Murder in Paradise Read online

  He gave a little snort. “How long do you need?”

  “About a minute, I think.”

  Less than that, actually. He was already beginning to wheeze. A vein forked at his temple. His eyes began to bulge. He slammed his hand against the counter, trying to maintain his balance.

  But before he fell to the floor, his body shuddering, she pulled the bottle out of her purse, showing off the logo of Shellsong Estates. “It’s like you said. There’s a way out of this.”

  He would be somebody else’s autopsy.

  Chapter 25

  It was possible Colton would live. She hadn’t poured much wine into the glass. But even if he did, she didn’t feel as bothered as she probably should. Maybe that would change. Or maybe she had encountered enough death in her profession that it felt like a common enough currency. She was able to see his body failing him, tracking the poison through his system, imagining the tissues swelling in his throat, the tiny hemorrhages occurring all through his body, bursting like fireworks from the intravascular pressure.

  She had no sympathy. Right now Abi cared only about her husband. And she didn’t have much time to save him.

  So when Colton fell to the ground, she snatched his phone off the counter and slid it into her purse. Then she knelt beside him and feigned worry, shaking his shoulders, calling out, “Somebody call 911! Is anybody here a doctor? Please!”

  Nobody noticed when she slipped the keys out of his pocket. Just as nobody noticed when she slipped away after a man announced, “I’m a doctor. Please. Make room,” and knelt beside Colton’s shuddering slab of a body.

  In the parking lot, Abi held up the key fob and hit the button. A horn chirped and she found the Range Rover hurriedly parked diagonally, taking up two spaces. She climbed in and checked the glove box. Nothing but registration papers. Then she reached beneath the seat and found what was she was looking for: a spring-loaded holster containing a Desert Eagle.

  Abi popped the clip out and found it full. She nudged off the safety. She was no stranger to guns; she had grown up hunting deer every fall. Her parents had a gravel pit on the edge of their property where they had set up a target range, using coffee cans and pop bottles to shoot with .22s and .357s.

  Abi set the pistol on the passenger seat and cranked the ignition. She wasn’t even a mile down the road before an ambulance came flashing by her, its siren wailing.

  Abi parked a mile away from Shellsong Estates at a cheese shop in St. Helena. Not because she was having second thoughts, but because she knew she needed some insurance.

  Earlier that day, in the tomblike stillness of the Bures’s home, it had been easy for Abi to remember she could end up like Paul and Neysa. Dead because of what she knew. So she had emailed all of the cloud photos to herself and then downloaded them onto her phone.

  She balanced Jamet’s business card on the dash and thumbed out a series of emails, attaching the photos along with the toxicology reports she had gathered and the very best summation of what had happened that she could manage in the short time afforded to her.

  They barely knew each other, yet Jamet felt like the only person in Napa that Abi could trust. Who would grasp the horror of what was happening here—a kind of eugenics program. Jamet brought life into the world, after all. She was the mother. A baby catcher, she had called herself.

  “I need your help,” Abi wrote. “If you don’t hear from me by tonight, it’s safe to assume I’m dead. In which case, I need you to share this information with the city police, the Napa Valley Register, the San Francisco Chronicle, whoever you think can help.”

  When she hit send, it made her feel less alone.

  Chapter 26

  Classical music played constantly through the tunnel system at Shellsong Estates. Violins flowed and pianos trembled. And sometimes, because of the arrangement of the chambers, choral compositions would echo so that the underground winery sounded like it was full of choirs calling back and forth to each other. This soothed Eric Stelling, and he believed it as essential to enology as the timing of the grape harvest, the malolactic conversion of the tanks, the oak of the aging barrels.

  This was what he cared about most. Improving quality. Removing impurities.

  It informed his interest in wine, as he carefully curated vintages that won awards of excellence and rated in the 90s for Wine Spectator. It encouraged his investment in medicine, as he built and expanded a private hospital system that would benefit those who could pay for the care they deserved.

