Tangled Vines

by Janet Dailey

  “My God, did she-“

  “Right now she’s only trying to link us with Dougherty. I want you to start putting pressure on Fougere’s widow. And get her the hell away from Katherine. I don’t trust her. I don’t trust either of them.” He slammed the phone down and stalked to the wall of windows, staring out.

  All the way back to the estate, Kelly ran the scene in her mind over and over again, trying to make sense of the obscure statements – accusations, really – that Gil Rutledge had made. Finally she started with the first and analyzed it.

  I know the truth about the legend of Madam. What was the legend of Katherine Rutledge? That she had carried forth the dream she had shared with her late husband to make wines in California that were equal to the finest from France. That she had replanted all her vineyards with cuttings of wine grapes at a time when others in the valley were tearing theirs up to replant with either hard-skinned shipping grapes or walnut and prune trees. That she had kept the winery going during Prohibition by making sacramental and medicinal wines. That she had kept the memory of her husband alive. That basically she had fulfilled her lifelong dream and the wines of Rutledge Estate were considered by many experts to be the equal of the best from Bordeaux.

  That was the legend, but Gil’s statement implied that was not the truth. All of it or part of it? It had to be part of it. Too much of it was documented fact: the vineyards had been replanted; many experts had rated the wines of Rutledge Estate in print; she had devoted her life to the winery; she had sold sacramental and medicinal wines during Prohibition. Where was the lie?

  Confused, Kelly moved on to the next. I know the secrets she has kept locked in the wine library all these years. He had to be referring to the wine library in the cellar that housed a collection of all the wines Rutledge Estate had produced over the years. Secret implied something was hidden in there; secrets implied there was more than one. All these years implied they had been placed there quite some time ago. But what could be hidden there? She had been in the wine library. It was rack after rack of bottles stacked nearly to the ceiling. Nothing of any size could be concealed there. Could it?

  The last one was a little simpler. I know about the accident that was no accident. Kelly knew of only two accidents, assuming Gil had meant the word in the context she was taking it. Katherine’s husband, Clayton Rutledge, had been killed in a motoring accident in France, and Kelly’s grandfather Evan Dougherty had died in a freak accident at the winery. If something wasn’t an accident, then it was deliberate. If a death was caused deliberately, that made it murder. Whose? Committed by whom? Katherine?

  Why was she driving herself crazy trying to figure it out? This had nothing to do with her father or the baron’s death. Did it? It certainly had to do with Katherine, and Katherine was the one who had seen Kelly’s father bending over the body of Baron Fougere.

  Avoiding the gated main entrance to the wine estate, Kelly took the back road and drove straight to the winery The wine library was the only lead she had. She parked in the shade of the cinnamon-barked madronas. There was no sign of Sam or his Jeep.

  The receptionist was away from her desk when Kelly went inside the office complex. She hesitated only a moment, then went behind the desk to the slim metal cupboard mounted on the wall. Hung on hooks inside it were duplicate sets of all the keys to the various locks on the estate. Kelly located the key to the wine library, removed it, and left without being seen.

  With the key in hand, Kelly circled the winery building to the aging cellars. She entered the shadowed cool of the caves and paused, removing her sunglasses and pushing her scarf back. There was a silence, so absolute it was almost eerie. There were no voices, no sounds of workers, nothing. Just the lights strung along the walls of the hand-hewn tunnels, the mammoth shapes of the aging barrels and the racks of kegs lined along the walls.

  The silence magnified the sound of her footsteps as Kelly made her way to the grated door of black iron, emblazoned with a scrolled R. Beyond its lattice of bars was the wine library, layer after layer of bottles lying on their sides.

  Kelly inserted the key and turned it. A pull, and the door swung silently open on its well-oiled hinges. She walked in, closing it behind her, and paused, making a visual search of the long and narrow underground room. Bottles, hundreds and hundreds of them, lined the opposite wall, from floor to the curve of the arched ceiling. There was a small wooden table and chair, racks with empty slots for future vintages, a sturdy-looking stepladder; otherwise the room was bare.

