by Ellen Crosby
“Is it going to rain?” I asked as he drove down Bridgeway and we left Sausalito, now nearly invisible in the fog, behind. San Francisco could have been swallowed up by the Pacific overnight; there was no trace of it.
“Yup,” he said. “In November. Don’t worry, in a few hours it will burn off like it does every day and the weather will be sunny, clear, and California perfect.”
“Always?”
He gave me a slant-eyed look. “Unless there’s a wildfire somewhere.”
“That sounds scary.”
“It is.”
We drove north following the curve of San Pablo Bay and took Highway 121 toward Sonoma. After a while, Quinn turned east, which eventually brought us to the main north-south highway through the Napa Valley.
“We’ll take this up to Calistoga,” Quinn said. “Highway 29 is the main drag. You’ll see all the legendary places like Martini, Mondavi, Inglenook, Beaulieu—the first-generation wineries that really got us started, put us on the map.”
“Great.” I smiled and willed myself to stop thinking about whether he was sending me another coded message that he wasn’t coming back to Virginia when he talked about “us.”
If Quinn noticed that I seemed subdued, he didn’t let on and kept going with his cheerful travelogue.
“When we get up near Calistoga, we’ll cut across the mountains and drop down into Sonoma Valley near Santa Rosa. There’s a place I want to show you. It’s the long way, but I want you to see Napa,” he said. “After that we’ll double back to Brooke’s winery. It’s on the Silverado Trail, just below Calistoga. A bunch of terrific wineries but the Trail doesn’t get the high tourist traffic 29 does.”
“Sounds like a lot of driving.”
“Not really. The entire Napa Valley is only thirty-five miles long and about four miles wide, so it’s not that big,” he said. “Bigger than Sonoma Valley, though.”
“Is this the famous rivalry between Napa and Sonoma surfacing?”
He grinned. “Sonoma’s jealous of Napa. That’s the rivalry.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
A truck hauling two tankers with white and red wineglasses painted on them passed us on the other side of the road. Wherever I looked there were acres of vines as far as I could see bounded by the rugged, deeply folded Mayacamas Mountains to my left and the less steep Vaca Range on my right. As we drove through the town of Napa and continued through Yountville, Rutherford, St. Helena, heading north, the storied vineyards flashed by as Quinn promised—a who’s who of California winemaking royalty.
Eighties tunes blared on the radio, the music Quinn grew up with. The Police, “Every Breath You Take.” I leaned back against the seat, listening to him sing in his warbly baritone and watching the mountains grow grander and more imposing.
Quinn’s surprise was a pilgrimage to the oldest vineyard in Sonoma Valley, a historic site. Gianni Bellini had been a major force in the first wave of Italian immigrants who settled here, along with Louis M. Martini and Cesare Mondavi. Three generations of Bellinis owned Gianni’s far-flung holdings, which included land next to the Russian River, an estate near Mount St. Helena in Napa Valley, and his pride and joy: this vineyard on the slopes of the Mayacamas in Sonoma County. A decade ago Gianni’s grandchildren, who lived and worked in San Francisco, Paris, and Hong Kong, sold it all to Pépé’s friend Robert Sanábria.
Quinn seemed to know the place well, driving past the sign indicating that this was private property as though it were meant for real trespassers and not us. The paved road wound around the side of a mountain and cut through immaculately terraced acres of vines before turning to dirt and gravel. Quinn stopped and put the top up on the Porsche to protect against the swirling red dust that coated the car until it turned rust colored. When the road ran out, he parked on a grassy hilltop overlooking the valley. The Sonoma Mountains bracketed the vast, sweeping view of overlapping vine-covered hills and crisscrossing mountains, which grew lighter as they receded and faded into the sky.
We stood next to each other without touching on the crest of that hill with only the sound of the whistling wind behind us and the chirping of birds somewhere in the trees.
“Quite a view, isn’t it?” he said finally. “Can’t you just imagine Gianni getting off the boat from Italy a hundred and fifty years ago and seeing this place, standing right here? Dreaming about the promise of what this land could be?”
