However, as I entered the main building, the sound of Jean Luc's accent rising in both volume and agitation drew me away from my mental to-do list and toward the tasting room.
Only a couple of small tables held patrons, but being early, that was to be expected. My eyes scanned over them, homing in on the bar, where I spotted Carrie. Her face was in her hands, her shoulders bobbing up and down with sobs.
My sommelier, Jean Luc, stood beside her, his tall, thin frame stooped as he patted her back awkwardly with one hand.
As I entered, my eyes connected with Jean Luc's, and his gratitude at my arrival was evident in his smile. "Emmy!" he called. "Zo glad you are 'ere." His Hercule Poirot worthy mustache twitched above his mouth as his thick French accent greeted me. While Jean Luc had been living in the states for years, his French accent remained as thick as ever. Sometimes, I wondered if it was on purpose. Jean Luc's sense of French pride sometimes bordered on stereotypically comical. However, the weekend wine lovers seemed to eat it up, so I was hard pressed to complain.
"'Ze Mademoiselle Cross eez a bit upset," he explained unnecessarily, sidling away from her as I approached. Clearly handling that much female emotion was beyond his pay grade.
Though, truthfully, almost anything was beyond his pay grade.
Carrie looked up, her wet eyes turning toward me and away from my poor sommelier. "Oh, Emmy!" she cried, leaping up from her barstool.
"What happened?" I asked, catching her in a hug. "Are you okay?"
She pursed her lips together and shook her head, the tears streaking down her cheeks as clear evidence of her state. "I'm sorry, but I didn't know what else to do. I don't really know anyone else here."
"It's fine," I said, not sure exactly what she was talking about. "What happened?"
"It was awful. They took him, Emmy. They took Bert."
"Who took him?" I asked, trying to get her to calm down enough to give me a straight story.
Carrie took a deep breath in then let it out on shaky sigh. "The p-police," she stammered. "The police took Bert!"
CHAPTER SIX
Before I could even instruct him, Jean Luc had a glass of wine poured for Carrie, setting it on the bar in front of her stool before he faded away, likely in fear of more female emotions. I guided Carrie back to her seat and sat beside her, waiting until she'd gotten the hiccupping sobs under control before pressing for more details.
"What happened?" I asked her. "Did the police say where they were taking Bert?"
"Not really. Just to the station for questioning."
Well, questioning was better than being under arrest. "What sort of questions?"
She shook her head, sniffling into a cocktail napkin. "I don't know. I-I'm afraid they think Bert had something to do with Harper's death." She barely got out that last thought before another loud hiccup/sob thing came out. "How can they think that, Emmy?"
I had a guess, but I didn't think that was helpful right now. "What exactly did the police say?"
"They said they had some things they needed to clear up."
I bit the inside of my cheek. I had a few questions about Bert I'd like cleared up too, but I wondered if they were the same set as the police's.
"Well, maybe they just need him to answer a few questions about the party," I reasoned. "You know, who was there, what they were doing?"
"Maybe." She blew her nose and looked up at me. "But that detective seemed so forceful that Bert asked if he needed a lawyer."
I knew firsthand how Forceful Grant could make a person sweat. "What did Gran—uh, the detective say to that?"
"He said Bert was entitled to have representation present." Her eyes brimmed with fresh tears. "That sounds bad, doesn't it?"
Well, it didn't sound good. But instead of voicing that thought, I patted Carrie's hand. "Detective Grant is good at his job."
Carrie took a deep breath, then an equally deep drag from the glass of Chardonnay in front of her. "Do you know him well?" she finally asked.
"Well enough," I hedged. I wasn't sure how she'd take the news that I'd been to second base with the guy currently interrogating her husband.
"Well, can you talk to him?" she implored. "Tell him that there's no way Bert had anything to do with Harper's death?"
As much as I wanted to make Carrie feel better, that was a negative. For one, chances of Grant listening to my direction in his murder investigation were slim to nonexistent. And for another, I wasn't sure how convincing I could be that Bert was innocent when I wasn't entirely convinced myself.
