by D. J. Herda
“Yes, it is.”
“So that left you holding the bag for another—what was it? Somewhere around seventy thousand dollars, is that about right?”
“About.”
“And instead of closing on her newly renovated home, Ms. Powell bought a one-way airline ticket to a South Seas island where her estranged mother had been working as a teacher for several years. Ms. Powell had apparently established communications with her mother and decided simply to walk away from the newly remodeled home she loved so much, walk away from her obligations to you, and walk away from Trinidale Building Supply, is that your understanding?”
“That’s what happened.”
“Did Scott Sandalman ever give you an explanation of why Kelli Powell may have quit so unexpectedly, left a high-paying position that she seemed to love, abandoned her house and her home town and her father and stepmother who lived only a few blocks from her new home in Trinidale, and just disappeared?”
“No, he did not.”
“And you believe that’s because Scott Sandalman paid for all of Kelli Powell’s materials, all the upper-end supplies and finishes and all the furnishings she wanted, while she deliberately ran up your tab for labor and other fees, is that correct?”
“Absolutely.”
“And in doing so, Scott Sandalman wasn’t actually out any money because when Ms. Powell defaulted and walked away, he would have regained legal possession of all the materials he had paid for her to use in her home, is that right?”
“That is.”
“All because Scott Sandalman resented the fact that you had recently moved to town, opened up a construction firm, and quickly expanded to carry your own line of building supplies, everything from flooring to roofing, from bathroom and electrical fixtures to windows, doors, and finish materials. All of the same materials that Trinidale Builders Supply had been selling virtually unchallenged—and at much higher prices—for decades, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“As had Sam Omado at Omado Lumber and Supplies.”
“Yes, although to a much lesser degree.”
“But Sam Omado never pulled a stunt like that on you, did he?”
“No.”
“I wonder why he didn’t object to your rapid expansion the way Mr. Sandalman apparently did.” He turned to Omado. “Can you comment on that, Mr. Omado?”
“I like the youngster. It’s a shame that this thing happened. He had so much on the ball, so much going for him. I actually thought one day he might even want to buy me out and take over my lumber yard. In fact, I broached the subject with him on several occasions, as I recall.”
Peeps turned back to Hightower. “Is that the feeling you had, too? That Stan Omado thought highly of you?”
“Yes, it is.”
Peeps looked around. “Any questions? Anything else anyone would like to ask about these matters?”
“I’d like to ask Stan if he can replace for Darryl the heating supplies that Bob Snow stole so we can get back to work. We’ve already lost more than a week.”
Omado stood up, and, grinning, lifted his glass to Hightower. “Whenever the youngster here comes for them, they’ll be ready.”
The contractor stood up and clinked glasses with him. “That’s really first class, Stan. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Just win this case,” he said. “That’s all I ask.”
Peeps walked over to the counter, turned off the recorder, and poured himself a Scotch before pouring one for Potash, who had just emptied his glass and held it up for a refill. “After tonight, I can pretty much guarantee you a quick resolution here,” Peeps said. “Not a doubt in my mind.”
Omado turned back to Hightower. “Just bring your checkbook next time you stop by,” he said. “You can post-date a check for whenever you want, whenever you need to. A year. Two years. Six months. Whatever it takes. I’ll hold your checks until you say otherwise. When you’ve gotten your funds back, just let me know, and I’ll put them through. Just so our bookkeeper has something for her records, some kind of accounting of what you’ve purchased.”
“It’s a deal,” Hightower said. “And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”
“No problem whatsoever,” Omado said. “The pleasure’s all mine.”
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
“What you’ve been waiting for all evening.” She tugged on the end of the tie holding his pants closed and slid them down over his hips. He moaned softly as she slipped her hand down to where she knew he needed attention. He reached out, pulled her closer, covered her lips with his as he cupped first one breast and then the other, rolling the flesh back and forth between his fingers until she let out a soft moan.
