by Harvey, JM
Midge didn’t argue, merely nodded as her eyes drifted over my rows of vines, lingering on the spot where Kevin Harlan had been found murdered. She shook her head and looked at me sidelong.
“I’m getting used to finding bodies up here,” she said, just as unfriendly as ever, echoing her snarky comment of the night before.
I tried not to let it get to me. I liked Midge and was sorry that our relationship had taken such an ugly turn last year. But it wasn’t my fault, and I wasn’t going to apologize. I made no reply.
“If you want, I can get the deputies to bag up the skins and stems,” she said grudgingly, the first tiny crack in her surly demeanor. “You can compost them when we’re done. I'm not hauling that mess down to the lab.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want the stems and skins for compost. It was just too gruesome to contemplate. Like using graveyard soil in your vegetable garden.
“I’ll get the hose,” I repeated and turned away. I went into the cellar and crossed to the workbench, Midge trailing behind me.
Jessica hadn’t been exaggerating about the number of tools taken into evidence the night before; every implement with an edge was missing. The pegboard was almost naked, but the 3” black hose we use to pump the crushed wine into the press pan for settling prior to racking was coiled in its place. It was heavy, but I carried it to the tank and stooped down to connect it to the racking port. The clamps were a pain, but I managed it. I’d have to discard the hose after the tank was drained. Two hundred bucks gone. It was too bad I couldn’t discard my memories of Dimitri’s body hanging over the top of the tank so easily.
“How well did you know Mr. Pappos?” Midge asked as I got the hose snugged down.
“Not very well,” I replied. I stood, made sure the hose's oversized nozzle was closed, then flipped open the valve at the bottom of the tank. The hose was heavy and as awkward as a boa constrictor, but Midge offered no help as I dragged it across the floor, out the door and snaked it across the lawn.
“From the statements last night it seems like everyone hated him,” Midge said as she stooped to grab the tarp and the sieve.
“Dimitri was very opinionated,” I said and left it at that.
The hose didn’t reach the tallus slope, only made it as far as the middle of my side yard, but there was no help for it.
Midge spread the tarp and placed the sieve at the near end. She took up the hose and worked the nozzle open. Grape juice squirted out in a rush, splattering her uniform blouse and splashing across her face. She gagged and dropped the hose. Pale-pink juice gushed across the yard in a thick stream until I stooped and closed the valve.
Midge was soaked and glaring at me. Her buddies back at the patrol car tried to hide their smirks as wine dripped off her chin. “You can go,” she finally said to me through her teeth.
I went, but only as far as the kitchen, after stopping under the awning to ask Victor to bring over the wagon.
I washed cutlery in the sink as the overloaded dishwasher churned away on a load of plates and glassware, but the cutlery was just an excuse to watch the three police officers work. By the time they got the hang of the hose, they were all dappled with grape juice, stems, and skins.
Jessica came downstairs at 11:00. The caterer, Charlie, arrived a moment later. I left them in the kitchen and went to my office-cubby in the tasting room to call my insurance agent, Steven Hearst Junior, and ruin his day.
I had been a customer of Steven’s father, Steve Senior, for twenty years. Steve Senior was a burly Napa Valley native with a beefy handshake, a skin-tight crew cut, and a willingness to chop through the red tape for his customers. His son was anemic and penny pinching.
“Two claims in eleven months,” he said doubtfully. “And that figure you gave me. I mean, this was grape juice, not wine, right?”
“It was a product with a cost of production and an expected return,” I said sharply. I had done my research during our last wrangling match the year before; I knew the exact wording of my policy.
“I’m just telling you what the company’s going to tell me,” he said defensively.
“Maybe I should take my business elsewhere.”
“Actually, they might insist you do just that,” he said, his tone brightening perceptibly.
“Steven,” I said warningly, and that was all I needed to say. I was as good at scolding other people’s children as I was my own.
