by Nadia Gordon
He gave her a searching look. Sunny thanked him. Nesto walked her out to the truck. After she got in, he closed the door for her and stood with a hand resting on the roof of the cab. She rolled down the window and he ducked his head to make eye contact. “I’ve told you plenty that I haven’t even told Mary. What about that other business you mentioned?”
“Nothing we’ve said today goes beyond you and me as far as I’m concerned. About that other business, I’ll be in touch.”
She turned the key and the truck roared to life. There was barely enough time to get home, shower, and disinter a few buckets of delectable roasted duck legs from their protective nest of fat before her guests were scheduled to arrive.
Back at home in the shower, she closed her eyes and let the water drum against her forehead. It would have been heaven to stand there for another ten minutes letting the heat unravel the tension in her neck, if it weren’t for the eight dinner guests slated to arrive in half an hour. She cut the water and stepped out, releasing a great round cloud of steam. They would feast on roasted duck legs cooked slowly until the rich, dark meat fell easily off the bone; fettuccine with Wildside’s trademark mushroom cream sauce; butternut squash soup with a big garlic crouton floating in the middle of each bowl; and a salad of arugula, Fuyu persimmons, Gorgonzola, and candied pecans—plus as much red wine as possible. If she could get everyone to drink cognac afterward, they’d really be in business. Most of the food was ready and waiting in cardboard boxes in the kitchen, thanks to owner’s privileges at Wildside, but she still needed to get the hot stuff hot and throw the salad together.
At ten minutes to eight, Sunny stood in front of her bedroom closet, pushing hangers back and forth. She chose a calf-length skirt made of velvet the color of dark chocolate and as soft and sleek as a cat. For shoes, she picked out a pair of dark brown riding boots. She pulled on a mottled moss-green sweater and had just selected small gold earrings with tiny topaz stones and a slender gold chain bracelet when the doorbell rang. Charlie Rhodes stood at the door with a wine bottle in one hand and a bouquet of white and yellow roses in the other. Elated, Sunny took the flowers and smelled them, wondering what kind of flowers they were intended to be. Were these “I find you enchanting and irresistible” flowers or “Let’s just be friends” flowers? Rivka would know.
“Come on in. You’re the first,” said Sunny. He took off his jacket and they headed for the kitchen, where Sunny hunted for a vase. The fact that he brought flowers at all was a good sign, she figured.
“I’m glad I’ve got you alone,” he said. “I was hoping we’d get a chance to talk.”
Her heart hit a pothole. “Really. What about?”
“I guess I’ll just come out with it. I’ve been sort of worried about you. This thing with Wade and Jack Beroni seems to have you all worked up. At the restaurant today you seemed sort of, well, manic.”
She winced but made a quick recovery. So much for any subtle romantic message with the roses. “Don’t worry about it, I’m fine. It was just a busy day and service was running late.” She gave him a reassuring smile laced with a fierce look she hoped would curtail any further concerns and went back to assembling dinner.
Charlie opened the bottle she handed him and he poured them each a glass of a Pinot Noir as clear and bright and rosy as a garnet.
“About my manic state. I need to ask you a favor,” she said, chiming her glass against his. “I might say something tonight that you will know is not true, but I want you to pretend that it is and go along with it. It’s very important, and not just to me. I can’t say what it’s about right now, other than it’s not nonsense or drama or insanity. I’ll explain everything tomorrow.”
He hesitated.
Sunny smoothed her velvet skirt and pushed her hair behind her ears, glancing up with a studied look of composure. She said, “I’m asking you to trust me.”
Charlie studied her. “Okay. I’m not sure what’s going on, and whatever it is, I don’t like it, but I guess I’m in.”
The doorbell rang again. “One more thing. You can’t say anything to anyone about this. No side remarks or insinuations about going along with my nonsense, okay? Tonight is not a joke.”
“You’re not exactly putting my mind at ease.”
“I know, I’m not trying to. Just bear with me for tonight.”
