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Filial duty accomplished, Greta found herself in the mood for pasta. In a pan, she made a sauce with canned tomatoes, chopped garlic from a jar, and basil, oregano, and thyme. When it was about ready, she put penne on to boil. She also made a small salad and then thought to open some wine. She looked into her cabinet where she kept her stash. None of her white wines seemed right for a tomato-based Italian dish. The malbec was red enough, although she wasn’t
in the mood for its heavy body. She reached for a dry riesling as the default choice, and her hand passed near a bottle given to her by Emily Sievers, the Cloverdale High School principal and girls’ basketball coach. Emily knew she liked wine and had given her a Christmas paper–wrapped bottle.
Greta pulled out the bottle. It was a red wine. Emily had either not known she mainly drank white or forgotten. Greta had wondered what to do with it—give it away? Although she was a creature of habit, the red malbec she had impulsively bought was good with the right mood or food, and this prompted her to give Emily’s gift a try. She opened the present, poured a small amount into a wine glass, and sipped it.
It tasted . . . different. Not with the floral aromas of her standards or the hint of sweetness she liked, just different. She looked at the bottle. Noceto Winery, Plymouth, California, sangiovese varietal.
It wasn’t bad, which she thought odd. She’d never liked reds before the malbec, and now this . . . sangiovese. Maybe her taste was changing? She took another sip, then a larger one. Still not bad. She thought about her first year in college. She had had alcohol for the first time and tried all the major variations. While hard liquor made her feel ill, she liked an occasional beer—the better ones—and white wine. She flashed back to a party with the other girls on the basketball team at Missouri State. That night she drank way too much red wine, threw up, and then had the mother of all headaches the next day. For many years following, she felt nauseated just smelling red wine. It had been several years before she chanced trying reds again.
Maybe it wasn’t the red wine itself, she thought, but the cheap version they had that infamous night and the amount I drank.
By now, the pasta was ready, and she served herself a plate of the penne with tomato sauce. She sprinkled it with Kraft parmesan cheese, the only non-Tillamook cheese in her house, and poured a generous glass of the sangiovese. She turned down the lights, lit a candle, and pretended to be eating in a small Italian restaurant, maybe waiting and looking for a male friend? After finishing, she was satisfied, had a definite buzz, and felt as if she’d made a new discovery.
She cleaned up after the meal, poured herself another glass, and wrote a detailed summary of the case, which included how she tracked down the origin of the receipt and the evidence that Toompas was regularly burglarizing Pacific City houses.
CHAPTER 18
Connors called the next day at exactly 8:00 a.m.
“I got word from Harward. We’re on for a two o’clock get-together with their Lordships today at the Lincoln City Police station. We’ll go over the case and see what to do next, if anything.”
Greta felt excited that the case would get formal attention again and nervous about Wallace thinking she might have hurt his reelection campaign.
“Uh, Mitch . . . since you’ve been the official lead in the case, will you be presenting a summary to the sheriffs?”
“This new information all comes from you, Greta, but if you’d rather I present it, that’s okay with me. You said you would write up a report?”
She sighed so deeply, she hoped he hadn’t heard it over the phone.
“Thanks, Mitch. I appreciate it. And yes on the report. I’ll come about an hour early and give you a copy, and we can go over it.”
The next day, Greta entered the Lincoln City Police station a few minutes before one o’clock. Connors arrived ten minutes later. She gave him her report, and they sat in the same room they’d used before.
“Where’s Tomasek?” she asked.
“Adam won’t be joining us.”
She raised a questioning eyebrow.
“I understand he told Chief Savilla there wasn’t enough new information to justify his leaving existing cases. And since it’s now looking like the murder may have occurred in Tillamook County, it’s outside the Lincoln City jurisdiction. Savilla agreed that Adam didn’t have to attend.”
Greta flushed in irritation. “You mean he said the stupid woman from Tillamook still sees clues in every shadow.”
“That wasn’t exactly what he said.”
Little prick, thought Greta. And I’ll bet he didn’t say “woman” but something more pithy. Oh, well, he wasn’t any real help before anyway. At least, now I won’t have to sit through any more meetings with him.
Connors went back to reading, asking an occasional question, and making notes. When he was done, he said, “A good summary, Greta. I know you already briefed me on the new information, but nice work digging it up. Are you sure you still want me to do the briefing?”
She nodded. You wimp, she chastised herself.
Half an hour later, Sheriff Harward and Alex Boylan arrived. He greeted Connors and Greta, then the two men helped themselves to coffee. Greta demurred, being already hyper enough.
At two minutes before two o’clock, Tillamook County detective deputy James Plummer walked in the room.
Plummer seemed affable, as far as Greta could tell from her few brief encounters with him. She had overheard snide comments from other deputies about the somewhat roly-poly detective, none of them respectful. She had pigeonholed Plummer as innocuous and wondered how he got to be made a detective.
“Hi, there, Greta,” greeted Plummer when he spied her.
