Aged for Death, page 14
She didn’t, though. Instead, controlling her emotions, she gave him a professional smile.
“I’m here to help and support in any way I can,” she emphasized. “You have my absolute loyalty, and I’ll do whatever it takes to fix this situation as soon as possible.”
From the look of gratitude on Marcello’s face, Olivia thought her words might have meant more than any hug could do, however big and loving it was.
Then his phone rang and he answered, looking stressed all over again as he strode back to his office to take the call.
Olivia felt a furious gaze drilling into her from behind. Turning, she saw that she had sensed correctly. Gabriella was standing at the restaurant’s entrance, glowering at her. Clearly, she’d seen Marcello greet Olivia and the friendliness in the gesture had triggered her.
Just as well she’d refrained from that warm, loving hug, Olivia thought, hurrying across the empty tasting room to confront her nemesis.
“I want to ask you something quickly, please,” Olivia called.
Gabriella looked surprised as she approached. Then Olivia thought she looked guilty, as if she’d been caught out for staring and thinking her evil thoughts.
The expression only lasted a moment before Gabriella recovered her usual poise, and looked down her aquiline nose at Olivia, while flicking a perfectly tonged curl behind her ear.
“I wonder what you want to discuss. Shall we speak about your previous workplace? We could have a very interesting conversation about that, I am sure!” Gabriella’s crimson lips curved into a nasty smile. “Perhaps we should bring in Marcello to listen. Or should we keep it between us girls—for now?”
Olivia felt herself writhe inwardly as she realized what a huge disadvantage she was at. Gabriella was enjoying taunting her so much that Olivia began to wonder if she’d ever reveal the awful secret. She seemed thrilled to be the sole owner of this damaging information.
“Please don’t mention that,” Olivia begged her. “Right now, there might not be a winery at all, if the winemaking operation gets closed down and the word gets out about what happened. Then the restaurant would have to close, too. We’d all be out of a job.”
Gabrielle’s unpleasant smile vanished. Olivia saw that her words had hit home.
“I wanted to ask you something very important,” Olivia said, striking while the iron was hot. She knew she wasn’t going to get many opportunities to be in a strong position with Gabriella. She needed to make the most of them.
“What?” Gabriella folded her arms.
“I’m doing some research into Vernon Carrington’s death, so that I can help to clear the winery’s name,” Olivia said.
She was also hoping to clear her own name, but knew Gabriella would have scant sympathy if she learned that. It was best not to mention it at all.
“There were two people at the auction who I think could have poisoned Vernon’s wine, and who might have had a motive,” Olivia said, lowering her voice. She was pleased that Gabriella leaned forward as she listened, abandoning her defensive demeanor.
“The first one was the Frenchman who bid against him at the end. He was an antiques dealer, I think. The other was the bidder at the back of the room, who dropped out of the bidding just before the end. If they wanted the bottle badly, one of those two might have planned to walk away with it regardless.”
“And you are telling me about this, why?”
Olivia smiled, hoping that Gabriella would interpret it as a friendly gesture.
“I was busy after the auction and didn’t see either of them. I was wondering if one of the two would have had the opportunity to add the poison to Vernon’s wine. You see, I’m looking to help out by investigating. After all, we need to have this awful crime solved.”
Olivia hesitated.
Another, horrible idea had just occurred to her. Her thoughts fragmented into panic as the thought hit home.
“Go on?” Gabriella asked, but now her tone was cold.
“I—I wonder if—you might have seen? Them? At all?” Olivia finished, in a small voice.
It had just dawned on her that there was another suspect at that auction. Somebody who had just found out about Olivia’s past connection with the victim and who had realized it was the perfect opportunity to frame her for a crime.
Someone who had a strong motive of jealousy, because her ex-boyfriend seemed to have romantic feelings for Olivia.
As Olivia smiled nervously at the other woman, she cringed at her own stupidity.
She could be confessing her suspicions to the real murderer.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Olivia felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the restaurant.
Why couldn’t she have thought this through before she’d blurted out to her biggest rival, and a newly discovered suspect, that she was investigating the case?
If Gabriella had been the killer, she’d been able to use a lethal poison with skill and without anyone realizing it. She was an expert with flavors, and seemed to know how to stay out of the spotlight of suspicion. She’d even passed under Detective Caputi’s oversensitive radar.
Olivia would never be able to enjoy a light lunch in the restaurant again! She’d even feel nervous opening a sealed bottle of mineral water, knowing it had come from Gabriella’s storeroom.
She wished she hadn’t said a word. In fact, she wished she could rewind time and start afresh, from the moment she’d opened the winery’s heavy oak doors.
All she could do was wait, in the lengthening silence, to see how Gabriella would react to her words.
She tore her gaze away from the safety of the desk and risked a glance at the other woman.
Gabriella had a perfectly manicured finger pressed to her temple. She was thinking—or pretending to. Possibly, she was creating an alibi to mislead Olivia deliberately.