"Carrie, did Grant say why he wanted to question Bert?"
She turned a blank look my way. "Well, about Harper's death."
"Right." I nodded. "But…why Bert specifically?"
Carrie took in another shaky breath before answering. "I don't know. I overheard him asking about the investments Bert had been helping Harper with. Like maybe something went wrong with one?" She turned a questioning look my way. "But that's not Bert's fault! I mean, he's usually amazing with money, but the markets turn, right?"
"Of course," I consoled her, doing more hand patting. "Had Bert been consulting with Harper a lot lately?"
Carrie reached the end of the cocktail napkin's usefulness and began digging in her purse for a tissue. "What do you mean?"
"Well, I mean, did Harper and Bert spend a lot of time together. Like…alone?"
Her head snapped up, her wet lashes blinking rapidly at me. "Emmy, what are you trying to say?"
Oh boy. Here went nothing… "I saw Harper and Bert together. At the party. Before she died."
"So?" Carrie finally pulled a tissue from her purse, blowing her nose loudly. "Everyone saw Harper and Bert at the party."
"I mean…they were alone. Upstairs." I didn't mention that Harper had seemed awful keen at the time to keep that info from Carrie.
Carrie paused, her tissue halfway to her nose again. For a moment, I thought she was going to come to the same conclusion I—and apparently Grant—had about Bert. But instead, she shook her head, as if shaking that unpleasant thought out of it. "Bert and Harper were friends." She paused. "Harper was friendly with all of us."
Some more than others. But I didn't press the issue. Clearly Carrie was under enough stress right now. Whether or not Bert and Harper had really been having an affair behind her back, it was over now.
"I'm sure Grant will get to the bottom of this," I told her. I just hoped for her sake that Bert wasn't there when he did.
Carrie nodded, though she looked about as unsure as I was. She twisted her tissue around her fingers, frowning as she stared at it. "There's something else," she said quietly. She took a deep breath again and lifted her eyes to meet mine. "Something I haven't told the police."
Now she had my full attention. "What is it?" I asked softly.
She pursed her lips together, as if trying to decide if she could trust me. "I saw something," she finally said.
"When?"
"At the party." She paused, and I could feel her still mentally deliberating. "I-I didn't want to say anything before. You know, when we thought it was just an accident. I mean, it would only have made Harper look bad, which isn't fair now that she's gone."
"Understandable," I said, hoping to calm her into getting to the point.
"But then when Detective Grant said it was intentional—I mean, that someone meant to hurt Harper. Well…" She trailed off, looking at her tissue, which was rapidly disintegrating as well now. "Well, I think maybe Harper was in trouble."
"What kind of trouble?"
Carrie shook her head. "I don't know. I only saw it for a second."
"Carrie, what did you see?" I asked her pointedly.
"Her phone," she finally confessed. "I didn't mean to! I mean, it wasn't like I was spying. I just…well, my agent was talking about this new streaming show that was casting, and I wanted to introduce Harper to him. You know, because she was out of work. I thought maybe he could get her an audition or something."
"A
nd?"
"And when I tracked Harper down, she was out on the front porch getting some air, and she had her phone out. I accidentally saw part of a message on it before she noticed me."
"What did it say?"
Carrie licked her lips. "Blackmail."
I blinked at her, letting that punch line sink in. "Blackmail?" I asked. "Are you sure?"
She nodded. "I didn't really think anything of it at the time. I dunno. I guess it could have meant anything, right?" She shook her head. "But then when the police said her death wasn't an accident, well, I just sort of started thinking…maybe it does mean something."
I nodded. "Did the message say anything else?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. I only got a quick glimpse at it before Harper saw me and covered up her phone." She bit her lip. "That seems bad, right? I mean, like she was trying to hide it?"
I glanced at Carrie's glass of wine, thinking I could really use one of those right then. "Honestly? I don't know." I paused. "You think Harper was being blackmailed?"
