CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
A hot summer at Gracie Vineyards in southern Idaho had ripened the grapes early. For the field workers, the workday started in the predawn hours. They cut grapes until the heat of the day changed the sugars in the fruit. Then they rested. For Pete Donaldson, the Gracie Vineyards vintner, the hours were longer, harder. Harvest was his busiest time of year.
Yet here he was, in the third week of September, on a raised platform in Michael Gracie’s wine cellar in Wildrose Valley, praising Michael’s palate, his decorating, and his method for storing wines in his own home. The vintner had taken time personally to supervise the transfer of older barrels from Michael’s cellar to Gracie Vineyards, where the wines would be bottled, as well as the transfer of this year’s vintages into Michael’s cellar. And to fill the time, Donaldson was sucking up.
Michael was fine with that. He enjoyed being complimented. Brazen flattery was but another way to tell that people were afraid of him.
Bodyguards Barry and Norm, both tall, both brawny, watched as a dozen winery workers fastened chains around a barrel and, with a lot of grunts, rolled it off the supports and onto the pallet. The forklift picked up the pallet and headed out the broad double doors and toward the ramp that led up to the truck.
“As soon as the wines settle down, I’ll get them bottled with the Gracie label,” Donaldson said. “I personally picked out wines I think will be the top of our line when they are bottled.”
“Gold medal winners, I expect.” Michael had hired Pete for his inborn talent and his exclusive UC-Davis Viticulture and Enology degree. He paid him well, and in return, he expected awards and high ratings for each bottle of Gracie Wines.
“It’s been a difficult growing year. I don’t know…”
Michael turned his head and stared at Donaldson.
Donaldson hastily added, “The wine you store in your cellar will be award-winners.”
“Yes,” Michael said.
The vintner feared losing his lucrative and prestigious position.
Yet, in the cellar’s cool atmosphere, the workers were sweating, probably because they speculated about the one barrel kept empty for Michael’s use. Maybe they recognized the bloodstains that never quite came out of the flagstones.
Pete Donaldson did not comprehend how fragile life could be.
The workers did. Brutal reality held no surprises for them.
They fastened a chain around the last barrel to be replaced and hoisted it onto the pallet, then high-fived each other. All the old barrels were on their way to the truck; half the job was done. Now they had only to place the new barrels onto the empty barrel stands. Two workers stretched and groaned. One held his pack of cigarettes and glanced Michael’s way, as if wondering if he dared light up. One leaned a hand on the barrel support to lower himself to the floor. He grimaced, snatched his hand back, and looked down.
Then he screamed, shrill and high. He wiped his palm against his pants, then screamed again.
Men gathered around him, exclaiming in wonder and then horror.
“What in the world?” Donaldson hurried down the stairs.
Michael gestured to Barry, who intercepted him, spoke quickly, directed him back toward Michael.
Michael opened the door and gestured Donaldson out. Cold with rage and a lurking fear, he said, “We’ve had problems with an infestation of rats.” One big rat named Dash. “We’ve had them exterminated, but I’m afraid that worker might have found a rotting carcass.”
Donaldson glanced back. “But these fellows are used to filth and vermin. Certainly Cesare is—he’s from a poor section of Panama City!”
Michael grasped Donaldson’s arm and firmly guided him into the corridor. “Poor devil.”
The door closed behind them.
Donaldson glanced at Michael’s face, and seemed to quake. “I should return to the winery and to work. Crush is ongoing.”
“You’ll join me for dinner.” Michael put his arm around Donaldson’s shoulders. “After we have thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company, my helicopter will take you back.” For whatever the worker had found, there was no covering it up now. Michael would remind Donaldson who paid his salary, would deliver a warning to keep his mouth shut, and gently explain that once a man went to work for Michael Gracie, he quit only when Michael said he could quit.
One dinner and a helicopter ride should do the trick.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Kennedy McManus sat on a folding chair in the small auditorium in St. Francis Catholic School in Bella Terra, California, and watched Miles perform his lines for the grade-school version of Pirates of Penzance. Like his mother and his uncle, Miles had an appalling voice, off-key and unsteady, and his part was mercifully short. But deep beneath the pain of listening to the boy screech like a tortured violin—really deep beneath that pain—Kennedy felt an uncle’s pride.
In the year since Miles had been kidnapped, he had grown taller, of course, but he was measurably more mature. For a kid, he was thoughtful, and viewed the world around him with an adult’s perception.
Tabitha hated that Miles had lost his innocent trust in people.
Kennedy figured better now than during his teenage years, when he would be a total screwup anyway.
Reaching over to take his sister’s hand, Kennedy squeezed it until she uncurled her fingers from the tightly held fist and squeezed in return, and when Miles finished and left the stage, Tabitha turned to him and smiled. “Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you,” he responded. “If not for you and Miles, I would have no one.”
She nodded. “Yes, and then you’d be … alone.”
Alone was not the word she had been going to use. Alienated, maybe. Probably she was thinking that he would be even more divorced from the human race than he already was. Probably that was true.
