by Linda Barnes
"It's okay, Howard." Spraggue raised his eyes to the high-beamed ceiling.
The winemaker's next words came out in a rush. "Is it true Lenny's dead? Murdered?"
"Yes."
"And Miss Holloway's in jail."
"Kate didn't kill him."
"Of course not . . . uh . . . I didn't mean . . .What I wanted to say is . . . It's one thing taking over if Lenny's missing . . . but if he's dead! I . . . uh . . . I'm going away, Mr. Spraggue."
"Going away?"
"Up to Ukiah, maybe. Start somewhere else."
"Because Lenny's dead?"
"You don't understand, Mr. Spraggue. Someone's killing people here in the valley, and I'm . . . I'm too nervous to take that. I see things . . . hear things . . . Everyone looks like a killer to me, people I've known for years .... "
"Howard, Ukiah's no safer—"
"Don't tell me that! People are always trying to convince me of nonsense like that! Saying it's no safer in the country than it is in the city, no safer in Napa than it is in San Francisco. Saying you could get hit by a milk truck crossing the street. I'm no idiot; I know about probability. Can't you see I have to leave? Those psycho-killers—they're repeaters. And Lenny was a winemaker .... Maybe somebody's got a grudge against winemakers .... I'm
in danger!"
"The police aren't even sure the two deaths are related. I need you, Howard. At least give me two weeks notice."
"Two weeks! It's not good for my health, Mr. Spraggue. My heart's beating too fast. I can't seem to calm down. Not since the police—"
"Please."
"One week." Howard's voice was faint. "I'll try to give you one more week, if nothing happens. If anyone else dies, I'm leaving. My bags are packed."
"Thank you, Howard. I'll be back in Napa late tonight. We'll talk in the morning" He hung up while the receiver still yelped, closed his eyes and shook his head.
"Bad news?" Mary asked quietly.
"Can you make wine?"
"I only drink it."
"Bad news." Spraggue deserted the desk, recovered his brandy and took a healthy gulp.
"Do you know who killed Lenny Brent?" Mary asked.
Spraggue sat on the couch and stifled a yawn, then ticked off the response on his fingers.
"Kate Holloway. Because Lenny didn't please her in bed. Number two: Alicia Brent. Because Lenny wouldn't buy braces for his kids' teeth. Number three: Grady Fairfield. Lenny wouldn't vacate her apartment. Number four: Phil Leider. Lenny ditched Leider for Holloway Hills. Number five: George Martinson. Lenny despised reviewers and they despised him. Number six: Mrs. George Martinson. She hates Lenny's guts and I'm not sure why. Number seven: Howard Ruberman. To get his job back. Number eight—"
"Lenny had swarms of enemies."
"It might be easier to figure out who didn't have a reason to kill him."
"Then it seems to me," Mary said, "that we are concentrating on the wrong aspect of the case. We ought to be delving into the other man's background, the first victim's. Perhaps he was less unpopular than Lenny. Possibly there might be only a single intersecting point in the graph of those who despised Lenny and those who hated our mystery man."
"No identification." Spraggue said. "No ID: no suspects. We can't know who hated him until we know who he was."
"Exactly," Mary said with some satisfaction.
"Pierce, fetch this young man more brandy. I have always maintained that fine spirits stimulate the thinking process."
"Sleep helps, too," Spraggue said.
"Nonsense. People spend entirely too much of their lives unconscious. Four hours of sleep per night has always been enough for me."
"But you," Spraggue said, grinning, "are unusual."
"Very true, dear boy. Now, Pierce, sit down and I pour yourself a glass. And let's consider how to identify a headless corpse."
13
"Kate wants you."
"Huh?"
"It's Bradley, from the sheriff's office. Did I wake you? I'm sorry—"
"Hold it. Hold it. What time is it?" Spraggue sat up and wondered how the phone had gotten into his hand.
"Almost ten. I thought you'd . . ."
Ten . . . ten o'clock Monday morning. Spraggue breathed in deeply and shook his head from side to side, hoping the sudden movement would clear it.
"Okay," he said. "Start over."
