Murders and Metaphors Read online

  “It just takes one crazy bunny to spoil it for all the good bunnies,” I said.

  She nodded. “I’ll give you that. But you’re basically investigating leads. I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of poking around.”

  I was about to argue with her more when she held up her hand. “Here’s the review on Bone and Hearth.”

  “What does it say?” I tried to lean over the information counter to get a look at the screen, but she had it turned away from me.

  Renee cleared her throat. “ ‘The vintage attempting to have a tropical flavor comes off as a mediocre fruit punch. This does not bode well for the rest of the line. Customers would do better choosing ice wines from across the Canadian border than to waste their money on this drivel.’ ” She looked up. “Can you say, ‘Ouch’?”

  “And Miles Rathbone is the owner of this winery?”

  She made a few more clicks on her keyboard. “Yes, that’s what it says here.”

  “He was at the book signing. He came up to her table and told her to sign her book to the winery she ruined.”

  Renee blinked at me. “Yikes. So, we can easily say that man is a tad bitter.”

  “Definitely.”

  She leaned forward, closer to her screen. “Belinda posted her review of the winery a month ago, and from what I can tell, it completely ruined his sales. It says here on another industry website that Rathbone pulled all Bone and Hearth’s wines this year over concerns for the vintage.” She looked up at me. “Which means they will make next to nothing in income. Why on earth would he want to be anywhere close to Belinda after she trashed him?”

  “Because he wanted to confront her, which he did,” I said.

  “Or kill her, which we don’t know if he did,” Renee said. “Seems to me that you have a serious suspect on your hands.”

  “I have more suspects than I know what to do with. Maybe it’s time to just tell Chief Rainwater about each of them and let him handle it.”

  Renee laughed. “I’d like to see you try. Violet, you and I know that you won’t rest until we see this through to the end.”

  I frowned, wishing that she wasn’t so right about me. “Does the article include a photo of Rathbone? I want to see if I recognize him from the book signing.”

  “No,” she said. “But that will be easy enough to find.” A moment later, she turned the computer screen in my direction. “There he is.”

  On the screen there was a photo of a middle-aged man standing in a vineyard. He had his hand on a post and smiled into the camera. He had salt-and-pepper hair and a toothy smile. Even though he hadn’t been smiling the night of the book signing, I recognized him immediately. “That’s him.”

  She nodded. “I can do better than that.”

  I arched my brow. “What do you mean?”

  She clicked away on the keyboard. “We need to go deeper and find out more about Belinda.” She typed for a moment.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, and tried to peer at her screen.

  “Patience. You can’t rush research.” She clicked a few more keys. “Ah, did you know Belinda was married before?”

  “What? I had no idea. How did you find that?” I asked.

  “It’s all public record. You just need to know how to find it, and with all those genealogy databases on the market that store this information, it’s easier than ever.”

  She clicked with her mouse. “Looks like they were married for less than a year.”

  “Was it annulled, then, because it was so short?”

  She shook her head. “Looks like a straight divorce.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Five years ago.”

  “What’s the man’s name?”

  “You are not going to believe it.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Miles Rathbone.”

  I froze.

  Not noticing my reaction, Renee went on. “They were married in New York City by a justice of the peace.” She looked up. “What wrong?”

  “What if her bad review of his winery was retaliation over their divorce?”

  I frowned and wondered if Lacey knew that her sister had been married once before. It was very possible that she didn’t, since the sisters hadn’t spoken in years. “Wow, this changes everything.”

  She nodded. “I bet Rathbone kicked himself over the divorce after Belinda became a success. From what I’ve found, her writing only hit the New York Times best-sellers list in the last four years. Although once she hit it, she hit it every time.” She paused. “And now she ruined his reputation with that article and is going to marry someone else. That seems like a good motive for murder, right?”

  I shivered.

  She removed her glasses and studied me. “It seems to me that you need to have a chat with Rathbone.”

  I nodded.

  “And there’s another person you need to talk to.”

  “Who?”

  “Nathan. You need to find out what his involvement is in all of this.”

  I stepped away from the information counter. “His involvement?”

  “The murder did take place at his family’s vineyard. You can’t ignore that.”

  “No, I can’t, so it’s hard for me to believe they could be involved. There is nothing the Mortons hate more than scandal, and they would never bring this level of notoriety down on their own property. It’s just not possible.”

  Renee set her glasses on the top of her head. “If you want to do right by Lacey, you can’t give Nathan or anyone else who was at that book signing a pass.”

  “Not even my grandmother? She was there too.”

  “Okay, you can give Grandma Daisy a pass, but that’s it.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Gee, thanks,” I muttered. “I think it’s more important to focus on Miles Rathbone right now. Also, there is her fiancé, Sebastian Knight. He has plenty of motive.” I was thinking about the insurance policy on Belinda.

  “They are both good suspects. The bad review of Bone and Hearth was just scratching the surface. There are at least five other scathing reviews of wineries and restaurants I found with a simple search. Who knows what I will find as I dig deeper. Rathbone’s might not be the only business she ruined with her pen.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  Renee glanced up from the screen. “Belinda Perkins made a lot of enemies.”

