Murder in Paradise Read online

  But before she could ask, Jamet said, “Your predecessor was kind of an odd duck. Maybe that’s a consequence of hanging out with dead people all the time.”

  “What do you mean?” Abi said.

  “I remember people saying he was a conspiracy-theory type. And I know he stirred up some trouble when he sent out a hospital-wide email, asking everyone to resist the merger.”

  “What merger?”

  “Oh, I don’t really pay attention to any of that stuff. I’m too busy throwing babies around. But didn’t they tell you about this when you took the job? There’s basically some health care system that bought out—or merged with?—this one. Something like that. The wine guy is behind it all.”

  “Which wine guy? This place is crowded with wine guys.”

  “Somebody Stelling. He’s on the hospital board. Major philanthropist.”

  “Eric Stelling.” For such a slight man, he cast a long shadow. “He also founded the free clinic where my husband works.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I saw him yesterday. At the dedication ceremony for the new ICU.”

  “He dropped ten million on it, I heard.”

  Abi said, “But why was Paul Bures opposed to the merger?”

  “I don’t know. He was convinced there was something evil going on. Which is kind of fun to think about, yeah? Makes things more exciting. Anyway, I’m stacked with appointments, but as soon as I get these results, one of the nurses will call.”

  As Abi left the office, Jamet called out, “Oh, and congratulations again!” At first Abi didn’t know what she meant; then she remembered. Yes. This was a good thing. The child growing inside her. The start of a new life.

  Abi returned to her office to face another set of results, for Alexei Petrov. Toxicology had revealed the presence of venom, a conotoxin sourced from a marine gastropod mollusk. A cone snail. A quick Internet search revealed that cone snails are found the world over, but only in tropical areas are their stings potentially fatal. Abi read about the radula tooth—acting a little like a hypodermic needle—that stings the snail’s prey and pumps out paralyzing venom.

  It wasn’t clear what had killed Alexei first: the bite or the car crash. But it was curious enough that Abi put in a call to the sheriff’s department. She wasn’t expected to do anything more than file a report, but she still hadn’t met Sheriff Colton and figured this was as good an excuse as any to reach out. He wasn’t available, so his secretary took a message.

  Abi forgot all about it until a few hours later, when she dislocated a liver from a body and turned to set it on the scale, only to find a man standing a few feet away from her.

  * * *

  It was the deputy, Dean Poole, from the Mustards Grill. His boyish face was still dominated by the bad mustache.

  Poole cocked his head and smiled. “How are the zombies treating you?”

  She didn’t respond except to set the liver down. She noted the weight and then shut off her recorder and peeled off her gloves and washed her hands. He had annoyed her before by dismissing her from the crime scene, and she liked him even less now, invading her work space.

  “Got your message,” he said.

  “I left it for Sheriff Colton.”

  “And he passed it along to me. Said to swing by.” He spoke to her, but his eyes were on the table, where an older man lay with his chest butterflied open. “What do you got?”

  She pulled off her face mask and hung it on a hook. “Something curious.”

  She waved him into her office and showed him the photos and the toxicology results and he gave a little laugh and shook his head. “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “It’s just kind of funny. You calling us on account of a snail.”

  “This snail is more dangerous than most of the people you arrest in a day. There’s one species, the geography cone, that’s nicknamed the cigarette snail. You know why?”

  “No, I don’t know why.”

  “Because if you get stung, you’ll be dead in about the time it takes to finish a Marlboro Red.”

  The printer hummed to life and began to spit out the autopsy report, and she neatened the warm stack of paper and handed it to him.

  Dean riffled through it and said, “Look. I dealt with two robberies, a beating, and a shooting last night. Earlier this morning, I busted a meth lab, and you know what I found there? A kid whose diaper probably hadn’t been changed in a week.”

  “Oh.” She was somewhat taken aback. “Here in Napa?”

