by Nadia Gordon
“Not again.”
“Yep. Dish, please.”
“Okay. Alex told me that he would have asked me out a long time ago, but he thought”—she stopped to laugh—”he thought you were my partner.”
“He thought we were a gay couple.”
“Yes!” Rivka bellowed with laughter.
“Well, I guess that explains it.”
“There’s more.”
“Oh, good. I can’t wait.”
“He also thought Wade Skord was your boyfriend. That’s how he figured out we weren’t a couple.”
“That’s lovely. And do we have any idea how widespread this concept is?”
“No idea.”
“Not that I don’t love Wade.”
“I hear you.”
Sunny stood over the sink in back and pulled the rough skin off a steaming-hot roasted beet, revealing the slick sanguine flesh underneath. Beet juice stained her fingers and purpled the calluses lined up across her palms at the base of each finger. Blood-red splashes hit the white sink. The back windows stood open wide in front of her, framing a view of the lush vineyards and sea of green, gold, and red leaves that stretched to the east behind the restaurant. Up valley she could see a portion of Howell Mountain. Gusts of cool air brushed her face while she worked, and soon she was lost in thought, remembering previous harvests. The first time she’d worked a harvest, reaching overhead to pick clusters of Sauvignon Blanc for eight hours that felt like sixteen, then the all-night party…The old black phone on the wall behind her jangled. Very few people had the kitchen number; it had to be either her mom, Monty, or Wade.
“Hello?” she said cautiously.
“Sunny?”
“Wade?” Sunny cradled the receiver and rubbed at her stained hands with a towel.
“Hi, Sun. Listen, do you think you could come over here to my place?”
“Right now?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just want your opinion on something.”
“What kind of something? Are you sick? Are you okay?” Rivka gave her a curious look. Sunny raised her eyebrows and shook her head, listening.
Wade said, “Sick? No, no. It’s…Well, I’ll explain when you get here. It won’t take long.”
“Okay. I guess I’ll be there in, um, fifteen or so.”
“Great. Thanks, McCoskey.”
Sunny hung up the phone and turned to Rivka. “He says it won’t take long.”
The road twisted through live oak, digger pine, and bay on its way up into the hills. After a few miles, sturdy trunks of Douglas firs rose out of the red soil, and the hills became Howell Mountain. Sunny rolled down the window and stuck her head out, catching the sweet breeze and picking out the plant smells. It had been a long, hot, dry summer and the turn to fall was welcome. Soon it would rain and there would be chanterelles on the lower slopes where the oak did better than the pine. It was pleasant to be called away from the kitchen unexpectedly, even if it meant the morning would be a crunch when she got back, even if the tone of Wade’s voice worried her. Still, these sorts of alarms were almost always false. He probably didn’t want to say what he wanted in case she wouldn’t come. The time was right for bottling last year’s harvest. It had been aging in barrels for a year now, and Wade would need to free up those barrels soon for this year’s wine. Probably he’d made two or three different blends and he wanted her opinion. She reasoned that if it was a real emergency, he would have said so on the phone.
At the crest she made a left onto a narrower paved road and soon passed the turnoff to the stone pillars and wrought-iron arch that announced BERONI VINEYARDS ESTATE, Wade Skord’s formidable neighbor. The road wound around a bend and along the edge of a steep ravine. At the black mailbox with SKORD MOUNTAIN VINEYARD hand-lettered on the side, she took a right onto a dirt road that curved precipitously down a slope lined with dense forest. As the grade flattened out, her truck emerged from the trees into bright sunshine, and grapevines took over where forest had left off. The deep ruts that had scored the steep part of the road were replaced by even deeper potholes and a luxurious layer of fine dust. Sunny slowed the truck to a crawl, hoping to minimize the wear and tear on the shocks, not to mention the cloud of copper-colored dust. The vines that lined the road threatened to engulf the truck. Purple clusters of matte-finish grapes hung in graceful bunches every few inches and leafy tendrils arched skyward. Gnarled silver-gray stocks plunged into dark soil. Between the rows, dry weeds made a shaggy straw-yellow carpet.
