Sharpshooter

by Nadia Gordon

  Sunny pulled into the driveway and turned off the truck. She thought about chickening out, but it was too late, a woman was peering at them through the drapes in the living room. The woman opened the front door, looking puzzled but not displeased to have surprise visitors. Her shiny black hair was cut in a bob just below her ears and she wore a tidy glaze of pale lip gloss. She was about thirty-seven, maybe thirty-eight years old and was dressed in stonewashed jeans, a pink cotton blouse, and white running shoes. Clean, pretty, feminine enough but mostly efficient and practical. Her face looked slightly familiar, probably from the restaurant. “My name is Sonya McCoskey,” said Sunny, “and this is Rivka Chavez. Are you Mrs. Cruz?”

  The woman smiled warmly. “Yes, I’m Julia. You have the restaurant in town. I remember meeting you there once, very briefly.” Behind her, a slender girl of about nine tiptoed close enough to see who was at the door, then ducked back into another room. Sunny heard a man ask who was at the door, and the little girl said, “Some strangers.”

  “I thought you looked familiar. You’ve been in for lunch,” said Sunny.

  “A couple of times. I’d come in more, but I don’t have time for sit-down lunches very often.”

  Sunny smiled. Why didn’t anybody have time for sit-down lunches? Why couldn’t Californians learn something from the Mediterranean cultures? They’d all live longer, happier lives if they took a little time to relax in the middle of the day; then they could work until ten if they wanted. It was a pet peeve of Sunny’s. She put the thought aside. “I’m sorry to drop in on you like this. I was wondering if I could talk with Silvano for a moment.”

  Julia stared.

  “It’s about Jack Beroni.”

  “I see.” Julia Cruz disappeared down a hallway and a few minutes later a stocky Hispanic man in his late forties came to the door in a plaid Western-style work shirt with short sleeves and Wrangler jeans riding low on a sturdy frame. Silvano Cruz had a wide brown face with heavy cheeks and a pleasant smile. He shook her hand and Rivka’s when they introduced themselves. “What can I do for you girls?”

  Sunny hesitated. “I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about what happened yesterday. About Jack Beroni.”

  Silvano’s face darkened and his smile disappeared. “A bad business, very sad,” he said. “Why don’t you come on in. We can talk in my study.”

  Silvano’s study looked like a fifties-era den, complete with burgundy leather chairs, a big oak desk, and a matching oak cabinet with glass doors, stocked with highball glasses and bottles of bourbon and scotch. A leather-bound set of Encyclopaedia Britannica filled the bookcase along one wall, and another held viticultural texts and agricultural manuals whose titles were liberally sprinkled with acronyms—UCCE & DPR Guide to Row Crop Pest Management and Viticultural Preparedness: Recommendations from the CDFA NNPP Task Force. He motioned them into the leather chairs and sat down behind the desk. “You want something to drink? Soda? Beer?” He held up the bottle of beer he was drinking as an example. They declined.

  Sunny said, “I was hoping you would tell us about yesterday morning. I understand you were the one who found Jack.”

  Silvano nodded. He looked anything but pleased to be having this discussion. “I found him, in the morning, first thing.”

  Sunny waited but he didn’t go on. “The police seem to think that Wade Skord killed him.”

  “Wade Skord, as in Skord Mountain Vineyard?”

  “Yes.”

  Silvano raised his eyebrows. He seemed to be waiting for Sunny to elaborate. She said, “I think they’re wrong. I’ve known Wade for years and I flat out don’t think he had anything to do with it. I thought I’d try to figure out what’s going on, at least find out what there is to know.”

  “And you figured you’d start with me.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll tell you what I know, but I don’t think it will have much bearing on Wade Skord’s predicament. I’ve told the police everything that happened already.”

  “Well, you never know,” said Sunny.

  Silvano pursed his lips. He told them about driving by in the tractor and seeing the dark marks on the stairs, and having a hunch right away what it was. “Blood looks different, you can just tell.” He said Jack was sprawled on his back on the floor of the gazebo with nothing around him to indicate what he’d been doing there, other than the remains of a cigarette he had apparently been smoking when he was killed. The cops said he’d been dead quite a while by the time he was found, maybe six or seven hours.

  Silvano hardened his expression and pointed to his chest. “There was a hole in the front of his shirt, right over his heart, about as big around as my little finger.” He held up his finger for them to see. “The back was a different story. The exit wound was about as big around as a silver dollar, maybe bigger. I don’t suppose you know much about rifles or do any hunting?”

  Sunny shook her head no.

  “Well, it’s not pretty. Those kind of bullets, hollow points, expand on impact, so they go in small and come out big, sometimes real big, depending on whether or not they hit anything real solid, like bone. They are designed to kill. It’s what you’d use on something you wanted to make sure was dead but didn’t intend to put on the wall. I’d say he died right off the bat. Even if it missed his heart, he would have bled to death very quickly with that kind of hole in him.” Silvano studied Sunny and Rivka, checking to see how they were handling this kind of information. “He was dressed up, wearing a tuxedo. They found his wallet on him full of cash, credit cards, the works, and he was still wearing a watch worth more than my car, so it wasn’t a robbery, but then nobody thought it would be. Whoever killed him never even came near him. They shot him from way off in the woods. I don’t think the cops found anything nearby in the way of footprints and such. Untraceable. I don’t know what they have on Skord, but whatever it is, I don’t think they found it at the scene of the crime.”