"Miss Holloway's been asking—demanding, really—to see you since yesterday. Enright's planning to ignore the request, but he's not here right now."
"How long will he be gone?"
"Wish I knew. Couple hours, I think."
"I'll be there. Thanks." Spraggue hung up the phone and looked around.
Sun poured in through Kate's bedroom window. Had he left the curtains open by design, hoping the light would wake him? Doubtful; last night he'd been too tired for conscious thought. And his subconscious had led him straight to Kate's bed, not to the guest room. Spraggue raised one eyebrow and disentangled himself from the covers.
The damned muffins were rock-hard. He contented himself with a long swig of orange juice from the cardboard carton he'd picked up at the all-night grocery, washed, dressed, and took off.
"Can we talk?" he said to Bradley thirty minutes later, glancing significantly at the chain-smoking sweet-faced secretary and recalling snatches of last night's parley with Mary and Pierce.
"My office" Bradley led the way to a cubicle no bigger than a closet, with a tiny desk crammed against one windowless wall. He sat in the single chair. "Well?"
"What can I offer for a glance at the file on your headless man?"
"It's worth zip."
"I still want a look."
"If you come up aces, you tell me before you tell Enright."
"My pleasure."
"I need to rack up a few points with Sheriff Hughes."
"I'll put in a word."
Bradley stood, stretched. "Think I'll have a cup of coffee," he said loudly. Then he whispered, "First drawer on the right. Only takes me five minutes for coffee, but that'll be plenty of time, believe me.
Then you'd better get upstairs to the jail."
"Thanks."
"If Enright shows up while you're in here, I never saw you. I don't even know you."
They changed places. Bradley closed the door and Spraggue fought off claustrophobia.
A few sheets of flimsy paper stuck in a manila folder; that was all Mr. X's file amounted to. The Napa County Medical Examiner had thus far left blank every space on the death certificate that called for conjecture or conclusion. Notes were affixed with paper clips, stating that the body had been so badly mauled that special care was needed, special care requiring extra time. Organs and blood samples had to be sent to various Bay Area labs, better-equipped labs than those immediately available.
Spraggue rested his head on his hands, read on. What did they know about the nameless, headless corpse? An approximate age: 22-24 years; an approximate height: 5 feet, 10 inches; an approximate weight: 155 pounds; no distinguishing scars.
Armed with that scant knowledge, the sheriff s people had plowed through the state's missing persons reports, then the region's, then the entire country's. One possibility in Arkansas, but just as they'd been about to contact the family, the missing man had turned up with a tale of amnesia and alcohol breath. None of the others had even been close.
Footsteps rang up the corridor. Spraggue had the file closed and back in the drawer before the door handle stopped turning.
Lieutenant Bradley raised a linger to his lips. He barely had room to turn around. "News," he said.
"Enright?"
"Just got a cause of death on John Doe. Preliminary. Report's on the way from San Francisco."
"And?" Spraggue prompted.
"Poisoned." Bradley stared down at a three-by-five card. "Sulfur dioxide. How's that grab you?"
"As a horrible way to go."
"I think I know how it'll grab Enright. As an out. A perfect excuse to treat the two d
eaths separately. Which does not look good for your lady."
"Right."
"I'm betting he'll jump at some kind of chemical-dump scandal. Not our case at all, a guy ditched here from some other county—"
"By somebody who just happened to know about the abandoned wreck in my vineyard."
"Logic never stops him. You'd better get up to see Miss Holloway. I'll tell Enright you terrified me, yelling all those legal terms at me."
"He won't fire you?"
"Not like he would if he found out you saw that file."
They shook hands. There was probably a quicker way to get to the jail from Bradley's office, but Spraggue went all the way outside and started again with the left-hand door.
The jail was too modern to intimidate anyone, too obviously on the third floor to qualify for dungeon status. Still, when the steel bars clanged behind him, Spraggue felt the urge to flee. He straightened imperceptibly, walked on quickly, gave his name and objective at the next pass point. The guard called down to Bradley, performed a brief but thorough search, escorted him to a tiny barracks-green room, empty except for three folding chairs and a round wooden table.
