“And when is the right time?”
“Well, there are several answers to that question,” he said. “But for me, the right time will be when we can get approval from the CCC. Without that, the project isn’t going anywhere.”
“And how do you get to that point? Do you think the day will come when the Coastal Commission will willingly approve your plan?”
He smiled. “Willingly? No, they will never willingly approve it. But there might come a time when they agree to our project in return for our doing something they want. That’s the strategic part.”
“Is that realistic?”
He nodded. “About twenty years ago, we wanted to build a seawall along the frontage of the 18th hole,” he said. “The entire fairway was in danger of being washed away. Every time there was a big storm, the waves came over the rocks and flooded the fairway. We lost the green once or twice. So we found some engineers who said they could build artificial walls made from blown concrete that would repel the waves, even in most storms. Great, right?”
I nodded.
“But of course, that was introducing all kinds of artificial stuff on the waterfront. Which is completely against the very foundational ideas of the CCC, which exists to protect and preserve Nature on the California coastline. So, what to do? We had a need, they had a coastline to protect, so, after some discussions that went on for years, we arrived at an agreement.”
“You had to give something up,” I said.
“Yes we did,” Strauss nodded. “We gave up an entire golf course that we had planned to build. Deep-sixed it completely. They gave us our seawall. Life went on.”
“So what do you have to bargain with for the condo project?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know,” he said. “Something will come up. It usually does. Or maybe we can convince them to see the light.”
I thought about that for a minute.
“That sounds like payola,” I said.
“You ready to go?” Strauss stood up to leave. “Business isn’t about right and wrong, Hacker. It’s about getting what you want for as little cost as possible.”
The next morning, the hubbub at the golf course got louder. All the pros had arrived, joined up with their celebrity partners and the practice rounds were taking place at all three golf courses on the Peninsula.
Sharky and I messed around until lunchtime and then set off up Carmel Valley Road once again. But this time, instead of branching off into the high country where the Ranch at Redwoods sat, we kept straight on, eventually reaching an area of low hills spreading up from the banks of the Carmel River. The hills were mostly treeless, save for the occasional copse here and there, and covered in brown, waving grasses. And when we pulled into the drive of the Radiata Vineyard, we found a hundred or so acres of grape vines planted on the hillsides.
In February, the plants were still leafless, and the vines had all been cropped back against the wire guides strung between wooden posts. They were mulched with round river rocks and some kind of narrow hosing fed steady streams of water, or fertilizer or a combination of both to the roots of each plant in the rows. Growing grapes is supposed to be Nature’s work, but out here near Silicon Valley, they leave nothing to Nature’s chance, but use technology to deliver the proper molecules to the proper root at the proper time.
We parked outside the vineyard’s tasting room, which was housed in a dramatic lean-to-like building that was all windows and granite ledges on the front, looking back down the valley towards the distant sea. Inside, the slate floor, granite counters and rough-sawn wood siding created a rustic look. Several displays showed off the various vintages made by Radiata, and, behind the tasting bar, rows of crystal glasses hung from a wrought-iron fixture that dangled from thick chains affixed to the high ceiling.
“My theory,” Sharky said as we stood in the lobby looking around at all this architectural extravagance, “Is that the quality of the wine is in exactly opposite relation to the fanciness of the place where it’s made.”
“This place is pretty fancy,” I said.
“Agreed,” he said. “I’ll bet the wine sucks.”
We got in line behind a half dozen other wine tourists and eventually made our way to the registration desk.
“Good afternoon, gents,” said a friendly young woman behind the desk. “Are you interested in the tour of the vineyards, the bottling operations, or are you just here for the tasting experience?”
“Oh, we’re always up for a tasting experience,” I said. “But we were also wondering if Cassie Conway was here today.”
“She sure is,” the young woman said. “I think she’s doing the vineyard tour right now. We had a bus come in from Sacramento. She should be back in about thirty minutes.”
“Well, we’ll just taste some wine until then,” I said.
I paid the money and we sidled over to the tasting bar, behind which three employees, two young men and a woman, were dispensing small dollops of the Radiata varieties, along with tasting notes.
One of the young men came over, put down two wine glasses and dribbled out half an inch of a purplish red.
“This is our Radiata Shiraz,” he intoned, sounding bored like he had to repeat the same words a thousand times a day. “It was one of the first grapes planted here at Radiata Vineyard when we opened fifteen years ago. The grapes were originally thought to have been cultivated in the ancient Persian capital of Shiraz in Iran and brought to France by the Phoenician mariners around 600 BC. But modern genetic testing has demonstrated that the grape, also known as Syrah, can actually be traced to the northern Rhone area of France at least four thousand years ago.”
Sharky and I tried some. Sharky did the whole swish and spit bit, swirling his tiny sip around in his mouth like it was mouthwash for a ten seconds or so, and then spitting it out into a waste pitcher our helpful tasting guide placed on the counter. I just sipped and swallowed. I’m a simple kind of guy. It tasted like wine. Red wine.
“Nice peppery finish,” Sharky said.
