Blood for Wine

by Warren C Easley

  In the best case, Blake Daniels was an alcoholic creep. In the worst case…well, I didn’t want to think about that.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Jim’s second arraignment came and went the following Monday without incident. On Tuesday morning of that week, I took Arch out for a walk and then crossed the 99W for a coffee at Bake My Day, determined to resist having a pain au chocolat. The sun had made a surprise appearance, and the fall air sparkled like a jewel. To my surprise, Blake Daniels sat at a small table in the back, absorbed in the Wall Street Journal and sipping a coffee. He was an occasional customer at the bakery, but I hadn’t seen him there since the murder.

  When my double cappuccino came up, I took it and pulled up a chair at the table next to him. His facial skin was taut and surprisingly tanned, his hair swept straight back in a dark, undulating wave. I found myself wondering how I’d look with dyed hair. His eyes registered something between surprise and enmity when he looked up at me. “Well, if it isn’t Dundee’s answer to Perry Mason, or is it Robert Kardashian?” he said, grinning at what he obviously considered a clever remark.

  I sipped my coffee and forced a smile to hide a ripple of anger. “I’ve been called worse.”

  He returned the smile. It was edged with delight. “Did you get those bruises in court the other day? Looks like you got a steep hill to climb, counselor.”

  I shrugged. “Indictments are a dime a dozen. Jim Kavanaugh’s out on bail, and that only happens in murder arrests when the prosecution’s case is weak.”

  Blake smiled again, but it was his turn to force it. “You’re his lawyer. What else are you going to say?”

  “Mind if I ask you something?”

  He leaned back a little, wary. “Be my guest.”

  “Have you received an offer to buy your place from a real estate firm called Hanson?”

  His eyebrows rose. “Yeah, I did. So what? Offers like that come in all the time.”

  “Just wondering how widespread it was.” Managing a more relaxed smile, I added, “Did you enjoy Amis’ bash?”

  His face clouded over faster than an Oregon day. “The man has no taste in wine. I offered him five cases of my best stuff, and he told me he couldn’t fit me in.” He lifted his hawk eyes, and their color intensified as if a fire had ignited behind them. “But he was pouring plenty of Kavanaugh’s swill.”

  I nodded and gave him what I hoped was a sympathetic look. “I don’t blame you for leaving the party early.”

  He blinked a couple of times, as if he were turning the comment over. His cold-burning eyes stayed on me. “What’s it to you when I leave a party?”

  I waved a hand dismissively. “Nothing. Just wondered why you left early and now I know. Amis wasn’t pouring the right wines.”

  He got up, folded the paper, put it under his arm, and faced me. His eyes narrowed down, and his face grew rigid. “It’s a damn shame what Kavanaugh did to that beautiful woman. If you get him off, you better be thinking about a new place to live because you’re not going to be welcome in Dundee.” With that he turned and left.

  I drained my coffee and went outside to fetch Arch. He popped up and began wagging his backside. “Which is it, Big Boy,” I asked him, “Perry Mason or Robert Kardashian?”

  ***

  “Found her,” Nando said when I answered his mid-morning call. “The extra two-hundred dollars tipped the balance. Her name is Maura Conisson.” He spelled it for me. “She’s thirty-eight years old, single mother of a seven-year-old son named Joshua. Works as a pharmaceutical sales rep for an outfit called Fizon. They distribute for Pfizer and other big drug companies. They’re downtown in the Fox Tower. She lives in North Portland, off Mississippi.” He gave me her address and cell number. Nando was a thorough investigator.

  “Nice work. What else have you got?”

  “We watched her movements yesterday. “She left for work at seven fifteen, parked in the SmartPark at Tenth and Yamhill, and stopped in at Elephant’s Deli for a coffee and roll, which she took up to her office. She was back down at Elephant’s around noon for lunch and left the Fox at around five fifteen. Drove straight home. We did not see her son coming or going. She is in sales, so she probably travels, but we do not know her schedule.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I have run a complete background check on her. She is from Seattle and went to Seattle University, a biology major. No priors. Her husband died six years ago. Brain aneurism. I will send the complete report in a PDF file. Do you want us to track her tomorrow?”