“My place?” he asked.
“Certainly not mine,” she giggled. “But we’ll have to hurry. I’m leaving tomorrow at eight.”
“In the morning? For ...”
“Chicago. I’ve got to get back for business.”
He ran his tongue along his lips and nibbled down her neck nearly to her breasts. “For how long?”
“Oh, God ... I think ... probably two weeks.”
“Two weeks? How will I survive?”
She giggled again. “Let me give you something to remember me by ...”
Before he could settle into his chair, Carrie threw open the screen door. “Christie, honey, you’d better come to bed, now. It’s after one. We’re leaving to take you back early tomorrow morning. You have to be there by noon, remember?” She paused, squinted into the darkness. “Oh, Darryl.” She hesitated for a moment, a smile creasing her face. “I didn’t know you were still here. Sorry about the interruption ...”
She slipped back into the house and closed the door as Christie withdrew her hand. “I’ll bet,” she said.
Hightower said, “You know what they say about absence.”
She drew him closer to her, licked his cheek, covered his lips with her own, exploring his mouth, nibbling on his tongue for an eternity before breaking away. “Uh-huh,” she whispered finally. “It makes the heart grow horny.”
A Chateau Pavie ’21—that was the answer to Hightower’s prayers. Or so it seemed. He had stopped off at his favorite liquor store, and Ron—the proprietor who knew more about French wines than Louis XIV—recommended it.
“You taste it once, and you’ll never be satisfied with anything else ever again.”
Ron had told him of its heritage. Like other vineyards in Saint-Émilion, such as Château Ausone, the Pavie vineyard dated back to Roman times. Taking its name from the orchards of peaches ("pavies") that used to stand watch over the rocky terraces, it sprouted its modern estate under the watchful eye of Ferdinand Bouffard in the late 19th century. He had bought land from several different families. It had been managed separately forever, and the nine hectares he purchased from the Pigasse family retained a separate identity as Château Pavie-Decesse.
But Bouffard’s vineyards suffered from a vicious invasion of phylloxera, small, aphid-like sucking insects that feed on the roots of grapevines and sometimes form galls on the leaves, causing severe damage to the crops. With his spirits crushed worse than his season’s harvests, Bouffard sold the vineyard to Albert Porte at the end of World War I. Porte, in turn, sold it to Alexandre Valette in 1943. His grandson, Jean-Paul Valette, transferred title to Gérard Perse in 1998 for $31 million.
Perse, a Parisian millionaire and former cyclist, sold two supermarket chains to fund his entry into the wine business. He bought Château Monbousquet in 1993, Château Pavie-Decesse in 1997, and Pavie in 1998. He ripped out most of the old equipment and constructed new, temperature-controlled wooden fermentation vats, a new cellar, and a new irrigation system in the vineyard. He brought in controversial wine consultant, Michel Rolland, who watched the yields cut nearly in half following his severe pruning and green-harvesting while encouraging malolactic fermentation in the wine. The results could have been predictably disastrous except for one thing: they
were extraordinarily rewarding. The wine from the vineyard today enjoys a more concentrated and intense taste than ever before in its history.
So much so that, in 2012, Pavie was elevated to the lofty position of Premier Grand Cru Classé (A) status, which made the vineyard one of only four such Saint-Émilion producers in the world.
It was all an intriguing presentation by Trinidale’s most renowned connoisseur, but Hightower remained unconvinced that he wanted to be indebted to a wine that cost a figure just south of Venezuela’s gross national product. Nonetheless, he picked up a bottle. It was going to be a very special night.
At precisely 7:30 that evening, exactly thirty minutes early, the bell rang, and Darryl went to answer the door. He had dressed early and was beginning to prepare dinner when he undid the lock to find not his dinner guest but Carrie standing there.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I just had to see you.”
Darryl smiled to hide his surprise, instinctively looking out past the front steps to the street. At no one.
