A Tainted Finish: A Sydney McGrath Mystery (12 page)

Syd had to wait outside of Jack’s office for ten minutes. She sat for a while, but found that pacing was far more comfortable. So she went outside and paced the same strip of concrete she observed Alejandro pacing the day before. The sky had been heavy with a steady drizzle earlier, but a breeze had stirred up a true autumn crispness that chilled her to the bone. She would have to ask Charlie to bring her some more clothes. She had rushed packing the week before and had little to wear for the sudden weather change other than the wardrobe of her youth that had been left behind in her closet. Eventually, Jack came out to beckon her inside.

“Getting chilly,” he said as he escorted her into his office, closing the door behind her.

The office was the same as the morning before, but the box that sat on Jack's desk was gone. Syd sat down and rubbed her chilled hands together.

“What can I help you with, Syd?” Jack asked, with the confidence of a man who knew the answer to his question.

“I want to know about the insurance policies, Jack.” Jack looked startled.

“I talked to Paul. Yours should fund within the month.” He shifted his weight in his chair.

“Yes, I know that. I meant the other ones. The key man policies. The one you have.”

He sighed and splayed his hands out on the table flatly. He stared at them for a moment before he spoke in a quiet voice. “Those policies will be nullified. I have a meeting with Paul later today.”

“But Paul said they were legitimate.”

“He thought so, yes. And they were paid for. Mine was paid for by Clarence.”

“Clarence paid the premium on his own life insurance policy?”

“Through a retainer for my services held in escrow, yes.”

“Why? He left you money, Jack.”

“He did. I think he was trying to find a way out for me.” He splayed his hands out further on the table.

“I don't understand.”

Jack hung his head and shook it slowly. Then he took a deep breath and explained the nature of the rift between him and her uncle. Jack had been instrumental in the arrangements of the life insurance policies and all the other contract arrangements for the buyout of the winery over a year ago. He was eager to make it work out. He understood the arrangement to be a win-win for everyone involved, including himself. He was named a beneficiary in the key man policies as an executor of the estate and a manager of any transition in lieu of Clarence, in case anything happened to him. But the deal went sour when Clarence found out that Hans Feldman had inexplicably made arrangements to sell the winery to a large wine label out of California, news he had learned from the nefarious blogging of Joe Donner. Jack conveniently omitted the part about his complicity in the arrangement of the sellout. He explained that Clarence was furious, and pulled out of the contract that was very nearly ending escrow.

“Just a few days after we nullified the contracts, Clarence had his plane accident,” he said.

“I saw you at the hospital. My uncle was still angry at you, I remember. What changed?”

Jack squeezed the bridge of his nose and exhaled. “Well, he was injured, of course. Just a broken rib and sprained wrist. Bruises mostly.” He responded cagily. She nodded impatiently; she knew all of this. “And then they ran blood tests.” His voice dropped off. Syd guessed at what he was getting at. “There was something else? Was he sick, Jack?” Suddenly some of the pieces of the puzzle fell in place. She remembered the last conversation she had with her uncle with a sickened heart. She felt like the chair was pulled out from under her, like she was falling.

“Cancer,” Jack said flatly. “Pancreatic.”

“Oh,” she let out as a sigh through pursed lips. She digested what he said for a full five minutes. She recalled her recent encounters with her uncle, his sweetness and eagerness to make amends. She thought of his many phone calls she had ignored the past few weeks. Her mind raced through recent conversations with others and their lack of surprise at his death. It occurred to her that everyone must have known; certainly Olivier and Rosa. Jack was surprisingly level-headed over the loss of his best friend. They had all been preparing for it. Only she was surprised.

“I'm only telling you this because something occurred to me last night,” he said at last, interrupting her thoughts. “So I went back over the original docs on the contract and I called Paul this morning. He faxed me a copy of the medical exam required for the key man policies on Clarence.”

Syd sat silently with her hands in her lap. She was too preoccupied with her own pain to connect the dots. At the moment she didn't care what he had discovered.