Rivka and Alex arrived, and right behind them, Ben and Claire Baker. The quiet kitchen turned boisterous. Rivka kept herself busy taking everyone’s coats and bags and putting them in Sunny’s bedroom. Rivka had pointed Alex out once at a party before they were dating, but this was the first time Sunny had ever seen him up close. He was tall and wide shouldered with a plain, handsome face and the shadow of a beard on his pale skin. His hands were hidden in the pockets of his cords, and he’d shoved himself against the far wall of the kitchen, looking extremely uncomfortable. These Campaglia boys weren’t much for social occasions, thought Sunny. The look of barely contained hysteria on his face was echoed on Claire’s.
Sunny wondered if Alex had discovered that the gun was missing from his room and decided that he had. It must be perplexing for him to wonder who could have broken into his house and found it. He might wonder if it was Rivka, but he would probably be afraid to ask for fear of giving himself away if it wasn’t her. It occurred to her for the first time as she turned the fires down and prepared to dress the salad that if she was wrong and Alex was actually guilty of murder, she had placed Rivka in considerable danger by asking her to keep the gun a secret. Her heart thumped, pulsing under her ears, and the lights seemed to wink. She stepped back suddenly, just catching herself before she fell, but not before she caught a damning look from Charlie out of the corner of her eye. She took a deep breath. He was right, she needed to calm down.
Monty showed up and pulled two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon out of a paper grocery sack. The first was a 1992 Caymus Special Select that made everyone say Ooh, followed by a 1986 bottle of Dunn Howell Mountain that provoked an awed hush. Sunny looked over Charlie’s shoulder at the label. It was a rare find even for someone who saw as much wine as Monty did. The Dunn operation was even smaller and more eccentric than Skord Mountain, and its wines generally sold for a good deal more money, being Cabernet Sauvignon to Skord’s less marketable Zinfandel.
“I figured we ought to celebrate tonight. Carpe diem,” said Monty.
Sunny bussed him on the cheek and handed him the wine opener. “You’re a brave and generous soul, Lenstrom. Let’s get those things open before you change your mind.”
At half past eight, the doorbell rang again and Sunny ducked out of the kitchen to open it. Gabe Campaglia stood on her doorstep smelling like aftershave and hair products. So, thought Sunny, he has a streak of vanity after all. He came in and they lingered by the door in a brief, slightly awkward silence while he took in her house.
“There is absolutely no way he could tell the difference, but do you think he would admit it?” came from the kitchen, Monty’s voice. Gabe let her take his suede jacket, which she quickly deposited in the darkened bedroom. When she came back, he followed her toward the sounds of conversation. She introduced him around, then he took up a silent post beside Alex.
There was a flurry of appreciative exclamations when Wade arrived, in some cases expressing relief that he was safely home, in others expressing joy that everyone could finally move to the table. Monty and Charlie shook his hand, and Sunny made her way over to embrace him. She could hardly believe he was really there in front of her. She rested her hands on his shoulders fondly, running her fingers over the fabric of his gray wool jacket. There was a rough spot on one shoulder where the fabric was snagged up. She smoothed the spot, and Wade slid out of the jacket. Holding the jacket in her right hand, Sunny flicked her nail over the spot again, wondering what might have caught the fabric.
“It’s an abrasion from that rifle stock of his with the crack in the bottom,” Claire said, as if reading Sunny’s mind. “There’s nothing you can
do about it, unless you want to reweave the whole shoulder. There was that night you all went out to shoot, and I noticed a snag on Monty’s sweater in the same place when he came back in. Monty’s sweaters never have snags on them.” She winked at Monty.
Sunny’s blood suddenly ran cold as she stood facing Claire in the overly warm kitchen. The dead animals in the shed at Hansen Ranch. Claire could have been the shooter. It could be Claire’s anger that lead to murder. Anger at Jack for a love that survived twenty years but never amounted to more than a secret. Frustration at having been devoted to him despite his snubbing her and his family’s disdain for Hansen Ranch. Maybe Jack had told her he was ending the affair to marry Larissa, maybe Claire had given him an ultimatum, maybe Claire blamed him and Beroni Vineyards for the ranch’s financial problems. Maybe Claire was tired of being the one who made sacrifices so they could be together. Claire’s motives were as good as or better than Ben’s.
