Blood for Wine Page 2

  I was relieved to see he had no noticeable scratches on his face, hands, or arms. Anything resembling defensive wounds would have been an even bigger problem than I figured he already had.

  I did my best to comfort my friend as we headed back to Dundee, but he was inconsolable. Having lost my wife to suicide a decade earlier, I knew the razor-blade-swallowing pain Jim was feeling. When I couldn’t think of much else to say, we rode in silence, the Pacific Highway like a ghost road in the early morning hours. My headlights finally shone on the small, understated sign marking the turn into his winery, Le Petit Truc, which Jim once explained to me meant “the little thing” in French. We drove through shadowy rows of grapevines, past a series of outbuildings, and parked in front of his house, a meticulously restored Craftsman built in the teens of the previous century.

  He turned to me, his face almost pleading. “I know you’re tired, but why don’t you come in. I’ve got a bottle of Kilbeggan, and I need a drink.”

  He needn’t have worried. I needed a drink, too.

  Jim withdrew the whiskey and two glasses from a built-in cabinet in the dining room. Nodding at the bottle, he said, “This stuff goes way back. Kilbeggan was a monastery built in the sixth century by one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, St. Becan.” He dropped his gaze, shaking his head. “Lori gave me this.”

  After handing me the drink, Jim excused himself, his face grim. “Gotta make some calls. Lori’s got a mother and stepbrother in Portland. The cops offered, but I told them I’d do it. I’m regretting that now.”

  He came back looking even more shattered, sat down across from me at the dining room table, and ran a hand through his hair. “Oh, God, I just broke her mother’s heart. She’s sick, too. Cancer.” He exhaled a long sigh. “This is like a nightmare. I don’t get it. I mean, what the hell happened out there? Someone try to rob her or what?”

  “Why were you meeting at such a secluded spot?”

  “She called me. Said she wanted me to meet her there, that she’d been doing some thinking about us.” He shook his head again, and a wisp of a smile came and went. “She said it was a favorite place of hers. I’d never been there. She went to high school in Newberg, so she knew about it, I guess.” He leveled his gaze at me. “I couldn’t believe it, Cal. It was like old times. She told me to bring a bottle of wine, too.”

  I nodded. “She just called you unexpectedly?”

  “No. Actually, we’ve been talking off and on for the past month or so. Had lunch with her once. Things were getting back on track, but we were going slow and not saying anything about it to anyone. She insisted on that.” He looked away and drained his glass as his eyes filled. “I was ecstatic,” he added, his voice suddenly husky.

  “What happened when you got to the overlook?”

  He studied the nicked surface of the table between us for several moments. “I parked next to her. As I swung in, my lights shone on her for an instant. Her head was kind of off to one side, but I didn’t think anything of it. I was so damn glad that she was actually there, you know? It seemed too good to be true.”

  I nodded again.

  He got up, poured himself another drink and topped me up. His hand, ink-smudged from having given a set of fingerprints, trembled slightly. “Anyway, I could just make her out in the car. She didn’t move. I remember thinking maybe she fell asleep. I knocked on the passenger side window, then opened the door.” He dropped his head. “The dome light came on and there she was, drenched in blood.” He looked up at me. “It’s a fucking blur after that. I screamed, I think, and shook her. Her head fell toward me, and I got blood all over my hands, my sweater. I fumbled around trying to get a pulse, but I couldn’t feel anything. She was limp. Like a rag doll. My phone was in my car, so I went back and called 911.”

  “Did you see her purse? Was there any sign of a robbery?”

  He nodded. “I remember it sitting on the passenger side seat. I think I might’ve pushed it onto the floor. I don’t think it was open or anything, but I’m not sure.”

  “You, uh, mentioned blood. Did you see any wounds?”

  Jim blew a breath through his lips and closed his eyes for a moment. “Oh, God. The side of her head, her hair, all matted with blood. Someone hit her with something. Hard.”

  “Did you see a weapon?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I would have noticed it, I’m sure. But I didn’t search around or anything.”

