Sauvignon Slaying: Spell's Bay Mysteries, #1

ONE~FORGET ME NOT  

~ I cook with wine , sometimes I even add it to the food. W.C. Fields.

AGATHA GREYSTONE SWIPED furiously at the single, fat tear that rolled over her papery cheek. Foolish sentiment is what it was. Her sister Matilda had lived a full life.

Agatha was sure that if she’d been asked, Matilda would have said in her typical forthright manner that there was no sense bemoaning fate since you couldn’t stop its tide anyhow...and that she had no regrets.

She added that line to the pad of paper in front of her, her hands shaking as she tried to form the words into something legible. The thing was a mess of crossed out words, lines, and arrows, the page full of 98 years’ worth of memories. And who best to write them than Matilda’s 94-year-old sister, who had lived with her for the last twenty-five years since her second husband had passed?

Agatha looked up gratefully as Mel, her housekeeper of over forty years, placed a steaming cup of tea at her elbow. Mel nodded wordlessly. Theirs was a relationship that didn’t require pleasantries.

At the door she turned and said, I’m turning in if you don’t need anything else.

Agatha looked up, swallowing with difficulty past the golf-ball sized lump in her throat. She sniffled. No, I’m good. See you in the morning. Just a single poached egg on toast for breakfast. Don’t fix anything else. I won’t eat it.

Mel scowled. And fruit. There will be grapefruit. The vitamin C will keep the chill at bay.

I won’t eat it, Agatha threatened irritably.

You will if you know what’s good for you, Mel threatened back, her skeletal-thin arms folded over her nonexistent bosom as she paused by the door.

Agatha started to respond and then thought better of it. Mel had a nasty habit of exacting revenge when her orders weren’t followed. Not for the first time, Agatha wondered who was really in charge at the Mansion on the Hill, as it was dubbed by most of the townsfolk of Veil Falls. Just a half, then. No more. And no juice.

Mel nodded and left, satisfied.

Agatha went back to writing her sister’s obituary. The lead on her pencil broke a few minutes later when she pressed too hard and she swore, reaching for another.

She tapped her chin and wrote. Matilda Greystone founded the Veil Falls Charity Quilting Association in 1947 following the death of her beloved Harold in the war. A single, working mother at the time...

An hour later, she sat back, her tea barely touched. She looked at what she’d written and gave a decisive nod, her expression pinched. It was done, her duty to her sister complete in the tribute to her memory that would be posted in the local paper and on-line. The funeral was scheduled for a week from today, allowing extra time to make arrangements and give friends from out of town a chance to make the long trek to their not-so-humble home of Veil Falls, Michigan, located on picturesque Spell’s Bay on Lake Superior.

But it didn’t feel done or final. It felt unfinished. Something was missing.

Leaving the rough copy of the obituary where it lay, Agatha pushed away from her desk and got gingerly to her feet, cursing old joints, bad knees, and fingers that didn’t work the way they used to when she completed a quilting square anymore. She grabbed the cooled tea and made her way through the door, down the long hall, and into the kitchen. The place seemed empty without her sister there to argue with.

She sat her cup by the sink and pulled her shawl tighter about her person, not bothering to turn on the lights, even though it was past ten in the evening and had been dark for hours. Gnarled fingers rested on the bottom of the mahogany staircase leading to the upper rooms on the second floor. In the last twenty years or so, only one of them had seen much use. As they’d entered their eighties, both women had talked about moving the contents of that room to the main floor since the over twenty steps leading up was rough on old knees. But they had both agreed, for once, that the exercise was good for them, even if the bending of ancient joints made their bodies ache in ways they didn’t care to think about. 

Gingerly gritting her teeth against the pain, Agatha took the first step. More than just her old bones wailed silently in protest. Her heart was heavy, too, as she took the next stair, pulling herself forward. At the top, she paused, swallowing against the overwhelming grief that was her constant companion.

I shouldn’t miss you so, you old bat. I didn’t even like you most days, she growled aloud, the sound bouncing eerily off the walls of the empty house.

Her mouth a thin line, she reached out and threw the door to the room wide, gasping at the blast of icy air that hit her. With a sigh of disgust, she flipped the light switch on and moved into the room. Shivering, she glanced at the thermostat and read the dial. Seventy-two was what they had the furnace set at, but it felt more like sixty-two. Scowling, she edged it up to eighty.

