The Wine of Life

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Robert Kinsolving is healthy, wealthy and forty-one, and has asked Jesse Falkenstein to draw up a will leaving everything to his sister, just in case. However, before signing, Kinsolving is found dead in an apparent suicide. Jesse is far from convinced, and discovers that Robert was actually not a Kinsolving at all, and anyone who may have benefited from his death is now seriously short-changed. It now becomes Jesse's job to track down Robert's birth mother, and the mystery turns from a whodunit to a where-is-she. 'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune

Release date: July 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

William De Witt had dropped by the office to take Jesse out to lunch. As the head of the Western Association for Psychic Research, De Witt had roped Jesse in as treasurer; not
that there was much work in it. Over the last couple of months, he had been engaged, with his little crew of psychics, in a triangular experiment aimed at getting the cross-correspondence
communications with his own team of psychics, a group at Maimonides Medical Center in New York, and another group at Durham University.

Jesse listened to his enthusiastic testimony with small interest. The evidential communications had been coming through, but it was the kind of cross correspondence, from a variety of accredited
psychics, that had been coming through to a number of parapsychological researchers for the last ninety years—evidential, but monotonous and fairly boring.

He said as he finished his coffee, “I can’t stay to gossip, William—I’ve got a two o’clock appointment.”

“Oh well, I just thought you’d be interested in the latest evidence.” They went out to the parking lot, and Jesse fished for his keys as they came up to the Mercedes sedan. De
Witt began suddenly to laugh, and leaned up against the car, as long and lanky and dark as Jesse, laughing. “Just a minute—I haven’t told you about Charles’ latest
hit.”

“Oh?” Jesse paused. Charles MacDonald was one of De Witt’s team of psychics; he was a gifted psychometrist, but his psychic pronouncements were often rather cryptic, needing
some interpretation.

De Witt chuckled. “Rather silly,” he said, “but interesting. This woman came to him for a reading a couple of weeks ago. Gave him a man’s ring to hold. All she said was,
she was having trouble with her husband and could he tell her anything. He told her yes, he got the definite impression that all her trouble was caused by Moonrose Mischief III and
Penhallow’s Minuet of Moonrose.”

Jesse laughed. “Outlandish even for Charles.”

“Say it twice,” said De Witt amusedly. “The woman thought he was kidding her—making up something—went away in a huff. But last week she came in to apologize and say
he’d been absolutely right. Turns out her husband is a professional dog handler—you know, shows dogs for the owners. And those dogs—Moonrose Mischief and the other one—are
prize-winning cocker spaniels he’s been showing for a wealthy socialite female. In the course of which they’ve started a hot and heavy affair, and he’s now asked his wife for a
divorce and is all set to marry the wealthy socialite.”

Jesse laughed. “That is a funny one—Charles right again, if in a roundabout way. I’ve got to run, William—this appointment.”

In fact, he was late getting back to the office in the highrise building on Wilshire Boulevard. When he came in, he found the new client waiting for him under the eyes of his twin blonde
secretaries Jean and Jamesina Gordon, and apologized for being late.

“I was a little early,” said the client amiably.

“Mr. Kinsolving? Come into my office and tell me what I can do for you.”

Kinsolving had called to make an appointment a few days earlier. He followed Jesse into the inner office and accepted the chair beside the desk. He was a man of middle height, thin and casually
well tailored in a gray business suit, white shirt, discreet tie. You’d look at him twice, thought Jesse, to realize that he was a rather handsome man, with regular clean-cut features,
intelligent blue eyes under heavy brows, his dark hair still plentiful in a severe short cut.

He said, “It’s nothing very important, Mr. Falkenstein. I just want to make a will.” He had an attractive one-sided smile. “Here I’m always advising my clients to
make wills like sensible people, and I only get around to it myself now. And of course, we have dealings with several attorneys with the firm, but I just thought—for personal
business—I’d go to someone outside, as it were.” He smiled again. “My sister accuses me of being secretive, but I don’t think I am—only cautious.”

“Just as well,” said Jesse.

“Well, Mrs. Gorman had mentioned your name,” said Kinsolving.

“Oh, I see.” Mrs. Gorman was a longtime client; she conceived a new codicil to her will on the average of once every three months, and it was now a respectably lengthy document.