  And it’s what made him call Napa home. A perfect dose of naturalism and protectionism and experimentation had made Napa into the premier wine region in the world. Terroir, the myriad environmental and cultural influences when growing grapes and making wine. The sense of place. The geographic identity. The somewhereness, you might say, of a region.

  The same terroir mind-set could be applied to its people as well. Protectionism was his goal. Refinement. The natural gifts of this place, aided by law, politics, and science, could create a stronger, more elite population.

  Jeremy was handcuffed to a chair in the innermost chamber. The heart of the ocean ballroom. Seated at the head of a large stone-topped table as if he were awaiting a meal. When he finally woke up, he cried out in a wobbly voice, saying, “I don’t understand.”

  “And you don’t need to,” Stelling said. Any more than the grape pickers need to understand fermentation.

  They had stationed him at the free clinic because he seemed vacant and eager to please. They had hired his wife because she was young and inexperienced. Jeremy wasn’t the problem. She was. But maybe they could still move forward. Money changed minds. So did blackmail. Jeremy’s culpability in the vaccination program put him at risk. And if none of that worked, they would simply be eliminated and replaced.

  Jeremy said, “I don’t understand” again, his words louder this time. He blinked his bleary eyes. He smacked his cottony mouth. He yanked at the cuffs. “What—why am I here?”

  “Everything will be fine,” Stelling said. “Don’t you worry. Your wife will make the right decision.”

  The rough-hewn rock walls framed brightly lit saltwater aquariums cut into them. When Stelling paced the room, his reflection slid across them like a pale blue ghost. The tanks were home to fish and coral, but also limpets and whelks and cone snails. Hundreds of snails, their rounded and spiked shells threaded with reds and pinks and purples. They were pets, mascots, weapons. Their venom was the final ingredient in what he called black wine: a small batch that could be found in the cellars of several local restaurants and basements. An arsenal on standby that they used to quiet those whose goals didn’t align with their own.

  Many would find his position horrifying. He understood that point of view, and the limits of it. But here was the simple truth: geographically, economically, genetically—the world was not equal. California had Muir Woods, Mount Shasta, Yosemite, Death Valley, the redwood forests, the Pacific coastline. California had Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and the agriculture industry—and thus the seventh largest economy in the world. Dreamers moved here, innovators—the talented and the beautiful. It was superior in every way.

  And Napa was its crown jewel, its gated community, its inland island. And it was worthy of protection from undesirables.

  Jeremy rattled the cuffs. “Please let me out. Let me out please.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you were quiet,” Stelling said, making his voice as gentle as possible, and Jeremy stared at him, confused but obedient. “Your wife will be here soon. Then we’ll all talk.”

  He checked his phone for what must have been the twentieth time in as many minutes. He had received a text from Colton, alerting him that he had cornered the Brenner woman, but more than an hour had passed since. He typed out a message: “Still nothing?”

  Stelling was standing before a hundred-gallon aquarium and humming along with a Chopin sonata when it happened.

  A gunshot sounded, and the same acoustics that carried classical mu
sic through the winery sent the report booming and rippling into the chamber where he waited.

  Chapter 27

  There was no tasting room at Shellsong Estates. No grape-to-glass tours. Aside from the occasional private event, the gates were closed to the public. But this was September, and the harvest was under way. The hot August weather had transitioned the grapes from veraison to full ripeness.

  So the vineyard was full of workers, snipping clusters into buckets, loading them onto the backs of Gators. And the gates—silver and blacksmithed to look like crashing waves, bordered by rough stony pillars—were open. For one short moment, when Abi passed through them, she thought this might be easier than expected.

  Then she spotted the squad car, parked back in the brush.

  She guessed Dean Poole hadn’t seen her. She hoped. She drove the Range Rover down the long crushed shell driveway. It was flanked by gnarled oak trees, the setting sun in red flashes between them. She was halfway to the winery when the squad car pulled out, following—slowly, not in any rush. Whether because he was biding his time or because he believed her to be Colton, she didn’t know.

