Merlot and Murder Read online

  "What on earth is his problem?" Tom wondered aloud.

  "No idea," I replied first, folding my arms across my chest. "But I hope someone else ends up interviewing me, because I do not want to be in the same room as Deputy Ratface any more than I have to."

  Chapter 5

  Because that was just how my luck seemed to work these days – although, to be fair, I knew of a few people having much worse luck than me that day – Deputy Ratface chose to interview me instead of Karen.

  A makeshift interrogation area had been set up inside the tiny office that was tucked away in the room above the warehouse, where I assumed Janice Winchester worked. Had these county sheriff’s workers thought to check into her whereabouts yet?

  Deputy Ratface – I’d already forgotten his real name – led me upstairs and gestured for me to sit down in front of the messy desk, where I quickly took a seat, nearly sliding right off of it. Even though I had nothing to hide from him, my heart was racing.

  “I’m Deputy Rattray from the Napa County Sheriff’s office. I'd like to ask you some questions, if you don't mind." He said it as though I had any choice in the matter. Pulling out one of those little steno notebooks and a black pen, he flipped to a fresh page. "First and last name?"

  "Taylor Dean," I answered, swallowing hard, glancing around the cramped space surrounding us while he was busy writing it down. Even though I knew I was innocent, there was something unnerving about being interviewed by the cops about a potential murder.

  "Alright, Miss Dean. What is your business today at the winery?"

  "My friend and I came to do the wine tasting tour. It's our day off."

  He nodded, still not looking up from his notepad. "And can you please describe what's happened here to the best of your knowledge?"

  "Yes, sir. We got here around eleven o'clock this morning and hung around the reception area here in the main barn, waiting for the tour to start. Alicia Stowe introduced herself to us once everyone in the group had shown up, and she started by telling us the history of the Singing Bird. The tour started inside the corking room where we had some Riesling."

  "And what time would you say this was?"

  I thought about it, biting my lip. "Um, eleven forty-five, maybe?"

  "Go on," Deputy Rattray encouraged.

  "After that we went outside to the vineyards. Alicia had us walk up and down some of the rows, where they grow the white grapes for the wines. I think we were probably outside for an hour, sampling the wines and walking around the grounds. When we came back, Alicia had us come up through the back doors and into the barn that way. She had her daughters help her serve us the last wine of the tour, the Chardonnay. And then she told us about the shop, and when we walked into it, she found her husband."

  I hated the fact that his eyes traveled over me more slowly than was really necessary. "And you're old enough for this tour, are you?"

  Was he serious? He looked like it; there was no hint of a smile on the man’s face. I wasn’t even sure he knew how to smile. And I knew my mouth had to be doing a pretty good fish out of water impression right now. "Uh, yes. Alicia checked IDs at the beginning of the tour. Do you want to see my license?"

  Waving me off, he added a couple of notes. "Not necessary."

  "I can provide you my ID if you need me to," I said, already digging my fingers into my purse. I couldn’t believe the guy thought there was a chance I wasn’t twenty-one yet.

  "No," he said slowly as if he were speaking to a child. "That's truly unnecessary. I will look at it when I am finished interviewing you. Everyone's information will be written down in case we need to contact you further." Licking one of his stubby fingers, he flipped to the next page in his notebook. "What was the reaction to Mr. Stowe's body? Did anything seem out of the ordinary to you?"

  "Out of the ordinary? Apart from the dead person on the ground, no, I don't think so." I immediately regretted the way it came out as soon as I said it. I definitely wasn't earning any brownie points with Deputy Ratface.

  "Mrs. Stowe told us that you took a closer look at her husband. Is that correct?"

  "I checked to see if he was breathing, or to see if I could find a pulse but there was none, and the way he was staring straight up, I knew he wasn't alive."

  This piqued his interest. "You tried to revive him? Are you a doctor, Miss Dean?"

  I shook my head, not liking where this was going. "No, I'm not. But I know to check for a pulse, and he didn’t have one."

