Sin And Vengeance

by West, CJ

“He helped with the trim boards yesterday,” Charlie said.

  “Impressive. He worked what? An hour? Two? He only did that because he wrecked them. I bet he’s never had a real job. That’s why he has to bum around.”

  “I never asked.”

  “He’s a leech, a useless, filthy leech. If you were broke, he would’ve left weeks ago.” Charles flattened his paper for emphasis. “I’m not one to interfere in your life, Charlie. You’re a grown man now…”

  How could you interfere, you were never around?

  Charlie pushed away his plate and stood up.

  Charles got up and leaned over the table. “You’re headed for trouble. He’s reckless and I won’t have him staying in Westport. Get rid of him.”

  “He has his own place.” Charlie hadn’t ever seen it. “I’m going to start on those barrels.” He kissed his mother’s cheek and headed for the front door, wondering how his father could order him to exclude Randy from his own house. Charlie had the deed, but that meant nothing to him. This was the price for the house his parents had given him. A winemaking career was suddenly less appealing.

  He walked across the parking area glad for his father’s sudden change of heart. The flight to Providence couldn’t liftoff soon enough. He’d gladly leave Deirdre, the burned-out house, and the police behind. For days now he’d had a sense of something malevolent nearby, waiting for him in ambush. The move to Westport wouldn’t erase his guilt, but it would help him sleep.

  Randy leaned against the sunny side of the garage and talked to one of the vineyard hands.

  “I didn’t know you spoke French.”

  “I don’t. He’s working on his English.”

  Charlie walked around back and tapped on an old shabby truck’s hood. “Get in ol’ man. We’re gettin’ us some barrels,” Charlie said in his best western drawl.

  Charlie took the wheel firmly. Randy balked a moment then got into the passenger’s seat.

  “Isn’t the barrel guy going to be pissed about this?” Randy asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Shouldn’t you use his barrels?”

  “We’re using steel lined with plastic. He makes every kind of barrel you could want, as long as it’s oak, oak, or oak.”

  The truck bounced and jostled as Charlie turned out onto the main road.

  “Won’t your wine taste like plastic?”

  “Since when do you care about winemaking? All I care about is leaving since you introduced me to that nice policeman yesterday.”

  “This is France, he’s a gendarme, and he takes ineptitude to a whole new level, don’t you think?”

  “How can you kill a guy and then barge in on the investigation to shake hands with the gendarme in charge? Are you insane or just stupid?”

  “It’s very zen. You know, in-touch. You ever meditate? Probably not, but if you did, you’d realize that if I hadn’t stopped, we would know nothing.”

  It seemed Randy and Charlie stood together and had entirely different conversations with Lieutenant Laroche. Charlie wouldn’t even pretend to know how the investigation would end, but Randy was positive they were in the clear. Charlie wouldn’t feel safe until he arrived in Westport. Even then, the murder would haunt him. Randy seemed entirely unencumbered by his conscience. Charlie drove the truck silently, reflecting on what they did until they approached the driveway of the burned-out building. “You want me to stop so you can leave some fingerprints?”

  “They won’t be looking for fingerprints.”

  The corrugated roofed warehouse was ten kilometers beyond the old farm. Charlie backed the truck up to the loading dock and went inside to sign the paperwork. Randy yawned widely when Charlie returned ten minutes later, followed swiftly by the forklift operator speeding back and forth with pallets of shiny black barrels. The unsightly old truck only held a quarter of what they needed, but it was more than enough for Charlie to get started back home. Jaunting to the marine supply store was quicker. Charlie bought a small, metal jar and What looked like two gallons of paint, which he placed on the floor in front of Randy.

  Curiosity soon engulfed Randy and he grabbed the jar and twisted the cover.

  “Don’t open that in here.”

  “What is it?”

  “A solvent, an ugly solvent. It’ll take the skin off your fingers and anything else it touches.”

  “Still worried about fingerprints?”

  Charlie pulled away and headed back to the farm. “Why worry about fingerprints when I have you to advertise our guilt. I’m surprised you haven’t written a blog yet.”

