The Merlot Murders

I’d rebuffed him.

“Why do you believe everything he tells you?” I said. “You were with him last night. You went to that concert to see him, didn’t you? And afterward he never went to the radio station. He replayed an earlier version of his call-in show. I heard him tell someone that the drought was going to continue for the next few days. But it’s going to rain today, isn’t it? He’s done this before. He can be in two places at once. Probably figures he’s got a rock-solid alibi for anything and no one will catch on.” Mason’s face, normally so inscrutable in the courtroom, gave him away for once. “Was he blackmailing you, like he was blackmailing Brandi?”

He didn’t answer.

“What dirt did he have on you, Mason? Did you bribe a judge? Lie under oath? Cheat on your taxes?”

“Shut up!”

I read somewhere that someone who was on the verge of committing murder enjoyed bragging about their accomplishments to their victims, probably because they were the only audience they could count on not to rat them out. He stood there with the gun and slowly raised his arm. I closed my eyes. He was going to shoot me now.

“He thought he could manipulate me.”

I opened my eyes. “But you were too smart for him, weren’t you?”

“Don’t you dare patronize me.”

“What happened?”

Mason’s jaw worked and for the first time since we’d embarked on this little adventure, he looked like he was ashamed of something. “It happened years ago.”

“What did?”

“Jimmy fixed my car one night after I had a small accident. Made it as good as new. It wasn’t the Mercedes. I had a Cadillac in those days. Greg happened to be around. He must have been about ten or eleven. Jimmy did me a little favor because I helped him out more than once, but the kid didn’t have the class of the old man. When he got older he realized what had happened.”

“Did you hit somebody?”

“It was an accident!” He sounded genuinely anguished. “It was raining, about ten o’clock at night. I didn’t even see the woman on the bicycle. It was a deserted stretch of Bull Run Mountain Road. Hell, there were no streetlights, not even a sliver of a moon. It was dark and she was wearing dark clothing. I thought I hit a deer. That’s why I didn’t go back. I was on my way to your house. I was supposed to take your mother to the hospital. She’d gone into labor with Mia.”

I swallowed hard. “Then what happened?”

He looked off toward the hills, like he was trying to recall. But I think it was probably because he was trying not to cry. “Jimmy found a piece of her dress in the undercarriage of my car. I never knew. By that time, I’d heard about the report of a Jane Doe found in a ditch on Bull Run Mountain Road. They had no clue who did it. Nothing to trace it to me.”

“Except that piece of her dress.”

He looked at me. “You have to understand, sugar. I have done a lot of good in my career. I have helped so many people. I have made it a crusade to do pro bono work for those people, most of whom would never have been able to hire a lawyer of my caliber.”

“What people?”

“She was Mexican.”

“I see.”

“I’m glad,” he said, “because let me tell you, I have repaid my debt to society. And it’s been far, far better this way than if I’d been behind bars.”

“Of course.”

“You do see, don’t you?”

“Yes.” I swallowed. “So what did Greg want from you?”

He smiled a rictus smile. “To be rich. To be like everyone else he grew up with. He hated it that Jimmy was a grease monkey. He knew that was his future, too. Hell, he’s not that smart. Just barely got through college without flunking out. He was too busy screwing girls and partying to really learn anything. But he wanted your house. More specifically, he wanted your land.”

I was stunned. “He has no money.”

“No, but I do. He knew your daddy was broke. He figured he could pick the place up for a song, then flip it and make a bundle.” He added, acidly, “I would have recouped my original investment of course. It would have cost me nothing.”

“He was going to sell to a group of developers who want to build a Civil War theme park. That’s how he was going to make a bundle.”

Now he looked surprised. “Who told you that? The Eastman girl.” He spoke with the same kind of venom as when he had talked about my “deformity.” “I’ll handle that.”

“Leave her alone. She hasn’t done anything. She doesn’t know any of this.”

His laugh was unpleasant. “Don’t worry, sugar. I don’t resort to something this extreme unless the situation warrants it.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Don’t you smart-mouth me or I’ll shoot you in the one good leg you’ve got left. If the fall from the bridge doesn’t kill you, you’ll bleed to death.”

“You mean, like Leland?”

He looked momentarily startled, then he smiled. “Poor old Lee. If only he’d gone along with me, none of this would have happened. It all would have been peaceable. He’d have his money and we’d have the land.”

“Were you with him that day?”

“I was.”

“You killed him.”

“Now, honey, don’t you go sayin’ things like that,” he drawled, like I’d just said a cuss word and he was trying to make me mind my manners. “Your daddy died in an honest-to-God hunting accident.”

“You’re lying. You shot him.”

“Lucie love, I’m warning you. Let me put you right on this. Lee asked me to go along with him to shoot a few of those pesky crows that were eating your grapes. What happened was he got tangled up in a trellis wire while he was sneaking up on some danged bird. He should have known better than to have his finger on the trigger. Damn thing went off and he shot himself. Unfortunately, he bled to death before anybody could get to him in time.”

“You left him there to die.”

He looked at me severely. “I had to protect my reputation.”

“Of course you did.”

“You’re sassing me again, sugar. I don’t like that.” He waved the gun at me. “I’d hate to have to really shoot you. You know I’m against handguns except for legitimate hunting purposes. Plus I didn’t bring the silencer.”

I almost said “what a pity” but that fell in the category of sassing him and I wasn’t sure how much patience he had left. “What happened to Fitz?”

He almost spat. “That was Greg.”

“Greg killed Fitz?” I stammered.

“Had to. Fitz came upon him when he was at the winery that night. He figured everyone would be at Lee’s wake and he wanted to go through things in case Lee had been sloppy and left anything around that might get back to him. So he made it look like a robbery, guessing you’d think it was one of your migrant workers.”

“I met Greg leaving the wake as Eli and I arrived. What did he do, rebroadcast his show that night, too? Until somebody figured out it was an old show, it looked like he always had an alibi, didn’t it?”

“He did have it all figured out,” Mason said. “He shacked up with Mia and screwed her until he got her to see reason about agreeing to sell your land. Then he had Brandi work on Eli. He had some old letters she’d written him. She wanted him to pay for the abortion and I guess he finally coughed up a little something.”

“Abortion?”

“Yes,” he said, “they had quite the fling.”

So Brandi wasn’t faking her difficult pregnancy. “That’s sick.”