A Vintage To Die For (Violet Vineyard Murder Mysteries Book 2) by JM Harvey

the wine, but I decided at that moment that I wasn’t going to let Hunt drift out of my life again. Life was too short to hold a grudge.
    But not everyone at the party felt that way.
    The first shrill scream caused me to flinch and my head to come up, more in confusion than concern. ‘What next?’ was my immediate thought. Who had decided to punch who? Or had someone brained someone with a wine bottle? Around me, the other dancers’ movements slowed as well, but no one looked all that concerned.
    The second scream stopped the party cold. It was high and tight and shrill, filled with fear and horror, but the single bellowed word was clear enough; “Murderers!”
    It had come from my cellar!
    I didn’t hesitate or stop to think; I tore myself out of Hunter's embrace, raced across the lawn, jerked open the cellar door and bolted inside. I took only two steps before I stopped dead in my tracks.
    Alexandra Pappos was standing in the doorway at the top of the cellar stairs, her lips stretched in a silent 'O', the index finger of her right hand pointing down toward the four fermentation tanks where my cabernet undergoes its primary fermentation process. Samson and Marjory were crouched atop the stainless steel catwalk that circled the shortest of the three tanks, a used six-foot tall, fifteen hundred liter Letina I had purchased just this past winter at an estate auction. The tank’s lid was open to allow heat to escape during the fermentation process, and Marjory and Samson were struggling with something floating on the surface of the wine.
    What the heck was Samson doing? The only reason to be on top of the catwalk was to punch down the cap of skins and stems into the juice below, but Marjory and Samson weren't pushing the cap down, they were trying to wrestle something large and cumbersome out, something that was already half hanging over the lip of the tank. It took me a full three seconds to realize that the something was the limp body of Dimitri Pappos.
    Samson and Marjory were covered in stems and skins, their clothes wet with the pale-pink juice of the crushed grapes. But Samson wasn't just wet from grape juice. His shirt was covered in crimson splatters, and so was Dimitri's. But Dimitri was long past caring. I could see - even from that distance - that his throat had been cut in a ragged line. There was more blood on the side of the tank and a puddle of it beneath the ladder.
    My lungs forgot how to work and my stomach clenched as I gaped up at Samson, Marjory, and Dimitri in horror. “Not again,” I whispered in a dry, husky voice, but no one heard me, the words drowned out by Alexandra.
    “Murderers!” she screamed again as Hunter squeezed past me into the cellar. I could sense a crowd growing behind me, pressing toward the door. Instinctively, I turned and pulled the door closed, blocking the view.
    “Stop right there, Samson!” Hunter bellowed, moving toward the tank. And that's when I saw the gun in Hunt's hand. It was aimed up at my aging winemaker.
    “Let him go, Samson,” Hunter said as Samson continued to pull on the inert form of the dead wine steward, dangerously overbalancing himself. “And get down from there, Marjory.”
    “He is ruining the wine!” Samson yelled down, still gripping Dimitri under the shoulders. “The blood!”
    “I won't tell you again,” Hunter yelled back, taking a step closer.
    Marjory came down the ladder and turned to face Hunter, her hands rising to shoulder height. For once in her life she seemed at a loss for words, but that didn’t last long.
    “We found him like that, Hunter,” she said, her usually shrill voice subdued and trembling. “We were trying to help! We’re not—”
    “Murderers,” Alexandra said again, but she was no longer screaming. The single word was spoken in a dull lifeless tone as she slowly descended, her gait jerky like a marionette with too-tight strings. She stopped at the bottom of the steps, her eyes on Dimitri’s body. Tears