Dead on the Vine: (Violet Vineyard Murder Mysteries #1 (A Cozy Mystery)) Read Free Page B

confusion.
    I flopped into a chair at the kitchen table, held my head in my hands and thought about Kevin. My life would be less rich for his loss. We’d shared so many good times. The harvests and crushes, the planting and tastings. Even the bad times seemed precious now. The times when equipment failed or the rains didn’t come or came in a flood. It was then that I thought of Laurel, Kevin’s wife.
    “Oh, no,” I said as Victor walked in from the dining room.
    “What?” Victor asked, anxiety carving deep lines in his face. “What’s the matter?”
    “Laurel,” I said. “She doesn’t know.”
    “Oh,” Victor said. Laurel was a cold and beautiful woman who had married Kevin seven years ago. Many nights I had listened to them argue inside their converted barn, which is less than two hundred yards from my home. With me, she was saccharine sweet and full of complaints. Either my workers were lying under ‘Her’ almond trees and crushing ‘Her’ grass or the smell of freshly picked grapes in the gondolas was just too much and could I have them moved downwind? It was never ending. With Victor she was snotty and hot-tempered. One day last fall, during the height of the crush, she had ordered Victor to have one of the pickers move his pickup off the road in front of her house. She would have told the picker herself, she rudely explained, except she didn’t “speak wetback.”  Victor calmly told her she didn’t own the road and she countered with a threat to call immigration if it wasn’t gone in five minutes. Kevin was apologetic after these incidents, but it did put a damper on our relationship.
    “Ben or one of the other cops will tell her,” Victor replied shortly.
    I nodded, but felt like I wasn’t showing Kevin the respect he deserved. No matter how bad it made me feel, I wasn’t going over there to deliver the bad news. If she and I had been friends I would have insisted on being there. For the first time I was almost grateful she was such a witch. 
    We were interrupted by a tapping at the kitchen door jamb. I turned to find Ben Stoltze’s frowning face thrust through the still open door.
    “Need you out here, Victor,” Ben said. They needed no introduction - Victor’s family has been in the valley longer than Ben’s or mine. Longer than any Anglo. More importantly, both Ben and Victor are natives of the Valley and remember a time when everyone knew everyone. And everything about everyone.
    “Coming, Ben,” Victor replied and Ben disappeared.
    “Jess is doing fine,” Victor told me as he trailed Ben outside. I nodded my thanks, but I assumed he was lying.  I doubted that Jessica had recovered so quickly from the shock of seeing Kevin’s corpse. I knew I hadn’t.
    I followed Victor to the door and stopped there. Out in the vineyard the detectives were measuring something with a roll-up tape measure while the deputies duck-walked around Kevin’s body, combing through the short clover with their fingertips. Kevin was still hanging from the trellis, mimicking the cruciform shapes of the sturdy rootstock from which the grape canes grow. Ben, Victor, Samson and the three Mexican men were standing on the patio talking in Spanish. Ben had a small notepad and a stub of pencil in his hand. It was a scene straight out of a television police drama.
    I waited for a break in the conversation before I spoke. “I’m going to take a shower and change clothes. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
    “All right,” Ben replied. “I want you to come with me to the Harlans. I’d like somebody the widow knows there when I give her the bad news. Then we’ll need to talk.”
    “Great,” I said, and Ben shot me a look. I didn’t care. “Ten minutes,” I said grudgingly and went back into the house, cursing under my breath, mentally asking Kevin to forgive me.
     
    I’ve never been one of those women who take two hours to do their hair and another two to dress. Maybe it’s because I never have