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“And are they going to grow it?”
    â€œHeaven forbid! Freddie apologized to Adam—for what, I don’t know—and we drank the Tokay every night after dinner, and Freddie gave a bottle to Candido as a peace offering—you know, that wretched business with Freddie and Candido’s daughter—and Candido, who never saw a bottle of wine at a thousand dollars a case, won’t open it but is saving it for his daughter’s wedding. Adam, as a gesture toward Freddie—you know, Barbara, Adam is a very sweet man, and I think his anger at Freddie was more because of the way Freddie treated Carla than about the Tokay—and anyway Adam went to the university and consulted Professor Hermez, the dean of the vintner school, who agreed with him that only the soil around the town of Tokay in Hungary could produce the wine, but pleaded for a handful of the seed for their experimental garden—which Freddie provided—so everything is healed and the professor came to dinner and drank two glasses of the Tokay and declared it one of the great privileges of his life. So there you are.”
    Eloise was far more intelligent and complex than people gave her credit for, and Barbara didn’t know whether she had formulated her story deliberately or not, but it caught Barbara up in the life of Highgate, which was stocked well with her memories, and she said yes, she would come, she’d love to come.
    â€œAnd you’ll be there in time for dinner—please, Barbara.”
    â€œYes, I can be there in time for dinner.”
    â€œAnd you’re all right now—enough to drive alone?”
    â€œI’m all right.”
    â€œAnd one other thing. Freddie bought one of those new facsimile machines, the first one in the Valley, so if you decide to stay a while, you can send in your column—‘faxing,’ they call it.”
    Smiling sadly, Barbara shook her head. “There is no column, Ellie. The first thing that wretched wife of Carson’s did this morning was to call the paper and tell them that my column and my job were over. She must have called from the beach house the moment she heard that Carson was dead.”
    â€œNo! I can’t believe that.”
    So much had happened. It was only the day before that she’d had lunch with Dianne Feinstein at the Redwood Club; it felt like weeks ago. “Dianne Feinstein has that handgun ownership bill coming up for a vote day after tomorrow. She asked me to write a column for the paper, and I called Carson. He was so pleased with the idea that he asked me to make it a feature story. I sat up half the night with it—the last time I spoke to him.”
    â€œPoor dear, I’m sorry, so very sorry.”
    H IGHGATE WAS MORE THAN A NAME on red wine that was recognized and appreciated the world over; it was saluted as the best Cabernet Sauvignon produced in California, by virtue of twenty-two awards; and to an extent it had made the Napa Valley famous. The winery was still totally a family business, presided over by Adam Levy, Eloise’s husband, and by Frederick, Eloise’s son by her first marriage, to Thomas Lavette, Barbara’s brother. Adam, who had just turned sixty, had taken over his father’s role as the patriarchal head of the winery, while the merchandising was in the hands of Frederick, now forty.
    Dinner was served at eight-thirty, in the great kitchen–dining room of the big stone house that was the central feature of the winery. The kitchen–dining room measured twenty-two by forty feet, with one end open, and in the Mexican style the walls were covered with blue tile. The open end of the room had heavy drapes of coarse wool, handwoven in Mexico, but on this balmy June night they were drawn back. The whole opposite end of the room was given to a great iron wood-stove, half of which had been converted by Clair to natural gas. In the center of the outside wall of the room, there was a