Wining and Dying Page 22

  I said, “The arsenic was probably added to a drink poured into one of the glasses Hannah sold. Did you buy one from her?”

  “No. I don’t have funds for frivolous gifts.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Jenna, you’re wrong. It couldn’t have been Christopher who did this. He’s controlling, but he’s not a monster. And I saw him. Outside my house! Not to mention why would he have poisoned Quade and then left the glass there?”

  “To frame you.”

  Naomi drummed her fingers on her arms. “Call Hannah. There were a lot of people at the party that night, including all the other artists. She must have records of who bought what.”

  Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  Chapter 24

  Naomi left, looking slightly more confident than when she’d entered.

  Seconds later, as I made a beeline for the display window, Bailey, my aunt, and Gran circled me. “What was that about?” they asked in unison.

  I told them.

  Gran snapped her fingers. “I knew that man was bad news.”

  “But Naomi corroborates his alibi,” I said.

  “True.” She folded her arms. “What’re you going to do?”

  “Call Cinnamon,” my aunt advised while rubbing her phoenix amulet. “Please, dear, be smart about this.”

  “Call Hannah,” Bailey suggested. “Get the scoop first. The more ammunition you have for Cinnamon, the better.”

  I agreed with her and moved to the children’s table. I sat on a stool, cell phone in hand. Tigger climbed into my lap, his heart chugging like crazy. Was he sensing my excitement? Was this case coming to a close? I dialed Hannah, but the call went to voicemail. I tried Hurricane Vineyards next and reached Hannah’s assistant. She said Hannah was in the field, which often caused her cell phone to be out of range.

  “Bailey,” I said, “want to join me?”

  “Sure.”

  I told my aunt and Gran that we would finish the display case when we returned. We hadn’t had a single customer. Aunt Vera replied that she’d put together a list of books she wanted me to order.

  And we were off, umbrellas in hand. On the way over, I whizzed past Destiny and her dog in her oversized Jeep, the ragtop in place to block the rain. She was parked outside Parker Printers.

  “No wine tours today, I’ll bet,” Bailey quipped.

  “She probably won’t care, exhausted from this week’s hullabaloo.”

  Halfway up Seaview Road, the rain let up and sunshine tried to peek through the clouds. It would fail. There was more rain in the forecast.

  Rows upon rows of healthy-looking vines flanked either side of the winding driveway to Hurricane Vineyards. The main house, which was three stories and featured turrets and multiple chimneys, reminded me of a mini castle.

  I parked in front of the house and, leaving the umbrella in the car, roamed to the right of the driveway to peer over the stone wall at the acres of vines. I saw someone in a broad-brimmed rain hat and black raincoat over jeans and boots moving between two rows.

  A crow cawed and dive-bombed us. Bailey ducked. I snorted. The crow, which was conveniently named Crow, was Hannah’s husband’s pet. In addition to being a talented vintner, Alan was a falconer and practiced with the bird often. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Alan in the vineyard. He was probably on the patio of his neighboring estate. That was where Crow liked to start and end his flights.

  “You clown,” I sniped at Crow as the cackling bird winged away. Then I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled to the figure in the vineyard, “Hannah, is that you?”

  Hannah turned and looked upward. “Jenna? Hi!”

  “Can Bailey and I come down and chat?”

  “Follow the steps but be careful. They’re slippery.”

  There must have been a hundred steps to the third tier of grapes. I rued the idea of having to climb up them to return to the main house, but c’est la vie. I craved answers.

  Hannah was tapping notes into an iPad. “I’m making a to-do list for my crew,” she said as we drew near. “I want to grow the best crop we’ve ever had. Mother Nature deals her hand in the spring and how the cards play out makes all the difference for the finished wine. This is the most stressful time for all of us. Weather is such a factor.”

  Thanks to the rain, the grapes were free of dust and glistening with moisture. “The crop looks beautiful to me.” I was a novice and knew nothing about how to grow grapes, other than what I’d learned from movies or cookbooks.