  A walk around it confirmed the walls were solid. There were no concealed side rooms, no obvious hiding places. Kelly scanned, the bottles again and sighed. If anything was hidden in here, it had to be small. Had some sort of documents or papers been secreted away here among the bottles? But that would be risky, dangerous. There were probably half a dozen workers, winemakers and their assistants, who would have reason to be in here, not to mention the visitors who were commonly brought here to view the collection. Any of them could accidentally discover the papers. And if the papers were somehow incriminating, why hadn’t they been burned?

  Why hide anything here at all? This room was strictly for storing the collection of wines the estate had bottled. If anything else were found among the bottles, it would arouse instant suspicion.

  But something was hidden here. Kelly started working on the premise that if she wanted to hide something in this room, where would she put it? Not among the bottles. People were always pulling ones out to look at the labels. Inside a bottle? Yes.

  “Locked away all these years,” Kelly murmured, repeating Gil’s phrase. “How many years? Thirty years? Forty? Fifty?”

  She tried to remember her dates Katherine had married Clayton Rutledge sometime near the end of World War One, and Gil had left Rutledge Estate in the early sixties. A span of roughly forty years.

  Kelly shifted to the section of the collection that contained wines bottled at the end of the first war. She began pulling them out, checking to make sure they were filled with wine. When she reached the decade of the twenties, the era of Prohibition, she began to slow her pace as a nagging suspicion started to form.

  Abruptly she skipped ahead to the latter part of the twenties, after Clayton had died. She pulled out a bottle and studied it. It looked the same as all the rest. But was it? There was only one way to find out.

  Kelly took it over to the table and removed the cork. She smelled the contents and wrinkled her nose at the strong vinegary odor that advised her the wine had turned. She tried another bottle, with the same results. Uncertain now, she turned back to the rack. What if her suspicions were wrong? She didn’t dare open every bottle trying to find that one.

  One more. She would try just one more.

  The leather strap dug into her shoulder, the weight of the two bottles Kelly had tucked inside her purse pulling it down. She held it close to her side to keep the bottles from clinking together as she walked into the house. The housekeeper was at the other end of the entry hall, moving noiselessly away from the terrace doom.

  “Mrs. Vargas,” Kelly called to her. “Where’s Katherine?”

  The woman stopped. “Madam is having lunch on the terrace.

  “Is Natalie with her?”

  “Madame Fougere had a previous engagement.”

  “Is Sam there?” Kelly walked quickly forward.

  “Yes, miss. Will you be joining them?”

  “Yes, but not for lunch. Will you bring some wineglasses, please?”

  “Of course.”

  Sam stood up when Kelly walked onto the terrace. “I was beginning to wonder what happened to you.” He pulled out the chair next to his.

  “I told you I’d be back.” She sat down, careful to swing her purse onto her lap.

  “You had an enjoyable outing, I hope.” Katherine smiled pleasantly and slipped a bite of poached salmon on her fork.

 
“Actually I had a very busy morning.”

  “What did you do?” Sam’s glance was idly curious.

  With impeccable timing, the housekeeper walked onto the terrace with the wineglasses Kelly had requested. She saw the questioning frown on Katherine’s face. “Miss Douglas asked me to bring these.”

  “I thought we should have wine for lunch,” Kelly explained and took the wine bottles from her purse. “I stopped at the cellars before I came to the house and picked up these.” Kelly set them on the table, making sure the labels faced Katherine.

  Katherine blanched slightly when she saw them. “Your choice is extremely poor. Take them away, Mrs. Vargas.”

  “No.” Her fingers circled the neck of one bottle as Kelly firmly but quietly challenged, “I think we should try this wine. Will you open one, Sam?”

  “I have no intention of trying it and there certainly is no reason to open that bottle,” Katherine stated sharply. “I know the wines of Rutledge Estate as well as I know my own children. This particular vintage went out years ago.”

