by J. C. Eaton
“It’s not like I’m trying to find dead bodies.”
He shuddered and shook off a light dusting of snow. “No, but you seem to have a penchant for attracting them. Now, suppose you tell me about your latest find. I take it you were the one who found the deceased?”
I nodded.
“Good. Tell me the circumstances and show me where the body is located.”
I began with Charlie and the wallet, continued with my call to Lavettia, and ended by having Theo and Don describe the crime scene. Deputy Hickman used the same small pad and pencil I’d seen him use before for note taking.
When he was done, he leaned against the doorjamb. “The coroner should be here momentarily, along with a forensics crew. Will one of you please walk me to the body? I don’t require an entire parade.”
“I’ll do it,” Theo said. “Give me a second to grab my jacket.”
“Um, Deputy Hickman,” I said, “if you want my opinion about the gunshot wound to the back of Arnold’s neck, I think—”
Two hands flashed in front of my face. “I most certainly do not want, need, or require your opinion. Gun season for deer hunting begins on Tuesday. Every overzealous hunter from here to Canada has been sighting in his or her gun. Most likely this was a hunting accident, but, until we get a thorough report from our trained investigators and our coroner, I refuse to speculate any further. And you, Miss Ellington, should do the same. Cease and desist from speculating and theorizing.”
With that, the deputy and Theo left the house. Don and I went back to the kitchen. Instead of sitting down, we looked out the window that faced the driveway.
“This is a disaster. How long do you think they’re going to be there with the body?” I asked.
Don shook his head. “Who knows? With a gunshot wound, they’ll be looking at the trajectory and all that neat stuff.”
“Aargh. That could take, like, forever.” I looked at the clock on their stove. “It’s eight fifty-three now. My tasting room crew’s going to be arriving in less than twenty minutes, if not sooner. Much too late to call them. At least the vineyard guys are off today, and the winemakers won’t come in until much later. Franz wanted to get that tainted barrel cleaned, provided the forensics guys are done with it. I really should go home and change.”
“Yeah, I’ve got to get washed and changed, too. Because our tasting room building is so close to the main road, party goers for ‘Deck the Halls around the Lake’ aren’t as apt to notice the active crime scene when they first arrive. It’s only when they start up the hill for your place that—”
“Don’t say it. I know. They’ll wonder who got knocked off this time. At least it’s cold out and they won’t be traipsing around. I’ll catch up with you and Theo later. Oh, geez, I almost forgot. We didn’t tell the deputy about Arnold’s car in your parking lot.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll get to that soon enough. Besides, the car wasn’t killed, Arnold was.”
“Yeesh.”
“Want me to drive you up the hill? It’s a long walk.”
“Nah. You’ve got to get going. Besides, it’ll give me a chance to have a word or two with Deputy Hickman. Not my fault I have to pass right by there on my way home.”
Don laughed. “Grab a few cookies for the trek.”
“I’ll need them to lure Charlie out of here. He’s fast asleep under your chair.”
It took me all of two seconds to slip back into the fleece-lined jacket I had draped over my chair and head out the door. With the cookies as bait, Charlie was at my heels once again. Deputy Hickman was right about the other county vehicles. There were more flashing lights in our driveway than strobes at a ’70s disco.
Geez. It’s not like you’re chasing a speeder. This one’s a slam-dunk.
As I got closer to the spot where Arnold Mowen took his last breath, I could see a heavy-set man wearing a dark vest that read “Yates County Coroner.” Next to him were two other deputies—probably the forensics team. Deputy Hickman was standing cattycorner from them, a good two or three yards away. His arms were crossed, and he barely moved.
Someone had already cordoned off the area with that familiar yellow crime scene tape. No way were the tourists going to think we roped it off to shelter part of our vineyard. A knot formed in my stomach just thinking about it.
“Excuse me.” I approached the deputies. “Do you know how long this is going to take? Um, not to sound callous, but we’ve got a winery event starting at ten.”
