Justice for None: Texas Justice Book #1

by Harvey, JM

  “I’m more concerned about Kevin,” I snapped. “Not a profitable concern, I know, but—” I didn’t finish because I couldn’t. If I had, I would have started crying and I’m not much for public tears. Before Samson could say anything further I headed for the house, leaving him staring after me in confusion.

  I flopped into a chair at the kitchen table, held my head in my hands and thought about Kevin. My life would be less rich for his loss. We’d shared so many good times. The harvests and crushes, the planting and tastings. Even the bad times seemed precious now. The times when equipment failed or the rains didn’t come or came in a flood. It was then that I thought of Laurel, Kevin’s wife.

  “Oh, no,” I said as Victor walked in from the dining room.

  “What?” Victor asked, anxiety carving deep lines in his face. “What’s the matter?”

  “Laurel,” I said. “She doesn’t know.”

  “Oh,” Victor said. Laurel was a cold and beautiful woman who had married Kevin seven years ago. Many nights I had listened to them argue inside their converted barn, which is less than two hundred yards from my home. With me, she was saccharine sweet and full of complaints. Either my workers were lying under ‘Her’ almond trees and crushing ‘Her’ grass or the smell of freshly picked grapes in the gondolas was just too much and could I have them moved downwind? It was never ending. With Victor she was snotty and hot-tempered. One day last fall, during the height of the crush, she had ordered Victor to have one of the pickers move his pickup off the road in front of her house. She would have told the picker herself, she rudely explained, except she didn’t “speak wetback.” Victor calmly told her she didn’t own the road and she countered with a threat to call immigration if it wasn’t gone in five minutes. Kevin was apologetic after these incidents, but it did put a damper on our relationship.

  “Ben or one of the other cops will tell her,” Victor replied shortly.

  I nodded, but felt like I wasn’t showing Kevin the respect he deserved. No matter how bad it made me feel, I wasn’t going over there to deliver the bad news. If she and I had been friends I would have insisted on being there. For the first time I was almost grateful she was such a witch.

  We were interrupted by a tapping at the kitchen door jamb. I turned to find Ben Stoltze’s frowning face thrust through the still open door.

  “Need you out here, Victor,” Ben said. They needed no introduction - Victor’s family has been in the valley longer than Ben’s or mine. Longer than any Anglo. More importantly, both Ben and Victor are natives of the Valley and remember a time when everyone knew everyone. And everything about everyone.

  “Coming, Ben,” Victor replied and Ben disappeared.

  “Jess is doing fine,” Victor told me as he trailed Ben outside. I nodded my thanks, but I assumed he was lying. I doubted that Jessica had recovered so quickly from the shock of seeing Kevin’s corpse. I knew I hadn’t.

  I followed Victor to the door and stopped there. Out in the vineyard the detectives were measuring something with a roll-up tape measure while the deputies duck-walked around Kevin’s body, combing through the short clover with their fingertips. Kevin was still hanging from the trellis, mimicking the cruciform shapes of the sturdy rootstock from which the grape canes grow. Ben, Victor, Samson and the three Mexican men were standing on the patio talking in Spanish. Ben had a small notepad and a stub of pencil in his hand. It was a scene straight out of a television police drama.

  I waited for a break in the conversation before I spoke. “I’m going to take a shower and change clothes. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

  “All right,” Ben replied. “I want you to come with me to the Harlans. I’d like somebody the widow knows there when I give her the bad news. Then we’ll need to talk.”

  “Great,” I said, and Ben shot me a look. I didn’t care. “Ten minutes,” I said grudgingly and went back into the house, cursing under my breath, mentally asking Kevin to forgive me.

  I’ve never been one of those women who take two hours to do their hair and another two to dress. Maybe it’s because I never have time, or maybe I just can’t be bothered. My two indulgences in the feminine grooming vein are bubble baths and perfumes. There’s nothing like a long soak with a good book and an even better glass of wine. And the smell of fine perfume can put me into a rhapsody as great as sipping one of my own wines.

