A Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mystery 3: Murder Alfresco Read online

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want them to see me. I was out there in the middle of the night with no one around. It didn’t seem safe. I didn’t want to invite the interaction. Also, I think I decided that maybe their lights were off on purpose. I’ve done that before on a country road. Turned off the lights and driven in the dark for a little while, just for fun.”

  Steve and Jute exchanged a look, whether disapproving or conspiratorial, Sunny couldn’t say which.

  “You didn’t want the driver to see you,” said Steve, “but they did see you, correct?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Sunny, rubbing the knot on her head from when she had passed out that morning. “It seems likely. The driver turned his lights on right as he passed me. That’s why I didn’t get much more than an impression of the truck. I was blinded for a second.”

  “And then?”

  “It accelerated away down Madrona, headed east toward twenty-nine. I watched the taillights for a while. That’s when I noticed they were mismatched. One was darker red than the other.”

  “Which one?” asked Steve.

  Sunny thought for a moment. “The way I remember it, the one on the left was cherry red, the one on the right a more orangey-red.”

  “What about a license plate?”

  “I didn’t notice it. All I noticed was the taillights.”

  Steve gestured for her to go on.

  “I started wondering what they were doing out there at that time of night,” said Sunny, “and I looked back toward the winery. That’s when I saw the girl.”

  “You could see her from the main road?” asked Jute.

  “I could see that there was something pale hanging from the tree. Technically, I couldn’t see that it was a person, but the silhouette was instantly recognizable. I knew right away that’s what it had to be. I was hoping I was wrong, of course. I thought maybe it could be a swing or a piñata or a punching bag. Anything.”

  It was after six when Steve finally turned the tape recorder off, satisfied, for the moment, with the information they’d gathered.

  “Sun, I may want to get you back in here and go over this stuff again once we’ve had a chance to do a little more research,” he said. “I also think it might be a good idea to go out there together, maybe retrace your steps. I’ll give you a jingle about that later if we decide it’s necessary.” Steve looked at the other officer. “Anything else?”

  “Just one more.” Jute turned to Sunny. “I’m having trouble understanding why you walked home in the middle of the night from the party. Did you have a fight with your boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “But he wouldn’t drive you home.”

  “I didn’t ask him to.”

  “Why not?”

  “He was enjoying himself with his friends, and he was the host. I didn’t want to bother him.”

  “And why didn’t you ask one of the other people at the party? It’s a short drive. It wouldn’t have been much of an inconvenience.”

  “I can’t explain. I just wanted to be away. It was nice to be outside, where it was quiet. I didn’t plan to walk home. It was an impulse when my phone was dead and I couldn’t call a cab.”

  “Wasn’t it cold outside?”

  “It was cold enough to need a jacket.”

  “But you didn’t have a jacket.”

  “No.”

  He wrote something on his notepad and looked at Steve. “That’s it for me.”

  Steve looked at his watch. “I’m meeting with a couple of reporters right after this, so you’ll be at liberty to discuss the case with whoever you want starting tomorrow. However,” he paused to exaggerate his eye contact with Sunny, “you will continue to have much more information about this crime than the general public. I would prefer that you keep it that way. We don’t want to start up the rumor mill on this one.”

  “I understand,” said Sunny. “Have you found out anything about who she was?”

  “We’re starting to piece things together. There’s nothing definite yet. Once we have a positive ID and the family has been notified, we’ll release what information we have to the media at that time.”

  They’ve ID’d her already, thought Sunny, he just doesn’t want to say so. “What about leads? Anything?”

  “We’re still gathering evidence.” Steve stood up. “Trust me, we’re going to do everything in our power to find those responsible.”

  Officer Jute excused himself, shaking hands with Sunny and raising his chin to Steve on his way out. “I’ll check in later,” he said at the door.

  “Thanks,” said Steve.

  Sunny sat back down, hoping Steve would do the same. “Do you know yet how she died?”

  Steve stayed standing. “Probably strangled, though there was evidence of some head trauma as well. The coroner is working on it now. We’ll know a lot more once the report comes back.”

  “And what about the people who own the winery?”

  “What about them?”

  “Did they have any idea why the girl might have been left there? Did they know her?”

  “I’ve spoken with them, and I’ll be speaking with them again, I’m sure. Once again, I will point out that, as a material witness, you possess far more information about this crime than those who were not at the scene, including the winery owners. I urge you not to share that information with anyone, just as I will not be sharing information unnecessarily with you, the owners of the winery, or anyone else. We’re playing poker, McCoskey, and the stakes are high. Somebody out there knows everything about this crime, but they’re holding their cards close. If we go around showing everything we have, it makes it that much harder to bluff.”

  “So, for example, you won’t tell the owners of the winery—”

  “Anything more than is absolutely necessary. Exactly.”

  “And you won’t tell anyone I found the body.”

  “I see no advantage to advertising your involvement. However, with the perpetrator at large, there is certainly a potential disadvantage to doing so.”

  “You mean he could see me as a threat.”

  “You would only pose a threat if you had proprietary information, such as the ability to identify a suspect. In your case, you may have seen the perpetrator’s vehicle, but that information has already been passed on. Harming you at this point would serve no purpose.”

