She gave herself a grim smile in the mirror as she adjusted the hang of the dress and fastened its front buttons. Black was not her color, never had been. She was too light a blond to carry it off; the black seemed to drain her face and arms. But she had the height and the figure for black, she decided as she surveyed herself.

Where was that small black straw hat? She so rarely wore a hat except as a sunshade that she had quite forgotten when last she'd worn the petite black one. Had it been at her son Lance's wedding to Melissa Agretti? Probably.

That was the Valley social calendar for you, Julia told herself: weddings and funerals. The occasional christening. The Founder's Day outing. Serious events, nothing frivolous. Black would be the usual color in most cases. And especially today, the funeral of her daughter-in-law's father, Carlo Agretti.

Again she checked her image in the mirror and, again her lips flattened in that peculiarly grave smile.

Well, she could guarantee the behavior of at least one of them at today's sad occasion: she, Julia Channing Cumson, would play the proper mourner.

About Lance Cumson she wasn't so sure. He'd been treating Melissa to a full dose of his "cool": never there for meals, often out all night, a nightmare distortion of what an expectant father should be.

Julia knew she should have spoken about it more often and more sharply to Lance. He was behaving inhumanly. It hurt her to watch the way he ignored his bride. But Julia knew that Lance's grandmother had already begun to pressure the boy about the same thing, if for perhaps different reasons. And when someone lived under Angela Channing's pressure, he didn't need an extra load coming his way.

She turned to leave her room and descend to join the rest of the mourners gathering at Falcon Crest. But once more she came back to the mirror and subjected herself to a merciless scrutiny. Hat ... gloves ... dress ... the look on her face. Yes, that, too, Julia reminded herself. Expressionless was not the right look. Concerned. Sad. Understanding.

Almost like an actress rehearsing a role, Julia moved her face slowly through several expressions. Refined grief. Utter compassion.

Good. Picking up a small black leather bag, she left the room and descended the stairs at a rapid pace, her long legs flashing. Then, abrupty, she slowed her progress. The rest of the curving marble staircase she took slowly, almost regally, one sad stair at a time.

Three steps from the bottom she paused. In the library, by the fireplace, she saw her son and his bride standing together. Well, not quite, but within a foot or two of each other. They were talking and, for a wonder, Lance's expression was almost ... yes!...almost a replica of his mother's face. Julia grasped the balustrade for support. Lance compassionate?

As she watched, her son actually started to put his arm around Melissa's shoulder. It was a slow, almost reluctant gesture. And, just as slowly, Melissa took a step backward, out of his reach. She smiled sadly. Lance leaned over and kissed her cheek.

Would wonders never cease? Julia asked herself as she descended the remaining stairs and walked directly into the library toward the young couple. Lance looked up guiltily, as if caught in an indiscretion.

"You . . ." He paused and seemed at a loss for words. Then: "Melissa's okay, Mother. She's going to be all right."

Julia's answer was to go directly to the young woman and take her in her arms. "Of course she will," she said soothingly. There was no responsive hug from Melissa. Over her shoulder, Julia could see her mother and Phillip Erikson in the far corner of the library, well out of earshot.

That explained it. Lance had put on this performance for his grandmother.

Kissing Melissa on the cheek, Julia scanned the long room. As she arrived a curious thing happened. In quite the same manner as Lance - almost guiltily, as if caught in something they didn't want witnessed - Angela and Phillip instantly stopped talking.

"Mother?"

"Oh, it's You." Angie's black dress was, if anything, cut even more severely than her daughter's. Phillip's dark gray suit neatly set off the small black armband he wore. Without further ado, they resumed their conversation as if, Julia weren't there.

"It can't be tied up completely in land," Angie said.

"But it is," the lawyer assured her. "I made it my business some months ago - you remember why - to do a full financial check on Carlo Agretti."

He lowered his voice to make sure it didn't carry across the long library to the dead man's daughter. "He wasn't the simple farmer he seemed to be," Phillip went on. "We all knew that. But what we didn't know was that he'd mortgaged so much of his land to make investments outside the Valley."

"A mistake," Angie announced in a crisp tone. "You don't build an empire that way. You make the land pay its way. But you never give anyone an ounce of control over it, especially not a bank."

"What are you saying?" Julia asked. "What's Melissa inheriting? Mortgaged land and a load of bank debt?"

"Keep your voice down," Angela hissed. "That's exactly what he's saying. The question is, does Melissa know it too?"

"I doubt it," the lawyer responded. "Carlo played his cards very close to the vest. He wouldn't have told his daughter a word of this."

To Julia's ears a faint note of discontent sounded in her mother's words. "Have you told Lance?" she asked very quietly.

"I'd have to be insane," Angela retorted. "It's taken all my efforts to get him just to treat the girl decently on the day of her father's funeral."

"Then how do you feel about it," Julia persisted.

Angela Channing's wide eyes narrowed slightly as she stared into her daughter's face. "What kind of question is that, Julia?" Her voice seemed to grow even more venomous for being low-pitched. "A man has been murdered. His estate may be in disarray. How do you expect me to feel on the day we bury him? It's a sad occasion. Period."

"So sad," Julia said with sweetly fake politeness, "that all you and Phillip can talk about is mortgages."

Angie's mouth opened in shock. And that was the way Julia left her as she collected Lance and Melissa and headed for the limousine.

"Of course I'm going," Cole said in a mulish voice.

"I don't know why not," his father Chase agreed. "Maggie," he turned to his wife, "Cole's done nothing but what any good citizen would do -report a murder."

Maggie wrapped her arms around herself and seemed to be hugging her body for warmth. "I can't explain why I feel this way, Chase. But I'm his mother and if I can't speak my mind, who can?"

"Mom," Vickie begged her, "we all get these ... uh, feelings."

"Premonitions," Maggie added. "Strong ones."

"About what?" her son demanded. "Look, Mom, I don't put on a suit and a tie-"

"And black socks and shoes," his father added.

"And comb your hair," Vickie put in.

"-just for nothing," Cole concluded. "I didn't like the guy. He didn't like me. But he was Melissa's dad and the fact that I'm the one who found him doesn't mean I shouldn't be at the funeral."

Maggie glanced around at her family. "So I'm outvoted."

"It's not a vote, sweetheart," Chase told her. "This is a decision a man makes for himself. And Cole's made it."

Maggie's hand reached out as if to touch Cole's face. There were a thousand things she could have said, a thousand fears. Couldn't any of them see the incriminating position Cole was in? she wondered. Couldn't they picture, as she had with her writer's mind, that scene last night when the sheriff had found Cole covered with Carlo Agretti's blood?

Couldn't any of them realize that Cole had given no coherent reason for being at Bellavista last night. Of course he was innocent. Of course he'd merely been a good citizen. But Maggie had seen enough of official justice in this world to know that sheriffs and district attorneys rarely saw things the way one's own family did.

"A man," she heard herself say in a choked voice, "has made a decision. That's right. Cole is a man, now. It's hard ... It isn't . . ." She turned directly to her son. "I keep picturing you as a little boy. You're not. I know that" - she touched her forehead - "up here. But not" - she touched her stomachn - "down here. Never mind. The decision's been made."

She took a long, shuddering breath. "Let's go."

If it had been up to Diana Hunter, she would have suggested that she and Richard Channing remain in the background at the funeral. Or perhaps not even attend. But here they were, virtually at graveside now, as the coffin was slowly lowered on its heavy tapes, inch by inch into the freshly dug ground.

Across the entire Valley sunlight poured down its richness. Endless rows of vines baked in the brilliant heat. The service at the church had been the briefest of funeral masses and the cortege to the cemetery had been on foot. Now, heads bared to the sun, several hundred people stood in silent prayer as the last remains of Carlo Agretti were returned to the soil he had tilled so well.

Diana's glance shifted subtly from Richard's taut, handsome face, nearest her, to the face of the woman on the other side of the grave, whom Diana had never met. But there was no mistaking the aura of power about Angela Channing, her great eyes glittering behind her veil, her glance fixed - not on the coffin or the grave - but upon Richard.

To one side stood the people Richard had identified as Chase Gioberti and his family. It was hard to tell what Chase really looked like because his trim beard defeated Diana's powers of concentration. But there was an odd similarity about the two men, Chase and Richard, their height and build and the conformation of their heads.

Chase's son, Cole, shared his mother's fair good looks, but where Maggie Gioberti seemed lost in thought, Cole glanced from one face to the next, as if forever engraving in his memory the mourners who had gathered to pay their last respects.

Odd, defiant boy, Diana thought. She watched the priest sprinkle holy water over the coffin. Then a tall, slender girl, heavily veiled, stepped forward, accompanied by a young man whose face was set in an almost frozen look of compassion.

The daughter, Diana told herself. And the man must be Lance Cumson, her husband. Peculiar, the way they stood, not touching, a great deal of space between them as Melissa Agretti Cumson bent down and picked up a small bit of the rich Valley soil.

She paused and seemed to steel herself. Then she dropped the handful of earth into the grave. It made a hollow sound as it hit the coffin lid, now hidden from view. The priest intoned his final phrases and for a long moment everyone stood in complete silence.