But Carrie just shrugged again. "I don't know. She never said anything. But if she was in trouble…if someone was blackmailing her…maybe that person was the one who hurt her?"
That put a whole new spin on things. Mental images of Harper's friends who'd been at the party flickered through my brain, but none had seemed particularly hard up for cash. Not hard up enough to resort to extortion. Not that I'd quizzed everyone in attendance on their net worth, but nothing in Harper's actions had seemed even the least bit uncomfortable or nervous around anyone.
However, there had been one person at Carrie's house that day who, by self-admission, hadn't fit in with that crowd.
"Carrie, how well do you know Tripp Jones?" I asked, thinking back to the rough-around-the-edges cowboy who'd been with Dante that fateful afternoon.
"Tripp?" she asked, confusion on her face at my seeming change of subject. "Not that well, I guess. I mean, I only just met him a couple weeks ago. When we bought Dante."
"And you said Harper was the one who recommended him to you, right?"
She nodded.
"How well did Harper know him?"
Her eyelashes fluttered up and down as she blinked at me. "I-I don't know. She said she hired him. A few months ago. She said he was excellent with horses, but I didn't really ask beyond that." She paused. "Why? You don't think Tripp had anything to do with her death, do you?"
I didn't know what to think. Harper had died at the hands of the horse Tripp had been training. And she had known him prior to the party. If someone had been blackmailing Harper—and she'd refused to pay, possibly even threatened to expose the blackmailer publicly—maybe that someone had seen the drunk actress and the wild horse as an opportunity to get rid of a problem.
The only question was, whose problem had Harper been?
* * *
Thanks to the combination of tears and Chardonnay, I offered to drive Carrie home and get her car to her later. The sun was sitting low in the sky by the time I pulled up to Carrie's vacation retreat. The police cars were noticeably absent, and the paparazzi had trickled down to just two dented cars filled with diehards toting cell phones and paper cups of coffee. We drove past them, thankfully uneventfully, and I dropped Carrie at her front door, telling her to call me day or night if she needed a friend. I almost hesitated to leave her alone, until she reminded me that Nolan was still staying the weekend at their house. Satisfied she had someone to watch over her if need be, I gave her a hug and a promise to call tomorrow before trekking back down her driveway in the waning sunlight.
As much as I was still waffling on Bert's innocence—at least as far as his involvement with Harper was concerned—the idea that someone had been blackmailing the beautiful actress was an interesting development. Hadn't Harper's sister, Kellen, said something about Harper being all about sensationalism and scandal? Maybe she'd had something in particular in mind—some secret Harper was keeping that might have really dragged the family name through the mud. I tried to think of what it could be but came up blank. Honestly? There was little the Hollywood world didn't tolerate these days. I mean, stars often faked scandals just to keep themselves in the news.
Then again, maybe the blackmailer hadn't been threatening to go to the press with Harper's scandalous secret but to Mommy and Daddy. I could well see Harper paying to keep in the family's good graces—especially if there was a sizeable trust fund involved or inheritance in her future.
So who had known Harper's dirty little secrets?
While anyone in Harper's inner circle could have had the access to her personal life to dig up dirt, I kept going back to the fact that none of them seemed that hard up for money. Nolan's suave GQ look, Bert's investments, Carrie's growing portfolio yielding enough to purchase a vacation home—none felt desperate enough to stoop that low. My mind again honed in on the odd man out in the equation. Tripp Jones.
While I hadn't seen him at the party, he had been on the property that day. I wondered if he'd been there when Harper had died. Had he left when the party started, or had he, as Carrie had suggested, stuck around to entertain the guests with his real life cowboy routine? Maybe David was right—maybe Tripp and Harper did have a past of some sort. Maybe just enough for Tripp to have stumbled onto something about Harper that she'd wanted to keep quiet.
On a whim, I pulled to the curb at the next light, grabbing my phone from my purse. I punched Tripp Jones's name into a search engine, and after a few quick clicks, came up with an address just outside of town, conveniently on the way to Oak Valley. It was located on Rosebay Meadows, which sounded like a nice place.