  “No. This is great, Nando. “I’ll take it from here. Uh, anything on Isabel Rufino?

  “Not yet. No one answers at the number you gave me. But I can now put the man who found Maura on this job. He is my best investigator.”

  I cleared my calendar for the next two days and then called Sean McKnight. After I gave him the news and we discussed what I planned to do next, he sighed into the phone, the sound of a defeated man. “I suppose it’s still worth all this to get the photos back.”

  “Listen Sean, we can take another tack. We probably have enough now to go to the police and have her and whoever’s behind this busted. Of course, that means the photos could possibly see the light of day along with a lot of publicity.”

  There was a long pause before he sighed again. “No. Let’s stay the course. I owe it to my family and the church, and Amanda…I mean, Maura. My heart tells me she’s a victim here, too. I’ll be praying for you, Cal.”

  I punched off and smiled grimly at the Reverend’s promise of divine communication. The last time someone told me they were going to pray for me, I got the crap beaten out of me.

  I called Winona next and told her what was up and that I was coming into town for at least one night. “I want to talk to you about strategy. I’ll have one shot at this and I don’t want to blow it again.”

  She laughed. “Okay. My consultation fee for how to approach a shady female is that you cook dinner tonight.”

  “It’s a deal, provided you do the grocery shopping.” She agreed and I gave her a list of ingredients I would need.

  ***

  “Oh, you brought the good stuff,” Winona said as she removed the two bottles of wine from a bag I’d placed on the counter, one bottle of Jim’s 2012 reserve pinot and a younger wine from a neighboring vineyard. I opened the younger bottle first and poured us each a glass. She’d already changed the bandage covering the gash on my temple and examined my bruised left arm, which was less sore and swollen each day. She’d had the stitches removed from her forehead that week, and although the whitish scar stood out against her burnished copper skin, it looked like it would fade with time.

  We were in her kitchen area with Archie lying off to one side, watching our every move. Brown rice cooked on the stove, and I busied myself chopping shallots, ginger, and garlic while we discussed Jim’s case. “So, nothing’s lining up,” I was saying. “Isabel’s my only potential direct link to the killer, but I’ll be lucky to find her and even luckier if she agrees to cooperate. I still think she ran because she knows something.”

  I scraped the ingredients into a sauce pan and added a cup of the young wine, a bag of dried cherries, some butter, and a dash of pepper and put the pan on a burner. Winona said, “Eddie’s a good-looking man. I could see him becoming Lori’s lover. After all, Lori was more attractive than his wife.”

  I drank some wine, shook my head, and told her about his alibi and the fact that he and Sylvia were the owners of a highly successful investment business. “They don’t need Le Petit Truc. Besides, they both seem to revere Jim.”

  “What about that creep of a stepbrother?”

  I unwrapped a pork tenderloin and seasoned it with curry powder and salt and pepper. “Yeah, Abernathy’s got anger issues. As you know, Jim wouldn’t set him up in the cannabis business, and he’s still livid about it.”

/>   Winona sipped some wine. “So he killed Lori just to get back at Jim?”

  I shrugged. “He was probably as mad at her as he was at Jim, but a motive for murder?”

  “Does he have an alibi?”

  The cherry sauce was reducing nicely, filling the loft with a rich aroma. “The police report said he was with Lori’s mom, and that’s what he told me when I asked him. But, you know, the mom’s dying of cancer. She could have been sedated or something. I put the meat under the broiler, started building a salad, and handed Winona a small dish. “Make us a dressing, two thirds olive oil, one third red wine vinegar, salt and pepper, a little lemon juice, then take the rice off. It should be done.”