“I think the medical report was tampered with,” he said. “It gave your uncle a clean bill of health in January.”

Syd was jarred alert. Her mind raced through the implications.

“So you think the policies were taken out on a man who had very little time to live?” she asked. Jack nodded.

“But you stand to gain from it, Jack. How do I know you didn't know about it before the plane accident?”

Jack threw up his hands. “I know how this looks, Syd. And I was in a terrible place, and I was not a good friend to Clarence at the time. I was furious with him. For years I watched him wallow in some kind of miserable self-pity, hardly getting excited about anything. He stopped going to Argentina. He gave you up for lost. He was beginning to lose interest in the winery, for God’s sake. I wanted him to just sell the damned thing and move to South America. Maybe find a woman and retire. Hell, I would have encouraged him to go back to those people in Argentina who made him so miserable in the first place. Anything but waste his life around here in that dark mood all the time.”

“Sure. You had his best interests at heart,” she mumbled.

“I did, Sydney McGrath,” he said defensively. “I always have. Clarence made sure that the premiums for that policy were paid out of the escrow funds. The other policy was let go, or so we thought. He was looking out for me. Of course, I have to come forward with the information I have now. My suspicions? It's insurance fraud, at the very least.”

“Noble,” she said in a hollow voice. “Fraud
and murder
, by the way.”

“I very much doubt that,” he said, his throat choking on the words.

“You think it was suicide?”

He nodded. “That was his plan. When it got too bad.” He looked miserable. An old man disillusioned. Syd was disgusted. She could hardly drum up empathy for him, in spite of his self-pity.

“The autopsy report says otherwise,” she said quietly.

She got up to leave, reaching the door before she turned around. She suddenly remembered the look of despair on Jack's face when he greeted her outside Clarence's hospital room months before. It was clear he had been crying in the palms of his hands. He loved her uncle and was trying to make amends by telling her about the potentially fraudulent medical report. She turned to look at the sad man, who sat with slumped shoulders at a cheap desk in an ugly room.

“You were a good friend to him, Jack.” She walked out and closed the door quietly behind her.

She pulled into the drive, almost running into the Sheriff's cruiser as it was turning out of the driveway. She pulled over and rolled down her window.

“You took off in a hurry,” Jim said from beneath a mystifying pair of dark sunglasses. Syd felt more intimidated than she had earlier.

“Yeah, I went to see Jack again.”

“Yup, I knew that.” He drummed his fingers on the outside of the car door. Syd hated not being able to see his eyes. She scanned his face for cues. He spoke in a clipped tone but waited patiently for her to continue, drumming his fingers as both cars idled.

“Did you find Alejandro?” she broke the silence with more truculence than she intended. She found herself sinking under the oppression of Jim's authority and judgement, all played out in a nameless tune through thick fingertips tapping on the cruiser door. She felt like a guilty teenager.

He turned to look at her blankly. “Yup.” He jutted his jaw forward. Syd figured he was angry. At her.

“Syd, I need you to listen to me. This is a murder investigation. And I’m only now beginning to figure just what kind of people we’re dealing with.” He spoke quietly, his voice flat, but Syd could hear the condemnation sifting through the deep gravelly baritone. “You need to leave this to the police.”

“I thought you wanted my help.” she said, sounding more childlike than she intended.

“With the will, yes. But we got through that, and now I need you to stay home, okay? Just stay put.”

“But I got a new lead on–.”

“Stop!” he said through tight lips. He took off his glasses and leaned through the window, looking her square in the eye. “Syd, whoever did this to your uncle is dangerous. This is murder we're talking about. You will not interfere in my investigation. It’s
dangerous
.” His piercing blue eyes wore an expression that she had seen too many times in Charlie. Somehow she found it less intimidating. She found it patronizing, and it made her angry.

She leaned in to her open window and met his eyes. “Well, maybe you should investigate insurance fraud.” She raised her eyebrows slightly and jutted out her jaw, nodding slightly. She stepped on the accelerator and passed him with more gas than she should have, leaving the cruiser in a cloud of dust.

