A Tainted Finish: A Sydney McGrath Mystery (24 page)

He stepped over to the door and said, “like this, Sydney,” without moving his lips. He pushed on the door slowly, effortlessly with some kind of miraculous expertise that left her exasperated and awestruck. They entered the winery and were greeted by the noxious burn of CO2 gas. It repelled Syd back and out of the winery gasping for air. But Clarence entered freely and walked over to Olivier and Rosa, each of whom smiled at him. They stood together in a cluster around a tank. Olivier handed Clarence a sample in a beaker. Clarence frowned and nodded, sipping and spitting the wine into the drain in the floor. Syd called out, but they couldn't hear her. She paced outside the door and looked up at the sky. A heavy purple gossamer veil hid the moon, leaving the clouds in a giant ripple like raindrops in a pond. The sky was oppressive and ominous. She attempted to enter the winery again, but the gases were too heavy to breathe. She watched Clarence and Olivier argue over the sample. Rosa puckered up her face in disgust and clucked her tongue. Suddenly, both men turned to look at her as she hovered in the doorway, shaking their heads in disappointment. She had ruined everything. She stared at them, her mouth working like a fish, pleading. She begged for them to understand that she couldn't do it. She was injured and in bed and she was forced to stay away by the gases. But they didn't listen to her or they couldn't hear her. Olivier walked into the recesses of the darkened winery and out of sight. Clarence followed him and Rosa vanished altogether. Syd stood just inside the door, shivering with terror and indignation.

She waited in the thin strip of the open door for a long time, trying to make out the shadowy shapes coming from inside the winery. The sky made terrifying moaning sounds, and the vines shuddered in a portentous wind. When she turned to look toward the vineyard, the rustling stopped abruptly. Suddenly the full moon shone brightly between the drawn curtains of the purple clouds and the doors of the winery gleaned a bright red. Syd tried to push open the doors again. They were a little easier to move this time, so she continued to push her way inside. The gas was present but not suffocating. She pushed the doors for what seemed like hours and stopped for a breath when the door was nearly all the way open. She bent her head while she gasped for air and noticed something directly behind the door. A shoe, attached to a leg. She peered around the corner, suddenly terrified again. A figure of a man lay against the door, blocking it. She realized she had been pushing his dead weight. But he wasn't dead at all; his eyes looked up at her as she crept nearer for a better look. It was a face too familiar to be forgotten.

Syd awoke with a jolt, jarring her arm out of position. A bolt of searing pain radiated through her and she realized that she may have torn one of her stitches. Her mouth was dry and she reached for the glass of water at her bedside. She gulped greedily, looking to fill up the hole in her chest burrowed by the nightmare. Her right hand pressed hard on the wound to squeeze out the pain, stanching any bleeding that may have occurred. She forced herself to breathe steadily. She contemplated waking up Charlie out of desperation to be held. Marcus would be nice, she thought to herself.
Marcus
. His huge body, his strange marmalade smells and incessant scratching in his sleep. She would endure his worst habits for the comfort of his embrace right now. She wondered if Charlie had called him when she was in the hospital. She had no idea where her phone was and she hadn't checked any messages for days. Guilt settled into the hole left by the nightmare. She had been unkind and unfair to Marcus. He deserved an answer. She knew she had to cut him free soon. She knew he'd wait patiently for her to do it. And he'd argue with her and tell her that he loved her, all the while putting up the effort to delude himself into thinking he had tried to stand by her during her time of need, a
Boy Scout
.

She lay struck by the sudden clarity of her relationship with Marcus, grateful for the distraction from her pulsing arm. He was the perpetual Boy Scout, predictable and comfortable. Marcus held no mysteries, no secrets in his past to uncover. He was a good-looking place filler, a known variable. A warm body to break against when she wanted one. He was outgoing and eternally faithful. He was less concerned with her own introversion than she was. He was a natural mask for her, the sleight-of-hand that deflected any real interest in herself. Besides, he mastered the trends and fads of the social elite like a natural. They looked good together, and he wore a lovely tuxedo. A hot surge of shame ran through her at her thoughts, and she swallowed hard.

