A Tainted Finish: A Sydney McGrath Mystery Read online

  A Tainted Finish

  A Sydney McGrath Mystery

  By Rachael A. Horn

  Copyright © 2016 by Barrel Aged Publishing

  www.BarrelAgedPublishing.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  ISBN-10: 0-9861966-0-6

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9861966-0-7

  A sweet darling man put up with countless nights of insomnia; the noises in the kitchen, lights being turned on to find slippers and the endless click of computer keys. Questions about murder, motives and human psychology were answered with patience and interest (with only a little suspicion). And encouragement? Loads and loads.

  This book is dedicated to Todd, my keystone.

  Acknowledgments

  Of course, there are many people involved in writing a book. I would like to thank my husband Todd for his endless technical support in creating an eBook. I would like to thank Chris at Open Book Editors for editing. Thank you Jon Davies, my insurance guy, for not reporting me to the police when I asked about murder and life insurance policies. Thanks to all of my early readers, who gave me insightful feedback (Mom, Allison, Brittany, Rat, Monica, Talia, Tom and Anais!).

  As odd as it is, I would like to thank wine. Wine has taught me the patience required to allow an idea to unfurl and slowly morph into something on its own volition. Wine has secrets and questions unanswerable, a destiny of its own. But mostly, wine is a work of human ingenuity bent on pleasure...it is a lovely release to know that wine and fiction save no lives or script no treaties. But wine and story offer a momentary escape, and this is what I offer you.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  A yellow haze drifted over the glorious basalt walls of the Gorge in subtle illumination, the gray-green of dawn slowly dissolving to the light. She stood outside her car at the Cape Horn looking east some fifty miles downriver. The tiny turnout near the hundred-year-old bridge cantilevered a thousand feet above the Gorge. She stopped to stretch and feel the cool air on her face. It was no coincidence that she stopped here, at his favorite spot. He used to terrorize her by hopping up on the Civil Conservation Corps-era rock wall, pointing his camera towards home, only steps away from a perilous fall. When she was really little he made her sit in the truck. Or on the rare occasion that he uncovered his shiny black Austin Healy, she would sit in the sun-warmed red seats, gripping the leather next to her thighs with white-knuckled fingers. He would jump back into the car and say, “God lives here,” with a wink and a rough tumble of her thick dark hair. Then he would start the cantankerous engine and set off down the S-curves of the Cape at a snail’s pace.

  She threw her arms up wide in the air, trying to open up her tight chest and back. Deep cool breaths filled her lungs, and she rolled her head around her shoulders. She had been driving through the early hours of the morning. Instead of being tired, her mind stormed with memories of fights and deeply regretted words said over stupid things that now seemed so flimsy, so silly. They were wispy, paper-thin reasons to be estranged for so long. She had loved him fiercely and this spot reminded her of how she felt as a small child; he was her only family, the most important person.

  “God lives here,” she said meekly, whispering to no one but the picture-perfect red and orange sunrise.

  She got in her car and felt a momentary sense of peace. She drove the remaining fifty miles thinking of a day when they hiked Mt. St. Helen's during one of its active stages. Her uncle got in an argument with a ranger after their hike. The trail had been closed, but he had dodged the signs and proceeded to lead her to a view of the caldera. He feigned ignorance to the angry ranger when she confronted him at the end of their descent. He proceeded to argue his case in perfect Argentine Spanish for a long time, gesticulating wildly up at the trail head and ending in mock genuflection, pleading for forgiveness. The ranger believed his ruse, and he winked at Syd when they turned to walk away.

  Earlier, they stood looking into the moonscape crater, a cinder cone in the far side of the caldera that puffed out 300-foot plumes of white cotton ball smoke.

  “The only things that matter, Sydney: truth, beauty, love,” he shouted into the volcano, his voice gruff and hoarse after hours of silence and walking.

  She pondered the predictably cryptic declaration during the long hike down, realizing that he had planned the day, the hike and his words like a six-move chess play. She knew she wasn't supposed to comment or discuss it, but somehow he expected her to know the meaning of his words and follow them like a compass needle. She was thirteen and completely annoyed.

  Now 32, and sadly complacent in a relationship with her only parent figure mired in strife and misunderstanding, she pondered his proclamation into the mouth of the volcano half a lifetime ago. His raison d'etre. Now she knew he was giving explanation and asking forgiveness for his future trespasses and the inevitable foibles of their lives to come. The poignancy of it stuck in her throat like a shard of basalt.

  Chapter 1

  She turned left off Highway 14 onto the Cook/Underwood road cutting in front of a flatbed truck loaded with half-ton fruit bins stacked two high. She watched it disappear in her rearview mirror. But as she turned into the driveway and entered the gorgeously forged iron gates laced with hand-blown glass flowers, she noticed that the truck turned onto the same road behind her. Theirs was the only winery on this road.

