Hmm. We’d been thinking of getting ponies for the boys. Would small mules be a safer choice?
As I headed for the wine pavilion, I made a mental note to ask Betsy later. Right now, coping with the evil Genette was more urgent.
Chapter 12
Mother was delighted to see me. She was standing beside a booth at the Mediterranean end of the pavilion, delicately sipping from a glass with a splash of white wine in it, while a woman winemaker watched intently, as if Mother’s verdict would make or break her wine’s reputation. For all I knew, perhaps it would.
“Meg, dear.” She held out a glass. “Do try some of this lovely Chardonnay!”
“Later,” I said. “When my taste buds have time to think. Would you like an opportunity to take Genette to task, or shall I do it myself?”
“Ooh,” the Chardonnay’s maker said. “What’s she been up to now?”
“Harassing other exhibitors to sell their livestock to her,” I said. “Anyone who feels harassed by another exhibitor should report it to the fair office, and we’ll deal with it. Repeat offenders can be banned. Permanently.”
Mother smiled.
“Last time I looked she’d stepped out,” she said. “I think I’ll wander down to that part of the tent. Thank you,” she said to the winemaker. “Can you save me a few bottles? In fact, make it a case.”
“Absolutely.”
Mother sipped the last bit of Chardonnay and sailed off.
“I may be the first to report Genette,” the winemaker said. “If she comes back and badgers me again to buy a copy of our customer list. Not that I’m afraid of losing customers to her—not if they taste her wine. But I shudder to think what kind of marketing she’d do if she ever got my customers’ names and addresses. She doesn’t exactly run a very classy operation.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve seen the labels.”
“Oh, I don’t mind the labels.” She shook her head and chuckled. “Her labels sell a lot of my wine. One look at that monstrosity and anyone with a smidgen of taste wants to run away and find something a bit more elegant.”
She pulled something out of her pocket and handed it to me. A wine label. No, actually it was an oversized business card made to look like a wine label on one side. The reverse held her name, address, telephone numbers, e-mail, Web site, and even a small map with directions to her winery.
And the label itself did look rather elegant. There was a white column on either side, with roses growing up the left hand one and grapes on the right. The winery’s name was printed in a very traditional typeface. The colors were bright, but not gaudy. Yes, elegant.
“Nice,” I said. “May I keep it?”
“Of course.” She held up a handful to show that she had plenty more. “Anyway, it’s not the labels that drive me crazy. It’s how she runs her winery. She tore down a bunch of perfectly lovely, mellow old buildings and put up a bunch of ugly new ones. They look a lot like her booth, actually. Then she put in a helipad. You have no idea what it’s like having helicopters swooping back and forth all the time, raising clouds of dust and frightening the horses. And then she caught on to the idea of using her winery as an event space.” She rolled her eyes as if this were the last straw.
“Aren’t a lot of wineries doing that these days?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Sometimes that’s the only thing keeping us afloat in the bad years. But it doesn’t always set well with the communities we’re located in. So most of us do what we can to minimize the negative impact on our neighbors and the environment and have orderly well-run events. Classy events.”
“That doesn’t sound like Genette’s style,” I said.
“Every weekend is a nightmare.” She was shaking her head and wincing. “Rowdy frat parties and bachelor orgies and wild wedding receptions. Rock bands and fireworks all night. Drunken partyers careening down the roads till all hours. A lot of sirens—police breaking up brawls, ambulances carrying out the casualties.”
“Sounds horrible,” I said. “Can’t the police do anything?”
“They’re trying,” she said. “But she’s got all the money in the world to fight back. It could take years, and all that time she’ll be busy turning a peaceful, rural county into a drunken slum. And making it that much harder for the rest of us who are trying to run our businesses responsibly.”
She shook her head and turned to go behind the counter of her booth, then turned back to me again.
“And in case no one else has said it,” she added, “we appreciate what you and your mother are doing to keep her from ruining the wine pavilion.”