Drip Dead (19 page)

I finished the sink in the island and went in search of the cabinet crew. They were supposed to have the granite countertop and bowl installed and ready for me to connect.

They didn’t and they told me it wouldn’t be ready until morning. Neither would the fixtures in the master bathroom. For now, the plumbing work was at a standstill.

Barry didn’t have another assignment for me when I called him, but he said he’d talked to Paula about our plans for the evening.

“Thanks for asking her, Georgie. She loves stuff like this.”

“And you don’t.” It wasn’t a question. Barry was a small-town, blue-collar kind of guy. His idea of an upscale wine was one that came with a cork instead of a screw top, and he’d still rather have a beer than either one.

“I’m heading home then, Bear.” It was a nickname that fit him, though I didn’t use it very often. After all, he was my boss, even though sometimes he felt like the older brother I never had.

Especially when I was planning a girls’ night out with his wife.

I was willing to bet Paula hadn’t told him the real reason we were going to the auction, either. He tended to be a rather old-fashioned and protective when it came to his wife—and to his female employees.

Even the ones with martial-arts training.

I still hadn’t heard from Dave Young, and it was beginning to worry me. What if something went wrong with Mom’s hearing?

I pulled the Beetle to the curb in front of Wade’s office. Maybe he had heard something.

No such luck.

“Dave said he’d call, Georgie, and he will. He’s a very reliable guy.”

“How can you be sure?” I was whining and I knew it. Like Daisy, I didn’t do “stay” very well, and the waiting was driving me nuts.

“I’ve known him a lot of years, and we’ve worked on several community projects together. Believe me, when Dave Young says he’ll do something, he does it.” Wade glanced from me to his cluttered desktop and back. His meaning was clear. He had work to do.

“Karen’s at the doctor’s this afternoon,” he said. “If you want to wait here, you can use her desk.”

It was a better idea than sitting at home, stewing.

I dragged the laptop into the office and set to work on the Veritas files. I still hadn’t had time to decipher Gregory’s e-mail. The longer it went unread, the more convinced I became that I would find all the answers there.

When Dave’s call finally came, it was anticlimactic. Mom had been arraigned, bail was set at a million dollars, and she was taken back to her cell.

Dave had been in a meeting with the Deputy Prosecutor, looking for a way to get the bail reduced. Vernon had been adamant; he thought Sandra Neverall committed a murder and he wanted her kept in jail. He was angry that the judge had considered bail at all.

All Mom’s properties together wouldn’t cover a million dollars, and a bond would cost ten percent of that amount. If she was going to get out of jail, we had to come up with one hundred thousand dollars.

Or we had to find the real killer.

I left Wade’s office and headed home. I had to pick up Paula in an hour for the trip into Portland, but my heart wasn’t in it.

There was no way to get my mother out of jail, even temporarily, without catching the real murderer.

I felt a serious pity party coming on. To combat it, I put the dogs on their leashes and allowed the three of us a thirty-minute walk. The sun was still warm, and there were many new smells to check out since we hadn’t been for a walk in several days.

Daisy and Buddha would have happily kept going for several hours, sniffing each tree and burrowing into each bush seeking out the messages left by other dogs. I, on the other hand, had a date to keep.

By the time we turned for home my spirits had lifted a little. I was going out for the evening with a good friend. A wine auction might not have been my first choice of entertainment, but it was something new and different, and it promised the opportunity for lots of people-watching.

And it might bring me one step closer to Gregory’s killer and Mom’s freedom.

I showered and faced the dilemma of what to wear. Years earlier I’d had a closet full of designer and business wear and expensive shoes. Now I dug in the back of Mom’s closet—it had been mine just a few days ago—and found a classic little black dress. I tossed a brocade jacket on top to fend off the evening chill and found my black pumps.

Lacking pockets, I tossed the bare necessities into a small shoulder bag. I was ready to go.

As I locked the door behind me, I looked at the keys. Keys to my house, to Mom’s house, Beetle keys, a padlock key for my toolbox, and the Corvette key.

Why not? It was a night out.

I opened the garage door and slid into the driver’s seat. The engine roared to life. I backed into the street, goosed the accelerator, and eased out the clutch, feeling the power of nearly four hundred horses at my disposal.

I smiled for the first time in days as I drove the couple miles to Barry and Paula’s house. Somehow I always felt like the queen of the world when I was behind the wheel of my beloved vintage Corvette.

Paula must have been waiting by the door. She came hurrying down the walk as soon as I pulled up. Barry stood in the doorway and waved to us as we pulled away.

“Wow!” Paula fastened her seat belt. “I wasn’t expecting you to bring the ’Vette! This just gets better by the minute.”

On the drive in I filled Paula in on my plans for the evening.

She’d never been to a wine auction, either, but she’d spent the afternoon reading up on the subject. She even, she reported proudly, had searched Google for wine auction information.

When I first came back to Pine Ridge, Paula had barely been able to turn on her computer to log books in and out at the library. Now, with the occasional help of her secret consultant—namely me—she kept the two public terminals connected and humming along, and she was learning to use the electronic tools at her disposal.

After Blake Weston’s murder, a lot more people were aware of my computer skills and I found myself fielding calls for help with increasing frequency. Sometimes it was a friend or a coworker, and I tried to do what I could to bail them out.

In a town the size of Pine Ridge there was no such thing as a complete stranger, but there were lots of people who were acquaintances, not friends. And lately I’d been getting calls from some of those people, too. My reputation was beginning to spread and I didn’t know what to do about it. It was a problem I had to address. Soon.

