Authors: Nadia Gordon
He rubbed his belly and scratched at the stubble on his neck. “Oh, the usual. Just sitting around watching the grapes grow. You want a cup of coffee?”
Sunny followed him inside. The kitchen glowed with soft golden light streaming in the windows and Sunny stared at a bowl of pomegranates sitting on a countertop. They were beautiful, their skin looking a deeper shade of red against a mint-green ceramic bowl. A collection of the season’s first fall leaves was spread out across the scarred wood of the kitchen table. Wade poured her a cup of coffee and Sunny sat down, gently stacking the leaves to one side and waiting for him to join her. He lifted an open bottle of Zin but she shook her head. Wade settled into the chair across from her. She could hear the clock above the refrigerator ticking.
Finally he said, “Steve Harvey came by early this morning.” He looked up at Sunny to see what the police officer’s name meant to her, if anything, then went on. “I heard a car drive up and when I saw who it was I figured Beroni had lodged another complaint against me. My existence is disturbing their precious peace, my mailbox needs mending and is bringing down the property values, I drive too fast, I didn’t wash behind my ears. Same old bull.”
Sunny waited. When he didn’t go on, she said, “What did he want?”
“That’s just it, Sunny. It wasn’t a complaint this time. The last two times the cops have come out, it was because Beroni called them about me playing Assault Golf in the evenings. I guess they can hear the shots up there and it gets Al’s undies in a
bunch. But it wasn’t that. We worked all that out. I never play after ten anymore, you know that. Anyway, I asked Steve to come in, but he wouldn’t sit down. He just stood there looking at his shoes. He asked me right off the bat where I was last night. I said here, like always. Then he asked me if there was anyone with me, what I was doing, what time I went to bed, did I make any phone calls, all kinds of stuff. I told him I was home alone after about seven. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Seven, seven-fifteen maybe. I was home by eight and I stopped at the store.”
“After you left I did some work in the office. I made a couple of fried eggs and toast around eight-thirty, played the guitar for a while. Then I went to bed. I don’t know what I thought he was after when I was telling him all this. I was just answering what he asked. I should have told him right away I’d have to call my lawyer. Anyway, he asked me if I heard anything unusual last night, if I saw or heard anybody creeping around. I told him I was sound asleep by ten and didn’t wake up until five-thirty this morning.”
“You dog,” said Sunny. “I woke up at four and couldn’t get back to sleep.”
Wade ignored her comment and went on. “Then he says, ‘Wade, do you own a rifle?’ and that’s when the hairs on the back of my neck started to stand up. I said, ‘What’s this about, Steve?’ and he says, ‘I just need to know if you own a rifle.’”
Sunny stared at him and he met her gaze, nodding very slightly, affirming that there was more. “I said I didn’t feel right answering any more questions until he gave me some idea of what this was about. I was still thinking it was probably about Assault Golf, because he’d been out here before about that, but he was acting strange. I knew just by watching him that something
bad had happened. Besides, he knows I own a rifle. He’s even seen it a couple of times. In fact, I fired it once when he told me to so he could hear for himself how loud it was up at the Beroni place, and he agreed it wasn’t loud at all. All they could hear was a pop, very faint.
“Anyway, it struck me as odd that he would be asking me about it now. It just didn’t seem right. I could tell something was upsetting him. That’s when he told me that Jack Beroni was dead. They found him this morning in that little gazebo over by the lake. Somebody shot him last night.”
Sunny gaped. “Jack Beroni is dead?”
“Shot in the chest. With a rifle, sniper style from a distance.”
“Are they sure? It has to be some sort of mistake, right?”
“Oh, they’re sure, all right. They found the body. It’s pretty hard to make a mistake about that.”
“I don’t believe it.” She thought of the chipper little gazebo standing beside the artificial lake over at Beroni Vineyards. She’d seen it often enough in the distance on the walks she and Wade liked to take at dusk. There was nothing menacing about the frilly white structure and the emerald lawn around it. It was hard to imagine anything bad happening there.
