“I didn’t want to bother anybody. It seemed so much simpler to just buy a ticket.”
“That doesn’t add up for me, Alex.”
“Why am I not surprised by that?”
“Come on. Do you really blame me?” He crossed to stand directly in front of her. She tipped her head to meet his eyes. “You’re here for this one tour, in the history of wine country tours, where a mutilated doll is discovered in a fermenting tank. And I’m not supposed to find that damn incriminating?
Before Alex could reply, Rachel stuck her head into the office. “How are you doing, Alex?”
“Better. Now that I know it was just somebody’s perverse idea of humor.”
“Tell me about it.” She shifted her gaze to Reed. “Your partner asked me to tell you she’d like to speak with you, as soon as you’re done here.”
He nodded. “I’m done. For now.” He looked back at Alex. “Are you going to be okay?”
Rachel answered for her. “She will. I’ll make sure of it.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Saturday, March 13
11:55 A.M.
Reed reconnected with Tanner outside the tasting room. “How are the tourists?”
“Happily inebriated. Or on the way to it.” She glanced at her watch. “And all before noon.”
“Anybody raise a red flag?”
“Nope. All staying at local hotels and B &Bs. All first-time visitors from out of state. All horrified, and not so secretly thrilled, by the incident.”
Human nature, Reed thought. They could all go home with a vacation story to top all vacation stories, and knowing Treven Sommer, a cache of free wine as well.
“What about the family and employees? Nobody had better access.”
“Deputies took statements. Running background checks on the transient help.”
Reed nodded. “Got to cover bases, but the cost and availability of those dolls limits the suspect pool.”
“My thought as well. What about Clarkson?”
Something in her tone set his teeth on edge. “She was understandably shaken.”
“Did she tell you she’s taken this tour before?” Tanner paused. “Yesterday. One of the guides remembered her. And a guard I spoke to found her in the caves, separated from the group. She told him she was claustrophobic and asked him to lead her out.”
Reed frowned, remembering the episode she’d had in the cave the night of the party. She hadn’t mentioned claustrophobia then. And why would she put herself in that situation not just once again, but today as well?
“There’s more. Apparently, she had a run-in with Clark. He’d been drinking and got up in her face.”
She hadn’t mentioned that, either. Interesting. When he’d questioned her, she’d gotten indignant-like he was the one out of line, for being suspicious. Truth was, he’d be out of line for not being more suspicious.
What a dupe she’d played him for.
“What was the outcome of that?” he asked, voice tight.
“Treven came along, defused the situation. Settled her down. Or so he thought.”
“What does that mean, or so he thought?”
“Maybe she placed the doll in the tank? Payback for him and the entire Sommer clan. For abandoning her.”
He thought of the story his dad had told him about Patsy, what she had done. And how he, Treven and several others had run her out of town. And now this happened, two days later.
“Clark confirmed the story,” she went on. “Was understandably sheepish about his behavior. She made a comment, he said, about the photographs in the museum. How none of them included her, her mother or Dylan.
“Let’s look at this, Reed. A lamb is slaughtered, stuffed under Alex’s bathroom vanity and left for her to ‘find.’ A bloodstained altar is discovered at Bart Park. Alex just happens to be an expert in alternative religious practices. Max Cragan hangs himself. Guess who finds the body? A second mutilated doll turns up-”
“And Alex is there to see it.”
“Yes.”
“And the first doll?”
“Check your calendar. Doll number one turned up on February 22, three days after Clarkson visits you at HQ.”
He did the math and realized she was right.
“Tom Schwann is brutally murdered. Bizarrely, his murder is connected to Clarkson in two ways.”
“The first, his tattoo and her ring. What’s the second?”
“Alberto Alvarez, killed in the same manner as Schwann-”
“Twenty-five years ago. You’re not suggesting a five-year-old child-”
“Committed the crime? Hardly. She’s connected to it because she lived here at the time and occupied the bedroom across the hall from her brother the night he disappeared. For all we know, she might be the one who set Cragan’s cottage ablaze.”
“She wasn’t.”
“You’re so certain? How?”
He met her eyes. “She has an alibi for that night. And for the night Schwann was killed.”
For a long moment, Tanner simply gazed at him. When she spoke, her tone was measured. “I suggest you evaluate your priorities. And if I were you, I’d do it fast.”
Reed managed to hold it together until he’d finished processing the scene. But even as he questioned winery employees and reviewed surveillance tapes and security logs, at the back of his mind, waiting to come barreling out, was his anger at Alex’s duplicity.
He found Rachel in her office. “Has Alex gone?” he asked.
“An hour ago. At least. Is everything okay?”
“Fine. I had another question to ask her, that’s all.”
“She promised she was going home.”
Reed thanked her and headed for his SUV. In typical wine country fashion, Saturday traffic was stop and go. It fueled his anger, and by the time he pulled up behind her Prius, he had to fight to keep it in check.
He climbed out of his vehicle and jogged up her walkway. He rang the bell, then, when she didn’t appear, pounded. “Alex! It’s Reed.”
After several moments, she answered. She wore an oversized sweatshirt and jeans, her hair was sticking out in several different directions and her eyes were red.
“You took the Sommer Winery tour yesterday. You didn’t tell me. Why?”
He’d caught her off guard, as he had meant to. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again.
“Why, Alex?”
She swung the door wider and stepped aside so he could enter. He did and she closed the door and faced him. “I started to last night-”
“I don’t remember that. I remember you kicking me out because I dared to question you.”
Color flooded her face. “I should have. I wanted to tell you everything-”
“But you didn’t. Why, Alex?”
She jerked her chin up. “Because I knew how it would look! Okay? How it would make me look!”
“And how’s that? Guilty?”
“No. Crazy.”
That one caught him off guard.
“I had another episode, in the cave.” She clasped her hands together. “It was worse this time. I had… I really panicked. I felt ridiculous after. And… shaken up.”
She turned and crossed to her living room couch. She sank onto it and dropped her face into her hands.
“Why, Alex?” he asked, unmoved by her attempt to elicit his sympathy. “Why were you out at Sommer yesterday?”
For a moment she didn’t respond, then lifted her face to his. “After you told me that story about my mom… I wanted to prove it wasn’t true. I called your mother and-”
“My mother?”
“She’d offered to let me look through your family photo albums. Since I couldn’t ask my mother the truth, I had to go looking for it. I figured the photographs couldn’t lie to me.
“I ran into Ferris while I was there. He suggested I go out to the Sommer place, that there were photos there as well. Plus, I wanted to see Mother’s painting, the one in the tasting room, behind the bar.”