Murder & Mayhem

by T Wells Brown

  By the time Sydney found me, I was finishing up my game plan, and had it pretty well organized and was ready to start moving forward .

  “Good morning Bella,” Sydney said from the doorway with a hot cup of coffee cradled in her hands, a loudly purring Agatha weaving her way through Sydney’s ankles. “I understand we had a fire last night?” That was Sydney, always cool as a cucumber – nothing riled her. Good, I was going to need her cool composure to help me.

  Come to think of it – I didn’t remember seeing her at the fire.

  Wow, I handled all that myself. “Yes, where were you?” I asked.

  She waved the question away with a flick of her wrist and instead of answering asked me, “What are you working on?”

  Interesting.

  “Well, the way I see it, I have until five today before everyone in the world officially knows I now own and operate Bellini Estates.” She nodded her agreement. “So, I am going to work every minute until then, getting things in place so when everyone comes at me for whatever thing they think they can get from me. Basically, I’m shoring up my defenses.”

  Slanting her head to the side, she looked hard at me, “Smart girl.”

  “Come in and let me show you what I have now, and you can tell me what you think I’ve missed. The fire last night was set on purpose in the old vines. If it weren’t for Cabe, we would have lost so much more than we did.”

  “Good Ol’ Cabe always riding in on his white horse to save the day. ”

  “Everything okay with you two?” I asked, tilting my head.

  “Yes, I shouldn’t have said that. Cabe is a great guy who saved my life. Just be careful, sometimes the decisions he makes on your behalf, in order to keep you safe, aren’t necessarily the decisions we would make for ourselves.” She entered the office and sat in the chair facing me, opposite the desk.

  “Duly noted,” I said, not exactly sure what the heck we were talking about, but wanting to move on to my issues since I was on a limited time frame. I could come back to this and made a mental note to do just that.

  “So, listen, I have already spoken to Antonio’s brothers, who, by the way, have informed me through their wives they are my uncles too - my tias and tios,” I smiled a sad grateful smile at Sydney, who smiled the same sad grateful smile back, “and asked them to help get me through this harvest. Francisco and Sophia are staying to do just that and Santini and Gloria are heading back to Italy to take care of their winery. So that’s going to help immensely.” I smiled, “Turns out I have a whole lot more family than I ever realized.” It was fantastic I had them and disappointing how much I had let myself miss out on.

  “Moving on…I need to be introduced to the harvesters, wine making crew, bottling group and walked through the process. I did some research this morning and found sommelier classes only forty minutes away from here I can attend to help me learn about wines. Unfortunately, they’re already full this year. However, I co ntacted them to see if they had any Master Sommeliers in the area and turns out they do, I mean how weird is that? Master wine sommeliers in wine country, who would have figured?” I smiled at Sydney who was watching me pretty closely, but not responding to my little joke. “Anyway… they are sending me a list of the ones located within a thirty-minute radius. I’m gonna see if I can hire one of them to come and teach me about wines in order to get me through until I can get signed up with some classes.”

  “Smart. Might I also suggest you contact Stella? She is a Sommelier as well.” Sydney took a sip of her coffee and crossed her legs without saying anything else, so I responded, “Wow that’s perfect! I’ll get a hold of her tomorrow and see what kind of time she has available.”

  “Also, who would be my go-to person around here? Like the person who knows the staff and can tell me who works where?” I asked.

  “Raquel’s assistant Stacy – I’ll see if she is here today. She might be in the kitchen. I instructed the staff to continue performing their normal duties until they were told differently.”

  “Okay, first I’ll need a breakdown of the different employees and what departments they work in. Then I need to have duties and see where we need to hire or pick up from where Raquel and Antonio left off.”

  “I can help gather the employees. Might I suggest you have everyone who is on staff meet together at once and go from there?”

