Gloria appeared in the doorway to the wine cave, silhouetted against the outdoor light.
Luz stood abruptly. “Abuela? Is everything all right?”
The old woman stepped into the cave. “I was just coming to see if . . . oh! Bruce!” Her face lit up. “It’s so good to see you! I’ve missed you around here.”
“Abuela!” Bruce exclaimed. He set down his wine and hurried across the room to give the old woman a hug. “Still spry as ever, I see.”
When he released her, she grinned at me. “This one here is my honorary grandson. I was very sad when he got a better offer from another vineyard, but I understood—strapping young men have to prioritize their careers, you know.”
I almost chuckled at the characterization of Bruce as a strapping young man—he was about fifty, with a considerable paunch beneath his plaid button-up—but from Gloria’s standpoint, I supposed we were all pretty young.
Gloria sniffed the air. “Bruce, you started smoking again?” she asked. “I smell cigarettes on you.”
He shifted sheepishly from foot to foot. “Well, you know, stress of a new job and all.”
She crossed her arms. “Those things will kill you, you know.”
He waved his hand. “I know. You talked me into quitting last time. I’ll quit again soon. Promise.” Then a look of concern crossed his face. “What brought you down here, abuela?”
I watched Regina out of the corner of my eye. She’d fallen silent, a sour expression on her face, but was pouring herself a glass of wine.
“Well,” said Gloria. “The lights came back on, but the air conditioning in the house didn’t, and it was getting too hot. I came to see if we needed to call an electrician. But it seems like there’s air conditioning down here.”
Luz nodded quickly. “Oh, I wonder if it got damaged when we flipped the breakers. I’ll call a technician to take care of it right away. We can’t be without AC in there.”
“It probably just needs to be reset,” said Bruce, waving a hand. “I’ll take a look at it. If that doesn’t work, you can call someone.”
Gloria looped her arm through his. “I’ll come with you. We haven’t had a chance to have one of our visits since you took that new job. Oh! And you must stay for a tortilla, and tell me about why you’re stressed.”
“I wouldn’t dream of turning down one of your tortillas, abuela,” he replied. “And I really will quit smoking. Soon.”
I drew close to Luz with a questioning expression, but she just nodded at me.
“He wouldn’t hurt her,” she whispered. “I can’t vouch for what else he might do, but he genuinely loves abuela.”
Bruce and Gloria disappeared out the door.
In a soft murmur, I replied, “But when you asked if it was safe to have them come . . . ?”
Then her eyes jerked to Regina, and I understood. Luz hadn’t been worried about Gloria’s safety around Bruce—which echoed what she’d said earlier. But she wasn’t as certain about Bruce’s wife.
Good to know.
Luz’s phone buzzed, and she let out a sigh. “Thomas just texted me—he’s at the house. I’ll bring him down.”
She headed toward the door, leaving Regina and me awkwardly sizing each other up. For her part, Regina pointedly ignored me.
“So,” I said, breaking the silence. “Did you or Bruce tell anyone about the . . . reasons for Bruce’s departure from Castillo’s? Gloria seemed to think he’d gotten a better offer somewhere else and left of his own accord, so I’ve gathered the whole thing was kept hush-hush.”
“Gloria’s a foolish old woman,” muttered Regina, tapping her neon-green nails on the countertop. “I don’t know why Bruce is so fond of her.”
“You could try answering my questions instead of avoiding them.” I leaned forward, trying to meet her gaze, but she wouldn’t look at me. “As I said, I’m a private investigator. That means I’m working for someone—Luz hired me—but it doesn’t mean that I’m interested in anything except the truth.”
She finally looked at me, something like surprise in her expression.
I pushed my advantage. “I just want the truth, Regina. I want to know who’s been sending threats to Luz and what happened to Vicente.”
She sank onto the wine-barrel seat and studied me. “This isn’t a setup?”
“Why would it be a setup?” I started scrawling on my notepad.
“I don’t know,” she muttered, cracking her neck. “Just seemed weird for Luz to haul us out here like this.”
“Her cousin is missing,” I reminded her.
She seemed to sink into thought for a moment, then shot to her feet, glowering. “Why would she think we had anything to do with that? Hasn’t Bruce suffered enough? Haven’t I suffered enough?”
Continues to deflect, I wrote on my legal pad.
“My husband gave that traitor the best years of his life and career!” With each sentence, she grew louder.
The door opened, and Luz walked back in, followed by a handsome man whose sandy hair fell nearly to his shoulders. His chin was dotted with stubble, and even in the soft light of the wine cave, his piercing blue eyes caught my attention.
This must be the ex-boyfriend. “Thomas?” I asked.
“That’s me,” he said, nodding back at me. “Nice to meet you, Detective Connolly.”
Detective Connolly. I rather liked the sound of that . . . but I was a PI, not a detective. Wouldn’t do to inflate my credentials. “Just call me Kate,” I said with a smile.
But Regina wasn’t done ranting. She wheeled on Luz and stamped her foot. “You make me sick! I can’t believe you’d have the audacity to drag us out here and level these accusations at us, after all we did for you!”
Luz drew back, tucking a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “Excuse me?” she asked icily.
“You’re a traitor!” Regina thundered. “When are you going to wake up and offer my husband his job back? You—”
“Now, wait just a minute,” Thomas interjected, stalking forward to insert himself between the two women. His eyes glinted in the soft light. “You can’t just stand there and yell at her like that. Bruce deserved to get fired. He was unethical and insubordinate. You’re lucky I’m willing to do business with the winery that hired him.”
Regina stopped short, her mouth hanging open. After a long pause, she snapped back to Luz. “So, you’ve been spreading the story all over town, I see? It wasn’t enough to fire Bruce or to accuse him of heaven knows what—you’re trying to start rumors that will get him fired from his new job, too?”