She realized she had chosen a shallow life. Deliberately. One replete with labels; wine labels, clothing labels, and self-branding as a floor working sommelier. And the perfect boyfriend was the perfect accessory to her self-abasing life. She had compromised everything that mattered with several casualties along the way. There was no truth, no beauty, no love. There was only a caricature of a life built in her own ironic cynicism. A life unauthentic, the kind she most despised. Even worse, she had squandered the love of the man most important to her in an attempt to find her own way; a way machete'd through a false jungle of first world problems mired in the swampy recesses of a selfish princess's mind. Her sense of entitlement sickened her. And now she had to break Marcus's heart too. She was a wrecking ball. But perhaps thinking she was a wrecking ball was part of her self-importance. Her self-pity sickened her more; narcissism was the worst epitaph imaginable.

Syd leapt out of bed, not caring if she tore open all of her stitches. She wandered aimlessly through the house, searching blindly in the dark. She was a succubus, an energy vampire sucking life out of everyone around her. Clarence lived for love, passion, and art, and she had learned nothing from him. He faced his own truths with a lifetime of dignity and authenticity, while she sneered at his genuine life floating like a ghost through a life full of every imaginable gift, only to squander them.

“I am so sorry.
So sorry
,” she whispered to the dark kitchen, choking on the ball of shame lodged in her throat. She wanted Clarence to hear her. She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. She loathed herself for wanting forgiveness so badly, feeling that she really deserved was a lifetime spent in purgatory. Yet she would have given over to any religion in order to speak to him once more and beg forgiveness. The loneliness of the dark, cold kitchen engulfed her, and she fell in a heap on the floor, sobbing. She tried to pray, but the hypocrisy of it stuck in her throat. Instead she worried her hands in knots while she spoke out loud to Clarence. She babbled through her tears, gesticulating at her phantom listener with passion. Eventually, she finished with dry coughing sobs. Her legs grew stiff and her arm ached with the weight of the blood entering her wounds. Over time the hole in her chest felt smaller; exactly the size of a bullet hole. She used the counter to pull herself up gingerly, using her awkward right arm.

She felt no sense of absolution, but she did feel a little lighter. Besides, there was one thing she could do for Clarence. She struggled with the medication bottle for a few minutes with her right hand, but she eventually managed to open it and took one of the Oxycontin with water. She stared out the window. It was too dark to see if the truck was back. She couldn't make out the Sheriff’s cruiser either. But Jim had said it was there, and she imagined it parked out in front of the house. The road to the winery was dark and ominous, but she knew it well. She would have no trouble in the dark without a flashlight. The way was branded in her. She took another pill, as an after-thought.

Punchdowns would not be easy.

After a few minutes of struggling with a pair of yoga pants under a black silk slip and her uncle's oil-slicker, she tiptoed her way onto the deck, closing the door silently behind her. She didn't want to wake up Charlie.

Syd was grateful for the security lights that beamed on when she got near enough to trip them. She usually would have waved her arms around for the motion detector, but her right arm was cradling her left arm in the sling and she had forgotten about the motion detector anyway. She reached the door and struggled to unlock it with the hidden key. The doors opened freely to the outside. She remembered her dream with a shudder, the red doors opening inside and giving such resistance. She flung both doors open and waited outside, letting the gas escape. She sat waiting in the lighted area on an Adirondack chair until the light went off. She nearly panicked while she leapt up to set off the motion light again. She took a big breath outside and stepped inside to reach the panel of lights just inside the door. She didn't want to face the sudden darkness again while she waited.

The night was crisp and gorgeous. The cold made the night air crystal clear, and she could make out the tendrils of the Milky Way in the midnight sky. The lights from the bridge on the river below shone bright, and the whistle of the train going by two miles away sounded much closer. She held up her left elbow in an embrace and began to feel a little better about herself. Maybe it was the painkiller kicking in, but she felt a warm surge coursing through her. She didn't mind being alone for the moment. The stars and the view were enough.

After she waited a long while outside – certainly long enough to purge the carbon dioxide from the room – she entered the winery with trepidation and an alert nose. Once she was a few steps in, she realized it was safe to enter and she focused on her plan. First she would remove the covers of the tanks and find which wines absolutely needed punchdowns and which ones could stand to wait until she had help in the morning. There were still ten tanks left in active ferments; all of them placed in the middle of the winery. She would take their temperatures too. She wasn't sure how she was going to do the work with her right arm. She was always dominantly left-handed. She plotted how she might get the tool through the drying caps after sitting all day without submersion into the juice. They would be under a great deal of pressure and she would need strength. But she could devise a way to dig through the skins and make a hole to get it started. She had done it before, albeit using her stronger arm.

