Dead in the Dregs_ A Babe Stern Mystery - By Peter Lewis Page 0,13

destemmer. The floor was littered with the grapes they’d tossed at the sorting table. Someone had been hosing it down, and I could see boot prints and tire tracks from the forklift and tractor. Colin Norton spotted me but made no acknowledgment. He was arguing with a tan-uniformed Napa County sheriff’s deputy while three Chicanos huddled off to the side, their wrists cuffed together with plastic bands. Two of them looked sheepish and terrified, while one just stood there stoically, looking directly at me. It was the same man Norton had been conversing with when Danny and I dropped by the winery.

“I’ve got a crop to bring in,” Norton kept repeating.

The deputy stood impassive, arms folded, oblivious to the appeal. Disdain was all that was visible on his face. Clearly, the cops had ordered Norton to shut down, and he wasn’t happy about it.

Brenneke approached me, readying the tape to set a second perimeter, and nodded for me to step back.

“Get lost, Babe. The chief’s having a shit hemorrhage. You working tonight?” he added under his breath.

“No, sorry. My son’s with me.”

“I’ll have to catch up with you later,” he said, and stretched the tape across the floor.

I turned and wandered back through the official vehicles and decided to check out the office. Carla Fehr was hunkered down on a bench, her shoulders shaking, head in her hands, hair covering her face. The staccato click and static of walkie-talkies reached us all the way from the winery, scratching the air.

She raised her head, hearing me come in. “One of the pumps went out . . . The giant oak thing . . . The hose was clogged,” she muttered. “Colin climbed up and found Richard floating inside. The smell coming off the tank . . . It’s awful.” She lowered her face into her hands again. “Awful,” she repeated dully.

It hadn’t been brett I’d smelled the day before coming off the foudre. It was the first bouquet of death emanating from the bloated corpse of Richard Wilson.

I needed to get back to Danny, a visceral, primitive urge to protect him rising up in the pit of my stomach. But first I needed to call Janie. I pulled over on the side of the road just outside St. Helena. I sat there a minute, looking out to a vista of flatland vineyard that extended as far as the eye could see to a line of hills, periwinkle blue in the distance. An immaculate morning in the wine country.

I hit speed dial. Janie picked up after a couple of rings.

“Danny? Is that you, sweetheart?”

“No, it’s me. Janie . . .” I didn’t know how to tell her. “The police found Richard this morning.”

“Where is he, the stupid jerk? Is he in trouble?”

“Janie . . .”

“What is it? A DUI? I hope they locked him up. Richard Wilson, in the clink for drunk driving! Perfect.”

“Richard’s dead, Janie.”

“Oh, no,” she moaned. “No, no, no.” She finally grew silent.

“You okay?”

“Should I . . . ?” I knew what she was asking.

“Stay put. There’s nothing you can do here. They found him in a vat at Norton. A wooden fermentation tank.” I heard her gasp. “The cops are in charge now. I’ll call you when I learn a little more.”

“This is unbelievable. Missing is one thing . . . but dead . . . in a vat. This isn’t some kind of joke?”

“Janie, please. I would never . . .”

“No, of course not. I’m sorry.”

I wasn’t going to tell her I’d smelled him myself the day before, an unwelcome touch of macabre humor.

“What about Danny?” She paused. “Babe, I can’t do this without you . . .”

That voice.

“Pull yourself together. I know it’s a shock. I’ll do the best I can. Trust me.”

I couldn’t believe I’d said it, and then it was too late to take it back.

There’s a certain kind of woman a man keeps coming back to, no matter what the injury, no matter how severe the damage. And a certain kind of man who keeps going back. How many times can you have your heart broken and still take a sucker punch to the solar plexus?

The human capacity for pain is almost infinite. Almost.

Janie’s mother had died the previous spring, and Janie decided to move her father, Bob, already in the grip of Alzheimer’s, to San Francisco. Her cottage on Telegraph Hill was too small for the three of them, and it would have been impossible for Janie to care for him anyway.