Her movements made Paul blink, and shattered the mood. Both Carla and Sam were shivering from being wet and cold. Paul got up, stripped off his sweater and draped it over Sam then he lifted him, straddling the young boy’s legs over his shoulders and holding them against his chest to keep Sam secure.
Glancing at Carla, Paul’s features remained inscrutable. ‘Let’s go. I think you both need a hot shower and a cup of cocoa to warm you up and settle the nerves.’ With confident strides he began to climb up the creek’s bank, through the thick scrub and between a row of vines, leaving Carla to bring up the rear and trying not to think about or analyse that discomfiting moment at the creek.
No matter which way Angie worked the figures for Sundown Crossing—the estimations on income and outgoings—she could not get them to balance. Since finishing dinner she had been in the office going through the paperwork, the business plan, the invoices, doing calculations to arrive at a reasonable expenditure figure for the vineyard, one they could cope with. And having kept the books for Valley View and other vineyards in her youth she was confident that she’d allowed for everything.
For weeks she had been playing catch up—one of Carla’s phrases—with accounts. Her first priority was to make sure that the Loongs were paid for their labour. The vineyard couldn’t afford to lose them, not that she thought they would go because the three—even Tran who was a restless spirit and had a weakness for gambling—were content with their present life. For the first time in their lives the three had a decent roof over their heads, regular money, they could afford to eat well, and knowing Kim’s ability to squeeze value from every dollar earned, Angie believed they were probably saving a good percentage of what they earned.
In frustration she threw the pen onto the writing pad where she’d been scribbling figures and rubbed the weariness from her eyes. She had tried every which way to stretch their funds but she couldn’t continue to give Carla a false sense of security and imply that all was well when it wasn’t.
As if tuned into her thoughts Carla appeared in the office doorway dressed in a blue, overlong nightshirt that reached down to her knees. ‘Still at it! It’s almost midnight.’ She came in and sat in the chair near Angie’s desk. Her gaze locked onto Angie’s drawn features. Something in the older woman’s expression communicated concern. She frowned. They had mutually agreed to leave the financial arrangements regarding the vineyard to Angie because she had the experience, but as Carla studied the figures on the writing pad, there appeared to be lots of calculations and scribbling, which caused Angie’s concern to transfer itself to her.
‘What’s up?’
Angie’s mouth tucked in at the corners, something she did when anxious. ‘I’ve been tracking the vineyard’s finances. The improvements we’ve made have cost more than I estimated even though I allowed a ten per cent fluctuation figure in the estimations.’ She picked up a piece of paper that bore the National Bank’s letterhead. ‘Our bank balance has dropped to just over a thousand dollars. We’ll have to stop ploughing the fields up near the Oakland Estate’s boundary. We can’t afford the driver and the tractor, and put a hold on the planting program.’
Carla absorbed Angie’s words with remarkable calmness. ‘Okay, but the mature vines are doing well, aren’t they? They’re loaded with grapes. You said we could expect a bumper crop.’
‘We can, but not till the end of summer. Then we have to decide whether to sell the harvest to a larger winery for blending, which would bring in funds quickly or go ahead and do our own bottling. If we choose the latter option we might not have an appreciable income for another year.’
Concentrating, Carla ran the fingers of her left hand through her hair to push the red-gold curls off her face. ‘I thought we’d already decided on the second option because everything in the winery is in working order and the profits would be greater.’
‘That was when I thought our funds would stretch to cover us for another year. Your income from the job with Paul helps immensely, he pays you a little too generously, I think, but it still isn’t enough to cover the shortfall.’
Carla’s shoulders slumped, her disappointment at this turn of events was obvious. ‘We’ve come so far, Angie, achieved so much.’ Her well-shaped mouth tightened appreciably. ‘Are you saying that we should give up? The Stenmarks would love that.’