Sunny feared that she had looked too hard at the wrong partner. Oh God, what was she trying to do at this dinner party? She thought she knew, she thought she had it almost all figured out and could squeeze out the rest by bringing everyone together. But if she’d misinterpreted all those facts as pointing to Ben, what else had she gotten wrong? She held on to the counter so the room would not start to sway. She was in it now, everyone was here. There was nothing to do but go ahead with the plan. Only now she wasn’t so sure how it would turn out.
On the surface, the evening progressed in an ordinary fashion. Each guest’s unease was not visible to the others, but Sunny knew it was not a happy gathering, and the thread of conversation was always just barely adequate to keep the party going from one topic to the next. The bottle of Dunn had been dispatched in the kitchen while their palates were pristine, and the Caymus soon met the same fate, followed quickly by a bottle of the Carneros Pinot Noir. Sunny reached across the table and refilled Charlie’s glass from another bottle of the Pinot, saying, “I can’t stop thinking about what you said about that glassy-winged sharpshooter they found over at the Maya Culpa. It just doesn’t sound right to me.”
“They found one?” Wade said.
“On Friday,” said Charlie. “A solo specimen. We went over the area thoroughly this morning, but there didn’t seem to be a local population. At least I wasn’t able to find anything. I don’t know where that little guy in the trap came from.”
“Probably somebody’s grandmother brought home a new rosebush from the garden shop,” said Wade. “They’re up to their belly buttons in sharpies down in L.A., and they’re shipping them up here with every hothouse flower. No amount of inspecting is going to catch every one.”
“We thought of that,” said Charlie, “but there’s nothing nearby that’s newer than thirty years. It was found in a mature olive grove far from the house and the winery, far from any of the ornamentals. In fact, I didn’t see much for ornamentals on the whole place. They’ve kept it pretty au naturel up there.”
Wade grunted, a sound somewhere between mere acknowledgment that something had been said and agreement with it.
“Tell him about the part where it’s the wrong kind of sharpie,” Sunny said.
Charlie explained the oddity of finding a stage-two nymph in a trap designed to catch flying and hopping insects.
“It sounds fishy to me,” said Monty.
“I started thinking after you left this afternoon,” said Sunny. “And so I gave Frank Schmidt a call.” She looked at Monty. “That’s the county ag commissioner.”
“I know who Frank Schmidt is.”
“Excuse me. Anyway, I was following up on what you said this morning, Ben. How everybody just sits around on their duffs, letting whoever shows up at the meetings decide what happens to the land. I figured I would give Frank a call and let him know my position on the matter, as the proprietor of a local business dependent on locally grown organic produce. He listened, but then he told me that they’re going to start spraying carbaryl in a broad radius around the find starting tomorrow morning even though Charlie’s team didn’t locate any more sharpies in the area. He said there’s nothing he or anyone else can do about it; the decision has been made. Apparently the ag board felt they couldn’t risk an infestation, no matter how small the chances. He said they’re getting big-time heat from Sacramento.”
“They can’t start spraying tomorrow morning. They have to hold a public hearing before they can do anything like that,” said Ben, his voice rising angrily.
Sunny threw Charlie a look. “Not this time. They have an executive order from the governor. It’s been declared an emergency situation.”
“I heard about that,” said Charlie, pouring himself another glass of wine. “They passed a bill last week that gives the state’s sharpshooter task force the right to move on a decision without a public hearing. That’s why they upgraded the glassy-winged sharpshooter to a class-one pest. Special rules apply because they consider catastrophic losses to be at stake.”
“And what exactly is a broad radius according to Frank Schmidt?” asked Ben, dropping his fork down with a clatter.
