Sour Grapes

by G. A. McKevett

She beamed, giving him her deepest dimpled grin. “You, Rory, are a jewel, a credit to the mother that bore you. Will you do me an enormous favor and not clean that drum until later this afternoon when a guy by the name of Dirk will be coming around with his tail tucked between his legs to collect what’s in it for evidence?”

  “I’d be glad to refrain from work, but only because such a comely lass as yourself asked. And also because I’m going to be rubbing out this monstrosity of a vehicle for the next two days anyway.”

  Savannah couldn’t resist; she stood on tiptoes and gave him a peck on the cheek. He laughed and the sound was deep and throaty, reaching parts of her anatomy that, for far too long, had gone undisturbed.

  “Thank you, Rory. I owe you a pint of Guinness.”

  “And I’d be glad to share it with you, Savannah, me love. Drop by sometime and I’ll buff yer fenders for ye.”

  “Yes,” she murmured as she walked away. “I’ll just bet you would. Ah-h-h . . . you cheeky lad.”

  Savannah thought there was a plethora of detail shops in the industrial area of San Carmelita, but to her dismay, she discovered there were far more junkyards selling used tires.

  She and Tammy had agreed to start at opposite ends of the Junkyard Jungle and work their way to the middle, giving each other a buzz if either found what they were looking for.

  So far, she had questioned a dozen dealers who were happy to see her, until they realized that she wanted information, not a used radiator or a replacement hood ornament. She had risked life and limb, fending off testosterone-ridden mongrels who guarded their yards, their rusted heaps of metal and piles of tires as though these assets constituted the National Treasury.

  But she hadn’t found anything yet, and, so far, her purse hadn’t buzzed, so, neither had Tammy.

  It was as she was crawling back into the Mustang, feeling a bit down as the “detail victory” began to wear off like a previous sugar fix going downhill, that she heard it. Her purse . . . specifically, the phone in her purse.

  “Hallelujah,” she said, though silently warning herself not to get too excited. Tammy could be calling to suggest that they meet somewhere for some afternoon donuts and coffee.

  But then . . . it was Miss No-Donut, Health Conscious Tammy, not Dirk, so . . .

  “Whatcha got?” Savannah asked.

  “Todd’s Tires, Four ninety-eight East Maple.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Three minutes later, Savannah pulled onto Maple Street, which must have been named by a homesick, displaced native of Vermont, because there wasn’t a maple . . . or any other kind of tree in sight. She spotted Tammy’s hot pink Volkswagen Bug parked under a hand-painted sign that identified that particular lot as Todd’s Tire Emporium. A lofty name indeed for what was basically a mountain of rubber.

  The canine protector of this fortune was an ancient golden retriever, who looked like the type who would open the gate for an after-hours burglar and show him the cash box. His white muzzle, arthritic limp, and wagging tail hardly inspired fear as Savannah walked up to him and patted his head. “Hey, old man,” she said, stroking the silky ears, “have you seen a dingy blond running around here? Okay, how about Todd? Where’s your master, eh?”

  At that moment, Tammy and a young man in overalls emerged from a ramshackle shed that bore the ambitious sign OFFICE on its door. Tammy’s eyes were glistening, her face an ear-to-ear grin.

  “This is Todd,” she announced proudly. “He sold a BMW some new tires, I mean, old tires a couple of days ago. And he identified the picture of . . . you know.”

  Savannah’s pulse rate shot up along with her spirit and her basic will to live. Yes! Yes!

  But along with the elation that she had been right came the strange, sad feeling she got when she realized that someone she liked had done something terrible. It wasn’t a good feeling. Before this was over, so many lives would be destroyed. Even the serene, beautiful world that was Villa Rosa would be changed forever. But, as always, she reminded herself that she hadn’t caused this situation. Someone else had begun the avalanche of catastrophic events. She was simply putting an end to it.

  “Hello, Todd,” she said. “I’m so happy to meet you.” She shook his grease-stained hand and gave him a warm smile that made the young man blush with pleasure. “What can you tell me about this transaction that took place between you and the fellow in the picture Tammy showed you?”

