“A hint of cinnamon,” the woman said. “And a little cherry.”
Vail rose and turned. A little too quickly, as the wine was already giving her a slight buzz.
“You must be Crystal,” Vail said, struggling to keep a straight face.
“Are you Karen or Roxxann?”
“I’m Agent Vail. This is Investigator Dixon.”
Crystal pursed her lips. “I see.” She took their hands with a firm shake, then motioned them to follow her. They walked down the hall to a glass-enclosed suite. The doors slid open and revealed an office with photos of vines and grapes and wineglasses, in clear frames mounted on the wall with suction cups. At the end of the room was a desk. A . . . glass desk.
Crystal held out an open hand, indicating the two rubber-footed chairs at the foot of her desk.
“I’m curious,” Vail said as she took her seat. “About the name.”
“Oh,” Crystal said with a wave and a bright smile. “Everyone asks. Yes, it’s my real name. My parents thought it was cute. Me, I’ve grown to like it. And working here,” she said with a sweep of her hand, “it kind of fits, now, doesn’t it?”
Vail smiled. “Yes, it does. I hadn’t thought of that.” She looked at Dixon, who was squinting at her. “But,” she said, turning back to Crystal, “I was referring to the name of the winery. Wedded Bliss. How does it fit with all the glass?”
Crystal waved a hand again. Grinned broadly. “Very simple, really. You want the winery tour version or the ‘we’re the police and we don’t have time for that crap version’?”
Vail shrugged. “We don’t have time for that crap, and, well, since we are the police . . .”
Crystal looked long at Vail, then nodded. Her smiled faded, but quickly returned. “Yes, of course. Short answer is that all our wines are blends, and we only use the finest grapes from Georges Valley. So it’s a marriage of pure bliss.”
Who thinks up this shit? Vail nodded. “Makes perfect sense. Surprised I didn’t see that coming. One question, though. What’s a blended wine?”
Crystal looked at Dixon.
Dixon scratched her temple. “She’s new to the wine country. That was a serious question.”
Crystal smiled again, wide and bright. “Well. A blend is a mix of two or more types of grapes to produce something of greater value than the parts would individually exhibit. We have an award-winning winemaker who created all our proprietary blends.”
“Is he happily married?”
The smile faded from Crystal’s face. “Is who happily married?”
Vail held out her hands, palm up, as if it were obvious. “The winemaker. Wedded Bliss. Surely he must—”
“We actually have some important questions for you,” Dixon said. She looked at Vail and shook her head.
Is she scolding me? Hey, I haven’t had a whole lot of sleep. I’m punchy. She realized Crystal was giving her a sympathetic look. Did I say that out loud? Shit, Dixon was right. I shouldn’t have had that wine. But it was so good. And I did deserve it.
“Agent Vail?”
“Hmm?” Vail focused on Crystal, but her gaze was a bit unsteady. “What do you put in your wine? It’s strong.”
“The alcohol content hovers around 14 percent. It’s not significantly different from any other fine wine. When did you last eat?”
“Eat?”
Crystal reached over, lifted her phone from its cradle, and asked the person at the other end to bring up some soda crackers to her office.
“Good idea,” Dixon said. She looked disapprovingly at Vail, then turned her attention back to Crystal. “Nice to hear about Wedded Bliss, but we really need info on your board. Georges Valley AVA.”
“Sure. But my term as president is due to expire next month. I’m not sure you want to be talking with me, or with the incoming president.”
The doors behind them slid apart and the black suited gentleman who greeted them earlier entered carrying a silver tray. At Crystal’s direction, he set it down on the desk in front of Vail and then left. Vail leaned forward and examined the spread. Soda crackers, as ordered. Sliced fruit, breadsticks, and cubed cheese.
“Please,” Crystal said.
“Don’t mind if I do. Very kind of you.” Jeez, I need to keep my mouth shut till I get some food in my stomach. She took a napkin from the side of the tray, selected a toothpick and loaded up on cheese and crackers. Within seconds, she was munching away.