  It must be coming here, she thought, frowning.

  She stopped her car and watched the truck struggle up the steep climb of her road. It slowed and signaled left. She accelerated her car ahead of the truck, up the long, steep gravel road to the winery, and parked it out of the way.

  The truck pulled around the narrow gravel drive with expertise, just inches from the rock island in the turnaround. It backed into place and stopped near the deserted strip of concrete, the crushpad.

  In her rearview mirror she watched a dark, young man rush out from the side of the winery. He had his hands on his head in exasperation. He approached the driver who remained seated high up in his cab and discussed the obvious error. He looked down at his feet often. His hands moved over his mouth and chin as he listened. Even from the distance she could see that the young man was distraught.

  She got out of her car and crunched across the grav
el toward the two men. They were silent now, with faces frozen in deep thought. The driver had his hands on his head too. She knew him but avoided his eyes.

  “No one called the vineyard then?” she asked, shouting over the diesel engine.

  “Pardon me?” the young man asked. He looked up, startled, having just noticing her.

  “No one stopped the fruit from coming,” she said, louder and oddly annoyed.

  “Uh, no. No,” the young man answered, bewildered and thick, his hand on his head in confusion.

  “I'm sorry,” the driver said. He glared at her with pleading hands.

  “Horse Heaven Hills today, Jimmy?” she asked. She chose to take his apology as an admission of his error.

  The driver nodded and rested his head on the steering wheel.

  “Well, then, this fruit needs to be processed,” she said, bounding to the end of the truck. She loosened the straps on the tie-downs, her hands expertly working the cranks and latches with the heavy bar she had found in the toolbox at the front of the flatbed.

  The dark young man approached her slowly. He was tall and classically handsome, and he walked with familiar grace.

  “You’re Sydney?” he asked in a lilting tongue. His face bore the haggard, bereft terrain of a stranger, but his thick eyebrows and nearly black eyes pierced her in a familiar way.

  She nodded and rolled up the straps into the crank. He watched her while she sidestepped to the next strap.

  “We can do this another day,” he said in the same thick voice. Maybe an accent, she thought.

  “This fruit is $2800 a ton,” she said, counting the bins on the truck. “We have eight ton of cab here? We’ll process it today.” She sounded as authoritative as her uncle ever did. She felt a sudden pain in her chest and gasped. She willed her heavy feet to move and carry her hands to the next strap.

  The young man followed her around the truck, watching her remove the straps. She worked in silent fury until all of the straps were rolled up. She brushed her hands off in a white cloud. They were covered in a white dust specific to the silty loam of Horse Heaven Hills. Both men stood silent and stared at her.

  She looked down at herself. She was still wearing her clothes from the night before. Her black crêpe Armani pantsuit was now dusted with the chalky dirt from the straps. She had changed her shoes before heading down from Seattle. Her running shoes peeked out from the too-long draped slacks that were meant to be worn with four-inch heels.

  She raised her eyebrows at the staring men. “Okay, then!” she said, and disappeared into the winery.

  When she returned the men had their heads together, whispering a plan. She donned a pair of rubber overalls far too large for her and a bright yellow rubber slick jacket. She couldn't find any boots in the lab, so her running shoes remained hidden under the huge pants. She made her way over to Hulk Hyster.

  The old battered forklift desperately needed a coat of paint. She had painted it in a multi-colored flower-power motif with her best friend Charlie during Crush 2000, back when they worked their summers and harvest at the winery. But her uncle would have never painted over the weathered artwork of her adolescence, and the patina looked so much like a beloved timeworn fresco that he couldn't replace it with a new model. His sentimentality was lost on Sydney, however. She dismissed it as a sign of his renowned frugality.

  Hulk Hyster started up right away. A bad omen, she thought. But the worst has already happened.

  She grimaced at the two men staring at her in helpless despair. A stabbing pain gripped her, and her hand move involuntarily to her chest. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. We can't let this fruit get warm, she shouted in her head, pushing all other thoughts out. She put the forklift in reverse and the back-up beeping echoed through her head.

  She had successfully unloaded two bins off the truck when the dark, young man stepped in front of the forklift and waved his hands.

  “We can’t do this today,” he said.

  She lowered the forks and put the machine in neutral. She looked down from her perch and sighed.

  “Who are you?” she asked. He opened his eyes wide and she felt instantly annoyed.

  “I am Olivier. Olivier Ruiz.” He gestured with a stiff politeness that didn't fit his age. He couldn't be older than she was. She thought he might bow. She raised her eyebrows, another relic of her uncle's preference for silence.

  “I am Olivier,” he repeated stupidly. “The assistant winemaker”.

  “An intern,” she said dismissively. She knew she was being rude and felt a sudden surge because of it. He looked offended.

  “And why can't we crush today?” she asked.