  Todd wiped the sweat off his face with a red rag, then stuck it back into his pocket. “I remember it so well because it was weird,” he said. “This guy in this gorgeous Beamer came in here and said he wanted to swap out his tires. I tried to talk him into some good recaps, but he said, ‘No, they’ve gotta be used. The more used the better.’ Now, that’s weird. I’ve been selling tires here with my dad, Todd Sr. for years, and nobody ever said, ‘The more used the better.’ And folks don’t buy old tires when the ones they’ve got are in great shape.”

  Savannah mentally crossed her fingers for luck, and said, “Tell me that you still have the tires, Todd, that you haven’t sold them yet.”

  Tammy wriggled all over with delight. “He’s got them! I already asked.”

  “Yeah,” Todd replied. “They’re so nice that I saved them for myself. They’re out in the yard.”

  “Fantastic!” Savannah slapped them both on the back. “That’s just friggin’ fan-tastic! Let’s see ’em.”

  Savannah found it embedded in the tread of the third tire that she examined. Within seconds she had Dirk on the phone.

  “Get over here right now, Todd’s Tire Emporium on East Maple. There ain’t no West Maple. Haul butt, will ya?” She glanced over at Tammy, who could hardly contain her glee. They loved getting one over on Dirk. “Let’s just say . . . I’m looking at four tires off a certain person’s BMW. And from the pattern, I’d say they’re a dead ringer for that plaster cast of yours . . . and . . . on one of the four tires, we found a wedge of gray plastic stuck between the treads.”

  She replaced the phone in her purse and grinned. “Needless to say, he’s on his way. It’s about a twenty-minute drive.” She snickered and gave Tammy a high five. “He’ll be here in ten.”

  Chapter 24

  Savannah felt his presence, even before she saw Anthony Villa standing near the center of the cavernous aging room, surrounded by endless wooden barrels and stainless-steel tanks, holding the fruits of his artistry. Unaware of her entrance, he swirled a glass beaker in his hand and gazed into the contents that were a beautiful golden coral. His face had the look of tragedy, an expression Savannah had seen on too many people, when they were going through one of life’s worst cycles.

  On the Wheel of Fortune, she knew that Anthony Villa was right there at the bottom of the rotation. And, considering that he seemed to have aged a decade in the past twenty-four hours, she was sure that he knew it, too.

  She didn’t know what he was looking for in the beaker, but he seemed to find it. A slight smile softened some of the dark concern on his face, as he lifted it to his lips and took a sip. Holding it in his mouth for a long time, he finally swallowed, and she saw the contentment, the pride on his face. Apparently, the master winemaker of Villa Rosa had done it again.

  The underground room was chilly, and she was grateful for the thick, oversize Aran sweater she was wearing. Or maybe it was what she was about to do that gave her the shivers. She couldn’t recall when she had experienced so many conflicting emotions when cornering a criminal. It just wasn’t nearly as much fun when you liked the person.

  As she walked closer, he saw her and gave her a casual nod hello. She watched for any sign of surprise, but there was none. If she didn’t know better, she would say that Anthony Villa had been expecting her.

  “Good evening, Savannah,” he said, then took another sip from the beaker. “How nice to see you.”

  She doubted that, but replied, “How kind of you to say so. What are you doing, tasting your wares?”

  “I am. I knew this whit
e zin wasn’t ready, but I had to see how it was coming along. That’s the hard part, you know, the waiting. We wait for the grapes to grow, we wait for them to ripen, we wait during the fermentation, we wait during the aging.”

  “It sounds like you have to have a lot of patience in your business.”

  “Or like me, you may not have it in the beginning, but you learn, just like you learn everything else.” He held out the beaker to her. “Would you like to sample it, tell me what you think?”

  She walked over to him and took the beaker. His hand brushed hers as they made the exchange. It was warm, large. Even that brief touch conveyed his masculinity, his vitality. Savannah had always found it a bit unsettling—how normal a killer’s hands could look.

  She took a sip of the wine and found that it was very good, even better than what had been served to them at the luncheon. Looking into its vibrant color, she said, “They must be pretty, the grapes that you make this from.”

