Sour Grapes

these?”
    She flipped the pages until she found the room chart. “Room ID.” She jabbed a finger toward the hallway that branched off the gallery to the left, then turned her attention back to the phone. “I have to check the registration tables, to see how it’s going,” she said. “Gert, I’m sure you can handle all of this, and when I check back with you in half an hour, you’ll have only good news for me, right?”
    She hung up the phone before receiving the affirmation. She didn’t need it. Gertrude was a most-capable coordinator. And she possessed another virtue that made her even more valuable... she was positively terrified of Marion Lippincott.
    And that was exactly the way The Lip liked it.

    Room 1D. A first-floor room. That was good. Perfect, in fact.
    The person with the flowers had brought along more than tulips. The jar of red gore was tucked inside a jacket pocket, just in case.
    But no. The “delivery person” wasn’t that lucky. The room was locked, and there was no choice but to leave •he arrangement outside in the hallway next to the door.
    Oh well. It was probably better this way. The old bat with the notebook might remember later, and there needed to be some time between the “delivery” and the “incident.”
    Tonight would be fine.
    Counting the steps to the exit at the end of the hall, the person mentally rehearsed the return. Fifty-five steps. Feeling the jar, heavy inside the jacket pocket, its contents sloshing around, brought a smile. If the flowers didn’t change her mind, Barbara Matthews was going to get an unpleasant surprise.

Chapter

4

    S avannah began to relax and enjoy the drive as she guided the Mustang along the winding highway through San Carmelita’s outskirts. Although the steering was a bit off, the car drifting to the right. The temporary tires that Dirk had provided, while they waited for the city to come through with the new radials, were mismatched, and she was pretty sure he hadn’t paid the extra few bucks to have them balanced. Tightwad. She’d have to give him a verbal slapping-around.
    Atlanta sat in the passenger’s seat, for once having little to say. There were a few advantages to quarreling—blissful silence being one of them.
    Having left the beaches and citrus groves behind, they gradually climbed tawny velvet hills, dotted with copses of dark oaks, into California’s Gold Coast wine region. On either side of the highway, perfectly straight rows of vines, heavy with fruit, glistened in the sunlight. And the smell of sun-warmed grapes scented the air.
    All along the highway, at the end of each row, a rosebush had been planted, each blooming in a different shade of crimson, pink, yellow, and coral—Villa Rosa’s trademark. Local legend had it that the winery’s founder had planted them for his wife, Rosa, and they had been maintained and replanted in her memory since.
    “We’re there,” Savannah told her silent passenger. ‘This is Villa Rosa, the winery where your pageant is being held. They’re one of the oldest, but fastest growing wineries in the area... and they never pass up a publicity opportunity.”
    “Humpf.”
    Ignoring the less than enthusiastic reply, Savannah continued. “How about that... both of us winding up there, you competing and me working security.”
    “Yeah, it sucks. It major sucks.”
    Savannah looked over at the petulant face and ignored the itch in her palm. It was an irritation she often felt when she badly wanted to slap somebody.
    “Sorry, Twerp,” she said, knowing how much the nickname irked the kid. “I didn’t mean to sneeze on your ice cream, rain on your parade, et cetera.”
    “Yeah, sure. Once again, Big Sister is watching every move I make.”
    Savannah gritted her teeth as she turned down a private road, marked with ornate wrought-iron gates and a carved, gilded sign which read: villa rosa .
    “I’m not sure how I turned out to be the bad guy here,” she said. “You were the one who signed up for this thing, saying you’d been living in San Carmelita for the past five years, using my address without asking me.“
    “I saw it on the Internet, okay?” Atlanta said, examining the nail cuticles of her left hand. “It sounded cool, so I signed up on-line. How was I supposed to know that you’d be stingy with your ol’ address?”
    “Come on, ‘Lanta. I may not be everything you want me to be, but the one thing I’m not is ‘stingy’ where any of you kids are