She looked around. It was exactly as they’d left it the last time they’d both been in there, sitting at their individual workstations and arguing over the color schemes and patterns for the completion of their next project. Agatha looked at the large square table in the center, a partially completed Christmas quilt in the middle, waiting for the addition of the next completed square. It was early December, and the quilt itself was over three-quarters finished with all the squares sitting in a pile and waiting to be sewn in place to finish this year’s Holiday Celebration Quilt.

An overwhelming sadness hit her. They’d had plans for that quilt. Every year for the last twenty, they’d entered the Grand Traverse Bay Quilting Expo on the second Saturday in December. And for the last three, they’d taken first place. Matilda’s granddaughter, Lacey, had taken the time off work to attend with them and act as their driver. Agatha still drove, but only to the store in Veil Falls on Sunday afternoon. Any farther and she was sure she was going to have to run half the idiots on the road over.

Staring at the partially finished quilt, Agatha gave a sigh. Now that trip was going to be postponed. Permanently. Maybe she could have had one or more of the other ladies from the club help her finish it, but it wouldn’t have been right. It was Matilda’s hands and her own that had created that masterpiece. It would be up to her to finish it as she had time—a tribute to her sister.

And that’s when it hit her.

A way she could honor her sister’s name and give her a proper send off to meet her dearly departed Harold in the hereafter.

She smiled as her imagination—what her sister had always told her was her worst trait—took flight. She’d hold a wake so friends and family could pay their respects. A stuffy, old room where people shredded Kleenex and sobbed like a bunch of whiny fools would have just irritated her sister to no end. Matilda would have wanted a party of sorts, with artery clogging food and enough of Brownie’s luscious cocktails to pickle their livers good. And she knew just how she was going to tie it all in, how she could allow everyone who was invited a chance to honor her sister and allow her memory to live on. She’d need to hire help to set things up, and there’d need to be a planning committee. And they’d need to move fast in order to hold the affair before the funeral, less than a week away. She tapped her chin. "This Saturday will do, sister," she mused. She gave a last, satisfied look at the empty room. It was still frigid, the furnace having yet to kick on. She cast the thermostat a cool eye. That would just be one more thing to deal with in a long list of things that needed doing.

But Agatha Greystone was smiling as she turned and left the way she’d come, hitting the switch on the way out and pulling the door closed behind her. As she crossed the threshold, she felt a brush of warmth over her cheek, making her pause with a gasp. Another tear gathered in the corner of her eye for no good reason as she made her way back down the stairs.

I’m glad you approve, she muttered. But if you think you’re going to interfere with my plans and tinker with the menu, you’re delusional.

She hit the next step, and the old wood gave a decided groan. Agatha smiled for the first time in several days.

It was short-lived. Back in the library, she frowned into the phone in confusion, scowling at the voice on the other end.

What do you mean there’s a tobacco convention? This can’t exactly wait, you know. At our age, things ripen quickly. Can they postpone it?

Agatha’s scowl deepened. Do you know how much we contribute to Lovelace Resort’s Cat Charity every year? In honor of Albert, her beloved grey Persian? Well, it should make a difference. I might have to cut that amount in half this year. What do you mean I have to do what I have to do? That’s not how a threat works.

But Agatha was pretty sure it was, and that Rachel Lovelace, who owned Lovelace Resort with her husband Jonah, wasn’t going to bend. She was honorable that way. If the place was booked, she wouldn’t change the reservations, in all fairness to those who had booked the convention rooms first. Though to Agatha’s way of thinking, maybe she should start. Think of all the lives she’d be saving since smoking was bad for your health anyway.

She hung up and tossed the phone onto the desk, her neatly manicured fingers, the nails tipped in Bloody Mary Red, tapping on the desk as she thought. It wasn’t like Veil Falls was some thriving metropolis— and they were in the middle of winter, for heaven’s sake. The funeral home was completely inadequate to host the affair. Though they didn’t have a lot of relatives left, they had a lot of friends. The quilting club alone boasted thirty members. She’d need a place to handle at least fifty, and tables and more for them to sit and work. Where in Veil Falls during the Christmas season could she find an establishment that had the room to host such an event?

And then her fingers froze in mid-tap, and her eyes narrowed, a small smile tipping the edge of her pale lips. Just maybe...

She picked up the phone. 

