twenty-nine

pairing suggestion: petite sirah—napa valley, ca

A dark red wine ideal for intense situations.

-

“I know you’re there. And I’m not going to make any sudden moves, but I am going to turn to face you. We need to talk. I’m only here to talk. About Jeff.” I slowly turned my head to see the barrel of a gun.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Katie,” said Jeff with a drastic difference in his voice from our previous conversations. “Life isn’t always what it seems.”

I kept a stern, unwavering appearance, my game face on. “I knew you would come,” I replied as I stared directly at Jeff, ignoring the ominous black circle that invaded my line of sight. “It’s nice to see you again.”

Jeff raised his eyebrows as he lowered the gun slightly, before repositioning its aim at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m simply protecting the winery from a thief. You stole before, you’ll steal again.”

I let a small laugh escape from my lips. “That’s funny. You can be set up for stealing just like you can be set up for murder. Isn’t that what you did to Tessa?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The gun barrel shifted.

“Sure you do, Jeff. And you had the perfect alibi. Me. I was with you when Mark was killed. Or at least that’s what everyone thinks. But I still knew it was you. How about that?”

“Liar. You couldn’t have known it was me.”

“Jeff, you don’t trust me? That’s a shame.” I locked eyes with him, looking past the barrel of the gun, which seemed to inch closer and closer. It was the first time I had a gun pointed at me and although I didn’t like it, a wave of calm swept over me. I was composed and my senses were acute. It surprised me, but I would have to analyze that later. For now, I needed get a hold of the situation. “I liked you. I liked talking about grapes and wine with you. In fact, so much so that I ignored all of the blatant clues.” I glanced at the cellar door, hoping Dean would burst through any second. The tunnel was silent.

“There weren’t any clues.” Jeff’s green eyes looked black in the dim light of the cellar.

“Sure there were, Jeff. In fact, Lisa gave me a great one right at the beginning. Be wary of grapes that shouldn’t be growing together. There were a lot of ways I could have taken that.” I placed my hand on a bottle next to me.

Jeff pointed the gun at a nearby bottle and fired.

I threw my hands over my face to protect myself as the glass exploded and fell to the ground around me, the gunshot ringing in my ears.

“Keep your hands up,” said Jeff in a terse and stressed voice.

I lifted my hands. “I’m surprised you destroyed a bottle without checking what type of wine it was.”

A guttural sound came from deep in Jeff’s throat.

“But,” I continued, “as I was saying, Lisa gave that great clue. It could have meant Tessa and Mark, or Garrett and Vanessa. But what I think it meant was you and Seb. Seb didn’t work directly for you, but he would listen anytime you said anything. Always looking over his shoulder, waiting for you. What did you have on him? What made him so loyal to a vineyard manager when he was an assistant winemaker?” The gun inched closer.

“Come on, Jeff, you have me here. You could at least talk to me. You know, like old times. Let’s pretend we’re sharing that ’69 Chateau Margaux and talking about wine.” I smiled. “So what made him so loyal?”

“Respect,” said Jeff. “You could learn some of it, like not breaking into wine cellars.”

“That’s cute. Cute that you still believe I think you’re innocent.” I pointed to a nearby crate. “Mind if I sit? I’ve had quite the twenty-four hours. I was in jail, you know.”

Jeff didn’t reply, but I lowered myself onto the crate. “What did you have on Seb that he became your little errand boy? Did you do him a favor once? Save his life? Did he owe you a great deal?” I titled my head. “Or was it more of a blackmail situation?”

Jeff didn’t move.

I smoothed out my pant leg, large marks from the walls on both of my knees. “Pretty quiet now, huh? Maybe we should talk about grapes instead? I’m going to take a stab in the dark here and say it came down to money. You caught Seb stealing money from somewhere, maybe here, maybe not, and you’ve been blackmailing him.”

“Stupid kid,” growled Jeff. “He should have known better than to steal from where he worked. But catching him doesn’t mean I did anything wrong.”

“No, it doesn’t, but it sure made Seb eager to pin the whole thing on Tessa.” I pointed to the gun. “Since I might only have a few minutes to live, can you fill me in a bit more about Seb? Tessa has money in her account that she didn’t put there. And Seb already came to me at the restaurant and accused Tessa of stealing. It was a little too perfect.”

Jeff narrowed his eyes. “As I said, a dumb kid. Got himself into debt and tried to use the winery to get him out of it. That’s why he started dating Lisa. She had access to all the account info. He started submitting invoices as a fictitious business that provided wine barrels, or so he said. He would have gotten away with it, too, if he hadn’t submitted an invoice for a new trellis wire. Lisa came to me asking if it arrived and I figured out what he was doing. I covered for him, and he’s been my little errand boy ever since.”

“Was,” I corrected him. “So then you helped him pin it on Tessa?”

“Nope. He did that himself.”

I leaned forward. “You really had nothing to do with that?”

“Nothing,” he replied softly, back to the Jeff I’d met at the Frontier party just a few days earlier. But the facade quickly vanished and he steadied the gun again. “I bet he figured Tessa was going down for the murder, so why not the rest of it. He was opportunistic like that,” Jeff added.

