A Tainted Finish: A Sydney McGrath Mystery

by Horn, Rachael

  “You fought about her?”

  “Yes. In the end I think it was about her. At the time I thought it was something different.” He returned to the stepladder and the task of inspecting the engine. Syd pondered the intensity of a love for a child that could outbid the love of a man. She may have known such a love when she was small. It was the kind of love that offered no choices or wins, and always trumped personal happiness. But Olivier saw that kind of love to fruition, and felt the terrible burden of it in his own life. He fled to her uncle to free himself. She let out a deep resolute sigh.

  She waited a few more minutes before patting the side of the plane and trotting off to find Albert. His muffled voice could be heard coming from the innards of a library of oily steel and iron parts on the other side of the hangar.

  “Albert?” she called out.

  Albert called back to her. He was hidden behind bookshelves holding an array of manuals. She walked over to him, standing next to another old-timer in classic blue work overalls smattered with oil stains and white chalky stuff. Frank was embroidered on a patch over his right breast, mended several times with yellow and red thread. He was an unkempt man with wispy white hair combed over the top of his head, floating like feathers in the ambient breeze. He had the same white powdery stuff on his whiskered face, and Syd smiled as she suspected a penchant for powdered sugar donuts. His eyes were heavy and bloodshot, sad and unfathomably blue.

  “I'm so sorry for your loss, dear,” he said gently, taking her hand and patting it. His huge hands were rough and stained black in the creases, and his thick fingers were sprinkled with sugar. The kindness in his eyes instantly cut through Syd in the worst way, and she withdrew her hand and cleared her throat reflexively. She could see his forgiveness for her in his empathetic smile and warm eyes.

  “I’ve known your uncle for years now,” he said, nodding toward a door in the far corner of the hangar. “Me and him played checkers sometimes.” Syd smiled at the thought of Clarence playing checkers in the greasy side room of a machine shop. She wondered if he ate powdered donuts with Frank. “Clarence asked me questions about airplane mechanics too,” he said, nodding and winking. It was clear both men viewed winking as a common means of communicating with women.

  “Are you working on the plane now?” she asked.

  “Not really. Nothing wrong with her, I suspect.”

  “Not after the accident?”

  “Nope. Just some dings from a hard landing. Her landing gear shocks was bent up a bit, but I'm pretty much done restoring her from that. She was built for rough landings on sod fields. I'm just trying to match the paint and get the woodwork in the cockpit refinished.” He looked thoughtfully up at the top of the hangar. “Nothing wrong with her before the accident neither. We inspected her together, Clarence and me. Before every flight.”

  “So what happened then?”

  He squished his mouth in an upside down C. “A clamp in the wrong place, I reckon.” He lowered his voice a little.

  “What do you mean?” She whispered back.

  “A clamp on the elevator cable preventing the correction of pitch fully. Also one on the rudder cables. The ailerons are stable on that craft, so he was able to rudder into a slow barrel roll in spite of the cable range and pull the gimbal hard to level her out when he got the chance.”

  “Are the clamps still on the cable?”

  “Nope. I took em off. And I gave em to Clarence.” He sucked his teeth and shuffled his worn boots.

  “How did they get there? Didn't you see them before he took off? You said you checked the plane before every flight.” She sounded accusatory and the old man looked hurt.

  “I did check it. Not an hour before he left the tarmac.” Syd wondered for a moment if Frank could be trusted.

  “Don't you have to file reports for those kinds of accidents?” She pressed. He grimaced at her suggestion and only screwed tight his mouth.

  She tried a different tack. “Do you have security cameras?” The old man shrugged and shuffled his feet again. She had put him on his guard, and it appeared he finished talking to her.

  She would have to play on his sympathy and what she suspected might be a knack for subterfuge and collusion. She sighed and moved closer to him, touching him on his sleeve.

  “Okay, I'm going to come clean with you. My Uncle's friend, Olivier Ruiz is the guy who flew with my uncle that day before the plane had troubles.”

  “Yup. That boy can fly, for sure. The Taperwing takes a daring pilot,” he said, delivering his highest standard of approval.

  “And the police think Olivier may have been responsible for my uncle's death. And they think that the plane accident in June was another attempt on his life.”

