Apples For Vinegar Read online

Mollie crossed under Coca leash. Helen and Frank exchanged dogs to untangle the animals.

  “What do you want with a thing like that?” Helen asked.

  “I’m thinking of carving Karen’s family into it. The roots would be all gnarled and intertwined, and among them would be her great grandfather and grandfather and father and their wives, and Jerzy and their daughter.”

  “Haven’t I seen faces sculpted in a root ball before? They seemed, I don’t know, sort of tacky. A lot of slithering sea serpents and trolls peeking out from the root branches.”

  “Yes.” He sounded irritated. “And you’ve seen a lot of tacky oil paintings before. It’s the concept and what you do with it.”

  “I’m sorry.” And she was. She loved Frank’s art, but she feared he’d be compared to the schlock hacks who came to mind when someone mentioned figures carved into tree roots. Despite her sincere apology, her mind jumped to other obstacles. Frank often came up with unrealistic schemes. “Where will you keep something as large as a tree root? Your studio’s much too small.”

  “I thought of using the garage. We can park the cars outside for a while.”

  “And the Duddas agreed to this?”

  “Oh, yeah. They already thought I was going to do something like that when I asked for the family album. I guess I did too; I just didn’t know what form it would take. I certainly hadn’t considered a root sculpture. It’s perfect, though, don’t you think? The tree roots that grew in the land and the family that grew on the land.” His excitement was obvious. “I’m going over there tomorrow to sketch the whole family. I think I can capture my impressions, the emotions I’d want to convey in the carvings.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to need an assistant?”

  “I assumed I would.”

  ◆◆◆

  When they arrived, Helen carried the tripod and sketchpad from the car, in line with her role as assistant. She feared Jerzy would recognize that Frank, encumbered only by a single camera slung around his neck and a small box of pencils in one hand, was capable of carrying everything himself. She needn’t have worried. When Jerzy opened the door, he ignored her and grabbed Frank’s free hand with a hearty, “Morning.”

  “Morning,” Frank answered. Smiling at Karen and their daughter standing behind Jerzy, he repeated, “Morning.” Then half turning toward Helen, he added, “I brought my wife to help out.”

  Helen nodded but, with her hands full, didn’t try for handshakes.

  “I thought we could go up to check out the roots,” Jerzy said, “to see which one you want.”

  Helen almost blurted out not to leave her alone with Karen again. Frank seemed to understand the quick intake of breath she used to stifle the words, because he said, “Helen can take a few photos of the one we choose, so I can get started even before you deliver it.”

  Jerzy glanced at Helen. “I brought the best ones down to the end of the field. It’s an easy walk.”

  Karen stepped forward. “Let me take your things.”

  Unencumbered except for the camera that Frank handed to Helen, they set out in single file, Jerzy leading and Helen well behind. She could hear they were talking, but she couldn’t make out what was said. In truth, she wasn’t interested in whatever sales pitch Jerzy was throwing.

  It took just a few minutes to reach the remnants of an apple orchard, the front five rows reduced to a series of deep holes each with a root ball beside it. Helen joined the two men staring at the roots and threatened trees beyond.

  “What’re you planning to do with the rest of the apples?” Frank asked.

  “They’re gone. I’ll pull them out and bury the lot. Except the one you want, of course.” As he’d promised, Jerzy had lined up five root balls close to the edge of the drive. “I thought these were the best looking ones. What do you think?”

  Jerzy had made an effort to wash off the roots he’d chosen to display, although clumps of damp dirt still clung to the mess of lateral roots close to the trunk. In each case the taproot, the feature Helen assumed would best exemplify a single family’s lineage, had been broken off. “What happened to the ends of the roots?” she asked.

  Jerzy looked at her a moment before answering. “They’re old trees. The taproots go down twenty feet. I didn’t want to dig that deep, so I just yanked and pulled out as much as wanted to release.”

  “That’s okay,” Frank said. “I doubt anyone, not even a museum, would accept a twenty foot long sculpture.”