  Sunny waited quietly to be sure he had said all he planned to say.

  Rivka fidgeted.

  When Sunny was sure he was through, she said, “You saw his face?”

  “Sure.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Look like?”

  “The expression. I mean, did he look upset?”

  “Well, I don’t know, mostly he looked dead.” Silvano took a slug from his beer. “Very white and very dead. And annoyed. If I had to describe his expression, I guess I’d say he looked shocked and annoyed.”

  “Did the police find anything else on him besides his wallet and watch?” asked Sunny.

  “Cell phone, car keys, lighter, smokes, that kind of stuff. What you would imagine. I didn’t hang around too long watching. I had work to do.” He nodded to himself as if that was the end of that. He seemed to have contributed all he was interested in sharing. Sunny waited. He drank from the beer again.

  She said, “What was Jack like? I mean, as a person. You must have known him. Did you like him? Did you like working with him?”

  “You didn’t know him?”

  “I saw him at parties now and then, and I’d see him around town, but I wouldn’t say I knew him personally.”

  Silvano leaned back and put his feet up on the desk. He was wearing Birkenstocks with woolly socks. That would be Julia’s doing, thought Sunny; something more comfortable than boots to wear on the weekends and in the evenings. He didn’t strike her as a man who would buy himself a pair of highbrow German sandals.

  He brooded over his beer for a moment and then said, “Al Beroni, Jack’s father, is a good, respectable man, and Louisa, his mother, is as sweet as they come, but Jack was a different story. He was a real son of a bitch, pardon my French.”

  Sunny noticed Rivka blink and shift in her seat. Silvano frowned. “Maybe I should be more diplomatic.”

  “Not at all,” said Sunny. “We want to know the truth. Tell me about a time when he acted like, like a son of a bitch.”

  Silvano smiled sheepish
ly. He looked from her to Rivka and back again. “I told all of this to Steve Harvey already. I drive up, I see the blood, I see Jack, I test that he’s dead, I run up to the winery and call for help. That’s it for me. If you want to know more about this stuff, I’d suggest you go talk to Ernesto Campaglia.”

  “Ernesto? What does he know about it?” Sunny glanced at Rivka, who didn’t seem to have any reaction to the name, or at least wasn’t showing any. Ernesto Campaglia was the father of Alex Campaglia, the guy she’d been dating for the past several weeks.

  “Probably nothing, just a long shot. Nesto is the winemaker at Beroni, supervises the entire production from harvest to blending, been doing it his whole life.”

  “What would he know about Jack’s death?” asked Sunny.

  Silvano took his feet down and leaned toward them. “Listen, I never had any problem with old Skord. He keeps to himself, but there’s nothing wrong with that. And you can’t blame him for knocking horns with Jack now and then.” He leaned back again and pulled on his beer, mulling over his words. “Let’s just say that Nesto and Jack were never on friendly terms.”

  “Did they have a fight?” asked Sunny.

  Silvano looked pleased that she had guessed, giving him the freedom to elaborate. “They had some words. On Thursday morning, Jack came by the winery. He was pretty steamed up because he’d told Nesto he wanted to start harvesting on Wednesday and be finished by Friday or Saturday, but it wasn’t happening because Nesto didn’t agree. Nesto wanted to wait until the weekend, said the grapes weren’t ready. They argued about it for a while and then Nesto said as long as he was winemaker at Beroni Vineyards, he would damn well decide when to bring in the grapes. Jack said if that was the case, then he had just decided for the last time. Then he stormed off. Nesto didn’t show it much, but he was upset.”

  “And Jack was killed that night,” said Rivka.

  “I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of water under the bridge between those two families. There’s always some kind of a catfight going on up there.”

  “Between the Beronis and the Campaglias?”

  Silvano nodded.

  “And what about you? Did you get along with Jack?” asked Sunny.

  “I kept out of his way. Luckily, he didn’t pretend to know anything about my business. Anybody who can lift a glass might convince himself he’s a wine expert, but you can’t fake viticulture. Either your vines produce the right amount of grapes at the right time in the right condition, or they don’t. That whole crew—Nesto, Jack, Al—keeps their distance from me. I just take care of the vines and stay out of the dramatics.”

  “And that’s the way you like it,” said Sunny.

  “That’s the way I like it,” said Silvano with a smile. He stood and showed them out. At the door he said, “One more thing. You might ask Nesto where his son Gabe was Thursday night.”

  They bounced back down the dirt road to the highway. “What do you think he meant with all that stuff about Alex’s family?” asked Rivka.

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you did.”

  “I met his father. He seemed like a nice guy. I don’t know Gabe that well. And I don’t know anything about any problem with the Beronis. If they don’t like each other, why would the entire Campaglia family work at the winery? Alex’s mom even comes in to cook for their tastings. And they all live in staff housing on the vineyard.”

