Bill Ladington had been right. The views along the Silverado Trail were spectacular. I looked down over the valley and its thousands of symmetrical rows of grape trellises that followed the contour of the land as far as the eye could see. Some vineyards were relatively flat; others twisted up hillsides and disappeared over their crests. All were brightened by lovely yellow wildflowers called mustard flowers, which inspire a number of festivals throughout California’s wine country. Besides the trellises, the other distinguishing feature across the sprawling landscape were windmills, hundreds of them spaced throughout the vineyards.
“Do those windmills generate power?” I asked.
“No, ma’am,” Raoul replied. “The vineyards turn them on when the temperature gets cold enough at night. The air above the ground is warmer than the air at the ground. The breeze created by the windmills circulates the warmer air over the vines.”
“Seems like a sensible, low-tech solution to a problem,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Some of the wineries we passed looked like European estates, with huge iron gates, and access roads lined with poplar trees reaching far into the vineyards’ inner recesses. Others, more recently built—at least the main buildings looked more contemporary—were closer to the road, and large signs invited visitors to come sample the product.
When we reached Halton Mountain, Raoul turned off onto a very narrow, winding macadam road edged with tall, thick bramble bushes. Then, suddenly, he made a sharp left turn and we were on a dirt road wide enough for only a single car. I looked up and was surprised to see tall, swaying palm trees along the sides of the road; had we left northern California and driven to sunny Los Angeles?
I looked ahead. Looming large on a rise of land was a castle, obviously the one inhabited by William Ladington that, according to him, had been built by the Spanish. I don’t know enough about architecture to question any castle’s origins, but I knew one thing for certain about this one: It was huge. And as we got closer, I realized we were about to cross a drawbridge over a moat.
“A moat?” I said.
“Yes, ma’am. Mr. Ladington had it dug years ago.”
“For security purposes?”
“I wouldn’t know, ma’am. I don’t question what Mr. Ladington does. Ever!”
I glanced at Raoul, whose face was set in what appeared to be anger, although he was such a serious, unsmiling young man that it was hard to gauge. I looked down and saw that the moat, which I judged to be twelve feet wide, was half filled with brackish, green water; huge boulders lined the bottom.
I didn’t have time to ponder it because we were over the bridge and on a circular gravel drive in front of the castle. Massive black wooden doors opened and the lord of the manor stepped through them and stood at the top of the steps. There was no doubt it was William Ladington; I’d seen his picture in enough tabloids to recognize him immediately—six feet, four inches tall, broad shoulders, square, tanned, and deeply lined face, and a full head of steel-gray hair. He wore tight jeans, a little too tight considering the overhang of his stomach, a white gauze shirt open halfway down his chest, and highly polished cowboy boots. He stood with his hands on his hips and a smile on his craggy face.
I opened my door before Raoul had a chance to come around to do it for me, and stepped out of the Jeep. Ladington didn’t bother to come down to greet me. He simply motioned for me to join him on the steps, which I did.
“Well, well, well,” he said in a loud, hoarse voice, “the famous Jessica Fletcher. You bring that book for me and Tennessee?”
“No. I didn’t have one with me.”
Ladington turned to Raoul. “Hey, get yourself over to town and buy up some of the lady’s books. Go on. Get going. Fletcher. Jessica Fletcher. Get the ones with hard covers on them.”
Raoul, who had been standing next to the Jeep, got back in it and drove off.
“Come on in, sweetheart,” Ladington said.
I didn’t move.
“You planning on standing out here all day?”
“Mr. Ladington, if we’re going to get along, I prefer that you not call me sweetheart or any other term of endearment.”
He laughed. “One of those fem libbers, huh?”
“No, just someone who believes in and demands respect between people.”
His face screwed up into exaggerated shock at what I’d said. Then he broke into a wide grin again. “Fair enough. What would you like to be called? Mrs. Fletcher? Jessica? Jess?”
“Jessica will be fine,” I said, extending my hand.
“And I’m Bill. Plain ol’ Bill,” he said, shaking my hand and guiding us through the huge doors.
