Deadly Offer by Vicki Doudera Page B

They heard the sound of rustling paper. “I think we should speak in person. Could you come into my office in downtown St. Adina? I’m heading there in forty minutes to do some paperwork.”
    ET looked at his brother and then at Darby. “We’ll be there,” he said.
    ———
    The winemaker was in the middle of one of the fields, row upon row of trellised vines flanking him. He looked up as Darby approached.
    “Hey.” Dan Stewart’s sandy brown hair was disheveled and he had a sheepish look on his face. He shielded his eyes from the sun. “Sorry if I was a little abrupt back there.”
    “I can’t imagine how you must be feeling,” Darby said. “You and Selena worked very closely for several years.”
    “Five years. She was like a sister to me.” He raised his face to the sun. “This was the kind of day she loved.”
    Darby fingered a cluster of grapes. They were glossy purple, and firm to the touch. “Have you always been in wine production?”
    He nodded. “Growing up here, It was a natural choice. Before I worked for Selena, I was at Contento Family Vineyards.”
    “In the same capacity? As their winemaker?”
    “Pretty much. Contento is a bigger operation, so there are many more fingers in the pie, so to speak. That’s what attracted me to Carson Creek. Selena was passionate about doing a small-scale but excellent product, right from the beginning. She was uncompromising in how the grapes were raised and how the wine was made.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean she took the whole organic thing seriously. For her, it wasn’t just a marketing term, it was a philosophy. Here at Carson Creek, we pay attention to soil depletion and erosion, water pollution, resistance to pests, and chemical dependence—things like that.” He snapped off a cluster of deep purple grapes and handed them to Darby. “Go ahead, give them a taste.”
    She pulled off a grape and popped it in her mouth while Dan Stewart chuckled.
    “That’s how you taste grapes? Come on, I thought you were a Californian.” He grabbed another bunch and held it before her. “This is how you taste them. Put a bunch in your mouth and then pull the stem.” He demonstrated as purple juice dribbled onto his shirt. “See?”
    Darby opened wide and put about half of the cluster in her mouth. She pulled the stem and bit down, while the wonderful sensation of crushed grapes filled her senses. She tasted juice, skins, and a rich velvety flavor that hinted of blackberries, cherries, and the rich California earth.
    “Ummm …” She wiped her mouth with her hand and Dan laughed.
    “Now you’re talking. So what do you think? Are they ready to pick?”
    “I don’t have a clue, but I can tell you this: they are delicious. Pinot?”
    “Correct. Pinot Noir grapes, the hardest to grow, but also, in my humble opinion, the best.” Suddenly his mood grew somber and he swore softly under his breath. “It just keeps coming back to me—she’s gone. Selena is gone. I can’t believe she isn’t going to celebrate this harvest after all she’s been through.”
    Darby looked into his tanned face, saw the circles under his blue eyes.
    “What do you mean? Her illness?”
    Dan shook his head. “Maybe I was obtuse, but I didn’t register that there was an illness—not a serious one, anyway. I can think back to times when she seemed wiped out, but I had no idea there was something so wrong.”
    “Then what did you mean?”
    He looked confused.
    “You said ‘after all she’s been through’—what did you mean by that?”
    Dan tossed the grape stem into the field. “Strange things happened over the past few months. A string of bad coincidences—or, at least that’s what we tried to tell ourselves.”
    “What kinds of coincidences, Dan?”
    “I guess the first thing was a fungus in the barrels, which fortunately we caught before it ruined too much of the wine. Then, one of our batches of yeast was so bad it would have spoiled production. Thank God