A Saucy Murder: A Sonoma Wine Country Cozy Mystery (12 page)

Ten minutes later they stepped through the front door of Jardin where the maitre d’ greeted Jack with a friendly clap on the back.

“Great game the other night, Jack. You still pass like an Olympian. You haven’t lost your touch.”

“An assist, Vince. You scored the goal.”  Jack winked at Emma. “Not too shabby for the Old Guys’ Hockey League. Emma, you know Vince Gagliardo?  He’s a part owner here.”

Jack quickly added in a lowered voice, “Hey Vince, Clare Blumberg asked me to tell you I’m joining her party after the Ormon Concert. Is that OK?  Can you squeeze the two of us in?  It’s some kind of a fundraiser, I guess. I told her I’d help her out.”

“No problem, Jack. No problem at all.”

“So Emma and I will just be having appetizers and a bottle of wine for now, OK?”

“Of course. Anything you like, Jack. Anything at all. I’ll tell your waiter.”

Emma couldn’t have been more impressed. When they were seated at their table she exclaimed, “Wow!  That was easy. But what if Clare objects?”

Jack laughed. “She won’t. It would be too embarrassing. What’s she gonna do, say who invited you, Mr. Platinum Circle Director’s Chair Club?”  He shook his head. “Ain’t gonna happen. She’s hoping I’ll leave City Opera something in my will. Sure, she’ll look a little bit surprised to see me. Then she’ll figure her secretary screwed up and say so glad you could make it, Jack. Trust me. I know. That’s how it goes.”

The waiter had handed Jack the wine list.

“Emma, red OK with you?” he asked. “I feel like red tonight, even though I’m ordering oysters.”  He turned to the waiter. “We’ll have the
Nuits Saint Georges
.”

The waiter beamed. “Excellent Mr. Russo. I’ll be back to take your order momentarily.”

They were enjoying an appetizer of Golden Mantle oysters when Jack turned the conversation back to the murder.

“By the way,” he began. “For what it’s worth, I did some more checking on Sergio. Contrary to what he told you at the party, the city’s been on his back for almost a year. Maybe not about rats. There are no health department complaints.”

“That shoots the obvious excuse for why he ordered that book on poison from Annemarie’s store,” Emma added.

“In some ways his problem’s more serious,” Jack explained. “The city’s demanding major renovations to bring his old building up to code. He owns the place. The location’s great. Right on the plaza. But according to my banker friends, he hasn’t been able to get loans.”

Emma shook her head. “Why?  He runs one of the most successful restaurants in Sonoma Country.” 

Jack winced. “He’s a good cook. That doesn’t make him a good businessman. The restaurant’s in debt up to its ears. And if Sergio doesn’t make the improvements, the city has already threatened to shut him down. That’s totally confidential, of course.”

Emma nodded. “Of course. But none of that implicates him in Natasha’s death.”

“Here’s what could,” Jack continued. “Sergio, it seems, owes a truckload of money to at least one of his purveyors, Nesson Wholesale Liquors. I know Nesson. He’s a billionaire who also owns an estate near Bodega Bay. He and Sergio got to be friends. They socialize. You know. Both of them bachelors. Well, guess who Natasha was singing for, all those years while Buchanon came up cold?”

“Sergio?” Emma asked.

Jack nodded.

She considered this for a moment. Sergio was definitely a handsome young devil. Way better looking than Buchanon. Who could blame her? “So maybe Sergio killed Natasha in a jealous rage.”

Jack nodded. “According to Nesson, it was passion at first sight. They met at a party and rendezvoused in his guest house on the Bodega Bay estate. But,” Jack continued, “Natasha insisted on hushing it up because she never wanted to let the wealthy Buchanon completely off the hook.”

“Enough to drive any hot blooded Italian wild,” Emma mused. “But murder? Now? That all must have happened years ago.” 

