A Vintage To Die For (Violet Vineyard Murder Mysteries Book 2)

by Harvey, JM

  I was saddened things were souring between Hunter and I, but I had bigger issues to deal with. I dug out my phone and started punching up numbers. Samson’s friends first.

  All three of them.

  I called Marjory first. She was unusually subdued on the phone. I didn’t go into detail, just asked her if she had seen Samson that day.

  “Not since the party,” she said and left it at that. The silence stretched between us, a silence that Marjory would normally have filled with a babble of conversation that would shift from erudite to catty to bawdy, sometimes in the span of a single sentence.

  “Are you two okay?” I asked.

  “No,” she said miserably. “We’re not.”

  “Oh, Marjory.”

  “I’ve called him five times and he hasn’t answered.”

  “He’s not answering my calls either,” I told her. “And Hunter is looking for him, too,” I added, but that wasn’t news to Marjory.

  “Hunter has been here three times,” she said and then went on in a gush of words, all of them choked with emotion. “I told him we were at the back of the cellar. We were—” she stopped abruptly, but I could imagine what they had been doing. “We heard a splash from the front of the cellar. Samson put his jacket on and went to see what it was. I waited for him, but when he didn’t come back I went out front, too. Samson was up on the catwalk trying to drag Dimitri out of the tank. He yelled at me to help and I did. We didn’t know he had been murdered! I thought he might have fallen in. And then I saw his throat. Oh, Claire, it was awful.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” I told her. “You and Samson didn’t do anything wrong.” I paused then added a too-abrupt, “I have to go, Marjory.” I cringed as I said it, feeling awful for abandoning my best friend in the middle of a crying jag, but I had two more calls to make. And what she had just told me had made me even more anxious for Samson’s safety.

  “You’ll tell him to call me?” she asked, the plea in her normally boisterous voice making me wince. Love cuts the knees out from under all of us I thought, as I promised that I would. I finally hung up and pulled up Victor’s number.

  Victor hadn’t seen or heard from Samson since the party two days before. We didn’t talk long before he told me he was on his way to Violet. I spoke to Jessica next, but all that accomplished was to make her as worried as I was. She was with Charlie at his home, preparing fifty chicken breasts for a buffet he was catering that evening, but by the time we were finished on the phone, she was making apologies to Charlie and heading for the door. I had no idea what we were going to do, but there were three of us now to do it.

  My third call was my seventh to Samson’s cell phone.

  He answered on the first ring. “de Montagne,” he said. “I need clothes. You will bring me them in the morning.”

  “Where are you?” I demanded. I had been so worried about Samson I had circled the wagons and called in the cavalry, but all that worry was devoured in a flash-fire of anger.

  “A motel. Room 117. The VistaStar Lodge, though there is no lodge and no vista.” I knew the VistaStar. It was a cluster of rundown cabins on the edge of American Canyon, tucked into a loop of tall pine trees.

  Samson was still talking. “And the prices! They have charged me for cable. I don’t even watch TV! I—”

  “Hunter says you’re hiding from him,” I said, cutting him off. “And that you threatened to kill Dimitri? In writing! What are you thinking? Is this the onset of dementia or are you determined to end up in jail?” I piled the questions on fast and hard, but Samson seemed unperturbed.

  “I did nothing,” he sniffed. “Why should I be jailed? You are the crazy one with the dementia. That Jorge, he is the one. They have him, so why do they need me? I am busy. I have no time for Hunter. I am—”

  “Jorge was released,” I said. “He didn’t kill Dimitri.”

  “And neither did I!” he bellowed in my ear. “You see how these policemen are! They arrest everyone! Guilty unless they say you are not!”

  “You need to call Hunter,” I bellowed right back. “Quit being a fool! You’re a witness to a murder! You can’t hide from the police!”

  “I saw nothing. Marjory and I were sampling in the back of the cellar. The 2012 is almost ready for bottling. It has a finish that will make you sigh. We have made no better. I think we will bottle next week. I am—”

  “I’m not interested in the 2012! There’s a killer on the loose. Call Hunter or I will!”

  “Betrayer!” Samson yelled.