  Deputy Ratface looked me over with his beady eyes, giving me a lopsided frown that looked downright ridiculous under his bushy mustache. "And is this something you do often?"

  "Um, I'm sorry? Checking people's pulses?" What on earth was he talking about?

  "Going around wineries, getting drunk in the middle of the day," he said casually, as if it were a completely normal question.

  My mouth dropped open as I struggled to find a way to answer him, and a weird noise caught in the back of my throat. "I'm not sure that's really relevant to this investigation."

  "Miss Dean, please answer my question. Regardless of what you think is relevant."

  I was pretty sure that we were about five seconds away from my ears letting out steam before I landed myself in deep with this wannabe rent-a-cop, so I took in a deep breath and tried to smile at him. "No, Deputy. I do not frequent wineries. Or have a habit of day-drinking."

  He gave me a stiff nod, jotting something down. "And did you know the deceased? Have you ever seen him before?"

  I shook my head. "No, never." The fact that he looked dubious as he wrote down my answer made me want to send a fun little curse his way, but I held my ground.

  "Don't make any plans that involve going out of state this week. I'm sure we'll be in touch soon. And in case something happens to jog your memory of what happened, feel free to give me a call," he said with a smirk, handing me his card.

  "Is that it?" I asked, standing, desperately hoping for an affirmative answer.

  Deputy Ratface’s beady eyes narrowed at me, looking at me for what felt like forever, until he snapped his notebook shut, fumbling to shove it back into his pocket. "That's all. You're free to go," he said as he leaned back in the chair and yanked the door handle open.

  I wasted no time getting out of there. The less I had to see of Deputy Ratface and his weird superiority complex, the better.

  I quickly made my way down the steps until I was back inside the winery shop. As soon as I spotted Karen walking back to the front of the shop from the doors that led to the corking room and storage warehouse, I sighed in relief. No more hanging around here getting suspicious looks from figures of authority for these girls.

  Karen strolled over to me and pulled me back outside to the front, letting out a shriek of indignation. "Can you believe them? I'm starting to get the impression that they got their investigation skills from the Looney Toons!" She blew a strand of brown hair away from her reddened face, fuming. "I don't know whether to be angry or appalled at the fact that this is how the sheriff's department interviews potential suspects!"

  "I know," I said, shielding my eyes from the midday sun. "That was definitely the most bizarre interrogation ever."

  By the time Karen had started up her old faithful hatchback, my mind was a million miles away. All I wanted to do was get back to Rosemary Creek and try and forget about the unnecessary guilt sitting in the pit of my stomach thanks to Deputy Ratface. It was no wonder people confessed to crimes they didn't commit with that kind of interrogation.

  "It wasn't all a wash, though," Karen said as she pulled out of the parking space.

  "Oh yeah?"

  "According to the deputy that interviewed me, they think Nick Stowe died about an hour and half before Alicia found him. So about ten minutes before the tour even started. “And,” she said, pushing her sunglasses up on her face slowly to emphasize the point, "he admitted that they are considering it a homicide. So he didn't just drop dead for some health reason."

  "
Whoa. So out of everything we know so far, what do you think? Do we have a main suspect yet, or what?"

  "I don't know. I think we need some more information."

  "What about Alicia?" I asked, throwing it out there.

  "Seriously, Taylor? You think his wife did it?"

  I shrugged. "Well, she is the most likely suspect, obviously. Isn’t there some sort of statistic that says most murders are committed by a person’s spouse?"

  She snorted, shaking her head as we pulled onto the main road. "I think you've been watching too much crime TV. Besides, Alicia seemed so normal on the tour. So bubbly and happy. Bubbly happy people don't just go on killing sprees. And she was totally devastated when she came across the body."

  "Maybe she was bubbly and happy because she finally got rid of a husband she didn't want anymore? And maybe she was faking her breakdown." Then I remembered the looks on the two younger girls’ faces, and I realized that Alicia would have really had to be a monster to take the girls’ father away from them. Maybe I was just grasping at straws.

