by Peter Prasad
In fact, Wally had never seen it. Jake knew it would seriously disturb Tanya. He took a slow, deep breath, greeted his inner soldier and applied some discipline. He wasn’t about to talk about it and scare the frickin-fry out of his little brother.
Instead, Jake became focused - crisply focused on analyzing the wing-nut at Fransec. Three months earlier, he could have called in an air strike and roasted the place. Now, as a civilian, he did not have that option, but he would find a solution.
For the first time in three months, he missed having a weapon.
He remembered Hap’s comment about a P.I. being like a shadow in the night. Was he ready to put on his face paint? He couldn’t turn back once he started; he couldn’t disappoint Hap, which would lead back to Sonya and Tanya.
Jake decided to wait and watch and gather evidence. He looked at himself in the truck mirror until his face relaxed, a trick he had learned after high school. He looked over at Wally, whose face remained twisted with fear.
“Let’s see if Tanya has another bottle of Fransec. But don’t mention our run-in at the winery. Keep that quiet for now. Okay?”
“Jesus, Jake. I don’t like guns. That asshole was mental.”
Jake patted his brother’s shoulder. “Relax, bro. He wanted to scare us. And he did.” Jake laughed until Wally laughed too. “Maybe he thought we were going to rob him, steal his delivery.”
Together they walked into Sonya’s Tavern. Wally ducked into the bathroom. The place was empty except for two retired guys playing liars’ dice at the bar. He heard Tanya’s voice coming from the kitchen. He walked to the kitchen door. “Hey, Tanya.”
Two cooks stood at a stainless steel center table, chopping vegetables and peeling potatoes. A third apron-clad cook stirred a large pot on the stove. Tanya was stretched up on her toes, reaching for a top shelf. She was wearing a sleeveless top and low-slung jeans that revealed an arc of bare skin, a rounded hip and narrow waist. Jake instantly felt better. He moved close to her and lifted the stack of bowls she was trying to reach, turned and put them on the counter table.
“Hey, Jake.” She kissed his cheek. “Hungry? The chili is ready.” She turned to her helpers, “Adolpho, Roberto and Scooter, meet Jake Knight.”
Each gave him a wary examination, head to toe, and nodded, “Hola.”
“Chili sounds great, Tanya. Save me some for later?” He looked into her green eyes and blinked twice to remember why he had dropped in. “Hey, do you have another bottle of that Fransec?”
“Sure do.” She forgot that Jake and Wally didn’t like it.
She took his hand and pulled him into a back store room. Open cases of Sonoma wine lined one shelf. He spotted the Fransec. She slipped into his arms and kissed him. “I love what abalone does to you. May I have more please, maybe this weekend?”
Jake was beyond being able to say no to Tanya. “I need to get a permit so I can feast you like a princess.” With one hand he caressed the back of her neck. With the other he rubbed the spot where her hip flared from her waist.
She unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt and used her finger nail to sketch a square box over his heart. “I permit you. See, it’s in writing.” After three more long kisses, he begged for a rain check.
He reached for a bottle of Fransec. “Can I pay for this?”
“Don’t you dare.” He followed her out of the store room and across the kitchen. “Let me get you a bowl of chili anyway.” She reached for to-go containers and filled them with chili. She set them in a paper bag. She folded the top and handed it to him. “Keep your strength up, sergeant.”
Her eyes were even greener in the light by the kitchen door. She wore turquoise nail polish that matched an orchid in her shoulder tattoo. She smiled and he remembered the sun, the sand and the serenity of the dunes at Drake’s Bay. He had a memory that he would always savior. He made a mental note to get that abalone permit. “Sunday it is. Thanks, darling.” He tried to sound peanut; it came out awkward Elvis. She giggled anyway.
Wally stuck his head into the kitchen and interrupted. “See ya later, Tanya. Thanks for the chili… I’m hungry.” He took the bottle of Fransec from Jake, turned and marched out the door.
“Do you still have a hot roast beef sandwich on the menu? The one that I grew up on,” Jake asked.