  He looked momentarily confused. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The white zinfandel that isn’t really white. It’s this gorgeous, peachy color. I mean . . . you make white wine from green grapes and red from red, right?”

  “Yes, but . . .” Comprehension dawned on his face. “Oh, I understand what you’re saying. But white zinfandel is also made from red grapes. You see, when we make white wine, we separate the skins and stems from the juice as soon as the grapes are crushed. With red, we leave them in there and the skins enhance the red color. With white zinfandel, we use red grapes, but separate the skins from the juice right away, as we do with white. Some of the color is still there, but not so much. Do you understand?”

  “I do,” she said, “and I feel like a dope.”

  “Don’t. I know wine, you know private detecting.... We all have our realms of knowledge. That’s why we have to ask questions and learn from one another.”

  She handed the beaker back to him, and there was an awkward silence as they stood there, looking into each other’s eyes. She was thinking about his reaction with the pay phone the night before, and she knew he was remembering, too.

  “So, what would you like to ask me about private detection, Mr. Villa?” she asked, her tone heavy with subtext.

  He turned his side to her and set the container on the nearest barrel. As he placed a large stopper back into the hole in the barrel’s top, he said, “I would like to know how you intend to apprehend this person who . . . who killed those girls.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell you. I think I should check around at detail shops and find out who took his car in recently to be cleaned . . . someone whose trunk smelled strongly of chemicals. I believe I’ll start with my Irish friend, a fine lad named Rory, who has a shop out in the industrial area.”

  Although his side was to her, she could see his profile well enough to tell when her verbal arrow found its mark. His entire body visibly sagged. But he didn’t look scared or distressed. He looked deeply tired, a fatigue, not of the body, but of the soul.

  “I see,” he said so softly that she hardly heard him.

  “And then,” she continued, “I would check out all the used tire places in that same area, to see if someone traded in their nearly new tires—the ones that would, undoubtedly, match that plaster cast we took by the cliff—for some old used tires. And, of course, I’d make sure that the junkyard guy and my detail friend could identify the suspect from a photo.”

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the barrel top and hung his head. “And?”

  “And we would check the vacuum at the detail shop for any long red hairs that matched the first victim. I’m sure there would be a few. All we need is one or two.”

  “I see.”

  “And then, Detective Coulter would get a warrant to have the crime technicians check the inside of the suspect’s trunk for chemical residue. I’ve done some research, and I understand that something like, say a bug bomb, lingers long after it’s released . . . no matter how good a job the detailer did of cleaning it.”

  Anthony laced his fingers together and studied them thoughtfully, as though seeing them for the first time. It occurred to Savannah that maybe he, too, was surprised at what his hands had done. “And do you think . . . if you did all that,” he said, “it would be enough to convict your suspect of murder?”

  “I think that once the DNA results come back from the lab on the fetus that Barbara Matthews was carrying, and it’s compared with our suspect’s DNA, we’ll know for sure that he’s the father. And if he happens to be a married man and someone who’s in the public eye and quite concerned about negative publicity . . . I’m sure Detective Coulter will have enough.”

  This time the silence that stretched between them was painfully long. She saw the battle on his face and knew he wanted to tell her. It was building inside him, and he wanted to speak and let it out. They always wanted to talk, but especially the ones who hadn’t led a habitual life of crime, people who had—other than one or two extremely foolish or cruel things—committed mostly decent deeds in their lives. They just couldn’t bear the burden alone.

  “If that phone hadn’t rung last night,” he said, twisting his hands in front of him so hard that his knuckles were turning white, “at that very moment when you and I were both walking by it. If that person on the other end had dialed correctly . . .”

  “Or if you hadn’t decided that murder was the best way to handle this problem.”

  When he didn’t reply, she decided to nudge him a little more. “Why didn’t you just let her win the beauty pageant, or pay her the money, or whatever she was wanting from you?”