  “It was. Someone tampered with his plane, if my name isn't Frank.” He whispered back into her face, so close that Syd could smell the coffee and powdered donuts on his sour breath. Syd sighed. He might not be any help at all, she thought.

  “You removed the clamps and gave them to my uncle?” she asked.

  “Yup. And then he put it back on and ran some tests on the ground.” Frank stared at her, eyebrows raised in conspiracy.

  “And...?”

  “Like I said, someone tampered with the cables to prevent a recovery from a flip or a deep stall.”

  “My uncle knew this,” she said flatly.

  “Yup. And he knew it weren't that Argentine boy neither.”

  “Jesus,” she said, realizing what Frank meant. Clarence had survived an attempted murder and had known about it just as he received his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Syd's gut wrenched with guilt and empathy.

  “So he asked me to keep an eye out on her. And to keep my mouth shut about the shenanigans.”

  “Why? Why would he ask you to do that?”

  “His way, I guess. He said something about a mess to clean up. Said they would get theirs anyhow. Said he didn't want to worry the ladies. Think he might have meant you.” He winked again.

  “And you kept this secret? Even if it was attempted murder?” She was more than a little peeved that so much secrecy could allay the fact that a crime was committed. He nodded sheepishly, holding his hands up in surrender.

  “Now understand, I wasn’t too excited about keeping it a secret,” he said. “But he said the cancer would do the job anyhow and he assured me that the culprit would get their just desserts. Now understand that the man had got himself in a pickle with some bad sorts who were going after his life's work. He wanted time to rectify it all. And he wanted to spare himself and his loved ones the pain of a protracted investigation and trial.” He was talking faster than he had before, clearly venting some long pent-up anxiety over his concession to Clarence's demands. He grabbed Syd's hands and held them in his own firmly. “Now understand that your uncle was a man of integrity. But he did things his own way. He held no truck with laying out his business with the police or the newspapers.” Frank's obvious respect for Clarence spread out over his wrinkled face. His eyes welled up with tears. “I ain't a man to tell anyone how to live. Especially a man who’s honest and lives with honor. And any man who lives his life loving a woman he can't have, raising a kid who ain't his own, and asking for nothing for himself in return is a man worth keeping secrets for.”

  Syd lowered her eyes, but she let him keep her hands. She could feel the rough skin of Frank's strong fingers against hers. She stood frozen in this hand grip before hearing the shuffle of Albert's boots and the light clip of another set of footsteps moving closer.

  “Ah, hullo there, Olivier,” Frank said. He let go of her hands.

  Olivier strode gracefully past the shelves of greasy parts, and shook Frank's hand.

  “Hello, Frank,” Olivier said. Syd watched Olivier's eyes soften when they met the old man's, which were still misty from their conversation. They shook hands longer than normal. Then Olivier moved in for an embrace. They patted each other's backs as hard as they hugged.

  Frank pulled away first, leaving Oliv
ier looking vulnerable and young. He stepped back from Frank, who patted him hard on the shoulder one last time.

  “One hell of a pilot, son,” he said, nearly yelling at Olivier.

  Olivier nodded, seeming too emotional to speak. Syd watched, flabbergasted. She had no idea who this man Frank was, but he apparently had an emotional connection with her uncle and Olivier.

  “You two known each other long?” Syd asked.

  “Uh, no, actually. We just met once. Last June, when I flew up with Clarence.”

  “And then we had some beers,” Frank said.

  Beer. It was the male version of oxytocin. Syd was struck by what she could never understand in men. Somehow sharing mediocre beer between men made them a close-knit tribe unto themselves.

  “But Clarence loved this boy like a son, you know,” Frank continued. “Talked ‘bout him all the time. Proud of him as a pilot and a winemaker. I know this boy never could have harmed Clarence. Told that Sheriff so too.”

  “You told the Sheriff about the clamp though, right?” Syd asked again.

  Frank looked at Syd as though she had lost her mind. “Nope. Like I told you, I promised to keep it a secret.”

  “But you lied to a Sheriff,” Syd said.

  “I might have to take that up with my maker in the end. But I sleep fine at night anyhow.” He screwed his face up philosophically, “ 'sides, sometimes the law ain't worth abiding if it gives more grief than if things are just let be. Clarence fixed it up so the culprit would get theirs. He had his own style of poetry, I won’t deny it.”

