From Cape Town with Love (38 page)

Finally, Marsha realized my mind was somewhere else. “What's going on?”

“I know this wine,” I said. “I've had it before. In South Africa.”

Marsha took the bottle and read the label. “It's a California wine.”

“I know. That's what I don't get. But I've had
this
wine, with Sofia. While we were in Cape Town. Sofia Maitlin gave me a sip. It was local, from Stellenbosch. I'm sure of it.”

Slowly, Marsha's face changed as she lowered the bottle, all playfulness fleeing her overly bright eyes. “Why does a South African wine have a California label?” she said.

“I'm not sure,” I said.

“Could this . . . Happy Cellars be rebottling it? Why?”

“I don't know.”

My fingers trembling, I pulled out my iPhone to do a quick Google search on Happy Cellars, in Paso Robles. Was it even a real winery?

It was. There weren't many listings, but I got a few bloggers singing its praises.
Best wine on our trip to Paso! I wish I could find it in L.A. !
crowed a woman who called herself Biker Gal. Happy Cellars had its own cheap website, probably from a free host. No flashing images or elaborate photography, just a home page with a photo of a vineyard and the winery's address in Paso Robles. No mention of South Africa. I scrolled through the site, looking for any winery employees. None was mentioned. No faces.

“So you're saying . . . this South African wine is in a Paso Robles bottle? At a vineyard called Happy Cellars?” Marsha said. “I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this.”

I shook my head, frustrated. “I don't know. Maybe it's locally grown—but if it is, they're re-creating the conditions exactly. Probably using the same winemaker.”

“I'm still confused, Ten.”

My heart raced as my mind put it together. “A winemaker is like a chef. You can give ten different winemakers the same raw ingredients, grapes grown and stored in identical conditions, and they'll create ten different bottles of wine. A winemaker's creation is like a signature.” Alice had taught me that, once upon a time. We had spent many lazy hours in Cape Town's wine country.

“So this wine has a South African winemaker's signature,” Marsha said.

“Yes.”

“You're sure?”

“There's a winery in Cape Town that uses concrete aging bins. They
are more temperamental than steel drums, but they
breathe.
I'd have to taste them side by side to be sure, but . . .” Revelation swamped me. “Shit! Paki and Sofia were drinking this wine at Nandi's party. The bottle was on the table. I don't know if it was her bottle or Paki's, but I remember seeing it.”

Marsha went silent, thoughtful, while I went to the wine rack to grab one of the other bottles. Same wine, same vineyard, same vintage. Had Paki gone on a spending spree?

“Wine like this . . . maybe twenty dollars a bottle?” I guessed. “It's not cheap. Paki's living on a shoestring, working as a mechanic, and he's gonna drop a hundred bucks or more on wine? Plus . . . it's a boutique winery. Paso's wine country. If you live in the Bay Area, you drive up to Napa. If you live in L.A., you drive to Paso, stay in a B and B, go from vineyard to vineyard. Most people probably buy from the source.”

Unless Paki has a friend who works there,
I thought.

“A gift from Sofia Maitlin?” Marsha guessed.

“Maybe, but . . . if the winemaker is South African . . .”

“. . . Paki might know him,” Marsha finished. She sounded awed.

“Paso Robles,” I said. “If Paki's not dead, maybe that's where he ran.”

Paso Robles was a four-hour drive from Los Angeles, fairly secluded, with acre after acre of grapevines. Farmers with lots of large storehouses. Barns. Privacy.

Maybe that's where they're holding Nandi.
To my surprise, hope was still alive. Marsha stared at me, nearly gape jawed. “You put that together from the
taste?”

“We need to go to Paso.”

Marsha backed up two steps, blocking the kitchen doorway. “Ten, wait . . .”

“I know it's a six-hour drive from here, but this one goes to my gut.”

“I need you to take a deep breath and think clearly,” Marsha said, like a hypnotist.

“Wait—one minute I'm as good as anyone you've worked with, and now . . . what? You think I'm way off base? Look at the pieces: Cape Town. A winemaker. Paso Robles.”

Marsha reached slowly behind her back. I hoped she was about to call in the Marines.

