“How long do they ferment?”
“Depends on the grape variety and what Henry wants. See Henry” —she pointed to her boyfriend, who was talking with Danny by the doors of the tank house— “Henry is the one who actually makes the wine. Nico grows the grapes and sells the finished product, but Henry is the one who decides how long things are going to ferment, decides how long before the must—that’s the mixture with the juice and the skins and the seeds and everything—when all that is going to be pressed. And then he tastes all the new wine—which is really not as tasty as it sounds—and he has to imagine how everything is going to age, which wines will blend together well. All that stuff.”
Henry and Danny finished their conversation. Then Henry tossed Danny some keys, and the younger man walked off toward Henry’s truck.
“Lot of moving parts,” Toni said. “Lots of people.”
Drew nodded. “This is actually really helpful. So over at Fairfield’s place, does Ruben do all that winemaking stuff?”
“No. Ruben is like Nico. He grows the grapes and oversees the vineyards. I think Fairfield hired a fancy winemaker from up north and then another person to sell and market the wine. I’ve never met any of those people. Henry might have.”
Nico spotted Toni and waved. Toni pointed toward Nico’s office, and he gave her an exaggerated thumbs-up sign and held up five fingers.
“Five minutes?” Toni asked.
“Works for me.”
Drew and Toni started toward Nico’s office.
“So” —Drew kept his voice low— “does your cousin know you’re pregnant?”
Toni froze. She turned to Drew with wide eyes. “How did you—?”
“Father of two.” He pointed to himself. “You’re not drinking. Taking things easier, according to the guys at your garage. More mood swings than normal.” He leaned back. “Plus there’s just this…”
“If you say I have a fucking glow, I will punch your face.”
Drew’s face split with a grin. “I was going to say you’re a little fuller around your cheeks.”
“You saying my face is fat?”
“Yeah. That’s definitely what I’m going to tell the scary pregnant woman. That her face is fat. Do I look like an idiot?”
“Fuck you, Detective Bisset.”
“I’m going to put that aggression down to hormones. So Henry, huh?”
“What about him?” She crossed her arms over her chest, only to realize that her boobs were both swollen and staging a revolt. Owwwwwww.
Drew laughed a little. “Okay.”
Toni pulled open the door to Nico’s ranch office. “Do you enjoy being a nosy asshole?”
“I’m a police detective. It’s kind of my job.” He sat in one of two clear chairs. “I think it’s nice. You’ll make a great mom.”
“It’s still very early, so…”
“My lips are sealed.” He looked around. “This looks more like a geologist’s office than a farmer if you ask me.”
“It’s all about the soil.” Toni shoved part of the small couch clear and sat down, putting her feet on the coffee table. “That reminds me.” She pulled out her phone. “Baxter was showing the plans we found for those five acres to his engineering friend at the university. I should tell them to just come here.”
“You found plans?” Drew raised an eyebrow. “For what?”
“We… happened across some plans related to that five-acre stretch that Fairfield kept pressuring Nico to sell. It’s not particularly valuable land—that we know of—which is why Nico always wondered why Fairfield wanted it so bad.”
“But this is Dusi land, correct? And Fairfield had plans about it?”
“Yeah. Nico and his dad got it at auction about twenty years ago when the previous owner passed with no will. It’s a really beautiful stretch of land with a unique microclimate, and the cabernet vines that grow there are a big part of the Dusi house red now. He’s never been tempted to sell.”
“That seems suspicious.” Drew narrowed his eyes. “And you just… happened to come across these plans?”
“I think someone gave them to Megan.” Toni’s face was carefully innocent. “You’d have to ask her.”
“Really? Is she coming today?”
“Don’t think so. Lunch with her kids.” Toni nodded. “Family time.”
“Yeah, I think I’ve heard of it.” Drew pursed his lips. “That reminds me. I heard there was some kind of commotion at Fairfield’s winery last week. Some hoses that mysteriously busted. No one could figure out what happened. They just… came apart. All by themselves.”