Kinsolving laughed. “The nice, silly, sentimental woman,” he said. “Fortunately she has just enough sense to realize she doesn’t know anything about money, and leaves it
all up to me. She’s so devoted to those dogs of hers.”

Jesse laughed. “The dear lady is nervous about my office décor.” He glanced up at the one large picture in its heavy oak frame on the wall behind the desk.

Kinsolving’s eyes followed his and surprisingly he recognized it at once. “That’s a very nice Holbein reproduction. Oh, yes, Sir Thomas More. Well, he is rather a grim-looking
old boy, isn’t he?”

“Very upright man of integrity,” said Jesse. “Very sound lawyer.”

“Until he made the mistake of getting into a religious argument with Henry VIII,” said Kinsolving with a grin. “Mrs. Gorman and her dogs—well, it’d be nice to have
a pet—I like cats—but in my position it’d be impossible. I’m away all day, and sometimes I have to travel for the firm. Mrs. Gorman mentioned that you have a
mastiff.”

“For our sins. My wife acquired him under the misapprehension that he was a Boxer, and then he kept growing—”

Kinsolving laughed. “Well, I won’t take up much of your time, Mr. Falkenstein—it’s a very simple will. I’ve got a forty-second birthday coming up in November, and
it’s past time I made a will.” He had a briefcase on his lap; he opened it and took out a single sheet of paper. “I’ve just noted down what the estate consists of.” He
passed it over—he had a copperplate handwriting nearly as neat as Jesse’s own. “I’d better tell you something of my circumstances.”

He was a tax specialist with an old and prestigious brokerage firm. For a man of his age he had amassed quite a nice estate; Jesse read him as a very shrewd businessman, and of course his job
was the knowledge of how to protect investments from the ravages of the income tax. He owned the condominium where he lived clear; he said he’d had a windfall several years ago and thought
that a sound investment. It was a good address, in upper Hollywood; it would represent a value of about two hundred thousand, and in addition he had not inconsiderable holdings in money market
funds, a fiduciary trust.

“It’s all to go to my sister,” he said. “Mrs. Shirley Grant.”

“There aren’t any other relatives?”

“Well, no, not to speak of.” Kinsolving sat back in the chair and passed a manicured hand over his mouth. “You see, Mr. Falkenstein, sixteen years ago I was engaged to be
married. I think Marion and I would have been very happy together—we wanted a family—and my life would have taken a different direction, you can say. But she was killed by a hit-run
driver two days before the wedding—and, well, since then I simply haven’t met a woman I could feel that deeply about. I expect you could say I’ve just—vegetated. Gone on
alone. I expect I got in a rut—I suppose some people would say I live a dull life, but I don’t know. I get to feeling a little depressed sometimes, thinking of all I’ve missed in
life, but on the whole I go along all right. I enjoy my work, I’m interested in that, and I get in some golf, and I’ve got a friend, a client, Sam Ulrich, who gives me a game of chess
now and then, and I like to read, and listen to music. I do all right. Well—this will. By the way, I’ve got a safe at the apartment—easier than renting a safety-deposit
box—I expect you’d better have the combination.”

He wanted to leave everything to his sister, Mrs. Shirley Grant. “Our parents are gone. Dad died five years ago, and Mother a couple of years later. Alan’s a very nice fellow,”
he added, “he’s been a good husband to Shirley, but he’ll never be a money-maker. The only thing is, I can’t give you a permanent address, not now. Alan’s been
teaching at Hollywood High School since they’ve been married, but he’s moving up a step now—he’ll be teaching at the university at Santa Barbara starting in September,
he’s got a pretty good contract there. They’ll be moving up there, they’ve got the house here up for sale, but you know real estate isn’t moving very fast—the interest
rates. It may be that Alan will have to go up there and get a temporary apartment until the house here is sold and through escrow. Of course, they’d like to get up there, moved into another
house, by the beginning of the school year—the kids are thirteen and eleven—but it may not work out. I’ll give you the current address.” It was Oporto Drive. “As soon
as they’ve moved, I’ll let you know the new address.”

“There aren’t any other relatives? It may be advisable to exclude them with a token legacy.”

