Tangled Vines
Authors: Janet Dailey
Janet Dailey
A television-satellite van bearing the “News Four” logo of the local NBC station in New York stood at the curb a short distance from Playmates Arch in Central Park. There, along the footpath, a camera crew was busy setting up for a remote telecast for the local “Live at Five” report. Behind portable barricades erected by park security, a horde of onlookers watched the proceedings in the steamy heat of an August afternoon.
Old-fashioned hurdy-gurdy music from the park's carousel drifted above the drone of the van's generator as Kelly Douglas stepped out of the air-conditioned vehicle. A co-anchor on the evening newscast at KNBC for almost two years now, she was in full makeup, her auburn hair drawn back in a French braid.
“Hey, Kelly.” Eddy Michels, one of the tech crew, came trotting up, slowing to a stop when he reached her. “Man, you talk about hot.” He wiped a sweaty cheek on the shoulder of his T-shirt. “It must be a hundred in the shade.”
“At least,” Kelly agreed and lifted her hands. “Welcome to New York, nature's summertime sauna.”
“You've got that right.” He started to turn away, then swung back. “I meant to tell you â I loved that interview you did with that bureaucrat Blaine the other day. You really had her squirming and stammering around for an answer when you pointed out all the discrepancies in her report. You shouldn't have taken pity on her, though, and backed off.”
Kelly smiled and shook her head in friendly disagreement “I learned back in Iowa not to have a battle of wits with an opponent who has run out of ammunition. Especially an opponent with powerful friends.”
He chuckled and conceded, “You have a point there.”
“I know I do.” Her smile widened as she warned, “Deliberately making a fool of somebody is the quickest way to make an enemy for life.”
“I suppose you learned that growing up in Iowa, too,” he joked.
“Naturally,” Kelly replied with a straight fare, then laughed, and set off to join the camera crew on the footpath to the arch.
As she drew close to the crew, she was recognized and a male voice shouted from the gathering of onlookers, “Hey, Kelly, aren't you worried about coming here to Central Park?”
“Only with you,” she countered quickly and smiled, automatically scanning the crowd to locate her caller.
An older man stood well apart from the others, his face turned in profile, his dark hair threaded with strands of gray. He was dressed in a plaid shirt and a faded pair of golf green slacks, sharply creased.
The clothes, the cocky sneer of his lips...
Kelly went cold when she saw him, fear freezing her in place as images flashed â a hard-knuckled fist swinging with force, pain exploding in white-hot arcs, silencing a half-born cry, the jerk of brutal hands, the stench of whiskey breath, a small, frightened voice sobbing, “Don't hit me, Daddy. Don't hit me,” a string of violent curses, the taste and smell of blood.
She stared, her face pale with shock, her mind racing in panic. How had he found her? How, after all these years? She had made a new life for herself. People liked her; they respected her. Dear God, she couldn't let him ruin that for her. She couldn't let him hurt her again. She couldn't.
“Kelly, what's wrong?” a voice asked. “You are white as a ghost.”
She couldn't answer. She couldn't look away from him. Then the man turned, giving her a full view of his face. It wasn't him. Relief came in waves.
Finally Kelly was able to focus on the woman in front of her, one of the producer's assistants. “It's the heat,” she lied, something she did with the skill of an expert. “I'll be fine.”
Reassured by the color coming back to Kelly's face, the woman nodded. “Patty Cummins from the Central Park Zoo is here. I thought you might want to meet her before we go on the air.”
“Of course.” Kelly glanced back at the man, confirming again that it wasn't him. How could it be? He was still back in California. Back in Napa Valley. She was safe. She had nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
The vineyard baked in the heat of an August sun, its vines strung along the mountain's rugged slope in orderly rows, their roots sunk deep in the rocky soil, drawing moisture and the distinctive taste of the earth from it. The land was poor, incapable of nourishing any other crop, yet from the grapes of this vineyard had come some of the finest wines in the whole of Napa Valley â some said the world.
Rutledge wine made from Rutledge vines grown on Rutledge land.
A tan Jeep with the insignia of the Rutledge Estate winery painted on its doors sat at one end of the vineyard on the grassy shoulder of a dirt road. Sam Rutledge slowly made his way back to it, pausing now and then among the vines to examine a cluster of ripening grapes.