  “Yeah, here in Napa. And that’s a normal twenty-four hours.” He leaned against her doorframe and hooked a thumb in his holster belt. “There’s a lot more trouble here than you might imagine.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and immediately regretted it. Women were always apologizing for things they shouldn’t apologize for. It wasn’t her fault the baby had been neglected. It wasn’t her fault he had come all the way down here.

  “With all I have to deal with,” he said, “I don’t know that a snail is my top priority. Couldn’t this guy have just pulled it out of a tide pool and got pricked?”

  The more he spoke, the smaller and more ridiculous she felt. “No. No, not the kind that stung him,” she said. “They’re not native to this area. And the poison hit him when he was driving, so the bite must have come soon before. Meaning, it happened here in Napa.”

  “If you say so.” Dean started out of her office and gave a backward wave and said, “Thanks, Nancy Drew. Like I said, I’ll look into it.”

  Chapter 14

  It was her father’s fault that Abi was a perfectionist. He woke at exactly 4:30 every morning and went to bed at exactly 9:30. He scraped and swept down the barn floor after every milking. He waxed his tractors to a glow and navigated his combine in tidy turns, never missing a stalk of corn.

  Jeremy thought she was the same way. When she rearranged a dishwasher he had already loaded, or refolded a shirt he had already put in a drawer, or remade the bed when he had simply roughed the sheets and quilt back over it.

  Her encounter at the ICU reception with Mrs. Bures felt a little like that. Like a badly folded shirt or an unmade bed. She couldn’t leave it alone.

  So during her lunch break, she headed over to the sheriff’s office. Dean Poole had pushed her out of the Mustards Grill and pushed his way into her office at the hospital. She would push back a little.

  On the drive there she passed three Teslas, one Jaguar, one Ferrari, three Mercedeses, and five BMWs. She and Jeremy had made this into a game, tallying luxury cars every time they went out.

  You couldn’t hurry anywhere here; the roads were clogged with traffic, every parking lot full, the door to every art gallery or oil and vinegar store swinging open to show someone smiling and tucking a receipt into their pocket.

  She was stuck for a mile or more behind a limousine, likely filled with tourists on a marathon visit to Mondavi, Silverado, Coppola, Beringer, Kendall-Jackson—hiring a driver to save themselves from a DUI.

  That really seemed like the only danger possible in a place like this: overindulgence. Dean had surprised her when he mentioned the robbery and the meth lab bust. She’d assumed, when she moved here, that the police existed more for pageantry. But she was slowly being cured of that illusion. Where there was sun, there were shadows.

  The sheriff’s office was newly built and perched on a small hill. With its wide walkways, tidy landscaping, sunlit windows, and stone-slabbed architecture, it more resembled a golf-course clubhouse than a police station.

  At reception, she introduced herself and asked to meet with the sheriff. No, she didn’t have a meeting. Yes, she realized he might be busy. But hopefully something could be arranged?

  She sat in the waiting area for five minutes, before a door buzzed and a big man stepped through it. Everything about him seemed squared off—his head, shoulders, fingertips, boots. His hair was a close-cropped, a white wire brush along his pink scalp. She guessed him seventy. He walked
with a slight limp but looked like he could still do some damage on the football field. “Abi Brenner? Chase Colton.” When he smiled, he showed off small teeth stained by coffee.

  He waved her back and escorted her down several corridors until they arrived at his office. A flag hung on a pole in the corner. There were photos of him as a soldier, with his family, and at a winery, holding up purple bundles of grapes, toasting glasses of wine.

  He saw her looking and touched the frame of one. “You should come up sometime.”

  “I’m sorry?” she said.

  “To the winery. My family’s winery. Colton Crossroads. You’re officially invited. I’ll give you the full tour, all the behind-the-scenes goodness.”

  “Oh. A winery? I didn’t realize—I mean, sure, I’d like that very much.”

  He sat and motioned for her to do the same. A glass bowl of nuts sat on the desk and he scooped out a handful and munched them down. “You’re surprised about the winery?”