I STOOD BACK AND FROWNED. The door swung free, no longer listing south. The latch was still sticking a mite. I’d need to have Honor look the next time he was by. Maybe he could tweak it the last bit, so it looked more professional. I stared through to the inside of the empty barn. The lights worked but were woefully inadequate for the facility. I was calling it the Crooked Tree Party Barn. I’d carefully pulled down the faded sign that read The Win-o Stop. The previous owner obviously had a sick sense of humor. I hoped to rent it out in the spring for weddings and birthday parties. It was the first outbuilding I’d started repairs on. The door had been first. Next up was painting the place, inside and out. I’d already checked the plank flooring and been surprised to realize that it might pass muster with enough elbow grease to strip and re-shellac the boards, so there were no splinters. And cleaning—it definitely needed that. If I looked into the pretty, wooden rafters, they were mostly obscured beneath a dense thicket of cobwebs and dust. But I’d need a better ladder than I had and a lot of help when it came time to do that part.

I stomped my feet and shivered, thrusting the screwdriver and hammer in my hand back inside the carpenter’s pouch tied at my waist. I stepped forward and pushed the door closed, scowling when it barely latched. I locked it up and turned back towards the house. Several inches of fresh powder had fallen the night before, coating the trees that ran along the back of the property, and dousing everything in winter white. The house stood back aways from the drive, a two-story sentinel no longer proud, whose time had come and gone. But it was mine, and I’d convinced myself that all it needed was some elbow grease and tender loving care. A lot. Beyond the house and to its side was the combination winemaking shed and tasting room—a split building where customers, if I ever had any, could sample various wines, cheeses, and chocolates. A long low window ran three-quarters of the way down the center and afforded a view into the wine room where everything involved in the making of the wines took place. Another quarter of the building was reserved for wooden barrel storage and aging once it was produced before being bottled for market. Of course, that was a long way off. Right now, I didn’t even have any stools for anyone to sit on. And wine? That was just a dream at this point. I wondered if the vines that remained in the orchard were healthy enough to produce. And I had a lot to learn. I’d been a server in my other life when I’d been married to Kyle and living in Trinity, Michigan, a small coastal town just east of South Haven. That had all been before the divorce, before I brought my nephew Joel Sommers with me. Foolish me had decided it was in our best interests to run away from it all as far away as I could get and buy a rundown fruit farm in the tiptop of the Upper Peninsula, hundreds of miles away.

I walked across the yard, glancing right with another sigh to the largest building on the property, and the one most in need of repair. The long, low, pole barn had been the primary hub of the farm, doubling as an open market during harvest time and a country store, featuring the farm’s produce as well as goods and services from other area businesses. But looking at it from where I stood, it would be the last to open—not unless I could get the roof replaced. Last year’s spring storms had ripped into the shingles, tearing them loose. Inside, the water damage was extensive, and the power had been turned off to prevent electrical shortages. The Hatchet Creek Market needed extensive work. Muscle aside, it would take more money than I had to make it habitable. It also had the most potential of any building on the property to earn its keep and more besides if I could. The Crooked Tree Party Barn needed the least amount of fixing up before it would pass inspection, so it was up first.

I entered the house, removing my hat and gloves and taking a seat on the old wooden bench just inside the door to unlace and remove my heavy boots. There was an emptiness in the air, and I knew without having to look that Joel wasn’t up in his room, surfing his computer, or with his head buried in some epic science fiction novel on some spaceship far out somewhere in outer space.

More likely, he was with Sam Owens and Beth, and maybe even Ben and Ralphie. Not that I was complaining. I was beyond relieved that he’d found friends to hang with. He’d had none in Trinity. And Kyle had always seemed to be on his case, too. It had been no secret that the two of them didn’t get along. Not all of it had been my ex’s fault. Joel had a way of using his disability to tune out anyone that irritated him. He had learned to use his deafness as an excuse for rudeness.

Which was why Sam’s mother, Maggie, was the second number I’d added to my contacts. I didn’t always know where the boys had gotten themselves off to. Most of the time, Maggie did.

In the kitchen, I warmed up a cup of water in the microwave and checked the refrigerator for leftovers. I settled on warming up a bowl of yesterday’s crockpot goulash and eating it at the counter with a cup of instant coffee.

I checked the time. It was closing in on five o’clock. In another hour, it would be dark. And that was the rule. I didn’t control his wanderings in the countryside as long as he kept an eye out for bears and wolves. He made sure he was home before nightfall.

I stared at my phone and bit my lip. The first number I’d added when I arrived in Veil Falls had been Honor Mason’s.

