It was all hers, Angie thought, or should be. Or soon would be.

The pleased look of total power that had brightened her face went suddenly dead as she remembered that Falcon Crest, hers by right, was only half hers. She knew full well what had been in her father's mind before he'd died. Old Jasper Gioberti had but one true heir, his beloved daughter, Angela. As surely as she stood here in her tall-heeled feather mules and the lavishly decorated cheongsam she wore as a dressing gown, Angie knew her father had meant her to own every square inch of' this vast holding that bore the falcon's crest.

Me, she told herself, not my weakling brother, Jason. And certainly not his do-good son Chase, her nephew, who on Jason's death now held half ownership of Falcon Crest.

Angic frowned, then ran a smoothing finger over the wrinkles in her forehead. She might be a grandmother but she was an attractive woman still, she hat lay ahead, for her, ever knew, and in the battle that lay ahead for her, every trick, every wile was necessary for victory. "More coffee Mrs. Charming?"

Chao-Li stood in the doorway of Angie's immense corner bedroom, a tray on his arm. His small face regarded her with simple curiosity. As majordomo of Falcon Crest's palatial mansion, Chao-Li had witnessed too much of Gioberti and Channing history to remain in awe of his employers. But Angela Channing knew he stood, if not in awe of her, then in a state of respect that bordered on fear.

He'd seen her grow from the brilliantly beautiful woman who married Douglas Charming to the embittered dowager queen of Falcon Crest. Angie felt that he knew her mind better than anyone else, sensed its subtleties, its spiderlike patience, its banked, fires of rage. Chao-Li remained respectful, but wary. In the end, Angie knew, he was sure she would win.

"Half a cup, Chao-Li. Are you certain Mr. Phillip said seven A.M.?"

He carefully poured the coffee. "Mr. Phillip phoned at one A.M. to say that he was booking a private jet in New York. It would bring him to our Valley airport at"-the Chinese glanced at his watch-"just about now, Mrs. Channing, six-thirty."

"And you've sent Desi to pick him up at the airport?"

"I have."

"Mr. Phillip didn't explain the need for all this rush?"

"To Chao-Li?" His almond eyes crinkled in a smile.

"Whatever news he brings is for your ears alone, Mrs. Channing."

"Quite right. That's all, Chao-Li."

Angie watched the dismissed servant close the doors behind him. Phillip Erikson was an old friend and enemy of hers. He'd become quite a high-powered attorney, thanks to her patronage. It amused her to have Phillip run her confidential errands and remain on hand when she needed an escort. Anything more between them-and there had been a lot more over the years-was a kind of carrot she-dangled before Phillip. Be a nice errand boy, she seemed to tell him, and you may once again enjoy my favors in bed.

But what could have happened in New York to send Phillip,jetting out here? Couldn't it have been told over the telephone? Or was he saying, not in so many words, that Falcon Crest's own telephones were no longer secure from eavesdropping?

Angie wondered if she had time to dress, then decided there remained only time to make up. She sat down at her wide dressing table and surveyed her face, broad through the jaw, small-nosed, with eyes so big they almost didn't need the liner and mascara she was applying.

What was Phillip's news? Surely in New York he would not have picked up California gossip. The standoff between Angie and her nephew, Chase, was always a shifting thing. At any moment, through sheer lamebrained good-heartedness, Chase was perfectly capable of making a decision that could injure Falcon Crest.

Angle's lips tightened as she brushed on lipstick. That had always been Chase's trouble, and his father's before him. Jason had been too softhearted to be entrusted with an enterprise as vast and profitable as Falcon Crest. Their father had known this. Surely, Angie reminded herself, he had realized that his own steely power and business sense had been inherited only by his daughter, Angela.

No, the news Phillip was bringing could not be of some new, dimwitted idea of Chase's. It had to relate to something in New York, where the winery's distribution and promotion center lay. From here the shipment of millions of bottles of Falcon Crest wine and brandy was worked out, not only for America but for the world, where the label had begun to earn tremendous favor.

In the distance, Angie could hear the low, menacing hum her Mercedes 600 limousine made, like an oncoming act of nature edging closer. She finished her makeup and returned to the window. Miles away, beyond the eastern quadrant vineyards, beyond the pressing sheds, beyond the winery itself with its thousands of casks and fermenting vats, a small plume of dust seemed to race toward the house like a desert whirlwind.

It rounded the corner of the bottling plant. In this vast panorama of nature, grapes ripening in the sun, buildings not yet open for the day's work, nothing stirred but the Mercedes. It seemed a malevolent force to Angie, the sure bearer of bad tidings.

She watched her chauffeur brake the huge limousine to a halt in the courtyard almost below her window. Phillip Erikson was Angie's age, mid-fifties, but he sprang out of the car as spryly as a boy, holding his small attache case in one hand and glancing up at her window as he approached the house.

Angie nodded to him. Phillip waved and disappeared below. In a few seconds she could hear him ascending the long, curving marble staircase from the main hall to her bedroom. Faintly, with Phillip's footsteps, she could also hear the quiet shush-shush of the slippers Chao-Li wore this early in the day. He was more than a majordomo: he was a bodyguard as well. As faithful an assistant as Phillip Erikson might be, Chao-Li would never dream of giving him unobstructed access to his employer's bedroom.

The Chinese knocked at her door, then opened it. "Mr. Phillip is here."

"Send him in."

"Angie, darling!" Phillip's tall frame hurtled through the door, every lock of his silver-gray hair perfectly in place. Arms outstretched, he made for her.

"Chao-Li," Angie said matter-of-factly, "coffee and toast for Mr. Phillip."

As the servant left, Phillip encircled Angie in his arms and aimed a kiss at her mouth. She maneuvered it to a position somewhere beneath her left ear.

"So it's good news you're bringing," she said then, pushing him away from her and sitting on an embroidered chaise longue in the broad bay window.

"Did I say that?" "Your behavior is positively boisterous" Angie indicated a straight-backed chair opposite her. "In other words, it's bad news and you're trying to distract me with all this youthful display of affection."

Phillip's face grew grave. He stared at her for a long moment. Then: "Richard Charming is back," he announced.

Something fierce snapped behind Angie's eyes. Her own face went grim.

"In New York?"

"He's taking the morning flight to San Francisco. That's why I had to beat him here. Angie, he's assuming control of the Globe!"

"What!"

"He somehow found the money to exercise his father's purchase chase options, What I mean is, he now owns damned near half the newspaper."

The two sat in silence for a long moment. Angie hadn't seen Richard Channing in decades. He'd been a meddlesome little pest when Angie's late husband, Douglas, had suddenly sprung him on the family as his own bastard. It was a situation that hardly appealed to what maternal instinct there was in Angie.

She'd borne Douglas two daughters, Julia and Emma. To be told that some unknown prostitute or paramour had whelped a third brat-and a son at that-hardly kindled much sympathy in Angie for this too-curious little boy. She'd treated him abominably, as she felt she had every right to do, and forced Douglas to send him abroad for his education. She hadn't even let Richard know when his father had finally passed on.

No, there had been no love lost between Angie and this boy. Nor, she was sure, did the boy-now a man in his early thirties-have any reason to feet anything but hatred toward her.

And now he was back in California, was he? And, what was worse, assuming control of the Channing family newspaper?

"There can only be one reason for this," Angie said at last.

Phillip nodded, assuming an air of superior knowledge. "To make trouble."

"Oh, more than that, Phillip. Trouble?" Angie asked scornfully. "You don't know Richard Channing. Trou- ble is only the beginning. This will end, you may be sure, in chaos, destruction and death!"

The silence that followed Angeia's dire prediction seemed to swirl about the large room, engulfing them.

A look of horror seemed frozen on Phillip's face, his eyes locked helplessly with Angie's. She gave him a small, tight smile, with no hint of mirth in it, and crossed her legs on the longue. The full side slit of the cheongsam fell open. Phillip's glance traveled downward-to take in the long, smooth sweep of Angela Channing's still-shapely leg.

There was a discreet knock and Chao-Li entered. "Coffee, Mr. Phillip?"

Not that she was doing any more than waiting for the morning flight to San Francisco. Mr. Denault had made sure of that. He'd more or less banished her to the window area, where great triple-paned sheets of plate glass gave out onto an utterly eerie scene in which giant jets roared and smoked their way skyward in utter silence, seemingly without making the slightest sound.

