Afraid?
Vicente and I glanced at each other, grim expressions on our faces.
But Luz waved her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said, regret in her eyes. “I shouldn’t have led with that. We’ll discuss it in a few minutes.”
Gloria emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray, and Luz clamped her mouth shut.
“Water and wine,” declared Gloria, setting the tray on the coffee table. Luz visibly flinched, but no one else seemed to notice. A moment later, Gloria disappeared back toward the kitchen.
“So,” Luz said, “I understand you’ve done great work as a PI. Tell me about an interesting case you’ve solved.”
“Well . . .” I reached for a water glass. “The most recent one was a murder on Alcatraz Island.”
Her jaw dropped. “At the old prison? What happened?”
“Well, it all started when my brother came to San Francisco on business . . .”
A sizzling sound came from the kitchen, and a delicious smell wafted toward us. I sat up straighter, realizing all at once how hungry I was.
We made small talk about my PI work and Luz’s winery for a few minutes, and despite the stress in her eyes, she was an easy conversationalist and a lot of fun to talk to.
How could someone as maddening as Vicente have such charming relatives?
And then Gloria swept into the room carrying two plates, each holding a decadent-looking pastry. “Tortillas!” she cried, handing one plate to me and one to Vicente.
“Thank you!” I breathed.
I bit into the tortilla, then froze, surprised by the savory taste. I’d been wrong. This was definitely not a pastry. “Is this . . . potato?” I asked.
Luz and Vicente laughed aloud, and Gloria slapped her forehead with an open palm.
“Yes, dear,” Gloria said. “I should have explained. Spanish tortilla is not like a Mexican tortilla. More like . . . how do you say it . . . an omelet. Egg, potato, very filling. Good for your baby.”
“It’s delicious!” I replied, shoveling another forkful into my mouth.
Gloria patted my shoulder, a knowing smile on her face. “I can make you another! I was always so hungry when I was pregnant with my babies.”
Luz interjected, “Abuela, I’m going to steal them off to the wine cave to show them some things, but maybe you can make Kate another tortilla later.”
“I would be delighted,” I said with a grin as I swallowed the last bite of tortilla. “You’re a wonderful cook.”
Gloria’s eyes sparkled. “Vicente, don’t stay away too long. I’m so happy to see you back home.”
“I’ll be back very soon,” he reassured her.
As we slipped out of the room, I took another sip of my water glass. “She’s so delightful!” I exclaimed.
“She is,” replied Luz warmly. She led us past the paintings of the Spanish countryside and to a back door. “Our parents are still in Spain. Vicente’s parents never left, but my mom lived here in Golden for most of her life. She and my father moved back to Spain about five years ago.”
“Your mom grew up here?” I gestured at the pine trees. “At the vineyard?”
She led us down a path that curved around the hill. “Yes. Abuela came to the United States with our abuelo in 1974. They started this vineyard. I came to live with them years ago to learn the trade, and I’ve taken care of her since abuelo passed. I don’t want to worry her.” She paused to open a door at the bottom of the stairs. “Or disappoint her.”
Double wooden doors were set into a rock wall in the hillside. Above it, on top of the hill, was what appeared to be a patio.
“No need to worry about disappointing her, prima,” Vicente said softly. “She loves you more than anything else in the world.”
“That only makes it worse,” groaned Luz, unlocking the wooden doors. “Anyway, this is the wine cave.”
We walked inside.
The wine cave was somehow both cozy and breathtaking—illuminated by soft track lighting and draped string lights, with tables propped up by old wine barrels. I leaned against one of the tabletops, Vicente at my side and Luz across from us.
“I love this place!” I said.
Luz smiled. “Thank you. We host our weekly wine-tasting events in here. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I always come in here when I need time to think.”
“I totally understand.” I said. After a moment, I drummed my nails against the tabletop and said, “So, Vicente explained what happened with the power outages and the lost grapes, and that you’ve gotten some odd notes. And then there was a cyberattack, or something?”
Luz nodded grimly. “A break-in, too. Before the cyberattack.”
“That’s right.”
“And something else happened today?” Vicente asked.
She nodded, opening a drawer and pulling out a few pieces of paper. “Another note,” she said. “These are the first two, from a few weeks ago.”
Vicente and I each reached out to take one, studying the details. The first one I looked at had been typed and printed on basic white paper.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID. MAYBE ITS TIME TO GIVE UP YOU’RE GRAPES OF WRATH.
“Well,” I murmured. “They’re referencing a classic novel but made a mistake on the difference between your and you’re.”
“I noticed that,” said Luz with a dark chuckle. “They missed the apostrophe in it’s, too.”
Vicente and I traded papers, and I read the other note.
HOW ABOUT A MIRACLE? TURN THE WINE INTO WATER.
It was printed on the same type of paper. No spelling errors in this one, I noted—but another allusion, this time to a Bible story. And this one explained why Luz had flinched at Gloria’s water-and-wine remark a few minutes earlier. It had been an unwelcome reminder of the strange notes.
Glancing toward Luz, I asked, “And what did they send today?”
Wordlessly, she passed the last piece of paper toward me.
LIGHTS OUT. CLOSE DOWN THE WINERY OR ELSE.
