G'Day To Die Part 16

"Google Earth," said Etienne. "Type in your coordinates, and you can zoom in on a dime you dropped in your driveway." He narrowed his blue eyes at me. "Why is it that you always put the fear of G.o.d in me when you ask questions like that, bella bella?"

"Ask and you shall receive," said Duncan, handing Etienne and me gla.s.ses half-filled with straw-colored wine. "I'd like to offer a toast." He raised his gla.s.s.

"Enjoy," said Henry as he left us.

Duncan clinked his gla.s.s against ours and gave Etienne a meaningful look. "What do you say, Miceli? May the best man win?"

"Farab.u.t.to," spat Etienne. spat Etienne.

"Imbroglione," hissed Duncan. hissed Duncan.

I rolled my eyes. Not again. I knocked back my chardonnay and toasted them with my empty gla.s.s. "You two keep up the friendly dialogue. I'm going back for a refill."

I skirted the perimeter until I found a path through the crowd, then inched my way toward the counter, where our hostess was brandishing a new bottle in the air. "This is our nineteen-ninety-siven Riesling with a lovely nose of limes, marmalade, and apricots."

I spied Heath and Nora at the far end of the counter, winegla.s.ses extended for a hit of the Riesling, while Roger and Diana brandished their stemware erratically and yapped at them like schnauzers. Huh, that was odd. What was Roger doing waving a gla.s.s around? Had he decided to drink the wine despite all the toxins he'd been fussing about? Jake lurked beside the group, looking ridiculously sinister as he cradled his winegla.s.s against his chest. His proximity to Heath boded trouble, so I was glad Henry was close by so he could break up- "CAN YOU BREATHE, d.i.c.k?" Helen Teig thumped her husband between his shoulder blades.

"Is he okay?" I asked anxiously.

"Yeah, he accidentally combined 'swish' and 'swallow' and got 'choke.'"

"The savory palate of the Riesling is a blend of spice and honey," our hostess informed us as she filled empty gla.s.ses.

"The lady said to swirl swirl the wine, d.i.c.k," Grace Stolee scolded. " the wine, d.i.c.k," Grace Stolee scolded. "Swirl, not slosh. The idea is to release the aroma-not run through a spin cycle! You'll never get that stain out." not slosh. The idea is to release the aroma-not run through a spin cycle! You'll never get that stain out."

I heard a sound like a toy motorboat and glanced across my shoulder to find Osmond Chelsvig with his head thrown back, acting as if he had a mouth full of Listerine. I made a slight detour toward him.

"Osmond?"

He gulped down what was in his mouth and smiled at me. "This tastes much better than my regular mouthwash."

"Why are you gargling?"

"That's what the lady said to do. Gargle before swallowing."

I shook my head. "Watch my lips. Gurrrgle. Gurgle before swallowing." I tapped my earlobe. "Check your batteries, okay?"

I placed my gla.s.s on the counter and tried to avoid getting crushed as I waited for it to be filled.

"Emily, dear! Yoo-hoo!" Nana plowed through the crowd with Tilly, Margi, and Bernice in tow. "Wasn't that chardonnay somethin'? I couldn't taste no coconut, though."

"That's because you have to sip before before you spit," Bernice said dully. you spit," Bernice said dully.

Nana shrugged impishly. "I got my steps outta order."

"Bernice should talk," Margi balked. "She went directly from see to swallow. I don't know what happened to swirl, sniff, sip, and swish."

I cuddled up to Nana and gave her a hug. "Did no one bother to tell you that your hairpins came loose? Henry asked why you're wearing a condom in your ear."

"No kiddin'? What size?"

I pinned the remnants of the glove back under her hair while the other ladies placed their gla.s.ses on the counter.

"Have any of you seen Connie?" Ellie asked, looking like a lost soul as she b.u.mped into us. "One minute he's spitting into a barrel, and the next minute he's gone."

Tilly scanned the room. That's one of the advantages of being six feet tall in your stocking feet. "There he is. Look for Jake Silverthorn's hat, and you'll be right on target."

"Party time!" said Bernice, grabbing a newly filled gla.s.s off the counter.

"Wait a minute," said Margi. "That's my gla.s.s."

"Is not."

"Is so. I put mine next to the one that's smeared with lipstick."

"That would be mine," I said, s.n.a.t.c.hing it up.

"I'm keeping this gla.s.s," vowed Bernice.

"Well, I'm not drinking after you," said Margi. "I want a new one. S'cuse me! Can I get a clean gla.s.s over here?"