"You wait over there," Henri Denault had ordered her. "I have a few parting words for Richard. He wouldn't enjoy me saying them in front of a witness."

So, across the almost empty lounge, fully fifty feet away from her, the two men stood by the coffee bar, locked in what appeared to be the most deadly of discussions. Like the great jets outside the window, their conversation was totally silent. They were even too far away for Diana to read their lips.

It was just as well, she reminded herself. The Cartel was organized on a need-to-know basis. Mr. Denault told you only what he thought you needed to do your job. And not a bit more. At least, that was the way he treated Diana. It was obvious that he had much more to say to Richard.

Diana soon tired of the sterile view through the lounge windows. Moving along a wall of smoked mirrors, she headed for the ladies' room to freshen her makeup. As she walked, she could see herself reflected darkly in each mirror, moving like a ghost in a haunted house, her slim young body gliding, the shadowless sunlight giving her blond hair a kind of foggy look piled atop her head. She sat down at the built-in makeup table in the ladies' room and stared at herself.

Clever face. The trick was never to let anyone know how clever.

Perhaps only Mr. Denault would ever know. Before one joined the Cartel there were endless examinations, intelligence tests, psychological evaluations. One couldn't even apply for a job without showing proof of a brilliant college career. And, even then, Denault demanded much more information before he hired someone new.

As she redid her hair, piling it more tightly, Diana reflected that joining the Cartel must be something like joining a very strict holy order. Not that there was anything mystical about what the Cartel did: investments, pure and simple, in almost anything that made money, from oil and gold mining to currency exchange and electronics. No, it wasn't the work that made the Cartel such a fortresslike, reclusive place. It was the discipline.

Like a holy order, it had its hierarchy. Henri Denault was the supreme ruler here in New York. But there was someone above him, in Europe, a Pope never referred to by name. "Number One" was this world ruler's only designation. And the others, like Denault, who ruled the Cartel's work in places like New York or London or Frankfurt or Hong Kong, were subservient to no one but Number One.

As Diana left the ladies' room, she realized she had taken a different return path. She was, in fact, coming up almost directly behind the two men whose conversation she was not supposed to overhear. It was all quite by accident, of course. She stopped short, watching them in one of the eerie smoked-glass wall mirrors. They couldn't see her as long as she remained motionless. If she moved, it might attract their attention. She froze.

"-nothing of the kind," Richard Channing was saying, not in an argumentative voice but more of a pleading tone. "There is no way this project of mine could be considered independent of the Cartel."

"Not only independent," Denault contradicted him, "but a damned wasteful ego trip on your part, Richard. You don't belong in California and you know it. You belong here with me."

"But the stakes. Think of the stakes!" Richard's eyes almost glowed in the darkly reflecting mirror walls. Diana watched his handsome face seem to light up with enthusiasm.

God, he was handsome, she told herself. There wasn't a weak line in his face. It was all angles, all powerful, deep-cut grooves of power. And yet, far from seeming bleak or forbidding, he was criminally good-looking, the kind of man who turns heads in a crowd. And not,just women's heads, she remembered.

As for Denault, who had the power to cancel Richaird's new project, he seemed curiously unwilling to do anything more than caution against it. The whole thing was so unlike the hard, grim investment banker. He was used to barking orders, not reminders. Yet here he was, not telling . . . asking.

"I'm well aware of the stakes, Richard," he was saying. "Or, at least, I'm aware of your promises about them. What was it you said?" He smiled almost sneeringly. "Nothing less than the whole wine industry of California?"

"Precisely," Richard responded. "With control of the newspaper I have the leverage to begin breaking apart the whole Falcon Crest empire. Let me put down roots in Tuscany Valley, and within a year I can hand you the whole operation on a silver platter."

"Tempting, I admit."

Denault was silent for a long moment. Diana couldn't see his face, except in profile, but she could see that searching, laserlike glance of his as it seemed to bore into Richard Channing's eyes.

"Just tempting enough," the older man went on. "I can't escape the thought that you've deliberately made it tempting so that the Cartel would finance your takeover of the newspaper."

"A straight business deal, Henri."

"Quite. You had your father's stock options. We had the money. By rights, those options belong to the Cartel."

"You needn't remind me." Richard's voice got a strangely hoarse quality to it, as if he were straining to utter his thoughts. "I don't need to he reminded that everything I am today is due to you."

"Hardly."

"As my adoptive father, you-"

"That has nothing to do with it," Denault cut in, brusquely. "If you know me at all, Richard, you know there is no room in my life for sentiment."

"Yet, when I needed a father's guidance, you were there."

"Perhaps. And perhaps I would have been equally helpful to a total stranger, providing he had your abilities."

"Abilities you nurtured."

Henri Denault stood silently. Then: "It does no harm," he said in a dry tone, "to flatter one's superior officer, Richard. I am, as you know, immune to flattery, but still it does no harm." He produced a noise meant to be a chuckle; the result, however, was devoid of any warmth. "Just as long as you remember what you told me a moment ago, that you owe everything to the Cartel."

"That's not what I said."

"Never mind. It's what you should have said." The older man's finger gently prodded Richard's chest. "And here is something you should have added to that statement."

"Yes?"

"That what the Cartel gives," Denault said ominously, the Cartel can take back."

"Those," Richard said in that strained voice, "are the rules of the game."

Denault's nod was curt, forceful. "I know some of the traps waiting for you in California," he said then in a softer tone. "There's the whole nostalgic thing of coming back to the place you were born. Of revisiting scenes you remember only from when you were a boy in your real father's arms. And, even stronger, there's the mystery of your true parentage, isn't there?"

"Yes." Richard's voice was very grave now, strained. "There's that."

"The whole question of who your real mother was. And the violent animosity of the woman who could have been your stepmother, if she hadn't chosen instead to cast you out of your father's life."

Neither of them spoke for a long moment. Richard's handsome face tensed, the smooth muscles clenching, as if swallowing something nasty.

"That bitch."

He paused and cleared his throat. "But, Henri," he said in a lighter voice, "it's the very existence of Angela Channing that guarantees my success and yours. I never wanted to humble anyone as I do her. I never wanted to wipe anyone off the face of the earth as I do her. And she ... is Falcon Crest., Destroy her and all of it falls to us."

"Flight 412, nonstop for San Francisco, now boarding at Gate Seventeen."

The announcement over the loudspeaker startled Diana. The two men turned away from the mirror wall and she quickly retreated along a different route until she emerged from the direction of the ladies' room.

"Diana," Denault called across the lounge. "I'll say good-bye here."

She joined the men. There was a moment of slight uneasiness. "You two needn't look so grim," she kidded them. Richard took Diana's arm as they picked up their small carry-on bags. "Henri?" The two men shook hands.

"I'm sending my best man with you," the investnient banker said. "That she happens to be an attractive woman"-his austere face seemed to crack in a wintry smile-"is what we must call a fringe benefit, eh?"

He took Diana's hand and shook it firmly. "Take care of him, will you?" he ordered. "He thinks this will be child's play. I know different."

"The pair of You," she said, trying to lighten the situation. "So serious. After all, this isn't a funeral."

"Diana," Henri Denault said softly, "that is where you're wrong."

Maggie Gioberti occasionally wondered what her life would have been like if she hadn't married into this turbulent family with its gigantic stake in the rich, productive Valley and its commanding position in the world of wine-making. But on a morning like this - clear, cool and brilliantly sunny - she forgot her doubts.

For a woman with two grown children, she looked amazingly young. Dressed in jeans, sneakers and a pale mauve tee shirt, Maggie knelt in her garden and carefully trowled the earth around her azaleas, breaking up clods into light, airy soil. It was scarcely breakfast time but she and her husband, Chase, had been up and working about the place for some time now.

The rural life, she thought, brushing back her thick mane of blond hair as it swung forward over her cheeks. It really, is early to bed and early to rise.

It didn't apply to either of her children though. Both Cole and Vickie were still in bed and would probably remain there until late morning. As for Chase, he always piled enough work into his daily routine to occupy three men. As county supervisor, his responsibilities were regular and steady, But as half owner of Falcon Crest, his day was filled with emergencies, sudden problems that required instant solutions, and, overall, the steady, deadly implacable enmity of his Aunt Angela.

