Plum Gone: A Sonoma Wine Country Cozy Mystery (Sonoma Wine Country Cozy Mysteries Book 2)

by A. J. Carton

  Barry immediately motioned everyone to the buffet table where the wait staff served lunch. Against Lexie’s urging, Emma held back, motioning the foreign contingent to fill their plates first while she observed them.

  The four Chinese men, Emma noted, were exceptionally well dressed that day. The tallest of them – Emma guessed he was at least 6’ 4” – was gorgeous. Surely, Emma noted, this was the hunk Lexie had “objectified” a few minutes before.

  He was dressed in a silk knit polo shirt with stripes in shades of blue, orange and smoky gray. His starched cotton khakis fit his trim figure like a glove. His dark brown crocodile belt and matching crocodile loafers made Emma wish they weren’t an endangered species.

  Two of the other three men wore handkerchief thin, expertly tailored linen shirts – one dark French blue, one gray. The fourth man, who was stocky and much shorter than the other three, wore a beige striped sear sucker suit with a tan linen shirt and a blue and green silk printed tie. Barbarians, ha!!! Emma laughed. These men were the epitome of good taste by anyone’s standard. Next to them, dressed in baggy bottomed chinos cinched under a swelling midriff, Barry Buchanon looked like Bilbo Baggins.

  When all were seated, Barry raised a glass of his own Lexie Reserve to the company. Emma found the toast confusing. Barry characterized HoCo’s imminent entry into the California wine industry as a milestone in Chinese-American relations. Something akin to Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China.

  After Barry had finished, it was Lexie’s turn to propose a toast. Casting a bold glance at the tall, good-looking man seated across the table, Lexie lifted her glass and to Emma’s surprise toasted “Alexander Wang.”

  Barry and his guests exchanged confused glances before Barry added, “Emma, you must meet our distinguished friends.”

  The men, whose formal manners rivaled her friend Jack Russo’s, rose at once to greet her.

  “Cheng Bo,” Barry introduced the really good-looking man seated next to him. “Huang Ho,” he continued indicating the shorter man in the sear sucker suit. “Chen Fung and Jing Lew,” he added indicating the two men in the linen shirts.

  When they had finished shaking hands, the men resumed their seats and, while eating, talked among themselves. No one addressed Emma or Lexie. It was as though they weren’t there.

  Emma observed Lexie try to break into the conversation twice, but everyone ignored her.

  That’s when things got messy. Lexie downed her first two glasses of wine, each in one gulp. Then Emma watched the young woman’s expression harden from a pout into a sulk. She downed a third glass of wine between birdlike bites of watermelon salad. Poured herself a fourth. Threw that back. Blinked. Cracked her neck right and left. Then composed her face into what Emma knew from past experience was a dangerous, devil may care smirk.

  “Enough business talk,” she announced in a loud voice, licking her lips at the tall man seated across the table. “I hear Chengboy over there is a Clint Eastwood fan.”

  “Bo,” the man replied. Then he added with a laugh, as though trying to placate the hostess by playing along, “Go ahead, make my day.”

  Emma held her breath. Did he mean to egg Lexie on, she wondered, or was it simply the only Clint Eastwood line the man knew?

  “I just might do that, Chengboy,” Lexie replied getting up from the table and stalking its perimeter in her four-inch heels like a tigress circling for a kill.

  “Bo not boy,” Barry cut in, casting a nervous glance at his wife. “His first name’s Bo. It’s backwards in China. Remember?”

  Emma’s eyes followed Lexie too, wondering if she were about to come off the spool. It had happened before.

  But Bo appeared to enjoy the repartee. He laughed, “Or backwards in the US, depending on how you look at it. Right, Ho?”

  Ho had pushed his chair back from the table as Lexie circled. Now he patted his knee – obviously inviting her to sit down on it. Emma got the feeling that the president and namesake of HoCo didn’t want to be left out of any action with the hostess.

  “His friends call him Bobo,” Ho explained with a giggle.

  Lexie abruptly stopped stalking and froze beside Ho’s chair.

  “OK, Blondie?” Ho crooked his little finger at Lexie. Emma noticed that his pinky nail was alarmingly long.

  All four of the Chinese men burst out laughing. But apparently Lexie was too young to recognize the allusion to Clint Eastwood’s 1960s character in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Emma could almost see the hairs on Lexie’s neck stand up.

