Sharpshooter (17 page)

Rivka nodded. “Okay. Until you give me the word, it doesn’t exist. How long are we talking about?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe a few hours, maybe a day or two. We’ll have to see. One more thing. We have to act like nothing is wrong or people are going to start asking questions and then we’ll have to make up little lies about why we’re upset, and that’s always a mess. Really solid lies, even the minor ones, are more complicated to sustain than anybody thinks. It’s better not to say anything at all. Omission is the key.”

“What makes you the expert on lying?”

“Strict parents and bad-girl tendencies as an adolescent. The combination practically turned me to the dark side before I could grow out of it.”

Rivka closed her eyes in a deliberate blink. “Sunny, how did Alex get Wade’s rifle?”

“I’m not sure yet. For now, let’s just concentrate on getting it in here before we have a bigger audience than we do now.”

By the time the day’s fish delivery arrived, the rifle was safely stowed in the wine locker, and Sunny and Rivka had taken to the refuge of work. Rivka shelled fava beans while Sunny hefted a fifteen-pound side of halibut onto the fish board and went to work running a long, thin knife under its skin. She hacked a sizable worm out of its flesh and sliced the rest into tidy opalescent filets. When that was done, she collected the day’s ducks and a meat cleaver. The cleaver made a blunt, heavy thunk as she removed the legs, wings, and breasts from each one with precision blows. How did Alex Campaglia end up with Wade’s rifle?
Chop!
Either he put it there or someone else did.
Chop!
It would only be a matter of time, and not much time, until the
police caught up with Gabe Campaglia. They were probably already tracking down everybody who was in the Dusty Vine Thursday night to find out if they saw anybody make that call. If Nesto told the same inadequate lie to the cops that he had told her, Gabe would soon find the inquiring light of justice shining on him.
Chop! Chop!

What if Alex discovered that Gabe had killed Jack? Would a drunken Gabe have picked up the spent shell and carried it and the gun back home with him? Or did Alex go to Beroni after he left Rivka and find the gun and the shell in the woods? She remembered Gabe’s face in the moonlight at the gazebo, equally startled as her own when she screamed, and the freshly oiled rifle set out on his coffee table. She thought about how Gabe’s temper had flared for an instant at breakfast when she asked him why he hated Jack Beroni: “I guess I was just born to hate him.” And Gabe had described Larissa Richards as a knockout and a high-society bitch, the only other strong words he’d used in their conversation. Sunny toyed with the idea that there was some other connection with Larissa that accounted for the heat.

Sunny finished with a duck and reached for another. Her imagination played out seductive scenes between Larissa Richards and Michael Rieder, who would not be able to resist telling her about the will that left everything to the Campaglias. She imagined Larissa, empowered by this new knowledge, scheming to get a share of the Beroni fortune using Gabe Campaglia as her agent. She might even have felt entitled to a share of the estate, which would have been hers if Jack had gone ahead and married her, and who knows what promises he made to keep her around for all those years. Gabe had his own motive, if he knew about the will. He didn’t know Wade, but he might have heard talk about Al and Louisa’s complaints to the police
about Wade disturbing the local peace by shooting his rifle in the evenings. For that matter, Larissa would have heard as well.

Catelina Alvarez shook a finger at Sunny. She wouldn’t like this line of thinking, all these assumptions. When she used to take Sunny with her to the farmers’ market when Sunny was a child, they would select the week’s fruits and vegetables. Catelina would hold up a peach in her gnarled hand and say, “Never trust the color on the outside, Sonya. A golden peach can be as hard as a stone or as grainy as porridge. The smell gives you a hint, but to really know, you have to slice one open and taste what is inside. Until then, you are only guessing.” Then she would hand the peach to the grower and wait while he, grumbling, sliced it open for her. Catelina was the queen of due diligence.

Sunny whacked apart another bird and spun the facts again, despite Catelina’s caution. She imagined Gabe getting lit up at the Dusty Vine, staggering out to the parking lot, calling Jack, stealing the gun, shooting him. But Jack’s murder was far too complicated to be a drunken crime of passion. Plus, Jack wouldn’t have left his party to meet a liquored-up Campaglia. Sunny tugged the last of the ducks onto the chopping block. It was even theoretically possible that Alex and Gabe had plotted the murder together. The timing was right, with Jack about to take over and edge them out. She scrubbed her hands. A couple of two-tops were already seated in the dining room, a party of three was lingering just inside the door, and there was still prep-work to be done. Nevertheless, she had a meeting to arrange. She worked quickly to pull together the last of the supplies Rivka would need to handle things for a little while on her own.

“Riv, would you do me a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Call Alex and get his brother’s mobile number.”

“Right now?” asked Rivka, glancing at the clock.

“I’m afraid so.”

Gabe picked up his phone on the fifth ring.