Well, Olivia thought, whatever Gabriella said, at this point, she’d better agree with her story! If Gabriella said she’d heard the entire Vescovi family plotting together to add antifreeze to the wine, Olivia resolved she would thank her enthusiastically and then leave the area as fast as she could.
“The Frenchman followed me into the kitchen straight after the auction,” Gabriella said. “He was in love with my macarons, and my food in general. He wanted to take a box of sweet treats away with him, which I put together for him, and to ask if I could do catering for his future events.” She smiled smugly. “He does a lot of business in Tuscany, mainly antiques sales and historical tourism. So we spoke for about twenty minutes, I gave him my details, and he gave me his card.”
She opened the till drawer and produced it with a proud flourish.
Olivia nodded, making sure Gabriella could see how impressed she was.
“The other man was a tourist. From Scotland, I think. He was bidding on the bottle for fun, as he has a big wine collection in his country house. He was there with his wife and son. He was competitive during the auction, but didn’t seem overly disappointed to lose, and they left straight afterward. They had a dinner reservation at a restaurant near Florence, so they barely touched any of my snacks. I offered them about six different trays of food, and only his wife ate anything.” Gabriella sounded petulant.
Again, her story rang true. Focused on food, Gabriella would definitely have been offended if her snacks were turned down, and would have listened for the reasons why.
Olivia began to think that Gabriella was telling the truth, and why would she do that if she was guilty? She’d want Olivia to run in as many different directions as possible, so that she didn’t look in hers. Gabriella could have said she hadn’t known anything about either of the men. Instead, she’d given a very clear explanation.
“Thank you,” Olivia said.
She hoped that perhaps this might mean Gabriella was willing to set aside her evident loathing of Olivia, but there was no such luck.
“Is that all?” the restaurant manager asked in an unfriendly tone, and Olivia knew that the temporary truce was over.
“Yes, that’s all,” she said, and hurried away.
Olivia decided that the interview had cleared Gabriella as a suspect, due to the information which she’d willingly shared. However, she wasn’t so sure about the Frenchman. He could have slipped poison into his victim’s wine, and then deliberately created an alibi for himself in the winery’s restaurant.
That was something a good planner might do.
But would somebody have had the foresight to bring poison to an auction in case they didn’t win the bottle they wanted, and have been able to create such a seamless alibi straight afterward? If that was the case, the Frenchman seemed to be less of an antiques dealer and more of a criminal genius.
She thought it unlikely that an antiques dealer would possess such a range of nefarious talents. Nonetheless, he would have to remain on the suspects list. If she didn’t find anyone with a clearer motive, Olivia would have to contact him and question him herself.
As she left the restaurant, Olivia saw Nadia stomping out of the storeroom. She seemed in a foul mood, and was holding a clipboard and pen. Olivia guessed she was stocktaking, trying to work out the damage and losses that had been caused by the contaminated wines, and which would now be exacerbated by the winemaking operation’s closure.
Nadia glowered at Olivia.
Olivia knew her well enough not to take it personally. When Nadia was happy, the world laughed and smiled along with her. When she was angry, everyone at the winery crept around trying to avoid her. Except Olivia, who now had to confront her. Hopefully, she could use subtle questioning techniques to remove her from the suspects list.
“This is such a terrible predicament,” she sympathized.
Nadia jabbed her pen into the slot in her board.
“More than terrible. I am stressed out! We have such a small deadline to make these wines and get them to market. The detective does not understand how a supply chain works. Stupid woman. She does not know or care about wine at all.”
“I don’t think Vernon did, either,” Olivia sympathized, hoping that this would encourage Nadia to speak out.
“I could have cried when he won the bottle. I felt like going and snatching it from his grasping, greasy hands,” Nadia hissed. “Our wine never deserved to be owned by such a rude, insulting ignoramus. The person who took it from him, I will only say that they saved it from him!”
“Who do you think it could have been?” Olivia asked.
Nadia shrugged expressively. Then she turned on her heel and marched out of the tasting room.
Olivia stared after her, frowning.
This conversation had by no means cleared Nadia, but now Olivia had a bigger worry. She was certain that the outspoken vintner would have shared her sentiments during her interview with Detective Caputi, and that the policewoman would be treating her words as highly suspicious.
Olivia needed to clear Nadia’s name, and pinpoint the real perpetrator, before Detective Caputi closed the net around her.
*
Checking her phone after work, Olivia saw that Danilo had sent her the list of what she needed to feed her soil and nurture the vines.
“Go to the hardware store and they can help you with everything,” he ended the message.
Eager to get her seeds off to the best possible start, Olivia drove to the hardware store straight after work.
“Ciao, ciao.” The friendly owner smiled. “You have come to buy some compost and soil fertilizer? Danilo said you would be visiting again soon!”
Olivia gave her a forced grin in response. She had the feeling that Danilo might already have regaled his hardware store friend with an eyewitness account of her winegrowing ineptitude.
“Danilo said you had one hundred percent enthusiasm but zero percent knowledge,” the clerk continued in a ringing tone, glancing up at Olivia. “Is it true that you chased him off your property?”