  “That would be classic. Your PC have Internet?”

  For the rest of the ride home, Charlie ignored Randy and his constant search for danger. His father’s words were beginning to make sense. No amount of excitement could make up for the constant anxiety Charlie felt when Randy was around. The day he took his money and went away would be a huge relief.

  In the next six hours, they hauled four truckloads of barrels and stacked them in the warehouse. They were light and moved easily, but after one hundred ten of them, both men were exhausted. Each barrel would still need to be sterilized, rinsed, filled and prepared for shipping. By two they sat exhausted behind the guesthouse watching the cooper’s shed. An hour later when the cooper quit for the day, they walked down and retrieved three oak bottoms, one for each of the empty barrels hidden in the guesthouse closet.

  Inside, Charlie opened the windows, snapped on a pair of thick rubber gloves, and donned a pair of clear safety glasses. He sat by the first barrel with the metal jar. Randy picked up a wooden bottom and lowered it into a barrel. It stopped about a foot down and fit so snugly he had trouble getting it back out.

  “Cool. These fit perfectly. But what are you doing to that barrel?”

  “The lining is epoxy-phenolic.”

  “Can’t you just say plastic?”

  “Fine. Nothing adheres to plastic very well.”

  “So, that’s some special glue?”

  “Nope. Solvent. I’m taking the lining off. Then we’ll seal the wooden bottom to the steel sides of the barrel. The bond will be rock solid.”

  Charlie opened the jar and the smell assailed his nose. Randy stepped back as Charlie brushed the gooey grey liquid in a circle around the inside of the barrel. The lining bubbled on contact and in thirty seconds he wiped it away leaving a shiny steel ring around the inside of the barrel.

  “What’s the other stuff?”

  “It’s an epoxy for waterproofing boats. Nothing will get through that stuff, not even wine.”

  Randy nodded, waving the fumes away from his eyes as he watched.

  “Why don’t you start bringing the money down?”

  Randy immediately turned to fetch the ladder, uncharacteristically compliant. Charlie heard the ladder open and footsteps creaking up. By the time he stripped the lining off the third barrel, Randy had the first two packed tightly with bills up to the shiny ring. The bills were much lighter than wine, so Randy buried a heavy rock in the center of the cavity and packed bills tightly around it so it couldn’t shift. He added a plastic sheet to keep the money safe from any epoxy that seeped through before it hardened.

  Charlie pushed the first wooden bottom down into place.

  In another half hour, all three barrels were stuffed with bills, fitted with a false bottom, and coated with a thick goo that would ruin the wine, but keep the money safe. They hid them in the closet and went back to work preparing the legitimate portion of the shipment. When the barrels were finally loaded into the containers on Monday, Charlie would be on the first plane to Providence.

  Chapter Ten

  Footsteps on the stone floor drowned out the faint sound of crystals bouncing and settling at the bottom of the barrel. Charlie belted the custom-made hood snugly over the barrel’s mouth and attached the hose with a snap.

  Randy approached down the long row of storage tanks. “What’s with the silly-looking gizmo?”

  “I’m gett
ing the wine ready to ship.”

  “And you can’t just dump it in?”

  “Not unless I want to dump it out when it gets to Westport.”

  Charlie opened the valve on a tall cylinder and gas hissed through the plastic tube and into the barrel. A few seconds later, a second valve at the apex of the hood began to hiss as it released the pressure building inside.

  “That CO2?”

  “And nitrogen.”

  “Why the lid? Won’t they just settle?”

  “The carbon dioxide will, but nitrogen floats. Gasses don’t like to stay still. They keep swirling around and mingling with the air. I could take all the oxygen out of the barn, but you might get a little lightheaded.”

  “Funny. What is that, winemaker humor?”

  When the gauge passed the volume of the barrel, Charlie turned a knob and started the flow of wine through a hose that lay flat at the bottom of the barrel.

  Randy startled at the hum of the machine by his feet. “You use a pump? Is that thing clean?” Randy asked.

  “It’s a wine pump. That’s what it’s for.”