“Gabe?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s Sunny McCoskey.”

“Yeah.” He sounded less than thrilled to hear her voice.

“I need to see you, right away. Is there someplace we can meet to talk? It will only take a minute or two.”

“We’re talking now.”

“I need to see you in person.”

She listened to him breathing. He seemed to be walking up stairs or a hill. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot of the Dusty Vine,” he said. “I’ll leave in five.”

“Right. I’ll be there.”

She hung up the phone to find Rivka staring at her. “I’m going with you.”

“He won’t say anything with you there. Besides, I need you to hold down the fort here. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Gabe was sitting in his truck writing notes in a little spiral notebook when Sunny pulled in. Sunny’s old Ford lurched up next to the late-model Toyota 4 x 4, the sort they seemed to hand out like sack lunches up at the Beroni place. She got out, and Gabe smiled at her like he thought something was funny. She felt suddenly self-conscious not only of the scarred-up old truck but of her checkered pants and white chef’s jacket, an outfit Larissa Richards wouldn’t be caught dead wearing in public.

“You weren’t watching a movie with your parents Thursday night.”

“Nope.”

“You were right here at the Dusty Vine drinking.”

“You’re a smart one.”

“Why did you lie?”

“I didn’t.”

“But you let your father lie for you. You didn’t stop him.”

“It’s his choice. He can do whatever he wants.”

She glanced across the parking lot at the phone booth under a street lamp. “Did you call Jack Beroni Thursday night?”

“No.”

“Did you park your car up on the logging road, steal Wade’s gun, and shoot Jack Beroni as he waited to meet with you?”

“No, I sure didn’t.” He smiled at her.

She watched his face. “You and Jack were about the same age, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Did Jack have a girlfriend in high school?”

“He had plenty.”

“No one in particular?”

He thought about it. The question seemed to interest him. “Yeah, I guess there was one in particular. He seemed especially fond of Claire Hansen all through high school. They broke up when he went away to college.”

“Claire Hansen. As in Hansen Ranch?”

“That’s right. I guess it’s Claire Baker now. She and Jack were always close.”

Sunny slid into the truck
and fumbled the keys with quivering hands. She had the urge to shout or run. If there had been a river nearby, she would have been tempted to jump in, clothes and all, just to feel the shock of the water. She drummed at the steering wheel, waiting for Gabe to pull out of the lot and go on his way ahead of her. She needed time to get a grip on this new piece of information. If Larissa’s hunch was right and Gabe’s information accurate, the blond woman whom Jack Beroni was having an affair with was Claire Baker, and judging by what Nesto said, it was more than a fling.

She looked at her watch. Rivka was about to get slammed with the full force of a Wildside-sized lunch rush, admittedly minuscule compared with the traffic in the valley’s name-brand restaurants, but it would still give Ms. Chavez a hearty workout handling it on her own. She’d have to survive for another hour or so.

At Oakville, Sunny made a right toward Mount Veeder. The truck chugged up the steep grade not far from Monty’s place. Near the top of the ridge, she eased the truck over the lip of the pavement and headed down a dirt road to Hansen Ranch. Of the wide variety of dirt roads in the valley and the mountains that
formed it, Hansen Ranch’s road was perhaps the most picturesque. It was a genteel, pebbly brown roadbed worn smooth as any pavement by a century of use. On one side a white three-rail fence followed the road between sturdy Douglas fir trees with their lower limbs pruned to ward off wildfires. Even in late September, at the pinnacle of the dry season, the top of Mount Veeder was shades of green. No wonder so many people dreamed of rural bliss up here above the valley. If wine really was the expression of the spirit of the land, it was also no wonder that some of the most complex, articulate wines in California were made from grapes grown in the ripples and cul-de-sacs tucked around the mountain, the pièce de résistance and undisputed beauty queen of the Mayacamas Mountains.

The road dipped down and then popped up and rounded a sharp turn. Acres of olive, prune, apple, and pear trees came into view. A fringe of yellow sticky traps hung down along the edges, turning in the breeze. Further on, the trees gave way to a large vegetable garden covering several acres. Hansen Ranch grew at least ten varieties of organic greens, all the usual vegetables, an extensive array of herbs, asparagus, squashes, pumpkins, and anything else Ben and Claire could coax into taking root. Three scarecrows stood watch over the garden, and Mylar streamers, like the ones some vineyards used to keep birds away, flashed in the sunlight. At the end of the road was a white Victorian house with a swing on the porch and rosebushes around the sides. Behind it, parked in front of a separate garage, was a tan mid-eighties Land Cruiser like the one Gabe said he’d seen parked on the logging road near Beroni Vineyards.