But right now, I had bigger fish to fry.

We pulled up in front of the simple and elegant brick building and climbed out. I swallowed hard and handed my keys to the valet. Knowing I wouldn’t have to park on the street was comforting. Letting someone else drive my toy was nerve-wracking.

Inside the door a registration table stood along one wall. Behind it a young man with spiky hair greeted most of the buyers by name. The bidders carried their own catalogs, already well thumbed and dog-eared. They signed a register, took a paddle with a number, and moved into the main room.

We inched along, moving closer to Mr. Spiky Hair.

As we got to the front of the line, Paula stepped in front of me and gave Spiky Hair a dazzling smile. “Need to register,” she said, “decided to come at the last minute.”

She signed the register and gave the guy a flash of her driver’s license. She took the paddle and the catalog he offered her, and returned him another smile.

I stepped forward, but Paula took me by the arm and pulled me away. “We’re together,” she said as she dragged me toward the door.

“No need to have your name in the register,” she whispered.

Paula had seen too many spy movies.

The large room hummed with muted conversations as the bidders conferred with one another and consulted their catalogs. I caught a glimpse of a couple catalogs marked with multiple colors and indecipherable codes. These people took this very seriously.

I looked around the room, taking in the crowd. They were a mix of ages and sizes with one thing in common: money. Some of it was understated, some of it was flaunted, but it was definitely there.

Good thing I’d brought the ’Vette. At least we had some camouflage.

At the front of the room I spotted Phil Wilson. He had less hair and more pounds than in his TV ads, but there was no mistaking the voice that had boomed out on every commercial break. While most people talked in low voices sort of like they were in church, Wilson’s volume control was set just a little shy of deafening.

He commented to his companion, a woman young enough to be his daughter and anorexic enough to be a model, on several lots that he thought he should bid on. Mostly he seemed concerned with the prices, dismissing anything without a high reserve. If the seller didn’t think it was worth a minimum, how good could it be?

We drifted closer to Wilson, listening to his nonstop commentary. Paula said softly that he obviously didn’t know a thing about wine. With a single afternoon of computer research, a new skill she delighted in showing off, she could see several errors in Wilson’s thinking.

“The man wouldn’t know a vintage port from a bottle of Mad Dog,” she said in an indignant whisper.

Still, he was the only link we had to Veritas, and I wanted to talk to him if I could. From the way Model-Girl clung to his arm like he was a prize catch, I wasn’t sure we would be allowed close.

We moved toward a couple chairs at a table next to Wilson. Several other bidders were beginning to take their seats as the official starting time approached.

Just then Wilson turned to survey the room. His gaze raked the assembled group, and I caught a glimpse of the shrewd intelligence that had kept him on top of the used-car game for forty years.

He might be a bombastic jerk who was ignorant about wine, but he wasn’t stupid.

In that moment he climbed high up my suspect list.

Well, it wasn’t much of a list. In fact, right now it consisted of only Phil Wilson, which pretty much guaranteed him the top spot. But he did seem to deserve it.

His eyes lit on Paula and a momentary confusion knotted his brow. Within seconds he identified her and extended a hand. “Mrs. Hickey! How good to see you. I didn’t know you were a wine aficionado.”

He turned to the woman on his arm. “Heather, this is Mrs. Hickey. Her husband’s a contractor in Pine Ridge. I sold him a couple rigs, and he did some work for me on the cabin.”

I managed to control my impulse to laugh. His so-called cabin had at least six bedrooms, a private theater, and three kitchens, including one on the flagstone terrace. I hadn’t been on the crew, but I knew Barry had installed solid-brass fixtures, steam showers, and jetted tubs in all four bathrooms, and put in natural gas heating units on the various decks.

Barry referred to it as the Hawaiian vacation cabin, since it had paid for an anniversary trip to the Islands.

Paula kept a rigid smile on her face. She wasn’t Mrs. Hickey, she was Ms. Ciccone, but this guy clearly didn’t know that. I had to give her credit; she didn’t try to correct him. She was making the sacrifice for the sake of my investigation and I appreciated her restraint.

Paula introduced me as an associate of her husband, and laughed merrily, as though Phil Wilson was actually charming. “Hardly an aficionado,” she said. “Georgiana and I just started learning about wine, and we thought the opportunity to see a real live auction was too good to pass up.”

I smiled and shook the hand he extended toward me. “Glad to meet you,” he said. “You work with Barry, huh? Great guy. Great guy! You ever need a car, you come down to the dealership. Tell my boy I said he should take good care of you.”

I didn’t mention that I drove a car worth more than anything on his lot and had no intention of replacing it, though I was tempted.

“Yes,” I gushed. “Barry’s a great guy. It was really sweet of him to let me steal his wife for the evening.”

I think Paula had an elbow ready to dig into my ribs, but I moved a step closer to Wilson and she couldn’t reach me.

“I heard about your cabin,” I continued. “Someone told me you had a great wine cellar.”

Wilson launched into a long-winded explanation of his wine cellar and his collection. Every sentence contained a reference to how much one thing or another cost.

I was beginning to sympathize with William’s assessment of the man.

“Philly,” Heather whined at his elbow. She had had enough of the conversation, and of the two of us. “Philly, I need some champagne.”

I bit my tongue. The name was actually appropriate. He was “cheesy” enough.

He didn’t move. Just dug into a pocket and stuffed a wad of bills in her hand. “Go find yourself some bubbly, girl. But hurry your sweet little self back here quick. This thing’s about to start.”