The Crush (Oregon Wine Country #1)(5)
“On top of a decade of tending grapes by moonlight after pulling eight-hour shifts busting drug dealers? Massive coronary, that’s how. Junie found him one morning lying right over there, where he’d gone out to graft rootstock the night before.” Sam pointed between long rows of stakes to where a flock of robins pecked at the thawing earth. Their chirps filled the resulting silence.
Neither Sam nor Manolo were strangers to death. Right now, Sam was probably reliving his own horrors from his time in Iraq. But, as for Manolo, he was obsessing over wayward sons and how they broke their fathers’ hearts.
“Maybe the brother’ll man up, once he matures a little.”
“Doubt it.” Sam pulled a blade of wild garlic and stuck it between his teeth. “Some say Storm got his mom’s good sense and Junie’s a dreamer like her old man.”
Some were probably right. “What about her mom?”
“She’s originally from down south. It’s a wonder Hart ever got her to move to Clarkston in the first place. She never really fit in.” Then Sam’s detail-obsessed nature asserted itself. “Check that. To be fair, she’s a surgeon. Could be she just never had the time to get in good with the locals.”
“A surgeon. Impressive.”
Sam gestured broadly. “You think you could raise two kids, put one through college, and subsidize all this on a cop’s salary? Everyone in Clarkston says it’s only a matter of time before Jennifer Jepson-Hart gets tired of throwing good money after bad and talks her daughter into moving back to civilization.”
“Sounds like Junie’s inherited some good genes.”
“What Junie’s trying to do takes more than good genes. Running a vineyard and a winery is like operating three businesses at once.”
“Growing grapes . . . making wine . . . what else?”
“Entertainment. Junie’s one of the most gifted winemakers in the valley. Hart Vineyards is starting to get noticed. But that’s not enough. People want to be entertained as part of the wine-buying experience. If she falls short anywhere, it’s there. I can’t seem to get that through her head. But then, speaking of gifted, you know about the seven intelligences.”
“Say again? I know what kind of structure works best on any given site and how to throw together a decent marinara. You’re the smart one. Enlighten me.”
“You just nailed it without even trying. Seven intelligences theory says the average guy has two or three things out of a possible seven in his wheelhouse.” He counted off on his fingers. “Math, verbal, spatial, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, kinesthetic.
“Take you, for example. You see a piece of ground and you instinctively know what kind of building will work best on it. That’s spatial intelligence. Me? Back in OCS when they gave me the aptitude test, I scored high in intrapersonal—knowing myself—and interpersonal—knowing others. On the other hand, I don’t know a noun from an adverb, and I have zero chance of being drafted by the Seahawks. Junie? She might have kick-ass winemaking chops, but it doesn’t automatically follow that she knows how to sell what she makes.”
Manolo nodded in assent. “That tasting room’s a disaster. Best thing that could happen would be to gut it and start over.”
“Hart didn’t see the point of a fancy tasting room, either. He invested the bulk of his hard-earned cash in the actual winemaking equipment. I suspect Junie’s still paying for those French oak barrels. Nothing’s lacking down there in the cellar. But as far as marketing, Junie’s got her work cut out for her. She’s strong, though. Strong and proud.”
The image of Junie’s late notices strewn across the tasting room floor popped into Manolo’s mind. But he made it a policy to steer clear of women’s personal business. Getting too close only made it harder to pull up stakes when the time came to leave.
He tipped back his head, inhaling the sharp tang of wood smoke and manure. Ahh, the smell of springtime in the country. That wasn’t what Hoboken smelled like. The fresh air cleared his head, bringing him back to less disconcerting problems. Problems that could be solved using inductive reasoning and logic.
“That’s some great pinot she’s got. You’re right, though. This property needs a major overhaul if she wants to turn it into a point of destination. For instance . . .” Manolo jabbed his bag of wine toward a slope just south of the tasting room. “Over there.” He backtracked several steps. “That grade is just begging to be terraced.” In an instant, the development crystallized in his imagination. “Maybe a pergola there, some tables there. Optimize the view while people are sampling the wine. Put them in the mood to buy.”
Sam followed him a few steps to humor him. “It’s not me you have to convince.”
But Manolo wasn’t listening. His head was exploding with ideas. He turned on his axis, pausing when the dove-gray siding and cheery yellow door of the main dwelling came back into view. “The house looks solid enough, except for that skeleton of two-by-fours on the north end. Is that an addition?”
“Junie hired some fly-by-night to start the side porch over a year ago, to be true to her dad’s original plan. The guy promised her the moon, stayed a couple weeks, then disappeared with her partial payment in his pocket.”
“That’s the kind of jerk that gives my profession a bad name. Not good for the frame lumber to be exposed that long, especially in this climate. The wood’s susceptible to mold.”