by A. J. Carton
Emma spent the rest of Sunday preparing for the wine tasting at Sergio’s restaurant. Over the past year its owner, Sergio Santagrata had become her good friend. And Jack’s new business partner. Jack had actually bailed Sergio out of serious financial difficulties shortly after saving Emma’s life. Sergio was a fine chef, but he was a terrible businessman.
Emma had recently enlisted his help preparing her new cookbook in collaboration with Buchanon Vineyards, What a Pair: Eating and Drinking Locally in Sonoma. The cookbook consisted of thirty breakfast, lunch and dinner menus. Emma’s job was to research and test each recipe used in the book, all using locally grown ingredients.
She would be serving one of the dinner menus for Jack and his guests at the dinner for six he purchased at the Opera in the Vineyards fundraiser the night they first met. The dinner she selected included one of her personal favorite recipes: spinach and ricotta gnocchi, light fluffy balls of cooked chopped spinach, ricotta cheese, egg yolks and parmesan rolled in flour and boiled for a few seconds in water till they floated to the top. The trick with the malfatti (a word she’d learned meant “badly made” in Italian) was to make sure they didn’t fall apart when they were boiled. There was no miracle cure if that happened - like adding ice cubes to a curdled sauce Bernaise. There was just a soggy mess.
Emma intended to serve the malfatti in a sauce made by sautéing a large clove of garlic and a few chopped basil leaves with fresh cherry tomatoes in a little olive oil, and letting it simmer until the tomatoes burst into a light sweet sauce. The trick with the sauce was not to burn it. And finding the right ratio of olive oil to tomato. The malfatti were light. Too much tomato drowned out their flavor. Too much oil…well, of course, that was never good.
Those were the recipes she tested all Sunday afternoon, and intended to “pair” with just the right wines at Sergio’s that night. Even for home-testing the recipes, she had bought all the ingredients locally. The ricotta from Sorellina’s Creamery. The spinach from Tasso Farms. Of course, May was too early for local tomatoes. Many Sonoma gardeners didn’t even plant their tomatoes until the end of May. Emma had tested her recipe with greenhouse tomatoes. Good local tomatoes would not be available until late July at the very earliest. The best did not appear until September.
At quarter to five Emma had finished cleaning up her kitchen. She stored the sauce she made in a glass container and put it in the fridge. Then she climbed the stairs to her bedroom to dress for dinner. Jack would arrive in a few minutes. He hated to wait.
She was just buttoning up a vintage Marimekko tent dress in bold pink and red stripes when she saw Jack’s Tesla pull into her driveway. She shoved her feet into her old, comfortable black Tods loafers and grabbed her black cotton French painter’s jacket out of the closet. The night promised to be mild. Her faux Goyard sac hung on a peg by the front door. She let herself out and locked up. Jack was getting out of the car.
They kissed each other lightly on each cheek before he opened the door for her. Jack’s manners never ceased to amaze Emma. Though he wore his working class background on his sleeve, Jack’s manners were strictly Emily Post. The original 1922 edition of the etiquette book. Emma suspected that somewhere along the line Jack had memorized it.
Emma settled back into the now familiar passenger seat of Jack’s navy blue luxury car. The one the VC had invested in. Early. The only car that Jack once said he “truly desired.” He said it like he meant it, Emma thought, staring at Jack’s determined profile maneuvering the car around the old magnolia and down the driveway to the street. Like a man still capable of desire.
He wasn’t a handsome man, she reminded herself. His face was too beat up for that. Too many broken noses, dislocated jawbones and black eyes playing hockey. But she had to admit the man was attractive. At least the women of Blissburg thought so. Maybe it was because all that damage somehow proved he was a survivor. Women like survivors, she mused.
As for what the men of Blissburg thought of Jack? Emma had learned that what you heard about Jack Russo depended on whom you spoke to. Those who’d had a run in with Jack offered grudging respect. Those who hadn’t – or those like her son-in-law who worked for him – treated him gingerly, like an unexploded hand grenade.
One thing was certain, however. Men trusted Jack Russo. They trusted him to be an enormous pain until he got his way. Which he usually did.
“How was the Stroll?” Jack asked as Emma buckled her seatbelt. “What’s new with Luther Burbank?”
