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A woman was just opening the door as I approached. I recognized her as Roz Kirby, the bar manager, although today she was wearing a long-sleeved green T-shirt and jeans instead of the black dress and matching jacket she’d had on at the funeral, an ensemble she clearly kept in the back of her closet for those sorts of occasions and hadn’t seemed very comfortable in.

She caught sight of me and raised a hand. “Lorelei! How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” I replied, a little guilty that I’d actually felt great for most of the week, except for a bit of lingering weakness on Monday. Still, I probably could have been at Copper State Cellars the whole time if it hadn’t been for Celeste insisting that I take it easy.

“Glad to hear it,” Roz said. “Let’s go inside, and I’ll show you around.”

Obediently, I followed her into the bar. It was painted dark green and had a wide-plank wooden floor that I thought might be original to the building. The long, shining bar on the other side of the room looked as if it was probably an antique as well, although I had no idea whether it had been here for the past hundred years or whether Hazel or the previous owners had found it somewhere else and installed it in the space.

A chalkboard behind the bar listed all the available wines, and a row of taps below it showcased the various beers and meads in the current rotation. Off to one side was a small raised area where I guessed they hosted live music. It wasn’t big enough to accommodate all the Voodoo Dollies, unfortunately, but I realized my friends’ raucous form of gothabilly probably wasn’t what a lot of people wanted to listen to while they were trying to hang out and have a drink and relax.

Still, Celeste did solo gigs every once in a while when the rest of the band wasn’t available, and she could usually be persuaded to do covers if you coaxed her with some free beer or wine. Her singing voice was throaty and could be surprisingly intimate under the right circumstances.

I filed that bit of information away for future reference, even as Roz led me over to the bar, where two cups of coffee from the local roastery were waiting for us.

“We’ve got a little time before the hordes descend,” she told me, “so I thought we could have a chat and go over a few things.”

“Sure,” I said, and gratefully scooped up one of the cups. I’d already had two mugs of coffee at the house, but I figured a little extra caffeine never hurt, especially since this was going to be a long day. Copper State Cellars was open until ten on Fridays and Saturdays, and when I’d talked to Roz earlier in the week, she’d made it clear that I was expected to be there until closing.

An iPad was lying on the bartop next to the coffee, and she picked it up and scrolled to some kind of list. “It’s all pretty basic,” she said. “Marco works Tuesday through Saturday — he’ll be here in a couple of minutes. We have two part-time servers whose hours can vary, since they’re both students at Yavapai College. I make the schedule.” Roz stopped there and looked at me for a moment. Her gaze was considering, as if she was still taking my measure and hadn’t made any final decisions yet. “If that’s all right, of course. Hazel was the owner, and she still worked a shift or two up until just a couple of years ago, but she let me handle the day-to-day stuff.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” I said hastily. My Etsy store was a solo operation, and I’d never worked in retail or food service, so I didn’t have the foggiest idea how to juggle a schedule that sounded as if it could have some complicated variables.

“Good,” she replied. “We get deliveries on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Everything we have here is local, so I’m talking about small vans bringing in a few cases, not big semi-trucks or anything like that. We do get a delivery from Shamrock Farms twice a month because we offer a couple of different charcuterie boards, but it’s still not a huge amount of food. There’s a small walk-in to hold the perishables.”

I nodded and hoped I didn’t look like a bobblehead. “Will I be the one putting together the charcuterie boards?”

Roz paused for a second, and again, I got that feeling of being assessed. “Can you?” she asked.

Most likely, she was expecting me to say no. All she really knew about me was that I was Hazel’s great-niece and that I was into all things vintage, with an emphasis on anything dark and funky. She probably thought I couldn’t put together a charcuterie board to save my life.

“Oh, sure,” I said coolly, which was only the truth. I’d done them for parties at my parents’ house when they didn’t want to hire a caterer, and a friend of mine had even asked me to put together a variety of boards for her wedding reception, since her budget hadn’t allowed for an actual sit-down dinner. By now, I could probably assemble a charcuterie board in my sleep.

Something that might have been approval surfaced in Roz’s dark eyes. “Good to know. I’ve had Alix and Mason doing it because Marco needs to focus on the drinks, but they’re not what you could call experts.”

She made a note on her list. After that, she went on to explain the point-of-sale equipment — which was just another iPad attached to a Square processor — and showed me where our alcohol permits from the State of Arizona were hanging.

“An inspector will come through every once in a while,” she told me. “It’s generally not a big deal, but I just wanted to let you know in case they show up on a day when neither Marco nor I are here.”

That comment awakened the butterflies again, which had seemed dormant up until that point. The last thing I wanted was for some officious state inspector to decide the taps weren’t clean, or we hadn’t corked the open bottles properly on a day when I didn’t have any experienced backup to help me out.

Some kind of alarm must have shown in my expression, because Roz said, almost smiling, “I doubt that’s going to happen. I’m here Monday through Friday, and Marco is here Tuesday through Saturday, so the only time that would even be a possibility is if an inspector came on Sunday. I’ve been running this place for eight years, and I’ve never once had an inspector show up on a Sunday.”

Well, that was a relief. Still, I knew I needed to be on my toes.

“And Marco has already said he’ll come in this Sunday, just so you’re not abandoned during your first weekend here,” Roz went on. “I would have come in myself, but it’s my mother’s birthday this weekend, and I’m going down to Tucson to visit.”

If Marco was going to be here, then I thought I should be okay. I definitely didn’t want Roz to cancel her plans because I needed my hand held.

After that, she showed me the small kitchen area — tucked against the south wall the building shared with the shop next door — and an equally dinky walk-in fridge, just big enough to hold the charcuterie supplies. Out front were two separate wine fridges, one for whites and rosés, one for reds, which obviously didn’t need to be chilled as much. Next to the kitchen was a small office that I guessed was Roz’s domain, although she told me I was welcome to use the computer setup there if I needed it.

“And here are the keys,” she said as she reached into a desk drawer and brought out a key ring with a metal Copper State Cellars logo stamped on it. Hazel’s doing, I guessed; she liked to have everything matching and tidy. “The big ones are for both the front and back doors, and the two smaller ones are for the cash register and the safe. I do the bank deposits three times a week, and we keep the cash in the safe in between.”

I wondered how much cash was even involved, considering how everyone seemed to use cards and electronic payment apps these days, but I supposed it was smart to have a secure place to store whatever cash did come in.

We went out to the main section of the bar. I hadn’t heard him come in, but a guy probably a few years younger than me was standing behind it and polishing one of the stemless logo glasses they used for the wine.

“Hey,” he said, smiling. “You must be Lorelei. I’m Marco.”