Death By the Glass #2

by Nadia Gordon

  Sunny let out a loud sigh. There was one huge problem. The only way to confirm her suspicions was to convince Steve Harvey to test the body for taxine. That was going to be a tough sell. If she hadn’t been so sure about the wine, he would be much easier to convince now.

  She tossed the purslane with what was left of a warm bacon vinaigrette and ate it standing up in the kitchen.

  Rivka rang the doorbell at eight-thirty sharp. She was dressed for a party in tall boots and a red jersey dress cut low. A long scrap of indiscriminate black fur was draped around her neck and her hair was pulled back tight.

  “Zow, you look hot. Part biker chick, part flamenco queen,” said Sunny.

  “And you aren’t even dressed yet. I thought we were going to go early so we could relax.”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Let me guess. Wait, I have news. I can tell you while you get your body on.”

  Rivka followed her into the bedroom and reclined against a heap of pillows while Sunny rifled through her closet.

  “I went over to Dahlia’s after work.”

  “More secret potions?” said Sunny without turning around.

  “Do you want to hear this or not?”

  “Of course,” Sunny said, choosing a pair of low-slung tweed pants and a clingy paprika sweater. She slipped them on, then sat on the bed and zipped into a pair of suede boots.

  “I don’t know how you wear those things,” said Rivka.

  “No pain, no gain.” She went over to her dresser and rummaged among the earrings in a little box for a pair of tiny gold hoops.

  “Dahlia went to the reading of the will this morning.”

  Sunny looked up. “And?”

  “Osborne didn’t have any relatives. He left Dahlia his car and the contents of his house, including his art collection.”

  “This could be key. He breaks her heart, then leaves her his furniture. Anything substantial?”

  “Uh, yeah. You might want to sit down.”

  Sunny finished putting on her earrings. She turned to her friend with her hands on her hips. “I’m ready.”

  “It’s not a big collection. He only bought art when a friend or a friend of a friend needed money back in the seventies. He was one of the few guys in the early days of that whole hippie artist Marin scene who had what you’d call discretionary income.”

  “And his friends of friends were?”

  “Well, not all of them became famous, but Roy and Wayne did okay for themselves.”

  Sunny’s eyes widened. “No. He has paintings by Roy De Forest and Wayne Thiebaud?”

  “Two original dog paintings by De Forest and some kind of pastry by Thiebaud.”

  Sunny whistled. “They’re worth millions,” she said breathlessly.

  “Maybe. It depends on exactly what they are, but it’s a fortune no matter what. Dahlia says it doesn’t matter what they’re worth because she won’t sell them.”

  “You’d only have to sell one of them to live on the proceeds for a long, long time. What else was in that will?”

  “He left instructions to sell the house and use the proceeds to settle his personal debts, which were evidently substantial. Remy Castels inherits Osborne Wines. Eliot Denby gets Nathan’s half of Vinifera.”

  “Very tidy. Everybody’s got a motive,” said Sunny. “Eliot, Remy, Dahlia. Even Andre, since Eliot owning all of Vinifera will have a direct and substantial impact on his peace of mind and the success of his career.”

  “I’m sure Eliot knew he would get Vinifera,” said Rivka. “Remy might have known about his take, and Andre could reasonably assume that removing Nathan would mean he only had to deal with Eliot, but Dahlia had no idea she was going to inherit a fortune in art.”

  “You don’t think he would have told her?”

  “No way. She’s in a state of shock.”

  “What about Pel and Sharon Rastburn?”

  “She didn’t say anything about them. I don’t think they were part of it. The only people at the reading were Dahlia, Eliot, and Remy.”

  Sunny put on a long camel jacket and ruffled her hair. “How do I look? Ready for date number two?”

  “Classic textures, sexy lines. Nicely understated. Well done,” said Rivka. “Before we go, I want to show you something.”

  She dug around in her bag and produced a digital camera. “Sit. I want to show you something Dahlia made. I know you’re still sleuthing, but you have to believe Dahlia would never harm anyone, especially Nathan. I took these at her house.”

  Sunny sat on the edge of the bed and peered at the little screen on the back of the camera. It showed a wooden box open on one side, taller than it was wide, elaborately painted in crimson, orange, yellow, and purple.

  “You can’t tell because it’s so little, but that’s a portrait of the seated Buddha floating in the top half of the box,” said Rivka. “Really beautiful.”

  A ruby fringe hung down from the top edge. In front of the box, arranged on a scrap of orange silk, was a collection of votive candles, an ornate brass urn full of sand with the remains of incense sticking up from it, a copper bell of the sort that comes from India or Nepal, and a vase holding one white lily. There was a framed photograph that looked to be Nathan with his arm around Dahlia. A candy necklace was draped over a corner of the photograph, and a Hershey bar and a fat navel orange sat in front of it. Standing in the corner in back was a bottle.

  Sunny handed the camera to Rivka. “Look at the bottle in back. Can you tell what that is?”

  Rivka shook her head.

  “We need to get a better look at this.”

  Sunny stomped into the front room and turned on the computer before Rivka could protest. She popped the tiny flash card out of the camera and into a port in the side of her printer, scrolled through to the frame she wanted, and hit print.

