Plum Gone: A Sonoma Wine Country Cozy Mystery (Sonoma Wine Country Cozy Mysteries Book 2) (24 page)

Thursday morning Emma made her way east off of Highway 101 to Curt Randall’s plum ranch. The 1870’s Victorian farmhouse where Curt now lived alone with his housekeeper was sited at the end of a long dirt drive a mile from the main road. Emma noted that the once impressive yellow wood frame house with its white gingerbread trim looked particularly forlorn that day. Like a once festive party dress yellowed with age and careless wear. The paint was peeling. The front porch sagged. A few gangly rosebushes along the front yard fence bore no buds. The hydrangeas were colorless and dry.

Further up the drive, next to a pick up truck parked in front of the old two-story detached garage, Emma recognized Piers’ Porsche side by side with Steve’s old Subaru. She noted this with dismay. That comparison alone would put Steve in a bad mood.

Emma parked her Prius next to the Subaru. Then slamming her car door, she saw a limo kicking up dust as it careened up the drive.
Maria coming from the airport
, she thought to herself.
How on earth did Piers convince her to attend the mysterious meeting?

As Emma stood on the porch waiting for someone to answer the door, Maria Hidalgo-Muller climbed the front stairs accompanied by her daughter. She greeted Emma with the same chilly suspicion Emma had noted when they first met.

“Paz,” Maria introduced her daughter, “this is Ms. Corsi. The woman who stirred up all this….” The next word seemed to fail her.

Paz smiled back tentatively, apparently embarrassed by her mother’s tone. She was a blond, willowy, fair-faced woman who bore little resemblance to her mother.

“The woman who located you on the Internet,” Paz finished her mother’s thought with the nonchalance of a thirty-something for whom finding someone on the Internet was no big deal.

“And just in case you’re wondering why I came, Ms. Corsi,” Maria addressed Emma now, answering the question Emma had not asked, “Your son…” She squinted her eyes, “I’m right, aren’t I, the lawyer is your son?”

“Son-in-law,” Emma corrected her, feeling as though Professor Hidalgo-Muller had somehow accused her of giving birth to a weasel.

“Your son-in-law the lawyer,” Maria continued, “told me the meeting was about Cory. I felt I had to come. Paz kindly agreed to accompany me.” She glanced at her daughter who nodded. “To close that chapter, so to speak. Certainly not to start a new one,” she added. “Paz agrees it is important that I do that. My son refused.  Though why Curt Randall wants to involve us in whatever this is, I do not know. We want nothing more to do with
him
.”

Professor Hidalgo-Muller added the last statement with a kind of angry resignation. Emma didn’t need to respond, however. At that moment Piers opened the door.

“Ah, you’re all together,” he greeted them. “Curt and Steve are in the study. Come right in.” Turning to Maria he added, “We can get started immediately and not take up more of your time, Professor.”

Piers escorted them down a wide hall that ran the full length of the house. It functioned almost as a room, the front furnished with hooks and an umbrella stand, the back with a desk and some chairs. A tattered blue Hamadan runner occupied most of the floor.

Rooms opened along each side of the hall. Peeking through the open doors, Emma noted a dining room with a huge oak table, and a formal Victorian living room complete with tufted red velvet upholstered sofa and chairs. A kitchen with a huge Wedgewood stove could be seen through an open door at the far end of the hall.

Piers, however, ushered them through two open French doors into the same study where Cheng Bo’s arrest had occurred. As on that day, Curt sat behind his grandfather’s massive oak desk. Steve sat in a Windsor chair facing it. Four additional chairs had been pulled up on either side. Piers motioned the three new arrivals to sit down before taking the seat nearest to Curt.

After all the excitement a few days before, Emma couldn’t help wondering what new surprise the old man had in store. Everything about the room looked the same except, she noted, an 8 x 10 inch inlaid wooden box sitting in front of Curt on top of the desk. That, Emma knew, had not been there the day Cheng Bo was arrested. Cory’s knife lay next to it.

