Tangled Vines

CHAPTER ONE

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--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--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--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.

"But that's more than thirty-five thousand dollars." Dougherty looked away, a watery brightness to his eyes, jaw clenched, hands trembling. "I can't get my hands on that much money before the end of October. I need more time." The protest carried a familiar wheedling note. "It hasn't been easy for me since I lost my wife--"

"She died some twenty years ago." Katherine had a voice like cut crystal, sharp enough to slice to the bone when she chose. She chose now. "You have sufficiently milked her death. Do not expect to gain any more from it."

He reddened. The infusion of color briefly eliminated the unhealthy pallor of his skin. "You are a cold and heartless old bitch. No wonder your son Gil hates you."

Pain. It struck swiftly and sharply. The kind of pain only a mother can know when she is hated by her child. A pain that hadn't diminished with the passing years, but rather deepened, just as Gilbert's hatred of her had deepened with time.

Unable to deny Dougherty's claim, Katherine stiffened, holding herself even straighter. "My relationship with Gilbert is not a subject I intend to discuss with you, Mr. Dougherty."

Dougherty had scored, and he knew it. "It must gripe the hell out of you that his winery is every bit as successful as Rutledge Estate. Who knows--in a few years The Cloisters might even be bigger."

A tan Jeep pulled into the yard and parked in the shade of the madrona trees. Out of the corner of her eye, Katherine saw her grandson Sam Rutledge climb out.

"I fail to see the relevance of your remarks, Mr. Dougherty." With a lift of her cane, Katherine indicated the papers gripped in his hand. "You have been served with legal notice. Either you pay the full amount owed or you forfeit your vineyard. The choice is yours."

"Damn you," he cursed bitterly. "You think you got me beat, don't you? But you'll see. Before I let you get your hands on my place, I'll burn every inch of it."

"Do that," Sam said as he joined them. "It will save us from bringing in a bulldozer to clear it." To Katherine, he said, "I flew over his place last Saturday when I took the Cub up." The Cub was the antique, two-seat biplane Sam had restored to flying condition two years ago. "From the air, I could see he'd let the vineyard grow wild. It's nothing but a jungle of weeds, vines, and brush now."

"I couldn't help it," Dougherty protested quickly, and defensively. "My health hasn't been good lately."

"Go," Katherine ordered abruptly, treating Dougherty to an icy glare. "I am weary of your eternal grousing and I am too old to waste more of my precious time listening to you." She turned to Sam. "Take me to the house, Jonathon."

Inadvertently she called Sam by his father's name, and Sam didn't bother to correct her. He had been a boy of fourteen when his father died twenty-odd years ago. Ever since, Katherine would slip now and then and address him as Jonathon. Over the years, Sam had learned to ignore it.

He escorted Katherine to the Jeep and helped her into the passenger seat, then walked around to the driver's side. As he swung behind the wheel, he heard her sigh, a note of impatience in the sound.

"Thinking about Dougherty?" Sam ventured, throwing her a glance as he turned the wheel and steered the Jeep onto a tree-shaded drive. "I have the feeling he's going to cause some kind of trouble before this is over."

"Dougherty does not concern me. He can do nothing."

The crispness of her voice made it clear the subject was closed; there would be no further discussion. Her mind could shut doors like that, on things, feelings, or people. Just the way she'd shut his uncle Gilbert from her life, Sam recalled as the Jeep cruised up the narrow lane.

Sam had been away at boarding school at the time of the split. In the valley there had been a hundred versions of what happened, a hundred causes offered for it. Any of them could be true. His father had never discussed it with him, and Katherine certainly never spoke of it.

Through lawyers, she had bought out any interest that her son Gilbert had in the family business immediately following the breakup. Gil had used that money plus more from investors, bought some abandoned vineyard property not five miles from Rutledge Estate, built a monastic-style winery, dubbed it 'The Cloisters,' and successfully launched a wine of the same name, going into direct and open competition with his mother.

More than once, Sam had observed chance meetings between them at some wine function. A stranger would never suspect they were mother and son, let alone that they were estranged. No hostility or animosity was exhibited. Katherine treated him as she would any other vintner with whom she had a nodding acquaintance when she deigned to acknowledge him at all. But the rivalry was there. It was a secret to no one.