“All right. I’ll type it up and get it in today,” he said. “But I make no promises…”
“Do that,” I said and hung up.
Charlie and Jessica were hard at work, boxing the caterer’s clean plates and clearing and loading the dishwasher. I pitched in, moving boxes to the door and stacking them. Their giggles and glances during the process made me smile at first, but the cloying scent of young love soon made me want to throw up. Does that make me a shrew? So be it. I was happy to exit the kitchen when a large truck with ‘Star Crossed Vineyard’ stenciled on the side pulled up out back and Blake Becker climbed down. He went to the rear of the truck, rolled up the door and took down a moving dolly.
I was surprised to see Blake, though he did have an appointment to pick up fifty cases of the Reserve cabernet. I mean, his partner had died just the night before. And I was afraid he had made a wasted trip. Midge and her crew of two would probably not appreciate the activity in the cellar while it was still a crime scene.
I dried my hands and exited the kitchen. Blake waved at me and started my way, but I held a hand up at him and crossed the lawn to where Midge was pawing through a massive pile of tangled stems, skins, and seeds with rubber-gloved hands. She was sweating, her uniform wet with as much perspiration as wine juice. Her partners looked no better, exhausted from shoveling the heavy must.
I tried not to think of all the bottles the wine now soaking into my yard would have filled - it seemed trivial when weighed against a man’s life - but I couldn’t help it.
Blake had ignored my hand gesture and followed me down. I hooked a thumb at him and told Midge, “Blake’s here to collect the cased wine at the front of the cellar. If that’s all right?”
Midge thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “We’re done in there. Just stay away from the tank.” I had started to turn away when she stopped me. “Ever seen this before?” She asked as she plucked something from the tarp and held it up between two fingers. It was a long and twisted piece of what looked like unraveling string with crosspieces of something dark and matted woven into it. I looked like a rope ladder with only a single rope. I ducked down for a close look and saw that the ‘rungs’ of the ladder were actually feathers and tiny bones knotted into a ‘string’ of woven hair. I jerked back, disgusted and a little unsettled. There was something sinister about the ugly thing.
“A witch’s ladder,” Blake said from behind me and Midge’s gaze jumped to him.
“A what?” she asked.
“A witch’s ladder,” Blake said. “Dimitri found one under his bed last week. He brought it to the office,” he said, staring at the object. “Supposed to be able to curse a person if they sleep above it.”
“Did he know who put it under his bed?” Midge asked.
Blake shot me a guilty look before replying. “Dimitri thought Samson put it there.”
“That’s crazy—” I began, but Midge wasn’t listening.
“Is this the one he found?” Midge asked, staring unblinkingly at Blake.
Blake shook his head. “He burned that one in the parking lot at work,” he said. “And then he buried it.” Blake shifted uncomfortable under Midge’s steady gaze. “I know it sounds crazy,” he added helplessly.
“Samson is no witch,” I said.
Blake said nothing; he just continued to stare at the hair and bone ladder until Midge set the ghastly thing back down on the tarp and resumed pawing through the must. Conversation over. But the damage had been done. One more finger had been pointed at Samson.
I turned to Blake. “Let's get the wine
loaded,” I said more tersely than was necessary. I headed for the cellar and he followed. I pointed out the wine he was to take. Blake nodded and his eyes drifted over to the tank Midge had just drained. Through the access port, I could see there was still a thick mat of must in the bottom of the tank. The deputies still had some work ahead of them.
Blake’s gaze continued back into the dimness of the crowded wine cave. “You should really let me store more of this for you,” he said. “I have a larger cellar open. We could move your personal stock into it and you’d have plenty of room to store what you have bottle aging.”
