Ellen McKenzie 03-And Murder for Desser (4 page)

“No, that’s…” Aunt Mary started. Frank didn’t give her a chance to finish.

“If you will permit, I will escort you to the patio. I believe Mark is going to give a short talk on the making of wine. Perhaps you will find it interesting. We will sip champagne. We know that will be palatable.”

One of the waiters gave a nervous giggle. Frank gave him a withering look, whirled Aunt Mary around, and whisked her out the door. She cast a frantic glance back at us, mouthed something, which I thought was a plea for us to follow, and disappeared.

Sabrina watched them go, then leaned up against the wall, muttering to herself, “Why me, God? Why me?”

There didn’t seem to be an immediate answer to that or to the implied question in Dan’s expression. Anyway, there wasn’t time because Otto once again found his voice.

“Imbeciles. That is no way to fill those trays. Can you not follow simple instructions?” He picked up a finished hors d’oeuvre and threw it at the waiter.

Dan said, “Hey, you can’t…”; I gasped; the waiter reached for the tray; and it looked like round two was about to begin, but a new voice stopped the action short.

“Otto, the bisque. It’s time to add the cream. Should I finish or…” It was the tall man, who, up to now, had said nothing. His eye twitched, then he stood quiet, waiting.

“Of course not. Last time you ruined it. Here. See if you can get them to do this right.” With one more “Phuf” for the waiters and not even a glance for us, he pushed through a door into the adjoining room. I had time for a quick glimpse of a pot-laden stove, open shelves filled with dishes, and a surge of smells that almost drove my stomach mad. Then the door swung closed.

The man walked up to me, stuck out his hand and said, “Hello, Ellen. You haven’t changed a bit.”

Chapter Four

I had no idea who he was. He stood there, waiting, his tall hat gently swaying, an expectant smile on his face, while I grinned idiotically back, trying to come up with a name. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but Dan’s eyes bored down on me, which didn’t help me place him. Very blond hair, pale blue eyes, long, nicely shaped face with a nose that tipped up just slightly at the end. If he’d had a chin, he’d have been quite good looking, but I still didn’t know who he was. The waiters watched while they filled their trays, evidently thinking a new drama was about to begin.

“I’m sorry I didn’t leave a number on your machine,” he went on, his words coming out breathy and rushed, “but the only phone I have right now is at Otto’s new bed and breakfast, and I didn’t want to take the chance he might answer. Not that he does, much.”

I had a name.

“Larry,” I said, “my, ah, I got your messages. What a surprise. After all these years.” I stopped, waiting for him to say something. He didn’t. “Dan,” I finally said, wondering what I was supposed to do now, “you remember Larry Whittaker from high school.”

“Ah,” was Dan’s reply. It didn’t matter because Larry wasn’t paying any attention to him.

“I’ve thought about you so much,” Larry said, looking at me expectantly. “You’re prettier than ever.”

I could feel my cheeks burn. I could also feel Dan watching me. “Oh,” I said with what I hoped was a little laugh. “We’ve both changed.”

“How have I changed?” he asked, smiling down at me with an intimate little smile I didn’t appreciate one bit.

“You’ve grown,” I blurted out.

At first he looked blank, then the smile came back. “I got all my height my junior year. Must have been all that French food.”

“That you ate while you were in Paris,” Dan put in. He looked Larry in the eye. Larry looked back. Same height, same expressions of suspicion. They stared at each other like a couple of junkyard dogs defending their territory, waiting to see who would back off first. It was Larry.

“I have to go back to work now, but I’ll call you. Real soon. We’ll do lunch.” He turned back to the trays and the waiters. Dan looked at me with an eyebrow raised. I shrugged and shook my head at him. Sabrina was still leaning against the doorjamb, muttering.

“Shouldn’t we do something about her?” I asked, anxious to change the subject.

“What?”

“At least get her out of here. Sabrina, come on. Let’s go find Mark.”

“And Frank,” she said bitterly. “Good old Frank. Now you see him, now you don’t. Why can’t the man show up when he’s needed? Or wanted? Of course, then we’d never see him. I could live with that.”

“You mean you didn’t know he was coming?” Dan asked.

“We haven’t heard from Frank for three years. His idea of being a father is to ignore that fact until something interesting happens. Then he appears and steals the spotlight. Remind me to tell you about our wedding sometime.”

“How did he know about tonight?” I asked her.

