A Vintage To Die For (Violet Vineyard Murder Mysteries Book 2) by JM Harvey Page A

slumped. I nodded. “Maybe. Truce?” I asked and she gave me her tight little smile.
    “Sure,” she replied. “Until you start playing Sherlock Holmes again,” she added, her smile widening a notch.
    I laughed. “Those days are over,” I promised her. “I learned my lesson the hard way.”
    Midge dropped behind the wheel and backed away. I watched her go, then turned and headed down the slope to the pile of must.
    I rewound the rubber hose, closed the tank’s valve and disconnected the hose. The hose went straight into the trash, fittings and all. I stood there for a moment, looking around the cellar. The police had left it almost as neat as they found it - which isn’t saying much. The back of the cellar is cluttered, but picturesque; the front is all industry. Canvas-cloaked machinery lines the walls two rows deep. The bottling line, which includes the corking machinery, the bottle conveyor, the sterilizing equipment, the encapsulater, and an ancient labeler, fills half the floor while stacked cases of empty bottles, foil capsules, and new corks are wedged in wherever they’ll fit.
    I crossed to the tank and ducked to look through the access port. Almost all of the must had been removed, but there was still a mess of sticky fluid and skins and seeds inside. I hooked up the garden hose, got out the sanitizing solution, and climbed up on top of the catwalk where Samson had perched just the night before, I went to work, hosing down the tank, letting the effluent run into the drain set into the concrete floor as I thought about Midge Tidwell and the promise I had just made to mind my own business.
    I had meant it when I said it, but, sadly, it was a promise I was not going to be able to keep. 
     
    I spent a fitful evening on my own. Both Jessica and Victor begged off on my dinner invitation, but I didn’t resent them for their departure. I was not fit company. The shock of Dimitri’s death was wearing off and the reality was sinking in. It seemed impossible another person had been murdered on my property.
    As the sun set over the Pacific, the mottled yellow carbon-haze over the freeways far to the west turned into an impressionistic painting of pinks and blues. I sat on my patio drinking a very short scotch, trying to let the beauty of the view and the knowledge of a completed harvest ease my dark mood. It didn’t work. My gaze drifted to the Harlans’ converted barn and the vineyard that hugged the slope below it. The home was well tended by a yard service, but it looked dusty and deserted. Not just empty, but void of life. The vineyard behind the house, trellised like a green waterfall down the side of the steep slope, was shaggy and unkempt. It had been picked by one of the big winemakers for their low price cabernet, but little had been done to prepare the new canes for next year’s growing season. It was sad Kevin had worked so hard to create rows that were being left to wither.
    Is it any wonder Jess and Victor abandoned me? I was even sick of myself. I dumped out the rest of the scotch and went up to bed.

Chapter 10
     
     
    The phone in the cellar, Violet’s business line, rang at 7:10AM while I was slipping on a pair of gloves and scanning the almost empty pegboard for something to use as a pruning blade. A few hours in the rows seemed like good therapy. Not to mention the vines offered a perfect hiding place from Samson, who would arrive shortly and immediately notice the missing fifty cases of wine. I could imagine the explosion that would follow when I told him I had signed an auction deal with Star Crossed. It was going to be a big one, the biggest ever. He might even become the first Greek in outer space.
    I thought of letting the call go to voicemail then reconsidered. It could be Hunter with an update.
    I wish I had let it ring.
    “Claire,” Angela Zorn breathed in my ear then continued in a rush. “The police were just here. They told me about Dimitri and Jorge. What happened? They