  “Pay her? Fix the contest? If only that had been all she was asking for. Demanding. No, she wouldn’t let me pay for a quiet abortion, or send her away to Europe for a luxury ‘vacation’ and then find a good home for the baby. Not Barbie. She expected me to divorce Catherine and marry her. Winning a crown wasn’t enough for her; she wanted to be a senator’s wife. She wouldn’t settle for anything less.”

  “And you didn’t feel you had any other choice.”

  His eyes met Savannah’s; they were haunted, full of pain. “I did something very stupid, Savannah. I’d been faithful to my wife from the moment I met her, and then, this little twit comes along, shaking it under my nose, telling me what a strong, smart, sexy older guy I was, telling me how much she’d like to win this contest. She caught me at a lonely moment, and I went for it. Not once, but twice. Two times and she was pregnant. Can you believe it? The sex wasn’t even any good.”

  Savannah shook her head. “Such a big price to pay—those two girls’ lives, yours, your wife’s, your children’s, all destroyed—for some bad sex.”

  “Yeah, we sign these blank checks, buying something we want, without thinking what’s going to be written on the line. Someone my age should’ve known better.”

  “And you should have known that killing those girls would make it worse.”

  Anthony pulled back his fist and hit the barrel so hard that she heard the wood crack. “Don’t tell me what I should have known, what I should have done,” he shouted. “You don’t know what you would have done in my shoes. I had hurt my family with my stupidity, and I had to protect them any way I could from the repercussions of what I’d done. I did what I did for them . . . and this.” He waved his arm, encompassing the vast room and its bounty.

  Then his anger dissolved as quickly as it had appeared. He sagged against the barrel and began to weep.

  “I’m so glad that my father is dead,” he said, “and my mother and my grandparents. They were such proud people. They would have been so ashamed . . . so ashamed.”

  Savannah would have walked over to almost anyone who was sobbing, broken like that, and tried to comfort them. But the thought of Francie’s cold skin stopped her. She just stood there, watching, until she heard the footsteps behind her.

  Dirk and Jake McMurtry were entering the aging room, and behind them came Ryan, John, and Tammy. Dirk had a pair
of cuffs in his hand.

  “Did you get it all?” Savannah asked Ryan.

  “Yes, every word,” he replied.

  Anthony Villa continued to cry as Dirk put the cuffs on him and Jake read him his rights. He was still weeping when they left the room with him, the rest of the entourage following close behind.

  “Thanks for the loan of that new high-tech equipment,” she told Ryan, lacing her arm through his. “Dirk’s old department-issued wires don’t work worth beans, and I wanted to get everything.”

  “Well, they got it all,” Tammy said proudly. “I was sitting right there in the van with them while they were taping it. You came through loud and clear, and best of all, so did he. Congratulations.”

  Savanna watched as Dirk and Jake loaded Anthony Villa, husband, father, winemaker, and senate candidate into a waiting cruiser. “Yeah,” she said, subdued. “Thanks.”

  When Savannah crawled into her own bed that night, she couldn’t believe how comforting it felt to be home. Her old flannel nightgown, her familiar pillow, the moonlight streaming through her lace curtains and painting lovely shadows on the pink comforter that she had treated herself to last Christmas.

  Life was hard, work was brutal, her daily grind anything but feminine. So, Savannah made up for it in her own bedroom with all the “girlie” things her heart desired but didn’t get during waking hours. Within these four walls, she was all woman, with lavender-scented sachets under her pillow, silk, satin, and velvet everywhere she touched, and a bouquet of fresh flowers in the vase on the dresser.

  Romance novels stacked on the nightstand chased the harsh realities of the day away when read by the light of a pink, Victorian lamp, complete with a three-inch fringe.

  Having a crystal dish brimming with Mon Cheri chocolates close at hand didn’t hurt either.

  This was her sanctuary. And tonight, she was thrilled to be back inside its cozy confines to renew her tired spirit.

  But when she turned out the lights and snuggled beneath the covers, she kept seeing Anthony Villa’s face, and she imagined what Catherine must be doing at that moment. Maybe she was in bed, too, but crying, holding her two boys close to her. Or perhaps she was pacing the floor, making phone calls, trying to find the best attorney possible to defend her husband.