I nodded and the knot in my stomach tightened. That he loved it here was clear, this land with its big skies, fertile valleys, and rugged mountains. That he belonged here was becoming even clearer. It was the reason he’d brought me to this place: to show me, so he wouldn’t have to tell me.
“It’s magnificent,” I said.
“I knew you’d fall in love with it.”
My heart felt like he’d attached a stone to it. “Yes.”
“There’s one more stop,” he said. “Something else I want you to see.”
We took the corkscrew road down the mountain until he made a sharp left onto another road that led to an abandoned-looking field-stone building set in a clearing surrounded by woods.
“Gianni’s original winery,” he said.
Quinn helped me climb down steep steps past a weed-filled garden. Above the arched stone lintel, the year 1886 had been carved into a piece of rose-colored granite.
“Should we be doing this?” I asked.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Sanábria’s vineyard manager is a good buddy of mine. I come here a lot.”
He lifted a heavy wooden latch and pushed open the door, flipping on the lights. Inside, the old winery looked bigger than it had from the outside. A few bare bulbs glowed like small moons among the crossbeams, casting murky shadows on the wide plank floor. Someone had attached rows of white Christmas lights to the exposed studs along the walls.
In the dim light, the sepia-tinted room smelled of history and ghost barrels of fermenting wine. For a moment I almost heard voices laughing and shouting and cursing in Italian, a few notes of Verdi sung with gusto. Quinn leaned against a wooden pillar in the middle of the barn, hands in his jeans pockets, and watched me.
“What do you think?” His voice echoed off the rafters.
“I think it’s fantastic,” I said.
He smiled. “Me, too.”
“I wonder what it was like to make wine back then, before everything was mechanized. Maybe they didn’t even have electricity or refrigeration when they built this place.”
He looked up at the ceiling. “There’s another floor above us that was probably used for crushing and fermentation. They would have been able to take advantage of gravity to drain the wine off the skins into settling tanks down here. That huge door you saw on the upper level was possibly the way they got rid of the pumice. Just shoveled it out to the ground and carted it off.”
I pointed to the Christmas lights. “Someone still uses this place.”
“Tastings for special clients. My winemaker friend got married here. Stuff like that. Eventually they’d like to get it on the National Register of Historic Places.”
“It would be wonderful to get married here. I’ll bet it was really romantic.”
It slipped out, an easy response to his comment about his friend’s wedding. But Quinn’s reaction—stunned silence—was like a curtain slamming down between us. He realized it, just as I did.
“Yeah, they had a nice ceremony. Real pretty.” His voice was flat, deadpan.
“Oh, come on, Quinn. It was just a simple remark. I wasn’t implying anything.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Then why are you acting like I yelled ‘fire’ in a crowded room, and you’re looking for the nearest exit?”
“Now you’re the one reading into things.”
“I’m not.”
It ended right there in the old winery, the magic of the past two days. We were like guests who overstayed their welcome at a party, forgetting to leave while eve
ryone was having a good time. A gust of wind blew through the open doorway, skittering a puddle of dry leaves across the floor. Quinn roused himself from his post.
“We should get going,” he said. “What time is Brooke expecting us?”
“When we get there,” I said. “Mick told me she was pretty laid-back about it. She gave him her cell number and said I should call before I wanted to come. She’d be there.”
“Then let’s grab lunch in Calistoga,” he said. “You can call her from there.”
We barely spoke on the drive back to Napa. But when he turned off Petrified Forest Road onto 29, I spotted a sign that said ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON STATE PARK, 9 MILES.
“What’s that?”
“Stevenson spent time near Calistoga back in the late 1800s,” he said. “I thought you knew the story. The park is on the site of an abandoned mine where he camped out one summer. Spent his honeymoon there, with a married woman he’d fallen in love with, after she got divorced, of course. He wrote a book about it. The Silverado Squatters. Talked about the Napa wine he drank, calling it ‘bottled poetry.’ You know that quote.”
“I didn’t realize this was the place,” I said. “And I’d forgotten it was his honeymoon.”