First Curt offered everyone tea or coffee from a silver service set up on a table in the corner of the room. There were pastries, too, Emma noted, from the Plaza Café. Everyone declined.

Then Curt leaned back in his chair. It was obvious from the start that he, not Piers, was running this meeting.  Staring directly at Maria, he spoke.

“A lot has happened over the past few days since we last met,” he began. “And I’ve done a lot of thinking. I’m an old man. I know I can’t change the past…”

“I’ll have to stop you there, Curt,” Maria Hidalgo-Muller interrupted him.

Emma particularly noted her use of the man’s first name, immediately establishing them on equal footing. No more “Mr. Randall” from now on.

“If you think I need anything,” Maria continued, “that I and my family have ever wanted anything from you, then you are mistaken. And I warn you,” she emphasized this by pointing her index finger directly at the old man, “if you offer me anything of any kind by way of trying to ‘change the past,’ all you will do is grossly offend me. So watch what you say!”

As she spoke, Curt gazed at the woman impassively. When she’d finished speaking he continued, undeterred by her warning. As though she’d said nothing at all.

“I’m an old man and I know I can’t change the past,” he repeated. “Or buy my way into heaven. But perhaps I can change the present and make it a little better for the people who…”

“Hold on, Mr. Randall.” This time it was Steve who interrupted him. “I can’t speak to what this has to do with Professor Hildalgo,” he glanced quickly at Maria.

“Hidalgo-Muller,” she cut in.

“Sorry, what this has to do with Professor Hidalgo-Muller,” Steve corrected himself. “But I, too, want to make something crystal clear before you begin.” He glanced at Piers. “As I have already told your attorney, nothing you do or say today is going to make me drop the lawsuit I intend to file. A lawsuit on behalf of employees whose basic rights you have denied.” He pointed at the inlaid box. “You can’t just throw money at us and make us go away. The issues are bigger than that. They’re not about money. They’re about shining a spotlight on inhumane practices going on right now at Randall Enterprises. A spotlight that will be visible all the way to Sacramento. To Washington. A spotlight that will change policies towards seasonal workers.”

Emma watched her son-in-law while Steve spoke. His eyes shot sideways to look at Curt. He opened his mouth once to cut in, but seemed to think better of that and closed it. Finally, when Steve finished, he began to speak. “Steve, you’re really out of….”

Curt Randall didn’t let Piers finish. He didn’t exactly interrupt him, Emma noted. He just talked over him, as though Piers wasn’t there. Like a bull unconsciously flicking a flea off his ear while standing his ground.

“I can make the present a little bit better for those who work for me,” he repeated as though no one had said a word. He stared down at the inlaid box sitting in front of him on the desk. The elk horn handled knife lay next to it. He picked it up and stared at it instead.

“First, before I forget. Here.” He extended the knife across the desk towards Maria. “This is yours. Take it. Cory wanted you to have it, so you’re not taking anything from me when I return this to you.”

Maria rose from her chair. She leaned forward, reached towards Curt, took the knife and sat back down.

Next, Curt stared at the box. He stared at it for a long time and his eyes began to swim with tears. Emma wondered if the man would be able to continue. The room was quiet. Finally he stood up and, with some difficulty, walked to the tea service in the corner of the room. He poured himself a cup and slowly returned to his seat, the teacup jiggling in the saucer held tightly in his shaking hand. Finally, he sat down and took a few sips of the tea which seemed to compose him.

“For a long time,” he began, “all I could see was the farm as it used to be. As it was when my father worked there. When I worked there. Sure. It was hard work. The living conditions were primitive. But we loved it. There was a romance to it. A kind of glory, if you will. And it was ours. When the summer was over, we came back north to Sonoma. To school and our comfortable lives…”

“I can’t listen to this.” Steve rose abruptly from his chair.

“Sit down, young man,” Curt ordered with a thrust of his forefinger. “You can listen and you will!”

Steve sat back down and blushed.

