So Far Into You (9 page)

Allan collected the cards and wrapped them in an elastic band. Allan, having been around Greg and Rina long enough to know when the shit was about to hit the fan, was first to check the clock on the wall, stretch, and mutter something about the bottling line not running all by itself. Remy would have gone then too, except Greg tipped his chin at her and said: ‘How did the cabernet look to you this morning?'

‘Fine.' Then she added, ‘Sulphur coverage wouldn't make the vines spotty?'

‘Shouldn't do,' he agreed.

Rina slapped her palm on the lunchroom table. ‘I've been in town all morning and I only just got back. I can tell you right now, those vines aren't fine.

‘Right-oh.' Greg heaved to his feet, sucked the last of his iced coffee and dumped the carton in the rubbish before he resettled his cap on his head. ‘You come too, Remy.'

Rina trailed them.

Cabernet sauvignon was the first variety planted at Lasrey in the early seventies, in the original vineyard now bisected by the gravel driveway that took tourists to cellar door. It wasn't far to walk and it wasn't long before they could see Rina was right. Something was very wrong with the vines.

Greg put a hand on the timber fence bordering the staff car park, vaulting his legs over. Remy ducked through the fence and trotted behind him across the mown grass verge into the vineyard.

‘See,' Rina said.

‘Yeah, I see.'

Instead of sitting crisp and alert, some leaves had begun to curl. There were leaves with oily brown/black spots, now spreading in irregular shapes, like a mole or freckle turned cancerous by the sun.

Greg's attention narrowed on Remy, and through the flu ache and the fog in her head she did her best to answer his rapid-fire questions.

Yes,
she'd sprayed here this morning.
Yes,
for powdery.
Yes,
she'd checked the concentrations and spray calculations against their spray charts.

‘You're sure about that?' His watery-blue eyes held hers.

‘Yes, I'm sure.'

But was she? Had she calculated the spray properly? Had she been paying attention? Her head had been so filled with Seth.

Sixty Seconds … Stand against the wall.

She hugged herself hard, and the day seemed suddenly grey and cold.

‘Where's the quad-bike now, Remy, and the spray gear? We need to check it all out.' Greg rubbed a leaf between his fingers and grimaced when he didn't like the feel.

‘I told you—' Remy began, before the flare in Greg's nostrils told her to leave out the attitude. Lasrey's vineyards were his responsibility.
She
was his responsibility too. He had every right to grill her about what she'd done to his vines.

‘Maybe you got a bad batch of copper sulphate. We can get it tested.' Greg headed back to the winery, his walk morphing into a jog.

Remy had to run to catch him. ‘I don't know what there'll be to see, I washed the tank out when I finished the last pass.'

‘Something must have got fucked up in the sprayer. It's all I can think of.'

‘You mean
she
fucked up,' Rina shouted at them from further behind. ‘Seth will hit the roof.'

Greg muttered something Remy was glad she didn't hear.

Lasrey had a full complement of sheds forming an industrial wedge at the winery's rear, separated from the polished veneer of the stone and timber façade the public saw when they visited cellar door.

The largest shed housed the tractor and the truck. Greg's work ute was in there too, plus the two quad-bikes and all the spraying gear. Chemicals and fertilisers were kept in a locked room accessed through the rear corner of the main shed. By the time Remy caught up with Greg, he was flicking through the pages of the spray diary and pages of stapled checklists Remy had signed off earlier that day.

‘You filled this out properly, yeah?' he said, without looking up.

‘I think so.'

Greg shot her a look, but it was Rina who pressed: ‘What does “think so” mean? Did you? Or didn't you?'

‘I'm sure I did.' But was she? Tick the same checklist one hundred times and you got to ticking on auto.

Greg sniffed the spray wand, checked for residue in the tank. ‘All I can smell is water.'

‘Don't ask me. My nose is so stuffed up, I can't smell a thing,' Remy said.

He snatched the key from the security board and unlocked the chemical room, snapping on the overhead lights. Remy followed him, moving further into the room, while Rina propped herself against the doorframe.

‘Here's the copper sulphate,' Remy tapped the container.

It all looked normal.

Greg's eyes narrowed as he thought it through. ‘What about adjuvant?'

