Murder Alfresco #3 (18 page)

“The world is a much more mysterious place than a person would ever imagine,” said Sunny. “Why would anyone want an
elective
spanking? That’s like getting a parking ticket for fun.”

“If Wade is right, I know the perfect man for her,” said Rivka. “Our friend Ové Obermeier should be just her kind of guy.”

“I wondered what was going on over there,” said Wade. “It looked like you were tangling with a marmot under the table.”

“More like a weasel. It’s amazing how much trouble a guy can cause with one hand. Finally I had to stomp on his foot with my heel.”

“Ouch, the sting of the stiletto. I think I saw that,” said Wade. “I distinctly remember seeing him grimace.”

“That explains another very perplexing aspect of dinner,” said Sunny, and told them about the winking epidemic. “I actually felt sorry for him. I thought he had a tic.”

Rivka rolled back in her seat with the giggles. “I love it! He’s getting all pervy on you, and you think, ‘That poor man! I must reach out to him in his time of need!’ I love how you thought they
both
had tics!”

“I think I feel a little insulted,” said Wade. “Nobody groped my knee or winked at me. You could have at least given me a suggestive nudge, McCoskey. I feel like such a wallflower.”

“You should have sat next to Daniela,” said Rivka. “I’m sure she would have made it worth your while. I thought she was going to crawl in your lap on the way out.”

“You noticed that, did you? I figured it was my imagination.”

“The part where she threw her cleavage in your face and nuzzled the top of your head should have been a clue,” said Sunny.

“It just proves that you put enough wine in a girl, she’ll fall for just about anybody,” said Rivka.

“Meow!” said Wade. “Hey, so, you think they were swingers?”

“Swingers!” said Rivka. “I’ve never heard anyone actually use that word.”

“What else do you call it? I think they were cruising for a side dish to the marital main course.”

“Don’t make me lose my dinner,” said Rivka. “Hey, nice job, by the way, faking the Ferrari connection. For a while you almost had me believing in your Testa Rossa collection out in Houston.”

“It was Ventura County, not Houston, but everything else was true. I owned every one of those cars. Put them together one piece at a time with my own hands. The only part I left out was that they were only about ten inches long.”

“Explain,” said Rivka.

“Back in the days before cable and TiVo, young lads like myself liked to kill the hours by assembling highly accurate models of our dream cars. My favorites were the beautiful new Testa Rossas they were bringing out in the late fifties and early sixties, what they call
vintage
models these days, but back then they were brand new and what everybody dreamed of owning, or even just seeing. I had a whole collection of them. I even had the 1956 Maserati Tipo 300S, a masterpiece from the moment it was born.”

“It’s all coming together now. Little Wade Skord taking out his adolescent frustrations sniffing model glue out in the barn,” said Rivka.

“And dreaming the sweet song of the Italian twelve-cylinder redhead,” said Wade. “I knew I would see those cars race someday, hear the basso profundo of the engines at the starting line and the howl of them flying by, and afterward have an elegant dinner in the company of two sexy young things. I just didn’t realize it would be such a long wait, or that one of them would be such a smartass.”

Sunny glanced at the moon, hanging like a yellow stone in a dull black sky. “That’s a lot of chemistry for one winery. Riv, what’s your take on Kimberly?”

“For once, I agree with Skord. Kimberly looked like the kind of woman who eats men for breakfast. I don’t know what she’s doing with Bruce. He seemed like a nice, ordinary guy. She’s all action. Did you see the nails? And the choker? That was a fuck me outfit if I ever saw one.”

“So we have Ové the groping winker and his winking accomplice Daniela,” said Sunny. “We have Bruce Knolls, the enigma, who may be a nice, ordinary guy, or who may simply have a better poker face than everyone else, and we have Kimberly, the wanton beauty with a case of nerves. In my opinion, somebody at that table has something to do with Heidi Romero.” She thought for a moment. “And then there’s Dean Blodger. Is it possible to believe he was at the racetrack today by coincidence? No, it’s not. But why would he go there?”

“The same reason you did,” said Rivka.

