“Don’t get your hopes up, Cen. I don’t want to think he did it either, but this is a long shot.”
A long shot that needed to be proven within the next twenty-four hours. Otherwise it would force Tyler’s hand.
As Sheriff, Tyler decided if and when Lombard Winery would be released to its legal owner. That is, whomever that owner turned out to be on Monday morning when the winery was officially foreclosed on. Technically Antonio remained the legal occupant, regardless of whether the foreclosure happened. Eviction and other legalities took time to come into effect.
We pulled up to the Lombard Wines gate and Tyler jumped out of the Jeep to unlock the gate. I was well aware that we were looking for answers to questions that didn’t make sense. I was glad Tyler was open to my suggestion. What seemed like an open and shut case was starting to look more like Antonio had been framed. The evidence against him was simply too perfect.
Tyler parked the Jeep and turned to me. “I hope there’s something here, Cen. I’m under a lot of pressure to charge Antonio. The case is in my jurisdiction, not Shady Creek’s, but they think Antonio’s the only one who could have done it. I’m sure to lose my job if I’m wrong on this.”
I had the same nagging feeling as I followed Tyler across the parking lot. He unlocked the winery door and we went inside. Despite the late afternoon sun streaming through the windows, the place felt eerie. I shut the door behind me and locked it.
It was cool inside the building but not as cold as it had been yesterday when we were bottling the wine. Had that only been yesterday? It seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Even if Antonio was the killer, he would never do it at his family’s winery and vineyard,” I said. “He reveres this place.”
“We think that way because we know him, Cen. But that’s based on emotion, not fact. Jurors will see Antonio as a desperate man with overwhelming evidence against him. They’ll arrive at a unanimous guilty verdict because right now, there’s no reasonable doubt that he didn’t do it.”
“Except that Antonio seems to have given up on life in general,” I said. “He doesn’t have the drive or even the energy to kill anyone.”
“The jurors won’t know that though.” Tyler sighed and headed across the floor to the stairs leading to the wine cellar. The cellar door was propped open with the wine barrel as before. It would remain that way until it could be reprogrammed by SecureTech, since no one other than Antonio could reopen the lock.
I gulped, remembering Aunt Pearl’s claim of a secret trip to the wine cellar. Was it all a lie designed to rile me up? I wouldn’t mention Aunt Pearl’s visit just yet—it would only cloud judgement. If I was right, my experiment would identify new suspects and I’d deal with it then.
I shivered as we descended the stairs to the wine cellar. The air was cooler and damper than I remembered.
“Shouldn’t somebody be guarding this place?” I asked.
“The crime scene is cleared now,” Tyler said. “The forensic team has processed all the evidence. The lock and everything else have been dusted for prints.”
“But you never release crime scenes that quickly. Does that mean you’re sure about—”
“I’m not sure about anything anymore.” He sighed. “But I’m confident we have all the evidence we can get, and delays make things complicated with the bank foreclosing and all.”
“You have Antonio’s code, right?”
Tyler nodded and handed me his phone. “Start recording now.”
I held the phone up and started recording as Tyler removed a paper from his pocket and displayed it for the camera.
I gasped. “Are you kidding me? 1-2-3-4-5 is the factory setting. Antonio never even set up a new combination!”
Tyler frowned. “Could he still set up his fingerprint?”
“No! He couldn’t have done that until he entered a new code, something different from the default. Either he reset it or he never set it up in the first place. I don’t get it—he sure talked like he had. And I saw him punch in his code and scan his index finger. So did Aunt Pearl.”
“How does the lock get reset?”
“You need a special tool that comes with the lock,” I said. “At least to change the combination, you do. As for the fingerprint scan—Antonio said the green indicator light wasn’t coming on. Either this lock was never set up for his fingerprint in the first place—or someone has had it reset to the factory setting.”
“Let’s prove it.” Tyler entered the combination once more, but the deadbolt remained sticking out in the locked position.
“I guessed wrong,” I said with a sigh. “It does need a fingerprint.”
A few seconds later the deadbolt clicked to open, surprising us both.
“It’s a time delay,” I said. “What Antonio assumed was his fingerprint being read wasn’t the case at all. Whether a fingerprint has been set up or not, the lock has a time delay programmed. That allows the user a few seconds for the combination number entry and the fingerprint scanner. It’s a pretty long delay, so no wonder Antonio thought his fingerprint was actually being scanned. No green light should have been the tip-off that it wasn’t actually working.”
I stopped the recording and handed Tyler’s cell phone back to him.
“Great work, Cen.”
“The lock is key.”
“Very funny.” Tyler smiled. “It doesn’t rule out Antonio, but it adds more suspects to the mix.”
“Or, there’s one other possibility, one I hope isn’t the case because then it still points back to Antonio.” I had learned quite a bit about locks during my research.
“What’s that?” Tyler asked.
“Do you know the difference between a fail-safe lock and fail-secure lock?”
“No idea,” Tyler said.
“Fail-safe locks are unlocked when the power goes out, whereas fail-secure locks stay locked when the