Instead, she pulled out her Beretta. And pointed it squarely at the center of my chest.

My mind, which had been racing, came to a dead stop. I couldn't have said anything if I'd wanted to. Marsha had the gun; it was her turn to talk.

“Put down the wine bottle, Ten,” Marsha said. “Kick your pistol to me.”

Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.

“Look into my eyes,” she said, “and tell me if I'm bluffing.” Marsha's eyes had been replaced by the eyes of someone I had never met.

She had moved to the doorway to stay out of my reach, I realized. Only an amateur points a gun in close quarters.

If I tried throwing the bottle at her, Marsha would shoot me as I raised my arm. I set the bottle down on the counter so hard that it splashed. I might not be able to hurt her with a glare, but I did my best. My eyes were seeing blood.

“Now the Beretta,” she said. “I'm sorry, Ten.”

I wanted to bang my head against the wall. How could I have been so stupid?

My hands slowly brought my gun out of my pants. I squatted to lay it gently on the linoleum and stepped back. With my toe, I kicked it in her direction. The Beretta Marsha had lent me slid straight to her feet, as if it had a homing device. She picked it up without taking her eyes off me, shoving it into her jeans with her free hand.

“I'm just trying to find a little girl,” said an old man's voice that was mine.

“Put your hands on the counter,” Marsha said, as if I hadn't spoken. She reached into another pocket, and I heard the all-too-familiar jingling of handcuffs.

In Paki's kitchen, I assumed the position. Through the kitchen window, the bright bougainvillea blossoms lied and said everything was fine.

“Shit,
Marsha,
come on!”
I said. “This isn't right. You know it isn't.”

Marsha tossed the handcuffs toward me, but I refused to catch them. They clattered to the floor behind me.

“Pick them up,” Marsha said, slowly and carefully. “Hook one wrist, put your hands behind your back, hook the other.”

“I want my lawyer.”

“DO IT!”
Marsha roared. Was her gun hand shaking slightly?

I didn't want to test Marsha's nerve, so I cuffed myself. I had done that more times than I could count, too—but usually in the bedroom.

“This is entrapment,” I said. “You texted
me
and said you could help me.”

Once I was cuffed, some of the armor faded from Marsha's eyes. She let her gun hand relax, dropping slightly. “Ten . . . I told you, I'm not a cop. I'm not FBI. This sucks on your end, but it's not much better on mine. I'm sorry, but I can't let you go to Paso.”

Getting arrested would have been a nightmare, but the nightmare was getting deeper. Anger made me want to try something desperate: charge at her with my shoulder; a long, sliding side kick . . . but I talked myself down. Only confusion remained.

“Why?” I said, feeling foolish for expecting anything like the truth.

Marsha pursed her lips, blinking. She was conflicted, or wanted me to think she was.

“Nandi is an abduction case, and it breaks my heart,” she said. “But my investigation is national security. If I blow a lead, thousands could die.”

“If you don't care about one, you can't care about ‘thousands.'” I started to shift my weight to try hooking a chair with my foot and heaving it up into her face, but even the
thought
triggered her alarms, and her gun hand snapped rigid again, the muzzle staring at my heart.

“Ten,” she said. “I really,
really
don't want to shoot you.”

But she would. She didn't have to say it. She had killed people before.

“What the hell does it matter to you if I go look for Nandi?” I said.

“It matters,” she said. “Your leap helped me bring something very important into focus, an angle that hadn't occurred to us, and we need time to process what it means. We can't send anyone rushing in—not you, not the FBI. We need to take a closer look.”

“Even if a little girl dies while you're ‘processing'?”

Marsha didn't answer right away. Her eyes were forlorn.

“Yes,” she said. “Even if.”

I work in Hollywood. I've been betrayed by friends, lovers, and strangers. But with Marsha, I'd hit the trifecta.

At gunpoint, she walked me out of the kitchen to Paki's living room. She kept me in the corner of her eye while she peeked out the curtain. The gardeners' machinery had died.

“If I can't call a lawyer, fuck you,” I said. “You're not taking me anywhere.”

Marsha gave me a baleful look and glanced outside again. Was she waiting for the gardeners to come looking? They were the only people who could tell anyone where I'd been.