In a distant way, he worried about it sometimes. He felt few of the emotions that roiled through the people around him, setting them alight or depressing them or giving them strength or taking it from them. At the same time, he didn’t understand why his sister thought him deprived. He said what he thought; people listened. He focused on a goal; nothing distracted him. He spent time with his friends, lovers, and colleagues, evaluated their needs versus their abilities; he always got their best efforts in any endeavor. To him, life was not a heated mishmash of whims and desires, but a well-balanced and forward mobility.
Only Miles’s kidnapping had yanked him from his calm contemplation of life and into a welter of unwelcome reactions. Not only had the emotional turmoil interrupted his work, but he had not enjoyed himself at all. Clearly, the whole feelings thing was oversold. Although it created clever musicals performed by children’s off-key squeaky voices, emotion was not fulfillment, it was agony.
And it left ashes in its wake … because every day he wondered how Taylor Summers had slipped past his team and vanished. Where was she today? Hiding in a city? Married to a country bumpkin who asked no questions? In some foreign country living under an assumed name? Or rotting in some deep valley in the Idaho mountains?
Logically, the last scenario was the most likely. But he didn’t believe it. The man who computed probabilities for every situation believed that if Taylor Summers, was dead, he would intuitively know.
Irrational and embarrassing. He did not admit it to anyone.
The play ended. The kids took their bows. The parents, grandparents, and relatives stood up, talking and laughing, and headed into the cafeteria for refreshments.
St. Francis was a good school for Miles, not because the McManuses were Catholic—they were, but neither he nor Tabitha were active—but because Jesuits ran St. Francis and they were strict and suspicious of outsiders. Kennedy believed the brothers would keep Miles safe. In turn, Kennedy paid the absurdly high tuition and tithed the same amount again to the parish church.
Hey, whatever worked.
Now he stood, holding a cup of punch and listening as Miles’s math teacher told Tab
itha what she needed to do to help him sharpen his skills. Kennedy smiled as he listened; Tabitha’s brain, like his, was razor-sharp and analytical, and for all that she had never graduated from high school, she had a clearer understanding of higher mathematics than most Nobel prize winners.
When Kennedy’s phone vibrated in the pocket of his jacket, he excused himself and stepped to the side. He opened it to an e-mail from Joshua Brothers … how very odd. He hadn’t heard from the old man since he’d sent his condolences on the sudden death of Mrs. Brothers. Kennedy read:
Hi, son,
I’m the conduit here, passing this on to you.
Hope it helps.
JB.
Hmm. Enigmatic. Kennedy hoped the attachment wasn’t a chain letter. He opened it, and even before he recognized the scene, he recognized the style.
Taylor Summers had drawn this sketch.
Driven by a gust of that despised emotion, his hand shook briefly, violently. She was alive.
He didn’t want anyone else to see this. Not until he’d had the chance to examine it himself. So although it hurt to do so, he shut the attachment. He looked to see if anyone was paying attention to him—in fact, several single mothers viewed him as if they were starving carnivores and he was an untasted pâté of fatherhood. He sidled away and returned to the empty auditorium. He once again opened the attachment.
In the spare strokes of a black pencil on a white background, Taylor had reimagined the moment when the kidnappers pulled Miles out of the trunk. The passion with which Taylor re-created her memories made the sketch painful to view. The meadow, the road, the trees, the Mercedes, the steep slope Miles had scrambled up in his escape, were nothing more than a backdrop for Miles’s terror, the kidnappers’ indifference, and unseen, but still pervasive, the horror of the innocent onlooker. This drawing had been conceived and generated by the woman who had seen everything and moved to take action.
Yet … where had she been for the last year? Why was she contacting him now?
What did she want?
He called Mr. Brothers, heard his quavering voice, and felt a pang. Mr. Brothers had always been loud, brash, impatient, and now, since the death of his wife, he sounded old. But he was still amused. “You called to see what I knew about Taylor Summers, huh, boy?”
“I did, sir.”
“I don’t know a goddamn thing. She was up here for a while, working for a caterer. Lorena and I met her at our party a couple of months after your brouhaha … Girl called herself Summer—”
Kennedy filed that away in his mind.
“—and she looked rough. Life had not been good to her.” Mr. Brothers sounded sad. “It’s only because I knew her family that I figured out who she was. Then she disappeared.”
“No communication until now?”
“None. I figured she was dead.”
“No. I knew she wasn’t dead.” Kennedy looked again at the drawing. “You think she was living in the woods all that time?”
“I don’t know how she could have been. It’s cold here, not like your namby-pamby central California cold, but really cold. But for sure she was starving…” Mr. Brothers’s voice became gruff. “She did you a favor, and she paid big for it. I expect you’ll be wanting to return that favor.”
“I do. I will. No matter what, I will repay her.”
“Good boy. Let me know how it all comes out.”
“I promise.” They clicked off, and still Kennedy stared at the drawing.
He understood Taylor Summers had been unjustly portrayed by the media. Yet he had examined her life and found nothing particularly admirable about her. Her mother said Taylor was ungrateful and defiant. She had a good mind, but what had she done with her intelligence? She had become an interior decorator, a silly occupation. And with two broken engagements behind her, she seemed to be one of those women who passionately attached herself to a man and then, when love became routine, she broke a heart and walked.
