“I’d just as soon avoid him when he gets like this.”
“Like what?”
He was still smiling, but now his face showed genuine puzzlement. “Come on, Lucie. Don’t tell me you don’t know. I figured you’ve just been turning a blind eye to it all this time.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The way he treats the crew. Me. How do you work with someone who’s so…” He shrugged.
“So what?”
He stared at his feet for a while, then looked up. “Abusive. That’s the only word I can think of to call it.”
It stung like a slap. Quinn could be abrasive, even irritable and ornery. But I would never characterize him as abusive. That implied cruelty.
“Quinn’s a good winemaker,” I said. “Sometimes he can be curt and maybe he’s short-tempered when the pressure’s on during harvest. But he’s harder on himself than he is on anyone else.”
Chance shook his head like I didn’t get it.
“Sorry. Not true. He’s really tough with the crew when you’re not around. You don’t see or know everything that happens.”
I ran my finger over the notched edge of the ignition key.
“I’m not blind to his faults. But in the two years he’s worked for me, I’ve never had a single complaint.”
“You really want to take his side over something like this? Come on, Lucie.”
He sounded almost jocular, as though he were trying to cajole me into something as innocuous as joining him for a drink, instead of indicting Quinn for violent behavior toward the men.
“I just can’t believe—”
“The guys won’t speak up about it, either. They’re scared of him.”
My phone rang and “Hunt & Sons Funeral Home” flashed on the display. “Hang on, I’ve got to take this.”
I opened my phone. “Hey, B.J. Yes, I’m on my way. Is Ray Vitale with you? He is? Give me two minutes… Right…’Bye.”
I closed the phone and said to Chance, “Look, this is a pretty serious accusation. I’ve got to go, but we need to finish this conversation another time.”
He stood there, holding the new line for the weed whacker, a flat, unreadable expression in his eyes. Disappointment in me? Disgust?
Actually, it seemed like something else.
“Sure,” he said. “We’ll talk whenever you want.”
“Chance,” I pleaded with him. “I’m sorry but B.J. wants to calm down the guy in charge of the Union reenactors because he’s all freaked out about that grave. I need to take them out to the site.”
“You’re the boss.” He picked up a rag and wiped grease off his hands.
“You want me to tell Quinn you don’t know where the
“That’s okay. I’ll talk to him. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
“Don’t worry. He won’t bite your head off.”
“Unlike the day laborers, I can handle myself with Quinn.”
He was still wiping his hands with the rag, no longer looking at me. I wanted to say something to end this conversation on a better note, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything.
Instead I turned and left, clenching the key until the hard edges dug into the palm of my hand.
It was true that Quinn had become increasingly exasperated with the inexperienced day laborers who worked for us. Many had never worked in agriculture before and often didn’t seem to know what they were doing out in the field when it came to some of the tedious but necessary chores like leaf pulling or dropping fruit. Had the never- ending series of accidents and mistakes along with an erratic and inept crew caused Quinn to cross the line into abuse as Chance suggested?
If the men were too terrified to complain, Chance had just put another problem on my overfull plate, in addition to the tornado damage and Bobby’s investigation. Right now, this one crowded out the others.
Sooner or later, I would have to confront Quinn. I got in the Mule and drove over to the parking lot. It was a conversation I dreaded.
Chapter 7
Tyler, B.J., and a third man, who had to be Ray Vitale, made an incongruous-looking trio waiting for me in the parking lot. B.J. and Vitale looked as though they were posing for a daguerreotype, each with one arm across his breast and a soldier’s erect bearing. Both had longish hair—B.J.’s was the color of snow, Vitale’s chestnut brown— along with beards and muttonchop sideburns. Put them in their uniforms and you’d swear you were looking at Lee and Grant in the flesh, with their somber bearing and unsmiling faces.
Tyler, by contrast, towered over the older men at six foot four, still possessing the gangly awkwardness of a kid newly adjusting to his height and long limbs. Unlike the others, he smiled and waved, his cherubic red-blond curls blowing in the light breeze as he pushed wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose with an index finger. His pale skin, which refused to tan, had turned strawberry colored from so much time working with the vines.
I pulled up and idled the engine. Tyler waited for Vitale to climb into the backseat before hopping in behind him with a well-worn copy of Marcus Aurelius’s
I reached over the seat and held out my hand. Vitale pumped it once and released it. “How do you do, ma’am?”
His voice was high-pitched and querulous. He gave me a cursory glance before settling back in his seat and focusing his attention on the scenery, ignoring me as though I were no longer of any consequence.
I turned back to B.J. sitting next to me. He wore an I-told-you-he’s-eccentric expression and waggled his eyebrows, so I had to stifle a laugh.
On the drive out to the field, B.J. kept up a one-sided explanation of the vineyard for Vitale’s benefit, talking about how successful we were as a small family business now run by the next generation. To hear B.J. tell it, I was on a par with the top women in the California wine dynasties. But by the time we reached the reenactment campsite, Ray Vitale’s monosyllabic comments had deflated BJ.’s well-intentioned patter and we all fell silent.
I reached for my cane as the others climbed out of the Mule.
“I don’t imbibe spirits, myself,” Vitale said in that reedy voice as I stepped down. “You know what the Bible says. ‘For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty.’ I’m glad to see that this site is well removed from your vineyard, Miss Montgomery. It’s not good to have temptation too near our young people. We do not allow any alcohol on the campground premises during the reenactment, you understand. I presume you will not be serving anything to those who come to watch, nor encouraging folks to visit your winery. We cannot have drunkenness marring these events.”
His prissy choice of words was right out of another century, uncharitable and stinging. I was about to make a sharp retort when B.J. intervened.
“What Ray means,” he said, in the soothing voice he used to comfort the bereaved, “is that it’s just common sense not to allow anyone to bring alcohol to the camp around guns and bayonets and the like.”
“I certainly appreciate that,” I said. “But I’d just like to say, Mr. Vitale, that there’s a difference between drinking and drunkenness. As we all know, Jesus turned water into wine and even imbibed himself, since you bring up the Bible. I’m sure the adults who attend the reenactment can make their own decisions about whether they’d like to visit my vineyard or not.”
B.J. placed a hand on my shoulder. “How about if Ray and I take a little walk so I can show him the campsite?” Under his breath he said in my ear, “Let me handle this.”
He caught up with Vitale, who was striding over to take a look at the tornado damage. B.J. pulled a couple of cigars out of his breast pocket and offered one to Ray Vitale. They bent their heads and went through the ritual of slowly rotating the match flame until the tips glowed like early evening fireflies.
