Free Death By the Glass #2 by Nadia Gordon Page B

Several cases had been set aside on a pallet and secured with the wide plastic wrap used to hold shipments of cartons together. Oneof the boxes was labeled “Château de Marceline St.-Quinisque.” Forget the keys.
    She went over to have a closer look. The box on top had been opened. Looking around first to make sure she was alone, she lifted one of the cardboard flaps and pulled up a bottle. The foil was red. The label said “1967 Premier Grand Cru Reservée,” with “Michel Verlan” spelled out in red capital letters near the bottom, an etching of a château faint in the background. She lifted the other flap. Two bottles were missing from the case. She let the flaps drop and stepped back. A piece of paper with “Do Not Touch—Reserved for Wine Club” written on it in black marker was taped to the boxes and sealed over with cellophane.
    Her heart was beating hard as she went upstairs and walked back to the bar. She waited for Nick to work his way over to her. When he got there, she asked him to tell Andre she wasn’t feeling well and had gone home. He said for her to wait just a second and he would go get Andre so she could tell him herself, but she said, no, she needed to leave right now, and would call him later.
    He gave her a concerned look. “All right, whatever you say. Are you okay?”
    “I don’t think it’s serious. I just don’t want to get sick again,” she said. People left you alone when your stomach was threatening, she found.
    On the way out she stopped at the hostess stand and introduced herself to the woman on duty, saying she was interested in talking with someone about Vinifera’s wine club.
    “You’d want to speak to the sommelier, Remy Castels, about that. It’s not really a Vinifera thing. All we do is provide the space,” said the hostess. “I can give you his card.”
    “That would be great.”
    “He has a group that comes in once a month. They do a tasting and he recommends wines for them to cellar.”
    “And they buy the wines from him?” Sunny asked.
    “I believe so, but you’ll have to ask Remy for the details.”
    “Thanks, I will.”
    Sunny smiled and shouldered her little handbag. As she reached the curtain she glanced back at the bar. Andre still had not come out of the kitchen. In a few steps she was out the door and into the night, where she exhaled a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

8
    Certain small but potent pleasures made living alone bearable, even enjoyable. High on Sunny’s list was the freedom to come home late at night, sit cross-legged on the work-table in the middle of the kitchen, eat corn flakes, and watch bad TV, sans remorse. She sat there for the first bowl without turning on the television, staring at the milky gray screen, thinking about Remy Castels. No wonder he didn’t like anyone poking around in his cellar. She was ready to believe he knew all about that case of wine.
    She got up to refill her bowl from the box of corn flakes. Was anything really sans remorse? She shook the box doubtfully and poured another bowl. Nothing was simple anymore. What she’d grown up thinking was the most basic food, the corn flake, was not what it appeared to be. For some time now, a person’s standard equipment hadn’t been sufficient to do its job of identifying what was good to eat and what wasn’t. The factories did an excellent job of fooling the senses. It might look like a corn flake, smell like a corn flake, and taste like a corn flake, but it was probably made from a fish-corn Frankenstein hybrid, some part of which had been milled, extracted, mashed, strained, bleached, and irradiated until it tasted like cardboard and lasted twiceas long, then doctored up to imitate what it might have started out as in the first place: corn. Gene-spliced seeds, irradiation, fungicides—there was no way to know anymore what you were soaking up even if you grew it yourself. All you could really do was light a candle for the immune system and