He led me into a foyer the size of my home in Cabot Cove. Here, the Spanish influence was more evident to my untrained eye. Huge, colorful oil paintings, heavy tapestries, and sizable wall ornaments made of steel or wrought iron lined the walls. We made our way down a lengthy hallway to the rear of the castle. He opened glass doors and we stepped out onto a broad brick patio that overlooked an Olympic-sized pool, and an expanse of vineyard that stretched to the base of a barren hill. Separating us from the vineyard was the moat, narrower at the back than in front. A wooden footbridge that could be raised and lowered by hand spanned it. It was down. An armed security guard sat in a yellow director’s chair next to it.
“Is that Halton Mountain?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am, Jessica, that’s exactly what it is. How do you know about Halton?”
“Friends told me about it last night at dinner.”
“They tell you it’s the finest piece of land in the whole damn valley?”
“They said it was a good place to grow grapes.”
“Your friends are fond of understatements.” He pointed to his right, to another mountain on which grape trellises were strung up to its crest. “That’s Howell Mountain. It’s almost as good as Halton.”
“Why aren’t there vineyards on Halton Mountain?” I asked, returning my attention to the bare hillside.
“There will be, Jessica,” he said sternly. “There will be.”
I pointed in the direction of another vineyard that seemed to butt up to the southern edge of Ladington Creek. The trellises were different from those on the Ladington property. “Is that your land, too?” I asked.
“No. It belongs to a rotten SOB named Jenkins.”
“I take it you and Mr. Jenkins aren’t friends.”
“I’d like to see him dead. That’s how friendly we are. Talking about Robert Jenkins just sets my blood pressure off, and it’s high enough as it is. Come on inside and meet some of my people.”
Some of my people. This was an arrogant man used to being in control of his world, including its human inhabitants.
The dining room easily accommodated a table with thirty chairs, as well as massive pieces of furniture along the walls. I noticed that seven places had been set for lunch, all at one end of the table. There were three chairs on each side of the table, and one at the end that was more of a throne, obviously Ladington’s place of honor.
There were two people in the dining room when we entered, a short, chubby man whom I judged to be in his late forties and a woman a foot taller than he. Her brunette hair hung loosely over her cheeks and neck. She wore a loose-fitting, ankle-length, multicolored dress that would have looked very much at home on a Caribbean beach. Although they stood together at the far end of the room, their body language said all was not well between them. The woman kept her back to us.
“Hi, Dad,” the man said, smiling and quickly circumventing the table.
“Hello, Bruce,” Ladington said.
Bruce extended his hand to me without any introduction from his father.
“I’m Jessica Fletcher,” I said, shaking a pudgy, soft, sweaty hand.
“The mystery writer?”
“Yes.”
“Jessica is joining us for lunch,” Bill said.
“That’s great,” said Bruce.
“You take care of that busine
ss this morning?” the elder Ladington asked.
“No,” his son replied. “I thought I’d—”
“I suggest you stop thinking and start doing. Go on, take care of it now!”
“Sure, Dad.” Bruce turned to where the woman continued to stand with her back to us. “Come on, Laura.”
She responded by giving us a wide berth and leaving the room. Bruce smiled weakly at me, mumbled something about being back in time for lunch, and left.
“Is he your only son?” I asked Ladington when we were alone.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
I didn’t comment on the callousness of the statement, and if I hoped he wouldn’t have more to say about his son, I was disappointed.
“Got his mother’s genes—that’s for sure. Weak-willed, half a backbone, no spunk.”
“What ah ... which of your wives is his mother?” I asked, knowing I shouldn’t but having decided that what would be considered inconsiderate to most other people probably didn’t apply to Ladington.
“Second, I think. Wasn’t the first—I’m sure of that.”
“How many ...”
“How many women have been Mrs. Ladington?” he said with a laugh. “Tennessee’s number eight. I finally got lucky and found somebody who wasn’t crazy or drugged or drunk, and who wasn’t after my money.”
Quite a testimonial to seven previous women, I thought.
“He married that pitiful excuse for a woman,” Ladington added, referring to the woman who’d just left. “Ever see anything so pathetic? Got the personality of a dead clam.”
