In the bathroom, she splashed water on her flushed face and stared at herself in the mirror. What a lightweight! Who got tipsy at a wine tasting?
Aidan was subdued while they ate. He’d ordered her chicken soup. She’d expected Campbell’s, but it was homemade and delicious. She ate every drop and every crumb of toast.
“What’s next?” she asked.
“Sure you’re OK?” He’d ordered a BLT and fries, which is what she would have ordered if her stomach felt normal.
“It snuck up on me.”
“You were knocking them back,” he said. “I think tasting means you swirl it around your mouth and spit it back out.”
“So, what’s your plan for looking for leaks or theft?” She was pointing out that she’d remembered what he said before they got into the car and started the long, slow, nauseating journey down to the Wagon Wheel.
“It’s in the trunk.”
They paid and went out to the car. Aidan opened the hood, the Porsche had its trunk in the front, and pointed to a tiny airplane.
“A drone?” she said.
“With a Go Pro.” He grinned. “Let technology do the walking.”
“Aren’t they illegal on private property?”
“Not so long as we stay high enough,” Aidan said.
Even though she was feeling better, he insisted on driving. It was his car, so she couldn’t exactly fault him, but it wasn’t helping her stomach any. Her phone rang and she took the call without looking at who it was from. Not a lot of people had her number.
“You’re buying a winery?” It was Jeffrey, the man who still acted like her agent even though she’d fired him. She supposed that, if he still worked for her, she’d be grateful for his persistence. “That could be good branding. Salgado Spirits.”
Sofia put him on speaker phone and set the phone down so that she wouldn’t be tempted to toss it out the window. “How would you know about that?”
“A woman named Annabelle Befort called me. She says you showed up at her winery, drank all the stock, and left.”
Aidan laughed so hard she worried he’d lose control of the car.
“Watch the road!” she said. “I didn’t drink all the stock and I’m not buying a winery. She’s mistaken.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad move,” he said. “Angelina Jolie has a winery. And look what that’s done for her career.”
“I’m pretty sure that her career trajectory has nothing to do with whether or not she owns a winery.”
“This Annabelle would like to meet you again. She told me to apologize to you for her husband’s boorish behavior and to beg you to go to her party tonight at seven. She has smoothed things over with her husband, whatever that means.”
“How did she know to contact you?” Sofia asked.
“It’s well-known that I’m your agent.”
“But you aren’t.” She rubbed her temples. “Do you still list me as a client on your website?”
“Who knows what my web guy is up to.”
“Take me off.”
“It doesn’t hurt to have someone to field offers. Do you want I should find a real estate lawyer for you? To help with the purchase of the winery?”
“Take me off your website. And I’m not buying a winery.”
“Sure, you can’t afford one right now, but I heard about this great script. It’s about a surfer girl who is kidnapped by drug runners and—”
“No.”
“Don’t you like surfing?”
“I’ve never tried surfing. Except that one time when I was twelve and the board hit me in the nose and I got two black eyes and you and the studio told me I wasn’t ever allowed to surf again.” The memory was making her even more angry.
“Then this is the perfect chance!” he said without apologizing. “We can get you a coach. Or you can use a double. You don’t have to get wet if you don’t want to.”
“You’re not my agent,” she said, slowly, reminding herself of the fact that she had fired him at least five times. But he kept pretending she hadn’t, and she somehow kept falling back into versions of this conversation. “I fired you.”
“Maybe not right this instant, but if you signed up for Surfer Chick, that’s the name of the picture, catchy, huh? If you signed up for Surfer Chick, I’d take you back on. No hard feelings.”
“I’m hanging up now.” She ended the call.
“Drank all the stock.” Aidan was still laughing, so she poked him.
“Maybe I should try surfing,” she said. “It looks fun.”
“Didn’t surfing almost kill your cowboy a few days ago? Why would you want to get back up on that horse? Do you want to get His and Hers boards?”
“Do they make those?”
“No.” He reached the turnoff for the vineyards. But he didn’t go to either one. Instead he took the third road.
“What’s up there?” she asked.
“Parkhurst, the third neighbor. I thought we’d pay him a visit.”
“Why would he be involved?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
She researched Pankhurst on her phone while Aidan drove. “Says here he has a stable. We could pretend to be horseback riders.”
“Just not a couple again.”
“It’s hardly believable we’d be a couple anyway,” she said. “That’s just Brendan’s fantasy. We can be brother and sister if you want.”
“No.” Aidan practically yelled out his answer.
She’d forgotten he had a thing about them pretending they were brother and sister. “Cousins?”
He gave a grunt that sounded like another no.
“Maybe you’re a hitchhiker I picked up because you looked so sad by the side of the road,” she said. “Because I’m such a kind person.”
“Maybe I picked you up by the side of the road because you were stumbling around drunk,” he said.
That hit a little too close to home. “We’ll go with the brother/sister thing.”
“We will not.”
Aidan stopped in front of a chain link fence. It was closed, and a chain had been threaded through the gate and locked. ‘No Trespassing’ and ‘Trespassers will be Shot, Survivors Will be Shot Again’ signs attached to the fence with rusty baling wire. Not surprisingly, someone had shot the sign.
