1st to Die (Women's Murder Club 1)

My favorite place.

I got home just before eleven, a half-finished coffee and the Sunday Chronicle in my hands. I figured I’d poke through the Metro section, see if there was anything on the case from my new best friend Cindy Thomas, shower, and be ready to meet Claire at one.

It was 11:25 when the phone rang. To my surprise, the voice on the line was Raleigh’s.

“You dressed?” he asked.

“Sort of. Why? I have plans.”

“Cancel them. I’m picking you up. We’re going to Napa.”

“Napa?” There was no trace of anything light or playful in his voice. “What’s up?”

“I went into the office this morning just to check. While I was there, someone named Hartwig got transferred from Central Dispatch. He’s a lieutenant in Napa. He’s got some couple out there who are missing. They’re newlyweds on their honeymoon.”

Chapter 29

BY THE TIME I HAD CALLED Claire to cancel, showered, put my wet hair under a turned-back Giants cap, and thrown on some clothes, Raleigh’s white Explorer was beeping me from below.

When I got downstairs, I couldn’t help but notice him looking me over — wet hair, jeans, black leather jacket. “You look nice, Boxer,” he said. He smiled as he put the car in gear.

He was casually dressed, in crumpled khakis and a faded blue polo shirt. He looked nice, too, but I wasn’t going to say it.

“This isn’t a date, Raleigh,” I told him.

“You keep saying that,” he said with a shrug, then stepped down on the gas.

We pulled up to the Napa Highlands Inn an hour and fifteen minutes later, the exact time, I noted, I was supposed to be pouring my heart out to Claire.

The inn turned out to be one of those fancy, high-end spas I always dreamed about going to. It was tucked into the mountains on Stag’s Leap Road. By the looks of it, with its main lodge built of stacked giant redwoods and arcing windows of tempered glass, the guests here were not exactly into self-denial.

Two green-and-white police units were parked along the rotary outside the hotel’s entrance. In the lobby, we were directed to the manager’s office, where a nervous, red-haired management type, who seemed just a few days out of the training program, was standing with a couple of local cops.

“I’m Hartwig,” said a tall, lanky man in street clothes. He was holding a paper cup from Starbucks. “Sorry to bust up your weekend,” he apologized in a friendly drawl.

He passed us a wedding photo of the missing couple. It was enclosed in one of those Plexiglas “shaky toys” with the Golden Gate Bridge in the foreground. “Party favor,” he acknowledged. “Mr. and Mrs. Michael De-George. From down your way. They both worked in the city at a large accounting firm. Married on Friday night.”

Actually, it was a sweet photo. She, bright-eyed, with thick brown hair; he, ruddy and serious looking, wire-rimmed glasses. Oh, God, not them. Not again.

“So when were they last seen?” I asked.

“Seven-fifteen last night. Hotel staff saw them come down on their way to dinner. French Laundry,” Hartwig said. “The concierge wrote them out directions, but they never showed.”

“They drove off to go to dinner and were never heard from again?”

Hartwig kept rubbing the side of his face. “The manager said they checked in the day before in a gold Lexus. Door staff confirms they drove it briefly that afternoon.”

“Yeah?” I nodded, fast-forwarding him.

“Car’s still in the lot.”

I asked, “Any messages from the outside we should know about?”

Hartwig went back to a desk and handed me a small stack of slips. I skipped through them. Mom. Dad. Julie and Sam. Vicki and Don. Bon voyage.

“We thoroughly searched the grounds around the property. Then we widened the search. It’s sort of like your murders down there. Big wedding, celebration. Then poof, they’re gone.”

“Sort of like our th