Fired and Inflamed, page 16
part #2 of Otto Viti Mysteries Series
“Just a heads up,” he continued. “And let me know if you hear of anything strange happening in town today.”
“Okay, I will,” I said. “Oh, Fitts?” I added hastily, hoping that he hadn’t hung up yet.
“What?”
“So, me and you—we’re like friends now, aren’t we? I mean, I give you information about people in OV, and you call me and tell me about the reporter who writes awful articles. We’re buddies, huh?”
“Oh, shut up, D’Angelo.”
And then he hung up.
But I knew I was right. I was growing on him.
I pushed myself up from the couch and walked through the kitchen toward the front door. I didn’t know anyone my age who still got the newspaper, but everyone my grandfather’s age did—including him. And there it was on his porch when I opened the door, spotlighted by the overhead light that Aldo left on all night.
On the front page was a picture of Chocolat, all ablaze.
“Oh no,” I muttered.
Fired and Inflamed, by Lucy Argyle
There will be no Christmas cheer in Otto Viti, the little enclave of wine tasting rooms, fancy restaurants, and specialty shops in the heart of Temecula’s wine country.
Not now with the untimely passing of two employees from the award winning treats shop, Chocolat.
Just twenty-three years old, assistant chocolatier Katie Foxx was strangled and then stuffed into a fireplace less than a week ago. And last night, her boss Bradley Greer—owner and master chocolatier of Chocolat perished in a fire that consumed his business.
Rumor has it that Katie had been fired by Bradley mere hours before being killed. And now, Bradley has gone up in flames. The morbid irony of Otto Viti never ceases to amaze me.
Say it with me, folks: Otto Viti is no longer the place to be. It is clearly unsafe, and its overpriced goods simply aren’t worth the risk.
The fire began about ten o’clock. So far, no witnesses have come forward to help authorities determine how it started. I was there by ten-fifteen and was shocked to see many Otto Viti residents and proprietors standing around, watching, doing nothing. No one talking to firefighters, no one helping, no one even crying.
Not only is Otto Viti unsafe, but it’s run by people who seem to care very little for their own.
Bradley Greer is survived by his wife, Allison, and their two young sons. When I spoke to Mrs. Greer last night, she was too aggrieved to give me a statement, which, of course, was understandable.
Are you inflamed? I am.
Friends, do yourself a favor and ensure your Christmas is merry by celebrating somewhere else.
My blood boiled. We didn’t help the firefighters? We were staying out of the way. And we weren’t crying? She couldn’t have been close enough to tell—and why would that have been the only appropriate reaction?
I wasn’t sure she even got half her facts straight. Bradley went up in flames?
I couldn’t stand that woman.
I checked the time on my phone. It was five-fifteen. The papers had already been delivered to businesses in town, but most people were still probably asleep.
Did I really want everyone in Otto Viti waking up to that article? What an awful way to confirm that Bradley was dead.
“Hey,” a voice said from the doorway.
I turned and saw a groggy Nico standing there. He squinted in the porch light.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
I shrugged and walked back into the house with the newspaper. Heading to the kitchen, I said, “Fitts texted me this morning asking me to call him. I wasn’t able to sleep, so went ahead and called him back. He had some questions about what we saw last night from our vantage point. And he told me that Bradley was the person in Chocolat—but he was dead before the fire got to him.”
Nico groaned.
“I know. That’s what we thought already, but having confirmation is still like a punch to the gut. And then he told me about the ridiculous article coming out this morning.”
I handed Nico the paper, and he scanned Lucy’s diatribe. I sat at the kitchen table and watched him. When he finished reading, he dropped the newspaper to his side and gave me a sympathetic look. “This is terrible.”
I nodded. “I feel awful that people in Otto Viti are going to find out that Bradley died by reading this article. But what else is there to do? Go steal all the newspapers before they wake up?”
Nico scratched the back of his head, thinking. “Right. Because then what happens? Does it then fall on you to tell everyone that Bradley is dead?”
