Pinot Noir and Poison

by Sandra Woffington

  Joy walked Kate to booking, while Max waited in the car. He could not do it. He could not see Kate being fingerprinted and photographed.

  Joy left Kate in the arms of Sierra, the matron of the force with silver hair and a golden disposition. She’d been a kindergarten teacher before she decided to join the force and carry a gun. Decades of police work had not tarnished her belief in mankind, nor diminished the kindness and empathy with which she treated every individual, victim or criminal. Sierra promised to escort Kate through the booking process and take good care of her.

  Joy hopped into Max’s car. “Sierra will walk Kate through.”

  “Thanks. I couldn’t do it.”

  Max followed Via Vendage up into the hills. He reached a dirt side road where an officer, standing beside his car, waved them through.

  Max parked his car behind the crime investigation van, and he and Joy walked over to Angelo, who had only arrived on scene a short while before them.

  Atop the promintory, smaller hills undulated and overlapped in the distance, like ocean swells.

  Todd lay sprawled out on a red and white checkered blanket. Drool ran down the side of his mouth. His eyes remained open and fixed on the blue sky. His arms lay to his sides. A bottle of Pinot Noir with the wolf, moon, and grapes logo of the Raedwald Estate Winery sat upright on the blanket, like a romantic picnic, except for the stalks of hemlock that protruded from the bottle.

  “Not again,” said Max. “Suicide? Or a romantic killer?”

  “You tell me,” said Angelo. “There isn’t much wine in the bottle, but if the hemlock had been placed in it hours before drinking, Todd could have received a concentrated dose.”

  Max studied the surroundings. A depression on the blanket beside Todd could have been knee indentations. Did someone watch Todd die? Or had Todd knelt, maybe to pray, before he keeled over?

  Joy surmised, “This must have happened shortly after Todd left the office in a huff, right after the reading of the will.”

  “I gather it did not go to his liking?” asked Angelo.

  Joy grimaced. “It did not. He received nothing.”

  “Did you find anything else out about Sally?” asked Max.

  “As suspected, belladonna and Death Caps, from her noon lunch, but we also found traces of foxglove and tetrahydrozoline. And hemlock in the dinner soup.”

  “Tetra-what?” asked Max.

  “Eye drops,” said Joy. “High dosage?”

  “No.” Angelo shook his head. “Not at all.”

  Angelo continued, “The Comfrey tea we found in Sally’s office wasn’t Comfrey tea at all, but foxglove. There’s no telling how long she’d been taking it. The only prints on the can belonged to Sally.”

  “We may have multiple suspects?” said Joy.

  Max informed Angelo, “Kate Wolf has been arrested.”

  “What? Your godmother?” said Angelo, surprised.

  “Please get the results to me as soon as you know something,” said Max.

  “Will do, Max.”

  Max stepped away from the body and turned to Joy. “Why? Why kill Sally with so many poisons?”

  “To be sure one of them did the trick?” Joy guessed. “Or, we have multiple suspects.”

  “There’s something else. I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Your lecture. Hemlock. If someone poisoned Todd, the perp didn’t just want Todd dead. Whoever it was, he or she wanted to watch him die. Hemlock incapacitated him long before his diaphragm stopped working and he suffocated.”

  “True,” said Joy. “But it’s also a killer. Once poisoned with a high enough a concentrate, someone can’t get help, can’t change his mind—maybe it was suicide. Todd had access to the garden, and he had lost everything.”

  “No one knew about the revised will until this morning. Todd thought he’d won the golden ring up until then.”

  “Elliot put up with Sally for a long time. If he thought he was about to lose out to Todd…would he kill him?”

  “You think Elliot hit his threshold? He killed Sally, then Todd. If that’s true, it had to be for passion. He didn’t know about the will. He did stand up to Sally at the party, but we also confirmed that he had spoken to a lawyer to initiate a divorce.”

  Joy paused before answering. “Or Lizzy hit her threshold. I don’t know, Max. Did you see Lizzy’s face this morning when Sally forced her, from the grave, to look at that picture?”

