The Merlot Murders wcm-1

by Ellen Crosby

  “Lucky you. You could have seen the Perseids if you’d looked on the right day and time. A change in longitude doesn’t change the night sky from one place to the next. A change in latitude does. You were about the same latitude in Grasse that we are here.”

  He smoked his cigar and we sat, side by side, in silence. Then he said, “I hope Allen Cantor rots in jail. As for what happened to the money he stole, who knows?”

  “You had no idea what he was doing?”

  “No,” he said. “Though I’m sure you don’t believe that.”

  “How could somebody you were so close to deceive you so completely?”

  “Happens all the time, sweetheart. What’s the saying? ‘Regret is insight that comes a day too late.’” He stood up. “Come on. It will be light in two hours. We still have harvest in the morning. I think we should sleep.”

  He was already awake and dressed when I opened my eyes. “Power’s on. I can see lights coming from the house. I’m going to get some breakfast. You want something?”

  I leaned on the golf club and stood up. “I need a shower and a change of clothes.”

  We split up when we got back to the house. He headed for the kitchen and I went upstairs. When I joined him later, he’d brewed a pot of coffee and was in the middle of cooking something on the stove.

  “What’s that?”

  “Omelet. Want some?”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Whatever you had in the refrigerator. Salsa. Goat cheese. Tuna.”

  “Maybe I’ll pass. Is there any bread?”

  “Nope. You’re pretty cleaned out. It’s the omelet or nothing.”

  It actually wasn’t that bad. While we were eating he said, “I called Hector while you were upstairs. He says everything’s quiet. We only lost power for an hour, so at least the generator wasn’t running all night.”

  When we finished eating I took our plates and stacked them in the kitchen sink. “Let’s get over there,” he said. “You ready?”

  I picked up the golf club where I’d propped it against the wall. “Yes.”

  We walked out the front door. The Toyota was right where I’d parked it. The air felt different and the sky was overcast. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Car keys?”

  “What?”

  “You drove here last night.”

  “So I did. I left them on the dresser in my room. I’ll get them.”

  “No, I’ll go.” He stared at the sky. “It’s going to rain.”

  “Feels like it.”

  “I’ll be right back. Why don’t you practice your golf swing while you’re waiting?”

  “Ha, ha.”

  He disappeared inside the house. I swung the golf club absently, then stopped and looked at the dirty white ceiling of low cloud cover in the early morning sky. It was definitely going to rain. We’d have to work fast to get rest of the Chardonnay picked.

  “What’s the matter?” He reappeared with his keys. “You look upset.”

  “I think I’m starting to get a headache. It’s definitely going to rain.”

  “What are you, a human barometer or something?”

  “I need some aspirin.”

  “Let’s get over to the winery. I’ve got some in my office.” He started the Toyota. We pulled into the parking lot. The only other vehicles there were Hector’s pickup and Bonita’s Corvette. “Why don’t you go see Hector and check things out?” Quinn said. “I’ve got to run back to my place for a minute. These clothes could walk by themselves. I’ll be right there.”

  I found Hector, looking sleepy, sitting on a stool in Quinn’s lab in the barrel room. “Morning, Lucita.” He stretched and yawned. “The crew’s on its way. César went to get them. We’ll start picking then, though I’m gonna let César take over for today. I’m going home to get some sleep.”

  “Do you know how many men we’ve got coming?”

  He picked up a piece of paper and squinted at it. He patted his shirt pocket absently and frowned. I watched him reach for the reading glasses on the counter and put them on.

  I’d left those glasses here last night when the power went out.

  Hector thought they were his.

  “Looks like we got eight men.”

  “Those glasses,” I said quietly. “I guess they really help you read, don’t they?”

  He looked up from the paper, over the top of the glasses. “Oh, I can still read some stuff real good,” he said. “But not small print. Maps. Menus. Anything with little writing.” He took off the glasses. “These are pretty strong, though. All those drugstore glasses look alike until you put them on.”

  “They’re not yours?”

  “Nope.”

  “Can I have them, please?”

  He looked puzzled, but passed them over to me. “What’s wrong, Lucita? Where are you going?”

  “To return them to their owner,” I said. “I know who they belong to.”

  Chapter 25

  I left the barrel room and walked along the courtyard loggia toward the parking lot. I knew who. I didn’t understand why.

  A man who had everything.

  As I rounded the corner I nearly collided with him. He was dressed immaculately as always, even at this hour of the morning.

  He looked astonished to see me. “Why, hello, sugar,” he smiled. “I wasn’t expecting to find you here.”

  When Eli and I were kids, we used to fry marbles in an old cast-iron skillet, then pour ice water over them. The sudden temperature change would make them crack inwardly. The marbles were broken, but not shattered.

  Looking into his familiar eyes I thought of those marbles. “That’s because you thought I’d be in the barrel room, where you left me last night. You’re the one who locked that door and shut off the electricity and the generators,” I said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do, Mason. You tried to kill me and you were coming back just now to make sure I was dead.” I held out the reading glasses. “These are yours, aren’t they?”

  His face was like granite. “Where did you get them?”

