nine

The sun was on its way to brunch when I dragged myself from bed and stumbled to my kitchen. One diet soda and two poached eggs on toast later, I stood at the sink, gripping the 1950s-era counter. Through the floral-print curtains, sunlight splintered off the unforgiving lines of my aunt’s ranch house across the drive.

I gulped orange juice and mentally organized my day. First up: an appointment at CW Vineyards to view the haunted house.

My cell phone rang.

Mason! Following the ringing, I scrambled through the nautical-themed living room. The phone vibrated on a bookshelf, shimmying toward a brass telescope in a battered leather case.

My heart nosedived. Not Mason. I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?” I plopped onto the soft gray-blue couch.

“It’s Leo. Uh, I know the museum’s closed today, but I heard we were doing the Ladies Aid haunted house.”

“Ye-es.”

“Do you need any help?”

“I’m headed over there—”

“Great! I’ll come along.”

I’d planned to say I was headed over soon and didn’t need anything, but something in his voice stopped me.

“That would be great. What’s your address?” Leo’s mother had died a year ago, and while he was old enough to live on his own, he was also young enough not to be prepared for it. Was he in his mother’s house? Given his strained relationship with his father, I was fairly certain he hadn’t been living with Romeo and Jocelyn.

Leo gave me directions to a house in a quiet neighborhood.

“Why don’t I pick you up in an hour?” I asked.

“You’re the boss.”

We hung up.

I dressed in jeans and a lightweight black blouse. Grabbing my messenger bag off the couch, I trotted down the steps of my garage apartment to my truck. Window down, I drove into town. The warm morning air billowed my blouse, tossed my hair, and freedom tingled through my veins.

I parallel parked in front of the tea shop, walked to the museum, and unlocked the front door. It stuck, refusing to budge. I rattled the handle and the Closed sign fell from the window. Putting my shoulder to the door, I jolted it open and staggered inside.

“Breakfast time,” I called, swooping the Closed sign off the floor. I shut the door behind me and replaced the sign.

The cat glowered at me from atop a bronzed skull, high on a display case.

Not getting any love from that quarter, I replenished his bowls and left GD to his own devices.

Leo lived in a ranch-style home surrounded by tall maples, their leaves sheer and golden. I parked beside the browning lawn and walked to the door. A pile of newspapers lay beside a withered fern. The mailbox overflowed.

I knocked. Stuff had clearly been piling up for a long while. Was Leo paying all his bills? I’d been so involved in the museum, I hadn’t paid much attention to Leo’s personal life. Now worry niggled my chest.

Leo wrenched the front door open and pushed past me.

I caught sight of a darkened hallway, a side table piled with unopened mail, stained tiles.

He slammed the door shut, brushing his black bangs out of his eyes. “Let’s go.”

Biting my tongue, I followed him to the truck. How could I get him help without offending his teen-male pride? Recommending a cleaning service was out. He worked for me, so I was fairly certain he couldn’t afford a maid. I unlocked his door and we got inside the truck.

I turned down a wide suburban street. “How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

“When my father died, he had things well organized. But there was still tons to do. It was overwhelming,” I said. And I’d had a mother and siblings to help. We’d all chipped in after his death, but each step forward had been a painful reminder of a hard ending.

Leo grunted. “Jocelyn’s taking care of the funeral.”

“Do you know when it will be held?”

“No. First they have to finish the autopsy.”

“So you’re in limbo.”

He shrugged, the seat belt rustling against his black T-shirt.

“That’s rough,” I said.

“Romeo hasn’t been a part of my life since I was little. It’s no big deal.”

The hell it wasn’t. I couldn’t imagine being rejected by a parent, though sometimes I wished my mother would be a little less involved. I frowned. She still hadn’t returned my calls.

I tightened my grip on the wheel. “Thanks for working today. It looks like this month is going to be crazy.”

“What are your plans for the haunted house?”

“We’re only responsible for one room.” I told him about the displays. “Dieter’s dealing with the hanging shadow thing. All I need are mannequins to play ghost hunters and someone to set up a video screen with a link to our web feed.” Pensive, I knit my bottom lip. “The only problem is, I don’t have a monitor.”

“I’ve got an extra one. I can set it up.”

“Really? Thanks!”

He shrugged.

We drove into farmland, passing an apple orchard. Rows of vineyards whipped by.

“Leo, can I ask you something about your father?”

He lifted a shoulder, dropped it.

“Who do you think might have put him in the vat?”

“Aside from me, you mean?”

“I hope you didn’t say that when you talked to the police.”

