3 Savor (20 page)

Curious, he played it back,
squinting at the little screen. He should plug it into his laptop. It would be
much easier to see. There he was running with the hose, then spraying as far as
he could reach. Ernesto showing up from the winery. Who was that? Did he just
see someone run out from the other side of the shed? He went back to the
beginning and played it again, looking hard at the south side of the building.
Yes! There he was. A guy in a long-sleeved plaid shirt and a Fredrickson Winery
cap appeared on the south side of the burning building, then disappeared out of
the frame into the vineyard beyond. He didn’t look familiar but the guy must
work there. Why else would he have a hat with the winery logo?

A glance at the time told him it
was too late to call Billie. After everything she’d been through in the past
twelve hours, she probably needed the rest. He’d call in the morning. He
downloaded it to YouTube and sent her the link in an email. Maybe when they
watched it up on a bigger screen, one of them would recognize the guy.

•••••

It was over two hours later when
Edoardo finally knocked on her bedroom door. Sabrina sat on the edge of the
king-sized bed and stared across the room at the locked door, wondering if the
man had a key. He probably did, but was biding his time. He knocked again.

“Sabrina. Are you all right? I’m
sorry I took so long. I had to take the call. It was important business.” He
paused, then asked, “Would you like to go for a swim before dinner?”

Dinner? That had come and gone. She
had been starving and finally snuck out of her room an hour ago to eat one of
the complimentary bananas from a fruit basket. Maybe his plan was to get her so
hungry she would do whatever he asked. She drew in a breath and went to the
door. It was now or never. She needed to make it clear that she was not going
to be his next conquest.

She turned the knob. He leaned
casually against the doorjamb with one shoulder, as though this happened all
the time. His smile was quick and magnetic.

“Thank God you opened the door,” he
said, his Italian accent as sexy as ever. He reminded her of Armand Assante
when he played leading roles in television movies during the seventies and
eighties. Trouble was, he didn’t always play a good guy, but much like
Salvatore’s personality – the dark side of the coin. “I thought perhaps I
would have to break it down.”

She swept past him, trying to look
cool and confident. “No need for that. I’d love to go for a swim, but as you
already know,” she glanced down at the outfit she wore, “I have no suit.”

He followed her slowly across the
room, hands in his pockets. The corner of his mouth curved up. “That does not
bother me.”

“Well it does me,” she said and
stepped securely behind the bar to get a bottle of water from the refrigerator.
Biding her time, she twisted off the cap and took a sip. “Perhaps you can go
alone and I’ll take a nap while you’re gone,” she suggested.

“Oh no, I will not go without you.”
He took her hand and tugged her from behind the bar then twirled her around as
though they were dancing. His gaze moved seductively over her figure. “An
American size eight, I think,” he said with more confidence than his words
implied.

“Excuse me?” Sabrina was
unaccustomed to a man being so blatantly accurate. “If you had a lick of
decency you’d guess a smaller number.”

He laughed. “American women.” He
moved closer and brushed a lock of hair from her cheek. “No matter how
beautiful you are, you are never satisfied with your body. Always looking for
perfection that does not exist. Am I correct?”

“And I suppose Italian women are
all completely comfortable in their own skin, right?”

“Of course. Because Italian men
make sure they admire every woman for the singular beauty that she is. We don’t
compare, we celebrate the differences.”

Wow. Just wow. As soon as she
managed to write him off as a smooth operator and get him out of her head he
said something totally unpredictable. Something that almost sounded as if he
cared what women thought and what they felt, not just how they felt pressed
against him. Dear God, she needed to get away from this man.

“I will have every available size
eight swimming suit brought up immediately,” he said and began dialing the
phone on the bar.

“You don’t have to–”

He cut her off with a snap of his
fingers and spoke in a quietly authoritative voice to the person on the other
end of the line. When he turned around he was smiling but his eyes were hard.
He sighed and shook his head. “Please forgive me for being abrupt. It always
takes a bit of getting used to,” he said waving a hand toward her, “this
American female habit of arguing every point. I know women’s rights have
twisted everyone’s idea of equality, but truly wasn’t it better when men and
women knew their place and could expect certain things from members of the
opposite sex?”