  Winona laughed. “I love it when you go into your bossy chef mode.” She made the dressing and transferred the steaming brown rice into a bowl. “Then there’s Candice and lover boy Blake Daniels,” she went on. “What about them?” I explained what Candice was up to, and she shot me a skeptical look. “You trust her?”

  I shrugged again. “Jim does, and I have no reason not to. Blake’s a different story. He’s my best candidate for Lori’s lover, and he left Amis’ party in time to have been the intruder. Candice said he’s showing a lot of interest in Jim’s business, too.”

  Winona laughed. “That and four bucks will get you a latte in Portland.”

  I nodded as I stirred the cherry reduction sauce and tasted it. “Umm, not bad. I think we’re there.” I took it off the stove, puréed it in a blender, then checked the meat. Pink in the center. Perfect. Every so often things clicked in the kitchen, and this was one of those times. I opened the bottle of Jim’s reserve pinot and we toasted each other by candlelight before we began to eat.

  Halfway through the meal Winona brought us back to the problem facing me the next day. “So, how are you going to approach this Conisson woman?” We kicked it around, and by the time we finished some Ben and Jerry’s mango sorbet I had a plan of sorts. I called Sean McKnight to fill him in.

  Later that night, she held my arm as we took Arch for a walk. The streets were silent, the rain had held off, and a light breeze from the east carried a faint scent of the river. Back in the apartment, Winona stretched and said, “Great food, great wine. There’s only one thing missing.”

  “What might that be?”

  She took my hand. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  Chapter Thirty

  At four-thirty the next afternoon I bought a twelve-ounce cup of black coffee at Elephant’s Deli and crossed the street to Director Park, a paved plaza that sat atop six stories of underground parking. A sharp departure from the verdant parks in Portland, it featured an expansive glass canopy for protection against the weather, a large, semi-circular fountain, and plants sprouting from concrete pots. A low cloud cover urgent with rain threatened that day but never materialized, so I sat out on the lip of the fountain with my eye on the building across the street. I took a couple of photos of Maura Conisson out of my pocket and studied them again, although I was pretty sure I’d be able to spot my quarry with no problem.

  Winona had persuaded me to approach Maura out in the open. “Catch her out on the plaza,” she’d said. “She’ll feel more vulnerable there, and you’ll have the element of surprise. If you confront her at home, on her turf, she’s likely to slam the door in your face.”

  A steady trickle of people began exiting the tower around 4:50 with the glut at 5:10. I didn’t see her and worried I’d somehow missed her. After all, she could be travelling or working late or God knows what. But at 5:16 a lone woman came out and strode across the street and into the park, a thin briefcase in one hand. I didn’t have to move, because she was heading right toward me. She wore a corporate uniform—a white blouse beneath a dark blazer with slacks and ankle boots. Even in the low light, I could see red highlights in her auburn hair, but my eyes, and I suspect, the eyes of many people, were drawn to her face. It wasn’t anything in particular about her features—large, wide-set eyes, a sloping, delicate nose, and full lips. Maybe it was how they were arranged in a perfectly oval face perched on a slender neck. I really can’t say, but there was no question Maura Conisson was a beautiful woman.

  I stood up, stepped in front of her, and smiled. “Hello Maura. My name’s Cal Claxton. I’d like to talk to you about Sean McKnight.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then sidestepped me and kept walking with her eyes focused straight ahead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said over her shoulder. “You’ve got the wrong person.”

  I fell into step with her. “No I don’t. You were involved in an effort to shake him down. I’m an attorney, not a cop, but unless you talk to me, I’m afraid there could be dire consequences for you.”

  She lengthened her stride. “You’re crazy. Leave me alone.”

  I kept pace with her. “You’re involved in the commission of a felony, Maura. You’re flirting with a prison sentence if you don’t cooperate. Think of your son, Joshua.” She slowed down and snapped me a startled look. “If you help Sean McKnight we might be able to work something out.”

  She stopped, faced me, and tried to marshal a look of righteous indignation, but instead her face went slack and her eyes grew wide as the shock of my words sunk in. Her chin trembled when she finally spoke. “I’m listening.”