I was spared having to respond when an older woman of Latino origin entered the dining room from a door at the far end. She carried a tray on which a selection of breads was displayed, placed it on the table, and left without saying a word.
“That’s Consuela. She and her husband, Fidel—like Castro—they help around the house, do some gardening, help out in the kitchen. They were here back before I bought the place. Didn’t think it would be right to can ’em, although I was tempted. They don’t do a hell of a lot.”
It was the first expression of compassion from him since I’d arrived.
We had just stepped outside again when a man almost as tall and wide as Ladington, and wearing gray coveralls and knee-high green rubber boots, came up onto the patio from a set of steps on the pool side.
“What’s up, Wade?” Ladington asked.
“I need you down at the press, Bill.”
Ladington said to me, “You’ll have to excuse me, Jessica. This is Wade Grosso, my vineyard manager.”
“Ma’am,” Wade said.
Ladington went to the open door and bellowed, “Hey, Tennessee, come on out here and keep Jessica Fletcher company.”
“No, that’s all right,” I said. “It’s lovely out here. You go ahead and ...”
A woman appeared in the doorway. She was tall, almost six feet, and had a mane of blond hair that exploded from the top of her head and cascaded down over her shoulders. She was heavily made up, her lips enlarged by an overuse of crimson lipstick. She wore a leopard-skin blouse with the top four buttons unfastened, and tight black slacks. Open sandals exposed rather large feet with polish the same shade as her lips. A cigarette dangled from long, talon-like fingers with inch-long red nails.
“Say hello to Jessica Fletcher,” Ladington said. “Got to tend to some business.”
He walked off with Wade Grosso, leaving his wife and me facing each other.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello,” she said, dropping the smoldering cigarette to the brick patio and extinguishing it with the heel of her sandal. “His majesty said you were coming for lunch.”
“ ‘His majesty?’ ”
“The great man, William Ladington.” She laughed. “He likes to be called that. Come on inside. I’ll give you a house tour.”
“A castle tour would be more apt,” I said under my breath, following her inside.
Twenty minutes later, after I’d been shown the bedrooms, baths, library, and a few other spaces, Tennessee Ladington led me to a series of rooms segregated from the main house. “The offices for the winery,” she said, lighting another cigarette and plopping down behind a desk in a high-back red leather office chair. “Sit down,” she said. “This is where his majesty rules his domain.”
Her constant snide remarks about her husband, delivered with apparent humor but pointed nonetheless, made me uncomfortable, and I silently wished he would return. I tried to make small talk: “Must be challenging to run a winery like Ladington Creek,” I said.
She responded by puffing on her cigarette and adding it to an already overflowing ashtray.
“You’ve garnered so many awards for your wine,” I said. “I took a wine-appreciation course before coming to California. The instructor is quite a fan of your wines, especially the cabernet.”
Tennessee Ladington was spared having to join the conversation when a man entered the office. “Hello, Tennessee,” he said.
“Hello, Roger.”
Roger, who wore a greenish suit that was slightly too big for his slender frame, started for a door leading to another office, stopped, turned, and said to me, “Aren’t you that writer, Jessica Frazier?”
“It’s Fletcher, Roger,” Tennessee said. “Jessica Fletcher. Bill invited her for lunch.”
“Honored to have you,” he said, coming to where I sat and extending his hand. “Welcome to Ladington Creek.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m pleased to be here.”
“See you later,” he said, disappearing through the door and closing it behind him.
“Roger Stockdale,” Tennessee said. “He’s our business manager. Bill thinks he steals.”
“Oh, I ... I, ah ...”
She smiled, her first since I’d met her. “Bill thinks everybody’s stealing from him, including me. He carries paranoia to new heights. I assume you noticed the moat when you arrived.”
“Yes, I did. I’d never seen a real moat before.”
“Stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Cost a fortune to have it dug. Made us the laughingstock of the valley.”
