Sundown Crossing Read Free Page A

property as stated…’
    The vineyard. Of course, that’s all he had to leave her…
    ‘And furthermore, to my daughter I bequeath a property and all it entails, known as the Krugerhoff Vineyard, namely parcels of land known as lots four, five and six of approximately forty acres in the Barossa Valley in the State of South Australia, Australia, as detailed on the attached title deed.’
    ‘What …?’ Carla’s eyes opened wide. She stared first at Tom then at Angie who shrugged, and smiled mysteriously, as if she had known all along.
    Tom held up a hand. ‘Carla, let me finish then I’ll explain.’
    The details of the will finished with bequests to Angie and, to his surprise, a small one to Peter Cruzio.
    ‘What’s this Barossa thing about? I…I don’t understand…’ Carla shook her head, her forehead creasing in a frown. Her father owned property in Australia! How? Why…? He had never talked about it, never given an inkling and…all she knew about the Barossa Valley was that it was the prime grape-growing region in the entire country and that her father had grown up there before moving to Italy.
    Tom shook his head, and said in a grumbling tone, ‘I told, suggested, that Rolfe tell you himself but he was adamant that you didn’t need to know until after he…after his death…’ He glanced down the table at Carla, saw herexpression and hurried on. ‘Your father was Australian, you knew that, didn’t you? Well, he, his birth surname wasn’t Kruger, he changed that by deed poll in 1963. His true surname was Stenmark.’
    ‘Stenmark,’ Peter interrupted, his voice pitched higher than normal. ‘Of the Stenmarks, the Rhein Schloss Stenmarks?’
    ‘Right. Rolfe is, I mean was, Carl Stenmark’s younger son,’ Tom advised.
    Carla blinked, stared first at Tom then at Angie and Peter. ‘Who are the Stenmarks?’
    ‘Just about the biggest wine producers in the Barossa,’ Peter, who’d spent a few years in South Australia learning about vine cultivation, informed her.
    Carla’s eye narrowed. ‘So…so, this Carl, he’s my grandfather?’ My God. Carl. Carla. She had been named after him and had never known it! Hurt by her father’s silence, the lost opportunities to know family, she turned away from them to hide the sheen of tears in her eyes. She had a grandfather and perhaps other family members and she had never known because…her father hadn’t wanted her to. A festering anger began to simmer inside her. ‘Why didn’t Dad tell me? Did my mother know?’
    Tom looked a little abashed. ‘To the best of my knowledge, Gina didn’t. Rolfe said there’d been some kind of um…family argument after which his father disinherited him. It’s a long story…and…’ He reached into his attachée case andpulled out a long book with a black cover. He pushed it down the table towards Carla. ‘Rolfe said you were to have this—it’s his journal. He wrote it a long time ago, and told me that it explains everything.’
    ‘So where exactly is the property in the Barossa?’ Angie, ever the businesswoman, asked.
    ‘I believe it’s near the township of Nuriootpa and has a creek known as Greenock Creek crossing it twice. It’s located just off the Sturt Highway, close to the Seppelts vineyards.’
    ‘There has to be more than forty wineries in the Barossa Valley. This Krugerhoff, the land alone must be worth a bloody fortune,’ Peter said in an awed tone.
    ‘These are the deeds and a description of the buildings it contains.’ Tom passed a plastic envelope over to Carla. ‘At your father’s request I contacted a property agent there about three months ago. He checked the place out. The buildings still stand but many are in need of repair because they’ve been unattended for more than thirty years and,’ he delved into his case again and brought out another sheet of paper, ‘curiously, this was faxed to me two days after Rolfe’s death. If you’re interested in selling, it’s an offer from a