itself. I would imagine those deputies are looking into that, and if they have reason to believe it’s one of the chocolatiers, they can get a search warrant.”
“If Stanislav, Allete, or Earvin sprayed that Ambien on Jules’s wineglass, they wouldn’t be so careless as to keep the bottle in their possession. Unless one of them has a serious problem with insomnia. Godfrey, if I can find that out, it would be like staring at the smoking gun.”
“Please tell me you don’t plan on doing anything that involves sneaking into their rooms.”
“No. Just their conversations.”
Godfrey walked me to my car, which was right next to his, and made sure it started. Suddenly, I remembered something. I reached into my bag, pulled out the spider jar, rolled down my window and handed the jar to him. “Oops. Don’t want to go home with this guy. Listen, I really can’t thank you enough.”
“It’s okay. I have to admit my life was kind of on the boring side until you arrived at Two Witches. Keep me posted about the event and don’t do anything rash. Got it?”
“Absolutely.”
I pulled out of the parking lot first and he followed me to the road before turning right into Geneva as I headed left to Penn Yan. I wasn’t sure if Godfrey was being protective of me the same way Theo and Don were, as a result of Francine and Jason’s insistence, or if it was something else.
It was the something else I couldn’t define. I had a hunky boyfriend, even though he was stuck somewhere in Yonkers for business, but for reasons I couldn’t explain, or didn’t want to, I found myself wondering how I really felt about Godfrey. Dammit. I never should have kissed him a few months ago, even though it was one of those thank-you-I’m-eternally-grateful-for-your-help kisses. So what if it was on the mouth. Rats! Kissing always complicated things.
Chapter 19
I called Theo the second I got in the door so he could do his phone tree thing.
“Don’t bother putting Rosalee and Catherine on the tree,” I said. “I have to call them myself.” I went on to explain about what happened with Allete, and he couldn’t believe we pulled it off.
“Yeah,” I went on, “Godfrey was a regular Winston Churchill. You should have heard him.”
“I heard enough from the WOW women to last me well into the next decade. Anyway, we better keep our fingers crossed nothing goes wrong with Earvin. I don’t think Don’s nerves could stand it.”
Once off the phone with Theo, I called Rosalee and Catherine. Both assured me they’d have someone on “Allete duty” the next day. Then I rechecked the doggie door to be sure Charlie wouldn’t be tempted to wander out at night and headed up the stairs to my bedroom. The combination of donuts, coffee, and club soda made my stomach feel as if it was on overdrive. Way too uncomfortable to get into bed right away so I did what every self-respecting millennial would do—I pulled out my iPhone and checked my emails.
Drat! Renee emailed to ask if I could possibly submit my screenplay a week sooner because “the production company was checking out a location in Guadalupe for a new series.” She went on to say she’d be staying at the Trade Winds Resort and would have full access to her email. Full access to the beach and spa was what she should have said. Terrific. Renee would be getting hot stone massages at a five-star resort while I got to deal with demanding chocolatiers, frigid temperatures, and now a new and closer deadline.
I scrolled past my other emails, since none of them required my attention. Sales notices from department stores, offers for computer and phone upgrades, and a reminder from Walden’s Garage that my car was due for an oil change. I was about to power off the phone when another email caught my eye. It was from [email protected].
Why Gladys Pipp would be sending me an email from the Yates County Public Safety Building was anyone’s guess. I tapped the screen and took a breath. Her message was brief but unsettling.
“Norrie, make sure no one tampers with the ingredients for those chocolate demonstrations. Call me in the morning. Gladys.”
Call her in the morning? I bloody-well wanted to wake her up that very instant. Instead, I forwarded the message to everyone in WOW, as well as Cammy, and I marked it URGENT. I also added “Just got this. Gladys must know something so take it seriously.”
Yep, try going to sleep after something like that. I didn’t know what annoyed me more, Renee’s exciting trek to Guadalupe or some impending disaster at the winery tomorrow. I was so wired I felt as if I’d need an Ambien spray bottle the size of an industrial pesticide fumigator just to get the job done.
The way I saw it, I had two choices—read one of Jason’s boring entomology journals or take out my screenplay and do a bit of writing. Beguiled into Love won out and I was able to turn out the lights and finally close my eyes at two fifty-three. Charlie never budged from his spot at the foot of the bed, so I wound up sleeping in a tight little curl with my knees up to my waist. By the next morning, I had a serious kink in my neck.
Gladys wouldn’t be at the public safety building until eight, but I was positive Theo and Don would be up and about. It was a little past six and every self-respecting winery owner was probably on his or her second cup of coffee. I dialed their home phone while I waited for my K-cup to finish brewing.
Don picked up on the second ring. “I told Theo you’d be up but he insisted I wait.” Then I heard him yell, “It’s Norrie!” Then back to me. “Hell of an email from Gladys. What do you suppose she found out?”
“It can’t be good. I’m calling her the minute that building opens for business. Boy am I glad I’ve got someone on my side in that place. She probably came across some tidbit of information on Grizzly Gary’s desk. Something he can’t leak to the public just yet, but something she felt we should be aware of.”