Far away a flight of small birds swooped over the vines, chattering and shrilling as they skimmed the great fields. Nearer at hand a tractor engine started with the iron clatter of a heavy diesel. Tuscany Valley had returned to its labors.

The crowd of mourners began to break up. Diana could see Chase Gioberti heading in her direction. Richard started to move away, but Chase was too fast for him.

The two men, so similar in build and height, faced each other.

"Richard Channing?" the bearded man said. It was hardly phrased as a question.

"And you're Chase," Richard replied.

They looked each other over for an instant. "You don't believe in returning telephone calls, do you?" Chase said then. "I'll be in San Francisco tomorrow. Are you free in the late morning?"

Richard half-turned to Diana. "I'm calling a shareholders' meeting in the near future. That's the time for you to have your say."

"They tell me you've fired Harry Loomis. That you're changing the newspaper's style," Chase persisted. "You haven't the legal power to do that, not without consulting the other owners."

"Minority shareholders," Richard said coldly, "will have to wait in line."

"Minorities have a way of sticking together. Then it's called a majority."

"Meaning?"

Chase started to say something, then checked himself. "Perhaps you're right, Richard. Perhaps that meeting you intend to call is a better time for you to find out."

"Find out what?"

The bearded man smiled slightly. "But that," he said softly, "would spoil the surprise. Wouldn't it?" He turned and walked away.

Angela Channing had taken Melissa's arm as they walked slowly along the gravel path of the cemetery. "I'm so terribly sorry about this, my dear," she murmured.

"Are you, Mrs. Channing?"

"I know how difficult it all must be with the baby on the way. There is no good time," Angela purred, "to lose one's beloved father. But this could hardly have been worse."

Cole came up on the other side of Melissa. "Hi," he said.

"Cole," the bereaved young woman responded. "I'm glad you came." She took his hand and pressed it softly.

"I'd like a private moment with my grandson's wife," Angela snapped.

"You've got all the time in the world, back at Falcon Crest," Cole spoke up. "Lissa, it was a terrible shock. I know that. I just wanted you to know that if there's anything I can do ... any help ... whatever ... I'm here for you."

"That's sweet of you, Cole."

"The way you were there the night her father died?" Angie asked, her voice brittle with innuendo. She swept back the veil covering her face and glared at the young man. "You're a fine one to offer help. It seems to most of us that you've already helped ... too much."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cole demanded.

"Ask the sheriff," Angie retorted.

They had stopped in the shade of a great fir tree, the ground beneath their feet carpeted with long brown needles cast off in previous years. As the older woman and Cole stared into each other's eyes, Richard Channing appeared.

"Miss Agretti," he said. "I'm sorry, I meant Mrs. Cumson, may I introduce myself I'm a distant relative of yours called Richard Channing." He put out his hand and took hers.

The fury in Angela Channing's face distorted her features into a demon's mask. "You're no part of anybody's family," she growled.

"Easy now," Richard said smoothly. "You'll pop a vein."

"Melissa, let's go. Neither of these people is someone with whom you should associate."

"What a lovely name," Richard murmured. "Melissa. It has something to do with honey, doesn't it? A sweet name, perfect for you." He was still holding her hand. "I didn't know your father very well, Melissa. But he may have told you I wanted to do business with him."

"He mentioned it."

"Bellavista is such a wonderful place. I come from here, you know," Richard went on. "And I want to sink roots back here where I belong."

"You come from nowhere," Angela said in a gritty voice. "You're illegitimate in every sense of the word. And the sooner you go back to nowhere, the sooner we'll have peace in the Valley again."

"Arrivederci, Melissa," Richard said. He picked up her hand and kissed it, his eyes holding hers. "Till we meet again."

Angela took the younger woman's arm and marched her off toward the waiting limousines. Richard's handsome face cracked in a broad smile as he watched them go. Then he turned to Cole. "How did you get up there next to me on Angeia's hit list?"

Cole had a stubborn look in his eyes. "What's it to you?"

"People with the same enemies often become friends."

"Name's Cole. Cole Gioberti."

"The lad who found Agretti's body?"

Cole's face went white. "That's not. . . " He stopped. "And I'm not a lad," he finished lamely.

"But you are a prime suspect," Richard informed him. "My reporters have been working over the story pretty thoroughly. You may be as innocent as a newborn lamb, my lad, but in the absence of anybody more likely, the sheriff could decide you're his best bet."

Cole glanced around him. "How would you like to say that out of a new hole in your face?"

"Put there by you, laddy-boy?"

Cole's right arm cocked back. His fist started in an upward arc aimed at Richard Channing's strong chin. The older man sidestepped and, almost as an afterthought, drove his stiff fingers into Cole's rib cage. Cole gasped and doubled over. Suddenly Diana Hunter appeared at Richard's side.

They propped Cole up against the trunk of a tree and watched him for a second trying to catch his breath. Then, silently, they left together, moving toward where Diana had parked the taupe jaguar.

"Was that necessary? He's only a boy."

Richard grinned at her. "But don't you dare call him one. Did anyone notice?"

"Hard to tell." She walked along in silence awhile. "Did you notice Emma Channing?" she asked then.

"Where was she?"

"That's the point. She wasn't." Diana glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "Odd."

"Very. Can you look into it?"

"Grist for your mill?" Diana asked.

"Diana, there is nothing in this Valley but grist. Buried secrets. Hidden relationships. Clandestine scandals. The new Globe is going to have a field day."

"Sounds more like a bloodletting."

Richard nodded as they got into the car. "And that young lad - you mustn't ever call him that - he's going to be my first lamb led to slaughter."

"Seems too young to have accumulated much scandal."

"Don't let his callowness fool you," Richard declared. "He's a big, hulking, self-destructive, hotheaded, accident-prone meathead. Intimately connected with Falcon Crest. And I'm about to plaster him all over tomorrow's front page."

And now, this new distraction. It had arrived with the morning mail, delivered by the postman with a special flourish: "ARRIVING TODAY SFAP NONSTOP PARIS FLIGHT. JAQUELINE".

Maggie reread the radiogram and, by accident, started to roll it into her typewriter, as if it were a blank sheet of paper. Laughing at her own distracted behavior, she rolled it out, got up and left her office. There would be no more writing today.

Chase's mother, Jacqueline Perrault Gioberti, was arriving at San Francisco Airport this morning on the transpolar flight from Paris, and at this moment Chase and Cole were driving to San Francisco to pick her up. This wasted at least half a day for each of them. But Jacqueline Perrault was a great consumer of other people's lives.

Maggie opened her big refrigerator-freezer and wondered what she might pull together for a special "Welcome Grandmother" dinner tonight. It would have to be the full treatment: four courses, three wines, candlelight, the best china and silver. And Vickie and Cole on their best behavior.

For a woman who had married a California vintner, Jacqueline remained forever and remorselessly French. Always a petite, pretty woman with a thick head of curly blond hair, she was, Maggie thought, the epitome of European chic, that special look that American women, no matter how much they spent on clothes and makeup, never achieved.

Maggie wondered, not for the first time, what this mysterious quality of chicness might be. She decided, as she sat down now and scribbled notes for a menu, that the chic was in the mystery itself. American women were a known quantity to themselves, to each other, to their men and to the world at large. American beauty had an open look. There might be secrets, but the look didn't depend on them. It depended on being open.

Jacqueline's French chic depended on an aura of mystery. What was this impossibly well-turned-out woman really like beneath the Chanel suit, the Ferragamo shoes, the St. Laurent coat, the Dior hat? The veil of mystery was a trick, of course, but a lasting one.

In Jacqueline's case, however, it was more than a trick. As often as she had conversed with her mother-in-law, as frequently as Chase had reminisced about her, Maggie knew almost nothing of this petite bundle of Gallic charm and reserve.

As the widow of jason Gioberti, she had money but no more than had been left to Chase. Yet her life-style must cost her dearly, Maggie knew. Nominally based in Paris, Jacqueline could surface almost anywhere in the civilized world, sending postcards to Vickie and Cole from exotic ports of call like Macao, Antofagasta, the Seychelles, Leningrad and Chad.

She seemed constantly on the go, and not with the traditional wanderer's backpack, either. When Jacqueline Perrault traveled, a minimum of eight matched Louis Vuitton cases moved with her, everything from the odd gold-clasped vanity case to the immense steamer trunk in which, as children, both Vickie and Cole would often hide . .. together.

As if she had summoned up this very apparition, Cole drove the jeep into their front driveway loaded to the rim with matched Vuitton. Behind him, Chase turned the Olds into its parking space and, quite like a chauffeur, came around to the passenger's door and ushered his mother onto the soil of Falcon Crest.

I suppose, Maggic thought, I ought to feel jealous. Chase and Cole never showered such attendance on Maggie, nor would she ever think of asking for it unless she was too sick to handle matters for herself. A nice example of French versus American style, she thought as she walked through the house to the front porch to welcome her mother-in-law.

"Such a surprise!" she said as they embraced. The older woman's thin, almost wiry arms encircled her. For an instant, Maggie fought off the mental image of a spider embracing a fly.