“Didn’t have to. They grilled me about where I was the night before.”

“The night before? Is that when they think he was killed?”

“I guess. They asked where I was between nine and midnight. I told them I was home.”

I sighed. We’d only worked together three months, and in that time I’d gotten to know a sensitive, reliable young man. I understood why Leo resented his father. But did he have to make himself a suspect? “You obviously didn’t kill your father, so who did?”

“Isn’t the spouse the killer nine times out of ten?” he asked.

“I talked to Jocelyn on Saturday,” I said gently. “She seemed hurt and confused by his death.”

Saying nothing, Leo looked out the window. Vineyards flew past.

“Is it possible your father died of natural causes and someone put him in the vat?” I didn’t believe that, but heck, it might be true.

“As a sick joke? Maybe,” he said slowly. “Romeo cared more about his vineyard than he did about anything or anyone. But why put him in the festival vat? There are plenty of wine vats at his own vineyard.”

I slowed beside a signpost to CW Vineyards and turned right. Though it had been a while since I’d visited, I didn’t need directions to find the place. It was on the way to the Harvest Festival grounds, and the town and its farms formed an easy-to-navigate grid pattern.

Making another right, I slowed at a gated entry worthy of J. R. Ewing. Five men struggled to raise a new gate into place.

I drifted past the laborers and drove the pickup onto a gravel track. We bumped past almond trees to a parking lot. I parked beside a silver Buick, and we stared.

Before us rose a two-story Gothic Revival home painted sullen gray with white trim. Pointed arch; steep gables; diamond-pane casement windows. It looked like a cross between a church and the house in Psycho. No wonder they’d chosen it for this year’s haunted house. On the tasting room’s front porch, a sandwich board proclaimed CW Vineyards Open for Tastings, Friday through Sunday, Noon to Six.

A barn sprawled across a wide lawn to the south. Beside it stood a cottage, a miniature of the Gothic Revival tasting room.

“Uh oh,” I said, staring at the Open sign.

“What?”

“If they’re using the tasting room for the haunted house, someone’s going to have to clear everything out at the end of each night and re-set things so people can do wine tastings during the day.” Or they’d have to at least clear the parlor, location of our spooky exhibit. I wasn’t so sure about the upstairs rooms.

Leo made a low noise in his throat. “You’re right. There’s no way the winery’s going to shut down tastings over October weekends.”

I nodded. I really hoped this didn’t mean I’d have to deal with haunted house cleanup every weekend.

We walked up the tasting room’s porch steps and through the open, screened front door. The room was double the size I’d expected, and not because its white walls made the room look bigger. It looked like it had once been two rooms—perhaps a living area and a parlor. To the right was a long tasting counter. To the left, bar stools surrounded tall round tables on the burnished wood floor. A second-floor loft area loaded with stacked wooden wine barrels loomed over the far wall. Wide windows looked out over the rows of vines, setting the room aglow with the late-morning sun. A narrow set of steps led up to the second floor.

“Wow.” I gnawed my bottom lip. If this was the parlor, I didn’t know how the hell I was going to fill it.

The round-faced blonde, deep lines around her cornflower-blue eyes, stopped and stared at us. She shifted the bucket of plastic skulls in her arms, bunching up her pale blue Ladies Aid T-shirt. “Maddie? You’re here to see your space?”

“Yes. Betsy, right? This is my colleague, Leo.”

“Hi, Leo. I’m Betsy Kendle with Ladies Aid.” She handed him the bucket. “Let me give you the tour.”

“Is my mother here?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think so.” Her chin dipped. “Shall we?” She motioned toward the stairs.

“Maybe I should just focus on my space,” I said. “It’s, uh, a lot bigger than I thought.”

“It will make more sense in the context of the entire house,” she said. “So this room is the entry.” She pointed at the tasting bar. “That’s where we’ll take tickets and such. And then the guests will move upstairs.” She led us up the narrow, switchback staircase.

I glanced at my watch. “Maybe I should just focus on the parlor?”

“That’s last on the tour.” She stopped at the top of the stairs, and Leo bumped into me from behind. We stood in a hallway with doors on each side, like in a hotel or asylum. A white sheet hung behind us, acting as a barrier. “Each room has both an entry from the hallway and an exit into another room, so guests won’t have to backtrack.”

“What’s with the sheet?” Leo asked.

“That blocks off the loft.” Betsy opened a door to a mid-sized room with a fireplace and sloped ceiling. “We’re going to call this the Unliving Room.” She took us through the house, room by room, and I checked my watch again, fidgeting. I knew my theme—Haunted San Benedetto—so seeing the rest of the house didn’t help.