“We sure do. Extra special for you.” She gave him another radiant Drake’s Bay smile, filled with starlight and secret places.
“Then I’ll be back for dinner tonight.”
“You bet. See ya.” She blew him a kiss and giggled again.
Jake heard the kitchen helpers begin to slice and dice with their sharp knives. If the boss lady was happy, they were happy. Jake was glad Tanya had helpers close by.
Wally waited for Jake in the truck. He studied the label and held the bottle up to the light. “This looks like the same wine but it’s a low fill. See the gap of daylight between the cork and the top of the wine? The gap is too big. People don’t like that. It can oxidize the wine and impact the taste. Maybe that’s why they discounted it to Tanya.”
“So test it. Maybe we got a bad bottle last time.”
“Will do but forty-five a bottle doesn’t justify a guy waving a gun in your face. And why’s a delivery guy driving around with a pistol? I don’t get it.”
“Beats me. Let’s keep building a case and we’ll send it to the wine board. That pistol got my attention. Let’s dig until we can bury them.”
Jake drove to the dairy and dropped Wally at his lab with the new bottle of wine and take-out chili. Marco was waiting with a rack of test tubes. Wally would be busy for the remainder of the day. Jake waved at Marco and drove to the other barn to begin his own chores.
The ever-present buzz of flies and the scent of sheep droppings greeted him. But Jake felt peaceful inside the barn. The two stud rams watched him from separate pens. Both rams tolerated Jake when he approached with a hand full of feed. Otherwise they sniffed the air and studied the ewes in the pen outside. They knew who was about to come into heat. Jake watched their sharp animal instincts. Occasionally, one ram got a promising scent and banged into a fence board. Mating season was coming around the corner and the rams lived by a biological clock that was thousands of years old.
If they were put in a field together, they would smack heads until one knocked the other unconscious. Rambunctious, he thought. Fifty girl friends standing in a line was worth the wait. Marco wanted no concussed studs. Jake knew each ram might last in the saddle for ten seconds.
Even if he was descended from apes on the evolutionary tree, Jake was confident he had more endurance and self-control than that.
Every day Marco and both rams eagerly monitored the ewes, waiting for signs that the mating season had begun. Soon the ewes would be wiggling their tails at their favored ram. On the chosen day, they would shake their tails and back up toward him. That was all the courtship required.
Outside, the sheep were on the last of the green summer grass. Jake studied the ewes. Some sat; others nibbled and roamed. The bellwether lifted his head and scanned the herd, always vigilant. He tossed his head which rang the bell that hung from a collar around his neck. Thor, a shaggy sack of nettles, fleas and dust, lifted his head at the sound of the bell chime. He looked around, saw nothing that deserved chasing, and returned to rest his snout on his paws.
Jake enjoyed the bucolic pecking order of man, dog, ram, ewe. He felt sorry for the bellwether, who was castrated soon after birth. He was usually in the center of the herd, keeping the peace and setting the pace as the flock moved from meadow to meadow.
He pulled on a pair of black rubber boots and began to rake old hay and manure from the pen beside the barn. He swept the muck into a large composter behind the barn. In ten weeks it would decompose into an excellent soil additive.
Jake had set up a recycling arrangement with a local vegetable farmer to collect the compost. The same farmer collected the whey, a by-product of cheese making. It went to a pig farmer across the
valley in a three-way trade-out that Marco handled. Sandy talked of selling the whey for energy drinks. For now, she used some of the milk protein as a soup base.
Marco and Sandy seized every opportunity for recycling and trading products, a point of pride for them and the growing group of like-minded farmers in Sonoma. Jake bent to load manure into the composter. He wondered if he could recycle human body parts. He didn’t want to know.
He found a spare axe handle and a six-foot-long dowel rod of seasoned hardwood. He placed them on the bed of his truck. Now he had a ready weapon, if it came to that. He could use either to disarm a man.
He topped up the feed bins and filled the water troughs for the rams.
Chores done, he returned to his cottage and fired up his laptop. He set to work investigating Fransec online. He respected the old adage—know your enemy. This was a different kind of battlefield, much closer to home.
