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For a moment they stared across the room at each other, trying to repair the damage their argument had caused, but it was impossible. “Excuse me,” Sheila said shakily, “but this is my decision.” She turned to the telephone and dialed the long-distance number to Spokane.
Noah turned on his heel, uttered a low oath, and headed down the hall toward Emily’s room. Women! Would he ever live to understand them?
Chapter Eleven
Though never mentioned again, the argument hung over Noah and Sheila like a dark. foreboding cloud. Noah had decided to spend another week at the winery to double-check Anthony Simmons’s conclusions concerning the fire. Sean was entrusted with Noah’s car and sent back to Seattle to pick up a couple of changes of clothes and some documents from the office of Wilder Investments. The boy was back at Cascade Valley as he had promised, the car intact.
For his part, Noah was a whirlwind. He decided it was in the best interests of Wilder Investments to reopen the winery, and he began a full-scale cleanup of the estate. It took some fast talking, but even the local sheriff’s department had reluctantly complied with his demands that the west wing be completely reconstructed. By late Friday afternoon D & M Construction, a subsidiary of Wilder Investments, had moved in, and the foreman was working with an architect to redesign the building.
Days at the winery were spent preparing for the autumn harvest; the nights making love. Noah didn’t mention Jeff again, and Sheila hoped that the harsh words shouted in the heat of anger would soon be forgotten.
Noah began a furious study of viticulture, with Sheila and Dave Jansen as his tutors. Dave was a young man whose serious, plain face was offset by laughing brown eyes. He took Noah on a tour of the vineyards and explained, endlessly, the reasons that wine production was suited for the valley.
“Thirty years ago, few people thought that western Washington could hold a candle to California for wine production,” he declared, proudly showing off a hillside covered with vinifera wine grapes.
“But you’re changing their minds, right?” Noah asked.
“You got it. Everybody thinks it rains all the time in Washington, or that it’s overcast, but that’s because they haven’t seen the eastern part of the state. Over here our summers are warm and dry with extremely low precipitation and cloud cover. This allows for a unique combination of moderate heat, high light intensity and long days that produce vinifera fruit with an excellent sugar-acid balance. All of our wines have a distinctive varietal character.”
“But what about the winters? A couple of years ago the late snow just about wiped out the crop.”
Dave nodded gravely. “That can happen,” he admitted. “We try to select our vineyard sights as close as possible to the Columbia River. We use southern slopes above the valley floor to further decrease the risk of low temperatures. Recently we’ve been planting a hardier grape, a vinifera that can stand colder temperatures.”
Noah’s gaze ran skeptically over the vineyards.
“Really, this is a great place to produce wine,” Dave stated firmly. “Look, Mr. Wilder—”
“Noah.”
Dave smiled and inclined his head. “I know that Sheila’s had a run of bad luck here, but for my money, Cascade Valley will produce the best wine in the country.”
“That’s a pretty broad statement.”
Dave pursed his lips and shook his balding head. “I don’t think so.” He held up his fingers to add emphasis to his point. “Eastern Washington has a good climate, the right amount of light, loamy soils, and is relatively free of pests and disease. I don’t think you can do better than that.”
Noah squatted and ran his fingers through the soil. “So what’s to prevent a competitor from building next to Cascade Valley?”
“Name familiarity and reputation,” Dave replied quickly.
“A reputation that has been tarnished over the last few years.”
“Yeah. I can’t deny that, much as I’d like to,” Dave conceded, opening the door to his pickup. “Want a lift back to the house? I’d like you to take a look at our latest investment, French oak barrels for aging instead of American white oak. They were Oliver’s idea. He used a few of them several years ago and the end result is our reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, which we hope to market later this year.
“I think I’ll walk back to the house,” Noah decided. “I’ll catch you tomorrow because I would like to see the reserve bottles.”
“All right. See you then.” The battered old pickup took off, leaving a plume of dust in its wake. Noah placed his hands, palms outward, in the back pockets of his jeans as he walked back to the house. He was lost in thought, considering all of the disasters that had struck Cascade Valley in the past few years. No one could be blamed for the volcanic eruption of Mount Saint Helens. The tonnage of ash and soot that had fallen on Cascade Valley and destroyed the harvest would have to be attributed to an act of God, or natural disaster. But the tampered bottles found in Montana were a different story. The contamination had been planned rather than accidental. Needle marks found in the corks of some of the damaged bottles proved that someone had to have been behind the sabotage.
Originally Noah had assumed that Oliver Lindstrom had executed the poisoning of the bottles; now he wasn’t so sure. The image painted by people he had spoken with told him that Oliver Lindstrom wasn’t the kind of man who would destroy all that he had worked so hard to build. If, as Sheila and the staff maintained, Cascade Valley Wines and the winery itself were Oliver Lindstrom’s lifeblood, why would he want to tarnish a reputation it had taken years to establish?
Noah squinted against the setting sun and kicked a stone out of the rutted dirt road. It just didn’t make sense. If a man needed money, he wouldn’t consciously taint his product, thereby causing an expensive recall and losing consumer trust Could Lindstrom really have been as desperate as Anthony Simmons wanted Noah to believe: desperate enough to take his own life in an arson attempt? The damned fire—always that damned fire—continued to plague Noah with doubts. As he walked up the final crest of the hill supporting the château, he stopped to look at the wreckage.
A disappearing sun cast red-gold rays over the charred timbers of the west wing. A yellow bulldozer was parked near the blackened building, waiting to raze the sagging skeleton. Noah ran his fingers through his hair as he studied the destruction. If only he didn’t care about Sheila, it would be much easier.
* * *
Sheila was tearing the old wallpaper off the walls in the dining room when the doorbell rang.
“Emily,” she called, pulling at an obstinate strip, “could you get that? Emily?” There was no immediate response, and Sheila remembered Emily mentioning something about going outside with Sean. Her ankle was much better, and she was feeling more than a little cooped up in the house.
