Murder in Paradise Read online

  Jeremy set down the screwdriver and pulled her into a hug. He said, “No way are we cooking. We’re going out. To celebrate.”

  “We haven’t accomplished anything. Look at this place. What do we have to celebrate?”

  He laughed in her ear, and then stepped back to study her at arm’s length. “How about that we now live in Napa Valley? That our life is somebody else’s vacation? Isn’t that too-good-to-be-true enough for you, or do we have to win the lottery too?”

  She snorted. It was as close to a laugh as she felt capable right now. “All right,” she said. “You haven’t officially cheered me up, but you’re getting there.”

  “I’d say we have plenty of reasons to raise a glass. Hop in the shower. Get ready. Let’s go.”

  “It’s only three in the afternoon.”

  “But our stomachs are still on central time.”

  “Fine. Great,” she said, and gestured at the maze of boxes. “But first we have to figure out where we packed our clothes…”

  Chapter 2

  They’d fallen in love with California on their honeymoon ten years ago. They couldn’t afford the two-week trip—that took them from San Francisco to Monterey to Yosemite to Napa—but their parents had thrown in a thousand dollars. They’d put the rest on the credit card and saved money by alternating nights in hotels and campsites.

  They were used to the long, gray-skied winters of the Midwest, and the golden sunshine felt impossibly good on their upturned, smiling faces. They loved the salt spray of the ocean and the way the foothills humped up into mountains and the cross-section of humanity you could encounter walking a single block of Haight-Ashbury.

  During the day, they would eat muffins and bananas and cheese sticks and nuts, so that they felt financially and physically justified when feasting every night. The Mustards Grill in Napa was their favorite of any place they’d visited. And that’s where they went now.

  The restaurant was white sided and blue trimmed with a long bank of windows facing the parking lot. It was a landmark known for its long waits, but it was early enough that they were seated immediately.

  Abi wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to the fussiness of California cuisine. Even ordering water was a chore. The bearded, tattooed waiter first offered them flat or sparkling water, and when she said, “Flat,” he said. “Very good. I’ll bring you a bottle of flat water.”

  “No, no, no,” she said. “Flat as in tap.”

  He raised his eyebrows as though asking her to reconsider. “I see. Tap it is.”

  Jeremy asked if the restaurant carried any sparkling apple juice. “You know, something that feels like wine. Something celebratory. For her.”

  The waiter nodded to Abi. “Are congratulations in order?”

  “No,” she said, and touched her belly instinctively. “But we’re trying.”

  “I see.”

  She insisted that Jeremy order a glass of cabernet.

  “It doesn’t feel fair,” he said.

  “It’s fine. We’ve got the rest of our lives to share a bottle. We’ll probably end up sick to death of wine, living here.”

  The waiter brought them their drinks, then told them the specials and took their order. Pork chops. They had been dreaming about those Mongolian pork chops—served with house-made mustard and sweet-and-sour red cabbage—for over ten years.

  “Ten years?” the waiter said. “Well, welcome back.”

  It was hard to believe they were back. She hadn’t thought she’d stood a chance of landing the job. She had high marks in med school and strong recommendations from her colleagues in Wisconsin, but she was a young thirty-seven and relatively inexperienced as a forensic pathologist, working for the medical school at UW–Milwaukee. She had no local connections. So few medical examiners were women, and to make matters worse, she had accidentally let slip that she and Jeremy were trying to start a family. She knew that sort of thing wasn’t supposed to matter, but it did.

  The interview lasted two days and they offered her the position on the way to the airport—and to sweeten the deal, they helped arrange a part-time post at the free clinic for Jeremy.

  Abi was too excited to negotiate, to ask if she could have a day or two to think about it. “Yes!” she’d yelled. “Of course I’ll take it!”

  And now she and Jeremy raised their glasses and chimed them together in a toast. “Feeling better?” he said.

  “Much.”

  Abi had grown up in a superstitious family. Knocking on wood. Tossing spilled salt over her left shoulder. Avoiding black cats. It was bad luck not to drink after making a toast—but when a scream rang out, she dropped her glass.

  It shattered on the floor, but no one even looked her way. Everyone in the restaurant was looking at the woman who had slumped forward at her table.

  She wore a yellow sundress. Her hair was once the same color, but it was now threaded white. Her body was stiff but shuddering, as though in a seizure, and she leaned sideways and dragged the tablecloth and everything on it with her to the floor.

  Across the floor, a bottle of wine rolled in a wide arc, glug-glug-glugging a red puddle.

  Several people stood from their chairs, but only Abi hurried forward to kneel beside the woman. Her eyes were rolled back, white and edged by red capillaries. She was making a panting noise, her airways clear, so she wasn’t choking.

  Jeremy joined her now. “What can I do?” She told him to clear away the nearby furniture and call 911.

  “Shouldn’t you put something in her mouth?” the waiter said. No, that was an old myth. They would wait the seizure out and make sure she didn’t hurt herself.

  The woman’s legs kicked and her body convulsed as if she were being electrocuted.

  At her table sat a heavyset man in a golf shirt and khakis. He remained in his chair, his hands still gripping his silverware, his mouth a wide O of surprise.

