Dead in the Dregs (13 page)

“Fuck,” I said. “What the fuck is going on?”

I just stood there, looking at the floor of the trailer, the fragments of glass at my feet like the pieces of a life I no longer knew how to put back together.

I went to the utility closet and got a broom and dustpan.

I’d stepped across a line I hadn’t even seen and been declared fair game. Fear cramped my stomach as I bent to sweep the pieces into the dustpan. My hands were shaking as I dumped the glass into the waste basket.

It had never occurred to me that I might fail, that I might be afraid, that I might be next.

Calm down, focus
, I told myself. But then an older, more destructive command crept into my consciousness, one I couldn’t quite formulate.

Escape
, it whispered.

In the medicine cabinet, I found an expired prescription of Xanax that dated to my breakup with Janie, and popped two, then a third just in case the pills had lost their potency. Even so, it took more than an hour to fall asleep, to escape.

 

I didn’t surface
from my drug-induced oblivion until late morning. I thought I’d better call Brenneke. I wasn’t sure what else to do.
When you’re in trouble, call the cops. Maybe Jensen had given him a Sunday off to play catch with his boys, though, under the circumstances, I doubted it.

Megan Brenneke, Russ’s impossibly perfect wife, answered the phone.

“Hey, Megan. Babe Stern. Is the old man around?”

“Right here. Feet on the coffee table. But I should warn you: It’s second quarter, and the 49ers are down by ten. Honey!” she hollered over the TV set. “Babe Stern’s on the line.”

I heard Brenneke moan. “Tell him I’m taking a nap.”

“Honey!” Megan said, knowing that I’d heard him.

“Fine, fine, fuck it,” he said, taking the phone. “Yeah? Whadda
you
want? I’ve got half a day with my family.”

“Then turn off the game, cocksucker, and play with your kids.”

“Fuck yourself. Sorry, honey. Turn down the tube, will you? Okay, what’s so important?”

“Someone tried to kill me last night,” I said.

“Sure they did,” he said after a moment.

“I’d like to swing by, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay, but the game stays on. And pick up a pizza and a six-pack. I need to eat something before I go back to work.”

 

The Brennekes lived
in a small, tidy house on Tainter Street two minutes from the police station. The front yard was taken over by a jungle gym and swing set, and soccer balls, baseballs, and footballs lay strewn across the lawn as if a referee had just called time-out in some bizarre, mixed-genre sport. Megan answered the door in a jogging suit, her hair pulled back tightly from her face in a ponytail.

“I sent the boys off to play with friends. He’s in a foul mood, just so you know.”

Brenneke moved his feet a foot to his right on the coffee table to make room for the pizza. I pulled two bottles of Fat Tire from the carrier, cracked one, and handed it to Russ, who hadn’t moved his eyes from the game.

“Argh!” he cried. “I can’t believe it! How can you miss a pass like
that? Where’s the line? What have you got?” he asked, lifting the lid of the box.

“Italian sausage, pine nuts, and black olives.”

“The case, shithead. What the hell happened last night?”

“Somebody shot an arrow through the back window of my truck. And broke a window of the trailer.”

“An arrow?” Brenneke looked at me with disbelief.

“No shit,” I said. “I have it outside, if you’d like to see the evidence.”

“Weird,” he said.

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“I’ll tell Jensen. And Ciofreddi, too. He needs to know.” He turned back to the game. “You okay?” he said after a minute.

“I’m fine. A little freaked out.”

“Where were you last night?” he asked.

“Having dinner with a source, a big mouth in more ways than one. These wine writers, there’s little love lost.”

“I thought you told Ciofreddi you were leaving this to us,” he said through a mouthful of pizza.

“I’d already set it up.” Brenneke just shook his head. “Look, neither of us thinks Fornes could have done this,” I said.

“I never said that.”

“And Norton has no motive. But Eric Feldman, his main competition, had a serious axe to grind. His answering machine says he’s gone to Europe.”

“And?”

