Chapter 2 #2
At the top of the menu was a photograph of two men and a woman in their twenties, and the story of how they went to college at U of M and decided to open a winery together.
There was more to it than that, but I was just skimming.
I was pretty sure the woman in the photo was the winemaid who’d handed us the menu. She wasn’t aging especially well.
There were seven kinds of wine to try: three white, two reds, a rosé and a cherry wine. You could get a glass or you could get a flight, which was a taste of three different wines. I decided to get a flight and try all three of the white wines.
That prompted me to look around the large room again. There were no buckets that I could see. This wasn’t a tasting room where you spit the wine out. I suppose that made it more of a swallowing room.
“You’re paying for this, aren’t you?” Opal asked.
“It’s not like I have a lot of money.”
And I didn’t. I was sneaking this onto my grandmother’s credit card. Of course, she figured out I’d stolen it and then said I could keep it. For household expenses only. A definition I stretched when necessary; and it was often necessary.
“You don’t have an expense account?”
Honestly, I had no idea. I hadn’t asked.
The winemaid came back with Opal’s mulled wine and I ordered my flight. Before the woman left, I said, “I’m Henry Milch, I work—”
“Emily Cole’s son?”
“Yes. That’s who I am. I’m—”
“We buy cherries from your grandmother.”
“You do? But I thought her cherries were made into maraschinos?”
“She grows more than one kind.” She looked at me like I was an idiot. “We buy her Ulsters for our cherry dessert wine.”
“Oh, okay.” Then I said, “Jasper Kaine does all that for my grandmother.” That way I didn’t sound like too much of an idiot. “I’m working for Hamlet Gilbody. Are you Melody Frasier?”
“I am. But it’s Melanie.”
“Sorry.” I’d written down the names of the people who worked at the winery on the back of coffee receipt and put in my pocket, where it still was. “Uh… Hamlet is the investigator for your insurance company. He wanted me to look into the Roberta LaCross’… um, incident.”
“Yeah, lemme get your flight. Then we’ll talk.”
She took a few steps away from us. Opal gave me the side-eye and said “Smooth,” under her breath.
“Shut up.”
When Melanie came back, she had this kind of carved wooden carrier which held three glasses partly filled with white wine. She set the contraption in front of me. Moving left to right, she said, “Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, and Late Harvest Reisling.”
“Thank you. So, I’ve read your statement. I thought I’d go over a couple of things.”
“If it will help, sure.”
“Before she came in that afternoon, did you know Roberta?”
“Yes and no. I’ve seen her around, but I don’t think we ever really met. I think the LaCross family is up in Leelanau County.”
That was the county above us. The Pinky, as some people say. I didn’t know much about it. I’d barely figured out Wyandot County.
“So, you were aware of her but not acquainted.”
“I guess. Most of the people I know that age are in my family.”
“What did you think of her? When she came in? First impression?”
“She was trying to look a lot younger than she is. Her hair was dyed, like a carrot color. And not in a punk way. More in an ‘ooops, that didn’t work out’ way.”
Opal chose that moment to take off her hat and fluff out her short hair. It was bright, a bright carrot color. Melanie looked over, saw her mistake, and covered by saying, “Yeah, but yours is deliberate. And believe it or not, looks more natural.”
Natural was not what Opal had been going for. She said, “You said she was old. If her hair is white underneath, a color like red can fade quickly. And if she did it herself, she might not have prepped it correctly.”
Melanie said, “It wasn’t just her hair, it was the way she dressed. She had on this blue jean miniskirt. Like it was the nineteen sixties! And I swear she was wearing a push-up bra. Showed a lot of cleavage. Wrinkly cleavage.”
“She claims she was overserved. Do you have her check?”
“Her friend paid. In cash. Which means we really have no idea at this point. I usually notice if people drink a lot, and I don’t think she did.”
“She was with two friends. Do you remember what time they got here?”
“It was early. We open at noon; she and her friends were here by one.”
“What time did she fall?”
“Three-ish, I think. We called an ambulance, so about ten minutes before they arrived.”
“That means she had two hours to be overserved.”
“Yeah, see… in order to get drunk in that amount of time they’d have had to have ordered bottles. At least two.” Melanie had clearly thought about this. “I’m sure they were drinking flights and single glasses.”
I reached into my pocket and took out the slip of paper I’d written names on. She was right. Her name was Melanie. I asked, “What about Kylie Stark and Penny Pellitier? Are they here?”
“No. They don’t even work here anymore. Penny bought the bookstore in Masons Bay and I think Kylie is working at the Walmart in Traverse City.”
I had their contact information in the file, so I didn’t need to ask. “They both interacted with Ms. LaCross?”
“They were here, but I was the one who served her party.”
I took a sip of the Chardonnay while I tried to think of other questions to ask. The wine wasn’t bad. Not that I’m a connoisseur.
“Wait, I thought some guy bought the bookstore?” I vaguely remembered my mother talking to him at a party. Not that it had anything to do with this.