“I’ve no idea. All I know is an hour ago he walked in and tried to take over. That’s what the scene was all about. Now Otto’s raging around the kitchen, Frank’s loose with our guests, and the evening is only beginning.” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and said, “All right. People are arriving, Mark can’t run interference all by himself, and someone needs to rescue Aunt Mary.”

“We’ll do that,” I told her. “You go do your job.”

She nodded distractedly and hurried out the door. Dan and I followed more slowly. Larry called out, “Bye, Ellen. See you soon.”

“Will he?” Dan asked.

“Not if I can help it,” I said softly.

Dan gave a soft chuckle. “So a romantic postcard from Paris doesn’t have much staying power?”

“Not after more than twenty years, it doesn’t.”

“What if that postcard had been from me?”

I looked up at him and laughed. “That would be a very different matter.”

He grinned and took my arm. One of the waiters passed us, carrying a tray filled with champagne flutes. He paused. Dan carefully lifted off two, handed one to me, and took a sip from the other.

“You know,” he said, toasting me with his glass, “I thought this was going to be a pretty boring evening, but it’s turning out not half bad.”

“I’m glad someone’s enjoying it,” I told him. “So far, I think you’re the only one. We need to find Aunt Mary.”

“Mary and Frank,” Dan said cheerfully. “By all means, let’s go find them.” He started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I said.

“The first act’s been pretty good. I was wondering if the second one will be as entertaining.”

It was.

Chapter Five

“Will you look at that!” Dan stopped short. “Isn’t this the tasting room?”

“It was until sometime this afternoon.” I looked around with what I thought was justifiable pride. The tables were elegantly set. The pale green of the tablecloths showed off the cool ivory of the china; the silver gleamed beside each plate. A myriad of sparkling wineglasses reflected the light from the hurricane lanterns set on mirrors, surrounded by pale lavender Cattleya orchids. At each place lay a roll of ivory parchment on which tonight’s menu had been imprinted, tied with a pale green ribbon into which a single pink rosebud was tucked.

“It came out nice, didn’t it?”

“You and Sabrina did all this?” Dan asked.

“Yep. This afternoon. I’d no idea it was so much work to put on one of these things. You know,” I went on a little thoughtfully, “I always thought Sabrina was sort of—”

“Scatterbrained?”

“Timid,” I substituted. “But she had everything ready. Tablecloths, place settings, centerpieces, they were all here, waiting for us to put everything together. She’d done things I would never have thought of, and she had the wines, the food, and the wait staff all under control.”

“And you’re surprised?”

“Yes,” I admitted, “a little. Aren’t you?”

“I guess I am. Now if she can just keep Otto and Frank from doing each other in before the evening is over, things should be great.”

“I think we’re supposed to do that,” I said. “Come on.”

“All those glasses!” Dan was still staring at the tables. “Anybody that drinks that much wine won’t be fit to drive home, let alone find his car.”

“Quit acting like a policeman. Besides, you don’t chugalug it. You drink a little of each wine because it complements the food. Eat a little, sip a little, and the whole thing takes hours.” Four weeks of Mark and Sabrina and one afternoon at the winery had made me an expert.

Dan looked from me back to the glasses, shook his head, and said, “Yeah?” As an expert I was evidently not to be trusted.

“Look. There’s Aunt Mary.” A group of people were gathered on the deck, looking over the rail at something. Frank and Aunt Mary were standing in the front. Dan and I threaded our way through the tables toward the double French doors and out onto the deck toward the growing group.

“That is the crush pad,” Mark said, making a sweeping gesture toward the concrete pad below us. “The grapes are brought here from the vineyards in large gondolas. Large boxes. Then they’re dumped in the hopper.”

He pointed down toward a wicked-looking piece of machinery as he started his lecture. “This is used for red wine only. It de-stems the grapes before they go into the crusher. We want the juice, but the skins and the pulp help to give the juice flavor.”

“That thing looks like my grandmother’s old meat grinder,” said a young lady in a too short purple velvet dress.

“Wine making is often old fashioned,” Frank told her, with a gallant nod. He slipped Aunt Mary’s arm under his. “Now you would have a food processor, but here, the old way is the best.”

“Not only in wine making.” Aunt Mary’s tone was a little tart. I wondered if she were thinking of her own meat grinder.

Mark allowed himself one quick glance at his father and went on.

