by Nadia Gordon
Organic farming was getting weird, thought Sunny, opening one of the jars for a sniff. The fondness for composting and worm boxes seemed to have evolved into a general obsession with organic matter, and decomposed organic matter in particular. Those on the cutting edge in recent years had started whipping up fetid potions said to promote soil vigor or keep pests on the march. She knew someone who swore by a concoction he made out of a gopher buried for six months, then blended into a frappé and sprayed on his plants at the full moon. It lent yet more support to the idea that folks go a bit goofy out in the countryside on their own, soaking up a little bit too much nature for anybody’s good. Still, she had to admit that the Hansen place looked bountiful, and there did seem to be some validity to many of the old folk remedies, such as using cat urine to keep away gophers and rabbits.
She closed the door and walked back to the open space between the buildings, listening. The largest of the three structures was a Victorian barn big enough to house an indoor tennis court, and she headed there across a rolling natural lawn. As she got close, she heard movement off to the right, coming from the furthest structure, an old storage shed another fifty yards away. She walked toward it, calling “Hello” so as not to arrive unannounced.
Like the rest of the farm, the storage shed was whitewashed, clean, and built decades earlier of sturdy, hand-hewn local timbers. At the back end, the double doors were flung wide open. Claire had set up a packing station in front with crates of kale, squash, heirloom apples, celery root, carrots, potatoes, figs, and rosemary arranged in a semicircle around her. She was busy assembling boxes of produce that were delivered weekly or biweekly to individuals who subscribed. Claire looked up when she heard Sunny. Claire’s cheeks were pink with exercise and her smile cheerful. She wore her pale blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“Sunny! What a nice surprise! My goodness, what brings you way out here?”
“Hi, Claire. I’m sorry to pop in on you like this. I haunted the front house for a while, but when nobody came to the door, I figured I’d come to you.” She stalled. “The farm looks great.”
Claire pulled off her gloves and gave Sunny a kiss on each cheek. “Doesn’t it? You remind me of how lazy I’ve been at getting people out here. When was the last time you visited?”
“Last fall? Maybe October. Rivka and I came out. I remember you made an amazing pumpkin soup.”
“With way too much heavy cream and jalapeños. That’s the secret to really good pumpkin soup, make it incredibly fattening. I hear you were at the sharpshooter meeting this morning.”
“Yeah, I was there. Ben did a nice job speaking against pesticides. I didn’t know he was such an eloquent public speaker. I’ve never known him to talk much.” Sunny stopped. She was starting to feel like a hypocrite; this was not a social visit. She decided to get to the point. She looked around, checking to see that Ben was nowhere within earshot. An assortment of upturned log sections stood nearby waiting to be split and Sunny tipped her head toward them. She and Claire went over and sat down. A knot formed in Sunny’s stomach. This was a dreadful topic to bring up. Claire looked at her expectantly.
“I don’t know how to say this. It’s really none of my business. If it weren’t for Wade needing help—do you know about Wade? That he was arrested?”
“I heard. I can’t believe it.”
“He’s out on bail, and I assure you that if it weren’t for his situation, I wouldn’t have any interest in sticking my nose into other people’s…business.”
“What is it?” She frowned and Sunny saw worry come into her face. Was it her imagination or did Claire look like someone accustomed to bad news?
“Claire, how close were you to Jack Beroni?”
She opened her mouth in shock, then closed it and looked away, shaking her head with what seemed to be successive waves of indignation, anger, and resignation. She worked a long splinter of wood off the log next to her and poked at the ground with it.
“You weren’t just having a casual affair,” said Sunny. “You’ve been in love with him since high school.” Sunny was becoming more experienced at eliciting information from people, and she’d realized that making a statement often got them talking more easily than if she’d asked a question.
Claire smiled, warmly at first, then her lips slid into a straight line. “Yes, but I was never good enough for Jack’s family. Not much is. And there was a time, years in fact, when I loved Ben just as much.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure you ever really know about these things. They’re gradual. Ben and I wore each other down, I suppose. The farm has never been a financial success and it’s been hard on both of us. Over the years, struggling constantly to make this place work, he got more and more introverted, more distant. We’ve spent most of a second mortgage and used all the money I inherited when my mother died. The next step is to sell. This ranch has been in my family for five generations.” She dug a trough in the ground with the splinter of wood, absentmindedly scraping as she talked. “The taxes alone are several times more than we made last year.”
“You shouldn’t have to sell. This land is so valuable, you could get financing to put in your own vineyard. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cabernet Sauvignon grown where we’re sitting right now sold for fifteen hundred dollars a ton.”
“I know. Believe me, I’ve tried to get Ben to go along with that idea. He’s absolutely against it. You know how he feels about the wine business. It’s a matter of principle with him. He says he’d rather go broke than turn booze farmer. He feels like they’ve ruined the valley, cutting down the forests and orchards so they can plant more grapes, causing erosion, eating up habitat for animals.”
“How much of that is about being jealous of Jack?”
“He’s never had anything to be jealous of. I fell for Ben in college, a few years after Jack and I split up. Ben doesn’t know there was ever anything between us.” She sighed. “No, Ben’s abhorrence of the wine business has come from all those county meetings he goes to. He’s been on the opposite side of the fence since the winery definition battle in the eighties.”