  Helen wasn’t so sure. She’d been to museums that displayed even larger sculptures. But maybe Frank had an idea about where his work might be shown.

  “Matter of fact,” Frank went on, “I think the one in the middle will work just fine.”

  Helen couldn’t see any structure within the mass of fine roots, but she trusted that Frank knew what he was doing. She stepped forward to take photos. She overheard the men discussing price, but she didn’t pay much attention.

  When they returned from the orchard, Karen said, “Oh good, you’re back. I made tea. Would you like some?”

  Frank glanced at Helen with a smile only she would notice. She briefly raised her eyelids in the closest to an eye-roll that she dared.

  “Thanks,” Frank said. “But we don’t want to take up too much of your day. It’d be a big help if I could get started sketching you both. Your son and daughter, too, if they’re around.”

  “Kyla’s in her room,” Karen said. “I think Ben’s up in the blueberry field.”

  “I’ll scare them up,” Jerzy said.

  “Do you want us all posing together?” Karen asked. “We could use it for our Christmas cards.”

  “It’d be better if I did each separately,” Frank explained. “For the details. We’ll set up in the dining room, if that’s okay. You can sit across from the windows. The light diffused through the plastic will be perfect.”

  “I take pictures while he draws,” Helen said. She’d never done it before, but it seemed a plausible enough reason for her to be called his assistant.

  Helen set up the tripod and camera on the table, then Frank asked Karen to come in, pointing to where she should sit. He closed the door to the living room and took his place across from her. When he told her to relax, every muscle in her face tensed more, her eyes squinted, her mouth pursed. Helen thought it was a lost cause, but Frank started to talk about nothing and everything. The weather. Her daughter. The color of her hair. In minutes she was back to the woman who’d greeted them earlier. Helen snapped a dozen photos, while Frank drew a quick sketch, then flip over the sheet to draw another, then another. Frank thanked Karen saying he had what he needed.

  Jerzy must have found the children because the daughter appeared next wearing overalls and a t-shirt. “My mom said to ask if I should change?”

  “You’re perfect the way you are,” Frank reassured her.

  She was unselfconscious in front of the camera and Frank’s intense gaze, but after three minutes she started to squirm. Helen challenged her to see which of them could sit still the longest. “The first one to move is a poopy head.” After a half-minute Helen’s chin started to itch. When she reached to scratch it, Kyla screamed, “You’re a poopy head!” with a torrent of giggles. Helen was certain the photos she’d taken during the outburst would be the best of the lot.

  Kyla was still repeating “poopy head’ and laughing when Jerzy came in. “Kyla, don’t be a pest,” he told her. “You know you shouldn’t call people names.”

  The girl slumped in her chair.

  “It’s my fault,” Helen offered. “We were playing a game.”

  Jerzy turned to Frank. “Are you done with her?”

  “I think we have enough.”

  “Then go see your mom,” Jerzy told his daughter, and took her place in the chair, striking a pose like a dead president on a postage stamp. Frank asked him how the spring crops were developing and what he planned for the summer. His face hardened when he told about his fight with Ben over the blueberries, but when t
hey somehow got talking about tractors, Jerzy’s face grew animated. He seemed disappointed when they were done and Frank asked him to send in Ben.

  The boy was as sullen as Helen had expected him to be. Frank sketched in silence for a while then said, “You were out working on the blueberries?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Your father says you two disagree about how they should be grown.”

  The boy sat forward. “They’re acid loving. You’re supposed to check the acid level and amend the soil and they should be planted in mounds. He just plopped them in freaking holes in the ground. I found all this info from UC Davis on line, but he says the ag schools are in bed with Monsanto; everything they recommend means more dollars for their sugar daddy.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think you should pay attention to science.”

  “Do you think you’ll be a farmer when you get older?”

  The boy sunk back into his chair. “No way. You work your ass off and get shit in return.”

  Helen had heard language like that and worse from children younger than Ben, but she was still surprised he would say it so unabashedly in front of strangers older than his parents. She’d hoped his obvious excitement about the blueberries meant he’d found a genuine interest, rather than merely another way to reject his father.