  “No,” she said. “Maybe a little.”

  “Comes with the territory. Sheriff’s a political position. Especially in a place like this. I’m not busting heads. I’m going to galas and giving the occasional press conference.”

  “Right.”

  He pushed the bowl of nuts toward her. “Want some? They’re good. Costco.”

  “No. Thanks.”

  “Suit yourself. So it’s good to meet you. Congrats on your new position. You settling in okay?”

  “Fine so far. It’s just…Neysa Bures.”

  “Oh, gosh. I’m sorry about that. I heard. The reception? Sounded like she had had a few.”

  “She appeared to be drunk, yes.”

  “She has a problem. A serious problem. We’ve pulled her off the road enough times that she’s lost her license.” He stood up and hitched his belt and stood by the window, taking in the hills in the near distance. He pointed with one of his giant fingers. “That’s about where we’re at—just tucked between those two hills. You see?”

  “That’s sad. About Neysa. But she seems convinced that someone killed her husband. That Eric Stelling…”

  He looked back at her, as if trying to remember what they were talking about. “It is. Sad. And her mind is—not sure of the right word—warped? She’s angry and she’s looking for a target.”

  “Why blame Stelling of all people?”

  He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Remember that guy who killed John Lennon? He started off as a fan, then got it in his head that he was a blasphemer. Eric Stelling is a big name around here. He’s in the papers a lot. Celebrity of sorts, all caught up in business and philanthropy. Sometimes weirdos get fixated on that type of person. A person bigger than they are.”

  “Her husband was opposed to Stelling’s hospital merger…”

  “Look. How he died was tragic. But it was a balloon disaster. The whole thing lit up like a torch. Paul Bures fell to his death. There are easier ways to murder someone—don’t you think?”

  His phone rang and he picked it up and listened and then said, “I’ve got to get this.”

  “That’s fine. I should be going. I’m sorry if I’ve wasted your time.”

  “Not at all. Not at all.” He pressed the phone to his chest. “Now, I meant it. You come on up to the winery. You’ll love it.”

  On her way out the door, she said, “Just one last thing.”

  “Well, sure.”

  “Do you mind if I take a look at the file? Just so I can get this out of my head.”

  “Be my guest. Tell my secretary, Norma, to hook you up.” As she closed the door behind her, he waved a hand as big as a catcher’s mitt. “Bye now.”

  She sat on a swivel chair in the archives room. The autopsy report—processed by Millennium—revealed nothing she couldn’t have guessed. Second-degree burns along his shoulders and the back of his head. Multiple lacerations, abrasions, and contusions from the explosion, including a full-thickness laceration to the bilateral, parietal scalp. Extensive skull fractures, with a hinge fracture of the skull base. A fractured pelvis. Multiple fractures in the cervical and thoracic spine. Extensive internal hemorrhaging.

  She didn’t know what she hoped to find. She should just go home. But Neysa’s words kept echoing through her head, and she wanted to erase all doubt in her mind. As Jeremy said, she could leave no t uncrossed, no i undotted.

  Colton hadn’t specifically given her permission to do so, but she found the evidence locker and flopped the case file down on the desk. She gave the attendant her best smile and said, “The sheriff sent me down here.”

  A few minutes later she was handed a bin and a pair of latex gloves, and the attendant said, “Not much to see, I’m afraid. Hope this is what you’re looking for.”

  Abi carried the bin over to a counter. In it were two plastic bags tagged and labeled. In one was a charred tennis shoe, size 12. And in the other a Nikon camera with a cracked lens.

  She remembered the landscape shots in her office, the ones she had returned to Neysa. So he had been up in the balloon taking photos. She snapped on the gloves and removed the camera and tried powering it on, but the battery was dead. Of course.

  She guessed there was nothing to see besides dawn-lit views of mist-swirled vineyards, nothing of interest. But when she popped open the storage compartment, she found the data card gone.

