Women of Wine Country
Murder & Mayhem
T Wells Brown
TITLE WOMEN OF WINE COUNTRY – MURDER & MAYHEM
Copyright © 2019 by T Wells Brown.
All right reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner what so ever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
For information contact :
Women of Wine Country
PO Box 132
Woodbridge Ca 95258
http://www.womenofwinecountry.com
Publisher : Women of Wine Country
Book and Cover design by Women of Wine Country
Author Photo : Casey Evans Photography
Editors : Peggy Hamilton and Mary T Ward
Book Formating : Women of Wine Country
First Edition : August 2019
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the Love of My Life, your love and support allows me to be a fearless woman.
If we only have twenty years left together - it isn’t enough time to tell
the world all the ways you make me a better human.
I will always love you, never doubt it.
To my mother, who didn’t live long enough to see her only daughter’s dream come true.
Mom, if you can see me, I hope I’ve made you proud.
P.S. Say hi to Grandma for me!
The Women of Wine Country Series continues!
Check out the First and Second Books;
Murder & Mayhem
Lawyer & Liar
Watch for these titles releasing soon;
Beauty & Betrayal
Grief & Greed
Family & Fear
Boards & Bombs
Martini’s & Malice
Rescue & Redemption
Death & Deceit
Want to stay current on all of the Women of Wine shenanigans?
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Join us on Facebook: Women of Wine Country group
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Follow the author on Facebook for updates on new releases and the new series T Wells Brown is working on.
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Women of Wine Country Podcast
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www.womenofwinecountry.com
Acknowledgements
First and Foremost, to my husband Donald, who teared up the first time I finally allowed him to read my work… and announced I was a writer, and the real push to publish began. That moment will forever be one of my all-time favorites.
To my beloved son Brandon, who always supports everything I do. You are the best partner I have ever had. It’s been a long road but you never lost faith in me … even when I lost faith in myself. To my sweet son Richard, my DIL Merissa and my grandson Bryant; thank you for always supporting me.
To my sweet little ginger Divas who always love to hear my stories.
To my editors; Peggy and Mary, who agreed to edit my book even though all they do - all day long, is edit other people’s work.
To Maria, who is my biggest cheerleader and confidant, who takes care of my home and family so I have time to write. To Katie who was the first one to encourage me to write before anyone else. To Samantha, who takes care of the business that pays the bills, and keeps the lights on.
To my beta readers; I appreciate and love you all - to my two f avorites, Aida and Kelly, thank you so much for taking time for my book and all of the wonderful feedback.
Casey Evans Photography is my hero.
To my Women of Wine Country tribe - you hold me up when I am low. You all encouraged me when I felt down. The level of your excitement of this book …almost matches mine. I won’t ever forget your support.
Come join my tribe of wine guzzling bad-asses who give tirelessly to community and the charities that serve a common goal – a better quality of life for all.
We may drink more than most, party longer than many, may dance long after the music has stopped - but darling, it’s all done with purpose and style.
- Brandon Brown
-
Welcome
Thank you for your inquiry,
Women of Wine Country is a multi-dimensional organization devoted to the Lodi AVA, it’s sub wine appellation’s, businesses, communities and their charities.
We are dedicated to promoting women entrepreneurs and professionals, who live and operate businesses and/or charities in our wine region.
With 87 wineries in our appellation the opportunity to discover wonderful new wines and enjoy the winery’s events are endless.
If you are interested in joining our Women of Wine Tasting tribe please check our website for the entry form, as well, you can check out our website and social media platforms for events happening in our beautiful wine country.
If you are a professional woman working in our wine region please join our Women of Wine Country Networking Association. We are always eager to help promote other women operated businesses and professionals.
If you are a charity, and you believe your organization could benefit from our contributions, please contact our President Raquel Bellini of Bellini Estate and we will determine how we can best be of service.
We look forward to working with you and thank you for visiting our wine region.
Raquel Bellini
President
Bellini Estates
Women of Wine Country
www.womenofwinecountry.com
For more information on the fabulous wineries in our wine region,
Visit; www.lodiwine.com.
Prologue
From inside the speeding car the only sound that could be heard was the pounding sheets of rain beating against the metal. There was zero visibility due to the windshield wipers inability to keep up with the torrential downpour. The frantic driver gripped the steering wheel, using it to pull himself closer to the windshield, as if that would allow him the ability to see the road ahead of him any clearer.
“Watch for falling rocks!” Antonio shouted to his passenger his eyes not leaving the windshield.
