Sinfandel by Gina Cresse Read Free Book Online

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    “Hey, Kate.  It’s Dave.  I didn’t want you to think I forgot about the Grass Valley sniper and your question about the car.  Anyhow, I still don’t have any definite answers.  The witnesses aren’t sure of the year, and to be honest, a couple of them aren’t even sure it was a Mustang.  The only thing they all agree on is the car was blue and white.  If I hear any more, I’ll let you know.  Talk to you later.”
    So I still didn’t know if Roger could possibly be the person taking pot-shots at passing cars in the middle of the night.  Part of me wanted to call and just ask him if he was that crazy, on the slim chance that he’d tell me the truth, which was something Roger didn’t do very often.  As I sliced a tomato, I weighed my options.  If Roger denied being the sniper, would I assume he was lying and report him anyway?  If he told me he was the sniper, would I write it off as another one of his delusions—like his adolescent dream of becoming a mercenary?  I put the knife down and dialed Dave’s number.  To hell with Roger.
    “I think I might know who the sniper is,” I said to Dave.
    “What’s his name?”
    “Roger.”
    “He have a last name?”
    “Flake.”
    “Really?”
    “It fits, believe me.”
    “Where can we find him?”
    “I have no idea.  He was living in his car somewhere in Nevada but I don’t know any more than that.”
    “Okay, I’ll run his name through the computer.  Anything else I should know?”
    “He has a gun.”
     
    For dinner, I made a salad with Romaine lettuce, avocado slices, marinated artichoke hearts, tomatoes, and red cabbage, and topped it with citrus grilled chicken.  I carried it, along with a glass of 2009 Muscato, which promised “a swirl of apricot and peach pie flavors with a dollop of creamy vanilla and crisp acidity for a reviving finish” into the office and placed it on my desk.  Another working dinner, which I’d sworn a dozen times to give up, would be my reality tonight.
    There was something wrong with the data I’d gotten from Quinn Adamson.  The bottom line figures were in agreement.  The total grapes grown in California were in sync with the total grapes harvested, and the total gallons of wine produced, based on a generally accept yield of 175 gallons per ton, more or less agreed with the wineries’ reported production.  The problem was with some of the varieties.  The Carignane, Grenache, and Valdepena yields were too low, and the Zinfandel yields were too high.  The swings between those varieties made me think I’d screwed up somewhere.  I checked my conversion tables three times, but still the numbers didn’t add up.  Finally, I composed an e-mail to Quinn Adamson and asked him if he had the resources to perform an audit on those varieties against the official documents.  I suspected that he was already aware of this variance, and I wondered if it wasn’t the true motivation for hiring me.
     
    The following morning, banging on my front door jarred me out of an unusually sound sleep.  I blinked at the clock, put on a robe and stumbled to the door.  Detective Obermeyer stood there, looking every bit as tired as I felt, and shook his head.
    “Nothing?” I asked.
    “Not even the beavers showed up last night.”
    “What now?”  I hoped he wouldn’t answer with, “You have the right to remain silent.”
    “As I said yesterday, we’re going to remove the plants, but continue the investigation.”
    “Is this the part where you tell me not to leave town?”  There I go again, wasting perfectly good humor on him.
    He handed me his card.  “Your cooperation will be helpful.  If you see anything suspicious, or think of anything that might be germane to the investigation, please call me.”
    “I will.”
    As he walked toward his car, something came over me—I think they used to call it hospitality in the old days.  “Can I make you some breakfast?” I called to him.  After all, he’d been up