More blue-shirted women passed us, hanging spiderwebs, clanking chains, testing red LED lights.

“And here’s the Haunted Library.” Betsy ushered us into a furniture-free white room lined with empty bookshelves. Paned windows overlooked the vineyards.

“How are they going to do tastings with the haunted house running?” I stumbled on a blue rag rug.

“They don’t use the upstairs for tastings. It’s normally a storage area, and we’ve shifted most everything onto the loft. It’s only the downstairs areas where we’ll have to do quick takedowns each evening and setups each afternoon. That’s where you’ll be.”

I think I whimpered.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “Our volunteers will deal with it. All we need from you is the initial setup. I’ll take photos of everything, so we know how to put it back each night.”

“That’s a relief. Thanks. You guys really are organized.”

“Ladies, not guys,” she warbled.

We emerged from the final room at the front of the hallway, where we’d started.

“Each tour will be led by a docent, so the guests don’t bump into each other as they’re going up and down the stairs.”

“Wow.” I tried to inject some enthusiasm into it. Betsy had just saved me from some major pain.

The door opposite us opened. Head lowered, Jocelyn Paganini stepped into the hall. She stopped short, her cheeks coloring at the sight of us. Wisps of her blond hair had come loose from her ponytail and stuck to her cheeks. In her black yoga jacket, she looked like she’d just come from a run. Her mouth opened and closed, an unpleasantly surprised guppy. “Leo!”

Blank-faced, my employee crossed his arms.

Chuck Wollmer emerged from behind Jocelyn. The vineyard owner laid a hand on her shoulder. “Howdy!”

Pinking, Jocelyn shrugged away from him.

Chuck’s handlebar mustache twitched. He slipped his hands into the pockets of his green CW Vineyards hoodie, worn over a white V-necked T-shirt and jeans. He smiled. “Getting the tour? I understand you’ll be in charge of the parlor room, Maddie.”

Our guide smoothed the front of her powder-blue shirt, jostling me with her elbow. “I’ve been showing them—”

“Leo, I’ve been trying to call you,” Jocelyn said. “Didn’t you get my messages?”

“What do you want?” Leo’s brows drew down in a dark slash.

“We have a lot to talk about,” Jocelyn said.

“Like how you’re managing my money?”

“Well, yes, that and other things. There are lots of decisions to be made.”

“Don’t pretend I have any say in the decisions,” Leo said. “You’ve got exactly what you wanted, and I’ve got nothing, no say—”

“Leo, that’s not true—”

Sidling past me, he rattled down the steps. I stared after him. Was Jocelyn mismanaging Leo’s inheritance? How badly did she need money?

A vein throbbed in Jocelyn’s jaw.

“You’re doing the right thing, Jocelyn,” Chuck said.

“Am I?”

Our Ladies Aid guide cleared her throat. “What are you doing here, Jocelyn?”

“I had a business meeting with Mr. Wollmer, and he offered to show me the haunted house.”

“Business?” Betsy arched a brow. “Well, you should know we’ll be ready for any sabotage here. We won’t let what happened at the grape stomp happen at our haunted house.

I laughed weakly, looking to Chuck. “I doubt we have anything to worry about. It’s not as if there’s some sort of conspiracy at work, though I must admit there’s a certain Mafia-like efficiency to Ladies Aid,” I babbled.

Chuck’s shoulders twitched.

“That’s why we have Maddie,” Betsy said. “She’s not just helping us with the haunted house. She’s also investigating your husband’s murder, and she’s running with a hot clue.”

Horrified, I gaped at Betsy. Chuck and Jocelyn’s eyes burnt holes in the back of my neck.

So much for a nice quiet investigation. “I’m sure the police have everything well in hand,” I said weakly.

“I’m not.” Jocelyn turned and walked down the stairs.

Chuck began to follow, but Betsy placed a hand on his arm. “Oh, Chuck, we’re having a problem in one of the rooms. Would you mind …?”

I slipped down the steps after Jocelyn. The passage of one day likely hadn’t eased the widow’s grief, but I worried about Leo. I had to talk to her.

Jocelyn rummaged behind the bar in the downstairs tasting room. She pulled out a half-empty bottle and uncorked it. “Want some?”

I shook my head. “No thanks.”

“Good, because someone’s removed all the glasses.” She took a gulp from the bottle and rolled her eyes. “Leo. He’s working at the Paranormal Museum with you?”

“For the last three months.”

