Chapter 20
TWENTY
Blackwood Estate Winery
Aubrey stood beside the towering wall of glass overlooking the vineyard.
Morning sunlight spilled across the endless rows of vines, turning the leaves a vibrant summer green. Beyond them, the Blue Ridge Mountains stretched across the horizon in layers of blue and silver, rising and fading into one another like distant ocean waves.
Somewhere between the funeral, the winery meetings, and the endless cups of coffee, the mountains had started getting under her skin.
The view no longer felt foreign.
It felt familiar.
“Gets to you, doesn’t it?”
Bennett’s voice came from behind her.
She glanced over her shoulder and found him in the doorway, one shoulder resting against the frame.
A smile tugged at her mouth.
“Yeah, it does.”
She turned back toward the glass.
“The best part?” she said.
Bennett stepped into the office.
“What’s that?”
“I didn’t even have road rage during my morning commute.”
He smiled, the corner of his mouth kicking up.
“Commute?”
She pointed toward the Victorian house visible beyond the vines.
“Three minutes. No traffic. No horns. No angry people trying to merge into my lane.”
“Sounds rough.”
“It was awful. I almost missed Philadelphia.”
Bennett snorted.
“Almost?”
“Let’s not get carried away.”
His low laugh rolled through the office, warm and inconvenient.
She moved back toward the desk. Three spreadsheets were open on her laptop, a leather-bound Tree of Life Reserve binder beside her coffee mug.
“You’re late, McCrae.”
“I am?”
“I’ve already balanced the 2023 casing margins.” She adjusted her reading glasses. “Found a three-thousand-dollar discrepancy in cork inventory.”
Bennett groaned.
“Don’t tell me that.”
“Oh, it gets worse.”
“Please stop talking.”
“I thought Napa men were supposed to be efficient.”
He walked around the desk.
“Funny. I thought vineyard managers knew how to count.”
“Careful, Princess.”
She smiled.
There it was again. Princess.
Every time he said it, it sounded less like an insult and more like something dangerous.
Bennett leaned down beside her chair to look at the screen. Instantly, she caught the familiar scent of his soap and aftershave.
She frowned.
“Huh.”
Bennett looked over.
“What?”
She tilted her head.
“No Jasmine Rouge.”
His eyes narrowed, a slow awareness flickering there.
He leaned in a fraction closer.
“Jealous?”
Heat curled unexpectedly through her chest.
“Yeah, jealous. That’s it,” she scoffed. “Devastated the cosmetics counter broke up with you.”
His mouth kicked up.
“Good,” he said. “Because I like your perfume better anyway.”
She met his gaze.
“Is that a fact?”
His eyes dipped briefly to her mouth, then back up.
“Yeah. It is.”
Heat curled again, lower this time, before she could stop it.
For one suspended second, neither of them moved. Neither looked away.
A heavy knock sounded against the glass.
Both of them jerked apart.
Sheriff Burke Scott stood outside the office. One look at his face erased every trace of humor from the room.
He stepped inside and quietly closed the glass doors behind him. The soft click seemed unnaturally loud.
Something about Burke’s face instantly set Bennett on edge.
Burke wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t making small talk. His expression was set, his eyes tired in a way Aubrey hadn’t seen before.
“Bennett.”
Bennett straightened.
“What happened?”
Burke paused, his gaze touching on Aubrey for a beat before he answered.
“We got the final report back from the Medical Examiner.”
A cold knot tightened in Aubrey’s stomach.
Burke’s attention shifted between them, then settled on her.
Burke took another slow breath.
"The Medical Examiner amended the report."
Silence settled over the room.
"Mabel's death..."
He paused.
"...has been ruled a homicide."
The word didn't belong beside Mabel. Not beside the woman whose office she was standing in. Not beside the mountains outside the window.
Not beside yesterday's burgers and laughter.
It refused to settle into anything her mind could understand.
Bennett stared at Burke, his jaw rigid, before he blinked as if trying to clear his vision. “What?”
“A homicide,” Burke said quietly.
“No.” The answer came immediately. Flat. Certain. Bennett shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. I found her.”
His voice dropped. “She was in bed. She looked like she’d fallen asleep reading. The book was still there. Her glasses were there. Moose was losing his mind outside the door, and I still thought it was nothing.”
“Hell, Sara Parker was standing right there when Kincaid looked at her.” His eyes locked onto Burke. “I heard him. ‘Most likely natural causes.’ Nobody said homicide. Nobody even hinted at homicide. Those were his words. So how does this suddenly become murder?”
Burke exhaled slowly.
“Because the autopsy found things nobody could see at the scene.”
Bennett went still.
“What things?”
“Petechial hemorrhaging,” Burke said. “Bruising on one wrist. And synthetic fibers embedded in her airway.”
The office went quiet.
Aubrey’s throat felt dry.
“What does that mean?” Her voice sounded thin to her own ears.
Burke focused on her, his tone softening.
“The Medical Examiner reviewed the photographs, microscopy, and tissue samples herself,” he said. “She concluded someone held fabric over Mabel’s face and kept it there until she couldn’t breathe anymore.”
For a moment, the room seemed to tilt.
Aubrey hadn’t known Mabel well, but she’d known the file folder: the will, the numbers, the promise of a different life. All of it twisted now into something sharp.
“Wait.”
Her voice cracked. She shook her head.
“Wait… let me try to make sense of what you’re saying.”
Nobody spoke.
Aubrey looked directly at Burke.
“You’re saying my aunt was murdered?”
Burke nodded once. Slowly.
“I’m sorry, Aubrey,” he said. “But yes. That’s what the report says.”
“Oh my God.”
Her knees went unsteady, as if the floor beneath the office carpet had shifted.
“Oh my God...”
She pressed a hand over her mouth and took a step backward, bumping lightly into the edge of the desk.
Bennett took an instinctive step toward her, stopping only when she steadied herself against the edge of the desk.
Some irrational part of her wanted him to ignore the distance and pull her into his arms; the rest of her bristled at needing anyone at all.
“I barely knew her,” she whispered.
Not really.
A few childhood visits.
Scattered memories of a sharp-eyed woman who always seemed larger than life.
Most of what she knew about Mabel had come from her mother. And none of it had been good.
Her throat tightened.
“I thought...” She stopped. The words caught somewhere behind her ribs. “I thought she died in her sleep.”
Burke didn’t speak. Neither did Bennett.
He looked away toward the vineyard, as if he couldn’t quite bear to picture it either.
Aubrey turned to him.
“I was just starting to realize I didn’t know the whole story.” Her eyes moved back to Burke. “And now someone killed her?”
Burke’s expression tightened; he gave the smallest nod, acknowledging the loss without looking away from it.
“The prowler.”
She looked at Bennett. Then back at Burke.
“The person outside my window. The porch. The broken latch.”
Her voice dropped to a frightened whisper.
“You think it was the same person?”
Burke didn’t answer immediately.
“Right now, we don’t know that,” he said. His voice stayed calm and steady. “But we’re treating that incident as potentially connected until we can prove otherwise.”
Aubrey swallowed.
“So what happens now?”
Burke glanced at Bennett, then back at her.
“Now we start over.” The words settled heavily into the room. “We stop looking at Mabel’s death as a tragedy… and start looking at it as a crime.”
He held her gaze.
“And I’m going to do everything in my power to find out who did this.”