Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel

by Jannifer Chiaverini

  “He is the law,” Alegra cried. “He makes his own law.”

  “No, Alegra, that’s not true.”

  “It is. It is.” Tears streamed down Alegra’s face. “Don’t tell Paulo. Please. I did it for him, but it would kill him. I know it would. And then I would be all alone, and what would happen to the children?”

  Heart pounding, Rosa held Alegra as she wept. “What did you do?” she asked as calmly as she could. “What is it that you don’t want Paulo to know?”

  The story came tumbling out of her, splintered and broken. How Dwight Crowell had come to their vineyard shortly after his appointment to the northern California bureau more than a year before, demanding to see their sacramental wine permit. How he had invaded their winery to count and tally their barrels and casks. How he had shown up week after week, accusing the Del Benes of selling sacramental wine to speakeasies and hotels up and down the West Coast. How Paulo had threatened him with violence if he ever accused them again. How Crowell began appearing whenever Paulo was away from the vineyard, interrogating Alegra and demanding that she inform on her husband. Alegra’s bewildered, tearful insistence that she had nothing to divulge. Crowell’s certainty that she was lying, and his promise that if he could not find evidence against her husband, he would procure it by some other means, and no judge in the county would take the Del Benes’ word over his. How he swore he would throw Paulo in prison if she did not testify against him. He would have her deported to Italy and she would never see her husband and children again. When she could not give him evidence of a crime, she desperately offered him money to leave them alone. Crowell seized her by the shoulders and shook her. He did not want her money. He could get money from any nervous bootlegger from Eureka to Santa Barbara. He wanted something else.

  “He comes for me when he knows Paulo is away,” Alegra finished dully as Rosa listened, dumbfounded by horror. “I put Gino in his room with cookies and milk and toys and I tell him I’m taking a nap. He doesn’t take me in my marriage bed—a small mercy. He takes me to the stable, which he says is the most suitable place for a filthy whore like me.”

  “Dios mío,” Rosa breathed, drawing Alegra into her embrace, holding her, rocking her gently as if she were Ana or Lupita. “Oh, Alegra.”

  “Don’t tell Paulo,” Alegra begged in a barely audible whisper.

  “We have to tell someone. This can’t go on.”

  “No.” Alegra tore herself from Rosa’s arms and pressed herself farther into the corner. “Mr. Crowell will tell him it was my idea. He’ll claim we were lovers.”

  “Paulo would never believe that. No one would believe it.”

  “He’ll arrest Paulo and send me back to Italy.”

  “That’s not in his power.”

  “No? Then why does Dante Cacchione sit in prison even now?”

  “Dante was a bootlegger. He broke the law. Paulo hasn’t and neither have you.”

  “Crowell can make anyone look like a bootlegger,” Alegra cried. “The trunk of his car is full of bottles and casks and equipment he’s kept from raids. He showed it to me. All he has to do is tell a judge he found it on our property and we’re finished. Don’t you see? No one would believe me. No one would believe Paulo, not even if his friend the bishop defended him. Dwight Crowell is the law.” Alegra enunciated the last five words clearly, her accent emphasizing her plight.

  “There must be something we can do.”

  “There is,” said Alegra bitterly, “and I’m doing it, God have mercy on me.”

  Rosa felt searing, helpless rage churning within her. “No. Not anymore. You’ve got to get away from him. Do you have any family in California who could take you in for a while? Does Paulo?”

  “My family is all back in Italy. Paulo—” Alegra hesitated. “Paulo has brothers and sisters in San Francisco and Sacramento, as well as here in Sonoma County.”

  No place within Sonoma County was far enough away. “Can you take the children and stay with Paulo’s relatives in San Francisco or Sacramento for a little while?”

  “But—” Alegra shook her head. “I can’t. The children have school and—and Paulo needs me—”

  Rosa took her by the shoulders. “Paulo and the children need you to be safe. You must get away from this man. Either you take the children and get away, or we have to tell the police what he’s done.”