I started to say that I’d been told Ladington Creek had an impressive tasting room—I had a sudden urge for a glass of wine, alone—when loud voices in the hall caused me to turn in that direction. The dominant voice belonged to Bill Ladington, who yelled, “I’ll be damned if that mealy-mouthed low life is going to intimidate me. You go back and tell him I’ll break his damn neck if he tries it again.”
Ladington’s large frame filled the open doorway. He said to his wife in the same bellowing voice, “Jenkins is out there telling Wade he’s going to bring in some new French rootstock and plant it alone, no grafting to American stock. Damn fool will kill every vine in the valley if he does that.” He looked at me: “Tennessee take care of you?”
“Oh, yes. I had a tour of the house—the castle—and—”
“You hungry? I sure as hell am. Tennessee, tell the cook to get things moving. We’ve got a hungry guest here. Can’t have a hungry murder-mystery writer, can we? Where the hell is Raoul with those books? Bruce back yet?”
Ladington continued to bark questions and orders as he led me back to the dining room where his son, Bruce, and daughter-in-law, Laura, stood where they had when I first encountered them.
“Hey, Mercedes, let’s get some food out here,” Ladington shouted through an open door to an unseen person.
Roger Stockdale, the vineyard’s business manager, joined us along with Wade Grosso, who’d removed his rubber boots and replaced them with carpet slippers. As expected, Ladington took his place at the head of the table and we occupied chairs on either side. Tennessee sat to my left, the seat furthest from her husband.
A woman who I assumed was Mercedes appeared from the kitchen followed closely by Consuela. Both carried platters of food that they placed before us. One platter overflowed with meaty ribs and chicken glazed with barbecue sauce; the other contained steaming ve
getables, a large bowl of mashed potatoes, and a silver gravy boat with extra barbecue sauce. I looked across the table at Laura, who looked as though she might become ill at any moment.
“Come on, dig in,” Ladington said, attacking one of the salads that had been put on the table earlier.
“Do you always eat this big a meal at lunch?” I asked, laughing.
“Always,” Stockdale said.
“Do you serve American food at your restaurant?” I asked.
“Of course,” Ladington replied through a mouthful of food. “It’s a steak house. Steak and lobster and chicken.
“The chef is Greek,” Tennessee said.
“But no Greek food,” Ladington said. “Not at my steak house. His name’s Nick. Never can tell what he’ll come up with for lunch. Ladington’s Steak House is the best damned restaurant in the valley. When Nick’s cooking for me, he keeps it simple, like ribs and chicken. He whips up lunch for us here at the castle, then heads over to the restaurant to make dinner. I’ll take you over there myself tonight, Jessica, let you see for yourself.”
“That’s kind of you,” I said, “but I have dinner plans.”
“With who?”
“Maybe Mrs. Fletcher doesn’t want to—”
Ladington interrupted his son with, “Don’t be telling me what to ask anybody, Bruce.”
“Sure, Dad, I—”
“Where the hell is Raoul with those books?” Ladington growled as he filled his plate with ribs and chicken.
It didn’t take me long to adapt to the conversational flow at the table, which was virtually nonexistent. Ladington pontificated while we listened. I asked a few questions early in the meal but soon stopped and ate in silence along with the others. Laura Ladington nibbled on a small piece of roll before excusing herself. “I’m not feeling well,” she said, which prompted Ladington to say when she was gone, “Of course she doesn’t feel good. How the hell can you feel good if you don’t eat? Just eats vegetables and all that organic garbage. One of those health Nazis we’ve got all over California.”
If Bruce had a defense of his wife, he kept it to himself.
Over dessert, talk turned to vineyard business. I would have preferred to absent myself and yearned to be taken back to Cedar Gables, but there didn’t seem to be an appropriate moment to make that request. As I sat there and heard Ladington lodge a series of complaints directed at everyone, I wondered what had possessed me to accept his invitation. He’d said on the phone he wanted to discuss something with me, but that was probably a ruse to get me to agree to come for lunch. Could it be, I wondered, that William Ladington was starstruck and simply wanted a well-known writer to be his luncheon guest? If so, was it to impress his wife, or some of the others? I decided that might be a good possibility, considering how much he wanted autographed books for his shelves.
Blood on the Vine Page 5