Wining and Dying

by Daryl Wood Gerber

  “He’s been stabbed,” she went on.

  “Stabbed?”

  “Please come to the inn. Help me sort this out.”

  “You need to call—”

  “Please, Jenna. You’ve been through something like this before. I’ve never . . .” She cleared her throat. “If Wayne were here, I’d call him, but he’s in New York. Thank you. Bless you.” She ended the call abruptly.

  Rhett was already on his feet and dressing. He refused to let me go alone and offered to drive. I was glad he did. I was shaking all over. Another murder? Of someone I knew? Admittedly, Quade had not been my favorite person, but he didn’t deserve to die.

  As Rhett negotiated turns on the rain-slick road, I phoned 911. A murder was police territory, not mine. With Yardley’s husband out of town, I was going to the inn to give her moral support. That was all.

  We arrived at our destination in less than ten minutes. A few guests were in the lobby, most warming themselves by the fire, all apparently unaware there’d been a murder on the property.

  Ginny the concierge signaled me. “Mrs. Alks told me to expect you.”

  “Where is she?”

  “At the cabanas.” The cabanas were located past the wing of suites. Six faced the ocean; six had mountain views. “What’s going on?”

  “When the police arrive, send them around,” I said.

  “The police?” Ginny blanched.

  Rhett and I hurried on. The left side of the walkway was dry but water dripping from the jasmine kept the right side wet. We found Yardley outside unit five, a mountain-view cabana. She’d changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and was quivering. Tears were streaming down her face. The door was ajar.

  Rhett put a hand on her arm. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m shaken to my core.”

  “Do you need to sit down?”

  “No, I’m—”

  A siren pierced the silence. Yardley flinched.

  I peered into the room but didn’t step inside. The lights were low and the drapes closed, but one glance revealed an expansive layout with a well-appointed living room, an adjoining kitchen area, and what I imagined was a bedroom to the right. Quade was lying on the brocade sofa, naked, his heavily tattooed backside facing the door. I didn’t see blood. He hadn’t been stabbed in the back. A mixed-media work—not his competition entry—stood on an easel beyond the sofa. Washed dishes had been left to dry on a towel on the kitchen counter. A scrap of paper lay on the floor beneath the sink and a couple of wads of paper were near a small trash can, as if he’d tried to shoot free throws from the sofa and missed.

  I turned to Yardley. “Why was Quade staying here? He told me he was renting a place on Poinsettia until he figured out where he wanted to buy.”

  “He is . . . was.” She blinked back more tears. “But his place needed to be fumigated, so Sienna was gracious enough to give him a few room nights on the house. She believes in supporting artists.”

  Was that what Sienna and Quade had been arguing about? Was she commenting about the state of his quarters? Had he played music too loudly or mistreated the staff?

  I inhaled. “Do you smell tar or something leathery, like a men’s cologne?”

  “I’m picking up all sorts of odors.” Yardley wrinkled her nose. “Quade brought many of his media with him. Paints. Oils. Metal chips. When he’s feeling creative, he can’t . . .” She gasped. “Couldn’t. He couldn’t rest.” She covered her mouth with the back of her hand, as if she’d said too much.

  “Why were you here?” I asked. “I mean, why were you the one to find him?”

  “I received a text from him around nine saying he didn’t feel well. He had an upset stomach. He ended the text with the word Naomi. But there was nothing after that. Do you think—”

  “He was accusing her of something?” I finished.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He liked her. Maybe he wanted you to call her, but he passed out before he could finish the message. He had been drinking earlier.”

  She wrapped her arms around her body. “I was talking to Wayne, long distance, and responded to Quade that I’d be over soon.”

  “Why would Quade text you?” Rhett asked.

  “Because I’m his mentor?” Her tinny voice skated upward with doubt. “I do know a thing or two about dealing with sore tummies, having been a grade school art teacher. Quade knew—”

  “What’s going on!” Sienna Brown bellowed from a distance. She’d changed out of her white jacquard dress into a black pantsuit. She marched toward us, her gaze riveted on Yardley. “I heard sirens. Ginny said we’re to expect the police. Why?”