Panicked, he knew this road well enough to know; in a rain this hard, large rocks would skid off the side of the mountain and pummel the cars traveling the winding road below. He also knew the road well enough to know there were twists and turns everywhere, but not well enough to know exactly where all those twists and turns were.
“Slow down Antonio!” The female passenger screamed out in fear.
The pounding rain was so loud, even shouting she was difficult to hear.
“I can’t! I’ve been pressing as hard as I can on the brakes, pumping the peddle and stomping down as hard as I can, and we just keep going faster!” Antonio shouted back. He knew they weren’t going to make it. In the deepest part of his soul he knew this was going to be the last day on earth for him and his beautiful bride.
> Their annual pre-harvest trip had turned into the last trip of their lives.
This wasn’t how he wanted to end, not in this hard, unrelenting rain, not on this twisting, unforgiving road, with fear and panic so thick, he could smell, feel and taste it like a foul stench that permeated all of his senses.
This wasn’t what he wanted for his amazing, full of life wife, who had given so much to live her life his way, to sacrifice so much to make him happy.
He wanted to walk … just one more time…through their grape vineyards hand in hand.
One more time.
A desire he knew, tragically, was rapidly coming to an end.
Just one more time.
To watch a sunrise come up over their vibrant colorful vineyards.
To smell the rich pungent scent of his wine grapes fermenting.
Take in the delicious aroma of the freshly toasted oak barrels as they were unloaded for the new harvest.
Watch his beautiful wife walking towards him swinging her old tattered picnic basket, an old basket she refused to replace.… with his lunch packed inside, for a picnic in the middle of their dirty vineyard, and a brilliant smile on her face.
He wanted to grow old with her, hold her in his arms, stroke her thick soft hair while she rested her head on his chest.
But alas, he knew these desires were not to be fulfilled.
He knew, as the pit in his stomach grew, they were not going to survive this day. With every fiber of his being, he knew they were going to die. This would be their last day.
With his entire soul, all that he was, all she believed him to be… he silently swore to himself he wasn’t going to let his beloved bride’s last moments on earth be filled with fear and terror.
A calm tragic sadness washed over Antonio, as he said in a soft shout, “I love you my beautiful bride. I’ve never regretted one minute of our time together.”
“Antonio…” she frantically screamed her reply, one hand stretched out to the dash and the other braced on the roof of the car.
“Baby, listen to me, I am asking you to calm as much as you can and listen, I love you. I can’t wait to see what God brings us to next.”
“ANTONIO….” Was the last thing he heard as the car slid over the side of the mountainous road and tumbled several hundred feet to its final crumpled resting place at the base of the Feather Ri ver canyon.
He didn’t hear his wife’s reply as she whispered, “I will love you for eternity.”
He didn’t feel the car’s metal crunch and cave in on them as it hit end to end, and then rolled side to side. Pieces of metal and plastic flying off of the car during its descent.
He didn’t hear the windows shattering, or feel the glass blasting with force all around and over them as they tumbled down the side of the canyon wall.
He didn’t feel the rain pouring in and pounding them as they came to rest near the bottom of the canyon.
He didn’t hear or feel any of this. He was already dead from the seat belt failure, that allowed his head hit the roof of the car, breaking his neck and killing him instantly on the very first tumble as they careened off the side of the mountain.
His wife however, was not so fortunate. The angels looking down and guaranteeing Antonio’s sudden death, did not do so well for her. She managed to stay alive, suffering…the metal painfully crushing in on her, the windows crashing in and blasting against the side of her face, neck and arm.
She felt every second, of every horrible, painful, tumble as she rolled down the side of the canyon. Until the end, when a tree drove through the windshield, pierced her chest and penetrated straight through her body, through her seat and finally stopping their descent near the bottom of the canyon, impaling her and the car, onto the tree.
One second, two, she felt it all, the pain, the horror, the grief knowing her life too was now over.
She struggled to breathe, to make sense of what had happened…and then, on her last shuddering breath, she was gone. Not experiencing a single moment of calm during this excruciating ending to reflect on her precious love or her life.
In her last moments, she felt pain, fright, and terrifying grief for her lost life. And in the final moment as her life flashed before her eyes, she took a small measure of comfort for a life well lived.
Headlights of the car that had been trailing the couple hit the curve where the now mangled vehicle had gone over the side of the canyon. The car stopped momentarily. The driver exited the vehicle in the pouring rain to look over the edge at the barely visible twisted metal below.
