Death By the Glass #2 (7 page)

Sunny tapped the cork on the table anxiously.

“Who cares if the wine had red foil or green foil?” said Rivka, looking from Sunny to Monty and back again. “What’s important is that you had a great time opening it together. I don’t see how it changes anything.”

At one o’clock
the next afternoon, the wait for a table at Wildside was forty-five minutes. The windows steamed up with a cozy heat from a room filled with the bustle and clatter of service. Sunny and Rivka worked quickly. It was days like this when they were at their best. There wasn’t time for distraction—no talk or music—it was a clean, straight-ahead hustle, their hands passing over the food with choreographed efficiency. Around two o’clock the sound of flames kicking up on the grill mixed with the heavy patter of raindrops on the roof and patio.

At three, Sunny sent out the last plate of chicken cooked under a brick with celery root dressing, roasted beets, and garlic mashed potatoes. She stopped long enough to down a glass of water and wipe the sweat off her forehead with the sleeve of her jacket. At four, she watched the maître d’ carry out a last round of cappuccino, espresso, and doppio macchiato. What was that pleasant sensation washing over her, soothing her tired muscles? Satisfaction. Life felt almost normal again after the flurry of the unusual, the unexpected, the tragic.

The coroner’s report had come back that morning and Sergeant Harvey and Officer Dervich had stopped by the restaurant to deliver the news personally.

“The autopsy lists the cause of death as cardiac arrest,” Steve had said, looking almost as relieved as Sunny. “No evidence of trauma or suspicious substances, nothing to suggest foul play.”

“What was it that made you think there might be in the first place?” asked Sunny.

“There was some evidence at the scene that seemed to suggest that Osborne may not have been alone the night he died. We’ll keep looking into it, but it doesn’t seem to have had any bearing on the ultimate outcome.”

“What kind of evidence?”

Steve smiled at his partner and said, “Sunny likes to spend her spare time doing police work,” but he didn’t answer her question.

Probably the story about how she’d practically gotten herself killed not too long ago chasing a murderer was still making the rounds at the police station. Her hand went to the back of her thigh involuntarily, touching the place where a shard of glass had sunk in several inches, a lucky break considering she had narrowly missed taking a bullet.

“So you’re satisfied with the autopsy?” she said.

“For now,” said Steve.

“Is something going to change?”

“You never know.”

Steve Harvey was a man of few words, and fewer today than usual. The way he seemed to enjoy withholding information tried Sunny’s patience. She suspected he was showing off for his new partner.

By the time Andre Morales called late in the afternoon, everyone but the dishwashers had gone home and Sunny was busy battling paperwork in the office. The workman’s compensation people had sent a stack of forms as thick as a dictionary
and about as user-friendly as any of the other government documents littering her desk. She stared at the jumble of blanks, boxes, charts, and fine print. The only thing clear about most of the forms was that not completing them correctly could result in the immediate or eventual demise of her business. The phone was a welcome interruption, made more so when she heard Andre’s voice on the other end of the line. Her heart kicked up a notch or two, and she felt her face get hot and her hands go cold.

“I’ve been meaning to call,” he said. “I haven’t had a second. It’s been chaos over here. Did you get the news? The police said they were going to stop by and let you know.”

“You mean about the autopsy? They came by this morning. What a relief.”

“You’re telling me. Now maybe we can get back to work around here. I thought things were bad while Osborne was alive. He’s twice as much trouble dead.”

“Can you say that?”

“You mean is it a sin against the deceased?”

“I guess so.”

“Knowing Nathan, he’s getting a kick out of watching me sweat. His final insult.”

“He wasn’t really that bad, was he?”

“He wasn’t bad, he just loved to be a pain in the ass. He loved to push my buttons and he was very good at it. He wasn’t what you’d call the warm fuzzy type. Not that I like the fact that he died, but I’m certainly not going to miss having him in my face every other night.”

“I guess I can understand that.”

The line was quiet for a moment.

“So, do I get to see you tonight?” he said. “I’m working, but you could come by the restaurant around ten and we could hang out for a while, maybe have a late snack.”

Satisfaction comes in many forms. What she had been planning to do at ten o’clock that night was snuggle up in bed with the tower of books and magazines stacked on the nightstand, and that’s exactly what she would have done, except that there was no denying the deeper impulse to return to Andre Morales. Sunday night had certainly brought them together in a way that was arguably too close, too fast. Now the idea of him drew her irresistibly toward him. Wasn’t there something about that in physics? How bodies of a certain substance manufacture their own gravity and can’t help pulling in anything that comes too close? She had picnicked in his gravitational field and now a subtle, pervasive force was pulling her toward him whether she was ready or not.

She took a bracing shower and put on her best jeans, the ones that could pass for dress clothes, chose a silk blouse and pointy alligator heels, threw her wallet and a lipstick in her good handbag, and drove down to Vinifera. With the Nathan Osborne mushroom crisis behind them, she could give her undivided attention to getting to know Andre better.

At Vinifera, the hostess came back from the kitchen with the message that Andre would be out in a few minutes and suggested she have a glass of wine. It looked like a slow night. Only about half the tables were full and there was plenty of room at the bar. Then again, it was well past the dinner hour. Nick Ambrosi, the bartender, lifted his chin at her when she looked over. She sat down in front of him.

“You’re back,” he said. He stood with his palms on the bar, like he was about to do a push-up.

“I’m meeting Andre,” she said.

“So I heard.”

“Did you?”

“No secrets around here,” he said. “He’s been sending someone out every five minutes to ask if you’re here yet. What would you like to drink?”

“A glass of something red sounds good. Whatever you have close by.”