“He told me it happened last night, late. Like maybe around eleven o’clock. Jack had been out somewhere. He was still wearing a tuxedo.”
“What was he doing down at the gazebo at night?”
“Who knows.”
“So then what happened?”
“Well, he told me how Silvano Cruz, the guy who manages the vineyard up there, found him first thing this morning. He’d been dead for several hours, probably most of the night. They didn’t find the gun that was used, or at least they haven’t yet.
They’re combing the forest by the lake right now. But they could tell by the way the bullet mushroomed out that it was fired from some kind of high-velocity .22. That could be any of the center-fire rifles everybody and his dog owns. Anyway, we stood there for a minute staring at each other and then Steve says, ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to have a look at that gun of yours,’ and that’s when I knew I’d already said way too much. I told him that he’d need a search warrant to go any further into my house and that I wanted to talk to my lawyer before I answered any more questions. He was like, ‘You sure you’re sure about that?’ and I said, ‘Damn right I’m sure.’ Then I told him he’d better leave.”
Wade stared up at Sunny across the table, his hands cupped around his mug of coffee. His wild gray hair, cowlicked in a dozen directions, stuck up all over his head, and his cheeks were grizzled with salt-and-pepper stubble. His face was deeply tanned from long days outdoors during his fifty-seven years, and his clear blue eyes shone at her, firm but questioning, looking for some confirmation that he’d done the right thing.
“The gun we use for Assault Golf, that’s a .22 caliber rifle, right?” said Sunny.
“Ruger M77 bolt-action .22 Hornet,” said Wade.
“The same kind that was used to shoot Jack.”
“It’s possible.”
Plenty of people in Napa Valley had guns. Guns were used to shoot skeet and, in Wade’s case, golf balls. At worst they were used to shoot gophers, deer, or quail. It never even occurred to her that one might be used to kill someone she knew, someone practically everybody knew. There wasn’t a person for thirty miles who wouldn’t recognize Jack Beroni.
“I think maybe I should give Harry a call,” said Wade.
“I think that’s probably a good idea, just in case.”
Harry was Wade’s lawyer. He’d helped him out when the Beronis tried to put in a road that ran three feet over onto Wade’s side of the property line. He also did all the paperwork when Sunny opened Wildside. “I’m sure it’s just routine,” she said. “I mean, it makes sense for him to come here, for Harvey to cover all of his bases. You might have heard something.” Sunny put a hand to her mouth and nibbled at a rough corner of one of her nails.
“I hope you’re right. It rattled me. Steve standing there giving me the third degree, telling me Jack Beroni has been killed within a mile of here. Everybody knows how I feel—felt—about Jack, but I certainly never wished him dead. Well, maybe once or twice, but not seriously, of course,” said Wade.
“You and half the valley. You were just more vocal about it. If they’re going to talk to everyone who had it in for Jack, they’re in for a lengthy investigation. Still, I’d call Harry and get his take, just to be sure.” Sunny tried to sound unconcerned, to actually be unconcerned, but the facts were alarming. Jack Beroni was dead. His nearest neighbor—and Sunny’s closest friend—had a long history of legal battles, animosity, and outright fights with both Jack and his parents. Wade had been home alone, hadn’t spoken to anyone. In other words, he had no alibi. And Steve Harvey had already been here poking around, asking about Wade’s gun. That could only mean Wade was a suspect. A terrible thought occurred to her. “Wade, you didn’t happen to play Assault Golf last night?” Her stomach turned over when she saw his face.
“I played a ball around nine o’clock,” said Wade, his worry interrupted by a conspiratorial flicker of pride. “Sank it in two shots.”