  “From Sara Rust. You must have dropped them when you were searching her house. That’s why you arrived so early at the concert last night. You couldn’t read the small print on your ticket so you thought it started at six thirty, not seven thirty. Why, Mason? Why did you do this?”

  He slipped the gun out of a holster under his jacket as easily as if he’d been reaching for his starched handkerchief. “I wish you hadn’t done this, sugar. Now I’m going to have to do something about it. Let’s go.”

  Mason went hunting every year with the Romeos. He was a crack shot.

  “You wouldn’t.” He’d burped me as a baby, maybe even watched when my mother changed my diaper. I wasn’t fooling him.

  “No one’s coming. I know Hector’s in the barrel room. And I saw Quinn leave about five minutes ago. So we haven’t got much time. Now move. I don’t want to shoot you here.” He motioned for me to walk in front of him to the parking lot.

  The silver Mercedes was parked next to Bonita’s Corvette. “Get in,” he said, “and don’t do anything stupid. I don’t want blood all over my car.”

  I got in the car. He leaned over me and pulled something out of his glove compartment. Plastic handcuffs. “Put your hands out.”

  He cuffed me and we drove out of the parking lot, headed for Atoka Road. We passed the turnoff for Quinn’s cottage. No sign of the Toyota.

  “He’ll be a while,” Mason said. “He’s got a few things to untangle.”

  “What did you do to him?”

  “Nothing.”

  My voice shook. “Why are you doing this? Are you trying to buy the vineyard yourself? What do you want it for? You already own a palace.”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “How do you know?”

  He glanced over at me, with his most ruthless and pitiless courtroom eyes. “Because you’ve never been a success.
Nor any of your family.”

  I held up my hands, manacled in the plastic handcuffs. “What a shame I’m not as successful as you are. Look where it’s brought you.”

  I shouldn’t have goaded him. He had that gun.

  “Shut up!” He reached out and slapped my face hard with the back of his hand. My head jerked backward. We had reached Atoka Road. He put on his left turn signal, though there wasn’t a soul in sight. Law-abiding citizen kidnaps niece at gunpoint. At least he wouldn’t be cited for a traffic violation.

  He drove through Atoka in silence, then turned onto Mosby’s Highway.

  “I thought we’d take a little drive to the Goose Creek Bridge,” he said casually. “Since it’s one of your favorite spots.”

  I’d never thought of him as sadistic before. He was enjoying this.

  “Who was in the SUV, Mason?”

  He didn’t even flinch. “Someone who owed me a favor. He’s not in jail like he oughta be.”

  “And I was the favor. Was he supposed to kill me?”

  He said, coolly, “It would have been an unexpected bonus.”

  I shivered and stared at the man who used to bounce me on his knee. “Does Aunt Linda know what you’re doing?”

  He glanced over at me and those eyes shut me up immediately.

  Another blinker signal and we turned smoothly onto the gravel road that led to the Goose Creek Bridge. It was too much to hope that there would be someone there, picnicking at dawn. “Get out.”

  I opened the car door and stepped out. He let me keep the golf club. It didn’t help much with the plastic handcuffs.

  “Move.”

  “Then take these handcuffs off,” I said, “or you can carry me.”

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  “The ground’s uneven. It’s hard enough using my cane, but nearly impossible with this golf club. Come on, Mason. Do you really think I can run away?”

  He hesitated, then reached in his pocket and pulled out the key. I held out my hands as he unlocked them and yanked them off my wrists. For a moment he seemed unsure what to do with them. Then he opened the door to the Mercedes and threw them on the passenger seat.

  “Walk to the bridge.”

  I walked as slowly as I could, even stumbling a little, but he was only going to believe so much ineptitude. Besides, who was going to find me here?

  We finally reached the arched stone bridge. The air was heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, as it had been when I was there with Kit…when? Two nights ago?

  “Okay.” He gestured to the parapet. “Climb up there. You’re going to jump.”

  “You are out of your mind. There’s no water.” I didn’t move from the gravel path. He was about ten yards away from me.

  “You’re too distraught to notice. The vineyard has no future. Everyone in town knows you and Eli are battling over money because you’re broke.”

  “Everyone in town knows I’m not suicidal.”

  “You’re dependent on painkillers since your accident and it’s changed you. You became despondent when you found out your ex-lover was screwing your sister. You’re still in love with him, but he’s rejected you. Unfortunately, he finds you repulsive, with your twisted foot and that pathetic limp.” He added cruelly, “You’re ashamed of your deformity.”

  I should not have been surprised that his fine, courtroom mind would have thought everything through so coldly and thoroughly. But his viciousness stunned me.

  “I am not ashamed of anything. And I’m not in love with Greg Knight. You must be getting senile in your dotage, Mason. In addition to being very farsighted.”

  It was stupid to continue to taunt him when he clearly had every intention of making sure I was dead before he climbed back in his Mercedes. I half-expected him to raise the hand with the gun and aim. Instead, he looked perplexed and then I knew why. He’d been getting his information from Greg, who was probably too vain to admit I’d rebuffed him.

