Read PW01 - Died On The Vine Online
Authors: Joyce Harmon
Tags: #wine fiction, #mystery cozy, #mystery amateur sleuth
PW01 - Died On The Vine (10 page)
Finally, Jack joined us. “Evening, ladies. I’ll have one of what you’re having.”
We ordered large slabs of meat and ate with carnivorous gusto while telling Jack about our day. He was stuffed and mellow by the time I got to the part about offering Craig Southern the use of the trailer. He just sighed.
“From what you’ve told me, I’d be surprised if the guy has the initiative to find his way to Passatonnack County, but I guess if he does, he can’t do much damage to that old trailer.”
“And his presence might keep the local kids out of the vineyard,” I added.
“That was your rationale for our fierce watchdog Polly,” Jack reminded me.
“One of these days, I’ll predict something accurately, and then you’ll never hear the end of it.”
I turned to Mary. “You’re the investigative type. What’s our next move?”
Mary pushed her plate away and sat back with a sigh. “Tell that fellow I want a doggie bag.”
“Yes, but about the murder?”
“We’ll just poke around. Home and office are the next logical targets. We need to look at the money angle and try to find someone who knows what Winslow was up to with the picture scam.”
“Okay, we can do that. Then what?”
“After that, we’ll know what the next steps ought to be. I can’t predict that far ahead.”
“Okay, we hang loose. I can do that too.”
Jack chuckled. “And when you barge into Winslow’s home and office, why should these folks talk to you?”
I thought about that. “Because we’re writers. We’re working on a story.”
“Don’t forget to tell them about your previous credits,” Jack said skeptically. “Especially Taxamatic and Qu’aot VII – Death and the Dragon.”
Mary turned to me. “Oh, was that yours? I loved Death and the Dragon! I thought I’d never get out of the tower.”
“The Archbishop’s Revenge is supposed to be a doozy, too.”
Turning back to Jack, Mary said, “And don’t worry about credits. I’ll show them my piece on the Texas S&Ls; they’ll fall all over themselves to keep on the good side of my word processor!”
Jack sighed. “You girls have fun. I’ll probably be shutting down early tomorrow. I’m running out of wine.”
“I guess it’s true that any publicity is good publicity,” I told him. “As long as you don’t get arrested.”
I noticed that Mary winced at the ‘girls’, and then cringed at the comment about arrest.
“I’m going to stake my reputation on this,” she said loftily. “No innocent person is going to be tried for this murder. That is the commitment of Mary Nguyen.”
Bless her heart. She’d had two of the giant margaritas. Good thing I was driving.
NINE
The next morning after Polly’s walk, there were two phone messages requiring my attention.
First stop was Julia’s. I had been urged thither by an excited message to “come and see what Mary brought me!”
I found Julia in her office nook, which had achieved a state of ultimate clutter. The usual mess had been augmented substantially. Julia sat enthroned in the midst of stacks of folders and boxes of papers. “Look, Cissy!” she called out. “Mary brought me her notes for the book.”
“Yes, but why?” I collapsed into a chair and stared at the debris.
“I called her and reminded her that I wanted to help. I just mentioned that I was a retired bookkeeper, and she said this would be a perfect use for my skills.” She sounded smug.
“So now you’re Robert Redford in All The President’s Men?”
“Why not? He wasn’t even a bookkeeper.”
I laughed and shook my head. “As long as you’re happy.”
Next stop was the sheriff’s office. Not to see Investigator Dawson or Sheriff Peters, but in response to an urgent SOS from Gloria Leigh, the office secretary.
The sheriff’s department is housed in the new administration building next to the courthouse. It was so new I could smell the paint.
New building, old plants. Gloria had been adamant about bringing the house plants to the new offices. Pride of place by the window went to the huge and venerable snake plant which had been brought to the office by Gloria’s predecessor. This battle-scarred old veteran was older than I am.
Gloria was thrilled to see me. A middle-aged lady given to fussy print dresses and glasses on a chain around her neck, she types about a billion words a minute and has adjusted with a moderate degree of comfort to the arrival of PCs in the office. But my work with EveryWare has convinced her that I’m some kind of computer whiz, so she calls me whenever something goes wrong with the computers.
“Gloria, I keep telling you, I’m not a hardware geek.” I leaned on her desk and smiled.
“Well, maybe I need a software nerd,” she smarted back. Gloria has been reading magazines to try to pick up the vocabulary.
“What’s the problem?”
“That computer salesman last year told me this machine had a 120 megabyte hard drive. Well, there’s only sixty now. Half the memory is gone! Surely that can’t happen by accident.”
“I’ve never heard of it happening,” I agreed. “Have you lost any data?”
“All my directories and files are still there, but my drive is about full. I can clean out my files and delete some old stuff, but I want to know where half my memory went.”
“Good question. Let me look.”
She stood up and I took her seat. Gloria is a model of efficiency, but you’d never know it to look at her desk. She has personalized and accessorized with a picture of her daughter in cheerleading attire, a statue of Winnie the Pooh holding a balloon, and any number of small plaques with cutesy or inspirational sayings.
There was also a small note taped to the corner of the computer monitor with the password to the state’s crime computer on it, but I’m not their information security officer (in fact, I think Gloria is), so I let it go.
I called up the directory of the C: drive, and sure enough, there was only sixty megabytes of memory. “How weird.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Hmm.”
Then I noticed the Post-It note beside the computer. “Joe, ask the unicorn for the formula. Hank” That little note spoke volumes to me.
I typed “D:”
The computer monitor replied, “D>”
“Aha! You partitioned the hard drive.”
“I did not!” Gloria said indignantly. “What’s that mean, anyway?”
“Half the drive is acting like a different drive and responding to a different designation.”