Taking out a phone, one picture, then two were snapped of the area where the car went over, and a final picture, of the best possible shot, of the wrecked car. Walked back to the running vehicle, climbed in and drove off never even considering calling it in for help.
Why would the driver?
Especially after all the trouble they had gone through to make the accident look just like that: an accident.
Chapter 1
The First Escape
I felt like an escapee.
I was running away… stealing away in the middle of the night from a bad place and heading (hopefully) into a better place.
I guess, in a way, I was.
Even though it wasn’t night, and I was leaving the only real home I’d known for my entire life, potentially, never to return. If things went my way, that’s what would happen. I still felt like I was getting away with something and from something.
You know how you hear those stories of people who lived their entire lives one way, and then something big happens that makes them reevaluate everything they believed and knew to be true? Well, that is exactly what happened to me.
I sat in my spacious seat on the plane watching the other passengers board and was thankful for the first-class ticket my aunt’s friend Sydney purchased for me. With so much weighing in on my shoulders, she was a blessing and luckily, also a force to be reckoned with.
There wasn’t any way I could have afforded this extravagant ticket and her generosity was beyond anything I had ever known from anyone other than my loving aunt.
But that was my aunt Raquel’s tribe, as they liked to call themselves: The Women of Wine Country. The ladies described themselves as a philanthropic club of do-gooders who saw to the needs of the under-served in their communities through wine tasting events.
That’s right, wine tasting events.
HA!
They were more like a wine guzzling, bad-ass sisterhood that stuck to each other like gorilla glue.
I couldn’t wait to see them.
Dealing with the sudden loss of my aunt was more than I was able to handle alone and my momma was NOT helping, not one bit.
I had, of course, met them all, the Women of Wine Country tribe, during my summer visits when I was younger. And more recently, I heard about all of Sydney’s scary over the top drama and their crazy goings on during my aunts and my weekly face-time chats.
Occasionally, they would drunk dial me (they called it tipsy time) but let’s face it; those ladies could put away a few bottles of wine and then move on to the sparkly stuff without a thought – usually it was during the sparkly tipsy time I’d get drunk dialed or they would face-time me. They huddled around my aunt’s phone, shouting into it, all at the same time, each one present trying to get their sage piece of advice to me over the voice of the other ladies who were shouting their sage advice, as well.
Usually, it was about how to deal with momma, but sometimes it was about why I was still single or if I had any prospects on the boyfriend scene. They would almost always finish up talking about my hair and trying to assure me of how pretty I was. I have really good hair.
I knew this because I got it from my momma, who had gotten it from her momma. My aunt Raquel also had really great hair ‘cause she shared the same momma as my momma.
They were a glamorous, powerful, beautifully glorious group of amazing women who were absolutely bonkers and I was flying, on a one-way f
irst-class ticket, right into the middle of them.
And I couldn’t wait to get there. To them .
I wish I could say I was returning to my aunt’s winery and estate for a visit and to reconnect with her friends, but I wasn’t. I was flying to my aunt’s home because I was her only living heir, except momma, and she had left her and my uncle entire estate to me.
House, winery, vineyards, tasting room, catering & event business…. all of it was left to me.
Me!
I didn’t know the first thing about how to do any of it.
Sure, I had spent most of my childhood summers with my momma at my aunt and uncle’s, and later, when I was a teen, I spent the summers there without my momma, but I had always left right before the grapes would harvest and only helped in the cooking, serving and cleaning up part of the catering and event business.
With only a two-year business degree that took me three and a half years to obtain (due to my mothers’ “episodes”, which, truth be told, weren’t even episodes but more like a way of life) I didn’t feel equipped for the position I would need to take in order to make sure my aunt and uncle’s lifetime of work, everything they had worked so hard for, would survive their deaths.
That was another reason I was stressed. My momma and her sister, my aunt, did not get along; they were like oil and water. My aunt was a hardworking, smart, devoted wife and business owner, who had a ton of friends and took care of her community.
My mother was a quiet, reserved, judgmental woman when she was sober….and a selfish, mean, nasty, loud, opinionated drunk.
Unfortunately, she preferred to stay drunk most of the time. She not only didn’t care about her community, mostly she held animosity towards it and resented everyone who lived in it.
My aunt and my momma’s falling out happened the last time we went to spend the summer in California together. I was fifteen and my mother had started drinking on the plane and stayed drunk the entire trip, which meant I was her prime target of discourse.
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