"Wait here."
Spraggue sank into a seat, tapped his heels against the metal chair rungs.
It took a long live minutes for Kate to appear, Kate in washed-out shapeless green cotton, too short for her, with her long dark hair twisted up harshly, anchored with barrettes and rubber bands over her colorless face. The female guard accompanying her wore way too much makeup, as if to stress every difference between herself and the prisoners.
"Five minutes," the guard said sharply. "And no touching," she added, too late. But when Spraggue leaned back from the kiss, the guard's wide, over-red mouth was smiling at him.
Kate jammed her hands into the pockets of her smock, ignored the chairs. "Where the hell have you been?"
"Nobody told me you wanted to see me. Not until Bradley woke me up an hour ago."
Her shoulders came down a notch. "Oh."
"Am I too late?"
"Just about. My lawyer says I could get bail in about thirty seconds."
"I think you should stay put."
"Then you've got to do something for me."
"What?" Spraggue said cautiously.
"Tonight, at eight o'clock, a tasting at Phil Leider's house; you have to take my place."
"I think I'd rather be in a cell."
"I'll switch. Gladly." She kept her voice low, but the intensity was electric. Spraggue wanted to touch her shoulder. The guard's heavily shadowed eyes warned him off.
"Spraggue," Kate said, "this tasting is important to me. To us. It's a horizontal blind tasting of '77 Cabernet, and we are honored to be included—"
"I don't know shit about the '77 Cabernet. Send Howard."
She laughed shortly. "You want Howard representing you? Howard driving everyone nutty, falling over chairs, upsetting wineglasses?"
"I see your point."
"At least you're presentable."
"Thanks."
"Get Howard to lend you his cellar book. All the informations there: fermenting, aging—"
"Will Howard give it up?"
"No problem. Howard's not Lenny. God, Lenny wouldn't let the damned thing out of his sight. He practically chained it to his wrist. Not even the cellar crew could touch it."
"Was it a big, tan, leather-bound—"
"Edged in gold," she said bitterly. "Did he have it clutched to his bosom when you found him?"
Spraggue wished the guard unconscious, willed her into the far reaches of the Sahara. Kate, who never cried, had turned away, her shoulders wracked with sobbing. She feigned a sneezing attack and fumbled a wrinkled Kleenex out of her pocket. When he touched her shoulder, she shuddered and flinched away.
"Kate . . ."
"Don't. Don't look at me. Don't feel sorry for me. I'm okay . . . really . . . It's just this damn place . . . Just being locked in a cell . . . Talk about something else . . . Tell me about the crush . . ."
"I haven't even checked on Howard."
"Too busy playing cop." Her smile, wobbly, but game, collapsed into another flow of tears.
"I searched your room," Spraggue said slowly, deliberately. He'd never meant to tell her, but it was one guaranteed way to turn those unexpected tears to anger. Anger he could deal with.
"I thought you believed me. I wouldn't have loaned you the car if—"
"You could have had an accomplice. He could have hidden the body in the car."
"Did you search the room next to mine, Spraggue? Did you find what you wanted? Am I guilty if Lenny was my lover? Or am I guilty if I have a lover, period?" Her chin jutted out at a familiar angle. "Who taught you how to trust, Spraggue?"
"You did, Katherine, in Paris, a long time ago."
"And who let me go to Paris?"
"I didn't think I had any right to keep you away."
"And I didn't think you cared enough to keep me away." They stared at each other until Kate closed her eyes and took a deep sighing breath. She dabbed at her nose with the soggy Kleenex.
Spraggue passed over his handkerchief.
"You're the only man I know who still carries a handkerchief."
"Keep it as a souvenir. You're the last woman dreamed I'd ever lend it to."
"Haven't we had the Paris fight before, Spraggue?"
"Yeah . . . Let's talk about something else."
"What?"
"About us. When you get out of here."
"When I get out of here," she said firmly, after a long sniffling pause, "we've got to do something about the house."
"Remember that chateau by the Loire? The white one with the towers and turrets and gold leaf?"
"Yeah." She blew her nose loudly. "We rented horses from an old German expatriate. The silver one tried to throw me."