"You look marvelous," she went on.

"You lie charmingly," Jacqueline responded, smiling. Her accent seemed to get more French with the passing years. Maggie could remember, when she'd first married Chase, that her mother-in-law spoke rather plain American English with only a slight back-of-the-throat roll to her r's.

"But it is you who are tres jolie, tres charmante," Jacqueline was enthusing. "And where is my beautiful granddaughter?"

"She's at school. But she's got the afternoon off."

"My grandson has gained several centimeters in height, nest-ce pas?" "Several kilos in weight," Chase volunteered. "He's turning into solid suet, this kid. I have to find more muscle-building work for him than romancing the sefloritas-,"

"That's it," Cole urged sarcastically. "Everybody on my back at the same time. Sock it to me."

They settled down in the living room and sipped glasses of Maggie's lemonade. "I was most sorry to hear the sad news about Carlo," Jacqueline said then.

"You really didn't know him that well, did you?" Chase asked.

Maggie watched several expressions cross that mobile face with its carefully outlined mouth and cleverly rouged cheeks. "Un peu," Jacqueline said at last with almost no expression at all. "A little, as I knew most of the other grape growers. Through your father, Chase, secondhand, so to speak. But Carlo Agretti, I have . . ." She stopped and slowly sipped her lemonade. When she finished and spoke again, it was on a completely different subject.

"Maggie, how does the film script progress?"

"It doesn't, I'm afraid."

"This family has to learn to give you more time for your writing." Maggie glanced at her husband. "You heard what your mother said?" They gunned at each other. "No, Jacqueline. I have the time. It isn't that. In fact, I'm within ten pages of finishing it. But . . ."

"But too many distractions," the older woman surmised. "I know the feeling well. The world is never fully prepared to give to the working woman the kind of mental privacy it willingly gives a man. There are always the needs of the children. The dinner to be prepared."

Her eyes widened stagily in their neatly crafted beds of mascara and mauve shadow. "By the way, I am taking all of us to dinner this evening. That's understood, non?"

Maggie smiled appreciatively at the gift of free time Jacqueline had just made. But she couldn't help wondering where her mother-in-law got her insights into the spare time available to a woman who pursued a career other than homemaker.

Had she ever had to face such time problems? Surely not here in the Valley. Perhaps now, as a much-traveled widow? It was always vaguely understood that Jacqueline did something rather unspecific, some sort of charitable or other fund-raising work. But would that have given her an insight into Maggie's problems of time? Not likely. The older woman had all the time that money could buy.

"I am not without friends in the film colony," she was saying in her thickening French accent in which "friends" came out "fwonz."

"Anybody crazy enough to take a look at my script?"

"Bien stir. I will give you some names and addresses, Maggie."

Jacqueline searched the boxes on the cocktail table for cigarettes. Finding none, she opened her own pack. Both Chase and Cole sprang forward to light it and Maggie couldn't help bursting into laughter.

"My cavaliers," Jacqueline said, joining in the mirth.

She puffed happily away for a moment. "What other news in the Valley? I understand the Agretti girl has married that odious Lance, whose baby will be born, ah, how do you put it delicately, perhaps a few months early?"

"Mother," Chase put in, "that's about as delicate as a meat cleaver. But it is the current news. Oh, and the change in Globe ownership." "Of this I have not heard."

"You knew that when he died Douglas Charming left a great many stock options available for purchase."

"Did I?" The petite woman seemed to be sparring with her son. "It's so long ago."

Maggie's ear caught something false in the older woman's voice. She began to listen more closely. Usually the flood of Gallic compliments and enthusiasms washed over Maggie without effect. But now she was paying rather close attention to her mother-in-law.

"You must remember," Chase persisted. "It's been hanging over all our heads for so long. That one day those options would be exercised. Well, they have been."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The man they were left to has found the money and bought the stock."

"The man ... ?" Jacqueline's cool voice seemed to falter.

"Richard Channing. You remember, the son Angela never seemed able to give Douglas? Well, Richard's back in San Francisco running the Globe and coming on bold as brass. He even showed up at Carlo Agretti's funeral."

"And took a punch at me," Cole groused.

"What?"

"That's all right," the young man explained. "I took one at him first."

"My word!" Jacqueline exclaimed.

Maggie watched the cigarette drop from her fingers. She dived forward to rescue it before it burned the sofa or floor. She managed to snatch up the cigarette and drop it in a bowl.

"Maggie! I am so sorry, ma chere."

"That's perfectly all right."

She could see the fine tremor shaking Jacqueline's hands, the tremor that like an internal earthquake had caused that smooth facade to crack for an instant.

Now she could see the woman hiding her hands. They were shaking badly. No wonder she'd been unable to hold her cigarette.

"Are you all right, Jacqueline?"

"Fine. Just fine." Her lips moved silently, as if rehearsing her next line. Richard Channing," she said then in a voice that almost, but not quite, shook as badly as her hands. "Richard Channing in San Francisco," she said more strongly, as if mastering the tremors. "Well, well, well."

Lance stood in the doorway of the bird's lonely cell. If he didn't come to feed it, no one would go near the bird not even Chao-Li, who was normally as fearless as they came. Lance couldn't blame them for not wanting to go near the falcon.

Trained for great, sweeping flights, conditioned to see sharply for miles, by heredity able to plummet like a stone and grasp its prey in steelike talons, the falcon was a true predator, a killer on the wing. Tied and blinded as it was now, its fury could be homicidal, or so everyone thought.

Only Lance knew better. The bird had been trained to his hand and his voice. Tired, hungry, inflamed by imprisonment, it would still bow to his will.

And so, one day, would this whole empire, Falcon Crest, of which the bird was only a symbol. Lance smiled, almost pleasantly. Things were turn ing his way at last. He watched the bird, careful to remain utterly silent, his breathing muffled, so that even the falcon, with its keen sense of hearing, couldn't detect his presence.

Yes, things were breaking nicely for him. He hated, to admit it, but Grandmother's idea of marrying that wimp, Melissa, hadn't been a bad one. She wasn't, after all, hard to look at, even now that she was starting to show her pregnancy. And Lance didn't mind that it was a difficult pregnancy. He rather liked the idea that her bouts with pain and nausea, her constant need to lie down, pretty much kept her out of his hair.

He had all the advantages of bachelorhood and, as a husband, he pretty well had the Agretti property sewed up in his hot little hand. Once the old man's will was probated - he had no heir but Melissa - the whole thing would drop into Lance's lap. It would need only a formality of signing a few papers. In Melissa's poor shape at the moment, she'd probably sign anything just to keep him off her back.

Even the disappearance of Emma was working for Lance, he decided now. It made his grandmother more dependent on him. She'd given him the job of helping Phillip Erikson find Emma. And she'd also added the confidential assignment of cooking the computer channels of the EDS to keep Chase Globerti ignorant of his own financial condition.

What the hell, Lance told himself, he deserved every bit of luck that was coming his way lately. He'd been his grandmother's houseboy for long enough, taking her lectures, her tricks, her schemes, her threats. Now that she found him useful, now that he was an essential part of her plot to add the Bellavista grape fields to Falcon Crest, now he cut some ice with her.

This business of doing people favors worked two ways, Grandmother needed undercover help with her schemes? Fine. But secrets bind people to each other. The more he did for her, the more power he could wield over her.

Up until now, Lance thought, he'd been like this falcon: pinioned and hooded. Now Lance would be free to fly, to pounce, to claw and to kill. That was the way the world went and he wanted his part of it... now!

He reached carefully for the strings that tied the hood to the falcon's head. With one hand, he pulled off the blinders. With the other he threw a dead mouse to the predator. Its cruelly curved beak snapped shut like a shears around the furry body of the mouse.

"Good boy!" Lance said. "Sensational reflexes."

Greedily, blood spurting from its beak, the falcon chewed and swallowed, gorging itself in a crimson orgy of gluttony. Lance grinned with sheer pleasure. if he was close to one thing in this world, it would be this bird of prey.

The swallowing sounds, disgusting to anyone else, pleased Lance. Finally the bird had finished his meal. A weird, choking gurgle sounded at the back of its throat. Its eyes, bright as stars, seemed to concentrate their power on the face of his master.

A great, deafening shriek came from the bird. Its beak yawned wide, as if to swallow the whole world.

Behind his back, several of Sheriff Robbins' men referred to him as "the prince," not meant with affection or respect. He was a martinet, curt, petty about details, much given to shouting orders rather than simply speaking them. But it was also true that Sheriff Robbins had a tough job on his hands maintaining his authority in Tuscany Valley. Not that the Valley was a lawless place. Far from it. Give or take a few Saturday-night brawls among the winery hands when they'd sampled a bit too much of the new vintage, and give or take the odd break-in burglary, crime was well under control.

No, the toughness of the job, and of Sheriff Robbins' style, too, was the result of the fact that in Tuscany Valley every major grower and vintner thought he was a law unto himself.

"They figure," he explained to his deputy, Sid Rawls, "the law stops at their fences. Inside, they're the boss, the judge, the jury, the whole works. You take somebody like Angela Charming, now."

"Naw, you take 'er, Sheriff."