  “Idiot!” I yelled back.

  Samson sighed melodramatically then went silent for a long moment. “I will call Hunter tomorrow,” he finally said grudgingly. “After you bring me clothes.”

  I started to argue, and then gave a weary sigh of my own. I was done talking to Samson over the phone where it was impossible to throttle him. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “No! Tomorrow morning. I need pants and shirts and the clothes for under them. And socks. Be sure you are not followed! By anyone!”

  “No one would—”

  “You do not know!” he yelled and I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “Thieves and murderers, de Montagne! Thieves and murderers! They are everywhere!”

  I’d had enough of Samson’s craziness so all I said was, “Right,” then I hung up. I wasn’t going to be his laundry service. And I wasn’t going to wait until morning.

  I called Jessica and told her to turn around. She was relieved Samson was safe, and almost as relieved, I thought, that she could return to Charlie’s. I had a moment where I wondered if she was moving too fast with this new beau, but I kept that to myself. I didn’t need another argument at that moment; I had to save my energy to beat the tar out of Samson.

  I called Victor. His phone rang just as his battered red Ford pickup turned the corner at the back of the house and came to a stop beside my Jeep. He didn’t get a chance to step down - I ditched my phone in my purse and was on my feet before he even turned the engine off. I waved at him to stay put, circled his truck and climbed into the passenger seat.

  He had the Padres pregame on the radio, the volume so low I could barely make out the words.

  “He’s in American Canyon,” I said as I pulled up Google Maps and started typing. “Hiding from the cops.”

  Victor took that in stride. “At least he’s okay,” he said.

  “Not for long,” I replied through gritted teeth.

  Chapter 13

  The VistaStar Lodge was a ramshackle U of clapboard cabins arranged around a square of neatly mowed lawn. Rusted croquet wickets jutted out of the grass amidst a scattering of brightly colored balls, though there were no players - or anyone else - in sight. Tall pine trees backed all sides of the U creating a gloomy fortress-like atmosphere, but in the light of the sinking sun, the place looked almost quaint. The office was up front, painted a neon blue in jarring contrast to the peeling brown paint of the sixteen cabins beyond it.

  There were a scattering of cars in the lot and a single rusted pickup that had seen better days. Cabin 117 was the seventh cabin on the office side of the U. Victor pulled up in front and we climbed out.

  The cabin on the left of Samson’s looked deserted, but there was an older model silver Mercedes parked in front of it. I didn’t care - I was prepared to cause a scene if necessary. I marched up to the door and banged my fist against it like a process server while Victor stood beside me, his hands in his pockets.

  Samson opened the door a crack, looked at us with disgust, then jutted his head out the door. He looked furtively left and right, like a mole looking for wolves.

  I had worked out what I was going to say on the drive over. I had planned your basic dressing down with a few insults and a threat or two thrown in for flavor, but all those words dried up as I took in Samson’s outfit. My gray, wrinkled old winemaker was dressed in tight black jeans, a billowing white shirt covered by a short-waisted black jacket with broad lapels, and a skinny red string t
ie. On his feet were black, highly shined shoes with toes so pointy they looked like lethal weapons. They looked at least two sizes too large.

  Maybe it was a release of the tension that I had been feeling all day, but I burst into laughter. Victor joined in while Samson scowled at us.

  “What are you wearing?” I asked.

  “A disguise,” he replied, jutting his chin into the air and staring down his beak of a nose at us.

  “What are you supposed to be?” Victor asked. “A bullfighter?”

  Samson chose not to reply to the insult. “You have brought clothes?” he demanded of me, looking down at my empty hands.

  I didn’t get a chance to answer before Samson’s gaze darted past me and Victor to the entrance to the parking lot. Samson flinched and dropped into a half-crouch.

  I turned to see Hunter Drake’s pickup turning into the parking lot, trailed closely by a single patrol car containing two uniformed deputies.

  “You have fingered me!” Samson bellowed as he shoved past Victor and took off running across the parking lot, his oversized shoes flapping and slapping at the ends of his skinny legs. He sprinted for the far cabins and the pine trees beyond them, running for all he was worth, his head bobbing on his skinny neck, bony arms pumping. He looked like a geriatric rooster fleeing the axe.