“Wilson fired Feldman a few years ago. They got into an argument at some winery in France. It was bitter. But what made it worse is that Wilson was shtuping his wife on the side. She ended up leaving Feldman and went to work for Wilson in New York.”

“All very interesting, very elaborate.” Brenneke sat up just as the 49ers’ quarterback got dumped for a ten-yard loss. “No protection,” he said, taking a bite of pizza. “Anything else?”

“You need to talk with the French kid.”

“Pitot.”

“Wilson got into some big squabble with the French a few years
ago. He thought they were giving him different wine in France than they were shipping to the States—first-rate juice over there, plonk for export. And pocketing the difference.”

“How would you know?” Brenneke asked, looking at me.

“Well, you open a bottle here labeled as the wine you tasted in France, and you can tell the difference.”

“No, idiot, I understand that. How would you know if Pitot had a motive?”

“You need to check his background, that’s all. See if his family is the same one Wilson accused of defrauding the wine-drinking public. It shouldn’t be hard.”

“Who has time for this shit?” he said.

We watched the game together in silence until the clock ran out on the third quarter. The 49ers were still behind. Brenneke muted the set to spare us the beer commercials.

“So, what about the autopsy?” I asked finally.

“They found marks. He was hoisted with a forklift.”

“That should narrow it down.”

“You’re really a fuckin’ genius,” Brenneke said. “Fornes just makes the most sense,” he continued. “It has to be someone with access to the winery, for one thing.”

“What’s his motive?”

“Hatred and jealousy, pure and simple. Needed to vent his rage at the injustice of life. Happens all the time.”

“The guy’s legal,” I protested. “He’s got a green card.”

“Could be a forgery. INS has it. They’re giving it the once-over. And we found blood and hair on his rubber boots. And it was his knife—you know, the kind they use to harvest grapes—that was used to cut Wilson’s hand off. It’ll be a few days until the DNA results come back, but Jensen thinks it’s a slam dunk.”

I said nothing. It still made no sense to me.

Brenneke sat wrapped in a funk. His team was losing.
Both teams
, I thought. I rose to go.

“Go get me the arrow,” he said. “We’ll look into it. I’ll show it to Ciofreddi. We’ll follow up, I promise.”

He went back to his game. As I reached for the doorknob, I heard Brenneke shout, “Hit ’im, you cocksucker!”

When I got back to the trailer, I called Janie.

“There’s something I need to tell you. You have to promise not to get upset.” She said nothing. “Someone tried to take me out last night.”

“You had a
date
? It’s about time! Why would that upset me?” She sounded relieved, even amused.

“No, not that kind of ‘take me out.’ Somebody tried to kill me. They shot an arrow through the window of my truck. And smashed a window at the trailer.”

“Jesus, Babe! This is crazy.” She was silent, then said, “I’m sorry I ever dragged you into this.”

“Tell me about the estate,” I said after a moment.

“What are you talking about?”

“A guy I had dinner with last night suggested that you were fighting with Richard over money.”

“How about some sympathy for the loss of my mother and brother?”

“Relax. I’m not suggesting you killed him for the inheritance.”

“There is no inheritance. Not yet. My father’s still alive, if you don’t mind.”

“So, what was it over? Real estate?”

“Do you have any idea how much Richard makes, made, a year?”

“Not a clue.”

“A couple million. Licensing, appearances, royalties. The newsletter’s the least of it.”

“You sound jealous.”

“Oh, please.”

I decided to change the subject yet again.

“My friend Biddy Teukes would appear to have made a death threat against your brother years ago.”

“You’re kidding,” she said.

“Richard never told you about it?”

“Never.”

“Well, he destroyed Biddy in print. Twice.”

“Do you think he’s the one who shot at you? What are you going to do?”

“I’m not going to do anything. The police know about it. I’m sure they’re going to haul him in for questioning.”

“Look,” Janie said, “Forget it. This is ridiculous and really terrifying. Let the police do their work.”

“I am. Is Danny around? I’d love to speak with him. By the way, would you mind if I pick him up later today? I’d like to get a visit in before he starts school. I sort of blew the last one.”