  “We must keep up with the drumbeat of the vintage,” Hannah said. “That’s what Bruce Cakebread calls the steady march of the seasons, the progression of the plants from buds to bloom to the onset of ripening—veraison,” she added in a French accent. Cakebread Cellars was a renowned vineyard in Napa Valley. “Forgive me,” Hannah went on. “I’m waxing rhapsodic. I’m just so hopeful. Alan has been instrumental in helping me understand it all.”

  She and Alan were well matched. I was happy for her.

  “Why are you here?” she asked, moving us beneath an awning that provided cover should the clouds open up again.

  “I have a question for you.”

  “About wedding sites?” She winked. “A little birdie told me you are on the lookout.”

  “Not about wedding sites. About the handblown wineglasses you’ve been selling. Do you keep a record of who bought what?”

  “Sure do,” Hannah responded, looking between Bailey and me. “I have to in order to pay the proper proceeds to the artist. Why?”

  “This is confidential,” I said, “but a wineglass was found in Quade’s cabana. After he was dead. Sienna Brown, who saw the glass—”

  “Because she went into the room,” Bailey said, cutting me off, eager to help me tell the story. “To do the dishes. Thinking Quade was asleep.”

  Hannah wrinkled her nose. “But he was dead?”

  “Maybe not at that time,” I said. “Anyway, Sienna told me the glass was beautiful with green-and-gold wavelike swirls. Did Quade buy it?”

  “Hardly.” Hannah scoffed. “He stayed miles away from my tasting station. Probably because of Destiny.”

  Bailey said. “Do you know who bought it?”

  “How about Christopher George?” I suggested.

  Hannah said, “That name doesn’t sound familiar.”

  “A hip-looking middle-aged man with a mustache.”

  Hannah strained to remember him. “No, sorry, but we served a lot of people that night and many customers paid cash. For my records, I wrote down the design name and the amount paid, and I added an initial to remind me of the purchaser.”

  “That makes sense.”

  She tapped a fingertip on her chin. “Flora and Faith Fairchild each bought one. I believe Flora chose a lavender one while Faith went for the bolder Aegean blue. Yardley Alks bought an aqua one. Naomi Genet wanted one, too.”

  “But she couldn’t afford to buy it,” I cut in.

  “You’re right. She had her eye on a red one, not a green one. Come with me to my office,” Hannah said. “I’ll give you a full account.”

  “I don’t mean to keep you from your work.”

  “I need a break. Besides, it’s getting ready to pour again. Some tea is in order.”

  Hannah took the steps two at a time while Bailey and I slogged up the last thirty heaving. We both worked out, but we did not do stairs. Perhaps we needed to change our regimens.

  As predicted, rain started right as we entered the main house. A rumble of thunder rattled the sky.

  “Phew! Just in the nick of time.” Hannah shrugged off her raincoat and hat, hung them on a peg in the foyer, smoothed the front of her black turtleneck, and led us into the wood-paneled den that served as an office.

  The room, like the rest of the house, was decorated in taupe and white. All of the furniture were quality antiques.

  I scanned the myriad books on the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, which had been fitted with a rolling ladder. “Have you read all of these?”
>
  “My father and mother did. They were avid readers.” She rang a bell.

  Within seconds, a slim young brunette in a tan dress, whom Hannah introduced as her assistant, came to take our order: three cups of Earl Grey tea and a plate of sugar cookies.

  “Is Nana sleeping?” Hannah asked her assistant.

  “Snoring like a champ.”

  Hannah suppressed a smile. She adored her grandmother, though the woman had the reputation of being a tyrant. As the assistant left, Hannah walked to a heavy oak filing cabinet by the picture window. She opened the second drawer from the bottom and pulled out a file. She placed it on the mahogany twin-pedestal partner’s desk and turned to the first document. “Let’s see . . .” She continued scanning pages and then stopped on one. With her finger, she guided her gaze through the sheet. “Here we are. Monday to Tuesday night. Workshop and opening of the festival events at Crystal Cove Inn.” She mumbled a few mm-hms as she perused her notes and viewed the next page.

  She paused on an entry and let out a breathy, “Huh.”

  “What?” I hurried to her to see what had caught her eye.