Maggie looked up through the line of slender lemon trees she had planted herself. Beyond, glittering in the morning sun, the Gothic pile of the family mansion rose out of its wraparound veranda to sharp, pointed spires and cupolas quite like some enchanted castle in a Disneyland devised by mentally disturbed architects.

She smiled. Not a bad image, she thought. She wasn't the kind of writer who hoarded up phrases for later use. The stories and screen plays Maggie wrote had to do more with the interplay of characters. The film script she was working on now, for example, concerned just such a locale as Tuscany Valley, with its tensions between rival families of vintners. Maggie called it "Tangled Vines."

She smiled a bit lopsidedly at the irony of the title, got to her feet and slowly walked back toward the gardening shed to replace her tools. On such a day it felt good to be alive. She had her work, a good man for a husband and two attractive children who might, one day, if they ever got out of bed, amount to something.

From the shed she could see her own home, a much more modest affair than the witch's castle in which Angla Channing lived. Yet it was big enough for the four of them and quite attractive in its lively way. Maggie drew in a long, full breath of clear morning air and exhaled slowly with some satisfaction.

Beyond her garden, in a small grove of orange trees planted on Falcon Crest property, something moved. Something white, or pale, wraithlike, seemed between the trees under the thick cover of small dark green leaves and sweet-smelling blossoms.

Maggie watched. Then she saw her wraith again. Even at this distance she could tell it was Melissa, the tall, dark girl whose pregnancy had not yet begun to show through the ... ? What on earth was she wearing - a nightgown?

"Melissa, is that you?"

The apparition seemed to melt into darkness behind the trunk of an orange tree.

"Melissa? Are you all right?"

Slowly, almost tearfully, Melissa's dark, pretty face appeared.

"Maggie?" Reluctantly she emerged from the darkness, as if summoned by a seance. Maggie walked toward her.

"Are you all right?"

"Mm. Yes. Fine." The words came haltingly.

Maggle crossed from dazzling sunshine into darkest shade under the overarching shadow of the orange grove. The sweet aroma of orange blossoms was everywhere. At closer range now she saw that Melissa was indeed wearing her nightgown, a filmy chiffon thing, almost see-through. "How long have you been wandering out here?" the older woman demanded.

"Not long."

Up close the girl who had been Melissa Agretti looked tired. Circles under her eyes were a bluish-mauve, almost the color of Maggie's tee shirt. "How long?" Maggle persisted. This girl was about the age of her own daughter, Vickie, a fact which freed Maggie of any inhibitions about asking embarrassing questions.

Melissa's face went stone-dead. "All night," she managed to say.

"My dear!"

"All night," Melissa repeated. She began to sob. Maggie reached out for her. She could feel the slim young body buckle with the force of her sobbing. "What's the matter, Melissa? You can tell me."

"N-nothing." Melissa drew back and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

In an inbred, closed-off enclave like Falcon Crest, Maggie needed very few clues to Melissa's unhappiness. The source could be summed up in a word: Lance.

Melissa Agretti, whose father, Carlo, owned the second-largest vineyard in the valley, had only recently married Lance, Angela Channing's grandson. Her reasons for the unholy union were perhaps as clouded as his. It was not a marriage made in heaven. But then, few things concocted by Angie Channing were even remotely heavenly, and most had about them the stench of brimstone.

"He doesn't seem to know I exist," Melissa said then, as if reading Maggie's thoughts.

"Lance has never been what you'd call a very sensitive person."

"Sensitive?" Melissa's eyes welled up again. "I don't even ask for that. I certainly don't ask for love. All I need is this much understanding." She indicated a tiny space between her thumb and forefinger. "A half inch of understanding, Maggie. Of what I'm going through. My situation. This hasn't been an easy pregnancy and Dr. Ruzza tells me it will probably grow even harder."

The two women surveyed each other for a long moment. A breeze filtered through the dense greenish shadow under the orange trees. A wisp of Melissa's long dark hair lifted and fell across her smooth young forehead. Unconsciously, she had folded her hands across her stomach, as if protecting her infant from a suddenly hostile world.

Maggle found herself wondering about the marriage and the baby growing inside this young woman. Angie's reason for promoting the marriage was obvious: a merger between Falcon Crest and the great Agretti vineyards would give her control of perhaps the largest and most powerful winery anywhere in the world.

But what had Lance's reasons been? What was he, a ne'er-do-well, ruthless opportunist, doing playing a pawn in his grandmother's chess game? And the baby? Considering that it had been conceived before the marriage, perhaps that was the clue to forcing Lance into wedded bliss.

Whatever the tangled vines that had produced such fruit, Maggie thought, they had created the deepest kind of misery as well. Melissa had everything: beauty, a pleasant personality and a family fortune. She was also possibly the most depressed and unhappy person Maggie had seen in many a year.

"Sometimes," Maggie reasoned, "a young man who's played around the way Lance has takes a while to settle into matrimony."

"He's already talking of a divorce." The words came from Melissa almost unwillingly. "He's already telling me it's not his baby and he'll have the marriage annulled."

Maggie took a step back. She was used to the frankness of young people's talk these days - she heard enough of it in her own family - but telling it like it was, letting it all hang out, didn't seem to solve any more problems than the old-fashioned discretion with which Maggie had grown up.

"Why would he think the baby wasn't his?" she asked then.

Melissa's dark eyes flashed in the greenish gloom beneath the oranges. "Because," she said, "it isn't."

"Melissa!"

"No," the young woman insisted, "not his. Never his."

"Do you . . . ?" Maggie paused. "That is, uh . .

"Oh, yes," Melissa assured her. "I know the father."

"But surely ... ?"

"No." Melissa's long hair swung sideways as she shook her head. "No one knows. No one will know. Not even him."

"Not even the real father?"

"Especially not him."

"But why?" Maggie asked.

For a long moment Melissa's dark glance was fixed on the clear blue eyes of the older woman. "That," she said at last, "you will never know either."

Maggle listened to the sound of her words as much as to the sense of them. There was something peculiar about the emphasis she had put on her words. You will never know, she had seemed to say. Why me? Maggie wondered. But then, perhaps, she was imagining the whole thing.

In the middle distance, perched on a lower limb of an orange tree, a mockingbird lifted its head and sent a long trill of laughter into the still, scented air.

"That's peculiar," Julia said. She was standing in the doorway of her sister Emma's bedroom. Though it was morning, both women still wore their nightdresses. "Chase didn't phone you?"

Emma's small, pert face was half buried in her pillows, her tousled hair spreading out around her like an aura. She seemed perfectly at rest, perfectly still. Only her wide-set eyes looked alive.

They darted this way and that around the room, resting for an instant on her sister, then flicking sideways to the morning sunlight in the windows, then across the room to the ornate doors of her great armoire, cream-colored with gold trim in the French Provincial style.

Finally her glance fastened again on her tall, slim sister, standing motionless in the open door, her face still expressing the question she'd asked. But Julia was always that way, Emma thought. Always the factual one, always demanding answers. And what a silly question. Her cousin Chase was Emma's friend, of course, but why wonder that he hadn't called her?

"Because he sure as hell woke me up this morning," Julia went on. "The way he was talking, I knew he'd phone you next."

"Nope."

"Emma, think. Your memory lately... " Julia's words died out.

There was no need to finish the sentence. Emma knew better than any of them how hazy her grip on reality was these days. Things somehow didn't seem real anymore - at least not at Falcon Crest. She couldn't put her finger on the moment they'd started to turn hazy and dreamlike. It hadn't happened all at once. But it surely was happening now.

"Chase definitely did not call me, Julia."

"Then you don't know about the shareholders' meeting."

Emma's eyes blinked once, then again. Something new to cope with? Some new problem? The air at Falcon Crest seemed filled with problems. She inhaled deeply, as if struggling for oxygen. Problems crowded out the oxygen. Problems lurked everywhere. No wonder a person couldn't keep her mind straight, couldn't remember things.

"No," she said at last. "No one told me anything."

Emma could hear the faintly defensive note in her own voice. That was Julia's fault. Her sister and their mother were always on her about something. Don't forget this. Did you remember that? Between the two of them they seemed to use up all the available air and light and space at Falcon Crest.