  Hunter braked hard in front of the cabin and the cruiser followed suit. The two deputies, young men I recognized from the party Saturday night, were out of their car in a flat second. They ran after Samson, but it wasn’t much of a race. They caught him before he had made fifty feet. They took it easy on him, grabbing an elbow each and dragging him to a stop. But Samson wasn’t going to make it easy for them. He jerked around between them, lunging and hopping like a freshly landed fish as they clamped the cuffs on him and hustled him toward the patrol car.

  “de Montagne!” Samson yelled as the deputies dragged him past me, the toes of his oversized shoes dragging through the gravel. “How could you do this to me?” His voice was as shrill and high as an air raid warning.

  “I didn’t!”

  One of the deputies opened the back door of the cruiser, but getting him into the back seat was like stuffing an unruly Jack-in-the-box back into his box.

  “They are killing me!” Samson yelled, though they were being as gentle as possible, despite his twisting and jerking. “Barbarians!” he yelled, and then they closed the door. Samson’s mouth was still working, but all I could hear were muffled curses.

  Hunter hadn’t moved from the open door of his truck. “Check out the room,” he told the two deputies. “Get his gear together and put a sticker on the door. I want Midge to take a look at the room before we release it.” Victor and I stepped aside and the pair disappeared through the cabin door.

  “Claire, let’s—” Victor said, but I brushed past him without a word and advanced on Hunter like a harvesting machine.

  “What are you doing, Hunter Drake?” I yelled at him. “There’s no need to haul a harmless old man away in handcuffs!”

  “I tried it the easy way,” Hunter said without apology. “He forced this on me. I have a warrant for his arrest.”

  Victor skirted around us and drifted toward the croquet court, giving me privacy to scream at Hunter. Or maybe he was just getting out of the line of fire.

  “He was going to call you tomorrow,” I said, and then what he had just said about a ‘warrant’ hit me. “You didn’t get that warrant in the last hour. You already had it when we spoke at Violet. You told me you just wanted to talk to Samson, and all the time you had that warrant in your pocket!” I glanced over at Samson in the back of the patrol car. He was looking our way, his face pressed against the glass, the red tie skewed on his neck like a hangman’s noose. His lips were working though we could not hear him.

  Hunter flushed, but then his chin lifted and he nodded. “Didn’t make me happy, but I had I do my job. You should have been honest with me.”

  “I’m not the liar here,” I replied acidly. “I had no idea where Samson was at that point.”

  “Right,” Hunter said, clearly unconvinced. “You had no idea where Samson was, and yet twenty minutes after I left your place I see you and Victor tearing out of the driveway to come straight here.”

  “You saw us leave Violet? You were spying on me!” I had been angry up to that point but I was seething after that admission. “How dare you! I’ll—”

  “They were Samson’s prints on the knife we found in Angela Zorn’s car, Claire,” Hunter cut me off with cold finality. That was another detail he had left out back at Violet. “And more of them on the slicker jacket. They match the prints we took from Samson last year during the Harlan case.”

  I laughed in his face, though I had to force it. “Wow! That’s brilliant detective work, Hunter,” I said. “Samson works in the cellar. His fingerprints are on everything.”

  Hunter’s jaw clenched. I knew I had gone too far, but I didn’t care. This was ridiculous!

  “The print on the slicker was in Dimitri’s blood, Claire,” he said, then turned and headed for his truck, his boot heels crunching gravel.

  That was a punch to the gut that shook me all the way down to my shoes, but it didn’t make me change my mind about Samson’s innocence.

  “Did you even ask him to explain it?” I demanded, following in Hunter’s wake. He wasn’t getting away that easily.

  “Yes, I did. This morning on the phone. He said he saw the slicker on the floor, picked it up and hung it on its peg without really looking at it, He claims he didn’t even notice Dimitri until a few minutes later.”

  Hunter popped the door handle and cracked the truck’s door open, his back to me. I reached past him and shoved the door closed with a thump. He turned to face me.

