Blue Period
by
Melanie Jackson
Version 1.1 – March, 2013
Published by Brian Jackson at KDP
Copyright © 2013 by Melanie Jackson
Discover other titles by Melanie Jackson at www.melaniejackson.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Chapter 1
There was no heat like the heat of late September, which was apparently why it was time to bring in the last of the grapes. Juliet should have been having fun standing among the bursting fruit with the crowd applauding around her, but she wasn’t.
Perhaps she would have been happier had she not been barefoot in grape slush, baring legs that could have used a shave and more of a tan. She was an artist. She should be sitting in the shade and sketching cliché pictures of grapes while drinking the wine from the last harvest.
Or perhaps the trouble was the party itself. The event hadn’t reached room temperature yet, and in spite of the brilliant sun, it probably never would feel any warmer or jollier. Good manners could only do so much when that year’s event coordinator’s favorite sport was intimidating his neighbors into doing what he wanted.
No matter. She had a job to do. Her eyes narrowed behind her sunglasses, her muscles tensed. She addressed a prayer to Dionysus that he help her stomp the grapes that were destined to be vinified and then sold in supermarkets everywhere.
“Begin!” a voice shouted.
Normally Juliet did not enjoy team sports, but at some point in the afternoon, the couple in the other vat—the popular president of some wine growers federation and his hapless, slightly inebriated wife—had become smug adversaries, sneering at her chances because she was an artist who had never squished grapes before. The man beside her was no longer the annoying host of the art show she had reluctantly entered; he had become her comrade in arms. Together they would grind the lifeblood out of the hapless grapes under their feet and the juice would flow into the waiting buckets.
She saw Raphael once but looked away. His grin reminded her that she was about to get splattered with pulp that would probably stain her clothes and face, making her look ridiculous. It was even possible that she would be photographed in this state and end up in the local newspaper. Then her old employers would see it and shake their heads sadly and wonder at how the mighty had fallen.
That couldn’t be allowed to matter. Juliet stomped, fast and hard, venting her anger at the mostly wasted week she had spent in Napa, waiting for a twice-delayed Raphael to arrive from Boston. She smashed fruit in revenge for the snobbery of the art critics jurying the show and the worse arrogance of those who made wine and thought it gave them the right to critique paintings. When her angry energy at the locals wore out she moved on to dislike of her old coworkers and the job she had done for twenty-five years. At last, in a final bid to keep from collapsing in exhaustion, she thought of her stepmother and all her childhood insults and injustices that had come after her father died. That fed her just enough anger to keep her feet moving until the voice shouted: “Time!”
Exhausted, she gripped the side of the vat and drew in heaving breaths of what felt like superheated air. Three minutes, only three minutes. But she was exhausted and feeling just a little sick as she fought the blackness at the edge of her vision.
Juliet did not watch as they measured the results of the grape massacre. She did not stir until a hand touched her clenched fingers.
“Miss Henry,” Carl Owens said. He was shockingly clean and Juliet suspected that he hadn’t been pulling his weight. “We’ve won. Damned if we haven’t beaten every other team. That means we are in the finals tomorrow.”
“What?”
“We go up against the winners from Sonoma tomorrow afternoon.”
We? He had the nerve to say we? Juliet reminded herself that this man could still be important to her career and that it would be the height of bad form to throw up with so many people watching, so she forced herself straight and jerked her lips into a smile as he pulled her arm into the air and then took a triumphant bow. Self-pity is never flattering so she didn’t indulge it. Especially not in public.
“Well, that’s great,” she lied, retrieving her arm. Juliet waved at the audience as they applauded, noticing that they were being polite but not enthusiastic, and then forced herself to climb over the side of the vat. It was not gracefully done, but she was pleased that she didn’t fall down. She was stained purple from the waist down.
She staggered over to the shade of an oak where Raphael was waiting with a towel, nodding at the words of congratulations from other couples whose matching shirts sported the hieroglyphics of various wine-related organizations.
“Well done, Juliet. Unless you have given yourself a coronary. You look a bit red in the face,” he said softly, handing her the white towel folded in his lap and then opening a bottle of water.
Grape goop plopped onto the ground. She could use a bath with one of the hoses they sluiced the tanks with over at the distillery. As it was, she planned on taking a long shower back at the cottage. As soon as she was strong enough to walk there.
“It was not well done. We’ve won and the crowd doesn’t like it. They will boycott my paintings. And now, because I was efficient, I have to do it again tomorrow.” The intoxication of spending a week expense-free in the fabled California wine country had worn off, sweated away by frustration and heat.
“Yes,” he agreed, sounding suspiciously amused. “But on the bright side, Carl will probably feel compelled to buy one of your paintings and display it at the winery.”
Juliet grunted and glared at her best friend even as she accepted the water.
“I need a shower and a beer,” she said. “And a nap.”
“And you shall have them. There is just enough time before the reception.”
Juliet grunted again.
“It better be an expensive painting. Nothing else will make this worthwhile.”
Chapter 2
“Like it?” Raphael asked. The lines around his mouth had eased into a genuine smile and Juliet tried to be happy too.