  Alegra gasped and clutched at her. “We can’t. Please, Rose.”

  “He can’t go on raping you at will!”

  “But Paulo—it would kill him if he knew. I couldn’t bear it. How would you feel? Would you want Nils to know?”

  Rosa inhaled deeply, imagining Lars’s anguish and rage. He would want to strangle Crowell with his bare hands. Eventually Paulo would have to know what Crowell had done, what his wife had suffered, but for now, what mattered most was getting Alegra away from him, to keep her safe until they could figure out what to do.

  Crowell had to be stopped.

  Eventually, gently, Rosa persuaded Alegra to arrange to take Gino for an extended visit to her sister-in-law’s family in Sacramento. The older children would be fine at school during the day and at home with Paulo; Crowell always ignored the children. After that was decided, Rosa led Alegra, limp with exhaustion and relief, off to her own bedroom to rest. She slept the afternoon away while Rosa minded the boys. Later, when the girls came home from school, Rosa left the younger children in Marta’s care and drove Alegra and Gino home in the Del Benes’ car, while Lars, who knew only that Alegra was suffering from some sort of nervous exhaustion, followed in the Chevrolet.

  They saw Alegra and Gino safely back to their own home, although Rosa doubted Alegra felt any sense of security and comfort there. Rosa could hardly meet Paulo’s eyes when she and Lars found him in the winery and told him only that his wife was not feeling well. Paulo ought to be told the truth, Rosa thought, with the same stomach-churning anger that had surged up in her before. He could protect his wife better if he knew the dangers she faced. But then an image flashed before her mind’s eye—Paulo with his hands clenched around Crowell’s throat, Paulo being hauled off to prison, Alegra collapsing in anguish—and she knew she must abide by Alegra’s wishes, for now.

  Lars drove them home. Staring out the window and blinking back angry tears, Rosa clenched her teeth and balled up her skirt in her fists. She did not know what to do.

  “Would you mind telling me what’s going on?” Lars asked.

  Rosa told him, and as she had expected, his first instinct, like hers, was that they must report Crowell to the police. Rosa reminded him that Alegra had agreed to leave town only on the condition that neither the police nor Paulo be informed, and getting her to safety had to be their first priority. The longer Lars mulled it over, the more he realized that they had to tread carefully. Of course they would have to go to the authorities before long, but who could be trusted, and who would instinctively take Crowell’s word over his accusers’ simply because of his position, they did not know—and they could not act until they did. Crowell was too powerful. If he struck back, he could ruin them all, picking off Alegra’s protectors until none remained.

  Rosa hoped an idea would come to her as the burning of the prune barn had, but although she kneaded and pounded the problem in her thoughts, day after day, no inspiration came to her, only anger. So constantly was Crowell in her thoughts that it was a shock when, four days after Alegra’s confession, he showed up on her front porch as arrogant and self-righteous as ever, as if his soul were spotless and his conscience clear.

  But of course, from his perspective, nothing had changed. He didn’t know that Rosa knew the truth.

  “What do you want?” she asked, her voice shaking with anger. When he smiled slightly, her anger and disgust surged. She knew he interpreted the tremor as fear. “The usual tour?”

  “No time for that today,” he said, with something like regret. “I just stopped by to show you something.” He reached into his breast pocket and removed a folded n
ewspaper clipping.

  There was only one clipping he would taunt and threaten her with, but why he had waited so long, she could only imagine. He held out the report of the raid on Cacchione Vineyards to her, but she didn’t take it. “I’ve seen it,” she said. “I was there.”

  “So many people claim you as a relative,” he remarked, reading the caption beneath the photo. “It says here that you’re a member of the Cacchione family.”

  “The reporter made a mistake, that’s all.”

  “It’s a curious list of relatives, even if we don’t add your cousin Albert Lucerno, who has quite a rap sheet, as it turns out, and looks absolutely nothing like you.”

  “We’re cousins by marriage, not blood.”

  “Of course you are.” Crowell studied the photograph a moment before turning an icy smile upon her. “I wonder who else might claim you as kin if they saw this?”