Six months earlier, an investor group led by Koch Semper had bought the old Shawn Estate. The winery once had an excellent reputation. A newspaper article said that Semper had stepped in to engineer a turn-around. Semper had purchased all outstanding inventories and rebranded as Fransec.
Jake kept digging. Semper had a wine-wholesale operation, imported wines from Europe and was a big man at wine auctions. He specialized in wine sales to Germany and the U.K., but “for serious collectors only,” he was quoted as saying several times. He looked like a stuffed shirt in his three-piece suit, hardly armed and dangerous. No wonder he had hired muscle; Jake doubted he had any of his own.
On several press releases from other wineries, Semper was mentioned as a consulting member or special advisor to a wine-making team. Clearly, he knew the players.
Jake searched for Semper in a database of pending California litigation. Semper owned a piece of a natural-gas operation up in the foothills of the Trinity Alps. California Land Management was investigating it for contaminated water run-off at one of its well sites and underpayment of lease fees. On that deal, Semper had a back tax liability of more than $500,000.
If found guilty, the fines could exceed $100,000. Jake wondered whether Semper was personally liable. The trial had been postponed twice. Jake guessed that Semper was lobbying to get off with a smaller fine if he pled no contest. Jake stared at a news photo of Semper shaking hands with the Lieutenant Governor at a contract-signing.
Bottom line, the guy was a mover-and-shaker who needed money.
Jake made a phone call to the reporter at the Sacramento Bee who had written the first article about the sale of the Shawn Estate, more than six months ago, but was told that the fellow had moved on.
Jake sat back and wondered where he might turn next. Did he want to be a PI? He was enjoying the research so far.
He imagined that Sonoma County must have a department of records, a Recorder’s Office or something, a place where tax clerks crawled through data looking for revenue. This was the computer-age, after all. Was it a citizen’s right to scan county data bases? He imagined Homeland Security would say “No” to that. He had so much to learn, so he kept searching. He found a Sonoma County landing page and a method for electronic payment of parking tickets.
Was there a business directory on-line, something that showed percentage ownerships and transfers? He reached for the antique black phone on the analog line that had served the dairy for years. The squat black handset was heavy. He wondered if analog lines gave a caller ID. This might provide him some level of anonymity. He bounced around through recorded messages in chirpy singsong voices until he found a live person.
She didn’t sound too busy. She was willing to talk. He identified himself by name and said he had a few questions. He was doing a simple background check before buying some second-hand equipment for his farm. She said, go ahead. Her name was Anita Darling.
Ms. Darling said she had access to all the county records and databases. She’d do the best she could. Please be more specific. Together they began to peel the onion of Koch Semper and Fransec. She was happy to help. No problem.
“You know that’s not his real name, right?” Anita mentioned. He filed a legal name change fifteen years ago, about the time he graduated from UC Davis. Before that, he was Cornelius Harvey Zeitzler.
“Corny Harry Zee, huh?” Jake said. They both laughed.
Anita read the death certificate on file for Semper’s father. He’d been a plastic surgeon, very wealthy, got arrested, left town, ugly divorce. “What was he arrested for?”
She searched way back into the Santa Rosa Press-Tribune. “Ugly stuff. You’re not going to believe this. He was a pervert. Got caught paying little kids for a pee-pee parade, two little kids marching around with their pants down. He was a sick-o.”
“Huh?”
“This was back before we protected minors. The older kid said, and I quote, ‘he paid us to play with him. He called it a pee-pee parade.’” Anita said one of the boys was the son of a Lutheran pastor.
“I’m surprised they didn’t hang him.”
“They probably tried,” Anita added. “So Semper’s mother, Marguerite—fancy name—got the house and most of his money after a divorce. Semper inherited all that when Marguerite died in a car crash on Highway One-Oh-One. That was twelve years ago.” She kept reading.
“Here’s more. He owned ten acres of vineyard over in Napa. Then phylloxera hit him hard. You know what they are? Almost microscopic, pale yellow sap-sucking insects, related to aphids. They suck the roots and leaves of grapevines. You have to yank out the vines and burn them to kill the phylloxera. Then replant. You lose three years.”