  “What do you want to be?” Frank asked.

  “Don’t know.”

  Soon after, Frank called to the living room, where Karen and Jerzy were waiting. When they came in, Jerzy asked, “You’re done already?" as if Frank was leaving without finishing the job.

  “Oh, yes. This and the photo album you so kindly lent me are all I need. And thank you for your time. You were all great.”

  “When will it be done?” Jerzy asked.

  “Can’t say yet. I have to think about it for a while. And contemplate the roots. They’ll tell me what the sculpture should look like. When do you think you can get it to me?”

  Jerzy promised delivery within a week. “I can pick up the photo album at the same time.”

  THIRTEEN

  Delyth worked every other Sunday with Tuesdays off. She called Foley’s office Monday morning on the off chance that Emily would be willing to meet the next day.

  When Delyth identified herself, Emily said, “I’m sorry. Keir isn’t here right now.”

  “Actually, it was you I wanted to talk to. I was hoping we could arrange a time to get together.”

  “I didn’t realize you were serious about interviewing me. What do you think I could possibly tell you?”

  “To be honest, your husband and I weren’t able to get too far. He was so strapped for time.”

  “And you thought his lowly secretary would have lots of time to spare?”

  This woman would have made a drab rose, but she had the thorns for the role. “Men are all about investments and the bottom line. Women can see…” Delyth stopped herself before she made matters worse. It didn’t help.

  “So, men are the practical ones, but women are all touchy-feely?”

  Delyth couldn’t admit the reason she wanted to interview her was because she believed her husband was involved in one and maybe two murders; that would result in a definite refusal. “No, no,” she answered. “I was going to say women have a broader perspective.”

  Emily laughed. “I’m just giving you a hard time. We’re having some work done on the house tomorrow, so I have to take the day off to let them in and make sure they do it right. We can meet there. About eleven?”

  ◆◆◆

  The next day Delyth showed up right on time. As she approached the Foleys’ place, an intricate bronze gate blocked the road just past the Duddas’ and Howard’s. To one side a sign announcing “guest parking” and a small lot of parallel spaces indicated that she was not meant to go farther. She parked next to a silver DeLorean, which she assumed was Keir’s. Was he home too?

  The path to the house followed the road beyond the gate then climbed on black, granite slabs above a cave protected by a similar bronze gate. Delyth assumed it led to an underground garage and, she speculated, an extensive wine cellar. The granite steps crossed over an artificial riverbed where no water had ever flowed, lined with cactus and cascading succulents. The entrance side of the house was the concave obverse of the semicircular building that could be seen from below—sleek, white, and mostly glass.

  Emily opened the front door seconds after Delyth rang the bell. “Oh. I was hoping you were the tile men.” She looked at her watch. “Right on time, I see. I wish I could say the same for tradesmen. They’re always late if they turn up at all.” Stepping back, she added, “Come in.”

  “I noticed Keir’s car in the parking area,” Delyth said. “Is he here.”

  “He had to fly to LA for a couple of days and didn’t want to leave it at the airport. So we switched. I can’t say I enjoy it that much.”

  They entered directly into what, Delyth was certain, Emily would call the great room. A wall-sized photo of rocks dominated one side. Three large sofas clustered beneath it, white leather and all curves mimicking the rocks on the wall and contrasting the linearity of the rest of the room. It was, Delyth thought, designed to make people apprehensive, like the waiting room of a sadistic dentist.

  “You have a beautiful home,” she said. “Very dramatic.”

  “Would you like a tour?”

  “Please,” Delyth said with more enthusiasm than she felt.

  The house had fewer rooms than Delyth expected. The private spaces, as Emily called the bedrooms and TV room, were as stark as the great room, relieved by a splotch of color in a spread, a throw, the towels. The larger of the two master closets contained all men’s clothes, the shirts arranged not just by color but by hue, like an obsessive rainbow.

  “Keir is a very neat man,” Delyth commented.