“Well, I never did that. Why would I do that? What’s in there, anyway?”
I called up the D directory. Just as I thought. “Bootleg computer games,” I told her. “Who else uses this PC?”
“I guess the guys on the night shift.”
“Well, they have a lot of computer games in here. I’d be willing to bet they didn’t go down to the computer store and drop fifty or so bucks on a game to bring in here. These are illegal copies. Don’t you people know that copyright infringement is a felony punishable by fine or imprisonment?”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” she said. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t even know these were in here.”
“Didn’t know what were in here?”
I turned to see Luther Dawson looking over my shoulder. “Bootlegging,” I told him impressively. “Piracy. What do you know about these programs?”
Luther shrugged. “Some of the guys brought some disks from home to have something to do on the slow night shifts, which we have a lot of around here. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that it’s copyright infringement,” I answered.
“And that’s a felony,” Gloria added helpfully.
“Come on, a few lousy games! Who’s being hurt?”
“The software designers are being hurt,” I told him. “You know, the folks I work for? Any time you copy a disk that’s copyrighted, that’s the same thing as stealing a copy from the company that produced it. I know the boys at EveryWare are just looking for a bootlegging case that would give them big headlines, to put the fear of God into all the small time pirates out there. I think a sheriff’s office would fit that criterion quite nicely.”
Dawson held up his hands. “Now just a minute, Mrs. Rayburn – “
I pointed at the screen, to the line that said, “QIV
“Yeah, but – “
“That’s the directory for Kingdom of Qu’aot IV, The Battle For The Heartland. Retails for $49.95. I sure would like to see your warranty card on that. And the manual – which I wrote, I might add. If that isn’t a bootleg, you must have the manual.”
“I don’t know what Joe and Hank have been up to with this, but look, Mrs. Rayburn, do you really want to get these guys fired?” Dawson gave me his most bassetty look.
“Well-l-l.” I hesitated.
Gloria leaned forward eagerly. “What do you say I just erase this stuff and give those boys a piece of my mind?”
“Gloria, let me talk to Luther for a minute.”
“Huh? Okay, hon, I need to water these plants anyway.” Gloria picked up the watering can and bustled out of the room.
“How about an update on the investigation?” I asked Dawson, with what I hoped was a winning smile.
He was scandalized. “You know I can’t do that!”
I pulled a notebook out of my purse and began writing down the names of the directories. “Let’s see,” I muttered. “QIV is EveryWare. MMG? That must be Murder Most Gruesome from Players, Inc. DRAK. Everyone’s heard of Drak. Boy, won’t the guys at Synth be tickled to hear about this - “
“Okay, okay, okay. Put that away.” Luther surrendered. “Now I’m not going to name names, and I wouldn’t tell you a word if I thought either you or Mr. Rayburn had anything to do with this. But there’s a fellow up in Reston who threatened Winslow. Threatened to kill him, in a letter even. We found that in Winslow’s files. We’re running background on the guy right now.”
“Okay. And?” I prodded.
“Then there’s your Mary Nguyen that Mrs. Barstow told us about.”
“Julia told you about her?”
“Yes, about her being Winslow’s daughter and all. But she was definitely out of the country when your tools went missing – of at one of those wars in eastern Europe, I never can keep them straight. So she’s out unless we can find an accomplice.”
“That’s what Julia thought,” I admitted.
“We’re looking at a lot of things, ma’am. And now I’ve really told you all I can.” Poor Dawson was looking harassed.
“Okay then. That will do.” I frowned at him severely and began erasing files.
When Gloria breezed in a few minutes later, I was finishing up aiding and abetting. But I did take the Post-It note and slipped it into my purse.
And outside in the parking lot, I wrote down the password to the crime computer. You never know when something like that will come in handy.
Back home, I entered the house with no greeting from Polly. Unusual. I found her in the great room.
Jack was sacked out on the recliner, and Polly had joined him, half beside him and half in his lap. Her chin was on his shoulder.
Polly is a big dog, but she can move with a pickpocket’s stealth when in pursuit of a cuddle. Jack was fast asleep, and Tough Stuff had staked out prime territory on his lap.
Awww! Poor Jack looked so sad and tired. There wasn’t much room in that pile of mammals, but I sat on the arm of the recliner and put my head on his other shoulder.
I lack Polly’s delicate touch. Jack’s eyelids fluttered briefly and he muttered, “Jeez, Cis, you weigh a ton.”
Such a romantic! “Some of that’s Polly.”
He opened his eyes and Polly greeted him with a sincere look of devotion and a delicate lick on the chin. Jack chuckled and closed his eyes again. “My apologies. The two of you together weigh a ton.”
“Don’t forget Tough Stuff. He’s adding a few ounces here.”
“How could I ever forget Tough Stuff? He sounds like an outboard motor.”
“That’s a sweet little purr!” I rubbed T.S. under the chin, causing him to shift into high gear.
“So, how was the festival?” I ventured.
“Oh, great,” Jack said. His eyes were still closed. “Half the guys there think I’m a murderer.”
“What!” I sat up. “What did they say?”
“It’s not what they said, hon. It was the way they talked to me from a yard further away than usual. After a while, it’s hard not to notice that.”
“Well,” I searched for a term bad enough and gave up. “What a bunch of jerks.”
“You said it, kiddo. But after hanging around pumping me for information, they felt duty bound to buy some wine. First time I ever sold out at Bull Run.”
“They’ll probably serve the wine to their guests as a conversation piece. ‘The man who made this wine may have committed a murder’.” I grumbled indignantly. “That will start the sort of gossip mongering that never goes away.”
Jack sat up. “But the thing about that kind of gossip is that it’s free-floating. A year from now, people will remember that some Virginia winery was associated with a murder, but they won’t remember which one.”