5 Blue Period

by Melanie Jackson

  “I was ready to go this morning. I want to go. But now Talbert has me interested. He is acting very strangely.”

  “Good. Then I needn’t call Esteban and put him off. It would disappoint him.”

  “He’s coming up?” Juliet wasn’t all that surprised.

  “Yes, tonight. He has had a sudden craving for Napa wine and perhaps for something less dull than following corrupt bankers around Los Angeles.”

  “Hm.”

  Juliet glanced around at the other tables. The lunchtime bedlam was calming and Juliet decided that they could probably order dessert without needing to straight-arm their server first.

  “I need further fortification against the sun,” she said.

  “The lemon sorbet?” Raphael asked and Juliet laughed.

  Was it good that he knew her so well?

  Chapter 5

  There was nothing gradual about the coming of the fog that afternoon and the valley sighed gratefully as it rolled inland. The summer had been the longest and hottest in a decade. The coastal clouds swelled over the crest of the hills and filled up the valley, trapping in the heat which could only gradually escape inland, but at least it blotted out the burning sun. It was heavier than the night before and less perfumed with fallen lavender. Juliet looked out of Raphael’s window and thought that anyone could be lurking in the oppressive, twilit gloom.

  “Are we ready to knock on Schneider’s door?” Raphael asked.

  They had decided that Schneider would be the easiest of their suspects to talk to that evening. Whether there was an actual grieving going on or not, convention said it would be in bad taste to approach the wife or son on the day of a family member’s murder.

  “Yes. At least I am ready to have some lemon cake and we may as well get on with this.” They had stopped at a small patisserie and picked up window dressing in case their new neighbor decided to accept their invitation for dessert and coffee.

  “One would think that you weren’t enjoying our puzzle,” Raphael scolded.

  Juliet snorted and pulled on a sweater. The evening was not at all cold, but the damp was unpleasant after the dry heat of the day and she didn’t want it on her skin.

  The pavers of the terrace were mostly smooth and the moss and creepers growing between the stones were of a modest height, but the stones were cracked and worn and she was wearing kitten heels. Juliet stepped carefully as she picked her way over to the third cottage where a porch light burned.

  She heard a noise and looked up. The nocturnal raiders were out, combing the foggy air for dinner. She wished them luck with the mosquitoes.

  Her knock was answered so promptly that she could only assume that Max Schneider was either expecting company or anticipating trouble to come knocking on his door.

  “Hello,” Juliet said to his expressionless, weathered face. He looked like one of those corpses pulled from the peat bog and his skin was so rough you could strike a match on his face. It left her a little taken aback. “I am Juliet Henry. I am staying at the end cottage. Raphael James and I were about to have a bit of lemon cake and wondered if you would care to join us.”

  Schneider’s face was frozen in a slight scowl.

  “If you don’t feel like socializing with strangers, I could bring you a piece of cake. If you wanted some.” Juliet did her best to look harmless. She must have succeeded, or else Schneider was tired of waiting for whoever or whatever event was pending.

  “That is kind of you. I would like that,” he answered and stepped out of his door. His voice and manners were rusty. That was understandable if he had been in jail. Or perhaps in a hospital. The state of his skin did not seem normal.

  As Talbert had said, Schneider was walking with a slight limp that made him even slower than Juliet. In the distance she could hear the harvesters. The grapes were brought in at night when it was cooler because it made them more stable and preserved the sugars.

  “These pavers are dangerous after dark,” Juliet said as she picked her way back to Raphael’s cottage. “I shouldn’t be wearing heels. I’ll end up breaking an ankle.”

  “The winery is not pedestrian friendly,” he agreed after a slight pause. He didn’t volunteer anything about his own accident.

  “It isn’t skirt friendly either. I need to stay away from the plants.” Juliet pulled her skirt away from a shrub laden with sticky blue flowers.

  “You are an artist?” he asked as she stopped to open the cottage door.