  Sam looked at the label. “Katherine is right, Kelly. This was a blended red wine, meant to be drunk when it was young. Like a Beaujolais, it has a very short life. It will be vinegar by now.”

  “Let’s open it and see. What’s the harm?” Kelly reasoned. “If it isn’t any good, we won’t drink it.”

  “This is pointless,” Katherine insisted, holding herself almost rigid.

  “You’re wrong, Katherine. There is a point.” Kelly kept her gaze leveled at Katherine. “You know it and I know it.”

  Sam looked from one to the other. “What is this all about?”

  “Do you want to tell him or shall I?” Kelly asked and received a small, trembling shake of the head from Katherine. “It’s all about Prohibition, Sam, and a term paper I did years ago in high school about the history of the wine industry in Napa Valley. It was so good the local newspaper published it. To write the paper, I interviewed people who had lived through those years. They told me a lot of stories about bootleggers and the methods they used, everything from wild night rides to shipping jugs of wine in coffins. The wineries involved also had to find ways to account to treasury agents for the loss of inventory. Sometimes the owner would claim a hose broke and a hundred gallons of wine were spilled, or that a fire destroyed wine casks, and sometimes...sometimes barrels were filled with colored water so they would sound full when they were tapped by federal agents. When you open that bottle of wine, Sam, you’ll find it’s filled with colored water.”

  “Is that true, Katherine?” His look was narrow and sharp.

  “Yes.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. She was pate, her eyes were a watery blue, bright with pain. Somehow she managed to keep her head erect, but she looked old, very old. “How -” Her voice broke.

  “How did I find out?” Kelly completed the question. “I talked to your son this morning. I know about the so-called accident, too.”

  “It was an accident.” A veined hand came up, slender fingers clenched to form a fist. “You must believe that. Evan’s death was a horrible, tragic accident.”

  Evan. Her grandfather. Kelly looked down at her own hands. “Maybe you should tell me your version of what happened?”

  “It was so long ago. So very long ago.” Katherine shook her head faintly. “I never knew our wine was being illegally sold...not until that night.”

  Her voice grew flat and brittle, the way she looked. “Evan Dougherty was the estate manager. He was in charge of everything – the accounts, the hiring, the purchases, the sales, everything. When Clayton was alive, Evan reported to him. Later, to me.” She lowered her hand to her lap. “Was a photograph ever taken of him?”

  “I never saw one.”

  “Evan was a handsome man, in an arrogant, almost brutish way, all muscle and cocky charm, and intelligence. Evan was a very clever man. When Prohibition came, it must have been quite easy for him to take wine from the estate and sell it on the black market, then cover his tracks with false entries, false records. Even now, I have no idea if he began his illicit operations before Clayton and I went to France, or during the more than two years we were there. When I returned, with Girard Broussard and his grandson, Claude, I cared only about the new vineyards. I took little interest in the arguments between Evan and Monsieur Broussard. It was easier to tell Claude’s grandfather that he must let Evan handle things as he always had. I thought it was best. Claude’s grandfather spoke almost no English. How could he deal with the inspectors, the forms? Why should he when Evan could?”

  A sigh broke from her, full of regret. “I never questioned what he did at the winery. Perhaps I wondered at a few things, the amount of grapes we bought from other growers, but I preferred to avoid his company. He had made suggestive remarks in the past, and what his remarks didn’t suggest, his eyes did. Evan Dougherty was that type of man. When my sons’ nanny became pregnant and I learned he was the father, I was outraged and insisted that he marry her. He did, but it hardly changed his philandering ways. I think he saw every woman as a conquest to be made.” Her voice trailed off into nothing, her gaze fixed on some distant point in the past.

  Sam set the wine bottle on the table. “What happened that night, Katherine?” In that moment a subtle shift occurred. The confrontation was no longer between Kelly and Katherine. It was between Sam and Katherine.