‘I know.’ Angie reached across and patted Carla’s hand in an attempt to ease the pain of the truth. ‘I’ve given the problem a lot of thought and there are options. We could bring in a partner, a silent partner. Someone who might want to invest in the vineyard.’ Angie glanced at Carla’s face, and saw her negative response. ‘Okay. We’ve got seven or eight acres in their natural state. We could offer five to Oaklands. They might be interested in purchasing and adding the land to their holdings.’
‘No!’ Carla’s head shook vehemently and when she spoke her voice was steely with resolve. ‘I will not forfeit a single acre—it’s not only my inheritance, it’s Sam’s and Dad wouldn’t have wanted me to. He held onto it for all those years for a good reason, so that we could rebuild it.’ Then she intercepted Angie’s well-what-else-can-we-do look. What could they do? They had no more assets to sell. Even the shares Derek had left Sam had been cashed in. ‘How much do you think we need to get over this hump, until we can produce a proper income?’
Angie was ready for that question and she wrote a figure on the pad and turned it around for Carla to see.
‘That much!’ Depressed, Carla sucked in her lower lip as the fingers of her right hand drummed on the desktop. She racked her brain trying to come up with an alternative plan to the two Angie had suggested. What would her father do? Then another question came into her mind spontaneously, what would her grandfather do if in the same situation? Through her growing years she had not been overly interested or sympathetic towards her father’s passion for the land, for the grapes. But in these last few months living in the cottage he had built, resurrecting the vines he had planted with his own hands, restoring the vineyard to how it had once been, had given her a sense of achievement and an affinity with and passion for winemaking that she had previously not had. Under Angie’s tutelage she was absorbing knowledge like a thirsty sponge about the difference in wines, methods of production, of bottling, of ageing, and of marketing.
‘The bottom line is, Dad wouldn’t give up. He’d find a way—I will too.’ She gazed at Angie steadily, challenging the older woman to contradict her intention. Her friend didn’t.
Angie yawned, no longer able to hide her exhaustion. ‘Okay. Look, I’m bushed. Let’s sleep on it and who knows, in the morning, the answer might come to us.’
Carla nodded, though she was sure that neither of them would get the sleep they needed. ‘Yes, let’s do that.’
Basil Coulthard, the National Australia Bank’s branch manager in Nuriootpa, dialled Luke Michaels’s private line at Rhein Schloss. His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed nervously in his skinny neck as he waited for an answer.
‘Mr Michaels—Luke. Basil here.’ Pause. ‘Yes, I’m fine thank you.’
‘Did you like that last case of Bordeaux, Bas?’
‘It was superb. The wife lapped it up.’ Basil’s mouth twisted in a cynical grin. ‘A few wines over dinner puts Roslyn in a much more pleasant mood.’
‘That’s good.’ As if he cared! Luke schooled himself to be patient, to wait for Basil to continue. The bank manager never rang unless he believed he had important information to pass on.
‘Luke, Carla Hunter’s just been in. You said previously that you were interested in her business. Well, her account is pretty low at present. She’s made an application for a loan, using the deeds to Sundown Crossing as collateral. I…thought you’d like to know.’
Luke’s expression suddenly became intense. He stopped fiddling with his ballpoint pen. ‘Go on.’
‘Well,’ Basil cleared his throat noisily, ‘I assume you, um, that Rhein Schloss wants me to reject her application.’
‘How much has she asked for?’ He whistled under his breath when Basil gave him the figure, his gaze narrowing on one of his golf trophies. The sun’s rays were glinting on it, throwing a prism of light onto the plush carpet. ‘Can she service the loan?’
‘Just. If the payments are spread over the maximum period. It’s really a kind of tide-over loan until the first harvest is in, bottled and aged long enough to retail. After that she’ll have the wherewithal to pay the loan back more quickly, so she said.’
