From Cape Town with Love (40 page)

We were greeted by a giant yellow smiley face poster with a psychedelically colorful border, a relic from the 1970s that matched the bottles. The interior smelled like incense, but not as earthy or spicy as the incense in Little Ethiopia, more like candy. The Stones' “Sympathy for the Devil” played from a hidden speaker, just barely loud enough to register above the conversational buzz. The front half of a powder blue VW Bug was propped against the wall as if it had driven into the room, buffed and shined for ambience.

Happy Cellars had tables instead of a bar, each table decorated with a working Lava lamp. The tables were crafted from glass tops fitted over modified wine barrels. There were couples or groups at half of the tables, twelve people talking and laughing quietly. None of the patrons looked up when we walked in. Three of the tables looked like couples out on a date, and one was home to three hunters sharing a pitcher of beer. I didn't see anyone behind the counter.

“Hey, folks! Help you?” said a woman's perky voice.

The woman, holding a broom behind the door, was white, about sixty-five, slightly overweight, her silver-specked hair hanging past her
shoulders hippie style. Her face was all ruddy friendliness. She looked like the cool grandmother who'll let you stay up late.

“We'd like to taste some wine . . . ?” Marsha said.

“After six, we only sell by the glass,” Granny Hippie said, blue eyes flashing merrily. I heard a whisper of exoticism in her accent. German? “If you like it, I'll give you twenty percent off a bottle.”

“Sounds like a deal,” I said. “Let's check it out, baby.”

“What's your pleasure?” the woman said.

“Got a good Viognier?” I said.

The woman's face brightened. “Soon as you walked in, I knew you were a man of good taste. And you, miss?”

“He's my wine guy,” Marsha said, smiling at me adoringly. “I'll have what he's having.”

Granny Hippie winked. “Between you and me, Chardonnay drinkers just don't know any better yet. Go on and seat yourselves. I'll bring out two glasses of our 2007 Viognier.”

Yes, there was an accent buried underneath her carefully enunciated banter. She masked it well, but it was ground in deep. She was pretending to be someone she wasn't, too.

She knows something,
I thought.

Pleeeeezed to meetcha,
the speaker whispered.
Hope ya knowww mahhhh name . . .

I wanted to press my gun to her throat and introduce myself. The Stones laid down a hypnotic beat as I followed Marsha to a seat by the window while she laughed about something imaginary I'd done in San Francisco earlier that day.

Everything dropped into slow motion, following the song's mournful beat. The table of hunters laughed endlessly over a missed shot during hunting season. Granny Hippie ambled across the room, checking table by table for anyone who wanted to spend more money. Two college-age girls showed each other photos on their cell phones, giggling. A white-haired couple sat taking it all in as they held hands across their tabletop.

Did I hear Nandi's high-pitched voice from over my shoulder, near the counter?

Wishful thinking, it turned out. The sound was only the sad psychedelic whine from Hendrix's electric guitar in “Red House,” bleeding from
the speakers after the Stones. Feeling so close to Nandi—but knowing how far I still had to go—made me ache from sitting still.

The wine arrived instantly, served with a hearty smile. I smiled right back.

Through an archway leading to the rear, where one of the two saloon-style doors was frozen ajar, I spotted a black man in the kitchen. My breath turned to ice.
Spider!

But he was taller, with wider shoulders. Not Spider—but was he South African?

I wrested my eyes away from him, finally remembering to sip my wine.

Marsha didn't need prompting to know where I'd been looking. She saw the guy in the kitchen, too. She was still wearing a phony smile, but her eyes sparked.

The man in the kitchen was talking to someone, and he sounded agitated. I couldn't see the people he was talking to, but under the music I heard traces from their conversation. There might be two or three other men back there.

“Gonna swing by the men's room,” I told Marsha. The men's room was also in the rear, not far from the kitchen's swinging doors. At least I would get a better peek.

Marsha nodded.
Be careful,
her eyes said. “Hurry back, baby.”

My heartbeat rocked me as I walked the room's length across those wooden planks. I kept my face slanted away from the kitchen doorway, but my eyes roamed behind my sunglasses.

A second man was still out of view from my angle as I walked by the kitchen. But I caught a glimpse of the third man, whose head was bent as he took a bite out of a sandwich.

Paki.

SHIT.
I INSTINCTIVELY
hiked up my shoulder to hide my face as I ducked toward the bathroom. Paki was alive! Did that mean Nandi was alive, too?

A few words drifted my way, but I couldn't distinguish Paki's voice in their hush.

“. . . and when they arrive, then what?”

“. . . what have I been telling you . . . ?”

Their words shifted into a language with clicks, losing me as I reached the bathroom.

My hands shook on the bathroom doorknob as I let myself in. I couldn't have pissed a drop even at gunpoint, so I didn't try. I waited a few years, flushed the toilet, and came back out.

To my relief, I heard the same trio of voices in the kitchen, more agitated.

“. . . but then it's a disaster . . .” Paki's voice.

“It's a disaster already! Can't you see?” A rational whisper I didn't recognize.

I lingered as long as I could, pretending to tie my shoelace just beyond the kitchen doors. But the conversation drifted back into a language I didn't know. I never heard Nandi's name.

I wanted to burst into the kitchen instead of going back toward my seat, but I pulled myself away from the men's conversation. All I could do in the kitchen was bring out my Beretta, and it wasn't time for that yet.

Too many innocent people could get caught in the crossfire or taken hostage. I'd end up dead or in jail, and Nandi in a grave. Like Dad had told me, I had to weigh every decision like gold.

I joined Marsha at the table and scooted my chair so that my face wouldn't be visible from the kitchen. She clasped the top of my hand:
What's up?

