Chapter 2

The water kept rising around the old man's knees.

The gloves turned in it, pale and torn, slow as leaves.

Nobody on the crush pad moved.

Neal Brask's hand was still out, hanging in the air where the trowel was not.

Then he took it back.

He smoothed his crested shirt and set his face like a man at a funeral.

"He's a confused old man," Neal said. "That blood is from a rabbit in the rows."

Nobody answered him.

The old man stayed on his knees in the mud.

He had not let go.

Tomás Vega still had a fist in the collar of his coat, but the grip had gone loose.

Elena Ruiz stood at the edge of the row, the hem of her lab coat heavy and wet.

"Those are hers," the old man said.

He pointed with his chin, because both hands were busy.

"Canvas and leather. Torn in the right palm. She wore them every night she walked the rows."

Nobody spoke.

Nobody understood.

Elena understood.

She had seen those gloves on the hook in the greenhouse more times than she could count.

Maren Brask had worn them the night she died.

"Let me see the trowel," Elena said.

"Leave it," Neal said. Too fast again.

"He's sick. He doesn't know what he's holding."

The old man looked up at her.

Clear for two seconds this time.

"You'll give it back," he said.

"Yes," Elena said.

"Then test it," he said.

And he opened his hands.

The trowel lay across her palms.

Cold steel. A worn handle with three letters burned into it. G.S.

The blade was caked with blood and wet dark soil.

Her stomach turned over.

She had tested wine for two years.

Nobody had ever handed her this.

Neal stepped toward her.

"I'll take that," he said.

"No," she said.

Her voice came out smaller than she wanted.

"It's evidence now."

"Evidence of what?"

She didn't answer him.

She was already walking back to the lab.

She bagged the trowel and the gloves in two clean sample pouches.

Then she went into the office and pulled the irrigation ledger off its nail.

Block seven.

Watered from 12:20 to 2:00 that night.

She read it twice.

Then a third time.

The row where the old man knelt was block seven.

The row where the lady of the vineyard died was block seven.

The report said she fell at first light.

Maren had found the accounts short.

She had told Neal she would strip him of the operation.

She had named the old gardener in her will that spring.

And she had walked the rows alone at midnight.

That was the night.

He would have lost everything.

Elena dried the silt and scraped the blade clean over a tray.

The soil under the blood was dark, cold and fine.

The same soil she had logged in block seven three mornings running.

Water-logged from a midnight pour.

Not the dry dust a first-light fall would ever leave.

Then the gloves.

She turned the right one over under the lamp.

A straight tear, edge to edge across the palm.

Not a crush.

Not a drag.

A strike.

She set the two pouches beside the ledger on the bench.

The trowel said midnight.

The gloves said a strike.

The report said first light and a fall.

Somebody had written that report.

She knew who.

Then somebody knocked on the lab door.

She turned.

Tomás Vega stood in the doorway with his cap crushed in both hands.

"I saw the water," he said. "I saw it running in block seven at midnight."

He swallowed.

"I saw a machine light in the row. No headlights. Just the light."

"And I have never said it out loud."

Elena looked past him at the harvest going on outside.

"Say it now," she said.