Robbins guffawed. An instant later all laughter had wiped off his face as he said, "This is our first murder in three years, Sid. We have to come down hard. All these owners are going to want it handled nice and soft. You watch."

"Meaning the Channings and the Giobertis?" Rawls suggested.

"Them especially. Because, let's face it, the only suspect we got happens to be one of their family."

"Come on," the deputy joshed him. "You don't seriously figure Cole Giobert' for the killer."

"He's a hair-trigger kid," the sheriff insisted. "Remember when we had him up on that assault charge last year? The only reason we couldn't make it stick is because the guy he beat up wouldn't press charges. And the only reason for that was somebody bought him off."

"Punching a guy in a fair fight is one thing," Rawls mused.

"Battering Carlo Gioberti's head into a pulp is another."

Sheriff Robbins was silent for a long moment. "Yeah, that's the real hitch. Forensics says it wasn't one hard blow that did the old guy in. It stunned him, but then the killer went to work like a maniac, like a machine. It took him twenty blows to make sure he'd done the job."

"Cole's a husky kid," the deputy said. "He could brain a guy in one."

Neither man spoke. Outside, in the squad room, someone was shouting.

"See what the ruckus is, Sid."

Rawls went to the door and peered outside. "Reporter and a photographer."

Sheriff Robbins' shoes slammed down off the desk to the floor. He reached for his khaki tie and tightened it neatly in place. Then he glanced at himself in a mirror on the far wall, noting his receding hairline. "Let 'em in."

"Sheriff," the reporter began. "Thanks a lot. I'm Dolan, from the Globe. This is my photographer, Klein. Can we take five minutes of your time?"

"Always glad to help the press, gents. Sit."

Diana Hunter put down the telephone, picked up her notes and entered Richard Channing's office by a private door. "I just finished talking to Forbush," she said. "He's got names, dates, places, signed statements and photos."

"Fast worker. Make sure he gets a bonus next week."

"He had help, Richard. If you include Dolan and Klein, we've got seven people out there in Tuscany Valley digging up dirt."

"Bonuses for all of them."

"First let's see what the lawyers tell us about printing the stories."

Richard made a disparaging clucking noise. "I'm surprised at you, Diana. We don't have to bother the lawyers with this one. We've got Falcon Crest dead to rights."

"Yes," she agreed, "on this migrant labor thing we do. Forbush says he's rarely seen such poor housing. The hovels have no electricity or water. And up to a dozen people are living in each shack."

"Lovely."

"But as far as the Agretti murder's concerned, there hasn't even been an arrest."

"Wait till Dolan gets through with that sheriff."

Maggie was grateful for the fact that Vickie and her grandmother had gone into San Francisco for shopping. Jacqueline's presence was too distracting for her to work. But this afternoon Maggie had finally finished "Tangled Vines." She stared at the last page, still in her typewriter, and allowed herself the luxury of a triumphant grin.

"Freeze frame," she read aloud. "Fade out."

In script parlance that meant "The End." And never in her life had she been happier to type those words. "Tangled Vines" had given her a lot of trouble, mostly because Maggie wanted it to ring true to the life of the vineyards and their people. She'd managed to catch the full flavor of the scene with colorful characters and a plot that held, great interest. What more could a prospective movie producer ask?

The telephone rang. Maggie reached for the extension on the office desk. "Hello?"

"Mrs. Gioberti?"

"Speaking."

"Uh, is your husband there, ma'am?"

"He's in the field now."

"And your son?"

"Who is this, please?"

"Mrs. Gioberti, it's Sid Rawls at the sheriffs office. We have a few more questions we need answered, I'm afraid."

Maggie sat back. She could feel something cold squeeze at her heart. "Haven't you gotten enough statements from Cole?"

"This is routine, ma'am. just routine," Rawls said nervously.

The grip on her heart hardened until it was almost painful. Maggie's career as a writer had begun years ago when she worked as a newspaper reporter. She was always wary when a policeman used that word "routine." All police work was routine and the end of it was always to put someone behind bars.

"Can I have him call you when he gets in?" she suggested.

"If you could give us a guess as to where he might be about now."

"I have no idea, Mr. Rawls."

"Well. Then ask him to call. Many thanks."

When she hung up, Maggie got to her feet, massaging her breast where the icy pain had been. She had lied, of course. She knew precisely where Cole and Chase were, in the laboratory, checking a new fungus that had appeared in the southern quadrant last week. She frowned as she paged through the Falcon Crest internal telephone directory, found the lab's three-digit number and dialed it.

"Chase?"

"Hi, darling."

"Is Cole with you?"

"Right here. Why?"

"Deputy Rawls just called. They have more questions. just a matter of routine, he says. Chase, I'm frightened"

"I can't imagine what new questions they'd have." Concern crept into his voice.

"Nor can I."

"Damn them," Chase burst out, "with their routine. They think nothing of destroying someone else's routine."

"I said Cole would phone them when he got home."

"What's that?"

Over the line Maggic could hear loud background noise. "I didn't tell them where you were. I said ... Chase? Can you hear me?"

"Maggie, there's a helicopter overhead. It's deafening."

"One of yours?"

"No." There was a long pause while the phone filled with chopper noise. "No," Chase said then, "it's from the sheriffs office."

Flashguns flared. Camera shutters snapped. Two husky deputies hustled Cole into the sheriff's office, his arms handcuffed behind him. Chase followed. "There was no need for this!" he shouted. "It's outrageous."

Sheriff Robbins came to the door of his inner office. "Sit him down right there," he barked. The deputies shoved Cole into a chair.

"You've been watching too many Nazi movies on late TV, Robbins. This is how the Gestapo stages a raid, not the way you pick up someone for questioning."

"I had my boys in the chopper look for your jeep. When they found it they made the arrest. Just routine."

"Arrest!" Cole shouted.

Chase jumped forward so quickly that he had the sheriff by his khaki tie before anyone knew it.

"What kind of farce is this, Robbins?" Chase demanded. "You want to question Cole or throw him in jail?"

"Ease off", the sheriff croaked, grabbing at Chase's hand. "Or there'll be two of you behind bars."

Chase relaxed his hold on the man. Flashguns set off bright blue explosions of light. Shutters whirred.

"Cole Gioberti," Sheriff Robjins said then, "I hereby arrest you on suspicion of murder. You are hereby warned that anything you say may be taken down in evidence and used against you at your trial. You are hereby further advised that you have the right to notify an attorney of your choice."

"Cole," his father burst out. "I'm calling a lawyer right now. You have cooperated fully with these maniacs. Now you have the right to stand mute until advised by your lawyer. You understand?"

"Yeah." The young man looked dazed.

"We'll have you bailed out by dinnertime."

Sheriff Robbins straightened his khaki tie. "Now, look," he said in a softer voice, "you don't want to be putting any wild ideas in your boy's head, Mr. Gioberti. We don't intend to rush our routine" - he glanced at the reporters to make sure they were taking notes - "just because Cole is the son of the county supervisor."

"You've got nothing, Robbins," Chase said, trying to match his calm tone. "You're in a panic, trying to dig up anything you can. We'll have Cole bailed by dinner."

He turned to the press. "Now, then, gentlemen, would you like the story of the Gestapo's daring daylight helicopter raid?"

"I don't promise a picnic," Julia had explained. "But it'll be a novelty. And it beats sitting around the house feeling rotten."

Which was why the two women were in a jeep jolting along one of the many dirt roads that crisscrossed the vast Falcon Crest lands. Julia had shifted down to low gear in four-wheel drive to make sure the uneven road didn't upset Melissa's queasy stomach.

"We're zipping along at four miles an hour, dear," she told her daughter-in-law cheerily. "Let me know if it bothers you."

She glanced sideways at the tall, dark young woman, who held tightly to the jeep's side. Sick she might be, Julia judged, but she had courage and, perhaps, something more. Melissa had the land in her blood, as did Julia. For both of them, the well-being of the vines was a paramount fact of life.

"Just another minute and we'll be at the winery," Julia promised.

Ahead of them the long, low sheds, in which the fermenting vats stood, formed a pleasant whitewashed contrast to the endless rows of twisting vines with their curling green leaves and fragile tendrils of grapes. Only recently had the grapes bloomed from the size of an orange pip to something more than half an inch in diameter. Soon, as the late summer sun did its work, the clusters would grow huge, bursting with sugary fluids.

Julia found herself comparing the condition of the grapes with that of Melissa. Both bore burgeoning life. Both would come to fruition at about the same time, mid-autumn.

"When I was pregnant with Lance," she said suddenly, without thinking, "I felt just like a grape cluster. Getting bigger and heavier every second."

Melissa's dark eyes regarded her with grave attention. "Did you?" she asked. Behind the eyes a flicker of pain showed. "Funny."

"Funny?"

"Just - - ." Melissa looked away. "Just funny."

Carefully, Julia braked the jeep to a gentle halt, hopped out and came around to Melissa's side to help her down. But the younger woman was already standing on the ground. "I'm really all right," she assured her mother-in-law. "Are we going to the lab?"

"I have to check some of the older vats. This way."

