A Tainted Finish: A Sydney McGrath Mystery (5 page)

Syd sat in Jack Bristol's office cupping a mug of black coffee in her hands. The door was ajar and she could hear his muffled voice while he gave instructions to his assistant, a woman Syd recognized from school. They were not to be disturbed. The voice that she had grown to love as a child – the voice of Uncle Jack – had never held the kind of authority she heard through the crack in the door. She felt unsteady sitting in his office on official business. She was not going to cry, she told herself with resolve. She had questions and she wasn't about to spend another day feeling like a lost child. Surely an adult woman could grieve with dignity.

Jack walked into the room and shut the door quietly behind him. “Syd, I'm so sorry,” he offered and embraced her like an uncle. His familiar smell of expensive cologne clung to his freshly shaven face, which now hovered close to her own. Syd was the first to pull away. She moved to take her seat again and picked up her coffee, wielding it like a shield in front of her.

He took his seat behind his desk, which was an inexpensive Scandinavian light wood office desk, uncluttered and unadorned. In the center of the desk sat a red folio, the kind Clarence used for his official papers. The room was lined with neat bookshelves in the same blond wood as the desk, and the walls were a pale purple. It seemed more likely to be a woman's office. But its smell was distinctly male, permeated by the more subtle aroma of Jack's cologne. A set of golf clubs leaned up against a wall and scattered baseball paraphernalia peppered the landscape of the bookshelves selfconsciously dispelling any misconceptions about the gender of the occupant.

“You redecorated your office,” she said, looking out the window. The only remarkable thing about his office was the spectacular view of the Columbia River and Mt. Hood. His building was prime real estate, poised on the bluffs of White Salmon.

He nodded at the door. “Becky did it,” he said, defeated. He clearly was not on board with the make-over, but he was living with it all the same. He was either a compromising, kind man or a coward. Syd hadn't decided. She was surprised at her need to make an adult assessment of the man. Clarence had sown a seed of doubt earlier in the summer, and she marveled at the power of suggestion her uncle held over her.

“Do your clients like it?” she asked. She wondered how a lawyer could garner confidence in a mauve colored room.

“Most of my clients don't ever come to the office. Farms, wineries, businesses. I mostly make house-calls.” He winked. She didn’t smile.
Except me
, she thought. Why didn't he meet her at the house?

“I have Clarence's will here, and his important papers,” Jack said, shifting in his chair.

“Uh huh,” she said into her mug. She crossed her legs.

“Have you read his new will, Sydney?” He asked warily.

“No,” she answered. He looked crestfallen. “But he did tell me he was changing it. He visited me in Seattle in August. He said he was making changes.”

“We changed it in August. Honestly, I was against it. In fact, we fought over it. I advised him to go a different direction.” He was distraught now, looking down at his hands. Syd squirmed in her chair. She wasn't going to feel badly for him until she had some real answers.

“Is that why he was so angry with you?” she asked, looking him the eye for the first time.

He looked startled. “No, there’s more to it. Lately his life had become a bit complicated. What do you know about the buyout?”

“Only that it went bad. That the investor was planning to sell out the winery to a big corporation behind our backs. Hell, everyone knows that. Thanks to the weasel Joe Donner. At least we have him to thank for that.”

“Except I'm pretty sure his intentions were anything but noble,” Jack added with surprising contempt for the critic, “I'm certain he intended to out Clarence as a sellout, among other things.”

“Well, that was obvious, Jack,” she interrupted him. She had no intention of discussing the infamous rivalry between her uncle and the insipid pop culture wine critic. She had to work closely enough with Joe Donner in Seattle, occasionally running into him for judging events or openings. His dislike for her was never far from the surface during their encounters. In fact, she discovered that he had gone out of his way to discredit her expertise in Sommelier school, whispering malfeasance in the ears of her instructors. In the end she had to agree with her uncle’s assessment of the man: he was a sycophantic, self-promoting chauvinist. Clarence once had an altercation with Donner years ago when he revealed a nauseating tendency toward misogyny. Clarence was an avid feminist and a vocal believer in the talents of female winemakers. He defended the work of a well-respected, up-and-coming colleague after Joe Donner published a ridiculous review of her wines. Clarence wrote a scathing open letter in the
Seattle Times
about the review and the nepotism surrounding what he called the “fraternity of bottom-feeders”, people who prey on the talent and hard work of creative winemakers. He pointed out Donner’s history of refusing to review the wines of female winemakers with fairness. Joe Donner countered with a litany of despicable attacks on his blog that were dangerously libelous. However, Clarence accepted the response as being a childish one, and wrote off the critic as a fool. Their rivalry began many years ago, and Clarence paid little attention to it except as the butt of an occasional joke. But Syd suspected that it was at the forefront of Donner's mind and it carried over to herself. While Clarence dismissed him as a fool, Syd saw him as far more nefarious than her uncle ever did.