"You want one of those? A white castle with towers and—"
"I want the time back," she said. "I want to be twenty again."
"You weren't half as good at twenty."
Her chin came up sharply. "I got what I wanted when I was twenty. You never turned me down."
"Temporary insanity," Spraggue said. "I'll make up for it when you're out of here."
"And when will that be?"
"A few more days, Kate. If I can't straighten things out by then-"
"Do you know what you're asking? I feel like some kind of animal. I walk back and forth, back and forth."
"Things are starting to move," he lied. "It won't be much longer."
"Have they found out who that other guy was? How he died?"
"Sorry," the guard said loudly, "time's up." She turned away, so Spraggue pulled Kate close and hugged her again.
"His name's still a mystery," he said. "He was poisoned."
"Jesus."
"With sulfur dioxide."
Kate's face lost the tiny trace of color it had left.
"Does that mean anything to you? Sulfur dioxide? I keep thinking—dammit, it's like some light bulb should spark when I say the words—and nothing happens. It's just high school chemistry to me."
The guard stared pointedly at her watch and took Kate's arm.
"One minute," Spraggue said. "Kate, does sulfur dioxide mean something to you?"
She swallowed audibly. "Ask Howard," she whispered, and then she was gone.
14
A shower, a shave, a change of clothes—those were minimal requirements before the eight o'clock tasting. A couple hours sleep wouldn't hurt.
Spraggue stomped the brakes as a grape-loaded gondola pulled out of a driveway fifty yards ahead, resigned himself to a 25 mph creep behind the vehicle, and, for the first time in days, really took note of his surroundings.
The valley bustled with its annual September fever. Mechanical harvesters rumbled across a vineyard to his left; the chatter of a picking crew competed to his right. The musty grape-smell was everywhere, overwhelming. Spraggue rolled down his window, drank it in.
With
crush in full swing, getting that cellar book out of Howard's hands might be trickier than Kate suspected.
Ask Howard, she'd said. Ask Howard about sulfur dioxide. Why? Damn it, there was something he should know, something he should recall about sulfur dioxide.
Industrial accident . . . Enright would follow that trail straight out of the county if he could. Spraggue wondered how political Enright's decision was. Had he powwowed with the elusive Sheriff Hughes, decided that one unsolved murder was more than sufficient for the sheriff s current term of office? That a crazed double-murderer was unthinkable? Industrial accident . . .
What the hell was SO2 used for? Spraggue's mind veered back to long-ago chemistry classes. Making sulfuric acid. Bleaching paper? It might have something to do with refrigeration ....
But the smell, dammit, that sharp, biting stink. SO2 wasn't any carbon monoxide insinuating itself into the bloodstream, lulling the victim to final dreamless sleep. Anyone breathing sulfur dioxide would know immediately, flee—unless . . .
Unconscious. Locked in. God, what an ugly, horrible, burning death.
Spraggue felt pain in his chest and realized he was holding his breath. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead into his left eye. He rolled up the window, flipped on the noisy air conditioner.
Industrial accident. And some foreman discovered the dead man, drove the corpse to the valley, dumped it in a convenient car trunk after stoving in the skull. Why? To prevent determining the cause of death? Garbage. The man's trachea and lungs would yield more than sufficient evidence. To prevent identification, then. If he could just find out who Mr. X was ....
He turned into the narrow driveway by the house, drove the twisting half-mile to the winery. He parked the station wagon far up, on the right-most verge of the gravel lot, so the gondolas would have easy access to the weight scales.
Just finding Howard might be tough work. The yard teemed with workers. The whine of a gondola inching up the steep driveway drowned out all but shouted words. One load of grapes had already been dumped into the stainless-steel hopper. The helical screw conveyor revolved slowly, bringing the blackish-purple bunches up to the crusher-stemmer. The smell was incredibly intense, a fact seemingly appreciated by the swarms of vinegar flies and yellow jackets. The crusher-stemmer whirred, churning tons of pulped fruit, its paddles slapping the grapes and skins through holes in the rotating drum, freeing the juice from the berries, leaving the stems behind.