  “How dare you call me Blondie, Huang?” she snapped.

  “Ho,” he replied. “Ho. Ho to you.”

  “Not funny, Huang!” Lexie yelled. Then she stormed into the kitchen.

  Barry started to get up from his seat, but seemed to think better of leaving and sat back down. “Women in America,” he shook his head. Then addressing the men at the table he added, “Ever hear of Women’s’ Lib in China?

  “Woo…man leeb,” Mr. Huang repeated, giving each syllable equal weight. Of the four men, Emma had noted that he was the least proficient in English. “Ni…ne to Fi…ve. Dor…ree Pah…ton. Whhwaaa. Beeega merr-on,” he motioned with his hands on his chest in the shape of two melons.

  Now, as the only woman left at the table, it was Emma’s turn to feel uncomfortable. At her old San Francisco law firm, the Anti Harassment Committee had scheduled a full day training session addressing just this sort of bad behavior. But as far as Emma recalled, the best response to such prohibited language that anyone came up with at the training session was a loud, “Ewwwww.” And if that didn’t work, a report to the Risk Management Committee.

  Somehow, “Ewwww,” didn’t sound right under the circumstances. Besides, who knew what “Ewww” might mean in Chinese? Uncomfortable as it was, Emma decided to keep her mouth shut and see what happened next.

  Barry glanced at her, but registering no response on her face, joined in the laughter that quickly erupted round the table. Causing Emma to wonder whether this was what all high level international food industry lunches were like.

  At that moment Bobo’s phone must have vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket and then excused himself to take the call. Ho continued to communicate, with the help of hand gestures, about his favorite American actresses. Emma decided to duck back into the kitchen to see where Lexie went.

  Lexie wasn’t in the kitchen, so Emma made her way towards the guest bathroom to sort things out in private.

  As she walked past the breakfast room, however, she happened to glance out the double French doors into the side yard next to the house. There, she noticed a long, black limo pulled into the guest parking area to the left of the herb garden. Bobo stood near it conversing with another man. This fellow, however, wasn’t Asian, and he wasn’t dressed in a hand made suit. He was wearing overalls and a bandana tied around his forehead. Emma couldn’t see his face clearly, but she thought he was the man she’d seen tearing down posters at the rally the day before.

  Emma combed the ground floor of the Buchanon’s house still looking for Lexie. When she returned to the lunch table a few minutes later, their hostess was still missing. Bobo was back in his chair. Mr. Huang spoke intently to Barry repeating a word that sounded like “prumran.” It took Emma a few seconds to get the hang of it. But when she finally figured out that “prumran” meant “plum ranch” and “cut ran daw” meant Curt Randall, the rest of the monologue more or less fell into place.

  Huang Ho, Emma realized, was explaining to Barry that a judge in Santa Rosa had issued a temporary restraining order – Huang called it a T WAR RO - stopping the sale of the Randall property. Mr. Huang wanted to know how such a thing was possible in America. Punctuated by much snide laughter (as opposed to the giggles that accompanied the melon talk) the gist of the speech appeared to be that Huang and his lawyers thought the T WAR RO was a joke.

  Mr. Huang ended his monologue with a derisive “Ha!” He folded his arms belligerently across his chest. Then he wa
ited for Barry to reply.

  That’s when Barry glanced across the table at Emma, his eyebrows raised as if to say what on earth was that all about?

  “He’s talking about the plum ranch sale,” Emma replied. “Apparently, after that rally yesterday, a judge in Santa Rosa issued a TRO – temporarily stopping the sale of the ranch until more testing can be done. You know,” she added, “to see how far down the pollution goes.”

  “You understood that?” Barry mouthed, looking impressed.

  Emma nodded. She hadn’t ridden the 55 Sacramento bus to work through San Francisco’s Chinatown all those years for nothing. “He says he’s not worried though. He thinks the judge’s order is a joke.”

  “Ask Ho how long he thinks it’s going to take for the sale to go through,” Barry replied to Emma. “Now, with the murder investigation. Won’t the delay cost HoCo a bundle?”

  Emma didn’t need to rephrase Barry’s question for Ho. Bobo replied instead in perfect English.