  “Yes, but I have a backup career picked out if this one should fail me.” Schneider turned to look at her. Even with the light from the cottage, his face was unreadable. “Apparently I am good at stomping grapes.”

  He nodded.

  “That’s right. I saw you there.”

  “Not my finest hour, though we did win the stomp. May I introduce my friend, Raphael James. Raphael, this is….” Juliet paused, wondering if she should betray their awareness of his identity. Conversational feints were annoying and she was tired.

  “Max Schneider,” the stiff face supplied.

  If he was taken aback by Raphael’s chair he gave no sign. Perhaps he had seen it already.

  “Please come in,” Raphael said. “Would you care for some coffee or tea? That red device on the table makes an acceptable beverage.”

  “Coffee, please.” Schneider pulled out one of the three ladder-back chairs at the small table. They had brought a third chair from Juliet’s cottage.

  “I’ll get it,” Juliet volunteered. They had agreed that though alcohol could bypass the critical faculties, their long-term goals might be better served with less obvious ploys.

  “You are here for the art show?” Schneider asked Raphael, making an effort at conversation.

  “Yes, but I doubt it will go on now. We had debated leaving but have decided to remain until the funeral. We have yet to pay a call of condolence either and it would have seemed….”

  “Graceless,” Juliet suggested when he paused.

  “Graceless,” Raphael agreed without a flicker of expression, “to leave without saying a word to the family.”

  Schneider didn’t exactly snort, but his exhalation was amused.

  “I don’t think there is much to condole about. Carissa never loved Carl, and Edward lost all affection for his father—and almost everyone—years ago.”

  “But surely not for Moira Mulligan?” Juliet asked, not looking directly at her guest as she poured water into the machine.

  “No, not Moira,” Schneider agreed after a moment. “You know the Mulligans?”

  “Only slightly,” Juliet said. “I took Raphael over to Trefoil this morning and that is the first time I met her. She looks a lot like Seamus.”

  She didn’t add that it was the first time she had met Seamus too.

  “Well, I’m betting there wasn’t much grief over at Trefoil either,” Schneider said and then pinched his lips together as if that would hold anymore bilious words inside.

  The machine began to make uncouth noises.

  “They were greatly shocked, I think,” Raphael said.

  “But maybe a little relieved that the neighborhood bully is dead,” Juliet added gently, placing a cup in front of their guest.

  “There seems to be some resentment of Blue Period’s sudden popularity among her neighbors,” Raphael suggested. He was being the good cop.

  “Or the way that Owens has lowered the tone of the neighborhood,” Juliet added with calculated bitchiness as she served their guest a slice of cake. “People are saying Blue Period wine should come with a screw top.”

  Juliet actually had nothing against screw tops so long as the wine was drinkable.

  It was the right move. Schneider actually laughed.

  “That’s true enough. Why waste the cork on it? There is no point in aging the wine because it is biologically dead by the time it reaches the bottle. It’ll never ripen or age. I doubt it can even go sour. In fact, I heard that he was actually considering doing bag-in-a-box wines for a fast foo
d chain before someone made him understand that vin ordinaire can only be so ordinaire and then you become a laughingstock.” He shook his head, but only a little as though his neck was also stiff. He also kept his sore ankle extended under the table. “As it is, there are a lot of people who got upset when they went from aging in oak barrels to just shoveling some woodchips into the tanks.”

  Juliet didn’t hide her grimace. Was that why the red wine had seemed so overpowering?

  “Are you a winemaker then?” Juliet asked, putting cake in front of Raphael and then cutting some for herself.

  “I was. Before the … accident. I’ve been away for a while.” Schneider’s eyes glanced at the door and Juliet wondered if he were listening for visitors.

  “Were you thinking of coming back to it now?” Raphael asked. His voice was polite, nothing more.

  “I guess maybe I am,” Schneider admitted. “I still have some friends and some people owe me favors. Big favors.”