"Well," Julia said in that superior tone of hers, "since the two of us own equal shares in the Globe, I imagine Chase would want us both at the meeting."

"Today?"

Again Emma could hear the tone of her voice, retreating. Oh, not today, she seemed to be pleading. Must it be today? Instead she cleared her throat and sat up in bed. "Did you say today?" she demanded. Her voice sounded fake and defensive again.

"In an hour. We're supposed to meet Chase in the sampling room at the bottling plant. Can you make it?"

"Don't be insulting," Emma snapped. "It doesn't take me an hour to get ready."

"Fine." Julia turned and left, letting the bedroom door slam behind her.

Emma sat up on the edge of her bed and let her feet dangle above the floor. Wonderful start to a day. Julia already angry at her. Chase calling meetings. Too much went on at Falcon Crest. Too much for any normal person to bear.

The word "normal" seemed to stick in Emma's mind.

Dr. Ruzza had used the same word, not too long ago. Emma had been to see him about her inability to sleep. He'd given her a mild sedative. "Normally," the doctor had said, "that should do the trick."

"Normally?" Emma picked up, again defensive.

She'd watched Dr. Ruzza's face go red. "I mean ... you know . . ." He had gestured meaninglessly.

"Implying," she persisted, "that something isn't normal?"

"Not at all."

"Or somebody?"

"Emma," the doctor had said in his fatherly way. "What I used was a perfectly meaningless phrase. Normally, this sedative helps a person sleep. You're reading too much into it."

She'd stared at him the longest time and suddenly she was in tears. Dr. Ruzza had looked acutely uncomfortable, but that was nothing to the way he looked as she began to pour out her troubles to him.

"It isn't just the insomnia," Emma had babbled between sobs. "it isn't just the bad dreams when I do get to sleep, the nightmares that wake me up. It isn't the fact that I keep forgetting things. Simple things. Or that I really can't bear to leave my room in the morning ... can't wait to get back to it. Doctor, I'm not stupid. I can recognize such symptoms as well as you."

When he had failed to answer at once, when he sat there thinking for such a long time, Emma's heart had sunk in despair. Then she was going crazy. And he was trying to find a kind way of telling her. And there is no kind way.

"Look," Dr. Ruzza had begun slowly. "You've heard it said nowadays, haven't you, that the world we live in is getting harder lo live in?"

"For me, yes."

"For everyone. The quality of life, even here in Tuscany Valley, is changing. It's getting more strident, more violent. Even in this pleasant little corner of the world devoted to good grapes and good wine, we can feel the mounting tensions, the changes ... and none of them seem to be for the better."

"Then it isn't just me?"

"No, it isn't just you, Emma. We cope with all this through a process called desensitization. You could call it growing a hard shell. Most of us manage that. Society more or less hardens our shell for us. But there are always a few whose skin never does harden. Such people remain sensitive; in time they grow even more sensitive. When that happens, life becomes quite painful for them."

As she got out of bed now, Emma recalled the doctor's words more clearly than anything else she'd heard in the past months. His diagnosis had stuck with her, word for word. Didn't that mean her mind was still all right?

She bathed quickly and pulled on the handiest dress, staring at herself in the long mirror. Poor, dear, kind Dr. Ruzza - how gently he'd let her off the hook. How diplomatically he'd told her the real truth. Never mind his talk about society or the world. In plain English he was saying, Falcon Crest will drive you insane.

In a sense she'd always known it. Her mother ... well ... Angela Channing's flinty bosom was nowhere for any young girl to lay her head. Her sister, Julia, had never had time for Emma either, once she'd married and given birth to Lance. And Lance himself, the other occupant of this great house, was someone Emma had always been wary of, someone too much out for his own good ever to be a friend in need.

Only Chase had been her friend, Chase and his dear wife, Maggie. But a great chasm, bulldozed by Angela Charming, now divided one side of the family from the other. Angela's idea of loyalty in a daughter was that Emma had to hate her mother's enemies. Chase was one such enemy, but Emma couldn't find it in her heart to hate him or to help her mother play all the tricky little power games that so exhausted the air of Falcon Crest.

Emma combed her hair carefully but put no makeup on her small, delicate face. A leprechaun's face, she told herself now. She looked like no one else in the family. Perhaps she was a changeling? Perhaps the fairies had substituted her for Angeia's true younger daughter? She stared at herself in the mirror. She'd always wondered how Angela could have been her real mother. Perhaps she wasn't. Changelings ... one read of them in the storybooks. Switched in the cradle. Fey folk foisted on human parents and raised as their own flesh and blood. Well, by God, she felt no kinship with Angela Channing nor, truthfully, with her sister or her nephew, Lance. She had always felt out of place here. This was hostile territory for Emma Charming.

She went to the great armoire and opened its doors. Standing back from it, on tiptoe, she craned her neck to see the canvas suitcase on the top shelf. That's what one did, Emma told herself. One fled from hostile territory. One didn't linger. One packed and ran for one's life.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and thought some more. Her mind began to compose a plan. She had to get Desi to take her to the train station or the airport. But it had to be done in such a way that Angela wouldn't know. Although, was it ever possible to do anything at Falcon Crest without Angela knowing?

Emma lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. She vaguely remembered getting dressed. But for what purpose? Had she anything to do, anywhere to go?

Sighing with the oppressive lack of oxygen in her bedroom, she pulled the pillow over her head. In the darkness she tried to remember a time when she had been happy. She made a little tunnel so that the exhausted air got to her. She dreamed without sleeping. It was lovely here in the dark.

And, besides, she had nothing else to do this morning.

In the distance, San Francisco Bay sparkled under the hard noon sun. Miles beyond, past Sausalito and Tiburon, farther to the east behind a low range of hills, lay the rich, dark fertile soil of Tuscany Valley out of Richard Channing's sight, but seldom out of his mind.

From this height, the fortieth-floor offices of the Globe, Richard Channing might well have stood at one of the great picture windows and faced east toward what he well knew would be his destiny.

Instead, he sat with his back to the eastern view, hunched over a great desk on which detailed Corps of Engineers ordnance maps lay. Pencil in hand, Richard traced vineyard boundary lines. And so wrapt was he in this fine-lined work that he failed to hear the knock on his door.

After a moment it opened and Diana Hunter stood on the threshold. "Are you in or out?"

Richard flinched, almost as if she'd slapped him. .He looked up. "I thought I left word not to be disturbed."

"That was yesterday." The attractive girl with the piled-up blond hair eyed him for a long moment. "You've done nothing since we got here but pore over maps. They tell me there's a newspaper to run."

"It runs itself," Richard barked. Then he made a face and pushed back from the desk. "Sorry. I'm probably still in jet lag. What's the problem?"

She opened a small notebook and flipped through its pages. "How much time have I got?"

He managed a faint grin. "Sit down. I said I was sorry. Lay it on me."

Diana managed to sit, cross her legs and not notice how far up this caused her dress to ride on her slender thighs. "Item One - your managing editor has wanted a word with you since yesterday morning. Item Two - a man named Chase Gioberti has called you three times. Item Three - I have word from Tuscany Valley that said Gioberti held a shareholders' meeting yesterday with an agenda that remains secret. Item Four - Mr. Denault just called from New York and wants to hear from you as soon as possible. Item Five - the mayor's secretary is trying to set up a meeting. Item Six - your broker has -"

"Stop. Halt. Cease. Desist."

"You told me to lay it on you. There are only twelve more items."

"Thanks." Richard shuffled the maps and rolled them tightly. He slipped them into a metal cylinder and capped it. "Send in the managing editor first." He glanced at his watch. "Get him out of here in fifteen minutes. Then get Mr. Denault on the phone. First things first."

Diana reached across his broad desk to the intercom and pressed a button. "Gladys, send in Mr. Loomis."

"You mean he's been waiting out there for two days?"

"More or less. With time off to run the newspaper." She paused. "You want to speak to him alone?"

"I want him to get the idea that between you and me there are no secrets," Richard told her. "You stay where you are. And pull down that dress an inch or so."

"Demure."

"But devastating," Richard added as the door opened.

Harry Loomis was one of the breed of newsmen who believed, as he soon put it to Richard, that "our main business is getting the facts and printing them."