Yet for all that, Taylor Summers fascinated him. Had she felt so passionately about injustice that she had risked her own life for an unknown child? Or had she seen in Miles and his kidnapping a chance to feed the excitement she craved?
He opened his photo app, and found his album with the photos of Taylor he had collected, and as he had every day for the past year, he wandered through her pictures from the day she was born until the day she had disappeared.
She had hidden from him so well. Now at last she revealed herself. She knew something. She offered the information. Yet she had sent no message, just the drawing. He could only assume she wanted something. He had only to discover what she wanted in exchange … and decide if he would give it to her.
A hand fell on his shoulder.
He jumped, and clicked off the phone.
Too late. In her scolding, overbearing, motherly voice, Tabitha said, “Honey, what are you doing, looking at her again? Taylor Summers is dead.”
“No, she’s not.” Knee-jerk reaction. Shut up, he warned himself
Tabitha continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “She did a wonderful thing. Every night, I get down on my knees and thank God that Taylor was there to help Miles. But that doesn’t change anything.” Tabitha rubbed his back as if she wanted to soften the deathblow of his dream. “She’s dead, she’s gone, you can’t find out what she knows, and this fixation on her is not healthy.”
It would be better if Tabitha didn’t know what he had received, better if she didn’t get her hopes up that the kidnappers would soon be brought to justice. Better if she didn’t know that the woman he had obsessed over for the past year was now making contact … for whatever reason.
He put his phone away. “You’re right, I’m sure. Now—if we don’t get back in there and get some of the carrot cake, it will be all gone.”
He didn’t fool Tabitha. She looked into his face. Then she sighed. “You’re never going to give up, are you? In fifty years, you’ll be an old, friendless man with no wife and no children, sleeping alone with the picture of a dead woman.”
“You’re dramatic.” He put his arm around her shoulders and turned her toward the cafeteria. “Let’s find Miles, get our cake, and for the love of God, don’t you dare leave me alone with any of the mothers.”
“Some of them are very nice women, and would be a welcome change from the type you usually are involved with.”
“What kind of women are those?”
“Dead women.”
Once his sister got the bit in her teeth, there was no stopping her. Or … almost no stopping her. “If you leave me, I swear I will leave you to suffer through these programs alone.”
She grimaced. “You win.”
“I know. I always do.” As Taylor Summers would soon find out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
It was midnight before Barry stuck his head in the entrance of Michael’s office. “It’s not what we thought it was.”
Michael Gracie looked up from his paperwork. “Barry, come in and let’s speak in private.”
“Right.” The big bodyguard glanced behind him, stepped into Michael’s second-story office, the one with the all-encompassing view of Wildrose Valley, and shut the door. He walked over to the desk, put his hands behind his back, and waited stoically.
Michael put down his pen and leaned back in his chair. “What did we think it was, Barry?”
“Some of Dash’s brains.” Barry was not the brightest star in Michael Gracie’s constellation, but he could always be depended upon to speak the truth.
Michael hoped it didn’t get him killed one day. “Then, what was it?”
“Somebody’s finger.”
Michael waited a few beats. “How did somebody’s finger get under one of my barrel supports?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. That, and whose finger it is. Some white person’s. It’s mashed pretty badly—fingernail and bone broken all to hell. Rotted, too.”
“So it’s been down there for a while, but how long is tough to te
ll because it’s cool in the cellar and that would slow decay.”
“Right.” Barry scratched his head. “I didn’t think about that. Good point. Anyway, we recovered a partial fingerprint. We’re running it through the federal database right now.”
“You used my software to get into the federal database, did you not?”
“Of course.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want you to try on your own.”
“No. I don’t do that computer stuff.” Barry stopped, seemingly overwhelmed by the thought.
“The finger?” Michael prompted.
“Oh. The finger. Only problem is, I’m pretty sure it’s a woman. Either that or a kid. It’s pretty skinny.”
“Why is that a problem?” Michael knew the answer, but he liked to walk Barry through every problem step by step. It increased the chances Barry would move from one problem to the next without undue confusion.
“If it’s a man, there’s a decent chance he was in the military, or worked on some federal or state program, or was arrested or went to prison. Then the feds would have his prints. Women and kids—not so much.”
“Let’s say this was a woman. That seems most logical. What was she doing in my wine cellar? How did her finger get caught under a wine barrel? How did she escape?”
“Oh. I know how she escaped. The finger’s been cut off right at the joint.” Barry lifted his hand and with the other hand showed Michael where and how.
“So a woman got her finger stuck under a wine barrel and cut it off rather than wait for someone to find her.” Michael allowed his simmering anger to heat. “What would make her do that?”
“She wasn’t supposed to be down there.”
“That goes without saying. But to cut off her own finger … what did she see that scared her so much she was willing to mutilate herself?”
“I guess…” Barry stared at Michael as if he couldn’t look away. “I guess she saw you shoot Dash in the head.”
“I guess she did.”
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