‘Alkylaryl,' Remy said. Mixing adjuvants or wetting agents was a standard part of the process at Lasrey. It improved how the sprays stuck to the leaves.

‘So where's that?' Rina asked.

Remy waved her hand at the shelf, but she did it distractedly, thinking every bit as hard as Greg. What could have happened here? How had she got this wrong?

Rina moved toward where Remy pointed. ‘This?' She laid her hand on a pack.

‘That's oxfluorofen, Rina,' Greg said, like he was talking to a silly kid. ‘Total opposite of what you're looking for. That stuff's a herbicide. Weedkiller.'

‘Well I don't see anything here that says alky-whatsit,' Rina snapped back. ‘Maybe someone didn't reorder it.'

That made Greg and Remy pay more attention. By now, both of them were in the corner with Rina, peering through the shelves. Greg examined the pack. Beside it there were telltale rings in the dust on the shelf that showed it had been recently moved. They all saw it.

‘Oxfluorofen could do that to the vines, couldn't it,' Remy said, meeting Greg's unwavering gaze. ‘I mean, if …' Her voice cracked just thinking about it and she couldn't get her mouth to close.

‘My oath it could,' Greg said, rubbing at his chin like he might twist it clean off. ‘But you wouldn't have mixed the two up, Rem? I mean, that's just not a mistake you'd make. I'd bet my left nut on it.'

Normally, Remy would bet Greg's left nut too, but she'd been so thickheaded this morning. Sick with the flu, lovesick. Try as she night, she couldn't rule it out, and she honestly couldn't see any other way.

‘I'm so sorry.' She was. Desperately sorry. Cabernet was Lasrey's flagship and she might have killed the company's oldest vines. ‘I'm the only one who's been in here. I can't think of any other possible explanation. I mean … there's no other explanation? Is there?'

Rina snorted. ‘You bloody
idiot
.'

‘Rina, you're not helping,' Greg snarled back.

‘Well,
someone
has to let the executive know what's happened. Seth won't be happy if I give him
half
the damn story. He'll want to know all the details. Maybe you'd like to be the one who tells him that
your
direct report poisoned his best vines?'

‘Seth's in the air,' Remy said woodenly, cutting their argument short. ‘He's on his way to France.' Greg's brow furrowed and Rina shot her a withering look. Neither of them asked how she knew the CEO's personal movements and Remy didn't care, she was beyond worrying about hiding things or saving face. This was too huge.

‘Ailsa's at the winery. She'll want to know. One of us will have to fill Seth in when he lands. What a fucking balls-up.' Rina took off, boots churning through the gravel.

‘I'm so sorry, Greg,' Remy said. The flu came with a crushing headache, but this new guilt made her want to throw up.

‘Yeah, so am I. You didn't do it on purpose. Accidents happen, so let's see if we can fix this one up.' Greg started rifling through his pockets. Digging out his mobile phone, he dialled then spoke: ‘Hey, Ed. Yeah. Good … Hey, mate, we got a problem. My assistant sprayed oxfluorofen on the cabernet this mornin' … Yeah. Dunno. Brain-fade I guess. Yeah.'

Remy watched Greg's face for any glimmer of good news, wishing more and more that she could rewind the day and start over. Finally, after a few more
yeahs
and
yeps,
he hung up the phone.

‘Right, let's go. If the active agent hasn't sat on the leaves too long, we might come out of it okay.' He grabbed two nutrient packs from the shelves. ‘You find the powdered kelp.'

Relief must have shown on her face because Greg quickly cautioned: ‘Don't get your hopes up.'

‘I won't.' Tonight she could bawl like a baby, not now. Not while there was a chance to try to make this right.

She followed Greg from the storage room with the kelp pack under her arm. Remy locked the door and slipped the key back on its peg. From the front shed they could see Rina striding up the hill toward them, elbows punching a path through the air like an Olympic walker.

As Greg measured product into the tank, Rina steamed up to them and without drawing breath, told Remy: ‘Ailsa wants to see you.'

‘Remy's gotta drive. We're doing a double foliar feed spray,' Greg said, adding out of the corner of his mouth for Remy's ears only, ‘Mrs Lasrey can wait in line. I'm first to tear you a new arsehole.'

Remy knew Greg was making light of it, trying to make her feel better. It didn't work, she still felt like shit.

