by Dan Kelly
“I’m not asking you to immediately renege on your agreement to sell out. I’m asking you to stall the transaction with some made up legal hurdles you have to deal with long enough for me to get my hooks into these scumbags. If I can’t deliver before your stalling tactics are recognized for what they are, you’ll still have a choice between selling out and taking your chances on the degree of impact the stories in the media will have on your business. I’ve said my piece. The ball’s in your court. What are you going to do with it?”
Looking out at his vineyard, Mr. Valentini once again goes silent as he struggles with what probably is the most difficult decision he has ever had to make. If he sells out, he’ll keep his reputation intact and receive a great deal of money from the sale of the winery, more than it’s currently worth, but he’ll be walking away from everything that he has worked so hard to achieve, everything that means so much to him and gives him so much happiness. He doubts if he’ll ever be that content and happy again no matter what new pleasant experiences will face him in the future. If he accepts Chandler’s offer of help and the Sergeant can’t nail these guys during the time he manages to stall, he could still sell out and move on, however, if these blackmailers sense that he’s stalling to buy time for the cops to ID them and arrest them there’s a strong likelihood that these people will resort to physical violence against him and/or his family. Is it worth the risk?
A good fifteen minutes goes by without a word being said by either one of the men and Derrick’s beginning to think he’s struck out. Another couple of minutes go by and then Mr. Valentini breaks the silence with, “Sergeant Chandler, on the surface your offer seems to be a win-win situation, but there’s a glitch that concerns me. If these blackmailers sense that I’m stalling because I’m up to something that might put them in danger, these people could get real ugly and respond with physical violence to me and/or my family. What protection can you provide to keep us safe until this entire affair is put to rest?”
“I’ll arrange for 24/7 protection for you and your family, here at the winery and at your homes. In transit security can be handled on a case by case basis as long as we are notified in advance so we can arrange to have a patrol car follow you to your destination. We don’t have the manpower to provide personal bodyguards that can accompany you wherever you may go like in a mall for example.”
After another five minute period of silence Valentini says, “I won’t know how long I can convincingly stall until I talk with my attorney. I’ll be counting on him to come up with the ruses, the tactics. The actual sale process will be handled by lawyers and he’ll have to be willing to go along with your suggestion.”
“Does this mean you’re taking me up on my offer?”
“With a great deal of reluctance, yes it does.”
“I’m very glad to hear that, Mr. Valentini. The first thing you’ve got to do is call your attorney and get him to agree to what we want to do. Once you have that, notify all the members of your family what you have decided to do and what will be required of them with respect to their protection. Do your family members know how you got the startup capital for the winery?”
“Yes, I told them quite a while ago.”
“Good, that’s one hurdle you won’t have to clear as we move forward. After you’ve done these two things, I have some very important questions to ask you and depending on your answers we might have a better idea of where to look for your tormentors.”
“It may take me a good part of the day to make contact with everyone and get there agreement. Give me a call around four this afternoon and I’ll let you know if there are any hang ups regarding getting everyone’s onboard and you can ask your questions then.”
“Fair enough and, Mr. Valentini, don’t second guess yourself. You’ve made the right decision and you’re not going to be taking on these creeps on alone. We’ll be with you all the way. I’ll call you at four.”
Once back in their car Derrick briefs Julie on his conversation with Mr. Valentini and its outcome. “It took a while, but he finally agreed to work with us. He’s going to bring his attorney and family members into the loop and I’m to call him at four this afternoon to make sure that everyone is on board and, if so, get the ball rolling.”
“That’s a base hit for our side. Who are we seeing at the Mel Del Meglio winery?”
“Mr. Alberto Massarelli. I haven’t been able to learn much about him other than he’s not a member of the founding family, but functions as the winery’s CEO. The surviving members of the founding family apparently are great vintners but bad business managers and realized that if they didn’t bring in outside help they were going to wind up in a world of hurt. Mr. Massarelli has been with the winery for close to 20 years and under his leadership the winery has flourished and continues to do so.”
“Since we’re not meeting with the owners of the winery, what do you hope to accomplish by talking with Mr. Massarelli? He may have a lot of authority, but I don’t think that extends to selling the business.”
“The owners pretty much keep to themselves and stay out of the daily operations of the winery. They receive routine weekly briefings from Massarelli and give approval or disapproval to anything out of his scope of responsibility. He’s the starting point for me to get the owners’ attention. At the moment, I have no idea who is being blackmailed and who knows what about what is going on. I’ll have to play things by ear until I have a better idea of the situation. If I can get the owners to hold off on selling out, the delays at both wineries combined with the refusals to sell by the other wineries just might be enough to agitate the people we’re after to a point where they’ll do something more risky to get their way and in doing so reveal a pathway to their front door. That’s my game plan since nothing better has come to mind. We’ll have to wait and see how things play out.”