She parked hard in the gravel, got out of the car, and slammed the door behind her. Her boots crunched the gravel up and down the length of the car several times as a white fury worked its way up her chest and into her throat. The frustration she felt with Jim transferred into a rage over the unwitting cloud of silence she was subjected to by her loved ones.

Why hadn't anyone told her? Why was she left in the dark?

She stormed into the house and yelled for Rosa. She had been with Clarence for years, but only recently had she been making him fresh juices every day. She certainly knew all along. In fact, Rosa thought Clarence had committed suicide. And she avoided Syd all last week. Syd slammed her way through the house, screaming Rosa's name. She ended up in the kitchen again, where her fury gave way to a lunatic rage. She picked up a pitcher drying on the counter and threw it against the wall, taking great pleasure in the smashing of ceramic shards skittering across the floor.

Rosa was not around. The house was empty, which left her raging screams dampened to ineffectual tantrums by the indifferent walls and furniture. Syd felt smothered by ambivalence. It was like a nightmare in which she screamed as loud as she could, but no sound came out of her mouth. She was alone in her rage, and instead of feeling the fire burn out she was maddened by it. Who else knew?

She flew out the door and half ran up to the winery. The huge doors were closed, and she wrenched her shoulder flinging it open with a furious jerk of the handle. She yelled inside the dark winery, rushing into the black room filled with wine aromas and CO2. The distinctive smell caught her, and she stumbled back onto the crushpad. Even her delirious rage was tempered by the threat of the noxious gas, and she gasped for breath in the fresh cool air outside the winery. She stood a few moments with her hands on her knees, sucking in air and working to find traction in her rage.

“Deep breaths. Deep, deep breaths,” she snarled to her knees. She wasn't sure if she was freeing her lungs of CO2 or fury. She paced the concrete with hands on her hips, mumbling to herself in a raving mantra.

After a few minutes of deep breathing, she found herself throwing her arms up wide to open her chest for air. She cleared her head while she took in the peaceful view of the river, the mountains, and the vineyards. The silent rolling countryside and the picturesque house held a kind of mesmerizing serenity that calmed her pulse. The place was a balm for her fierce anger and fresh wounds. She forced herself to take in the view and calmed down. She began to feel foolish and relieved that no one actually witnessed her tantrum. Still, she wanted some answers, and her anger was not extinguished. Her eyes caught the small Airstream trailer across the property.

Syd's feet seemed to move on their own as she made out a light on in the trailer. She tried to inhale deeply as she marched downhill and then up through the northern side of the vineyard. When she reached the trailer door, she felt in control of her anger enough to manage a civil conversation. She knocked.

Olivier opened it immediately. He was not surprised to see her. In fact, he had been waiting for her. He motioned her inside.

“Would you like some tea?” he asked politely. He ran his hands through his hair selfconsciously and flattened his shirt. He was clean-shaven and he smelled like cinnamon and sandalwood, but his eyes looked tired and worn. He seemed much smaller here in the trailer.

“Yeah” she answered gruffly. She sat down at the small table and watched as he started the electric kettle and searched for mugs and a teapot. The little trailer was well kept, which was a recent change. Syd had spent a good deal of time in the trailer many years back when she and Alejandro had their summer fling. Alejandro had been staying in the trailer as an intern, and he kept it in the state of disarray one might expect from a 22-year-old bachelor. While it was under Alejandro's care, the original linoleum floorboards were always sticky with spilled beer. The window blinds were mysteriously tangled and the few flat surfaces of the trailer were buried deep under stacks of mail and empty beer bottles. But now the vintage trailer was getting some gentle care. A small toolbox sat on the counter, and Syd noticed that one of the cabinet doors was resting on the bench at the table opposite her. The small trailer felt warm, and she saw the tiny space heater down the alley near the curtain by the bed.

“The trailer looks nice,” she said, trying out her voice again.

Olivier nodded. “I have been working on it.” He picked up the cabinet door on the seat and began to screw the hinge back into place.

