Cantina Valley (A Ben Adler Mystery Book 1) (6 page)

The older woman slipped back into the office area, leaving Sonya and Ben alone.

Now he hugged Sonya.
 
He wasn’t sure about the current status of their relationship.
 
Although she was on social media, he had never viewed her profile.
 
Without a phone, they had to make dates the old fashioned way—well in advance.

She pulled back from him, but kept her hand on his free one.
 
“You really should get a cell phone,” Sonya said.
 
“Then I could give you a call before coming over.”

“As you know, there’s no service at my place.”

“You could get with the last millennium and have a landline installed.”

He didn’t want to tell her that the lines were already in place from when his parents lived there.
 
But Ben had removed the lines from his house to the pole by his front gate.
 
“Then I’d get all kinds of calls from telemarketers and asshole politicians.”

Sonya said something to him in French and he rolled his eyes and shook his head.
 
Her heritage was recent Italian, with both of her parents emigrating to Oregon as college professors.
 
So she had learned Italian organically as she grew up.
 
The French and Spanish she had learned as a student at the U of O, when she wasn’t running for the Ducks track team.
 
Ben insisted she spoke one of the three languages while they made love.
 
She used French during foreplay and Italian during the actual act.
 
Spanish was saved for her naughty side.

“What was that?” he asked her.

“I said, ‘What’s with the photo?’” Sonya explained.

He showed her the image of Tavis and said, “Have you ever run across this guy?”

She looked carefully and said, “Yes.”

“What?
 
Seriously?
 
When?
 
Where?”

“Slow down cowboy.
 
Why are you looking for him?”

Instead of giving Sonya the story he had to the others, he came out with the truth.
 
“A friend of my old commander asked me to find him.”

“A woman?”

“Yes, why?”

“What do you get in exchange?”

Considering they had never established exclusivity, Sonya was acting as if they were married.
 
“She’s a lawyer from Portland.
 
And has promised to deal with a little IRS matter.”

Sonya shook her head.
 
“What about the EPA?”

“That’s bullshit!”

“So is the IRS matter, Ben.
 
But the EPA can really fine you.”

“For collecting my own water on my property?
 
Oregon is full of water.
 
First the power company wanted me to direct my excess electricity back to the grid instead of storing it in my batteries, then the waste management people keep dropping off garbage cans and recycling bins—even though I never asked them to do so.”

“Recycling is important, Ben.”

“I understand that, Sonya.
 
But I compost all of my yard debris and other organic waste.
 
I don’t buy normal products with outrageous packaging, so I don’t collect cardboard and paper.
 
What little I do have, I burn in my wood stove.
 
That heats my house, along with the wood, which I cut from my own land.
 
I bring my old wine bottles to you for recycling.
 
Now the county tries to tell me which trees I can cut from my own land.
 
And the water really pisses me off.
 
I draw water into large cisterns during the winter months and use it for my garden in the summer.
 
When the EPA says I can’t collect the water because it is owned by all of Oregon, that’s the last straw.
 
The ground around my house is so saturated it’s like walking on a floating bog in my yard.
 
Can you imagine how that would be if I let the water flow from my roof?”

Sonya stood with her arms crossed over her chest.
 
She had heard his rants before.
 
“I understand, Ben.
 
But you have to deal with the government sometimes.”

“I dealt with the Air Force bureaucracy for more than twenty years.
 
I’m done.”

“I’m just saying that maybe this lawyer could get the EPA off your back.”

Ben had already scared them off, showing up at his gate with an AR-15 and his 9mm handgun on his hip.
 
Although he never pointed either of them at the bastards, the threat he wanted to convey was implied.
 
“You know how the EPA found out I was collecting water?
 
They require sellers of cisterns to report the sales to them.
 
We need to get rid of the EPA and the IRS.”

“I know.
 
You should see how they restrict us here at the winery.”

Ben smiled and said, “You might have a bigger problem with ICE.”

“Our workers are legal,” she complained.