Toni made her eyes wide and guileless. “That’s so weird.”
He folded his hands carefully and stared at her. “The world is full of mysteries, isn’t it?”
“Hmmm.” She took out her phone and texted Katherine. “I’m just telling Katherine that she and Baxter should meet us up here.” She held up her phone a moment later. “They’re on their way.”
“Great.”
It was far more than five minutes later that Nico walked in. “Hey. Sorry about that.”
“No worries,” Toni said. “Thanks for taking a break. I know it’s crazy out there.”
Nico sat behind his desk and pulled out a Coke from the small fridge beside it. “I keep telling myself two more weeks and it’ll slow down. A little.” He held up the soda. “You guys want one?”
“I’m good.”
Drew said, “I’ll take one.”
“Sure thing.” Nico reached down and grabbed a second soft drink. “So, Detective. Please don’t tell me anyone else died or was beat up last night, because I got home late and crashed and I do not have any kind of alibi.”
The corner of Drew’s mouth turned up. “I’m not here about that. Toni was telling me about the sabotage you were dealing with a few weeks ago. Wanted to question you about that.”
Nico let out a long breath. “Damn. I nearly forgot about that; it seems so long ago.”
“It’s only been a few weeks,” Toni said.
“I know. But since the tractor, we haven’t had another incident. Not even a minor one that I just kind of wondered about. Whoever was messing with us stopped. Right around the time that Whit Fairfield went missing.”
“But not before he was dead,” Drew said.
“Oh right.” Toni realized where he was going. “The tractor happened after Fairfield was killed, but before he was found. So it couldn’t have been Fairfield behind the sabotage.”
Drew said, “But it’s possible someone wanted you to think that it was.”
“Okay, I see where you’re going.” Nico frowned. “Speaking of the tractor, did you ever figure out if that finger was…?”
“Oh yeah,” Drew said. “The finger belonged to the victim. Prints confirmed.”
“But how did it get all the way over—”
“It had cat teeth marking it,” Drew said quietly. “So… we have a pretty good idea of what happened.”
Oh. Ewwwwww.
Please don’t let it be Enzo. Please don’t let it be Enzo.
“So the finger was Fairfield’s but the sabotage wasn’t,” Nico said. “Because the sabotage happened on a particular night, and Fairfield was already dead.”
“Correct.”
Toni said, “What if it was someone Fairfield paid who didn’t realize he was dead?”
“That’s a possibility I can’t rule it out.” Drew turned his attention to Nico. “Do you have any idea who it could be?”
“No.” Nico shrugged. “Honestly, I thought it was Fairfield or one of his guys sneaking over. I hate to think it’s anyone I hired, but how much do you ever really know a person? I can’t think of anyone on our staff who’s having money problems or anything like that. Not that they’ve shared anyway.”
“And these were things that happened in the tank house?”
“There were a few different things. The tractor you know about.” Nico tapped his finger. “The next most serious thing was
a fermentation tank that had been reset and would have spoiled if Henry hadn’t caught it. Even though Henry saved it, the added heat will affect the quality. I’d say that at best, it’ll be a blending wine,” Nico said. “So we did lose money on that one. Then there was the labor contractor someone called, pretending to be from the winery here, and canceled all our crews for a week. That put us way behind.”
“Damn,” Drew said. “That can mess you up, can’t it?”
“It can, but it’s not going to ruin us,” Nico said. “It would take something more than that to really run us out of business. It was, at best, a half-hearted attempt. We managed to fix everything.”
There was a tap at the door, and Baxter poked his head in. “Perhaps the goal wasn’t to run you out of business,” the professor said. “But rather to put enough pressure on you to sell some land.”
“Hey.” Nico waved them in. “It’s not out of the question. Not ideal, but not unheard of.”
“I highly suggest,” Baxter said, “that you do not sell this parcel.”
Baxter and Katherine walked in the office, and Katherine bent down to spread a large set of plans on the coffee table where Toni had propped her feet.