  “That’s more than plausible,” I said. “I would have done the same thing.”

  “There’s more, Claire. Blake Becker says he saw Dimitri and Samson struggling in the basement not long before the body was found.”

  “Blake said that?” I said in shock. Blake hadn’t mentioned that to me while we were sitting in the tasting room on the night of the murder waiting to be interviewed by Hunter.

  Hunter nodded. “I don’t want to believe that, but there’s something going on here, Claire,” he said, his hand still on the door handle. His eyes slid over to Samson in the back of the idling patrol car. Samson was still yelling and thrashing around, making the car bounce on its springs. Hunt looked back at me, his gaze cool, remote. “He won’t talk to me. Won’t explain anything. Maybe a night in jail will shake him up.”

  I laughed bitterly at that. “And maybe poking a hole in a bee hive with your finger will get you honey.”

  Hunter shrugged. “I have no choice.” He turned, opened the truck door and climbed inside.

  I made a cranking motion at Hunter and he rolled down the window – after rolling his eyes, which didn’t do much to erase the anger I was feeling toward him at that moment.

  “What if Blake Becker is making it all up?” I asked, thinking while I talked, spinning a theory out of the limited facts I had. “What if he killed Dimitri?”

  Hunter rolled his eyes again, which just made me more determined to make him see there were other suspects besides Samson. “It would explain why he broke into Samson’s house Monday afternoon. He could have gone there to plant evidence. After feeding you a lie about Samson and Dimitri arguing. I think you need to look into Star Crossed’s finances. What if Dimitri found out Blake was embezzling? Have you seen the car Blake drives? It’s a Ferrari.”

  “All right. I’ll look into it,” Hunter said grudgingly. “Now, I have to go talk to the motel owner,” he added as he reached for the ignition. He started the truck and turned up the driveway. He stopped at the office and went inside.

  The two deputies emerged from Samson’s cabin each carrying a cardboard box. The pair walked to the patrol car, popped the trunk and stowed the boxes inside. One of them slid behind the wheel while the other took somethi
ng from the trunk and returned to the cabin door. He peeled a large red sticker and plastered it on the door. Sealed By Order Of Police was printed in screaming black capitals. He returned to the car and climbed inside. The car headed out to the highway with Samson in the back seat, craning his head around to stare back at us like a condemned man.

  Victor and I stood shoulder to shoulder and watched them go.

  “I’ll call Solly, the bondsman we used last year,” he said. “I figure the bond will be high. The fee will be ten percent, just like last time. In cash.” That was Victor, practical to a fault. While I was ready to blow a gasket, he was making plans.

  “Do you know a defense attorney?” I asked.

  Victor nodded. “A couple of them.” That wasn’t surprising, Victor was very involved in the community outreach programs aimed at the migrant workers who drifted across the south and west, following the harvests. “I’ll make a call. But we won’t be getting him out of jail tonight. It will be morning session before he’s arraigned.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Hey,” Victor said, and gave me a grin, “after a night with Samson they might keep the bail bond low just to get rid of him.” I knew he was trying to cheer me up, but I couldn’t force a smile.

  Victor’s own smile flickered out and he turned toward his truck. “Let’s get out of here.”

  As I circled the truck, I saw a face in the window of the cabin next to Samson’s, the one where the silver Mercedes was parked. It was only a glimpse before the curtain was jerked closed and the face disappeared, but there was something familiar about it to me. Some flicker of recognition. I stopped and stared at the curtain for a moment, but it stayed closed. I shrugged it off. I was being paranoid. And no wonder!

  We climbed into the truck and Victor started it up and turned on the headlights. The sun was setting, the light slipping away, the shadows growing. Already it was getting cooler.

  I was not cool; I was steaming, angry at both Hunter and Samson, but mainly at Hunter. Samson was foolishly stubborn, opinionated and surly, so his behavior of the past two days was not shocking, but Hunter…Hunter had been sure I had lied to him about Samson. That alone rankled, but the fact that Hunt had hidden out somewhere and waited for me to make a move - like I was some kind of two-bit criminal - really stoked the flames.