“The buy-out was all but complete, Sydney.” Jack said. “We had to do some fancy footwork to get your uncle out of it. And frankly, I'm not sure it was such a great idea.”

“His life's work? He was supposed to just cash out and hand over the winery to some corporate label?”

“He was burned out, Syd. He was tired. Didn't the man deserve a retirement? He busted his ass for thirty years on that winery. And he had no one to hand it to.” She heard the bitterness in his voice.

“That wasn't my fault,” she said through clenched teeth. A surge of anger and guilt rose in her throat.

He threw up his hands. “I know, I know. He discouraged you. And I know why, and I never agreed with it. But you know how stubborn he was. We argued over it for years. As odd as it sounds, it was out of love. And respect for your talent and intelligence. He was in awe of you. He always said you were meant for bigger things.”

“But all I ever wanted was to make wine, like my mother.” She said flatly, the tragedy of her conflict with Clarence staring her in the face.

“I think that was the crux of it. Honestly, Syd, I think you always reminded him too much of your mother.”

“I've always known that,” she said, feeling the old resentment well up in her chest. She strategized a way to take control of a conversation going in a dangerous direction. “Anyway, the buyout? What happened?”

“Well, thanks to Joe Donner, Clarence changed his mind. The contract was tight. I drew it up myself. Clarence was supposed to work as the winemaker and maintain all proprietary decisions for at least another five years, with an option to renew if he had not found a replacement winemaker by that time.”

“What would the investor get? Who is he, by the way?”

“A man named Hans Feldman. He’s fairly new to the area. From New York, but he lives in Hood River. He would’ve had 75% ownership of the winery, and Clarence would be under salary. We included a clause to allow Clarence to live in the house until his death. Clarence would get a big cash out and the winery would get some new equipment and a general manager. Not that Clarence needed the money. He saved everything. He just wanted to make wine and not do the business end of it any more. It was a sound investment for Feldman. The winery’s been fully allocated for decades. But in the end he would’ve almost doubled his money immediately. An easy $20 million.”

“The corporation would have bought it for $20 million? Did they offer it to Uncle?”

“Several times. In fact, their hounding him is what gave him the idea to sell to begin with. By selling it to a small investor he thought he was staving off the possibility of a sellout to the big boys. Naively. Feldman had other plans from the beginning, it seems. He could’ve easily fought for control of Blackwell's. After getting to know the man, I suspect he intended to batter Clarence with bullying and undermining him until he broke down. Clarence was tired, Syd. His heart wasn't in it anymore.” He looked down at the red folio in front of him, “in the end it would have been better for everyone if he just sold it to the highest bidder.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, taken aback. Jack folded his hands on the desk in front of him.

“What do you know about Olivier Ruiz?” he asked. There was an edge to his voice.

~

Syd left Jack's office holding the will and the nullified papers related to the sale of the winery. The bump on her head began to pound while Jack expounded on the mystery of Clarence's adventures in Argentina long before Sydney was born. Jack mulled over details, never having received the full story of Clarence and her mother in South America. But he could piece together fragments of the story that he culled from Clarence over the years, and he was nothing short of suspicious. The sudden arrival of Olivier Ruiz and his connections to the family in Mendoza that caused so much tragedy for the Blackwell’s gave Jack considerable pause. Sydney's head was swimming by the time she left, but she felt that she was under control of her emotions for the first time since she arrived home. The intrigue was a welcome distraction.

Charlie was busy in Clarence's office when Syd entered. The desk was cluttered with crumpled tissues, and she was cooing soothing sounds into the phone. She looked up at Syd with tears rolling down her puffy red cheeks and shrugged. The person on the other end of the phone line was obviously sobbing. Syd left to make some tea with a lump in her throat. Charlie was the best friend a girl could have.