“Certain things?” she said, her
American female poking her nose into the conversation again. “What exactly are
you expecting from me, Mr. Salvatore?”

“No, no, no.” He put his hands up
in surrender. “Whatever you are thinking is not what I said. Please,” he
extended his hand, palm up in supplication. “Sometimes my English does not
translate well. Let’s just have a good time. We will swim, attend the luau, and
maybe go dancing before the night is over, but we will not do anything you do
not want to do. Capisce?”

The way he said want to do, she
knew he wasn’t acknowledging the option of her backing out, but rather, his
unarguable magnetism for the opposite sex. And yes, she had to admit she found
him very attractive. And yes, she wanted him in that needy, emotional,
careless, sexual sense of the word. But want was not the end all, be all. She
was old enough to know better. A lot of things she wanted were bad for her and
he was most certainly one of them.

Sabrina found herself praying for a
way out. The knock at the door gave her reason to ignore his question while she
went to the bar and picked up her bottle of water. He strode across the room
and pulled open the door. A young woman about Billie’s age, thin and tanned,
moved past Edoardo holding about a dozen swimsuits over her arms. Her gaze
swept the room and landed on Sabrina with a look of surprise.

She smiled tentatively. “Ma’am,”
she said. “Where would you like me to place these?”

Edoardo waved a hand toward her
room. “Lay them on the bed,” he ordered.

She hurried to do as she was told,
then retraced her steps to the door, glancing briefly at Edoardo with a little
batting of her eyes, but he ignored her.

“Thank you,” Sabrina called as the
girl went out the door.

Edoardo smiled disarmingly and
winked. “I look forward to seeing your selection,” he said. “Since you have so
many to choose from, I will give you some time. Meet me back out here dressed
for our swim.” He glanced at his watch, “Say thirty minutes?”

She nodded.

He grabbed a wine cooler from the
refrigerator, went into his private room and shut the door.

Sabrina released a sigh and turned
back to the bar. His cell phone was lying there lit up. Someone had sent him a
text. She leaned over and read the words before the screen went dark. Her gaze
narrowed. What did that say? She glanced back at Edoardo’s closed door before
sliding her finger across the screen and opening chat. She quickly perused the
conversation and gasped.

•••••

Adam heard Queen’s Bohemian
Rhapsody playing beneath his head and groggily reached for his phone under the
pillow. He rolled over to his back. “Yeah?” he said, his voice soft and gruff.

“Adam, I’m sorry for waking you,”
his mother’s voice said, briskly impatient and not that sorry. “I completely
forgot that it’s a three-hour time difference but this just couldn’t wait. I’m
worried about your Margaret and I don’t have her number.”

He forced his eyes open. They felt
gritty as if the sandman had just come and filled them up. Rubbing a hand over
his face, he cleared his throat. “Mom. It’s after midnight. I just got to
sleep. Why are you worried about Margaret all of a sudden?”

She lowered her voice. “Edoardo
Salvatore is not who he pretends to be.”

“Really.” He yawned loudly and
scratched his head. “Who exactly is he then? A hit man for the mob?”

“Adam, sit up right now and
listen,” she directed. “I saw a text come in on his phone. Someone with the initials
JT.”

“Justin Timberlake?”

“Well if it is, he’s involved in
some very nefarious plans.”

Only his mother would use the word
nefarious. “Mom, could you get to the point? I really need to sleep.”

He heard the crinkle of paper. “I
wrote it down as soon as I locked myself in my room,” she said. “Edoardo
instructed JT to stir up the Parker woman. The next day JT answered that the
fire was contained early. No vine damage. I never heard about a fire. Do you
know what he’s talking about?” She didn’t pause long enough for him to respond,
but continued, “Edoardo then told him to get personal. JT’s last text a little
while ago said Parker’s truck just had a tune up.”