After a gentle turn at the bottom of the hill, the cabin came into view. It had been built in the thirties after Prohibition, the same time that several acres of the slope above were planted to Zinfandel. Those vines still produced some of the best wine in the valley. Wade had added a large bedroom and kitchen to the original cabin, the exterior of which had weathered to a shade of silvery gray that made it blend into the surrounding forest so well, it was possible to stand on top of the ridge and take in the view without noticing the house at all. A redwood deck, another of Wade’s modifications, extended off the southwest side, looking toward the winery.
Wade was waiting on the deck when Sunny pulled up. He’d taken off his boots to go in the house and now he stood in his white gym socks watching her walk toward him. He had on a gray wool work shirt over a white thermal shirt and dirty jeans and stood there, smiling weakly. Sunny kissed each cheek and looked at him. There was an awkwardness about him, a stiffness and hesitation that hadn’t been there before. “What’s up?” she asked.
He rubbed his belly and scratched at the stubble on his neck. “Oh, the usual. Just sitting around watching the grapes grow. You want a cup of coffee?”
Sunny followed him inside. The kitchen glowed with soft golden light streaming in the windows and Sunny stared at a bowl of pomegranates sitting on a countertop. They were beautiful, their skin looking a deeper shade of red against a mint-green ceramic bowl. A collection of the season’s first fall leaves was spread out across the scarred wood of the kitchen table. Wade poured her a cup of coffee and Sunny sat down, gently stacking the leaves to one side and waiting for him to join her. He lifted an open bottle of Zin but she shook her head. Wade settled into the chair across from her. She could hear the clock above the refrigerator ticking.
Finally he said, “Steve Harvey came by early this morning.” He looked up at Sunny to see what the police officer’s name meant to her, if anything, then went on. “I heard a car drive up and when I saw who it was I figured Beroni had lodged another complaint against me. My existence is disturbing their precious peace, my mailbox needs mending and is bringing down the property values, I drive too fast, I didn’t wash behind my ears. Same old bull.”
Sunny waited. When he didn’t go on, she said, “What did he want?”
“That’s just it, Sunny. It wasn’t a complaint this time. The last two times the cops have come out, it was because Beroni called them about me playing Assault Golf in the evenings. I guess they can hear the shots up there and it gets Al’s undies in a bunch. But it wasn’t that. We worked all that out. I never play after ten anymore, you know that. Anyway, I asked Steve to come in, but he wouldn’t sit down. He just stood there looking at his shoes. He asked me right off the bat where I was last night. I said here, like always. Then he asked me if there was anyone with me, what I was doing, what time I went to bed, did I make any phone calls, all kinds of stuff. I told him I was home alone after about seven. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Seven, seven-fifteen maybe. I was home by eight and I stopped at the store.”
“After you left I did some work in the office. I made a couple of fried eggs and toast around eight-thirty, played the guitar for a while. Then I went to bed. I don’t know what I thought he was after when I was telling him all this. I was just answering what he asked. I should have told him right away I’d have to call my lawyer. Anyway, he asked me if I heard anything unusual last nig
ht, if I saw or heard anybody creeping around. I told him I was sound asleep by ten and didn’t wake up until five-thirty this morning.”
“You dog,” said Sunny. “I woke up at four and couldn’t get back to sleep.”
Wade ignored her comment and went on. “Then he says, ‘Wade, do you own a rifle?’ and that’s when the hairs on the back of my neck started to stand up. I said, ‘What’s this about, Steve?’ and he says, ‘I just need to know if you own a rifle.’”
Sunny stared at him and he met her gaze, nodding very slightly, affirming that there was more. “I said I didn’t feel right answering any more questions until he gave me some idea of what this was about. I was still thinking it was probably about Assault Golf, because he’d been out here before about that, but he was acting strange. I knew just by watching him that something bad had happened. Besides, he knows I own a rifle. He’s even seen it a couple of times. In fact, I fired it once when he told me to so he could hear for himself how loud it was up at the Beroni place, and he agreed it wasn’t loud at all. All they could hear was a pop, very faint.