  “So much for going early,” said Rivka, watching impatiently.

  “It’s a test print. It’ll just be a second.”

  The printer spat out a grainy eight by ten. Sunny examined it. In back, standing under the floating Buddha, was a clear glass bottle of liquor, shaped like a wine bottle, less than half full, with the distinctive tan label and rounded cursive font of Francis Darroze Bas-Armagnac.

  “That’s it,” said Sunny. “I can’t see the bottom of the label, but that has to be the bottle of Armagnac Nathan kept behind the bar at Vinifera. Have a look.” She handed the print to Rivka. “Nick told me somebody swiped it between Saturday night and Monday afternoon. Obviously, it was Dahlia. We need to go out there and get that bottle.”

  “Hang on,” said Rivka. “I’m having déjà vu. We went through this with the wine. If Dahlia put the poison in the bottle of Armagnac, she would have disposed of the bottle afterward. She wouldn’t have left it hanging around in a shrine at her house waiting for someone to come along and have it tested.”

  “Absolutely true. So Dahlia might be off the hook. Maybe the real killer didn’t expect the victim’s ex-girlfriend to lift the bottle before they had a chance to get rid of it. Regardless of how it happened, there is the bottle in Dahlia’s shrine.”

  “I still don’t think there was a killer,” Rivka said.

  “Riv, I want that bottle. It may have poison in it. We can’t risk alerting Dahlia, just in case she is involved, so we’re going to have to go out there and remove it ourselves, and the sooner the better. If Steve Harvey wasn’t hostile to my suggestions we could call him and he could get a search warrant. She’s at the restaurant tonight, right?”

  “Are you insane? What are you talking about search warrants for? Dahlia hasn’t done anything. If you want the bottle of Armagnac so badly, ask her for it. She might think you’re an obsessed weirdo, but if you tell her you think it’s important, she’ll give it to you. She only took it because it’s something Nathan liked.”

  “That’s one theory,” Sunny said.

  Rivka took a lipstick out of her purse and went over to the mirror above the dresser. She coated
her lips in fiery red and pressed them together once. Satisfied, she turned around and faced Sunny. “Let’s strike a bargain. I will call Dahlia right now. If she agrees to let us go out there and pick up that bottle, you relinquish all suspicion of her, both because it makes sense and as a personal favor to me, your best friend.”

  “And if she doesn’t?” asked Sunny.

  “I’ll change into my camos and we commit some breaking and entering.”

  “The bottle’s worth enough, it will be a felony.”

  “Deal or no deal?”

  “Deal.”

  21

  “Now what?” said Rivka, examining the bottle.

  They sat down on the sofa in Dahlia’s cabin. The quiet crept up around them. They still felt like intruders, even though Dahlia had given them her permission. Sunny took the bottle and held it up, letting the light from the lamp shine through the dark auburn liquid. She half expected to see murky signs of tampering.

  “So?” Rivka asked.

  “Well, I think it needs to be tested.”

  “You think Steve Harvey’s going to go for it again?”

  “No, and I wouldn’t ask him. I don’t have anything concrete. I was thinking I’d call Charlie Rhodes. I checked it out and they have a diagnostic laboratory down there at Fresno State. If he can’t do it himself, I’m sure he knows somebody who can do the test for us. The only other way is to send a sample to the veterinary lab all the way out at Purdue in Indiana, and then it takes three days to get the results.”

  “When was the last time you talked to Charlie?”

  “Right after he moved.”

  Rivka stood up and smoothed her dress. “Do you think he’ll do it?”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t been teaching there very long. It’s a big favor to ask, but he owes me one.”

  Rivka checked her watch. “Let’s get going. I don’t want to leave Alex sitting at Vinifera alone. He already feels weird about tonight because we’re supposed to be not seeing each other and getting a fresh perspective on our relationship.”

  “So why are you doing it?”

  “I miss him.”

  They drove back down the mountain in silence with the bottle riding between them like a prisoner in custody. When they arrived at Vinifera, Sunny said she’d be in after she made a quick call. She wanted to try to reach Charlie before it got too late. Rivka gave her a look. She knew Sunny was more focused on getting the bottle tested than she was on meeting Alex and Andre. Rivka shut the truck door meaningfully and gave Sunny another wary look through the glass.

  Charlie Rhodes picked up quickly. “Sunny! This is a pleasant surprise.”

  They exchanged the usual greetings of friends who hadn’t spoken in several months.

  “Are you at work at this hour on a Friday night?” asked Sunny, hearing the murmur of professional voices in the background.

  “Yeah. I’ve got a project on the fast track. I’m practically living at the lab these days.”

  “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk with you about,” said Sunny. She explained what she needed.

  “An alkaloid screen. That’s not too big a deal. I think they can do it over at the avian diagnostics lab. Did somebody’s horse die?”

  “Horse?”

  “It’s usually horses and cows that get yew poisoning, sometimes dogs.”

  “How does that happen?”