“One dollar to prevent challenging the will?” Kinsolving laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so—there are cousins, second cousins, but Shirley and I haven’t kept up
with them at all—they all live up north, I think. And there’s Aunt Janet, Mrs. Janet Culver. My father’s youngest sister. She and her husband never had any children. They lived in
Chicago, and when he died about five years ago, she came back to California, she was tired of the winters in Illinois. But her husband left her a very good annuity, she’s all right, and
besides she’s about seventy-five. I really don’t expect to die for quite some time, you just have to be—foresighted. Make sensible plans.”

“Yes, that’s only sensible.”

“Shirley and Alan have made mutual wills—everything to each other—and left me as guardian in case they both die while the children are still minors. That isn’t very
likely, of course, but you never know.”

“Well, we’ll get this drawn up for you, Mr. Kinsolving, probably by the end of the week.”

“That’s fine. I’ll be glad to have it done and off my mind—shouldn’t have put it off,” said Kinsolving. He stood up and gave Jesse his attractive one-sided
smile. “I’ll be relieved to have it taken care of.”

“We’ll let you know when you can come in and sign it,” said Jesse.

“Fine. You can get me at the office or at home.” He offered his hand. “Thanks very much, Mr. Falkenstein. You’ll be in touch then?”

“In a few days.”

“Fine.” Kinsolving went out, and in the door to the anteroom Jimmy Gordon said expressionlessly, “Mrs. Cochran is here, Mr. Falkenstein.”

Jesse suppressed a few forcible words. Mrs. Cochran had somewhat more money and less sense than she should have had, and at the moment was bent on instituting a lawsuit against a large
department store on the grounds that one of its clerks had insulted her over an argument about bathing suit sizes. It was going to take quite a lot of persuasion to convince her that it would be a
useless legal exercise.

He had two divorce hearings tomorrow, and sometime next week the hearing would get underway on the litigation about the deed to an empty lot in Glendale, which could be time-consuming and
confusing—two cousins of the same name claiming it, and a mutual uncle’s will not specifying which. Wills, however meticulously drawn, could sometimes be unspecific.

He got rid of Mrs. Cochran within half an hour and settled to draft Robert Kinsolving’s will in his finicky copperplate handwriting; he dictated it to Jean before he left the office.

“I don’t know when I’ll get to it, Mr. Falkenstein—there’s that Fielding contract, and all the paperwork on the Brunson divorce—”

“No particular hurry,” said Jesse. Kinsolving—whom he liked, a good man, an attractive man—wasn’t about to drop dead tomorrow. Just being foresighted.

He spent a tiresome day in court on Wednesday. In the third week of July, the usual summer heat wave in Southern California was getting underway. Of course, the Central Criminal Courthouse was
air-conditioned, and so was the Mercedes, but the underground parking lot wasn’t—it was like the anteroom of hell, and the air-conditioning didn’t get the car cooled off until
Jesse got home.

On Thursday he was peacefully proofreading a contract between a building contractor and a major investor when he had an unexpected call from a little-known client—he’d once drawn a
will for the man a year or so ago—who was incarcerated in the county jail on a charge of assault, and screaming for help. Jesse turned the contract over to Jean, drove down to the jail, and
discovered that it was a tempest in a teapot—the client’s girlfriend had accused him of attempted rape on rather flimsy evidence.

“Listen,” said the client morosely, “I was drunk—we was both kind of drunk—I don’t figure I could have done it even if I’d meant to, see. She was just
mad at me because I’d forgot to get her a birthday present.” He was fifty-eight and twice divorced; the girlfriend was sixty, with a small record of petty theft.

Jesse arranged for bail; the man would probably be arraigned within a few days. It would cost some time in court in a couple of weeks’ time, but he could probably get the charge dismissed.
People! he thought, driving home. The heat had built up more; when it arrived this early, it was going to be a bad summer. And why one of the world’s greatest cities had grown up in this
climate was just one of those mysteries. And thank God for air-conditioning.

He had to be in court on Friday afternoon for another divorce hearing. He got back to the office about three-thirty; he had an appointment with a woman who wanted a divorce, and listened to a
long list of grievances. People, he thought again. The woman was a raddled harridan, the husband apparently a drunk and a chaser, and there wasn’t much to choose between them. He got all the
relevant details, she grudgingly parted with a retainer, and he saw her out with relief. It was getting on to four-thirty.

