Death in Wine Country (Wine & Dine Mysteries Book 5)

by Gemma Halliday

  "Well, do you think there's any chance the cameras might have caught a glimpse of Harper's phone?"

  She blinked at me, the frown deepening as she thought. "I-I don't know. I never thought of that. It's possible, I suppose." She paused. "The police officers have already looked through all the footage though. It was one of the first things they did when they arrived."

  I should have figured as much. However, there was a chance they might not have been looking for the same thing we were.

  "Did they take it all, or do you still have copies?" Ava asked.

  "We still have it," Carries said, nodding. "I mean, it's all digital. The police just copied files from our system, but we didn't erase anything." She paused again. "You really think there's something there that might help Bert?"

  "I think it's worth looking," I told her, meaning it.

  "The system is set up in the den," Carrie said, rising to lead the way.

  Ava and I followed, leaving our coffee behind as we entered the house through the back door and made our way down the short hallway.

  It was welcoming and cool after the heat on the terrace, yet it felt eerily quiet. I knew that Carrie had purchased it as an escape from the fast life in LA, but with the pall hanging over the place now, I wondered if she planned to stay on.

  The den had a distinctly masculine feel to it, filled with dark woods and leather chairs in warm brown tones. The desk was immaculate—its top empty except for a sleek, slim monitor—the view to the hills beyond the estate was spectacular, and the absence of Barkley's hair told me he either wasn't allowed in here or their housekeeper did a mighty fine job.

  Carrie sat at the desk and jiggled a computer mouse, the monitor springing to life.

  Ava and I moved behind her to view it.

  Carrie did a little clicking around, opening a program that linked to their security system. As she'd mentioned, it didn't look high tech, and by the slightly pixilated look of the software, I assumed it predated the app craze. But even if it was dated, it seemed to work, having logged footage of the night in question. Several files appeared with the date of the party on them. Carrie clicked on one, and a video player appeared.

  From the angle of the footage, it looked like the cameras were mounted in the upper right corner of the eaves, facing the doorway, though the frame was wide enough to cover most of the front porch and a small swath of the driveway beyond. We watched several people come into view, entering the house one after another as the party got underway. Occasionally Carrie's face popped into the frame, greeting newcomers and ushering them into the house.

  "What time did you see Harper go outside?" I asked.

  Carrie shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't actually note the time."

  "Let's just let it play then," Ava said, eyes on the screen.

  We did, watching several more minutes of people arriving before the steady stream ceased. A few stragglers appeared, and then there was several minutes of nothing—no activity on the porch, all of the guests having made their way into the party.

  Then finally Harper's dark hair appeared, her sequin clad frame moving into view.

  "There!" Ava said, pointing at the screen.

  "She must have ducked out to check her messages," Carrie said as we all watched Harper lean against the porch railing and pull her phone from her sequined clutch. She clicked and scrolled, though she was angled away from the cameras, keeping the screen hidden from us.

  "That's weird," Carrie said softly.

  "What? What's weird?" I asked.

  Carrie swiveled in the leather chair to face me. "Well, I could swear that's not Harper's phone."

  I felt my heart rate speed up. "Why do you say that?"

  Carrie turned her attention back to the screen, frowning. "Harper had just bought the new iPhone. She had it in this really sparkly gold case." She pointed to the screen, where Harper was clearly holding a matte black phone. "That one is the wrong color."

  "Maybe she just took the case off?" Ava offered.

  "Maybe," Carrie said, but I could tell by the hitch in her voice that she wasn't convinced.

  "Well, she's definitely reading something," Ava said.

  She was right. We could plainly see Harper scrolling, her eyes narrowing as she took in the message on her screen. The trouble was, from our angle we had no idea what it was. I was beginning to think this whole thing was a bust.

  "Oh, that's me!" Carrie said, pointing as her figure appeared on screen. "This is where I came to get Harper to meet my agent."

  We watched as Harper's head snapped up from her phone and she spun around to greet the hostess. Her smile was as stunning as I remembered it, and she moved in close to give Carrie a hug.

