Free A Saucy Murder: A Sonoma Wine Country Cozy Mystery by A. J. Carton Page B

mentioned it earlier that afternoon, Emma wondered.  All of a sudden, her mouth went dry. She’d started out trying to prove Carmen was innocent. Now she wasn’t so sure. She looked from Julie to Piers.
    “Nothing,” she shrugged. “I didn’t find out anything yet. Sorry. I…I spent most of the day in bed.” 
    “Mom!”  Julie and Piers exchanged worried glances.  
    Emma looked at her watch. “Shouldn’t you two be leaving soon?”  She got up and joined Harry on the couch in front of the TV.
     
    When Julie and Piers returned a few hours later Emma and Harry were still on the couch. Both of them fast asleep.
    “Mom,” Julie accosted her before she was fully awake. “I can’t believe you let Harry fall asleep on the couch. Even worse, you fell asleep with him. What kind of a babysitter does that?  You’re deteriorating, Mom. Letting things slip. Piers and I ran into Barbara at the movies. She’s worried about you, too. She said you didn’t show up for your volunteer job at the clinic till almost 3:00.”
    “Traitor,” Emma muttered, still only half awake.
    “She also told us the gypsy showed up,” Julie continued. “And that you talked to her. You lied to us about that, Mom. What’s going on?”
    “Nothing. I’m fine,” Emma replied grabbing her coat and heading for the door. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
     

Chapter 7: Sunday Morning - Stroll
     
    Sunday morning, Emma decided to leave her self-imposed house arrest bright and early, and join the weekly Blissburg Historical Society’s Sunday Stroll. Julie’s criticism the night before hurt. So Emma left her house at 8:30, before Julie phoned, or worse, showed up. The Sunday Stroll would surely be better than more of the Julie treatment.
    Besides, Emma liked the Historical Society’s Sunday Stroll. After six months she had barely scratched the surface of Blissburg’s history. So far, she had learned that the town plaza, bordered on all four sides by well preserved buildings dating back to the turn of the last century, comprised the heart of the old Molino land grant. Five hundred thousand plus acres of rolling hills, open pastures and fertile soil that the king of Spain deeded to Alfonso Molino over 200 years before.
    Molino managed to maintain control of his holding after Mexico won its independence from Spain; only to have it lost by his n’er do well grandson in a game of monte in Yerba Buena (aka San Francisco). The new owner was Eliazer Bliss, an eighteen year old gold seeker who was murdered a year later in a dispute regarding a prostitute at a nearby hot springs. Eliazer’s six brothers and sisters in Utica, New York, who inherited the property when Eliazer died, sold the land off to Moses Stearns on the condition that it include the picturesque town plaza now shaded by maples, sequoias and redwoods, and that it be renamed Blissburg in honor of the family.
    No, Emma thought when she heard the story of the town’s founding at her first Blissburg Historical Society Sunday Stroll, Blissburg didn’t boast the illustrious history of a Concord, Massachusetts, home of the shot heard round the world, where her son-in-law’s family originally put down roots after coming to America in the 1600s; or even Pittsburgh or the back breaking quarries of Stonington, Maine where Piers’ family summered on nearby Blue Hill. But it sure was the quintessential history of the California where Emma was born. A place made famous by fortune hunters, crooks, gamblers and quacks. By people perpetually reinventing themselves.
    Now, waiting for the rest of the strollers to show up, Emma sat on a park bench next to the plaza’s decorative fountain. With a coffee and a still-warm apricot galette in her hand that she’d bought from the Plaza Cafe, she surveyed the surrounding hills dotted with twenty-five million dollar mansions attached to rolling vineyards protected by electric fences and remote controlled gates. And thought that things hadn’t changed