Sinfandel (12 page)

We’d slowed to a walk so I could listen for sounds from the predator.  When we reached the corner of the orchard, I stopped Buster and peered down all four avenues of the dirt intersection.  I was wrong about how close the walnut trees were.  We’d have to cut across a large open field before we’d reach them.

When we left the cover of the trees, Buster must’ve sensed my fear because I barely nudged him and he took off like a Derby horse.  I gave him his head and the Thoroughbred blood he’d inherited from his sire’s side of the pedigree took over.  I grabbed a handful of mane and hung on for the ride.

In a little less than sixty seconds, we were back in the cover of big, beautiful, bullet-absorbing trees.  From there we hop-scotched from almonds to apricots, then cherries, and finally made it home.

Buster was lathered and sweaty and I needed to cool him down before I could turn him back out with Emlie, who was quite happy to see us.  My first priority was to report what had just happened, so I put him in the cross ties in the barn, where he’d be out of sight if the shooter had managed to find us here, then ran to the house to call Detective Obermeyer.  He promised to come right over.

Cowering beside my living-room window, I peeked out from behind the curtains to see if anyone was out there.  For an instant, I considered taking the shotgun out from under my bed and removing the trigger lock, but the weapon intimidated me so much that I decided to leave it there.  Obermeyer would be here soon.  When he finally showed up, I quickly unbolted the door and let him in.

“Did someone put a curse on you or something?” he asked as I slammed the door shut behind him and re-locked it.

“It would appear so.”

He looked me up and down.  “How’s your head?”

“Fine.”  I felt the back of my skull to make sure my ponytail was still doing its job.

“So tell me what happened.”

“I was riding back from feeding Andy’s horses and that’s when someone took a few shots at me.  Got pretty close, too.”

I still had the dried peach juice on my face, which by now was caked with dirt.  Obermeyer flicked a piece of it off with his fingernail.

“That’s from the peach he managed to hit, right next to my head.”

“You piss anyone off lately?  I mean more than usual?”

Ignoring his insult, I nodded.  “I had a blowup with my neighbor this morning.”

“Zucker?  The ex-con?”

“He came over here accusing me of siccing the TTB on him.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“Not that I could make out.  He used a lot of language I’m sure he picked up in prison, so it’s possible.”

Obermeyer gave me his “tell me more” look.

“I shoved him.  That really set him off.”

Obermeyer grinned.

“He was being a jerk.  But I don’t think he’s the one who shot at me.  I would’ve seen him following me, and he had no way to know where I was going.”

“I think it’s fair to say that someone has it in for you.  First the snake, now this.”

“But we agreed the snake was meant for Andy.”

Obermeyer took my arm, led me to the couch and sat me down.  “What if Andy put the snake up there?” he said.

“What?  That’s crazy.  He didn’t know he’d be in jail that night.”

“No?”

“And besides, assuming it’s the same person who shot at me, then it can’t be Andy.  He’s still in jail.”

“Afraid not.  He made bail early this morning.”

Chapter Nineteen

A
t first, I didn’t want to get out of Obermeyer’s car when he drove me to the peach orchard where I’d been shot at.  What if the shooter was still out there?

But after a while a dozen other police officers showed up to help search for bullets that might be lodged in trees and I felt safe enough to venture out.

It was hard to recall the exact spot where the peach exploded next to my head, and the hundreds of trees all looked alike.  As the searchers fanned out in the orchard, I wandered down the road, gazing at the dirt until I spotted Buster’s hoof prints.

“Over here!” I called to Obermeyer, who had just plucked a peach from a tree and taken a bite out of it.

“What’ve you got?”

“Right here,” I said, pointing at the ground.  “I turned Buster into the orchard after he shot at me.  See the hoof prints?”

Obermeyer took one more bite of the juicy peach without getting a single drop on his neatly pressed shirt and tossed the pit away.  He placed his feet in the exact spot where the prints left the road, then scanned the trees, keeping his gaze at eye level. 

“Buster is sixteen and a half hands tall,” I reminded him, and pointed toward the higher branches.  “He was aiming for my head.”

“Right,” he said, then motioned for some of the men to come over, moving the search effort closer.

I waved a honey bee away while I focused on trying to find the peach that splattered my face when it was struck by the bullet.  The trees were so loaded with leaves and fruit that it seemed an almost impossible task. 

Everything had happened so fast that I forgot many of the details, but being there again, the events came back to me.  Buster had almost dumped me because my foot was not in the stirrup when the shot was fired, and he galloped along the orchard for a good distance before I got him under control.  Following his tracks until the hoof prints changed from the distinct three-beat gallop to the four-beat walk, I stopped and looked up.  Within a matter of seconds, my eyes landed on the wounded peach, its juice still dripping, and now covered with a small swarm of honey bees.