‘I see.’ Interesting. Carla’s money was running out. He’d known it would, just as he was sure Carla and Angie had thought through their options and decided a bank loan was the only option open to them. He could tell Basil to say no and bring matters at Sundown Crossing to a head. Being low on funds would increase the pressure she was under. Perhaps it would be sufficient to make her accept his offer which, according to Grandfather, was too generous but Luke considered it to be fair.
‘So?’ Basil tired of waiting for an answer and prompted. ‘Do I tell her no?’
Luke’s business head told him to say yes but, curiously, his heart was saying no. Christ, what was wrong with him? He didn’t want Carla to succeed; it was in his best interest for her to fail utterly and quickly, get her out of the Barossa and out of the Stenmark family’s life forever. His resentful grandfather wanted that and would be grateful to him if he delivered on it. Contrarily though, his thoughts ran in a different, more subtle direction. If she had the loan and it still wasn’t enough, she’d be backed into a corner with no way out but to sell. In the long run that might work out better because she could walk away from Sundown Crossing now, and do so without selling, but if she owed money and couldn’t pay it back that would force an outcome which would be better for Rhein Schloss.
He made his decision. ‘Give her what she says she needs but make it clear that there’ll be no top ups, no extensions, and watch the repayments like a hawk. If she defaults or is late on one payment, you know what to do.’ He let that sink into the bank manager’s head. ‘Get my drift, Basil?’
Basil’s Adam’s apple wobbled again. ‘Most definitely. Whatever you say, Luke.’
Luke said goodbye and replaced the phone’s receiver. He sat still in his plush, leather executive chair for quite a while, mentally debating how he was going to put a positive spin to the family on what he’d just done to the family.
If Carla had been looking where she was going, instead of staring curiously at Walt Conrad talking to Josh on the other side of the road—the men appeared to be arguing about something—she would not have bumped into Luke Michaels as he came out of a building in Second Street. The load of rolled-up plans she’d been carrying spilled over the footpath.
‘Damn it, why don’t you watch where you’re going?’ Carla said crossly. She knelt to retrieve the plans she’d just picked up from the printer.
‘You were the one not looking where you were going,’ Luke pointed out. He was amused by her irritability until he saw why she had been distracted. He knew that Josh was taking her out. That didn’t sit comfortably with him because he knew what Josh Aldrich was like. Ambitious, sleazy, cunning were descriptions that came to mind easily though he did his job at Rhein Schloss well enough. In a way, Josh was like his Aunt Lisel—both saw members of their respective opposite sex as fair game with few rules involved in getting what they wanted.
‘Let me help,’ he offered, and bent down to pick up a plan that had rolled into the gutter.
‘I don’t need help from a Stenmark,’ Carla said stubbornly, continuing to gather the plans to her.
‘Perhaps not.’ He looked into her eyes then shot a meaningful glance towards Josh. ‘I guess you’re not used to having gentlemen around you.’ Her cheeks turned pink and he knew she’d understood his barb.
She stared daggers at him but didn’t respond as she tried to move around him.
‘I hear things are going well at Sundown Crossing. That you’ve a good crop in the making,’ he ventured because, for some illogical reason he wanted to prolong their conversation.
‘Do you have spies who report regularly as to the comings and goings at our vineyard?’
He shrugged. ‘Word gets around. There are few secrets in the Valley.’
‘That’s good. I don’t like secrets,’ she threw back at him through tight lips.
‘Let me give you a little free advice, Carla, no strings attached. I hear that you’ve become matey with the Conrads. Just watch them. They’re not the kind of people one could consider as trustworthy.’
‘Funny, they said the same thing about the Stenmark family. That you cheated them out of their vineyard by claiming they’d taken part of the boundary between their vineyard and one of yours. I’ve asked around. People say that Rhein Schloss bled them dry.’
