A Twisted Vine of Secrets

Deadly Offer [by] Vicki Doudera

Midnight Ink; Woodbury, MN [2012]

978-0-7387-1980-1; $14.95

Darby Farr, a real estate broker in a small community near San Diego, is helping her neighbor Doug pack.  He has met a wonderful woman online – she lives in Hawaii, close to the beach, and is a surfer, with a small shop to keep her solvent.  Doug is smitten, even though he has not yet met her, and he is storing everything and getting ready to put his house on the market.  He figures this is his one big chance at a great love.

Meanwhile, in the northern part of the state, Selena Thompson, a lovely mid-fortyish woman, who owns a small vineyard in the Wine Country, has just expired mysteriously in her hot tub.  The next morning, her principal employee, her winemaker, Dan, discovers her dead body and reports her demise.  Her brothers are called.

Darby’s very capable assistant, whom she calls E.T., receives a phone call.  His little sister has died.  His younger brother Carlos is a basket case in San Francisco, and is waiting for his arrival to go to the winery where their sister died.  E.T. is completely overcome, in no condition to drive, and he has a complete a total fear of flying.  Obviously he needs help, and Darby finds herself driving him to San Francisco to pick up his brother, and then driving the two of them to the vineyard.

They are welcomed, with neighbors and other vineyard owners coming to pay their respects.  They learn that Selena had 3 viable bidders for the sale of her little winery.  One is the extremely large and important vineyard next, which can expand its land and use the little orchard of olive trees to great advantage.  Another is a yoga instructor, who wishes to make a yoga retreat out of the place – he also has had past dealings with Selena, which have a rather bad taste to them.  The third is a woman who has a very deep pocket backing her.  All claim that Selena had promised them the sale.  All claim that everything is aboveboard, but there are intense undercurrents in all of the dealings the brothers have with the valley’s inhabitants, which Darby, as an outsider, is able to observe. There are bribes and other chicanery. Dan, Selena’s winemaker, is also interested in the winery, but he cannot afford the price tag.

Everyone has only the best to say about Selena, yet someone sabotages the antifrost spraying system.  They rush out in the middle of the night to put it back together to save the crop, and they learn that there have been other acts of sabotage against the winery.  None has been too serious, and all were averted, but, obviously there are things going on that the newcomers do not understand.

Dan’s teenage daughter, in a ploy to get attention, and to get a souvenir of her friend Selena, takes the bottle of wine that was the last that Selena was drinking when she died, and Darby tastes the wine.  It tastes off.  Dan agrees.  They take the bottle to the police, who find out that one of the medicines that Selena was taking for her illness (which she had really kept under wraps) – a medication that many people in the valley take, was in the bottle, and that she was probably murdered. A final episode of sabotage unveils one of the enemies – the winemaker at the big family vineyard next door – he dies in the fire that he sets in one of the buildings.

Both Darby and the teenager do some sleuthing, unbeknownst to each other.  Several others also slink around, spying, dropping clues, and behaving badly.  Secrets abound in the valley, and it seems like many are being uncovered, distorted, and recalled.  And to pull Darby, and her drop-in boyfriend Miles, from the issues at the winery, are the issues around Doug’s trip to Hawaii.  They have listed his house, and there is some interest, but they cannot find him – he has disappeared.

When the patriarch of the family next door dies, things suddenly escalate.  Some players seem to tip their hands, but some family members are playing the parts of other family members.  A few red herrings crawl across the road and are nabbed, but it takes an extremely dangerous scene underground for all of the twisted vines to come together, almost cutting the lives of Darby and another player on her side short.

This is a very effective mystery, with lots of action in all directions and lots of suspense.  You really care about most of the characters, and it’s not always easy to see what the best course is to take for the good of the vineyard and the honoring of Selena’s life and her wishes, but it all works out in the end, order is restored, and the brothers and Darby, as well as her neighbor, all get back to what they are meant to do.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r



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This is my own book.