Blood for Wine

by Warren C Easley

  A wet, heavy fog had oozed its way up from the valley and lay like a cold blanket across the Hills. I switched on my fog lights and cut my speed in half as I made my way down Worden Hill toward Blake Daniels’ Rolling Hills Estate, home of mediocre pinot noir offered at a value price.

  I nearly missed the sharp left that bore off to the east and took me first past the Le Petit Truc acreage, then Sean McKnight’s massive holdings, and finally along the southern edge of the Rolling Hills Estate. But that night there was nothing to see but milk white fog that condensed on my windshield and sloshed off my wipers.

  No coherent plan formed in my head as I worked my way along that dirt road. My objective was simple—make sure that Candice Roberts was in no danger. I didn’t give a good goddamn what kind of scene I made. The subterfuge with Blake Daniels was over.

  I was maybe a half-mile from the turnoff to Rolling Hills when I caught the movement of something off to my left, just inside the tree line. I slowed down and craned my neck. There it was again. Something dashed between two trees! Archie let out a single, sharp bark. I slammed on my brakes, grabbed the crowbar and the flashlight, and hopped out of the car with Archie right behind me.

  A form materialized out of the woods, and there, illuminated by my flashlight, was Candice Roberts. “Cal, oh my God, is that you?” She stood in front of me in nothing but a pair of bikini panties, her hands clamped over her bare breasts. Her hair was soaked and stringy, she was shivering almost uncontrollably, and her eyes blazed with a kind of crazed excitement. Her knees were raw and bloody, and blood was dripping down from a gash on her left shoulder. Archie whimpered and sidled up next to her.

  “Yes, it’s me.” I ripped my coat off, covered her with it, and helped her into the car. I got a blanket from the trunk and spread it over her once she was in the front seat. “Are you okay?”

  “Hell yes,” she said between shivers. “I’m okay. Just cold and a little scratched up.”

  Anger boiled up in me like hot oil. “Did Daniels do this?”

  “No. Not directly.” She managed a laugh. “I was in his study. His computer wasn’t passworded, so I pulled up his calendar. I looked on the night of the murder, October third, and several days on either side. He had lots of entries, but the night of Lori’s murder, his agenda was blank. So, no alibi for that day that I could see.”

  “What about the Sunday Amis was killed, November thirteenth?”

  She smiled. “Same thing. Nothing entered for that date. He cancelled our date for that day, said something came up, but nothing was penciled in.” She went on, “There was a stack of memos, personal mail, bills, all kinds of shit, on his desk. I was working my way through that when I looked up, and there he stands in the doorway staring at me with the scariest look I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “What did you do?”

  She laughed again, more a release of nervous tension than anything. “I panicked, that’s what. There’s a door in the study that leads out to the side yard. I blew out that door like I had a rocket tied to my butt. No way he was ever going to catch me.”

  “Did he chase you?”

  She shrugged. “I never looked back, and I didn’t hear anything. I fell a couple of times and scratched myself up.” She looked down at the gash on her shoulder. “Nothing serious.”

  I breathed an audible sigh of relief and put the car in gear. “Let’s get the hell out of here. He might be out there somewhere.”

  “Coming after us?”

  “I don’t know. He might have a gun or he might call the cops, accuse you of burglary. Who the hell knows?”

  “Burglary? I was his guest. And I’m practically naked.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t noticed.”

  She laughed, despite herself. “Well, I don’t think that little shit’s going to be rushing off to the police.” She looked me full in the face, and allowed the faintest smile to crease her still-blue lips. “I found something in there, Cal.” She reached into her panties along her hip and pulled something out. “You’ve got to see this.”

  I didn’t see any headlights in my mirror, so I pulled over onto the narrow shoulder and switched on the dome light. She handed me what looked like a slightly mangled birthday card. The outside read simply:

  Happy Birthday, Stud Muffin.

  I opened it up. The inside read:

  A hard man is good to find

  I’m glad I found you!

