“Do people usually have reserved bottles?” Michael asked.
“Sometimes.” She’d studied up on the lodge’s practices. “The villas keep stocked bars, but sometimes the liquor requires different storage. Like an expensive red needs to be kept in a cellar. We’ve got a part of our wine cellar reserved for villa guests to store their wine. Sometimes a guest will bring an expensive bottle but prefers to not keep it in their room. Maybe they have other guests in the room they don’t want to share with or they’re worried they’ll drink too much. Then we’ll store it at the bar and have a room service attendant bring them one or two glasses. There’s a small fee for that, and they’re expected to tip. We’re required to get a signature in case the guest later on claims we didn’t provide the service.”
It happened. There were plenty of guests who sought to take advantage of the “customer is always right” attitude most resorts held. It usually cost the worker their job.
“So at some point in time, Brock would have packed his stuff and sent his precious Scotch down to the bar,” Michael mused. “The question is how did it get from the main bar to the one set up for the party. Who would have been involved in setting up? Was Van Dean in charge of that?”
She didn’t think Van had anything to do with Brock’s death. Though he had mentioned he’d taken a couple of punches at the party gone wrong. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean he moved every bottle. It was kind of chaotic today. I’m sure we can find a list of who was working the day shift.”
“And there are cameras in and out of the ballroom.” Ty sat back, seemingly more comfortable now. “There are a few inside the ballroom.”
Michael nodded. “Yeah, I’ll ask the security head to lock down that footage. We need to go over it and see if we can find who brought that bottle in.”
“It could have been a mistake.” It would have been easy to pick it up and put it with the rest of the bottles. “It had to have been marked or they wouldn’t have realized it was gone and found it. If we hadn’t been so swarmed, I would have sent the bottle back to the main bar and had them handle it.”
She wished she had, wished she hadn’t worried about being late with the delivery. If she’d been a little less concerned, she wouldn’t be in this position.
And then someone else would be.
Of course that someone else probably wouldn’t have had a complicated relationship with the deceased.
“Did he say anything to you before he took that drink?” Ty asked.
“He made a bunch of comments about how pathetic small-town people are, me in particular, but I would bet he would say the same things about anyone who doesn’t have a billionaire father, so I didn’t take too much offense.” She had never cared what a guy like Brock Foster thought about her. He didn’t matter to her life, so she would never have gone out of her way to change his mind. “Then he refused to sign the bill until I…” She’d totally forgotten about what he’d said. The last hour and a half seemed like a blur, but now she remembered something important. “Until I brought the bottle up. He promised he would call down every fifteen minutes for a new glass unless I brought him the bottle.”
“So he didn’t ask for the Scotch to be kept downstairs?” Michael stared at her like this was an interrogation. And she supposed it was. It was definitely a preview of what would happen when Nate questioned her.
It was coming back to her. For a while all she’d been able to think about was how the man had died, the blank look in his eyes and how he’d convulsed and then gone still. Now she was calmer and could recall what had happened before. “He said his sister thought he would drink less if the bottle wasn’t in his room.”
“The sister who thinks you killed him?” Ty pushed his chair back.
“I would bet it was Sonya. He has two sisters, but I don’t think Kendall would care how much he drank.” She didn’t know a lot about their family dynamics, but she was certain Sonya was the caretaker of the group.
“I’m going to go make sure Nate knows where we are.” Ty started for the door but it opened before he could reach for the handle.
Nate Wright strode in followed by a lovely blonde in her early thirties. Gemma Wells had moved to Bliss from New York to be with her mom. Like many who walked into Bliss, she’d quickly found two hotties to love and settled down. She ran the sheriff’s department, but in true Blissian fashion, also did some legal work on the side. Sometimes against the sheriff’s department.