  “I do all that for him.” Emily touched a few of the shirts at the violet end of the spectrum. “That’s how I won him over. We were living in Hermosa Beach, you know, living the surf life even though he was running a business at the same time. He had his pick of women. I spent the night at his place and after he went to work I organized his closet. I didn’t mean anything by it. I see chaos and I get the urge to straighten it out. Anyway, that did it.”

  The story felt too personal to bring up to a stranger and to a reporter at that. All Delyth could think of saying was, “I’m sure you’re a great help, not just here but at work.”

  “That’s what he tells me.”

  In the master bath, Emily commented, “Here’s what the workmen are supposed to fix today.”

  “What’s that?” Delyth asked because she didn’t see anything broken.

  “We just had the granite installed in the shower. The slabs were supposed to be bookmatched but, as you can see, they’re off.”

  The stone had brown, amber and cream swirls that radiated from the center of the shower wall in a vertigo-inducing, inkblot pattern. Except where they joined, the slabs were two inches off. “Isn’t that just natural variation?” Delyth asked. “I mean, from stone to stone.”

  “Bookmatched is meant to be matched. That’s the whole idea.”

  “It still looks beautiful. Very dramatic.” Delyth had to look away before her stomach rebelled against the drama.

  “Thank you. But we insisted they fix it.”

  “Can they move the slabs once they’re installed?”

  “Oh, no,” Emily scoffed. “It has to be completely redone. If they ever get here.” She sighed then pointed the way down the hall.

  When she arrived, Delyth hadn’t noticed the narrower space three steps down from the great room. A wall of windows looked out across an infinity pool. Five concrete chaises shaped like lazy, overturned ess-curves lined the near side of the pool. Delyth couldn’t believe anyone would lie on something that looked so uncomfortable. Beyond the pool the view looked over the Duddas’ property. From above, the apple blossoms appeared more advanced than when Delyth drove under
the trees on her way here. “Beautiful,” she commented to Emily, and this time she meant it. “But everything’s so early this year.”

  “Global warming. The harvest was three weeks early last year.”

  “Well, at least the blossoms are beautiful.”

  “A waste of valuable property, if you ask me. What you see below you will be the new Napa. As it gets hotter, Napa won’t be able to produce good wines. Smart money is already trying to gobble up land in this county.”

  “Really? There’re so many vineyards already, I’d think all the good land is taken already.”

  “You have to think fifteen, twenty years down the road. Keir says we’re sitting on a prime location for the future of wine.”

  Delyth had read articles about the effects of global warming on grapes, but she hadn’t heard or thought about the possibility that speculators would already be buying up land in anticipation of those changes. It could be adding pressure on small farmers. It could be the hook she’d been looking for. She'd come about the murder, but that didn't mean she couldn't leave with the beginnings of a feature article about agriculture. “Are you saying Napa is going to be too hot to grow grapes?”

  “They’ll still grow, but the wine won’t be as good.”

  “How soon is that going to happen?”

  “Depends, of course. But by the time people are confronted with the reality, the big corporations will have bought up all the good land, especially nearer to the coast. We’re inland, but a break in the mountains west of here allows the ocean air to flow in. Our neighbors down there”—she nodded to the view below—“don’t know they’re sitting on a potential goldmine.”

  The doorbell rang or, more accurately, gonged. The sound filled the house and reverberated against the windows.

  “That must be the stone man,” Emily said. “I’m sorry. I really have to deal with him. I thought he’d get here before you arrived. Can we continue later? Maybe another day this week?”

  Delyth was glad of the interruption. She needed time to do some research about climate change and wine before she could know what questions to ask. She followed Emily to the door, negotiated through the confusion of workmen coming in and Emily’s reprimand for their being late, and down the granite steps to her car. As she drove away, she wondered if Howard, Suzanne or the Duddas were aware of the supposed bonanza their land might yield. Residential property prices in the area were already outrageously high. She doubted anyone would pay that premium to turn the land into vineyards. And, the future Emily was talking about was too distant for most people to count on. Still, it could be an added motive for murder.