“I found it!” I called out.

The searchers followed Obermeyer to my position.  As we all stared up at what remained of the peach, I said, “Should we try to pick it?”

“No,” Obermeyer said.  “If we can find where the bullet lodged, then we can track its path and determine where the shooter was when he fired it.”

Everyone began searching the surrounding trees.  “There!” someone yelled, pointing at a fresh scar on one of the trees a few rows in.

While they played with tape measures and string to determine the trajectory of the bullet, I walked out to the center of the road, closed one eye and lined up the two known points, then turned 180 degrees and scanned the horizon.  A tall crop of field corn looked like the most likely place for the shooter to hide.  I didn’t have to say a word.  Obermeyer saw me staring at the field and walked up next to me.

“I think you’re right,” he said.  “Let’s go take a look.”

Within ten minutes the whole team had relocated to the corn field, some now armed with metal detectors they’d taken out of the trunks of the police cars.

The rows were tightly planted and only wide enough for one person to squeeze through.  It was determined fairly quickly that if the shooter left any clues behind, we wouldn’t have to go very deep into the field to find them because his view of the orchard would have been completely obscured just a couple feet inside the tall green stalks. 

The metal detectors squealed every time they landed on an old bolt that probably fell off a tractor, or a wrench that some farmer lost while working on the tractor that was losing bolts left and right.  It didn’t look like we were going to get lucky and there was talk of packing up and heading out when someone hollered, “Over here!”

A single shell casing, the brass still shiny, was dropped into a paper bag and labeled with a permanent marker.

“Why would he have left that here?” I asked Obermeyer.

“Probably didn’t intend to.  It had rolled under a leaf and wasn’t visible.  I’m sure he was in a hurry to get out of here, so he left it.  If we’re lucky, we’ll get a print off of it.”

“So, what now?  We wait?”

“Nope.  We go talk to your boyfriend and find out where he was this morning.”

Following Obermeyer to his car, I said, “I don’t think we can officially call him my boyfriend.”

He looked at me with raised eyebrows.  “No?  How does one become official?”

“When we know for sure he’s not trying to kill me.”

Obermeyer parked his car in front of Andy’s house, then pointed a finger at me.  “Stay put.”

I gave him my “Are you kidding?” look and he shot back with his “I mean it” look. 

“If he’s the guy, then I don’t want you near him.”

“Then why didn’t you just take me home first?”

“You know what a sitting duck is?” 

“Fine, but leave the engine running.  It’s too hot to leave me in this car without the air on.”

Instead, he rolled the windows down and took the keys. 

“Jerk,” I said to his back, loud enough for him to hear, as he walked toward Andy’s front door.

Fanning my face with a map I dug out of the glove box, I watched Obermeyer knock for the second time on Andy’s door.

“What’re you doing here?” a voice said into my ear, causing me to jump.  When I whipped my head around, Andy was leaning into the car, his face right next to mine.

“Looking for you,” I said, trying not to appear afraid.

I pushed the door open and climbed out of the hot car.  There was no point obeying Obermeyer anymore since his plan to keep me away from Andy was a complete failure.  “Hey, Detective!” I called out.  “Quack!  Quack!”

We all retreated to the air conditioned living room in Andy’s house.  I sat in a recliner next to a bay window and Andy took the sofa.  Obermeyer remained standing.

“Where were you between eight and nine this morning?”

Andy scratched his chin.  “I was on my way home from the county jail.  You know that.”

“You were released at six.”

“I had to make a stop,” Andy said.

“You want to elaborate?”

“You want to tell me what this is about?”

I decided to join the conversation.  “Someone tried to kill me.”

“What?”

“Someone put a rattlesnake on your haystack and it bit me in the head yesterday.”

“Are you–-”

“And this morning someone shot at me—coming home from feeding
your
horses.  Would’ve been nice if you’d called to let me know you were out of jail.”

“And you think it was me?”

I pointed at Obermeyer.  “He seems to be leaning in that direction.”

Andy looked disgusted.  “My brother brought me my truck when they let me go.  I was heading home when two pups ran out in front of me.  I barely missed hitting them.  I stopped to get them out of the middle of the road and saw that one had a broken leg and the other was bleeding, so I took them straight to the vet.”

Oh, he was good.  If there was any story he could tell that would disarm me in an instant, rescuing injured puppies was it.

“What’s the name of the vet?”  Obermeyer wasn’t as easy to convince.

Andy took a business card from his shirt pocket and handed it to Obermeyer.

“I’ll call him,” he said, then took out his cell phone and stepped into the kitchen.

Andy turned his attention back to me.  “Are you okay?”

I nodded.  “Just a little shaken.”

“A rattlesnake?  Really?”