  “The green-and-gold wave was sold by Destiny on Monday.” Hannah tapped the notation. “To a customer with the initial N. Destiny personally purchased a green-and-gold one with a raindrop pattern on Tuesday. She wrote her entire name by that sale.”

  “She bought one?” I repeated. “Why?”

  “Because they’re pretty. She has quite a collection of glass bottles, vases, and such that she inherited. You bought a couple, too, Jenna. For your store display.”

  Bailey peeked over my shoulder. “Are you sure that’s her writing?”

  “Yep. Big and loopy.” Hannah squinted to reread the sales memo, as if reading harder would tell her what had occurred.

  But she needn’t, as everything became evident to me.

  Destiny. At one time, she and Quade had made plans to get married, but he’d made it clear that would never happen. He had fallen for Naomi. Monday night after the workshop, Destiny tried again to win his favor, but he rebuffed her. Therefore, deliberately with malice aforethought, she purchased a glass and wrote the letter N in Hannah’s log, with the idea of killing Quade and framing Naomi.

  I flashed on the multiple necklaces Destiny owned; she’d been wearing the ebony perfume bottle necklace the night Quade was killed. Years ago, I’d read a magazine article about arsenic at one time having been utilized for medicinal purposes, and though banned, traces of it would show up in vintage bottles in antiques shops.

  “Destiny’s mother,” I whispered. She had owned an antiques shop.

  “What a sad story that was,” Hannah said, not on track with my theorizing.

  “Sad how?”

  “She died of a broken heart. About twenty years ago. Her husband and she had quite a to-do on their front porch, my nana said. He accused her of being off-kilter, always fussing with those antiques, not living in the real world. He said she was detrimental to their daughter and ordered her to leave and never come back. Chastened, she left. Two days later”—Hannah held her breath and let it out—“she fell down a steep incline.”

  “Oh, no!” Bailey cried.

  Hannah said, “My grandmother said the police determined she’d misjudged the stability of the rocks.”

  Had she really, or had she committed suicide? Was Destiny off-kilter, too, but rather than take her own life after being rejected by Quade, she took his?

  “Her father was devastated by the way things turned out,” Hannah went on.

  “Didn’t you tell me he was a well-to-do builder?” I asked as another idea formed.

  She nodded. “He’d started out as a tradesman. Tile, wood carving, cabinetry. He could do it all. He built the company into something grand.”

  The man had probably known how to open padlocks without a key. Had he taught Destiny tricks of the trade?

  “Tea,” Hannah’s assistant announced. She set the tray down on the coffee table between the white brocade love seat and two armchairs. “Sugar and cream, if you want it. Need anything else, boss?”

  “No, thank you. Bailey, Jenna.” Hannah motioned for us to sit on the love seat. She took an armchair.

  I perched on the edge of the love seat, my mind reeling with more theories.

  Bailey sat beside me and offered me a cup of tea. I waved it off. “What are you thinking?”

  “I was wondering about the incidents that landed Naomi and Destiny at Mercy Urgent Care Saturday morning.”

  “So awful,” Hannah murmured as she stirred sugar into her tea.

  “Destiny implied that a man had attacked her.”

  “Implied?” Bailey arched an eyebrow. “You don’t believe her?”

  “Was if she was lying? About all of it?”

  “No, no, I saw her face and eye!” Hannah exclaimed, the spoon clacking on the china saucer.

  “What if she hurt herself to make it seem that there were two victims?” I went on. “The buckle imprint on Naomi’s cheek was deeper than the one on Destiny’s forehead, which was smack in the middle, as if she’d whacked herself like this.” I mimed holding my purse in both hands and slapping it against my face.

  Hannah grimaced. “Why would she do that?”

  “To make herself a victim and remove any notion that she might be a murderer.”

  “Were the police considering her?” Bailey asked.

  I should have mentioned her to them after she’d readily offered up an alibi for the night of the murder, saying she’d been home doing PR. I should have questioned why she’d felt the need to share.

  “What if Destiny, not someone with the initial N, bought the wineglass Monday?” I went on. “What if she filled it with wine laced with arsenic on Tuesday and set it in Quade’s cabana with a note from Naomi?”

