Free The Riesling Retribution by Ellen Crosby Page B

with an erratic and inept crew caused Quinn to cross the line into abuse as Chance suggested?
    If the men were too terrified to complain, Chance had just put another problem on my overfull plate, in addition to the tornado damage and Bobby’s investigation. Right now, this one crowded out the others.
    Sooner or later, I would have to confront Quinn. I got in the Mule and drove over to the parking lot. It was a conversation I dreaded.

CHAPTER 7
    Tyler, B.J., and a third man, who had to be Ray Vitale, made an incongruous-looking trio waiting for me in the parking lot. B.J. and Vitale looked as though they were posing for a daguerreotype, each with one arm across his breast and a soldier’s erect bearing. Both had longish hair—B.J.’s was the color of snow, Vitale’s chestnut brown—along with beards and muttonchop sideburns. Put them in their uniforms and you’d swear you were looking at Lee and Grant in the flesh, with their somber bearing and unsmiling faces.
    Tyler, by contrast, towered over the older men at six foot four, still possessing the gangly awkwardness of a kid newly adjusting to his height and long limbs. Unlike the others, he smiled and waved, his cherubic red-blond curls blowing in the light breeze as he pushed wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose with an index finger. His pale skin, which refused to tan, had turned strawberry colored from so much time working with the vines.
    I pulled up and idled the engine. Tyler waited for Vitale to climb into the backseat before hopping in behind him with a well-worn copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. B.J. got in front and introduced Vitale to me.
    I reached over the seat and held out my hand. Vitale pumped it once and released it. “How do you do, ma’am?”
    His voice was high-pitched and querulous. He gave me a cursory glance before settling back in his seat and focusing his attention on thescenery, ignoring me as though I were no longer of any consequence.
    I turned back to B.J. sitting next to me. He wore an I-told-you-he’s-eccentric expression and waggled his eyebrows, so I had to stifle a laugh.
    On the drive out to the field, B.J. kept up a one-sided explanation of the vineyard for Vitale’s benefit, talking about how successful we were as a small family business now run by the next generation. To hear B.J. tell it, I was on a par with the top women in the California wine dynasties. But by the time we reached the reenactment campsite, Ray Vitale’s monosyllabic comments had deflated BJ.’s well-intentioned patter and we all fell silent.
    I reached for my cane as the others climbed out of the Mule.
    “I don’t imbibe spirits, myself,” Vitale said in that reedy voice as I stepped down. “You know what the Bible says. ‘For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty.’ I’m glad to see that this site is well removed from your vineyard, Miss Montgomery. It’s not good to have temptation too near our young people. We do not allow any alcohol on the campground premises during the reenactment, you understand. I presume you will not be serving anything to those who come to watch, nor encouraging folks to visit your winery. We cannot have drunkenness marring these events.”
    His prissy choice of words was right out of another century, uncharitable and stinging. I was about to make a sharp retort when B.J. intervened.
    “What Ray means,” he said, in the soothing voice he used to comfort the bereaved, “is that it’s just common sense not to allow anyone to bring alcohol to the camp around guns and bayonets and the like.”
    “I certainly appreciate that,” I said. “But I’d just like to say, Mr. Vitale, that there’s a difference between drinking and drunkenness. As we all know, Jesus turned water into wine and even imbibed himself, since you bring up the Bible. I’m sure the adults who attend the reenactment can make their own decisions about whether they’d like to visit my vineyard or not.”
    B.J. placed a hand