“Mostly,” Juliet answered, meaning the town and not the people around them.
The winery was beautiful in an overproduced way. The new castle with its crenellations was operatic in style, the lighting carefully theatrical and designed to enhance the fantasy mood with its shades of blue. Juliet admired it technically, but couldn’t warm to the architecture and its anachronistic encrustations of mixed cherubs and gargoyles that clashed with the older hacienda buildings.
She hadn’t warmed to the owner of the encrustations either.
The town was another matter. Napa seemed to ignore the seasonal whims of urban haute couture and kept its own fashion in food, architecture, and clothing. And wine. The style was a lot closer to Chanel or Ralph Lauren than say Vivienne Westwood. More Julia Child than Iron Chef. It was a village that was fully aware of its worth and dignity. Juliet could appreciate that. She also felt the need to defend herself from the barbarians at the gate.
Though mostly the liberal kind of place that Juliet Henry had come to expect from upscale California, there were a few of the Second Amendment types around who spoke in slogans that came off NRA t-shirts. Some of them, like Carl Owens, owned vineyards and put on art shows which were good for her career. She didn’t like chronically angry men, but was willing to admit that sometimes rage could make people efficient. It had made Carl Owens rich, much to the dism
ay of the other growers who were more from the traditional molds of mid-twentieth-century ladies and gentlemen. They did not always see eye to eye with agrarian entrepreneurs who were out to increase market share. Some felt, and probably rightly, that cupidity and not quality was the guiding force behind some of the newer wineries. Like Blue Period, now that it was under Owens’ management.
The woman with Carl that evening was a bit of surprise. She looked as expensive and well glossed as anyone there, but couldn’t be local. The hair was a highly improbable shade of red. And one put on an outfit like that only by avoiding mirrors while dressing. As an accent color, the choice was unwise. But in an entire pantsuit made up of zippers and well-placed rips, it was an eye-abrader. It resembled nothing so much as the mold that grows on cheddar cheese left under aging bologna at the back of the fridge. She was betting that this was L.A. streetwear by some avant-garde designer who was having a secret laugh at her clients.
Juliet could only shake her head. She wasn’t even trying to look fashionably wealthy. That wasn’t a look that was available to her. She could do professional suits or Bohemian skirts. The latter seemed a better choice given the lingering heat and fifty-year-old hips. Unfortunately, though Rose’s creation was nice and cool it had also managed to collect a fine collection of twigs and leaves in the garden, and the fringe of her belt was hopelessly tangled among the skirt’s lumpy glass beads which sounded like an enraged rattlesnake whenever she moved.
“Yes, she is a bit over the top,” Raphael agreed. He had the habit, usually comforting but sometimes not, of reading her mind. “The mouth twists into a smile, but the eyes above it are blank. Do you suppose it could be Botox?”
“It could equally be boredom.”
Their lips barely moved as they spoke. Their voices were politely hushed so no one would overhear them.
The evening smelled glorious. A nearby winery was harvesting its lavender crop and the sharp bite of shorn stems was being carried in with the fog which also rode the evening breeze, rolling over the thimbleberry trees and into the newer gardens. Juliet hoped to visit them the following day. It was an old vineyard, one of the few that retained the nineteenth-century grapevines. They made only one wine and it was supposed to taste wild, even a bit feral. Since her host was pressuring the family to sell out, and he usually got what he wanted, it was possible that the Trefoil might not see another harvest of lavender or old grapes.
“The new wine isn’t that bad, is it?” Raphael asked as she grimaced. He rarely drank in public and being acquainted with the vintner had opted not to refresh himself with any of the offered vintages.
Juliet tried not to grimace again. All the white cab was made in stainless steel tanks which made it sterile tasting, and the red cabernet had so much oak in it that it was a chewy monster which left her wishing for some dental floss. It was a fine grocery store wine that would be great with barbecued pork rinds. The other vintners sneered at it. But quietly. Owens was known for taking offense at such comments and retaliating.
She wasn’t alone in her thoughts of the cuisine which did include lowbrow pork rinds and weapons-grade salsa. Usually free booze would have made for a tumultuous crowd. But these people had standards and the circulating platters remained full of wine and food. There would be no drunks throwing up behind the rose bushes after a night of wild dancing. Some of the grape growers at the party were dilettantes, retirees and hobbyists with money and a dream of owning a vineyard. Under other circumstances they would have boycotted their neighbor, but that wasn’t easy to do when you lived next to Attila the Hun.
“The canapés are horrid. I think these are squid puffs. They are as chewy as rubber.”
“Not squid. Alligator. Or iguana. Both are on the menu. I read the card.”
“Good God.” Juliet stared at her plate and then put it on a wrought-iron table. It was covered in an embroidered cloth that represented all the local wineries. She had seen something like it before in a restaurant in D.C. That cloth had been a battlefield map of the Napoleonic Wars and it had looked at home with the sabers and muskets hanging on the wall. Here, it made one think of the Protestants sacking the abbeys. There was also another example of the head gardener’s horticultural torture which plagued all the formal gardens. It was a blue bonsai rose, doubtless a white rose spray-painted to match the name of the winery: Blue Period. Unnatural color aside, roses needed elbow room to sprawl and arch and climb their way to grace. Trapped in the tiny pot, the short, spiked canes looked angry and repellant.