"There are facts," Richard reminded him, "and ... there are facts."

The editor paused and scratched the bald spot atop his head. His dark brown jacket didn't match his pale gray trousers, nor had he remembered to fasten the top button of his shirt and neaten the knot of his tie. But to Diana he didn't seem either ill prepared or ill at ease. Just natural, something like an old shoe. And, like an old shoe, he got stepped on.

There couldn't have been a greater contrast between two men, Diana found herself thinking. Harry Loomis was perhaps only five years older than Richard, but the two seemed to have arrived from different planets. Both were lean and rather intense in their own ways, but there the similarity ended.

Richard's good looks alone would have made him different from any other man. But it was what lay beneath the handsome facade that made the real difference. He seemed almost ready to explode with the importance, the sheer global weight of his own mission in life, plus a driven ambition held only loosely in leash .

No such fires possessed Harry Loomis. He had the air of an old-fashioned craftsman who could fix a watch while he listened to your troubles and gave you good advice. He had ambition, but not for himself - rather for some strange entity he called "the truth."

"There's not enough of it in journalism anymore, Mr. Channing."

"Call me Richard."

"Richard. What I'm saying is that in this land of ours there are maybe a handful of real newspapers left. The Globe is one. There's another down in L.A. Two on the East Coast. And I'm damned if I can volunteer many more. By and large, Mr. Ch-, Richard, the newspapers of America are mostly advertising giveaway sheets. They're filled with warmed over public relations garbage, girlie snapshots and casserole recipes. It's no wonder people turn away from newspapers by the million to get their information from TV."

"You may be right, Harry. I know for sure TV can pay its people more than we can." Richard was silent for a moment. "But I keep getting back to the same idea. There's truth, and there's truth. The readers of the Globe are going to be interested in what you tell them about this new disarmament conference in Geneva. That's why you gave it the number one spot on yesterday's front page. But where did you put that story about the call girl whose body was fished up out of the Bay with two bullets in her heart?"

"Bottom of page three."

"And where's her diary? Where are some sexy photos of her alive? Show me a dead call girl and I'll show you a whole rogue's gallery of people-her pimp, one or more corrupt detectives and a dozen very nervous customers. None of their pictures are in the Globe."

"Christ, Richard, that isn't the Globe's style."

"No? What's style worth if it doesn't give the readers what they want?"

"They can read it in some yellow rag tabloid," Loomis retorted hotly.

"Some rag that's stealing away our circulation."

Harry Loomis' normally calm face had grown red. He scratched furiously at his bald spot. "You asking me for a complete turnabout in Globe style?"

"No, Harry. I'm not asking you. I'm telling you."

Silence fell over the big room. Outside the picture windows the sun poured in as it began its daily trek across the Pacific Ocean. Diana Hunter shut her notebook and laid it very carefully on the desk in front of her, as if it contained a high explosive, set to detonate at the next outburst.

"Scandal?" the editor demanded. "Nudie shots? Rumors? Innuendo?"

"That's it, Harry. I want the Globe moved out of the nineteenth century and into the last decades of the twentieth. I want a live paper, not a dead one."

Loomis got to his feet. "No thanks, Richard."

The new owner glanced at his watch. Ten minutes had elapsed. "Then you've got the rest of the day to clear out your desk and leave the premises. Miss Hunter will make arrangements for severance pay."

"Just like that, Richard?"

"Just like that, Harry." Richard smiled slightly. "On your way out, send in that young assistant of yours, Atkins?"

The editor nodded. "Atkins might be,just hungry enough to do the job for you. His wife's expecting a new baby."

"Excellent, Harry. Good-bye."

"Do me one favor?" the editor asked.

"Call me Mr. Loomis?" the man suggested, and walked out of the office.

Richard's mouth, open for a moment in shock, closed at last in a grim smile. He jerked his head sideways at the phone. "Get Denault."

"Here," Angela Channing said, touching the lined pages of a great bookkeeping ledger. "Right here."

Phillip Erikson, standing behind Angela as she sat at her desk in the wood-paneled winery office, peered over her shoulder at the ledger. Almost carelessly his hand cupped her shoulder, gently massaging. "This is the part of ' the accounting program that Chase manages?"

Angie nodded thoughtfully. "If you know my nephew at all well, you know he's stretched himself too thin, running around taking care of a million details." She turned her head to stare into her attorney's eyes. "Chase is much too busy to pay any attention to these ledgers, even the part that is his responsibility."

"That's hard to believe. Chase is a businessman, after all."

Angle's laugh was bitter. "He's a poor excuse for one. My father, now there was a businessman. It's my impression that somebody could cook this part of the books without Chase ever knowing what had happened."

Outside the office's locked door, the work of the winery went on in an unending flow. At this time of the year, before the harvest of new grapes in October, the men were at work testing last year's wine under Julia's supervision, blending it with other strains and adjusting its alcoholic content to conform to the law. Each day a batch of new wine would be ready for the bottling and labeling plant down the road. Each day anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand bottles were filled, sealed, crated and shipped.

"Angie," Phillip said then, "you're forgetting the EDS."

"I forget nothing," she snapped. "Our electronic data system is the best, the latest in state-of-the-art computer control. Anything in this ledger is accessed into our electronic data bank."

"And that's what Chase consults. Not this ledger book."

Angie's smile managed to be both scornful and triumphant.

"Sometimes, Phillip, your naivete surprises me."

Erikson was silent for a moment. "You mean you could cook the computer?"

"I mean I already have. My grandson, Lance, may be hell on wheels with the women, but he did pick up a few useful bits of expertise in school. He knows computers."

"And he is your faithful grandson."

"He's already opened a duplicate channel in our EDS that appears to be the true set of accounts for Chase's part of the operation. When Chase switches on a computer terminal, that's what feeds him information over the video screen. But the original channel, with the true data, is now sealed off. There's an electronic lock on it that only Lance and I can open." Angela's voice seemed matter-of-fact, almost bored. But her face revealed a smug content.

The lawyer whistled softly. "My, my, my."

"Which gives me," Angie went on then, "the ability to dip into Chase's side of the business without his knowledge."

Erikson's other hand cupped her other shoulder. "Angela, you're not only sexy, you're formidable. I'm glad I'm on your side."

"Are you?" Her glance held his. "But am I glad you're on mine?"

"Angela!" Phillip said in a shocked tone.

"A man like you . . ." Angie got out of her chair and strode to the window that overlooked the vast expanse of winery production. Vats stood in long rows receding into the distance, miles of vats, endless arrays held to a strict temperature in a warehouse of controlled humidity.

"Any man except a total leech," she went on then, more to herself than to her attorney, "when he works for a woman eventually ends up working against her. It's in the male genes. It has nothing to do with whether he feels she's attractive, or even that he loves her. It's got to do with male independence. And for the best, most sincere reasons in the world, he will end up doing her in." She swung on him. "You're no different."

"You flatter me, Angela. I'd have to be a lot smarter than I am to match some of the capers you pull."

"I can't say my marriage to Douglas was a happy one," she went on in an almost reminiscent tone, "but it was an educational one. I learned a lot about men from him, things I would never have learned from my father."

Phillip laughed. "I should hope so."

"Not sexual things. No, from Douglas I learned...treachery ... deceit ... betrayal ... humiliation ..." Her voice died out.

In the silence that followed, Erikson shifted uneasily from one leg to the other. Then: "I'm sorry, Angela. I know he made you unhappy."

"Is that the right word?" she asked him. "Somehow it doesn't seem evil enough."

Someone knocked at the locked office door. Angela Channing ignored the intrusion. "And his evil wasn't buried with him, was it?" she went on. "No, it has returned here to California in the form of his bastard son."

The pounding grew louder. Angie's great eyes swung sideways to the door. "What is it?" Beyond the glass she could see the foreman's unhappy face. He was shouting something but the soundproof door muffled his words.

Phillip unlocked the door and opened it. "Mrs. Channing!" the foreman burst out, "please call the big house right away. Miss Julia's been ringing for fifteen minutes but you had the phone shut off in here."

"Very well." Angie watched him back out of the room. "Lock the door again, Phillip."

She glanced at the small private switch box on the desk, punched a button and dialed a three-digit nuniher that rang in the big house. It rang three times. Then:

"Channing residence," Chao-Li mmurmurered.