  “I’d prefer to meet them all in smaller groups and meet by departments. It will make it easier for me to differentiate who belongs in Antonio’s part of the estate and who worked for Raquel, which employees are house hold staff etc.,” I replied looking down at my list. “I’ve made a list of what I believe are the departments. Once I get a chance to identify the main players for each department, I can expand the lists I have – it’ll help me stay organized.”

  “Isabella, look at me.”

  I looked up from my many lists.

  “You flew in the day before yesterday, buried Raquel and Antonio yesterday, dealt with a fire last night and this morning you have completely recharged yourself and are taking the bull by the horns without missing a beat.”

  I nodded at her.

  Little did she know I was doing this for my aunt, making up for all I hadn’t done. I knew it was too late to go back and fix things, but that wasn’t going to stop me from making Raquel’s name and hard work shine on. “Have you read Raquel’s letter yet?” she asked.

  I shook my head and said, “I can’t. I need to be strong right now and it will crumble me. And also…. I need to prove I deserve to receive a letter from her, before I reward myself with reading it.”

  She watched me for a moment before saying, “I’m very proud of you.”

  It took me back a minute, first, because I didn’t deserve anyone to be proud of me, and second, because I hadn’t really done anything yet. I said, “No one except my aunt has ever uttered those words to me; I’ll try to live up to them.”

  Sydney rose from her chair, placed her coffee on my uncle’s desk, came around and hugged me so tight I couldn’t breathe. She whispered at the top of my head, “I will never forget to tell you how proud I am of you.”

  Letting me go, she picked up her coffee and walked out with Agatha trailing behind her.

  After a brief meeting with Rafael and the farm employees, I learned that only a small number of the vines were damaged and even smaller number lost, thanks to the quick action of everyone at the fire. They were very busy taking sugar content samplings of the grapes in the adjacent area of the fire, because I was told the heat from the fire would alter the grapes of the nearby vines. The vines weren’t lost, but some of the grapes might be.

  I then met with Francisco and Sophia, who were working on getting the crush area staged and tanks set up. I found Cabe in the middle of the staging area taking count of the blue picking bins and the large white receiving bins.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” I said as I approached him.

  He looked up from his clipboard and said, “Just lending a hand, so when it’s time for the grapes to be harvested, we’re ready, Antonio usually did this and I would often come out and help during the harvest.”

  “I didn’t know that. Thank you.”

  “You didn’t know because you weren’t around. Antonio and I were great friends. He was an honorable man and I won’t have his legacy destroyed.” He gave me a hard look, flipped his pages over the clip board and walked away.

  Well shit. Someone was grumpy.

  I wasn’t sure what I did to deserve that, but I had too much to do and needed to stay focused.

  Next was the catering staff meeting. Stacy was a Godsend in this area; she’d compiled a list for me of all of the upcoming events, their menus, projected cost vs income, and the staff assigned to each event along with their job duties. She also had instructed the staff to wear name tags so I could familiarize myself with them. It seemed the staff in the catering business could take over for the most part on everything except for my aunt’s duties. Stacy approached me and said, �
�Raquel had two interviews this week for bakery chefs. Up until now she had been doing the baking, but she was getting too busy to keep it up. What do you want me to do about the appointments?”

  “Let’s keep them. If you can sit in on the interviews with me, we can decide together who will work out best. In the short term, I can actually chip in as far as baking and cooking.” It’s something the three of us, my aunt, my momma and myself, all know how to do really well, and my fondest memories were of us in the kitchen. I continued, “I’m not saying I’ll be anywhere as good as my Aunt, and I’m not sure if I’m good enough to do it full time, but I can pitch in for the short term.”

  I started to go and turned back to Stacy. “Thank you so much for your efficiency, and all you’re doing to help.” I gave her a brief hug and started to walk away, but turned back again and said, “Also, can you please ask the rest of the winery staff to wear name tags too? It was a brilliant idea!”