“Want to see my bald spot?”

He shook his head, leaned over to see what Obermeyer was up to in the kitchen, then gave me a conspiratorial grin.  “Come on.  I want to show you something.”

After a brief hesitation, I did a gut-feeling check and decided Andy was not a killer, so I followed him through a door that lead to his garage.  He turned on the lights and directed me toward the far bay where he’d created a make-shift dog-run for two lucky puppies, both standing at the gate, their entire bodies wiggling with joy at the sight of us.

“Oh, they’re so cute,” I said as I reached over the doggie play-pen to pet them.  One had a cast on her left hind leg and the other had a bandage wrapped around his ribcage.  “Aussies?”

“A mix, I think.  Vet says probably Border Collie, Australian Shepherd, Queensland Heeler, and maybe a little Mc Nab.”

“Mc Nab?” I said.

“Basically a short-haired Border Collie.” 

Andy picked up the male and handed him to me, careful not to disturb the bandage.  He was mostly white with large splotches of red merle scattered in a random pattern over his body.  One of the dark spots landed on the left side of his head.  He had a brown eye on the white side of his face, and a blue eye on the other.  His nose was brown with two pink spots over each nostril, and he reminded me of a little piglet.

“I call that one Tony,” Andy said.

“Tony?  Where’d you come up with a name like that?”

“I don’t know.  He just looks like a Tony to me.  The other one’s Maybell—short for Maybelline because she looks like she’s wearing eyeliner, see?”

Maybell was mostly red merle with white paws and white along her chest and belly.  She was the prettier of the two, but my heart had already been spoken for.

I held Tony up to my face.  “Tony baloney.  You are too cute.”  He licked me on the nose and that was it.  There was no way I was leaving without staking a claim on that dog.

“Just this morning I was thinking I needed to get a good dog to guard the place,” I said.

Andy reached over and scratched Tony behind the ears.  “I don’t know.  What do you think, boy?”

The connecting door from the house squeaked and Detective Obermeyer poked his head in.  “His story checks out.  Let’s go.”

“Will you think about it?” I said as I handed Tony back to Andy.

He winked at me.  “Just as soon as they get all their shots and the vet gives them a clean bill of health, I’ll bring him over.”

During the drive back to my place, I made a mental list of everything I’d need to get for Tony.  Food and water bowls, toys, dog bed, collar… I’d have to enroll him in obedience school.  Maybe I’d get lucky and find a “Raccoon Chasing 101” class for him.  I’d call Monica to see if she had any recommendations.  She knew every dog trainer in the valley.

When we got to my place, I took the clicker out of my purse and opened the gate.  Obermeyer pulled through and parked.  “I’ll check your house.  I want you to lock all the doors and windows until I get back.  Got it?”

I gave him a military salute and nodded.  “Yes sir.”

After a dramatic eye-roll, he got out of the car and I followed him into my house.  He checked all the rooms, all the closets, under the bed, and even poked his head into the attic and scanned it with a powerful flashlight.  The place was secure.

“I’m going to talk to your neighbor.  I’ll be back shortly.”

All the windows were locked, shades and curtains were drawn, and the doors dead bolted.  Peering through a tiny gap between the curtains, I watched Obermeyer’s car roll out of my driveway and head toward the Zuckers’ place.  Since I couldn’t see anything from inside my house, and I wasn’t allowed to go outside, I decided to do a little work.

Using satellite images from the vineyard coordinates turned out to be a very useful tool.  Like Adobe Vineyards, several of the other farms didn’t appear to be vineyards at all—in fact the latitude and longitude for one of them placed it inside the boundaries of Lake Camanche.  The last time any of that land was above water was back in 1963 when the dam was built to create the reservoir—except for 1988 when a drought caused the water levels to drop so low the foundations from the ghost town of Camanche saw the light of day once again, if only for one summer.

My suspect vineyard list was now narrowed down to four.  I composed an e-mail to Quinn Adamson and sent him the list.

My stomach growled and I checked the clock on the wall.  It was after 1:00 PM.  Obermeyer had been at the Zuckers’ place for nearly an hour.  Worried, I raised the shade in my bedroom window and cracked it open an inch to listen for anything that sounded like a gunfight.  All was quiet, but that didn’t last long.  Sirens blared and the next thing I saw was a sheriff’s car racing up the road.  I ran to the front door and unbolted it, then stepped out on the porch.  Behind the sheriff’s car was an ambulance and the coroner’s wagon.

With my heart pounding, I slammed my door shut and took off at a run toward my neighbor’s house.  Was Detective Obermeyer all right?  Oh my God, if anything had happened to him, it would be my fault.  I’d be in therapy for years trying to overcome the guilt.  Why did I have to get so mouthy with Dash this morning?