“What comes out of the crusher is called “must.” We pump it into those stainless steel tanks for preliminary fermentation.” He waved toward the towering, tightly covered tanks visible through the open roll-up cellar door. “That takes about seven to ten days, sometimes longer. During that time, all of the seeds and skins float to the top of the juice, forming the “cap.” We ferment in closed tanks, pumping the juice from the bottom over the cap to get the most flavor out of the skins, and that’s called a pump over.”

Mark paused and looked directly at me and grinned. I grinned back. How about that. I had heard him right.

He went on, “Look down at this platform. This is an old-fashioned tank. We like to keep this big old wooden one open to show you how wine used to be made.” Mark pointed down to a shorter tank on a platform directly below us. The top of the tank wasn’t more than a few feet from the railing where we stood. There was a set of stairs that led from a double gate on the deck down to the platform, and another ladder led down to the crush pad. The thick cap Mark had been talking about lay on top of the fermenting wine in easy view. “See those paddles?” he went on. “They are used to punch down the cap. Any of you hear stories of crushing the wine by stomping on it? Well, they were punching it down. We don’t go quite that far.”

There were “ohs” and “I never knew that” through the crowd and several questions.

“How thick does that stuff, what did you call it, get?” asked a portly man.

“The cap.”

“Yeah. Cap. How thick does that get?”

“Several inches, and it’s pretty tough.” Mark was really into his lecture, but his audience, lured by loaded hors d’oeuvres trays and the offered refills of champagne, was starting to fade away. It was Frank who came up with the one last bit of information.

“Tough and lethal.” He addressed Aunt Mary, but his dramatic tone carried. Several people, whose glasses were once again full, turned back.

“What do you mean, lethal?” asked a balding, red-faced man.

“Carbon dioxide collects under the cap.” Frank waved down at the dull red stuff sitting silently in the wooden tank. It looked like overcooked cranberry sauce, and just about as dangerous.

“He’s right,” Mark said. “It wasn’t uncommon for workers to die of carbon dioxidepoisoning when they did it all by hand.”

“By foot,” Frank corrected. He got a laugh from the crowd, but not from his son.

“I’ll show you the cellar floor during the dinner break,” Mark said through clenched teeth, “and we’ll do some barrel tasting then.”

The last of the group faded away, leaving only Frank, Aunt Mary, Mark, Dan, and me.

“Nicely done,” Frank told Mark with a little nod. “Mary, we’re going to have one of Mark’s wines with dinner, one he made while he was assistant winemaker up north. Quite a nice little thing.”

“How kind of you to say so.” Mark tried to jam his fists into his tux pants pockets, gave up, and clenched them instead.

Frank blinked, as if taken aback by the sarcasm in Mark’s voice, but only for a second. “Not at all,” he said. He tucked Aunt Mary’s arm through his and nodded to all of us. “If you will excuse us, there are some people Mary should meet.”

I had never heard Aunt Mary say so little, nor seen her look so, not exactly bewildered, maybe nonplussed. We watched them disappear through the Ffrench doors. A waiter appeared carrying a tray of full flutes and a champagne bottle. Mark grabbed one. Simultaneously, Dan and I held our glasses out to be refilled but Mark took the bottle from him and filled our glasses. The waiter looked a little startled, but, after a quick look at Mark’s face, he walked off with his tray.

Mark held up the bottle, squinted at it, shook it a little and grunted, “Empty.” He set it on one of the wooden picnic tables, took a large gulp from his glass and stared down at the remaining bubbles.

“Your father’s got quite a sense of humor,” I said, trying to lighten Mark up a little.

“You think so?” He glanced up at me. “Lots of people have said so.” He made it quite clear he wasn’t one of them. We all sipped silently for a moment. “I’ve heard they put you in jail for strangling your father.”

Dan nodded. “Even when it’s justified.” He glanced at Mark with what looked like sympathy, then held up his glass and watched his own bubbles.

“I’ve got to go talk to people. Why don’t you find your table. They all have place cards.” Mark drained the rest of his champagne and walked off, twirling his now empty glass in his fingers.

“Should we? Go find our table, I mean,” I said.

“In a minute. It’s nice out here, especially as everybody else has gone inside. Let’s go over here.”

I followed Dan over to the railing where we stood, side by side, saying nothing, letting the view set the mood. The early autumn setting sun had put on quite a show but now had slid behind the hills, leaving us with a silver sky dotted with pink clouds. The oak trees on the far hills and the vines close up were standing out like paper silhouettes, giving us one last look before night enveloped them.