  Could Edward Owens be one of them?

  “You would follow the old methods?” Juliet asked, genuinely curious.

  “More or less. I think science can help someone make an adequate wine, but it will never be a great one. It will never be a masterpiece like you get from a place like Trefoil.”

  Schneider changed the subject after that and refused to be brought back to it. They talked in polite generalities which told them little about Schneider’s mood or intentions toward the vineyard, Owens’ son or wife. Partly he was hard to read because of his face, but also because he was a man who held his cards very close to his vest.

  As ten o’clock rolled around, he finally excused himself. As he was leaving, he promised to stop by the visitor center and to see their work. Since there was no reason for him to do this, excepting good manners which Juliet didn’t think was his motivator, she assumed he was using their acquaintance as an excuse for dropping by the visitor center, which was being kept open in spite of Owens’ death.

  Apparently neither Edward nor Carissa saw any reason for making gestures of respect toward the dead. That might change if the media got obnoxious. Murders of millionaires, especially if unsolved, could make them that way.

  Though perhaps the remaining Owens were of the opinion that any press was good press.

  “Well, we gained some good will, I think,” Juliet said as she watched Schneider’s door close. She looked up into the fog but couldn’t see any bats if they were still there.

  “Yes, and that is all very well, but I am not sure we gained any useful information. He is very difficult to read.” Raphael sounded keyed up. Juliet wondered if he would want to sketch her.

  “Hopefully we didn’t give any away.”

  They looked at each other and then turned and went back into the cottage. There was still a little lemon cake and neither of them was sleepy.

  Chapter 6

  Juliet was dressed when the knock fell on her door. As she had hoped, her visitor was Esteban and not Talbert.

  It was nice that the gods decided to answer her prayers. Esteban was as beautiful as the sunrise, though infinitely harder and more dangerous.

  “Come in and have some coffee. I have to subdue my hair. The heat has made it rambunctious.”

  “Bella,” Esteban said and kissed her cheek. Juliet wasn’t sure when the relationship had grown into the social-kissing level but it was sometime after he had been shot and Juliet saved his life. “Is Raphael up?”

  “I’m not sure. We had a bit of a late night, carousing with a murder suspect. Leave the door open. Let’s enjoy the cool while we can.”

  “And does this person remain a suspect?” Esteban asked, going to the Keurig and helping himself.

  “Max Schneider. Hard to say. I’ve never met anyone with so few physical tells.” Juliet went on to explain what they had heard about Schneider and what the man himself had said.

  “The gossip is partly wrong,” Esteban said when she was done talking and had her hair pinned into a chignon. “He was arrested on a charge of embezzlement in 2009, but it didn’t stick. Partly because Owens refused to cooperate with authorities. But by then Schneider had sold out a controlling interest in the vineyard to his partner, Carl Owens, who was what you call a Johnny-on-the-spot in the offer to supply his friend with money in return for his share of the business—a share that had been left to Schneider by Owens’ first wife. It might have seemed a good deal at the time because the winery was not yet popular and good attorneys are expensive.”

  Juliet nodded.

  “Schneider was eventually released from jail when it became apparent that without cooperation from Owens there wasn’t enough evidence to make the case stick. There should have been some gratitude, but one gathers that there was not.”

  “Well, if he thought Owens had profited from his misfortune….”

  “That seems to be the case. Schneider was making plans to come north and look up Owens when there was a fire at his home. Arson, it was ruled, and professionally managed. Because he had wine making supplies there, the fire released some sort of chemicals into the air and he was burned. He has spent the last two years getting surgeries and doing therapy to repair the lung damage he suffered. His parents’ collection of antique furniture had to be sold off, at least the pieces that were not too badly damaged. Even with some marring, Louis the whatever tables and chairs are worth a bit of money.”

  Juliet frowned, thinking of the table at Trefoil. Had Seamus and Moira purchased it to help Schneider out? Why? To thwart Owens? Was their animosity predating Carl Owens’ efforts to buy their winery?