Claire’s expression made her face look hard in a way Sunny had never seen before, as if she’d grown used to being unhappy. “Once he said if I ever asked for a divorce, he’d get a lawyer and make sure I lost the girls. I don’t think he was serious, but you never know. He’s changed over the years. I do know we wouldn’t get out of it without selling this place, and I won’t do that until I’ve exhausted every other option.” She started scraping a new trench. “I used to be in awe of him, the way he devoted himself to this place. The way he loved to watch things grow.”
Sunny twisted the toe of her shoe in the dirt. “Where is he now?”
“Out making deliveries.”
“And Thursday night?”
She smiled. “Come on, Sunny, don’t be ridiculous. He may not be the happiest man alive, but he certainly didn’t kill Jack. He’s not cold-blooded. Ben still cries every time he has to shoot a gopher. I see him. He’ll watch the hole and pace for hours until he finally decides to do it. Then he’s upset for days. This is not a guy who could commit a murder. And anyway, he didn’t know anything about Jack and me. Even if he did, I don’t think he’d care that much. Ben stopped loving me in the romantic sense years ago. Staying together has been about the girls and the farm for a long time now. I don’t think he particularly cares who I sleep with, as long as I keep it a secret.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Marriages are not always what they seem, Sunny. Forever is a long time.”
Sunny bit her lip. “You were home Thursday night?”
“Me? Yes.”
“The whole night?”
“Yes.”
“And Ben, too?”
“I assume so.”
“You don’t know?”
“We don’t sleep together. He works at night sometimes. After dark is the best time to do certain
applications. To be honest, I don’t always know where he goes and I don’t want to know.”
“Applications?”
“Biodynamic solutions. You know, to keep pests away or balance the soil.”
“So there are times when he leaves at night and you don’t know where he goes?”
“It’s usually the west orchard. If I know Ben, the other woman has leaves and bark, not feathered hair and big boobs.”
“Does he drive over there?”
“Usually. It’s too far to walk carrying equipment.”
“Did you hear him leave Thursday night?”
“Sunny, stop. Ben was here on the night of Jack’s murder, miles away from Beroni Vineyards.” Claire stood up. “I think this whole conversation has gone far enough. I need to ask you to give me your word you won’t talk to anyone about this, any of this, and then I think you’d better leave.”
Sunny felt her face heat. She hadn’t been asked to leave anyplace since she was a kid passing notes in school. “Just one more thing and I’ll go. And I won’t speak of any of this to anyone, I promise. Did Jack ever come here to see you?”
“Of course not,” she snapped. “He would never come anywhere near this place.”
Claire stood and put her gloves back on, giving Sunny a pained, disapproving look before turning back to her work.
Sunny walked back to the truck. The midday sun warmed her shoulders and the guilt and shame she’d momentarily felt lifted with each step. None of this mess of lies and secrets was hers, and she wasn’t about to start carrying it around. Now that Jack was dead, Claire might be able to find her way back to Ben. The best way for that to happen was for the past to evaporate, starting with what Sunny knew. She unbuttoned her chef’s jacket and stripped down to her T-shirt, longing to grab the old blanket she kept behind the seat of the truck, stretch it out on the grass, and have a nice long nap. Instead, she needed to get back to the restaurant pronto and see if there was anything left of Rivka after a solo battle with the hungry gourmands. On the drive back, she lined up the new questions she had, starting with whether or not Ben had found out about Claire’s affair. Next up was what Jack was doing up here Wednesday night, if it wasn’t to see Claire. Monty had seen Jack’s Jaguar racing down Mount Veeder on Wednesday night. She pictured Claire’s face when she’d answered that last question, about whether or not Jack ever came up here. Sunny was willing to bet she was telling the truth as far as she knew it. In fact, it seemed painful to Claire that Jack didn’t want to come near the ranch.
Claire said Ben didn’t like to kill things, but barn number one seemed to scream the opposite. Still, farm life involves more killing than anybody likes to admit. All farmhouses get overrun by mice and wood rats from time to time, and rattlesnakes take up residence under the porch and in the garage eventually. Gardens attract a host of quadrupeds eager for a meal, not to mention birds by the flock, and anyone who keeps chickens has a problem with coyotes, possums, and raccoons, not to mention predatory birds and mountain lions. And then there were all the little lives, the insects and the microscopic life. It was like Nesto said, there were plenty of pests in the valley, depending on your perspective. “Getting rid of them” was usually a euphemism. Farmers tried alternatives, but often enough getting rid of a pest meant killing it. That barn was just Ben Baker being as efficient as possible by using every part of the animals he killed.