Luke’s smile was more of a grimace. ‘You should check all the facts. We won the court case fairly and the Conrads were ordered to pay costs. That’s where most of their money went, with them trying to wriggle out of the theft of our land on our Black Ridge Estate. They sneakily moved the boundary fence and we lost more than an acre of arable land. Had they agreed at the outset to abide by the surveyor’s plan, instead of being greedy opportunists and wanting to fight us through the courts, they’d still have their vineyard.’
‘You said they took your land. How did you work that out? It’s not always clear where one vineyard’s boundary finishes and another begins.’
He decided to satisfy her curiosity with the truth. ‘Just by chance, really. Someone on the production side noticed that the crop of the Black Ridge Estate had dropped considerably over a period of five years. One can lose a noticeable amount of liquid volume by having one less acre of grapes,’ he informed her. ‘The manager of Black Ridge thought one of the boundary lines was wrong so we had the land re-surveyed where it butted up to the Conrads’s vineyard—and found they’d moved the entire boundary line, planted mature vines so it wouldn’t be noticeable and were reaping the benefits. They assumed that we were such a big concern we wouldn’t notice.’ His features fell into serious lines. ‘They were wrong.’
‘Walt said it was the other way around, that Rhein Schloss took a percentage of their land.’
‘The surveyor’s report proved otherwise,’ he countered.
She thought about that for a few seconds. ‘Everyone knows that if a wine company has heaps of money they will, most likely, win any court case. Why would Walt bother to lie, what would he have to gain?’ When Luke simply shrugged, she went on, ‘I tend to judge people by their behaviour towards me. Walt and Frances have been very kind to me and my family. I can’t say that for too many others in the Valley, thanks to suggestions from a certain family to make us feel unwelcome.’
He controlled the urge to wince at the sharpness of her words and the truth behind them. ‘Not my doing, personally.’
Carla wasn’t bothering to disguise her annoyance, or the hurt, and in a way Luke couldn’t blame her. She hadn’t done anything wrong other than to be the offspring of their grandfather’s prodigal son. In another time, another place, he would have handled things differently but in this situation his hands were tied, by loyalty and need. Lisel had said so one night at dinner after Grandfather had left the table, and it was true. Carla should be regarded as a threat to his inheritance. So, in spite of any soft feelings he might have towards his cousin, he couldn’t afford to let her get in the way of what was rightfully his—Rhein Schloss.
‘Then we have to agree to disagree. As usual,’ Carla said pertly and before he could reply she turned her back on him and walked away, a thoughtful frown gracing her forehead all the way back to Paul’s office where she deposited the approved plans on his desk.
Luke’s tale of what had happened between the Conrads and Rhein Schloss was different to the Conrads’s story. In Walt and Frances’s mind, the Stenmarks were the bad guys. They claimed that Rhein Schloss had paid a surveying company handsomely by contracting them to re-survey all their vineya
rds, and to show different boundaries on the deeds to create the dispute that had seen the Conrads lose their winery and most of their funds.
Who should she believe? Walt and Frances’s story was convincing whereas Luke Michaels had shrugged the case off as being unimportant. Perhaps it was, to the Stenmarks, because their wine company was so big. Yet, dislike Luke as she did, and what he stood for—Stenmark power and arrogance—something inside her didn’t want to believe that her grandfather’s company was underhand, or greedy enough to falsify deeds to get what was to them a minutely small parcel of land to add to their holdings. It simply didn’t feel right, but then she asked the question again, why would the Conrads lie? She sighed and rubbed her temples. It wasn’t her problem and as she enjoyed the Conrads’s company, and Walt was teaching her about the distribution side of winemaking, she saw no need not to remain friends with them.
She sat on her stool, rolled out the building plan she had been working on and, putting thoughts of the Conrads and the Stenmarks and Sundown Crossing to the back of her mind, started to adjust the drawing according to the notes Paul had left on the board. When next she glanced at the wall clock hanging over a row of filing cabinets almost two hours had passed. She straightened her back—her muscles still weren’t used to leaning over at a particular angle for long periods of time.
Sundown Crossing Page 15