Sunny winced. As harmless as it was, she had never thought Assault Golf was a good idea. What good could come of firing
a gun at night? Still, she had to admit it was fun. Wade had invented the game years ago. It started when he used to like to practice driving golf balls across the ravine onto the grass in front of the winery. Then one day he got the idea of using the balls for target practice before he walked down to pick them up. Soon after that he sank an old coffee can next to the compost heap on the edge of the meadow and Assault Golf was born. The idea was to use the old eight iron Wade had bought at a garage sale to hit the ball toward the compost heap, then switch to the rifle for no more than three shots to move the ball along the ground toward the coffee can. A player scored ten points every time he made the ball move without hitting it. If he succeeded in getting the ball into the coffee can, he scored an additional fifty points. Actually hitting the ball, and therefore ruining it, earned a fifty-point penalty. After a while, he was so good at it, it wasn’t much of a challenge anymore. Then the day came when Wade found glow-in-the-dark golf balls on the Web, and after-hours Assault Golf was born. Sunny had played half a dozen times and Wade played a ball or two nearly every night before bed. It was exactly this sort of behavior that made Sunny question the virtues of living a solitary life.
She finished her coffee and pushed back her chair. “I’m not sure there is anything we can do about this right now other than worry,” she said, giving Wade an ironic smile and standing to go. She glanced in the sink. Two plates were stacked on top of the frying pan with a spatula, a fork, and two knives. There was also a wineglass with dark purple residue in the bottom. There were crumbs on the top plate and there would be crumbs and olive oil from the eggs on the one under that. Eggs and toast for supper. Toast with canned sardines for breakfast. For someone who had such good taste in wine, he sure didn’t put much effort into what
he ate when he was alone.
Food’s just something to put the wine on, anyway,
he’d joke.
Wade walked her to the door. At the truck, she gave him a hug and, trying to sound casual, made him promise to call Harry right away.
Driving back to Wildside, she tried to get used to the idea that Jack Beroni had been killed in a way that left only one possible conclusion: There was a murderer at large in the valley. She drove on, hardly noticing the beauty of the surrounding countryside, a sight that normally still caught her attention every day. The idea that Steve Harvey suspected Wade Skord was simply ridiculous. Harvey must have just been checking out every possible source of information. It sounded like that was all he was doing—until he asked if Wade owned a rifle. No, thought Sunny, when a man is shot and a policeman comes to the door asking to see a gun, it’s not a routine visit, it’s a criminal investigation. Sunny gripped the steering wheel and pressed the gas pedal, racing back to the restaurant as though that would help.
The chirp of a siren interrupted her thoughts. Steve Harvey’s patrol car filled her rearview mirror. She tipped the truck off the side of the pavement at the next turn out and waited for Harvey to walk up. His muscular shoulders bulged under the khaki shirt. Harvey was a stocky guy. A healthy crop of sun-bleached hair glistened on his forearms as he came over. He took off his sunglasses and smiled at her.
“Hi, Sunny.”
“Hi, Steve.”
“Where’s the fire?”
“Fire? Oh, just in a hurry. I’m running late.”
“Are you headed to the restaurant?”
“Yes.”
“Mind if I follow you? I’d like to talk with you for a few minutes if that’s all right.”
“Of course, my pleasure.”
He gave her a perfunctory smile. Sunny watched him walk away in her side mirror, then pulled slowly back out onto the highway and drove the short distance to the restaurant, the patrol car tailing her at a polite distance. At Wildside, they got out of their cars and walked around the back of the restaurant and through the kitchen into Sunny’s office without speaking, the stiff leather of Steve Harvey’s holster creaking loudly.
Sunny’s office at Wildside looked
significantly smaller and messier with Sergeant Harvey standing in it. Suddenly the room that had always felt perfectly spacious and efficient seemed cramped and crowded with furniture and papers. The walls needed painting, the two windows were dusty and fringed with cobwebs in the sunlight, and the walls and desk and even the standup metal filing cabinet were littered with several years’ clutter. Postcards from traveling friends, mailers from wineries and kitchen suppliers, snapshots, souvenirs, shift schedules, supply lists, and long-forgotten reminders were tacked, taped, and held up by magnets in drifts. A bent and corroded metal rooster bought at a flea market in Provence perched on top of the filing cabinet. Every flat surface including the floor was stacked with cookbooks. On the desk next to an old typewriter from the thirties was a piece of driftwood that someone thought was shaped like a trout. There was a ceramic pig from Mexico, a primitive mask from a Burning Man costume made out of an empty bleach jug painted turquoise blue and neon green, and, displayed on the windowsill, a collection of dried chicken feet.