As she drove, she ran Ben through the steps it would have taken to kill Jack. He would have had to find out about the affair. In such a tight-knit community, there were plenty of ways that could have happened. It was hard to believe he wouldn’t object to her sleeping with another man, no matter how far their relationship had slipped. How well did Claire Baker know her husband, anyway? It was even hard to believe it would be enough to drive him to murder in genteel Napa. But Ben had been boiling with anger after the hearing. Could years of frustration have been channeled into a hatred of Jack Beroni? Ben could have made that call to Jack Thursday night from the Dusty Vine. Maybe he confronted him about the affair. But why would Jack agree to meet him? What could they have to say to each other? She thought about the list she and Wade had made of people who knew that he kept a rifle in the winery. Ben and Claire were on it. They’d been at Wade’s house the night they played Assault Golf after dinner. Even if Ben hadn’t seen where Wade kept the gun, it wouldn’t have been that difficult to find, knowing it was stashed somewhere reasonably accessible in the winery. Still, it didn’t explain how Alex ended up with the gun or how Mike Rieder’s business card came to be outside the winery.
The gravel parking lot at Wildside was packed when Sunny finally got there. She parked on the street a block down and jogged back, throwing on her chef’s jacket as she came in the rear door. Rivka gave her a look.
“You better have one hell of an excuse, McCoskey.”
“Damn straight.” She looked over the open counter at the dining room, which was filled with customers, both seated and waiting. Most looked like they were on their second course, a few were eating dessert. “How bad is it?”
“Let’s just say we don’t have a whole lot of time to chitchat.”
Berton, the maître d’, strolled over to the zinc bar and leaned against it as if he had all the time in the world. That was his expertise. No matter how busy the tiny dining room got, he always maintained an air of professional ease and competence, as though waiting an hour for a table was exactly the way it should be. Sunny whipped around her prep station, putting up four salads while he stood watching.
“So, what happened? Did you decide to call it quits after nine holes?”
“Does my jacket say Chef?” she said, giving him her best haughty look. “Table five needs water.”
“Bite me!” he replied, without emotion.
He cruised away, overseeing the diners like a director scrutinizing a dress rehearsal. The next hour and a half sped by in a blur of mixed greens, pasta, grilled vegetables, roasted meats, seared fish, and braised duck breasts. Just before three o’clock, Charlie Rhodes came in and took a seat at the bar. Sunny felt an involuntary flutter in her stomach. What was she, twelve? she thought. Wasn’t she a bit old to be having crushes on cute boys? Still, there were his hands, each fingertip pressing the zinc, hands of a rock climber or flamenco guitarist, and the little white scar on the right index finger.
“Am I too late for lunch?”
“Yep, unless you happen to hold certain degrees. We’re running a special late lunch service for area entomologists. In honor of harvest.”
“Wow, that is such a coincidence.”
“Chef’s special?”
“Sounds good.”
She put together a plate of various leftovers from lunch and slid it across the counter.
“Did you go out to the Maya Culpa yet?”
“Yeah, I was out there all morning.”
“What’d you find?”
“Not much. Well, not anything, at least not in the way of glassy-winged sharpshooters. Whole lot of dead bugs stuck to a whole lot of bug traps. The usual assortment of winged critters, plus a few blue-greens and that one glassy-winger they located on Friday.” He cut himself a piece of roasted meat and swiped a layer of mashed potatoes on top of it.
Sunny poured them each a glass of Wildside private label Cabernet Sauvignon, a joint project with a winery down the road that she’d spent far too much time and money on last year. He took a swallow.
“You know,” he said, “just when I think I get these little guys all figured out, they go and throw me a wild card.”
“How so?”
“Well, first of all, the glassy-winged specimen in the trap turned out to be a stage-two nymph, which is weird because those traps normally only catch adults. You’ve seen them, right? They’re sticky strips that hang down from a limb. You generally have to fly or hop to land in the middle of one, and stage-two nymphs don’t do either. They crawl, and they don’t even do that very well. For another thing, it’s the wrong time of year
for stage-two nymphs around here. It’s like finding a fawn with spots in November, or butterflies in January. I can understand finding a stage-two in a year-round breeding ground like Southern California, but up here they should be dormant right now. I wouldn’t expect anything but adults until March or later. It just goes to show you that nature is always stretching the rules. Just when you think you have it all figured out, you find an exception. But that still doesn’t explain how a non-hopping, non-flying leaf grubber landed in the middle of a sticky trap.”
Sunny stared at him. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s not a nothing face.”
Her mind raced. She thought of the silver Jag screeching around the corner, brake lights flaring in the dark Wednesday night. That would be the same day he’d canceled lunch with Ripley Marlow so he could make a last-minute trip to Los Angeles, the night before he was killed.
“When was the last time those traps were checked?”
“Friday afternoon.”
“I mean before that.”
“Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning.”
At that exact moment, the back door yawned opened and Ben Baker appeared, wearing his usual flannel jacket and jeans and hoisting a hand truck loaded with produce up behind him. He stacked the boxes inside the walk-in and gave Sunny a wave. She put on a casual smile.
“Hi, Ben. You look tired. Can I make you a cappuccino?”
“Love one, thanks.” He pulled off his gloves and tucked them in the pocket of his jacket, resting against the hand truck. He acknowledged Charlie with a nod.
“Mr. Rhodes.”
“Ben.”
“Any word from the board?” Ben asked.
“Nothing yet,” Charlie said.
“Hi, Rivka,” Ben said as she came back into the kitchen.
Rivka waved and flashed a smile before turning back to her work.