  Olivier nodded firmly and turned on his heels. He put his arm around Syd and pushed her out of the rows of shelves without a word. Syd looked back at Frank, who nodded and winked.

  Chapter 31

  Syd sat next to Olivier in the old flatbed Ford in complete silence. She wasn't sure if her throat was hurting from her recent illness or from a lump of tragedy taking residence after her morning of revelations about Clarence. Her mind was spinning. It appeared that her uncle was closer and more candid to an old mechanic than his lifelong best friend. But then again, Jack had been involved in some nasty business at the time when Clarence may have felt compelled to bear his soul to someone. And now, Jack was as deeply involved and lucky to be alive. Syd made a mental note to visit Jack later in the evening while Olivier steered the old truck up to the winery. “I’ve got to get the Zin in the press now. Alejandro has set it up.” He squinted at his hands on the steering wheel. “You should maybe rest. You've had a rough day.”

  “I'll just go down to the house for a bit,” she answered, feeling defeated and a bit helpless. She slid off the seat of the truck and floated back to the house in a fog. She entered through the kitchen to find the house empty. She called out, to no avail, wandering the rooms upstairs. She found a note on the kitchen table from Charlie.

  Siddy,

  Where the hell are you! I've gone to meet Dad at the station. Jack is out of ICU.

  Leave a fucking note!

  Charles

  Syd read the note a few times before folding it up and discarding it in the waste basket under the sink. She felt guilty for leaving without telling Charlie, but she remembered how disgusted her best friend was at Becky for not informing the police about the mysterious phone call when the office was torn apart. Charlie was willing to break the rules and follow a hunch when it came to amateur sleuthing, but Sydney instinctively knew that she would not approve of going off with Olivier, her father’s primary suspect, to investigate. Pensively, she puttered around the house for a while after she made a quick meal of toast and peanut butter. Her feet absently toured the empty house, leaving her to feel lonelier than she could remember. She realized that she was exhausted and dizzy, and soon she took heed to Olivier’s advice and laid down for a nap. She stirred restlessly in bed for a half hour before giving up. Five minutes later she pulled on her muck boots and rain gear and found herself standing next to Alejandro at the press, with a new understanding of Olivier’s strategy to stay busy.

  They worked for a few hours outside in the cold, crisp day. The sunlight faded around four in the afternoon, giving way to a freezing autumn breeze. They siphoned off the free run wine into a tank until the pomace was dry. Then they raised the fermentation tank over the press opening and tilted it to dump the skins into the press. Olivier stood on a scaffolding over the press, raking the pomace out of the tank. They could only fill the press with three fermentation tanks, which meant they had to do two cycles. Syd worked hard shoveling the dry cake of the pomace out of the press after the press cycles ran dry. They filled a harvest bin with the dry grape skins and Alejandro used the old tractor to empty the bins in the compost pile near the upper vineyard. Syd cleaned the press and the equipment between cycles.

  The day grew colder as the sun disappeared. Syd shivered in her damp quilted Carhartts, dipping her hands in a bucket of warm water to keep them agile. Alejandro had kept his distance from her, which she dismissed as reticence to regale her with the previous night's exploits. She spent the day in a cloud of memories and contemplation. Her body and hands moved automatically while her head worked through the details of the morning. The men left her alone, speaking to themselves quietly. At dusk, she silently prepped herself to climb into the press for the final cleaning. She tightened her rain gear around her face like a slick wimple and gathered her brushes and cleaner. Only as she was ready to climb under the stainless steel bullet-shaped press to get inside did she catch part of their conversation.

  “He hit him? Or did he have a weapon?” Olivier asked, looking shocked and amused all at once.

  “He only had his deadly hands,” Alejandro answered, waving his hands in mock kung-fu motion.

  “But he attacked him?” Olivier asked.

  “Yeah, man. He jumped him in a bar. Like some kind of gangsta.” Alejandro was obviously excited and amused. He fell into sniggering that reminded Syd of their trysts so long ago.

  “Who? Who attacked who?” Syd butted in.

  They turned to look at her in surprise, and she remembered that she wore a slicker tightened around her face. It was very unflattering. She felt she might look terrible. She preferred it when they treated her as if she was invisible.

