Enemy of the People

by Peter Eichstaedt

  Jake Henshaw was a fortyish, muscled man with closely cropped hair. He wore a black fleece vest with “SHERIFF” emblazoned in yellow block letters across the back, an automatic pistol holstered at his waist. His jeans fell on tan desert boots. “Since when are you covering homicides?” Henshaw asked.

  “People keep asking me that.”

  “And what do you say?”

  “Not much. What happened here?”

  “I’m really busy, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Dante turned to Hansen. “Cathy Hansen, this is Investigator Jake Henshaw. She’s the one who’s covering this story for the Sun. Our photographer is Nate Segura.”

  Henshaw flexed his jaw muscle and looked around the crime scene, as if worried, and back at Hansen. “You can’t quote me, okay?”

  “No problem,” she said with a smile. “Background. The sheriff’s going to have a press conference in another thirty minutes.”

  “The man who owns the winery—” Henshaw began.

  “Bernie Morrison,” Dante blurted.

  Henshaw scowled. “Apparently had some issues with the victim—”

  “Chao Ling.”

  Henshaw scowled again. “We haven’t released the names of the suspect or the victim.”

  “I just talked with the victim’s attorney,” Dante said. “Carmen Carelli. She’s inside the winery now. I also know Morrison. I interviewed him a few weeks ago.”

  Henshaw looked irritated. “The victim, Chao Ling, was chased from the winery, into the vineyard, and shot. Five times. Once in the leg, once in the head, three in the chest.”

  “What about Morrison?” Dante asked.

  Henshaw sighed. “When officers arrived, they found Morrison standing over Ling, who was still alive. Officers ordered Morrison to drop his weapon. He didn’t. Instead, he fired three rounds into Ling.”

  Henshaw watched Hansen take notes.

  “The deputies shot Morrison?” Hansen asked.

  “They had no choice,” Henshaw said.

  “Two men gunned down in a vineyard,” Dante said with a smile. “Can’t make this stuff up.” He watched Hansen finish her notes and look up.

  “Do you think it was premeditated?” she asked.

  “Hard to tell,” Henshaw said. “But, yeah.”

  “Why?” Hansen asked.

  “There was a silencer on the murder weapon,” Henshaw said.

  “What was the weapon?” she asked.

  “A .22 caliber.”

  “It’s what people use to hunt rabbits, I thought,” Dante said.

  “Pistols like the Walther are popular among a certain crowd,” Henshaw said. “They’re light and easy to use.” He tilted his head from side to side, bones crackling in his thick neck. “Sorry. Gotta go.”

  “Thanks,” Hansen said. She turned to Dante, her face sinking into a frown. “It’s my story.”

  Dante lifted his hands and waved her off. “I know. I know.”

  Chapter 3

  Three days later, the Napa County sheriff said the investigation was continuing, despite the fact both the suspect and victim were dead. No one was talking about a motive, which made Dante wonder. Two people shot dead in a vineyard and no one wants to know why?

  The Napa Valley Vintners Association was unwilling to weigh in on the deaths, which did not surprise him. Bodies riddled with bullets and lying around vineyards were not what winemakers wanted to discuss in public. Nor was it what they wanted to read about, and to comment would only provoke more questions, the kind of questions Dante intended to answer—in print.

  He had helped Hansen as much as he could, and her stories dominated the front page for the past few days. But the hard news edge of the story was gone, and Hansen was back to covering the routine stories of her beat: car accidents, burglaries, and assaults. It was time to dig a little deeper. Carmen Carelli was the best place to start. She’d sounded apprehensive on the phone, but agreed to meet him for dinner.

  Arriving early, Dante elbowed his way to the restaurant bar, ordered a glass of wine, and took a swallow while keeping an eye on the parking lot. He recognized Carmen’s Porsche when she wheeled into the parking lot. He greeted her near the door, guiding her through the noisy, upbeat crowd as they were shown to a glass-topped table on the outside patio. Whatever scent she wore was enticing. Dante reminded himself to stay focused. The pretext for this dinner was not romance, but information. His job was to get it.

  The hostess dropped two menus on the table, flashed a fake smile, and disappeared. A busboy appeared and asked if they wanted water. “Because of the drought, we only serve water on demand.”

  “Please,” Dante said, scanning the multi-page wine list. “This place has very good wines.”

  “Some are from my clients,” Carmen said.

  “Provided here, I’m sure, at a deeply discounted price,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  He pointed to one on the list. “What about this Italian Brunello? It’s quite reasonably priced.”

  “It’s a good one,” Carmen said.

  “You know it?”

  “It’s one of Ricardo’s wineries. He gave me a case for my birthday this year.”

  “Ricardo, as in Ricardo Santos?” Dante asked, lifting his eyes from the wine list.

  “Yes, of course,” she said, perusing her menu.