“How’s it going?”

“Good. He’s dependable, serious.”

She laughed hollowly. “Are we talking about the same Leo?”

“I understand he didn’t get on well with his dad.”

“He hated us both. I’d hoped we could at least be civil to each other now that we’ve got to plan a funeral. But I guess I was stupid to expect things to change.”

“Why the antagonism?” I asked.

She clutched the bottle to her chest. “Romeo left Leo’s mother, and she painted his father as the bad guy. Then when his mother died last year, Leo blamed Romeo.” She rubbed her neck. “In fairness, the conflict wasn’t all Leo’s fault. Romeo could be … unyielding. It’s bad enough Romeo made enemies in the business. He shouldn’t have made one of his son.”

“Your husband had enemies?”

“Why else would someone sabotage our vineyard? It has to be personal, and I doubt it was one of my students, upset about a grade.”

How does someone sabotage a vineyard? And why?

As I opened my mouth to ask, two women in blue T-shirts clattered down the stairs, laughing. We fell silent, watching them leave through the front door. The screen banged behind them.

“Are you really investigating the murder?” Jocelyn asked.

“Ladies Aid took the placement of Romeo’s body in their grape vat as a personal insult,” I said, evasive.

She glanced out the window.

Outside, Leo leaned against my pickup.

“You mentioned sabotage,” I said. “What exactly happened?”

Feminine voices wafted from the second floor, and Jocelyn glanced at the staircase. “We should speak in private,” she said. “Why don’t you come by my place tomorrow night for drinks? Around seven thirty? And I can properly apologize about the grape press imbroglio.”

“Sure.” I paused. “Why would Romeo tell the police a grape press Herb bought from you was stolen?”

She took another swig from the bottle. “He loved that damn press. It was from the old country, and it came with the vineyard. The fact that it was associated with an old murder was icing on the cake. I guess he was just desperate to have it returned.”

“If it meant that much to him, I would have sold it back. Having the police show up on my doorstep kind of threw me.”

“That was Romeo. He didn’t like to ask. You still have it, don’t you? The police didn’t confiscate it?”

“Yeah, they did. But if he loved the press so much, why did you sell it?”

Jocelyn flinched, her knuckles whitening around the bottle. “Romeo Paganini took everything from me.” Slamming the bottle on the counter, she strode onto the porch. The front door bammed shut behind her.

Footsteps cascaded down the stairs and Betsy emerged in the tasting room, panting. “Oh! I thought you’d left, and we haven’t had a chance to go over your space.”

Pensive, I jerked my chin toward the open room with the tables. “Is that it?”

“Yes. We’re going to hang a divider between the tasting bar and your parlor room, here.” She stood between the two open spaces, her arms in a T shape. “We’ll leave space on both ends of the divider for entry and exit. When people come down the stairs, they’ll turn right and enter the final exhibit, the Haunted San Benedetto room. Then they’ll exit from the gap on the other side of the divider.”

“Makes sense.” On the plus side, I was back to a ten-by-twelve-foot space. On the minus side, I only had four days to decorate. I pointed at the loft above and the stacked wine barrels, stained with damp. “Are those safe?”

“They’re empty, but we’ll be sure to have them properly tied down. This is earthquake country, after all. But … Wouldn’t it be fun if the barrels teetered, making it look like they might fall on the guests below? I’ll ask Dieter if he can rig something.”

“I don’t suppose you have any extra mannequins I can use?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. The Wine and Visitors Bureau was expected to provide all their own materials for the room.”

“Do you know where I can get any mannequins?”

“Your mother might have an idea. She was in charge of collecting ours.”

“Thanks.” I got busy drawing diagrams in my notepad, and Betsy hustled upstairs to get busy with whatever she had to do.

Leo stormed into the tasting room, his chest heaving. Wordlessly, I handed him one end of the measuring tape and we measured the space—stairs to front door, corner to stairs.

“I think we’ve got it all,” I said.

He released his end of the tape. It retracted, rattling across the wood floor, snapping into its container and whipping my thumb.

“Ow.”

“Sorry,” he said, coloring. “I guess I could have walked it to you.”

“I’m feeling a little tense myself. We’ve got a lot of space to haunt.”

“We can hang the noose over the banister,” he said.

“That would be authentic, assuming anyone can get past all those wine barrels to rig one.” In the nineteenth-century McBride murder, the victim had indeed been hanged from a landing banister.

“I think I can do it,” he said.

