I was only going to be staying here tonight, since Alex had told me he was planning to return to San Francisco in the morning; otherwise Mrs. Cappellani would have had to send somebody down to my flat for toiletries and changes of clothes, or I would have had to go down there myself with Alex for company. He had not sounded happy about returning to San Francisco; he still wanted to crawl into a hole for the duration, and the one that looked best to him was right here. But he had obviously decided — no doubt with his mother’s help — that it was best for him to keep his mind occupied by keeping up a pretense of normal activity. I could just hear the old dragon telling him that there was no shame in being afraid, only in letting others see just how frightened you really were.
After I had looked the room over I said, “What about today, Alex? You have any plans?”
“I’d like to get shit-faced drunk,” he said.
“That won’t help any.”
“I know that.” He smiled in an ironic, humorless way. “There’s a fest this afternoon; we’re all supposed to go.”
“Fest?”
“Wine fest. There are a lot of them in the Valley around this time, after the crush. This one’s being put on by the Simontaccis; they own one of the big vineyards a few miles up the Silverado Trail, and we buy most of their grapes.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Christ no. Music, dancing, picnic lunches — it makes me cold just thinking about it. But I’ve got to go anyway. The Simontaccis have been having these things for twenty years and the Cappellanis always attend in full force. It’s tradition, good PR.”
“Under the circumstances, I’d think you could bow out gracefully.”
“Tell that to Rosa. She’s going, and so are Leo and Rosten and Shelly and the rest of the people from here and from the office. She thinks I ought to go too. So I’m going — and you’re going.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a mama’s boy, despite appearances. It’s just that she’s one hell of a tough woman and I’ve learned the hard way that it’s easier to let her call the shots.”
“Does Leo feel that way too?”
“He wouldn’t admit it but he listens to her as much as I do.”
“Is he already here?”
“Yeah. He came up last night.”
“Does he know about this bodyguard idea?”
“No. Not yet. Nobody knows but you and me and Rosa.”
“They’ll all have to know eventually.”
“So they’ll know,” he said, and it was obvious by his tone and his expression that he did not care for the idea. Pride, probably — the Cappellani pride that Leo had alluded to and that was obvious in Rosa. Don’t let anyone know how frightened you really are. “Look, the fest doesn’t start until one o’clock and I don’t feel like being cooped up in here until then. You know anything about winemaking?”
“Not much, no,” I said.
“Then let’s go down to the cellar. I’ll show you around.”
So we went downstairs again and out into the sunlit morning. On the way I didn’t see any sign of Mrs. Cappellani, who was probably still in her late husband’s office, or of the silent maid. Or of anyone else. But when we walked down the lane and turned onto the road, I saw Leo and Paul Rosten come out from the direction of the nearest small cellar and start toward us.
Beside me Alex said softly, “Here we go.”
I said, “I’ll handle the explanations if you want.”
“Yeah.”
When the four of us came together on the road, Rosten was wearing a grave expression and Leo no expression at all. Neither of them seemed surprised to see me — maybe because too many surprising things had happened in the past few days.
“You do get around, don’t you,” Leo said to me. But there was no irony in the words; it was just a statement. He appeared cool and imperturbable, and the image was enhanced by his country-squire-casual outfit: a tailored white short-sleeved bush jacket and the kind of faded denims that cost upward of forty dollars.
“Your mother asked me to come up, Mr. Cappellani.”
“Oh?”
“She’s concerned that there might be another attempt on Alex’s life,” I said. “She thought it would be a good idea to have me around for a few days.”
“I see.”
Abruptly Alex said, with some challenge, “You don’t mind, do you, Leo?”
“What sort of question is that? Why should I mind?”
“You didn’t like the idea of my hiring a private detective in the first place. You’ve made that plain enough.”
“That’s an entirely different matter; you were meddling in Rosa’s private affairs. Now that Booker has been killed and your life is in jeopardy, we need all the help we can get.”
“Thanks for your concern.”
“Is that sarcasm, Alex?”
Alex just looked at him.
Around the cold nub of a Toscana cigar, Rosten asked me, “Are you going to be investigating what’s happened?”
“Private detectives aren’t allowed to work on murder cases,” I said.
“Well, the police don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”
“They will. They just need time.”
Leo said, “Have you had bodyguarding experience?”
“Enough.”
“Good. Then I’ll feel better about things with you watching over my brother.”
Alex did not like that. “The hell with this crap,” he said, and pushed between Leo and Rosten and started down the road again in short choppy strides.
I nodded to Leo, to Rosten, and went after Alex. When I caught up with him I said, “Take it easy. You won’t do yourself any good if you let things get to you.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“You don’t get along with your brother, is that it?”
“He’s a bastard. He’s just like my mother — thinks he’s superior, thinks I’m a weakling and a fool.”
He had nothing more to say after that, and we crossed the gravel yard and entered the cellar in silence.
For the next hour he showed me the grape crushers and the French continuous action wine presses and the testing laboratory and the bottling plant; he told me how grapes were vinified, how varietals were made, how samples were taken from dozens of different grapes and vines so that the total sugars and total acids could be measured for the best balance. It was all a little like being with a programmed automaton: a steady stream of facts and figures, with no interest or enthusiasm whatsoever. There was nothing I could do to bring him out of his funk, nothing I could say to reassure him; I just let him drone on, asking polite questions now and then to keep him going.
It was past noon when we came out of the bottling plant, and he had turned restless and sullen by then. He said, “We might as well go back to the house. It’s almost time for the goddamn fest.”
So we went back to the house. And a little while after that we filed out again with Rosa and Leo and got into the Lincoln Continental — it belonged to Leo — and drove off through the vineyards in an atmosphere of grim silence. Like people on their way to a funeral instead of a fest.
There were at least a hundred people at the Simontacci place, considerably more than I had expected, and the party was already in full swing. Picnic benches had been set out under oak and pepper trees in the side garden of a rambling old brick house — the house and its two outbuildings sat in the middle of several hundred acres of foothill vineyards — and a couple of guys in peasant costume strolled among them, playing Italian polka music on a pair of accordions. Woman in brightly colored skirts and dresses and men in crisp white shirts danced together or talked among themselves; a dozen or so children ran around playing games the way kids do. Two small wine casks sat on chocks to one side, tended by a jovial mustached man, and beyond there were a long brick-sided barbecue pit and two tables overflowing with salads and a dozen different kinds of antipasto. The air was pungent with the smoky aroma of barbecuing chicken.