“I don’t say this to justify anything. I say it to explain. Yes. I was a horse with blinders on. Those were Cory’s words when we argued about how I was running the farms. ‘History,’ I told him. ‘This is the history of a family you are attacking. The history of our way of life.’ ‘Your version of history,’ I remember him shouting back. ‘Sometimes history blinds you, Dad. Don’t you see what’s happened? You should be ashamed of how your workers live!’” Curt closed his eyes. As though seeing it all again in his memory. “My own son said that to me. I still blame it on that danged university. A bunch of lefties like Chavez.”

Curt glanced at Maria again. “Well, you know what happened. We argued about the farm. We argued about you. In my mind they were one and the same.” Curt nodded sadly. “He tried to explain. But I wouldn’t listen. So he left.”

Curt tapped the inlaid box. “I never talked to him again. But his mother did. And he wrote to us. She read the letters and put them away, here. At first I didn’t because I was mad. And stubborn. Later, after Cory died, I
couldn’t
read them. All these years they’ve sat in this box in his mother’s closet where Amelia left them.”

Curt seemed to run out of breath. He stopped talking and opened the box.

The room had grown very quiet again. Emma studied her companions. Steve’s right leg was crossed over his left knee, his right foot jiggling, agitated and impatient. Maria sat with her arms folded across her chest, belligerent. Beside her, her daughter Paz glanced worriedly at her mother. Piers had closed his eyes; his jaw clenched like he was biting his tongue. Even Emma grew annoyed at the old man’s self-indulgence.
What
, she wondered,
do Cory’s old letters to his mother have to do with us?

“So what’s your point?” Steve finally said.

His words seemed to wake Curt out of a reverie.

“My point is,” Curt resumed. Again it was as if Steve had not spoken. “My point is this. Something you said, Professor, something you said about love finally gave me the courage to read my son’s letters. Thanks to you I realized it wasn’t too late…”

The old man broke off speaking and started to weep. Then he collected himself. “I realized it wasn’t too late to admit how much I loved him. I came back home from our visit and I read all of the letters. Every word. And it turns out, what he’d written to me and his mother was a blueprint. A fine, intelligent, honorable, loving blueprint of how to improve the farm. The farm he loved. The farm that, one day, he hoped to run. With you,” he nodded at Maria.

“Of course, that could never happen,” the old man continued. “But I realized that the blueprint, my son’s legacy – the legacy I’d mourned for most of my life – was right here.” He tapped the stack of letters. Then the old man nodded at Piers and smiled. “I showed them all to my lawyer over there. And he helped me figure out what to do. That is why you are all here.”

Emma looked at Maria. The annoyance in her eyes had dissolved into sorrow.

Steve’s expression, too, had shifted. From impatience to mistrust. He opened his mouth to speak but Piers waved him silent with a stroke of his forefinger across his neck.

“With Piers’ help and the Monroes,” Curt explained, “I’ve just concluded the sale of the plum ranch. To a nonprofit that will preserve old Luther Burbank’s plums. Under the terms of the sale, I will continue to live here, in the house, for the remainder of my life. As far as I understand these things,” he nodded again to Piers, “the proceeds will fund some kind of credit union offering low cost loans to all the employees working at Randall Enterprises.”

Curt Randall stopped talking. Emma looked around the room. The agitation was gone. The old man now had everyone’s complete attention.

“That’s not really my point, though. The point is that, thanks to Piers, Randall Enterprises, itself, has been put into a trust. I no longer have anything to do with it. Again, Piers can give you the details. But it is my wish that the Coachella farms be run according to the ideas that my son, Cory, explained here in his letters. As I understand it, the farm will be turned into a cooperative owned and managed by my employees in a way that specifically addresses the needs of all the workers it employs.”

Curt continued, nodding at Steve, “I want Randall Enterprises – or whatever the trust is named – to serve as a model of how a farm could be run cooperatively to make a fair profit and to treat its owner/employees fairly. Steve, I want you at the Free Legal Services Clinic to act as legal counsel for the trust. You’ve been a doggoned pain in my neck all these years, and I respect that. Sometimes you remind me a little bit of myself. Of course, the trust will pay your organization very well for your services, if you choose to take on this job.”