Chapter 36
ALEXA
“Bo was in the Doodlebug until late,” Deputy Warnock said.
He’d shown up with a coffee stain on his shirt and a smudge of powdered sugar on his chin.
At least, I hoped it was powdered sugar.
“Doug Colbert had to drive him home, and he said Bo wasn’t in any state to walk to the bathroom, let alone go hiking across your property. ”
“How about Wyatt?” Nolan asked.
“Wyatt wasn’t there.”
“Wasn’t where? In the Doodlebug? Or at home?”
“At home. Only Bo was there, drunk and ornery.”
“So you’re going back to talk to Wyatt later?”
“He’s just a kid.”
“A kid who trespasses on my property and shoots at my dog.”
“Probably thought it was a deer.”
“He shouldn’t be on my property, period. And what happened to gun safety?”
Warnock sighed. “Guess I’ll have to speak with him.”
“Sometime today would be good,” I said, unable to hold my tongue any longer. “And you should check the property for clear glass bottles and gasoline.”
“Ma’am, most everyone in the county has a can of gasoline on their property.”
“Well, Bo won’t, not if he or one of his kids threw it at Nolan’s cottage last night.”
“Uh…right.”
“So you should get back out there and take a look before he sobers up enough to drive to the gas station for more.”
“Wouldn’t I need a warrant for that?”
“Yes, but you can ask to take a look around, and if he says no, then it’s more likely he has something to hide, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.” Warnock nodded slowly. “Then what should I do?”
“What do you think you should do?”
Didn’t they have training for this? Like, cop school? Even Uncle Porter was easier to work with than this fool—at least Porter was vaguely smart and sneaky as fuck.
“Uh, I should ask Wyatt where he was at last night?”
“And…”
“And?”
“And do you just believe everything he tells you?”
“I guess I’d better try to verify that information.”
“Exactly.” I flicked my wrist toward the patrol car.
“And don’t forget to interview Marielle Marten as well—she did a less-than-stellar job with the decorating, and we cancelled her contract last week.
” Jez, Storm, and I had discussed whether to mention Marielle, but as it seemed she’d been bad-mouthing Nolan around town, keeping quiet about the dispute would only attract suspicion.
Or maybe not, with these doofuses. Whatever, she wouldn’t be answering questions anyway. “Off you go.”
“Take backup when you speak with Bo,” Nolan advised. “Get Buddy Eames to go with you.”
The idiot headed for his car.
I was damn glad Ari was here. If Deputy Warnock were in charge of the investigation, the case would never get solved, would it?
The sheriff’s office barely had a dozen brain cells between them, and Warnock seemed to have left most of them in his locker this morning.
In between researching Marielle and the Hayes family, I’d looked up the twenty-nine deputies who worked in Amador County, and their solve rate was pitiful.
At least Deputy Eames was big enough to be intimidating and soft enough to take a punch without suffering serious damage.
Now, Ari sidled over. “That was painful to listen to.”
“We don’t get much crime out here,” Nolan said. “Most folks are just glad that Deputy Warnock prefers sleeping to traffic enforcement.”
“At least if he’s focusing on the Hayes family, he’ll be out of the way. And from what Alexa says, they’re guilty of something, even if it’s not hurling a fire bomb.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t Wyatt? Or even Tucker? He’s younger, but he’s still trouble.”
“We don’t think so. Storm’s confident it was a woman.”
“It was dark.”
“And we have to start somewhere. Jez found a fresh footprint over in the trees where Storm saw the figure. Size seven, narrow, and we’re working to identify the boot that it matches. Erin can take over the lead when she gets here—she’s good at that type of research.”
“How do you know it was fresh? We haven’t had rain in a while, and nobody’s stirring up the dust by the trees.”
“It was in a pile of horse shit. Your foreman said a neighbour went through on horseback the day before yesterday, and the pile is still slightly squishy, which means two things: one, the print is recent, and two, the horse is having some kind of dietary issue, according to Google. The culprit was heading uphill, away from the cottage and into the forest.”
“When is Erin arriving?” I asked. “Assuming she makes it, that is.”
Erin had finally passed her driving test three weeks ago, and I suspected her driving instructor had thrown a celebratory party afterward. Fresno, where she spent half her time with her fiancé, was three hours away.
Ari checked her watch. “Tomorrow morning. Rusty’s driving her, so she’ll get here okay.”
“Is he planning to stay?”
“Just for a night.”
“Where’s he going to sleep? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re short of beds.”