  “Uh, what about the blood? Did it look dark or seem sticky?”

  He looked queasy for a few moments, and I thought he might throw up. “No. It was fresh, still oozing from the wounds.”

  “What did you do until the police arrived?”

  “I just sat there, holding her hand and crying like a fucking idiot.” He brought his eyes up and met mine. The blue lasers were pumping now. “I want to find the son of a bitch who did this, Cal.”

  “Me, too.”

  Jim had another Killbeggan, and we talked some more. When he finally put his head down on the dining room table, I coaxed him over to a couch in the living room and got him to stretch out. After covering him with an afghan, I left him there and went down to the outbuildings and waited for his field boss and general handyman, Juan Cruz, who rolled in at six forty-five.

  A proud man with short cropped hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, Juan crossed himself when I explained what happened. “I left Jim sleeping on the couch,” I added. “You might want to look in on him in the next hour or so. I’ll check back this afternoon.”

  Like a dull yellow coin, the sun lurked behind a band of gauzy clouds that morning as I drove through the vineyards toward The Aerie. The shock of Lori’s death had muted somewhat. Her death was an absolute, and now something less certain but perhaps more disquieting took up residence in my head. I didn’t think for a moment that my friend killed his wife, but with blood on his hands, in his car, and a history of estrangement, I knew the investigative detectives would have a much different take.

  There was more to come.

  Chapter Three

  There’s nothing like missing a night’s sleep to dull one’s enthusiasm for work the next day. I had a nine o’clock appointment, so I needed to get my butt down to the office, which I did after feeding Archie and downing a bowl of granola and a double cappuccino. A stand-alone with a flat roof and a six by six front window, my law office sat on the east end of Dundee on the Willamette River side of the highway. It had been a barbershop—the only one in town—for forty-odd years before the barber died. The building sat idle for a decade before I came along and gave it a bit of a makeover and hung my shingle out.

  The morning air had a nice fall snap to it, so I put a pressed log in the woodstove after straightening up a little. I was the head janitor as well as the only lawyer in this operation. My nine o’clock arrived at 9:13, a woman named Audrey Steele who was trying to make a break with an abusive husband. She was thin with slightly stooped shoulders, wispy blond hair, and doe eyes that told a sad tale.

  “Are you clear on what we’re going to do in court on Friday?” I asked her after she got through fawning over Archie, who lapped up the attention shamelessly.

  “Yeah, I think so. We’re gonna ask the judge for a restraining order.”

  “That’s right.” I took her through the questions I planned to ask her at the hearing and some of the photos to be introduced into evidence. The photos showed a battered but defiant woman with a bruised forehead, a split lip, and a chipped front tooth. I got angry all over again just looking at those shots. When we finished up, her lips began to quiver and her eyes brimmed with tears. I came around the desk, handed her my handkerchief, and patted her gently on the shoulder.

  “We’re going to win this on Friday,” I told her. “You wait, things are going to turn around for you.” Me, the eternal optimist.

  After she left, I busied myself sorting out my client
billing for the previous month, a job I always put off until the last minute. I rarely got my going rate because it had gotten around that I was willing to accept barter and string out payments. A soft touch, that was me. This behavior was frowned on by my accountant, Gertrude Johnson, who was also my neighbor to the north. September had been slow, raising the possibility of a cash crunch, a specter that moved in and out of my life like the winter fog in the valley.

  I was nearly done when my cell went off. “Hey, Cal, it’s Winona.” Nine years ago, Winona Cloud asked me to help her find out why her grandfather disappeared, a task that nearly got us both killed and resulted in her being charged with killing the man who murdered him. We uncovered the truth about her grandfather, and after two hung juries, the murder charges against her were dropped. The violent ordeal we shared forged a strong emotional bond that blossomed from friendship into something more than that. But neither of us was ready for a committed relationship. As a strong Native American woman, she felt the alienation of a people whose culture had been systematically destroyed. This gave her a fierce sense of independence. I, on the other hand, felt the alienation of having my world ripped apart in a single afternoon. This made me leery of attachments. A matched pair.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I’m in Idaho, on the Snake River, near Mackay Bar. We’re doing that species survey on steelhead and Chinooks I told you about.” A PhD biologist and expert in habitat restoration, Winona was a consultant who did a lot of work for the Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. “It’s gorgeous up here, Cal. Look, this is short notice, but I’ve got a couple of slack days. Why don’t you come up for some steelhead fishing?”