Now both the closest shoppers were listening, as they pretended to browse the shelves near the till. Olivia knew with a sinking heart that this drama had probably been the talk of the village.
“Yes,” she admitted, her face burning. “He was being annoying so I asked him to leave.”
The clerk laughed uproariously. Even the young woman standing by the closest shelf covered her mouth to suppress a giggle.
“You shocked him,” the clerk confided in Olivia. “He said you seemed offended by the comments he made in this store, so he drove to the farm to try to help. He could not believe that a pretty turista like you would refuse his assistance, and then become angry when he tried to explain your mistakes. He said he was hurt. I told him he should have asked more nicely, and that not everybody wants to know they are doing something wrong.”
Touché, Olivia thought. That had been her, all right. Three months later, and she had been served up the portion of humble pie that had been waiting for her.
“I’m grateful he’s helping me now,” she confessed. Might as well own up to her ignorance. After all, she had an audience listening in. She didn’t want the whole town to believe she was an arrogant turista.
“Danilo has a big heart!” The clerk placed her hand expressively on her own chest to illustrate her point. “He is always trying to help others.”
“I’m glad we sorted out our miscommunication.” Olivia smiled.
“Now, tell me,” the clerk said, lowering her voice. “You work at La Leggenda, no? I hear there was some trouble after the auction? That the bidder who won the final item was found dead the next day?”
Olivia stared at her in consternation. She wasn’t used to small-town life! Did word really travel so fast? How had the clerk even known?
“Um,” she said.
She was aware that the closest shopper, a woman, was sidling even closer, feigning a deep interest in the display of shovels under the counter.
“I don’t really know anything about it,” Olivia mumbled, but the clerk smoothly called her bluff.
“They say the winery has been closed. Is there a problem there? Why did the police close it?”
“There was no problem at all,” Olivia said hastily. “They just—the police had to come and check something, and they didn’t want tourists going in and out.”
Her face was turning crimson. She was a terrible liar, and it only made things worse when she realized that the clerk had probably acquired a fair amount of information already.
She might even know more than Olivia did. Probably, she simply wanted to confirm her version.
One of the shovels clattered to the floor, and the female shopper, looking embarrassed, righted it and retreated to a polite distance.
Olivia paid for the goods and wheeled the cart outside as fast as she could, packing the bags into the Fiat until the trunk and the back seat were full.
Then she scarpered back to her farm. Spreading compost suddenly seemed like a fun and appealing job, compared to dealing with the community’s fascination with the crime.
This time around, Olivia had Charlotte to help her. She was bribing her friend to provide an extra pair of hands to finish dressing the seed beds, with the promise of buying her dinner afterward.
Charlotte had willingly accepted this offer and Olivia was glad she thought it was a great deal. Olivia hoped that the extra help would allow them to finish faster. She was eager to be in good time for the restaurant on the other side of town, where she’d booked a table. It was a fancy place so they’d need to spend some time getting ready first.
As they worked, she updated Charlotte on her investigation.
“The problem is that I keep returning to Nadia as my main suspect,” she said. “She had the motive, because of losing the family’s historic bottle, and she had the opportunity to grab poison when she left the auction. By then, she knew how obnoxious Vernon was. She could have brought the poison back with her as a precaution.”
“Sounds like something any thinking woman might have done,” Charlotte agreed.
“I had very high hopes for the two other bidders who lost out to Vernon,” Olivia said. “But the Frenchman seemed to have an alibi afterward, and the other man seemed to have been bidding for fun. Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe that was a front.”
She sighed. Investigation wasn’t easy. In fact, once you started to think, rethink, and eventually overthink everybody’s possible motives, Olivia realized it made her head spin.
Carefully, she loaded another sack of compost into the wheelbarrow.
“What about that man who was speaking to Vernon before the auction?” Charlotte asked. “The one we overheard at the restaurant, bragging about his cellar?”
Olivia nodded. “Patrick? He left straight after the bidding for the first item. That means he couldn’t have been a suspect.”
“Even so, it would be worth speaking to him,” Charlotte insisted. “They knew each other through business, and you know how shady Valley Wines was. Vernon could have shared important information with him.”
“You’re right,” Olivia agreed. “It would be worth following that up.”
From behind them, there was a loud throat-clearing.
Olivia dropped her spade and spun.
Danilo stood a few yards away, looking sharp in a trendy pair of ripped jeans and a blue checked shirt. His hair was parted to the side this time, and slicked down with gel, giving him a 1920s look.
How long had he been standing there? Olivia was horrified by the fact he might have overheard her sharing her suspicions about Nadia. She didn’t want anyone to think that Nadia might be guilty.
Staring at Danilo in consternation, Olivia realized that her innocent conversation with Charlotte might have been a huge mistake.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
“Buon giorno. I came to see if you needed any help,” Danilo said. “I was driving past when I saw you wheeling a barrow to your vineyard.”
Olivia smiled nervously at him, wishing she could replay the last few minutes and take back what she had said.