"Chao-Li, did Miss Julia want me?"

"Miss Julia has driven to the airport."

"In heaven's name why?"

"Looking for Miss Emma."

"What?"

"Miss Emma took one of the jeeps. We thiiik she went about two hours ago," the Chinese explained.

"Why should that be the occasion for such panic?"

"Her suitcase. Gone."

"What?" Angie thundered. "Spit it out, Chao-Li!"

"Miss Julia says Miss Emma packed some clothes and left. Left Falcon Crest. Left Tuscany Valley."

"How can she be sure?"

"Miss Emma left a note."

"Saying?"

"Ah . . ." The Chinese faltered for a moment. "I do not have the note in front of me, Mrs. Channing. But-"

"I said spit it out!"

"The note said something about ... ah well, about Miss Emma's sanity. She said to protect . . ." Again Chao-Li paused. "Mrs. Channing, she said that to save her sanity she had to leave Falcon Crest."

"Oh, did she." Angeia's voice sizzled with venom.

"Something to that effect."

"Then good riddance," she snapped. "And may she stay away ... forever."

Like Falcon Crest, Bellavista was a roomy mansion in the typical California Gothic style, cedar-shingled, verandaed and decorated with spires. It sat almost in the geographical center of Carlo Agretti's expanse of vineyards, and, like Falcon Crest, Bellavista was the nerve center of a major enterprise.

Not that Agretti made wine. He had chosen long ago to concentrate only on the grapes, selling his produce each October to the highest bidder. And the Agretti harvest never brought anything but top dollar. Generations of Agrettis had contributed their toil and experience to producing some of the best merlot, sirah, gamay and other varieties grown anywhere in the world.

Perhaps, jealous neighbors hinted, Agretti's success was only a matter of luck, the chemical richness of the vineyard's soil, the way the sunlight warmed his slopes. It may also have been because the Agretti rootstocks, originally brought here in the late I880s from Europe, had escaped the withering rot that had blighted the best vines in France and Italy after World War One.

When the wine-making countries of Europe sought to replace their blasted rootstocks with new, healthy ones, they had been forced to turn to California vineyards like Agretti's to buy new vines. It was literally true that the best of Europe's wine grapes grew on roots imported from California.

Melissa, Carlo's only daughter, had read all this in the family records. Her father had told her the old stories time and again. She missed this strong link of family tradition now that she lived at Falcon Crest. This evening, feeling faint and vaguely nauseated she had begged the Channings' chauffeur to drive her "home."

Oh, yes, she told herself, Bellavista is home.

She dismissed Desi and walked slowly, almost painfully up the steps of the veranda. From a distance she seemed to move like an elderly woman carrying a load too great for her, not the vibrant young bride who had only recently married Lance. But no one expected her arrival tonight, so no one saw the painful homecoming.

She found her father in his den, smoking one of the stubby black cigars he still imported from the old country. "I knew it," Melissa said, forcing a smile, "all I had to do was follow that horrible smell and I'd find you."

They embraced. Where Melissa was tall and slim, Carlo Agretti was squat, a true son of the soil who never wanted to stand too tall above it. After a moment he held his daughter at arm's length. "I haven't seen you in ... nearly a week, is it?"

"Two."

"And you look..." Her father stopped. "You're not well, Lissa?"

"I'm fine. Really."

"This time of year," he apologized, "this is our busiest, when the grapes need all our time. I've neglected you, tesora."

"I have a husband for that."

"Yes. I haven't forgotten." Carlo glanced behind her. "Is he here with you?" When she shook her head, Carlo sat her down in the easy chair across from him. The room was filled with the mementos of a long and productive life, the walls covered with awards, certificates of merit, photographs of ceremonies and gala harvest picnics.

"Tell me, Lissa. How is my grandson?"

She patted her abdomen. "He's fine. We're both doing well, Papa."'

"Dr. Ruzza tells me we have to be caref-"

"Dr. Ruzza is a nervous old maid," the young woman interrupted. She glanced around her. "Somebody ought to take a good feather duster to this place."

"Never mind all that." Carlo eyed her for a long moment. Then: "What brings you here tonight?"

Melissa sat back and boldly returned the questioning glance. There was no way she could ever pull the wool over her father's eyes. Man of the soil he might be, but the emotional bond between them was too strong for her ever to fool him. Besides, there were no secrets in Tuscany Valley. He might not know the precise reason his daughter was unhappy but he could sense her misery and make some accurate guesses as to its cause.

"Lance," she said then, "is not really cut out for marriage."

"No?" Carlo bristled. "Maybe he needs a little pruning, then."

His daughter's laugh sounded hollow. "He's not one of your vines, Papa."

"That I know. He's one of the rootless kind, that kid. He's too vain to think he belongs here among us. He's too careful of himself to take a chance on sinking roots. So, instead, he runs wild. And you know what happens to a weed in this part of the world?"

There's no answer to that, Melissa thought. You don't prune a person the way you prune a vineyard. She hadn't come here to measure her father's anger. She wanted his comfort, his reassurance. She wanted to recapture her sense of belonging, here in Bellavista ... home.

The telephone rang and she was spared the need to speak. "Yes, this is Agretti. Who?" Her father's glance shifted sideways to Melissa and his eyebrows went up. "Richard Channing? The Richard Channing?"

Melissa sat forward, watching her father more closely. She had heard the illegitimate son of Douglas Channing had returned. But what did he want of her father?

"Not now," Agretti was saying into the telephone. "I don't leave my vines for the next three months. What? Yes, I know San Francisco's only an hour's drive. But in that hour anything could happen, a hailstorm, a flood, high winds. Till October, we live here at the mercy of Mother Nature."

Carlo Agretti sat back in his chair. It creaked comfortably as he listened. Now and then he would turn an amazed face at Melissa as if what he was listening to was either the funniest or the most insane conversation in the world.

"No way. It's precisely five thousand acres. And all under intensive cultivation. I'm not like the people at Falcon Crest. I use every inch of my land for grapes."

He listened again. This time, to Melissa, he rolled his eyes and touched his forehead with one finger. Then: "Mr. Channing, it's crazy. Don't waste your time, Mr. Ch-. All right, Richard. I tell you, Richard, this land is my life. I wouldn't sell either."

He shook his head slowly several times. "No. Absolutely final. Good night, Mr. Char-, ah, Richard."

Slowly he replaced the telephone receiver and took a long, steadying breath. "Now that," he told his daughter, "is what you kids would call a gigantic ego trip."

"For Richard Channing?"

"Yes. But even more for me. You know what he was asking?"

"It sounded as if he wanted to buy Bellavista."

"That's it. And my, oh, my, did he try. He wanted to buy the land. Then he wanted to sign an exclusive contract for the grapes. Then he suggested me selling him half the land. Then ... I lost track of the offers."

"Where would he get that kind of money?"

"He claimed he had it, and to spare," Carlo Agretti said. "He said he'd just bought up his father's shares in the Globe and there was plenty more cash where that came from."

"And you said no?" Melissa asked.

"Naturally."

"No to any part of it?"

"No to every part of it," her father corrected her. "Lissa, you know me. I'm a simple man. What I know, I know better than anybody. And what I know is grapes. Take that away from me and I'm no better than the lowest tramp on Skid Row. Give me a bunch of money in place of my grapes and what have I got? Piles and piles of dirty green paper. Where's the fun in that? Where's the challenge? Where's the life?"

"So that's what you meant, that it was an ego trip for you, too, saying no to that much money. Did he offer a lot?"

"Baby," her father told her, "it's numbers with a lot of zeros added on. A barrel of nothing, Lissa. They say every man has his price? Okay, every man but one. And you're looking at him."

Melissa jumped up and hugged the squat little man. "You make me proud, Papa," she said. "You make me proud to be an Agretti."

"Thank you," he said in a humble voice. "Now that you're up with the swells there at Falcon Crest, it's good to know you still have me in your heart."

"I always will," she, said quietly.

"And you in mine," he promised her. "And after you, Lissa, the grapes. My heart can hold all that. And no more."

"Good."

"Ask me to sell Bellavista..." Carlo Agretti fumed. "The nerve of the man. Before I sell Bellavista," he added, taking Melissa's chin in his hand and looking her straight in the eye, "before that, I would die!"