“I’m not sure. Charlie, do you know?” said Sunny.
“I don’t. I suppose I’ll find out tomorrow.”
“Do they plan on letting the property owners know about this, or are they just going to show up?” asked Ben caustically.
“He said a guy will go around ahead of the spray crew and let the occupants know what’s going on,” said Charlie.
Ben was fuming. Sunny said, “I’m as upset about this as you are, but I don’t know what we can do about it at this point. At least it won’t affect your organic status anymore. They also passed a bill saying that organic produce that gets nuked as part of an emergency effort can still be called organic.”
“They passed that law quite a while ago,” said Ben.
“That’s awful,” said Rivka. “So the organic produce I’m buying could be even more toxic than the nonorganic stuff and I won’t even know it.”
“That’s right,” said Sunny. “It’s a serious blow to the credibility of the word organic. It’s one giant step closer to the now-meaningless natural on packaging.” Sunny looked at Claire, who was nodding in agreement but didn’t seem upset. She was watching her husband’s face.
Ben was flushed with anger. “That’s not the worst of it. It’s not just that the produce won’t be organic anymore, the land won’t be. The land will be poisoned. There’ll be carbaryl in the soil, in the plants, in the water. It takes years for it to dissipate, let alone for the soil to build back the natural defenses and strike the right balance of beneficials and microorganisms. If they spray like that, the whole concept of an organic farm is over, and we can thank our friends at Beroni Vineyards for the service.” He glared at Alex and Gabe.
Alex looked at Rivka. Gabe looked at Ben. Gabe’s eyes were red and he looked as though he was fighting to stay awake. He wrestled his shoulders back. “It’s not Beroni Vineyards,” he said. “It’s all wineries. There is no cure for Pierce’s disease in grapevines. It means certain death. The glassy-winged sharpshooter vectors Pierce’s disease right into the heart of grapevines. If the sharpshooter gets established, we are out of business, and so is every other grape grower in town, until they can engineer a plant that resists it, and that could be years. The local economy would crumble. The wine industry would never grow back because all the land would be strip malls and suburbs, built over the best grape-growing land in the world.”
Gabe fell silent. Ben looked around the table in frustration, his cheeks plum red and his glare darting from one of them to the other. Eating had stopped, and the tension was unbearable. Sunny fought the urge to flee to the kitchen or at least nibble a nail. She checked Claire, then focused on Ben. The longer the silence at the table went on, the closer to exasperation he got.
Finally Ben spoke. “Charlie, you have to stop them. That sharpshooter is a phony. It was planted in that trap. I caught Jack Beroni planting one in a trap on my land last wee
k. On Wednesday night around ten o’clock. It was the same as the one you found, a stage-two nymph. He must have put one in the trap at the Maya Culpa at the same time.”
Claire stared at her plate, holding one hand at her forehead like a visor.
“That can’t be true,” said Charlie vehemently.
“It’s true. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to risk them not believing me. I couldn’t prove it. I figured there was a chance they’d spray anyway, just in case, even if I told them it was planted. I knew Beroni would deny it, of course. So I just let him get away with it. It didn’t occur to me until now that he might have planted more than one.”
“Why would he plant a sharpshooter on your land?” asked Charlie.
“To drive me out of business. He’d been trying to force me to give up on the farm and grow grapes in partnership with Beroni Vineyards. He even offered me my own boutique label. He knew that if the county sprayed my farm with carbaryl, we might as well quit organic farming. He loved to wave his money under my nose. He actually thought I could be bribed into ripping out hundred-year-old fruit and olive trees so I could grow grapes for a bunch of wine snobs in a glutted market. He thought he’d encourage the county to destroy my farm, and then come around with his wallet and take the place off my hands or force me into a partnership. He even tried to seduce Claire into selling to him.”
Claire looked mortified under the shield of her hand, and her face was tightening up. Sunny wondered if Ben’s word choice was coincidental. She also wondered how much of this Claire knew and when.