  Her smile was the answer I needed, so I went on to the rest of my day. It was pretty much the same as the first part, meetings with staff trying to figure out what was going on and where I was needed most.

  Luckily, Stacy immediately had everyone wearing badges, color coded by department; it was already making things much more comfortable.

  After a long day, I showered, applied light makeup, dressed in a simple flowing black, tank maxi dress, and slipped a pair of low-heeled strappy sandals. I pulled my hair back into a high pony tail, slid some pearl studs into my ears, and headed down to my uncle’s library where the reading of the will was taking place.

  The room was completely filled. I hadn’t realized so many people would be here, and were in the will. Maybe Sydney was wrong, maybe the estate was going to be willed out to everyone?

  The library was standing room only, so I slipped into the room and leaned up against the back wall.

  Soon Sydney got started. “Good evening. You have all been asked here because each one of you have been named in the will of either Antonio Bellini, Raquel Bellini or both. I will read the will and the items you are inheriting and I ask that you leave the room directly after. If you have any questions, please feel free to email those questions to my email address listed on my card – I will not be answering any questions verbally. Any and all questions will need to be in writing, and in turn, my responses will be in writing,” She looked around the room and said, “I can’t stress this enough.”

  Taking a deep breath, she started calling individuals in the room and listed their inheritance.

  For the most part, it was some cash to charities that had been favorites – a few of the rental homes my aunt and uncle owned were left to long time employees, and finally, the children of some of the employees were set up with college funds to make sure the immigrants’ children would be able to receive a higher education. This was most of the crowd. When the list of college funds was read off, the mothers of the recipients wailed long and loud. I teared up – it was hard not too – Raquel and Antonio were extremely generous and thought of everyone. They loved and cared for all of their employees as if they were family. One by one, the room cleared out until eventually all that was left was myself, Cabe and Sydney .

  I walked further into the room and sat down. Cabe stayed standing against the wall across the room. “Cabe, Bella, this may come to a surprise to you both but Raquel and Antonio left the winery to you, both of you.”

  “WHAT!” Cabe yelled as he pushed off the wall.

  I sat there quietly, not really sure what was going on.

  “Antonio wanted to make sure you, Cabe, had a vested interest in the winery, so you would stay around and make sure it was run properly. Raquel knew it was part of his wishes and they agreed. Of course, they thought you’d be helping Raquel, not Bella, but regardless, the terms stand. Now your portion is a non-voting stock ownership, so basically Bella owns most of the winery but this way they thought it would be fair and would limit how much you would be able to bulldoze Raquel,” she gestured toward me, “now our Bella.”

  She turned to me, “Quite frankly most of these provisions, regarding you Isabella, were set up as if Raquel passed first. They both knew you wouldn’t have anyone to turn to. If you had been married, they left a provision for that but since you’re still single, they don’t apply. They wanted to make sure whoever inherited had help. They knew Cabe loved this place and they knew he knew the winery like the back of his hand and they wanted to have his protection. So, they left him twenty five percent of the winery and you seventy five percent.” She stopped speaking and watched us both for a moment before saying ,

  “Anyway, you two have to figure out how to work together and navigate. They also left a provision for Cabe to move to the estate…”

  “WHAT THE HELL?” Now it was my turn to yell.

  “Yes, seems they wanted to make sure he was close by. If you don’t move in and live the first year here at the winery in the house, then you forfeit the inheritance.”

  “Me too?” I asked

  “No, just him.” Sydney pointed a perfectly manicured finger at Cabe who was still as a statue. “Bella, Raquel and Antonio were worried about your mother and her influence over you. This provision with Cabe was just to protect you.”

  “Wait a minute. I have men deployed all over the world. It’s impossible to expect me to leave my business and responsibilities, and move in here to play house with Isabella.”

  “Cabe, you can set up command central here and run SDI from the estate. You need to look at this as the last thing you’re ever going to be able to do for Antonio. He counted on you.” Sydney said.