He rubbed his hands together. “I just opened a bottle of Au Bon Climat Isabelle Pinot that’s drinking really nice.”

“That sounds great.”

He poured the wine and set the glass down in front of her, then walked to the other end of the bar, returning with a dish of little deep-fried nuggets.

“Green olives stuffed with anchovies,” he said.

“Yum.”

He leaned into the corner of the bar.

“I was sorry to hear about Nathan,” she said. “Steve Harvey said you were the one who found him.”

He nodded and took a swig from a bottle of Calistoga water.

“That must have been terrible,” said Sunny.

“Not a pretty sight,” said Nick. “I’ll be glad when things get back to normal around here and I can forget about it. Is Sergeant Harvey a friend of yours?”

“He came by yesterday to talk about the false morels I found on Sunday night. I think initially they were worried that Osborne might have come in contact with some of them.”

“They grilled a bunch of us here about that too. The police have been knocking on our door every five minutes to question
somebody about something for the last two days. They were here again this afternoon.”

“I guess it’s good they’re being thorough,” she said. “Still, I don’t understand why there’s an issue if the autopsy says he died of a heart attack.”

Nick selected an olive out of the little dish and ate it. “They’re trying to figure out who was in Osborne’s house Saturday night.”

Sunny sampled an olive. “What makes them think someone else was there?”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“They didn’t give me any details.”

Nick ate another olive and stared at her while he chewed, thinking.

“Nathan was in the living room when I found him,” he said. “It looked like he’d come in, poured himself a glass of wine, and sat down on the couch. He was sort of crumpled on the floor right in front of it, like he’d slid down there when he died. The glass of wine he’d been drinking was on the coffee table in front of him. That all makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that a few feet away, a full bottle of wine was smashed on the floor. Osborne’s living room has a tile floor. Somebody dropped a bottle of wine and it broke. There was wine all over the place when I got there.”

Sunny raised her eyebrows. “Maybe it was Osborne who dropped it,” she said. “Maybe he started to have a heart attack, dropped the bottle of wine, and sat down on the couch.”

“No way,” said Nick, frowning. “I’m no expert, but my guess is that it was dropped after he was dead. You could tell by the way there were splashes on the pant leg that was closer to where the bottle broke. I’m guessing the police think the same thing, or they wouldn’t be looking into it. Plus, the bottle that was broken
hadn’t been opened. The cork was still in it. It wasn’t the bottle he poured his glass of wine from.”

He rubbed his neck and tipped his head back, cracking several vertebrae loudly enough for Sunny to hear. She waited, sensing there was more. There was.

“The really odd thing is, they haven’t found an open bottle of wine anywhere in the house,” he said. “And you wanna hear the kicker?”

“There’s a kicker?”

“A good one.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“They ran a report from the security system and somebody disarmed it about two hours after they figure Osborne was already dead. That’s why they’ve been questioning everyone around here. It had to be somebody who knew the alarm code.”

“How many people is that?”

“Most of the longtime staffers around here. Anybody who ever took him home knew it. It’s the same code that opens the gate on the driveway.”

Sunny ate another olive. No wonder Steve Harvey was checking out all the possibilities. This was starting to sound like a very complicated heart attack.

“There’s no security tape?” she asked.

“You mean video?”

“Yeah.”

“No, there’s nothing like that. It’s not Fort Knox up there. He’s just got a regular alarm system with a motion detector and an automatic gate.”

She met Nick’s eyes. “What do you think happened?” Sunny asked.

“Me?”

“You were there. You saw it all with your own eyes. You must have a theory.”

He held up a finger for her to wait and went down the bar to pour a couple of glasses of wine for other customers. When he came back he said, “I haven’t come up with anything that explains all of it. I can imagine him giving his alarm code to a woman, so she could come over late at night and let herself in. He was like that. Did you know him?”

“No, we never met.”

“It was amazing the women he brought in here. I don’t know how he did it. Osborne loved women. All kinds of women.”

“So she lets herself in,” said Sunny.

“She lets herself in,” said Nick. “It’s late. She expects to find him in bed, but he’s not there. So she goes through the kitchen into the living room and flips on the light. When she sees him slumped over on the floor she screams and drops the wine she was carrying.”

“Then she panics and leaves,” said Sunny. “She doesn’t call the police?”

“She’s afraid to,” said Nick. “Maybe she doesn’t want anyone to know she was there. There could be lots of reasons for that. If I was sleeping with Osborne, I wouldn’t want anyone to know it.”

“I’ll bet!” laughed Sunny.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. Anyway, the startled lover theory doesn’t quite fit. Her prints would be on the wine bottle, the light switch, both alarm key pads,” said Sunny. “The cops must have found something by now.”

“If they have, they haven’t said so.”

“And there might be footprints in the wine,” she said. “Did you see anything like that?”

“I don’t think so, but I didn’t really look. There were plenty of my footprints by the time the cops got there, that’s for sure. It didn’t occur to me to be careful at first. It was a very weird scene to find him like that. I walked around a bunch looking for the phone to call the police.”

Nick swigged his water. “There’s another hole in my theory. It doesn’t explain where the wine in his glass came from. They looked everywhere for an open bottle in the house.”

“Everywhere is big. Maybe they missed it,” said Sunny. “Maybe he’d already put it in the recycling. Or maybe our lady friend took the open bottle with her.”

“Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know,” said Sunny, chewing another olive thoughtfully. “There are two bottles of wine to account for. We can presume there was an open bottle, because there was wine in his glass and that didn’t come from nowhere. And we know there was an unopened bottle, because it’s still on the scene. We also know, maybe, that there was someone else present. Since the someone else and the open bottle are both missing, it seems logical that they would have left together. What we don’t know is why.”