  A half dozen trucks and sedans were parked in the pebbled lot. A few with primer gray doors. Another missing its bumper. The same sort of vehicles she saw in the trailer park. The same sort of vehicle driven by Alexei Petrov, who she assumed at this point had been a random casualty, stung by one of the cone snails Stelling must keep inside the facility. She could see the men and women working, distant figures moving among the vines.

  From Paul’s aerial photos, the winery had appeared as a conical shell, but from the ground it looked like something out of The Hobbit, a large grassy mound with two double doors built into it.

  Abi pulled up as close as she could. And waited. A faint trail of dust hung in the air, coughed up by the Range Rover, and she saw the squad car following it.

  She curled a hand around the pistol. Checked, then double-checked the safety. Pressed her body into the seat, making herself as small as possible.

  She had parked in such a way that he wouldn’t pull up alongside her, but she could see him. She heard the engine to the squad car cut and the door open, and saw Dean step out. She thought he was reaching for his gun, but he was just hitching his belt. He ran a hand along his mustache, neatening it, as he moved closer.

  When she swung the door open, he called, “Well? You got her?”

  She swiftly aimed down the line of her arm, trained the Desert Eagle on him, and said, “Yes.”

  Chapter 28

  Saltwater aquariums, two hundred gallons each, flanked the foyer of Shellsong Estates. They bubbled faintly. Fish flitted through pale blue water. Eels curled lazily. Coral bloomed. Cone snails spiked the white sand bottom.

  Dean walked a few yards ahead of her, his hands up. She knew she ought to reach out, yank the gun from his holster, toss it aside, but she didn’t want to risk getting that close. Or risk his finger on the trigger if she asked him to do it himself.

  “We wanted to talk to you,” he said. “You don’t have to be on the outside of this.”

  “I don’t want anything from you,” she said. “Except my husband.”

  She stood in the doorway, holding it open, and a wedge of sunlight lit up a mosaic on the floor. It was ten feet in circumference, a multicolored rendering of the winery’s shell logo. Dean stood in the center of it. “That’s far enough.”

  “Where’s Colton?”

  “Probably the ER.”

  The doors closed behind her and choked off the sun. There was no light beyond that of the aquariums, and it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the shadowy space.

  That was when Dean made his move, dodging to the side and reaching for his own pistol.

  His shot hit the door behind her, lodging in it with a splintering crack. Hers hit the aquarium behind him. The gunshots were drowned out by the sound of glass shattering. The water released from the tank with a shushing boom.

  Dean was hit by the surging wave, jeweled with thousands of pieces of broken glass. He got off one more shot, aimed wildly at the ceiling, before he collapsed and rolled over with the tide.

  Instantly the air smelled of brine. The wave hit her knees, and she stumbled but did not fall. The water subsided after only a second, hissing down the curving hallway. The broken aquarium dribbled and plopped. And Dean sputtered and coughed on the floor, climbing up on his hands and knees, searching among the shells for his lost pistol.

  Abi didn’t hesitate. She shot him twice—once in each leg—incapacitating him.

  While he screamed, cursing her, she kicked through the coral and shells until she found the gun. Then tucked it into her waistband and started down the hallway, splashing her way through puddles as she jogged.

  * * *

  She could hear her husband calling out—“Help! Anybody? Let me out!”—and she tried to follow his voice. But Dean’s screaming and the orchestral music interrupted Jeremy’s echoing plea, and the curved, interlocking hallways and chambers confused the sound. Sometimes he sounded ahead of her and sometimes he sounded behind.

  She didn’t dare respond to Jeremy, not wanting to reveal herself. But she couldn’t help but cry out when the phone in her pocket buzzed. It was Colton’s. She had snatched it off the counter, back at the Coppola Winery, hoping it might house some evidence. Someone was trying to reach him now, and when she pulled out the phone, she saw that the screen listed the caller as Eric Stelling.