  I was rinsing under a hot jet of water when I remembered Victor telling me about the broken cellar door. The thought set my heart racing and I was out of the shower in a flash, still soapy and dripping. I pulled on jeans, ratty tennis shoes and a purple sweatshirt, ran a comb through my hair and headed downstairs.

  I took the stone steps from the kitchen to the wine cellar two at a time. The cellar vault is actually a cave cut into the hillside where the natural temperature controls of the earth keep it cool. A thermometer at the rear of the cellar reads a constant temperature of fifty degrees, summer, winter or fall, while the front of the cellar, where the fermenting tanks are located, hovers between seventy and seventy-five degrees.

  The cellar was built by the bankrupt-banker and with one look you can see where his money went. Three thirteen foot tall, 6,000 liter stainless steel tanks take up a large part of the front of the cellar. These tanks are the primary fermentation vats where the must (crushed grapes, including some of the stems, seeds and skins) is allowed to go through its first fermentation, which takes two to three weeks. Stainless steel piping brings the must down from the de-stemming/crushing machine located on the open-air crush pad thirty feet overhead.

  The tops of the tanks have pneumatic lids, but for red wine we leave the tops open throughout the primary fermentation process. The stems, seeds and skins float in a cap on top of the juice, to which we add yeast cultures. This cap is punched down twice a day to keep the skins in contact with the wine as the yeast converts the grape’s sugar to alcohol. Most people don’t realize that grape juice is clear and that red wine draws all of its color and much of its flavor from the skins.

  Beyond the tanks, in the cool darkness of the cave, are rows of large oak barrels fire-toasted on the inside to encourage oak flavors in the cabernet. This is where the secondary fermentation process takes place. This usually takes several months to a year, sometimes longer. During this time the wine is racked (siphoned off the top) twice, leaving the lees (sediments) behind. The wine is then racked into smaller oak barrels where it ages until it reaches maturity, usually a year or two. The decision on when to sell is made by me on a vintage by vintage basis.

  In the cellar, Samson was perched on top of a ladder leaned against one of the fermentation tanks. A hose was unwound across the floor and Samson was rinsing the inside of the tank with a mixture of water and sterilizing solution. He does this once a month between harvests to keep the tanks clean. Otherwise, any microorganisms or bacteria in the tanks would find its way into the flavor of the wines. And moldy cabernet isn’t a big seller.

  “The sheriff is still outside, and no work is being done,” Samson paused long enough to complain, then went back to rinsing. Nothing can take Samson’s attention from winemaking for long, not even the murder of a neighbor. His life revolves around wine and grapes. Violet Vineyard cabernet, Victor and myself are his only friends, and I’m pretty sure I don’t rate as high as the cabernet. This suits Samson. He needs no company, has no interest in news or gossip. He doesn’t even own a television, but he’s on the mailing list of almost every wine magazine and newsletter in the country. If it isn’t wine, it isn’t worth knowing, is his general philosophy.

  “Samson,” I said. He didn’t take his eyes off the swirl of water in the tank, but I knew he was giving me perhaps ten percent of his attention. “Have you noticed anything damaged or out of place?”

  “What?!” His head snapped around and he almost fell off the ladder. “Why would that be?” He turned off the hose and his eyes probed the dark recesses of the cellar as I explained about the cellar door being kicked in by whoever killed
Kevin.

  “Damn that Harlan,” he spat, one of the most insensitive things I have ever heard from my gruff old winemaker, but I didn’t rebuke him. I was just too stressed to worry about Samson’s rotten attitude.

  Samson climbed down, cursing in Greek, and began roving over the cellar. He looked behind an aging winepress coated in a fine layer of white calcium, and under and around the primary fermentation tanks. He lifted the dusty canvas covers off of the bottling machinery and the destemmer and tried the door handle on the small cave where I keep my private stock of wine. He walked back into the vault, past rows of oak barrels, looking at and under each one. He reached the end of the cave and came back to where I stood looking at the broken lock on the cellar door.

  “Everything is fine,” he said, eyes still peering into the dark corners of the cellar. “It should have been locked. Every night!” He said, poking the air with an emaciated finger.

  “It was locked. They kicked it in,” I sighed.

