Dying on the Vine

DYING ON
THE VINE

AARON ELKINS

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

DYING ON THE VINE

Copyright © 2012 by Aaron Elkins.

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FIRST EDITION:
December 2012

Berkley Prime Crime hardcover ISBN: 978-1-101-61349-8

An application to register this book for cataloging has been submitted to the Library of Congress.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, it took a number of people to help me over the rough spots and keep me out of trouble in
Dying on the Vine,
and it’s a pleasure to express my appreciation to them.

Capitano
Roccangelo Tritto and
Luogotenente
Roberto Conforti treated me most cordially at
Carabinieri
headquarters in Florence and took time to answer my questions there. For many months afterward,
Luogotenente
Conforti patiently continued to answer them by e-mail.

Also demonstrating commendable patience were my Italian friends Vincenzo Panza, Alberto Venanzetti, and University of Ottawa Professor Cristina Perissinotto, who uncomplainingly answered every one of the many questions I posted to them on Italian culture, language, and mores. I apologize to them for bending a few things in the interest of storytelling.

As usual, J. Stanley Rhine, professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico, was my go-to person on matters anthropological.

Dr. David L. Black, clinical assistant professor in pathology, microbiology, and immunology at Vanderbilt University and president of Aegis Sciences, was extremely helpful in the area of forensic toxicology, even going so far as to plan a murder with me (and solve it as well).

And my thanks to Martin and Ryan Johnson, proprietors of the Ruby Magdalena Vineyards in Zillah, Washington, for their hospitality and friendship during an early research trip to the Yakima Valley wine country. I learned a lot from Marty and had fun doing it.

ONE

IT
had long been the unvarying custom of Pietro Cubbiddu, following that of his father back in Sardinia, to take a
mese sabatico
, a solitary, monthlong sabbatical each fall, at the conclusion of the arduous September grape crush. In recent years, on the advice of his physician, he had begun taking it at the beginning of the month instead, to escape the stress that went along with the harvesting and crushing. During this time he rested, he thought deep thoughts, and he pondered plans and decisions for the ensuing year. That no other major winemaker in Tuscany did likewise was of no concern to him. Pietro Vittorio Teodoro
Guglielmo Cubbiddu was every inch (all sixty-four of them) a patriarch: of his family, of the Villa Antica winery, and—although many would argue the point—of the winemaking fraternity of the Val d’Arno, the Arno River valley between Florence and Arezzo.

As large as Villa Antica was today—the fourth largest of the valley’s seventy-plus wineries—it was still very much a family affair, but with Pietro himself firmly at the helm. And Pietro’s every act was guided by the wise old adages of his forebears, very much including
Quando il gatto non c’è, i topi ballano. When the cat’s away, the mice will dance
. Thus, it was also his custom to gather his three sons before he left on his sabbatical, to issue detailed instructions for running the business in his absence, to resolve differences with Solomon-like decrees, and to deal with issues that might arise while he was gone. For the last several years he had found it helpful to have Severo Quadrelli, his lawyer, confidante, and oldest friend, as part of this group as well.

It was for this reason that Quadrelli, along with Pietro’s offspring, Franco, Luca, and Niccolò, had been gathered with him for the last hour around one of the tables on the porticoed, vine-shaded back terrace of the ancient villa, originally a fifteenth-century convent, where they munched almond biscotti and sipped from tiny, thick-walled cups of tooth-dissolving espresso, both of them made by the housekeeper according to Pietro’s exacting specifications.

The
padrone
set his cup down in its mini-saucer with a clack that would have broken a lesser vessel. “Okay. So. What else we got to talk about?” His gaze went around the table and settled on his old friend Quadrelli. “I can see you got something on your mind, Seve. Spit it out.”

“Well, yes, I do, as a matter of fact,” said the lawyer after one of his lengthy, harrumphing throat-clearings. “About this Humboldt matter. Don’t you think we ought to tell them
something
before you run off and disappear into
casus incommunicado
?” The use of Latin—frequently rather suspect Latin—was also typical of signor Quadrelli.

Pietro glared at him. “No! What for we got to tell them something?”

He had grown up in the mountains of Barbagia, the remote and primitive interior of Sardinia, where the dominant language was still Sardu, rather than Italian. Indeed, he had spoken virtually no Italian until he came to mainland Italy (“Europe,” as he called it) as a married man in his thirties. And in the two decades since, he had never lost the thick Sardu accent or the brusque speech constructions that sounded so coarse to mainland Italian ears. Whether he still spoke this way out of shrewd business calculation (
“Ey, signore, I’m just a dumb paisano
right
off the boat, what do I know?”
) or because he couldn’t help it or simply because he liked talking that way, was a question that even his family had never resolved to its satisfaction.