Later they sat at the kitchen table, sipping their tea. Charlie had recovered sufficiently for another round of phone calls, informing loved ones about the death and memorial service for Clarence Blackwell.

“The things I do for love,” she said, rolling her eyes at Syd. She squeezed Syd’s hand.

“Thanks,” Syd said. She was truly grateful for Charlie, but more than a little preoccupied with what Jack told her.

“How was Jack, by the way?” Charlie asked, playing with Syd's hand.

Syd pondered for a moment. “Weird, actually. And angry. At Uncle, I think. Did I tell you that they fought this summer? Jack didn't want Uncle to back out of the sale. Even after he found out about the corporate buy-out. And he rewrote Uncle’s will, which he didn't want to do either. He wouldn't tell me about the will. He wanted me to read it myself before the reading of the will, whatever that means. And, you know, Charlie? I don't think he was even that broken up about Uncle's death.”

Charlie frowned. “But they were best friends, Syd. And everyone has different ways of grieving. Trust me, after today I could write a book.” Syd frowned and picked the skin on her lip. Charlie patted her hand and got up to make more calls.

Syd stared at the thick red folder on the table, trying to not make out the syllables of Charlie's phone calls in the other room. The fine red linen paper folio donned a wax string that wound around a bone button. The elegant simplicity of it struck her as a perfect symbol for the man she loved so dearly. While others might see a simple pocketed folder for important papers, Syd could see what it really was; a carefully detailed enticement of something precious inside, withholding secrets and offering a defense built entirely on the assumption of common decency and restraint. Clarence crafted a reality in which the details of hand-made paper and a hand-hewn bone button might thwart the ugliness of the world. Punishment for upsetting his eccentric reality was swift and Earth-shattering. It was the thing that Syd feared the most in her lifetime; his disappointment.

She hardly remembered her uncle when she came to the States to live with him at five. He had been in Argentina with her family when she was a baby, but he left when she was four. She had not seen him since. When she first came to his house, she was frightened and alone, and he scared her most of all. She only vaguely understood the circumstances of her life's upheaval, but she was aware of the tragedy of her parents’ car accident, their deaths, and the untethering of her feelings.

Her uncle spent most of his time up in the winery, smelling like everyone she ever loved. He worked all hours of the day, and when he came back down to the house he barely looked at her. Once, when she first arrived, he sat at the kitchen table with a nearly empty bottle and wept while she spied on him from the darkened doorway. He got up abruptly and strode into to her room, and she scurried ahead of him and jumped into bed. He sat on her bed and hugged her, squeezing so hard that she gasped for air and hit him in the face to make him let go. He pulled away and left, leaving her frightened and alone. He didn't speak a word, and he hardly ever hugged her since.

As time went on, she and her uncle grew comfortable with each other, in spite of their idiosyncrasies. He was quiet and gruff, and he wore his grief like a mantle weighing down his shoulders. She busied herself with information, reading books and gathering erroneous data to keep her mind occupied. She was a precocious five-year-old. She spent her time shadowing Rosa, the nanny he hired to help him with his unexpected parenthood. They shuffled in their individual self-preservation for over a year, until the day Syd pulled out the chessboard in Clarence's office. It had been buried in a cabinet of papers and books.

Clarence taught Syd how to play chess on his lovely reproduction Isle of Lewis Chessmen set, with four queens. He had carved the board as a young man and purchased the set one piece at a time through a monthly subscription service. They were made of fine ivory, though not walrus bone like the 12
th
century originals. The board was a work of art as well, with inlaid burled maple and black walnut, made with hand tools over the course of several months. Clarence hand-carved vines along the border that vaguely looked like grapevines. Later he confessed that they were imaginary flora, and not true to any particular species. But they looked like wild grape leaves to Sydney.