“As far as you know,” he said.
 
“But I’m sure you don’t verify every ID.”

“We contract out the pickers and pruners,” she said.
 
“It’s that company’s responsibility.”

Ben raised his hands.
 
“Hey, I don’t give a shit one way or the other.
 
They work their asses off in that vineyard.
 
I sure as hell don’t want to do that work.”
 
He hesitated, knowing he had brought peace to the middle east, if not his little piece of Cantina Valley.
 
“Now, you were going to tell me how you happened upon the man in the picture.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to water board me for that information?” she asked.

He stepped in a little closer and said, “Positive.
 
But maybe I could restrain you and bring you to the point of climax a number of times.”

“Tease.
 
Don’t promise without action.”

“I am nothing if not a man of action.”

She gulped noticeably.
 
“That you are.”

Ben waited for her to answer.

“I don’t know the man.
 
But he’s come in here a number of times to taste and buy.”

“Alone?”

“No.
 
With a couple of other guys.
 
Rough characters.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know.
 
Just a feeling.
 
They were scary.”

She wasn’t being too clear.
 
“Explain.”

“A lot of tattoos.”

Ben laughed.
 
“You mean like everyone else in Portland and Eugene?”

“Good point.
 
But no.”
 
Sonya held the crucifix around her neck gently with her right hand as if saying her contrition.
 
“It was their eyes that bothered me the most.
 
They looked soulless.”

Her Catholic heritage rarely came up, despite the fact that she was devout in her beliefs.
 
And Ben?
 
His parents had raised him as a fundamental Christian, with heavy doses of Taoism and Buddhism thrown in to the gumbo pot.

“Always the same guys with him?”

“Yes.”
 
Then her eyes seemed to beam with an idea.
 
“They seemed awfully friendly with that Bigfoot hunter once.”

“Marlon?”

“Yeah.
 
They sat at the end of our tasting bar for a long time talking last month.”

“In October?”

She nodded.

October was one of the winery’s most busy months, with people trying to capture one more day of sun before the rains of winter came to Western Oregon.

That was interesting, Ben thought.
 
Why had Marlon lied to him?

Ben put the photo back inside his jacket.

“I’m confused,” Sonya said.
 
“Why did this lawyer come to you for help?”

He had never really told Sonya what he had done in the military.
 
To the layperson he could just say he was retired military and leave it at that.
 
Many thought the military was like a large mass of trained killers who only knew how to pull a trigger.
 
They had no idea of the complexity of the equipment used, especially in the Air Force and Navy.
 
Or even the tanks and helicopters in the Army.

“As I said, my former commander sent her my way.”

“What did you do in the Air Force again?”

There was no again.
 
This was the first time she had really asked this question.
 
“I was an agent with the Office of Special Investigations.
 
It’s like the Air Force’s version of the FBI.”
 
And the CIA.
 
But she didn’t need to know that part.

Her eyes got round.
 
“What?
 
Wow.
 
Is that why you still carry your gun everywhere?”

“Partially.
 
What did you imagine I did in the Air Force?”

She shrugged.
 
“I don’t know.
 
Something to do with airplanes, I guess.”

“Every career field is related to keeping the jets in the air, Sonya, from the cooks to the pilots.
 
I made sure we had a quality force.”

Sonya pointed a finger into his chest.
 
“This isn’t over, Ben.
 
I want to know more.
 
But I have to get back to work.”

“Yeah.
 
I need to be moving on as well.”
 
Back to Marlon’s house to find out why that Bigfoot asshole lied to him.
  
“Why don’t you come by on Saturday.
 
I’ll have some fresh smoked fish.
 
You can pair a nice wine with that, I’m sure.
 
Some pinot something or other.”
 
He smiled at her, knowing she was cringing inside.
 
His intent.

“Sounds good.
 
Six p.m.?”

“No, let’s do eighteen hundred.”
 
He confounded her constantly with military time.
 
It was their thing.