Adam was still trying to decipher
the first thing his mother said. “Why are you locked in a room?” he asked
squinting into the dark. “Has that man tried… I’ll kill him,” he mumbled.

“Concentrate, Adam! This is
important. The woman you love could be in serious danger. Don’t you get it? JT
has fiddled with her pickup. Maybe he put a hole in her brake line. They always
cut the brake line,” she said.

He heard knocking and a muffled
voice in the background. “Is that him?”

“Yes. I have to go. Warn Margaret,”
she whispered and ended the call.

There was no way he was getting
back to sleep now. He didn’t think Margaret would be using her pickup in the
middle of the night, so he didn’t have to run straight over, but the thought
that Salvatore was behind all these acts of vandalism made him too angry to lay
around. He needed to vent physically.

After pulling on sweats and a
t-shirt, he left his apartment and went for a run. The cooler night air felt
good against his face and managed to clear the rest of the cobwebs from his
mind. He turned down one street after another, running through a strange quiet
world of sleeping neighborhoods where the only sound was the soft smack of his
running shoes against pavement. His shirt was soaked through by the time he
turned back. He cut across a baseball field to shorten his route.

He stopped to catch his breath and
looked up. Red and white lights marked the wings and fuselage of a jet making
its way toward San Francisco. He felt a sense of impotent anger at the thought
that his mother was in the company of that creep over two thousand miles away
and he couldn’t do anything about it.

•••••

Sabrina answered the door wearing
the only one-piece bathing suit the girl had brought for her to try, in
slimming black, and a sheer cover up in a dark shade of coral. Poking through
the pile of string bikinis earlier in bright sapphire, hot pink, emerald green
and red, she realized that the girl had expected a younger, perkier woman to be
staying with Edoardo in the executive suite. Not one with body parts that hung
low like overripe fruit.

Elasticity was something young
women took for granted, wearing things without any kind of support until they
realized too late that it was gone and it wasn’t coming back. But she felt
quite confident in this suit. The price tag alone made her feel a bit perkier.
She’d looked in the mirror and known the old adage to be true. You really do
get what you pay for. Instead of a woman well into her middle years, she saw a
vibrant, put-together, sexy older woman who didn’t need to be ashamed of where
she was at in life. She was a knockout.

Edoardo smiled appreciatively. “I
can’t believe my luck. To accompany the most beautiful woman in Oahu,” he said,
taking her hand. He kissed the tips of her fingers and pulled her arm through
his. He was wearing royal blue shorts with white stripes down the sides and a
hotel robe unbelted over the top, revealing a muscular chest with a light
sprinkling of curling gray hair. He obviously had no problem with confidence.

Her return smile was probably
overly bright, but she couldn’t let him suspect her true feelings for him or
that she knew about his underhanded plans against Margaret. The man was a cad.
The absolute despicable nature of what he was doing to poor Margaret! And how
did he know that Davy wouldn’t be in that pickup the next time she drove? Was
he willing for his grandson to get hurt as well just to get his own way?

She owed Billie an apology for not
believing her when she said the man was no good. But now was not the time to
show her hand. She would smile and flirt and eat so much food at the luau that
he would have to get a luggage trolley to carry her back upstairs. That ought
to cool his ardor.

“Ready to turn heads?” he asked,
opening the door into the hallway.

“Let’em spin,” she quipped, a
little worried that having dinner with the devil might be more dangerous than
she anticipated.

On the ride down in the elevator,
he faced her, one hand braced on the wall, his gaze seductively focused on her
mouth. He was just moving in for a kiss when the bell rang and the doors
opened. She slipped under his arm and out, hearing a soft chuckle behind her.
He was not going to be easily distracted from his pursuit. She needed to find a
reason to get them back on that helicopter and on their way home.