  "There!" I shouted.

  In hindsight maybe a little too loudly, as Carrie jumped in her chair.

  But when Harper went in to embrace Carrie, she'd had her phone in her hand still, the angle of the screen directly facing the camera.

  "Can you back it up?" Ava said as Harper and Carrie stepped apart again on the video.

  "I think so," Carrie said, pursing her lips together in concentration as she clicked a Rewind button.

  "See if you can pause it when Harper hugs you," I directed.

  Carrie nodding, clicking the Pause button a second later as the two women embraced.

  I leaned in, squinting at the screen to get a better look at the phone in Harper's hand. It was blurry, but I could tell it was a text message, and I could just make out the words.

  "How dare you blackmail me!" I read out loud.

  "That's it!" Carrie said. "That must be what I saw."

  "Can you see who it's from?" Ava asked, leaning in to squint at the screen herself.

  I shook my head. "No, it's too small." I paused, something not feeling quite right. "But we didn't see Harper typing, right?"

  "What?" Carries asked.

  "We watched Harper get a message and read it," I said, my mind working over what I was seeing on the screen. "We didn't see her typing anything out."

  Ava nodded. "Right. We would have seen her thumbs moving. Or her talking, at least if she was using speech to text."

  "But she didn't do either. She just read the message." I paused. "Which means, Harper didn't send this message—she received it."

  Ava blinked, and I could see her coming to the same realization I had. "'How dare you blackmail me,'" she repeated. "Harper wasn't being blackmailed…she was blackmailing someone else!"

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "No," Carrie said, shaking her head. "I can't believe that. Harper wouldn't do that."

  "I'm afraid it looks like she did," I said, pointing to the screen again.

  Carrie bit her lip, warring emotions evident in her eyes. "She wouldn't," she repeated, but I could hear the statement losing conviction.

  Ava put a hand on Carrie's shoulder. "I'm sorry."

  So was I. Especially as I thought of what, exactly, Harper could have been blackmailing someone about.

  Kellen had told us that morning that Harper was hard up for money. She'd been cut off by her parents, fired from her job, and just found out she was pregnant. I could see her being desperate for cash. Desperate enough to start an affair with Bert, just to blackmail him about it later?

  Then again, hadn't Kellen mentioned Harper "blackmailing" her? She'd said Harper had told her she'd never forgive her if she didn't help her get back in her parents' good graces…but maybe Harper hadn't stopped at emotional blackmail. Maybe she'd asked Kellen for actual cash to keep quiet about something. I didn't know what skeletons lurked in Kellen's closet, but I did know embarrassment was high on Kellen's list of things to avoid in life. Had Harper threatened to reveal something embarrassing about the Bishop family if Kellen didn't pay up?

  Of course, there was also my favorite suspect, Tripp. While it was possible Harper had gotten physically close to the cowboy when he'd given her riding lessons, it was also possible she'd gotten emotionally close enough to him to have found some secret she
used to her advantage. Had she found out something incriminating about Tripp that he'd rather keep quiet? My mind went back to my conversation with Grant and the fact Tripp had been a suspect in a prior murder. Maybe Harper had found the evidence the police lacked to convict him and had blackmailed Tripp with it? Maybe the duffel full of cash hadn't been a payment to Tripp, but one he'd been preparing to give to Harper?

  "…sure that's not her phone."

  I realized I'd been so lost in my own thoughts that I hadn't been paying attention to the conversation around me. I tuned back in to find Carrie staring at the footage on the screen again.

  "What about Harper's phone?" I asked.

  "It doesn't look right," Carrie repeated. "I don't think it's even the right size. Her new iPhone was bigger." She swiveled in her chair to face me again. "I don't think that phone is hers."

  "Could it be a burner?" Ava asked. She squinted at the screen. "Remember we thought that Tripp could have used a burner phone to make his blackmail requests so the calls couldn't be traced?"

