Page 27 of Blood Orange Christmas
I look at the linen. The stain on it isn’t wine. It’s old iron and today’s heat. “You think he fell on purpose?”
“I think someone helped,” he says, “or moved him after. Either way, messaging has consequences. So does getting caught with the wrong bottle in your hand.”
“What are you going to tell the guests?” I ask.
“What they already heard,” he says. “Accident. Heat. A misstep near the barrels.” He folds the linen back over the bottle the way you close a dead man’s eyes. “Keep your boy close. Tell me if anyone asks you about menus more than once.”
“Who sent it?” I ask, nodding at the strip of paper.
“Someone in the house.” He doesn’t blink. “Someone who knows the cellar better than they should.”
“Dante?” I ask, because I want to hear him say no.
“Dante is the target,” he says. “And the shield. Don’t make me guess which one you want more.”
He leaves with the bottle and the strip of paper. I stand there with my hand on the steel and try to make my breath do what it’s supposed to do. “The dinner is the weapon” circles in my head in time with the fountain. Poison. A fight staged at a course change. A knife that isn’t mine at the pass. A gas line no one checked. I go through the kitchen like it’s a new room. I open the salt bins. I run a finger along the flour shelf for anything that grits. I count knives and then count them again. I smell the oil. I have Gabriella relabel the stockpots I only relabeled yesterday.
The day stumbles forward. Lunch happens because it has to. The summit guests practice smiling over espresso. I send out two plates I don’t remember finishing and they come back empty anyway. Every door feels like it’s waiting to be touched.
Dante doesn’t call me in. He doesn’t send me out. He passes the kitchen twice and doesn’t tap the frame. The second time, he stops and looks at Marco like he’s memorizing the size of his hands. “He needs a nap,” he says.
“He needs a world that isn’t a plan,” I answer.
“I’m trying,” he says.
“I can’t tell,” I say, and the words land between us with a dull sound we both pretend not to hear.
Afternoon falls hard. The staff are quieter than they were yesterday, voices dropped an inch, footsteps careful. Rocco walks the ridge again and again. Harrison appears in the library and disappears before the chair he used is done rocking. Camilla’s phones blink without sound. The saints in the hall keep their hands up like they can bless the air into behaving.
When the house finally exhales, it’s late. Marco sleeps in our room, comic open on his chest, milk gone warm in the bottle. Iwash my hands. I put a lemon spoon in the drawer where it came from and close it without noise. Then I take a flashlight from the pantry and a towel for no good reason and walk the long corridor under the paintings of saints to the door with the big, honest keyhole.
The air is colder here, stone and oak and something under both. The smell of wine sits low. Under it is the faint metallic note I tasted this morning when I breathed wrong. I press my ear to the wood. Nothing. I try the handle to prove to myself that I can’t. It turns. The door opens two fingers and stops on the chain that isn’t there.
The lock is broken.
13
DANTE
The cellar door is ajar when I reach the bottom of the hall. The old oak should sit flush in its frame with the iron latch seated. Tonight, it leans two fingers open. The strike plate is cracked. The screws are freshly-scored metal, and a curl of wood shavings rests on the floor like a confession.
Serena stands with one hand on the edge of the door and the other around a flashlight she hasn’t switched on. Her shoulders are squared. Her jaw is set. When she hears me, she does not start. She doesn’t step back either. She looks at me, then at the lock, as if to say we both know what this means.
“Who opened it?” I ask.
“I came to look,” she answers. “Someone saved me the trouble.”
I take the door and test the swing. The hinges breathe without sound. The chain is gone. The bolt is split where someone levered it with a narrow bar and patience. Whoever did this knew how to make old wood give without waking the house.
“Step back,” I tell her.
“No.” Her voice is calm. “I’m tired of stepping back.”
“It isn’t a request.” I glance at the ceiling. “Harrison,” I say, not loud, and he is there at the top of the short run, as if the house made him out of air. He carries no weapon I can see. He never does when Serena is in the room.
“Perimeter is clean,” he says. “Ridge is quiet. Rocco is walking the north wall.”
“Hold here.” I angle my body so Serena must either move with me or be in the way. She does not move. The look she gives me could notch a blade.