“Yep. To get a look at Bruce and Kimberly Knolls,” said Sunny. “But how would he know they’d be there?”

“The same way you did. It’s probably posted on their Web site.”

The Volvo’s occupants fell into a meditative silence as the road narrowed and the trees planted on either side reached together overhead, their branches thrumming a flickering pattern of moon shadow on the hood of the car as they drove toward home.

Certain chores at Wildside
could not wait until Monday morning. Least urgent was the tower of unopened mail on her desk, but that was what Sunny tackled first, since it was more inviting than doing inventory on the walk-in, figuring out why the grease drain on the grill was sluggish, and baking a fresh supply of biscotti. Even the payroll sounded fun compared to cleaning out the grease drain. Andre was right, she thought, tearing open another bill. If she expanded the restaurant like he suggested, and started serving dinner and staying open on weekends, she could do more business, bring in more revenue, and afford to hire more staff, which might ultimately liberate her from cleaning out the grease drain, not to mention working the line all day Monday through Friday. On the other hand, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that expanding the restaurant’s hours would only expand her own and make it that much more difficult to maintain her standards. “More money, more problems,” was what her father said plenty of times, usually on a Sunday afternoon while trying to repair some new piece of equipment that was supposed to make life simpler.

She had finished opening the mail, taken inventory, made a list of what to order for the week, completed the payroll, and,
against all inclination, crawled under the grill, unbolted a section of pipe, and stuck her arm into the drain up to the elbow, the better to scrape away the clogged-up grease, when she heard knocking. She waited, presuming she was mistaken. To her surprise, it sounded again, this time louder and more insistent. She wiggled out from under the grill and found a rag, wiping the black grime off her hands as best she could. The knocking continued impatiently from the front door.

“Coming!” she called. “It’s Sunday and we’re not open, but I am coming to the door anyway. Just one second, please.” Sunny did not have to open the door to know who it was. It would be a tourist convinced that her continued happiness and well-being, as well as that of her friends and loved ones, hinged irrevocably on a reservation for four at noon on Tuesday, and that her possession of a major credit card entitled her to as much. Instead, she was surprised to see Kimberly Knolls standing on the threshold, looking the picture of affluent professionalism. She did not stay there for long. Sunny moved aside as Kimberly walked in without waiting for an invitation.

“We need to talk. Are you alone here?” said Kimberly.

Sunny took two chairs down from a table in the dining room. “We’re alone. Have a seat. Would you like something to drink? I’m going to get a lemonade for myself.”

Kimberly declined. Sunny went into the kitchen and came back with two glasses. She put a glass of water in front of Kimberly and sat down with her lemonade. Mrs. Knolls, dressed in a sleek gray pants suit and heels, was as well groomed as Sunny was slouchy, sweaty, and grubby.

“What can I do for you?”

Kimberly moved her sunglasses to the top of her head and stared into Sunny’s eyes with a fierceness that some people
would have found intimidating. A few years ago, Sunny would have been one of them, but running a restaurant and all it entailed—demanding near perfection from her crew, dealing with arrogant customers, handling the county and city authorities—had toughened her to such displays. Kimberly gave it her best shot, nevertheless. She leaned toward Sunny. “First of all, I know who you are. I found it all out this morning. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it is not amusing. I’d like a complete explanation of last night, and if I’m not satisfied you’ve told me everything, I’m going straight to the police.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” said Sunny.

Kimberly’s lips narrowed angrily. “You think the fact that a young woman died is some kind of invitation to play games?”

“No, I don’t think it is. Do you?”

“I’m not the one going around telling lies,” said Kimberly. “You pretended you didn’t know anything about the murder when you know more than anyone else.”

Sunny bit her lip. “That’s true. I’m sorry I deceived you. I wanted to hear what you thought about the murder, see if you knew anything about Heidi Romero, if you had any theories. That’s why I went to the Ferrari dinner last night, to try to talk to you. But the police asked me not to tell anyone I was the one who found her, so I had to pretend I only knew what was in the paper.”

“And are you satisfied now? We don’t know her. We don’t know anything about her. It was a random act of violence that happened to land in our laps. It was just our miserable bad luck, and hers.”

