An elderly type in Neapolitan country garb greeted the Cappellanis; I gathered that he was the head of the Simontacci family. Other people joined them, and there was a lot of handshaking and vocal gaiety that struck me as being a little forced: everyone was aware of the recent events and trying to pretend that they weren’t. Nobody paid any attention to me.
I drifted over to one of the pepper trees and stood watching Alex. He had the sort of half-panicked look on his face a person gets when he wants desperately to be alone somewhere and finds himself instead in the middle of a crowd. In less than a minute he broke away from the group, hurried over to where the wine casks were, and got a large glass of red wine from the bartender. Then he went to one of the empty picnic benches and sat down and worked on the wine, not looking at anybody, withdrawing into himself. It was obvious he did not want company; I stayed where I was under the pepper tree.
More people arrived, among them Paul Rosten and Logan Dockstetter. Dockstetter was alone — I did not see any sign of Philip Brand — and his pinched face was gaunt-eyed and troubled. Lovers’ quarrel? Or was there something else on his mind? He spent a couple of minutes saying hello to Rosa and Leo and a few of the others, and then, like Alex, made for the bartender and the wine casks.
Time passed, and the party got louder and gayer. I did not enjoy it much. I wasn’t here for festive reasons, that was one thing; and another was that these people were all strangers — even the Cappellanis — and I did not belong to their way of life, pleasant as it might have been. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling, as if I were an interloper.
Alex had two more large glasses of wine and his face took on color, and he began to come out of himself a little; he spoke to some of the others, circulated in a hesitant way. But it was the kind of loosening that is sometimes double-edged: you need more and more alcohol to maintain it, and the more you drink the more likely your mood will eventually shift back into an even deeper depression. If he gets drunk, I thought, then what? Do I step in and handle him myself, like a keeper? Or do I let his mother take care of—
A voice at my elbow said, “Well — look who’s here.”
I blinked and turned my head, and it was Shelly.
She was dressed in a flared Mexican skirt and an opennecked white blouse with puffy sleeves, and she had her head cocked to one side, smiling at me in that bold way of hers. Dapples of sunlight made her auburn hair shine with red-gold highlights. Looking at her, I felt a faint stirring of sexual need; my attraction to Shelly Jackson seemed to be sharpening a little more each time I saw her.
She said, “I had a feeling you might be around, after that business with Alex in San Francisco yesterday.”
I smiled back at her. “You know about that, huh?”
“Word gets around. So do you — for somebody who isn’t working for the Cappellanis.”
“You might as well know,” I said. “I’m working for them now.”
“As a bodyguard, maybe?”
“Is that a lucky guess?”
“Educated guess.” She glanced over the crowd and settled her gaze on the wine casks. Alex was there again, waiting for a refill. His face had a damp, glazed look now that had nothing at all to do with the warmth of the afternoon. “Poor Alex,” she said. “He really doesn’t know how to cope with a crisis, does he.”
“It isn’t easy for anybody to cope with two attempts on his life.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t.” Her eyes turned sober. “Do the police have any clues yet?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to watch over Alex for the duration?”
“Maybe; that’s up to him and Mrs. Cappellani.”
“Well, it’ll be nice to have you around for a while.”
“Will it?”
“I think so.” The bold look again. “Weren’t you supposed to call me? It seems to me you said something about that at lunch the other day.”
“I did call you, as a matter of fact,” I said. “Friday night and yesterday morning.”
“I came up here Friday night. What did you have in mind?”
“Dinner, a show. Something like that.”
“Something like that,” she said. “Well, right now you can buy me a glass of wine.”
We walked over to the casks. Alex had drifted away again, but Dockstetter was there for a refill of his own. As we approached, Rosten came up from the opposite direction and jostled Dockstetter’s arm and made him spill some of his wine over the sleeve of his cashmere jacket; it looked like an accident, but Dockstetter wheeled around and gave him a withering glare.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped.
“Sorry,” Rosten said. “It was an accident.”
“Oh — was it?”
Rosten’s eyes narrowed. “You calling me a liar?”
For a moment there was the kind of belligerence in Dockstetter’s face that a man gets when he’s spoiling for a fight. Maybe Rosten was a specific target, or maybe it was something and somebody else bothering Dockstetter and the winemaker was a handy outlet. But then the belligerence faded, and his mouth turned petulant; he held up his stained coat sleeve.
“You’ve ruined this jacket,” he said. “Red wine won’t come out of material like this.”
“That’s too bad,” Rosten said.
“I ought to make you buy me a new one.”
“Yeah, sure.” Rosten turned away to the bartender.
Dockstetter glared at his back for a couple of seconds and then spun the other way, toward where Shelly and I were. He gave Shelly a passing glance, me a slightly longer one, but said nothing to either of us. He disappeared behind us into the crowd.
I said to Shelly, “What’s his problem?”
“Who knows? He had a fight with his boyfriend at the office Friday afternoon, God knows about what, and Brand hasn’t shown up here; maybe that’s it.” She shrugged. “You know how these fags are.”
No, I thought, I don’t. But I said only, “Has there been trouble between Rosten and Dockstetter in the past?”
“Not that I know of. But Brand and Rosten have had words.”
“What about?”
“Winery matters. Brand thinks Rosten is incompetent.”
“Is he?”
“Not according to Leo and Mrs. Cappellani.”
“Does Alex get along with Dockstetter and Brand?”
“He tolerates them and vice versa. You’re not thinking that it could be one of them who’s trying to kill him?”
“I’m not being paid to think anything,” I said, but that was a half-truth. I was thinking about the possibility, all right — not that it got me anywhere. It could be Dockstetter or Brand or both of them, but it could also be Rosten, or Leo, or Shelly herself, or anyone else Alex was acquainted with. Without positive evidence of some kind, it was nothing but a damned lottery.
We got glasses of white wine — Grey Riesling, Shelly said it was — and took them to one of the picnic benches. We talked for a time about nothing much, and I looked around periodically to keep tabs on Alex. He was still belting wine. When I saw him go back to the casks for yet another refill I excused myself from Shelly and went over to him.