Aaron Elkins: Dying on the Vine

Other titles by Aaron Elkins

Gideon Oliver Novels

DYING ON THE VINE*

SKULL DUGGERY*

UNEASY RELATIONS*

LITTLE TINY TEETH*

UNNATURAL SELECTION*

WHERE THERE’S A WILL*

GOOD BLOOD*

SKELETON DANCE

TWENTY BLUE DEVILS

DEAD MEN’S HEARTS

MAKE NO BONES

ICY CLUTCHES

CURSES!

OLD BONES*

MURDER IN THE QUEEN’S ARMES*

THE DARK PLACE*

FELLOWSHIP OF FEAR*

Chris Norgren Novels

OLD SCORES

A GLANCING LIGHT

DECEPTIVE CLARITY

Lee Ofsted Novels (with Charlotte Elkins)

ON THE FRINGE

WHERE HAVE ALL THE BIRDIES GONE?

NASTY BREAKS

ROTTEN LIES

A WICKED SLICE

Thrillers

TURNCOAT

LOOT

THE WORST THING

*Available from Berkley Prime Crime

DYING ON

THE VINE

AARON ELKINS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, it took a number of people to help me over the rough spots and keep me out of trouble in Dying on the Vine, and it’s a pleasure to express my appreciation to them.

Capitano Roccangelo Tritto and Luogotenente Roberto Conforti treated me most cordially at Carabinieri headquarters in Florence and took time to answer my questions there. For many months afterward, Luogotenente Conforti patiently continued to answer them by e-mail.

Also demonstrating commendable patience were my Italian friends Vincenzo Panza, Alberto Venanzetti, and University of Ottawa Professor Cristina Perissinotto, who uncomplainingly answered every one of the many questions I posted to them on Italian culture, language, and mores. I apologize to them for bending a few things in the interest of storytelling.

As usual, J. Stanley Rhine, professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico, was my go-to person on matters anthropological.

Dr. David L. Black, clinical assistant professor in pathology, microbiology, and immunology at Vanderbilt University and president of Aegis Sciences, was extremely helpful in the area of forensic toxicology, even going so far as to plan a murder with me (and solve it as well).

And my thanks to Martin and Ryan Johnson, proprietors of the Ruby Magdalena Vineyards in Zillah, Washington, for their hospitality and friendship during an early research trip to the Yakima Valley wine country. I learned a lot from Marty and had fun doing it.

ONE

IThad long been the unvarying custom of Pietro Cubbiddu, following that of his father back in Sardinia, to take a mese sabatico , a solitary, monthlong sabbatical each fall, at the conclusion of the arduous September grape crush. In recent years, on the advice of his physician, he had begun taking it at the beginning of the month instead, to escape the stress that went along with the harvesting and crushing. During this time he rested, he thought deep thoughts, and he pondered plans and decisions for the ensuing year. That no other major winemaker in Tuscany did likewise was of no concern to him. Pietro Vittorio Teodoro Guglielmo Cubbiddu was every inch (all sixty-four of them) a patriarch: of his family, of the Villa Antica winery, and—although many would argue the point—of the winemaking fraternity of the Val d’Arno, the Arno River valley between Florence and Arezzo.

As large as Villa Antica was today—the fourth largest of the valley’s seventy-plus wineries—it was still very much a family affair, but with Pietro himself firmly at the helm. And Pietro’s every act was guided by the wise old adages of his forebears, very much including Quando il gatto non c’è, i topi ballano. When the cat’s away, the mice will dance . Thus, it was also his custom to gather his three sons before he left on his sabbatical, to issue detailed instructions for running the business in his absence, to resolve differences with Solomon-like decrees, and to deal with issues that might arise while he was gone. For the last several years he had found it helpful to have Severo Quadrelli, his lawyer, confidante, and oldest friend, as part of this group as well.

It was for this reason that Quadrelli, along with Pietro’s offspring, Franco, Luca, and Niccolò, had been gathered with him for the last hour around one of the tables on the porticoed, vine-shaded back terrace of the ancient villa, originally a fifteenth-century convent, where they munched almond biscotti and sipped from tiny, thick-walled cups of tooth-dissolving espresso, both of them made by the housekeeper according to Pietro’s exacting specifications.

The padrone set his cup down in its mini-saucer with a clack that would have broken a lesser vessel. “Okay. So. What else we got to talk about?” His gaze went around the table and settled on his old friend Quadrelli. “I can see you got something on your mind, Seve. Spit it out.”

“Well, yes, I do, as a matter of fact,” said the lawyer after one of his lengthy, harrumphing throat-clearings. “About this Humboldt matter. Don’t you think we ought to tell them something before you run off and disappear into casus incommunicado ?” The use of Latin—frequently rather suspect Latin—was also typical of signor Quadrelli.

Pietro glared at him. “No! What for we got to tell them something?”

He had grown up in the mountains of Barbagia, the remote and primitive interior of Sardinia, where the dominant language was still Sardu, rather than Italian. Indeed, he had spoken virtually no Italian until he came to mainland Italy (“Europe,” as he called it) as a married man in his thirties. And in the two decades since, he had never lost the thick Sardu accent or the brusque speech constructions that sounded so coarse to mainland Italian ears. Whether he still spoke this way out of shrewd business calculation ( “Ey, signore, I’m just a dumb paisano right off the boat, what do I know?” ) or because he couldn’t help it or simply because he liked talking that way, was a question that even his family had never resolved to its satisfaction.

“Well, you see, Pietro,” Quadrelli said, lifting a placating hand, “the thing is, I don’t know how much longer we can put them off. There are a great many other wineries they could go to, you know.”

Pietro’s round, balding head came up. His response, delivered with flashing eye and a whack of his hand on the table, was like the snap of a whip. “But only one Villa Antica!” This was followed by a bark of laughter: Ha-ha, I’ve got you there, my friend!

The matter at hand was an offer from the giant Humboldt-Schlager Brewing Company to acquire Villa Antica. The Dutch-American beer conglomerate was eager to get its foot into the premium-wine market, and it thought that Villa Antica would be the perfect entry. Last week they had upped their offer from an already stunning €3 million to a staggering €5.5 million, more than enough for Pietro to move back at last to his beloved Sardinia, where he would be able to retire in great luxury, far from his old enemies in the mountains, to the swank Costa Smeralda, where he’d live on the beautiful coast, right in there with the opera singers and rock stars. Maybe with his wife, Nola, at his side. Maybe not. What to do about Nola would be one of the many things that would occupy his mind over this next month.

“Of course, Pietro, that goes without saying,” Severo was saying. “I’m merely—”

“They don’t want to wait, they’re in such a big hurry, let them go somewheres else.” Then, as a muttered afterthought: “They don’t like it, they can go to hell.”