He gave me another look like I’d just lighted the fuse to a stick of dynamite.
“Maybe we should change the subject. Maybe I should call Brooke.” I got out my phone and thumbed through the contacts.
He pulled into a parking space on the main street of Calistoga in front of a restaurant called Café Sarafornia. “You did tell her I’m coming, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t tell her anything. I haven’t talked to her yet. Mick made the arrangements. I told you that.”
“So she has no clue?”
“No, she doesn’t. Why, is it going to be a problem? She might not sell me the wine if you’re involved?”
I shouldn’t have baited him like that, but he asked for it. He got out of the car and slammed the door.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Don’t slam the door like that. And if you want to go with me, fine. If you don’t, I’ll get a cab and go myself.”
I picked up my cane as he opened my door.
“This isn’t the big city, sweetheart. You don’t just step out into the street and wait for a taxi to pull over.” His voice was curt.
“Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out, just like I always do,” I said. “If you’re going to walk out on me.”
I didn’t say “again,” but I might as well have done.
“That was low,” he said. “And if you don’t want me to come along, it’s no skin off my nose.”
“You know, I don’t care what you do anymore. You don’t want to commit to this, either, suit yourself.”
“What ‘either’?”
“You know damn well what ‘either.’ I’m talking about everything. Us. The vineyard. Virginia. All of it.” By now I was practically shouting at him.
An elderly couple passing by swiveled their heads and gave me reproachful looks like I’d been talking in the middle of the church sermon. I lowered my voice. “I’m done asking, okay? Do whatever you want, but just make up your damn mind and let me get on with my life.”
“What the—?”
“I’m calling Brooke.” I punched the button to my phone. “And telling her I’ll be there and maybe I’ll have someone else with me, or not.”
He clenched his jaw and I knew he was biting back something that would only throw more gasoline on the fire.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll come. But don’t blame me if this blows up when she sees me and shows us the door.”
“I thought she had a mad crush on you.”
He shot a look at me and something dark simmered behind his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, finally. “She did.”
Brooke Hennessey’s vineyard was easy to spot from the main road, even without the hand-painted sign. On either side of the gated entrance a pair of Don Juan rosebushes bloomed profusely, their espaliered masses of velvety red flowers brilliant against a white brick wall. Quinn turned down a drive lined with silvery-green olive trees that ended in a small, new-looking parking lot. A fresh coat of white paint gleamed on a post-and-board fence separating the parking lot from an orchard of apple and peach trees.
We hadn’t said more than ten words to each other during and after lunch, but Quinn could have warned me about the winery. It was hidden around a bend at the bottom of a hill, masked by a pathway lined with wrought-iron arches graced by pastel climbing roses twining through them. The building looked like a miniature castle that had been plucked from old Europe, or a fairy tale. The mottled stone façade with its mossy crenellated parapet, multiple turrets, and two gargoyles leering at us from weathered corbels startled me so much that I stopped walking and stared at it.
“A change from your classic California mission architecture, huh?” he said.
If we were going to get through this meeting, we at least needed to be speaking to each other even though the lunchtime tension still hung in the air between us, thick as fog.
“You’ve been here before?” I was polite, but we had clearly drawn boundary lines.
“Nope. I’ve heard about it. Everybody around here knows it. Built by an eccentric guy with a trust fund and a taste for the slightly weird and offbeat. I think his family owned railroads in Canada. He blew through all his money before he ever finished the main house—that place is a real doozy. Kind of Gaudí meets Disney. The stories went that it had doors on the upper levels that opened to absolutely nothing and staircases that ended in midair since the workers just stopped construction from one day to the next,” he said. “For years it was an abandoned ruin that kids used as a place to get high or have sex. Then about ten years ago someone from the Central Coast bought the property and planted vines. They must have sold to Fargo, who, in turn, sold to Brooke.”
“What happened to the house with the doors and stairs to nowhere? Was it ever finished?”
He shrugged and held the door. “I guess we’ll find out when you ask for the nickel tour, won’t we?”