Sunny idled the truck in the driveway. This was insanity. Even if it was true that Jack and Claire had renewed their high-school romance, it was none of Sunny’s business. Even stretching “her
business” to encompass events and situations vaguely related to Jack’s murder, extramarital affairs of the deceased probably still weren’t justifiably covered. And Claire was very much alive and very much married. On the other hand, Wade was in serious trouble, and now Rivka was involved. Was she going to let good manners stand in the way of helping them? She sat in the car, waffling.

Sunny turned off the engine and got out, praying as she walked up to the front door that Claire would answer instead of Ben. She had no idea what she would say to either of them, but at least she had a reason for coming to see Claire. She knocked softly, waited, then knocked again like she meant it. When there was no answer and no sound from inside, she made her way around back to the barn and outbuildings, hoping the Bakers didn’t keep a ferocious guard dog who had been temporarily indisposed but would be trotting over shortly.

In addition to the garage, there were three good-sized outbuildings behind the house. Sunny called out and waited but heard nothing. It was a glorious afternoon and she scanned the needlepoint slopes of distant vineyards, wondering where Ben and Claire could be. She walked across the compound to the first building, a sagging white gabled shed just large enough to house a pickup truck. The side door had swung halfway open and she slipped inside. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom. The smell in there was sweet and musky, like rotting fruit and wet morels, and reminded her of winter days spent in the garage as a child, helping butcher the deer or elk her father never failed to bring back from his annual hunting trip. Sure enough, on a workbench straight ahead lay a possum, freshly skinned. Tacked to the wall behind it were numerous hides in various stages of processing, including a rabbit, a gopher, and a raccoon, its eyes
dried to crackled slits. The wall to the left was covered with shelves, each burdened with a row of glass jars containing what looked to be mostly seeds, herbs, and insects, but also eggs of various sizes, feathers, soil mixtures, oily liquids, husks, peels, and bones.

Organic farming was getting weird, thought Sunny, opening one of the jars for a sniff. The fondness for composting and worm boxes seemed to have evolved into a general obsession with organic matter, and decomposed organic matter in particular. Those on the cutting edge in recent years had started whipping up fetid potions said to promote soil vigor or keep pests on the march. She knew someone who swore by a concoction he made out of a gopher buried for six months, then blended into a frappé and sprayed on his plants at the full moon. It lent yet more support to the idea that folks go a bit goofy out in the countryside on their own, soaking up a little bit too much nature for anybody’s good. Still, she had to admit that the Hansen place looked bountiful, and there did seem to be some validity to many of the old folk remedies, such as using cat urine to keep away gophers and rabbits.

She closed the door and walked back to the open space between the buildings, listening. The largest of the three structures was a Victorian barn big enough to house an indoor tennis court, and she headed there across a rolling natural lawn. As she got close, she heard movement off to the right, coming from the furthest structure, an old storage shed another fifty yards away. She walked toward it, calling “Hello” so as not to arrive unannounced.

Like the rest of the farm, the storage shed was whitewashed, clean, and built decades earlier of sturdy, hand-hewn local timbers. At the back end, the double doors were flung wide open.
Claire had set up a packing station in front with crates of kale, squash, heirloom apples, celery root, carrots, potatoes, figs, and rosemary arranged in a semicircle around her. She was busy assembling boxes of produce that were delivered weekly or biweekly to individuals who subscribed. Claire looked up when she heard Sunny. Claire’s cheeks were pink with exercise and her smile cheerful. She wore her pale blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“Sunny! What a nice surprise! My goodness, what brings you way out here?”

“Hi, Claire. I’m sorry to pop in on you like this. I haunted the front house for a while, but when nobody came to the door, I figured I’d come to you.” She stalled. “The farm looks great.”

Claire pulled off her gloves and gave Sunny a kiss on each cheek. “Doesn’t it? You remind me of how lazy I’ve been at getting people out here. When was the last time you visited?”

“Last fall? Maybe October. Rivka and I came out. I remember you made an amazing pumpkin soup.”

“With way too much heavy cream and jalapeños. That’s the secret to really good pumpkin soup, make it incredibly fattening. I hear you were at the sharpshooter meeting this morning.”

“Yeah, I was there. Ben did a nice job speaking against pesticides. I didn’t know he was such an eloquent public speaker. I’ve never known him to talk much.” Sunny stopped. She was starting to feel like a hypocrite; this was not a social visit. She decided to get to the point. She looked around, checking to see that Ben was nowhere within earshot. An assortment of upturned log sections stood nearby waiting to be split and Sunny tipped her head toward them. She and Claire went over and sat down. A knot formed in Sunny’s stomach. This was a dreadful topic to bring up. Claire looked at her expectantly.

“I don’t know how to say this. It’s really none of my business. If it weren’t for Wade needing help—do you know about Wade? That he was arrested?”

“I heard. I can’t believe it.”

