A Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mystery 1: Sharpshooter by Nadia Gordon

Author:Nadia Gordon [Gordon, Nadia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery & Detective, General, Fiction
ISBN: 081183462X
Google: wr0zLNkJFuIC
Amazon: B0056G04Y0
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Published: 2002-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Once they were driving, Monty asked if it was worth the trouble of going out there.

“I don’t know,” said Sunny. “It was nice to meet her at least. There’s a good spot up ahead for lunch. You want to stop?”

She passed it, made a U-turn, and doubled back, pulling off at an overlook. She grabbed the sack lunch, a bottle of water, and the Thermos from behind the seat and let the tailgate down for them to sit on. Below, the land sloped away steeply, offering a view almost as spectacular as the one from Ripley Marlow’s living room. Sunny divided the egg salad sandwich in two and poured water into the Thermos cup for Monty, keeping the liner cup for herself, then set out the sliced apples and Cheddar cheese. It felt good to be outside in the fresh air.

“Thank God,” said Monty, squinting through his little gold glasses. “I wanted to lunge at that tray of food, but it didn’t seem polite. It was torture just staring and pecking at it.”

Every now and then a car went past. When they’d finished the sandwich, Sunny poured coffee and got out the chocolate chip cookies. One of the new Volkswagen Beetles went by, flashing license plates that read WINEBUG.

“That’s very cute,” said Sunny. “Almost too cute.”

“Or menacing. It depends how you read it. You can get the wine bug, that’s good. But if you have wine bugs, that’s bad. Phylloxera. The glassy-winged sharpshooter.”

“I think they mean they are driving the wine bug.”

“Right. Gotcha.”

“I don’t know what makes people get vanity plates, anyway. The only one I ever saw that I really liked was ‘Aztec Lover,’ with a heart for the ‘love’ part. I didn’t see the driver, but I assume it was a guy who looked like the drawings on those calendars they hand out at Mexican restaurants at Christmas. You know, standing on top of the mountain holding the Indian maiden.” Sunny stood up to illustrate what she meant.

“It could have been an anthropologist.”

“No, the car was all muscle. Like a Trans Am or something.”

“I saw ‘Wine Guy’ the other night. In fact, I was nearly run down by Wine Guy on my way home. I was about to turn into my driveway when Mr. Guy comes flying around the corner going about a thousand miles an hour. I saw the plates because I looked to see if he was going to wipe out on the turn. He made it, but not without taking some rubber off the tires. He hit the brakes so hard they squealed.”

“Was it a silver Jaguar?”

“Yeah, I think so. How’d you know?”

“When was that exactly?”

“Um, Tuesday? No, Wednesday night. I was coming back from dinner at Delfina with the wine buyer from Bistro Five.”

“In the city?”

“Yeah. I can hardly ever get him to come up here. I always have to drive all the way to San Francisco.”

“So it was late.”

“About twelve-thirty, maybe quarter to one.”

“You’re sure it was Wednesday night?”

“Of course.”

“Did you see the driver?”

“I don’t remember.

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