“Do you honestly believe that? Because it seems very odd to me. It just doesn’t fit. If you saw what I saw that night, you would find it very hard to believe there was anything random
about that particular act of violence. It was . . . orchestrated. Choreographed. What’s the word? Curated.”

“Murder rarely seems normal, does it? And the fact remains, we know nothing about any of it. Our winery caught the attention of a killer. In the scheme of his demented logic, it somehow made sense to leave her there. We may never know what that logic was.”

Sunny studied her. There was no hurry. She took her time, gathering her thoughts and her courage. Kimberly Knolls wasn’t going anywhere.

“We have a very unpleasant situation on our hands. A young woman, a fine person by all accounts, is dead. Her killer is free. And you know something that has you in a panic. I don’t want to make any of this more difficult for you, but under the circumstances—”

“I am hardly in a panic. It is an unpleasant situation. But it’s also over. Whoever killed Heidi Romero is long gone. They chose our winery to make their demented statement. Beyond that, none of this has anything to do with Vedana.”

Kimberly looked even more tired, and more beautiful, than last night. Sunny drank her lemonade. Finally she said, “That sounds to me like what your husband tells you at night when you’re scared. Only he doesn’t know everything, does he? As I was saying, under the circumstances, with a killer out there running around, I’m prepared to do whatever is necessary to get to the truth. I have never believed Heidi Romero was left there at random, and I’m even less inclined to believe it now. On the contrary, I think you know plenty about that girl and why she was left at your winery, but you’d rather sit and wait and hope nothing more will come of it than tell what you know, or what you suspect.”

“You’re wrong,” said Kimberly, taking her sunglasses from her head and placing them on the table nervously. “I don’t know anything about her.”

Sunny read the word PRADA upside down on the stem of the sunglasses and idly wondered what such objects cost. “Then why are you so scared?”

Kimberly gave her an amused look. “What makes you think I’m scared?”

“The fact that you’re here, for one thing. I think Heidi Romero’s murder makes you nervous in more than the usual ways. The police haven’t said much about what happened to her or exactly how she was left, but the kind of questions they’ve been asking probably has you good and worried, and you want to know more. You’re here to find out everything you can from me. You need help, and I might be the only safe place for you to look for it. The worst part, I would imagine, is being alone. You can’t confide in anybody. You can’t even share your fears with your husband, let alone the police. All you can do is wait.”

Kimberly looked at Sunny with an expression of naked despair. She put her hands to her face, covering her mouth. “I don’t have to tell you anything,” she said in a voice that was barely a whisper. She reached for the water and drank thirstily.

“No, you don’t. In fact, I have work to do. And since nobody left a dead body at my restaurant, I don’t have to worry about any of this. Heidi Romero is not my problem, she’s your problem. You can tell me what’s really going on, and maybe I can help you, or you can go on staying up all night wondering when the next body will be found, and when it will be your turn. It makes no difference to me.”

Kimberly put the glass down hard. “I didn’t even know her. I’ve never even heard of Heidi Romero until last week.”

“Then tell me what you do know,” said Sunny. “Wait, let me enhance your motivation. Here is what we’re going to do. If you don’t share enough of your story to satisfy my curiosity right now, my first phone call after you leave will be to Sergeant Harvey. As I understand it, he’s been inches away from getting a search warrant for your home and office for the past week. This conversation could be just what he needs to finally get it.”

“What are you talking about? I haven’t said anything that would remotely interest the police.”

“The fact that you came here to threaten me is enough.”

“I didn’t threaten you!”

“Didn’t you? I thought that was how this conversation began.”

“I just wanted to . . . I was angry about last night.”

“And I’ll just tell Steve you came by after meeting me at dinner, desperate to know more details about the murder, asking a million questions. The police don’t believe any more than I do that that girl was left at your winery at random. They know someone at Vedana knows something about her. Imagine what they could find with a search warrant. It’s remarkable what can be recovered from a hard drive these days, for example. Deleted files, deleted emails, Web sites you visited three months ago. As I understand it, it’s all still on there if you know where to look. And then there are the cell phone records.”