  “But if that was the killer leaving Vedana, and if he did see me when he clicked on his lights, he might wonder if I saw him.”

  “It’s possible, but that’s a lot of ifs.” Steve rapped his knuckles on the edge of the desk decisively. “I think our guy has more to worry about than a witness whose testimony would be of extremely negligible value. A good defense lawyer could discredit that kind of ID—a glimpse of a speeding car at night with headlights blinding you—in about ten seconds. No, if I were him, I’d be either watching or running. Let’s just try to keep a low profile and not invite problems.”

  “Right.” Sunny imagined the murderer somewhere, remembering her face in a flash of headlights. He wouldn’t know who she was, or where to find her. The link between them was safely severed. “Who are these Vedanas anyway?” she asked. “Why don’t they have a gate on their driveway or any security? I smashed the front window of their winery without so much as a dog barking.”

  “Vedana isn’t their name, it’s a Pali term meaning sensation.”

  “I thought it was Spanish for window.”

  “That’s ventana,” said Steve. “As I understand it, vedana is related to the Buddhist concept of samsara. Sensation is one of the things that makes us want to be alive, thus triggering desire and attachment, which keeps the wheel of consequence and suffering turning. That’s samsara. Speaking of windows, the owners were nice about the window you broke, by the way. Their insurance is covering it.”

  “That’s big of them, since I had to sit with the dead body and wait for the police, not them. Since when are you an expert in Pali terminology, by the way?
”

  Steve looked away, trying to hide a smile. He coughed. “I’m not, but Sarah Winfield is.”

  “Pretzel-girl Sarah? I thought I saw you hanging around the yoga studio more than usual.”

  “Just pursuing my practice,” said Steve. “

  “I’ll bet.”

  Steve grinned for a second before he caught himself and assumed a more serious expression. He looked at his watch. “I need to wrap this up. I’ve got reporters waiting.”

  “Okay, but just tell me what the next step is.”

  He made a matter-of-fact face. “Well, the next step is I do my job and hopefully find the perpetrator or perpetrators. You go home, get some rest, and try to forget any of this happened.”

  “Unless I remember something important.”

  “Bingo.”

  5

  Coming home never felt so good. Long shadows darkened the street when she hoisted her bike out of the back of the truck and walked it down the overgrown path to the front door. She locked it up next to the ginkgo tree by the fence and went inside, shedding clothes on the way to the shower. Passing the phone, she stopped to turn off the ringer.

  The alarm went off at five the next morning, waking her from a dream that was quickly becoming a nightmare. She was having dinner at a restaurant with white tablecloths. For her main dish, the waiter brought a whole, grilled fish. Fork and knife raised, she was just about to cut into it, when the fish looked up at her with one searching, terrified eye.

  She lumbered out of bed, thoroughly possessed by the shock of the dream. In the bathroom, she stood under a hot shower, washing away the weight of the heavy sleep. She ran through the dream again and again, as if the impact of the experience was not enough and her mind needed to reinforce it by repetition, or perhaps the opposite, that the impact was too much and could only be worn away by familiarity, facing it again and again until she could get used to that eye upon her and the knife in her hand.

  The early-morning mix of denim-clad farmers, construction workers, and commuters in suits sat over mugs of coffee at Bismark’s. Everyone seemed to be either reading or talking about the body that had been found at Vedana Vineyards, not ten minutes away. A reverential hush at the uniqueness of the event had fallen over the room, and the patrons lowered their voices to exchange views on the homicide. Sunny carried her latte to a table by the window, happy to be surrounded by daylight and humanity, even if murder was the topic on everyone’s lips. The shock had finally sunk in, and she had felt jittery in the dark of the early morning, with a too-thorough knowledge that a murderer might still be nearby and hunting her face.

  One of the surly, pierced youths working the counter brought over her bagel and orange juice a moment later. Dreams aside, of which she had had several disturbing ones leading up to the eye of the fish, ten hours of sleep had worked its magic and she felt almost coherent again. Now a bite to eat, and maybe the world would go back to the way she liked it.

  She had hardly lifted her cup when Wade Skord appeared beside the table bearing coffee and croissant.

  “Buenos días, amiga!” he said loudly, turning heads. “You have room for a vagrant winemaker from south of the border?”

  Wade Skord had been back less than a week from Mexico, where he had been sailing the Baja peninsula for the last three months. He’d left his winery in the care of a former employee and taken his dream trip. His lined and weathered face was tanner than usual, and his blue eyes sparkled even more fiercely. He sat down and laid his callused hands on the table like artifacts.

  “How’s life back on the mountain?” said Sunny, delighted to see him.

  “The cat doesn’t recognize me, but the grapes are glad I’m back. Never trust a creature without roots.”

  Wade got up and rummaged through the stack of castoff newspapers in a basket by the door and came back with several sections under his arm. He kept the Napa Register and handed Sunny the front page of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. In the upper left was a story about the girl, under the headline GRISLY FIND AT LOCAL WINERY. The accompanying photograph showed the winery and oak tree cordoned off with yellow police tape. Steve, true to his word, had supplied few details. The text said only that an unidentified woman was discovered at Vedana Vineyards late Wednesday night in an apparent homicide. Anyone who had seen or heard anything suspicious in the area was urged to contact the police department right away.

