Dead in the Dregs

by Peter Lewis

  “For example?” I said.

  “What we’re doing now. Each lot of fruit isolated in the fermenter. The tanks are insulated so I can control temperatures. Native yeast fermentation, cold maceration, manual bâtonnage.”

  Matson’s hands worked on their own, incredibly fast, dexterously feeling through the fruit, picking and pitching, cluster by cluster. Danny studied him and did his best to imitate his every move.

  “Work a little faster,” he said, observing my son. “You don’t have to be so careful. I mean, be careful but not too careful.”

  Danny sped up.

  “Good,” Matson said and then turned to me. “I’m obsessive, and I’m strict. I despise inflated rhetoric, inflated reputations, and inflated wine. The problem is, people don’t know what they want to make. So they end up producing wine to fit someone else’s idea of what wine’s supposed to taste like. Take Wilson: He thinks he’s championing the artisanal, but the opposite is really the case. All he’s done is fuel people’s crass commercial instinct. They end up making fat wines to get high scores to fetch top dollar. It’s sick. And it’s a vicious circle.”

  “Fret no more,” I said.

  His hands paused between the sorting table and the destemmer into which he’d just tossed a cupped handful of fruit.

  “Wilson’s dead,” I said. “He was found in a vat at Norton a couple hours ago.”

  Danny kept going. I searched Matson’s eyes as he looked from me to his new helper and back to me. He seemed genuinely shocked. We heard a car pull up outside the barn, and a moment later a petite blond woman with a face as innocent as Matson’s walked into the room through a side door.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “My wife, Gretchen,” Matson said.

  “Babe Stern,” I said. “This is my son, Danny.”

  “Gretch, Richard Wilson . . .” was all Matson was able to get out.

  I told them what I knew. Danny stopped sorting. It was the first time he’d heard the story of what had actually happened.

  “Pretty weird time to visit the valley,” Matson said.

  “He was probably polishing copy or something,” Gretchen suggested tentatively.

  “Exactly. The revised edition of his book on California was about to go to press. He wanted to retaste a few things. That’s what he said, anyway. I was with him late yesterday afternoon.”

  “Do you know . . .” Matson started.

  “All I know is that they lined up a few bottles for him and left him to his own devices. He was heading back to the city, then off to New York.”

  Jesús, Matson’s assistant, now arrived, and the three of them got to work sorting.

  “Sorry, but I’ve got to get the Chard done today,” Matson said. “I’m back at Hauberg first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “One question before we take off?” I asked. Matson nodded, then looked down at his hands as they flew through bunches of glistening grapes. “Can you think of anyone who hated Wilson enough to kill him?”

  “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “After he wrote what he did about me, I stopped paying attention. Look at this,” he gestured across the pint-size barn. “We’re pretty marginal here. Hangin’ on for dear life. Last year we bottled three hundred cases. If we’re lucky this year, we’ll get three fifty, maybe four. I don’t want to take on any more than I can handle. This is about as boutique as it gets. I’m sorry Richard is dead. He was a serious person. But all I really care about is my wife, my children, and my wine.”

  He looked at me. Gretchen smiled wanly as she plucked two brown-tinged grapes and dropped them on the ground. I had no reason to disbelieve Matson and excused myself.

  “You’re a good worker,” he said to Danny. “If you’re around this week, feel free to come by and give us a hand.”

  I decided to run through St. Helena and stop by the cop shop. When we got there, I stood in the waiting room, examining the police department’s patch collection while Mary, the dispatcher, buzzed Brenneke. She said he’d just arrived with some suspects or witnesses, she wasn’t sure. As she waved us back, Danny pointed to a teddy bear in a cop’s uniform perched on a boom box above her desk.

  “His office,” Mary said.

  Brenneke looked up when we walked in.

  “I thought I told you I’d catch up with you later,” he said. “I have no time for you.”

  “Russ, this is my son, Danny.”

  Brenneke nodded.

  “Who’d you just bring in?” I asked.

  “None of your fucking business,” he said, then realized that a child was present. “Sorry,” he said to Danny, and turned to me. “A few of the Mexicans. Two of ’em fled. Probably halfway to Baja by now. All they need to see is a radio antenna, and they take off. We have another two of the seasonal guys locked up. They materialize every year to help bring in the fruit.”

  “There was a third. He seemed more important. I saw him talking to Norton yesterday when Danny and I were at the winery. What is he, the foreman?”

  “Fornes, the vineyard manager. He’s back there, too.” Brenneke paused. “You were at Norton yesterday?” he said, his eyes drilling into me.

  “Yes. And the day before. Wilson dropped by the bar and asked me to go out there with him.”

  He put the report he held in his hand on the desk, rose from his chair, and walked to the door.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” he said.

  “What’s going on, Dad?” Danny asked.

  Brenneke returned a moment later with Mary.

  “Son, would you mind? I need to talk to your dad a minute. Mary’ll take you out front.”

  Danny looked at me as if everything had suddenly gone terribly wrong.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s fine. I’ll be right there.”

  He glanced at me over one shoulder while Mary placed her hand on the other and led him down the hallway.

