Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (46 page)

The wine cellar had not changed since Crowell’s last visit except that the new wine was a little bit older, though still undrinkable, but he went through his usual paces anyway, inspecting every nook and corner of the winery. When his search turned up nothing illegal, he left the winery disappointed and more suspicious than before. Rosa was tempted to tell him that perhaps the reason he found nothing incriminating on their property was not because they hid it so well but because there was nothing to find, but she kept the observation to herself. She already did too much to challenge and provoke him. If she were
more submissive and meek and showed him the deference he believed he deserved, he might leave them alone, but Rosa could not bring herself to cower and scrape before a man she despised.

Finally he left. Rosa joined the boys in the garden and asked them to help her feed the dogs, glancing to the front door from time to time and waiting for Alegra to reappear. When she didn’t, Rosa brought the boys inside for a snack of cookies and prunes while she went to find her friend.

Alegra was in the baby’s room, sitting in the corner with her knees drawn up to her chest, staring straight ahead at nothing. “Alegra,” Rosa exclaimed, hurrying to her. “What’s the matter?”

“Is he gone?”

“Who? Agent Crowell?” Rosa tucked her skirt beneath her legs and sat down on the floor beside her. “Yes, he’s gone, off to torment some other law-abiding citizens. Alegra, please tell me what’s wrong. Are you ill?”

“No, I just—” Alegra swallowed hard and took a deep, shuddering breath. “I can’t get away from him. He comes into my house, he follows me here—” She wrapped her arms around her shoulders, shivering and bowing her head as if an icy wind buffeted her on all sides. “If I know he’s coming, I can prepare myself and it’s not as bad, but when I don’t expect to see him and suddenly he’s there—”

A cold, hard knot formed in the pit of Rosa’s stomach, and she had a terrible feeling that something was very, very wrong, something much more than simple dislike. “Alegra,” she said steadily, “what has Agent Crowell said to you? Has he threatened you?”

Mutely, Alegra lifted her head and threw Rosa a pleading, tearful look.

“You can tell me,” Rosa persisted gently, putting her arm around Alegra’s shoulders. “I’ve told you, he can’t arrest you if you’ve done nothing wrong. He’s not above the law.”

“He
is
the law,” Alegra cried. “He makes his own law.”

“No, Alegra, that’s not true.”

“It is. It is.” Tears streamed down Alegra’s face. “Don’t tell Paulo. Please. I did it for him, but it would kill him. I know it would. And then I would be all alone, and what would happen to the children?”

Heart pounding, Rosa held Alegra as she wept. “What did you do?” she asked as calmly as she could. “What is it that you don’t want Paulo to know?”

The story came tumbling out of her, splintered and broken. How Dwight Crowell had come to their vineyard shortly after his appointment to the northern California bureau more than a year before, demanding to see their sacramental wine permit. How he had invaded their winery to count and tally their barrels and casks. How he had shown up week after week, accusing the Del Benes of selling sacramental wine to speakeasies and hotels up and down the West Coast. How Paulo had threatened him with violence if he ever accused them again. How Crowell began appearing whenever Paulo was away from the vineyard, interrogating Alegra and demanding that she inform on her husband. Alegra’s bewildered, tearful insistence that she had nothing to divulge. Crowell’s certainty that she was lying, and his promise that if he could not find evidence against her husband, he would procure it by some other means, and no judge in the county would take the Del Benes’ word over his. How he swore he would throw Paulo in prison if she did not testify against him. He would have her deported to Italy and she would never see her husband and children again. When she
could not give him evidence of a crime, she desperately offered him money to leave them alone. Crowell seized her by the shoulders and shook her. He did not want her money. He could get money from any nervous bootlegger from Eureka to Santa Barbara. He wanted something else.

“He comes for me when he knows Paulo is away,” Alegra finished dully as Rosa listened, dumbfounded by horror. “I put Gino in his room with cookies and milk and toys and I tell him I’m taking a nap. He doesn’t take me in my marriage bed—a small mercy. He takes me to the stable, which he says is the most suitable place for a filthy whore like me.”

“
Dios mío
,” Rosa breathed, drawing Alegra into her embrace, holding her, rocking her gently as if she were Ana or Lupita. “Oh, Alegra.”