“It’s clear that Whit Fairfield had plans for your property.” Katherine looked up at Nico. “And we think we know what they were.”
“Looking at these” —Baxter spread his hands over the blueprints— “the reason he wanted the land becomes evident. It’s not what is on the land, but what is under it.”
Nico brought a chair over. “What is it? Oil? Natural gas? Some mineral or something?”
“Nothing like that. I admit, that’s what I expected at first, but my engineering friend Professor Njoku made it quite clear that because of the topography of the land, any valuable mineral or mining rights were unlikely to be the motive.”
“Okay.” Nico looked over the spread-out papers. “But you do know why he wanted it?”
Baxter continued, “When I finally pieced these plans together and Chimezie and I printed them out, we thought we were looking at a brand-new structure Whit Fairfield had commissioned from scratch.”
Toni looked at what appeared to be an Italianate facade with elaborate columns that almost looked like a temple. “What is this?”
“I believe it’s a facade for a portal site,” Baxter said. “It would be built into the hill overlooking the creek across from the current Fairfield winery. This portion is purely aesthetic.”
“A facade for what?” Nico asked.
“For an elaborate wine-cave complex dug into the hill.” Katherine flipped the top plan up to reveal a more detailed and technical one underneath. “See? The cave goes back into the hill, which is made from a soft volcanic rock that would be very good for tunneling. The ornate facade faces the Fairfield winery, but there are actually two portals. See? It’s like a stretched horseshoe shape. The second portal is very near the road that runs by Toni’s house.”
Nico sat back. “So Fairfield wanted to buy that land because it’d make a good wine cave?”
“It makes sense when you consider his own property situation,” Baxter said. “I took the liberty of looking up his holdings. His acreage isn’t consolidated. It’s spread out and scattered. In addition to that, looking at the topographic and geologic maps available publicly, it would be much more complicated to find as suitable a site that would also be accessible to his existing facilities.” Baxter tapped the spread blueprints. “But for this wine cave, all he would have had to do is build a pleasing facade on the front portal and a sturdy bridge across the creek.”
Nico snorted. “And a freaking wine cave. I mean, it’s a hell of a thing to have on your winery, but caves cost millions to dig.”
Baxter placed a hand on a corner of the plans. “They do indeed. Of course, if the wine cave had already been dug and all the landowner had to do was improve the infrastructure and create a grand entrance, the cost would be far less.”
Toni’s eyes went wide. “What?”
Nico looked confused. “Are you saying—?”
“I’m saying you need to look more closely at the plans.” Baxter pointed to the blueprints. “What Professor Njoku noted are these large studs.”
“Aren’t those just part of the support?”
“No. They are seismic retrofitting. Earthquake retrofitting would only be done on older structures, particularly those built prior to 1980.”
“We didn’t own that land in the 80s,” Toni said. “It still belonged to the old Hungarian guy.”
Nico sat back in his chair. “Are you saying that that weird little strip of land my dad and I bought at auction has a wine cave dug into it?”
Baxter smiled. “I believe that is the case, yes.”
“Holy shit.” Nico’s eyes were wide as saucers. “Toni, are you hearing this?”
“I’m hearing this.” She looked at Drew. “That certainly explains why Fairfield wanted to buy it.”
“Holy shit.” Nico seemed to be frozen in shock. “It’s just been sitting there empty for thirty years?”
“Perhaps even longer,” Baxter said. “And if these plans are recent—which they appear to be—with a moderate investment to update the structure, you could have functional wine storage caves with very little trouble.”
There was a rapid knock at Nico’s door.
“Come in!”
Henry opened the door, frowning when he saw the crowd gathered in Nico’s office. “Hey… sorry. So many people.” He seemed scattered.
Nico said, “What’s up?”
Henry turned to Nico. “I’m sorry if I’m interrupting, but I need you to see something.”
Nico stood. “What is it?”