"I spoke with Emile this morning," Katherine said. Emile was, of course, Baron Emile Fougere, owner of Chateau Noir in France's famed Medoc region. "He will be attending the wine auction in New York next week. I have arranged to meet him there."

Her fingers closed around the cane's carved handle. Its presence was a constant reminder of her own mortality, something Katherine had been forced to acknowledge last year after she had been immobilized for two weeks from a fall that left her with a severely bruised hip and thigh.

In the time she had left, Katherine was determined to ensure the future of Rutledge Estate. As painful as it was to admit, she doubted that it would be secure in the hands of her grandson.

She cast an assessing glance his way. Sam had his father's strong muscles, his height and build. There was a coolness to his light brown eyes and a hardness to his features. And yet, he had never shown any pride in the wines that bore the name Rutledge Estate. And without pride, there was no passion; without passion, the wine became merely a product.

Under such circumstances, she had no choice but to look outside the family. This past spring she had contacted the current baron of Chateau Noir and proposed a business arrangement that would link the two families in a venture to make one great wine at Rutledge Estate.

An agreement in principle would have been reached by now if Gil hadn't entered the picture, proposing a similar agreement to the baron. He had done it to thwart and irritate her, Katherine was sure.

"Naturally you will accompany me to New York," she told Sam when he stopped the Jeep in front of the house.

"Naturally." Sam came around to the passenger side and assisted her from the Jeep.

Katherine turned to the house and paused, her gaze running over it. An imposing structure, it had been built twenty years before the end of the century by her late husband's grandfather. Modeled after the great chateaux in France, it stood two-and-a-half stories tall. Creeper vines crawled over its walls of old rose brick, softening their severe lines. Chimneys punctuated the steep slope of the slate roof and the windows were mullioned long and narrow with leaded-glass panes. It spoke of old money and deep roots.

The entry door of heavy Honduran mahogany swung open and the ever-vigilant, housekeeper, Mrs. Vargas, stepped out. Dressed in a starched black uniform, she wore her gray hair scraped back in a chignon.

"That man Dougherty was here earlier, demanding to see you," the housekeeper stated with a sniff, indicating what she thought of his demand. "He finally left after I informed him you weren't in."

Katherine merely nodded in response as Sam walked her to the marbled steps of the front entrance. "Have Han Li fix some tea and serve it on the terrace," she ordered, then glanced at Sam. "Will you be joining me?"

"No. I have some things to do." Unlike Katherine, Sam wasn't so quick to dismiss Len Dougherty.

Sober, the man was harmless enough. But drunk, he was known to turn violent, and that violence could be unleashed on property or people. Sam intended to make sure it wasn't Rutledge.

Traffic clogged downtown St. Helena. Its postcard-perfect Main Street was lined with turn-of-the-century buildings of stone and brick, a collection of quaint shops and trendy restaurants. A Toyota with Oregon plates pulled out from its parking space, directly into the path of Len Dougherty's Buick. Cursing, he slammed on the brakes and the horn.

"Damned tourists are thick as fruit flies," he muttered. "Think they own everything, just like the Rutledges."

That thought had the panic coming back, bringing with it the tinny taste of fear to his mouth and the desperate need for a drink.

With relief Dougherty spotted the Miller Beer sign in the window of a crumbling brick building. The faded lettering above the door identified the establishment as Ye Olde Tavern, but the locals who frequented the bar called it Big Eddie's.

Leaving his car parked in an empty space in front of the bar, Dougherty went inside. The air smelled of stale tobacco smoke and spilled drinks.

Big Eddie was behind the bar. He looked up when Dougherty walked in, then turned back to the television set mounted on the wall. There was a game show on. Big Eddie loved game shows.

Dougherty claimed his usual perch, the stool at the end of the bar. "I'll have a whiskey."

Big Eddie climbed off his stool, reached under the counter, and set a shot glass and a bottle of whiskey in front of Dougherty, then went back to his seat and the game show.

Dougherty bolted down the first shot in one swallow, feeling little of the burn. With a steadier hand, he filled the glass again. He gulped down half of it, then lowered the glass, the whiskey flowing down his throat like lava. The foreclosure notice he'd stuffed in his shirt pocket earlier poked him in the chest.