  “That night?” She swung a blank look in his direction, then stared at him for several seconds, recognizing that Sam would settle for nothing less than the whole truth. “It was late. I went for a walk. I felt lost, lonely that night, and worried. There had always been money. I never had to watch what I spent before. But after the crash, I had so very little left. The first year, it was difficult. I resented it, you see. I tried to deny it, but that night, I think I finally realized I would be dependent on the small income the estate made.”

  A cloud passed in front of the sun, throwing its shadow over the terrace. The breeze picked up and tugged at the scarf loosely wound around Kelly’s neck.

  “When I saw Claude hurrying home through the darkness, I knew I wanted company, even that of a young boy. I called to him, asked him why he was out so late. He told me he had been walking, but he seemed troubled, unusually quiet. I thought perhaps something had happened at school and I asked him what was wrong. He was reluctant to tell me at first, then he admitted he had seen Evan loading wine from the cellars into his truck. He was very confused by that. I remember he said, ‘Should Monsieur Dougherty be doing that?’ I tried to think of a reason Evan might load wine at night when there were no workers about to help. But none made sense. I told Claude to go home to his grandfather and not to worry, that I would go and talk to Evan. I finally found him in the cellars. I heard him whistling before I actually saw him. He was carrying wine jugs....”

  “Where are you going with those?” Katherine halted squarely in the center of the aisle, flanked by racked kegs.

  “Well, well, well.” His mouth curved in that lazy, insinuating smile of his while his bold, bottle green eyes made their sweep of her. She felt her skin heat despite the cool of the underground cave. “If it isn’t the widow herself, and all alone, too. You finally got lonely and came looking for company, did you?”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “The cellars are pretty chilly. You should be wearing something warmer than that thin blouse.” He set the jugs on the floor. “You’d better put on my jacket before you catch your death.”

  He shrugged out of it, the action stretching the plaid material of his shirt until Katherine could make out the definition of his smooth muscles. She hadn’t meant to notice that.

  “I have no need for your jacket.” Katherine deliberately put a frost in her voice and her eyes.

  But it had no effect on him as Evan advanced toward her. “Of course you do.” Katherine stood her ground, trapped by the feeling that if sh
e backed up, she would be relinquishing her authority over him. “Come on, now. We’ll just slip it around your shoulders and warm you up.”

  When he reached out to draw the jacket around her, the urge was strong to retreat out of his reach. She controlled it and remained impassive while he draped it around her and drew the collar together at her throat. The jacket held the heat from his body and the musky male scent of him. She felt smothered by it.

  “There. Isn’t that better?” Holding the jacket closed, he tapped the point of her chin with his thumb, then stroked it lightly.

  Katherine kept her expression icy cold. “I want to know what you were planning to do with those jugs and the wine in your truck.” She refused to be distracted by him, or unnerved.

  “Sell it, of course.” His slow smile was cocky as his gaze moved lazily over her face.

  “To whom?”

  “A man I know in San Francisco.” Letting go of the jacket, he trailed a finger along her cheek. “I always knew your skin would be smooth to the touch. All over, I’ll bet.”

  This time she slapped his hand away. “What man in San Francisco?”

  He pulled a smile. “You know, I can’t remember his name.”

  “You are selling it illegally. You are taking my wine and selling it on the black market. I should have realized that.” She was furious.

  “Now, now, it’s nothing for you to be getting yourself upset about,” he chided in a crooning voice. “You take too much on yourself. You work too hard. It’s a way to get through the loneliness, I know. The nights must be worse with no man to hold you in his arms. You must be aching.”

  His hands moved to her shoulders. “Stop it.” Katherine angrily twisted sideways away from them. “You have involved me in a bootlegging operation. Do you realize what will happen if you are caught?”

  “Don’t you be worrying your pretty head about that. It isn’t going to happen. Not after all this time.” He shifted around to keep facing her head-on.

  “All this time?” The anger came first, then the fear of the consequences his activities could bring down on her. Katherine backed up, not from him, but from the thought of what could happen. “Do you realize that if they catch you, my permit to make wine will be revoked, they will confiscate the winery, I will lose everything.”