  “Is she epileptic?” Abi said. “Sir! Sir, I need your help.”

  That woke him up from his daze. He pushed back from the table and hesitantly said, “Mary? Mary, what’s wrong?”

  “Is this your wife? Mary? Is she epileptic?”

  “Yes,” he said, and then shook his head. “I mean no. No, she’s not epileptic. Not diabetic. She’s nothing. She’s perfectly healthy.”

  As if to argue his point, the woman stopped breathing and her body went stiff, humming like a diving board.

  Jeremy was talking to the 911 operator, telling them to hurry.

  But it didn’t matter. No ambulance could have gotten there quickly enough. A minute later, the woman’s body went limp. A minute after that, her pulse stilled.

  Chapter 3

  Abi didn’t like to be told what to do. She was very aware of this and thought of it as a weakness as much as a strength. She and Jeremy rarely cooked as a couple—or gardened, or even so much as painted a room together—because they both had strong opinions.

  They joked about it often, calling each other boss and chief. If Jeremy thought the onions needed to be minced instead of chopped, he would have to suggest so indirectly. “Hey, boss. I saw this cool move on the Food Network the other day,” he might say. “Can I show you?”

  She loved him all the more for this. Because it showed that he understood her and respected her.

  Unlike this man. Dean Poole, a deputy with the Napa Valley Sheriff’s Department. From the moment he walked into the Mustards Grill, he treated her like she was a suspect, not a colleague. “You’re the new examiner?” he said upon introduction. He spoke in demands: “What are you doing here of all places?” then “Tell me what happened,” and “Well what did you do?” until finally, “Uh-huh, how about you go stand over there while I secure this scene?”

  He was in his midthirties but had a soft, boyish face. Abi thought this must be why he grew out his mustache. It was meant to give him more authority, but it was too thin to do much more than dirty his upper lip.

  Abi said, “Why don’t you let me help?”


  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “But…,” she said.

  “But what?”

  “But I’m the medical examiner.”

  Dean said, “You haven’t even gotten into your office yet. And Millennium should be here any minute.”

  So she and Jeremy stood in one corner—and the waitstaff and manager in the other, talking in quiet voices, everyone eager to give their statements and go home. Every now and then someone glanced at the body on the floor.

  Mary. That was her name. Her mouth and her eyes open. Her arms and legs splayed in an X and her clothes sodden with the red wine that had puddled on the floor.

  The EMTs had already done what they could. Nothing. They packed up their kits now and spoke briefly to Dean before heading outside.

  Nearby the husband of the dead woman cried softly in a booth, his hands over his face.

  Dean pulled on latex gloves and crouched beside the body. He snapped photos. He made notes on a tiny pad. But he was interrupted by a horn blasting outside.

  He peered out the window and said, “Excuse me,” then pushed out the front door and jogged across the parking lot.

  Chapter 4

  The road was busy with cars and all of them slowed down to gape. But a Cadillac had tried to pull in and continued to blast its horn. Another young deputy blocked his way, saying, “I’m sorry, sir, but the restaurant’s closed.”

  The driver rolled down his window. “What the hell is this? We’ve got reservations.”

  “Not anymore you don’t,” Dean said.

  The driver shook his head as if this were Dean’s fault. “What are we supposed to do now?”

  “I don’t care. Go to Burger King.” He gestured them out of the way. “Medical examiner’s coming through,” he said, and made a windmill motion with his arm. “Get moving, get moving.”

  The Cadillac grumbled off, but not before letting off another loud blast of its horn.

  And then a white van pulled into the parking lot. It had black lettering printed across the side that read MILLENNIUM PROCESSING.

  Abi and Jeremy stood on the porch of the Mustards Grill and watched as a tall, sandy-haired man stepped out of the van. He had a nose too small for his face and wore a white windbreaker that carried the same logo as his vehicle. He and Dean shook hands and clapped each other on the back, both of them smiling.

  “Should I be pissed right now?” Abi said. “Because I’m kind of feeling like I just got shrugged off by the good ol’ boys club.”

  “Well, you could get pissed,” Jeremy said, and hooked an arm around her shoulder to give her a squeeze. “Or you could hunt around for an excuse not to be. Your official start date isn’t until tomorrow, right? Maybe you’re not legally able to process the body?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe.”

  The deputy gestured toward them then—and the tall man’s smile faltered when he studied Abi with a blank expression.

  Abi knew Millennium. With about two and a half million people dying every year in the United States—seven thousand a day—and so few medical examiners, corporate groups had popped up to fill in the gaps.

  These private coroners were necessary, but they worked for profit, and many considered them messy and unreliable.

  The tall man walked toward them now, extended a hand to Abi, and said, “Peter Rustad.”

  When they shook, she squeezed hard enough to make one of his knuckles pop. “Oh, wow. What a grip.” He gave a small giggle.

  She pulled her hand away and tucked it in her pocket.

  He had a dreamy way of talking and his eyes never really focused on her. “Bad luck, huh?” Peter said. “Dean here tells me you just got into town and somebody already croaked on you. Sorry to ruin your night.”