“Well, you see, Pietro,” Quadrelli said, lifting a placating hand, “the thing is, I don’t know how much longer we can put them off. There are a great many other wineries they could go to, you know.”

Pietro’s round, balding head came up. His response, delivered with flashing eye and a whack of his hand on the table, was like the snap of a whip. “But only one Villa Antica!” This was followed by a bark of laughter:
Ha-ha, I’ve got you there, my friend!

The matter at hand was an offer from the giant Humboldt-Schlager Brewing Company to acquire Villa Antica. The Dutch-American beer conglomerate was eager to get its foot into the premium-wine market, and it thought that Villa Antica would be the perfect entry. Last week they had upped their offer from an already stunning €3 million to a staggering €5.5 million, more than enough for Pietro to move back at last to his beloved Sardinia, where he would be able to retire in great luxury, far from his old enemies in the mountains, to the swank Costa Smeralda, where he’d live on the beautiful coast, right in there with the opera singers and rock stars. Maybe with his wife, Nola, at his side. Maybe not. What to do about Nola would be one of the many things that would occupy his mind over this next month.

“Of course, Pietro, that goes without saying,” Severo was saying. “I’m merely—”

“They don’t want to wait, they’re in such a big hurry,
let
them go somewheres else.” Then, as a muttered afterthought: “They don’t like it, they can go to hell.”

“Yes, but what do we tell them if they want a definite answer?”

“You tell them what I just say. I have not yet made up my mind. What is so hard about this?”

Franco, the eldest, who thought of himself as a natural peacemaker and arbiter (he was neither) intervened. “
Babbo
, all Severo is asking is that you make your decision before you leave for your vacation. Surely—”

“Is no vacation.” Pietro told him sternly, not for the first time, “Is
un mese sabatico
. I think about this thing on my
mese sabatico
.
Then
I make up my mind.”

But his voice had lost some of its authority. He was being evasive, even untruthful. The Humboldt-Schlager offer had a catch. Naturally. (
Non c’è rosa senza spine. There is no rose without thorns.
)
The catch was known only to Pietro and Quadrelli. When the company had increased their offer they’d also changed the original provision that called for Franco to become the winery’s chief operating officer and for Luca and Nico to continue in their present positions. Now they’d decided they had no use for any of them; they wanted all of them out and gone the day the deal closed; out of the winemaking operation and gone from the living quarters. Otherwise: no deal. To Pietro, it would once have been unthinkable: family came first, above everything. But times had changed, and Pietro had changed with them—at least a little—so more recently, it had become, well, thinkable. Besides, with the money he would get from the sale, he would make ample—very ample—provision for their futures. So, there was nothing for him to be embarrassed about, anybody could see that. But then why had he not told them?

“
Why
do I make my
mese sabatico
now, this minute?” he went on with a ferocity that stemmed from shame. “Because this is when I take. Just as the vines must have their set time to rest and replenish, so must the mind.” He glanced at the inexpensive Casio watch on his stubby wrist. “Now, if nobody got nothing else—”

“I have something,” said Niccolò, at twenty-six the youngest of the brothers by a dozen years.

Pietro, who had begun to rise, sank down again and looked suspiciously at him. “Well? Nico?”

“It’s something I really think you need to think about before you leave,
babbo
.”

“Wha-a-a-t?” It was as much a warning growl as a question. Pietro Cubbiddu didn’t care for being told what he “needed” to do, even when it came from his handsome, charming rascal of a baby boy, who was granted indulgences that his older brothers didn’t get. Besides, he thought he knew what Nico had on his mind, and he didn’t want to hear it.

“Well, it’s not about the winery, it’s about your will. I know you’re upset with Cesare, and I agree with you, he has it coming, but don’t you think he deserves at least—”

Just as he’d thought. “Don’t tell me what Cesare deserve or don’t deserve,” he snapped. “My will is my business, not yours. I got every damn right to change it any damn time I feel like.”