"I don't mean to confuse the issue," said Tilly, "but I could have sworn I put my my gla.s.s next to the one with the lipstick print." gla.s.s next to the one with the lipstick print."

At birthday parties you played musical chairs; at wine-tasting parties it was musical gla.s.ses.

The sound of shattering gla.s.s echoed through the room, followed by a boom boom that vibrated the floor-boards. that vibrated the floor-boards.

"What was that?" asked Nana.

"Call an ambulance!" a man shouted.

Our hostess slammed her bottle of Reisling onto the counter in disgust. "That's it! I've had it with you flaming tour groups. The idea is to taste taste the wine, not drink yoursilves into a b.l.o.o.d.y coma!" the wine, not drink yoursilves into a b.l.o.o.d.y coma!"

Chapter 13.

Osmond read from his tally sheet as we huddled next to the building where paramedics had been administering to Nora Acres. "Five people think she collapsed from the heat. One person thinks it was a heart attack. One person thinks she fainted from thirst. I reckon that'd be Lucille. Three people say she collapsed from old age, and one person says she's faking it to draw attention to herself." We all stared at Bernice.

"What? You've never heard of Munchausen's Syndrome? Don't you people ever watch ER ER?"

"She wasn't faking it," Tilly chided. "Did you see the poor woman when they took her away? She looked as if she were on her deathbed."

And if it was possible, Heath had looked even worse.

A local ambulance had arrived in record time and whisked them away. I hoped their efforts to stabilize Nora had been successful.

"How old a woman you s'pose she is?" asked Nana.

"A hundred and ten," said Bernice.

"They probably shouldn't let folks that old sign up for these trips," said Osmond, who was a birthday short of ninety. "I've heard that once you reach a hundred, things really start falling apart."

"That young man with her should have known better," Helen affirmed. "You think he's a relative?"

"That's her son," I said, not surprised by the drop-mouth expressions that stared back at me.

"No way," said d.i.c.k Teig. "Great-grandson, maybe."

"Do you suppose she had him late in life?" asked Alice.

"Yeah, like when she was eighty," said d.i.c.k.

"It's her son," I repeated. "He told me himself."

Henry walked our way, lips moving and finger waving in the air as he counted heads. "That's everyone. You can reboard the bus in about tin minutes. Sorry for the excitement, but I hope you won't let it affict the rist of your day. There's plinty more wine for you to taste at the other vineyards, kangaroo with plum sauce to dine on for lunch, and you can relax knowing that Mrs. Acres is receiving the bist midical care that South Australia has to offer. I'm sure she'll be up and about in no time and anxious to rejoin us."

"How old a woman do you think she is?" d.i.c.k Stolee called out.

Henry unfolded a paper from his breast pocket and scanned the text. "She was born in forty-three, so that would make her-what? Fifty-siven going on fifty-eight?"

Gasps of disbelief. "No way is she only fifty-seven," argued Bernice.

"Says so right here on her midical form. She was born on St. Patrick's Day in nineteen-forty-three."

"Maybe she's got that disease what makes people look real old," said Nana. "What's it called?"

"Wrinkles," said Grace.

Uff da! Nora Acres was younger than my mom? I guess that's what happened when you lived in a place with too much sun and not enough drugstores selling sunblock with high SPF. Nora Acres was younger than my mom? I guess that's what happened when you lived in a place with too much sun and not enough drugstores selling sunblock with high SPF.

A digital tone rang out from Henry's hip. He walked out of earshot to answer it.

"If she's fifty-seven, I'll eat my-" Bernice gave herself a once-over in search of digestible clothing.

"Why don't you eat d.i.c.k's shirt?" suggested Grace. "It's made in China, and you like Chinese."

Henry walked back to us, a hitch in his normally fluid gait. "That's a call I wasn't expicting." He inhaled deeply, his cell phone still cradled in his palm. "I'm afraid I painted too rosy a picture about Mrs. Acres's recovery. That was Heath. His mother died on the way to hospital."

"What was it?" asked d.i.c.k Teig. "Heart attack?"

"I bet it was heatstroke," said Margi. "If people get too hot, their insides can cook like peas in one of those boiling pouches, and that can do them in real quick. The old and infirm are especially vulnerable."

"She wasn't old," objected Tilly. "She was only fifty-seven!"

"If she was fifty-seven, I'll eat-" Bernice looked around. "You got anything better than d.i.c.k's shirt?"