“Actually,” Dixon said, “you’re the person we want to talk with.” She reached over and removed the manila folder from Vail’s lap, then opened it. “Victoria Cameron was due to take over as president, right?”
Crystal’s cheerful face hardened. Her eyes misted. “Terrible tragedy, Victoria. I—you just never know, do you? I mean, a stroke at thirty-seven? That’s . . . it’s just shocking.”
“Yes, just shocking,” Vail repeated as she reached for a breadstick and more cheese. Got news for you, Crystal. If you find that shocking, I wonder what you’ll think when you find out what really happened to her.
Dixon sighed. “It was tragic. But with Victoria . . . deceased . . . who’s taking her place as incoming president?”
“Well, it’s all spelled out in our bylaws. Victoria was our VP of Administration—she handled administrative matters the board had to deal with, took minutes, distributed proxies, liaised with the VP of Budget and Finance to ensure we had our statements each meeting, that sort of thing. The Admin VP was next in line for president on a three-year rotation. If the Admin VP isn’t able to carry out those duties, it falls to the Marketing VP. And that’s Alec Crawford.”
“Can we get a copy of your bylaws?”
“I’ll have them emailed over to you, if you’d like.”
“That’d be fine.” Dixon dug out a business card and handed it across the desk to Crystal. “And a list of all the names of the board members, too, with phone numbers and addresses.”
“We’ve got a phone tree I can send you.”
“And a copy of your board’s minutes for the past twelve months.”
Crystal tilted her head. “Now that might be a problem. Our minutes are not public record. There are proprietary secrets discussed at these meetings. And I’m not at liberty to release that information.”
“Well I’m at liberty to get it,” Dixon said. “I’ll have a subpoena issued if you think it’s necessary.”
Crystal leaned back in her chair. “I’m afraid it will be necessary.”
Vail had polished off half the tray. Only the fruit was left—and she was already feeling more lucid. “We’re not trying to be difficult. It’s just information we think may be useful.”
“Useful in what?” Crystal asked. “Is this about Victoria?”
“We’re not at liberty to say.” Vail winced. “Sorry, I’m not trying to be a wiseass.” At least, not right now. “But this is a sensitive investigation and we can’t say what it is that we’re investigating.” Sure sounds like bullshit doubletalk to me, but what the hell, sometimes witnesses buy it.
“Do I need my attorney? Or the board’s attorney?” Crystal asked.
Dixon crossed one leg over the other. “Not unless you or your board has done something wrong. And we have no indication of that, if that makes you feel more comfortable.”
“We’re having some difficulties with our investigation,” Vail added. “It’s got nothing to do with Wedded Bliss or the Georges Valley AVA—but we’re doing our due diligence in trying to cover all the bases.”
“You’re fishing,” Crystal said.
Dixon shrugged. “Kind of.”
“I’ll see what I can do about releasing the minutes to you. I have to contact the executive committee.”
“We appreciate it.” Dixon looked down at the file. “Meanwhile, can you tell us what the abbreviation ‘SMB’ might stand for?”
Crystal held out her hands. “In what context? Sounds like someone’s initials.”
Vail didn’t want to disclose they had Victor
ia’s notes, and she hoped Dixon was on the same page. “Let’s just say we came across it in our investigation. Something from January.”
Crystal nodded animatedly. “Ah, then that would be Superior Mobile Bottling.”
“Do you or any of the other bottlers who are members of your board use Superior?” Vail asked.
Crystal smiled. “Well, the way our AVA works is a little unusual. Our members pool their purchasing power. Wine making is a business like any other. Our goal is to make money while turning out a quality product. All businesses do well to carefully monitor their expenses. The more they pay out—”
“Thanks for the business lesson,” Dixon said. “But the point is—”
“The point is that the more we order of something, the better our prices. We use the AVA as a means of keeping our bottling expenses low. So we contract with Superior to do the bottling for all our member wineries. And as a result, we get rock bottom pricing.”