  L

  Below the initial L, the sender had left the lip print of a kiss in blood red lipstick. Candice pointed at the L. That’s Lori’s handwriting, I’m almost positive. And that’s her favorite lipstick color, for sure.”

  “There’s no date on this,” I said.

  “I know, but it was in with a stack of other cards and letters wishing him a happy birthday. Most were dated August 16. I’ll bet anything that’s his birth date. The timing fits, Cal. That would have given him plenty of time to cozy up to her and set up the murder.”

  My pulse ticked up a notch. “You’re sure about the initial? I mean it’s only one letter.”

  She exhaled a long breath. “Looks like it to me. She always signed her stuff with just the initial L. Jim would know for sure.”

  I nodded. “Right. We need to show this to him right now.”

  She barked a laugh. “Not until you take me home to change. This is going to be humiliating enough. I want some clothes on when I face him.”

  On the way to Candice’s place, she said, “If Jim recognizes the signature, do we have enough to go to the cops?”

  “No. Afraid not. I’m glad you grabbed it, but it’s not valuable as evidence in court. We could establish a chain of possession, but we’d have a huge credibility problem. How could we show the card wasn’t altered somewhere along the line?”

  “Shit. I never said I was Sherlock Holmes, you know.”

  I laughed. “Taking it was the smart thing to do, Candice. Who knows what would have become of it? If Jim can confirm this, we’ll know Daniels is the lover. That’s huge. Did he see you take the card?”

  “No. I’d already stashed it in my panties when he found me.”

  “Good. That should give us an advantage, although he’s going to know you were looking for something.”

  “There’s one glitch, Cal. I, uh, dropped my phone on his desk when he surprised me. He’s going to read all our texts, everything. Stupid, stupid me.”

  I shook my head. “No, don’t beat yourself up. It couldn’t be helped. I’m just glad you got the hell out of there.”

  She took a couple of nibbles on the cuticle of her thumb then laughed. “Yeah, well, it’s not the way I drew it up, but at least I found something. I wanted to do my part, you know? For Jim.”

  We should all command such loyalty, I thought. It occurred to me that Lori Kavanaugh was a fool to have ever left Jim. It also occurred to me that perhaps Jim ought to consider what’s right in front of him.

  I was now pretty sure I knew the identity of Lori’s lover. But the next steps were about as clear as the fog we were driving through. The trouble was, after Daniels finished reading all those texts he’d know I was curious about his whereabouts on key dates, interested in his drug use and source, and very, very suspicious.

  So much for the element of surprise.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  It must have been four a.m. before we got to Le Petit Truc. The fog was breaking up, but there was no hint of light yet. I rang Jim’s doorbell, then pounded on the door when there was no response. Candice stood next to me in boots, jeans, and a maroon and gold ASU sweatshirt, with Archie at her side like a mascot. Her hair was washed, towel dried, and twisted into a loose bun, and her wounds, she assured me, were cleaned and bandaged. Jim opened the door in a pair of boxers, the coppery hair on his thick chest like a living sweater, and his beard swirled into divots and snarls like an angry sea.

>   He looked at me, then Candice, then back to me. “Jesus, what’s happened?” he asked through eyes struggling to focus.

  “Can we come in?” I said. “We need to talk.”

  He shuffled off ahead of us into the kitchen, offered us seats, excused himself, and came back wearing a thick terry robe and a pair of worn slippers. “So, what is it?”

  I turned to Candice, who handed Jim the card. “I, uh, found this in Blake Daniels’ study last night. We’re wondering if you recognize the handwriting on the inside?”

  He took the card, and as he read it his face seemed to grow hard, like marble. He stared at the contents for several seconds, then nodded. “That’s her initial. That’s how she signed things, with a curly L. He put the card up to his nose and smelled the lip print, closing his eyes. “That’s her lipstick, too,” he said, his voice falling to a near whisper. “I swear I can still smell it.” He handed the card back to Candice, his eyes wet. She took it and looked away.

  “That’s Blake Daniels’ birthday card,” I said. “Looks like Lori started seeing him after she left you.”