Jack shrugged. “Here’s another hook,” he added. “A few months ago, the city started breathing hard down Sergio’s back. According to Nesson, that’s when Sergio started gambling at the place up on the hill, hoping his luck would turn. Instead, of course, things only got worse. Soon, he owed the casino so much money, the Sicilian Mafia, my relatives…” 

Emma gasped.

Jack rolled his eyes. “Emma, I’m
joking
. My father was a poor bricklayer, not a Mafia Don. Anyway the Mafia, who own a chunk of that debt ridden sorry excuse for Las Vegas, told him to pay or else someone else would.”

“Like who?” Emma asked, her voice still husky from the Mafia scare.

“That’s the point,” Jack replied. “What could they do to him?  Sergio has no family. No wife. No kids. His business is deep underwater. No assets. They could either kill him…”

“Or someone he loved.”  Emma ended Jack’s sentence for him.

Jack nodded. “So, according to my friend Nesson, when Natasha was murdered Sergio convinced himself that his Mafia brethren administered the poison to Natasha in order to punish him. Nesson says Sergio’s been holed up in his office at the restaurant ever since. He’s sure the Mafia will come after him next.”

“Why doesn’t he go to the police?” Emma asked.

“Cause he’s overstayed his visa, for one thing,” Jack explained. “And he’s scared.”

“Do you believe all this?” Emma asked. “That the Mafia killed Natasha because of Sergio’s debts? It sounds far-fetched. Like a smokescreen. Like something Sergio invented because he has more to hide.”

“Sweetheart,” Jack replied, looking at his watch and motioning the waiter to bring them their check, “I’m just repeating what I heard. I don’t know what happened. But I do know that, no matter who you are, if someone analyzes the soles of your shoes, they are sure to find some dirt.” 

By then, he had signed the check and was helping Emma on with her coat. “Of course,” he added, “there’s a cruder way to say that, but I thought I’d spare a nice lady like you.”

By the time they’d found their seats for the Ormon Society’s thank you concert for major donors, Emma’s thoughts were in a whirl. Sergio the jealous lover was one thing. But the Mafia? 
That
, Emma shivered, was way out of her league.

Since she didn’t take the time to review the thick program distributed by the ushers when they took their seats, Emma really couldn’t follow much of the Ormon Fellowship program. It consisted of one after another of the Ormon Rising Young Star Fellows singing a favorite aria in thanks for the donations that supported their training.

Just before the intermission, however, Chiara Bruno, the prior year’s winner of the Ormon Rising Young Star award, stepped on to the stage. She sang an old favorite,
Un Bel Di
from
Madam Butterfly
. The song where the jilted geisha declares her faith that her callous American lover will one day return. It was a song that almost everyone in the audience knew by heart.

Halfway through Chiara’s exquisite performance, the audience’s own sniffling chorus began. Anyone caught without a hanky better at least have had a sleeve. When Emma couldn’t control her tears and reached for her purse, Jack handed her his starched white monogrammed pocket handkerchief instead.

The first half of the program ended in an explosion of enthusiastic applause.

“Champagne at the Allegro?”  Jack suggested.

The Allegro was a plush private lounge where the really big donors relaxed among their own. Emma loved it. She had been there once with Julie and Piers whose law firm made a large annual donation to the Opera.

“Sure,” Emma replied. “I’ll probably see Julie there. That way I can warn her. So she won’t act surprised when we show up at dinner.”

In fact, Julie was standing in front of them in the line waiting to be recognized by the elegant bouncer stationed at the entrance to the lounge.

Emma introduced Julie to Jack.

Julie nodded coolly. “I think we’ve met. At one of my husband’s firm’s parties. You’d just moved from the East Coast.”

Jack squinted at Julie like he was trying to size her up. Then shook her hand.

Emma just had time to whisper in Julie’s ear before they entered the lounge, “Everything’s set. We’re coming to the dinner. Don’t act surprised.”

