Ellen Crosby - The Merlot Murders

I was pretty sure Eli didn’t have that kind of spare cash lying around anywhere, after what Fitz had told me about the state of his finances. Nor had I realized the immediacy of our need for money.

“You mean…from Eli?”

His eyes narrowed. “I don’t care which one of you gives it to me, if that’s what you mean. I’ve been dealing with Eli for financial matters since…” He paused. “Since a few days ago. If you want to give it to me now that’s fine by me.”

“I’ll get it to you by the end of the day.”

His face was bland but his eyes were skeptical. “Fine, then. I’ll call Carlyle’s and order the part right now.”

The screen door banged shut as he left. I finished my coffee and followed him inside. Dominique, barefoot and wearing an oversized T-shirt from the prep school where Joe taught, was spooning fresh-ground coffee from the grinder into the coffeemaker. She looked up when she saw me and spilled coffee on the counter.

Her eyes looked like two bruises.

“I’ll take care of that.” I crossed the room and took the scoop out of her hands. “I like my coffee strong after two years in France but you’re making paint stripper.”

Her pale smile seemed more like a grimace. She reached for a pack of cigarettes on the counter and lit one with shaking hands.

“I thought you quit,” I said, wiping up the spilled coffee.

“I did.”

“You slept here last night?”

She exhaled a cloud of smoke through her nostrils. “I couldn’t stay at Joe’s. I wanted to come home. I tried not to wake you.”

“Are you all right?”

“Who would do this?” She chewed on a fingernail and her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t understand. Who would do such a thing?”

“Someone took the payroll money out of the safe in the lab. Bobby thinks Fitz might have surprised whoever it was.”

“I should have gone. I should have picked up those cases. He asked me to go for him and I…” She sucked hard on her cigarette. “It should have been me.”

I pushed the button on the coffeepot and after a second, it started to gurgle. “How long had he been depressed?” I asked. “How long had he been taking antidepressants?”

She looked stunned. “I don’t know. He was taking pills? How did you find that out?”

“I, uh, found them.”

“He’d stopped confiding in me. He was very angry with me.” She blew out another fierce stream of smoke. “The last time I spoke to him we argued. You can’t imagine how much I wish I could take it back and do it over again.” She froze. “ Mon Dieu . I’m so sorry. Of course you can imagine. You must relive that accident every day of your life. What a stupid thing to say.”

“It’s okay.” I picked up a dish and began washing it. “I’ve moved on.”

She looked at me shrewdly. “That’s a clean dish you’re washing.”

I set the dish on the counter and wiped my hands on the towel. “Okay, so I think about it.” I folded the dish towel, carefully aligning the edges and laid it on the counter. “I’m not Mother Teresa, but what’s the use? What’s done is done. I can’t think about ‘what if.’ That goes nowhere.”

She sucked hard on the cigarette again and eyed me up and down. “Then you are a saint. He walked away without a scratch on that beautiful face. If it was me, I’d want…I don’t know. I guess I’d want him to suffer, too.”

She squashed her cigarette in a saucer and sat down at the kitchen table, tracing a finger over a series of indentations in the soft pine. Eli’s math homework from about twenty years ago was memorialized when the numbers transferred through his paper to the table.

“It was an accident,” I said softly. “And I think we ought to change the subject.” I picked up the coffeepot. “Want some?”

She nodded as her mobile phone rang. “Hello…yes? Where? No, wait. Don’t do anything. I’ll be right over.” She disconnected and sighed, reaching for the coffee cup. “That was Joe. We’re still trying to figure out what to do about tonight. In spite of everything we still have one hundred and fifty people coming for a sit-down dinner and three hundred more for the opening-night performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I don’t know how we’re going to pull this off.”

“You’ll have to move the dinner to the inn,” I said. “Bobby shut down the winery completely.”

“It’s fully booked.”

“Then maybe we ought to think about canceling.”

She drank some of her coffee and reached for the pack of cigarettes. “Too late for that. Everything’s ordered…and paid for.”

“You’re saying you can’t give people their money back?”

She busied herself lighting another cigarette. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘robbing Peter to pay the piper?’”

“Sort of.”

She took a drag on the cigarette. “I ordered some new equipment for the catering company. The company I bought it from went bankrupt right after I paid for it.”

“Before you got the equipment?” What was it about my family and money? She and Leland weren’t even blood relatives. “So how much money are you talking about?”

“Seventy thousand.”

“You’re out seventy thousand dollars?”

“Closer to seventy-five. I’ve got it under control, though,” she said. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.” Her phone rang a second time and she glanced at it. “Joe. Again.”

She had another monosyllabic conversation, then hung up and rubbed her eyes. “He had some of Hector’s men haul the picnic tables from the orchards to use as buffet tables for tonight. But Hector needed the guys somewhere else so they left all of them sitting in the road over by the Ruins.”

“The men?”

“The tables. What a mess. I’d better get over there and straighten things out.”

“Leave them there,” I said. “Have the dinner right there in the middle of the road. There won’t be any cars coming through since everything is off limits. You could string lights in the trees and use hurricane lamps for the tables. It’ll be like fairyland.”

“That,” my cousin said, “is a brilliant idea.” She stood up and smiled tiredly. “I need to shower and change. Then let’s get over there.”

“You go ahead. I’ll have to join you later. The destemmer’s broken. Quinn needs eight hundred dollars to fix it. Today.”

“And where are you going to get that ? Money. It’s always about money.” She picked up the pack of cigarettes and concentrated on rubbing a thumb across the cellophane wrapping. “You know, chérie, no one knows what I just told you, about the money, I mean. Be an angel. Keep quiet about it, won’t you?” She wasn’t really asking and her thin-lipped smile was chilly. “Besides, I’m taking care of it.”

I said uneasily, “Sure.”

She set her coffee cup in the sink as she left. A few minutes later I heard the pipes knocking in the walls and the sound of running water. Had Fitz known about the money? Dominique never explained what they argued about during that last conversation. Eli said they had quarreled over the subject of Fitz retiring.

Now that he was dead she wouldn’t have to explain the seventy-five thousand to him. Nor did she need to persuade him to retire.

Just what I needed. Another family member with a motive for murder.

The door to Leland’s study creaked as I opened it. Someone had closed the curtains and the hot, dark room smelled vaguely mummified. The air-conditioning seemed even feebler in here than in the rest of the house. I flipped on the light switch and saw the stack of yellowed newspapers that had toppled over, covering one of the floor vents. Opening the curtains set off a tornado of dust motes and the gloomy shadows became—wherever I looked—stacks of magazines, books, and newspapers piled carelessly and untidily on all flat surfaces or sticking out of shelves on the floor-to-ceiling cherry bookcases.