  “It’s worth checking into.”

  “Great. We’ll get Wade out of jail and then they’ll arrest someone in Alex’s family.”

  Sunny nosed into the weekend traffic. As they inched along she took in the view of the mountains to the east. Beyond the first ridge, nestled in the hills that surrounded Howell Mountain, Wade Skord’s vineyard was waiting for her. “Do you have plans for the afternoon?”

  “Nothing specific,” Rivka said.

  “Would you mind going over to Wade’s place and testing the Brix? You know how to do it, right? You just take a sample from each section and write down the results on one of the charts in the workshop. The sections are numbered on metal stakes. You could just fill it out and leave it there. I’ll swing by later tonight and take it to Wade first thing in the morning.”

  “Meanwhile, you’re going to go see Nesto,” said Rivka.

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “I’d like to come along.”

  “And when Alex finds out you’ve been questioning his father about whether or not he killed his boss, you’ll say…?”

  Rivka wrinkled her nose. “Right. Could be awkward. I’ll be out taking crop samples at Wade’s.”

  Sunny rolled down her window and surfed her hand through the warm air.

  Rivka said, “Do you suppose I’ve been making out with the killer’s son?”

  “I don’t think so. And probably not the killer’s brother, either. But it’s nice to know you’re making out.”

  Nesto Campaglia’s home, a pretty Edwardian, sat on the west end of a large parcel of Beroni vineyard situated several miles to the northwest of the winery and main house. The smoothly packed dirt driveway wrapped around a giant oak tree that was surrounded by a puddle of sparse lawn. Another square of lawn lay between the driveway and the screened-in front porch. Overgrown hydrangea bushes, loaded with blooms, grew on either side of the door. Their petals had faded to shades of lime, eggshell, pale blue, rust, and lavender, which Sunny thought were prettier than the uniform periwinkle they were in spring. The house itself looked well maintained and was freshly painted squash-yellow, with trim the color of oregano leaves and paprika. An aging BMW coupe, a well-worn station wagon with faux-wood side panels, and a homemade trailer for hauling firewood were parked around the side under a sixties-era carport.

  Sunny pulled to the side of the driveway and turned off the engine. Her steps crunched on the pebbly dirt as she walked up to the door. White wicker chairs and potted plants sat on the porch. She rang the bell. No answer. She listened. The day was perfectly quiet. She could hear faint sounds of activity from the backyard, a door opening and closing, someone talking softly as though to a cat or a dog. She followed a narrow path that led around the side of the house, past a supersized lilac bush, and called out, “Hello? Anyone home?”

  “Out back!” came the gruff reply.

  Sunny walked around the back of the house in time to see a man she supposed to be Nesto Campaglia emerge from a green metal garden shed, the kind advertised with other farm and garden equipment on billboards in Napa. He pulled off his work gloves and tucked them in his back pocket, frowning as he scrutinized Sunny up and down.

  “Mr. Campaglia?” she said.

  He nodded.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you.” She glanced into the shed out of habit and was surprised to see an impressive array of pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, defoliants, and poisons lining the shelves. The rest of the space was filled with garden implements and a riding lawnmower. Nesto followed her glance to the wall of poisons.

  “We attract plenty of pests around here. Luckily, there’s no shortage of ways to get rid of them.” Behind him a thriving garden spread out over a half-acre or more. “The tomato worms are the ones that really tick me off. Nothing’s too bad for them. When I find them, I put them out in the driveway for the birds to peck,” he said with a nod in the direction of the road.

  Nesto wore the loose trousers and cardigan sweater of a man approaching seventy. His eyes were bright and his handshake was strong and steady when Sunny introduced herself. His gray hair was cut short in a dense nap. Bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows overshadowed his dark eyes. He had a dignified, intelligent, stern look to him. She guessed there was a stint in the military somewhere in his past. “Sonya McCoskey,” he said. “You own the restaurant where my son’s girlfriend cooks.”

  So Rivka was Alex’s girlfriend now. That was fast, thought Sunny. She smiled. “Rivka’s been working with me for about two years.”

  “My son Alex seems to think a lot of her. I’m not sure about that nose
ring, not to mention those birds tattooed on her arms. I’m old-fashioned, but it seems a bit daring for a young lady.”

  “I guess they were all out of anchors,” said Sunny.

  He chuckled at that. “I guess so. What brings you out here?”

  “Mr. Campaglia, I’m interested in finding out a couple of things about Jack Beroni.”

  “You’re not helping the police, are you?”

  “Not exactly. I’m trying to help a friend.” She hesitated. “I was wondering what Jack’s relationship with the rest of the Beroni crew was like. I mean, did the employees like him?”

  “Like him? Hell no, I wouldn’t say that any of the crew liked him. Too big for his damn britches, not that he deserved to be killed for it. I’ve known him his whole life. For a while, it looked like he was going to grow into a fine young man, and he might have yet if he hadn’t run into trouble. He wasn’t very old in the grand scheme of things, and his only real fault was arrogance. Spoiled rotten. That was his dad’s fault, mostly. Sometimes a person will wear through that given enough time. Unfortunately, he didn’t.”