‘
I'll
drive,' Rina snapped, crossing to the security board to pick out the keys. ‘Ailsa said
now.
Given the way things are, I'd get a wriggle on if I were you. She's in the boardroom.'

Greg glanced at Rina, then at Remy. ‘Go on, Rem. At the end of the day the buck stops with me. I'm your manager. I should have been supervising you better, obviously. I'll tell them that later.'

‘It's not your fault,' she tried to assure him, but the sound of the quad-bike as Greg started the engine drowned her out. Rina climbed into the truck, reversed, and spun a turn that threatened to tear strips in the gravel before she gunned the truck after him.

As the engine noise faded, Remy trudged across the lot. It was the second time in twenty-four hours she'd had cause to enter the admin area at Lasrey, only this time it was via the back entrance and this time, there was no Seth.

***

Sally Deering, Seth's assistant, made her wait. Remy sat in the same green chairs where salespeople sweated before an appointment with Seth or Rina, or whichever decision-maker they'd come to schmooze.

Word of the morning's monumental stuff-up must have spread because the reception area had all the cheer of a funeral parlour. Even Sally, who had seen just about everything a wine business could toss at her, looked grim.

It felt like an age before Sally's phone buzzed and she picked it up, glanced across her desk at Remy and said: ‘They're ready for you.'

Remy pushed to her feet, wishing her body didn't ache so much. The adrenalin that had driven her since lunch had faded with all the sitting still. She felt sharp as a sloth.

‘Good luck, Remy.' Sally said it so low, anyone waiting in the boardroom would have needed bionic ears to hear. It wasn't a glowing endorsement of how she thought the interview might go.

Remy straightened her shoulders, knocked twice. A voice called her to come in.

Ailsa Lasrey sat on the long side of a timber table even more polished than she was. Diane Laurie, the HR manager, sat on Ailsa's right with her laptop cracked open. Both women glanced up as Remy closed the door, but only Diane's smile held any hint of warmth.

Remy had to stop herself from smoothing the creases in her khaki pants. She didn't own an iron on principle and these women wore clothes that screamed freshly pressed.

‘Take a seat,' Ailsa waved her in.

Remy pulled out a chair and folded her legs into it. She'd picked a seat right by one of the ornate table supports and it took her a couple of tries to sit. First the chair legs, then her boots kept getting stuck.

‘You know why you're here?' Ailsa said.

Remy nodded, drawing breath to launch into her version of the day's events.

Diane interrupted. ‘Before you say anything, Remy, I should let you know I'm typing this up in an incident report because we may need to get insurers involved, and I'll print it for you when we're finished and get you to sign that you're happy it's all accurate. Do you want to have anyone here with you?'

‘Do you think it's necessary?'

The HR manager shrugged. ‘It's up to you. You can ask someone to come in with you if you like.'

Remy thought about that for a second. Greg was the obvious choice, but he had about six hectares of cabernet to save from weedkiller. Perhaps Blake—

‘Blake isn't here,' Ailsa said, like she'd read her thoughts, lowering her chin to stare at Remy over her glasses. Thick, navy and black-rimmed, they were, with over-sized gold hinges that winked in the lights. With her almost white hair and eyes the colour of rain on ice, Ailsa looked like the fairy godmother in Shrek. The nasty one.

‘It's fine. I don't need anyone,' Remy said. ‘I take full responsibility for my actions today. I'm so sorry, Mrs Lasrey. I don't know what I was thinking this morning. I've done routine sprays almost every week since I started here. This is the first time anything like this has happened.'

‘Why don't you tell us in your own words what you think went wrong, and we'll go from there,' Diane said, pulling the laptop closer.

So Remy did. She kept it direct and honest and tried to make sure Greg Trimble didn't cop any blame. When she'd finished, it took a lot of typing before Diane's fingers clicked their final clack.

Remy tried not to fidget. It was warm in the boardroom and stuffy with the door closed. Floral perfume permeated the air, adding its weight to the headache Remy had been fighting all day.

Ailsa scribbled notes in a personnel file on which Remy could see her name handwritten in black marker. Eventually, Ailsa put the pen down but it was Diane who spoke first. ‘I don't like to be the one to say this, but I have to put it to you, Remy. Are you sure what happened today was really an accident?'