  “We can talk down the street, at the Virginia Café. I’ve got a booth reserved in the back.”

  We walked in silence down Park Avenue to the café. I’d been in earlier and given the bartender twenty bucks to reserve the last two booths in the back, one for us to talk and an empty booth for a buffer. The light was dim, and when she hesitated I said, “Go ahead. Sit down. I just want to talk.” She finally slid across from me into the booth, all the while averting her eyes from mine. “We can’t change what happened,” I began, “but we have a chance to make some things right here. Sean just wants the pictures back. Not for his sake, but for the sake of his family and his church.”

  Maura furrowed her smooth brow. “Pictures? What are you talking about? I had an affair with Sean. That’s all I know about.”

  “Cut the crap, Maura. There’s video footage of the two of you in a motel bed. You had to have known about that.”

  She looked stunned for a moment, and what color was left in her face drained away. “I knew pictures of us going in and out of motels were being taken. That was the deal.” She looked directly at me. “I did not know about any bedroom shots. I swear.” She wrung her hands. “Oh, Christ.”

  “I don’t care whether you knew or not. We want the name of the person who paid you for this so we can get the pictures back.” I locked onto her eyes. “If this happens, Mr. McKnight has told me he won’t go to the police to press charges, and you can go about your life. But if he doesn’t get the pictures back he’s going to the police and tell them everything. He will not be blackmailed.” She looked at me, unblinking. “That could mean hard prison time for you, Maura.”

  She sat there for a long time clasping and unclasping her hands, her eyes focused on the surface of the stained, rough-hewn table. “What if the blackmailer doesn’t cooperate?”

  “Then you’re both screwed,” I answered. “We’re coming after you.”

  She went silent again, her hands moving restlessly. The noise level in the café was building as a happy hour crowd began to filter in. Then her hands stopped, and she closed her eyes. When she opened them again they were flooded with tears. She looked at me and said in a barely audible voice, “Do you think Sean could ever forgive me?”

  “If you cooperate, perhaps. He’s been deeply hurt and has already paid a heavy price.”

  She sighed. It sounded like the weight of the world had just come off her shoulders. “I’m so sorry I did this to him. My son. He’s sick. Cancer. I needed the money. I did it for the money. I never wanted to hurt Sean.”

  I nodded and let the conversation go for
a while, as Maura told me about her son, Josh. He had leukemia and needed a lot of expensive home care after his initial treatment at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. “Home care wasn’t covered by my insurance. I couldn’t take off work, so the bills piled up, and I was going to lose my house.” She dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “I did it for my son. And I hated myself every single day for it. I only got half the money, twenty thousand dollars. I’m supposed to get the rest when the deal—whatever that is—goes through. I’d give the money back, but most of it’s gone.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not concerned about that.” I met her eyes and held them. “Who was it, Maura? Who talked you into this?”

  She let out a long breath. “He’s an ex-client of mine, a psychiatrist out your way named Richard Amis.”

  Richard Amis? I leaned back in the booth. Well, I’ll be damned, I said to myself. Life is, indeed, full of surprises.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  By this time, I’m sure the Virginia Café was buzzing with after-work revelers, but all my attention was riveted on Sean McKnight’s seductress, Maura Conisson. I leaned forward in the booth. “How long was Amis your client?”

  “About two years. He was always interested in my personal life, always asking me how things were going, that sort of thing. He was very easy to talk to, and after Josh got sick I started pouring out my heart to him.” She shook her head and swung her eyes to mine. “It was like free therapy sessions, you know? God knows I needed it.”

  I nodded. “How did he recruit you?”

  She dropped her eyes and studied the table for a few moments. “I got a new territory, but one day he called out of the blue and invited me for coffee. I didn’t think much of it. I mean I didn’t think he was hitting on me or anything. Anyway, he kind of broke down and told me this story about a man who’d seduced his wife. It was threatening to break up his marriage.”