  Randy followed the clear hose back to a gleaming stainless steel tank that rose twenty feet off the floor then glanced back toward the warehouse. The wine from this tank had filled over a hundred barrels and when Randy shifted his eyes to the larger tanks standing side by side in a long neat row, they were filled with awe. Sixteen gleaming, twenty-thousand-gallon tanks were a surprising sight hidden away in the tiny farming village like so many missiles buried beneath an Iowa cornfield. Randy didn’t comment, but he was definitely impressed.

  When the barrel was filled to the absolute top, Charlie removed the hood, sprayed on a layer of argon from a second cylinder and sealed the lid. Together they wheeled the final barrel out of the fermentation room and down the main aisle to the warehouse.

  They bypassed the cellar that had nurtured wines for more than a century. This wine belonged there too, but no one was there to protest, just a long empty hallway where every footfall and every whisper echoed forbiddingly off the ancient stone walls. Andre was enjoying his Sunday at home. He would be shocked when he found the shipment on the loading dock; in plastic-lined barrels no less! He had yet to sample the batch and he’d be outraged when he discovered it was destined for the United States; the ultimate insult.

  The Rhone Valley yielded some of the world’s most prestigious wines and there were strict laws governing how they were produced. Charlie thumbed his nose at centuries of tradition and readied his wine to travel to Westport, Massachusetts. As they tipped the hand-truck and maneuvered the barrel onto a pallet with the others, Charlie wondered why his father had agreed to such an odd idea. He’d never known him to change course lightly.

  The two men walked outside for a break beneath the starry spring sky. Charlie caught his breath and listened as Randy cataloged the more exquisite cars parked along the chateau’s wide drive. A distant violin played and Charlie imagined Rosalie shooing the caterers around her kitchen as they hustled to serve the Rhone Valley elite.

  This dinner and tasting event was the Marstons’ “coming out” of sorts. The previous owners had departed in disgrace after three consecutive vintages were failed by the certification panel. The panel was back again and Charles was eager to return Chateau de Piolenc to respectability with the same vines, the same vintner, and a greater emphasis on quality. This was the part of the business Charlie hated: sucking up to influential customers and greedy politicians. In France, it was part of the Appellation Controlee, the law. They couldn’t label a wine with the words “Rhone Valley” unless the certification panel approved.

  Fortunately for Charlie, his parents excelled at impressing their guests. Elizabeth could entertain anyone with a smile and a charming story or a sympathetic ear. Charles was less sophisticated, but he’d learned to keep his opinions to himself and center his conversations on winemaking. He left the schmoozing to his wife. Charlie assumed the panel would approve the next vintage by morning.

  “Looks like you need a drink, Young Marston.”

  “What’s your pleasure, Mr. Black?”

  “Let’s take a walk and decide.”

  A few minutes later, they left the cellar with two bottles each, headed across the lawn, and trudged up the stairs into the guesthouse.

  Charlie poured two glasses and sat on the couch gazing at hundreds of rows of vines in silhouette along the valley floor. “You’ve never told me what you do to pay for the trips, the motorcycle, and the boat?”

  “This is what I do. I meet people, I travel, drive fast machines.”

  “And chase women.”

  “Chasing gets you all sweaty. I gather them, preferably in twos and threes.”

  “Excellent work if you can get it.”

  “You don’t do so bad. Daddy takes pretty good care of you.”

  “But alas, I’m joining the working world.” Charlie frowned down into his glass as if in mourning.

  “You don’t really need to after the other night, but winemaking is noble I suppose. Someone’s got to make the stuff.” Randy swirled the wine in his glass.

  “That stuff you’ve been drinking isn’t free.”

  “But what is money? Paper, numbers in an account? It isn’t real.” Randy pressed his glass to his face and filled himself with the aroma. “Now this is real.”