The small chartered four-seater airplane had long since disappeared along the darkening southern horizon. Chase Gioberti sat without moving behind the wheel of the Jeep Emma had used to make her escape. He still wondered why she'd involved him in her plan, but, as he stared at the thick envelope she'd left in his hands, he knew the answer lay inside.

Poor Emma, Chase thought. She never did things except in a dramatic hurry. Tearing off alone in the jeep, finding him at the nearby general store, begging him to drive the vehicle while she crouched down beneath the dashboard. It was like a Nancy Drew girl's adventure book.

Chase grinned and rubbed his trim beard. It had been his idea, once he knew what Emma wanted, to drive to the smaller airstrip used by the tiny cropdusting planes and ultralight flying enthusiasts. Nobody at Falcon Crest would think of Emma making her escape from there. They'd be watching the railroad station and the big airport. And now she was gone. She'd promised to phone Chase and let him know where she ended up on the money she was carrying. That way he could send her more as she needed it.

"But, oh, Chase, if you value my life, please, please don't tell a soul where I am," she had pleaded.

"Not even Maggie?"

"It's my secret, in your hands," Emma had reminded him. "Please don't let me down. Please!"

And now her envelope was in his hands. Before he opened it, Chase made sure no one was watching. The airstrip seemed deserted this time of evening, but he could never be sure. He glanced carefully around him-at the tied-down small planes, the rickety hangar building, dark inside, the parking lot with nothing parked but the Jeep itself.

Typical Chase Gioberti behavior, he told himself. Mr. Careful. Mr. Look-Both-Ways. Well, it hadn't hurt the other day, when he'd called that Globe shareholders' meeting, to come on as Mr. Cautious. The trouble with the tangled ownership of the Globe was that the entire game had just been stood on its head.

For years the shares had been evenly parceled out to the grandchildren of Jasper Gioberti, meaning Emma, Julia and Chase himself. And there had hung over them the purchase options Douglas Channing had left to his illegitimate son. But for decades now it had been a fact of life that Richard Channing had no money to exercise the options.

At the meeting Chase had called, which Emnia had forgotten to attend, he and Julia had reluctantly sat down to figure out where they stood as far as the newspaper was concerned. It became clear that the mysterious Richard owned precisely as much of the Globe as did the three of them put together. Richard owned half and Julia, Emma and Chase each owned sixteen and two-thirds percent, totaling the other 50 percent. Plus a few shares owned by the general public.

"In other words," Julia had complained, "he has us beat."

"Separately," Chase had reminded her. "But not if we vote together."

"If we vote together," Julia had retorted, her mind as sharp with figures as her mother Angela's, "what we've got is a fifty-fifty head-on collision. Nobody wins."

"Not quite. Some outstanding shares are held by the public. Anybody who bought those would be able to deal himself into the game."

As he sat in the growing darkness behind the wheel of the Jeep, Chase ran again through the mental arithmetic of the thing and decided there were too many unknown quantities. Until he knew what Richard had in mind for the Globe he couldn't reach any valid conclusions. But Richard wasn't returning his telephone calls.

Typical, Chase thought. The man had lived most of his life abroad or in New York. He was a completely unknown quantity. None of them even remembered him as a boy. It was doubtful that any of them had ever seen him in those bygone days for more than a fleeting glance. He'd been treated as a pariah, a guilty secret, something to be hidden, spirited away.

Chase could remember asking his own parents about the missing boy. His father, Jason, had been no help. Chase's mother, who had been Jacqueline Perrault before she married Jason Gioberti, had been even less forthcoming. And now that she spent most of her time in Europe, Chase had almost no access to her. Even on the few occasions when she came back to the Valley to see how her grandchildren, Cole and Vickie, had grown, Jacqueline remained her usual taciturn, private, mysterious self.

"I don't mind that about her," Maggie once told Chase. "I prefer an aloof grandmother to the smothering kind. Cole and Vickie have a lot more respect for your mother that way, Chase. They're a little in awe of her. So am I, to tell the truth."

So was he, Chase reminded himself. Having Jacqueline Perrault as your mother was a little like being the son of one of the ice sculptures they trotted out at formal dinners. The workmanship was terrific, all smooth and glittering, but you didn't dare put your arms around her and give her a bear hug. You would freeze to death.

He hefted the thick envelope Emma had left with him. It was too dark now to read its contents. Chase switched on the Jeep's headlights and climbed down onto the dusty roadway. He stood in front of the Jeep and ripped the envelope open.

Inside ... what? Chase pawed through the contents, heavy wads of engraved stock certificates decorated with gold seals. Good Lord! These were Emma's voting shares in the Globe!

With them came a handwritten note on Falcon Crest letterhead. "Know all men by these present," Emma had written in her awkward, backhand script, "that all certificated shares in the San Francisco Globe held in the name of Emma Marie Channing are hereby devised and transferred for proxy purposes to Chase Gioberti for a period of one year from today, together with my power of attorney to vote these shares in my interest as he deems best."

She'd signed and dated the document. It might not stand up in court, Chase thought, but it would give an opponent quite a headache to try and break.

By the light of the Jeep's headlamps, Chase stood there, rubbing his beard and doing his Mr. Cautious mental arithmetic. Richard Channing had half the votes. Julia had sixteen-plus percent. And he, Chase Gioberti, now controlled slightly more than a third.

Okay, Richard Channing, man of mystery, your move.

The Honda 500 emitted a blast of noise like a bull elephant on the rampage. Cole Gioberti twisted the handlebar throttle and forced more exhaust through the twin tailpipes. This hog revved like a jet, he thought. It was the fastest thing on two wheels in the whole Tuscany Valley.

He slammed into gear and did a half-wheelie as he roared off along the dirt road that led from the migrant workers quarters back to his own home. His mother, Maggie, would have had dinner ready for some time now. Cole was an hour late and fervently hoped the family had eaten without him. Otherwise he'd never hear the end of it.

What the hell, a man of nineteen was entitled to a little fun. And some of the cute Mexican girls among the migrant workers were ready, willing and able to supply as much fun as Cole could absorb.

Chuckling to himself, the young man rocketed along the bumpy road, leaving an immense plume of dust in his wake. But now that the sun was down and night had settled in, who would know he was polluting the good, clean air of Tuscany Valley?

If he used the cutoff through the Bellavista property, he'd be home half an hour sooner. The problem was, Carlo Agretti had ordered him off his property, hadn't liked the fact that Melissa used to see a lot of Cole before she got married. But at night there are no problems, Cote told himself. Just as long as old Carlo can't bear the noise this 500 makes, I'm safe.

He eased up on the throttle and ghosted along in the darkness, nearing the Agretti cutoff. But just as he reached the corner he saw a long, low-slung Jaguar coupe rumble smoothly in through the main driveway, headed toward the Agretti house. Too risky, Cole thought. With visitors on the premises, and a noisy hog like this Honda between his knees, he'd be sure to be spotted, even at night.

Reluctantly, Cote wheeled his cycle onto the main road and headed home like an arrow. He was in enough trouble with his family for being late. He didn't have to complicate it by getting old Agretti's dander up as well.

The Jaguar was a taupe color, just a shade darker than the hue of Diana Hunter's nylons as she swung her legs from behind the wheel of the powerful car and stood in front of Bellavista. Alerted by her arrival, the veranda suddenly blazed with light and a chunky Chinese guard came outside, a 12-gauge doublebarreled shotgun cradled in his arms.

"Yes, miss?"

"I'm here to see Mr. Agretti. Tell him it's Diana Hunter, from the San Francisco Globe."

"Just hold it there a second, miss."

The guard went inside. A moment later he came out, shotgun leveled at the new arrival. Behind him the squat form of Carlo Agretti moved warily, a black cigar clamped in one corner of his mouth.

"You from that Channing fella?" he demanded.

"I am, Mr. Agretti. I'm asking for ten minutes of your time." Diana started up the stairs. "I think you'll find the proposition attractive."

"Hold It." The twin muzzles of the Chinese guard's gun watched her with the intensity of two feral eyes.

Agretti looked her up and down, from her highheeled black patent-leather pumps up her sleek, taupe legs to her brief navy suit and flimsy blouse tied with a colorful man's foulard. "You don't look like you could hurt me too much," he said then.

