by Dan Kelly
“Well, I’ll do my best to keep my trap shut.”
“Don’t worry about it. If you’re saying or doing something I disagree with, I’ll head it off at the pass.”
They spent the next hour and a half walking around and talking with employees, but nothing useful was uncovered so they headed out for the next winery on the list.
Chapter 7
Their next two visits are almost carbon copies of the Aragon visit. Theses wineries are still experiencing operations interruptions also, but no one has seen or heard anything that will steer them in a helpful direction.
After stopping at a Subway for a bite to eat, they are now headed to the Parmentier Winery. It’s approaching four o’clock and Derrick is figuring this will be the last stop for the day. They’ll hit the last four on the list tomorrow.
The guy in charge of daily operations for the winery is Henri Levasseur and when they arrive in the reception area of the winery offices that’s who they ask for. The receptionist seems to be rattled over something and a few seconds later they know why. When she buzzes Levasseur on the office intercom to announce them she barely gets the words out before he comes flying out of the office behind her saying, “How did you get here so fast? I just called it in a few minutes ago.”
Derrick has no idea what the man is referring to so he asks. “What did you call in?”
Levasseur answers with a question of his own. “Aren’t you responding to the call I just placed concerning the body of a field worker that was just found in one of our storage sheds?”
Derrick explains the purpose of their visit and then says,” Just a second. I want to call the dispatcher to let him know that I’m on the scene and he can cancel the call for a unit to respond to your call.”
Once this is done, Levasseur leads them into his office and gives them the lowdown as to what has happened.
“The timers in our irrigation system started to malfunction and one of our men went out to see what had to be done to fix the problem. He found some wiring that had somehow become loose and went to a storage shed nearby to get the tools he needed to reconnect the wiring. The lock on the shed had been jimmied and when he entered the shed he found the body of a man who works for us lying on the floor. He called his supervisor, the supervisor called me and I called 911. This all took place within the last 15 minutes or so. I wanted to go out to the shed to see for myself what had happened, but I thought it best to wait for deputies to arrive.”
“Okay, take us out to the shed.”
When they get to the shed there’s already a crowd of employees milling around inside and outside the shed, so the scene has been severely contaminated and anything that might have been found to give them something to work with has probably been destroyed.
Julie quickly clears the area and asks Mr. Levasseur for the name of the employee who found the body.
“Carlos Aguirre.”
While Derrick goes into the shed to check out the body and the interior of the shed, Julie starts moving through the group of employees which she’s moved across the road and asked to stick around so Derrick can talk with them asking if Carlos Aguirre is amongst them.
A young man probably in his early twenties steps out of the group and says, “I am Carlos.”
“Are you the man who found the body?”
“Si senora.”
“Come with me please.”
She brings him back across the road to the entrance to the shed and tells him to wait there while she gets Derrick. When she enters the shed she sees Derrick crouched down alongside the body looking at something in the man’s hand. Taking a closer look she sees it’s an earring, a gold loop, covered in blood.
Seeing Julie standing over him Derrick says, “It appears this guy put up one hell of a fight judging from the mess in here. In the struggle it appears he managed to tear this earring off the assailant’s ear.”
“How did he die? I don’t see any blood anywhere on him.”
“I’m betting his neck’s been broken. The person who did this knew what he was doing and must have been over six feet tall and in good shape because this man is no midget and has the physique of a heavy weight boxer.”
“I have the man who found him outside. I figured you’d want to talk with him. His name is Carlos Aguirre.”
“Okay, I’ve seen everything there is to see in here. First I’ll call for the coroner and the crime scene people and then I’ll speak with Carlos.”
After making the calls, he joins Julie and Carlos outside the storage shed where they’re standing under the shade of a big Weeping Willow. “Hi, Carlos, I’m Sergeant Chandler and I want to ask you a few questions about the man in the shed and what you did when you found him, okay?”
“Si senor.”
Do you know the man in the shed?
“Si senor. His name is Juan Peralta.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Only a few months, he just started working here. I don’t know him very well. We didn’t hang out together.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“Did he have any friends here?”