While the group debated the cause of Nora Acres's death, I slipped back into the tasting room, which was eerily quiet minus the sipping and spitting. The staff had cleared away the dirty stemware and swept Nora's shattered gla.s.s off the floor, so the room sparkled once more with pre-tour group tidiness. You'd never know someone had just died here.

Okay, maybe not technically, but she might as well have died here. And if she had, I imagined things would be very different right now. The medical examiner might be snooping around, looking for evidence that might cast Nora's death in a suspicious light. He might have called in the crime scene unit, who would have gathered the pieces of her broken gla.s.s into an evidence bag, taken photos, and subjected us to lengthy interviews about where we were when the incident happened and what we'd seen.

I peered out the window, where I could see people straggling back to the bus, and wondered if any of the guests who'd been in her vicinity would have owned up to what had been going on. Heath wanting to cuckold Jake. Roger wanting to best Diana. Heath wanting to blow off Roger and Diana. Jake wanting to punish Heath. Diana wanting to destroy Roger. Roger and Diana wanting to break Heath. And Nora stuck in the middle of it all. Had she been aware of all the undercurrents? Or had her mind been so detached from reality that someone could have come at her with the business end of a corkscrew and she would have missed the intent?

Poor Nora. She'd seemed such a sad, lost soul. She'd probably never hurt a thing in her life, other than Jake's leaping spider. Why was it that people who were quiet and una.s.suming ended up dead while the obnoxious ones always managed to survive? It didn't seem fair. G.o.d obviously knew what He was doing, but on occasion, I wish He'd err on the side of the obnoxious ones.

But He was G.o.d. G.o.d didn't make mistakes. Only people made mistakes.

Turning to leave, I glanced at the shelves of sparkling stemware behind the counter and felt my pulse quicken as an absurd thought hit me.

Only people made mistakes.

d.a.m.n. What if- Whoa! Was it possible that- Holy c.r.a.p. If what I was thinking proved true, Claire Bellows's killer had struck again, but he might have killed the wrong person.

"You don't think it was a heart attack?" asked Nana, when we were back at the hotel. "What about a ruptured gallbladder, or kidney stones? I don't think you die from stones, though. You just wish you could."

We'd finished our day of wine tasting, despite what had happened to Nora. Henry had suggested we return to Adelaide, but the seventy-and-over crowd had voted to continue with the schedule. Few people had bonded with Nora. The majority didn't even know what she looked like. So the loudest voices had convinced Henry to press on. As one man had articulated so eloquently, "I paid an arm and a leg for this tour, so I d.a.m.ned well better see what the brochure promised. I'm sorry about the old girl dying, but life goes on, and so should the tour."

I slid open our patio door to let in the cool evening air. "I think Nora was poisoned. We've seen this kind of thing before. You know how easy it is."

"Why would anyone want to poison Mrs. Acres?" asked Tilly.

"I don't think anyone wanted to." I sat down on the sofa while the ladies yanked off their boots. "I think the poison was intended for someone else. You saw all the confusion with the gla.s.ses in the tasting room. I'll bet you anything Nora drank from the wrong gla.s.s and died because of it."

Tilly leaned back in her chair, rubbing her feet. "So if Nora wasn't the killer's target, who was?"

"I'll give you my short list: either Heath, Roger, Jake, or Diana. And did I tell you that Conrad changed his plane reservations? He's going to be staying on after the tour ends."

"Long enough to return to Port Campbell and look for your grandmother's plant?" asked Tilly.

"Ellie didn't say how long they'd be staying. She was more upset about where the money was going to come from to foot the bill."

"Are you thinkin' the same person what killed Claire Bellows killed Nora?" asked Nana.

"That's my current theory. Why, do you think it sounds stupid?"

"Nope, but there's somethin' I don't get, dear. Makes sense to me that Roger, Diana, or Conrad might a killed Claire 'cause a the plant business. Even makes sense why they'd wanna kill each other. But what's got me stumped is why Jake or Heath woulda killed Claire when they got no connection to her."

"Perhaps they didn't need a connection," said Tilly. "Have you considered the possibility that we might be dealing with a sociopath who kills for no reason at all?"

Nana gave that careful thought. "Where would you write 'Sociopath' on them medical forms we filled out? Under 'Pre-existing Conditions' or 'Other?'"

Unh-oh. I felt an acid indigestion moment coming on. "Umm, I never mentioned this before because I didn't want to scare you, but Jake could have had a hand in Claire's death. He didn't do anything deliberately, but there's a chance he might have killed her." I dropped my voice to a raspy whisper. "Accidentally."