  Rosa felt a cold fist close around her heart. “What do you mean?”

  “It should be easy to get the negative from the photographer, and as soon as I do, I’ll have copies of this picture sent to every police station, post office, and newspaper in California.” He folded the clipping, returned it to his breast pocket, and patted his coat with satisfaction. “Someone will recognize you and your husband, but I doubt any of those folks will be from Stavanger.”

  “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?” Rosa snapped, fighting off panic.

  His lips curved in a slow, thin smile. “The look on your face right now tells me there’s no better use of my time than finding out whatever it is you and your husband are hiding.” He turned and descended the porch stairs. “See you soon, Sonoma Rose.”

  Rosa slammed the door and fell back against it, heart pounding, breathless with fear and rage. Within weeks, days perhaps, someone from the Arboles Valley would come forward and identify her as the missing and presumed dead Rosa Barclay, and Lars as her childhood sweetheart who had informed on the mob. The news would eventually find its way to John, even in prison, and he would know precisely where to find them. The Ventura County police would come for Rosa, and mob hit men for Lars.

  She paced the length of the parlor, clenching her hands together, taking deep breaths to clear her churning thoughts. They would have to flee. They had no choice but to abandon their new home and run before their enemies caught up with them. But this time they would not be fleeing with two satchels full of cash and the reassurance that they were believed to be dead, drowned in the flash flood that had raced through the Salto Canyon or, in Lars’s case, murdered by John’s gangster friends. Every penny they owned had gone into purchasing Sonoma Rose Vineyards and Orchard. Crowell’s photos proved they were alive. And Rosa was five months pregnant.

  An hour passed, two, but the clarity of thought Rosa desperately needed eluded her. She could not bear the thought of fleeing penniless into the night with enemies in hot pursuit. She could not tear the children from the safety and comfort of their vineyard home. She could not give birth in some rundown motel with only Lars’s help and no means to pay for a doctor or food or any of the essentials they needed. It was impossible, impossible, and yet what choice did they have?

  A sudden knock on the door jolted her into alertness. Crowell, back so soon? Furious and afraid, she raced to the door and flung it open only to find Mr. Lucerno standing on the porch, hands in his pockets, looking out toward the winery.

  Her first dizzying, sickening thought was that he had come for Lars, but somewhere in the back of her mind murmured a voice of reason—Crowell had not yet distributed the photos. He had not even had enough time to obtain the negatives. She rested a hand on her rounded abdomen, took a deep breath, and said, “Mr. Lucerno, what brings you out our way?”

  Mr. Lucerno turned and offered her a cordial nod in greeting. “I was just passing by and thought I’d check in and see how the new prune barn is coming along.”

  Rosa felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach, and for a moment she could only look back at him, unable to breathe.

  “Mrs. Ottesen, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she managed to reply. She patted her tummy and forced a smile as if to indicate that only the normal pangs and discomforts of pregnancy troubled her. “I’m afraid we’ve only cleared away the rubble. This is one of our busiest times of the year on the vineyards and in the orchard. I—we didn’t realize the need was so urgent. We assumed you would find another place to work.”

  He grimaced, clearly disappointed, and gestured to the high hills and the tall, concealing trees all around them. “We haven’t found anything as remote and secluded as this, not with such easy access to the pomace we need to make grappa.”

  “There must be somewhere you could go.”

  “You might be surprised, but some folks would rather be left alone even if it means passing up an easy five hundred bucks a month.” He paused and regarded her with intent curiosity. “You and your husband wouldn’t be those kind of people, would you, Mrs. Ottesen?”

  It was simply too much. They would never be free of these men who hounded them like jackals, howling and nipping at their heels, waiting to pounce and rip out their throats the moment they sensed weakness. They would never be left alone.