“Or we can just get a ladder and attach it from this side,” I said. My mother would have a ladder if Dieter didn’t. “The problem is, a hanging noose doesn’t take up any space. I’m going to have to fill the rest of the room with a fake paranormal museum.” I didn’t want to take too much stuff from the actual museum. But people paid good ticket money for the haunted house, so I couldn’t skimp on my exhibits.

“What about the creepy dolls you took to the Harvest Festival?” Leo asked. “What happened to the extras?”

“Good idea,” I said. “They’re in the back of my closet at home.” I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t gotten rid of them yet, except I hated throwing stuff away. And I kept finding myself glad I had them. “The invisible grape press will take up another five or six square feet, but that still leaves a lot of space.”

“Can we keep the tables that are already here?” he asked.

“I’ll ask. We could use them to display the dolls.” A bunch of scary-looking dolls plus the grape press, noose, and ghost hunter exhibit just might be enough.

“Okay.” I scribbled on my yellow pad. “Here’s what I think we need. Three mannequins dressed for ghost hunting—my mom might be able to help there—plus ghost-hunting equipment.”

“Which we sell at the museum.”

“Right. And I can get a noose from my mom. There’s bound to be some good rope in her garage, no pun intended. But we’ll need tablecloths—can you stop by the party supply store and buy some cheap black-plastic table coverings?” I dug my wallet out of my bag and handed him some cash.

“What about the grape press? Are you going to be able to get it back from the cops?”

I leaned against a window sill. “I’ll head to the police department today and check. But let’s plan on using the invisible grape press.”

“I can set up the monitor so people can watch the museum’s web cam, but does this place even have an Internet connection?”

“Chuck should know. I’ll ask.” If I was going to snoop on my mother’s behalf—was I?—this would make a good excuse to talk to Chuck. He seemed to know Jocelyn well. Maybe he had some insights into who might have killed Romeo.

Explaining about how the divider would be used, I handed Leo my notebook and crooked diagram. “Can you sketch out the room with the displays? Traffic’s going to flow from the stairs, around the room, and then out the front door.”

“Got it.”

“Thanks.” I jogged upstairs to find Chuck.

Poking my head through the open doors, I finally located him, surrounded by a gaggle of elderly Ladies Aid ladies twittering about the placement of a guillotine. Looking haunted, Chuck violently smoothed his moustache, his eyes darting around the cramped room.

I knocked on the open door. “Chuck, I have a question—”

“Of course!” He sprang from the group. “Excuse me, ladies. Duty calls.” Hustling me down the hallway, he half-shoved me into the haunted library. He shut the door and leaned his muscular form against it, his shoulders sagging. “Salvation.”

I grinned. “A bigger job than you expected?”

“You have no idea.” He wiped a hank of blond hair from his unlined brow. “But the publicity is worth it.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself. I’d like to set up a monitor downstairs and run our live webcam of the museum at night. Does this building have Wi-Fi or an Internet connection?”

“Sorry, no. What if you just ran a video loop? You know, a recording?”

“That’s not a bad idea.” Leo could manage that for sure. “And can we use some of the tables in the tasting area?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks. How did you get suckered into this?”

“I volunteered when Jocelyn was still a part of the organization.” Chuck frowned. “At least I think I did. It’s hard to say no to Ladies Aid.”

“It’s a great space for a haunted house. And Jocelyn? How do you two know each other?” I wasn’t investigating. Just making small talk.

“The way most vintners know each other, I suppose. It’s a small town. Winery owners have to stick together.”

“But you’re not a member of the Wine and Visitors Bureau?”

“Not enough bang for my buck there, I’m afraid.”

“Terrible about Romeo.”

“Why do I feel like I’m being interrogated?”

My cheeks warmed. “The police are managing the investigation, but I’m worried about Leo. This has hit him hard.”

“And the angry-young-man shtick won’t win him any points with the police.” Chuck smiled, wry. “He’s a teenager. Bad attitude is in the DNA. The cops must know that.”

“Who do you think would have wanted to kill his father?”

Chuck rubbed his knuckles against his jaw. “To tell you the truth, Romeo was a bit of a lady’s man, so any number of jealous husbands would have.”

“Really? Any husbands in particular?”

“I couldn’t say. And as you said, the police are handling it.” He walked out.

Chagrined, I wandered to the library window. Outside, Leo leaned against my truck, his arms folded over his chest. Jocelyn was speaking to him, her posture rigid. I understood the tension between Leo and his stepmom. But there seemed to have been something between Chuck and Jocelyn, and I wasn’t sure if it was romance or anger. Was Romeo the only lady’s man in the mix?