  Jim stared off into the middle distance between us, shaking his head slowly as color rose in his face like an incoming red tide. He reached to the center of the table, picked up an ornate sugar bowl that probably belonged to his grandmother, and threw it against the cut glass mirror hanging on the opposite wall. The mirror and the bowl exploded, spewing sugar and shards of glass and porcelain across the kitchen.

  The act was sudden, the noise deafening. Candice and I sprang to our feet and stood there, stunned. Archie began barking ferociously, came across the room, and stood between Jim and I with his fangs bared. I calmed Arch down and Jim dropped his head into his arms while Candice ran down the hall to the bathroom, sobbing all the way.

  I did the only thing I could think to do. I made a pot of coffee. By the time the coffee was brewed, and I’d swept up the kitchen, Jim had gotten hold of himself, Candice had come back with dry but puffy eyes, and Arch was back in the corner with a watchful eye on Jim. I looked at the two of them and decided they didn’t need some kind of emotional intervention for which I was singularly ill-equipped. I poured us each a steaming cup of black coffee and said, “Okay, if we’re through with the histrionics, let’s figure out where we are. You can both help me think this through. First, we have compelling evidence now that Blake Daniels was seeing Lori after she moved out of Le Petit Truc. We know that Lori probably knew her murderer, that he probably drove to the scene with her. My theory all along has been that she thought they were going to kill you, Jim.”

  Jim winced at this but remained silent. The cold, menacing look that had formed in his eyes made me nervous.

  “But the killer turned the tables on her,” Candice said.

  “Right. When they got to the turnout that night, Lori called Jim to set the frame in motion, but she gets killed instead of Jim.”

  “The killer needs a ride from the crime scene,” Jim piped in, “so he hires a driver to pick him up.”

  “That’s right,” I added, “A guy named Luis Delgado. And his payment’s a bullet in the head. But his girlfriend, a woman named Isabel Rufino, somehow gets a look at the killer and manages to get away after she learns of Delgado’s death.”

  Jim shakes his head. “And Isabel’s MIA in Portland.”

  “Yeah, but I haven’t given up on finding her.”

  Candice blew on her coffee and took a tentative sip. “Blake Daniels fits perfectly here, and he doesn’t appear to have an alibi for the night of the murder.”

  “At least you didn’t see anything marked on his calendar,” I add. “That’s no guarantee.”

  Jim sipped his coffee and scowled into the cup. “Yes, but what’s in it for him? With me and Lori both out of the way, I guess he figured he could come in and swoop Truc off the market.” He looked at me and chuckled. “Wouldn’t he be surprised?” Candice looked puzzled, and Jim continued. “If both Lori and I are out of the picture, Truc reverts to Sylvia and Eddie, who probably wouldn’t put it up for sale.”

  Candice nodded and smiled. “Your silent partners.”

  “Right. Now you know.”

  I said, “But that doesn’t take Daniels off the hook. He had no way of knowing about your deal with the Mannings, so gaining Truc could have been a motive.”

  Jim nodded. “That’s right. Only Sylvia, Eddie, and I knew about the loan and the note, as far as I know.”

  “And he hated Jim’s guts,” Candice added. “Don’t forget about that.” Jim grunted and she swung her eyes to me. “You told me earlier that Richard Amis might have been Blake’s drug supplier. Are you suggesting he killed Amis, too?” She wrinkled her brow. “How would that fit into this?”

  I hesitated for a moment. “I’m a witness in the Amis murder, so this is sensitive territory. I can tell you that Amis was trying to acquire Stone Gate Farm, Sean McKnight’s place, but he failed.”

  Candice’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, my God. That would consolidate Le Petit Truc, Stone Gate, and Rolling Hills. That’s the trifecta—the primo acreages for growing pinot noir grapes in Oregon and maybe the world consolidated into one vineyard. What a coup that would be.”

