2 Crushed (10 page)

Margaret was bent over the kitchen
table, a metal lockbox open before her. She looked up at the sound of his step.
Her face was wet with tears and there was a gun in her hands. She was trying to
load it, unaccustomed fingers fumbling with bullets. She sniffed and wiped at
her face with the back of her hand. “Is he gone?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“We’ll never be free of him until
he’s dead,” she whispered.

The anger that burned so intensely
in his chest now dissipated at sight of her desperation. “You don’t mean that.”

He stepped close and put his hand
over hers, pointing the barrel downward. Her fingers were tense and cold as the
black handgun. He gently pulled it from her grip and set it on the table. She
released the bullets from her other hand, letting them drop back into the box,
the sound like hail on a tin roof. He slowly drew her into his arms and she
pressed her face against his chest, her tears dampening his t-shirt. She sobbed
and shook and he held her there, never wanting to let go. In that moment he
knew he would do anything to keep her safe.

CHAPTER TEN

“What do you mean, you can’t? I
have paid you an exorbitant amount of money to accelerate the process. I want
to take my son home to Italy by the end of this month. Don’t tell me it’s not
possible. Just do it!” He flipped the cell phone closed and laid it on the
table beside him.

Carl’s restaurant was already busy
and bustling at five p.m. He still hadn’t become accustomed to the seven and a
half hour time difference from Rome, but he’d skipped lunch and he was
starving. A waiter moved smoothly between tables offering free samples of a
local Merlot. He waved him away when he neared his table. The man moved off to
a rowdy group of middle-aged patrons, already half drunk from touring wineries.

Agosto picked up his glass of wine
and took a sip. Letting it linger on his tongue, he breathed deeply. He detected
a hint of nutmeg and lush, dark blackberries. There was a nose of cocoa and
something else he couldn’t quite...

“Agosto. I didn’t know you were
here.” Carl stood beside him still in his chef coat, a puzzled look on his
face. He eyed the bottle of wine on the table. “I see you’ve discovered
Margaret’s Wine.”

“Please have a seat and share a
glass with me.” Agosto motioned for his cousin to sit. “If you can spare a few
moments from your precious kitchen. We’ve hardly spoken since I’ve been back.”

Carl turned toward the kitchen and
nodded at a busboy standing there. The young man disappeared through the
swinging doors. “I can sit for a minute.” He took a wineglass from the
unoccupied table next to them, pulled out a chair and sat, his face a mask of
politeness.

“I suppose you know that Margaret
has refused to allow me contact with my own son.” He swallowed the rest of the
wine in his glass and reached for the bottle. He refilled his and Carl’s as
well. “I thought perhaps we could start over. But she won’t give me a chance.”

“Did you really think that taking
Davy was a good way to start over?” Carl asked, is tone sharp. “I find that
hard to believe. You were always a conniving…”

Agosto put out his hand. “Stop
right there! You have no right. It’s been ten years since I was the boy you so
despised. I’m a different man now. Am I to be punished for the rest of my life
for an immature choice I made a decade ago?” He rubbed his hands over his face
and sat back with a weary sigh. “I know I shouldn’t have taken him. It was
stupid. I waited for Margaret to call and she didn’t. I wanted to see my son.
To talk with him. To spend time with him as a father. So I took him—to
play soccer. What is so horrible about that?” He shook his head. “She actually
called the police.”

Carl watched him as though he were
a criminal on the witness stand. “What did you think she was going to do?
Welcome you back with open arms? Handel and Margaret are my friends—my
family. If you have any intention of hurting them again, you will answer to me
this time.”

“After all my father did for you,”
Agosto said. “He helped set you up in this restaurant, paid the loans you were
unable to meet, and now you treat your family like this.”

“I’ve paid my debt to your father.
I do not owe one to you.” Carl stood and pushed the chair carefully in,
smoothing the white tablecloth in place. He lifted his glass and drained it in
one gulp. “Thanks for the wine,” he said, and walked away.

Agosto drew a deep breath and
slowly released it. He smiled and sipped his wine, unconcerned by his cousin’s
warning. Carl had always been easy to lie to. He liked to take people at their
word. He truly believed there was good in everyone, and given a chance they
would do the right thing. That’s really what his little warning was all about.
Carl was giving him another chance to prove his worth. He laughed softly and
reached out for the breadbasket.