  "Tripp?" Carrie turned a confused look from me to Ava.

  "Uh, yeah," I admitted. "We thought maybe Tripp was the blackmailer at first."

  "But why?"

  "Well, I, uh, saw him doing something. Something that seemed off."

  "Off how?" Carrie pressed.

  I hesitated to tell her, not sure if I was sharing sensitive information with the wife of a killer. But chances were it was all going to come out eventually anyway, so I quickly filled her in on seeing Tripp burn Harper's clothes in the fire pit and how Ava and I had happened to see a duffel bag full of money in his trailer. I did not elaborate on how we'd happened to be inside his trailer, but luckily, Carrie didn't dig, her blonde brows just pulling deeper and deeper into a silent frown as I talked.

  "And you think Tripp might have had something to do with Harper's death?" she asked when I'd finished.

  I nodded. "I think it's a possibility."

  Carrie turned her gaze back to the screen, chewing on her lower lip in thought. "The police took Harper's iPhone."

  That much I knew. I also knew they hadn't found any mention of blackmail on it, and now I knew why—she'd had a disposable phone.

  "They didn't mention finding a second phone among her things?" I asked.

  Carrie shook her head. "No. And Bert actually watched them pretty carefully. He would have noticed."

  "Maybe she hid it," Ava said.

  "But the police have been all through her room. I think they would have found it."

  I'd been through there too, and I hadn't seen a black phone.

  "Maybe…" Ava said, drawing out the word, "her killer took it off her after she died."

  I raised an eyebrow her way. "Go on."

  "If the killer was someone Harper was blackmailing, the last thing they'd want is for the police to find a phone with their number in it, right?"

  I nodded. "Right. Especially if it had blackmail requests on it."

  "You think the killer still has the phone now?" Carrie asked, her gaze once again pinging between us as we formulated our new theory.

  I shrugged. "It's possible they destroyed it."

  "Or, it's possible it's still hidden away," Ava added. "Like at the bottom of a bag of cash."

  "You mean the duffel bag in Tripp's trailer?" Carrie asked.

  Ava nodded. "What if Harper was blackmailing Tripp about something she found out during their relationship?"

  "Possibly about his past," I added, thinking of his ex-girlfriend who'd ended up dead as well.

  "Right. And, if Harper was using a burner phone, it's possible Tripp didn't even know who was blackmailing him!"

  "Until he went to hand off the duffel bag of cash at your housewarming party," I said, nodding toward Carrie.

  "Maybe that was the first time he realized Harper was behind it, and he got angry," Ava said, picking up the thread again. "Maybe they fought, and Tripp lost his cool. And he threw Harper into the horse ring."

  I cringed, trying not to picture her body there.

  "Then he takes the cash back home," Ava continued, "along with Harper's disposable phone that she used to blackmail him. Then, the next day, he burns the evidence in the fire pit."

  "But he was burning clothes. Not a phone," I pointed out.

  Ava shrugged. "Maybe they were all tied together somehow."

  "Maybe," I said. While it was a good theory, I felt like something wasn't quite fitting.

  "I think we should go talk to Tripp," Carrie said, standing.

  "I don't know. He wasn't really in a talking mood the last time I approached him," I told her.

  "He'll talk to me," Carrie said, determination in her voice. "If he did this to Harper—if even part of what you're saying is true—there's no way I'm letting him get away with it."

  * * *

  Rosebay Meadows hadn't improved since my last visits. If it was possible, in the pale afternoon light, it looked even worse. The grass looked taller, the odd slabs of pavement more cracked, and the smattering of dilapidated homes and trailers clinging to the hillside looked even more run down.

  "This is where Tripp lives?" Carrie asked, winding her window up.

  "At the top of the hill," I explained, slowing my Jeep as I pulled up the dirt road.

  "I had no idea," she said, more to herself than us. Whether she had no idea her horse trainer wasn't as well off as she was or that some people actually had to live like this, I wasn't sure. But as I pulled to a stop outside Tripp's small plot of land, she let out a sad sigh before exiting the passenger seat.