Dan leaned on the railing, playing with his glass. What a piece of good luck, finding him again. After twenty years with Brian McKenzie, I’d wondered if I’d ever actually
like
a man again. I liked Dan. He made me laugh, he talked to me, not at me, and he treated me as if I belonged in his life. The fates, or whatever, seemed most of the time to have a malicious sense of humor. But sometimes they forgot themselves and things turned out pretty well. Like coming home to Santa Louisa. Like now.

“That Whittaker guy’s not the only one who thinks you look pretty tonight.” Dan wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he stared intently at the barely visible grape vines.

“Thank you,” I said, amused that he’d let Larry get to him and pleased, very pleased, that he’d said something. Compliments had been few and far between when I was married. Dan didn’t throw them around lightly, either, but when he gave you one, he meant it. I frowned. A thought I didn’t want intruded. Would Dan still find me pretty, or important, when we had been married twenty years?

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Just thinking about Otto, hoping everything’s all right.”

“Oh. It’s fine. Look at that view. Too bad we can’t have our wedding reception here.”

Wedding reception. Damn. “We’d freeze to death,” I said.

He turned toward me, leaning against the railing, sipping slowly from his glass. His face was half hidden in shadow, so I couldn’t read his expression. “I’ll bet I could keep you warm.”

That was not the problem. Being with Dan made me feel things, do things, that, well, parts of me came alive with Dan that had dozed through my whole life with Brian. Oh, yes, he could keep me warm. But how about five years down the road? What then? Would he still want to? I could feel my stomach knot up.

“I talked with Reverend Hanson,” Dan went on. “He thought New Year’s Eve would be a great time. We can have the church that night. Service at eight, then dinner and dancing in the Inn ballroom. What do you think?”

What I thought was I was going to throw up. Panic clawed at me. New Year’s Eve was just over three months away.

“You know, Ellie,” Dan said softly, stepping closer and pulling me toward him. “I think I’m going to like being married again.” He bent down and kissed me, the kind of kiss that made my knees go weak and all the butterflies upsetting my stomach fly away.

He let me go and took a step back.

“My,” I managed. “My.”

“Consider that an appetizer.” Dan laughed. “The main course will come soon. I promise.”

Yeah, I thought. Soon. “You look pretty handsome yourself tonight. I like you in a tux.” I reached out and patted his stomach. “A little more here than the last time I saw you in one, but I think it becomes you.”

“The stomach or the tux?” Dan asked, one eyebrow slightly raised.

“Both,” I laughed. “Too bad there aren’t more events in this town where one is called for.”

I could hear him take a deep breath before he said, “Not like in your old life. I’ll bet Brian didn’t wear a rented tux.”

“No. He had his own.” Where had that come from? Was Dan worried I’d miss my old life? Miss Brian? He couldn’t possibly. I didn’t miss being married to Brian. Damn. I didn’t miss being married. The butterflies were back. I turned toward him, thinking I should say something, something about bad marriages, divorce, scarring, but not knowing what.

Dan took a step toward me. “I love you, Ellie,” he said softly, leaning closer to me.

I lifted my face toward his. His mouth, as it came closer to mine, was tender under the neat little mustache that always tickled me. I let my hand drift up to touch it, to trace the shadows down his cheekbones, ready to forget old hurts, hesitancy, and doubts, ready to believe he was right, that married life could be…

“Ouch,” I shouted. Dan suddenly crumbled, then crashed against me, grabbing to keep us both from falling. Champagne flew out of his glass, barely missing us.

“What on earth…” I gasped.

“What the hell?” Dan stared accusingly at the picnic table we’d pushed against. It had moved, evidently not caring for people leaning on it. The railing had stopped it from further travel.

“Damn,” Dan said. “It could have dumped us right into that tank.” He glared at it as though it had moved purposely.

“Grab it!” I shouted.

“What? Oh.” Dan dived forward and caught the empty champagne bottle as it finished its slow journey toward the edge of the table. “Got it. That would have made a nice mess.”

“Why is the picnic table shoved up against the gate?” Sabrina’s voice made us both jump.

“Ah,” I started, but she didn’t seem to want an answer.

“Can you help me push it back?” She put the dish tray she was carrying down on the deck, grabbed one end of the table, and started to pull. I took the other end and gave it a tug. “Why do we have to do this now? We’re not exactly dressed for table wrestling.”