“No, of course not. Come on in. I was expecting ...”
“Umm. Something smells good. Oh!” she paused. “Oh, God, how awful of me. You’re expecting company. I shouldn’t have just dropped in.”
“It’s okay. My guest isn’t due for a while yet. Can I get you something? Some wine? Or a vodka rocks with a twist?” He led her into the kitchen and opened up the refrigerator. “Or I can mix up a wine cooler.”
He turned around when she didn’t answer. “I say ...”
He stopped suddenly, taking in the pained expression on her face. He looked at her more closely. She wore more makeup than usual, with her eyes done to perfection and her lipstick moist and glistening. She had on a lightweight wool sweater with no bra beneath—that much was obvious. Her breasts swelled out and down, the breasts of an older woman, the breasts of maturity, of motherhood, of only God knew what else. The fact that they sagged some only made them appear fuller and larger than they had the previous night beneath her sundress.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“She shook her head and frowned. “It’s Dom. I think he’s going to leave me.”
He paused. “What?”
She nodded “I think we’re going to separate.”
“Why?” he heard his lips utter. “What happened?” He didn’t know why he had asked, but the words had a mind all their own. And a life.
“This whole thing with the hotel renovation and all. I don’t know if it’s gotten to him, if it’s all become too overwhelming or what. But he’s talking about just giving up and moving back to Chicago, getting his old job back. Moving in with his son, Dom’s child from a previous marriage.”
“But you guys are so close to finishing, we’re so close. We’re a couple months away from completion.”
“He doesn’t think you have any intention of finishing the job.”
“Are you kidding me?” Darryl glanced right and left, his mind trying to grasp the words. “What are you saying? Of course, we’re going to finish the job. Of course we are. Why on earth would he ...”
“He said that, after talking to Peeps, he’s convinced you’re going to drain us of the rest of our money and walk away, leaving us stranded and the job incomplete. He thinks you’re broke, and you’re going to get yourself out of financial trouble by stealing from us. That would ruin us. This is all the money we have in the world—we’ve sunk every nickel we own into this project. You know that. If that ever happened, if you ever did quit, we’d be destitute.”
“You don’t think I’d do anything like that, do you? I mean, Peeps ... the interview ... you were there. You heard what happened; you heard what we’re up against.”
She maneuvered close to Darryl’s shoulder and buried her head in his shirt as she started to sob. “I don’t know what to think anymore. All I know is that it looks like my marriage is over.” He hoped she wouldn’t leave any makeup behind. That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all.
“I thought he was all gung-ho,” Darryl said. “I mean, we’re going to win this thing. We’re going to beat Sandalman and the others. We’re going to get our money and our materials replaced, and we’re going to win. We’re going to come out on top. Just the way we were before. I’ve got money. I’ve got backup funds. I’ve got insurance,” he lied. “Bedsides, I’ve already ordered the materials for the hotel’s heating system from Omado. They’ll be here this week. I don’t understand what he’s thinking.”
“I told him that. I told him I was sure you had enough money personally to finish the job if you had to...”
“And what did he say?”
She shook her head. “He’s got his mind made up.”
Darryl looked around, stunned. “That’s just ... you know, it’s just crazy.”
“That’s not all,” she sobbed.
Oh, great. There’s more!
“I think he has someone else.”
“What?”
“I think he’s ... cheating on me.”
“What do you mean? Why do you say that?”
“It’s the way he’s been acting these last couple of weeks. Whenever I come into the room and he’s on his phone, he hangs up quickly, like he doesn’t want me to overhear who he’s talking to. And when I ask him who it was, he says something stupid, like it was a wrong number or he was checking the time or something like that.”
“Well, who would be having an affair with Dom? I mean, no disrespect intended here, but if either one of you was to get involved with someone else, I’d think it would be ...”
Nice going, asshole, he thought. Anything else you can tell her? Why not just ask her to climb into bed with you? How much more of an opening could she want?