The coroner, who had bent over to examine Arnold’s neck wound, looked up. “Could be another half hour or more before we remove the body.”
“A half hour? Can’t you move it any quicker? How long does it take? I’ve seen mattresses moved in less time, and they were heavy mattresses, too.”
“Miss Ellington,” Deputy Hickman’s voice bellowed. “If you don’t leave the crime scene immediately, I’ll have you arrested for interfering with an investigation.”
“Fine. I’ll be on my way.”
I turned away, but not before overhearing the coroner say something to Deputy Hickman about antacids. No surprise there. That job would give me indigestion too.
I thundered up the rest of the hill, threw off the clothes I had grabbed earlier, and put on a cheerful holiday tunic. Nothing like basking in the joys of the season with a corpse to welcome our visitors.
“You stay here,” I said to Charlie. I added kibble to his bowl and made sure his doggie door was sealed shut. Last thing I needed was for him to return to the scene of the crime. Then I was off to the tasting room, anticipating a round of questions from the staff. I wasn’t wrong.
Glenda rushed over to me the minute I set foot in the place. “I had an awful premonition that another restless soul would be haunting the winery,” she said.
I groaned. “If anything’s getting haunted, it’ll be the ditch between us and the Grey Egret.”
“Norrie! What the hell happened?” Cammy shouted as she opened the kitchen door and spied me. “Was someone shot? There are two sheriff’s cars off the side of our driveway, not to mention the coroner’s van. You can’t miss it.”
“Sorry, guys,” I said. “It was too late to call you.”
Roger, Lizzie, and Sam walked over to where I was standing. They were joined by the part-time college students who were also working the event.
“Can someone get Fred over here?” I asked. “He’s at the bistro, and I really don’t want to repeat this.”
“YO! FRED!” Sam yelled across the large room. “You gotta get over here. Like now!”
I rolled my eyeballs and took a breath. Fred came running as if the place was on fire. “What? Is this about all the sheriff’s cars in our driveway?”
“I’ll make this as short and succinct as possible.” I tried to sound professional and matter-of-fact. “Our wine distributor from Lake-to-Lake Wine Distributors was found dead in the ditch by the side of our driveway, midway between us and the Grey Egret.”
“Dead like heart attack or dead like bludgeoned to death?” Sam asked.
I swallowed. “Dead like bullet wound to the back of his neck.”
A chorus of “oohs” followed.
I went on to tell them how I found the body, from Charlie gifting me with a partially chewed wallet to Deputy Hickman threatening to arrest me for interfering with an investigation.
“How long are they going to be there?” Cammy asked. “Did they tell you?”
“Nope. No clue.”
“They usually load up the body and get it on a gurney right away,” Roger said. “It’s those forensics guys who take their time with everything. Want me to have a look-see?”
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing any of us can do about it, and we’ve got to get ready for today’s event.”
Lizzie furrowed her brow and pursed her lips. “As the account keeper for th
is winery, I’ve had my share of dealings with Mr. Mowen. Most of them quite unpleasant. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if his death was ruled a homicide. The man didn’t get along with anyone. When I went to make a deposit at Seneca Lake Communities Bank last week, I found out he had moved his business accounts to First Liberty Federal. The teller told me he had a falling out with ‘one of the bigwigs’ at her bank.”
Glenda caught her breath and held it. “I’m sensing his death was the result of a personal vendetta.”
I shook my head. “Deputy Hickman thinks it might’ve been a hunting accident.”
“The season doesn’t start for two more days!” Sam blurted out. “Is he nuts or what?”
“None of us will know anything until they complete their investigation. Heck, we don’t even know what kind of a bullet it was.”
Roger took a step closer to me. “You said you saw the body, right? And the wound? What was the diameter?”
“I didn’t exactly take out a ruler, guys! Aargh. Less than a half inch. The size of a dime.”
