The Merlot Murders

Chapter 25

I left the barrel room and walked along the courtyard loggia toward the parking lot. I knew who. I didn’t understand why.

A man who had everything.

As I rounded the corner I nearly collided with him. He was dressed immaculately as always, even at this hour of the morning.

He looked astonished to see me. “Why, hello, sugar,” he smiled. “I wasn’t expecting to find you here.”

When Eli and I were kids, we used to fry marbles in an old cast-iron skillet, then pour ice water over them. The sudden temperature change would make them crack inwardly. The marbles were broken, but not shattered.

Looking into his familiar eyes I thought of those marbles. “That’s because you thought I’d be in the barrel room, where you left me last night. You’re the one who locked that door and shut off the electricity and the generators,” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do, Mason. You tried to kill me and you were coming back just now to make sure I was dead.” I held out the reading glasses. “These are yours, aren’t they?”

His face was like granite. “Where did you get them?”

“From Sara Rust. You must have dropped them when you were searching her house. That’s why you arrived so early at the concert last night. You couldn’t read the small print on your ticket so you thought it started at six thirty, not seven thirty. Why, Mason? Why did you do this?”

He slipped the gun out of a holster under his jacket as easily as if he’d been reaching for his starched handkerchief. “I wish you hadn’t done this, sugar. Now I’m going to have to do something about it. Let’s go.”

Mason went hunting every year with the Romeos. He was a crack shot.

“You wouldn’t.” He’d burped me as a baby, maybe even watched when my mother changed my diaper. I wasn’t fooling him.

“No one’s coming. I know Hector’s in the barrel room. And I saw Quinn leave about five minutes ago. So we haven’t got much time. Now move. I don’t want to shoot you here.” He motioned for me to walk in front of him to the parking lot.

The silver Mercedes was parked next to Bonita’s Corvette. “Get in,” he said, “and don’t do anything stupid. I don’t want blood all over my car.”

I got in the car. He leaned over me and pulled something out of his glove compartment. Plastic handcuffs. “Put your hands out.”

He cuffed me and we drove out of the parking lot, headed for Atoka Road. We passed the turnoff for Quinn’s cottage. No sign of the Toyota.

“He’ll be a while,” Mason said. “He’s got a few things to untangle.”

“What did you do to him?”

“Nothing.”

My voice shook. “Why are you doing this? Are you trying to buy the vineyard yourself? What do you want it for? You already own a palace.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“How do you know?”

He glanced over at me, with his most ruthless and pitiless courtroom eyes. “Because you’ve never been a success. Nor any of your family.”

I held up my hands, manacled in the plastic handcuffs. “What a shame I’m not as successful as you are. Look where it’s brought you.”

I shouldn’t have goaded him. He had that gun.

“Shut up!” He reached out and slapped my face hard with the back of his hand. My head jerked backward. We had reached Atoka Road. He put on his left turn signal, though there wasn’t a soul in sight. Law-abiding citizen kidnaps niece at gunpoint. At least he wouldn’t be cited for a traffic violation.

He drove through Atoka in silence, then turned onto Mosby’s Highway.

“I thought we’d take a little drive to the Goose Creek Bridge,” he said casually. “Since it’s one of your favorite spots.”

I’d never thought of him as sadistic before. He was enjoying this.

“Who was in the SUV, Mason?”

He didn’t even flinch. “Someone who owed me a favor. He’s not in jail like he oughta be.”

“And I was the favor. Was he supposed to kill me?”

He said, coolly, “It would have been an unexpected bonus.”

I shivered and stared at the man who used to bounce me on his knee. “Does Aunt Linda know what you’re doing?”

He glanced over at me and those eyes shut me up immediately.

Another blinker signal and we turned smoothly onto the gravel road that led to the Goose Creek Bridge. It was too much to hope that there would be someone there, picnicking at dawn. “Get out.”

I opened the car door and stepped out. He let me keep the golf club. It didn’t help much with the plastic handcuffs.

“Move.”

“Then take these handcuffs off,” I said, “or you can carry me.”

“Don’t be a fool.”

“The ground’s uneven. It’s hard enough using my cane, but nearly impossible with this golf club. Come on, Mason. Do you really think I can run away?”

He hesitated, then reached in his pocket and pulled out the key. I held out my hands as he unlocked them and yanked them off my wrists. For a moment he seemed unsure what to do with them. Then he opened the door to the Mercedes and threw them on the passenger seat.

“Walk to the bridge.”

I walked as slowly as I could, even stumbling a little, but he was only going to believe so much ineptitude. Besides, who was going to find me here?

We finally reached the arched stone bridge. The air was heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, as it had been when I was there with Kit…when? Two nights ago?

“Okay.” He gestured to the parapet. “Climb up there. You’re going to jump.”