  “Was he guilty of embezzlement? I mean, did he actually do it?”

  Esteban shrugged.

  “Who knows? He has no other record of financial wrongdoing, but the good criminals never do.”

  “And Owens?”

  “His reputation—in his old business which was some sort of computer start-up—was for being sharp and unscrupulous. And perhaps a bit careless when handling proprietary technology. There is nothing criminal in his past however. At least nothing that I can find. And the wine business seems clean.”

  Juliet suppressed a sigh. Generic data-sniffing programs could catch some things, but not all. In many cases there was no substitute for human intuition. She was going to have to dig deeper into the morass of Owens’ relationships.

  She wondered if the business was as unsoiled as it looked on the surface. It was rare not to have a company being stalked by a heavy debt load, especially when it was expanding rapidly. Still, this was Esteban’s area. If there was something to find, he would find it eventually.

  “If Schneider felt that Owens had been unfair—or was in some way responsible for his bad luck….”

  “Then he would have an excellent reason for wanting him dead,” Esteban finished. “But that is not definite.”

  Juliet nodded.

  “You said Owens owned some kind of computer company? Manufacturing, or software?”

  “Yes to both. The main plant was in the Silicon Valley with offices in Seattle and Los Angeles and Tokyo.”

  “So there is an international connection. I suppose that might explain why Talbert was interested in him. Perhaps. It makes more sense than the NSA suddenly being interested in Farmer Carl’s fermenting grapes.” Juliet was interrupted by a tap on the doorframe and Raphael rolled in.

  “Mercy! I need coffee.”

  Juliet went to make him a cup.

  After breakfast and some planning, they split up to deploy their plan. Raphael was going to see the estate manager about packing their paintings when the show was over and also to pay a call of condolence on the widow. Esteban was going to do more research after he dropped off Raphael.

  Juliet was going to visit the only son for similar purposes and see if Edward was looking any more grief stricken now that the first shock had passed. Once in a while it worked that way, though not often. Usually first reactions were the most honest ones.

  And it could not be forgotten that some peo
ple went through life doing whatever they wanted, loving no one, immune from self-judgment and incapable of true regret. It was possible that he was such a person. That didn’t mean that he was a killer, but Juliet had found that the odds of someone resorting to murder went up whenever someone cared too little. Or too much.

  Having treated herself to enough coffee to get her eyes open and her brain at least partially functional, she stepped out onto her patio to see what the day would be like.

  A few wisps of mist huddled around the edges of the hilltops and tallest trees, fugitives on the run from the laws of nature which said their time had passed. In the distance clouds of red dust swam through the air behind the hoe traveling below the posted speed limit on the frontage road, dusty minnows confused by the machine’s presence and covered the haphazard patches of California poppies.

  In the valley, the sun had finally burned through the fog and was bathing the world with radiance. It touched the grapevines and touched the trees. It even touched the khaki-clad butt that Juliet was sure belonged to Jeffry Talbert. She couldn’t see much of his upper body since he was crawling through a bush, but he held a set of high-tech binoculars in a hand which he had pushed against his eyes. The back of his neck was sunburned and she wondered how much of his time was being spent skulking in the shrubbery.

  Juliet looked over the scenery he was interested in. There were empty vines and then some gardens and finally the vine-covered walls of the visitor center where Esteban’s car was parked. A tanker was doing a reverse manoeuver into the bay of an outbuilding where the white wine was stored, but that was the only sign of movement or life. There were no birds, no animals, not even human ones. The vegetation was attractive, of course. No grass had ever been so green and the gravel parking lot was raked to perfection, but Juliet couldn’t see any cause for sustained interest in the sterile environment.

  “Good morning,” she said in a normal voice as she stepped up to the bush with the sticky blue flowers. She was pleased to see that Talbert’s back was covered in them.