“He’s out on bail, and I assure you that if it weren’t for his situation, I wouldn’t have any interest in sticking my nose into other people’s…business.”

“What is it?” She frowned and Sunny saw worry come into her face. Was it her imagination or did Claire look like someone accustomed to bad news?

“Claire, how close were you to Jack Beroni?”

She opened her mouth in shock, then closed it and looked away, shaking her head with what seemed to be successive waves of indignation, anger, and resignation. She worked a long splinter of wood off the log next to her and poked at the ground with it.

“You weren’t just having a casual affair,” said Sunny. “You’ve been in love with him since high school.” Sunny was becoming more experienced at eliciting information from people, and she’d realized that making a statement often got them talking more easily than if she’d asked a question.

Claire smiled, warmly at first, then her lips slid into a straight line. “Yes, but I was never good enough for Jack’s family. Not much is. And there was a time, years in fact, when I loved Ben just as much.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure you ever really know about these things. They’re gradual. Ben and I wore each other down, I suppose. The farm has never been a financial success and it’s been hard on both of us. Over the years, struggling constantly to make this place work, he got more and more introverted, more distant.
We’ve spent most of a second mortgage and used all the money I inherited when my mother died. The next step is to sell. This ranch has been in my family for five generations.” She dug a trough in the ground with the splinter of wood, absentmindedly scraping as she talked. “The taxes alone are several times more than we made last year.”

“You shouldn’t have to sell. This land is so valuable, you could get financing to put in your own vineyard. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cabernet Sauvignon grown where we’re sitting right now sold for fifteen hundred dollars a ton.”

“I know. Believe me, I’ve tried to get Ben to go along with that idea. He’s absolutely against it. You know how he feels about the wine business. It’s a matter of principle with him. He says he’d rather go broke than turn booze farmer. He feels like they’ve ruined the valley, cutting down the forests and orchards so they can plant more grapes, causing erosion, eating up habitat for animals.”

“How much of that is about being jealous of Jack?”

“He’s never had anything to be jealous of. I fell for Ben in college, a few years after Jack and I split up. Ben doesn’t know there was ever anything between us.” She sighed. “No, Ben’s abhorrence of the wine business has come from all those county meetings he goes to. He’s been on the opposite side of the fence since the winery definition battle in the eighties.”

Claire’s expression made her face look hard in a way Sunny had never seen before, as if she’d grown used to being unhappy. “Once he said if I ever asked for a divorce, he’d get a lawyer and make sure I lost the girls. I don’t think he was serious, but you never know. He’s changed over the years. I do know we wouldn’t get out of it without selling this place, and I won’t do that until I’ve exhausted every other option.” She started scraping a new
trench. “I used to be in awe of him, the way he devoted himself to this place. The way he loved to watch things grow.”

Sunny twisted the toe of her shoe in the dirt. “Where is he now?”

“Out making deliveries.”

“And Thursday night?”

She smiled. “Come on, Sunny, don’t be ridiculous. He may not be the happiest man alive, but he certainly didn’t kill Jack. He’s not cold-blooded. Ben still cries every time he has to shoot a gopher. I see him. He’ll watch the hole and pace for hours until he finally decides to do it. Then he’s upset for days. This is not a guy who could commit a murder. And anyway, he didn’t know anything about Jack and me. Even if he did, I don’t think he’d care that much. Ben stopped loving me in the romantic sense years ago. Staying together has been about the girls and the farm for a long time now. I don’t think he particularly cares who I sleep with, as long as I keep it a secret.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Marriages are not always what they seem, Sunny. Forever is a long time.”

Sunny bit her lip. “You were home Thursday night?”

“Me? Yes.”

“The whole night?”

“Yes.”

“And Ben, too?”

“I assume so.”

“You don’t know?”

“We don’t sleep together. He works at night sometimes. After dark is the best time to do certain applications. To be honest, I don’t always know where he goes and I don’t want to know.”

“Applications?”

“Biodynamic solutions. You know, to keep pests away or balance the soil.”

“So there are times when he leaves at night and you don’t know where he goes?”

“It’s usually the west orchard. If I know Ben, the other woman has leaves and bark, not feathered hair and big boobs.”

“Does he drive over there?”

“Usually. It’s too far to walk carrying equipment.”

“Did you hear him leave Thursday night?”

“Sunny, stop. Ben was here on the night of Jack’s murder, miles away from Beroni Vineyards.” Claire stood up. “I think this whole conversation has gone far enough. I need to ask you to give me your word you won’t talk to anyone about this, any of this, and then I think you’d better leave.”

Sunny felt her face heat. She hadn’t been asked to leave anyplace since she was a kid passing notes in school. “Just one more thing and I’ll go. And I won’t speak of any of this to anyone, I promise. Did Jack ever come here to see you?”

“Of course not,” she snapped. “He would never come anywhere near this place.”