  Some would have said one too many.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It took all of my teaching skills to make it through my late-afternoon class. All I wanted to do was leave campus and find Miles Rathbone to ask him the growing list of questions in my head. By the end of the hour-and-fifteen-minute class, I congratulated myself that I’d made it through.

  As the students filed out, one came to my desk. She was a petite girl with a large hoop through her eyebrow and a thick layer of black lipstick around her pouty mouth.

  “Professor Waverly,” she began.

  I held up my hand. “Jodi, if this is about another extension on your paper, I’m going to have to say no.”

  “Professor, you have to give me an extension. I don’t want to hand in anything to you that’s not topnotch.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “It’s true. You are such a good judge of what good writing is. I would hate to insult you if I turned in something not good enough for you to read.”

  I sighed. “How much more time do you need?”

  “Just one week. I’m almost done. I promise.” Her pout morphed into a smile.

  I had heard that all before. This was the third time that I had given the same student an extension because she showed promise. The writing samples she had actually turned in were well constructed and imaginative. I marveled at how she could say mundane things in new and exciting ways. I didn’t want to discourage her from writing. She had such a gift.

  “Okay, but this is the final time. I can’t keep giving you an extension. If I do, I will have to give you an incomplete
for the quarter. It could ultimately affect your final grade.”

  “Thank you, Professor Waverly! I will make it up to you. I promise!” She turned and almost ran directly into a woman entering the room.

  “Sorry. I’m just leaving. The room is all yours,” I said, thinking she was the next professor to teach in the classroom. As at many community colleges, most of the faculty at Springside were adjunct professors like me, which meant I didn’t know who many of them were. I believed only a handful lived in the village of Cascade Springs; most commuted in from farther away. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

  I slid my class notes and composition book into my giant tote bag that I used for my classes. The tote was impossibly heavy, weighing more than most seven-year-old children. I heaved the bag onto the desktop.

  “Are you Violet Waverly?” the woman asked.

  I stopped putting items into my bag. “I am.” I smiled, still thinking that she was a professor. “Can I help you with something?”

  The woman held a pair of leather gloves in her hands that she had twisted into a tight rope. She was of medium height and build and had dishwater-blonde hair that was pulled back into a severe low ponytail. She dressed like she was a woman creeping up on old age, but I guessed from her face that she was younger than I was. She was vaguely familiar to me, but I assumed that was because I had seen her around campus. “I’m Michelle Hardy. My maiden name is Perkins.” She paused. “Lacey Dupont is my sister, and I have been looking for you.”

  I stared at her. Many times, I had gone looking for someone who might be related to a murder. This was the first time someone related to the victim came looking for me.

  “Michelle?” I asked in wonder. The last time I had seen the third of the four Perkins girls had been when I was a senior in high school. I guessed that Michelle had been eleven or twelve at the time. However, now that I knew she was Lacey’s sister, I saw the family resemblance. The hair color was close, but Lacey’s was lighter and much less drab, and she had Lacey’s curvy build. Where the sisters differed, the most was in demeanor. There was none of Lacey’s natural exuberance and zest for life. Michelle Hardy appeared to be a woman who had lived a hard life and simply accepted the cards she was dealt instead of throwing them back and demanding a new deck.

  “How did you find me?” I asked.

  “I knew that you taught here. I work at the college too. When they announced that you would be joining the English faculty, I recognized your name. You’re a bit of a celebrity in Cascade Springs.”

  I winced. I knew that she was thinking about my dramatic exit from the village twelve year ago. It seemed that I would never completely be able to leave that all behind me.

  “Since I work for the college, I called your department secretary and asked where I could find you.”

  I grimaced. “There is a class in here soon. Can we go somewhere else to talk?”

  “What about the college coffee shop? It should be quiet this time of day, as most of the classes have finished up and students will have gone home.” Springside was strictly a commuter campus. There were no dorms on the property.

  I agreed. Michelle and I walked across the campus with our heads bent low, unable to chat in the howling wind. That was fine with me. It gave me time to gather my thoughts about what I wanted to learn from Lacey’s sister. Lacey had said she’d been at Belinda’s signing, but I didn’t remember seeing her. Unfortunately, the third Perkins sister was the kind of woman who was easily forgotten.

  The college coffee shop was in the middle of the campus and was the gathering place for all the commuter students to wait between classes and hang out with their friends. It was a large room with café tables and quiet booths peppered throughout, so there were plenty of places for students to socialize or study. It was one of my favorite places on campus, and the baristas there made decent coffee. It certainly wasn’t up to Adrien’s standards, but it was good.

  As Michelle had predicted, the shop was nearly empty. There were two baristas at the counter, looking impossibly bored, and one lone student, who had the volume up so loud on his earbuds I could hear every lyric, was hunched over a laptop.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked Michelle.

  She looked like she might say no but changed her mind. “Just a small black coffee for me. Thanks.”

