Ari disagreed. “I like posterboard. Writing out my thoughts helps me to organise them.”
“Alexa has shitty handwriting,” Jez told her.
“I do not.”
“You do,” said Marcel, bustling in with a tray. “Nobody can read a word you scribble.”
Whatever. At least nobody would ask me to take notes. I helped myself to a chocolate chip cookie and dropped onto the cleanest-looking couch. A cloud of dust rose around me, and I began coughing.
“Ugh.”
Marcel looked pained. “Maybe I should get the vacuum?”
“No time for that right now.” Jez grabbed a marker pen. “Suspects? And don’t say Marielle’s ghost.”
“I don’t think we can rule out Wyatt Hayes.” Nolan glanced at Storm. “I know you said it was a woman, but other than Marielle, I can’t think of a single woman who’d do this.”
“Okay, let’s try approaching this a different way,” Ari suggested. “These incidents have been going on for a while, yes?”
Nolan nodded. “Although I thought they were accidents at first. It started with the temperature controller on one vat of wine being turned right up, and I just figured I’d made a mistake.”
“That’s not how it started,” I said. “You said your ex-girlfriend opened the spigots on a bunch of tanks and the wine ran down the drain.”
“But that happened last year.”
“So? We’re looking for a woman, and she is a woman, therefore we can’t rule her out either. Plus she told Nolan this place would never be a success without her. First it was the spigots, then the fermentation temperature, then a destemmer machine broke, Nolan found a nail in his tyre, a row of vines got trashed, sulphur dioxide mysteriously fell into a tank of wine, and then the fire happened. The shower in the master suite broke, and my coffee was switched for decaf. Some of those could be accidents, but not all of them, and Marielle admitted to the coffee thing.”
“Did you look into her?” Ari asked. “The ex?”
“Of course.” Did she think I was a slacker? “She’s over in San Francisco, working as an administrator for a guy who imports high-end sports cars.” I glanced at Nolan. “And also dating him. He’s ten years older than she is, but he lives in Noe Valley and owns a condo in Miami.”
“San Francisco is, what, two and a half hours away?”
Jez coughed into her hand. “Two hours.”
“Okay, two and a half hours for someone who doesn’t drive like a maniac. What’s her name?”
“Lisanne Fulton. She knows her way around the winery, and she drives a Porsche 911, so the two-hours thing isn’t impossible. On the surface—meaning social media—she seems happy, but the car guy has either back problems or a side piece because there’s no need for a regular, healthy human to visit Madame Butterfly’s Temple of Tranquility three times a week.”
“Is that a brothel?” Jez asked.
“A massage and wellness spa. Allegedly.”
Ari wrote Lisanne’s name on the board beneath Wyatt’s. “Who else?”
“Donna Hayes,” I said, and Nolan began shaking his head.
“No way, not Donna.”
“She’s a woman, she lives close by, and she’s been browbeaten and brainwashed by her husband. Honestly, I’m not sure she’s smart enough to carry out the subtle sabotage we’ve been seeing, but we at least need to check her whereabouts last night. That should be easy enough if we call the shelter she’s staying at.”
Ari tapped the pen against her chin. “We need to consider the possibility that more than one person is involved.”
“Like two people working together?”
“Or two people working independently. Maybe a copycat?”
My turn to shake my head. “Not a copycat. Nobody knew about the sabotage—we kept it very quiet.”
