I realized that she had been studying me too — but there was nothing in her eyes to indicate what impression she had formed, or if she had formed any impression at all. In that same matter-of-fact voice she said, “You’ve got blood on your shirt where I bit you.”
I looked down at the area under my collarbone; the shirt there was torn and stained a dark red. The bite still stung, and as soon as my mind focused on the stinging I grew aware again of the throbbing in my head and the dull ache in my wrist and the bunched muscles in my legs. Christ, a walking-wounded.
She said, “Does it hurt?”
“A little. It’ll be all right.”
“I guess we both played rough up in the vineyards.”
“Yeah, I guess we did.”
Neither of us said anything for a time, thinking our own thoughts. I broke the silence finally with a question: “The pinch-faced guy — who is he?”
“Logan Dockstetter,” she said. “He’s the winery’s sales manager. And a fag, if you hadn’t already guessed.”
That last comment was uncalled for; Logan Dockstetter’s sexual preferences had nothing to do with anything. But I did not say that to her. Apparently she did not like homosexuals any more than she liked cops, and there is never any point in calling someone on his prejudices.
I said, “Is Dockstetter staying here too?”
“No. He came up from San Francisco tonight, along with his boyfriend, Philip Brand. Brand is the Cappellanis’ accountant. The two of them—”
She broke off because there was an abrupt commotion out in the foyer — the echo of hurrying footsteps, the excited babble of voices. I shoved away from the counter, and Shelly came around from behind it, and together we went across to the doorway and out into the corridor just as five people came crowding up.
Three of them were men, Logan Dockstetter among them, but it was the older of the women who was in the lead. Rosa Cappellani, I thought. But she was nothing at all as I had pictured her, nothing at all like the popular conception of an Italian matriarch. She had a lean but heavy-breasted body that seemed well preserved in a blue pants suit; silver-streaked hair, and features that were too angular to be called anything other than handsome. Those features were set now in firm lines that gave her an imperious, no-nonsense demeanor, and though she had to be pretty upset she gave no outward indication of it. My immediate impression was that here was a woman who was always in perfect command of her emotions, who possessed a good deal of strength and self-assurance.
She went past Shelly and me without looking at either of us, as if we were not even there. Which gave us no choice but to turn and follow her, along with the three men and the other woman. When she got to the office door she stopped and stood stiffly, staring inside. I saw her face in profile, and nothing changed in it; she did not even blink.
I stepped up to her. “I checked his pulse and it seems strong and fairly stable,” I said. “It would be best not to touch him.”
She pivoted to me, acknowledging my presence for the first time, and gave me a long probing look. Then she said, “I had no intention of touching him,” and she had a voice to match her demeanor. “Has an ambulance been called?”
Shelly said, “Yes. I phoned for one a few minutes ago.”
“And the police?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good.” Mrs. Cappellani took her eyes off me and put them on one of the men — a guy about her own age dressed in work clothes and a poplin jacket, with eyes set deep under a craggy forehead and a nose as sharp as a rock spire. “Paul,” she said, “find a blanket somewhere. A heavy blanket. We won’t touch Alex but he has to be kept warm.”
He nodded and hurried off.
“Where’s Leo?” Shelly asked.
“He went out for a walk,” the other woman said. “I don’t know where he is.” She was in her early thirties, attractive, with thick coils of dark hair and breasts even larger than Mrs. Cappellani’s. There was vulnerability in her face and a kind of detachment in her manner, as if she had withdrawn into herself as a defense mechanism against all the things which could hurt her. The exact opposite of Shelly. I thought that she was probably Leo Cappellani’s wife; Alex had told me Leo was married.
The third man said, “Do you want me to see if I can find him, Mrs. Cappellani?” He had a deep and very precise voice that surprised you a little because of his physical appearance: round soft face, bright eyes, prim mouth. He was about Dockstetter’s age.
“Yes,” she said. “Do that, Philip.” Philip Brand, I thought. “And take Logan and Angela with you.”
She looked at me again as Dockstetter and Brand and Angela Cappellani went toward the foyer. “Now suppose you tell me who you are and what happened here.”
I told her. But I did not say that I was a private detective hired by her son, because of the nature of my investigation and because it was not up to me to discuss my findings with her. And I did not say anything, either, about the scuffle with Shelly up in the vineyards; I was embarrassed by it, and it had no particular relevance anyway. I said only that in the darkness I had mistaken Shelly for the man I was chasing and that he had gotten away for that reason.
“You have no idea what this man looked like?”
“No, ma’am. He was just a dark shape, average height and build. But Alex probably saw him and can identify him.”
“Yes. I’m sorry for what happened to you, but I’m grateful just the same that you arrived when you did. You may well have saved my son’s life.”
There was nothing I could say to that, and the craggy-featured guy saved me from having to find words by coming back with a folded Army blanket. Rosa Cappellani took it from him, went into the office and shook it out and draped it carefully around Alex’s inert form. Then she straightened up, but she did not come back out of the office; she just stood there, stoically, staring down at him with her hands clasped in front of her.
The wine smell had begun to get to me again; I could taste sour bile in the back of my throat. I said to Shelly that I was going out for some air, and went into the foyer and through the double doors. As soon as I stepped outside I could hear, in the distance, the faint ululating wail of an ambulance siren. They made good time out of St. Helena, I thought — and I hoped the county sheriff’s people were as efficient. The sooner they got here, the sooner I could find a hotel or motel and get some rest.
I took a couple of deep breaths, and the doors opened behind me and the craggy-featured guy came out. He paused to fire one of those misshapen Italian cigars called a Toscana, that smell like smoldering manure, and then walked over to where I was.
“Paul Rosten,” he said, “I’m the winemaker here.”
I nodded, gave him my name.
“What the hell happened in there?”
Before I could answer that there was abrupt movement to the north, over by the two smaller cellars, and three figures materialized there and came running toward us. When they pounded up into the glow of the nightlights, I saw that two of them were Dockstetter and Brand and that the third was obviously Leo Cappellani; Angela had evidently remained at the house. Leo had the same dark angular features, the same wide mouth and curly black hair as his brother. But he was a few years older, a few pounds heavier. He also had quite a bit of his mother’s imperiousness, something which Alex did not have. You could tell that about him right off.