“You all use the same bottler?”
Crystal bobbed her head. “For the most part. There are a few who’ve had bottling facilities for years, so they don’t participate, unless they have some specialty wines they need bottled a certain way.”
Vail shook her head. “Let’s back up a second. Bottling includes what, exactly?”
“Gas sparging the bottles, filling them with juice, corking them, applying the labels and capsules, and then boxing them into cases.”
“And this is done at the winery, right?” Vail asked.
“That’s what I was saying. Some larger wineries have the capacity to do this. Many don’t. And many don’t want to do it because it means committing a large amount of space to something that only gets used two weeks out of a year. And they have to maintain and upgrade the equipment every so often to increase capacity, or to accommodate new technology to increase efficiency. It’s a lot of headache and expense. Easier, and usually more cost efficient, to let someone else worry about it.”
Dixon nodded. “So the ‘mobile’ in Superior Mobile Bottling means they come to you.”
“Exactly,” Crystal said. “They have semi trucks that are outfitted with all the equipment. They come to your winery, hook up to your electrical grid, and eight hours later, you’ve got finished cases of wine. A state-of-the-art truck, like the kind Superior has, can do a hundred bottles per minute, about 2,500 to 3,000 cases a day.”
Vail picked up a strawberry from the platter. “Sounds like a nobrainer.”
“One would think.”
“But there are some who don’t get it.”
Crystal slid her chair closer to the desk and leaned her forearms on the glass surface. “Our pricing power is contingent on us hitting certain volume goals. So if you have some who don’t want to get onboard, it can cause some . . . discontent within the ranks.”
Dixon pursed her lips and nodded. “Of course. So who in the AVA didn’t want to get onboard?”
“A very small minority didn’t want to renew the contract we have with Superior. They thought we should invest in building a few custom trailers of our own, that would then move from each of our wineries and do our bottling. But that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. There’s the initial build-out cost—five hundred grand to a million dollars apiece—and you’d still have to park them somewhere in the off-season. Not easy to find parking spots for sixty-five-foot trucks.”
“And it puts you back in the business of maintaining and owning bottling facilities.”
“Sort of. You don’t have permit issues, which is a big deal nowadays. Trying to get permission to build out new space to expand your bottling line is tough, if not impossible. So if we built trailers, we’d get around those issues. Still, there are other things that wouldn’t make sense if we were to own our own trailers. Like some of our members have restrictions on the roads that lead to their wineries, so they’d need to have smaller trucks, which, obviously, have less bottling capacity. Superior takes care of all that for us. They have trailers that can accommodate all our members’ needs.”
Vail swallowed the strawberry she’d been chewing and dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “What about the issue of natural versus fake?” She was trying to be nonchalant with the question, hoping to place less emphasis on it. Because she didn’t really know what she was asking, should it involve something significant, she didn’t want Crystal to feel the weight of the question and attempt to snowball them.
Crystal leaned back. “Well, that was another thing that led to intense debate. I’m not sure that got resolved. I guess we’ll find out where we are at our next meeting.”
“Why such disagreement?”
“What do you know about corks?”
Vail and Dixon shared a glance. Vail’s look said, This is about corks?
“I don’t know a whole lot,” Vail said. “Wineries stick them in wine bottles to seal them. But my guess is there’s a lot more to it than that, isn’t there?”
Crystal smiled again—but this was not her promotional smile. It was a one-sided smirk that conveyed depth and irony. “Your guess is correct. It’s sparked quite the debate in the wine community, and our board is no exception. There are those who are fervent supporters of natural cork, to the point of being fanatics. They claim that not using cork is breaking with centuries of wine-making tradition.”
“What alternatives are there?” Vail asked.
“Synthetic corks or screw tops.”
“Screw tops—like a twist-off on a bottle of soda or tea?”
