Murder in Paradise Read online

  In the exam room, Jeremy spoke quietly and assuredly to a boy who whimpered and shook his head. “It’s okay,” Jeremy said, hiding the needle from him. “It’s only a little poke. A tickle-pinch. You’ll only feel it for a second. I promise.”

  There was a knock on the door and Stacie popped her head in. “Thought you were probably ready for a refill.” She hefted a container of vaccines and set it on the counter beside the sink. “You have enough M&M’s?”

  “For another few hours anyway.”

  “You’re pushing the HPV vax on all the girls and moms, right?”

  She had been especially adamant about this, mentioning it several times this morning. He said, “Don’t worry. Everybody’s getting dosed.”

  “Good work,” she said. “Is that your phone, by the way? It’s driving me crazy.”

  With the door open, the ringtone was even more obnoxious, its volume rising and falling like a siren.

  “Sorry about that. Could you shut it off for me, next time you’re near the lounge? It’s in my jacket.”

  “Happily.” Stacie smiled at the boy and the boy smiled back. Jeremy used that distracted moment to plunge the syringe into his shoulder.

  The boy let out a shriek, and Jeremy said, “All done. That was easy, right?”

  Two hours and two dozen patients later, Stacie poked her head into the exam room again. “Knock, knock.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Time for a quick break.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Sure you can.” She waved for him to follow. “It will only take a minute.”

  He washed his hands—which had gone raw from the soap—and followed her down the hallway and then out the back door. “What’s up?” he said, and blinked painfully in the sunlight.

  It took him a second to process what she was motioning toward.

  Beside the Dumpster, in the alley, an egg-white Bentley idled. Its rear door open. He couldn’t be certain, because the windows were tinted, but he thought it was the same car from yesterday. At The French Laundry. Mr. Stelling’s.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Eric wants to talk to you about something.”

  “About what?”

  “Something.” Stacie always smiled, but she wasn’t smiling now when she put a hand to his back and led him toward the car. “About your future.”

  “Is something wrong?” He remembered the phone then. “Did you happen to see who was calling me earlier? Was it my wife?”

  She scooped an arm through his elbow, as she had done the night before, and led him toward the car. “No need to worry.”

  “But was it her?”

  “It was. But like I said, there’s no need to worry.”

  When they reached the car, she released him and he leaned toward the vehicle to say hello, to fold his body into the rear seat. At that moment he felt a prick at his neck, and he swatted his hand there, thinking he had been stung. But instead of a wasp, he found Stacie’s hand. She gripped a syringe.

  It didn’t take long—only a few seconds—for the drugs to flood his system. The sensation was a little like a black blanket drawn over him, the promise of a deep, terrible sleep.

  “Don’t worry,” she said as she lowered him into the backseat. “It will only hurt for a second. And when you wake up, I’ll give you a magic M&M.”

  Chapter 23

  Abi didn’t realize she was being followed. Not at first.

  It felt important to move. Her thoughts were stopping and starting and turning and merging, and so was she as she drove through Napa—first the city, then the valley itself.

  Abi’s parents had a routine of Sunday drives. After church and their noon dinner, they all climbed in the station wagon for a drive around Chippewa Valley. Not saying much, except to point out foliage or a new combine or a house being torn down. Otherwise, they rode in silence, maybe with the radio playing old country. It was a time for reflection, to process the week prior and ready for the week ahead.

  Abi felt calmer as she followed the roads that twisted through the blond hills and green clusters of trees. She passed bicyclists with picnic baskets lashed to their handlebars and limos with people laughing out the open windows. Here was a spa, a cedar lodge with a mineral-water pool, a stony inn advertising organic sheets, a resident masseuse, and a lamb shoulder dinner. Here were solar panels flashing on hillsides beside rows and rows of knotty vines.

  She called the hospital first, confirming the toxicology report with her assistant, which established the trace presence of conotoxins in the sample taken from her pants. She asked the assistant to scan and send the file to her email. “Now, please, as soon as we hang up.”