  “It won’t take long,” he brushed any concerns aside with a graceful wave of his manicured hand. “We have good lawyers. But as far as poor old Curt Randall’s murder charge goes, I’m afraid the old man did us a favor when he murdered that poor young Mexican.”

  “How so?” Barry asked.

  “He’s desperate to sell the ranch now,” Bobo laughed. “He needs cash to cover his legal expenses. I’m sorry to say that, far from costing HoCo a bundle, this most unfortunate crime may have provided us with an opportunity to purchase the property at an even better price.”

  Of course, Emma noted, Mr. Cheng didn’t sound sorry at all. Poor Piers, she thought to herself. He must be going nuts.

  Chapter 10: Tuesday Afternoon – Ghost Writer

  As soon as Emma could leave the table, she ducked back into the kitchen and packed up her empty food containers. Morena had already washed them, so Emma hoped to make a quick get away and avoid dealing with Facebook.

  She was just leaving the kitchen via the breakfast room when Lexie caught her. She’d changed into tight stretch jeans and a blue and white T that looked like someone had slashed it strategically with a knife.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Ms. Corsi?” she greeted her, still sounding a little tipsy. “You have a Facebook lesson today.”

  Emma wracked her brain for a reason to beg off, but she realized she’d already told Lexie she was free all afternoon. Finally, she simply decided to tell the truth.

  “Lexie,” she sighed. “I don’t know how else to say this. I’m not going on Facebook. In fact, I hate Facebook. The whole idea of it. Of branding yourself. Of turning your life into some kind of blog. Of having to read other people’s blogs about themselves. Who needs it?”

  Emma watched Lexie’s eyes bug out. “You hate Facebook?” she began. From the tone of Lexie’s voice Emma wondered if, by mistake, she’d said she hated Bambi, or the Dalai Lama, or ET.

  “Well,” Emma snorted, “hate is a strong word but…” she didn’t finish the sentence. The truth was she did hate Facebook. “But,” she repeated trying to recoup, “well, it’s not like I hate Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, I loved that movie about him, Social Network. Honestly, he’s kind of a personal hero of mine. I just hate his product, if you know what I mean. Like I admire JLo, too, but I wouldn’t wear her clothes.”

  Lexie had cocked her head to one side. She blinked a couple of times.

  “Emma,” she finally said putting her hands on her hips. “Facebook isn’t something you love or hate. It’s something you use.”

  For a second, Emma wondered whether, in those few words, Lexie had just defined her own thirty-something generation.

  “But I do hate it, Lexie,” Emma nodded slowly. “And that makes it impossible for me to use it.”

  Lexie sucked her breath in and squinted at Emma, as though she’d discovered a defect in a favorite old blouse and wondered if she could continue to wear it. Then she blew the breath out and swatted her hand in the air.

  “Nonsense, Emma. You just don’t understand Facebook. Let me explain it to you. Then, when you know what it is, well…you won’t love it or hate it. You’ll just use it. OK?”

  Emma tried to smile. She realized there was no way she could refuse Lexie’s offer to help her understand Facebook. Not without looking like the Pope challenging Galileo’s theory that the earth revolved around the sun.

  “You’re right, Lexie,” she finally said. “I don’t understand Facebook. Why don’t we give it a try?”

  Emma followed Lexie out the French doors in the breakfast room across the side flower garden to a little bungalow that Emma soon realized was Lexie Buchanon’s private office. For a young woman whom Emma had dismissed as an airhead, the office was surprisingly well organized. Far better organized, Emma noted, than Emma’s own little office off her farmhouse kitchen.

  The twelve by fifteen foot room was painted in sponged Tuscan yellow and lined with closed cherry cupboards. Each was labeled: shopping, Russian Arts Archive (an organization Lexie chaired), household, art, Kathy (Lexie’s personal assistant), yoga, Poops (Lexie’s Sydney Silky terrier), vacation - just to name a few that caught Emma’s eye. Two original Hockney landscapes hung on the walls. A cherry desktop with leather inserts was immaculate, except for a 27” iMac and one bundle of mail placed squarely in front of it.

  Emma gazed around the pristine space. She’d worked with lawyers whose offices looked like that. And wondered if their owners’ minds were tidy or empty. She had never figured that out.