I wasn’t interested. I would hold onto the rest of my wine. Self-reliance is my byword. If you’re a woman with a runaway husband, you’ll understand. I was even feeling a little doubtful about letting him have the fifty cases I had agreed to auction off through Star Crossed. If Angela’s accusations about Star Crossed were accurate…
I kept those thoughts to myself. “No, but thanks,” I told him as I headed for the stairs. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me. I retreated upstairs to the kitchen where Charlie and Jessica were still swooning and mooning. I left them to it and went into the tasting room to my computer. I needed to log the wine being taken by Blake and print the address labels for sixteen cases of the 2011 I was shipping to four different restaurants in San Francisco the following day.
I hate paperwork, but that day it was an escape that made the drudgery almost worthwhile.
By the time I had the shipping labels printed and the accounting spreadsheet updated, Charlie and Blake were gone and Jessica was out in the rows with Victor and the two laborers, trimming vines and cleaning up debris from the rushed harvest last week. The back yard had been cleared, the tent was down in an untidy pile and the battered chairs and tables were stacked together like a weary group of soldiers after a battle. I headed outside.
The hose I had attached to the wine tank was still stretched across the yard, a sticky pile of debris the only remains of more than two hundred liters of wine. Midge's partners were gone, and she was stowing the tarp and the sieve in the trunk of her car. She looked up at me as I approached. Her gaze was flat and unfriendly, a look I’d had more than enough of. Midge and I had not been friends before the incidents of the previous year, but we had not been enemies either. It was time to confront the issue head on.
I reached the sheriff’s car as she thumped the trunk lid closed.
“We're done,” she said. She circled the car, popped the door open and started to duck inside.
“I'm as sorry as you are about what happened last year,” I said abruptly, not bothering with any preliminaries. “But it wasn't my fault.”
She stood with one foot in the car and glared at me for a moment. And then her expression softened. “No,” she said tiredly, “It was my fault. Mine and Hunter’s. If we had done our jobs better—”
“It was his fault,” I said, and we both knew who I was talking about, and it wasn't Hunter. The words sounded harsh and bitter, but they were true.
She nodded, but not like she was agreeing with me, more like she was considering the possibility. “Maybe it was all of our faults,” she said.
I sighed and my shoulders slumped. I nodded. “Maybe. Truce?” I asked and she gave me her tight little smile.
“Sure,” she replied. “Until you start playing Sherlock Holmes again,” she added, her smile widening a notch.
I laughed. “Those days are over,” I promised her. “I learned my lesson the hard way.”
Midge dropped behind the wheel and backed away. I watched her go, then turned and headed down the slope to the pile of must.
I rewound the rubber hose, closed the tank’s valve and disconnected the hose. The hose went straight into the trash, fittings and all. I stood there for a moment, looking around the cellar. The police had left it almost as neat as they found it - which isn’t saying much. The back of the cellar is cluttered, but picturesque; the front is all industry. Canvas-cloaked machinery lines the walls two rows deep. The bottling line, which includes the corking machinery, the bottle conveyor, the sterilizing equipment, the encapsulater, and an ancient labeler, fills half the floor while stacked cases of empty bottles, foil capsules, and new corks are wedged in wherever they’ll fit.
I crossed to the tank and ducked to look through the access port. Almost all of the must had been removed, but there was still a mess of sticky fluid and skins and seeds inside. I hooked up the garden hose, got out the sanitizing solution, and climbed up on top of the catwalk where Samson had perched just the night before, I went to work, hosing down the tank, letting the effluent run into the drain set into the concrete floor as I thought about Midge Tidwell and the promise I had just made to mind my own business.
I had meant it when I said it, but, sadly, it was a promise I was not going to be able to keep.
I spent a fitful evening on my own. Both Jessica and Victor begged off on my dinner invitation, but I didn’t resent them for their departure. I was not fit company. The shock of Dimitri’s death was wearing off and the reality was sinking in. It seemed impossible another person had been murdered on my property.