  I groaned. Spending time with Winona and steelhead fishing were at the top of my drop-everything-to-do list. “I’d love to, but something’s come up.” I went on to explain what happened to Lori Kavanaugh.

  When I finished, Winona said, “Oh, that’s terrible. I remember them. An interesting couple. He’s the winemaker, big, outgoing guy with a red beard. She was the tall, sultry one. Right?”

  “Yeah. He’s pretty broken up, and I’m worried that the cops are going to come at him hard.”

  “God, Cal, he didn’t do it, did he?”

  “I can’t imagine it.”

  “You sure?”

  “I knew you were innocent, didn’t I?”

  She laughed at that and rang off after promising to call me when she got back to Portland. It was good to hear her voice.

  I went back to work, calling Jim a couple of times but without reaching him. Sometime after noon, I took Archie out for a break and then we crossed the Pacific Highway—known less colorfully as 99W—to get a coffee and something to eat at the local bakery. The highway sliced Dundee in half, and that two mile commercial strip constituted a notorious bottleneck, particularly on summer weekends when Portlanders flocked to the beach, or in the fall when they swarmed to the wineries up in the hills for a day of tasting. After years of wrangling, a plan to route a bypass around the town was settled on and construction was underway. Agreement on the bypass finally gelled when Dundee realized it had become a destination rather than a wide spot in the road, and that a bypass would not be a train wreck for its burgeoning economy.

  Run by a young couple who recently moved from Arizona, the Bake My Day was billed as an “artisanal” bakery. Their coffee was excellent, and they made pain au chocolat that was irresistible, especially if you had it right out of the oven in the morning. I was famished, so after tethering Arch outside I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, a bowl of French onion soup, and a double cap.

  “So, Cal,” Jamie, the female half of the team asked after I finished ordering, “did you hear about the murder last night?”

  I nodded but was taken aback that word of Lori Kavanaugh’s death had gotten out so fast. Before I could respond she made a face and added, “One of our customers was out jogging this morning and found the body, a young Hispanic man, facedown in Chehalem Creek. Probably a drug deal gone bad, the cops told him.”

  “Huh,” I said and went on to tell her about Lori’s murder. Both Jamie and her husband, Todd, knew Jim and to a lesser extent Lori. Dundee was a small town, and Jim was the unofficial mayor. They were horrified at the news. We talked for a while and when Archie followed me out, Jamie said, half jokingly, “Stay safe, Cal.”

  As we waited for a break in the traffic, I wondered if the death of that Hispanic man was somehow tied to Lori’s murder. After all, what was it, maybe seven or eight miles from Chehalem Creek to where her body was found? Then again, the Pacific Highway was a known drug corridor between Portland, a couple of gambling casinos, and the coastal towns. People got popped every now and then, and leaving a body in a creek would make a statement worth paying attention to.

  The traffic cleared momentarily, and my dog and I dashed across the highway. Just as I sat back down at my desk, my phone rang. “Cal, it’s Jim. My friends from last night have reappeared along with reinforcements. They’ve got a search warrant, too. I’m feeling a little threatened here.”

  “Okay. Don’t answer any questions until I get there. I’m leaving right now.”

  I got up, glanced at my watch, and said to Arch, “What took them so long?”

  Chapter Four

  I locked up my office, loaded Archie into the backseat of my old BMW, and started into the Dundee Hills, also called, more properly, the Red Hills of Dundee due to the reddish cast of the soil. Formed by a violent history of colliding continents and relentless lava flows, the hills were rich in iron and other minerals, which made them ideal for growing grapes—one of the many oddities of viticulture I’d picked up from Jim Kavanaugh. “It’s all about the dirt, Cal,” he must have told me a dozen times. “You can’t make good pinot noir without good dirt, and these hills have it.”