“Joel Fletcher,” Opal said. “He crashed and burned around Thanksgiving. He thought he was going to make a mint selling books by Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter.”
“My grandmother loves them.”
“And how many books does she buy?”
Other than three copies of the Bible and one copy of The Joy of Cooking, there weren’t a lot of books in Nana Cole’s house.
“Penny got the business for a song,” Melanie said.
“I think I’d like to see the ladies’ room,” I said. “You know, like, where it happened.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“You don’t want to check and see if anyone’s in there?”
“No one’s in there. It’s not crowded; I can count.”
I hopped off the stool and walked to the back of the room where the restrooms were. I opened the door to the ladies’ room and walked in. I hadn’t realized it, but Opal was right behind me.
The room looked more like the bathroom in most homes. It was meant for one person at a time. There was no stall, just an open toilet and a sink. There was a vase with plastic flowers on the back of the toilet, alongside a Lysol spray can. In case you stank up the place.
“Did she fall off the toilet?” Opal asked.
“No.” Her statement was still fresh in my mind. “She said that after she used the toilet she fell on her way to the sink. That there was water on the floor, and she thinks she slipped.”
“It’s not a very big room.”
I’d noticed that since we were kind of crammed together.
“I think if I started to fall, I’d just grab the sink.”
“Even if you were drunk? Maybe she tried to and it didn’t work,” I suggested.
The door opened and Melanie stood in it. “What do you think?”
“How was she discovered?” I was particularly proud of that question. It sounded very Law and Order.
“She was screaming her head off. Her friends heard her and came in.”
“Did you come to see what was happening?”
“Yeah. She was whimpering, moaning, howling. Very dramatic.” After a moment, she added, “Sorry. I had more sympathy before she sued me.”
“But she’s not really suing you,” Opal said. “Your insurance company is going to pay.”
“There’s a cap on the policy at three hundred thousand. If she gets the million she’s asking for, the winery goes out of business.”
“Can we get back to what happened?” I suggested. “Did you notice if there was water on the floor?”
“There was some water on the floor.”
“How often do you and your staff check the restrooms?”
She gave me a grumpy look that said they didn’t check often. “We don’t know how the water got on the floor, or when. It could have gotten onto the floor when she fell.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “In her statement, she says that she slipped on the way to the sink.”
“No. When I came in the faucet was running. If I had to guess, I’d say she fell while washing her hands.”
“People don’t just fall down while washing their hands,” I said. Though to be completely honest, I may have done it myself once or twice. A taste for opioids isn’t all fun and games.
“She’s an old lady,” Opal said. “She could have had a ministroke. She could have fainted for a dozen reasons. Breaking her arm may be covering up whatever really happened.”
I didn’t know what really happened, obviously. All I knew was that Roberta’s statement wasn’t entirely correct. Or Melanie’s wasn’t. One of them wasn’t telling the truth.
We went back to the bar. I was pretty sure I’d asked all my questions. Without asking me, Opal ordered a glass of wine for herself—the Late Harvest Reisling. I was about to tell her she was paying for it, when she asked, “You remember Carl Burke, don’t you?”
“Yeah, the guy you’re hopelessly in love with.”
“I’m not— You’re an ass.” For some reason she didn’t let that stop her. “Carl has this thing with Denny Hazzard.”
“Who’s that?”
“The barber.”
“Oh him, yeah.” I’d kissed him once. Not a fond memory. “What about him?”
“Have you seen him at any meetings? He told Carl he’s off meth, but it’s hard to believe.”
Anger ripped through me like a flash flood. How did she know— “What meetings? I don’t go to any meetings.”
“You were seen. Everyone knows about it.”
“Everybody’s wrong. It must have been someone else.”
“Someone else who dresses like you and calls himself Mooch?”
“It’s possible.”
“Look, have you seen Denny there or not?”
Occasionally, though it’s rare, the truth will get you out of a sticky situation. I said, “I’ve been three times, and I haven’t seen him. Why can’t your ‘sources’ tell you if he’s going?”
Ignoring that, she asked, “Did you go to the LGBT meeting?”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing.”
“Thursday nights at seven. They all go to Drip afterward. Maybe you could go and see if Denny is there.”
“Why don’t you go?”
“I’m not a drug addict.”
“They don’t test you at the door.”
“I don’t want to violate people’s privacy.”
“Seriously? You’re literally gossiping about who’s going. That’s violating people’s privacy.”
“I was gossiping out of concern for Denny.”
“Doing bad things for good reasons… You get a gold star.”
She downed the rest of her wine, and got off the stool and put her fuzzy coat back on. Then she pulled her hat on and said, “I’ll wait outside.”
I put my coat on and paid before I followed her out to the parking lot. It had only been a couple of minutes, but her cheeks were already pink. Or maybe that was the wine.
Once we were in the car and I was about to start the engine, she said, “Oh, and by the way, there’s baby puke all over the right shoulder of that sweater.”