As the sun set over the Pacific, the mottled yellow carbon-haze over the freeways far to the west turned into an impressionistic painting of pinks and blues. I sat on my patio drinking a very short scotch, trying to let the beauty of the view and the knowledge of a completed harvest ease my dark mood. It didn’t work. My gaze drifted to the Harlans’ converted barn and the vineyard that hugged the slope below it. The home was well tended by a yard service, but it looked dusty and deserted. Not just empty, but void of life. The vineyard behind the house, trellised like a green waterfall down the side of the steep slope, was shaggy and unkempt. It had been picked by one of the big winemakers for their low price cabernet, but little had been done to prepare the new canes for next year’s growing season. It was sad Kevin had worked so hard to create rows that were being left to wither.
Is it any wonder Jess and Victor abandoned me? I was even sick of myself. I dumped out the rest of the scotch and went up to bed.
Chapter 10
The phone in the cellar, Violet’s business line, rang at 7:10AM while I was slipping on a pair of gloves and scanning the almost empty pegboard for something to use as a pruning blade. A few hours in the rows seemed like good therapy. Not to mention the vines offered a perfect hiding place from Samson, who would arrive shortly and immediately notice the missing fifty cases of wine. I could imagine the explosion that would follow when I told him I had signed an auction deal with Star Crossed. It was going to be a big one, the biggest ever. He might even become the first Greek in outer space.
I thought of letting the call go to voicemail then reconsidered. It could be Hunter with an update.
I wish I had let it ring.
“Claire,” Angela Zorn breathed in my ear then continued in a rush. “The police were just here. They told me about Dimitri and Jorge. What happened? They wouldn’t give me any details.”
I told her, keeping it short and simple. Dimitri had been murdered and Jorge arrested. By the time I had finished she was past being curious; she was angry.
“I’m glad that man is dead,” she said viciously and I winced. I definitely heard a little whiskey-slur in her voice.
“Angela—” I began but she wasn’t listening.
“He deserved what he got,” she said. “And worse.” She and Samson could start an anti-fan club for Dimitri.
“No one deserves that,” I pointed out, getting angry myself and letting it show. I wasn’t in the mood for this. “Someone murdered him.”
“Jorge was too drunk to kill anyone,” she said, and I couldn’t argue with that. “Hunter was just angry about Jorge’s dinner conversation.”
“Jorge had blood on his sleeve. And he hated Dimitri,” I said. While I doubted Jorge was a killer, I still leapt to Hunter’s defense.
“A nosebleed. He gets them all the time,” she said heatedly.
“I
f that’s true, he’ll be released.”
She sighed, suddenly sounding deflated. “I hope that’s true. I can’t afford to bail him out again.”
“Jorge can take care of himself,” I assured her. He had been getting in and out of scrapes for more than forty years.
Angela made a noncommittal sound that was neither assent nor dissent, then changed course. “I want to apologize for Saturday night. You’ve always been a friend to me and I’m sorry I repaid that by ruining your party. Most of the Valley natives act like we newcomers are an invading army, but you’ve always gone out of your way to be gracious and helpful.”
“There’s no need to apologize or thank me, Angela,” I said, surprised by the ‘friend’ comment. Angela and I had had maybe a dozen conversations in those ten years, mainly about harvests, weather, and the hundreds of other concerns that plague a winemaker, certainly nothing intimate or personal. “Saturday was a trial for all of us. And I’ve always enjoyed your company, too.” I glanced at my watch. Samson would be arriving soon and I wanted to be far from the cellar by then. “I guess I’ll see you at the next Vintners’ association Meeting,” I added, trying to end the call gracefully.
“No, Claire, you won’t. I’m through fighting and scraping by. It’s over and it’s time for me to face it.”
“Oh, no, Angela,” I said as my eyes involuntarily drifted up the flanks of the shortest fermentation tank, climbing to the rim where Dimitri had been hanging, his eyes open, blood dripping— I abruptly turned away as the memory came, vivid and unwanted.
“I hope he hasn’t suckered you in, too, Claire,” Angela was saying. “Blake has signed up a lot of the small growers for his auctions. He promises high returns, but the checks rarely come and when they do they’re a pittance.”
