Page 8 of Corkscrew You
“Where do you source your vineyard crews?”
She tilts her head as if I’m trying to trick her.
“Javi organizes all that.”
“Harvey? Like the invisible rabbit?”
“No, with a J. As in Javier.”
“Right. And Javi is … where?”
“At Bartons,” she says. “He’s the concierge.”
I resist the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose.
“OK, so here’s the thing.” I say it slowly and distinctly. “All the information I’ve had to date is your accounts, and what JP has told me. Which was a basic overview of the vineyard’s size and capacity, but mainly about how great a winemaker your dad was, and the potential he saw in you.”
Her cheeks pinken with pleasure. “JP issucha great guy. How do you know him again?”
She has all the focus of a dog on a squirrel farm.
“Old friend of my father’s.” Moving right along. “So today, what I need to do is fill the gaps in my knowledge.”
Shelby nods, with an earnestness that’s both cute and exasperating.
“What I need fromyou,”—I have to spell this out—“are answers filled with details. Specific details. The kind you’d give someone who knows absolutely nothing about Flora Valley Wines. Or Verity, or Sonoma, or even Planet Earth. Do you get me?”
She screws up her face. “Kind of.”
Seriously? Is she messing with me?
“Let me give you an example. When you say Javi is the concierge at Bartons, the details I need are: what and where is Bartons, and why is a concierge also organizing vineyard workers?”
“Oh,right. Because Ted lets him. Ted’s very big on putting back into the community. And he has a lot of friends who want to come over and do seasonal work. They’re all from posh British families, so you wouldn’t expect them to be of any use, but they’ve been great. Only downside is they can sound like a pack of donkeys when they all get together.”
She’s definitely winding me up. Shehasto be.
Sure enough, she bursts out in a surprisingly rich laugh. I imagine giving her a dead arm, the Durant sibling revenge of choice.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist,” she says, grinning like an evil fairy.
“Funny. Do Ted and Javi actually exist?”
“Ted is the owner of Bartons, the hotel in Verity.” She’s all business now, the minx. “Heissome British noble and actuallydoeshave a seemingly endless supply of young people who want to come and work here. Javi has connections all over this part of the world. He’s been contracted to Flora Valley for, oh, must be five years now. Total godsend. He’s coming over later this afternoon, so I’ll introduce you.”
“OK. Great. Next questio—”
“Of course, when we were kids, we were all forced to work on the vineyard.”
Now she’s started spilling the beans, I can’t stop her.
“I was the only one who enjoyed it. Mostly. But we got that it saved on overheads. When my brothers and sisters left home, Dad had to bite the bullet. He knew they couldn’t be roped back in, not even with emotional bribery. So he asked Javi to up the quota of workers he recruited.”
She makes a face. “Took a bit of a financial hit that year.”
No need to say,and every year since. We both know it. I’ll move on.
“Who does your maintenance work for your equipment and so forth?”