  I thought back to the day I met Jim, not long after I arrived from L.A. I’d passed his turnoff several times before noticing a sign one Saturday announcing the opening of a tasting room. I drove in and parked next to an old wooden barn with an arbor attached to one side, shaded with wisteria in full, purple bloom. Jim stood in the dappled sunlight behind a small bar lined with wine bottles. I was his only customer that day, and soon we were sitting at a small round table with a bottle of Le Petit Truc between us, his first pinot noir vintage. He was rough around the edges, but with a self-deprecating sense of humor and a laugh that could shake a room. But there was an intensity about him, too. I sensed it immediately. The man was an artist and, as I was to learn, his medium was the pinot noir grape.

  I’ll never forget that first glass of pinot he poured me. I loved wine but was more of a cabernet sauvignon type in those days, the prevailing wine grape down in California. I liked the deep color and big, back-slapping flavor of a good cab. Jim’s offering was a distinct departure. The color was less intense, but jewel-like when held to the light. The flavor was subtler and more complex, coming in lean and then blooming on my palate. I was an immediate convert. Jim’s face lit up at my enthusiastic reaction, saying, “It’s young and exuberant right now,” as if speaking about a child of his. “It’ll smooth out and get a lot better.”

  He was right, and I was a delighted witness to his growing prowess over the years as a maker of fine pinot noir wine.

  Le Petit Truc lay southwest of my place a couple of miles, off Worden Hill Rd. As I pulled into Jim’s long drive, I could just see the tip of a serrated line of Douglas firs that marked the west side of my property further up in the hills. The vineyards on either side of the drive were alive with men and women picking grapes, and I had to brake to let a forklift stacked with bins of just-picked, dark purple fruit cross the drive. I parked behind a line of official cars and left Arch with the windows rolled down. I found Jim inside the warehouse next to a moving conveyer belt laden with grapes. He was talking to a uniformed deputy. He looked shrunken and haggard, his face drawn and lacking color. I knew firsthan
d what a night of grief could do to a man, but I was still shocked.

  When I approached, he said, “Hey, Cal, thanks for coming. They’ve already taken my laptop from the house and a computer I keep in the tasting room for recordkeeping. They’re in the barn now, looking for God knows what. I mean, what the hell is this?”

  He handed me a copy of the warrant. It looked fairly standard except for one item. “They’re looking for the lug wrench for your Grand Cherokee?”

  Jim shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t get it. They’ve got my damn Jeep. As far as I know, the wrench is under the backseat where the jack’s stored.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to look unconcerned. I didn’t like the sound of that but saw no need to alarm him. Sometimes the purpose of a search warrant is to prove something is not there.

  While we waited, Juan Cruz came in a couple of times to confer with Jim. I caught enough of their conversation to learn that the pressure was on to finish the harvest because of impending bad weather. Meanwhile, I watched as four women at the conveyer belt sorted the good clusters of grapes from the occasional bad, or broke off a stem containing bad fruit, all done with blinding quickness. The search crew emerged forty minutes later, empty-handed but apparently unvexed. Hal Ballard, one of the detectives at the scene the night before, approached us, nodded to me, and said to Jim, “Mr. Kavanaugh, we’d like you to come down to the office in McMinnville. We have some more questions to ask you.”

  Jim’s eyebrows dipped and two vertical creases appeared between them like little geysers. I knew that look. He was pissed. “Are you kidding me?” He swept an arm toward the vineyards. “We’re trying to finish up the harvest here. I can’t leave right now.”

  Ballard held a neutral expression, but he stood up a little straighter. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, Mr. Kavanaugh.” He glanced at me, then looked back at Jim. “Time’s critical right now. We want to find out who killed your wife.” True enough, I thought, although I was pretty sure they thought they had their man.