“Yes, that’s the Shiraz variety’s claim to fame,” our tasting guide said. “Most people mention notes of coffee, chocolate and black pepper.”
“What do you get, Hack?” he asked.
“Wine,” I said. “Red wine. Chewy.”
“I think your notes are out of tune,” Sharky said.
Tasty Boy poured us some cabernet and something called tempranillo, which he said was a Spanish grape. “It comes from a region in Spain with a climate much like our own,” he said. “Arid, temperate, chalky, sandy soil, some marine influence. I think you’ll like it.”
I actually did. It was a deep purple wine, smelled fruity and it tasted like purple, fruity wine. I told Sharky what I thought.
“You are probably the world’s worst oenophile,” he said.
“I’m number one!” I said.
A fairly large crowd of people began filing in. At the head of the group was the woman Sharky and I had seen with Mike Nelson up at Redwood the day before. Dressed in slacks and a polo shirt featuring the logo of the vineyard, she was speaking in a loud, outdoor voice and gesticulating like a flight attendant explaining where the exit rows are located.
“Okay, people,” she said, “Please take a position along this counter. Our wine guides will serve your samples and answer any questions you might have. When you’re done, don’t forget to visit our wine and gift shop, so you can take home any of our fine wines to enjoy with your friends and family.”
Her charges obeyed her orders and she turned away, looking somewhat relieved. I went up to her.
“Cassie?” I said.
She looked at me blankly.
“I was wondering if you had time to answer a couple of questions for my friend and me.”
She peeked at the watch on her wrist, frowned, but nodded.
“I’ve got another group in ten minutes,” she said. “But shoot.”
“Did you know Charlie Sykes?” I asked.
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p; “Or Mike Nelson?” Sharky had come up next to me.
Her eyes went from me to Sharky and back again, and her face paled. One of her hands came up to her throat and began fiddling with the charm on her necklace dangling there.
“Oh my God,” she said, almost to herself. “You are the guys who went to see Mike the other day.”
“Yup,” I said. “We are.”
“What do you want?” she said. “Why can’t you just leave us alone?”
I looked around the room. There was a small patio off to one side of the building, with some plastic chairs and tables.
“Maybe we should go outside,” I said, nodding at the patio. “We can talk privately there.”
She nodded and led the way. Outside, the midday sun felt good on our backs as we all sat around a clear-topped table.
“So we know that Charlie and Mike were besties up at Stanford,” I started. “How did you come to know them?”
She looked at us, studying me first, then looking at Sharky.
“You aren’t cops, are you?” she said. It was a statement, not a question.
“No, ma’am,” Sharky said. “We’re investigating a letter someone sent to Pebble Beach. We think it might have been Mike Nelson.”
She shook her head sadly.
“I told those guys it was a big mistake,” she said. “I told them it would backfire.”
“Maybe you should start at the beginning,” I suggested. She did.
She had met, and briefly dated, Charlie Sykes at Stanford. They were friends first, she said, and although she had been interested in taking things further, Sykes had demurred, telling her he needed to concentrate on his academics and his golf. But it was all very friendly and not awkward, so they continued hanging out. And since Mike Nelson was Charlie’s best friend, he became part of the circle of friends. Which meant that Cassie grew fond of Mike, too, and he returned the feelings. Pretty soon, they had a nice little threesome going.
“Not a sexual thing, really,” she said to us. “There was one night when we all got pretty hammered and high, and we all fell asleep on the same bed. There might have been a little drunken groping that night, but, again, it was all cool.”
After graduation, the three of them found work on the Monterey Peninsula: Charley rode his family connections into the job at Pebble, Mike landed a job at the Ranch at Redwoods, and Cassie began working at Radiata, planning to move into marketing and promotions after serving her time as a tour guide.
Cassie moved into Mike’s trailer up in the hills, and Charley was a frequent visitor. Like most twenty-somethings, they partied together, went to concerts, ski weekends in the winter, hiked in the mountains some … the usual work-hard, play-hard lifestyle of people their age. Life was good.
“Did Charley have any girlfriends?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Nope. He told us he was waiting for what he called ‘the big score’ before he even thought about settling down,” she said. “Charley was goal oriented. He knew what he wanted and he was going to get it. He wouldn’t let anything else get in his way.”
“What was the big score?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t think he knew. He just believed that something big would come along and he wanted to be ready to cash in when it did.”
So Cassie, at least, was not surprised when Charley came out to their trailer toward the end of last year and asked them to help him write a letter. He told them he had learned about something that was going on at the Pebble Beach Company, and that what he had learned could easily result in making him lots of money.
“He found his Big Score,” I said.
Cassie nodded.
“What was it?”
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t tell us the details,” she said. “He said he wanted to protect us, keep us out of trouble. We helped him come up with a fake name. Mike has a cousin in Idaho named Newell, so we used that.”
“How did Charley expect to score a lot of money by pretending to be Udall’s long-lost son” Sharky asked.
Cassie looked at us blankly.
“What are you talking about?” she said. “What long-lost son? That’s not what the letter was about.”
Sharky and I looked at each other.
“What was the letter about?” I asked.