  As the three of us carefully stepped over the debris in the front yard, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I pulled it out to see another text from David Allen.

  Looking for proof of life. And all the gory details.

  I grinned before shoving my phone back into my pocket and making a mental note to text him later when I had time for details. I caught up with Carrie as she was banging her fist on the metal front door so hard that the sound echoed inside.

  I shifted nervously from foot to foot, wondering exactly what Carrie planned to say.

  When no one answered, she knocked again but had much the same results—an echo from the interior but no sign of an occupant.

  "His truck's not here," Ava pointed out, nodding to the empty spot where it had been parked the day before. "Maybe he's not home."

  Carrie pulled her phone from her purse and scrolled through her contacts, stopping when she got to Tripp's name. I heard it ring four times before a generic computer voice said to leave a message.

  "No answer," she told us.

  Ava stood on tiptoe and peeked in the front window. While there wasn't a whole lot to see through the grungy glass and tacked up sheets, she did come to one conclusion. "Lights are all off in there. I don't think anyone is home."

  I took a step back toward my Jeep. "Well, I guess we can try coming back another time— Wait, what are you doing?"

  Ava paused with her hand on the front doorknob. "What?"

  "Are you trying to break in?" My gaze went from Ava to Carrie, and I stopped myself from adding again just in time.

  But Ava shook her head. "No,"

  "Good."

  "I was just wondering if the door was locked."

  "Ava, I don't think that's a good—"

  But I didn't get to finish as she plowed ahead, twisting the knob in her hand and pushing the door open easily. She gave me an innocent look. "Well, what do you know?"

  I rolled my eyes.

  "He's trusting, for a criminal," Carrie mumbled.

  "Alleged criminal," I added, suddenly feeling like it was a very bad idea to bring her here at all.

  Ava pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside, Carrie right behind her. I hesitated a moment, but since I was already an accessory after the fact again, I followed them.

  I glanced around and noticed some of the mess had been cleaned up. The interior felt different. Bigger. Like some things were missing. />
  "The pile of clothes is gone," Ava called from deeper in the trailer, standing at the bedroom doorway.

  I moved beside her and surveyed the small back room. She was right—no clothing in sight. I would have thought it was laundry day, but also missing was his bong, boots, and any sign of his horse training equipment.

  Ava lowered herself to the floor, looking under the bed. "The duffel bag is gone too."

  "What do you mean, gone?" Carrie asked from behind us.

  "I mean, it's not here." Ava straightened back up.

  No clothes, no equipment, no money.

  I met Ava's gaze as she voiced the same thing I was thinking.

  "It looks like Tripp's skipped town."

  Carrie's expression went from confused to angry, and she let out a couple of choice words that would never make it into a PG-13 movie. Suddenly I saw where she got that Stormy Winter's rage from on Carefree Hearts. "How dare he! He kills Harper and then runs!"

  I wasn't sure both of those statements were confirmed facts, but I had to admit that him leaving in a hurry did not look like the work of an innocent man.

  "We should probably get out of here," I said.

  Before I could act, Carrie's phone sounded from her handbag, and she quickly retrieved it, swiping the call on.

  "Hello…" Carrie answered, her voice still holding an edge from her tirade. She paused as she listened to the other end, her expression changing. "Wait—Bert, slow down. I can't understand what you're saying." She stepped out of the trailer.

  Ava kicked a stray beer can before she and I followed, closing the door behind us. Just for good measure, I used the hem of my dress to wipe the handle for any prints we might have left behind as I vaguely listened to Carrie's side of her phone conversation behind me.

  "No, don't say anything. I-I'll call Shuman. You just…don't say anything. I'll be right there." Carrie's voice was tight, and I could feel the sudden fear in it as she hung up.

  "What's wrong?" I asked, taking a step toward her.

  She carefully put her phone back in her purse. "It's Bert." She lifted her eyes to meet mine. "He's been arrested."