“Is being a good shit disturber a perquisite for becoming a detective?”
Chuckling he says, “I wouldn’t say it’s a prerequisite, but at times it comes in real handy.”
Chapter 21
The perfect word to describe the Mel Del Meglio winery is quaint. The old brick facades of all the buildings with their arched windows imbedded everywhere coupled with their inside décor take you back a hundred years or more. The furniture, the carpeting, the art work on the walls, everything you look at, excluding the computers on the desks, is old yet functional and beautiful and when you add the sounds of Italian and French being spoken along with the accents when
English is spoken one is transported to another time and culture. It’s a kind of eerie yet quite pleasant experience.
Derrick approaches the receptionist, introduces himself and Julie and asks to speak with Mr. Massarelli. “Let me check to see if he’s available” Before she can pick up her phone to do so, a man walks into the reception area and heads for the reception desk. “Mr. Massarelli, these deputies are here to see you. I was just about to call Jennie to see if you were available.”
“Good morning deputies. I saw your car pull into the lot and you walking into the building and came right out to see what was up. This is a first for the winery as far as I know. Has somebody here done something wrong?”
Derrick answers with, “Not that I’m aware of Mr. Massarelli. We’d like to talk with you about a sensitive matter. Is there somewhere we can talk more privately with less chance of being interrupted?”
“Certainly. Follow me please. Joan, let Jennie know that I’m in the conference room with these deputies and to hold all my calls.”
Even the conference room is quaint. Instead of the usual long rectangular shaped table there’s a very large circular table with a beautiful Tiffany style lamp hanging over the center of the table. Instead of incandescent or fluorescent lighting in the ceiling there are bronze sconces with incandescent light bulbs shaped like flames with their filaments flicking on and off to give the illusion of a burning candle hanging on the walls. There are potted plants situated in the corners of the room and th
e art work reflects landscapes to be found in the country sides of Italy and France. It’s quite impressive.
Derrick opens the dialogue with, “Mr. Massarelli, we’re here because we want to try to convince your owners to hold off on selling their winery to the people who have been persistent in their attempts to acquire it.”
Derrick proceeds to follow the same approach he used with Mr. Valentini and finishes up with, “We believe the prospective purchasers are behind the sabotage that has taken place at your winery as well as others in Napa Valley along with the murder of one innocent field worker. These people are determined to have their way and will resort to any methods to bring that about, including blackmail.
“We believe either you or the owners have been threatened with the public airing of something you would prefer to remain a secret and these threats have provided sufficient leverage to force the sale of Mel Del Meglio. I’m here today to offer you a possible way out of the dilemma you’re in. If you can stall the sale process long enough to give us time to nail these people, whatever they might make public would probably be taken with a grain of salt because of the credibility of the source. If the information involves some kind of illegality, I may be able to help you with that once I know the nature of the illegality. We’re zeroing in on the culprits, but we need more time to gather the proof we need to make our arrests stick.
“So, to sum things up, I need confirmation that blackmail is involved, your willingness to share with me what is being used to blackmail either you or the owners and your agreement to stall the sale process as long as you can. If the blackmailers get wise to your stalling tactics, you can always go through with the sale if you trust them not to go back on their word.”
Mr. Massarelli now has an incredulous look on his face and after taking a deep breath and swallowing nervously he responds with, “I haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re talking about. I’m not aware of any agreement to sell the winery and I assure you no one has approached me with threats of blackmail. Every offer to buy the winery has been made to me and I passed them on to the owners and they strongly turned them down.”
“Well, I have it from a reliable source that your winery is about to be sold. If you know nothing about it, it appears that these folks went over your head to the owners and the owners have decided to keep you out of the loop as long as possible to avoid having to explain to you the reason for their changing their minds or outright lying to you. I would like your cooperation by doing your best to persuade the owners to meet with us to discuss the possibility of avoiding the sale of the winery and mitigating or entirely neutralizing the effects of the blackmail information. How about it?”
“Wow! I’ve been blindsided before, but never like this. I certainly didn’t see this coming.”
After pausing a bit, probably weighing his chances of convincing the owners to reconsider their decision to sell, he says, “Okay, I’ll see what I can do. You’re going to have to do the sales job of getting them to go along with you. All I have a chance of accomplishing is to get them to agree to meet with you.”
