The Lovely Pines

by Don Travis

  Turning back to the desk, I picked up the file I was currently working. Local attorney Del Dahlman—who was my significant other before I was shot while serving with the Albuquerque police—had hired me to look over the shoulder of the city’s fire department as they conducted an arson investigation. One of his client’s warehouses burned to the ground in a spectacularly stubborn blaze a few days ago. Del was concerned about where the inquiry might lead. I was beginning to think the case was heading precisely where he did not want it to go.

  After phoning the lieutenant heading the arson investigation, I drove out to meet him at the scene of the fire for another walk-through. Like most cops—and ex-cops—I wanted to see the scene of the crime up close and personal. More than once.

  That walk-through took the remainder of the day, so I headed straight home from the South Broadway site to clean off the soot and mud. With any luck, the cleaners could salvage my suit pants. If not, I’d add the cost of a new pair to Del’s bill.

  I was surprised to find Paul home when I arrived. In his second year of a UNM graduate program in journalism and holding down a job as a swim instructor and lifeguard at the North Valley Country Club, Paul Barton carried a lot on his plate. Although we’d been together for almost three years now, I sometimes felt we were ships passing in the night. The nights were perfect, of course, but our schedules didn’t allow us much time in between.

  I’d offered him a job at the office, but he was an independent cuss and turned me down. He was still driving his ancient, purple Plymouth coupe even though he could have afforded a newer model. But he was determined to finish his education without any debt hanging over his head.

  I returned his smile as he stood up from the kitchen table where he’d been studying. After a gentle but stimulating kiss, a pot of his very special stew percolating on the stove captured my attention. The savory aroma of green chili and chicken and potatoes sent my sudden hunger wandering back and forth between the gastronomic and the carnal.

  “With warm flour tortillas?” I asked.

  “And butter.” He grinned. “After dinner, I’ll expect a reward for my culinary efforts.”

  I beamed like a smitten teenager. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

  Chapter 2

  I DROVE to Valle Plácido directly from the house the next morning, saving myself a trip downtown and then a run back north. In a bucolic mood, I took the old Highway 85 to Bernalillo about fifteen miles north of Albuquerque.

  Bernalillo was an interesting town, at least to history buffs like me. The area had been more or less continuously inhabited for probably close to 1,000 years, first as an indigenous Anasazi town and later by the Spaniards when they arrived in the late sixteenth century to claim it as a trading center and military outpost. In one of those odd coincidences, Albuquerque became the governmental center of Bernalillo County, while Bernalillo was the seat of Sandoval County. Go figure. The present day town fathers liked to say their community was the gateway to the Jemez Mountain Range to the west and the Sandias to the east.

  At the north end of town, I hung a right on Highway 550 and crossed over I-25, climbing steadily toward the mountains on what was now a gravel state road. Before long, I passed through another former Anasazi settlement renamed Placitas, which meant Little Town. With its large adobe homes tucked into folds in the foothills or hanging on the slopes, Placitas managed to bring some of the famed Santa Fe style south.

  Shortly after leaving the town limits, I entered an even smaller settlement about whose history I had no knowledge—Valle Plácido. All I knew of the place was that people had grown grapes and made wine here for centuries. New Mexico was one of the earliest wine-making centers in North America.

  As instructed by Ariel Gonda, I turned north on a well-graded gravel driveway and saw the winery about 200 yards ahead of me. My first impression was of a French chateau plopped down in the middle of New Mexico. As I grew nearer, the image was reinforced. I passed over a cattle guard between an impressive black wrought iron gate anchored to solid four-foot stone walls stretching off in both directions. I assumed it enclosed the entire place, or at least the ten acres of the winery. The wall would probably have stopped a tank but provided little protection from stealthy intruders afoot. The vineyard lay to the east.

  Up close the stately house did not seem so forbidding, less of a mysterious manor harboring psychopaths and star-crossed lovers. House, of course, was a misnomer. It was truly a chateau, even though small by European standards. I judged it to be three floors of around 1,500 square feet each. The gray stone of those tall walls wasn’t native rock. A cloudy green patina stained the copper mansard roof. Brown brick framed doors, windows, and the roofline beneath the gables.

  As I swung around to park beside a few other vehicles, some with out-of-state license plates, I caught sight of another solid-looking stone building about a hundred yards behind the chateau. Probably the winery.

  A sign with black lettering mounted on a field of white to the right of the main entryway confirmed this as The Lovely Pines Vineyard and Winery. The placard mirrored a larger billboard I’d seen out on the highway. The effect of the whole layout was stiff and formal. A bit off-putting for my tastes.

  That changed as soon as I walked into the front hallway. High ceilings gave the place an airy feeling, and windows that seemed rather small from the outside admitted bright light to play off eggshell and pale gold walls tastefully hung with good art. I couldn’t be certain from this distance, but some seemed to be old masters. Reproductions, probably. The chocolatier’s kiosk was modern without being jarring. The word Schoggi was prominently displayed, leading me to believe this was Swiss German for chocolate. An attractive woman of about fifty lifted her head from a notepad and smiled as I entered. I clicked the REC button on the small digital voice recorder on my belt as she spoke.