“The Stroll was interesting,” Emma answered. “And a little bit sad. It seems the man who knew how to make everything else increase and multiply never had any children of his own.”
“So he left us Santa Rosa plums instead,” Jack replied. “They were his children.” He stopped talking for a few seconds before adding with a sigh, “And I’ll bet those plums never broke his heart.”
Emma waited for Jack to continue. When she determined that he would not, she decided there was no use prodding him. She changed the subject.
“How was hockey?” she asked. Talking about his grandsons always brought a smile to Jack’s face.
“You know, Emma,” he replied, his voice recapturing all the enthusiasm it had lacked a moment before. “I was just thinkin’ about that driving over to your place tonight. Why the heck do I get such a kick out of being with those boys? There is very little, in fact, that I enjoy more than their company. I’m ashamed to say it, honestly, I don’t remember having so much…fun…with my own…”
“Do you think it’s because now you have boys?” Emma asked.
For a few moments Jack seemed lost in thought. Then he shook his head.
“No,” he finally said, decisively.
He didn’t look at Emma, which was unusual because he frequently took his eyes off the road to glance at her when he spoke.
“I really don’t think it’s that,” he continued. “See Cara was always very athletic. She even joined an ice hockey team – I think she was around eleven. Looking back, I guess the poor kid was tryin’ to get my attention. I traveled a lot,” he shrugged. “Always chasing a deal.”
“It’s a pretty common story, Jack,” Emma said.
“Yeah,” he answered. “But that’s water under the bridge, isn’t it?” He shook his head, “Anyway, what I figured out is that grandchildren are different. I don’t mean that cliché about how grandparents get to have fun and then drop the little buggers off with the parents when they’re tired and cranky. I’m talkin’ about how the whole thing is different.”
He stopped for a moment as if to collect his thoughts. Then he continued. “At the rink today, Emma, it was like hockey practice when I was a kid. I never wanted to get off the ice. I looked at my grandsons skating around the rink – Josh skates backwards great, by the way. Mikey junior – not so good. I wasn’t lookin’ at my watch wondering when it would end. I wasn’t checkin’ email. I was there. I didn’t want to be anywhere else. And the best part is, the kids knew it. That there was nowhere else their granddad would rather be than with them. Havin’ fun.”
Emma felt a surge of something when Jack stopped talking. It was warm, and crept over her in places she hadn’t felt in years. She hoped it wasn’t love. That would complicate things. She liked their friendship simple. The way it was.
She took a deep breath. “You know, Jack,” she said. “I don’t think I could have phrased it better, myself. That’s exactly how I feel when I’m with Harry. That I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
And because that was true. Because Jack’s treasuring his time alone with his grandsons gave Emma the freedom to treasure her time alone with Harry, any jealousy she might have felt about his comment vanished into thin air.
They had pulled up to the service entrance behind Sergio’s restaurant. Since bailing Sergio out of his financial troubles and buying into the business, Jack had a parking space just to the left of the restaurant’s back door. He turned off the ignition and got out of the car. By the time Emma had ga
thered up her purse and unbuckled her seatbelt, Jack was opening her door.
Sunday night at Sergio’s was wine pairing night. Representatives of three or four of the many local vineyards prepared a tasting and then educated the customers on the optimal wine for each of their courses. That night, among others, Barry Buchanon from Buchanon Vineyards had brought along his master vintner, Giuseppe Pieri, an eighty year old Italian from Lucca in Tuscany. Despite almost fifty years living in Sonoma County, Peppino, as he was locally known, still spoke Italian like a Tuscan, pronouncing the soft “c” before a vowel like a “sh”. So for cento or a hundred, he said “shento” instead of “chento”; “shinque” for “cinque” or “five”.
Emma loved practicing her Italian with the tall, blue-eyed, ruddy-faced man when she visited the Buchanon Vineyard to research her book. Even in his eighties, Peppino knew how to flirt.
“Ciao, bella,” he called to her from behind the restaurant’s sleek mahogany and steel bar - interrupting an animated conversation in Italian with Sergio, the restaurant’s owner and celebrity chef.
Emma waved back. Then Sergio broke away from the conversation to take Emma and Jack to what had become their usual table near the kitchen.