Thirty-five thousand dollars. It might as well be three hundred thousand for all the chance he had of getting his hands on that kind of money.

Damn her eyes, he thought, remembering Katherine Rutledge's steely gaze boring into him. He threw back the rest of his drink and topped the glass again, dragging it close to him.

He lost track of time sitting there, one hand clutching the bottle and the other around the glass. More of the regulars drifted in. Dougherty noticed his bottle was half empty about the same time he noticed the level of voices rising to compete with the television. Tom Brokaw's face was on the screen.

The legs of a barstool scraped the floor near him. He glanced over as a baggy-eyed, heavy-jowled Phipps, a reporter with the local paper, sat down beside him.

"Hey, Big Eddie," a man called from one of the tables. "A couple more beers over here."

"Yeah, yeah," Big Eddie grumbled.

Dougherty cast a sneering look over his shoulder at a garage mechanic in greasy coveralls, sitting with a painter in splotched whites. Common laborers all of them, he thought contemptuously. Punching time clocks, letting others tell them what to do. Not him. Nobody gave him orders; he was his own boss. Hell, he owned a vineyard.

He remembered the paper in his pocket and felt sick. He couldn't lose that land. It was all he had left. Without it, where would he live? What would he do?

He had to stop the Rutledges from stealing it. He had to find a way to get that money. But how? Where?

Nothing had gone right for him. Nothing. Not since Becky had died. His beautiful Rebecca. Everything had gone sour after he lost her.

Tasting that sourness again, Dougherty tossed back the whiskey in his glass. As he did, his glance fell on the television screen.

"In a scene reminiscent of the assassination attempt on President Reagan," Tom Brokaw was saying, "New York State Senator Dan Melcher was wounded tonight and a policeman shot. Kelly Douglas has more on this late story from New York."

A woman's image flashed on the screen. Night darkened the edges of the picture, held at bay by the full illumination of a hospital's emergency entrance in the background. She stood before it, a kind of restless energy about her strong and angular features that briefly pulled his attention.

He looked down when she started to speak. "Tom, State Senator Dan Melcher has been rushed into surgery suffering from at least one gunshot wound to the chest...."

That voice. His head came up fast. The low pitch of it, the smooth ring of authority in it. There could be no mistake. He knew it. He knew that voice as well as his own. It had to be her.

But that woman's face was no longer on the screen, its image replaced by that of a middle-aged man coming out of a black car flashing a smile and waving at the camera, ignoring the angry shouts from picketers outside. There was only her voice--that voice--talking over the images.

"Since his election to the state senate two years ago, Dan Melcher has been the center of controversy. His liberal stand on civil rights and pro-choice issues has created loud opposition. Tonight, that opposition took a violent turn."

The voice stopped as a woman broke from the sign-carrying crowd. "Murderer!" she shouted and started firing.

The ensuing flurry of action was difficult to follow. An aide grabbed the slumping senator; a policeman fell; bystanders scattered amidst shouts and screams of panic; someone grabbed the woman, and another policeman wrestled her to the ground. The scene was followed by a close-up of the unconscious senator, blood spreading across the white of his dress shirt. Then it cut to a shot of him being loaded into the ambulance.

It was back to the woman. "We have just received late word that the patrolman who was also shot has died of his injuries. The police have the assailant in custody. Her identity has not been released. Charges are pending." She paused a beat, then added, "Kelly Douglas, KNBC, New York."

Dougherty frowned. She didn't look the same. The coloring was right--the auburn hair, the dark green eyes. And that voice, he knew he wasn't wrong about it. She had changed a lot in ten years. She had even changed her name, taken her mother's. But her voice hadn't changed. It was her. It had to be.

He stared at the television, blind to the patriotic commercial for Maxwell House coffee flickering across the screen. Beside him, Phipps groused to Big Eddie, "They call that journalism. You couldn't write lousy copy like that and get away with it in the newspaper business."

Big Eddie shrugged his lack of interest. "A picture's worth a thousand words."

"Some picture," Phipps scoffed. "A pretty face in front of a camera pretending to be a reporter. Take it from me, everyone in television news is overrated and overpaid."

Len Dougherty half listened to the exhange. He was confused, his thoughts jumbled. He started to lift his glass, then abruptly shoved it away and pushed off his stool. He needed to think.