“Could be a .22 caliber. A shotgun would use a plug and a 30-30 would leave a larger hole. Now, if this was the French and Indian War, we’d be talking the flintlock musket, but you probably know it by its nickname, the Brown Bess.”
Oh, God help us! Roger’s about to launch into one of his lectures about that war.
“We don’t have time right now,” I said. “Customers are going to be walking in that door. Later! We can talk about vendettas, bullet wounds, the French and Indian War, and Arnold Mowen much later. After we close for the day.”
No one argued or added another word. One by one, everyone went over to their tasting tables, or in Fred and Lizzie’s case, the bistro and cash register respectively. I took my spot at the welcome table and prayed our customers would be more interested in Pinot Noir truffles than who was in that ditch. Turned out I was wrong.
Someone working for Channel 13 WHAM in Rochester must’ve had nothing better to do than listen to the sheriff’s scanners from Yates County. The TV channel wasted no time sending a bright yellow and black news van to us. It was déjà vu all over again. This time with a light snowfall.
“We saw the coroner’s van removing a body from the side of your driveway,” the first customer said, as I handed her a grapevine wreath. “Car accident in your driveway? I think the light snow is much more dangerous than inches of the stuff. It’s so slippery, and there’s nothing anyone can do.”
Before I could answer the svelte, twenty-something with the Brazilian blow-out, she snatched her wreath with one hand and grabbed the small cookbook with the other. “Oh, do I smell truffles?”
She was gone in a nanosecond. Unfortunately, the topic of conversation wasn’t. The questions kept hitting me like my own personal barrage of bullets.
“What happened in your ditch?”
“Why are there a zillion sheriff’s deputies parked down the driveway?”
“Did someone plant a bomb on your property?”
I decided to go with the most innocuous response. “Gun sighting mishap. Hunting season starts the day after tomorrow.”
An hour after we opened, the traffic at the welcome table remained steady. I had developed a certain rhythm as I greeted people. I was even beginning to feel comfortable with my own lie about a possible hunting accident, but that ended abruptly when the gold charms from Lavettia Lawrence’s chain bracelet brushed against my wrist. She latched on to every bone that connected my hand to my arm and wouldn’t let go. In fact, I could feel her long nails pinching my flesh.
“You, you…monster! You knew he was dead and you didn’t tell me. I had to find out from my…my… never mind. I found out. It was all over the news. On TV, on the radio. The dead body in your ditch must be my Arnold. The moment I heard what happened, I got in my car and drove right over here.” Then she paused for a second and loosened her grip slightly. “Oh. You are Norrie Ellington, aren’t you? The cashier pointed in this direction, but there’s another table behind yours and there’s a woman at that one, too.”
I used my left hand to extricate her fingers from my wrist. “Yes, I’m Norrie and I thought the sheriff’s department would be contacting you. The sheriff’s department has Arnold’s wallet. I gave it to Deputy Hickman. Honestly, I expected him to call you.”
“Well, he didn’t. No one did. So, tell me, did you see the body? Was it my Arnold?”
“Um, it was a bald man with some hair below the crown of his head. And nicely dressed.”
“Florsheim Hamilton Wingtip Oxfords? Shiny black?”
“Well, some kind of shiny black dress shoe.”
She pressed her hand to her chest. “What about the car? Did you find a silver Audi?”
“There was one parked in the Grey Egret’s lot. I think it was there all night.”
Lavettia rubbed the edges of her eyes and stood still. I wasn’t sure what to say or do.
Finally, she spoke. “I warned him something like this might happen. But did he listen? No. Or he’d still be alive. I kept telling him, ‘Arnie, you can’t keep squeezing money out of people. One of these days someone’s going to make you pay.’”
Then, without warning, Lavettia flung her faux rabbit coat across the nearest chair, grabbed the side of the welcome table, and threw herself across it. Her sobs could be heard across the room.
Behind her someone said, “My God! I don’t get that upset when I lose an event ticket!”