Margaret clipped three separate
clusters of grapes from different rows in the vineyard and started toward the
house. She intended to test the level of acidity and see how close to harvest
they really were. The vines were heavy with fruit this year, the wine berries
exorbitantly large. It would be a terrific crop. They only needed to have
everything run like clockwork for magic to happen.

She heard the hum of the Corvette
before she saw it turn into the drive. Adam pulled up to the garage and parked
beside her pickup. He got out and looked around. When he saw her coming up the
hill he waved and leaned against the car with arms folded. His long, lean legs
were encased in faded jeans and he wore the green shirt she’d given him for his
birthday. Her favorite color. She smiled, and quickened her pace.

He straightened up and kissed her
when she stopped to open the garage door with the number pad. She wasn’t taking
any chances with the rash of vandalism. Her wine cellar was the thing she
prized most, other than Davy, and she couldn’t bear it if someone got in and
trashed it. She licked her lips. “You taste like peppermint,” she said,
carrying the grapes inside the garage.

Adam anticipated her destination
and lifted the wooden door in the floor, propping it up with a crossbar. He
descended the first few steps into the cellar and turned on the light for her.
She set the grapes on a low table and turned around for a proper kiss. When she
pulled away she noticed the dark rings under his eyes. “What are you doing here
so early, anyway? You look like you didn’t get much sleep.”

His brows drew together. “I got
less than that. Mom called about an hour after I went to bed. Did I tell you
she’s in Oahu with Salvatore?”

“What?” Margaret’s mouth dropped
open and she shook her head.

He nodded, frustration clear in his
eyes and the tenseness of his shoulders. “It was a spur of the moment thing.
But I guess now that she’s there she’s at least seeing him for who he really
is.”

“What did he do?” she asked,
worried that Sabrina would be used by Edoardo just like she had been used by
his son. “He didn’t...?”

He shook his head. “Not that I know
of. If he touches her, I’ll kill him.”

She pointed him to a chair. “Sit.
You look about ready to fall down.”

“I went running after she called.
For two hours,” he said, slumping into the metal chair.

“Did it help?” She knew he ran when
he was angry or frustrated. He said it was better than taking it out on the
people he loved. She loved him for that too.

He shrugged. “A little.”

She set up her testing equipment
while he told her about the call and the strange text messages his mother had
intercepted. She wiped her hands on a towel and turned around. “Someone messed
with my truck?”

“I think you should have it looked
over. By a mechanic. Who knows what this JT guy did.”

“That’s crazy. Why would Salvatore
do something that could potentially hurt Davy as well?”

“He’s just a rich thug. He acts
like he’s above the law, that he can change things to be what he wants them to
be with a wad of money and a snap of his fingers. We need to get proof that
he’s behind these acts of violence and maybe he’ll get on his private jet and
fly home… alone.”

“I can’t afford to have a
professional mechanic look over my entire truck. Who knows how much they’d
charge. I haven’t even had the power steering belt replaced yet and that’s been
squealing for a while now.”

“I’ll pay for it,” he offered,
reaching out to pull her onto his lap.

She went willingly, curled up
against his chest and kissed his neck where the V of his shirt was open and
inviting. “You can barely make the payments on that car out there after paying
your rent each month,” she teased. “Don’t worry. I know a guy.”

“Yeah, but I don’t like the idea of
you asking one of those guys for a favor.”

He sounded a little jealous and she
tweaked his nose. “It’s not a favor, silly. He’s a friend and a very nice kid.
He offered to replace the belt for me the other day. I’m sure he won’t mind
looking over the rest of my hunk of junk.”

“I’m sure he won’t, but I think I
should be there as well. Where do we find your young mechanic genius?” he
asked, rubbing a lock of her hair between his fingers.

“Carl’s restaurant. Dirk is head
dishwasher there,” she said and grinned.