“Anyway, it struck me as odd that he would be asking me about it now. It just didn’t seem right. I could tell something was upsetting him. That’s when he told me that Jack Beroni was dead. They found him this morning in that little gazebo over by the lake. Somebody shot him last night.”
Sunny gaped. “Jack Beroni is dead?”
“Shot in the chest. With a rifle, sniper style from a distance.”
“Are they sure? It has to be some sort of mistake, right?”
“Oh, they’re sure, all right. They found the body. It’s pretty hard to make a mistake about that.”
“I don’t believe it.” She thought of the chipper little gazebo standing beside the artificial lake over at Beroni Vineyards. She’d seen it often enough in the distance on the walks she and Wade liked to take at dusk. There was nothing menacing about the frilly white structure and the emerald lawn around it. It was hard to imagine anything bad happening there.
“He told me it happened last night, late. Like maybe around eleven o’clock. Jack had been out somewhere. He was still wearing a tuxedo.”
“What was he doing down at the gazebo at night?”
“Who knows.”
“So then what happened?”
“Well, he told me how Silvano Cruz, the guy who manages the vineyard up there, found him first thing this morning. He’d been dead for several hours, probably most of the night. They didn’t find the gun that was used, or at least they haven’t yet. They’re combing the forest by the lake right now. But they could tell by the way the bullet mushroomed out that it was fired from some kind of high-velocity .22. That could be any of the center-fire rifles everybody and his dog owns. Anyway, we stood there for a minute staring at each other and then Steve says, ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to have a look at that gun of yours,’ and that’s when I knew I’d already said way too much. I told him that he’d need a search warrant to go any further into my house and that I wanted to talk to my lawyer before I answered any more questions. He was like, ‘You sure you’re sure about that?’ and I said, ‘Damn right I’m sure.’ Then I told him he’d better leave.”
Wade stared up at Sunny across the table, his hands cupped around his mug of coffee. His wild gray hair, cowlicked in a dozen directions, stuck up all over his head, and his cheeks were grizzled with salt-and-pepper stubble. His face was deeply tanned from long days outdoors during his fifty-seven years, and his clear blue eyes shone at her, firm but questioning, looking for some confirmation that he’d done the right thing.
“The gun we use for Assault Golf, that’s a .22 caliber rifle, right?” said Sunny.
“Ruger M77 bolt-action .22 Hornet,” said Wade.
“The same kind that was used to shoot Jack.”
“It’s possible.”
Plenty of people in Napa Valley had guns. Guns were used to shoot skeet and, in Wade’s case, golf balls. At worst they were used to shoot gophers, deer, or quail. It never even occurred to her that one might be used to kill someone she knew, someone practically everybody knew. There wasn’t a person for thirty miles who wouldn’t recognize Jack Beroni.
“I think maybe I should give Harry a call,” said Wade.
“I think that’s probably a good idea, just in case.”
Harry was Wade’s lawyer. He’d helped him out when the Beronis tried to put in a road that ran three feet over onto Wade’s side of the property line. He also did all the paperwork when Sunny opened Wildside. “I’m sure it’s just routine,” she said. “I mean, it makes sense for him to come here, for Harvey to cover all of his bases. You might have heard something.” Sunny put a hand to her mouth and nibbled at a rough corner of one of her nails.
“I hope you’re right. It rattled me. Steve standing there giving me the third degree, telling me Jack Beroni has been killed within a mile of here. Everybody knows how I feel—felt—about Jack, but I certainly never wished him dead. Well, maybe once or twice, but not seriously, of course,” said Wade.
“You and half the valley. You were just more vocal about it. If they’re going to talk to everyone who had it in for Jack, they’re in for a lengthy investigation. Still, I’d call Harry and get his take, just to be sure.” Sunny tried to sound unconcerned, to actually be unconcerned, but the facts were alarming. Jack Beroni was dead. His nearest neighbor—and Sunny’s closest friend—had a long history of legal battles, animosity, and outright fights with both Jack and his parents. Wade had been home alone, hadn’t spoken to anyone. In other words, he had no alibi. And Steve Harvey had already been here poking around, asking about Wade’s gun. That could only mean Wade was a suspect. A terrible thought occurred to her. “Wade, you didn’t happen to play Assault Golf last night?” Her stomach turned over when she saw his face.