  Brenneke closed the door and took his seat, rolling it out from behind the desk to within a foot of me.

  “You mind telling me what’s going on?” he said.

  “Janie, Wilson’s sister, is my ex.”

  “You’re just full of surprises.”

  “When he failed to show for dinner the other night and didn’t return her calls, she asked me to poke around.”

  “You being a well-known wine guy and all,” Brenneke smirked.

  “Wilson and I were close when we were just starting out. That’s how I met Janie. He got me my first few jobs in Seattle, around the time you and I met.” He waited for a more detailed explanation. “He looked me up the day before yesterday. There was something he wanted to talk to me about. He asked me to follow him to Norton.” Brenneke still wasn’t satisfied. “But we never got around to it,” I continued. “There were people around—Colin Norton, a woman who works in the office, a young French kid who’s doing a sort of apprenticeship—so we couldn’t talk. It was something private, and we didn’t have any privacy there.”

  He fished a notebook from the clutter on his desk, folded one leg over the other, and jotted some notes.

  “Let me get this straight: He never told you what he wanted to tell you.”

  “Correct.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “I left.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I don’t know, five, five thirty, maybe.”

  “What was he doing when you left?”

  “Tasting with Norton. In a room off the reception area.”

  “Anybody else around?”

  “I couldn’t say with any certainty. The French kid took off. Fornes was probably still there, along with the crew. Their workday runs late this time of year, needless to say. Carla Fehr, the office person, may have been there, but I don’t think so.”

  “Oh yeah, why’s that?”

  “Because she and Wilson were having an affair.”

  Brenneke looked up from his notebook.

  “You know that for a fact? I thought you said that you and Wil
son didn’t have a chance to speak in private.”

  “Call it an educated guess. I know him pretty well. And when I called Ms. Fehr to ask if she’d seen him, she said he was supposed to come over for dinner and never arrived.”

  “And what about you? What did you do that night? Go back to work?”

  “No, Mulligan had the bar. I went home to get ready for my son’s visit.”

  “Anybody see you?”

  “No, I was alone the whole night.”

  “And Wilson never called?” Brenneke asked.

  “Not even the next morning, when he said he might drop by the bar,” I told him.

  Brenneke’s gaze was steady. He rubbed his cheek with the butt end of his pen.

  “Jesus, Stern,” he said, shaking his head. He was trying to make up his mind about what he should do next. “Look, I know your kid’s sitting out there waiting for you. He’s probably scared to death.” He thought a moment. “I’m gonna type this up and show it to Jensen. But you should know right now, he’s going to want a formal statement.”

  “I realize that,” I said as if I had fully expected it. I hadn’t.

  “Okay, get the fuck outta here,” Brenneke said, rolling his chair to the desk without looking at me. “Just stay behind your bar and keep your eyes and ears open. You hear anything you think I should know, you call me.”

  Danny was sitting in the waiting room on the edge of his seat. The teddy bear seemed to be gazing down at me. They were both waiting for an explanation.

  “It’s fine, pal,” I said, ignoring the bear. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Easy enough to say to your child, but a little tougher to convince yourself of. It hadn’t occurred to me until Brenneke said he’d need a statement that I’d inadvertently set myself up as a suspect.

  7

  We stopped at The Diner in Yountville and grabbed some lunch.

  “These tacos are better than yours, Dad,” Danny said.

  “I’m not surprised. The food is great here. See if you can figure out how they do ’em, and you can tell Ernesto.”

  While Danny deconstructed his taco, I considered my history with Brenneke. Our paths had first crossed in Seattle. He was the kind of cop who always made you feel he had you in his back pocket. He took pleasure in pushing people around. A little sloppy and a little angry, he evinced the arrogance of power but was crippled by his own ineptitude, a quality that had led to his dismissal from the SPD. We’d done each other a couple of favors since discovering we were both in the valley, but I doubted our friendship would count for much under the present circumstances. The cops had no idea what was about to descend on them once the news of the murder of Richard Wilson got out. They’d be under enormous pressure to solve it.

  Leaving, I stepped into the phone booth and looked up Carla Fehr’s address.

  “One more stop,” I said to Danny when we were in the truck.

  He threw me a look that suggested I was out of my mind, then turned his back on me.

  “You’re not a detective, Dad,” he said out the window.

  “True,” I acknowledged, “but bartenders and detectives have a lot in common.”

  He turned his head to look at me. Sure they do, the look said.

  Carla Fehr lived in a small white clapboard cottage on a back road on the other side of the highway. Lace curtains masked the windows.

  “Wait here. I’m not sure this woman’s going to talk to me,” I said. “I think it’s better if I go it alone.” Danny appeared relieved to be let off the hook. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  The geraniums on the front porch hadn’t been deadheaded in weeks. I knocked and stood there for several minutes. The cicadas’ frenzied whining made me edgy. I knocked again and saw the curtain drawn back an inch. She opened the door and turned without saying a word, retreating to the safety of the living room. She was barefoot, wearing a man’s shirt and blue jeans. Her hair was carelessly tied up.