“I don’t know. He never talked much and after work he went off by himself to his trailer. Sometimes he’d take off in his pickup for a couple of hours. He might have friends close by. I don’t know.”
“Did you ever see him doing anything suspicious, you know, something that he shouldn’t be doing?”
After thinking about it for a few seconds he answered with, “No, he always acted normal to me.”
“How long have you worked here, Carlos?”
A couple of years. I’ve been going to night school to learn how to speak English better and to get my high school diploma. I don’t want to work in the fields for the rest of my life. Maybe I’ll even go to college someday.”
“Do you have family or relatives here?”
“I have an older brother who served in the U. S. Army and when he got out he became an American citizen. He’s a good mechanic and works for a Chevy dealer in Napa. He helped me get my green card and got me my job here. I wanted to do what my brother did so I wouldn’t have to wait so long to apply for citizenship, but I have a shoulder that doesn’t have full movement, so I couldn’t pass the physical.”
“Okay, Carlos, you can go now. Thanks for talking with us.”
“You’re welcome senor.”
“Julie, since we have all these people here we might as well take advantage of the opportunity to talk with them all at once. It will save us some time and sometimes you can learn more from a crowd of people than you can from an individual because frequently synergism jumps into the mix.”
“Okay. I’ll stand to the side and let you do your thing while I keep an eye on the group.”
Julie follows Derrick over to where the employees are assembled and Derrick stops about ten feet in front of them while Julie continues to walk around to the back of the group to check things out from that vantage point.
“Listen up everyone. I have something to share with you and then I want to ask you a bunch of cop questions.”
This approach appears to settle the group down a little as they had been getting a little antsy having to stand around in the hot sun waiting for someone to talk with them.
As Derrick is talking with them and asking them his cop questions, Julie is keeping an eye on everyone, looking for odd behavior, some sign of guilt or perhaps of inside knowledge, along with checking out the ears of everybody in the group. After a half hour has gone by without anything helpful being uncovered, Derricks thanks them for their input and dismisses everyone.
Derrick has questioned everyone individually and as a group and has taken copious notes. Walking over to Mr. Levasseur he says, “I want a list of all your employees, their positions with the winery and the days and hours they work.”
“I have that information in the office. I’ll head back now and you can pick the information up when you’re fi
nished here.”
“Thank you sir.”
While Derrick was engaged in questioning the group of employees, the coroner and the crime scene people had shown up and all are doing their thing. He walks back into the shed and asks the coroner what the cause of death was and how long he thought the man was dead.
The coroner confirmed what he surmised; death was due to a broken neck and the time of death was within the past twelve hours or so. “I’ll be able to give you a more reliable estimate after I do the autopsy.”
Derrick then goes over to one of the crime scene guys and asks, “What are the chances of finding prints on the earring since it’s covered in blood?”
“If the prints haven’t been smeared, pretty good. We find prints in blood at crime scenes quite frequently and if the surface is highly reflective like this earring is that makes it even easier. However, this earring was torn off with a lot of force, so there’s a good chance whatever prints are on it are going to be smeared. But don’t give up on it yet. Our forensics guys are very good at what they do. If there’s the slightest chance of getting something useful, they’ll get it. I’ve seen them do some amazing things.”
“Thanks.”
When he walks out of the shed, there’s no sign of Julie, in fact, there’s no sign of anyone. Their car is parked right where they left it, but it’s empty. Looking around, he spots some movement out in the vineyard a good seventy five yards away. It’s Julie and she’s shaking her head as she approaches and mumbling to herself.
“What brought you out there?”
“While you were in the shed I spotted this guy about twenty yards out hiding behind some of the vines. I called out to him and he took off like a rocket. I tried to run him down, but he was very quick and could change direction on a dime. At first I thought he was a kid because he couldn’t be more than five-two or three, but he glanced back once while I was chasing him and he had a moustache. I lost him somewhere out there, where I haven’t a clue. That little man can move.”
“I wonder why he was hiding and why he ran when he saw you. It might be because he’s an illegal and/or he might have seen something and is afraid to get involved but let his curiosity get the better of him when he saw all of the people and us gathered here.