I didn’t want that job.
But I still didn’t want anyone else finding out through Awful Argyle’s article.
I lost myself in my thoughts as Nico made coffee. When the ancient coffee pot finished gurgling and sputtering, I watched him pour the coffee and creamer into two mugs and walked them over to me.
“Thank you,” I said. I took one mug from him. “So what do we do?”
He sat at the table and looked out the patio door to the darkness of Aldo’s back yard and wine cave. “I don’t know.” He turned back to me. “But people like that reporter—people who hurt others as they try to climb their way to the top—they often end up falling back to the ground. What she puts out is what she’s going to get back. You know what I mean. What comes around goes around, right?”
I nodded.
“I know it doesn’t make you feel better,” he said, “but Otto Viti has a big spirit. This reporter won’t ever be able to crush it. Today will be hard, but we’ll pull through.”
He was right.
I looked out the patio door. Bradley had two boys, the same ages as my nephews Hunter and Thatcher. And now their daddy was gone.
My heart ached for them.
TWENTY-THREE
I didn’t have to be at the tasting room until after lunch, so I had plenty of free time that morning. More than six hours, actually.
I could have done something good for myself, like yoga or pushups, but I just wasn’t in the mood. Since I was going to be reprimanded by my principal for showing a movie clip upon returning to school, I could have started preparing my defense, but I wasn’t in the mood for that either. I tried reading my new favorite genre of novels—time travel—but got antsy after thirty minutes. Not even being whisked away to early twentieth-century Virginia helped, and I sure did love early twentieth-century Virginia.
Nico went to take a shower, and I found the notebook I had stolen from Holly’s room yesterday right where I had stashed it in Aldo’s kitchen junk drawer. I carried it back to the kitchen table and looked at my original list of suspects for Katie’s murder.
My first instincts had been Elita, Daniel, and Bradley.
I started to cross Bradley off the list but stopped myself. It was possible that he could have killed Katie, and then someone could have started the fire in Chocolat for revenge. Could anyone on this list also be responsible for the fire? Or killing Bradley beforehand?
I put my finger to Daniel’s name. Could he have done it? I had no idea. He was pretty distraught over Katie. Was he capable of revenge?
Holly was sure that Elita couldn’t have killed Katie, and she was probably right. But it was strange that we didn’t see Elita at self-defense last night, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen her with the other shopkeepers during the fire. Where was she? Her parents had been there—at least until they decided to take their guests back to Zonda. And while Elita didn’t live with her parents over Zonda, she did live next door over their restaurant, Deseo. She should have been there with the rest of us. Even if she hadn’t killed Katie, could she have been the one to start the fire?
Oh, looking at that list was pointless. I knew in my gut that my friends or family couldn’t have been involved. Allison just lost her husband, and Daniel just lost the girl he had been in a serious relationship with. None of the people on that piece of paper made sense.
I just needed to ignore my curiosity and start being productive.
I turned the page and wrote a to-do list for the day.
Tell Daniel we don’t want the apartment
Confirm time to see Artie’s rental house
Offer condolences to Allison—and find out what we can do for her (talk to Athena about it?)
Talk to Elita
I didn’t really want to speak with Elita, but it was probably time to admit that I hadn’t told Fitts about the note.
I closed the notebook and headed to the back of the house to get ready for the day.
By the time I showered and dressed, Nico had left for Entonces, and Aldo had gone to meet his buddies for coffee. Holly was still sleeping. Back in the kitchen, I flipped open the notebook and surveyed my to-do list again. It was still early. There was only one person on the list I knew for sure would be up and about right now.
I slipped on my shoes at the front door. On the porch, I could see the backside of Chocolat. Though the fire hadn’t burned through the entire building, the smell of smoke still filled the air. I could practically see and feel the ghost of the fire. In the distance, the sunrise hot air balloons were rising, and I felt a stab of sadness. Outside the bubble of OV, the world kept spinning. Life went on. How easy it was to take for granted the tragedies happening all around us when they didn’t affect us directly.