In fifteen minutes she had managed to take the temperature of all of the tanks. She found three that needed immediate attention to release the heat and CO2 built up under the cap. She prepped a five-gallon bucket with steaming water and metabisulfite to dip the punchdown tool in. It slopped on the floor when she carried it with her clumsy right arm.

She dug a hole in the skins of the first tank and tried to use the heavy punchdown tool. She experimented with every possible angle, but her right arm was not nearly as useful as she would have liked. She cursed her dominant left-handedness, feeling the burn of defeat when she realized that she could not maneuver the tool. Her right arm simply wasn't coordinated or strong enough. She carefully placed the punchdown tool back into the bucket of water, removed the overcoat, and sanitized her arm in the sulfur water. She stood on the stool and plunged her arm in the pomace up to her armpit, using her arm as a stir rod or a mixer. The ferments were warmer than the outside air, and she enjoyed the work on a visceral level. There was a sensual weaving of smells and sensations. It took her three times as long as it would have taken with a good arm and the tool, but she felt satisfied as she finished one tank.

The next tank took longer than the first. She was growing tired, and worse, she felt loopy from the pain meds. She worked the skins with her right arm as she stood on the step ladder. The outside motion light had long gone out and the cold air of the autumn night crept into the open doors, making her shiver violently. The front of her nightie was wet from slopped wine. She knew she should have been miserable, but she had not felt so determined in a long time. She was taking care of the wine when there was no one else to do it.

The last tank was the Tempranillo that had given Olivier such trouble two days before. It still had a slight off odor of hydrogen sulfide; a red flag for unhappy yeast. She took a Brix reading with the hydrometer and found that it was at 7 Brix. It had moved a little since Olivier brought it to her attention. Or had it moved? She couldn't remember. She considered just throwing in some diamonium phosphate, unnatural chemical nutrients that acted like candy for yeast. But adding nutrients now would be tricky. Adding too much would make the wine a lovely nutritious medium for future unwelcome spoilage yeasts, but too little would not stimulate the ferment. She would have to do further tests. She grabbed a sample of the juice after bathing her arm in the sulfur water. Her arm was now purple, even after all of the wine had been washed away. Stained. She pulled on the overcoat with her right arm in the sleeve and stood shivering, working to keep her mind from remembering the details of Clarence's purple stained hands. She padded back into the barrel room.

The barrel room was a dark, familiar labyrinth of oak barrels stacked to the top of the twelve-foot ceilings. It smelled like vanilla, tobacco, and wood, a mixture of aromas that Syd loved with her entire being. She made her way through the first stack to find the bank of lights and switched them all on. She was not used to the way the barrels were lined up. They were usually stacked in a different direction, but she could see that the current system used less space. She made her way to the lab door off of the barrel room, somewhere near the middle of the maze.

The fluorescent lab lights buzzed and flickered when she turned them on, which was a terrible nuisance for long stints in the lab. Syd found the small cylinders necessary to do a test in the spectrophotometer. An unfamiliar cell phone sat silently near the spectrophotometer, on top of a legal pad with cryptic notes in a familiar slanted masculine handwriting. She recognized it as Olivier's. She found comfort in knowing that he left his phone behind, sitting like a beacon or tether to this place. She opened the old-school flip phone and scrolled through the menu. He had five missed calls; four of them from Charlie and one from Alejandro. She scrolled down through his history and saw many recent calls from
Madre
. Some were from unknown numbers, but most were from Alejandro. She was surprised to see a few from Marcus. She scrolled down a few weeks back and stopped on a name. Clarence. Then another from Clarence, and then several more. Then a few from Antonia. She put the phone down and felt guilty for having pried. She looked around for the test tubes she needed.

Syd filled the vials with wine to test the yeast assimilable nitrogen-YAN- content in the spectrophotometer. The test would help her determine how much nutrients to add to the stuck fermentation. She prepped the vial and calibrated the machine, remembering vaguely how to run the test. It had been several years. She used to do all of Clarence's lab work, but tonight in her OxyContin fuzz she couldn't remember the test procedure. She botched the sample on her first try. She thought about leaving it for the morning, but obviously Olivier thought it was important to run a YAN test too, and she didn't want to let him down. He could have done the additions already, but what if he hadn’t? Determined, she grabbed another beaker to get a sample of the Tempranillo, turning the light out as she left.