“I played a ball around nine o’clock,” said Wade, his worry interrupted by a conspiratorial flicker of pride. “Sank it in two shots.”
Sunny winced. As harmless as it was, she had never thought Assault Golf was a good idea. What good could come of firing a gun at night? Still, she had to admit it was fun. Wade had invented the game years ago. It started when he used to like to practice driving golf balls across the ravine onto the grass in front of the winery. Then one day he got the idea of using the balls for target practice before he walked down to pick them up. Soon after that he sank an old coffee can next to the compost heap on the edge of the meadow and Assault Golf was born. The idea was to use the old eight iron Wade had bought at a garage sale to hit the ball toward the compost heap, then switch to the rifle for no more than three shots to move the ball along the ground toward the coffee can. A player scored ten points every time he made the ball move without hitting it. If he succeeded in getting the ball into the coffee can, he scored an additional fifty points. Actually hitting the ball, and therefore ruining it, earned a fifty-point penalty. After a while, he was so good at it, it wasn’t much of a challenge anymore. Then the day came when Wade found glow-in-the-dark golf balls on the Web, and after-hours Assault Golf was born. Sunny had played half a dozen times and Wade played a ball or two nearly every night before bed. It was exactly this sort of behavior that made Sunny question the virtues of living a solitary life.
She finished her coffee and pushed back her chair. “I’m not sure there is anything we can do about this right now other than worry,” she said, giving Wade an ironic smile and standing to go. She glanced in the sink. Two plates were stacked on top of the frying pan with a spatula, a fork, and two knives. There was also a wineglass with dark purple residue in the bottom. There were crumbs on the top plate and there would be crumbs and olive oil from the eggs on the one under that. Eggs and toast for supper. Toast with canned sardines for breakfast. For someone who had such good taste in wine, he sure didn’t put much effort into what he ate when he was alone. Food’s just something to put the wine on, anyway, he’d joke.
Wade walked her to the door. At the truck, she gave him a hug
and, trying to sound casual, made him promise to call Harry right away.
Driving back to Wildside, she tried to get used to the idea that Jack Beroni had been killed in a way that left only one possible conclusion: There was a murderer at large in the valley. She drove on, hardly noticing the beauty of the surrounding countryside, a sight that normally still caught her attention every day. The idea that Steve Harvey suspected Wade Skord was simply ridiculous. Harvey must have just been checking out every possible source of information. It sounded like that was all he was doing—until he asked if Wade owned a rifle. No, thought Sunny, when a man is shot and a policeman comes to the door asking to see a gun, it’s not a routine visit, it’s a criminal investigation. Sunny gripped the steering wheel and pressed the gas pedal, racing back to the restaurant as though that would help.
The chirp of a siren interrupted her thoughts. Steve Harvey’s patrol car filled her rearview mirror. She tipped the truck off the side of the pavement at the next turn out and waited for Harvey to walk up. His muscular shoulders bulged under the khaki shirt. Harvey was a stocky guy. A healthy crop of sun-bleached hair glistened on his forearms as he came over. He took off his sunglasses and smiled at her.
“Hi, Sunny.”
“Hi, Steve.”
“Where’s the fire?”
“Fire? Oh, just in a hurry. I’m running late.”
“Are you headed to the restaurant?”
“Yes.”
“Mind if I follow you? I’d like to talk with you for a few minutes if that’s all right.”
“Of course, my pleasure.”
He gave her a perfunctory smile. Sunny watched him walk away in her side mirror, then pulled slowly back out onto the highway and drove the short distance to the restaurant, the patrol car tailing her at a polite distance. At Wildside, they got out of their cars and walked around the back of the restaurant and through the kitchen into Sunny’s office without speaking, the stiff leather of Steve Harvey’s holster creaking loudly.