I shivered and then started down the path down to Otto Viti, feeling grateful that visiting Vendemmia didn’t require walking past Chocolat. Later I would have to go by it on my way to Entonces, but I wasn’t ready for it just yet.
Vendemmia’s lobby was empty when I pushed through the front doors, and the smell of freshly cut flowers was a welcome change from the burnt air outside. I walked to the breakfast nook just off the lobby. The Council of Elders sat around a table, silently, all wearing black, the only people around.
I should have worn black, too. Did people wear black after Katie died? I couldn’t remember. My situational awareness really did need work. The only reason I probably noticed it now was because all four of them were wearing it.
Sensing my presence in the doorway, the men looked up. Eduardo and Artie nodded at me. Aldo forced a smile. Morrie rose and pulled over a chair from another table, motioning for me to sit down. The others scooted over to make room.
“Thank you,” I said, sitting between Aldo and Morrie. I knew it was pointless to ask how they were doing, so I didn’t bother. “Artie, with everything going on, do you want to postpone us seeing the rental house? We can do it another day if that’s better.”
He glanced at me and then settled his eyes on something past me in the lobby. He shook his head. “We don’t have to do that. If you’d like to postpone it, we can. But we don’t have to. We’ll be just as sad tomorrow as we are today.”
“That is true,” Aldo sighed, leaning back and staring at his coffee cup.
“Does three o’clock still work for you?” Artie asked.
“It’s perfect.”
“Did you see that atrocious article in the newspaper?” Morrie asked.
I nodded. “That reporter is so angry at Otto Viti for some reason. And when something bad here happens, she seizes the opportunity to take her anger out on us.”
Artie and Morrie gave each other a look—the kind of look my sisters and I gave each other when we shared a secret. They knew something about the reporter and why she was angry at Otto Viti. Now wasn’t the time for me to ask, though.
“I do not know how she gets those articles published,” Eduardo said. He covered his face with his hands, pulling them downward over his eyes and cheeks. He looked exhausted. “Shouldn’t news stories present the facts? She editorializes. Unfairly, at that.”
I nodded again at the table. He was right—Lucy Argyle’s editorializing was the biggest problem with the articles. If she just stated the facts, that would be one thing. But she let her negative opinions overshadow the facts. And even Eduardo—the man most likely to overreact and throw his weight around to get his way no matter how reasonable his way was—made a coherent and logical argument about her editorializing.
I looked across the table at him. His exhaustion triggered a wave of concern in me. Of the four men, he looked the worst by far. Skin drooped under his eyes, and his black hair looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in a week. “Are you okay, Eduardo?” I asked.
He shook his head, pursing his lips and gluing his eyes to the table. “I don’t know what is happening. First, Katie. We find her in Entonces. Entonces. Then Elita, I don’t know that girl anymore. She tells me nothing. Why is she keeping secrets? And then Bradley. And Chocolat. There is a big, empty hole in the middle of Otto Viti, and it makes no sense. None of it.” He shook his head again.
Artie patted Eduardo’s shoulder.
“You know, it is my fault that Elita has turned out this way,” Eduardo continued. “It is my fault, and it is Carmelina’s fault. The two of us, together, we allowed her behavior.”
I tried to keep my eyebrows from rising in surprise. I hadn’t ever heard Eduardo acknowledge that Elita was anything less than perfect, but now he was not only acknowledging it but also taking responsibility for it.
He leaned forward and stared at me. “Did you know, Jill, she was adopted?”
I shook my head.
“Yes, adopted. I am old, you know. Seventy years old. And Elita is only thirty. Carmelina and I, we got married later in life, and we could not have kids. So we adopted Elita, and we did not tell her that she was adopted. She found out on her own much later, and that was a big mistake. We should have told her. She felt betrayed that we didn’t. Since then, I’ve let her do what she wanted. For years, I’ve been trying to make it up to her. I let her get her way because I am guilty of keeping that secret from her.” He paused, shaking his head. “But now, it has backfired. Now she is more spoiled, more dramatic. And she tells me nothing. Nothing.”