•••••

Billie was already in her office at
the winery by half past six. Despite Handel being just a reach away, she tossed
and turned all night, managing to feel more tired when she got up than when she
went to bed. She hadn’t seen Ernesto yet, and wasn’t necessarily looking
forward to it. She owed him an apology for jumping to conclusions. Whether or
not Javier had anything to do with the fire, she knew Ernesto would never
knowingly let him stay here if he thought the boy would bring damage to the
vineyards. He’d lived through that hell once already.

She turned on her computer and
opened email. Deleting spam seemed to be a fulltime occupation anymore. She
clicked through the list, opening business correspondence and taking notes to
call certain people later in the morning. An email from her brother had a link
to YouTube. That was weird. He sent it a little after one in the morning. Did
he record himself playing the club last night?

The link opened to a video screen
shot of the shed on fire. She clicked to play and watched Adam run with the
hose, spraying at the already engulfed wall with what amounted to a drizzle.
Then Ernesto came from the other direction, pulling the winery hose behind him
and spraying the surrounding vines with a sense of desperation. His eyes were
wide and anxious beneath the brim of his cap.

Davy zoomed in on the shed as
flames shot through the roof and ate away at the east wall. A man moved out
from the shadow of the building on the south side, glanced sharply toward the
road when he heard the siren, then darted off into the vineyard out of camera
range. Javier.

She pulled the time lapse bar back,
sat forward in her chair and replayed the last bit.

Even with the blurry pixilated
quality of the video at that distance, she recognized his shirt. He’d been
wearing the same shirt when she met him in the vineyard earlier in the day. His
face was not clear, but she had no doubt they’d found the culprit hell-bent on
causing the winery trouble. But why? What was his motivation? If he really quit
the gang and wanted a new life as he told his uncle, why would he screw it up?
And if he was there on behalf of the gang, to distract Handel from looking for
other suspects in Kawasaki’s murder trial, then she felt really bad for
Ernesto. He didn’t deserve that kind of disloyalty after trying to help the
kid.

She let the video play to the end.
Davy turned the camera on the approaching fire truck and watched as the men
jumped down and set to work pouring a deluge of water over the flames in a
matter of minutes.
 
And there she
was grabbing Ernesto by the elbow and yelling into his face. She flushed with
embarrassment when she watched Adam pull her away from the poor man so he could
go about the business of saving her vines.

The video ended with a shot of them
both walking back toward the house, Adam’s arm around her and her head on his
shoulder. She owed her brother big time for his quick thinking and for stepping
in when she’d lost it.

Sally knocked on the open door.
“Hey, boss.”

“Good morning.”

“I’m making some coffee right now.
It should be ready in a few,” she said, leaning against the doorjamb with arms
crossed. “That was quite the excitement yesterday, huh? Did the firemen ever
tell you how they think it started?”

Billie sent the video to Handel’s
email. She shut Safari down and pushed back from the desk, grabbing two notes
she’d written for Sally when she came in. “No. They just assumed with power
tools in there that maybe it was an electrical fire, but I’m sure they’ll have
an official report soon.” She handed Sally the notes. “Could you call these two
distributors and see what’s taking so long on our orders?”

Sally nodded, but didn’t budge. She
apparently still had something to say. “Good thing Javier wasn’t in there when
it started, huh?”

“You knew he was sleeping in the
shed?”

“I saw him go in and out and put
two and two together.”

“But you didn’t think it was worthy
of a mention?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips. “If the insurance
company learns that he was sleeping there and was the cause of the fire,
they’ll not only refuse to pay but they may cancel our policies.”

Sally had the sense to look
chagrined. “Sorry, boss.” She backed into the hall. “I really didn’t know. It
was just a guess. If I thought…” she shook her head.

“Never mind. It’s too late now. I
found out yesterday, a few hours before the fire. I told Ernesto that Javier
couldn’t stay there. He was going to let him crash on his couch until he could
find him another place.”

“That’s a strange coincidence,”
Sally said. “You don’t think he did it in retaliation, do you?”

