Plum Gone: A Sonoma Wine Country Cozy Mystery (Sonoma Wine Country Cozy Mysteries Book 2) Read Free

whenever family was concerned, this time she was sure Piers was not calling about her grandson. Piers’ curt text conveyed annoyance not angst over an injured or ailing child. Besides, if the message was about Harry, she knew he’d have called, not texted.
    In fact, as Emma had explained to Jack, she was pretty sure she knew exactly why Piers was texting. She was also pretty sure she didn’t want to talk about it. One of Piers’ biggest clients, Curt Randall, an ornery old reclusive widower who’d lost his only son in the Viet Nam War, was selling a vast parcel of land between Blissburg and Cloverdale. Over five hundred acres of plum trees that once had been a mainstay of Blissburg’s economy. Randall also owned thousands of acres of farmland down south, near Coachella. But this parcel was special. Randall claimed that his distant relative by marriage, the famed Santa Rosa horticulturalist, Luther Burbank, had planted the plum trees himself over a hundred years before.
    Now, at the bitter old age of eighty-eight, Curt Randall, left by his son’s untimely death without an heir, was finally selling the Sonoma property. All five hundred plus acres of it. To a Chinese investor who planned to convert the plum trees to vineyards – a new-to-California variety of grapes – for wine to be marketed in China. Piers was handling the deal.
    The exact terms of the sale were secret. The Chinese demanded it and Piers intended to keep it that way. But the rumor around Blissburg was that, if the deal went through, by the following spring all the prune trees would be gone and the acres of rolling hills would be planted with a cheap new Chinese variety of grapes. Now even Sonoma wine would be “Made in China.”
    Needless to say, the sale was controversial. All the more reason for Piers to keep its provisions secret. Many of Blissburg’s older natives – the few that were left – remembered when plums, or more accurately prunes, got the residents of Blissburg through hard times. Most of them working as prune pickers and packers shipping the famed Blissburg plums all over the world.
    Emma’s eyes drifted across the street to Jack then back to her phone. She reluctantly hit the call return button. Sure that her son-in-law’s concern was about the Gomez lawsuit that Steve Zimmer, her boss at the free legal clinic, had filed on behalf of a Mexican worker at one of Randall’s Coachella farms. The complaint accused her son-in-law’s client of providing his employee with substandard housing and not enough water and shade in the blistering Coachella heat.
    A week before, Piers had all but ordered Emma, privately, to ask Steve to drop the lawsuit. To settle it, quietly, before it jeopardized the plum ranch sale. 
    Emma, however, decided not to act on the request. For the very first time, she thought her son-in-law was out of line. Now she was sure Piers was texting to find out why Steve still hadn’t dropped the lawsuit so he could close the plum ranch sale.
    Emma listened to the phone ring. It was the direct line to Piers’ office. And braced herself for her son-in-law’s annoyance.
    She heard the click of someone picking up the phone and putting her on speaker.
    “Emma?” he began, Piers’ caller ID having already identified the source of the call. “Bad news.” He stated the two words slowly, giving equal weight to each. “Very bad news…”
    Emma felt her heart plunge into her stomach. In the middle of the night, she’d imagined such a call – always about her grandson, Harry.
    “Santiago Gomez…”
    “What?” Emma couldn’t understand what Piers was saying.
    “Santiago Gomez,” Piers repeated. “The Mexican farm worker. The guy your boss bullied into suing Curt Randall…”
    Emma still couldn’t answer. Her heart was thumping hard in her chest and she hadn’t caught her breath. When would Julie and Piers learn that, for her, “very bad news” only meant one thing? Harm to them or to Harry.
    The phone went