you; I won’t do that!” Vincent didn’t realize he’d shouted.
Joubert, a normally cheerful old man looked infinitely disgusted. Lupita the cook was close to tears.
He was very gentle when he answered. “You will never have to do that here, Vincent, never. We would never permit that sort of thing.”
“If I stay I will work, I will work harder than two men, if you let me stay. I promise and I will never break my promise.”
“All right, Vincent, I accept your word. It is the deal, yes?”
“Thank you...”
“My name is Etienne Joubert, you will call me Monsieur Joubert, and this is, Lupita. She is my housekeeper and cook and everything else that I cannot do. You shall call her Senora Rivera because that is polite. Here we will always be polite...even when we are angry, after all, we are just people.”
For the next year Vincent slept in a tack room behind the great barn where the wine was pressed. Joubert paid him a small wage and saw that he was well clothed and well fed. Vincent kept his word and worked far longer and harder than the old man would have demanded. Always in his eyes there was fear, not of Joubert, but that for some reason the old man would ask him to leave. Anxiety had become a way of life and it was not easy to shed.
He talked only when spoken to and then only the bare minimum needed to understand what was needed or wanted of him. He never talked about the past, where he’d been, how he ended up in Joubert’s vineyard. And the dreams were always there, as relentless as a cancer that never quite kills.
The old man made a few attempts to get him to talk, but seeing the way of it didn’t press. Lupita would have mothered him as she had affection to spare, but he would not permit it so she waited and fed him more than he needed, and talked to him of inconsequential things, normal things in the hope hearing them would make him normal. She had no way of knowing that no part of his life had ever been normal.
At the end of the first year Vincent had reached a point where he would occasionally smile at some of Joubert’s comments, which were colorful and hopelessly French.
That Christmas he gave the boy three glasses of wine and patiently got him to talk and he finally did. Afterward the old man wished that he hadn’t asked, but at least he understood some of what drove Vincent to act the way he did. Who can resist a mystery?
The next two years were better than the first. Vincent was his shadow. He never let the old man out of his sight. And he learned the wine business from a master vintner.
When Vincent was fifteen Joubert got him new papers, a new birth certificate and a social security card. The birth date was wrong. When Joubert asked Vincent how old he was, he told the old man he was seventeen. And the last year, which should have been perfect, was ruined in December. Joubert, seventy-seven years old, died without warning of a heart attack in his bed.
Vincent was so stunned it was weeks before he could think to act on his own. Lupita stayed on and looked after him. Her family came to run the winery full time instead of during the picking season. Before Vincent could learn that he had inherited a half share in the winery he left without saying good bye. He stayed in Sacramento a week and joined the army. He was sixteen years old though his birth certificate said eighteen.
He was alone again and the army was an easy place to hide.
Chapter 9
Teresa drove up Sunland Boulevard slowly, checking the numbers on the mail boxes. She spotted the box by the metal gate and pulled in quickly.
She had dressed with as much care as when she went to visit her mother, then she took everything off and put on her uniform, careful not to examine her motives.
A speaker with a buzzer beneath had been mounted on a post near the gate. The gate was closed and she couldn’t see a house through the iron bars, only fruit trees, flowers and fields of golden buffalo grass. Something wasn’t right. Why did the place seem abandoned?
He probably isn’t home, she thought. I should just forget the whole thing.
She sat in the car for ten minutes trying to get up courage, to make a decision.
Finally Teresa got out of the car, walked around to the post and looked at the buzzer. Indecision made her angry. She jabbed the buzzer one, two, three times angrily.
It was a long count of ten before anyone answered. Then a tinny voice. “Who is it?”
“Sergeant Keely, Burbank Police Department.”
“What do you want?”
There it was. What did she want? She really didn’t know. “ The Peersons,” she blurted it out.
The silence went on for a long time. Then a metallic snap and the gate began to roll back. Teresa got back in the car and drove through the gate. The road onto the property was gravel, well kept. Teresa felt her heart beat faster.
At the top of the first hill she stopped and looked toward the house on the hill beyond. “Jesus! Will you look at that!”
She drove on and parked in an area to one side of the house. The entry way was tucked in between two of the wings radiating out from the central tower.
Teresa didn’t look for the bell. She knocked and waited. Vincent opened the door and looked at her without expression or curiosity.
He dressed neatly in dark slacks, a soft mouse-colored shirt with wide collar open at the neck; black curly hair visible at the top of his shirt. Teresa wasn’t aware of her hands curling reflexively, as if wanting to touch.
He turned and walked into the house without looking back. Teresa followed. Vincent walked across a wide entry space into the atrium. She looked up toward the roof three stories above, then around the room. The sun cast beautiful shadows on the walls and small pool.
A massive, pier glass mirror on the wall reflected the shifting light from the skylight and the small pool. On another wall was a fine copy of Renoir’s Rocky Crags at L’Estaque/Rochers a la L’Estaque. There were other paintings, all impressionist, more landscapes and a few still lifes. None of the paintings contained people.
What’s wrong with all this? Teresa wondered.
To one side a long sectional sofa in pale orange faced a low glass-topped table.
“Will you sit, please?” A deep voice that resonated around the room. “Please excuse me, I’ll be back in a moment.” Without waiting for a reply he left the room.
He sounds like he learned his manners from a book, she thought.
He came back in a moment with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She noted without saying anything that it was the same kind she drank. He put the glasses on the table in front of her. He started to ask something, changed his mind and poured.
Teresa wasn’t supposed to drink on duty, but then she wasn’t really on duty. The uniform made it okay to be where she shouldn’t be.
He stood well away from her holding his glass.
“Is this official?”
She