  “Yes, Mr. Lucerno,” she burst out, “we are exactly those sort of people. Please, please, try to understand. It’s too dangerous to have you here any longer. We have young children. I’m going to have a baby. Agent Crowell is constantly breathing down our necks—”

  “Hey. Hey.” Mr. Lucerno held up his palms. “Take it easy, cousin.” With a glance to her abdomen, he frowned and paced the length of the porch, then returned and halted in front of her. “Okay. Listen. You’re about to have a kid and that’s got you all worked up. I see that. And you’re right, that fed comes around so often I’d think he was sweet on you.”

  Rosa shuddered. “Please don’t say that.”

  “I’m not saying you enjoy it. Okay. Look. I’ll tell my boss that this isn’t a good place for our operation anymore. But he doesn’t like bad news. You’ve got to give me something to sweeten the taste.”

  Rosa regarded him mutely, helpless and hopeless. She had no rescued grappa to load into his car this time, no refunded rent payment to make the injury sting a little less. She had nothing to offer him, nothing that he wanted, except—

  “I know where you can find Lars Jorgensen,” she heard herself say. Her throat constricted in horror at the thought of what she had done, but she could not take the words back. With one sentence she had set foot upon a path she must follow to its end.

  Mr. Lucerno shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

  “I’m sure your employer has.” Rosa’s voice shook. “Have him ask his associates in Southern California if that name means anything to them and I bet he’ll like the answer. They’d probably pay him for the information, or at the very least, they’d owe him a favor.”

  “Sometimes favors are better than cash.” Mr. Lucerno studied her. “All right. Whoever this fella is, how can we get our hands on him?”

  Rosa shook her head. “You’ll have to figure out that part on your own.” It was the only measure of protection she could give him.

  “You don’t want to implicate yourself. Fair enough. But you’ve got to give me more to go on than a name.”

  Rosa plunged ahead, refusing, for the moment, to consider the consequences. “Talk to your boss’s friends in Southern California. Get his description and find out what he did to them. Then ask yourself, who showed up around here soon after Lars Jorgensen disappeared? Who looks like him and acts like him, down to his hatred for bootleggers?”

  “All right. I can do that. Then what?”

  “Your employer can do whatever he wants with this information. All I ask is that you never tell me what that is, and that you and your friends consider our property off limits from now on. Agreed?”

  “If the information proves to be as valuable as you think it is,” Mr. Lucerno emphasized,
“then I’d say you have a deal.”

  He put out his hand, and they shook on it.

  “Thank you,” Rosa told him. “Thank you and good-bye.”

  “I’ll miss your prune pie, cousin.” He tugged the brim of his hat, nodded, and turned to go. When he reached the bottom of the porch stairs, he suddenly glanced to his right and raised his hand in greeting to someone who stood behind the house out of Rosa’s field of vision. As Mr. Lucerno walked on, Lars came around the corner and halted, looking up at her without a word.

  He waited until Mr. Lucerno crossed the footbridge and disappeared behind the redwoods.

  “Rosa,” he said, pained, “what have you done?”

  What was necessary, she thought, but could not say aloud. Only what was necessary.

  • • •

  Dwight Crowell never returned to Sonoma Rose Vineyards and Orchard. Neither did Albert Lucerno, just as he had promised.

  A few days after Crowell’s last visit, his car was found abandoned on a rural back road outside Geyserville, the windshield shattered, the sides pockmarked with bullet holes, the driver’s seat splattered with dried blood. The doors were closed, the handles wiped clean. The agent himself was nowhere to be found.

  A month passed. The detectives investigating his disappearance were stymied, and anonymous sources from within the department admitted that only a handful of tips had come in, all of them useless, and that the trail was stone cold. It didn’t look good for the missing agent, they said, a man with few ties to the area, no family back in Los Angeles to speak of, a man whose job was his life. Officials from the Prohibition bureau acknowledged that a man like Dwight Crowell made a lot of enemies in the course of performing his duties. The people of Sonoma County, especially, owed him a debt of gratitude for his diligence and steadfastness on their behalf.

  A year after his disappearance, a memorial service was held in his honor in Santa Rosa. No one Rosa knew attended.