“Okay, fine. Whatever it is, call us back when you know. By the way, kudos for pulling off that bit of business with Allete last night.”
“Yeah, well, I hope she doesn’t change her mind. We’re not off the hook yet. And Earvin better arrive at Two Witches with bells on. Catch you later.”
Granted, the tasting room staff wouldn’t arrive at work until nine, but Fred and Emma were bound to be in the bistro cooking up the food they’d need for today’s meals. It was another frigid morning and the snow in our vineyards glistened from the crust of ice that had formed on top of it. Another picture-perfect postcard for the Finger Lakes, unless you actually had to be outdoors.
I made myself a slice of toast, fed Charlie, and took a hot shower before throwing on some clothes and trekking to the tasting room. Sure enough, Fred was frying up bacon and sausage while Emma was in the process of
baking what looked like cornbread muffins.
“Norrie!” Fred exclaimed. “Is everything all right? It’s barely seven.”
“Yeah. I’m still convincing my brain I’m not sleepwalking. Listen, I got an unofficial message from someone at the public safety building. She said to make sure no one tampers with our chocolate. The chocolate for the demonstrations. Everything’s safe, isn’t it?”
“Gladys, huh? Wonder what she knows.”
Or who she knows since everyone seems to be familiar with her. “Uh-huh. Gladys.”
“All of the ingredients were delivered yesterday from Geneva Restaurant Supply. Everything was packaged, and we stored the block chocolate at room temperature in our pantry. I’ll make sure the pantry door stays locked until we need to get in there. We should be fine.”
“Do me a favor and have Emma double-check the pantry. Everything should look exactly as it did when she stored the stuff yesterday.”
“Norrie, Emma didn’t store it. Remember? You sent her to the Grey Egret.”
“Oh gee, yeah. I forgot.”
“Glenda from your tasting room gave me a hand and we stored it. The open ingredients, like corn syrup, were put in the large kitchen fridge.”
The muscles in my neck began to tighten up. “Oh my gosh. Anyone could have gotten in there while we were working. Sometimes customers mistake it for the restrooms, even though the sign says, ‘KITCHEN STAFF ONLY.’”
“I’ll give it a look-see as soon as I can take these meats out of the frying pan. Give me a second.”
Fred placed the thick cut Applewood bacon and sage sausage on paper towels while I made a mental note to have lunch at the bistro today.
“All set,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Fred opened the door and let out a gasp. “What the heck! There’s a red ribbon dangling from one of the wire shelves and it’s got some sort of charm on it. Looks like an eyeball.”
I groaned. “Glenda. Glenda must have returned to the fridge with one of her amulets or charms for warding off evil. And don’t get me started on those red ribbons she uses for the same purpose. She must buy them wholesale. How does everything else look?”
“Exactly the way I remember it from yesterday. The corn syrup on the second shelf to the right and the small jars of jam lined up by size.”
“Don’t be surprised if you see more red ribbons in the pantry. Glenda’s been pretty spooked about Jules’s death. Okay, I guess we can relax for a few minutes until I find out what’s going on with Gladys.”
Fred made me a Grande caramel cappuccino and I carted it off to my office. I figured I’d catch up on some winery correspondence while I counted down the minutes until eight. For some reason, I scrolled back to a few of the emails Henry Speltmore had sent us regarding the chocolate event. Henry’s emails tended to be real snoozers, so it wasn’t exactly my fault I’d overlooked them. Who wrote long diatribes in an email?
The first one dealt with etiquette on the wine trail. No wonder I skipped to the next. That one, at least, was partially interesting. Henry gave us the background on the chocolate manufacturing company that supplied the product for the chocolatiers. Come to think of it, that was probably where Don got his info.
Then I remembered something. Around Christmastime, I saw something on CNN about merger talks between two prominent chocolate manufacturers. One of them was Puccini Zinest and the anchor mentioned something about Puccini Zinest springing back from the loss of its CEO a year ago. Something about an untimely death. The anchor also mentioned the major chocolate competition in the states. The TV was on in the living room and I was in the kitchen. I heard the word, “Puccini,” and thought maybe the Smith Opera House in Geneva was going to showcase one of the great Puccini operas. I’d gotten hooked on Italian opera when my freshman class got to see a performance of Madame Butterfly from a visiting opera company in Sydney, Australia. I rushed into the living room. Even given my penchant for M & M’s and Milky Ways, I was disappointed as hell to hear it was some chocolate company.
Now, all of sudden, I wondered about those merger talks. It was no secret our chocolatiers got paid beaucoup bucks for endorsements. Like Olympic athletes touting Adidas and Nikes, these chocolate aficionados were praising the daylights out of their sponsors. I really needed to get my hands on some of those fancy-dancy culinary magazines to find out who was paying whom and whose account would be dropped after the winner of the Chocolate Extravaganza competition was announced.