  She said, “I’m happy to—”

  But Peter made a cutting motion with his hand, as if to slice her words from the air. “Oh, I won’t hear of it. Consider this my gift to you. Happy to take over. But you know what I love already? That you’re a team player. You head on home. Unpack those boxes. Get settled. You’ll have more than enough trouble to deal with tomorrow when you have to clean up the mess your predecessor left behind.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Rustad’s eyes blinked at shutter speed. “I just mean that he died over a month ago, and that leaves you with quite the backlog.” He nodded and continued on toward the restaurant. As he yanked open the door, he yelled over his shoulder, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I better get to her while she’s still fresh!”

  Chapter 5

  Eric Stelling preferred the dark. His pale skin burned easily, and the sun made his vision wobble and a headache fork between his eyebrows. That’s why his office was underground. Along with all of the wine at Shellsong Estates. The storage and aging took place entirely in the fifty-thousand-square-foot cave system, tunneled into a foothill of the Vaca Mountains. The lighting here was dim and recessed, and the temperature a stable fifty-two degrees.

  Occasionally he opened the winery to guests for a special release or a Christmas party or fund-raiser, but it was otherwise closed off from anyone except his employees. He preferred the privacy and the control of his environment.

  The tunnels were carved as a series of interconnected parabolas that opened up into chambers. The farther you traveled from the entrance, the wider the tunnels and the larger the chambers grew, the last the size of three basketball courts. The winemakers were centrally located in a lab, and this way they were never more than a few hundred feet from their aging galleries.

  He’d gotten the idea for the winery’s architecture from an unlikely inspiration: snails. His mother had been a marine biologist who specialized in mollusks. When he was a child, she often gifted him with shells that decorated his bookshelves and windowsills. Some conical, but most a spiraled coil. Spiny, smooth, white, pink, purple, gray. She loved the way they filtered minerals from the water and wove them into a beautiful fortress.

  He had been a small boy—often sick, regularly bullied—and when he would pick up the shells to study, he would imagine himself sliding inside them to hide and armor himself.

  In a way those daydreams had come true. The winery had become his burrowed fortress, his exquisite shell, and he felt naked and vulnerable whenever he left it. That was why their logo was a shell. And that was why he kept seawater aquariums throughout the subterranean estate, in the floors and walls and even ceilings of the tunnels, all of them knobbed and spined with whelks and limpets and cones.

  Eric was sitting at his desk now, holding an empty shell that still smelled like the sea, worrying it with his fingers as though trying to memorize its shape. It kept him occupied while he waited. He stared at the phone. He knew it would soon ring, and when it finally did, he cleared his throat and lifted the receiver to his ear and said, “Yes.”

  “It’s done.”

  A smile flickered across his face and died. Then he hung up the phone and closed his hand around the shell, making a fist.

  Chapter 6

  It was a strange job, being a doctor for people who were already dead.

  Families and police departments requested autopsies because they wanted to be sure. That happened more often than you would think. Yes, there were the homicides, but the list of bodies in the freezer included a woman who died in a car crash, a man who seemingly had a heart attack in a hot tub and whose boiled body was not found until a day later, and a girl who wouldn’t wake up when her parents flipped on the lights and told her it was time for school.

  Maybe Abi could get through seven or ten autopsies a day. Maybe. A body could take anywhere from forty minutes to two hours to process. She currently had a backlog of one hundred twelve bodies. And could expect more to arrive every day.

  With that impossible math in mind, Abi still felt angry about the way she had been treated by the deputy and coroner, but also…weirdly grateful. They dismissed her and treated her like an outsider, yes, but they were right: she didn’t have time for an
other body.

  The previous medical examiner—Paul Bures—had left her with a mess that she was going to spend the better part of a year cleaning up.

  The pathology lab looked like a cross between a cafeteria kitchen and an operating theater. Stainless steel tables and cabinets edged the room, interrupted by a fridge, a dishwasher, and a deep sink. Surgical gowns and masks and face shields hung from hooks. Here was a scale and a colander for washing organs. Here were rows of saws and shears and mallets and hooks and knives.

  At one end of the lab was a big steel door that led to the freezer. And at the other end was a door that led to Paul Bures’s office.

  Which was now Abi’s office, though it hardly felt like it. A windowless room with walls painted the same butter color as every medical clinic and elementary school in the country. There were filing cabinets with open drawers and extra folders stacked on top in perilously leaning piles.

  She thought there was a desk buried somewhere beneath all the coffee cups and manila folders and envelopes and loose paperwork, but she couldn’t be sure.

  Bures must have been a messy person, the working equivalent of someone who didn’t make the bed and left his dirty underwear on the floor. But that didn’t seem to align with the meticulously clean laboratory.

  She didn’t know where to begin and for the first few hours of her day moved between sorting spilled piles of paper and greeting people who popped into the office to introduce themselves. “Good luck,” most of them said, looking around at the mess with widened eyes.

  Framed photos hung from the walls; Bures was apparently a hobby photographer. There were shots of waves crashing and birds flying and sunsets flaring. She pulled them down from their hooks and set them in a pile to return to his wife.