“You are out of your mind. There’s no water.” I didn’t move from the gravel path. He was about ten yards away from me.

“You’re too distraught to notice. The vineyard has no future. Everyone in town knows you and Eli are battling over money because you’re broke.”

“Everyone in town knows I’m not suicidal.”

“You’re dependent on painkillers since your accident and it’s changed you. You became despondent when you found out your ex-lover was screwing your sister. You’re still in love with him, but he’s rejected you. Unfortunately, he finds you repulsive, with your twisted foot and that pathetic limp.” He added cruelly, “You’re ashamed of your deformity.”

I should not have been surprised that his fine, courtroom mind would have thought everything through so coldly and thoroughly. But his viciousness stunned me.

“I am not ashamed of anything. And I’m not in love with Greg Knight. You must be getting senile in your dotage, Mason. In addition to being very farsighted.”

It was stupid to continue to taunt him when he clearly had every intention of making sure I was dead before he climbed back in his Mercedes. I half-expected him to raise the hand with the gun and aim. Instead, he looked perplexed and then I knew why. He’d been getting his information from Greg, who was probably too vain to admit I’d rebuffed him.

“Why do you believe everything he tells you?” I said. “You were with him last night. You went to that concert to see him, didn’t you? And afterward he never went to the radio station. He replayed an earlier version of his call-in show. I heard him tell someone that the drought was going to continue for the next few days. But it’s going to rain today, isn’t it? He’s done this before. He can be in two places at once. Probably figures he’s got a rock-solid alibi for anything and no one will catch on.” Mason’s face, normally so inscrutable in the courtroom, gave him away for once. “Was he blackmailing you, like he was blackmailing Brandi?”

He didn’t answer.

“What dirt did he have on you, Mason? Did you bribe a judge? Lie under oath? Cheat on your taxes?”

“Shut up!”

I read somewhere that someone who was on the verge of committing murder enjoyed bragging about their accomplishments to their victims, probably because they were the only audience they could count on not to rat them out. He stood there with the gun and slowly raised his arm. I closed my eyes. He was going to shoot me now.

“He thought he could manipulate me.”

I opened my eyes. “But you were too smart for him, weren’t you?”

“Don’t you dare patronize me.”

“What happened?”

Mason’s jaw worked and for the first time since we’d embarked on this little adventure, he looked like he was ashamed of something. “It happened years ago.”

“What did?”

“Jimmy fixed my car one night after I had a small accident. Made it as good as new. It wasn’t the Mercedes. I had a Cadillac in those days. Greg happened to be around. He must have been about ten or eleven. Jimmy did me a little favor because I helped him out more than once, but the kid didn’t have the class of the old man. When he got older he realized what had happened.”

“Did you hit somebody?”

“It was an accident!” He sounded genuinely anguished. “It was raining, about ten o’clock at night. I didn’t even see the woman on the bicycle. It was a deserted stretch of Bull Run Mountain Road. Hell, there were no streetlights, not even a sliver of a moon. It was dark and she was wearing dark clothing. I thought I hit a deer. That’s why I didn’t go back. I was on my way to your house. I was supposed to take your mother to the hospital. She’d gone into labor with Mia.”

I swallowed hard. “Then what happened?”

He looked off toward the hills, like he was trying to recall. But I think it was probably because he was trying not to cry. “Jimmy found a piece of her dress in the undercarriage of my car. I never knew. By that time, I’d heard about the report of a Jane Doe found in a ditch on Bull Run Mountain Road. They had no clue who did it. Nothing to trace it to me.”

“Except that piece of her dress.”

He looked at me. “You have to understand, sugar. I have done a lot of good in my career. I have helped so many people. I have made it a crusade to do pro bono work for those people, most of whom would never have been able to hire a lawyer of my caliber.”

“What people?”

“She was Mexican.”

“I see.”

“I’m glad,” he said, “because let me tell you, I have repaid my debt to society. And it’s been far, far better this way than if I’d been behind bars.”

“Of course.”

“You do see, don’t you?”

“Yes.” I swallowed. “So what did Greg want from you?”

He smiled a rictus smile. “To be rich. To be like everyone else he grew up with. He hated it that Jimmy was a grease monkey. He knew that was his future, too. Hell, he’s not that smart. Just barely got through college without flunking out. He was too busy screwing girls and partying to really learn anything. But he wanted your house. More specifically, he wanted your land.”

I was stunned. “He has no money.”

“No, but I do. He knew your daddy was broke. He figured he could pick the place up for a song, then flip it and make a bundle.” He added, acidly, “I would have recouped my original investment of course. It would have cost me nothing.”

“He was going to sell to a group of developers who want to build a Civil War theme park. That’s how he was going to make a bundle.”

Now he looked surprised. “Who told you that? The Eastman girl.” He spoke with the same kind of venom as when he had talked about my “deformity.” “I’ll handle that.”