André was on his way too—Storm had volunteered to hop over to San Francisco and pick him up in the helicopter—and Chase was due back the day after tomorrow. At this rate, we’d need to run out and buy an RV because we were still a bathroom down, and I hated waiting in line for the shower.
“Rusty will share the bedroom in the surviving cottage with Erin, and the couch is a pull-out, so I’ll use that. Jez and Storm can take one of the guest bedrooms, you and Nolan have the second, and Marcel can bunk with Chase when he gets back.”
“And André?”
“We found a blow-up bed he can put in the master.”
“André won’t much like that.”
“Well, I didn’t much like having to jump out of a burning building, but sometimes we don’t get much choice. Don’t tell Zach how big the flames got, okay? He worries enough already.”
“I’m not a blabbermouth.”
Ari smiled. “I know. You’re the most secretive person I’ve ever met. If Zach hadn’t assured me you existed for real, I would’ve thought you were some Holodeck computer thing.”
“She’s as frustrating as a computer, but she doesn’t have an off-switch,” Jez said from behind me.
“Ha-ha. Are we actually going to get any work done, or are you just planning to stand around insulting me all morning?”
“Marcel made danishes. There’s no whiteboard, but we found a bunch of posterboard and taped it to the wall in the library.”
Nolan groaned. “The library? Couldn’t you have picked another room? It’s still filled with dust from the Gold Rush.”
“It’s the biggest space apart from the living room, and the living room has floor-to-ceiling windows. There’s a guy cleaning the pool right outside. Do you want him and the rest of the staff to find out what we’re doing?”
“There are drapes.”
“Do you normally close them during the day?”
“No, but— Okay, we’ll use the library.”
We all trooped into the library, which contained the same chaotic mess as the study.
At some point, Nolan had shoved a bunch of moving boxes in there and never unpacked.
No wonder he avoided the older wing of the house.
Now that André was taking over the refurb project and I didn’t have to pretend I liked the “eclectic chic” of the study anymore, I’d see if Nolan wanted the place cleared and turned into a more usable space.
Shelves lined three of the walls—the two short sides and one of the long ones.
On the long side, two windows nestled between the books, framed by heavy brocade drapes with matching window seats.
A fireplace formed a centrepiece on the other long side, and a trio of Chesterfield-style leather couches clustered around a coffee table in front of it.
The light was dim, the ambiance gothic. If there was an afterlife, Marielle’s ghost was probably recoiling in horror at the vibes in here.
“We could use a light projector,” I said. “We don’t need to go back to the Dark Ages with posterboard.”
Ari disagreed. “I like posterboard. Writing out my thoughts helps me to organise them.”
“Alexa has shitty handwriting,” Jez told her.
“I do not.”
“You do,” said Marcel, bustling in with a tray. “Nobody can read a word you scribble.”
Whatever. At least nobody would ask me to take notes. I helped myself to a chocolate chip cookie and dropped onto the cleanest-looking couch. A cloud of dust rose around me, and I began coughing.
“Ugh.”
Marcel looked pained. “Maybe I should get the vacuum?”
“No time for that right now.” Jez grabbed a marker pen. “Suspects? And don’t say Marielle’s ghost.”
“I don’t think we can rule out Wyatt Hayes.” Nolan glanced at Storm. “I know you said it was a woman, but other than Marielle, I can’t think of a single woman who’d do this.”
“Okay, let’s try approaching this a different way,” Ari suggested. “These incidents have been going on for a while, yes?”
Nolan nodded. “Although I thought they were accidents at first. It started with the temperature controller on one vat of wine being turned right up, and I just figured I’d made a mistake.”
“That’s not how it started,” I said. “You said your ex-girlfriend opened the spigots on a bunch of tanks and the wine ran down the drain.”
“But that happened last year.”
“So? We’re looking for a woman, and she is a woman, therefore we can’t rule her out either.
Plus she told Nolan this place would never be a success without her.
First it was the spigots, then the fermentation temperature, then a destemmer machine broke, Nolan found a nail in his tyre, a row of vines got trashed, sulphur dioxide mysteriously fell into a tank of wine, and then the fire happened.
The shower in the master suite broke, and my coffee was switched for decaf.
Some of those could be accidents, but not all of them, and Marielle admitted to the coffee thing. ”
“Did you look into her?” Ari asked. “The ex?”
“Of course.” Did she think I was a slacker? “She’s over in San Francisco, working as an administrator for a guy who imports high-end sports cars.” I glanced at Nolan. “And also dating him. He’s ten years older than she is, but he lives in Noe Valley and owns a condo in Miami.”