  “A stronger lock must be bought! I keep records here. Valuable information!” He hurried on his skinny legs to a rickety desk shoved into the far corner of the cellar where he doodles on notepads and chews on cheap cigars that he never lights. He pulled open the top drawer and rummaged through a mess of useless papers and free promotional pens.

  “Samson, not many people read Greek,” I tried to reassure him.

  “There are translators at the university,” he reminded me as he took an ancient stub of cigar from the drawer and stuck it in his mouth. Chomping angrily on the withered stogie, he held a yellowed piece of paper at arm’s length. I left him there, muttering, squinting at his spiky scrawl, and went to meet Ben.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Medical Examiner’s antiseptic-white van was parked on the grass of my back yard. Two technicians in white coats with ‘County of Napa’ shoulder patches embossed with a bunch of grapes were transferring Kevin’s body to a stretcher. Ben was still talking to Victor, but the three Mexican workers were working on the far side of the vineyard, thinning out the flower clusters and cutting away lateral shoots and leaves to provide the clusters with filtered sunlight. It’s a delicate balance, too much foliage and the grape crop will be reduced significantly while taking on an earthy quality, too little and the grapes will not receive the nutrients they need from the leaves. In addition, it is important to cut back old wood and make space for the new canes that will provide next year’s crop. It takes practice and a trained eye, so I was a little concerned that they had started without Victor. But now wasn’t the time to worry about the vines.

  “I’ll get back with you soon,” Ben said to Victor as I approached. Victor nodded, then hurried over to join the workers.

  “Ready?” Ben asked me, raising one eyebrow.

  “No, but I’m not likely to ever be,” I replied honestly.

  “Can’t be helped,” Ben said with a shrug. “Gotta be done.”

  I wanted to yell, “Not by me!” but I held my tongue. There was no sense in making this harder. Instead I mentioned the broken lock on the cellar door.

  “Victor told me about that. I told Doug to check it out and I’ll have Midge dust for prints.” We walked side by side toward the weathered gray barn with its freshly shingled roof and bright copper window frames. Kevin had refurbished the barn over two years of rain-days and evenings while he planted rootstock and grafted fruiting vines from sunrise to sunset. During that time, Laurel had stayed in a small apartment in Yountville. Money was tight, even though the forty acres Kevin was farming were worth two million dollars on the current market. In Napa the Harlans were considered ‘land poor,’ a condition I was familiar with myself. Every penny I had was tied up in the vines.

  A glance around the Harlan’s place revealed the love Kevin felt for this spot. And the sweat he had expended on it. He had planted fifteen acres of cabernet sauvignon five years ago and the young vines in their neatly trellised rows were already reaching maturity. Kevin had laid the stone foundation for his pressing room this summer with help from Victor and Michelle Lawford, a tireless, burly woman with a man’s haircut and mannerisms, who day-labored for the Harlans. Michelle, better known as Mike the Dyke by the cruel wits in the valley, was one of Stanley Kostyol’s friends, but I didn’t hold that against her. She was as sweet and shy on the inside as she was gruff and tough on the outside. And she knew her vines, which is the highest compliment I can give.

  Kevin had hoped to make his own wine in the next year or two, but for the time being he had been selling his crop to Dearborne Vineyards to be used in their medium priced cabernet. The money from Dearborne had allowed Kevin to make much-needed improvements to the vineyard’s drainage. Just last week he had terraced and prepared ten acres of trenches for new vines with a rented backhoe. Kevin had big plans and the ambition and drive to see them through.

  What would happen to his work now? Did Laurel have the tenacity or the desire to continue, or would she sell the property? It had been Kevin’s dream to build the winery, to grow the best grapes and devote his life to bottling great wine. Laurel seemed more interested in the status she achieved by being a vineyard owner. I never saw her lift a finger around the winery, unless it was to point out some grievance.

  “Hate this part of the job,” Ben muttered as we walked down the narrow stone path that fronted the barn. A heavy growth of hibiscus and roses gave the barn a picture-postcard quality. “Especially after Winter. The Harlans have had a pretty rough time since they moved up here. Hell, that case still keeps me up at night,” Ben added, reminding me of the awful ordeal the couple had endured just over a year ago when their daughter, Winter, was taken from Laurel at gunpoint.