“Leave her alone. She hasn’t done anything. She doesn’t know any of this.”

His laugh was unpleasant. “Don’t worry, sugar. I don’t resort to something this extreme unless the situation warrants it.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Don’t you smart-mouth me or I’ll shoot you in the one good leg you’ve got left. If the fall from the bridge doesn’t kill you, you’ll bleed to death.”

“You mean, like Leland?”

He looked momentarily startled, then he smiled. “Poor old Lee. If only he’d gone along with me, none of this would have happened. It all would have been peaceable. He’d have his money and we’d have the land.”

“Were you with him that day?”

“I was.”

“You killed him.”

“Now, honey, don’t you go sayin’ things like that,” he drawled, like I’d just said a cuss word and he was trying to make me mind my manners. “Your daddy died in an honest-to-God hunting accident.”

“You’re lying. You shot him.”

“Lucie love, I’m warning you. Let me put you right on this. Lee asked me to go along with him to shoot a few of those pesky crows that were eating your grapes. What happened was he got tangled up in a trellis wire while he was sneaking up on some danged bird. He should have known better than to have his finger on the trigger. Damn thing went off and he shot himself. Unfortunately, he bled to death before anybody could get to him in time.”

“You left him there to die.”

He looked at me severely. “I had to protect my reputation.”

“Of course you did.”

“You’re sassing me again, sugar. I don’t like that.” He waved the gun at me. “I’d hate to have to really shoot you. You know I’m against handguns except for legitimate hunting purposes. Plus I didn’t bring the silencer.”

I almost said “what a pity” but that fell in the category of sassing him and I wasn’t sure how much patience he had left. “What happened to Fitz?”

He almost spat. “That was Greg.”

“Greg killed Fitz?” I stammered.

“Had to. Fitz came upon him when he was at the winery that night. He figured everyone would be at Lee’s wake and he wanted to go through things in case Lee had been sloppy and left anything around that might get back to him. So he made it look like a robbery, guessing you’d think it was one of your migrant workers.”

“I met Greg leaving the wake as Eli and I arrived. What did he do, rebroadcast his show that night, too? Until somebody figured out it was an old show, it looked like he always had an alibi, didn’t it?”

“He did have it all figured out,” Mason said. “He shacked up with Mia and screwed her until he got her to see reason about agreeing to sell your land. Then he had Brandi work on Eli. He had some old letters she’d written him. She wanted him to pay for the abortion and I guess he finally coughed up a little something.”

“Abortion?”

“Yes,” he said, “they had quite the fling.”

So Brandi wasn’t faking her difficult pregnancy. “That’s sick.”

“He’s not a nice guy,” Mason said. “Then you came home. Greg was getting tired of Mia anyway, so he decided to work on you. He bet he could get you to go to bed with him within a week. But you wouldn’t cooperate, would you? I think he really wanted to do this without it getting messy.”

“It got messy enough that you tried to set Sara Rust’s house on fire so you could get rid of the records from Knight’s Auto Body.”

There was a distant rumble of thunder. It could have come straight from hell. “Aren’t you the clever girl,” he said. “Guess we’re going to get that rain, aren’t we?” He motioned with his gun. “Let’s get on with it. I don’t want to get this suit wet.”

“Don’t do this. You haven’t killed anyone. Don’t.”

“Don’t be difficult, sugar.”

“I’m not jumping.”

“I’m going to have to shoot you, then.”

“Then do it.”

He raised his hand and aimed. I looked away.

“Goddamnit, Lucie! Jump!”

I looked over at him. He was furious.

“No.”

“Then I’ll have to make you.”

It’s still hard to remember precisely how it happened, but he did make a lunge for me. I swung the golf club at him, as hard as I could. The hooked end caught his hand, knocking the gun out of his grip. He yelped with pain and staggered to regain his balance. But I think those nice wing tips must have been brand new, because he slipped on the gravel like it was greased. He stumbled forward and pitched toward the low wall. God help me, but I swung at him again. He went over the ledge head first. His scream reminded me of the Wicked Witch of the West as she melted to her death.

I got to the parapet and looked down. He lay crumpled, face down in the dry creek bed. He’d landed among some river rocks. I was sure he was dead. If we got the kind of rain that the skies seemed to be promising, there’d be water flowing there again and maybe it would wash him downstream toward the Potomac.

I got back to the Mercedes, hobbling as fast as I could across the rough ground. There had been a car phone on the dashboard. I didn’t remember him locking the doors. Not only was the car unlocked, he’d left the keys in the ignition.

I took the phone out of the cradle and punched the button with the little green telephone on it. Greg’s name flashed on the display. I hit the button again and the LED display flashed that it was calling his number.

He answered instantly. “I’m leaving the house. I’m finished with the gasoline. You got rid of her, didn’t you?”

I disconnected.