*****

The restaurant parking lot was well
lit, but he didn’t notice the man hunched inside the old pickup next to his car
until he squeezed between the vehicles to open the door. The man climbed out
and leaned with his forearms on the side panel of the pickup bed, staring
boldly across at Agosto while he tried to open his door without banging it
against the rust bucket beside him. He’d bought another bottle of Margaret’s
Wine to take back to the hotel and he carefully placed it on the seat before
turning to face the man watching him.

“Could you perhaps move your truck
so I can get into my car? It’s much too close,” he said, his words only slightly
slurred. He knew he could get back to the hotel without mishap but backing up
with an inch to spare might be a problem. The rental was extremely expensive
and although it was well worth it, he didn’t want to pay for damages that could
have been avoided.

The man wore a faded baseball cap
pulled low over his eyes and a couple days growth of grey whiskers covered his
face like heavy sandpaper. He had a lit cigarette between his lips. He didn’t
bother to take it out, but spoke around it. “So you’re Davy’s daddy,” he
drawled, his voice as rough as his appearance. “I pictured someone a little
different. More manly.”

Agosto shut the door and turned to
face the man. “Should I know you?” he asked, his eyes narrowed.

The man laughed. “No reason you
should.”

There was something about him that
seemed familiar but Agosto knew he’d never laid eyes on him before. Even so, he
felt the urge to escape back inside the restaurant. Instead, he opened his
jacket, took out a cigarette, put it between his lips and lit it.

“I hear you had a little run-in
with my Maggie.” The man continued, as though they were in the middle of a
normal conversation. “Lately, she seems to be channeling her momma—a
harridan if there ever was one.” He paused, took the cigarette from his lips and
crushed it out in the bed of the pickup. “I can help you with that.”

Agosto blew out a puff of smoke.
Now he knew who the man was. The perfect patsy.

*****

The winery was alive with activity
at two a.m. Margaret surveyed the pickup trucks filled with empty crates,
tools, and water tanks for the workers. Everything seemed to be ready.
Harvesting the grapes in the cool of the night and early morning was easier on
the workers and guaranteed crisp, juicy fruit. Cheerful voices, in Spanish and
English, ping-ponged back and forth across the parking area, greeting
latecomers, sharing stories, and making small talk. The camaraderie and
excitement were testament to the way people felt about harvest in Napa. Hard
work went hand-in-hand with joyful thanksgiving for a bountiful crop. Even the
tasting room crew was out in force, wearing work clothes rather than white
shirts and slacks. Everyone wanted to be involved in the crush.

Margaret went in search of Davy. He
had run off in the direction of the sheds earlier with his soccer ball in hand,
his headlight blazing on his baseball cap, excited about getting up in the
middle of the night. He’d begged to skip school for the day and help out, and
she couldn’t resist his eager anticipation at the idea of working alongside her
at her new job. She caught a glimpse of his blonde head through the trees,
where he was bouncing his soccer ball against one of the sheds with a Mexican
boy a few years older than him.

“Davy, are you coming to work with
me in the south field? We’re getting ready to take off.”

He caught the ball and turned
around, then glanced back at his friend. “Want to come with us, Pablo?” he
asked.

The boy shook his head. “I’m s’pose
to stay by Uncle.”

“Is Mario your uncle? I thought
maybe he was your grandfather.” Margaret put her arm around Davy and smiled at
the boy. He looked about thirteen, with black hair and a scarred lip that
pulled up slightly. He’d obviously been born with a cleft pallet and had gone
through some reconstructive surgery.

He shifted nervously. “Uncle
Mario’s family is in Mexico—except for us,” he mumbled, and then looked
as though he wished he hadn’t volunteered so much information. He stared down
at the ground, scuffing the toe of his shoe in the dirt.

“If Mario wants you with him,
that’s fine,” she said, changing the subject. She’d rather not know if Mario’s
relatives were in the country illegally. The boy looked scared to death. She
looked down at Davy. “Would you rather go with Mario and Pablo? I’ll miss you,
but as long as you promise to work hard…”

“Thanks, Mom!” Davy said, before
she even finished her sentence, his voice pitched high with excitement. “We’ll
work hard, won’t we Pablo?”

The other boy nodded solemnly.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll see
you at breakfast.”

The boys ran off to climb aboard
Mario’s truck, leaving her staring at Davy’s deserted soccer ball and feeling
much the same.