  The news was one more piece of a jigsaw puzzle that was coming together. It didn’t surprise or excite her. Not much could, after seeing Paul Bures’s photos.

  Paul Bures had done his homework. His photos captured vehicles, locations, and people; they made explicit the connections he must have suspected.

  The coroner, Pete Rustad, walking through a vineyard with Sheriff Chase Colton, tasting a grape plucked off the vine. Chase Colton climbing out of his Range Rover at The French Laundry, then sitting down at a table with Eric Stelling and Matthew O’Neel, in photos taken through vine-tangled windows. The dead councilwoman, Mary Rizzio, in a heated argument with Matthew O’Neel at a park in Yountville. The photos were taken rapid-fire enough to appear filmic: Abi watched O’Neel handing Mary a leather satchel, which spilled money when she refused it, knocking it over and walking away.

  There were other photos too. Some highlighted well-known wineries and restaurants and spas. Handshakes. Hugs. Whispers. Toasts. Some included women she recognized from the Ladies’ Night Out. How many of these people were actually connected? How widely did this conspiracy spiral outward?

  But the photos, along with the toxicology report, cemented Abi’s understanding that something murderous was indeed happening here. She had inherited the work of her predecessor in more ways than one.

  Two series of photos in particular made her feel as if she might unravel with panic. They were the reason she was driving now, trying to outrun her shredded nerves, while taking deep calming breaths, blowing them out until her lungs were empty.

  The first series showed Matthew O’Neel unloading boxes at the Stelling Free Clinic. He was parked in the alleyway and assisted by the blond-ponytailed nurse—Sarah? Stacie? Abi had forgotten her name.

  The telephoto lens focused on the box’s label as Matthew hefted it into Stacie’s arms, and Abi could make out a word: cyclophosphamide. This was a chemo drug, she knew. Cyclophosphamide had shown up in a wrongful death lawsuit she had been involved with in Milwaukee.

  Why would O’Neel be the one delivering it, given his rank? And why would the free clinic distribute it, given their limited resources?

  For the lawsuit, Abi had performed a heartbreaking autopsy on a baby whose father accused the mother of killing the child. She had downed a chemo cocktail known to cause miscarriage, or a “ninth-month abortion” as the newspaper had said.

  The memory brought Abi to the woman selling flowers, who had collapsed at the Ladies’ Night Out. Who had miscarried her child at the Stelling Clinic after having been “vaccinated” at the very same place, the very same day.

  Abi hurriedly thumbed her phone, calling Jeremy. Waiting for the voice mail to pick up, then trying again. Waiting for voice mail, redialing. He had to answer eventually. He might be ignoring her, still sore from their fight from this morning, or he might be too busy. But he had to answer. Had to. She texted as she drove, trying to explain what was happening, knowing it would sound crazy or alarmist, but at least then he would call her back.

  The second series of photos that had caught Abi’s attention depicted the hot air balloon’s ascent. A dawn-pinkened sky over mist-smoked vineyards. The red and white stitching of the balloon itself, swollen with the heat of the burner. The thick wicker basket that hauled Paul Bures into the sky.

 
; And then…image after image of a winery. One with several cars she recognized parked in its lot, despite the early hour. The Range Rover, the white Bentley, a squad car, among others.

  The facility was not an old mansion or a Spanish revival or a steel-roofed, sharply geometric modern design, like so many of the other wineries here. Instead it was built into a hill, mounded with dirt that created a giant conical shape. Bushes were planted in diagonal patterns, curling from one side to the other, giving it the grain and form of a shell. The shell of a cone snail.

  And then the photos zoomed in on a car parked outside. The squad car. Zooming closer. And closer still. There was a man beside the car. He was holding something: a rifle. The rifle was aimed at the camera. His face was half hidden behind the scope. But she could see the mustache. She could see that it was Dean Poole. And then the black bore of the muzzle blurred. The gun fired.