Chapter 7
Fred happened to be making the rounds with coffee for us at that very moment, and helped me move Lavettia from the tasting room to our kitchen. The part-time worker assisting Lizzie at the cash register immediately took over for me at the welcome table.
I handed Lavettia a cup of coffee and a handful of napkins. She sank down in the closest chair at our long rectangular table.
“You going to be okay?” Fred mouthed to me as Lavettia wiped her eyes.
“Yeah,” I mouthed back. “You can go back to work.”
He gave a quick nod and got out of there in a flash. It didn’t surprise me. I’d never met a man who could stand being around a crying woman. Heck, I couldn’t stand it either, and I was a woman.
“Miss Lawrence, um, Lavettia, please calm down.”
It was pointless to tell her the body in the ditch might not have been her boyfriend, We both knew it was. The wallet, the car, the clothing, the bald head…Duh. No wonder Lavettia was beside herself. As for me, the last thing this winery needed was a reputation as a dumping ground for bodies, or worse yet, a killing ground. True, Arnold’s rock-solid corpse was equidistant from us and the Grey Egret, but that was a small consolation.
Lavettia took a sip of her coffee and, as she put the cup down with a trembling hand, she said, “Channel 13 WHAM announced it was a gunshot wound to the victim’s head. My God! How can someone mistake a well-dressed, portly man for a deer? No, it was personal all right. It had to be. Now all I have to figure out is which SOB killed him.”
“If I’m not mistaken, isn’t that what the sheriff’s department is supposed to do?”
“Oh, please. They couldn’t locate a lost cow if it opened up a milk stand on Route 14!”
With the histrionics behind her, I figured now was as good a time as any to get Lavettia to open up about Arnold.
“I don’t suppose you’d know if he had any close relatives. Or any, for that matter. They always seem to crop up when there’s a mention of a will.”
“A will? Who mentioned his will?”
“Um, er, uh…I was talking in general. Not specific.”
“It doesn’t matter. Arnold’s an only child. Parents passed on years ago. No wife. No children. He was all about work. Everything for that business.”
“Speaking of which, do you have any idea who inherits his business? Lake-to-Lake Wine Distributors is a big-name company.”
Lavettia rolled the gold charms around on her bracelet and answered me without looking up. “Me. I inherit the business. He left it all to me.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Thankfully, Lavettia didn’t seem to notice. I rubbed my hands together and took the seat next to her at the table. “Lavettia, this isn’t good. If you stand to inherit his business, you could be the prime suspect in his murder.”
Murder. I’d said the word out loud. Me. I was the one who said it. Not the sheriff’s deputy. Not the forensics crew. Not the coroner. Not Channel 13. Me. I had opened my mouth and there was no going back. I did the only thing possible—I dug myself a deeper hole.
“You probably should hire an attorney. Just in case. And don’t say a word to Deputy Hickman when he questions you unless you have an attorney present. Then again, that might look as if you’re guilty. Okay. Have someone you trust at your side when he questions you. And whatever you do, don’t tell him about the business.”
“The business. Oh heavens. The business. I don’t know the first thing about it. But Arnold’s sales rep does--Miller Holtz. Oh, and then there’s the secretary, Clayton LeVine. Should I be calling them?”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t be doing anything just yet, until you hear from the sheriff’s department. Your business card was in Arnold’s wallet. Naturally, they’re going to contact you. Right now, they’re probably trying to track down next of kin and when that doesn’t pan out, I guarantee they’ll send one of their deputies to Arnold’s office and another to your house. Right now, all anyone knows is that a dead body with an apparent gunshot wound was found on Two Witches Hill in Penn Yan. That’s not really unusual during hunting season.” Oh, who am I kidding? Last time someone got shot around here during hunting season was when one of the Munson brothers mistook his twin for a deer and grazed him in the butt.
“What about the news? It’ll be all over the TV, not to mention social media.”
I brushed an annoying strand of hair from my forehead. “No worries. The news media won’t be able to release the name until they get clearance from the sheriff.”