  Chapter 15

  Abi drove next to the Del Sur development and parked on the street outside the Bures home. She sat there for more than a minute, the car idling, before she finally killed the ignition and climbed out into the dry heat of the day.

  Her clogs clopped the driveway loudly, making her feel even more visible as a trespasser. What her plan was, she didn’t know. Be kind. Stay patient. Don’t run away, even if she was yelled at. Ask how Mrs. Bures was feeling, if she needed any help. Invite her over to dinner.

  She wouldn’t mention anything disturbing—not a single thing about the dedication ceremony or her husband or Abi’s own concerns—until she had earned the woman’s trust.

  Like last time, the windows were dark and the porch was cluttered with forgotten newspapers. Like last time, she rang the doorbell, waited, then knocked.

  But this time there was no response. She rang again, knocked again, then walked over to a window and peered inside. From here she could see the dining area and kitchen. Some takeout containers mucked with old chow mein sat on the table. Unwashed dishes were piled on the counter.

  But it was the bottles that bothered her most. Dozens and dozens of empty wine bottles. If a hard wind came through the house and blew across their open tops, it would have made a ghostly chorus.

  At the sound of an engine, Abi pulled back from the window. Why did she feel as if she was guilty of something? She was here to help.

  A familiar white van rolled down the street and slowed as it approached. MILLENNIUM PROCESSING was stenciled across the side. The coroners.

  Pete Rustad wore sunglasses, so his expression was hard to read, but only a few feet into the driveway, the van lurched to a stop. He had spotted her. She raised a hand, and he raised two fingers off the steering wheel in return.

  The van continued forward until it nearly nosed the garage door and the engine died with a wheeze. The driver door opened and Pete said, “Didn’t recognize you at first. Thought you were a Jehovah’s Witness or something!”

  “It’s just me,” she said. “Your friendly neighborhood medical examiner.”

  At this he laughed and reached out to shake her hand. She didn’t squeeze as hard this time but pulled away when he held on to her an eerily long time. Then he started for the rear of the van.

  “So,” she said. “I’m confused. What are you doing here?”

  “Doing here?” He unlatched the doors and unloaded a medical bag that he swung over his shoulder. “Same reason as you, I assume.”

  “I’m sorry?” The sun was at an angle that made her feel blind, even when she lifted a hand to shade her eyes.

  “I’m
here to collect the body.”

  “The body…”

  He stared at her curiously and blinked a few times before saying, “She’s dead. Neysa Bures is dead.”

  The front door was unlocked. Strange smells competed for her attention. Rotting garbage, sour milk, vinegary wine, body gas. Fruit flies clouded the air. Abi tried the lights, but the switches didn’t respond. They passed a messy heap of mail in the kitchen and Pete said, “Looks like they shut off the electricity on her.”

  The hallway that led to the master bedroom seemed to keep extending as they walked. Pictures hung from the walls. Framed photos of Paul and Neysa. Among the redwoods. Along the coast. She paused to study one photo—of Neysa kissing Paul on the cheek, while he scrunched his face up with delight—that might have been taken on their honeymoon. Back when they were the same age as Abi and Jeremy…

  Abi saw death every day. She thought she was immune to it. But that photo had the effect of a funhouse mirror: this dark, reeking house and dead marriage and drunk paranoid woman all added up to some cruel reflection, of what might befall Abi if she wasn’t careful.

  Neysa lay in bed, propped up crookedly by her pillows. Her eyes were half-lidded and her skin gray-green. She wore the same outfit as she did the day of the ICU ceremony, ruined by a purplish tide of vomit.

  “A neighbor called it in. Came to check on her and found her like this,” Pete said. “I thought you knew. I thought the wires got crossed at the department and they ended up calling us both.”

  “I just came by to check on her.” Abi spoke quietly, as if she were in a library or church, the same tone of voice she used when speaking into her recorder at work. The dead quieted her. “I was worried—”

  “Looks like you were right to be. Must have drank herself to death.” He gestured to several empty bottles of red wine stacked on the night table.