At thirty-six he had lines bracketing his mouth and fanning from the corners of his eyes in deep creases, but the years hadn't faded the faint smattering of freckles that showed beneath the dark tan of his broad, roughly planed face. He wore tan chinos and a blue chambray shirt, the cuffs rolled back exposing the corded muscles of his forearms. An old and weatherworn brown hat, the kind that had been in vogue in the forties, shaded his eyes from the full glare of the sun.
As he neared the end of the row and the Jeep, Sam Rutledge stopped and reached down to scoop up a handful of soil, a mixture of dust and pebbles.
It was Rutledge soil, the same as the vines. His life revolved around them. It was the way he wanted it.
Still holding the dirt in his hand, Sam lifted his head and turned to look across the narrow vineyard-strewn valley. The wild canyons and spiny ridges of the Mayacamas Mountains lay to the west, a twin to the coastal range that walled the valley on the east. The deep green of conifer and oak blanketed its slopes and contrasted sharply with the dull yellow of summer-parched-pastures.
Mount St. Helena stood at the head of the valley, its rounded peak thrusting up to dominate the northern horizon. Over it all arched the blue canopy of an unclouded sky. It was a land of sparse rainfall and unrelenting sun, of cooling fogs from the Pacific and baking heat, of rock, volcanic ash, and the sediment of ancient marine life. Sam saw it as nature's crucible.
His fingers curled around the rocky dirt in his palm, holding it lightly for a moment, then opening as he turned his hand to let the soil fall back to the ground. As Sam dusted his hands off, he heard a vehicle on the road. He immediately wondered who had left the main gate open. Rutledge Estate wasn't open to the public. Tours of the winery were by appointment only and the schedule rarely permitted that.
The sound grew into the definite rumble of a car. A green-and-white Buick LeSabre rounded the bend in the road, trailing a thick cloud of dust. The staccato roar from its knocking engine shattered the quiet of the vineyard.
Sam recognized the ten-year-old car even before he saw the magnetic sign on the door panel that read REBECCA'S VINEYARD. There was only one car like it in the entire valley and it belonged to Len Dougherty, as did the ten acres that Dougherty called Rebecca's Vineyard. The last time Sam saw it, it had looked more like a jungle than a vineyard. He hadn't been surprised by that. Len Dougherty only masqueraded as a vintner; his true career was drinking, with brawling an occasional pastime.
Sam had no use for the man and no pity for his current financial problems. It showed in his face when the Buick shuddered to an abrupt stop with a screech of grinding brake shoes. Dust enveloped the car, then swept on.
“Where is she?” Len Dougherty stuck his head out the window, his heavily lined face twisted in anger. “Dammit, I said where is she?”
“I assume you mean Katherine.” From long habit, Sam referred to his grandmother by her first name. As he approached his Jeep, he didn't have to guess at the reason Dougherty wanted to see her. Obviously he had been served with the foreclosure notice.
“You know damned well that's who I meant,” the man snapped, his eyes narrowing into slits. “And I'm telling you the same as I'll tell her. You aren't taking my land from me.” He averted his gaze, as usual unable to look anyone in the eye for long. “That vineyard is mine. You don't have the right to take it.”
“Any lawyer in the county will tell you otherwise, Dougherty,” Sam replied evenly. “You borrowed money from Rutledge Estate and gave a first mortgage on your land to secure the loan. Now you've fallen behind in the payments and we are foreclosing. It's as simple and legal as that.”
“Legal thievery, you mean,” Dougherty retorted and tromped on the gas, sending bald tires spinning, kicking up gravel and more dust before they gained traction and the car sped off.
Sam followed its dust wake with his gaze until the car disappeared over the rise. He swept off his hat and ran combing fingers through his thick hair, the color of khaki. He had expected Dougherty to react to the foreclosure notice with outrage and anger. But, in Sam's opinion, the real outrage was Dougherty's neglect of the land, the way he had let it go to seed.
The ten-acre parcel had once been part of Rutledge Estate. Then, some sixty years ago, Dougherty's father had been killed in a freak accident at the winery, leaving his pregnant widow without money or a place to live. Out of pity and a sense of duty, Katherine had given his widow a small house on the estate and its surrounding ten acres of vineyard.