  The room was pleasantly if sparsely furnished, a little frilly in its taste. She plopped onto the sofa and tucked one leg beneath her. I took a chair facing her.

  “Still skulking around?” She shook her head. “Don’t you believe in mourning?” she asked, her tone sarcastic.

  “I’m doing this for Richard’s sister. She asked me to.”

  “Asked you to talk to me? I doubt it.”

  “Oh? And why’s that?”

  “She doesn’t know about Richard and me.”

  The shadows cast by the lace played across her face, and the light silhouetted her body in the enormous shirt. It was a perfect body.

  “How would you describe your relationship with Richard?”

  She looked at me as if I were a child. A very stupid child.

  “We were friends. He confided in me,” she finally said.

  “I don’t know if he ever mentioned me, but he and I were friends, too. And he wanted to confide in me. There was something bothering him, something that he wanted to get off his chest. You have any notion what it might have been?”

  I could tell by the look on her face—hostile, a little sad, contemptuous—that whatever it was, he hadn’t told her about it.

  “Look, I don’t know what you’re after. Richard and I were close. I mean, he wasn’t here that much. But whenever he was . . . I just can’t believe somebody would do this to him.”

  “So, you don’t have a clue? No idea?”

  She didn’t like the fact that I was implying there was something he hadn’t told her, that their relationship was purely sexual.

  “Get a life,” she said. “And get your ass out of my house.”

  Danny was standing outside the truck, throwing rocks into a field. I came up beside him, bent down, and grabbed a few myself, and we stood there a minute, seeing who could throw farther.

  “Good arm,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  “This isn’t turning out to be much fun, is it?”

  “Not really,” he said.

  “You wanna go home?”

  “I guess.”

  “Okay, let me call your mother.”

  I walked to the truck and pulled my cell phone from the glove box.

  “I need you to take Danny back,” I said. “If you really want me to do this.”

  “You told him?” She was furious.

  “I had to. Anyway, he was going to find out sooner or later.”

  “How is he?”

  “He’s fine. We’ve been working on it together.”

  “Christ, Babe! He’s ten years old.”

  “You can’t protect him. He’s too smart. He’s going to figure it out.” I could tell she was fuming in silence. “Listen, you said Richard kept an apartment in the city. You wouldn’t happen to have a key, would you?” When she said yes, I asked for the address and told her to meet us there in an hour.

  We drove down 29 to Highway 12, and I pointed out the smudge pots and propellers viticulturalists use to move frigid air. Now they stood frozen in the dead heat. Buzzards soared high overhead.

  Traffic wasn’t too bad heading into the city. As we crossed the Bay Bridge, I said, “How’s Grandpa Bob?”

  “He’s weird,” Danny said, scrunching his face.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes he’s okay. And then . . .”

  “He’s very sick, Danny. You have to help your mom. She really needs you right now.”

  “I know,” he said defensively.

  It was an awful lot to ask of a young boy, to understand and make space for an old man who was losing his memory. Now he’d have to console his mother as well.

  As we pulled up I saw Janie parking her BMW convertible, neatly wedging it onto a slope in front of a sleek art deco-style building on the north edge of Russian Hill. I circled three times before risking a ticket in a space in front of a fireplug.

  “I don’t cover parking,” Janie said as we crossed the street to her.

  “I’ll take my chances.” All I care
d about was getting into the apartment before the cops beat me there.

  She gave Danny a big hug and kissed the top of his head. She refused to let go, forcing him to wriggle free.

  “I’ve been helping Dad,” he said.

  “I know; he told me. You’re a very brave boy.” She looked at me over the top of his head, just shaking her own.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  Janie unlocked the outer door.

  “Fourth floor,” she said.

  “I thought he might have given you a key,” I said to take my mind off her ass, which rocked with metronomic precision as we made our way up the staircase.

  “I insisted, in case there was a problem. They’re on the road so much.”

  “They?”

  “He shares the place with his assistant, Jacques Goldoni. Richard only uses it—used it—four or five times a year. But Jacques stays here at least as much. They kept it so they wouldn’t have to pay for hotels. It doubles as an office. They go all over the state.”

  I felt an ache as I passed her and entered the apartment. Distract yourself, I said. Be methodical. Play detective.

  “What are we looking for, Dad?” Danny asked.

  “I’m not sure. See what you can find,” I said.

  Janie said nothing. All that mattered was that Danny was here, with her, safe.

  The kitchen was tiny but serviceable. Two cases of empty wine bottles were crammed under the sink. Another case full of samples sat on the counter.

  An easy chair commanded a sweeping view of the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge to the west and Alcatraz directly before us in the distance. A stack of wine books lay at its feet. Remington Norman, Jancis Robinson, Clive Coates. Predictable stuff. What wasn’t predictable were the frogs. There were frogs everywhere: porcelain frogs, crystal frogs, carved wooden frogs with wings, even a frog chandelier.

  “Why does he have all these frogs?” Danny asked.

  “I think it must have been a way to express admiration for the French. Sometimes we call the French Frogs.”

  “It’s not a nice word,” Janie said. “I never want to hear you use it.”