If that wasn’t a motive for murder, I didn’t know what was. Then there was the matter of Jules Leurant. Despite his hubris, Jules was a master chocolatier and, with him out of the way, not only would Allete and Stanislav reap the rewards, but they’d use it to become the CEOs of their own chocolate manufacturing company. Unless that was the merger Puccini Zinest had in mind. Remove the competition, stack the deck, and wait a year or so until the new company was established. I thought about that for a moment and dismissed it. People who were greedy for money didn’t want to wait that long.
Of course, there was Earvin. No doubt he’d reap some benefits, too. Endorsements paid big time. I wondered which company Puccini Zinest wanted to share a bed with. Would they keep it European with someone like Teuscher or go U.S.A. with Scharffen Berger or maybe even Hershey? As much as I wanted to do a little digging on all of them, I had more pressing things to deal with, namely Gladys Pipp.
It was one minute past eight and one minute later than I originally planned to call her. I picked up the winery phone and punched in the numbers.
Gladys answered on the first ring. “If this is an emergency, hang up and dial nine-one-one. Good Morning. Yates County Public Safety Building. Non-Emergency Line. Gladys Pipp speaking. How may I be of assistance?”
“Gladys! This is Norrie. I didn’t sleep a wink last night after I read your email. What’s going on?”
Gladys lowered her voice. “I have to keep this brief. Deputy Hickman is out on a call, but he can walk in at any second. He got a memo from the coroner’s office yesterday regarding the contents of the piece of food found in Jules Leurant’s throat. It was chocolate.”
“Yes. I know. Everyone knows. That’s what got Stephanie Ipswich into so much hot water. She made an off-hand comment about him choking on a bonbon.”
Gladys cleared her throat. “He may have choked, but the poison in it would have killed him anyway.”
“Poison? A different poison? I thought he died from getting spacy with that Ambien spray on the wineglass and then passing out and suffocating in the snow with some help from his assailant.”
“That’s on the pending report. Now things have changed. I thought you needed to be aware of this because who knows where that piece of chocolate came from.”
“Um, Geneva on the Lake. Little chocolate bites were served at the opening event and no one else died from ingesting them.”
“Of course not, dear. Whoever served Jules Leurant that piece of chocolate must have been the very person who infused it with—Oh, good morning Deputy Hickman. I’ll be right with you.”
“Guess that’s my cue to get off the line, huh?”
“That’s right. We’re open until five.”
“Thanks Gladys. I’ll catch you later.”
Chapter 20
“It was a double homicide,” I said to Theo when I got him on the phone a few seconds after I hung up with Gladys.
“What? Another body? Where? When?”
“No, not a person, a method. I spoke with Gladys and she told me she saw a recent addendum to the coroner’s report. They tested that bonbon Jules had in his throat and the chocolate had been poisoned. Poisoned! She wanted us to know so we’d be really careful about who’s serving our confections.”
“What kind of poison?”
“She didn’t say. Deputy Hickman walked in on her and she had to hang up. He doesn’t know it was me on the other e
nd of the line.”
“Holy Cow. Either someone wanted to be doubly sure Jules Leurant got knocked off or we’ve got two killers on our hands. Did she say how the investigation was going?”
“No. It was a short call. Anyway, I’m going to head back to the house to get some work done on my screenplay. The producer moved the deadline up a week.”
“Yeesh. When you get back to your tasting room, let us know how it’s going with Earvin and if there’s anything we should be concerned about.”
“Anything? Try everything.”
As it turned out, I got mired under with the screenplay and didn’t make it back to our tasting room until after “the incident.”
The minute I set foot in the door of our winery, Cammy rushed over and grabbed me by the arm. “I was about to call you. Glenda, believe it or not, got Earvin to calm down.”
“Calm down? From what? What did she do to him? Please don’t tell me she doused him with essential oils. We’re not even supposed to have that stuff near the wine or it will mess with the aromas.”
“Not Glenda. Your goat! Alvin.”
“Alvin? First of all, he’s not my goat. He’s Francine and Jason’s goat. It was their idea to have a goat at the winery for family enjoyment. I would have opted for swings or a teeter-totter. What happened? Did Alvin break loose again? Oh God. Do NOT tell me he broke loose and chased Earvin.”
“Er, well, he didn’t exactly break loose, but he did get out for a few minutes. One of the vineyard workers, Travis, I think…was adding hay to the pen and left the gate open slightly. Yeah, come to think of it, it was Travis. He’s the cute one with the dark hair. Anyhow, with the cold weather and all, Alvin’s been a bit high-spirited. You know, racing and stomping around. He got out of his pen and charged down the path to the parking lot the second Earvin got out of the limousine. According to the driver, who had just opened the door for Earvin, Alvin stopped dead in his tracks in front of the limo and spit right in Earvin’s face. Then, the goat made a beeline for the winery lab, but fortunately, one of our guests, who happened to be in the parking lot at the time, slowed him down by offering him a bagel. By that time, Travis came running with a rope, snagged the goat, and got him back in the pen.”