“Yes. We don’t like that model, for that reason. Screw tops solve a lot of the problems that come from natural or synthetic corks, but they’re cheap looking. They fit more with a cut-rate label than the quality of a Georges Valley wine. There’s something about a twist-off top that just doesn’t fit with a fine bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, or a highly regarded blend such as ours.”
Dixon nodded. “Same could be said about those synthetic corks, right?”
Crystal’s face firmed. “No. Not right. Not in my opinion. You still have the feel of opening the bottle with a corkscrew. The only difference is that the good ones are made of thermoplastic elastomer.” She waved a hand. “That’s not entirely true. There are other differences. Cork comes from tree bark, a very specific oak tree grown in the Mediterranean and Portugal—and the trees can’t have their bark stripped until they’re twenty-five years old. After that, they can only be harvested once every ten years or so. But there are nearly twenty billion bottles of wine produced each year. There just isn’t enough natural cork to go around.”
“So it’s a supply and demand issue.”
“On the surface, yes. But there’s much more to it.”
Dixon leaned back and placed a hand on her chin. “Doesn’t cork allow some air to get into the bottle, which promotes natural aging of the wine?”
“It also allows TCA into the bottle, which causes what’s called cork taint. It ruins the wine, gives it a moldy smell that tastes like wet cardboard.”
“TCA?” Vail asked.
“Trichloro-something. It’s a fungus that grows because of naturally occurring chemicals found in cork. Depending on who you believe, between 3 and 20 percent of bottles are ‘corked.’ Basically, those bottles are ruined by TCA contamination. The winery can avoid that by using the thermoplastic elastomer, or synthetic, corks that I mentioned. Some synthetics aren’t as good, and they actually let more air into the bottle than natural cork. But the ones Superior uses are, well, superior. They don’t have that problem.
“Then there’s also the issue of cost. With our volume pricing, we can get these synthetics at about four cents apiece, compared to fifteen to seventy-five cents for natural cork. Add it up over the millions of bottles our members produce, year after year, and you’re talking real money.”
Vail hiked her brow. “So it seems like the synthetic would be the way to go.”
Crystal grinned—that same deeper-meaning half-smile. “One would think. But there was considerable debate ove
r whether to renew that three-year contract with Superior.”
Dixon shook her head. “What does Superior have to do with the cork issue?”
“They only have one trailer that’s still equipped to handle natural cork. They’ve refitted the rest of their trucks to synthetic-only because they’ve developed custom machinery that allows them to bottle faster with the synthetic.”
“So,” Vail said, “there are a couple people on the board who didn’t want to renew the Superior contract. Did Superior know this?”
“Absolutely not. The business of the board and its member wineries is confidential and we don’t discuss it outside the boardroom. We each sign confidentiality statements preventing us from discussing board business with anyone who’s not a board member.”
Vail wondered if Crystal had herself signed one of these statements—here she was telling them all about the board’s deliberations. But she wasn’t complaining. Still, it made her wonder who might also have thought it was okay to tip off someone at Superior that their contract renewal was in jeopardy.
“Who usually deals with Superior?”
“Our Contracts VP. Ian Wirth.”
“And who’s the board’s contact person at Superior?”
Crystal hesitated. Her eyes moved between Vail and Dixon. “Why?”
“Same reason it was five minutes ago,” Vail said. “We’re investigating something and this information may or may not be germane to the issue we’re looking into.”
“I’m not sure—”
“This isn’t confidential board business,” Dixon said. “It’s just someone’s name at a company. We can call Superior and ask them the same question, but you can save us some time and effort. And we’d appreciate that.”
Crystal reached to the right corner of her desk and removed a file folder from a standing portfolio. She opened it and traced a finger across a page. “César Guevara. He’s their CFO.”
Dixon pulled a spiral notepad from her inside jacket pocket and made a note of the man’s name.
Vail sensed they were reaching the end of the interview. But there was one more piece of information they needed. “Who on your board,” she said, “has the initials TN?”
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