The guard cackled. "Depends on what you call hurt."

The men chuckled as Diana moved onto the veranda. "Ten minutes, Mr. Agretti," she repeated.

"What's the hurry?" He led her back to his den, the same room where he and Melissa had talked earlier in the evening before she'd gone back to Falcon Crest. "Have a seat." He set out two big, sparkling clean red-wine glasses. "Would you like a glass of wine? It's some I make for myself. I don't sell it."

"That would be lovely."

Putting out his cigar, he poured the two glasses half full from an unlabeled bottle, held his glass to the light, swirled the bright ruby liquid, then inhaled its aroma before taking a careful sip. "Not too many people have ever tasted this wine, Miss, ah, what was your name again?"

"Diana Hunter." She sipped daintily. "Excellent. A full nose and a really terrific finish. You can be proud of this wine."

"so tell me, what's Mr. Channing up to this time?"

Diana carefully put down her glass. "You see, over the phone, he was at a disadvantage. There are fine points to the bargaining process that can be best accomplished face-to-face."

"Without anybody tapping the line," Carlo Agretti finished for her. He winked. "So Mr. Channing sends out a pretty woman to soften up the old paisano, that it? Face-to-face, as you say."

"What he could mention on the telephone was money, Mr. Agretti. You turned him down cold. And Mr. Channing isn't used to that. So he asked me to try to change your mind."

"He isn't used to being turned down?" Agretti's voice had thinned to a sneer. "That's too bad. Lemme tell you something. It gave me a great deal of pleasure to turn down Mr. Channing."

"No need to antagonize him. He can be a very valuable friend if you let him." Her voice held a note of caution.

"Yeah?" the old man's voice had gone up a tone or two as anger began to creep in. "What if I don't want him as a friend? Tell me that? What if I don't want any part of him or his cartel?"

In the sudden silence Diana Hunter glanced around the room at the pictures, the awards, the certificates. Richard had sent her into a booby trap. This was no simple-minded peasant. This man knew a lot more than any of them dreamed.

"Cartel?" she asked then in her coolest voice.

"Hey, Miss Hunter, when I let somebody taste my wine, I don't want to play funny games with them. I'm a guy who levels, you understand. So don't you play funny games with me."

"But I don't understand you."

Agretti finished the rest of his wine in one furious gulp. "The cartel? You never heard of it? And next you're gonna tell me you never beard of Henri Denault. Or the idea that Channing comes out here to try and buy up the whole West Coast wine industry for Denault's cartel."

"This is amazing," Diana countered. "The man makes an offer for one vineyard and he stands accused of masterminding some mysterious statewide takeover."

"Bellavista first, then the rest. You gotta start somewhere. Channing and Denault want to start with me. Now, finish your wine and get out of here. I took a look at you and thought, here's a pretty woman. What's wrong with a glass of wine and ten minutes talk? But you don't talk. You play games."

Diana glanced at her wine. It was tempting to finish the lovely, velvety liquid, but she wanted to maintain her cool stance with Agretti. "Money isn't all that Mr. Channing could offer you for Bellavista," she said then. "That's why I'm here in person."

"Offering what?"

"How about ... ? Let's call it freedom," she said airily.

"What?"

"In the agricultural businesses, record-keeping can't be as precise as in manufacturing. So a lot of agribusinesses may not report quite accurately to the IRS. Corners are cut now and then. Sometimes a vintner doesn't even realize he's cut a corner till it's too late. When I say freedom, I mean freedom from someone informing on you to the IRS."

Carlo Agretti sat there in stunned silence. Then: "I'll ... be ... damned. Here's a pretty woman, I tell myself. How can she hurt me? Five minutes of talk and you already got a knife on my jugular?"

"It's just a suggestion," Diana retorted coldly. "You'd be the best judge of how you stand with your taxes, But you might find Mr. Channing's offer a welcome escape hatch. Liquidate your property and stop worrying about the IRS."

Agretti was on his feet. "Out!"

Diana got up. "No need to make a decision now."

"Out of here!"

"Just give it some thought," she added, moving toward the doorway of the den.

"Get out of here! Fong! Bring the shotgun!"

"I'm going,"

Breathing heavily, Carlo Agretti watched her leave the house. He could hear her sharp heel taps as she descended the veranda steps. A moment later the sleek car purred into life. With a screech of tires, it swung around in the driveway and headed off the property. Some moments later Fong returned to the den.

"She's cleared the property, boss."

"Okay. Shut down the gates and go to sleep."

"Check."

Agretti felt his breathing case off. The pounding in his head came to an end. He sat at his desk and shook his head slowly, sadly. So that's what he got for letting a pretty woman in the house!

That Channing and his rotten cartel. They were all snakes. Taking him for a fool, some brainless contadino who had no idea of the world outside Tuscany Valley. Well, he'd shown her, shown them. Shown Henri Denault. God, how the man seemed to haunt him all these years. Wasn't it ever possible to rid of such memories once and for all?

"Carlo," a voice said. He glanced up into the shadows beyond his desk. He knew that voice. It was not Fong, his night watchman, nor was it the silky voice of Miss Hunter.

He was staring into an eye of steel, the muzzle of a .9mm Browning automatic pistol. It fired the kind of slug that went small into your chest and came out the size of a grapefruit. A great tightness seized Carlo Agretti by the throat.

"Who's there?" he wheezed.

"Carlo," the voice said, "pick up the phone."

Cole Gioberti coasted down the driveway to his parents' home. Only the porch light was on. He let himself into the house and soon realized no one had waited dinner for him. In his excitement over the Mexican girls, he had completely forgotten that the four of them, Mom, Dad, Vickie and he, were supposed to have dinner in town at the steak restaurant.

While he cursed himself for missing a great meal, the phone began ringing. It would be Dad, wondering what the hell had happened to him. "Yeah, I know," he said as he picked up the phone. "I goofed."

"Cole?" a strange voice asked.

"Who is this?"

"Carlo Agretti."

"What did I do now?"

"Can you come over here?"

"No way. The last time I even got near your property you read me the riot act."

"I've changed my mind. Melissa asked me to."

"Huh?"

"Cole, it's Melissa." The voice hesitated. "She's here. She wants to talk to you. Right now."

"You gotta be kidding, Mr. Agretti."

"Please. Right now." The line went dead.

Cole stood there in the darkened living room and tried to figure out this change of heart. Half an hour ago he was carefully avoiding the Agretti property because he was as welcome there as a coyote in a pack of sheep. Now the old guy himself was issuing an engraved invitation in Melissa's name?

But why not? Maybe there was still something there between Melissa and him, Cole thought. And, anyway, dinner was shot. He got back on his cycle and roared off into the night.

The main house at Bellavista lay in darkness. Cole dismounted from the Honda and pulled his emergency flashlight out of his saddlebag. He flashed it over the veranda. The front door was wide open.

By the light of the flash, Cole picked his way inside. He'd spent enough time here as a kid - and later when he and Melissa were dating - to know his way around the darkened house.

"Mr. Agretti?"

The house lay still. Not a board creaked. Not a curtain whispered in the breeze.

"Melissa?"

Cole moved forward in the direction of the room Mr. Agretti used most, his beloved den. "Mr. Agretti? It's Cole."

He was standing in the doorway, flashing the light from side to side. At first it missed Carlo Agretti. Then it landed full beam on his face, wreathed in blood. The desk brimmed with blood. A bronze statue lay on its side, soaked in red. Cole picked it up, then hastily put it down.

Flashlight wavering, he dialed the telephone. He could hear the ringing on the line. He reached over to feel Carlo Agretti's pulse. There was none. With blood on both hands now, Cole waited. Ring. Ring. Ring.

"Sheriffs office. Can I help you?"

"This is Cole Gioberti. I'm at Bellavista. You'd better send an ambulance."

"What's the problem, Cole?"

"It's Mr. Agretti. He's dead."

"What?"

"Murdered."

"What makes you say that?"

"Come and see for yourself."

"Right. And, listen, don't touch anything!"

Hanging up the telephone, Cole got blood on the instrument. He switched on the room's overhead light and caught a glimpse of himself in a wall mirror.

Blood stained his shirt in three places. Both his hands dripped red. Don't touch anything, he repeated dully. Oh...my...God...

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