Ellen Crosby: The Merlot Murders

“No one’s coming. I know Hector’s in the barrel room. And I saw Quinn leave about five minutes ago. So we haven’t got much time. Now move. I don’t want to shoot you here.” He motioned for me to walk in front of him to the parking lot.

The silver Mercedes was parked next to Bonita’s Corvette. “Get in,” he said, “and don’t do anything stupid. I don’t want blood all over my car.”

I got in the car. He leaned over me and pulled something out of his glove compartment. Plastic handcuffs. “Put your hands out.”

He cuffed me and we drove out of the parking lot, headed for Atoka Road. We passed the turnoff for Quinn’s cottage. No sign of the Toyota.

“He’ll be a while,” Mason said. “He’s got a few things to untangle.”

“What did you do to him?”

“Nothing.”

My voice shook. “Why are you doing this? Are you trying to buy the vineyard yourself? What do you want it for? You already own a palace.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“How do you know?”

He glanced over at me, with his most ruthless and pitiless courtroom eyes. “Because you’ve never been a success. Nor any of your family.”

I held up my hands, manacled in the plastic handcuffs. “What a shame I’m not as successful as you are. Look where it’s brought you.”

I shouldn’t have goaded him. He had that gun.

“Shut up!” He reached out and slapped my face hard with the back of his hand. My head jerked backward. We had reached Atoka Road. He put on his left turn signal, though there wasn’t a soul in sight. Law-abiding citizen kidnaps niece at gunpoint. At least he wouldn’t be cited for a traffic violation.

He drove through Atoka in silence, then turned onto Mosby’s Highway.

“I thought we’d take a little drive to the Goose Creek Bridge,” he said casually. “Since it’s one of your favorite spots.”

I’d never thought of him as sadistic before. He was enjoying this.

“Who was in the SUV, Mason?”

He didn’t even flinch. “Someone who owed me a favor. He’s not in jail like he oughta be.”

“And I was the favor. Was he supposed to kill me?”

He said, coolly, “It would have been an unexpected bonus.”

I shivered and stared at the man who used to bounce me on his knee. “Does Aunt Linda know what you’re doing?”

He glanced over at me and those eyes shut me up immediately.

Another blinker signal and we turned smoothly onto the gravel road that led to the Goose Creek Bridge. It was too much to hope that there would be someone there, picnicking at dawn. “Get out.”

I opened the car door and stepped out. He let me keep the golf club. It didn’t help much with the plastic handcuffs.

“Move.”

“Then take these handcuffs off,” I said, “or you can carry me.”

“Don’t be a fool.”

“The ground’s uneven. It’s hard enough using my cane, but nearly impossible with this golf club. Come on, Mason. Do you really think I can run away?”

He hesitated, then reached in his pocket and pulled out the key. I held out my hands as he unlocked them and yanked them off my wrists. For a moment he seemed unsure what to do with them. Then he opened the door to the Mercedes and threw them on the passenger seat.

“Walk to the bridge.”

I walked as slowly as I could, even stumbling a little, but he was only going to believe so much ineptitude. Besides, who was going to find me here?

We finally reached the arched stone bridge. The air was heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, as it had been when I was there with Kit…when? Two nights ago?

“Okay.” He gestured to the parapet. “Climb up there. You’re going to jump.”

“You are out of your mind. There’s no water.” I didn’t move from the gravel path. He was about ten yards away from me.

“You’re too distraught to notice. The vineyard has no future. Everyone in town knows you and Eli are battling over money because you’re broke.”

“Everyone in town knows I’m not suicidal.”

“You’re dependent on painkillers since your accident and it’s changed you. You became despondent when you found out your ex-lover was screwing your sister. You’re still in love with him, but he’s rejected you. Unfortunately, he finds you repulsive, with your twisted foot and that pathetic limp.” He added cruelly, “You’re ashamed of your deformity.”

I should not have been surprised that his fine, courtroom mind would have thought everything through so coldly and thoroughly. But his viciousness stunned me.

“I am not ashamed of anything. And I’m not in love with Greg Knight. You must be getting senile in your dotage, Mason. In addition to being very farsighted.”

It was stupid to continue to taunt him when he clearly had every intention of making sure I was dead before he climbed back in his Mercedes. I half-expected him to raise the hand with the gun and aim. Instead, he looked perplexed and then I knew why. He’d been getting his information from Greg, who was probably too vain to admit I’d rebuffed him.

“Why do you believe everything he tells you?” I said. “You were with him last night. You went to that concert to see him, didn’t you? And afterward he never went to the radio station. He replayed an earlier version of his call-in show. I heard him tell someone that the drought was going to continue for the next few days. But it’s going to rain today, isn’t it? He’s done this before. He can be in two places at once. Probably figures he’s got a rock-solid alibi for anything and no one will catch on.” Mason’s face, normally so inscrutable in the courtroom, gave him away for once. “Was he blackmailing you, like he was blackmailing Brandi?”

He didn’t answer.

“What dirt did he have on you, Mason? Did you bribe a judge? Lie under oath? Cheat on your taxes?”

“Shut up!”

I read somewhere that someone who was on the verge of committing murder enjoyed bragging about their accomplishments to their victims, probably because they were the only audience they could count on not to rat them out. He stood there with the gun and slowly raised his arm. I closed my eyes. He was going to shoot me now.

“He thought he could manipulate me.”

I opened my eyes. “But you were too smart for him, weren’t you?”

“Don’t you dare patronize me.”

“What happened?”

Mason’s jaw worked and for the first time since we’d embarked on this little adventure, he looked like he was ashamed of something. “It happened years ago.”

“What did?”

“Jimmy fixed my car one night after I had a small accident. Made it as good as new. It wasn’t the Mercedes. I had a Cadillac in those days. Greg happened to be around. He must have been about ten or eleven. Jimmy did me a little favor because I helped him out more than once, but the kid didn’t have the class of the old man. When he got older he realized what had happened.”

“Did you hit somebody?”

“It was an accident !” He sounded genuinely anguished. “It was raining, about ten o’clock at night. I didn’t even see the woman on the bicycle. It was a deserted stretch of Bull Run Mountain Road. Hell, there were no streetlights, not even a sliver of a moon. It was dark and she was wearing dark clothing. I thought I hit a deer. That’s why I didn’t go back. I was on my way to your house. I was supposed to take your mother to the hospital. She’d gone into labor with Mia.”

I swallowed hard. “Then what happened?”

He looked off toward the hills, like he was trying to recall. But I think it was probably because he was trying not to cry. “Jimmy found a piece of her dress in the undercarriage of my car. I never knew. By that time, I’d heard about the report of a Jane Doe found in a ditch on Bull Run Mountain Road. They had no clue who did it. Nothing to trace it to me.”