“Well, whoever he is he’s long gone now. Let’s get that information from Levasseur and head back to the office. We’ll come back here first thing tomorrow morning.”
“It looks like you were right about things getting worse in a hurry.”
“This is one of those times I wish I was wrong.”
Chapter 8
Duilio and Riccardo are sitting in Duilio’s office and they are still reeling from what they’ve just seen on the six o’clock news.
They are both livid as they strongly believe Nick Petrillo is responsible for what happened at the Parmentier Winery. Riccardo is venting his anger by pounding on the arm of the leather couch he’s sitting on and screaming every obscenity that comes to mind. Duilio has more control over his temper, but one look at his face will tell any observer that he’s not far from losing it too.
Duilio says, “Our guy did what we wanted him to do. He messed with the irrigation system wiring and then split. Nothing else should have happened out there. Petrillo must have sent someone out there to rough one or more of the workers up and somehow things got out of hand. I can’t believe he’d be so stupid as to deliberately send someone out there to kill one of the employees. Shit! Harassment, rousting, intimidation are effective means of persuasion and the way we’ve been using them difficult to be prosecuted for, but murder puts a whole different light on things.”
“We’ve got to find some way to get Petrillo and his bosses to back off and let us do things our way. From what we know at the moment, there’s nothing to directly link the killing of that guy to what we’ve been doing. There most assuredly is suspicion of a link, but there is nothing concrete to tie us to that. We’ve got to get these guys to stand down before they ruin everything.”
Duilio doesn’t respond right away as he’s trying to come up with some proposition, some leverage he can use, to get their new partners to cool it and let them run the show, at least for a while more, say six months. If no one caves by then, he’s willing to try it their way.
He shares his thoughts with his brother and Riccardo says, “Whatever we come up with, we’ll have to rely on Petrillo to pass it along to his bosses in a convincing way.”
“Money is a powerful motivator. If we make him an attractive offer, I think his greed will win the day.”
“Okay, how are we going to convince his bosses to go along with us?”
“Has Gerry Haggerty been able to come up with anything we can use to pressure any of the owners to sell?”
“I haven’t heard from him yet. He said it might take a while.”
“We may have to engineer something.”
They’re interrupted by a soft tap on the door and Duilio’s admin opening it. “A Gerry Haggerty is on line two for Riccardo.”
“Thanks Brenda.”
Riccardo hits line two on the phone and puts the call on speaker.
“Do you have our offices bugged? Your timing’s perfect. We were just talking about you and wondering if you’ve found any dirty laundry that we should be concerned about.”
“As a matter of fact, I have come up with a few things that might give you some second thoughts about getting involved with some of the folks on the list you gave me.”
“Such as?”
“Illegal labor, creative accounting, marital infidelity, embezzlement, pricing irregularities.”
“When can you get a detailed report to me?”
“It’s ready to go now. I’m calling to find out how you want it delivered; snail mail, e-mail, fax, courier?”
Riccardo’s thinking, “Haggerty’s no dummy. He senses that we might want to keep our background checks under the radar, hence the delivery options.”
“Courier will be fine, Gerry. Keep digging to see what else might come to light that we should know about. Good job and thanks.”
“You’re welcome. You’ll have the report in a couple of hours if you’re going to be in your office or I can have it delivered to one of your homes tonight or at the office tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning at the office will be fine, Gerry. Bye for now.”
Riccardo hangs up and says, “I think our convincing problem may be solved if what Gerry has come up with is everything he implied it is.”
“How much of a bribe do you think it will take to get Petrillo to go to bat for us?”
“A grand or two should do it, payable only if he gets his bosses to play along with us.” If he accepts the bribe, that will gives us something to keep him in line also. I don’t think his bosses would be very happy to know that he can be bought. We can record the conversation for posterity.”
“Okay, we have a plan. How good it is will depend on what’s in Gerry’s report.”
Chapter 9
The next morning Derrick and Julie are back at the Parmentier Winery, first talking with everybody in the office and then more of the field workers. Nobody has seen or heard anything suspicious and nobody knows who the little guy with the moustache is. No one they talked with gave off any signs of lying or holding back anything and they left feeling that the next four visits on the agenda were probably going to yield the same results.