“Don’t tell Paulo,” Alegra begged in a barely audible whisper.

“We have to tell someone. This can’t go on.”

“No.” Alegra tore herself from Rosa’s arms and pressed herself farther into the corner. “Mr. Crowell will tell him it was my idea. He’ll claim we were lovers.”

“Paulo would never believe that. No one would believe it.”

“He’ll arrest Paulo and send me back to Italy.”

“That’s not in his power.”

“No? Then why does Dante Cacchione sit in prison even now?”

“Dante was a bootlegger. He broke the law. Paulo hasn’t and neither have you.”

“Crowell can make anyone look like a bootlegger,” Alegra cried. “The trunk of his car is full of bottles and casks and equipment he’s kept from raids. He showed it to me. All he has to do is tell a judge he found it on our property and we’re finished.
Don’t you see? No one would believe me. No one would believe Paulo, not even if his friend the bishop defended him. Dwight Crowell is the law.” Alegra enunciated the last five words clearly, her accent emphasizing her plight.

“There must be something we can do.”

“There is,” said Alegra bitterly, “and I’m doing it, God have mercy on me.”

Rosa felt searing, helpless rage churning within her. “No. Not anymore. You’ve got to get away from him. Do you have any family in California who could take you in for a while? Does Paulo?”

“My family is all back in Italy. Paulo—” Alegra hesitated. “Paulo has brothers and sisters in San Francisco and Sacramento, as well as here in Sonoma County.”

No place within Sonoma County was far enough away. “Can you take the children and stay with Paulo’s relatives in San Francisco or Sacramento for a little while?”

“But—” Alegra shook her head. “I can’t. The children have school and—and Paulo needs me—”

Rosa took her by the shoulders. “Paulo and the children need you to be safe. You must get away from this man. Either you take the children and get away, or we have to tell the police what he’s done.”

Alegra gasped and clutched at her. “We can’t. Please, Rose.”

“He can’t go on raping you at will!”

“But Paulo—it would kill him if he knew. I couldn’t bear it. How would you feel? Would you want Nils to know?”

Rosa inhaled deeply, imagining Lars’s anguish and rage. He would want to strangle Crowell with his bare hands. Eventually Paulo would have to know what Crowell had done, what his wife had suffered, but for now, what mattered most was getting
Alegra away from him, to keep her safe until they could figure out what to do.

Crowell had to be stopped.

Eventually, gently, Rosa persuaded Alegra to arrange to take Gino for an extended visit to her sister-in-law’s family in Sacramento. The older children would be fine at school during the day and at home with Paulo; Crowell always ignored the children. After that was decided, Rosa led Alegra, limp with exhaustion and relief, off to her own bedroom to rest. She slept the afternoon away while Rosa minded the boys. Later, when the girls came home from school, Rosa left the younger children in Marta’s care and drove Alegra and Gino home in the Del Benes’ car, while Lars, who knew only that Alegra was suffering from some sort of nervous exhaustion, followed in the Chevrolet.

They saw Alegra and Gino safely back to their own home, although Rosa doubted Alegra felt any sense of security and comfort there. Rosa could hardly meet Paulo’s eyes when she and Lars found him in the winery and told him only that his wife was not feeling well. Paulo ought to be told the truth, Rosa thought, with the same stomach-churning anger that had surged up in her before. He could protect his wife better if he knew the dangers she faced. But then an image flashed before her mind’s eye—Paulo with his hands clenched around Crowell’s throat, Paulo being hauled off to prison, Alegra collapsing in anguish—and she knew she must abide by Alegra’s wishes, for now.

Lars drove them home. Staring out the window and blinking back angry tears, Rosa clenched her teeth and balled up her skirt in her fists. She did not know what to do.

“Would you mind telling me what’s going on?” Lars asked.

Rosa told him, and as she had expected, his first instinct, like hers, was that they must report Crowell to the police. Rosa
reminded him that Alegra had agreed to leave town only on the condition that neither the police nor Paulo be informed, and getting her to safety had to be their first priority. The longer Lars mulled it over, the more he realized that they had to tread carefully. Of course they would have to go to the authorities before long, but who could be trusted, and who would instinctively take Crowell’s word over his accusers’ simply because of his position, they did not know—and they could not act until they did. Crowell was too powerful. If he struck back, he could ruin them all, picking off Alegra’s protectors until none remained.