“I doubt God had anything to do with it. This is all manmade abomination.” But this seemed to amuse rather than appall him.
“Quite,” Juliet agreed. “In any case, this isn’t her scene. That’s an urban predator. I wonder why she’s here.”
Raphael looked at her again.
“Yes, I see what you mean. There is something rather fanglike in that smile. I am having doubts that it is love alone that has brought her here.”
The woman was covering her pantsuit with another abomination. The coat sported a number of furs which Juliet hoped were faux, but knew in her heart were not. This creature belonged to the brutal cult that liked animals only when they were dead and draped over their bodies. The zoomorphic interlacing of jaws clasping feet and tails resembled a crazy quilt of dead animals. It was impossible not to recall the pied piper of Hamelin and his cloak of living rat pelts.
Juliet wished passionately that she was at home with her paints and her cat, Marley. She did not know how to deal with people like that and there were too many of them at the party. Juliet and Raphael were outnumbered. Especially Juliet. There weren’t a lot of women in the crowd exhibiting overt power or intelligence. Men, even in California, were historically cold to the idea and females aren’t stupid when it comes to reading male moods. Well, not all of them were stupid. There were a few hip-swinging bottom-jigglers in the crowd. But for the rest of the females, this male disapproval meant that the power went underground where it often got twisted by frustration.
Raphael hid his distaste of the woman’s clothing and her ostentatiously displayed and artificially enhanced assets. Juliet hoped that she was also ready for the poker game since her host and his lady friend were headed their way. It took some effort because after a week of socializing she had wearied of connecting names to faces, or at least forms, and those forms to public identities. It was necessary because everyone there felt they were terribly important. Juliet knew that she was expected to declare that she was honored to meet them and to keep on declaring it with a believable level of sincerity. She was resigned to the social code. The only escape would be to take off her artist disguise and reveal herself as an NSA super spy. Former super spy. And that she would never do.
Fortunately she had made a career of understanding lies and even telling them while she thought of other things. She didn’t have to work so hard these days to keep the wolf from the door, but it still lurked in the nearby woods, close enough to help her put in a good performance.
She needed the skill of distracted lying because there was only one guest she was interested in and he was working his way toward them. He had been introduced at Jeffry Talbert. She had last known him as Thomas Herbert. She was making every effort to stay out of his way. The man was, in NSA parlance, a fixer. It was kind of like being a hit man, but usually nonlethal solutions were tried first. But this time, Talbert seemed to be without electronic aid and was contorting with the agonies of the eavesdropper who had to do things the old-fashioned way. It should have amused Juliet, but it didn’t.
But then, nothing was amusing that evening. The blade of general social angst had taken on a personal edge. Embedded in her party manners, which insisted that she remain and make Raphael proud, was a lingering resistance to any involvement in governmental projects. And she was having a strong intuition that she was going to become involved in Talbert’s affairs if she did not depart immediately. Raphael had also recognized him and had aided her in her efforts to avoi
d the agent, but they had retreated as far as they could without locking themselves into the bathroom.
“We’ll make nice for a moment and then go,” Raphael promised. “I’ll pretend to swoon or something.”
“Good.” But Juliet found herself smiling at the idea of Raphael pretending to faint.
“Now smile pretty for the rich man.”
Juliet obeyed.
Arrogant Carl Owens she knew how to handle, but the woman was baffling. She wouldn’t want ego-stroking from Juliet. Which was good because Juliet was at a loss about what to say or where to look. The creature wasn’t fat—far from it—but her pronounced ovoids, top and bottom, were suspiciously and unfashionably lush. While she was busy removing all expression from her face she had probably asked the doctor for JLo’s butt and Dolly Parton’s breasts. Juliet wondered if she were vain or just stupid. And would it be better for her if the creature were intelligent enough to converse, or as dumb as a post and just as uncommunicative. One thing was for certain and that was that her sense of smell had to be dead. To breathe around her was to invite suffocation by perfume.
Carl Owens dropped a stained napkin on the table. There was writing on it, blurred by the wine stains. The message was upside down but Juliet could make it out: Meet me at the old door. Somehow it came as no surprise that Owens was being chased by some ill-advised female who thought that being near men with money could buy happiness. Wealth made even unpleasant men acceptable to some women. It also would not surprise her if he kept the assignation.
Equally, it would not surprise her if he ignored it. Sex wasn’t Owens’ vice.
“Raphael, so glad that you could make it. You had no trouble negotiating the path?” Carl Owens asked as he extended his hand. That meant Raphael was deemed important. Which he was. His reputation in the art world cast a long shadow.
Juliet gave Owens credit for not ignoring Raphael’s wheelchair and for caring that his guest had had no difficulties getting to the party. His smile also seemed genuine if aided by porcelain veneers.
5 Blue Period Page 1