Ten minutes later Ernesto parked
the truck at the far corner of the south field and let everyone off. Margaret
and Billie climbed out of the cab and stood back while Ernesto directed the
workers on different sides of the rows to begin picking. They each carried a
small plastic bin that would hold about thirty pounds of ripe grapes, and their
picking shears.

Billie worked on one side of a row,
while Margaret took the other. The flashlights attached to their caps lit up
the vines and revealed the plentiful clusters of purple grapes. The south field
was planted in the seventies with Cabernet Franc and had always yielded the
best crop of Fredrickson’s varietals.

“Who is driving the tractor?”
Margaret asked, hearing the put-put of the slow engine in the distance. The
tractor pulled a long flatbed with huge bins attached. Each time the pickers
filled the tractor bins, the driver would return to the winery to empty the load
and the wine process would begin. The first step would be for the grapes to go
through the de-stemmer/sorter machine.

Billie’s light stayed pointing
downward as she pinched off the grape clusters with her cutter and dropped them
into the bin at her feet. She slid it along with one foot as she moved down the
row. “Loren and Sammie are driving the tractors. I figured since they are two
of the slowest pickers we have, but very careful in the tasting room with the
crystal, that they would use extreme caution driving through the vineyard with
our precious cargo.”

“I hope they have more driving
experience than just pushing a cart with glassware on it.” She slid the bin
along the row and clipped more bunches, dropping them into the quickly growing
pile.

Billie laughed, her flashlight beam
bobbing up and down. “Don’t worry, they drove last year and managed to back the
trailers in and out of the yard with awesome precision. I think Sammie actually
pretends he’s driving a big old semi. He told me his dream was to be a truck
driver.”

“He’s still got time. He’s another
couple years away from retirement.” Margaret heard the tractor getting close
and lifted the bin. “Mine’s already full. How bout yours?”

“Right behind you.”

Half a dozen workers were already
waiting to dump their bins by the time the tractor came to a stop behind the
pickup. One of the men climbed up on the trailer and poured the grapes in the
larger bins as each person lifted their container to him.

“How’s it going Sammie?” Margaret
called, when he shut off the tractor and climbed down to help.

“Pretty damn good,” he said with a
grin, as he always did when asked. He added, “Looks like these grapes were made
for wine.” An inside joke that had been around for so long no one knew who
started it—or why it was considered a joke. But Sammie repeated it each
harvest like clockwork.

“They sure do, Sammie.” Billie’s
headlight flashed over his face and blinded him before she remembered to shut
it off. “Sorry about that. It’s actually pretty bright out here in the light of
the moon. Forgot I was wearing it.”

“We better get back out there.”
Margaret picked up her bin and headed for the place in the row that she’d
marked with a white cloth on the ground.

Two hours later, Loren arrived with
the other tractor, pulling another trailer bed of empty bins. They poured one
thirty-pound bin after the other into the larger bins until the trailer was
brimming with sweet/tart wine berries. He climbed back up to start the tractor
and return to the winery.

“Loren, you mind if I hitch a ride
back with you?” Margaret called. She handed up her bin and watched it get
dumped into the gleaming pile. “I need to check on the sorting and start the
press while they’re still cool and crisp.”

“I’ll catch up with you later,”
Billie said. “Could you touch base with Adam—make sure everything’s going
all right? He’s running the forklift and lifting the bins off the trailers.”
She laughed at Margaret’s look of disbelief. “Don’t worry. He shouldn’t take
anyone’s head off. He has experience. He worked in a warehouse during college.”

Margaret climbed up on the tractor
beside Loren. “I’ll check on him.”

She held on as Loren put the
tractor into gear and it jerked into motion, put-putting away down the gravel
road toward the winery. The horizon was streaked with threads of pink, the
first signs of daylight trying to break through. The winery was ablaze with
light, the yard behind alive with motion. Adam had a bin on his forklift and
was lifting it to the sorting machine as they approached. Another man watched
the grapes fall in. Using a long fork he kept them from jamming up as they went
through the machine and were de-stemmed and pushed along for sorting.

Loren pulled up close and shut off
the tractor to wait his turn for the trailer to be unloaded. Margaret climbed
down and stood looking around, loving the rhythm of harvest. The place was in
full gear, everyone doing the job they’d been given. The thump and grind of the
machines reminded her of Disneyland without music.