  "But then again, what about the office manager? What was her name again, Janet or something?"

  "Janice," I corrected her.

  "Yeah, her. Don't you think it was a little too convenient that she was nowhere to be seen today? I know we don't know anything about her yet, but maybe it's something we can look into."

  I stared out the window, watching the rows of the winery’s vineyards blurring past us. "We should look into her for sure."

  I couldn’t believe we were doing this again.

  Chapter 6

  Going to Creekside Trinkets the next morning was a big relief, where all I had to worry about was finishing Barbara's latest batch of potion-infused soaps instead of whether or not I'd be carted off to jail for looking at Deputy Ratface the wrong way.

  "I'm going to stop at Stephanie's Café for lunch. Would you like me to bring you back anything?" Barbara asked, tucking her purse under her arm.

  As much as a burger and seasoned fries from Stephanie's sounded amazing, I'd packed my lunch for the day in a flimsy effort to start saving my money. After all, school to become a vet tech wasn’t going to pay for itself, and I still had hopes of eventually doing that one day. And, for the first time since my parents had died, I truly felt like I was in a position to one day make that a reality.

  "No, thanks," I finally replied, pasting on what had to be the most uninspiring smile ever.

  But Barbara knew how I was feeling—sensing and manipulating emotions was her specific special ability—so she understood my plight anyway. "My treat?"

  "Letting me live in your house and teaching me how to be a proper witch is totally enough of a treat, Barbara," I said, this time smiling for real. "I've got the shop covered for now. Go enjoy your lunch."

  The last thing I wanted was for my boss to feel like she had to worry about feeding me, so I pretended to shoo her out the door.

  "All right, if you insist," she said, throwing me a skeptical look as she pushed open the front door. "I'll be back in an hour."

  Having the shop to myself wasn't so bad. Plus, it gave me an excuse to take a crack at mixing and enchanting the secretly magical bath and body products we sold. I'd gotten used to having Barbara around whenever I helped add to our constantly sold-out inventory of the more magically-enhanced items. Proving to both Barbara and myself that I could whip up a basket full of magical goodies would at least leave me feeling a little more accomplished, if anything.

  I'd managed to do pretty well with our magically infused bath bombs, but that was only with Barbara's help and guidance. It may have seemed easy to do well enough with someone standing over top of you, but magic could be pretty tricky. I was happy just learning not to set the place on fire. Again.

  I glanced over at the nearly-full basket of bath bombs. Those would have to wait for another time, but the beauty soaps could definitely have used a replenishing. Peering out the front door, I made sure none of the people walking around downtown Rosemary Creek looked like they were going to be stopping by anytime soon. After all, trying to explain away a magical product-making session would probably prove to be pretty difficult.

  Everything I needed was tucked away inside of a locked cabinet in the storage closet. Luckily for me, Barbara already had the essential oil blends mixed together, so I grabbed my personal favorite mixture of lemon verbena and ylang ylang for the pore-less complexion bars. Not only was the smell incredible, but I loved how they made my skin look.

  The soap molds Barbara usually used for the beauty bars were boring and basic to me, so I opted for the pretty unicorn mold, figuring we could label it something different. Our regular customers loved when we introduce new products, so why not?

  Making sure I had gotten absolutely everything I needed, I carried the big container to the shop floor and set everything up toward the front so I could get a good look at anyone approaching. Call me crazy, but I highly doubted I could get away with concocting colorful, powerful potions with Stephanie Holmes coming in and asking for her usual magazine and favorite fizzy bath bomb.

  If I were making soap the old-fashioned way, it would have taken way, way longer. From what Barbara had told me, I would have needed at least a month between starting the process and having fully-cured hard soap. But since I was using magic, things were a little more convenient.

  Fishing out my small, leather-bound spell book from my bag, I flipped until I found where I'd written all of the directions to make the soaps from scratch. "All right. This doesn't look so," The pages and pages of instructions felt like they were taunting me for even attempting something like this by myself. ",hard." I swallowed to keep the lump in my throat from rising any more.