  “Francois Bertrand. His majesty, the winemaker,” Alejandro said, smirking while be began squirting Syd with the hose.

  “He was attacked?” Syd asked, glaring at him.

  “Nope. He did the attacking. He's cooling his heels in jail now.” Alejandro smiled, enjoying hosing her down.

  “This is really old rain gear, pendejo!” she said, more than a little peeved at the soaking he was giving her.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said mischievously, turning his hose off. “Yeah… So, that asshole who was buying the winery got his ass kicked by a winemaker. And Francois’s now in jail and all those wineries he makes wine for are shit out of luck.” He took a swig from a flask that he retrieved from the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. He offered it to Syd and she took a long pull.Syd choked a bit on the rough whiskey. It stung her still raw throat.

  “So Monsieur Bertrand is in jail,” she said, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. “He attacked Hans Feldman.”

  “Yup.” Alejandro nodded.

  “When? How’d you find out?”

  “Last night. It was at that fancy bar downtown that you made me take you to when you turned 21, remember? My uncle texted me. Francois was supposed to get the late harvest grapes this morning and the pickers had to work the vines instead of apples, so they were pissed off anyway. It was fucking cold this morning. And then the bins just sat there in the vineyard and never got picked up.” He raised his eyebrows and whistled through his teeth. “Man those wineries are going to be pissed.”

  “Why would Francois attack Feldman?” She interjected, looking between the men. Olivier frowned.

  “Because he's a sleezebag, m’hija wouldn't be surprised if Francois is our Peeping Tom.” Alejandro offered, sagely.

  “A 60-y
ear-old Peeping Tom who can out run you?” she teased.

  Alejandro's face grew serious. “Maybe. And he had reason to kill Clarence.”

  “Why? Jealousy? Revenge? I don't see it, Alejandro.”

  “Never underestimate the compelling power of envy,” Olivier piped in for the first time. He reached for the flask. “Your uncle said that to me once,” he explained.

  “But does Francois envy Feldman? There is something else between those two. I saw them arguing at the memorial service. Francois looked desperate while Feldman was cool as a cuke.” She chewed on the inside of her lip while she climbed under the press to hose out the loose grape skins, hoisting half her body inside the huge stainless steel tube. Both men watched her enter the tight space with puzzled looks on their faces. She started to rinse out the echoing chamber with very hot water, while her mind mulled over Alejandro’s gossip. Although her mind was bursting with the events of the day the hot steam and closed space cleared up her stuffy head, leaving her completely soaked and completely lost in thought.

  ~

  Syd got back down to the house a little before seven. She was instantly struck by the delicious smells of dinner as she made her way down the drive, but she found Charlie cooking when she stepped inside instead of Rosa. She stood in front of the large Ada stovetop frying taco shells. Small colorful Fiestaware bowls were spread out in the center of the table, holding taco fixings. There were at least a dozen of them. Syd loved Charlie's tacos almost as much as Rosa’s.

  Charlie wielded her long chef's tongs like a cattle prod. “Where were you this morning?” She jabbed her tongs at Syd's wet clothes. Syd thought she looked more like a 1950s-era snapshot of the-good-housewife with her apron and her hair held in a bandanna than she could have ever imagined. Syd dodged her and escaped into the other room.

  “I'm talking to you, young lady!” she bellowed through the doorway in a shrill falsetto.

  Syd shrugged and grabbed a handful of shredded cheese out of one of the bowls as she passed the kitchen table on her way to the spare room. She kicked off her rubber boots and peeled off her wet clothes, leaving them in a sopping pile on the floor. Her skin was freezing and goose-pimpled, and she was shivering. She clamored into a pair of yoga pants and pulled on her favorite oversized sweatshirt. She finished dressing by pulling on a pair of Clarence's old wool socks. They were far too large for her, with the heel high up on her ankle. Feeling unbearably cold, she grabbed the old quilt that she uncharacteristically folded up that morning and draped it around her like a shawl. Charlie stood guarding the table when Syd shuffled her thick wool clad feet across the wood floorboards. “Ah, eh, eh,” she yelled into Syd's ear and slapped back her hand as Syd reached for more shredded cheese. “Not until I get answers.” Charlie stood with crossed arms, tapping her foot.