The comfortable disarray seemed to indicate not a colorful personal history and eclectic interests, but shoddiness and
negligence when Sunny saw it through Steve Harvey’s eyes. She glanced at the photograph of the smiling blond woman, a Bordelaise in a deep V-neck sweater holding a seductive armload of Cabernet Sauvignon fruit. The picture, which had once seemed to epitomize the sensuality and abundance of harvest, now looked vaguely incriminating, as though it signaled a bent toward the lascivious or some other warp in character.
Sunny pushed one of the windows open for fresh air, kicked a bag of dirty gym clothes aside, and dragged her desk chair around toward the coffee table, suggesting that Sergeant Harvey take the more comfortable seat on the couch. He declined. Instead he grabbed a small wood and cane café chair from the corner, which turned out to be, like the rest of the room, far too small for him. He perched on the edge of it stiffly, like a trained bear. It occurred to Sunny that he felt as uncomfortable as she did. He said, “I hate to bother you in the middle of a busy morning, Sunny.”
“Don’t worry about it. I have a hunch I know why you’re here.”
“Do you?” said Steve, suddenly stern instead of apologetic. Sunny felt the sting of authority in his voice, and the wooden resolve it always provoked in her. It was like being in the principal’s office or her father’s study all over again, only this was her office, her space, the place she’d spent years getting to. She felt the tingling sensation of rebellion rising up. She told herself to relax, he’s only doing his job. She said, “I was on my way back from Wade Skord’s house when you pulled me over, but I think you know that.”
She thought she caught a flicker of surprise in his face, maybe even a little amusement. He’d assumed she wouldn’t notice him staking out the base of the turnoff to Howell Mountain. He said, “Then you know about Jack Beroni.”
“Only that he was found this morning in the gazebo. That someone killed him. Do you have any idea who did it?”
“We have some leads. It was done sniper style, at night, by somebody who was a good shot with a high-powered rifle.” Sunny thought of Wade, standing up behind the house with his .22 Hornet, using the night-vision scope to sight the glowing yellow golf ball lying in the grass across the ravine. Steve Harvey leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, provoking a vision of him on the toilet. Sunny stifled a giggle. “Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable on the couch?” she said.
He sat upright again. “No, thanks. Was there a particular reason for your visit to Wade Skord this morning?”
“He called and asked me to come over. Your visit and Jack’s death had his nerves all jangled. He just needed to see a friend.”
Steve nodded. “Did he tell you what he did last night?”
“Yes, but I don’t feel right about speaking for him. I’ll tell you what I know directly. Wade can speak for himself.”
Steve shot her a hard look and said, “Okay. We can always talk about that stuff later.” He looked around the room as though it were evidence. His eyes settled on the blue and green mask. Fringe made from strands of painted plastic wrap hung down half a foot from the bottom. He said, “Tell me about your day yesterday. You worked here at the restaurant?”
“Yes.”
“Until what time?”
“Around five.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I drove over to Wade’s place to have a look at the harvest. It’s getting close up there. He’ll bring them in any day now.”
“What’s he got up there, Zinfandel?”
“Yeah.”
“So the two of you were out in the vineyard tasting grapes? What time was that?”
“Probably around five-thirty. We tasted fruit and took samples from each segment. He has the vineyard divided up into eight segments.”
“Then what did you do?”
“We went back to the house to drop off the samples and measure the Brix. Wade opened a bottle of ‘96 late harvest and we took glasses of it with us on a walk up the ridge to the top of the vineyard to watch the sunset. That was about six-thirty. After that I was tired, so I went home. I left around seven or seven-fifteen.”
“Where did you go from there?”
“I stopped at the supermarket. The Safeway over by the railroad tracks. Then home. I was home all night after that.”