Julie did a double take. “What?” she answered a little too loud. “You’re kidding!  Right?”

Emma couldn’t hide the frustration in her voice. “See?  That’s exactly what I
don’t
want you to do at the restaurant!”

By then, Clare, the Director of City Opera, was waving to Julie to join her at a small table near the back of the lounge. When she saw Jack standing behind Julie, she blew him a kiss and mouthed “Ciao Bello” before motioning him to come too. Soon, champagne glasses in hand, Julie, Piers, Jack, Clare and Emma squeezed together around a tiny glass table surrounded by a crush of major donors. Emma only recognized a few, including her old boss, Trent Dunn, from the law firm where she’d worked as a paralegal all those years.

“Emma,” he greeted her. “Fancy meeting you here. I didn’t know you were an opera fan. How are you finding the work up there in Blissburg?  I remember your saying you were afraid it would be boring compared to the City. Anything but!  I saw you on the news.”

Emma cringed and introduced him to Jack. Trent did a double take. “I know this guy. Hockey. Harvard. Hell of a team. Didn’t know you were out here.”

“Yeah. Just moved.”  Jack nodded and turned away.

Emma watched Julie watch Jack. Her daughter’s success meter recalibrating his score.

Then Julie turned to address the director. “Chiara was fabulous, Clare. I had no idea she was such an actress in addition to having a wonderful voice.”

Instead of accepting the compliment to her new hot diva, Clare frowned.

“Just between us,” she whispered, “that girl is a royal pain in the backside. Acting?  I’ll say she can act. She just threw a hissy fit before she went on stage. She’s threatening not to sing opening night unless we redraft her contract and give her more money.”  Clare looked at Piers. “Of course, she knows she has us over a barrel. She’ll call in sick. Strained vocal chords or something. And we’ll be up a creek.
Her
understudy isn’t half prepared. We’d have to call in Smetnova from New York for opening night. Which would cost us a fortune and Chiara knows it. It’s extortion, Piers!  And Massimo, my besotted conductor, is taking her side. Don’t even get me started on
him
. Grrrr.”

By the time Clare’s little tirade was over, the lights flashed signaling that the second half of the program was about to begin. Emma and Jack hurried back downstairs to their orchestra seats.

As they sat down and the curtain rose, Emma whispered into Jack’s ear, “I think we just found another pair of dirty shoes.”

Emma was so worried about her subterfuge at Jardin that, the minute the singing stopped, she insisted she and Jack leave the Opera House. She wanted to beat the rest of Clare’s guests to Jardin, the chic restaurant located just kitty corner to the Opera House.

“I thought about it all through the second half of the concert,” she informed Jack as she urged him into the aisle while the performers were still taking their bows. “I figure Clare will be the last one to arrive at the restaurant. Julie tells me the Director’s Box, where she sits, is way at the end of the mezzanine. I’ve watched her glad hand everyone from the foyer to the carriage entrance. And from what she said at the intermission, she’ll probably have a few words with the conductor too. So if we’re in the private room at Jardin before the other guests arrive, I think this thing may work. Julie and Piers know not to say anything. The Buchanons, the bass and Vera Vasiliev, Natasha’s twin sister, have no idea we were never invited. The conductor, if he comes, will assume he misunderstood something. Then, if what you said is true, Clare will breeze in late and blame the mistake on her secretary. You and I will be home free.”

Jack had grabbed Emma’s elbow and maneuvered her out of the Opera House and across the street. “Wow,” he exclaimed. “That’s some plan. Did you happen to hear anything they sang for the past forty-five minutes?  Does that brain of yours ever shut down?  I don’t think I’ve thought
that
hard about something in fifty years.”

“Fifty years?  What was it you thought so hard about then?” Emma asked.

Jack smiled. “How to get my future wife to break up with her boyfriend so I could take her to my senior prom. I wracked my brains for weeks over that one.”

“What did you finally do?’ Emma asked.