  Lexie had pulled a seat up for Emma next to her ergonomic Herman Miller Embody chair, pushed aside the mail and turned on her iMac. Watching Lexie’s fingers move across her keyboard at lightning speed, Emma soon realized she was not dealing with an amateur. Lexie was up and running in seconds – and logged on to her Facebook page.

  Because Emma did not belong to Facebook, she had never seen a Facebook page before. Lexie’s consisted of an adorable photograph of Lexie smiling holding what appeared to be a tranquilized tiger cub. Behind it was another photo of an expanse of rolling vineyards probably taken somewhere on the Buchanon Estate, but it could have been France just as well. Under that, to Emma’s dismay, was an array of boxes, tags, images, superscripts and subscripts that was more confusing than CNN.

  Lexie scrolled down the page while images erupted on the screen and then quickly disappeared from view. Photos of Lexie with a Tibetan monk, buildings being blown up in Gaza, a luscious apple pie followed by dogs being tortured, Lexie at a Jay Z concert along with girls sold into slavery in Nigeria, someone’s main course at a fancy Paris restaurant, a quotation from Ghandi, a young woman giving birth, a man holding an assault weapon, a family vacation at the seashore.

  Above the photographs, vertical and horizontal stripes announced “photos of Lexie,” “Lexie’s album,” “chat with Lexie,” “about Lexie,” “Lexie’s timeline,” “Lexie’s friends.” Everywhere little thumbs pointed up or down next to the word “Like” in what looked like a digital format of Survivor.

  What happens if nobody likes you? Emma wondered. Do you get voted off the Internet?

  “See,” Lexie said, expertly clicking on her mouse, opening and closing menus. “These are my friends.”

  To Emma’s amazement, there were 3869 of them. “Wow!” she exclaimed, wondering if she could count her friends on more than one hand, “You have a lot of friends. How do you keep up with them?”

  “Easy!” Lexie shrugged. “Watch.”

  In a block labeled “messages,” Lexie instantly typed in, “I’m sitting here at the vineyard with my best friend and world famous cookbook author Emma Corsi.”

  In a matter of seconds, Lexie had posted a selfie of her and Emma on her Facebook page. Lexie looked great. Emma looked dazed.

  The message ended with, “Check out Emma’s cookbook, Dining with the Stars. You’ll love her yummy spaghetti sauce recipe. Sergio uses it at his restaurant, but guess what? You can save $24 by making it at home. (Sorry, Sergio. You
may lose a few customers.) I can’t wait for her new book, What a Pair! written with yours truly. I’ll keep you posted…”

  “See,” Lexie said, not taking her eyes off the screen. “That’s called marketing. That’s how it’s done. Now let’s look at ‘all about Lexie.’ That tells my ‘friends’ everything I want them to know about me. It’s like…like my product description.”

  Lexie scrolled down the “all about Lexie” blurb. Much to Emma’s surprise, she learned that Lexie was a freelance filmmaker and producer specializing in Buddhism and animal rights. She lived in Blissburg, Paris, and Australia, had traveled extensively in Southeast Asia, loved Klezmer music and the Brandenburg Concertos, and Sydney Silkies. Her favorite movie was A League of Their Own, and her favorite book was Nelson Mandela’s autobiography.”

  “Really?” Emma asked. “You liked the Mandela autobiography. That’s a long book.”

  Lexie laughed. “It just says ‘my favorite book.’ It doesn’t say I read it.”

  “I didn’t know you were a filmmaker, as well,” Emma added.

  “Yeah,” Lexie sighed still looking at the screen. “I have my own little company, Poops Productions. Barry bought it for me as a wedding present. So I’d have something to do. I make little videos.” She laughed, “You know. Mostly of us.”

  “O…K,” Emma replied. “You produce little videos of you and Barry. What’s my product?”

  Lexie snorted. She still hadn’t taken her eyes off the screen. “You!” she scoffed. “You are the product. That’s what’s so cool. Now, thanks to Facebook, everybody has a product. Themselves. And thanks to Facebook, everybody gets to brand and market that product any old way they choose. It’s like…like you’re your own little corporation marketing your product. You. And you get to do what’s good for business. You. Cause you are the business. After all, corporations are people, aren’t they? Didn’t the Supreme Court just decide that? Like it was in the papers, right? So corporations are people and people are corporations and everybody gets to do what’s best for their own little selves. Cool, huh? I mean it’s so capitalist. So American!”