I walked past him and said coolly over my shoulder, “Yes, I guess we will.”
Brooke Hennessey looked up from doing paperwork at a bar on the other side of the room when she heard us come in. A shaft of light from an open leaded glass window lit her profile so that she looked like the medieval princess who inhabited the castle—heavy brows, dark long-lashed eyes, exquisite cheekbones, an aquiline nose, a serious mouth.
“Can I help you—?”
Her gaze shifted from me to Quinn and her hand flew to her throat.
Allen Cantor hadn’t been kidding about Brooke being a knockout. She was tall and slender, dressed in well-fitted black shorts that showed off long, tanned legs and a white T-shirt with a deep V-neck that hugged willowy curves. For a moment I could have sworn she was the younger sister of Quinn’s beautiful ex-wife, Nicole.
I heard Quinn breathe “whew” next to me as Brooke flew across the room and threw herself in his arms.
“Quinn! Where have you been? Oh, my God, it’s been ages. I’ve missed you so much.”
Quinn’s arms went around her like he was afraid she was going to break. So much for worrying about his presence screwing up this deal. Finally, he disentangled himself and introduced me.
Brooke blinked as she looked from Quinn to me, taking stock of my cane.
“You’re the one who called just now,” she said. “Lucie Montgomery. You’re from Virginia.” She turned to Quinn. “That’s where you went when you left. You two know each other?”
“I’ve been the winemaker at Lucie’s vineyard for the past few years,” he said.
Brooke’s mouth fell open and, for a second, her guard came down and I saw the old hurt in her eyes, how painful his departure must have been for her.
“Why didn’t you call me?” Her voice held a quiet note of reproach. “I had no idea you were coming. How long are you going to be in California?”
I wondered how he planned to answer that.
“It’s kind of complicated.” He looked uncomfortable. “Hey, Brookie, do you think it would be possible to taste that Cab?”
She smiled at the affectionate use of the nickname, though the abruptness of the request seemed to take her aback.
“Sure, no problem. It’s downstairs in the barrel room, of course. Or, as I like to call it, the dungeon.” Her eyes flickered to my cane. “There’s no elevator, only stairs. Is that, I mean—?”
“I can handle stairs. And dungeons.”
“If you’re sure.”
It almost sounded like she wished I’d said I couldn’t join them.
We’d reversed roles, Quinn and I, good cop, bad cop. Brooke was so captivated by him, so glad to see him again, that he probably could get a tour of her underwear drawer, if he’d asked. I had my doubts what she’d say if I inquired about Teddy Fargo’s off-limits-to-the-public gardens. Quinn was going to have to finesse this for us.
The wine was good—very good—just as Charles had promised. Neither Quinn nor I said anything, but it couldn’t have been Brooke’s. Teddy Fargo—Theo Graf—had made it. I wondered why it hadn’t crossed my mind before now.
It didn’t take us long to figure out the blend we wanted. Brooke’s eyes darted between the two of us and I caught the tiny flare of surprise as she realized how well we knew each other, how easily we slipped into a private, coded way of communicating that had been honed over the past four years.
After the paperwork was done, Quinn asked for a tour of the rest of the vineyard.
“I was hoping you’d ask.” She flashed a flirty smile at him.
Her bright red four-seater all-terrain vehicle was out by the crush pad. I got in back before anyone could say anything, so Quinn climbed in the passenger seat next to Brooke. She started the engine and gave us an overview of her land, much of which was woods stretching up the steep slopes of the hills behind the winery. The Gaudí-style castle, still unfinished, sat at the end of a road that branched off behind the orchard. Her home was a small stone cottage that would have been intended for a groundskeeper in grander days.
The vines—she had only six acres, planted in Cab, Zinfandel, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc—were terraced on stepped fields that surrounded the winery on three sides. Her vineyard was small and compact, but as Allen Cantor had said, that’s how she wanted it. I kept silent while she and Quinn talked about her trellising system, what she was doing for canopy management, her hopes for this year’s harvest. She was tight for start-up money, which was obvious; otherwise she wouldn’t have been selling her wine.