The two women walked to the far end of the winery, Julia carrying a small leather bag with her, the kind of Gladstone old-fashioned doctors used to use. It had been her grandfather's bag before her. Most of the instruments inside dated back to Jasper Gioberti's era, nickel-steel thermometers, oddly shaped glass beakers, pipettes and the long tubes with rubber bulbs on top that tested the ferment for specific gravity and alcohol content.

Of all Julia's Possessions, her jewels, her antique cabinets and tables, she prized this battered old leather bag and its contents the highest of all. It formed a direct link between her grandfather, who had founded Falcon Crest, and Julia, who had recently assumed daily technical control of its vast creative capacity.

"These three here," she said as they entered the cool shade of the winery. Julia could feel the instant change from outside heat and dryness to the controlled atmosphere within the building.

The two women rolled a ladder-table to the side of the first great fiberglass vat. It dwarfed them with its immense white bulk. Melissa steadied the table and Julia climbed the ladder to unscrew a circular porthole near the top of the vat.

"Umm," she said, inhaling. "A few more whiffs of that and I'd be staggering. Hand me the gravity tester, will you?"

When they had finished all three vats, Melissa helped Julia wash up the instruments. "Be very careful with that one," Julia cautioned her. "It's a real antique. Made in Prague some time in the I870s and used by Alsatian vintners. It's marked in Reaumur, not Fahrenheit or centigrade."

"This belonged to your grandfather?"

"Yes."

Melissa seemed to cradle the great thermometer as if it were a baby. She held it to her breast as she carefully polished it dry with a bit of cheesecloth.

"Julia," she said then, "I appreciate what you're doing."

"Me? just getting on with my work."

"I appreciate your bringing me along. I don't really know the wine business, just the growing of grapes. But now that Lance and I are..." She faltered. "Well, you understand."

"We're one family now," Julia told her. "All this will be yours. Or his," she added, gently touching Melissa's abdomen.

The two women stood in silence for a moment. Then, suddenly, Melissa turned violently aside, sobbing.

"Melissa, what is it?"

The young woman's head shook violently from side to side as she tried to master her tears. "You can't . . ." She stopped. "I mustn't . . ."

"There, there." Julia smoothed her long dark hair slowly, softly. "It isn't easy, this pregnancy."

By a great effort, Melissa calmed hersell "That's it," she said at last in an easier voice. "It's the pregnancy." She shivered and turned toward the outer doors. "it's too cool in here."

"Right. Let's get some sun.."

Outside, at the loading platform, one of the foremen was sitting on the edge of the dock reading a newspaper. Several winery hands were reading over his shoulder. "Miss Julia?" he asked when the two women came out into the sunlight. "Seen this?"

Julia took the newspaper from him, that morning's edition of the Globe.

Across the top of the front page, in large white type on a blue band, were blazoned the words:

HOW WINERY EXPLOITS MIGRANT SERFS

And under it, in a boxed-off area, appeared these words in black:

"Appalling living conditions for Falcon Crest 'Slaves'; See Page Three."

Julia whipped open the newspaper to the third page and was confronted with a layout of photographs. Undernourished children dressed in rags crawled in the dust before squalid hutlike cabins. Family groups of eight or ten posed in front of even meaner-looking hovels. "Just because we are migrants," Jose Mufloz had said, speaking slowly in English to a Globe reporter, "doesn't mean we're not human beings with rights. Here in Falcon Crest we have no heat, no light, no fresh water, no toilets. They don't treat animals in the zoo that bad."

Julia looked up from the paper. "Where did they get these pictures?" The foreman jerked his thumb in an easterly direction. "Over to Shantytown, I guess. You ever been there?"

Julia shook her head. "Lance is supposed to supervise labor conditions," she said. "I can't be responsible for everything around here." Her tone was sharp.

"Hey, look, Miss Julia," the foreman reminded her. "It's not me making the fuss. It's the newspaper. You ... uh ... you sort of missed something else, back on page one."

Julia flipped back the pages of the newspaper. "Where?" she demanded. Then, abruptly, she saw it: a three-column photo of Chase Gioberti grabbing Sheriff Robbins by the tie while Cole sat to one side, shackled in handcuffs:

SHERIFF NABS AGRETTI MURDER SUSPECT:
IRATE DAD NABS SHERIFF

Julia's glance lifted quickly to Melissa. She had seen the picture and the headline. The color seemed to drain from the younger woman's face. "Melissa!"

Her dark eyes rolled upward into her head as her slender body began to buckle at the waist. The foreman jumped up and lunged for her. He managed to catch her before she slumped to the ground.

Gently, he and Julia carried her under the shadow of the loading-dock roof. Julia wet her handkerchief in cool water and dabbed Melissa's forehead.

"Cole," the girl murmured.

"Wha'd she say?" the foreman asked.

Melissa's lips moved silently. But she said nothing more.

But Phillip Erikson had over many years learned enough of her character to be able to decipher some of these fleeting changes on her face. This morning he shared the big round table in the coffee room with her, both of them basking in late-morning sunlight.

"The cat," he said at last, "has swallowed the canary."

Angela's wide eyes glanced up at him. "I beg your pardon?"

"Don't give me that, Angela. I find your reaction to this morning's Globe most educational." He grinned mischievously at her.

"Perhaps." She put the paper to one side. "What do you make of it, other than that Douglas' bastard son has declared war."

"Oh, I wouldn't put it that way."

"Which tells me you still don't understand the situation." Angela poured herself a bit more coffee. "I can't imagine what the man hopes to do, churning up all this hullabaloo about migrant workers. They've always lived that way, here and at every other winery. There's no news in that. It's simply a stick to hit me with."

"And the way he's crucified your nephew, Cole?"

Another fleeting expression passed over Angela's face. "Gutter journalism," she said then, but in a tone that indicated she hadn't made her mind up yet whether to condemn or applaud it.

"My guess," the lawyer mused, "is that when he saw how much publicity the Globe was going to give this, the sheriff reached out for the first suspect he could think of."

"Possibly." Angela put on an innocent look. "But I'm quite sure that if Cole is guilty of anything, it was done in self-defense."

Phillip stared at her, astounded. Then: "Mee-oww," he drawled.

"I don't find that funny."

Erikson removed the sly smile. "Quite so, Angela," he said in a deceptively mild tone. "Tell me, would you like me to offer my legal services to Cole?"

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far," she responded. "Chase can come up with an attorney of his own. This is his mess. Let him clean it up."

The lawyer watched her for a while. "I am lost in admiration," he said at last. "You understand better than any of us how hostile Richard Channing's attack is. But you're not willing to - you know, to pull the family wagons in a circle and repel the common enemy."

"Common's the right word for Douglas' bastard."

"Illegitimate or not, he owns half of the Globe."

"Not quite." Angela got up and adjusted the blinds so that the sun no longer fell so strongly on the table. "Julia and Emma and Chase, together, own as much as he. And there's a sizable number of shares in the hands of the general public."

"Not that much. Say ten or twelve percent."

She stood silhouetted against the blinds. Phillip had to squint to see her properly. She had chosen the posture of an interrogator with a suspect. "So what do we have, then, my accomplished legal counsel? We have some forty-five percent in Richard's possession and another forty-five with the other three. Does that suggest anything to you?"

Erikson's smile grew slowly. "It suggests that if someone could buy up the remaining ten percent, he could control the whole game." He paused. "Or should I say she?" he asked then.

"But it has to be done very privately," Angela replied. She sat down next to the lawyer and her voice dropped to a conspiratorial level. "You have to do your buying on an eastern stock exchange - Chicago, New York, London. And it has to be done in the name of a dummy corporation. It must never be traced back to me."

"So far, so good," Phillip agreed. "But what do you suggest I use for money?"

"There we're in luck."

Angela's voice grew softer. She moved closer to the attorney until she was speaking only a few inches from his ear. "That part of the Falcon Crest accounts under Chase's supervision happen to be showing a tidy profit at the moment. In fact, quite a cash surplus."

"You don't think Chase would object to you using his funds for this?"

"He'd have no objection," Angie murmured, "because he'd have no idea we were using his cash. You do remember what I told you about the EDS channels? The one he taps into to get a computer readout is a cooked set of books. The one we tap into for cash is under electronic lock and key."

"Dear me," Erikson sighed and took his employers hand. "Such sweet, soft, tiny hands. But how they can grab."

"Does that surprise you?"

"Not in the least," he said. "I'm beginning to wonder why Lance is in charge of the falcon. When it comes to being a predator, my dear, you could give that bird lessons."

A frown crossed Angie's face. She drew back her hand and lightly slapped the lawyer across the cheek. "You're not paid for your moral opinions, Phillip. just your legal services."

He blinked and grasped her hand. "Morals? When was the last time anyone around here worried about morals?"

She withdrew her hand and stood up. "How soon can you start buying stock?"

"As soon as I set up a dummy corporation."

"Use one of my European ones."

"In that case," the lawyer said, "I can start today."

"Richard Channing may be my enemy, but he's not stupid. He's done his arithmetic just as I have. At the moment he's a bit short of cash, having bought up all his father's options. But as soon as he can lay hands on more, he'll be after the same outstanding shares I am. So speed is important."