“Mike and I never saw the actual letter,” she said. “Charley wrote it. But he told us he was going to tell them he knew what was going on and would tell the authorities what was going on unless …”
“Unless someone paid him to keep quiet,” I said.
“Yeah, that was basically it,” she said. “I told him he was crazy and that he could get into serious trouble. But he thought he could pull it off. He said he had all the information he needed. He said it was a slam dunk.”
“And then he went over the cliff,” I said. “Not the kind of slam dunk he was thinking about, was it?”
Her eyes filled and she looked away.
“He told us he was going to collect the money,” she said. “That was the night he died.”
“Do you think he killed himself?”
She shook her head vigorously, but could not speak. A few tears ran down her cheek.
“After he died, did you say anything?”
“No,” she said in a gasp. “I told Mike we had to keep this quiet. Either we’d get in trouble with someone for knowing about Charley’s plan, or someone would think we were somehow involved. And …”
“And you could be in danger yourselves,” I finished for her.
“Probably a good call,” Sharky said.
“Are you going to tell on us?” Cassie’s voice wavered. “Is Mike going to get in trouble?”
“I don’t know,” I said. Because I didn’t know. “If someone pushed Charley Sykes over the cliff, that’s homicide. I think we’ve got to tell the police what you just told us.”
“Can’t you just leave Mike and me out of it? Tell them to find the guy Charley wrote his letter to.”
“But you don’t know who that is,” I pointed out.
“Oh, yeah,” she said.
I took out my wallet and fished out a business card.
“Why don’t you have another little talk with Mike,” I said. “Maybe you could help him try and remember if he ever heard the name of the guy who got the letter. Anything would help. How Charley met the guy. When and where? Did they meet in person, or on the phone? Or did he send an email or a text? Anything like that could help us track the guy down. If we get him, we don’t need you.”
“I will,” she promised, and flashed us a weak smile. “I’ll try.”
She got up and left. Her next tour group had arrived. Sharky and I sat there in the bright sun.
“Strauss showed me a copy of the letter,” I said. “It said nothing about blackmail. It was all about being a long-lost heir to Udall and that he wanted his share.”
“Do you think Cassie was lying to us?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t. Do you?”
“Didn’t feel like it,” he said. “We gotta tell Johnny Levin what we know,” he said. “It’s material evidence of a possible crime.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But do we have to tell him today? If Cassie can squeeze some information out of Mikey, we might be able to shed a little light on what really went down.”
“Johnny would say we should tell him right now,” he said. “But I don’t think waiting a day or two is gonna thwart justice all that much.”
“Right,” I said. “We’re not thwarting justice, we’re just letting it simmer for a bit.”
“And like Oliver Wendell Holmes used to say, justice simmered is justice …”
“Made more delicious,” I said.
The AT&T Pro-Am officially began at the crack of dawn on Thursday, but Sharky and I decided to ignore it until around noon. Then he drove us down 17 Mile Drive to the course at Spyglass Hill, one of the three courses utilized in the t
ournament, along with Pebble and one of the courses at the Monterey Country Club.
Sharky told me that he’d been invited to watch the golf from the comfort of the balcony outside the offices of the Northern California Golf Association, which perch above the 9th and 18th greens on the course.
“Open bar, good eats, indoor toilets,” he said succinctly.
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
It was a cloudy day, damp and chilly, with the wind coming in strong off the cold Pacific. Little bands of mist blew in with a scattering of rain, draping the trees in smoky clouds that hung, drifted and were blown away again. Very atmospheric, especially out at Spyglass Hill, which even on a nice day can feel otherworldly. Most of the holes are built beneath a cathedral of tall pines along a ridge above the ocean. But the first hole, a long par-five, drops out of the cathedral into an open, treeless plain where the rocky sea is visible just across 17 Mile Drive, and you can often hear the seals barking away on the rocks where they gather just offshore. Down there, the fairways and greens are bordered by thick, impenetrable stands of ice plant and sedge, and the ocean breeze is always a factor. Soon, the course climbs back up into the forest and I’ve never played Spyglass without having a herd of deer materialize suddenly from some dark thicket, prance around the fairway, and run off into some other part of the woods. Part of the magic of the place.
I rode with Sharky since he had all the required parking passes. Gotta love a guy with resources. He pulled into a lot right behind the NCGA offices and we made our way inside. Sharky was busy greeting everyone, shaking hands and exchanging hugs. That happens almost everywhere Sharky goes, so one gets used to it.
Eventually, we made our way out to the redwood deck which, as advertised, overlooked both finishing holes of the nines. White jacketed crew were busy setting up a full bar on one end of the deck, and chafing dishes for the luncheon on the other. Tables and chairs were scattered everywhere.
Sharky brought me a beer. “This is the way to watch golf,” he said.
“If that’s what you call it,” I said, and motioned down to the ninth green, where one of the amateurs in the foursome, a country musician of whose work I was unfamiliar, was blading shots back and forth across the green, from bunker to bunker until his professional partner told him to pick the goddam thing up and get out of the way.
An Open Case of Death Page 15