  “So Daniels kills Amis, too, so that he can have it all,” Jim said, his look turning even more deadly. He closed his eyes, and we both looked at him. “I’m fantasizing about the best way to kill the bastard.”

  “Damn it, Jim,” I said, “we can’t prove any of this yet, but we’re close. Don’t do anything stupid to screw it up.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at me as if coming out of a trance. “I said fantasizing, okay?”

  We sat in silence for a while processing the implications of what we just hammered out. Candice topped up our coffees all around, then looked at me. “So, what do we do now?”

  “First, we find a safe house for you. Daniels has your phone, and he knows we’ve been looking hard at him. If he’s the killer, he has to believe you’re a major threat to him.” Of course, I was a major threat, too, but I let that one lay.

  “She’s staying here,” Jim said with finality. “My guest room.” He stood up, excused himself, and came back a couple of minutes later carrying a double-barreled shotgun and a box of shells. He broke both barrels open, slid a cartridge into each chamber, and snapped the breach shut. “I’ll take care of her.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw Candice flinch momentarily. The protective gesture was welcome, I’m sure, but it wasn’t in her psyche to be protected by anyone. I looked at her for a moment and she nodded. To Jim, I said, “Okay, so you need to run her over to her place and let her pack a bag.” To Candice I added, “Don’t wander off on your own, you know, to go into Dundee or something, until this gets sorted out. I’m going to need time to put some things in place.” I looked at them both. “Meanwhile, everything we discussed stays in this room.”

  “Are you going to the police?” Jim asked, as they walked me to the front door.

  “No. Not yet. We’ll need much, much more to nail him.” I turned to Candice and hugged her. “Thanks, again. We owe all this to you. That was a gutsy thing you did.” I glanced over at Jim, who stood there with a look of pride and something else, something softer and deeper but hard for me to read.

  I left the two of them standing on Jim’s porch that morning, Jim cradling his twelve gauge shotgun like a mountain man and Candice standing tall next him with a look of stubborn defiance. Whatever concerns I had about Blake Daniels mounting some sort of retaliation receded from my mind.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  As Archie and I headed back to The Aerie that morning, the leafless vineyards to the west were silhouetted in a layer of vivid gold below a sky still dark with purple cloud. The sun breaking through seemed an apt metaphor, but I knew that, just like the Oregon weather, this case had a habit of changing in a hurry. The scenari
o we arrived at that morning was good as far as it went, but like I warned Jim, we had no solid evidence implicating Blake Daniels in anything. More work was needed.

  I was more hungry than tired, so after feeding my dog and brewing a double cappuccino, I fixed breakfast—a three-egg mushroom and spinach omelet to which I added red pepper flakes, green onion, and a topping of grated Gruyere cheese. That, along with a couple of slices of Dave’s Killer Bread slathered with Scottish marmalade, restored my energy.

  We got to the office around seven and after reading my e-mail and the news of the day, I called Nando’s cell. “Yes, Calvin, what can I do for you this morning?” he answered. I was surprised he even picked up at such an early hour, and the fact that he sounded cheerful was even more surprising. It turned out he closed on the property in southeast Portland the afternoon before, an event he was obviously still savoring. “I am doing the catch-up,” he explained. “I have been neglecting my janitorial business for too long.” In an unguarded moment some time ago, Nando admitted to me that he started the business to provide entry-level employment for immigrants like himself. Like Jim, he didn’t want to draw attention to his good deeds. Maybe that’s why I like them both so much.

  I steered the conversation back to my situation, gave him a quick sketch of what happened the night before, and said, “I need a tail on Daniels, Nando, but he might be looking for it. Can you handle something like that?”

  The line went quiet for a few moments. “This can be done using two cars. It is what I believe you call a tag team. The car directly behind the suspect is alternated to minimize suspicion.” He paused again. “It works well in the city. I cannot guarantee it will work in Dundee. Once off the Pacific Highway, the traffic is light, the cars more noticeable.”

  “Of course, no guarantees. I need to watch him for a while. It’s all I can think to do.” I exhaled. “Let’s give it a try.”