  “Welcome to the Lovely Pines. Please feel free to make yourself at home. Our wine tasting won’t begin for another half hour or so. The entire first floor is given over to our public rooms—the Bistro, a salon for lounging, our gift shop, and, of course, our tasting room.”

  I thanked her for the sales pitch and let her know that Mr. Gonda was expecting me.

  She gave a real smile this time, one that dimpled both her powdered cheeks, and excused herself. Almost immediately she returned with Gonda through the double doors to the left. He held out a hand in welcome.

  “BJ, I see you have met Mrs. Benoir. Heléne, this is Mr. B. J. Vinson. He’s a private investigator who will get to the bottom of our little problem. He is to be given free rein of the property. Nothing is off limits.”

  “Mol, Ariel. Nice to meet you, Mr. Vinson. Please let me know if I can help in any way.”

  I had no clue as to what “mol” meant, and no one saw fit to translate. “Thank you, Mrs. Benoir.”

  “Heléne, please.”

  I turned to face her boss. “Ariel, may we speak privately before we inspect the property?”

  “Certainly.” He turned up the staircase as I paused to express my thanks to Heléne. A few individuals—mostly couples—stood or claimed seats in upholstered chairs or couches. Customers waiting for the wine tasting, I assumed.

  If the first floor was somewhat formal, the second looked and sounded like a typical business operation. Ariel explained this level was totally given over to offices, except for a guest suite, currently the residence of his nephew, Marc Juisson.

  An attractive blonde woman typed on a keyboard as she spoke into a telephone cradled between her head and shoulder. When she noticed us, she promptly terminated the conversation and stood.

  “This is my wife, Margot. My dear, this is B. J. Vinson, the man I told you about.”

  My mouth must have been ajar, because Gonda laughed. “Nein, you are not seeing ghosts. Margot and Heléne are cousins. But they could be sisters, eh? Twins, even.”

  Margot, a striking woman probably slightly younger than Gonda’s fifty years, had gray highlights in her long blonde hair,
but she possessed the vivacity of a much younger woman while exuding sagacity and sophistication. I liked her immediately.

  “I do hope you can help us,” she said as she offered a manicured hand. “We are probably worried over nothing, but it is a mystery. And a mystery demands to be solved.”

  “Apparently so.”

  Gonda chuckled. “She is just making excuses for me. I am the worrier in this family. She is quite willing to shrug off the matter. Now, you wanted a word in private. Feel free to speak in front of Margot. We harbor no secrets between us.”

  “Does everyone here know who I am and what I’m doing? I ask because of what you said to Mrs. Benoir.”

  Gonda frowned. “Yes, the entire staff knows. Was that an impropriety on my part?”

  “Not necessarily. I would have cautioned against it, but everyone will figure out what’s going on within minutes of my arrival, anyway.”

  “My thoughts precisely. I must also admit I wanted to make clear that I took the intrusion seriously, just in the unlikely event one of my people was involved. Let me show you the rest of the operation.”

  For the next hour, Gonda walked me through the property, starting with the chateau. He took me to their living quarters on the top floor and prompted me to stick my head in every room. This tier had a distinctly European flair, from the eclectic blending of Louis XIV and Queen Anne furnishings to the heavy, somber Renaissance paintings on the wall. It was tastefully done.

  From the chateau, we went to the large stone building behind the house, which was indeed the winery. On the way I met Maurice Benoir, the master of chocolates, who better fit my image of a Swiss merchant than did his boss. Solid, even stocky. Thinning sandy hair cut short. A fair but florid complexion. His accented voice rumbled up out of a deep chest as he greeted me amiably.

  Gonda paused at the doorway of the winery to show me where the hasp that had been ripped away was now replaced with a new one firmly affixed to a reinforcing steel plate. Entry by the same means would be more difficult now. He led me straight to his lab—as sterile as any hospital facility—which also served as his winery office, Ariel told me this was the room where the mischief occurred. Then he opened a file cabinet drawer and handed me a gallon-sized clear plastic bag containing a bottle.

  “This is the one that was disturbed. I thought you might wish to see if there are fingerprints on it.”

  “I can give it a try. I assume your prints are on record because of your alcohol license, but since we’re going to have to take elimination prints from all of the family and staff, it would be better for your people to see you being printed as well.”

  “Certainly. Whatever you think best.”

  We toured the winery, and although I am not a wine aficionado, I had visited other such facilities in the area occasionally and was able to make mental comparisons. The big surprise was the aging or storage facility—the cellar. Until Gonda opened a heavy double door and ushered me inside, I hadn’t realized the building backed up to a cavern. The cellar was actually a natural cave.

  “This is one of the reasons I was attracted to C de Baca’s operation,” he explained. “This underground storage is ideal. The temperature seldom varies, and the humidity is easily controlled. I age my wines at fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit and keep the humidity rather high. I prefer to mature the product slowly. Rapid aging caused by elevated temperatures gives the product a questionable taste.”

  I stared at what appeared to be oak barrels stacked in rows that disappeared into the gloom of the large hollow in the earth. The darkness was only partially broken by low-watt bulbs placed at regular intervals.