  Why had I thought this was a good idea, again?

  Well, I already had everything gathered up, so it didn't make any sense to just stand there and stare at it. So, I got to work. Measuring out all the necessary oils, I poured them carefully into the double-boiler pot which was already heated up to just the right temperature. Without the need for the lye in our soaps, I could completely skip that step and move on to adding in the color and herbs.

  "Hmm, Barbara always does natural colors with these. Why don't we do something a little more fun?"

  I poured a few drops of magenta-colored dye into the oil mixture, stirring it in for a good ten minutes. It took a little elbow grease to keep the air bubbles out, but when it was done, it was a beautiful bright pink with bits of rose petals to make it even fancier-looking. This was going to be a very good-looking soap unicorn.

  I found my spot in the spell book, tracing my finger along my handwriting until I was where I left off. "Add the enchanted essential oils to the mixture," I said to myself, uncorking the mixture of lemon verbena and ylang ylang oils.

  Stirring the mixture together, I turned the temperature down and clapped my hands together, hovering them over the pot to test, and make sure it wasn't too hot.

  The mixture let off a poof of brightly-colored sparks, then steamed for a moment before calming back down. "Okay. Okay, that wasn't so bad."

  I fought with my free hand to turn the page and began reading the last of the instructions. "Saponification is not necessary when using magical energy to blend and solidify the oils into the trace soap. You can now solidify and cure."

  With the unicorn soap mold set out in front of me, I very carefully poured the warm mixture into it, already imagining the twelve small, bright pink unicorns washing my skin and making smooth enough to be in one of those I’m your Venus razor commercials. It was hard not to grin at my own handiwork.

  "Solidify, right. What was the spell for that again?” I muttered to myself, but a second later, it came to me. “Indurescoroa."

  As I spoke the word, the gelatinous pink mixture turned solid in a split second. "Wow. Okay, that was way easier than I thought it would be. Now, how do I cure it? Oh, that’s right. Imbuoroa."

  A sheen of magic glittered over the top of the mold, leaving traces of
shine across the soaps. "There!"

  I was just about to dump the soaps out of their mold when I remembered I still needed to enchant them. Sliding my finger a few pages behind the one I was on, I searched until I found the specific spell I needed for pore-less beauty. With any luck, I'd have a face as smooth as a baby's backside once it was all said and done.

  In my head I pictured the spell, repeating it over and over so I wouldn't forget in a panic like I tended to do. "Expurgoroa colos nitidus et facies. Evanescoroa colos nitidus et facies."

  At first, nothing seemed to happen, and I was sure I hadn't said it with enough oomph. That had never been a problem before, but magic could be funny like that. I was getting ready to say the spell again, when something stopped me.

  The silicone mold shook violently, and I scrambled backward until my back hit the shelf of garden gnomes behind me as the bright pink soap mixture started to expand outward like a giant bubble.

  "No, no, no!" I shouted, frantically searching through the pages to figure out where I'd gone wrong. I got to the last page of the mixture and my heart sank as I peeled two pages apart to reveal an entire section I'd done out of order. I had solidified the soap, but I hadn’t cured it, which meant that I had enchanted the soap too early, and now the soap's magic was completely unstable.

  The huge pink bubble grew and grew until it expanded past the soap mold itself. Anyone stopping into the shop would have thought I was making self-chewing bubble gum or something, as it only grew bigger. The bubble stretched far beyond what should have been possible, and as it approached near-ceiling height, it captured all of the surrounding shop items inside of it. Realizing what was about to happen as the pink color thinned out to nearly transparent, I dove behind the next aisle and covered my head with my hands just as a loud bang shook the entire store. Bobbleheads and glass figurines rattled in place, and a soft pink powder encased every single surface within twenty feet of the soap mold, including the backs of my hand and my shoulders and hair.