“Oh, I’ve got that Kinsolving will copied,” said Jimmy in the door of his office.

“Good.” It was, of course, a short and simple will. He proofread it—as usual, the copy was crisp and correct. He wondered now and then what on earth he would do if a couple of
personable young men should rob him of his efficient and excellent twin Gordons; they were, after all, extremely pretty girls, brown-eyed blondes with eye-catching figures. He wouldn’t find
one such efficient secretary in a hurry, let alone two.

It was five o’clock when he called Robert Kinsolving at the brokerage firm. “Oh, you just caught me leaving,” said Kinsolving.

“Your will’s all ready to be signed, you can come in anytime.”

“Oh, fine,” said Kinsolving amiably. “Be just as happy to have it done and off my mind. I don’t suppose you keep office hours on the weekend.”

“Any time on Monday,” said Jesse.

“Well, let’s see, I’ve got an appointment in the morning—and I’ve got to talk to that trustee on the Clymer business, but I can put that off until late afternoon.
I’ll tell you,” said Kinsolving, “I’ll drop by about two on Monday afternoon to sign it. That all right? I suppose your girls can act as witnesses.”

“Yes, that’ll be fine. You can leave it with me—I’ve got all the rest of the relevant paperwork. I’ll see you then.”

And thank God not only for air-conditioning but for the weekend. It was good to get home, to the sprawling big two-story house at the end of Paradise Lane off Coldwater Canyon Drive. At this
time of year it wasn’t dark yet, the front lights not on, but the gate was open, which meant that Athelstane was in. He stopped to close the gates behind him, drove into the garage and parked
the Mercedes beside Nell’s identical sedan, and went in the back door. The central air-conditioning was on, and damn what it cost. Nell was stretched out on the couch in the living room
reading, and looked up in surprise. “You’re early—” She scrambled up to kiss him, his lovely Nell with her bright brown hair in its fat chignon, but these days not exactly
her usual slim self. The new baby had got started in March and was due in November; they both hoped it would be a girl. Davy came running up, discovering that Daddy was home; at just over two years
he was more energetic and voluble by the day.

“Daddy read—read about Dame Wiggins!” He had lately been introduced to Dame Wiggins and her wonderful cats in the new nursery book.

“Later,” said Jesse. “You all right?”

“Never better,” said Nell. “Being pregnant agrees with me.” Athelstane, the huge brindle mastiff, was sprawled on the hearthrug before the empty fireplace, and the
arrogant liquid length of Murteza, the royal Siamese, was in his favorite place on the mantel.

“Dame Wiggins!” insisted Davy.

“I can offer you steak and French fries, or cold cuts and potato salad. What sort of a day did you have?”

“Middling,” said Jesse. “I’ll have the steak. But I need a long drink first.” He sat down in his armchair, and Davy clambered up to his lap clutching the big book
of nursery rhymes. “Oh, all right, boy, we’ll find Dame Wiggins.”

Nell brought him a tall bourbon and soda, and a glass of Dubonnet for herself. “Fran and Andrew are coming to dinner on Monday night. I called your father too, but he’s got to be in
Sacramento for the firm.” Falkenstein Senior was a busy corporation attorney.

“Um,” said Jesse, sampling his drink gratefully.

There was paperwork he could be doing at the office, and sometime he would have to get back to the Huff woman’s attorney about that divorce settlement; he was
representing Huff, and if the other attorney prevailed, Huff was going to get a raw deal. The woman was a mercenary slut, out for all she could get. But he was damned if he’d do overtime on
the weekend.

He stayed in with Davy while Nell went out marketing on Saturday morning. She came home with an armful of library books as well. “Talk about luck,” she said, dumping them down on the
coffee table when she had put the groceries away. “I wasn’t even sure any library would have it—it’s a British publication—but I asked just on the chance, and they had
it and it was in. That new book of Keith Simpson’s, Forty Years of Murder. You know, he’s the great forensic specialist for Scotland Yard.” Nell was a true-crime
buff.

“Um,” said Jesse, who was somnolently rereading The Daughter of Time while Davy sprawled acr. . .