  I understood where they were coming from, I hadn’t ever shown them any kind of back bone and always gave into my momma and her crazy ass ways – even when it was bad for me. Of course, they would be worried. Of course, they would put a strong man with me who knew the estate as well as Cabe did.

  And even though it seemed out dated and old fashioned, and a bit chauvinistic, I understood.

  “I understand,” I turned to Cabe, “please stay, stay and help and I promise I won’t let you or them down.”

  Cabe turned his big man body towards me and said, “Isabella, I can stay and help, but you need to understand that I also have a business. I’ll help – but this isn’t going to become my life. I will do it for my friendship with Antonio and Raquel but if I see one hint of you wavering or making bad decisions you won’t like what I do next.”

  “I understand.” And I did. I needed to prove where my heart was and I needed to prove that I would stand up to my momma when she decided to show up – and she would. She always did.

  These words it seemed, had magical powers and conjured my momma because the next thing we heard was;

  “Where is my baby? I know she’s here! Let me in you stupid! Asshole! Bitch! you’ve no right to keep me out! This is my family home and I’ll be let in! You are FIRED BITCH - FIRED!!”

  Jumpin’ Jezebels!

  There she was.

  The three of us went still for a second and then in unison we all headed for the door.

  Chapter 6

  Vintage Vines

  There she was, my momma, in all her glory, yelling and cussing and spitting her fury at poor Stacy, the unfortunate soul who had stayed late to help with the people receiving an inheritance, and happened to answer the door.

  My beautiful and clearly drunk momma, and her beau Mark standing behind her. She must have consumed a gallon of alcohol on the plane; I could smell it from where I was standing behind Stacy.

  Cabe gently pulled Stacy away from the door and told her to get her things and go on home. As she walked by me, I pulled her in for a hug and apologized – something I did by rote – I was so used to apologizing to people for my momma’s bad behavior.

  Sydney started first, “Cynthia, I told you not to come. You were not included in the will and inherited nothing from your sister or her husband.”

  “The hell you say! This is MY sister’s home and MY daughte
r. I will come in. I will stay in my family home and I WILL be contesting that fucking will. So, don’t be handing anything out yet, cause you’re gonna look real fucking dumb when you gotta go ask for it all back.” She said this in a spitting nasty way, wobbling her head back and forth in an effort to punctuate her statement.

  God. I was so sick of this.

  “Shut up.” I said.

  “What-the-fuck did you just say to me girl?” She spat.

  “I said shut up. Shut up. Shut up. SHUT UP! You are NOT welcome here. You WILL leave and not come back.” I stepped closer to her pointing my finger in her chest and said, “If you don’t leave now, I’ll call the police, have you removed and then I’ll have a stay-away order issued against you.” I was done with her bullshit. She cost me my valuable time with Raquel. She wasn’t costing me anything else.

  Sydney stepped back between us when my momma screamed back at me, “Don’t you dare fucking talk to me like that you uppity little bitch. You been here only a few days and you think you’re all that? Well, let me tell you - you ain’t shit, bitch. And when I get this winery, I’m going to kick you and your fancy ass out on the street and let you see what it’s like to fend for yourself. I’ve been taking care of you your whole damned life. You ain’t ever had to do anythin’ for yourself you - little fucking bitch.”

  I pushed in front of Sydney and got really close to my momma. I could smell the alcohol reeking off of her and saw she was swaying. She was smashed in the worst way. I wasn’t even sure she was going to remember any of this. Mark stepped up behind her and held on to her upper arms, probably realizing, the same as me, that any minute she was going to fall over.

  “Isabella,” Mark said quietly, “Let us in, sweetheart. This is no way to treat your momma.”

  Looking him in the eye over my momma’s head, I said, “I’m sorry she talked you into coming all this way Mark. She was told not to come and she isn’t welcome. You need to get her a room and sober her up. I will talk to her when she isn’t stinkin’ drunk.”