"And what about Emma's shares?"

"Find Emma first. I'll get a proxy out of her soon enough."

"Poor Emma."

"Don't waste your sympathy on Emma. Think about poor Phillip Erikson, if he doesn't pull this off."

Phillip got to his feet. "Is that a threat, Angela?"

"Would I say a thing like that?" Angie purred. "As long as I keep paying your exorbitant legal fees, you'll do your usual job. Fast, silent, secret, no loose strings."

"For that kind of money, my dear, you'll not only get your ten percent in Globe shares, but I'll throw in Emma for free."

"Lies?" Richard retorted at the other end of the phone conversation.

"That's a pretty strong word for something that's been going on right under your nose. What angers you is that the Globe won't let you get away with it."

Richard glanced at Diana Hunter as she listened in on an extension line. She had already triggered a tape recorder to make sure every word of Chase's could be verified later.

"Your photographer and reporter are pretty slick when no one's watching," Chase said. "Those photos could have been taken anywhere from here five bundired miles south to the border."

"Nevertheless," Richard insisted, "they were taken at Falcon Crest in the Western Quadrant near the intersection of Road 22 and Road I7. Care to meet me there after lunch?"

"I sure as hell would!" Chase snapped. "Three p.m. On the dot!"

Richard smiled coldly as he hung up, then dialed an inside number at the Globe's office. "Sam Klein? We're taking a ride out to Falcon Crest this afternoon. Bring plenty of film."

The four men - Chase, Richard, his reporter and photographer - walked slowly from the road intersection under the hot afternoon sun toward a cluster of what looked from a distance to be chicken coops or dilapidated farm structures left to molder of old age. Several dozen of these hovels filled an area in a slight valley watered by a small stream. By an odd trick of perspective, as they neared the shanties, behind them on a distant hill rose the ornate pile of veranda and spires called Falcon Crest. Chase felt as if he had stepped into a nightmare over which he had no control.

"Surely people don't actually live in these huts?" he asked.

Richard's mouth set in a thin smile. "Ask them."

Chase walked up to a small group who stood beside their shack and eyed the four men apprehensively. "Afternoon," he said to the man who stepped forward a bit defensively. "I'm Supervisor Gioberti. Do all you folks live in this one ... uh ... house?"

The man's glance darkened with suspicion. "Supervisor of what? You from the Board of Health?"

"I'm supervisor of the county," Chase explained.

"What'd we do wrong?" the man countered. "We pay our rent."

"Rent?" Chase sounded shocked. "For this place you pay rent?" He started to circle the hovel. "No electricity. I don't see any water pipes. What do you folks do f-"

"We got the stream. It's good water."

"And for toilets?"

"The same."

"And someone charges you rent for this?" Chase demanded.

"It's an absentee landlord," Richard told him. "Some corporation back East administers these buildings for the owner."

"Which is?" Chase persisted.

"Don't you ever read your own maps?" Richard asked quietly.

"You're saying this is Falcon Crest property?" Chase asked. He glanced about him, orienting himself to the directions of the compass. The image of Falcon Crest house itself hovered in the air like a mirage, contrasting spiendor with squalor. "Well," he said at last, "I guess it is."

He turned to the man who lived in the hut. "This your family?"

"Yeah. We all work for Falcon Crest."

Chase eyed the group and counted eight adults and children. "All eight of you? Then urely you earn enough to afford something better than this."

"We're part-timers. We get the minimum wage"

"And no health benefits," a woman piped up.

"You're telling me," Chase began, his anger rising, "that Falcon Crest cheats you on wages and cheats you on housing." He whirled on Richard as camera shutters clicked. "You've got to believe this is the first I've heard of this. Labor isn't part of my responsibility."

"Whose is it, then?" Richard asked calmly.

Chase felt his anger rising, heightened by the surprise of what he was seeing and the frustration of realizing where it should be focused. It was Lance, protected by his grandmother Angie and taking his orders from her, who was supposed to administer labor relations here. But Chase knew better than to tell any newspaper that much - especially one that had his worst interests at heart.

"Never mind whose," Chase said. The photographer kept snapping pictures. "As of this moment, I'm taking responsibility for this disgrace. I'll get to the bottom of it and that'll be the end of your little expose. Will you give me as much publicity when I set this straight?"

"What law says I have to?" Richard asked.

"No law. Just common decency and the public interest. You pillorize me and Falcon Crest for disgraceful labor practices. It happens, unfortunately, that you're dead right. Now I'm going to set matters straight. I want the same amount of publicity - a front-page banner headline and a page of photos inside."

"We'll see."

"Otherwise you really are a rat in journalism's gutters."

Richard's smile was carefully crafted to look genuine. "We'll see."

"What a nasty little rag you've made of the Globe."

"Are you speaking as an owner?" Richard demanded in a challenging tone.

It was Chase's turn to smile. "We'll see," he mimicked.

It was after four when Chase located Lance at the bottling plant, checking the new labels of the Cabernet Sauvignon wine. He strode over to the young man.

"I want our payroll records for the last three years," he demanded.

Lance looked up with insulting slowness from his clipboard. "Ask my grandmother."

"I'm asking you. Get them. Right now."

Lance frowned. "Look, if it's about those migrant workers the Globe's so excited over, It's all legal. We do exactly what every other winery in the Valley does."

"Get the books!"

"Chase, these are unskilled workers. By hiring them part-time we protect ourselves from having to pay full wages and health and pension benefits to people who might not even be here next year. We're saving tens of thousands of dollars."

Chase took him by the shoulders. "Talk sense. Our costs are factored into our per-bottle price, the same as everybody else's. I'm talking about the practice of underpaying help and overcharging them for substandard housing."

"Nobody's forcing them to work for us." Lance's tone was pure arrogance.

"Nobody," Chase retorted, "but hunger."

"They're free to move on, work somewhere else. It's always been that way."

Chase started to shake the younger man slowly, rocking him back and forth. "That may be the way it's always been, Lance. But not anymore."

Lance's face grew dark with anger. "I take my orders from my grandmother."

"And from me. Don't forget it! Now ... get the books."

They stood just inside the door, glancing around at the spartan anteroom where Sheriff Robbins and the jailer were busily handing each other legal-sized pieces of paper to sign.

"Right," the sheriff said at last. "Bring him out."

The jailer disappeared inside, jangling a small ring of keys.

Sheriff Robbins eyed Maggie and the lawyer. "Where's Chase?"

"Busy," Barton responded. "This is not a juvenile remand, Sheriff. Cole is of age. He's being bailed into his own safekeeping. Maggie's just here for moral support."

"Such as I have," Maggie added. She watched the sheriff closely. "You've given us all a bad time, Sheriff."

"A bad time? I took a suspect into custody, Mrs. Gioberti."

"Overnight?"

"Not my fault if it took this long for you to bail him."

Maggie glanced at the lawyer, who spoke up, "It's not the easiest thing in the world to pull together collateral for a bond in the middle of the night, Sheriff. As you very well know."

"Hey, you hear that tone you're using?" Sheriff Robbins started to sidle up to Barton, then decided he was too tall to stand beside. "I'm just doing what the law says I have to do. You make bail, I release him. No dawdling. I don't take sides, you know that."

"Except for the big question," the attorney retorted. "Why you decided Cole was a suspect in the first place."

At this moment the suspect himself, unshaven but not much the worse for wear, walked out into the anteroom, the jailer behind him carrying a plastic bag. "Don't forget your personal effects," he said, offering Cole the bag. "Check 'em out first."

Cole opened the bag and removed his wallet. He leafed through it and seemed satisfied. Then he saw that he had visitors. "Mom." They embraced. "Sure glad to see you."

"Have you had breakfast?" Maggie asked.

"Of course he has," the sheriff cut in. "We don't run a hotel here, but we try to treat a prisoner like a human being."

Cole glanced blankly at him. "Coffee and a baloney sandwich is breakfast?"

"S'what I eat," Sheriff Robbins assured him.

The nonsense of this exchange got to the jailer, who began to giggle.

Robbins glared at him. "Shut up, Clint."

"Hard not to laugh, Sheriff," the lawyer suggested.

"Cole, all your things in the bag?"

"Yeah."

"Then let's go.

"Hold it," Sheriff Robbins interrupted. "Cole, you'll be notified of any hearings. If you fail to appear you'll forfeit your bail. Get that? If that happened we could issue a felony warrant and rearrest you. Got that?"

"I'll apprise him of his rights," Barton told the sheriff.

"These aren't rights. These are duties. So long." He stuck out his hand to Cole. "No hard feelings."

"Who said?" Cole countered and, ignoring the hand, walked out of the jail. He was silent on the ride back to his home. Finally Maggie could bear the silence no longer.

"Did they mistreat you injail?" she burst out.

Cole sighed heavily. "They treated me okay. That's not my beef."

"I know your beef," Barton assured him. "Why did they pick you up in the first place."

"I know why." Cole sighed again, an even heavier sound. "They asked me enough questions. Here's a guy gets into the Agretti house in the dark. He's got a flashlight. His fingerprints are all over the place. Also on the bronze statuette that killed Carlo Agretti. Also he's got blood on his hands and shirt. Also, what the hell was he doing there to begin with? You find a fella like that, you lock him up."