“Okay,” I continued in an effort to delay the inevitable gunshot, “then mysteriously Seb ends up dead. Almost as if to keep him quiet. Was he going to confess to the accounts? Was he going to reveal Mark’s murderer? What was the reason to kill him?”

“I didn’t kill him,” grunted Jeff.

“Oh that’s right.” I waved my hand. “I can believe everything you say. And, if I may ask, where is Lisa?”

“She’s a little busy.” Jeff sat down on a crate across from me, keeping the gun pointed at me from his knee. “You still have nothing on me.”

“True, but let me share my theory. I think this isn’t the first time we’ve been in this wine cellar together. I think you were here last night, throwing the bottles.” I leaned back against the solid stone wall. “They were all white wine. I could smell the buttered popcorn. Red wine doesn’t have that smell and in fact, I didn’t smell any red wine last night.” I pointed to the shattered glass at our feet. “Frontier doesn’t produce white wine, but Garrett Winery does. May I?”

Jeff scowled as I reached down and picked up the same shard of glass I had held before, the label still attached.

“Buttered popcorn is a big indicator in California Chardonnay. The same kind they make next door.” I pointed to the colors of the Garrett Winery label.

Jeff’s eyes shifted to the label and then back at me.

I motioned to the racks of wine around us. “The white wine is placed in random order around here with no large groupings together. Which means the person in the cellar last night knew how the cellar was organized and cared about the wine made here at Frontier. Certainly there were red wine bottles that would have been closer to throw instead of the multiple bottles of white, but the assailant didn’t want to waste the red wine. The Frontier wine.” I leaned forward. “And you don’t like to waste Frontier wine. Not even a single drop.”

Jeff twisted his mouth and then smiled. “You must be a fool,” he said. “You think you’re in charge here? Who’s holding the gun? News flash, it’s not you.”

“Such a strong man.” I shook my head. “And we almost had something. But I don’t think you’re as innocent as you say. That text was sent to Tessa after Mark was already dead. And that would take out your alibi, which is me.” I shrugged. “Tessa got the text at the party and disappeared. Immediately after, you stood by me and didn’t leave my side until the body was discovered.”

I took a breath and continued, as if I was explaining the wine list at dinner. “Since the text had the code, which Tessa and Mark had only set up two days earlier, it had to be someone who had overheard them plan it. Someone who had easy access to the winery where they made the plan. Perhaps someone who had been delivering grapes? So tell me, Jeff, why did you kill your boss?”

He stayed motionless.

“Oh please, Jeff, I’m about to die. You’re going to kill me. I get it. You can at least tell me why you killed Mark.”

Jeff leaned back against the wall, the hand with the gun resting on his thigh, the barrel still pointed at me. “Mark found out I bought Pinot grapes from McPherson Winery up the road. He didn’t like that. Said it messed up his estate labeling. I told him it didn’t matter. That no one would know and it made the wine better. Richer. Full-bodied.” He shook his head. “But he got all up on my case about it. Said it wasn’t right to go behind his back and misguide people who buy his wine. People who only want wine from grapes grown right here on the property.”

Jeff wiped his forehead with his free hand and laughed. “There I am, getting a speech from a man who says you shouldn’t go behind people’s backs, and there he is, cheating on Vanessa. Prancing around with girls like Tessa. He was ruining his marriage, and all I was trying to do was to improve his wine, yet I’m the bad guy.” Jeff looked at me as if I would agree with him.

Even though agreeing with him could possibly lighten the situation, I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. I kept my game face on. “There’s got to be more.”

He breathed out and nodded. “I caught him putting a move on Lisa at the party. I don’t know if it was the first time or not, but they were in the winery together. After Lisa left, I called Mark out on it. Told him he had no right to treat Vanessa like that.” The gun moved in Jeff’s hand as he talked and I felt myself twinge with the worry that it could go off.

“He fired me. Right then. After everything I had done for him and his winery, and he was firing me.” Jeff’s voice grew sharper. “I got upset. I pushed him.”

“So you killed him because he was firing you?” I muttered to myself as much to Jeff.

“No, it was an accident.”

I scoffed. “I doubt a jury will believe that.”

“I only wanted to push him, but he fell and hit his head against the fermentation tank. Pretty bad, too. He wasn’t going to make it, I could tell. But I needed to buy time, so I put him in the tank and found you at the party.”

I studied Jeff as the events of that evening went through my mind. “And Tessa’s wine opener?”

“It was on the grass. Since I was the one to pull him out of the tank, it was easy to stick it in his back.”

“So you killed Mark by accident.” I debated using air quotes, but I refrained. “Yet now you’re going to kill me.” I put my hands on my knees. “Wait, why did you kill Seb? What was that about?”

“What if I didn’t kill Sebastian?”

“Right. Like I’m going to believe that.” I sat up as a sudden realization dawned on me. “But, Jeff, since you don’t like to waste a single drop of Frontier wine, why would you ruin a whole batch of wine with Mark’s body?”

A wicked grin formed on Jeff’s face. “I gave him a good old taste of those McPherson grapes.”

A noise came from the main tunnel and a wave of relief fell over me. I turned to the darkness, waiting to see Dean’s face. Instead, a different face appeared. One filled with hatred and spite.

But it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Because that’s the thing to remember with blind tasting. You can’t ignore the clear indicators.