Jack smiled. “I simply asked her to the prom. She dropped the poor sucker like a hot potato. Done. And the rest is history.”

Emma wondered about that. She had a very strong feeling that, whatever the rest was, it wasn’t history.

Indeed, all Emma’s planning paid off. She and Jack were the first to arrive at the private dining room. Vera Vasiliev, the dead singer’s twin, was second, dressed in an expensive looking black sequin evening dress. Emma couldn’t help wondering if it belonged to her sister. She immediately noticed that Vera looked distraught. Her green eyes, outlined in mascara, were red from crying. Even the thick layer of foundation that Vera had smeared on her face couldn’t hide the dark circles around them.

Emma introduced herself and Jack, reminding Vera that they had met the night of the fundraising party. But the very mention of that fateful night seemed to plunge the poor girl deeper in gloom.

Only the sight of Sacha Kuragin making his entrance noticeably lifted the partnerless twin’s spirits. Emma watched her rush to embrace him, as though the poor girl thought she might interrupt the bass singer’s self-absorption. She didn’t. He ignored her, along with everyone else in the room, occasionally casting a desperate glance left or right like a great trapped blond bear. When the waiter entered with a tray of champagne, Emma heard him order vodka. Then he took out his cell phone and looked like he was texting.

The Buchanons arrived minutes later. Covered in his and her layers of frost, Emma noted. Dressed in a revealing silver tube, Lexie looked unsteady and disheveled. Even if their angry voices in the hall hadn’t been clearly audible through the closed door to the private room, it was obvious to everyone that they had been arguing.  

Vera Vasiliev did not greet the Buchanons when they entered. Emma saw Barry Buchanon avert his eyes as though Vera’s near miss looks were too strong a reminder of all he had lost in her twin sister.

When Barry caught sight of Jack, however, he greeted him with a slap on the back. “Clare didn’t tell me you’d be here,” he said.

“It was kind of last minute,” Jack replied. “Her secretary called me this morning. Someone must have told her I like Russian opera,” he added with a laugh.

“Really?”  Lexie stared so brazenly at Jack, Emma deduced she was drunk. “Does anybody?” she added.

“Does anybody what?” Jack replied.

“Like Russian opera,” Lexie answered with a laugh. Then she looked Jack up and down and added, “Personally, I like hot blooded Italian.”

Jack winked at her. “So do I.”

Just then Julie and Piers appeared, saving all of them from the awkward moment. Emma couldn’t have been more relieved. Finally, someone to talk to.

But Emma didn’t have time to greet her daughter. Clare, the Director, and Massimo, the City Opera’s conductor, followed them through the door. Clare still looked annoyed. In spite of herself, Emma froze, afraid that her ruse to crash the Director’s party was about to fall apart.

Clare surveyed the small room. “Are we all here?” she asked.

When her gaze rested on Emma and Jack, her face expressed but a moment’s surprise. Then her brow furrowed, as if she were trying to remember something. She glanced at each guest, mentally taking a tally. And seemed to count the chairs at the round table set in the middle of the room. Ten and ten, the numbers matched. Her face relaxed. She walked up to Jack, her hand extended.

“Jack, so glad you could come,” was all she said.

Moments later, her guests took their places at the table. But before anyone ordered, Clare announced the point of the meeting.

“As all of you
may
know,” she looked pointedly at Jack, “the Buchanons, today, made a profoundly generous donation to City Opera.”  She added, “Probably one of the biggest opera donations of its kind. The donation was made in the memory of our beloved friend and colleague, Natasha Vasiliev.”

“Waida minute,” Lexie interjected. Her voice had begun to slur. By then, the spaghetti straps of her platinum trash tube had fallen to half mast and one of her dangling earrings was caught in her hair.