“‘Sort of’?” she said. “And do you really think that’s a good idea, under the circumstances? I mean, if someone
is
trying to hurt you.”

“It’ll be fine, Janie. I’m fine. Nothing’s going to happen. I’ll protect him with my life.”

And what if you lose your life, asshole
? I thought.
Then what
?

 

She relented, and
I drove into the city to pick him up. It was tough to get a conversation going with him on the way back to Napa.

“Dad, did you find out what happened to Uncle Rich?” Danny finally said.

“I haven’t, sorry to say.”

“It would be really awesome if you could solve it.”

Leave it to your kid to cut to the bone.

“I thought we might fly some kites,” I said, unwilling to own up to my failure as a detective. “Do something different. I picked up some stuff on my way to get you.” I didn’t want him worrying about Richard or his mother or his ailing grandfather. He needed a break. For that matter, so did I.

“Hunh,” he said. “Okay. That sounds neat.”

We spent that night cutting ripstop nylon, painting dragons’ faces, and fastening sticks to the fabric. We cooked together, and after dinner I picked up where we’d left off reading
The Sword in the Stone.
At the rate we were going, we might finish
The Once and Future King
by the time he turned twenty-one.

The next morning I took him to a field not far from the trailer. The kites were less than perfect, but they flew, and we ran and laughed and launched each other’s until mine got strung up in a pine tree at the edge of the field, its face gazing down at us fiendishly. In the afternoon I drove him back to the city. We parked, and Danny led me down a flight of steps to their bungalow. Janie answered the door, threw me a cool look, and hugged our son.

“You want to come in?” she said. Her invitation lacked conviction. I took my cue and embraced Danny, enfolding him for a little too long.

I drove home, feeling more bereft than I could ever have imagined. I was like a kite myself, cut loose from its string, sailing out of sight, as if no one were holding on.

By Labor Day
the harvest was pretty much done. Families relaxed and picnicked, the wine was laid down in wood, and life went on. Kids started school; the tourist season let up but not too much. The valley took on its autumnal robe, the leaves yellowing to mustard and deep scarlet. The well-heeled clientele that could afford to wait until the masses had taken off thronged the verandas of Meadowood and Domaine Chandon and the Auberge du Soleil. By early October the evenings had grown as chill as the case.

Occasionally Russ Brenneke would wander into Pancho’s, but he never took a stool. He and Yablonski, the Asian-looking corporal, would hunker down in a booth and keep to themselves. The Wilson case was, technically speaking, an “open investigation,” and they continued to try to pin it on Fornes. He suffered for the unhappy coincidence of proximity and a string of damning physical evidence. They had his blood-spattered boots, but anybody could have slipped them on. All the workers’ boots stood in a neat row in the employee changing room. Likewise, his gloves. But the fact of his pruning knife could not so easily be swept away. No one else’s prints were on it.

But I knew, and was waiting for Ciofreddi to concede, that the Mexican’s sole possible motive was flimsy at best. It simply made no sense. It turned out that his green card was bona fide even though
it looked counterfeit, having been put through a washing machine inadvertently, and that the night of the murder he had left early to celebrate his daughter’s birthday. A veritable village of Chicanos testified that he never left her side, though fewer cared to risk deportation by agreeing to testify on his behalf.

In any event, Francisco Fornes had resumed his responsibilities at Norton and could afford, with the fruit in, to keep a low profile until the pruning began. Our fall was his summer.

They’d questioned Matson repeatedly, but his alibi remained tight. He bounced back and forth between the two wineries that time of year and had spent the night at Chateau Hauberg, too exhausted to go home, just as Daniel Hauberg had said.

Ciofreddi remained unconvinced that Biddy hadn’t finally resolved to pay Wilson back for the reviews, but that could hardly be proved in the face of Biddy’s own alibi. Even Mulligan said that he’d come to Pancho’s after getting off work and hadn’t left until late.

And, just as Ciofreddi had told me, Jean Pitot had a sister married to an American winemaker. They lived in Sonoma County, and Jean had ridden his motorcycle over for a visit, his sister and brother-in-law confirming his story.