“So Cornelius copped a plea?”
“Yeah. The bank took the land back. It got scrubbed and replanted. And sold again.”
“But Semper has a winery now…”
“Yeah, he bought the old Shawn Estate. The money went to the Shawn kids and the tax man. Looks like Semper has some silent partners on that deal too.”
“Do you have a list of Fransec owners or shareholders?”
“Nope. That’s corporate. Sacramento might have it. Bureau of Corporations.”
“You have a current home address for Semper?”
“Nope. Sorry. But did I help? Jeez, Jake, you don’t remember me, do you?”
“Anita? Darling? I’m sorry. No.” Jake wondered what was coming next.
“That’s my married name. My maiden name was Dimplewhite. Remember?”
Anita Dimplewhite Darling paused to let this sink in.
“Well, Mr. Jake Knight, I knew you in your shake-and-bake days. I was a freshman at Cardinal. You were a senior. Under the bleachers. Remember?”
Jake drew a blank and got embarrassed.
“You were my first love, Jake. On the grass, under the bleachers at the October sock-hop.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Jake looked at his reflection in the mirror by the kitchen sink. His ears were bright red. “Oh, Anita, I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be silly. I dragged you under there. I tore your clothes off. My nick name was Shaky-Bakey Pop Corn with all my gal pals after that. I told everybody.” Anita laughed and Jake joined her.
“I’m happily married now. Got a great job. We’re having kids soon. Just glad you’re back, Jake. You can call me any time. Good luck with the sheep dairy.”
“Thanks, Anita, you’re great.”
“Cardinal forever.”
“Cardinal forever.”
***
Jake took a break for a fresh cup of coffee. He bookmarked the appropriate documents on the laptop for Wally to review later, and decided to take a shower before his dinner with Tanya. His walk down memory lane with Anita Darling would remain their little secret. He intended to stop in and thank her in person. He needed to get an abalone permit. And she had proved to be a great resource. If he was going to start a new career as a PI, he’d need that kind of help.
He kept thinking, mulling over the new information, trying to paint a picture that made sense. Perhaps Semper w
as trying to raise money fast with his new winery purchase. Perhaps he wanted to increase production by cheating and cooking the product. Semper had a financial motive, especially if the court decided against him on the tax issue or the environmental pollution fines. However, situations like these could drag on for years, through layers of appeal.
He dressed in a clean flannel shirt and jeans and opened the last IPA in the refrigerator. He heard Wally walk across the veranda and open the door. He had a new lab analysis report in his hand, and a half full bottle of Fransec in the other.
“Same batch. Bad stuff. The analysis further documents my assumptions.”
“Good job, Wal-bro. Let’s send both reports to your guys in Sacramento and include this half bottle. That should get the ball rolling.”
Wally agreed and said he’d pack it up tonight. Jake picked up the keys to the truck and headed for the door.
“Dinner with Tanya tonight?” Wally asked.
“You got that right, but I think I’ll stick to beer.” Jake stepped out the door then turned back and pointed to the laptop which he had left open on the table. “Hey, take a look at the documents I’ve bookmarked. It’s about Fransec and their management team. These guys have problems with pollution penalties and back taxes. I can see why they’re looking for fast cash.”
“Do we mention that to Sacramento?” Wally wanted to know.
“Sure, mention it in the cover letter, maybe. The more agencies looking into these guys, the sooner we’ll find something.” Jake closed the cottage door.
***
When he stepped into Sonya’s Tavern, Tanya was waiting for him. She came out from behind the redwood bar and steered him to a table for two in the back. She carried a frosty beer for him. “Your dinner will be right up, Jake. Hot roast beef, country gravy and extra crisp fries, my treat.” She sat and held his hand for a moment. “Don’t mind me, I’m working the bar tonight so I have to hop up and down.” Tanya bounced off to serve a few customers. Jake relaxed, one eye on the Giants game and the other on Tanya.