  “I bulk age in split-oak barrels for a period of time and then bottle age until the wine reaches maturity,” he said.

  “How long does that take?”

  “Cabernet sauvignon has a fairly long aging period. Anywhere from four to twenty years, depending upon the product you are striving for.”

  That was when I realized the bottles he’d given us at the office were part of the former owner’s wines. None of Gonda’s had yet matured. I also snapped to the “Founded” date on the sign outside. C de Baca likely started the winery in 1964.

  He confirmed my reasoning. “Most of what you see is inventory I purchased from C de Baca. Fortunately my practices mirror his closely.”

  I glanced around. “Is the only access to the cellar through the winery?”

  “Yes. This door is the only way in and the only way out.”

  I pointed up. “Is the ground over the cavern on your property?”

  He nodded. “Yes, but the end of this tunnel means you are within fifteen feet of the northernmost boundary of the ten acres the winery occupies.”

  Without waiting for an invitation, I walked the length of the long corridor. The cavern probably spanned around one square acre. Part of it was given over to barrels and part was lined with row after row of racked wine completing the aging process in bottles. Gonda explained that early aging was done in wood to give the wine the flavor of the oak, and then the product was siphoned off the lees by means of a racking hose attached to a racking cane. Thereafter it was bottled and placed in another portion of the cellar to mature.

  At the far end, behind the oldest wine barrels, I found an area with a battered sofa, a few chairs, some cabinets, and other indications of human occupancy.

  “What’s this?”

  “I suppose you could say this is our preparation against the—how do you say?—vagaries of both man and nature. Our own little shelter against disaster. We store water and canned and packaged foods in case our people need to take shelter for any reason. The prior management set this up, and I have continued it, although I cannot really think of a reason it would ever be required.” He opened a cabinet. “Here is where some of the food disappeared. Chips. Cookies. Things like that.”

  “No one lives down here?”

  “Oh no. It is a little too cool for my tastes, and I was raised in Switzerland. It is merely a precaution.”

  “I noticed no supports for the roof of the cavern. Do you have the occasional debris to contend with?”

  “No. Never. A little settling dust, but nothing beyond that. The roof is solid stone, and as you can see, slightly domed.”

  As we exited the winery and walked toward the vineyard, Gonda kept up a running commentary. “As I say, there are one hundred acres to the growing field, although C de Baca planted only around fifty. I am placing the remainder under cultivation. This vineyard is another of the reasons I wanted the property. Despite the fact we are virtually on the side of Sandia Mountain lying directly to our east, the entire property slopes slightly to the south. This gives us good drainage and long hours of sunlight without too much exposure to the hot afternoon sun. This and the composition of the soil makes it ideal for my grapes. In a state full of caliche clay, Mr. C de Baca managed to find a fairly sizable tract without much on it. I cultivate the cabernet sauvignon. The berries are small with a very tough skin, so it is fairly resistant to disease.”

  Gonda was off and running on a discourse about his favorite subject. I allowed him to proceed as I took in every aspect of the field, including what appeared to be a cottage and a smaller workshop with a covered shed attached. Both were made of the same gray stone as the chateau and the winery.

  He indicated the lake to the south between the vineyard and the highway. “C de Baca bought enough water rights to install a fairly sizable lake in the belief it would help offset the effects of cold weather. The theory is the heat stored in the water dissipates and helps to ameliorate extreme temperatures. I am not certain a body of water this small serves the purpose, but it is a nice addition to the property, is it not?”

  A tall, slender man about my age, introduced as viticulturist James Bledsong, interrupted us. Actually, he was both vigneron, the one responsible for cultivating the vineyard, and viticulturist in charge of the health and well-being of the fields. Since the entire staff was aware of who I was and the assignment
I’d been given, Gonda excused himself and left me with Bledsong, a man as eager to explain the vineyard as his employer had been to go on about the winery.

  “We’re pretty proud of our vines,” Bledsong said in a voice that called up images of sun and surf. Gonda probably brought the man with him from California. “The fella who owned it before only cultivated about half of it. We’re planting out the rest.”

  “High-quality grapes?”

  His voice held a trace of pride. “The best cabernets in the country.”

  “Is that the only grape you grow?”

  “Yes, sir. We don’t do any field blending here. We use some other local terroir varietals in a few of our wines, but those berries are bought from other vineyards and blended in the winery.”

  “How many vines do you have?”

  “Old man C de Baca was a pretty good viticulturist. He didn’t overplant. He used an eight-foot by five-foot spacing, and that yields around 1,000 vines per acre. We’re stepping it down a little, so the newly planted acreage will average around 1,500 plants. We get about four or five tons of grapes to the acre. We could produce more, but the lower harvest gives us a sweeter fruit. So we do some green harvesting.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Green harvesting?”

  “That’s what we call removing some of the immature grape clusters. When these new plants mature, Mr. Gonda will be able to cork eighty thousand bottles a year or more.”

  “That much?”

  “Oh yeah. And a high percentage of it’ll be good quality wine too.”

  “Do you have any ideas about what happened a couple of weeks ago?”