Rosa hoped an idea would come to her as the burning of the prune barn had, but although she kneaded and pounded the problem in her thoughts, day after day, no inspiration came to her, only anger. So constantly was Crowell in her thoughts that it was a shock when, four days after Alegra’s confession, he showed up on her front porch as arrogant and self-righteous as ever, as if his soul were spotless and his conscience clear.

But of course, from his perspective, nothing had changed. He didn’t know that Rosa knew the truth.

“What do you want?” she asked, her voice shaking with anger. When he smiled slightly, her anger and disgust surged. She knew he interpreted the tremor as fear. “The usual tour?”

“No time for that today,” he said, with something like regret. “I just stopped by to show you something.” He reached into his breast pocket and removed a folded newspaper clipping.

There was only one clipping he would taunt and threaten her with, but why he had waited so long, she could only imagine. He held out the report of the raid on Cacchione Vineyards to her, but she didn’t take it. “I’ve seen it,” she said. “I was there.”

“So many people claim you as a relative,” he remarked, reading the caption beneath the photo. “It says here that you’re a member of the Cacchione family.”

“The reporter made a mistake, that’s all.”

“It’s a curious list of relatives, even if we don’t add your cousin Albert Lucerno, who has quite a rap sheet, as it turns out, and looks absolutely nothing like you.”

“We’re cousins by marriage, not blood.”

“Of course you are.” Crowell studied the photograph a moment before turning an icy smile upon her. “I wonder who else might claim you as kin if they saw this?”

Rosa felt a cold fist close around her heart. “What do you mean?”

“It should be easy to get the negative from the photographer, and as soon as I do, I’ll have copies of this picture sent to every police station, post office, and newspaper in California.” He folded the clipping, returned it to his breast pocket, and patted his coat with satisfaction. “Someone will recognize you and your husband, but I doubt any of those folks will be from Stavanger.”

“Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?” Rosa snapped, fighting off panic.

His lips curved in a slow, thin smile. “The look on your face right now tells me there’s no better use of my time than finding out whatever it is you and your husband are hiding.” He turned and descended the porch stairs. “See you soon, Sonoma Rose.”

Rosa slammed the door and fell back against it, heart pounding, breathless with fear and rage. Within weeks, days perhaps, someone from the Arboles Valley would come forward and identify her as the missing and presumed dead Rosa Barclay, and Lars as her childhood sweetheart who had informed
on the mob. The news would eventually find its way to John, even in prison, and he would know precisely where to find them. The Ventura County police would come for Rosa, and mob hit men for Lars.

She paced the length of the parlor, clenching her hands together, taking deep breaths to clear her churning thoughts. They would have to flee. They had no choice but to abandon their new home and run before their enemies caught up with them. But this time they would not be fleeing with two satchels full of cash and the reassurance that they were believed to be dead, drowned in the flash flood that had raced through the Salto Canyon or, in Lars’s case, murdered by John’s gangster friends. Every penny they owned had gone into purchasing Sonoma Rose Vineyards and Orchard. Crowell’s photos proved they were alive. And Rosa was five months pregnant.

An hour passed, two, but the clarity of thought Rosa desperately needed eluded her. She could not bear the thought of fleeing penniless into the night with enemies in hot pursuit. She could not tear the children from the safety and comfort of their vineyard home. She could not give birth in some rundown motel with only Lars’s help and no means to pay for a doctor or food or any of the essentials they needed. It was impossible, impossible, and yet what choice did they have?

A sudden knock on the door jolted her into alertness. Crowell, back so soon? Furious and afraid, she raced to the door and flung it open only to find Mr. Lucerno standing on the porch, hands in his pockets, looking out toward the winery.

Her first dizzying, sickening thought was that he had come for Lars, but somewhere in the back of her mind murmured a voice of reason—Crowell had not yet distributed the photos. He had not even had enough time to obtain the negatives. She
rested a hand on her rounded abdomen, took a deep breath, and said, “Mr. Lucerno, what brings you out our way?”