No one seemed surprised by Eduardo’s admission. They must have already known.
I waited a moment before speaking, hoping the silence conveyed respect for his pain and hurt. “But Elita didn’t have anything to do with what happened at Entonces or Chocolat,” I said. “What happened is tragic, yes, but Elita didn’t have a hand in it.”
Eduardo shrugged. “My heart agrees with you. But my head worries. She is keeping something from me.”
I wondered if Eduardo knew where Elita had been last night since she wasn’t with the rest of us watching the fire. I guessed that he didn’t—and that was part of why he was so distraught. It seemed insensitive to ask, so I didn’t.
“Have faith in your heart,” Aldo said.
Artie, Morrie, and I mumbled our agreement.
I looked at my grandfather. “Will we do a memorial for Bradley?”
He thought, then nodded at the table. “I think it depends on his family. We should do anything Allison needs us to do.”
“Will we still have the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve?”
Aldo thought for another moment. “I think, yes. And we should remember Katie and Bradley when we are all there tomorrow.” He looked at his buddies. “Yes?”
They all nodded.
“Jill, I’m so sorry, I should have offered you some coffee earlier,” Morrie said. “Can I get you a cup? Today my mind is floating around somewhere else.”
“Oh, no thank you, Morrie. Actually, I should get going.” I stood up. “Thank you for letting me sit and chat.” I patted Aldo’s shoulder and then waved goodbye to the others. “I’ll see you all soon, I’m sure.”
And with that, I turned and made my way out of Vendemmia.
I knew what I wanted to do next.
First I needed to run back to Aldo’s to put on a black shirt, and then I needed to go find Elita. I had some words for her.
TWENTY-FOUR
When I got to Aldo’s house, Holly’s bedroom door was open, and she wasn’t inside. I quickly changed my shirt and then wandered out to the kitchen. My sister must have been in the wine cave, again unable to sleep until ten o’clock because of the distress of last night’s fire.
On top of the notebook I had left on the table was a torn-out piece of paper. I hadn’t noticed it on my first pass through the house. I picked it up and recognized Holly’s handwriting.
Dearest Sister Jill,
Per your request, I am leaving a note informing you that I am in the wine cave.
Might I point out that while I have extended this courtesy to you, I’ve received no such reciprocal courtesy. Please recognize that I too wonder of your whereabouts when you are gone.
Love, your adoring sister,
Holly A. D’Angelo
Post script: Stop stealing notebooks from my room. Pretty please.
Well. She sure thought she was funny.
I opened the patio door, and piano music drifted toward me. This time wearing shoes, I crossed the lawn to the cave, the music getting louder with each step.
I pushed through the heavy door, leaving it even more open than before, and walked down the long entry past the wine barrels and ornate light sconces. By the time I reached the last wine barrel, my sisters’ voices were mingling with the music. I turned the corner to see Holly sitting at the piano and Stella unfolding the legs of a rectangular table laid on its side. She must have been starting to set up for the Feast of the Seven Fishes dinner.
“C’mon, please,” Holly whined while continuing to play softly. “Just one song—that’s all I ask. Just one.”
Stella set the table upright and pushed it against the formal dining table. She checked to make sure they were lined up straight. Then she looked at me. “Hey Jill, good morning.” She clamped her hands on her hips, looked at Holly, and took a deep breath. “No,” she said. Then she disappeared into the little storage closet that blended in so well with the walls that I only knew it was there when its door was opened.
“Want help with that?” I called after her.
“No,” she said, dragging out another folding table. “I’ve got it. But you could help me by convincing Holly that I shouldn’t sing on Christmas Eve.” She extended the table’s legs, stood it upright, and pushed it against the first folding table.