  Yardley sputtered, “Quade . . . is dead. He’s been murdered.”

  Sienna paled. “What?” She started for the room.

  I held her back. “Please, Sienna, don’t. It’s a crime scene.”

  She peered past me. “For heaven’s sakes, Jenna, he’s not dead. He’s sleeping.”

  “No, Sienna, he’s dead.” Yardley’s voice cracked. “I entered because he’d texted me. The door was open. I thought he’d left it that way. He’s been stabbed.”

  A housekeeper and a hospitality deliveryman carrying a covered tray drew near.

  The housekeeper yelped. “Stabbed?”

  The hospitality guy whispered loudly enough to be heard, “Miss Brown entered the cabana at a quarter to ten.”

  I turned my attention to Sienna. “You went into the room?”

  She squared her broad shoulders, looking cool under fire. “Yes. I was making rounds, as I often do before retiring for the night, and I noticed the door was open. I poked my head in and saw him asleep on the couch, as he often was.”

  “You’ve found him asleep before?” Rhett sounded skeptical.

  “Three nights in a row. He was a furious and passionate artist. He would often exhaust himself after an hour of work. He was lying like that”—Sienna motioned to the room—“nude, curled on his side.”

  “He loved painting au naturel,” Yardley said.

  “That’s what he told me, too,” Sienna went on. “Anyway, as I was leaving, I saw that he’d left dishes on the counter, so I washed them, as I would for any negligent guest, and I left. I didn’t know that he was . . .” She shuddered. “Maybe he wasn’t . . . dead. Maybe . . .” She folded her hands in front of her.

  “He never did dishes,” Yardley said idly. “It was beneath him.”

  I wondered how she would know such a personal thing about one of her students and again questioned why Quade would have contacted her when he’d felt sick, grade school teacher credentials notwithstanding. Why hadn’t he contacted his doctor? That would have been my first instinct. Or 911.

  “All right, everyone, please back away from the door.” Chief Cinnamon Pritchett, not in uniform and wearing no makeup, clearly roused from sleep as I had been, strode to us.

  Deputy Martin Appleby, a largish man with a moose-shaped jaw, and two uniforms—one a fresh-faced female, the other a skinny male—trailed her.

  Cinnamon gazed at me and frowned. “Again?”

  “I wasn’t the one to find him,” I said, as if that exonerated me from earning her wrath.

  Rhett said, “Mrs. Alks found him and reached out to us.” I liked how he’d used us. “We came to give her emotional support.”

  “The coroner is on his way,” Appleby said to Cinnamon while inserting his cell phone into his pocket.

  “He’s been stabbed,” Yardley murmured. “I . . . I went in. I’m sorry, Chief Pritchett. I didn’t know it was a crime scene. I—” She begged with her eyes for me to finish.

  Rhett cut in, offering that the hospitality deliveryman had witnessed Sienna entering the room at nine forty-five.

  I quickly recapped Yardley’s account to Cinnamon and added what Sienna had told us about washing dishes.

  “So that sets the murder sometime between nine and nine forty-five?” Cinnamon stated. “A narrow window.”

  “If he was dead when Miss Bro
wn entered the room. Otherwise, the time frame could be around ten to eleven, when Yardley arrived. Also a narrow window.”

  “Foster,” Cinnamon said, “get any staff statements, please.”

  “Ma’am,” the fresh-faced female cop replied.

  “Ferguson,” Cinnamon said to the skinny male cop, “establish a perimeter, and get me the security videos.”

  Sienna cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Chief Pritchett. The security cameras have been glitching. The company has promised to fix them, but they keep resetting the appointment.”

  “Swell.”

  I wondered about Sienna’s story. Why had she changed out of her white dress? Because there was blood on it? Were the security cameras really glitching? They had to be. The police would check even though she’d said they needn’t.

  On the other hand, stabbing wasn’t a typical murder method for a woman. I weighed what the hospitality guy had said, or in this case, what he hadn’t said. He hadn’t mentioned hearing any loud noises around the time he’d seen Sienna enter the room. Quade would have screamed if Sienna had stabbed him, wouldn’t he?