  I nodded and put in our order with the green-haired barista at the counter: small black coffee for Michelle, large caramel latte for me. I had a sweet tooth, and I wasn’t afraid to show it. Service was quick, and I paid and carried the coffees to the most secluded booth, where Michelle sat. I set the coffee in front of her and took my place.

  Michelle wrapped her hands around the paper cup. “Thank you.”

  I smiled. “What did you want to talk to me about? I assume it’s Belinda.”

  At the mention of her eldest sister’s name, Michelle teared up.

  I plucked three white napkins from the dispenser on the table. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I know losing your sister must be awful. She was such a vibrant woman.”

  “She was a terror.”

  I jerked my head back.

  “I’m not crying because I’m sad that she’s dead.” She wiped at her eyes with the napkins. “I mean, I am sad. It’s sad when anyone dies, but I don’t mourn her like you should mourn a sister. She was more a stranger to me. She flitted in and out of my life when it was most convenient for her. Since I had nothing of worth to contribute in her mind, I was of no interest. If it weren’t for my children, I don’t think she would have communicated with me at all. I’m not Adele.”

  She said all this in a rush, and I stared at her. I had been prepared for tears, but not for such obvious anger. “What do you mean that you’re not Adele?”

  Mascara smeared onto the white napkin as she rubbed the coarse paper under her eyes. “Adele was the favorite. Belinda doted on her and gave her favors and money. How else can my youngest sister live as a starving artist?”

  “Why did she like Adele so much?”

  “Because Adele had a talent. She’s a painter. Belinda only cared about people who showed promise of some sort. According to her, I didn’t have any useful talents. I was of little interest.”

  That sounded odd to me. If Belinda believed only in people with talent, then why was she with Sebastian, who by all accounts wasn’t much good for anything?

  “But she’s interested in your children?”

  She sighed. “She had been. She sent us money from time to time to put our two daughters in different activities so that we could discover what their talents were. At Belinda’s direction, we put them in everything from gymnastics to singing lessons to dance. Nothing “took,” as far as Belinda was concerned, because the girls didn’t show exceptional promise in any of them.”

  “How old are your children?” I sipped from my latte.

  “They are three and five, and Belinda expected them to be protégées in something. It was too much pressure for a little girl. I refused to put them through it any longer. I told Belinda this a year ago. I said she could give the girls money if she liked, but she couldn’t dictate how we spent it.” Michelle pushed her untouched coffee cup away from her. “Belinda wouldn’t agree to those terms, because even hundreds or even thousands of miles away, she wanted to control the family. I don’t know why. She abandoned us when we were children ourselves. I always thought that this was her way of making up for her guilt of leaving the family.”

  “Seems an odd way to do it.”

  “Well, Belinda has always done things her own special way.” She folded her hands on the tabletop.

  “So, what happened when you told her this?”

  Michelle licked her lips, and I thought she wasn’t going to answer. She finally said, “She cut the money off.”

  I wasn’t sure if Michelle was aware of it or not, but depending on the terms of Belinda’s will, she had just given me a very good motive for murder. Love and money were the most common reasons to kill som
eone. Love lost, in this case. The lost love of a sister, and the money that she might have granted the family had Michelle remained in Belinda’s favor.

  “You were at the book signing the night Belinda died,” I said.

  “Only for a few minutes. My husband wanted me to go and talk to my sister about the money, to remind her that the girls needed it. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. As soon as I saw Belinda, I turned around and left.” She pulled her coffee closer to her and finally took a sip. “I was in such a hurry to leave that I ran into Lacey as I was leaving. It was the first time I had seen her in a long time. She looked very upset.”

  “What did you tell your husband when you got home?”

  “That if he wanted to grovel to Belinda, he’d have to do it on his own. I couldn’t stomach it anymore.” She set the cup back on the table.

  “What about your relationship with Lacey?” I asked. “Since you and Belinda had a falling out, have you reached out to Lacey at all?”

  “Just because one of my sisters is being selfish, it doesn’t mean that I have forgiven the one that killed my mother.”

  “Lacey didn’t kill your mother.”

  “She let her die. Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up without a mother?”

  “Actually, I do,” I said in a quiet voice.

  She stared at me for a long moment, and then she said, “I didn’t come here to tell you my life story.”

  Since she had told me so much, I strongly doubted that. “Then why did you come here?”

  “I’m here to tell you to butt out. I know your reputation in this village. You’re one of the crusader types thinking that you can waltz into a situation that you couldn’t possibly understand and fix everything.”

  At the mention of crusader types, the image of Charles Hancock came to mind. Surely she wasn’t thinking I was like that.

  She stood up, leaving her barely touched coffee on the table. “You can’t fix this family, so don’t bother trying. It’s broken beyond hope.”

  “I can’t believe that anything is beyond hope,” I said.

  Michelle buttoned up her coat as she stared down at me. “Stay out of this family feud. It can’t be mended. Your meddling will only make it worse and dredge up more pain for us all.” She spun and walked away.