Honor was my neighbor and lived no more than a mile through the woods to the west of Crooked Tree Farms. He’d gone out of his way to be friendly and help me out way more than necessary. He was a few years older than me, but I hadn’t missed the comfortable way he moved or the cut of his jacket over broad, dependable shoulders. He was everything my husband hadn’t been, and I found that way more attractive than I probably should have.

I controlled the urge to pick up the phone and call him. I could have used Joel as an excuse since my nephew spent part of his time with Honor learning the ins and outs of running a vineyard— something I was determined to do as well. I wanted that, to breathe new life into Crooked Tree Farms and make it productive once again. I had so many ideas for what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, they all required money, and I was in short supply of that.

The Veil Falls Haunted Wine Tour that Honor and my new friends Jack and Juli had helped me put on during the month of October had helped. I’d made enough to pay the taxes for the next year and make at least three months’ worth of payments. But the money hadn’t extended to paying the heating bills, or for Joel’s clothes, or the upkeep on the old ten-year-old blue Suburban I’d paid cash for with the last few dollars from my divorce settlement.

Scraping the last of the goulash into the trash, I stared out the window and bit my lip in consternation. Maybe I should make that phone call after all.

I was reaching for my phone when it rang, making me jump. With a frown at the unfamiliar number, I answered.

Hello?

An elderly voice floated down the line, clear and to the point.

Miss Blume, correct?

That’s me. And who am I speaking to?

Agatha Greystone.

Something about the name rang a bell, but I couldn’t remember what. She cleared that up right quick.

Yes, well. I have a proposition for you. You may have seen the paper and read that one of the sisters in the ‘Mansion on the Hill’ has died? Old busybodies down at the paper don’t have anything better to do, so I’m sure they’ve blasted the news all over town. I’m Agatha, her sister.

I’m sorry for your loss, I added lamely. It still didn’t explain why she was calling me, a virtual stranger in Veil Falls.

Yes, well. I just got off the phone with Rachel over at Lovelace Resorts. Lovely woman. Wish she was a little less honorable, though.

I blinked at the strange turn of conversation. What? Mrs...

Miss. Never married. Never found a man I could stand for more than a week.

Oh. Well, that’s good, then, right? How can I help you, Miss...?

"Don’t go all proper on me. I’m not that old lady. Agatha will do. There was a slight pause. I suppose you are curious about why I called you?"

The thought had crossed my mind, I added dryly, giving an enormous sigh of relief when the outer door opened and Joel sailed into the room and straight for the fridge.

She cackled on the other end. Sarcasm. You and I are going to get on just fine. So, I called Rachel to see about renting one of their banquet rooms for Saturday. Short notice and all, but really, Rachel and I go way back, you know. But she apparently had already rented them all out to some tobacco convention being held there this weekend. She couldn’t even spare one little corner room. They are all full.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it in consternation. Joel had pulled the rest of the goulash out and added the entire container to the microwave. My nephew was tall and stick- thin, but there was nothing amiss about his appetite.

Agatha went on. So, here’s the thing. I want to rent one of your buildings.

What? I asked, startled.

How much are you asking for the day? This Saturday.

Hmm... Nothing— I tried to interrupt.

She was quicker. Don’t be modest. I can pay for the use of the venue and anything else we might need to make it happen.

No. I mean I don’t have a room you can rent.

What? Her voice was growing shriller by the moment. Are you having a tobacco convention, too? What’s with those people?

Miss Greystone, please. Nobody is renting any of my buildings. Have you been out here recently? Have you seen them? If you had, you wouldn’t be calling. I couldn’t hold a sheep shearing convention in any of them right now.

They can’t be that bad.

The Hatchet Creek Market pole barn needs a new roof. It leaks. A lot.

It was never called that before...

Yes, well, I renamed it. And the tasting room is overrun by mice. Big ones. Oh, and there are these spiders...nasty things.

Did you rename that, too?

Tongue in cheek, I added drolly, "Yes, I call it the tasting room."

What else do you have out there? I’m getting desperate here.

I have the Crooked Tree Party Barn.

There was several seconds of uninterrupted silence. I suppose you renamed that one, too. What kind of farm are you planning on running out there?

I sighed. Nothing right now. The place is under repair. I’m hoping to open a couple of the buildings in the spring.

So...the...Party Barn. It leaks?

Well, no, but.

It’s a den of rodents?

I don’t think so. Nothing in there to eat...

So, what’s wrong with it?

"It’s absolutely filthy, for one. There’s spider webs and