As far as Sam was concerned, it was time that land was once again within the boundaries of Rutledge Estate. As he pushed the hat back on, he threw a glance at the sun. At this time of day, Dougherty would find Katherine at the winery with old Claude.
Sam climbed into the Jeep and folded his six-foot-one-inch frame into the driver's seat, then drove off in the same direction Dougherty had taken, but with no thought of rescuing his grandmother. Even at ninety, Katherine Rutledge was more than capable of dealing with Len Dougherty. Or anyone else, for that matter.
A grove of cinnamon-barked madrona trees shaded the dirt yard outside the winery of Rutledge Estate. Built more than one hundred years ago, it was a massive structure of weathered brick that stood three-and-a-half stories tall. The cupola atop the roof provided the lone embellishment to its otherwise severe lines.
A pair of huge wooden doors marked the main entrance to the winery. One stood open, and it was through it that Katherine Rutledge walked, a silver-topped ebony cane touching the ground with each stride. She was a petite woman, weighing barely one hundred pounds. She walked with shoulders perfectly squared, her posture always correct, a fact that had more than one person proclaiming she had a backbone of iron.
Time had turned her once black hair an immaculate white. As a bride, Katherine had worn it in a fashionable bob; now it was styled in an updated version that framed her face in soft waves. It was a face that remained relatively unlined despite her years. Her features seemed delicate, almost fragile...until one looked into her eyes. There was a kind of power in their dark blue depths, the kind that came from the merging of intelligence and determination.
Claude Broussard was at her side. Fifteen years younger than Katherine, he had been the cellar master at Rutledge Estate from the time Prohibition had ended. French by birth, he was a stocky man with big hands, big shoulders, and an even bigger chest. Age had thickened his girth and grayed his shock of hair, but his step, like Katherine's, remained firm and his legendary strength undiminished. As recently as this winter, after a full keg of wine had tumbled from its pallet on a forklift, workers at the winery had watched in awe as Claude hoisted the thirty-gallon keg onto his shoulder and set it back on the pallet.
“A man called Ferguson came by the winery this morning,” he informed Katherine. “He has purchased the vineyard planted by Cooper. He wished to sell us his grapes.”
“What nonsense.” Her response was immediate, her voice still carrying the lilt of her European finishing school. “How could we possibly buy his grapes when we have no idea who their parents are? I planted every vine on this estate, tended them, watched them grow from cuttings into maturity. Rutledge wine is made only from Rutledge grapes. If this man should call again, inform him of that.”
In full agreement, Claude Broussard nodded. “As you say, Madam.”
He had always called her that, from the moment of their first meeting in France when he was a mere boy. Never Madam Rutledge. Certainly never Katherine. To him, she had been always and simply Madam. An appellation others had picked up years ago. It was not uncommon for those in the industry to refer to wines bottled under the label of Rutledge Estate as Madam's wine. In the decade following the repeal of Prohibition, it had been used in jest, mocking her attempts to produce a red wine to rival the great Bordeaux from France. When her wines began to win in blind tastings against those from famed chateaux, it was spoken with respect and, more often, envy.
No small amount of the credit belonged to him as maitre de chai, master of the cellar. Aware of that, Claude lifted his head a little higher. But his pleased look faded when an old Buick swung into the winery yard and stopped, the engine backfiring. A fine film of dust coated the old car's highly waxed surface, dulling its sheen. Claude cast a worried glance at Katherine.
Distaste flickered through her expression when she saw Len Dougherty climb out of the driver's side. She smoothed all trace of it from her face as he approached.
Her glance skimmed his graying hair and lined face. His olive green trousers sported knife-sharp creases down the legs and his striped shirt was stiffly starched. Appearance was everything to Len Dougherty, even now.
“You can't do this.” He halted before her. Aqua Velva had been applied to his smoothly shaven cheeks with a heavy hand, but not heavy enough to mask the smell of whiskey. “You can't take my vineyard away. That land is mine. It belongs to me.”
“If you wish to eliminate my claim to the property, Mr. Dougherty, you have only to pay me the balance you owe, and the land is yours,” Katherine informed him.