“Not a friendly guy,” Sofia said.
Aidan climbed out of the car and wandered over to the fence because that’s how much sense he had. There was even a sign with a gun on it to tell you how you would be shot. Maybe it was a courtesy to people who couldn’t read English or couldn’t read at all. Helping the illiterate avoid a bullet. What a nice guy.
A blue pickup headed down toward them, kicking up a rooster tail of dust behind it. The truck stopped in gravel on the other side of the fence. The driver was in his forties, with a sun-weathered face, bright blue eyes, and short blond hair. He was pretty cute, although a little angry. She hurried over to join Aidan. He might need backup. Or someone with finesse.
“No trespassers,” the man said. “Signs say so.”
“Are you Rick Pankhurst?” Aidan asked.
“Not your business. Now go.” The man glared at them. He had a gun rack in the pickup and it held a rifle. What kind she couldn’t tell, but she didn’t doubt it was loaded, although she was pretty sure guns in gun racks were supposed to be unloaded.
“We were in the neighborhood.” Sofia smiled at him. “And we thought we’d go horseback riding. Your stables are very highly ranked on the Internet.”
“They’re closed.” He spit out the window onto the dust. “Been closed since my wife died.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Sofia said. That meant he was probably Rick Pankhurst.
His face softened a little, but not much. “Go before I call the police on you for trespassing.”
She looked past him at a long dusty driveway, a dilapidated red barn, and a rambling one-story house with a front window replaced by a sheet of plywood. It looked as if no one had lived there for years.
How long had his wife been dead?
“Do you still have the horses up there?” Aidan asked.
“Sold ’em.” The man started up his truck and looked at them.
“I think he’s done talking to us,” Sofia said.
“Something about this guy gets my back up,” Aidan said.
“Your cop sense is tingling?”
“Something like that.” Aidan crossed his arms and looked at the truck. He looked as if he could wait there all day. Pankhurst looked back at him, just as stubborn. It didn’t look as if he was going to move either. Maybe he was sitting there loading his shotgun.
“I don’t see how he could be a water rustler,” she said. “His property looks pretty dried out. I don’t think see any landscaping or a pool or anything.”
Aidan sighed. “You’re right. It’s probably nothing that’s our problem.”
He looked so disappointed she felt bad for him. “Why don’t we head back down the road, see if he leaves his house, wait for him to pass us, then turn your drone loose and see if he’s hiding anything?”
“I like your thinking,” Aidan said.
But they were destined for disappointment. Rick Pankhurst never came down the road.
CHAPTER 18
Sofia was completely sober and more than a little bored, but she amused herself by looking at photos of Pankhurst and his wife Belinda. They had a bunch on their website. Belinda was tall, thin, and dark-haired. She looked a little like Annabelle Befort, but seemed more down-to-earth in her jeans and cowboy hats and sincere-looking smiles. Sofia looked up her obit. She’d died of breast cancer. No foul play from Pankhurst on that count.
Aidan stared moodily up the road. She could practically see the gears turning in his head.
“You know,” she said. “If Pankhurst came out, he’d spot us in a heartbeat. The Lemon Drop doesn’t blend into the background. We ought to get a rental for stakeouts.”
Aidan grunted, which was as forthcoming as he’d been so far on this stakeout.
“He’s not coming,” she said, for the twenty-second time.
“You’re right,” Aidan said.
She looked up from her phone in surprise. “What was that?”
“We’ll head over to the Grigoryan’s property, try out the drone from there.”
Her phone buzzed.
“Who is it?” Aidan asked.
She looked at it. It was a picture of an ice cream sundae. “Jaxon. He says there’s a hilly trail we can take on Tuesday. It ends up at a restaurant with great ice cream.”
“Make sure you don’t drink wine before you leave.” Aidan started the car.
“I don’t get horse sick. I get car sick.”
“You get wine sick,” he said.
She started to text Jaxon back.
“You can’t do that,” Aidan said.
“Why not?”
“You have to wait at least ten minutes or you seem desperate.”
“Really?” If there were rules to texting, Aidan would know them.
“People want what they can’t have, so waiting builds up a sense of mystery and uncertainty which makes you seem more desirable. It’s been shown in rat studies.”
“Rats text?”
“There’s a button they press. Never mind.” Aidan turned up toward the Grigoryan’s castle.
She pocketed her phone. Maybe Aidan was right.
The castle looked the same as it had last time. Blue skies, blue pool, giant ostentatious building, angry Armenian approaching.
“You have found proof already, haven’t you?” Narek Grigoryan puffed up to them.
“Not yet, sir,” said Aidan. “We’re going to use a drone to check for leaks or anything suspicious.”
“Good. Spy tech. That will help.”
Aidan opened up the Porsche’s trunk and took out his drone. It had four rotors and a tiny body. It was blue on the bottom and white on the top, with a camera mounted under its belly. He pulled out a little remote control box that looked as if it would be used for video games. She sensed her afternoon was about to get more boring, if that was possible.
“How high can it fly?” asked Mr. Grigoryan.
“High enough.” Aidan set it on the ground and took it off. He looked about five years old with the remote control in his hand and a dopey grin on his face.