I keyed it into my GPS and pulled back into traffic.
Fifteen minutes later I turned onto the street in question…and realized the irony in the name. There were neither roses nor meadows on the dirt lane that wound into the hills above town. There was, however, dry grass, hard packed dirt, and a smattering of single wide trailers and rusted mobile homes—some looking inhabited and overflowing, and others long abandoned. I drove slowly, feeling more depressed with each inch of barren scenery, until my navigation system told me I'd reached my destination.
It was a small trailer, set back a few feet from the road. And it certainly wasn't one of those adorable tiny homes I'd seen on television. This was a clunker. I thought that once upon a time it may have been white with a brown stripe around its middle. However, now the white was more gray, the stripe was faded, and the tires weren't just flat—they were missing, leaving the bare hubs to be half buried in the dirt. At one point it looked like someone had tried to fancy the place up with a white picket fence surrounding the lot, but most of the slats were now gone or broken, the gate was hanging by a single hinge, and the grass had long given up on life. Not that I blamed it. I wouldn't want to live there either.
I parked on the dead grass to the right of the road and got out of my Jeep, locking the door behind me. Pushing my keys and phone into my pockets (because you just never knew when you'd need them in a hurry), I walked toward a pair of cement blocks masquerading as a step. I knocked on the screen door and jumped back as it rattled, groaned, and threatened to fall from its hinges.
Footsteps pounded within the trailer, causing the entire thing to tremble, and I feared the rust might win its battle and the whole thing could collapse before my eyes. Luckily, it was a tiny trailer, and it only took a couple of footsteps before the door opened, and a half-naked cowboy stood in front of me.
Tripp may not have been living on easy street, but his toned torso was a bright spot in the dreary scenery. I tried not to stare at his abs, but somehow my gaze couldn't help wandering toward his belt buckle riding so low on his hips I could almost see the top of his…
"Can I help you?" he demanded.
I snapped my eyes up to meet his. In my defense, if he didn't want people staring, he should probably put a shirt on before answering the door.
"Uh, yes. Yeah, I'm Emmy Oak. We, um, we met yesterday. At Carrie Cross's hous
e."
His eyes narrowed, and if he recognized me, he didn't let on. "And?"
"And…I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions."
His dark eyes narrowed further, until they were mere slits beneath his cowboy hat. "What are you, a reporter? Cuz I seen enough of them already today."
He moved to close the door.
"Wait! Uh, no. I, uh, wanted to ask you about horses."
He paused. "Horses?"
"Uh, yeah. That's right. I am…thinking of buying one. And Carrie said you were the best trainer in the area." I could almost feel my nose growing with the lie, but it must have done the trick, as he opened the door wider again, leaning against the frame.
"What kinda horse you buyin'?" he asked.
"Uh, what kind would you suggest?"
He snorted. Clearly that was not the right answer. "Look, lady, I know all 'a Carrie's rich friends thought that a wild horse was a real novelty, but that animal deserves better than what she did to it."
"She did to it?" I asked.
His face puckered into a sneer. "Animal like that needs someone who knows how to handle it. Mrs. Cross didn't know its mane from its tail. And look what happened. Poor creature will probably be destroyed now."
"And a woman is dead," I reminded him.
His eyes went dark, something flitting across them before he ducked his head down from my view. "That too."
"Did you know her well?"
His head snapped back up. "Excuse me?"
"Harper Bishop. The woman Dante trampled to death." I almost felt bad for being so blunt, but I was fishing for any reaction to break through his hard exterior.
He worked his jaw back and forth a couple of times. Then he turned his head, spitting on the patch of weeds to my right before answering. "I knew her."
"Did you know her well?" I repeated.
"Well enough."
Well enough for what, was the question. I tried a different tactic. "Carrie said Harper recommended you to her. Did you train a horse for Harper too?"
Death in Wine Country (Wine & Dine Mysteries Book 5) Page 7