“Fair enough. When’s the soonest you can approach them?”
“Tomorrow morning. They’re out of town meeting with some horticulturists about some new kind of fertilizer being developed.”
“Okay, here’s my card. Please call me as soon as you talk with them.”
“I will.”
Back in their car and heading back to the station Julie says, “That was an interesting turn of events. The President/CEO of the company he’s managing has no idea the winery is in the process of being sold.”
“I think that came about because of the nature of the blackmail material. It’s either extremely embarrassing, illegal or both. They don’t want to be put in the position of being tempted to reveal what occurred in their past to a man they obviously respect and trust to run the show if they can somehow avoid the confrontation.”
“It looks like your now back to the ‘waiting for something new to happen’ mode.”
“It goes with the territory. At four this afternoon, I’ll call Mr. Valentini to make sure everyone’s on board and I’ll also check in with the senior Paganellis to see if they recognize the person in the sketch we left them. I have no other ideas on how to move forward with this investigation, so it’s on to something else awaiting my attention. To avoid boredom, you can go back to your normal routine until something breaks if you want to.”
“Isn’t there something else I can help you with while we’re waiting for something new to develop? Going back to riding around in a patrol car looking for troublemakers is also going to be borderline boring compared to what we’ve been doing and Bemis assigned me to work with you until we put these winos where they belong, in a cooler reserved just for folks like them where they can chill out for the rest of their lives hopefully.”
“Chuckling he says, “Winos, cooler, chill out? You took your clever pills this morning I see.”
“I have my moments.”
“Okay, I’m sure I can find something to feed your curiosity and keep you occupied.”
“Alright!”
Her enthusiasm is contagious and Derrick finds himself affected by it, pleasingly so.
Chapter 22
A few minutes after four in the afternoon Derrick touches base with Mr. Valentini and gets some good news on that front. His attorney has agreed to go along with Derrick’s request and his family is supporting the game plan as well. So, if Alberto Massarelli can open the door for him with the owners of Mel Del Meglio and if Derrick can convince them to go along with his suggestion this just might give him the time he needs to identify and arrest the people behind the sabotage and the killing of the field hand. Although he hasn’t said anything to Mr. Valentini or Mr. Massarelli, he’s hoping that the delays in the sales of the wineries plus anything else he can think of will frustrate the buyers to the point that they’ll do something more overt, more violent, more careless, that will shed some light on who they are. At this point, all he can do is try to shake things up and see what happens.
“Mr. Valentini, before you go, I have a question. How were you contacted with the blackmail threat?”
“By phone here at the office. It was a man who called, but his voice was distorted. It sounded like one of those prerecorded electronic ones you get that gives you a list of options to choose from when you call a business.”
“Do you remember the day and time you received the phone call?”
“I’ll never forget that day. It was earlier this month on Friday the thirteenth. How’s that for irony? It was sometime in the afternoon.”
“Okay, I’ll check with the phone company and see if we can track down the number the call was made from. I’ll be surprised if this guy didn’t use a throwaway phone, but used one that can be traced back to him. I don’t think we’ll be that lucky, but we can’t leave any stone unturned. Sometimes these creeps do really dumb things. Keep me abreast of how things go with the stalling tactics.”
The next day, late in the morning, Mr. Massarelli calls to let him know that the owners of Mel Del Meglio have agreed to meet with him and have asked that he be included in the meeting. Derrick’s thinking that’s a good sign regarding the possibility of their considering fighting back and not caving in to the blackmail attempt if they’re willing to discuss the threat in the presence of their President/CEO.
Mr. Massarelli provided the names of the owners of Mel Del Meglio, Andre and Colette Beauchamp, and their contact information. “Andre and Colette have been married for over thirty years and are the nicest people I have ever known. When it comes to grapes and turning them into the finest wines available anywhere, they are walking encyclopedias with decades of hands on experience to boot. However, when it comes to the business side of things they are a disaster waiting to happen. Fortunately for them and me, they realized that and brought me on to manage the business side of the winery. I can’t imagine anything they might have done that they would want to keep
a secret at a cost of giving up everything they’ve worked so hard to achieve.”
“Mr. Massarelli, there are very few people walking the planet that don’t have some dirty laundry they would prefer to keep hidden in the hamper, some more dirty than others. Folks aren’t perfect. They sometimes screw up big time.”
“Just the same, I just can’t believe they have done anything bad enough to be blackmailed with.”