  Winter had been a sparkling three-year-old with her mother’s looks and her father’s natural charm. She’d been a sickly child, always down with the flu or some other ailment. But she had spent every minute she could in the fields with her father, brightening all of our lives in the process. Her abductor, a convicted child molester named Buford Logan had been caught two weeks after her abduction, a week before Winter’s badly decomposed body had been found. She had been buried under a partially caved-in bank of the Napa River not far from where Buford worked as an auto mechanic. I recalled that time period with a shudder - the news reports, the televised manhunt and the reward money fundraisers. Kevin and Laurel had been devastated, though Laurel managed to keep her composure better than Kevin. Suddenly I felt guilty as hell for thinking so many snotty things about Laurel. If anything, she deserved sympathy and compassion, not spite.

  Ben buttoned his jacket as we stepped on a five-foot by five-foot granite slab that made up the barn’s threshold.

  “A damn dirty business,” he said wearily. He used the brass knocker. We waited for a couple of minutes before Laurel opened the door.

  We had obviously gotten her out of bed. I was surprised to see that she had slept in her makeup, which isn’t very good for the skin. She was dressed in an ankle-length white cotton gown that covered her from neck to toes and would have been considered modest on a nun. That surprised me; Laurel always dressed in clothing that flatteringly revealed her figure and bordered on lewd. Then I noticed the black fishnet hose poking out of the bottom of the granny gown. An odd ensemble

  There was no denying it, Laurel was beautiful. Blonde, five-foot-eight, anorexia thin (the current trend in female beauty) with dark eyes and full lips. She looked fantastic even with her hair in a tangled mess and her eyes ringed with mascara. But, more than beautiful, she was sensual. All of her postures and gestures, even in the most informal of conversations, seemed charged with sexual tension. That had made her no friends among the women in our circle of winemakers, but it had won her admiration and amorous pursuit from the men, married and single alike.

  I could see that Ben was struck by Laurel’s beauty. He stood up straighter, squared his shoulders and sucked in his stomach. He probably wasn’t even aware he was doing it. Laurel worked on men’s hormones like the moon works on the ocean, though h
er gravitational pull centered on only one region of their anatomy, bypassing their brains all together.

  Laurel looked at Ben and then turned to me, puzzled and still half asleep. Her eyes narrowed when they hit me. Animosity is hard to hide, and Laurel’s made me extremely uncomfortable at that moment. I shouldn’t have come, I thought. She needs a friend right now, not a feuding neighbor. But, Laurel didn’t have any friends I was aware of. I’d do my best. For Kevin’s sake.

  “Mrs. Harlan, I don’t know if you remember me, I’m—”

  “I remember you, Ben,” Laurel interrupted. Even her voice was seductive, throaty and soft, though still fuzzy from sleep. She stepped into the doorway and panned her eyes over the front yard. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Could we come in, Mrs. Harlan? I need to speak with you,” Ben said gravely.

  “Kevin’s not here,” Laurel replied, brow furrowed. “He’s down on the lower terrace,” she explained.

  “Yes Ma’am,” Ben replied apologetically. “But could I speak with you for a moment?”

  “Of course,” she said, stepping aside. “How rude of me. You’ll have to excuse the house, today is cleaning day so it’s a mess.”

  Ben mumbled something in reply. Laurel led the way down a short hall into a huge open area at the back of the barn that was the Harlan’s living/dining room. The barn’s ceiling was insulated with a coated sheeting painted pale blue, but the old hand-hewn beams had not been refinished. The furniture was country-chic with lots of flower print upholstery and mass produced folk art. The kitchen was separated from the living area by an L-shaped bar lined with stools. Chintz covered the windows and wallpaper roses bloomed everywhere.

  Ben stood until Laurel and I had taken seats facing each other, me on a long sofa covered in yellow roses and Laurel in a matching armchair, then he sat beside me, hands nervously kneading his knees.