  A tear streaked down Abi’s cheek as she imagined Paul’s last moments, and she roughed it away with her hand. Then she blew out another steadying breath and checked herself in the rearview mirror.

  That was when she noticed the vehicle behind her. A forest-green Range Rover. Could it be the same one from the photographs?

  Abi took her foot off the gas and the vehicle closed in. She knew it was him. The sheriff, Chase Colton, his broad silhouette just visible through the sun-smeared windshield.

  Some small part of Abi hoped it was a coincidence, but when she picked up speed, he did too. She took several turns and still he followed. She pushed the accelerator to sixty, to seventy on a straightaway, and he growled up behind her until he filled the mirror.

  She braced herself, gripping the wheel two-handed, certain he was about to crunch her bumper and shove her off the road. But he only nudged her, a test, or a warning.

  She thought about reaching for her phone to dial 911, but what could she possibly tell them? I need the police—to rescue me from the police?

  Then Colton gained speed again, and she cringed as his lights flashed and his grill loomed.

  But then he backed off by ten yards.

  A short stream of traffic flowed by—a Mustang, a Viper, a Mercedes convertible—and she realized her only hope was to stay seen, to find someplace public and surround herself with people.

  So when Abi saw a sign for the Francis Ford Coppola Winery, she crushed the brake, spun the wheel hard, and skidded slightly as she sped into its parking lot.

  Chapter 24

  The parking lot already held a hundred cars, maybe more, but Abi managed to shove into a space near the entrance. She stepped out and felt the heat of the day. The air tasted like dust.

  Abi shouldered her purse and rushed down the sidewalk, pushing past visitors who were snapping photos or taking in the grounds. At picnic tables staggered across a sunlit patio, people snacked on cheese and crackers and clinked their wineglasses together.

  Pulling the door open, Abi overheard someone say, “I hear Nicolas Cage sometimes hangs out here. He’s the nephew, you know.”

  She looked back to see Colton starting up the pathway, maybe fifty yards back. He leaned forward like a linebacker moving in for a tackle, his eyes on her. She considered hiding in the bathroom, but if he had followed her this far, he wasn’t going anywhere. She was better off hiding in plain sight.

  The building was dedicated as much to Hollywood history as to wine, perfectly capturing the aspirational but exclusionary quality of Napa. Here was the desk from The Godfather, the red armor striated with muscle from Dracula, the hat and boots Robert Duvall wore in Apocalypse Now, a gleaming row of Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscars.

  Abi found the tasting room and pushed up against the busy counter, wondering if the people around her could hear the slamming of her heart. She tried not to look for Colton, but she could feel him coming. Her back felt exposed, vulnerable. As if he could reach out with one of those big hands and rip the spine from her body.

  A bartender—young, with a choppy, gelled haircut—approached her with a smile. He pointed out the list of wines available to sample and asked her what she was in the mood for. She couldn’t tell whether his slight British accent was real.

  Abi’s voice seemed separate from her as she requested the chardonnay. “Of course,” he said. “A good choice for a hot day.” He poured a splash into a glass, gave it a swirl, and said, “It’s got a nice buttery finish, from the French oak barrels. Let me know what you think.”

  When she reached for the glass, her hand was shaking so badly that she almost knocked it over.

  She heard his voice before she saw him. “You two mind if I sneak in here?” he said to the couple beside her. “Need to chat with my friend here.”

  The couple scooted over and made room for him and he laid his arms on the bar and leaned forward with a happy sigh. “This place is a circus,” he said, turning toward her with a smile. “But the wine isn’t bad. Not bad at all.”

  Colton was close enough that she could smell the mint on his breath. His face was broad and pink, his body hulking. He must weigh twice as much as her, if not more.

  The shiver in her hand took over her whole body, a surge of adrenaline that made her teeth chatter in her mouth. Abi concentrated on remaining still.

  He knocked his knuckles on the counter. “How about the claret?” he called out to the bartender, who hurried over with a bottle and glass.