“Did you talk to anyone? Did anybody call or come over?”
“Monty Lenstrom called, I think around nine o’clock. And I sent some e-mail around ten.”
Steve took a tiny notepad out of his breast pocket and used the little pencil that came with it to write something down, probably Monty Lenstrom’s name. As a wine merchant who sold expensive, hard-to-find wines, Lenstrom circulated to all the better parties and seemed to know everybody up valley, at least well enough to call them customers. Steve probably knew who he was. He sat quietly for a moment with the pencil hovering above the pad. Sunny studied his short, neatly combed blond hair, thinking that it was probably stiff to the touch. He’d have to use a strong gel to freeze it into place and have it last all day like that. His fingernails were perfectly clean, too. She glanced at her own hands, which were comparatively barbaric, her nails shaggy along the edges, the strong tendons too pronounced, the
skin scarred from things sharp and hot in the kitchen. Catelina Alvarez, the old Portuguese woman who lived across the street the whole time Sunny was growing up, had small, gnarled hands that could take a live chicken strutting around the backyard and turn it into neat pieces arranged in a baking dish in minutes. Sunny had seen her reach into a pot of boiling water, pull out a potato, and start peeling it with the steam coming off in plumes. Sunny’s hands were already more like Catelina’s than like Monty Lenstrom’s girlfriend’s, who had petal-soft skin and long fingers like beautifully shaped twigs; hands best suited to the application of eye makeup.
Steve returned the notepad to his shirt pocket and put his hands together, fingers interlaced, and stared down at them. After what seemed a painfully long silence, he looked up at Sunny and asked, “How would you characterize your relationship with Wade Skord?”
Sunny wondered if that was an official question or a personal one, or merely curiosity. Cops are the best source of gossip in a small town, next to the hairdresser and the DA’s office. She said, “We’re friends. Have been for years.”
“Nothing more?”
“No. Is that part of this?”
Steve looked up at her with a new fierceness in his eyes. “Ms. McCoskey, may I remind you that a man has been killed, shot with a rifle not half a mile from Wade Skord’s home. What Wade Skord was doing last night and who he was doing it with are very important pieces of information. People’s lives could depend on it.”
Wade’s life could depend on it, thought Sunny. She said, “We aren’t lovers. We never have been. We’re friends, and we collaborate in our businesses. I work with him as a consultant in his winemaking, he produces wine for Wildside.”
Steve seemed to relax slightly. He said, “Did he seem upset or agitated about anything last night? Did he mention anything that was bothering him?”
“No. In fact, he seemed extremely relaxed. It’s been a good growing season; the fruit looks like it will be exceptional, if the weather holds. Assuming nothing goes wrong in the next few days, it will be one of the best harvests in years.” Sunny paused. She’d been trying to ignore the obvious subtext of their conversation, but the time had come to face it. “Steve, Wade Skord isn’t capable of murder.”
“I’ve never met anyone I thought was, but plenty of murders happen,” said Steve. “People are capable of more than you think.”
“Not Wade. I’ve known him for years. He thinks about three things: the vines, the grapes, and the wine. He is completely absorbed in his work.”
“And what if something threatened that work?”
Sunny didn’t reply and Steve stood to go. After he left, she sat staring at the card he’d given her with his mobile-phone number penciled on the back. “In case you remember something,” he’d said. Like what? That Wade planned to shoot Jack Beroni later that night after she left?
Rivka stuck her head in a few minutes later. “What was that all about?” she asked.
Sunny looked up, feeling suddenly on edge. “Long story.”
“It wasn’t about Jack Beroni, was it?”