"But I understood Agretti telephoned you," the lawyer said. "Isn't that what you told Robbins?"

"He didn't believe it."

"It's too goofy to be a lie," Maggie put in.

Barton laughed. "Your mother's right. Of all the alibis for being there, that's so bad it's got to be true. What did Agretti tell you?"

"He asked me to come over."

"Just like that?"

Cole's face tensed. "Just like that."

Maggie shook her head at the lawyer. "No more cross-examination."

"Cole," Barton told him, "I'm on your side. But sooner or later you're going to have to answer that question."

"Let it be later."

Once home, Cole's grandmother clucked like a French hen, fussing over him. Earlier Jacqueline Perrault Gioberti had announced that she had business elsewhere - some far corner of the globe - and would be leaving today or tomorrow. "But I am so happy you are out of that horrible jail," she told her grandson. She perched on the sofa beside him, and patted his hand.

"Maggie," she said, "this boy should go away to school. Now."

"That's called jumping bail, Jacqueline."

"Then as soon as possible. He is too full of life to stay out of trouble for long in this Valley. I know the symptoms. It's a combination of male hormones and good looks. He must be sent away."

"To a monastery?" Cole asked with mock innocence.

"Don't make fun of your poor old grandmother," Jacqueline said, waving her finger under his nose "To a desert island inhabited by spider crabs, perhaps."

"Good eating, anyway."

She shook her head. "Incorrigible, this one." Her voice had a tinge of pride to it. "Whatever this lawyer Barton charges you, I want the bill sent to me, Maggie."

"We can certainly afford to-"

"No arguments. I want to make sure my grandson gets free of this ridiculous charge, once and for all."

"I appreciate the interest you take in us," Maggie countered. "But really, Jacqueline, a busy woman like you has other matters on her mind."

"None more important than my family. Which reminds me." She began pawing through her tiny patent-leather clutch bag. "Where'd I put it?"

"Put what?"

"His card. At my bank in San Francisco yesterday I was introduced to a film director. I told him all about your script, Maggie. He got very excited."

"Really?"

"Here it is." The older woman squinted at the card. Maggie knew her mother-in-law's eyes were ruined for close reading but she refused to use her thick reading glasses unless absolutely forced to. "Darryl Clayton," she said, reading off the card. "Here. He's in town till tomorrow. Call him at the St. Mark".

"What, cold turkey like that? I should use an agent."

"I am your agent," Jacqueline assured her. She glanced around her. "Where is the telephone? Call at once."

Cole watched his mother with some curiosity. "But you haven't finished the script yet, have you, Mom?"

"It's as finished as it'll ever be." Maggie stared at the card her mother-in-law had given her. "I should wait to call. The poor man's just gotten out of bed," she protested.

"Call him now," Jacqueline commanded. "He, was very excited, that one. I told him who you were. I said you had written an insider's undercover expose of the Valley. I told him you-"

"He's going to be terribly disappointed. The script's nothing like that."

Jacqueline laughed, a silvery note Maggie had heard before. It was a studied laugh, neither spontaneous nor totally fake - but terribly French. "But, mon chere Maggie, nothing in life is ever what we expect."

"I suppose you're right" - spoken with a sigh of resignation.

"To the Sheriff, Cole seems guilty. To us, we know he's innocent," Jacqueline said. "To Darryl Clayton I seem like a rich, slightly eccentric lady. To me he looks like a hungry director. To him you sound like a terrific script for a movie. To Cole the pair of us seem like prize lunatics, nattering on about a film scenario when he's just spent the night in jail."

"Go ahead, natter," Cole assured her. "It beats jail."

"You see? Nothing in life is what we expect. To Cole, our chitchat is refreshing. It was ever thus."

Maggie smiled and nodded, thinking that of all the people she knew, Jacqueline ranked first as an expert in how things were different from what they seemed. The word for what she was describing was deception. And on that subject, Jacqueline had written the book. This whole grandmotherly act, the cozy visits, the postcards to Cole and Vickle, the offers to pay this or that expense, even getting her the name of a film director - none of it was the real Jacqueline Perrault Gioberti. Deep down, Maggie knew this about her mother-in-law. But if you asked her who the woman really was under the grandmother act, Maggie would have come up with a complete blank.

She was resting comfortably on the chaise as Lance passed along the outside corridor. He paused in the doorway. "Off to San Francisco."

"Lance, are you free this evening?"

There was a long pause followed by a sigh. "I have plans," her husband told her.

"I see." An instant later Lance's grandmother appeared behind him.

"Good morning, Angela," she called.

"Morning. Nice to see you two lovebirds together."

"I'm following up that suggestion of yours," Melissa told her. "You know, those natural childbirth classes?"

"Good for you. They're very helpful, even if you decide not to have the baby that way."

"And Lance is going to attend them with me, of course," Melissa added. "The first one's tonight."

With his grandmother behind him and his wife in front of him, Lance sensed he was surrounded and in danger of being outmaneuvered.

"Look, Melissa-"

"Isn't that wonderful?" Angie enthused. "Because these classes are just as much for the father as the mother."

"I'm not sure I can get free to-" Lance began.

"Oh, I'm sure you can," his grandmother told him. She smiled past his sullen face to Melissa. "I'm really glad you two are finally working things out."

"Yeah?" Lance grunted. "What time is the class?"

"Eight in the evening. It's only an hour."

He sighed unhappily. "If you really have to go, I guess it's up to me to take you," he said ungraciously.

"You see," Angela Charming remarked, you're having such a positive effect on him, my dear."

"Oh," Melissa assured her, "I knew fatherhood would bring out the best in him."

The two women smiled sweetly at each other and Angie swept off along the corridor. The moment she was out of earshot Lance turned on Melissa. "I never knew before what a real hypocrite was. The two of you have taught me a lesson."

"Bitter. Bitter."

"Fatherhood? Me?" Lance insisted. "You of all people know better than that. The one guy who isn't the father is the guy you're married to."

"How nicely you put things." A mocking tone crept into Melissa's voice.

"So why should I take you to classes to learn how to give birth to somebody else's kid?" he growled.

"Because Grandmother likes it that way," Melissa responded sweetly.

"So what?"

"And Lance doesn't do anything to upset Lance's grandmother," Melissa said in a voice as falsely saccharine as her smile.

Later, in San Francisco, Lance waited at a restaurant for his lunch date, an old girlfriend named Lori Stevens. He hadn't seen her since long before his wedding, and when he'd phoned the other day she had seemed almost reluctant to meet him, even for lunch.

Now he wondered if she intended to stand him up. Lance didn't pretend to know the inner workings of a woman's mind. The outer surfaces were more to his tastes. But he had begun to realize that the marriage his grandmother had forced him to make was turning him into some kind of celibate monk, a situation for which there was only one quick cure.

The cure he envisioned walked into the restaurant at that point - Lori, the attractive girl his grandmother had driven out of his life to ensure his marriage to Melissa. She paused in the entrance and looked around, suddenly shy and uncertain. Lance stood up and waved to her. Slowly, she came to the table.

"I'm sorry to be late," she said, formally, as if to a stranger.

"But I had a hard time making myself come here at all."

"But you did come."

"I spent six months getting you out of my mind," she said, her unhappy glance raking across his face. "I went abroad, started up with another man. Lance," she added, still making no move to sit at the table with him, "I'm really here to make sure I'm over you."

He grinned. "Lori, we're only having lunch. This is a restaurant, not a motel."

She tried to relax. They sat and read the menu. She looked up at him slowly and he could see she hadn't read a word on the page. Nor had be. The tension between them was too great.

"That girl," Lori said then. "The one your grandmother wanted you to marry. Still seeing her?"

Lance took a long breath for courage. "We're married."

"Dear God."

"It wasn't love," he hastened to tell her. "I married her because of Falcon Crest."

"Isn't there anything in your life but that winery?"

"I was hoping there'd be you."

She had no ready reply. They stared wordlessly into each other's eyes.

"Mr. Gioberti is here to s-"

"Angie," Chase called, coming in behind the servant. "I've just checked our employment records. We hire a third of our people on a part-time-"

"Thank you, Chao-Li," Angie remarked, maintaining her formal pose and ignoring Chase's obvious agitation.

Her majordomo nodded and left the room. "And pay the minimum wage with no benefits," Chase concluded.

She stared up at him. "I believe that's the law, Mr. County Supervisor."

"Angie, these people deserve equal pay for equal work. You should see the kind of shanties we charge them to live in."

"No, thanks."

"You owe yourself that much. Come over with me now and take a look at how a third of our people have to live."

"I'm a businesswoman, Chase, not a philanthropist."

"These are human beings!" He eyed her for a long moment. "You're really afraid of human Contact, aren't you? You're afraid you might appear to be human, too."

A slow flush suffused Angela Channing's face. Almost without knowing it, Chase had touched the one nerve she was most sensitive to.

"That's how much you know me," she said in a low voice. She pressed a button on her desk phone. A moment later Chao-Li appeared again. "Chao-Li, she ordered, "please have Desi bring the car around."