“Our buddy who recommended this place . . . ?” I said. “We can thank him in person.”

Marsha glanced nearly imperceptibly toward the kitchen.
“Love
to,” she said.

“But we'll have to wait. He's still out hanging with his friends.”

“How many friends?”

“Two,” I said. “Maybe more. Popular guy.”

“How are you doing back here?” Granny Hippie said, hovering at our table.

That time, I heard her Afrikaner accent loud and clear. She was South African.

WHERE THE FUCK IS NANDI?
my mind screamed at her.

“Doing all right,” I said instead. I tried to wipe loathing from my face, fixing a neutral smile. She didn't seem satisfied; she'd noticed that I'd barely touched my wine. I raised my glass slightly. “What's that mineral taste?” I said, low enough so my voice wouldn't carry to the kitchen. I'd noted the same crisp minerality in Paki's wine bottle. And Maitlin's.

Granny Hippie grinned. “We use cement barrels for aging. That's what you're tasting.”

“Wine is so confusing!” Marsha said. “Red. White. That's all I know.”

Granny Hippie and I shared a superior smile over Marsha's ignorance.

“Is that common? Cement barrels?” I said to Granny Hippie, pretending I gave a shit.

“We're the only ones in Paso. Stainless steel is easier to disinfect, but we're kind of old-fashioned here.”
Like in South Africa,
I thought, but I didn't have to ask. “I've got a Viognier-Roussanne blend you might like better,” she offered.

“I'll give this one a chance,” I said, with a smile to ease her load. “No worries.”

Granny Hippie winked. “They pay me to worry.”

“I like this,” Marsha said. “Bring us a bottle. It'll go great with the food at our party next week.”

“Pretty
and
smart,” Granny Hippie said. “Be right back.”

The kitchen door swung shut behind Granny Hippie when she went to the back, but no one came out. I was worried that Paki might leave, but the quiet babble of voices went on despite Granny Hippie's presence.

A gasp came from behind me. “Where do I know that face . . . ?” a woman said.

I didn't have to turn around to know that she was talking about me.

“Shhhhh.
Don't be rude,” hissed the woman's companion. From the sound of it, they might be college kids who weren't much older than Chela.

When I sipped my wine again, my hand was unsteady. Marsha's eye noticed my hand's quiver, so I exhaled slowly, looking for the calm eye in the waiting storm.

“We better take off before it gets too dark,” I said. “We promised the kids.”

“Mommy and Daddy to the rescue,” Marsha said. Our eyes locked, bound in purpose.

“I'll stay in and pay.”

“Great. I'll be right outside.” I was on my feet, trying not to look like I was in a hurry.

“I
definitely
know his face . . . ,” the voice said. “Damn! Now it'll drive me
crazy
. . .”

Keeping my eyes and face away from the giddy voice behind me, I leaned over to kiss Marsha's lips gently; I'm not even sure it was for show.

The older man and woman sharing a table close to the door gazed at us as if we were a time machine. Their smiles encouraged us to cherish each day like our last, each night as if we might not live to see tomorrow. On my way out, I smiled back to show them I got the joke.

You never know when it's your last chance.

I waited for Marsha around the corner from the tasting room's entrance, near a Dumpster that smelled like rotting fruit. The still parking lot and empty roads were wrapped in long gray, orange, and purple shadows. Neatly planted rows grew in every direction. Tourists might have seen beauty, but all I saw was the perfect seclusion for hiding an abducted child.

Lights burned in several windows in the house on the hill at Happy Cellars. The house was brick and had a reddish hue, I realized, just like the Hendrix song. I counted three cars parked up at a circular driveway in front of the house, but there was plenty of room for more cars out of my sight. The farmhouse looked busy.

I still had more than an hour before the sky went fully dark, but I wasn't going to let Paki out of my sight. There was nowhere for Paki to go on foot except into the grapevines, which weren't dense enough to conceal him even in dim daylight.

Paki wasn't going anywhere without me.

While I waited, the older couple left and climbed into their vintage VW bus. They drove away as Rare Earth blared through their open windows.

“Turns out she knew you from a
cell phone commercial,”
Marsha said, joining me outside. “Let's walk before she tries to get an autograph.”

“What about Paki?” I said, hushed.

“We'll watch him from a distance.”

A distance turned out to be back at our car, but Marsha's high-powered binoculars put us right back where we'd been. I hoped we looked like bird-watchers to anyone who drove by, but we lowered the binoculars when cars approached.

We'd chosen a low-traffic road a quarter-mile from the vineyard entrance, but we were high enough on a hill that the vineyard spilled down below us, and our views of the corner tasting room and the farmhouse were unobstructed. The growing darkness made it hard to see even with binoculars, but I had a clear view of Happy Cellars's front door and the driveway. The doors opened and closed as patrons left; no more came in.

A large red Chevy Tahoe pulled into the vineyard's driveway, but it veered beyond the parking lot and drove up toward the house instead.

“They've got company,” I told Marsha, and let her take a peek.

“Uh-oh,” Marsha said. “This looks like bad news. And now Paki's on the move.”

“Where?”

“Getting into a car with two other black males. The white Honda Accord.”

My recurring nightmare was unfolding for yet another night.

Marsha handed me the binoculars. The world bobbed wildly until I found the barrels, near the parking lot. A flash of white reverse lights caught my eye. The white Honda Accord was backing out of its parking space.

“Then we follow him,” I said. “He'll take us to Nandi.”

“We need to stay on the house. I have to bring in my team, Ten . . .”

The Honda didn't turn toward the driveway that led to the road. Instead, it swung the other way—toward the house. The car veered along the same path the red SUV had followed.