  “Chief,” I said, “the text to Yardley ended with the name Naomi. No message following.”

  “Got it.”

  “I’m not saying Naomi Genet did this. She couldn’t have.”

  Cinnamon threw me a wry look. “Why not?”

  “She . . .” I paused. She what? Was too nice? Too fragile? “She went home. The concierge saw her leave before eight.”

  “She could have come back.”

  Cinnamon donned Latex gloves and stepped into the cabana. Appleby followed. Cinnamon switched on the overhead recessed lights and continued to the body. She felt for a pulse and then moved to the opposite side of the couch and peered down. Her face turned grim. Carefully, she reached between the body and the back of the couch. She lifted something and inspected it. She showed it to Appleby.

  Cinnamon crossed to the doorway, carrying a tapered tool with a wooden knob handle. “Does this look familiar?” She held it out to me. Blood clung to the burin’s shaft.

  “You didn’t . . . pull that out of . . .” I gagged.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It was lying on the couch.”

  “He was stabbed with it?”

  “Yes.”

  “While he was lying in that position?” I couldn’t figure out how the killer would have been able to do so.

  “Doubtful. There’s—” She shouted over her shoulder, “Deputy, do not move the body.”

  “Do I look like a rookie?” Appleby replied sarcastically.

  Cinnamon addressed me. “I’ll leave the where and how to the coroner. Back to the matter at hand, do you recognize this tool now?” She turned it so I could see the top of the handle.

  The initials KL were stamped on it.

  My insides roiled with worry. It was Keller’s burin. The one he’d shown me from his tool kit during the workshop. Why would he have—

  No, no, no. He didn’t kill Quade.

  “What’s wrong?” Rhett slipped up beside me.

  “The weapon,” I said. “It’s Keller’s tool.”

  “Keller Landry had a fight with Quade,” Sienna said from behind the crime scene tape that the policeman was unfurling.

  “It wasn’t a big fight,” I countered, sticking up for my friend.

  Cinnamon said, “I saw the set-to, Jenna. Remember? You said Keller was concerned about finances. Did he feel Quade was his competition? Did he think Quade might impede him from achieving his goal?”

  “No!” The word flew out of me.

  “Of course he was,” Sienna said. “They both used mixed media. With Quade out of the picture, Keller Landry could shine.”

  I turned on the woman, my gaze blazing with indignation. “Keller would not do this. He is a gentle soul. A passive man. And why would he have left his tool behind if he’d killed him? Someone is framing him, Cinnamon . . . I mean, Chief. Were there any defensive wounds?”

  “You know I can’t answer that.”

  I gazed past her into the cabana as I replayed events earlier in the evening. Quade dogging Naomi. Quade rebuffing Destiny. Quade having a heated conversation with Sienna. He’d been tipsy, slurring his words by then. I flashed on the text he’d sent Yardley saying he didn’t feel well. Was it possible he’d passed out before the murderer stabbed him?

  “Did you notice the wads of paper?” I asked Cinnamon.

  “I’m not blind. I’ll check out everything. Don’t you worry.”

  I searched the burgeoning crowd and saw Sienna chatting with a few guests. My thoughts returned to the set-to between her and Quade. She had given him a costly gift by allowing him to stay in a cabana for free. Granted, it was her inn. She could do whatever she pleased. What had they argued about? Had Sienna added something to one of his drinks earlier in the evening to ensure that he would pass out so she could slip in later and kill him? Did she wash the glass to hide the evidence?

  Chapter 6

  I didn’t sleep well. Rhett tried to comfort me, but I tossed and turned. Images of Quade on the couch and Keller wielding a bloody etching tool pervaded my dreams. I rose early, tamed my unruly hair, splashed my face with water, and threw on running clothes. A jog on the beach, listening to the ocean rhythmically lapping the shore, the sand still wet from last night’s rain, helped clear my head. Keller was innocent. I knew that at my core. Cinnamon would figure it out soon enough.