“I could never do something like that. I could never cheat on him. No matter what he did to hurt me personally.”
“I just meant, you know, he’s not exactly Don Juan. And you’re so ...” He caught himself, weighing his words cautiously. “—much younger looking. You know. Still attractive. And ... and ... you know. Attractive. Alluring.”
Oh-oh. Wrong word. Wrong word. Wrong word. Definitely the wrong word.
She looked up into his eyes. “Oh, God, you don’t know how that makes me feel. How much more worthwhile it makes me feel. Not like some piece of dead meat you’re finished with and throw out with the morning trash or toss to the dogs.”
“Of course you’re not that. You know that. You know better than that. And I’ll tell you. He’d be crazy to leave you. You have a great marriage. Everyone knows that. You two were meant to be together.”
“Looks ... can be deceiving,” she said, and he swore she batted her eyes once, twice, as she gripped his forearm and squeezed lightly. “We haven’t been ... intimate ... in months. Sometimes I feel like he doesn’t even think of me as a woman anymore. He doesn’t see me as his wife.”
“Well, then, he is crazy.”
“Do you think so?” She drew herself nearer, and before he had time to think, she stood up on her toes, threw her arms around his neck, and pressed her lips up to his. Hard He could feel the strain of her nipples through her sweater, feel the heat of her groin pressing against him. Stunned, he tried not to react, but he instinctively felt he was failing. As she pulled back from him, she let out a soft moan and reached down between his legs. “This is another thing I never thought I’d feel again.” She squeezed it lightly before her hand clamped down on it so hard, he felt his brows shoot up and his back spring straight up.
“Whoa. Carrie. I ... what I mean was ...”
“I can feel what you mean. I think I’ve always felt something special between us. Every time I lay eyes on you. And when I catch you looking at my tits, it sends a shiver throughout my entire body.”
Crap, dad always warned me to be discreet.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You feel it too, whenever you look at these.” She put one palm under each breast and thrust them up, her nipples taut and straining, the blue of the material begging for attent
ion.
“Oh, my God, Carrie. Of course, I feel it. But, I mean, I feel it like a friend. Like a brother toward a sister. I mean, you’re a married woman, you know? I think of you as ... as a woman, sure, but as a married woman. You and Dom. Together. Just the two of you. Like you were meant to be.”
“I’m not saying it will be easy. We’ll have to be careful. It would be just like him to twist everything around and make it look as if I was the one out cheating on him. But now that we know, now that we understand how we both feel ...”
Panic raced through his frame, a genuine desire to turn and run. But he couldn’t risk hurting her. Maybe he was to blame. Maybe he did goad her on without even realizing it. Or maybe he did realize it but didn’t ever think it would amount to anything. Be careful what you wish for ...
Suddenly the doorbell rang. He looked in terror at the clock. Eight sharp.
Carrie pulled back instinctively, her eyes never losing contact with his. “Is that the company you’re expecting?”
He let out a sudden breath. “I hope ... I ... I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
He excused himself and went to answer the door. As he opened it, Deidre smiled and stepped in. “Hi. Hope I’m not late. It’s not every night that a gal gets invited by her boss to ...” Her voice trailed off, and her brows rose instinctively as she looked behind him at Carrie. “—to have dinner with him.”
“Hi,” Carrie said, extending her palm. “I’m Carrie Potash. Darryl is renovating our hotel. Down on Commercial? The big old bank building we bought last year.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about it. And I’m sure I’ve seen you at the office ... with your husband. What’s his name again?”
“Well, yes, I think, if that’s all we need to discuss for the moment, Darryl, I’d better be running along. Dom is probably holding dinner for me.” She smiled curtly, threw one last long, lingering look at Darryl, and turned for the doorway. “I want to thank you again for all you’ve done ... for us.” She stopped, smiled again at Deidre, and added, “You have a very understanding boss.”