“If you’re so convinced he did nothing wrong,” said Luz dryly. “Then why are you worried the story would get him fired?”
Regina glared at her.
“But,” continued Luz, taking a step back and leaning against the bar, “in answer to your question—no, I’m not interested in spreading the story, and I haven’t talked about it to many people. I ran into Thomas shortly after I fired Bruce. I wasn’t myself, and he could tell something was wrong. He wouldn’t let it go. So, I finally told him what had happened, and, like a good friend, he helped me process it.”
Thomas smiled gently, not seeming to notice her pointed use of the word friend. “I’ll always be here for you, my light and love.”
Luz ignored him.
It was a cheesy line that might have been cute if I didn’t know their history. This guy just won’t take no for an answer, will he?
Which, of course, didn’t necessarily mean he was the saboteur, but it did make me a little more suspicious of him. But Regina’s reaction was even more over the top. Everywhere I looked, there was another red flag.
My chest tightened with worry. How long had Vicente been missing? I glanced at my phone to check the time. It was 3:32, which meant . . . four hours and eleven minutes since the power outage.
Definitely too long. But not so long that there couldn’t be a reasonable explanation. Cell service was spotty here. He might have found a good clue and gone off to follow a lead. Maybe he’d tried to send an explanatory text message, but it hadn’t gone through.
But this heat was unrelenting.
What if he’d gotten sunstroke and was passed out somewhere?
I quickly gathered my thoughts. “Thomas, some odd things have been happening here at the vineyard. We brought you here to ask you a few questions.”
“Right,” he said, pulling up a wine-barrel chair to face me. “How can I help? What’s going on?”
Briefly, I explained the history of sabotage, watching Thomas’s face for his reactions. When I described the notes, he seemed concerned. That concern was replaced by alarm when I mentioned the break-in, and by disgust at the cyberattack. By the time I got to the events of the day, he rounded on Regina.
“You expect us to think you and Bruce weren’t behind this?” he demanded. “You’re the only ones who have a bone to pick with Luz.” He looked around the wine cave. “Where is Bruce, anyway?”
“Abuela stole him away,” said Luz. “He’s helping her reset the air conditioning in the apartment—it didn’t come on when we got the power back.”
Thomas looked at her, aghast. “What if he hurts her?”
Regina openly rolled her eyes. “Bruce and I didn’t do any of this crap, but even if we did, Gloria’s basically his grandmother. He’d sooner chew off his own leg than harm a hair on her stupid gray head.”
Luz’s jaw tightened.
I interjected before she could lash out at Regina. “We’re not accusing anyone here. I just want to gather information. Could—”
Regina cut me off and pointed a finger. “It was probably Thomas.”
He blinked at her several times, his blue eyes taking on an even icier glint. “What . . . are you talking about? Why would I do something like this?”
“Oh, please.” Regina took a long slurp of wine. “Everyone knows you’re bitter that Luz dumped you. Not to mention that she’s your biggest competition for catering contracts. You happened to run into her after she traitorously fired my husband, and she couldn’t help but cry in your arms, right? So you saw an opportunity—make it look like Bruce and I were tormenting her so that she’d come to you for comfort.”
Thomas’s face reddened. “You have a lot of nerve—”
“And if that didn’t work,” Regina spat, “you still stood to gain from it. If she’s driven out of business, you’ll make a lot of money catering events that would have been held here at Castillo’s.”
“I would never hurt Luz!” he yelled.
“Tell me about the breakup,” I said before Regina could reply.
He opened and closed his mouth. A moth fluttered around the string of lights that hung above his head. Finally, he said, “She . . . we broke up ten months ago. We’ve been on-again, off-again since high school.”
“Mostly off-again,” Luz said. “We’ve dated three times—the first time for a month during our senior year at Golden High, the second time for four months right after college, and this last time for about a year.”
“Thirteen months and five days.” He ran a hand through his hair.
She rolled her eyes.
“Why’d you break up?” I asked.
“I ended things for good,” said Luz, “after he cheated on me.”
Thomas looked stricken. “It was a meaningless one-night stand, babe. I’ve told you over and over again—”
“I won’t be made a fool of.” Luz’s face hardened to steel. “Not again. And I’m not the first or second or third woman you’ve done this to. I should have known better than to try to change you.”
“I swear I’m different now. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. I love you!”
“Should have thought of that before you unzipped your pants,” Luz muttered. “Thomas, you have to move on. You’re not going to have another chance with me. Ever. Third time was the charm, and you ruined it.”
He fell silent.
I pursed my lips. “Okay, now tell me about the business angle. Is it true that you’ve poached some of her catering and event contracts?”
He hesitated, glancing from me to Luz and back again. “That’s different.” He shifted his weight. “Poached is too strong a word.”
Luz harrumphed.
“You have to understand that Golden isn’t a huge town.” He held up his hands as if to surrender. “There are a limited number of catering contracts, so of course we compete for customers. But that’s not personal, it’s business.”
Regina piped up as she studied her manicured nails. “Maybe some friendly corporate sabotage was just business, too.”
“Not in a million years!” thundered Thomas, rounding on her. “But it was personal for you when she fired your slimeball of a husband, and everyone knows you’re a conniving, unstable—”
“I just want to know where my cousin is!” Luz exploded.
Everyone fell silent.
Tears brimmed in Luz’s eyes. “Don’t you understand? None of this matters to me if Vicente’s not okay. Everything I’ve done—every hard choice I’ve made, every compromise . . . it’s been for my family. Vicente is my cousin. My blood. Practically my brother in some ways. I just want him back. Nothing else matters. Nothing!”