  She answered without saying hello.

  And there was that voice. “Chase?” The one from the ICU dedication ceremony. “Chase?” The one she would have mistaken for an old woman’s, if she didn’t know better. “Chase, is that you? I heard gunshots. I hear screaming. What happened? Do you know what’s happening?”

  He sounded so fragile. She imagined him somewhere deep in the winery, pale and frightened and retreating into his shell.

  She hung up. Not knowing what kind of danger her husband might be in, but not wanting to give away her advantage. Stelling sounded afraid and uncertain and she wanted him to stay that way. For all he knew, a SWAT team might be swarming toward him.

  The ever-curving space was lit by the occasional shell-shaped sconce or aquarium. Abi had no idea where she was, lost in the coil of hallways. Wine barrels were stacked along the walls and among them were so many shadowed spaces to hide. She turned in constant circles, looking ahead and behind and to all sides of her. For all she knew she was covering the same fifty yards repeatedly.

  She heard a clattering thud—like something heavy and wooden falling over. Jeremy’s voice had gone silent, and she worried what might have happened to him.

  Abi had felt nauseous with fear for some time, but now her stomach cramped and her vision wheeled and she had to lean against a wine barrel for a moment before the feeling passed.

  Then she took a deep breath and approached an archway that opened up into a wider space. She could see a stone-topped table with more than twenty high-backed chairs surrounding it. An event space. She edged through the doorway, her eyes sweeping the space, seeing nothing.

  And then she heard her name—“Abi?”—and swung the pistol toward the source of the sound.

  One of the chairs was on the ground, and her husband remained seated in it, his wrists and ankles handcuffed. While tipping himself over, one of the arms had splintered, and he reached out to her with his free hand. “Abi!”

  “Where is he?”

  Jeremy motioned toward an archway on the other side of the room. “He took off. Just a few minutes ago. He hung up the phone and ran through there.”

  She hurried over to Jeremy and put her hands on him. His cheeks rough with stubble. Just to feel him. To make it real that he was still alive.

  “Will you help me?” she said.

  “First you need to help me,” he said, and rattled the chains of his handcuffs for emphasis.

  Chapter 29

  Jeremy had so many questions, but she didn’t have time for answe
rs. People were dying. That’s all he needed to know right now. People were dying and Stelling was behind it.

  From the look on his face, he clearly wanted to say, “This is crazy.” Only the gun in her hand—and the Glock she handed him, Dean’s—made the situation inarguable.

  He rattled as he moved beside her. They had broken him free of the chair, but the handcuffs still dangled off him. They ran a few paces, then paused to listen. Then ran farther before pausing again.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” Jeremy said.

  “No clue,” she said. “Out.”

  The chamber where she’d found Jeremy was not only at the center of the winery, but also at its deepest point. The corridors all had a slope to them, Jeremy pointed out; if they wanted to get out, they had to go up.

  They heard a noise up ahead, down the bend of the passage. A scrape. A groan. Then the boom-boom-boom of ten or so barrels collapsing from their stack and rolling toward them.

  They both fired, stupidly, shocked by the sudden motion up ahead. A small crater opened in one barrel and a geyser of red wine frothed from it as it turned over and over, rushing toward them.

  Jeremy scooped an arm around Abi’s waist and pulled her off to the side as some of the barrels rolled past, others crashing into stacks and collapsing, a domino effect that continued down the corridor.

  “Thanks,” she said to Jeremy. “But I don’t need you saving me.”

  “I know you don’t,” he said.

  Abi eyed the tunnel ahead and bashed the grip of the pistol against her forehead. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Maybe we should go back,” Jeremy said. “Maybe we should go back and try to circle around another way.”

  “No,” she said. “No. We’re not running. We’re chasing.”

  They clambered over the barrels jamming up the tunnel. Up ahead the air grew brighter—and when they rounded the bend, they saw a doorway exiting into a high-ceilinged, fluorescent-lit room.