  “Todd didn’t have anything to do with that. Why kill him?”

  “Maybe it turned Lizzy’s stomach to give Sally’s shares to Todd. One more twist of the knife from Sally.”

  “Lizzy had money. She didn’t need Sally’s shares. Let’s get over to Todd’s house and see what we can find.”

  “Can we go slowly? You made me nervous this morning racing through traffic.”

  “You didn’t say anything.”

  “Why would I? If we’re ever chasing after someone I love, you’d better buckle up and drop your head between your knees.”

  Max laughed. “I can do that.”

  Joy jumped into the Taurus. Max drove down the hill.

  “You’re lucky, Max. You had a few women who became surrogate moms: Belle and Kate.”

  “Belle is my surrogate grandmother.”

  “You’re lucky, Max.”

  “I know, Joy. But Belle has adopted you too, and after this morning, I think Kate has as well.”

  “Yep, but it’s not the same as years of memories. You can’t re-create the history you have with people. I think that’s why Red protected Kate so fiercely.”

  “No, you can’t re-create history, Joy. But you can make history, like we’ve done ever since I saw you on the hill at Dad’s funeral. Of course, I’d be fine if we’d have skipped meeting at the funeral or our history with hemlock.”

  Joy nodded. “Me too, Max. Me too.”

  Max and Joy stopped to grab to-go sub sandwiches on the way to Todd’s Tudor-styled home in the Wine Valley Golf Club.

  Max had sent a patrol car to secure the premises, knowing that Alice had accessibility.

  Alice was waiting outside. She had been crying. She handed Max the keys with a shaky hand and told him the security code. “I can’t go in there. Please don’t make me.”

  Max assured her, “You can’t go in. This is a possible crime scene.”

  Alice seemed relieved. “Right. Of course.”

  “When did you see Todd last?” asked Joy.

  “After the meeting. He shot out of the building. I’ve never seen him so angry. I tried to get him to slow down, but he just said he’d see me later.”

  “You stayed at your desk all morning?” asked Max.

  “At work, yes. At my desk, no. Elliot left for the day, and I promised to drop some files by his house. I also…well, I stopped by here to see if Todd was okay, but he didn’t answer the door.”

  “How long has the affair gone on?” asked Max.

  “It’s been slow. I liked Todd from the start, but he was with Sally. I guess we’ve been a couple for a few weeks now. A month at most. He talked about leaving the company. Do you think he killed Sally?”

  “We don’t know yet,” said Joy, putting on her gloves.

  Alice shook her head and turned to leave. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

  Max opened the front door. He stepped inside and punched the code into the security system. With a ping, it turned from red to green, and the panel read “Disarmed.”

  “I thought he’d have better taste,” said Joy. “So typical bachelor-cave.”

  “Remember his choice of women when evaluating his tastes.” He snapped on his gloves.

  “Touché, Max.”

  Joy stepped to the refrigerator. With gloved hands, she opened the door. “Roasted chicken, potato salad, macaroni salad, steaks, and champagne. I think he was planning a celebration tonight.”

  Joy opened the freezer. She moved aside a rectangular tub of vanilla
ice cream. “Max!”

  Max stepped over as Joy pulled out a plastic bag with what looked like foxglove and blueberries.

  “Maybe Todd found out about Rio, and it was his last straw too. He could have been poisoning Sally slowly over a long period.”

  “Or he’s in cahoots, as David King would say, with someone else.”

  “Only Elliot and Lizzy stood to gain anything with Todd gone.”

  “Lizzy didn’t gain a dime.”

  “She didn’t know that, Max. No one knew it until this morning.”

  “Let’s get a team here, and maybe we’ll find out. Then, let’s call it a night.”

  17

  Max had just stepped in the hacienda when his phone rang.

  “Max! Can you come over?” Joy’s voice wavered, like the night he was poisoned. It had the same ring of concern.

  “Can’t it wait?”

  Joy didn’t answer. Joy always had an answer. Her silence scared Max to death. “I’m on my way.”

  Joy let out a barely audible “Thanks.”