Clarence's passion for chess was almost as deep as his passion for wine, although he had laid aside his chess board for years. He had played chess every day with his sister Floy – Sydney’s mother – when they were teenagers. He told Sydney that she was better than he was, and it was true. But she often grew impatient, and he almost always beat her in the long games. Frequently they played with competition timers and she would prevail. But then she would want a slow game and let her mind wander. She was a gifted abstract positional chess player, while he played in more calculated moves. She engineered vast and complicated conundrums for her brother's more methodical defensive playing. Floy never bothered to study opening strategies, controlling the middle of the board, or castling in the first three moves. She had been using black's Grundfeld defense for a decade before she knew it had a name. But Clarence studied and loved the chess games codified in the newspapers. He analyzed their meaning in his own journals. He jotted down her moves and strategies, and tried to capture her apparent chaotic style of playing. Secretly he knew her talent wasn't in the careful analysis of long game strategies, but rather in the relative positioning of the team. She had an intuitive sense of the probability of play as a function of synergy, while he saw individual pieces in positions with their own set of odds. Even worse, she never cared about winning, a trait that baffled her brother.

Syd played almost identically to her mother. When Syd was seven she and Clarence played a match in candlelight for an entire afternoon and evening. The power had gone out during a particularly severe winter storm, and they moved their chairs and the chess set near the wood stove. The match was drawn out and leisurely. Syd held his captured pieces in her hands, her small fingers moving over the ivory absently. She sat gazing at the fire, mesmerized.

“Why do you do that?” he asked softly, pointing at the berserker rook she was holding in her hand.

“Do what?” she answered selfconsciously, jolted out of her trance.

“Hold the pieces like that,” he said. He paused before continuing softly. “Your mother. She used to do that.”

She stared at him for a long time. “I like the smoothness of the pieces, but I like to feel the bumps of the carving too. I can feel where the knife has been.” A hint of a lisp hid in her tongue, a repository of the slowly filling hole where her two front teeth were growing in. She was startled to see his eyes fill with tears. He dropped his head in his hands and wept quietly while Syd watched him.

Over time Syd began to equal her uncle in play. She began to understand sacrifice when she was eight, and played with relentless ferocity that bordered on recklessness. When she was ten she played with sacrifice, but often to soften her uncle's mood or appease his desire to teach her something of value. She was his superior in play from that point on, but it took him a few years to figure it out. The chess board was the classroom, and Clarence never tired of the metaphor. To his masculine mind he could teach her the ways of the world through well-planned strategies and maneuvers. But she could see the inherent flaw in his lessons; in the end life is unpredictable.

At fourteen Syd played chess to suit her mood. She could beat her uncle or not. She rarely played the game for puzzle anymore. They played less frequently by then and she only wanted to play when she wanted to talk to him about something. She understood that Clarence knew that his lessons were no longer her guiding compass, but they danced the dance of teacher and pupil all the same. Besides, they could fight their battles on the chessboard and still understand the rules of the game. However, they managed to avoid their primary sources of conflict while always fueling the growing sparks between them that flew just beneath the surface.

Syd wanted to be a winemaker. Like her mother. Like her uncle. Clarence all but forbade it. But Syd had winemaking in her blood. Clarence confused her desire to make wine for rebellion and he dismissed the possibility of her ever becoming a winemaker. He told her that winemaking was a man's world. He did not mean to say that women don’t make excellent winemakers. In fact, he believed just the opposite. But the industry was infested with megalomaniacs; self-important, posturing men with little intelligence and no imagination. Clarence expounded on the experiences of so many women colleagues who had to work so much harder than their male counterparts despite having more talent and finesse. But the fraternity of mediocre male winemakers was never better bolstered than when they silently mustered against the ultimate threat; a superior female palate and nose. His opposition was vehement in a way Syd could hardly understand. His reasoning always seemed to miss the mark for such a violent opposition. Her own experience with the winemakers she met revealed little of what Clarence believed. She certainly could see that they treated women differently, but no differently than the way men treat women in every other role.

They had their final blowout – the big fight over her future endeavors with the Isle of Lewis pieces – when she was seventeen. It was an October day, and they waited around for the first fruit to come in, itching impatiently, static electricity in the air. Harvest was weeks late and impending poor weather loomed in the minds of everyone deeply dependent on weather and seasons. Clarence was in a rare state of anxiety. Syd goaded her uncle into a conversation about the virtues of harvesting based on pH and the phenolic sweet point relatively independent of Brix, or grape sugars. She had taken to reading all the back journals of the
American Society of Enology
and Viticulture
and she craved some kind of discussion about harvest parameters. She hounded all of the local growers, begging to get her hands on clippers and discuss every aspect of vineyard management. But they grew tired of her questions and felt secretly threatened by her insatiable curiosity. In the end she made friends with the vineyard crews and slipped in the lineup of workers who pruned, hoed, and harvested fruit. She found that the pickers knew far more about the vines anyway. The view is always closer from the ground than from the seat of a tractor, or behind a desk.