  When I returned, I decided to make an omelet using herbs from my garden . . . our garden. Though I hadn’t learned to cook until I’d moved back to Crystal Cove—and for the first year, five-ingredient recipes were the only ones I could master without breaking out in a panic—I was really enjoying cooking these days. Rhett slipped up behind me as I was turning the omelet onto plates and kissed my neck. A delicious shiver of joy swizzled through me.

  “Smells great,” he said as he set the table and poured coffee.

  After we ate, rather than go back to sleep, Rhett left with Rook for a long hike, and I threw on my favorite coral sweater, denim skirt, and bejeweled sandals, and drove to work with Tigger.

  Once I’d set up the cash register and roamed the Cookbook Nook to make sure titles on spines read from top to bottom, aprons hung smoothly on their hooks, and all the gift items were turned to their most advantageous angle, I queued up instrumental jazz music and dialed Naomi on my cell phone.

  She answered after one ring. “Hello?”

  “Naomi, it’s Jenna. I was worried about you.”

  “Didn’t you get my text?”

  “Yes.”

  “The sitter contacted me to say my daughter missed me. I don’t go out much at night.”

  “What about the picture of the man I showed you? Did you recognize him? You left so abruptly that I thought I’d upset you.”

  “Upset me?” Her voice cracked. “Of course not. I’m sorry, Jenna. I have another call coming in. Thanks for checking on me.” She ended ours.

  I noted that she didn’t say a word about Quade being dead. That had to be a good sign.

  “Is everything all right, dear?” Aunt Vera asked. She was wiping down the craft table in the children’s corner before setting out new supplies. From the outset, we had decided a corner featuring children’s cookbooks as well as utensils and food-oriented games would be a great lure. Parents and grandparents often came into the shop with children and needed something to occupy the young ones’ attention while they browsed.

  “Talking to Naomi was weird.”

  “How so?” Aunt Vera asked.

  “It was almost as though she couldn’t wait to get rid of me.” I explained about the man I believed was stalking her. “When I showed Naomi the picture I’d taken, she gasped and ran off.”

  “Maybe her cell phone buzzed in her pocket at the same time you displayed the photo.”

  “Or perhaps her smart watch did,” I murmured. That might explain why she’d been stabbing it while racing away.

  Wh
istling cheerily, my aunt ambled to the vintage table, picked up the turban that matched her emerald green caftan, and set it on her head. “So what else is on your mind?”

  I hadn’t told her about the murder and didn’t intend to. Why spoil her good mood?

  “I’d like to pull all cookbooks with the word art in the title from the shelves and put them on sale for one day. The Art and Soul of Baking. The Art of the Cheese Plate. The Art of Vintage Cocktails. I think we stock about ten books with similar titles.” I rounded the sales counter and traveled from bookcase to bookcase selecting books.

  “Any special reason we’re having a sale?”

  “For the charity.”

  “Oh, yes, silly me, of course. All the proceeds will go to the charity.”

  During each festival, the mayor selected a charity that the festival would sponsor. This year’s was the Boys and Girls Club of America. They planned to expand art programs for kids.

  “In a half hour”—I checked my watch—“the artisans who have made the specialty cookie jars and salt and pepper sets are coming in to be available to customers to talk about their wares. It’ll be casual. They’ll roam the shop. They’re donating twenty-five percent of their proceeds to the charity, too.”

  “Marvelous.”

  “Katie made cookie-jar-shaped treats for the occasion.”

  “Adorable.” My aunt began whistling again. Ever since she and Deputy Appleby had become a couple, she’d been light on her feet. I was so happy for her.

  • • •

  Two hours later, after we’d sold more than half of the discounted books and all of the specialty decorative items—the artisans had departed utterly thrilled with the customers’ enthusiasm—Bailey flew into the shop pushing her daughter in a stroller, the tails of her turquoise scarf flying behind her.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Typically, she brought Brianna to work in the morning. No one minded. The girl was so easygoing. Later, Tina, after her morning classes, would pick up Brianna and tend to her for the afternoon. “I got caught up on a call with Tito. He heard about the murder. Fill me in. That artist is dead?”

  My aunt gasped. “Which artist?”

  I motioned for them to hush. I didn’t want to scare away the few remaining customers.