My eyes widened. “They’re all disconcerting, but this one reads as a more direct threat. They didn’t even bother to try to be clever with a literary reference.”
“I know.” She ran a hand through her dark hair. “I . . . don’t know what to do.”
“Let’s start thinking through some suspects, so we have a place to begin investigating,” I said. “Vicente thought maybe your ex has something to do with it?”
Vicente grumbled his assent.
Luz traced the edge of the table. “It is easier for Vicente to think that Thomas is involved than it is for me. Thomas is many things . . . Vicente always hated him, even when we were all children. Vicente and I spent several summers here together.”
“You can say that again,” Vicente muttered. “He’s a weasel.”
She ignored him and continued, “But I have a hard time imagining he would go this far. He wants us to be together. Sometimes he has a terrible way of showing it. But I don’t think he wants me to shut down the vineyard or anything.”
“Is there anyone who might want you to shut down?” I pulled out my trusty legal pad and scribbled a few notes.
“I’ve thought a lot about it, of course.” She paused, pulling down a glass from a shelf and uncorking a bottle of wine. “I’m so sorry, I just need to settle my nerves. As far as other suspects go . . . I did have a manager, Bruce Stringer, whom I fired a few months ago.”
“You fired Bruce?” asked Vicente, leaning forward, a new intensity in his eyes. “Why?”
Luz took a sharp breath. “It was after the rolling blackout. We’d decided together to buy grapes from another vineyard, and I told him to mark those barrels of wine. When the wines came of age, we were going to use those bottles to fulfill our contracts, but . . . I was not comfortable pretending the wine was made from our own grapes. But Bruce didn’t label the barrels . . .”
Vicente sucked in a sharp breath. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She buried her face in her hands. “Because I was complicit, too, and I didn’t want to make excuses for my own behavior. When I confronted Bruce about it, he . . . laughed at me. He told me this wasn’t the first time he’d done this . . . that our wine that came of age this year is also mixed, that he’d bought other grapes before. We won an award for this year’s wine! It was only a small one, from a local harvest festival. But there’s no way to know if the award was for wine made from our grapes or someone else’s.”
“Oh, Luz,” breathed Vicente.
“I was incensed.” She took a sip of wine. “I left a message for the head of the committee asking her to call me back. But before she did, I found out that the press release had already been sent out. It was a full story in the local paper and a small item in a couple of national wine magazines.”
My heart went out to her.
She raised her head, tears brimming in her eyes. “And I panicked.” Her voice squeaked. “A retraction like that would call into question the credibility of my whole operation. No one would trust my label anymore. So, when the head of the committee called me back, I just said that I’d wanted to thank her. I . . . went along with Bruce’s deception. And I’m still going along with his deception, because I have no way to distinguish which barrels of wine are really from Castillo’s.”
“What a mess,” Vicente said.
“So, don’t you see? It would be a lie to put the blame on Bruce. I hate everything about the situation, but the fault is mine. I own this label, and I was too afraid to come clean and make it right.”
Understanding flooded me. “You didn’t want to tarnish your grandparents’ good name,” I said.
Our eyes locked, and she nodded. “Yes. I was afraid of the financial consequences, of course. Afraid that I wouldn’t be able to take care of abuela as she ages, but more than that . . . I didn’t want to ruin her legacy or have to see how disappointed she was in me.”
Vicente opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of whatever he’d been about to say.
“So, you fired Bruce after you found out about the award?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, wiping away her tears. “Immediately. He was . . . angry, but I didn’t think he seemed angry enough to take revenge, or anything. But with everything that’s happened, I’m second-guessing that.”
I flipped the page on my notepad. “Were you worried he’d go to the press or sue you or take the dispute public?”
“Not at all.” She took a long sip of her wine and chuckled darkly. “He’s already gotten a job as a manager at another winery, so he still works in the industry. If the story became public, I’d lose my credibility, but so would he.”
“Mutually assured destruction,” I murmured.
Vicente began pacing back and forth. “So, if he wanted revenge, he’d have to do it this way—with threats and sabotage, not by publicly shaming you.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “That’s exactly right.”
An oppressive silence fell over us.
“Well,” I finally said, setting down my pen. “For now at least, Bruce seems like our best suspect. Based on the notes, it seems like the saboteur knows about what happened with the grapes.”
“Thomas knows about the grapes, too,” said Luz.
Vicente snapped toward her, astonishment on his face. “Why . . . why would you give him that kind of ammunition against you? Luz!”
But she kept her focus on me, refusing to meet his gaze. “I didn’t know who to turn to. Thomas and I have a lot of history.”
“You can say that again,” Vicente muttered.
She took a deep breath. “The day after I fired Bruce, I ran into Thomas in town, and he asked me how I was doing and . . . I burst into tears and the whole story spilled out.”
Vicente stalked back toward us. “Why, that no-good weasel, I’ll—”
“I’m sorry!” Luz sounded close to tears. “But that doesn’t mean he’s guilty. I’m not going to date him again—really, I’m not—but just because he’s a bad boyfriend doesn’t mean he’s a criminal.”
I held up a hand. “Let’s not jump to conclusions until we’ve done a little more investigating. Both of these men seem like viable suspects. We need a plan of—”
The lights flickered and then went out, plunging us into darkness.