Chapter 36 #2
“San Francisco is, what, two and a half hours away?”
Jez coughed into her hand. “Two hours.”
“Okay, two and a half hours for someone who doesn’t drive like a maniac. What’s her name?”
“Lisanne Fulton. She knows her way around the winery, and she drives a Porsche 911, so the two-hours thing isn’t impossible.
On the surface—meaning social media—she seems happy, but the car guy has either back problems or a side piece because there’s no need for a regular, healthy human to visit Madame Butterfly’s Temple of Tranquility three times a week. ”
“Is that a brothel?” Jez asked.
“A massage and wellness spa. Allegedly.”
Ari wrote Lisanne’s name on the board beneath Wyatt’s. “Who else?”
“Donna Hayes,” I said, and Nolan began shaking his head.
“No way, not Donna.”
“She’s a woman, she lives close by, and she’s been browbeaten and brainwashed by her husband.
Honestly, I’m not sure she’s smart enough to carry out the subtle sabotage we’ve been seeing, but we at least need to check her whereabouts last night.
That should be easy enough if we call the shelter she’s staying at. ”
Ari tapped the pen against her chin. “We need to consider the possibility that more than one person is involved.”
“Like two people working together?”
“Or two people working independently. Maybe a copycat?”
My turn to shake my head. “Not a copycat. Nobody knew about the sabotage—we kept it very quiet.”
“Including the Lisanne incident?”
We both looked to Nolan, and he turned sheepish. “I might have mentioned that to a person or two.”
Ari wrote Copycat? on the board. Nolan didn’t seem happy, but he did stop arguing, at least until I moved on to the next name.
“Add Antonella Cranston.”
“Who?”
“Nolan’s neighbour from the horse farm next door.”
“That place looks fancy. They have money?”
“Plenty of it. Her husband runs a hedge fund.”
“A successful one?”
“Reasonably so. He’s made a few dud investments, but who hasn’t?”
“Most people? Not everyone can afford to play the stock market.”
“Okay, I’ll rephrase. He’s made a few dud investments, but which hedge fund manager hasn’t?
For the most part, they’re all just flinging shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, which is why I rarely invest in hedge funds.
The Cranstons do have money, though, and they’ve also tried to buy part of Nolan’s land. ”
Ari tilted her head to one side. “Oh?”
“It’s more of a standing offer,” he explained.
“The vineyard hasn’t always been profitable, and you know what small towns are like—everyone knows everyone else’s business.
So Everett Cranston said if I ever needed cash, they’d be open to buying the south side of the property.
The part that adjoins their land. If they keep expanding the horse farm, they could use the extra pasture, plus it has a nice network of riding trails.
But I let Antonella ride there anyway, and I’d rent them the pasture if they needed it. ”
“She still goes on the list,” I said. “Not at the top, but somewhere in the middle.”
“Who else?” Ari asked.
“Margaret Leland. She co-owns one of Dionysus’s competitors, and she’s apparently a smart woman. Shrewd too.”
This time, Nolan didn’t have any argument. “I guess I could see it. Teo says she’s a real tyrant. Silver Hollow can’t keep staff because they work them to the bone and stiff them on overtime.”
Ari wrote her name and added an asterisk beside it. “Any more?”
“One. Marielle Marten. The real one. We know Rayna Bishop is on ice, but there are still so many questions—where’s the real Marielle, what happened after the two of them left New York, and could they be colluding in some way?
All we have is a social media post hinting at man trouble, but what if that was a ruse? ”
“Like, they could be running a scam?”
“It’s an outside-the-box possibility.”
“The real Marielle is dead,” Jez said from the couch nearest the door.
She’d draped herself on it lengthwise, head propped up at one end and legs hanging over the other.
“Remember what Rayna did to you? She has the self-control of a firecracker. If the cheating thing is true, then fifty bucks says she ran into Marielle before she left New York, they had a fight, and Marielle’s lying in a shallow grave somewhere.
Or maybe a river, depending on where they lived. Do we have that information?”
“Marielle lived on Long Island.”
“The ocean, then.”
“Great,” Ari said. “We have six suspects, no clear motive, and no real leads. Good thing you’re paying me the big bucks.”
“Tell us what you think,” Jez said to her. “You’re the PI. If we need to shoot anyone, I’m your gal, but where do we start with solving this mystery?”
“We start by not mentioning shooting in front of Erin. Or the body in the morgue. Because if Erin knows, then Rusty will find out, and although he’s pretty easygoing, I’m not sure he’d condone us covering up a death.”
“What death?” I asked innocently, secretly pleased because in the time I’d known her, Ari had stepped over from the light side and firmly into the twilight. “As far as we know, Marielle aka Rayna drove south to Mexico, and the cops are on her trail.”
She sucked in a breath. “Right. And as for my thoughts… The pattern is mismatched. You say the first incident was last year? If they’re connected, then why such a big gap afterward?
And of the seven non-domestic incidents, five targeted the vineyard, one involved Nolan’s truck, and the last focused on the cottage.
So we could have two or even three perpetrators.
The only common denominator is that Nolan is the victim. ”
A sobering thought. I needed to get a sprinkler system installed in every building, and someone should teach Nolan how to shoot properly.
We all looked at him, and he shrank back into his seat. “I swear I haven’t gone around upsetting anyone. Not on purpose.”
“Okay, I do have one more question,” Ari said. “Your website says there’s an old gold mine on the property—what are the chances of there being any gold left?”
Huh.
That…that was a possibility I hadn’t even considered.
And neither had Nolan, judging by his surprised expression.
“The gold is gone. It has to be. The mine was abandoned a hundred years ago, and this whole place was a ghost town until folks realised the soil was good for growing grapes. I used to pan for gold in the stream with Grandpa when I was a kid, but we never found more than a few flakes. They’re in a box in the study. ”
“I don’t know much about mining, but I imagine technology has improved in the past hundred years. Maybe someone thinks they can find more gold?”
“Antonella Cranston has a minor in geology,” I said. “When she lived in New York, she worked as a commodities trader. I assume that was how she met Everett.”
Nolan sighed. “Is there anyone around here you haven’t researched?”
“It’s literally listed on her résumé. That’s practically public information.”
“The Cranstons have only been as far as the tasting room. And when they offered to buy part of the land, they weren’t interested in the caves or the winery. The opposite, in fact—Everett said they hoped that with more investment, I’d be able to expand the winemaking operation.”
“Has anyone spent time in the mine lately?” Ari asked.
“Well, Marielle. There’s an underground tasting room, and she decorated it. There was another decorator before her, but Wanda wasn’t tall or slender, so I guess we can rule her out.”
“How tall? She could have dieted.”
“Five feet two, at a guess. Plus there was a team of contractors who made the mine structurally safe when I moved in—they installed extra roof supports, lighting, that kind of thing.”
“I’ll need the name of the company. Is it based close by?”
“In Elk Grove.” Nolan’s eyes widened as he remembered something. “You know who recommended them? Roy Leland. We were friendly when I first came here, before my wine started beating his for awards. I bought some of his old equipment.”
“The destemmer?” Ari guessed.
“Uh, yeah.”
Well, damn.
“And they also made an offer on the place.”
“Including the gold mine?”
“All of it. Property prices had crashed in those days, but even then, they were lowballing, so I turned them down. They haven’t mentioned it since.”
Ari added another asterisk beside Margaret’s name.
And I had a whole new bunch of stuff to snoop through.