Clarence stroked his beard while she prattled on about mid-season leaf stripping for pyrazine management. He tried to change the subject.

“Did you talk to the counselor about your trip to Harvard?” he asked.

Syd stopped mid-sentence and mumbled
no
.

“I thought he might be interested in helping you with your essay.”

“Actually, he said I should have at least five schools picked out,” she said. Clarence scowled at his knight on D3, pursing his lips. “I'm thinking about Harvard, Wesleyan, Cornell, WSU, and Davis.” She moved a pawn in a stupid but appeasing move, exposing her bishop. She wanted to stall the game, anyway.

Clarence looked up at her and glared with dark eyes. “Why Cornell, WSU or Davis?” he asked in low gravelly voice.

“You know why,” she said through gritted teeth. “They all have excellent Enology programs.”

“Well, I won’t pay for it,” he said. He moved his queen out, ready to take her bishop.

“I have my own money. From Mom.” She took his knight on D3 with her rook. Clarence scowled at the board.

“Not enough for an Ivy league school.” He shook his head angrily.

“I'll get loans, and my grades are good enough for scholarships,” she replied through a sigh, drumming her hands on the board in feigned concentration.

“What you’ll get is disappointment,” he roared. Syd sat up with mouth and eyes wide open. “Why not be a secretary? Or a stripper? Why not squander
all
your talent!” He pushed over the chessboard and stood up, knocking pieces on the ground. She stared at the man who never showed emotion while he paced in front of her. He held his hands on his head as if to keep his head from exploding. After a torturous moment he stopped pacing and jabbed a finger toward her. “
You
are brilliant. You have so much to offer to the world. You can do whatever you put your mind to, Sydney. Very few people can say that. Your natural talents, your IQ, your privilege of living in North America, of being white, for God's sake! You have a great responsibility. And you want to squander it all and be like
me!
”

He sat down in the chair opposite her again, his fury melting into disappointment. They sat in silence for an eternity. Clarence fumed as Sydney put the chessboard back together.

“What's wrong with wanting to do what you do? What Mom did?” she asked timidly, tears streaming down her face.

He threw up his hands. “What I do is meaningless, Sydney. Ultimately unimportant.”

“You’re an artist and you give people joy.”

“In the end I produce piss, Sydney. Any greatness attributed to wine is a function of status and ego and all kinds of the worst human attributes.”

“But I love that it’s simple and humble and transient. You taught me that.”

“Being a winemaker isn't about art, Sydney. I’ve known far too many women who are eaten up in this industry. It’s heartbreaking. Even dangerous.” He mumbled into his hand, staring at her slack shoulders.

“Don't tell me it's 'cause I'm a girl” she spat. She slammed the pieces back in position.

“No, it's not just 'cause you’re a girl. It's all of it, Syd. Wine is unimportant and you can be anything. Don't you see that?”

“So it doesn't matter what I want?” she asked, placing the last pawn back on the board, creating an exact replica of the game they had been playing.

“It matters, Syd. But you’re seventeen and you can’t possibly know what you really want at seventeen. Trust me. I wanted to be a lawyer, for Christ's sake!” He waved at his working clothes, long hair, and beard, a subtle stab at humor.

“Mom knew what she wanted at seventeen.” She moved her castle forward. “Check. Mate in two moves.”

Her uncle sighed. She watched his eyes cloud over. He worked to control his emotions with deep breaths. She felt sharp stabs of guilt in her chest, seeing him so defeated.

“In the end it was wrong for her,” he said, eyes fixed on the white queen in his hand. He turned the piece over and over, caressing it with his thumb. The man who Sydney had grown to know as distant and unemotional now looked so vulnerable. For the first time Syd saw her uncle for who he truly was; a defeated man plagued by the tragedy of losing the people he loved the most. The realization washed over her while she righted the pieces for another match. She gestured for him to make the first move, but she knew he had already won.