“We'll sit tight here for a while,” Marsha said. “Until my friends get here. They'll want to meet you and chat about the wine, and you'll have some time to calm down so you don't get hurt.” She made it sound like a social occasion.

“In the middle of an FBI stakeout?”

Marsha's eyes flashed. “You don't get it, Ten. Screw the FBI. This is my scene now. I don't want them here, I don't want them in Paso. Your world just changed.”

I didn't like the sound of that.

“And then?” I said, my voice dry. “After the chatting is over?”

“That's up to you, sweetness. But I think you need a vacation for a couple of days.”

Marsha was planning to debrief me, transport me somewhere, and lock me up. The juvenile part of my mind wondered,
How could she do that to ME?

And the painful answer was,
With effortless ease.

“Not without a fight,” I said again. “Just know that.”

“That could get ugly, Ten.”

“That's up to you . . .
sweetness.
And, baby, don't you dare turn your back on me. I can't wait to throw you through that window.”

“Thanks for the warning. I'll just have to kneecap you first.”

Marsha closed the curtain, never once turning her back as she paced. I wondered how long I had until her backup came knocking on the door. Unless they were already in San Diego, it might take an hour or more. I might still have time to talk my way free.

I stripped the steel out of my voice. “She's a two-year-old girl, scared to death—and she just wants to go home, Marsha,” I said.

“You and I both know that Nandi is already dead.” The sugar coating was gone.

“Until there's a body, we don't know that.”

“She was dead the minute the drop-off went south. And if she wasn't dead then, she was sure as hell dead after Spider made you at the nightclub. Your face was on the news, Ten.”

“How easy is it to kill a two-year-old kid, Marsha? Could you?”

I almost didn't want to know the answer to the question.

“It would be tough,” she conceded.

“Do they plan to kill her? Yeah, maybe. I'm just saying
they might not have done it yet.
She could be in some basement in Paso Robles with Paki, and we still have time to find her!”

“If Nandi's with her birth father, she'll probably be fine.”

“Fine?
Are you crazy?”

“I'm sorry, Ten, but I can't blow a five-year investigation because you think there might be a kid over there—especially if that kid might be dead, or with her dad.”

“He helped abduct her! He's not her
dad!”

My leg mutinied, stepped toward Marsha. She snapped into a two-handed
pistol stance. “Sit down,” she said. “Slowly. Or you'll never dance at Chela's wedding.”

I sat. “This whole time, you never gave a fuck about Nandi,” I said.

“Believe me or not, that's not true,” she said quietly. Her face was flat, nearly expressionless. She was masking emotions. “I'm only with you today because I wanted to help.”

“But you never thought I'd get anywhere, did you? This was just a side adventure for you. Except for that Asian guy at the club, maybe, you've just been marking time. You know what, Marsha? When your friends get here, I'm gonna tell them to go
fuck
themselves. Then, the first chance I get, I'm gonna call the people I know at the
L.A. Times
and see if they want a story on covert intelligence ops being conducted on U.S. soil and involving Kingdom of Heaven.”

Maybe it wasn't the right tactic, but the truth was all I had left.

Marsha's frame sagged. “Then you might not get that chance, Ten.”

“Do you think anything you threaten me with could be worse than this?” I said, shaking the handcuffs behind my back. “Then you haven't learned a damn thing about me.”

“You're wrong,” Marsha said, blinking. Her eyes looked glassy. “I've learned plenty. And there is worse. You don't want to know how much worse.”

“Bring it on, bitch.”

This time, Marsha took two strides toward me.

“What?” I said. “You want to fuck me one more time?”

Marsha stopped in her tracks, giving me a sick, almost hopeful, smile. “Wish I could.”

“Yeah, baby.” My voice was suddenly super sweet, as if my words were poetry. “Just bring that fine chocolate ass over here and let me do that thing—you know, that special thing you like. Let me tie you up and rub you down. I hate it when we fight.” I puckered and blew her a poisoned kiss. The scent of her made me feel sick to my stomach. Until that day, I'd never had the taste of hatred in my mouth. “Now I know what a real whore looks like.”