  “Why do you believe everything he tells you?” I said. “You were with him last night. You went to that concert to see him, didn’t you? And afterward he never went to the radio station. He replayed an earlier version of his call-in show. I heard him tell someone that the drought was going to continue for the next few days. But it’s going to rain today, isn’t it? He’s done this before. He can be in two places at once. Probably figures he’s got a rock-solid alibi for anything and no one will catch on.” Mason’s face, normally so inscrutable in the courtroom, gave him away for once. “Was he blackmailing you, like he was blackmailing Brandi?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “What dirt did he have on you, Mason? Did you bribe a judge? Lie under oath? Cheat on your taxes?”

  “Shut up!”

  I read somewhere that someone who was on the verge of committing murder enjoyed bragging about their accomplishments to their victims, probably because they were the only audience they could count on not to rat them out. He stood there with the gun and slowly raised his arm. I closed my eyes. He was going to shoot me now.

  “He thought he could manipulate me.”

  I opened my eyes. “But you were too smart for him, weren’t you?”

  “Don’t you dare patronize me.”

  “What happened?”

  Mason’s jaw worked and for the first time since we’d embarked on this little adventure, he looked like he was ashamed of something. “It happened years ago.”

  “What did?”

  “Jimmy fixed my car one night after I had a small accident. Made it as good as new. It wasn’t the Mercedes. I had a Cadillac in those days. Greg happened to be around. He must have been about ten or eleven. Jimmy did me a little favor because I helped him out more than once, but the kid didn’t have the class of the old man. When he got older he realized what had happened.”

  “Did you hit somebody?”

  “It was an accident!” He sounded genuinely anguished. “It was raining, about ten o’clock at night. I didn’t even see the woman on the bicycle. It was a deserted stretch of Bull Run Mountain Road. Hell, there were no streetlights, not even a sliver of a moon. It was dark and she was wearing dark clothing. I thought I hit a deer. That’s why I didn’t go back. I was on my way to your house. I was supposed to take your mother to the hospital. She’d gone into labor with Mia.”

  I swallowed hard. “Then what happened?”

  He looked off toward the hills, like he was trying to recall. But I think it was probably because he was trying not to cry. “Jimmy found a piece of her dress in the undercarriage of my car. I never knew. By that time, I’d heard about the report of a Jane Doe found in a ditch on Bull Run Mountain Road. They had no clue who did it. Nothing to trace it to me.”

  “Except that piece of her dress.”

  He looked at me. “You have to understand, sugar. I have done a lot of good in my career. I have helped so many people. I have made it a crusade to do pro bono work for those people, most of whom would never have been able to hire a lawyer of my caliber.”

  “What people?”

  “She was Mexican.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m glad,” he said, “because let me tell you, I have repaid my debt to society. And it’s been far, far better this way than if I’d been behind bars.”

  “Of course.”

  “You do see, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” I swallowed. “So what did Greg want from you?”

  He smiled a rictus smile. “To be rich. To be like everyone else he grew up with. He hated it that Jimmy was a grease monkey. He knew that was his future, too. Hell, he’s not that smart. Just barely got through college without flunking out. He was too busy screwing girls and partying to really learn anything. But he wanted your house. More specifically, he wanted your land.”

  I was stunned. “He has no money.”

  “No, but I do. He knew your daddy was broke. He figured he could pick the place up for a song, then flip it and make a bundle.” He added, acidly, “I would have recouped my original
investment of course. It would have cost me nothing.”

  “He was going to sell to a group of developers who want to build a Civil War theme park. That’s how he was going to make a bundle.”

  Now he looked surprised. “Who told you that? The Eastman girl.” He spoke with the same kind of venom as when he had talked about my “deformity.” “I’ll handle that.”

  “Leave her alone. She hasn’t done anything. She doesn’t know any of this.”

  His laugh was unpleasant. “Don’t worry, sugar. I don’t resort to something this extreme unless the situation warrants it.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Don’t you smart-mouth me or I’ll shoot you in the one good leg you’ve got left. If the fall from the bridge doesn’t kill you, you’ll bleed to death.”

  “You mean, like Leland?”

  He looked momentarily startled, then he smiled. “Poor old Lee. If only he’d gone along with me, none of this would have happened. It all would have been peaceable. He’d have his money and we’d have the land.”

  “Were you with him that day?”

  “I was.”

  “You killed him.”

  “Now, honey, don’t you go sayin’ things like that,” he drawled, like I’d just said a cuss word and he was trying to make me mind my manners. “Your daddy died in an honest-to-God hunting accident.”

  “You’re lying. You shot him.”

  “Lucie love, I’m warning you. Let me put you right on this. Lee asked me to go along with him to shoot a few of those pesky crows that were eating your grapes. What happened was he got tangled up in a trellis wire while he was sneaking up on some danged bird. He should have known better than to have his finger on the trigger. Damn thing went off and he shot himself. Unfortunately, he bled to death before anybody could get to him in time.”

  “You left him there to die.”

  He looked at me severely. “I had to protect my reputation.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “You’re sassing me again, sugar. I don’t like that.” He waved the gun at me. “I’d hate to have to really shoot you. You know I’m against handguns except for legitimate hunting purposes. Plus I didn’t bring the silencer.”