Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

divided the Bondino estate evenly between the two brothers, but then this new will turned up,” said Bruno, riffling through more photographs,some so old they were in shades of brown rather than black and white. Others had crinkled edges like ancient postcards. He held up an aged sepia print. “Here’s the founder of the family fortunes, Silvio himself, as a young man. He arrived in California from Italy back in the late nineteenth century.”
    “Quite a handsome man.”
    “A tough one, too. He kept the family business going all through Prohibition, when alcohol was banned, and then again through the Depression. He had two sons. The younger one now runs one of the world’s biggest wine firms, after inheriting it from his father, and the older one was left nothing in the will that he claimed was a forgery.”
    “Here’s another clipping—‘Disinherited Bondino Son Dies in Car Crash; Foul Play Not Suspected.’ Somebody didn’t agree with that verdict,” said Pamela. “The clipping is attached to a bill from a lawyer and another from a private detective for inquiries into the car crash. The lawyer’s bill is for thirty-two hundred dollars, but I imagine that was worth quite a sum back in 1958. And here’s the detective’s report. The last page says, ‘We regret to inform you that our inquiries have proved inconclusive.’”
    “The dead man’s widow brought a lawsuit claiming her husband had been murdered. It got nowhere and she ran out of money,” Bruno said. “I was reading up about this earlier. But look at this photo—it’s the same baby girl, in nineteen fifty-seven, but this time with a woman, and on the back it says,
Maman et Grand-mère
. And if you look at this family photo of everybody including old Silvio, from Christmas 1956, the woman listed as Grand-mère is being embraced by Grand-père. But look at Grand-père’s face and compare it with this photo. It’s the same man, so Jacqueline’s
grand-père
was the elder brother, the one who should have inherited but for the disputed will. You can confirm that from that photo of him inyour news clipping. ‘Grand-mère’ was his widow, the woman who brought the failed lawsuit. See if you can find any names for Grand-mère and Maman.”
    “Right here on the private detective’s bill—Mrs. Maria Bondino, 4249 Sunset Drive, Sausalito, California. What very long roads the Americans have. She must be Grand-mère. Look, here’s a carbon copy of a letter from Maria to Francis, dated April 4, 1958—that’s after the court verdict—asking for money ‘to ensure the education of’ his niece Sophia. So that’s the baby girl in the photo, who presumably grew up to marry a French-Canadian called Duplessis and to become Jacqueline’s mother.”
    “That makes Jacqueline the great-niece of our Francis X. Bondino,” said Bruno, “the man whose wise old face beams at us from all these company brochures. And his son would be Jacqueline’s cousin, as well as her lover.”
    “Her lover?” said Pamela, startled. “You didn’t tell me that. Was that while she was seeing Max or before?”
    “Maybe while she was seeing Max; I’m not sure. But I think she deliberately set out to meet young Bondino. She knew exactly who he was and what he was doing in Saint-Denis. She knew that she was sleeping with her own cousin and she knew all about the family feud. But I don’t think Fernando had the slightest idea who she was or that they were related. The two branches of the family seem to have been bitterly estranged.”
    “That makes it sound rather sinister.”
    “Indeed it does,” said Bruno. “What’s in that next file?”
    “More press clippings, new ones, all about the Bondino company, printed out from the Internet. Here’s one from
BusinessWeek
in March of this year about production problems in Australia because of the drought. And here’s an interview with Bondino from a wine magazine in May, with a paragraph marked in the margin. It’s about ‘exploring new opportunitiesin Europe, where the industry has yet to benefit from consolidation.’ He mentions France and Italy and eastern Europe. And here’s another bit she’s marked, about there being an ‘unsustainable business model in the Bordeaux region with too many small producers making too many wines of variable quality and no consistency of product.’ It says here that Fernando Bondino graduated from Stanford business school.”
    “So she knew back in May that Bondino was