“That’s something I need to speak
with Ernesto about.” She followed Sally to the front office. “Has he showed up
yet?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

Ernesto usually came in and had
coffee and one of Sally’s cookies before going out to the fields, but she
didn’t know if he would feel comfortable about seeing her after the way she
acted the day before. She peeked into the conference room where Sally left a
tray of cookies on the table nearly every morning, but no one was around.

“If you do, tell him I’m looking
for him. I’m going over to the house for a few minutes. I’ll be back in a bit.”

•••••

When she left the house earlier,
Handel was still sleeping, no doubt mentally worn out from his brief stint as
an investigator and subsequent hours spent at the police station the day
before. But when she let herself in the back door, he was sitting at the table
drinking coffee and reading the news on his laptop.

“Morning, babe,” he said, tilting
his face up for a kiss.

She grazed his forehead and picked
up his cup. “I haven’t had my coffee yet,” she said and sat down to finish his.

He got up and filled another cup,
placed it in front of her and took his now empty one back to the counter. He
refilled it, emptying the rest of the pot and shut off the warmer. “You were
sure up bright and early,” he remarked.

“Maybe that’s why I caught the
proverbial worm. Check your email,” she said, blowing across the top of her
steaming cup.

He sat down and clicked to the
video, then watched it all the way through in silence. His eyes met hers across
the lid of his laptop. “Javier?”

She nodded.

“Did you notice the way Ernesto
looked at you when Adam pulled you away?”

“What do you mean?”

Handel set the video to the correct
spot and turned the screen so she could watch. “The guilt on his face. He knows
it was Javier.”

She sighed. “I can see why he would
deny it. He tried to help the kid and all he got in return was trouble. He
loves his job as vineyard manager. It’s what he’s always wanted to do. Maybe he
thinks I’ll fire him because of Javier.”

Handel met her eyes. “Would you?”

“Of course not! I can’t believe
you’d ask me that. Ernesto is part of the Fredrickson family now. Like Sally or
Loren or Sammie.” She propped her chin in her hands. “As soon as I see him I’ll
apologize for acting like he was guilty before proven innocent.”

“Lot of that going around,” he
said, pointing at a local news article he was reading online. “They’ve already
tried and convicted Sloane without ever hearing the facts. The more sensational
the crime, the more media salivates, stirring up controversy and making
personal judgments against people they know nothing about.”

She reached out and covered his
hand, squeezing his fingers lightly. “Doesn’t matter. He has the best attorney
in the state. I’m confident the truth will prevail.”

“Yeah, but whose truth? Hosea’s or
Sloane’s?”

“Maybe they’re one and the same.”

There was a knock on the back door
and it opened. “Can I come in?” Adam asked, already closing the door behind
him.

“I think you are,” Handel said. He
closed his laptop and pushed it to the side. “Have a seat.”

Adam glanced at the empty coffee
pot before taking the chair at the end of the table. “Did you guys watch Davy’s
video of the fire?” he asked without preamble.

Billie got up to make another pot
of coffee. “I just showed it to Handel,” she said, filling the decanter.

“Well?”

“It’s Javier. Ernesto gave him a
job a while back,” she said, putting in the filter and coffee. “I haven’t
spoken with Ernesto yet, but Handel thinks he already knows.”

“You think he was in on it?” Adam
frowned and shook his head. “Ernesto is a stand-up guy. I don’t think he’d be
part of something like that.”

“I didn’t say he was.” Handel
pushed back from the table and went to the refrigerator. “I said he knew Javier
started the fire. It was the look on his face after Billie confronted him.”

Handel set a pint of half &
half in front of Adam along with the sugar bowl. Her brother’s taste in coffee
leaned toward a hot milkshake. She poured him half a cup before the pot was
completely brewed and brought it to the table. They watched him doctor it to
within an inch of its life before he took a sip.

“Your coffee is always so good,” he
said, his eyes glinting with humor. He set his cup down and crossed his arms.
“Do you think it’s possible this guy, Javier, knows Edoardo Salvatore?”