“I wanna get one thing straight,” she announced. “This isn’t my gift. Unnastand?  The gift isn’t from,” she made quotation marks with her fingers, “the Buchanons. See, I’m,” she pointed to her chest, “one of the Buchanons. An I don’t give a rat’s you know what about opera. If it were up to me,” she paused, “which it isn’t.”  She wagged the forefinger of the hand bearing
the
sapphire ring. “I’d give the money to some poor little sick kids.” 

She stood up, cracked her neck a couple of times, and took a deep breath to better address her audience, most of whom sat perfectly still watching. Only Sacha the Russian bass, Emma noted, seemed to enjoy Lexie’s performance. Lust was written all over his face.

“Becau-ause,” Lexie continued in a singsong voice, “I don’t unnastand why a handful of jerks, like my husband Barry here, should be allowed to squander their money on a bunch of people screaming at each other up on a stage.”  She paused to giggle. “Except maybe to get his hands up the soprano’s you know what. So please don’t say Buchanons in the plural, M’dam director. Cause Lexie Buchanon ain’t givin’ one red penny to honor that Russian whore!  In fa-act,” she paused. “I’m glad she’s dead.”  Lexie stared at Clare and curtsied. “I hope my remarks have been duly noted, M’dam director.”  She sat back down.

At the end of Lexie’s performance, Sacha erupted in such enthusiastic whistling, howling and applause that, for a second, Emma wondered if the entire act had been planned.  But, if so, which opera was it from?  She reconsidered. No. That theatrical number was strictly impromptu.

Emma didn’t have much time to consider all the possibilities, because at that moment, Vera, the dead soprano’s sister, sprang from her seat, raced around the table and grabbed Lexie by the throat.

“How dare you?” she cried. “How dare you talk that way about my sister?  It’s all your fault she’s dead!”  

For a moment, no one had the presence of mind to pry Vera’s hands off Lexie’s neck. Jack was seated too far away. Sacha, to Lexie’s left, was laughing too hard to intervene. Piers to her right, froze as Vera lifted Lexie by the neck out of her chair and pushed her down onto the table. Barry, Lexie’s husband, who should have sprung to her defense, had his head buried in his hands, sobbing at the far end of the table. Finally it was Julie who intervened. In the nick of time. By then Lexie was choking and turning blue.

It took some time for Julie to pry Vera’s hands loose and wrestle her to the ground. Nobody helped. The men all looked stunned.

When Lexie flopped back on the table gasping for breath, however, it was Piers who cried, “Water. Give her some water.”  He grabbed a full glass, but was so flustered he dumped it on Lexie’s chest instead of splashing it on her face.

Lexie sat up, suddenly sober. She looked at her sopping wet dress and burst into tears. Before anyone could stop her, she ran out of the room.

No one ran after her. Instead, Clare stood up from the table.

“I think we need to resume this discussion of Barry Buchanon’s generous gift another time,” she said, clearly having registered the point of Lexie’s speech.

Then she and Massimo high-tailed it out of the room. But not before Clare bent over to whisper something in Piers’ ear. Emma was seated close enough to him to hear.

“Thank goodness I’ve already deposited Barry’s check,” was what she said.

Emma and Jack said little in the car on the way back to Blissburg. Half way across the Golden Gate Bridge, Jack turned on the radio to catch a replay of the last innings of the baseball game. When they pulled up in front of Emma’s house, Jack got out to open her door and escort her up the stairs.

“Sorry about that dinner,” Emma apologized. “Are you hungry?  I could make you some eggs.”

“I’d better go,” Jack replied.

While Emma searched her purse for her keys, he folded his arms across his chest defensively, nervously drumming his fingers on his coat sleeve. “And please don’t apologize,” he added. “For what it’s worth, the dinner was
unforgettable
. But,” he paused for a second and his fingers stopped drumming, “did it help?  I mean, are you any closer?”

“Closer to what?” Emma asked. 

“To figuring it out. To knowing who the murderer is.”

Emma shook her head. “No. If anything, I more confused now than ever.”