  By the time Max parked Baby Blue and hopped out, the stars shone brightly. The air had cooled but still held comforting warmth. Joy’s house barely had any lights on inside. Max tried the door without knocking, since she had expected him. Sure enough, it was open.

  Joy sat on the end of the yellow, floral sofa, wearing leggings and a tank top, over which she wore a silk robe of black with a red dragon snaking along one side.

  Monty, coiled in Joy’s lap, slithered beneath the robe.

  Joy swigged back her whiskey. A glass sat on the table for Max, along with the bottle. Max sat next to her, refilled Joy’s glass, and poured a drink for himself.

  “Joy, you’ve scared me to death ever since you showed up in my life, but now you’re seriously freaking me out. What’s wrong?”

  Joy grabbed a manila envelope from the side table and set it on the table before them. “I don’t know what to do.” Her voice shook, and she swept her silky black hair behind her ears like a kid in some kind of trouble. She glanced upward with fear in her eyes.

  Max was used to the stoic, impenetrable girl who contemplated death on a regular basis, the girl who literally stared death in the face, not the shivering puddle coiled into a ball before him now. Max grabbed the envelope and read the return label. The part that registered in his brain were three letters in the company’s title: DNA.

  Max swilled back the whiskey, letting it burn as it ran down his throat. The pungent smell jolted him awake. He refilled his glass and slumped back on the sofa. He thought he’d be more upset, and maybe he’d get there, but not yet. Maybe it was because, for this moment, the envelope sat there—sealed and silent.

  “What do we do?” Monty poked her head out, and Joy stroked it. Monty’s tongue flicked the air, tasting Max’s scent. Monty began to glide toward him.

  “I’ll do whatever ‘we’ decide, Max.”

  “Why didn’t you open it? You mailed it.”

  “I know. I sat here with every intention of ripping it open, but I couldn’t. All I cared about was finding the truth. Then you almost died. And now, I’m more afraid of losing you.”

  “David King would say to ‘sit like Solomon’—Solomon was King David’s second son. But that doesn’t matter. It means that we have choices. We can open it. You can open it. We can burn it. We can sit here and stare at it. We can shove it in a drawer.”

  “Right.” Joy expelled a breath that released tension. “We have choices.” Joy set down her drink. She scooped up Monty and stood up. “Be right back.” Joy put Monty back in her enclosure in the bedroom and returned. She picked up her drink and took a sip. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Max sipped his whiskey. “Back to choices, Joy. Once we look at it, we can’t unlook at it—like the picture the attorney showed Lizzy today. That image is forever in her brain, and Sally knew it.”

  Joy turned toward Max. “That’s what I’m afraid of. It will change everything. Maybe this was a mistake, Max.”

  “So you don’t want to know anymore?”

  Joy slumped down and sipped her drink. Max sipped his. Their glasses moved in an odd unison to their mouths and then back to their laps.

  “If we open this, all it tells us is if we’re related or not,” said Max.

  “Right?” confirmed Joy. “That’s it.”

  “Then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean—if we aren’t related, then it’s a big sigh—relief or otherwise—and we move on. But if we are related, then what? Do you hunt down our mother and father?”

  Joy closed her eyes. Her lips parted, but nothing came out.

  “Good,” said Max. “If you’d have spit out, ‘Of course not, Max,’ I would not have believed you. You don’t know what you will do next. Do you?”

  Joy turned her face toward his. “What would you do, Max?”

  “I don’t know.” Max sipped his drink.

  “Good. If you’d have said ‘I’d let it go,’ I would not have believed you.”

  “So the only problem that arises is if we are related,” said Max.

  “Right.”

  They sat in silence, sipping and thinking and thinking and drinking. “Do you have a pencil and paper?”

  “Sure.” Joy walked to the kitchen and rummaged through a drawer. She pulled out a notepad and a pencil. She came back and set them on the table. “Now what?”

  “Now we let each other know how we really feel—without any pressure. But—and I mean this—no matter how this goes, we promise to do nothing tonight. David King and King Solomon, I think, would say ‘don’t make whiskey decisions.’”