“Ciao, Em-ma,” he greeted Emma with a cursory kiss on each cheek, pronouncing each of the m’s in her name, Italian style. “Come va, Jack? What’s up?” he added to Jack. Despite his friendly greeting, something in the young man’s tone signaled to Emma that Sergio was annoyed.
“Senti, listen,” he added, squatting down by their table as they took their seats. “Peppino will be over in a minute. I know you want to talk to him about some wines for your dinner, Jack. But I gotta warn you, the old man’s making me trouble.”
“Trouble?” Jack asked.
“He’s steamed because the HoCo guys dropped by tonight for dinner. They’re staying out at the Honorage Inn and Spa. This morning, Barry invited them up to Buchanon Vineyards to look around and Peppino lost his temper. You know. Same old thing about the Made in China wine. Now they turn up here as my customers and Peppino refuses to talk to them.” Sergio pounded the table in frustration jiggling the forks and knives. “I told him, I can’t do that. Somebody comes to my restaurant, I gotta serve them. And you know what he says?” Sergio looked at Jack.
Jack shrugged.
“He said, ‘just like a Sicilian. You’d do business with the devil,’” Sergio replied.
Jack’s eyebrows shot up. “What did you say?”
“Nothing,” Sergio answered. “Next thing, you two walked in. Besides,” he added, “what could I say? I would do business with the devil – as long as he pays his bill.”
“Forget about it,” Jack said, eyeing the customers in the restaurant over Emma’s shoulder. “So where are they?”
“Who?” Sergio asked.
“The Chinese,” Jack replied, his eyes still scanning the room. Then he stopped and squinted at a table in the far corner of the crowded restaurant. “Do they pay their bill?”
“I’ll say,” Sergio laughed. “And they know a lot more about what they’re eating than the dumb clucks from Marin who don’t know a Bolognese sauce from tomato ketchup. But when they practice their Italian…” he shook his head. “It’s murder. I gotta give them credit, though. They try. And the clothes?” Sergio kissed his fingertips. “Hand made suits – Kiton, Etro sportswear. I wish I could afford to dress like that. Look at them.”
Emma turned, in spite of herself, to follow Sergio’s and Jack’s eyes to the table. Four Chinese men sat there conversing, obviously enjoying their meal. Even from a distance, they looked impressive in their beautifully tailored suits and designer ties. Emma guessed there was nothing “Made in China” about them except themselves.
“So, what did they order?” Emma asked.
“Potato gnocchi and the veal Bolognese,” Sergio answered.
“What wine did they choose?” Jack added, “without the benefit of Peppino’s expert advice, I mean.”
Sergio waved his hand up and down, sideways. “They knew exactly what they wanted. And they chose well. A 2011 Soliste St. Andelain Sauvignon Blanc with the gnocchi. And a 2012 Two Shepards Saralee Grenache Noir with the veal. I might have chosen a different red; but...” he shrugged. “All this in Italian, mind you. Which was pretty good except for putting the accents on all the wrong syllables.”
“They’re dropping a bundle,” Jack laughed. “You’re right. Only a dumb Lucchese like Peppino Pieri would turn away business like that.”
Emma winced. Peppino was waving, walking towards their table. Thank goodness the only thing wrong with the hearty old Tuscan was that he was hard of hearing.
Twenty minutes later, after Peppino offered them a dozen or so wines to taste, Jack selected a 2012 Preston GSM, a 2012 Macphail and a 2010 32 Winds Hirsch Pinot Noir for the dinner.
“I’ll have it all delivered to your house tomorrow,” Peppino promised, patting Jack on the back with a paternal smile.
But when the old man turned to bid Emma goodbye, she saw his eyes meet those of one of the Chinese men seated at the table behind her. Emma looked over her shoulder at him. The man waved, obviously motioning Peppino to his table. Instead of waving back, the winemaker scowled, turned on his heel and walked in the opposite direction.
Emma knew Jack saw the exchange as well.
“Great way to make enemies,” she mused. “Barry won’t be happy with that performance. I’ve heard from Piers that Barry has been trying to make nice with the Chinese.”
“Enemies?” Jack shrugged in his fatalistic Sicilian way. “At Peppino’s age, who cares?”