She watched him silently as he methodically worked the screwdriver. The kettle whistled softly and he stopped to pour the water into the pot. He loaded a tea strainer full of loose-leaf tea from a canister. He finished screwing in the last hinge while the tea steeped, carefully putting his screwdriver back into the toolbox. He placed the toolbox in the upper cupboard above the small stovetop. He brought two large pottery mugs to the table with a bowl of fresh cream from the tiny fridge and sat down opposite her. A fabulous Darjeeling aroma filled the space around the small table. Syd felt herself sink into the bench cushion, and let the smells and the warmth of the trailer embrace her.

They sat drinking their tea together without looking at each other. She was still very angry, but she began to wonder how much she could justify being angry with him. She hadn’t even known him before Clarence died. She had little right to feel betrayed by him withholding information about his death. He owed her nothing, really. And yet he sat patiently, waiting for her to speak. She began to feel embarrassed and pushed her mug forward in defeat. She was ready to go.

“Don't you have something to say to me?” he asked. He looked her square in the eyes. “You looked so angry up in the winery.”

Her heart dropped like a rock. “You saw me?” she asked, covering her face with her hands.

“From the window here,” he said. “I have a perfect view of the winery from this window.” His face was placid and non-judgmental. Syd felt oddly reassured by his acceptance of her behavior. He seemed to expect her outrage and seemed to almost respect her passionate breakdown. Still he had witnessed a very private moment of unraveling, a moment that she would have never indulged in had she thought she was being watched.

She pulled her mug closer. She was staying for a while. She needed a moment to figure out what she needed to say.

“You are angry with me?” he asked.

Syd nodded reluctantly.

“I would be too.” He stared into his mug.

“Why would you be angry at you? What do you think I’m so angry about?” She felt a bit of the fire stir up in her chest.

He threw his hands up. “
Everything!
I am here. You must share it all with me or go against your uncle's wishes. You don't know who I am or why I'm here, and I take half of what is yours. And you think that I may have killed your uncle. How could you
not
be angry?” He shook his head emphatically. Syd noticed the outburst was spiced with an accent she hardly heard before.

“I do not think that you killed my uncle.”

“The police do.”

“You're not in jail, are you?” She used a dismissive tone she sometimes threw at Marcus. “And I’m not even close to processing my inheritance or the will or any of that. I want to know why you didn't tell me he was sick.”

“Ah.
That,
” he said with a sigh.

She nodded, growing angrier at his relief, which she felt trivialized her feelings about something so important. “Yeah,
that!
” she spat.

“I told you. I made a promise to him. Clarence made me promise not to tell you.”

“Well, he's dead now. And you
still
don't tell me?”

“I made a promise,” he said, as if it explained everything. “But I am relieved that you know now.”

“Excellent. Great. I'm happy to make things easier for you.” She knew her sarcasm was childish but she was too frustrated to keep it in. He sat patiently, waiting for her next question.

“Why didn't he want me to know?”

“He wanted to talk to you in person. Here. He wanted to tell you after you had come to the winery and helped with crush. He wanted you to come because you wanted to, not because he was sick. He wanted us to meet. He had a plan to explain it all to you.” He reached over the table and drew her hands together in his. “I am so sorry, Sydney. His plan was romantic and good and noble. He wanted to make amends with you. He wanted to give you your dreams back. It was his sole purpose in the end.”

She pulled her hands away, feeling her anger morph into something more terrible in her chest. A deep dark hole inside her began to draw in her rage. She wanted to be angry; she wanted to lash out at this stranger cooing her most precious and deepest wishes to her when it was too late. She wanted to hit him in his beautiful, empathetic face. Instead, she got up slowly, holding a piercing sharp lump in her throat.

“Well, it was too late,” she said. She retreated from the table and saw the box on the small trailer couch. It was an old Danner shoebox stacked on top of a carved chessboard.

“That’s mine,” she said quietly, pointing at the box as she stepped out of the trailer.