  He blinked at her. “I have called off the crew,” he answered in stiff, perfect English. The grief and despair evaporated from his face for the first time. He met her raised eyebrows with a steely stare.

  She got off of the forklift wearing a frown and walked over to the harvest bins. She leaned over the bin and buried her face in the cold clusters of blackish grapes, inhaling deeply. She stood up and brought several clusters to her face in a gentle intimate gesture, something like a kiss. Her eyes shut as she smelled each cluster. After inhaling the aroma of many bunches – rummaging through the depths of the bin – she started to pop berries into her mouth. She spit seeds into the palm of her hand and inspected them as her teeth ground up the skins. She spit out the skins and proceeded to attack other berries with the same concentrated fury. She held them up to the light and inspected them in the early morning sun. The small clusters looked straggly and airy; tiny black grapes on reddish stems.

  “Can you sort?” she asked, still inspecting the clusters.

  “Of course.”

  “This fruit is gorgeous. Clean and cool. We’ll dump straight into the destemmer-crusher and sort as we go. But keep an eye out for ladybugs. This vineyard once had them everywhere. Yuck.”

  “We run with a crew of five,” Olivier stated, attempting to gain some ground. No intern would tell this arrogant female about their crushpad operations, Clarence's niece or not. He was not going to back down.

  “And we sort always,” he added, parroting her uncle's standard of procedures.

  “Yes. Always,” she said, climbing up into the forklift seat again. “Just not always on the tables.”

  ~

  Sydney and Olivier worked side by side sorting and pushing fruit through the machine. The destemmer-crusher sat in a metal cradle in a frame over one-ton fermenter tanks. Sydney loaded the harvest bins onto the forklift and turned the forklift head. The heavy fruit bins pivoted twelve feet in the air over the machine and rested near the hopper so that grapes could move easily into the mouth of the machine. Olivier was busy with the pallet jack, moving filled fermenter tanks in and out from under the frame and staging Syd's next harvest bin. They worked well together, falling into step in a silent dance of two people expertly doing a job with multiple tasks reliant on the other's skill. They worked in the din of two machines, each thankful for the roar that excused their silence.

  Once the fruit bins were all emptied, Syd took samples from the tanks Olivier had carefully lined up in the full winery. She entered the lab with averted eyes, trying not to see too much. But she couldn’t help herself. It smelled liked him. This was his domain. The concrete lab counters were littered with beakers, pipettes, and every kind of glassware needed in a mad scientist's workshop. Chaos was the only obvious theme. She forced herself to search the metal cabinets for the chemicals and reagents she would need to start testing the juices. After several minutes spent searching for the right glassware, she began her basic analysis of the juice, a process she was taught when she was six.

  After an hour of running the pH and titrating for acids in each sample, she stood up and stretched. She knew she ought to run the spectrophotometer tests for nutrients but she had forgotten the procedure and her brain was foggy. A nagging pain in her stomach began to demand notice, followed by a growing headache. She felt as if a tight metal b
and was being screwed around her head. The buzzing fluorescent lights in the lab didn't help. A noisy clock on the wall reminded her that it was 6:40 pm. They had worked for the last ten hours. She hadn't eaten anything since the night before, and she could hardly call that a dinner. She had a tiny foie gras appetizer refused by a customer and hurriedly swallowed in the wine alley at the restaurant where she worked around 9 pm. The headache required less sleuthing; she hadn't had her requisite pot of french press that morning.

  She shuffled out of the back room through the labyrinth of barrels and equipment, all miraculously crammed into a climate-controlled space. She found Olivier hosing down the destemmer-crusher on the crushpad, finishing just as she arrived. She turned the water off for him and began to roll up the hose on the overhead rollers.

  He stood next to her as she finished, both of them leaning against a tank. Together they scanned the winery for incomplete tasks with expert eyes. She began to take notice of the changes in the winery. The back pegboard with all of the sanitary fittings was organized by size and machine. All of the cleaning materials were on labeled shelves, each in the right place. The barrel room had been rearranged with the handiwork of a mind much different from her uncle's. She had learned from her uncle to sanitize and keep tools immaculately clean, but her uncle had no sense of organization. All surfaces and shelves would remain cluttered under her uncle’s direction. She knew with embarrassment that she had inherited her uncle’s penchant for chaos. Apparently, the man next to her had not.

  She absently rubbed her head as she cataloged the subtle changes in the winery, childish resentment building up in her chest. Olivier abruptly left her side for the lab, while she noted the bright red SOP manual on the chemical shelves. Another one was clipped to a new whiteboard that listed tasks. She had always thought her uncle needed a whiteboard. Olivier came out of the office with a jar of Advil in one hand and her suit neatly folded in the other. She couldn’t remember folding it. A whiskey bottle was deftly tucked under an arm. He set the suit gingerly on the clean counter and handed her the Advil. Then he handed her the half empty bottle of Buffalo Trace.