“Do we have to wait for it to come back to see what it’s seeing?” Sofia asked.
“There’s an app for that.” Aidan swiped his phone, and it displayed the drone’s eye view on his phone screen.
The drone was looking down on them, their car, and the top of the castle. Sofia waved.
“Camera hound,” Aidan said.
“Can I fly it?” she asked. “Please. Pretty please.”
“We’ll start with the Grigoryan’s property,” Aidan said. “I’ll pilot. You look out for anything that seems weird.”
“Such as?” Mr. Grigoryan was watching Aidan’s screen as intently as they were.
“Green where it shouldn’t be green, dark soil,” said Sofia. “Or maybe a hose running off somewhere.”
“Exactly,” said Aidan.
The drone flew over the first row of grapes. It was going to be hard to see if there was a leak there. The grape vines were covered in giant green leaves, and they blocked a lot of the view. “Can you get lower?”
“Not unless I’m ready to smack my drone into a grapevine.” He flew down one row and up another.
“Someone would have noticed. We walk the rows regularly, looking for pests, making sure nothing is browning from lack of water,” Mr. Grigoryan said. “This is a waste of time.”
Not a very upbeat guy, Mr. Grigoryan.
She watched the tiny screen, but Mr. Grigoryan wandered off. It was pretty boring—grape vines, grape vines, the brown dirt at the end of a row, more grapevines. After about twenty minutes, the drone sped up, and Aidan moved the phone out of her view.
“What’re you doing? I can’t see.”
“It’s running out of battery,” Aidan said. “I have more in the trunk.”
He flew the drone back to Grigoryan’s parking lot where they changed the battery and started over. Aidan had brought a bunch of extra batteries. She put the used ones in the glove box so they wouldn’t get them mixed up, then started to text Jaxon again.
“Are you watching the screen?” Aidan asked.
“I’m watching a screen,” she answered. “I’m texting Jaxon. It’ll only take a minute.”
“No mystery if you text too soon.”
“It’s been over twenty minutes. That’s twice the time you told me.” She thumbed in “What’s better than a scenic horseback ride? A scenic horseback ride with ice cream and a cherry on top!”
She thought about putting in two exclamation points, but decided that made her sound too perky.
“Not bad,” Aidan read it over her shoulder. “Not totally generic, so that’s good.”
The drone started down another row. She was already sick of grapes and grapevines.
“He’s not analyzing them on the other end like you are.” At least she hoped not.
“Of course he is. That’s what people do. If he knows the rules, he won’t text you back for at least twenty-five minutes.”
“But I texted him back in twenty!”
“He needs to stretch it out some, so he seems chill about it.”
Her phone buzzed. She had a text.
“See!” she said. “Your rules are dumb.”
“What’d he say?”
“It’s Emily.” Emily had sent her another picture of a shirtless Jaxon. He was on the Hollywood Life website under the heading ‘Sofia’s Sexy Stallion.’
“What’s Emily have to say?”
“Nothing.” She put the phone in her pocket. “Is that a green streak right there on the ground? Maybe it’s a leak.”
It wasn’t, but by the time Aidan had circled the drone back to check that spot of land again, he’d forgotten about her text. Hopefully, Jaxon hadn�
��t seen the headline. Most civilians were weird about stuff like that. Not that she could blame them. It was weird to have your love life constantly on display.
By the end of the second battery, they’d covered a good part of the vineyard and hadn’t seen anything amiss. The landscape was as groomed at the house.
“I want to go to the Pankhurst’s house.” Aidan’s drone was already flying at top speed across the vines.
It was obvious where the property line ended. Where the Grigoryan vineyard was well-tended, Pankhurst’s property was wild. Clumps of golden, dry grass dotted a dusty landscape. The blue pickup had either left or returned to its garage. Nothing much to see. No plants or intentional landscaping, like Sofia had said.
“His water usage rose ten percent, too,” she said. “But how?”
“He doesn’t look like he’s growing anything.”
“Wonder what he does in the barn so much?” she said.
“What do you mean?” Aidan asked.
“He said the horses are gone, and I don’t see any evidence of any. The trough’s dry. No horse poop anywhere. The only walking trail that isn’t overgrown is between the house and the barn.”
Aidan zoomed the drone back and forth along the path. It looked as if Pankhurst walked out there every day.
“Maybe he’s going out there to mourn his wife,” she said. “Maybe the barn was a special place for them.”
The house door opened, and Pankhurst came out onto his porch. He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked around as if he knew something was up.
Aidan spiraled the drone higher until the house and barn looked like beat-up children’s toys. Pankhurst paced around his front yard, searching for something. Then he jogged over to the barn and disappeared inside.
She wished they could get the drone in there, but there was no way he wouldn’t notice that.
From his new high altitude, Aidan flew a large circle around the property, but she didn’t see anything amiss. No patches of green, and if a drop of water had spilled on that landscape some plant would have drunk it up.
“I don’t think he’s stealing anyone’s water,” she said. “Or using much of his own.”
“But why the increase?” Aidan asked. “I still have a weird feeling.”
“You should have used the bathroom at the Wagon Wheel.”
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