By then, they had finished dessert. Zuppa Inglese, an Italian riff on English pudding made with custard and home made ladyfingers. It tasted so much like Emma’s grandmother’s version of the dish, it brought tears to her eyes.
And Emma laughed so hard she almost did cry when the woman at the neighboring table complained that Sergio didn’t list the ubiquitous tiramisu on his menu.
“What kind of Italian restaurant is this?” she pouted. “Imagine,” she said addressing Jack, “no tiramisu.”
As they got up to leave, Jack turned to Emma. “Do you mind stopping by my house before I take you home? I thought you could help me figure out, you know, how to plan this party. I took your advice and invited Bob Monroe and his wife. You know Bob? He runs Monroe Realty.”
Emma nodded. She’d heard of him. “Good call,” she added, somewhat relieved. Bob was young. His presence, and that of his wife, would ease the awkwardness between their daughters.
Jack nodded. “I thought Cara and Mike would enjoy them. My point is I’ve never given a party before. I mean, all by myself. I’m gonna need some help.”
At that moment, Emma noted Jack did look helpless. There was something endearing about it.
“Sure, I’ll stop by,” she said. “If you don’t mind my poking around a bit – like for glasses, dishes, cutlery, placemats. I can lend you stuff if you need it.”
Jack nodded. “I feel better already. And the place might be a little messy tonight. Celina doesn’t come on Sunday.”
“You mean, she comes every other day?” Emma asked.
Jack raised his hands palms up and stuck out his chin. “Whaddaya think? I lost my wife. That’s bad enough. Now you think I should pick up after myself, too?”
Moments later, as they headed north in his car, Jack turned to her. “That reminds me of something,” he said.
“What?” Emma replied.
“Housekeepers,” Jack answered. “It reminds me of something Celina told me yesterday. About the Gomez murder. Curt’s housekeeper, Teresita, told Celina that Curt has an alibi. Seems she saw him, dead asleep in his armchair, all plugged into this oxygen tank the night Gomez died. Teresita claims the old man was still there, in the same position, fast asleep, when she returned the next morning. She swears the guy never moved.”
Chapter 6: Later Sunday Night – Jack Who?
Jack’s house wa
s located at the border of Blissburg’s city limits off chic Silver Creek Road. Further to the northeast lay the famed Alexander Valley, home of some of California’s most famous and prestigious wineries.
Jack pulled his Tesla into a long paved driveway up a small incline. Emma noted that the house, wherever it was, sat hidden behind a growth of old oak trees. The main house, when it came into view turned out to be a two story white gingerbread Victorian surrounded by a wide porch that wrapped the perimeter like the flounce around a rich lady’s skirt. A few yards away, Emma also noted an iconic old barn that appeared to have been turned into a guesthouse – probably for Cara and her boys. Emma had to admit the place was gorgeous, even if it didn’t look the least bit like Jack.
He glanced at Emma when they got out of the car.
“Cara picked the house out for me. It’s beautiful – but way more than I need.” He scratched his head and gave her a sheepish grin. “Not that, right now, Emma, I have any idea what it is I need.”
Emma stopped for a moment to survey the flower-filled front garden and the meadow between the house and the barn, all shaded by enormous oak trees and surrounded by vineyards.
“It’s…” Emma shook her head, “…breathtaking.”
Jack motioned with a nod of his head. “Come inside. You can take a look at the yard before it gets dark.”
Climbing the few stairs to the front door of the Victorian jewel, Emma noticed the porch was decorated with chic white metal furniture cushioned in blue and white cotton canvas. None of it looked used.
Inside, things were much the same. To the right of the entrance Emma glimpsed an immaculate pearl gray living room dominated by a cool white marble mantle over a hearth that clearly had not been lit in years. To the left, a library filled with books. All the furniture in the library was white against a background of Wedgewood blue walls. At least that room looks lived in, Emma noted. Books and papers cluttered the tables and floor. Six remotes of all shapes and sizes littered the coffee table along with a plain white mug of coffee half full. And there were shoes. Shoes everywhere. Running shoes, loafers, even a pair of gray crocks stuck half way out from under a vast white canvas covered couch. Emma blushed. She felt like a voyeur.