Sunny hesitated. Rivka came into the office and plopped down on the couch. She took a bunch of Sauvignon Blanc grapes from a bowl on Sunny’s desk and began to eat them, piling the seeds on the corner of an old newspaper lying on the coffee table. After several grapes she said, “Alex called right after you left. He told me about them finding Jack this morning. Everyone’s talking about it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said Silvano Cruz, the guy who oversees the vineyard, was driving along in his tractor early this morning when he noticed something red running down the steps of the gazebo. Turned out to be blood. He went up there and found Jack sprawled on his back, dead. About this time, Alex pulls into the winery for work, and here comes Silvano running up the road saying Jack’s been shot, they have to call the police. Alex said he was white as a sheet. So Silvano goes inside to phone while Alex drives down to the gazebo to stand guard until the police get there. He said there was blood all over the place. He sounded pretty shook up about it. He waited around until the police got there, then helped them tape off the area and lift the body onto the stretcher and everything.”
Sunny rubbed her head with her knuckles, making circles at her temples and working her way back to her neck. The day was getting weirder and weirder, and there was every reason to believe it was only going to get worse. She tried to make it all seem real. Jack Beroni was dead. The police clearly considered Wade a suspect, at least for the moment. And Steve Harvey, perennial big softy about town, was coming on like a big-city cop. “Did he say if they have any ideas about who did it?” she asked Rivka.
“Nothing so far. Whoever shot him was careful. They never even came near him, just shot him from way off, probably from the trees along the west side of the vineyard. They didn’t find any footprints or anything. They have about a dozen guys out there looking for evidence. They think the killer used a rifle, a powerful one that’s effective from a long way away, probably fitted with a night scope. Alex says those guns are incredibly accurate if you know how to shoot them. The killer could have hit Jack from a hundred yards away and ditched the gun in the
forest. The only evidence they found, as far as Alex could tell, was the body and the bullet.”
“And they could tell exactly what kind of gun was used?”
“Yeah. They could tell by the bullet. They can even match the bullet to a specific gun, if they find it. Don’t you watch cop shows on TV?”
“No TV. I’m a recovering addict, remember? I haven’t watched TV since they invented the remote.”
“Right, I forgot. Anyway, every gun barrel leaves its own particular marks on the bullet when it’s fired, like a fingerprint. They’re threaded, so the bullet spins and the threads make little scratches on the bullet that they can match up to the gun.”
Sunny felt a wave of relief. This was very good news. The police had the bullet. If there was any real suspicion of Wade, which the rational side of her mind seriously doubted, the police could always check the bullet against his gun. She took a deep breath.
Rivka looked at her. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You thought something.”
“No, just thinking about that bullet. How somewhere out there in the world there’s a gun that matches it.”
Sunny looked at the clock above the couch. It was after ten; they’d have to hurry if they were going to be ready to open in an hour. Rivka went back to the kitchen and Sunny picked up the phone and dialed Wade’s number. She tapped the office door closed with her foot.
By noon the restaurant buzzed with news of the murder. From her station behind the zinc bar Sunny caught snatches of conversation from the dining room. It seemed as if everyone was
talking about Jack Beroni. Each time a waiter or one of the customers encountered someone new, they seemed compelled to establish whether or not the other person had heard the news, and if so, whether every scrap of available information and informed speculation was known. If a reference to
the tragedy, what happened last night,
or
Beroni Vineyards
went unacknowledged, the instigator would say, “You haven’t heard?” and then relate in ever increasing detail what had happened.
Sunny plated a row of salads from an enormous aluminum mixing bowl full of dressed baby greens and added a disk of pistachio-crusted goat cheese and a fan of date slivers to each. Like the rest of the town, she couldn’t get used to the idea of somebody like Jack being gone all of a sudden. He’d been a fixture in the valley as much as Beroni Vineyards itself. Every party and charitable event had to include an appearance by Jack Beroni in a tuxedo. The man wore a tux more often than most movie stars. Around St. Helena, he was everywhere. She’d see him coming out of the hardware store on Railroad Avenue, having coffee at Bismark’s, getting a sandwich at the Oakville Grocery. It wasn’t that she knew him well, it was more that he was part of the fauna of the valley, like the quail and the coyotes and the rattlesnakes—creatures she assumed were there and saw occasionally, but who otherwise went about their business well outside the range of her familiarity. “I just can’t believe he’s dead,” she said to Rivka, who was working the grill behind her.