“Nothing’s wrong with the guys or the equipment.” He shook his head. “Danny and I had to trade trucks, and I found something in his that I… I don’t know what to think.”
Chapter 25
The blood-covered shirt was balled up and creased; the spatters were dark brown and smeared over the previously white cotton button-down. It was sitting on the floor behind the driver’s seat in Danny Barba’s pickup truck.
Henry stood with his arms crossed at the open truck door. “Danny needed to borrow my truck because it has a trailer hitch. I forgot that I’d ordered some new lines that were supposed to be in today. The store just called, so I figured I’d borrow his truck to go pick them up. We’ve traded trucks before. I’m a lot taller than Danny, so I tried to move the seat back and it made a ripping noise.”
Drew returned to the half circle that had formed around Danny’s truck with a large evidence bag. “Did you touch it?”
“Yeah. I reached under the seat—figured it was just a T-shirt or a rag or something—but when I pulled that out, I dropped it on the floor there.”
“Okay.” Drew pulled on gloves and lifted the shirt from the floor into the large plastic bag. “I may need a DNA sample to rule you out, but we’ll see what the lab has to say.”
“Okay.”
Toni stood next to Henry, and he had his arm around her, rubbing her shoulder. She could feel his emotions; they were everywhere. He was angry, confused, and worried all at once. Layered over all that was a blanket of guilt.
She tugged on his shirt, and he leaned down to her. “You did the right thing.”
“I can’t believe Danny would be involved in anything violent,” Henry said quietly. “He’s my friend.”
“I know, and maybe that shirt means nothing.” She rubbed her thumb over his cheek. “Maybe it’s all a misunderstanding. Or maybe something did happen that he got involved in and he doesn’t know how to come forward.”
Henry looked skeptical. “Maybe.”
“However that shirt got in his truck, you did the right thing, okay?” She kissed his cheek. “Don’t question yourself.”
Nico was standing on her other side, staring at the truck and the shirt while Drew searched the rest of the vehicle. The detective had already called for backup.
“I
can’t believe Danny would get involved in any of this,” he said.
Toni looked up at her big cousin. “You and Henry both.”
“I have to admit though…” Nico sighed. “Someone might be able to convince him. He’s not a ringleader, but he can be a follower.”
“Do you think he was responsible for the sabotage?” Toni asked.
Nico shrugged. “It’s possible. Maybe it’s even likely. He had access to all the equipment. Hell, no one would think twice of him working on a tractor or messing with one of the tanks. That’s his job.”
“But why?” Henry ran his hands through his hair. “Danny’s been here longer than me. I thought he was loyal.”
“I thought he was too.” Nico shook his head. “I don’t want to keep guessing. Did you call him?”
Henry nodded, and the wave of guilt nearly knocked Toni over. “Yeah. I didn’t say anything, just asked when he would be back.”
“Okay.” Nico walked over and leaned against the barn. “Then we wait.”
Nico and Henry went back to work, so Toni and Drew went to Nico’s office to wait. Toni stretched out on Nico’s couch and leaned against a threadbare pillow that smelled a little dusty. She didn’t care. It was nearly three o’clock, and she was about to pass out from exhaustion.
“Your symptoms getting worse?” Drew asked, eying her from the easy chair next to the desk.
“They’re not too bad so far.” She yawned. “Exhaustion is the most obvious one. I get morning sick at night, so sometimes I have to force myself to eat. Uh…”
“Your hips hurt?”
She nodded. “Yeah! What is that about?”
Drew shrugged. “Something about your joints loosening up. My wife hated that part.”
“I don’t blame her.” Toni shuddered. “Was it worse with twins? Probably, right?”
“Oh yeah. Everything is real… extreme. It’s, like, extreme pregnancy, all-star edition or something.”
“Well, this one only has one heartbeat,” Toni said. “So I think I’m in the clear for that.”
“Probably a good thing.” Drew smothered a smile.
Fate Actually: Moonstone Cove Book Two Page 20