  “That Bordeaux is beyond real… I guess money is the scorecard of real things you’ve created. The more you accomplish, the more you have.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong. Everyone earns money, but big money is different. Big money is a sign of greed and malice applied mightily against your fellow man. Man is a treacherous beast, forever thieving and killing his brethren. Those sleazy capitalists you admire so much are the worst. You choose to ignore it, Young Marston, but make no mistake: the wrath of God is coming upon these sons of disobedience. Someday judgment will come for those rich people you think are so virtuous. The Lord will pile them into the great winepress and their red blood will flow over the land to repay their sins against their brothers.”

  “So all rich people are thieves to be crushed like grapes?”

  “Not all. I’m not necessarily impoverished and I expect the Lord will look favorably upon me when my day of judgment comes.”

  Wine burned its way toward Charlie’s lungs and he coughed uncontrollably. He stared through teary eyes, amazed that Randy could maintain such a self-perception. Finally he regained his breath. “Ever hear the phrase ‘thou shalt not kill’? It might come up.”

  “He attacked me.”

  Charlie scoffed. “How about: Thou shalt not commit adultery?”

  “How was I supposed to know she was married?”

  “Get real! She called herself LustyFarmWife. That was a clue. The wedding ring might have tipped you off, but you weren’t looking at her hands, were you?”

  “Oh. Is that what was slowing you down?” Randy snickered.

  “I’m not going to be sainted, but-”

  “Of course not. You’re going to rape and pillage the poor grape farmers just like your father.”

  “My father turns these farms around and saves jobs. Twenty-eight people work here and if it weren’t for my father, they’d be unemployed right now.”

  “Blah, blah, blah. Does your father print that crap for you? Think a minute and tell me why you’re so different from the last owners.”

  “Their wines sucked. They were flunked by the panel three years in a row.”

  “Odd. They make wine here for what, two hundred years, and then they suddenly forget how. Don’t you find that a little bit strange?”

  “I heard he turned to drinking.”

  “Before or after the panel put him out of business?”

  Charlie took a long drink and considered. “What are you saying?”

  “Open your eyes, Charlie. Life isn’t as neat as those textbooks you’ve been reading. Making wine is art. The rest is dirty and nasty and violent. You’re going to lear
n a lot in your first year. I guarantee it.”

  “And what about you? I suppose your immaculate wealth came directly from God on a ray of sunshine.”

  “My family earned big money in business, too.”

  Charlie gasped dramatically. “And they were saintly capitalists, I suppose?”

  “Ever wonder where all that money came from? Before your father had two or three wineries, I mean?”

  “He’s owned them since I was a kid,” Charlie said.

  “I started to wonder where it all came from when I was about sixteen.”

  “I bet your parents hated that.”

  “They were gone then.”

  Gone had to mean dead, but Randy showed no emotion whatsoever.

  “Sorry,” Charlie said.

  Randy ignored the subject. “I had some serious questions about where all that money came from. I did some research. I watched the money flow. After a while, things started to connect. I asked a few questions, handed out a few bucks.”

  “So are you an investor or a con man?”

  Charlie pulled the cork from the second bottle and refilled the glasses.

  “I made my money ethically, which is more than most people I deal with. I pay a little for information here and a little for help there. It’s amazing what you can learn if you know how to ask.”

  “So you’re a hotshot investor?”

  “I’m no hotshot. I choose my investments very carefully. I don’t want to have to get a job or, God forbid, make wine for a living.”

  “I don’t mind making wine. I’d rather play football, but winemaking is ok.”

  “You keep telling yourself that.”

  Charlie smiled thinly.

  “If you ever build your own winery, maybe I’ll invest.”

  “Maybe I’ll let you.”

  “That would be your first mistake,” Randy snickered.

  Charlie shook his head at the constantly shifting puzzle that was Randy Black and turned toward the window. The line of cars was gone and the main house was dark except for a single light in the master suite; the perfect time for what they needed to do.

  “Let’s get to work.”

  They wrestled a barrel out of the closet and rolled it on edge through the bedroom and toward the back stairs. It left a wavy trail on the carpet as if an iron snake had slithered through the living room. They clumsily lifted the barrel through the door and started down the long flight of stairs. Charlie held steady on the lower end, backing down the stairs, but Randy alternately swayed into the wooden railing and then against the stone wall of the guesthouse as they descended.