Every right and every reason. Cesare was his wife Nola’s child by her murdered first husband, Eliodoro. He had been an infant when she and Pietro had married; a few months younger than Nico. It was Cesare, even more than Nola herself, who was the source of the tightness, the hollowness, that now never left his chest. Pietro had joyfully welcomed the child into his family, treating him as his own and lovingly introducing him even as a boy to the rudiments of wine and winemaking. Cesare had taken to it like fleas to a dog. Like his stepbrothers, he had been sent off to the United States when the time came, to the famous “enology” program at the University of California. And, like the others, he’d lapped it up and been given an important role to play in the winery.

And how had Cesare repaid him? By betraying him. With his years of priceless training and experience at Pietro’s expense, and with no warning to Pietro, two months ago he’d announced that he’d accepted the position of assistant cellar master at Tenuta Vezzi, a rival winery only a little smaller than Villa Antica, and just fifteen kilometers to the north, near Rignano sull’Arno, halfway to Florence. There was no doubt in Pietro’s mind, and no surprise either, that Agostino Vezzi—spiteful, envious, old geezer that he was—had offered the boy the job for no other reason than to get Pietro’s goat. But that Cesare had accepted—and accepted without even having had the decency to consult with him—that had been a blow that had laid him low.

Pietro had responded in the way honor demanded. He had thrown Cesare out on his ear (incredibly, the boy had expected to continue to live at Villa Antica) and had made it clear that he was no longer to consider himself the son of Pietro Cubbiddu. At Pietro’s instructions, Quadrelli was now drawing up the formal papers for disowning and disinheriting him. Signing them would be Pietro’s first order of business on the day he returned from his
mese sabatico
. It was not what he would have wished, but it had to be done.

As might be expected, all this had done nothing to improve his deteriorating relations with Nola, who had shrieked at him like a fishwife for an hour, been silenced only by the mute threat of his raised and quivering fist, and had sulked ever since. The road trip to his cabin in the Casentino mountains wasn’t going to be a pleasant one, and for the first time he wished that he’d learned to drive, rather than having to depend on others to get him anyplace. For years one of the boys had taken him, but since Nola had learned to drive a few years ago, the task had fallen to her. On the first day of September, Nola, who was uncomfortable at Villa Antica in his absence, would take him to the isolated cabin, then continue north to spend a quiet month with her spinster aunt near Bologna, and then return exactly one month later to pick him up on the way home.

He’d thought about asking one of the boys to drive him up instead, but Nola was no fool. If he suddenly declined to ride with her, she would conclude—correctly—that something was up. And that he did not want; it was necessary that she behave as she normally would.

Nico clamped a hand over his heart, pretending fright. “Okay,
babbo
, okay! I didn’t mean to wake the sleeping giant.”

Pietro laughed. Even when he didn’t understand what Nico was saying, the boy could always make him laugh.

Franco raised a bony finger. “There’s one more thing,
babbo
. I need to know whether to keep the rotary fermenter or not. We only have another week to commit. I think we should do it.”

A rough shake of the head from Pietro. “The what?”

“The rotary fermenter? From Cosenza? Three years old? Twenty thousand euros? It’s an excellent buy. We’ve had it on approval for almost a month now. Galvanized frame, access catwalk—”

“And what is it that such a thing does again?” This was asked partly because he’d forgotten the details, but mostly for the simple pleasure of irritating his increasingly officious, impatient, eldest son.

“It macerates the—”

“It
what
?”

Franco pursed his lips. Clearly, he knew he was being had, but he also knew that Pietro would trust his judgment in the end, as he always did when it came to things that didn’t engage his father’s interest—such as modern production methods and sophisticated equipment. “A rotary fermenter,” he said through only slightly clenched teeth, “will assure consistent contact between the must-cap and the juice, not only shortening the total fermentation time, but eliminating the labor-intensive—”

He was interrupted by Luca, the middle son. “Rotary fermenters,” he said disgustedly, “those cement-mixers you love so much—damn it, Franco, can’t you see they rob the grapes of their individual character, of everything that separates the soil of
our
vineyards from every other vineyard in the Val d’Arno? No, better to take a little longer and let the wine macerate naturally into what it was
meant
to be, not something some machine made it into.”

Pietro unconsciously nodded his head in agreement. When it came to wine—when it came to just about everything—the old ways were best. If they weren’t, would they still be around after all these centuries?

But Franco shook his head sadly. “Ah, Luca, you’re living in the past. Today, the manufacture of wine—”

“
Manufacture
of wine?” Luca’s eyebrows jumped up. “Did I hear that right? Since when do we
manufacture
wine? Are we the Villa Antica wine factory now? Do we produce our wines on an assembly line, producing a thousand bottles a day of perfectly uniform, identical wine . . .”