  “Agreed. That way, at least we don’t make any major mistakes tonight.”

  “And we can’t say we rushed into it.”

  “How can you be so calm? You were the one vehemently against this, and I’m the wreck, not you.”

  “My theory is that sometimes having all of that extra brain power in that head of yours is a distraction. You fire on eight cylinders, where my four-cylinder brain is just as effective without all the moving bits and pieces and extra thoughts here and extra thoughts there. I’m a simple man, Joy.”

  “The Brain-Cylinder Theory. That would make an excellent dissertation.”

  “See what I mean—you’re already on a new path.” Max peeled off a piece of paper from the pad and handed it to Joy. He peeled another for himself. “Write down ‘open,’ ‘hold,’ or ‘burn.’”

  “Damn your four-cylinder brain—that’s brilliant! You’re right. My brain was running a hundred scenarios.”

  Max handed her the pencil. “You first. Keep it secret.”

  Joy leaned back and settled into the sofa. She gazed at Max and wrote one word. She handed the pencil to him.

  Max twisted his torso, placed the paper on the end table, and hunched over it. He scratched one word then turned back.

  “What now?” asked Joy.

  “I think that we keep playing this game until our answers match up. If you open that envelope and I don’t want to, you’re right—it creates friction. Now you have to keep a secret—even if we’re not related—because I didn’t want to know. And if you don’t keep it secret, it’s chaos. We have to agree on this. It’s too important. And you know it too. That’s why you called me.”

  “I know. We do this together or not at all.”

  Max paused, set his paper face down, and he poured a tiny sip of whiskey into both of their glasses. “I want you to know that you’ve changed me too. When I remembered what had happened to us, and you offered to leave town, the flood of memories that came rushing back included a thousand moments of you watching over me. I remembered the shock of your hand separating from mine—and maybe that’s why I pushed that pain so far down I didn’t have to ever see it or feel it again. All I know for sure is that I feel the same way you do: you’re more important to me than this envelope.” Max held it in his hand. “No matter what
this test says, we are Pride and Joy.”

  Joy’s voice exuded her regained equilibrium. “We are Pride and Joy.”

  “One, two, three.”

  Max’s paper read “burn” and Joy’s read “hold.”

  Max laughed. He picked up his glass and clinked it with Joy’s. They swilled the last sip. “Hold? Scaredy-cat. I was sure you’d write ‘open.’”

  “It’s just that I—” Joy began, but Max held up a hand to cut her off.

  “No discussion on this. We can’t talk each other into it, one way or the other. We’ll write how we really feel—no pressure.” Max rose to leave. “You’re the keeper of Pandora’s Box. Get some sleep.”

  “I will. You too, bro—not the DNA kind!” she called after him.

  “I know, bro!”

  18

  The following morning, Max headed straight for Captain Banks’ office, where he was scheduled to meet to review the Kinsey-Fee case with the captain and Chief Goldsby.

  Joy had already arrived and was providing an update when Max grabbed a seat next to her.

  Captain Banks listened intently. She had become less spritely and more serious since her promotion to captain. She sat with a stiff back and interlocked fingers. She was three years shy of forty, black, muscular, and had a short bob haircut. Her demeanor let others know she could take them down in a heartbeat, and she could do that either by force or the caustic bite of her words.

  Chief Goldsby hovered over Captain Banks’ shoulder. He was a portly man with wavy white hair. He had his arms crossed and the usual sour face and puckered lips. The spider veins on his cheeks seemed particularly inflamed, which Max suspected directly resulted from his irritating proximity to Max. Goldsby would never admit Max and Joy had saved his neck on the last case, but he had at least resigned himself to the effectiveness of their teamwork. In Goldsby’s mind, Max did nothing but keep Joy, the real brains, happy. And solving crimes made Goldsby look good. Thus, he put up with the former chief’s golden-haired son-of-a-gun. Goldsby’s eyes glared at Max, like a hungry cat, claws bared, ready to pounce and shred at just the right moment.