  Hannah shook her head, not believing a word. Bailey, on the other hand, rolled her hand, encouraging me to continue.

  I rose to my feet and walked to the desk to have another look at the sales form Destiny had filled out. Would her cursive N match the one found on the scrap of paper the police had? “Wadded-up sketches of Naomi’s daughter were on the floor of the cabana,” I said. “I saw them spill out of Naomi’s purse at our last workshop. Remember when Destiny ran away from the soiree, upset at being rejected by Quade? She fled to the communal room. It wasn’t locked until after the event. She could have stolen them.”

  “No,” Hannah said. “Destiny is kind and caring.”

  “What if she brought the sketches as props to make it seem like Quade had gotten angry after Naomi revealed Nina was not his daughter?”

  “I can’t believe it,” Hannah went on. “I won’t. Jenna, please don’t bring this wild theory to the police’s attention. It’s outrageous.”

  I heard the roar of an engine and squeal of brakes and hurried to the window. A large Jeep, its ragtop in place, was doing a U-turn halfway down the hill. What the heck? “Hannah, is Destiny bringing a tour group today?”

  “No, why?”

  “You’re kidding me!” Bailey dashed to my side and peered out. “She’s here? How could she have guessed we’d visit Hannah to talk about the wineglass?”

  Hannah joined us at the window. “That’s not Destiny. That’s Alan. He’s scoping out a new vineyard to purchase. In the rain, a four-wheel-drive vehicle is necessary.”

  As the vehicle drove away, I flashed on Destiny and her dog in her Jeep outside Parker Printers, and another notion struck me. Did she wash her dog using the same shampoo that we used for Rook? Had she bathed the dog earlier that day and tracked in its hair, which left a trace of tar-scented fragrance in Quade’s cabana instead of a whiff of Destiny’s confidence perfume? Had the crime scene techs found any dog hair?

  “Hannah, we have to go,” I said. “Not a word of our conversation to Destiny.”

  “But—”

  “Not a word. If she’s not guilty, great. But if she is . . .”

  I didn’t wait for her promise. I rus
hed out the front door—the rain had stopped—and hopped into the VW. Bailey did the same. I switched on the car, flicked on the wipers to clear the windshield, plugged the USB cord into my cell phone—the phone was running low on juice—and ground the car into gear.

  As I drove down the hill, with the intent of looping Cinnamon into the conversation, I sorted through my thoughts. The murder had been premeditated. No doubt about it. The killer had stolen Keller’s personalized burin from the communal room. That hadn’t been done on a whim. Did Destiny stab Quade in the heart because he’d broken hers?

  Something puzzled me. Quade’s stolen painting. Why hide it in Keller’s garage? Why frame Keller? To drive home the ownership of the murder weapon?

  No, I had the timeline screwed up. The art had gone missing first. Quade had needed to create an entirely new piece by Monday night. Had Destiny feared Keller would win the poster art competition and outshine the love of her life for years to come? Had she stolen Quade’s original piece of art to force him to create something new?

  A bolt of lightning flashed in the distance, way out in the ocean. A few seconds later, thunder rumbled overhead.

  “Did you see that?” Bailey cried. “It’s a good ten miles away, but the brunt of the storm is coming in this direction.”

  I didn’t respond.

  Bailey twisted in her seat to face me. “What’re you mulling over? Your eyes have that glazed thinking-hard look.”

  “If Destiny is the killer, she was running hot and cold.” She loves me, she loves me not. “One minute she adored Quade, the next minute she despised him. What if she took Keller’s burin with the idea of killing Keller to remove Quade’s competition?”

  “Wicked.”

  “But in the middle of the night, she realized her reasoning was faulty. Quade would never love her. She pondered suicide, but then, stronger than her mother, unwilling to die of heartbreak, she decided to turn the tables. She would poison the man who’d rejected her. Tuesday, after the evening’s event began, she slipped into Quade’s room and preset the wineglass with the note from Naomi while Quade was mingling with all of us.”

  “Except the poison didn’t work.”