The silence and darkness caught Syd off guard and she gasped. The barrel room was pitch black. She turned to find the lab door and turn on the lights, but she was disoriented by the new barrel arrangements and had to feel blindly along the wall. She put the beaker in her pocket to free her hand. She was nearly inside the lab door and reached for the lights, but she was shocked motionless at the sound of shuffling feet in the darkness.

They were near her; very near her. Maybe a few feet away on the other side of the barrel stack.

She stood petrified, holding her breath. Her ears strained to listen. A soft swish, maybe a hand on a barrel, barely audible. A slight moan of leather, possibly from shoes. She stood staring wide-eyed into the darkness. The winery and the barrel room were dark. But she could make out the faint glow of light from the motion lights outside. The gentle green glow terrified her more than the darkness. She realized the reality in front of her. Someone had entered the winery and turned off the lights. And he was now standing feet from her. Panic choked her, collapsing her throat. She gasped again reflexively. She knew immediately that the sound gave her away. She bolted toward the door, feeling her way along the barrels. There was only one way out of the lab, down one aisle of barrels. And once he stepped into the aisle with her she knew she was trapped. She struggled to quiet her breathing to listen. He was still far from her, possibly at the end of the aisle. She heard by the sound of his footsteps that he was moving quickly. She scrambled forward, acting before she could think.

Her right hand darted into her pocket and she grabbed the beaker. She threw it on the ground on the other side of the barrel stack closest to her. The glass shattered everywhere. She stood motionless, listening. The sound of shuffling feet floated from her left to her right. She wasn't certain, but she felt like breaking the glass might have worked. She could wait until he made his way to the broken beaker and make a run for it.

She stood frozen and listened for an eternity. She held her breath, held her body taut. Every muscle was poised. No sounds. No movement. She tried hard to remember the lay-out of the barrel room. She had only been in it a few times since the new arrangement. She had to choose her path carefully. A life-or-death choice she realized in a gulp of terror. Was he in the other aisle?

She raced through her options, paralyzed by the choice in front of her. This man was certainly going to kill her. She was going to die if she couldn't get out of here. She had no weapon and she couldn't fight with her left arm in a sling. There’d be no one to help or hear her if she screamed. A chill ran up her spine, filling her with an icy resolve.

Run!
she screamed in her head and her feet accelerated into darkness.

She hit her slung arm hard on a metal barrel head stave and cried out. Her right arm reached out frantically as she ran into hard, invisible obstructions. Her ears roared with raging waves of fear. She made for the distant green glow, barely visible from the barrel room. Her right arm felt along a wall as she neared the glow. She shuffled harder and bounded off of a shorter stack of barrels she had forgotten about. She spun toward the glow of light and stumbled to the ground. She used her right arm to push off of the floor and re-gain her footing.

She was a yard from the barrel room door when her head jolted back with searing pain. She fell back onto the ground and into the man's legs. She rolled slightly over to her left side and freed her right arm. He held her hair in his hand and jerked her up, sending searing pain through her scalp. She hit back hard with her right arm, grazing his thigh. She threw another punch that landed in the soft tissue of his groin. She reached up again and grabbed a fist of whatever she could. She squeezed, punched, and wrung it violently. Suddenly, his screams were mixed with hers as her hair was pulled from her head. She thrust viciously with her hand again and felt a sudden relief of her searing scalp. She pushed off hard, wrenching her wounded arm as she tried to stand up. She stumbled and he leaned down over her, frantically grabbing at her with both hands. She swiveled on her butt and kicked his thigh as hard as she could. She kicked again and landed her foot in his groin. He stumbled backward and she crawled like a crab with one arm, scurrying several feet away. She rolled to her right side and bound up on her feet.

She sprinted out the door and into the big room of the winery. The cold air rushed into her face like a beacon, and she forced herself out blindly into a fermentation tank. She spun around the tank and made a path through the other tanks. She could see the door twenty feet away.

To her right she saw a dark figure and the flash of a long metal object. She paused for a split second and turned as she registered the sight. She sprinted forward again, only to stop suddenly as she was struck with a hammer of force on the back of her head. She fell like a bag of rocks to the concrete floor. Darkness filled her head, overtaking her with frightening coldness. Only one thought coursed through her fading consciousness –
Olivier.