  “This is a full-bodied wine,” the man said in his lilting, singsong voice. “Packed with fruit. You might notice some black cherries. And a certain plumminess. It’s heavy with tannins, so that ripeness will give way to an interesting dry, acidic zing. Now forgive me for making assumptions, but you look like a man who knows his way around a grill.”

  “I am!” Colton said. “Charcoal all the way.”

  “Well, this claret would go perfectly with a steak. Try to imagine following up each sip with a rare bite of dry-rubbed porterhouse.”

  “Hey, that sounds great.” He nudged Abi with his elbow, and she nearly cried out. “This guy’s good at what he does. Thanks, buddy.”

  “Cheers,” the bartender said, and left them to attend to a woman down the counter, wondering if they had any sweet wines.

  Colton swirled the wine. “Good legs.” He sniffed deeply from the glass. “Nice stink to it.” And then he slurped a drink and smacked his lips. “That’s pretty all right.”

  “So,” Abi said, barely a whisper.

  “So?” he said.

  Abi turned to face him and was able to maintain a steady gaze, but her eyes kept blinking, and she felt like she had forgotten how to breathe. “Why?” was the only word she could manage.

  “That’s a complicated question.”

  “Maybe I should rephrase it. How could you?” This came out as a scolding whisper.

  But he only chuckled and took another sip of his wine, the redness clinging to his lips. “We were really hoping to have this conversation with you down the line. After we all got to know each other a little better.”

  The words were coming easier now, the fear giving way to anger. “Oh, and how were you planning on doing that? Make me feel special? Invite me out to French Laundry, slip me a fat envelope?”

  “Worked on your husband.”

  She spit more than said, “He didn’t know what you were offering.”

  “From what I heard, he seemed open to anything.”

  She focused on her glass, staring through the wine, studying the way it warped the wood grain of the bar top. “By the time he understood what was going on, he’d be in too deep. Was that what you hoped?”

  “Oh, he’s already there. Deep enough that he’s already drowning in it.”

  “Because of what’s happening at the clinic.”

  “You said it.”

  “You’re sterilizing poor people.”

  “I’m not doing anything except keeping my county safe and happy.”

  “How many people have you killed?”

  “Me? I’ve never killed anyone. Sheriff is an elected
position, remember? I’m more of a politician, a dealmaker.”

  “So what’s the deal you’re proposing?”

  “It’s a pretty lucrative one.”

  “I don’t care about—”

  “You care about your husband’s life? Because that’s what’s on the table.”

  “Liar.”

  He dug into his pocket then, and though she knew it was ridiculous to think he might draw a weapon here, that was where her brain went. It took her a moment to recognize what he held: a cell phone, not a gun or blade. He pulled up a photo to show her.

  Jeremy. In some shadowed space. His eyes half lidded, his gaze uncertain, drugged. His hands cuffed. She thought she could make out some wine barrels in the background.

  Colton set down the phone on the bar and slugged back most of his wine. “There’s a way out of this.”

  Before she could respond, a bright voice called out to them. “Well, hey there, stranger!”

  Chase’s eyes tracked away from her and his expression shifted in an instant, suddenly warm and expansive. He shifted off his stool to shake the hand of a man in a golf shirt and sharply creased khakis. “What do you know, Bob? Haven’t seen you in months.”

  Colton stood close, but turned his back against her, blocking the man off from any contact with Abi while walling her in.

  The bartender came over, seeing that Colton’s glass had only a tiny puddle of wine at its bottom. “Another pour? Or is he done?”

  Abi said, “Go ahead.”

  Then she thought better of it, grabbed the glass, and said to him in a rush, “Actually no! Leave it. Thanks.”

  Abi waited until the bartender slid away to another customer, then reached into her purse, her hand closing around the neck of a bottle.

  It was another three minutes before Colton slapped his friend on the back and promised to arrange a nine-hole outing one of these afternoons. Then he settled back onto his stool and picked up his glass. He toasted it against Abi’s, downed the wine in a gulp, and said, “Make a decision yet?”

  “Can I have a little more time?”