  Sunny folded the paper. “You ever think about living anywhere else?”

  “You mean move? Not me. I’m anchored to the mountain. I may go walkabout now and then, but this scrap of paradise is home. Why? You’re not thinking of moving?”

  “No, I guess not seriously. It’s just this valley starts to feel about as big as a canoe sometimes.”

  Sunny looked at her watch. She wrapped the waxed paper around her bagel, swallowed the last of her orange juice, and picked up her latte. Wade put down his paper. “Are you leaving already?”

  “Afraid so. It’s that time. Raviolis wait for no woman.”

  “Is that the menace du jour?”

  “We could FedEx fresh ravioli from Tuscany faster than I can make them myself. I don’t know why I put them on the menu. I’m a masochist.”

  “At least the rest of us are safe. What are you doing tonight?”

  “Nothing. Want to come over?”

  “I was planning on it. Seven?”

  “Seven.” Sunny pulled on her jacket and buttoned it up. She stuffed her hands in her pockets, lingering over the vision of Wade Skord.

  He looked up. “Seven sounds good. You want me to bring anything special?”

  “No, I’ll get everything from the restaurant.”

  “Great. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Sunny didn’t move. Wade looked at her again. “Hey?” she said. “You know that story about the girl somebody killed yesterday?”

  “I saw that. Terrible news. That’s not that far from here. Just around the corner.”

  “Well, the strange thing is, just between you and me… I have to tell somebody.” She stared at him. She knew she must have a maniacal look on her face and she tried to control it. “The strange thing about it is, I was the one who found her. I’ll tell you about it tonight.”

  Wade stared up at her. “You set my hair on end, McCoskey.”

  The truck skimmed across the yellow morning like a boat on a rippling sea. It was a morning like the first morning on earth with a blue sky and fresh, cool air. Sunny rolled down the window and wished she had farther to drive. Instead, she pulled into the parking lot at Wildside and killed the engine.

  She sat in the truck listening to a red-winged blackbird trill from the edge of the vineyard that ran up to the back of the restaurant. Perhaps things would go back to normal now. She was rested, washed, fed, and caffeinated. Moreover, she’d been freed of the burden of secrecy. The beautiful young woman’s tragic death was known to the world at large. It was no longer her burden. Everyone carried the girl’s death now, everyone shared the grief and horror of it. Steve Harvey and his team were working on the case. There was order. Sunny’s only task was to come to terms with the memory of the white shape hanging in the tree, tied like a macabre gift.

  There was no longer any way to avoid the next order of business, which was to telephone Andre Morales and attempt to explain why she had left his house without saying good-bye two nights ago, and had avoided his calls since then. If he was upset, she couldn’t blame him, he had a right to be. She claimed genetic weakness as her defense. The McCoskeys were a disciplined and talented clan stricken with several consistent flaws, among them the inability to articulate their feelings, especially under pressure. Sunny was a typical McCoskey. At least she knew herself well enough to admit that she would do almost anything to avoid having to explain an incident of precocious behavior, including, it seemed, jeopardize the peace of mind of the person she was most interested in pleasing. This, she resolved, was a moment that would require courage and frank language, as well as consid
erable eloquence. If she did not possess these qualities in adequate supply, she would simply have to fake it. The truth—that she had left because she was annoyed at being kept up all night when her work day started at five every morning—was likely to provoke more bad feelings. On the other hand, there was always the chance Andre would understand completely, and even empathize.

  She walked around the back of the restaurant and through the kitchen garden, feeling better with each step. The darkness of Wednesday night was behind her and a new day ahead. The girl’s death was a tragedy and a nightmare. It may have been Sunny’s nightmare, but it was not her tragedy. She did not have to carry it around forever, and in fact she refused to do so. Encouraged by the sight of the tender green sprouts that had popped up seemingly overnight along the raised rows of black soil in the garden, she bounded up the back stairs, almost crashing into Andre Morales sitting at the top of them.

  6

  Not that she wasn’t glad to see him. It was just that she was not expecting Andre Morales or anyone else to be sitting on the back stoop of the restaurant at this hour. He basked in an air of joie de vivre. The early sun warming his pretty face, his white shirt crisp with enthusiasm, he looked every bit the rising star chef that he was. Even the heavy steel watch fastened around his wrist, a Breitling he fondled affectionately whenever he was bored, seemed to foretell an inevitable, swift rise to fame and fortune.

  “Did I startle you?” he said.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack,” she gasped.

  She leaned down and gave him a kiss. Among Andre Morales’s many attractive attributes were full, sensuous lips like a Brazilian beach beauty. Sunny squeezed in beside him on the stoop and they stared at the back garden. The winter crop of lettuces were producing nicely and the spring onions, carrots, and potatoes showed solid ambition above ground. Howell Mountain struck a stoic pose in the distance, and beyond it, the craggy face of Mount St. Helena.

  “Mind telling me what’s going on, or do I have to guess?” he said.