  In little more than a decade, Santos had become one of the major wine producers in the state. From the Santos Wine Company headquarters in the San Joaquin Valley, he lorded over tens of thousands of acres of vines and owned a handful of boutique wineries as well. But the bulk of his business was mass-produced, low-cost box wines called Santos Select. He’d once been fined for mislabeling wine, and the case put him on Carmen’s client list. Dante had wanted to talk to her about Santos the time they’d met for lunch. Now she might talk.

  “So, you’re on a first-name basis?”

  She looked up from her menu. “We have a professional relationship.”

  A waiter appeared at the table. “Good evening. My name is Brad. I’ll be your server this evening. Can I get you started with some drinks?”

  “We’ll start with a bottle of wine.”

  “Certainly. Do you know what you’d like?”

  Dante looked at Carmen. “Should we go right for the good stuff and get the Brunello favored by your good buddy, Ricardo?”

  She shook her head. “Let’s start with something lighter. He’s not my buddy, by the way. He’s my client.”

  “Okay.” Dante scanned the wine list again. “How about we start with a bottle of this Rossese Di Albenga.” He pointed to the item on the wine list.

  “Good choice.” The waiter spun and left.

  “It’s from Liguria, on the northern Italian coast,” he said, returning to Carmen.

  “You know Italian wines?” she asked.

  “I spent some time with my mother’s family in Italy. Near Spoleto, in central Italy.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “They own a winery. In Montefalco. I stayed for a season and learned the business.”

  “Italian style.”

  “I took the opportunity to travel. Northern Italy, Southern France, the Rhone Valley, Burgundy, Bordeaux, and the Loire.”

  “So you became a wine critic by drinking your way across Italy and France?”

  “I’m not a wine critic. I’m a journalist who enjoys wine. I started writing my wine column out of necessity. I try to keep it about the business, not the nonsense usually written about wine. But sometimes I stray.”

  “Like what you wrote about Morrison Creek?”

  “Yeah, well. There’s more to the story. Anyway, the column has attracted a following.”

  He thought about his conversation with Jones at the office and was about to say the column would soon end, when Car
men said, “Ricardo reads it.”

  “He does?” Dante said, curious Santos would follow a local wine column.

  “Yes. He told me so. I think you’d like him.”

  Dante straightened at the thought. “Do you think you could arrange an interview?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I suppose I could try.”

  “He’s a recluse,” Dante said.

  “He’s been burned by the press a few times,” she said. “It would be a stretch to get him to talk.”

  “All the more reason for him to come out of his shell. Set the record straight, so to speak.”

  She shook her head. “He’s a busy man. He’s got affiliated offices in Rome, Madrid, and Mexico City.”

  “He’s probably got Mexican business partners, maybe the Italian mafia, too.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Anyone with money in Mexico is involved with the drug cartels. Same in Italy.”

  Her face flushed in annoyance. She drew a breath and exhaled. “It’s a myth and you know it.”

  “Do I? The drug cartels make billions of dollars a year. What do they do with the money?”

  “How would I know?” she said.

  “Besides buying more drugs and paying their men to hunt and kill rival cartels, some of the money is washed through legitimate businesses,” he said. “So why not wine?”

  She shook her head in disgust.

  “So where did Santos get all the money to make himself a leading player in the California wine business in such a short time?” he asked.

  “Not all of his wineries are in the US. Some are in Italy, some in Spain. He’s also in the olive oil business. He has olive presses in Spain and Italy, along with his wineries. Mexico, as you may or may not know, is starting to produce some very good wines now.”

  “Good-bye, tequila.”

  Carmen shook her head in annoyance. “The point is, Santos is an international businessman. Any number of international banks would loan him money. How does that make him a criminal?”

  “He’s rumored to be linked to the Aragon cartel.”

  “Carlos Aragon and his brother Miguel have businesses in the US. So what? It’s not a crime.”

  Her response piqued Dante’s curiosity.

  The waiter brought their bottle of wine, showed it to them with a flourish, and pulled the cork. As he poured, Dante wondered why Carmen so readily defended Santos. Putting the thought aside, he lifted his glass for a toast. “Centi anni!”

  “May you live a hundred years as well.”

  He rolled the wine around his mouth before swallowing. “Good. Very good.” He looked at the glass thoughtfully. “Hints of frutti di bosco, but still dry.”

  She sipped. “I like it.” She set the glass down.

  After they ordered, he took another drink and leaned back. “Thanks for meeting with me.”

  “It’s mostly because I’m afraid of what you might write about my clients.”

  “The live ones or the dead ones?”

  “This conversation has to be off the record.”

  “What are you so worried about?”

  Carmen wrinkled her nose, as if the question smelled badly. “What do you think? I’m taking a risk just meeting with you here.”

  “A risk? I don’t think of myself as a risk.”

  “Meeting with a journalist? Are you serious?”

  Dante dismissed the comment with a shake of his head. “I did a little research at the courthouse. You sued Morrison on behalf of Ling. Tried to take the winery from Morrison. What prompted the suit?”