  “The grazers seem to like the way yew tastes and it’s widely available. People plant all kinds of yew trees and shrubs in their yards. The typical scenario is a friendly neighbor brings over the lawn and hedge clippings as a treat for the livestock. It only takes a few mouthfuls and they drop dead. It’s a fairly common problem, especially in the transition zones between ag use and suburb, when you mix horse and cattle ranches and semi-rural ranchettes. The horse nibbles on a hedge for five minutes and that’s it for the horse.”

  “That’s not exactly the situation here.” Then she explained what exactly the situation was. There was silence on the other end of the line. After a while she said, “Charlie?”

  “I’m here.” He cleared his throat. “Is this at all legal?”

  “What?”

  “Testing this stuff?”

  “A friend gave me a bottle of brandy. I’d like to test it for the alkaloids taxine A and B. What could be illegal about that?”

  “Right. I suppose that’s okay.”

  “How soon do you think you could do it?”

  “It’s too bad you couldn’t have made the afternoon Fed Ex pickup. If it was here tomorrow morning we could do it first thing. The lab is open from eight to eleven on Saturday mornings. After that they’re closed until eight on Monday.”

  “What if I brought it down myself tonight?”

  “You’d drive it down? It’s that urgent?”

  “If I’m wrong, time’s not an issue, but if I’m right, there’s a murderer strolling around Vinifera right now.”

  There was another silence, then he said, “You can stay at my place.”

  “Great.”

  Charlie explained how to find his house and where the key would be so she could let herself in if he was already asleep or not back from the lab yet.

  “Are you sure you can stay awake that long?” asked Charlie skeptically. “There’s a mind-numbing stretch on Interstate 5.”

  “Sleeping is the problem. Staying awake is my specialty.”

  There was still the issue of what to do about the rest of the evening. The drive would take four or five hours at least, and it was already past ten o’clock. If she was going to make it there tonight, she needed to leave right now. The bottle was right there on the seat beside her, and her purse contained everything she really needed other than a toothbrush. All she had to do was find some way out of her date with Andre and she could hit the road. The trouble was, she couldn’t tell him where she was going or why, and what possible explanation could there be otherwise? There wasn’t one. She’d already feigned illness. This was it. This was the end of the world’s briefest romance. Could it even be called a romance? It would have to be recorded as a one-night stand. What else could you call it? And was there any hope Andre would have any desire to see her again after she stood him up twice? She would be lucky if Rivka would talk to her. Going inside would only make matters worse. She started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, feeling like a criminal escaping the scene of the crime. She waited until she was on the highway to call Rivka’s mobile.

  “No,” Rivka said, picking up. “No, no, no. You have to come in here.”

  “I can’t,” said Sunny. “I’m on the road already.”

  There was a pause, the sound of heels striking the floor, then the susurrus of diners in the background stopped. Rivka must have walked outside. “Where are you?” she hissed.

  “I’m headed to Fresno. The lab opens at eight in the morning. I can be back by tomorrow afternoon. I’m sorry, Riv. I couldn’t think of any excuse that would get me out of there in a timely manner and I needed to get started. I can’t stay up all night driving.”

  “Yes, you can. You stay up all night all the time. You are the world’s most dedicated insomniac. You’ve stayed up all night to bake cookies, to make sausage, to cure salmon, make wine, devil eggs, knit a scarf, read a book, and wallpaper your bedroom. This is not about Nathan Osborne. This is about your terror of facing Andre Morales. I don’t care if you’re halfway to Denver, turn around right now and get back here or I will never, and I mean never, speak to you again, except perhaps to point out what a weasel maneuver this is.”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Sunny. “You expect me to spend the next two hours sipping wine, then drive five hours to Fresno.”

  “Yes, I do. If it was anyone else, no, of course not. But you, yes.” Sunny heard the unmistakable sound of a match being struck. A moment later there was a long exhale, then: “In the first place, you are totally inured to a lack of sleep. In the second place, you are in desperate need of a boyfriend exact
ly like the man who is about to walk out of his kitchen expecting to see you waiting for him. And third, you can drink a couple of triple espressos. Now turn around and get back here right now or I am going to throw a Jewish-Latina hissy fit that’s gonna make you wish you never knew such a thing existed.”

  Sunny pulled off where 29 met 121 and headed back the other direction. Minutes later she walked into Vinifera, where Rivka leaped up to give her a delighted embrace.

  “So, did you leave it on?” she asked a little theatrically but convincingly. “Every time I think I left a burner on, it turns out I actually didn’t. So, did you?”

  “No, you were right,” said Sunny. “It wasn’t on after all. But I feel much better that I checked.”

  “Good. Now you can relax.”

  Alex Campaglia, Rivka’s boyfriend, stood up from the bar and gripped Sunny’s shoulders like he was going to head-butt her. Instead he gave her a loud kiss on each cheek. He seemed even taller than usual and towered over her.

  “We thought we lost you,” he said, casting a shy glance around the room.

  “Not a chance,” said Sunny. Nick Ambrosi was working the crowded bar farther down. There wouldn’t be time for him to ask her why she’d been so interested in Nathan’s missing bottle of Armagnac. One of the other bartenders came over to Sunny and held up an open bottle of Acacia Pinot Noir. She nodded. When all of them had a drink, Alex raised his glass. “Safety first.”