  She sipped from her wine, slowly putting her glass on the table. “Before I answer, I want to ask you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “You said there was more to the review you wrote about Morrison. What was it?”

  He winced, reluctant to go into it.

  She shifted in her seat. “Quid pro quo.”

  He sighed and returned her gaze. “You drive a hard bargain.”

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “There’s a rehab facility north of here, near Calistoga,” he said.

  “I’m familiar with it.”

  “My late wife, Nicole, was driving there one night to check herself in. She never made it.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “An accident?”

  He drank from his wine, the memories of that agonizing night roiling in his head.

  Carmen looked sympathetic, yet curious.

  Dante cleared his throat, shifted in his chair, and continued. “It was about a year ago. She’d been visiting friends, or so I thought. She’d been drinking. It was raining. The car left the road at high speed.” He drew a halting breath. “She was found by a driver who saw the car lights in the field, the car upside down. She was brought to the emergency room here in Santa Rosa.”

  “That’s awful,” Carmen said.

  The bright glow of the red block-letter “Emergency” sign on the hospital wall, the glare of the blue-green fluorescent light in the ER, and the confusion and helplessness he’d felt that night were as strong as if it had just happened. It was 1 a.m. by the time they’d tracked him down and called. The emergency room was quiet. Too quiet. He’d asked to see Nicole immediately. Instead of showing him to Nicole, the nurse told him to wait. A doctor would talk to him.

  “She died on the operating table,” Dante said, his throat tight as he struggled to tamp down his roiling emotions. “Internal injuries, they said.”

  Carmen’s eyes opened wide. “I’m so sorry.”

  “The emergency room doctor told me she was pregnant.”

  Dante’s words hung in the air.

  “You didn’t know?”

  He shook his head. “She never told me. That’s why she was driving to the rehab facility, I think. She wanted to clean herself up to have the baby.” He looked across the restaurant and back at Carmen. “I found her phone when I retrieved her effects from the wreck.” He cleared his throat again. “It was filled with text messages.”

  She frowned, struggling to understand, and quietly asked, “An affair?”

  His mind lost in the memories, Dante didn’t answer.

  “Did you know who?”

  Dante swallowed hard. He could barely form the words. “Bernie Morrison.”

  Carmen sat back and looked at her wine glass, pondering the implications.

  “He was texting her things like he couldn’t wait until he held her in his arms again. It was such a bunch of bullshit.” Dante swirled the wine in his glass and took another swallow, exhaling slowly. “Morrison had used her to worm his way into Napa wine society.”

  “How?”

  “Nicole and her first husband once owned the Shady Oaks winery.”

  “I know the place,” Carmen said. “The wine’s pretty good. Small batches, high quality.”

  “Nicole’s husband was stashing money in off-shore accounts rather than paying creditors.”

  Carmen shook her head in disgust.

  “The banks eventually called in their loans, and when he couldn’t pay, they threatened to foreclose on the winery. So he ran off to Mexico with one of the girls who worked there. The winery went on the market as part of the divorce settlement.”

  “It happens more than people like to admit,” she said.

  “So Bernie Morrison shows up, and with the help of some investors, he bought it.”

  “That’s how they met?”

  “That’s how we met, too. I wrote a story about the sale. It was my first as the new wine editor.”

  “And you married her?”

  “Nicole was waiting for the sale to become final. We had lunch. One thing led to another.”

  “Wait. I don’t get it. So she was involved with Morrison as well?”

  He shook his head. �
�Not initially. They knew each other because he was the managing partner for the new owners. She was very sociable and did a lot of volunteer work, like for the Napa Valley Arts Council. It hosts wine tastings for fundraisers. The wineries donate their wines, raffle off their best stuff—you know the drill.”

  “Yes. Good community relations,” Carmen said. “My family has donated millions to the arts.”

  “Morrison was a charmer, you know, and professed a profound interest in the arts and that kind of thing.”

  Carmen smiled, recalling the man’s good looks. “Tanned, thick white mane, trimmed goatee. Contagious smile. But still....”

  “I blame myself. It’s a hazard of the news business. Long hours, low pay. Nicole got lonely.”

  “So why do you do it?”

  “I’ve been asking myself that a lot lately.” He glanced at his wine and back at Carmen.

  “So you and Morrison had some history,” she said. “Interesting.”

  Dante sipped his wine. “After Nicole died, I lost track of Morrison until he resurfaced with his Morrison Creek Winery.”

  She narrowed her eyes again. “So you trashed Morrison’s wines in your column out of revenge?”

  Dante drew a deep breath. Yeah, he thought, and it had felt good, damned good. If revenge is a dish best served cold, this one had been delicious. But Nicole was dead. Had been for a while now and nothing would ever bring her back. Dante shook his head and tried to push down the feelings of regret. “The wine deserved to be trashed. Comparing them to Santos’s box wines was accurate. Morrison’s wines are very similar. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same wine. Putting it in a bottle with a nice label does not make it good.”

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