Once again, as he had yesterday, Chase was struck by the terrifying contrast of the way he and Angie lived and the way the migrant workers had to exist. The long Mercedes 600 moved smoothly down the rutted lane into the hollow where the hovels lay scattered along a bank of the creek. This time of the year, only a trickle of water moved sluggishly through the bed of the stream, yet it had to provide for dozens of families.

In the distance, like a feverish nightmare image distorted by heat waves under a broiling sun, the spired and turreted image of Falcon Crest house loomed over this scene of desolation. Chase ushered Angie from the limousine.

"Not quite the cottages we provide our regular workers."

Angela Channing stood gazing at the hovels. "Nobody said life was fair."

"That's no excuse for not paying a living wage. And for charging these people rent on a miserable collection of huts."

"It can't be any other way." There was no hint of emotion in her voice.

He watched her glance swing slowly from side to side, not missing a thing, from the half-naked babies in the dust to the rags of washing hung on makeshift clotheslines, from the eight-year-old girl toiling uphill with a lard can of water to the buzz of flies gathered over the garbage heap.

"Paying part-time help what we pay our regulars," she said simply, "is bad business. Falcon Crest isn't a charity."

"It isn't charity to pay for what you get."

"And it isn't good business," Angie shot back, "to pay more than you have to. More than any other winery in the Valley."

"That's no excuse, either." Chase escorted her back to the limousine. "Here's what's going to happen, Angle. At four P.m. today, right here, I've scheduled a press conference."

"You what!"

"Press, TV, everybody. I don't expect your stepson at the Globe will send anybody. But the rest will."

"He's not my steps-"

"We're going to build new cottages here, Angie. Real ones with electricity and running water. And we're going to pay these people full-time, plus benefits."

"You do and you'll pay for it yourself."

"It'd look a lot better if you were with me on this, Angie."

"Do you think I care how it looks?" she hissed. "Thanks to my father's generosity, you control half of Falcon Crest. If he'd known you'd run your half into the ground, he'd never have left it to you.. You're not a Gioberti. You're a disgrace!"

"Think about it," Chase persisted. "Because I'm doing this with or without you."

The only reply was the slam of the Mercedes door as Angela Charming left.

Lying on the king-sized bed with Richard, Diana stared up at the ceiling. This relationship was not something new between them. The affair had gone on sporadically in New York, but there Richard had had other women. His lovemaking had a rather distracted quality to it, as if it were a pleasant pastime, not a'dedicated effort.

Here in San Francisco - so far, at least - she'd had him to herself, and it made a difference. Here she wasn't one of several women he saw, she was his right-hand mainstay, his closest support-his fellow conspirator. And this new intimacy had a wonderfully concentrating effect on Richard, especially in bed.

He slept now, his face in repose freed of many of the lines that could make it look hard-driven by ambition. Exhausted by their lovemaking, he had dropped off into a deep sleep, but Diana knew better than to think it would last for long.

For one thing, she'd set the timer on her TV set so that it would turn on automatically for the "Six O'C,Iock News" - at Richard's request. For another, he still had a full list of evening calls to make. And then there were the final pages of the Globe to check in proof form before the great presses began to run at midnight.

Relaxing in the half-darkness, Diana stared at Richard's face. Even in sleep he had the look of someone special, someone marked by destiny and his own ambition for greatness. Diana wondered what he really thought of her. Surely it must cross his mind, especially here in San Francisco, to try to understand her motives.

It was a complex relationship, originally based on their mutual intelligence and their dedication to the Cartel and its projects. But eventually it had become more than that, much more.

Diana didn't fool herself into thinking that the lovemaking meant as much to Richard as it did to her. It never did with the man, she thought. But some new element had changed the quality of it lately. A certain excitement, a taut sensual tension, seemed to elevate these moments in bed to a different, higher level.

Ultimately these emotions could present a big problem, Diana told herself, because her primary loyalty could never be to Richard Channing. It had to remain what it had always been - a fierce concentration on her role in the Cartel. It was to this end she had dedicated herself, and it was this conflict that would give her the most trouble.

Across the room, the TV set went on in the middle of a margarine commercial. A moment later the fast, staccato tempo of music announced the evening news.

Richard stirred beside her, coming awake in one smooth movement.

"Turn up the volume," he said.

They watched the announcer skim the top headlines of the day, including a transport strike, a fire in Oakland, the arrival of a French navy ship on a goodwill mission ... and a startling announcement from Tuscany Valley.

Richard sat up in bed. Impatiently he waited while the first news items flashed across the screen. Then the announcer reappeared: "Meanwhile, at a news conference this afternoon, labor relations history was being made among the vineyards and wineries of Tuscany Valley. County Supervisor Chase Gioberti, half owner of the immense Falcon Crest holdings, told the story this way. The screen showed Chase on a small platform, Maggie in the background. Microphones had been shoved randomly under his nose as he explained what was happening and pointed to the scattering of shanties behind him.

The camera lens shifted slightly and zoomed in on scenes of desolation and poverty while Chase's voice went on: "These changes will take time, as does anything worthwhile. Today I'm making sure Falcon Crest starts treating its part-time workers as fairly as we treat our regular people. And I urge other vineyards in the Valley to do the same."

"Mr. Gioberti," a reporter asked, off-screen, "do you speak for your co-owner, too? Mrs. Angela Channing?"

"You'll have to ask her," Chase parried.

"Then this was not a joint decision?"

Once again the camera lens shifted from Chase. In the distance a huge Mercedes rolled toward the camera, stopped and Angela got out. She walked confidently toward the lens.

"Mrs. Channing," a reporter asked, "are you aware of the statement Mr. Gioberti has just-"

"I'm sorry he started without me," Angic told the camera. "He's acting on my suggestion. I'm glad to have his support."

"Then this is a joint statement?" the reporter persisted.

"Of course," Angie said smoothly. "Falcon Crest has always led the way in matters of reform. When history's made, Falcon Crest makes it."

The screen's picture changed back to the studio announcer. "in Beirut today, Phalangist guerrilla troops shelled government positions for the third straight day."

Richard was out of bed, snapping off the TV set. "Damn the woman."

"Tricky."

"I'd hoped to split the two of them wider apart this way." He sat down in one of the glove-leather arm chairs. "What do you think of Chase Gioberti? For an essentially ordinary man, he does have a bit of charisma."

"Umm." Diana's glance traced the muscles in Richard's legs. "Not compared to your stepmother."

"Don't ever call her that," Richard said coldly.

"Sorry."

"I'll tell you this one time, Diana, and then we'll both forget it."

He was staring at her across the darkened room with a gaze so intense that Diana could almost feel it. "She had her chance to treat me as a human being. When I was a baby, she could have agreed to adopt me, as my father wanted. But she voted me out of her life. Forever. And that's the way it's going to stay."

"Except that you're about to blow up her way of life."

The intense look on his face softened slightly, settling in a cruel smile. "How well you put it." He glanced at the table clock, its green numerals glowing in the dark. "Time to be up and doing."

Diana stretched languorously, half under and half out of the bed linen. She thought of half a dozen remarks, but rejected them. Richard would appreciate none, since each would obviously be designed to get him back in bed. It was too late now, and Diana knew it.

That particular compartment of Richard's brain had snapped shut. The TV press conference, and Angela Channing's hijacking of Chase's idea, had shifted Richard back into fighting mode again.

"Either you fight," she murmured, "or you make love. You're wise to keep the compartments separated."

"Get me our man in Arizona, the one who's keeping an eye on Emma Channing. She can't keep running forever. The minute she comes to rest, I want to know it."

Diana got up slowly, stretching, smoothing her body, hoping the sight of her would remind Richard that life wasn't all work. "And put on a dressing gown while you're at it," he added.

"You find the sight of me disturbing?"

He grinned maliciously at her. "Always testing, eh, Diana?"

"I'll put on a gown if you put on a robe."

"I'll do better than that as soon as I talk to Arizona. I'm going back to the office."

"Because the sight of you can he disturbing, too."

He eyed her for a moment. "I'm taking that as a compliment," he said at length. "Tell me, my resident expert on men. Tell me how you react to Chase Gioberti. If it hadn't been for that damnable Channing woman, I could have used him and the migrant workers expose to gash a major hole in Falcon Crest. As it is, she's outmaneuvered me. But it's only the opening battle."

"Chase?" Diana slipped into her gown. "Chase is family oriented. You saw him on TV. He wouldn't say anything incriminating about Angela even though his jaws ached."

"Then my first instinct was right. The way to knock him off center is through that idiot son of his."

Richard got up and, still nude, strode to the phone. He dialed an outside line and stood there for a moment. "Dolan? It's Channing. Are you still monitoring the Gioberti kid? Good. Now step it up. I want twenty-four-hour coverage. I want to know every move he makes. Photographs. If you need more men, assign them. If you want a private eye, hire him. If you have to bribe a deputy sheriff, bribe him. I want this kid nailed to the cross."

Diana watched him hang up the phone and stride to the window. He yanked open the curtains and blinds to stare down at the San Francisco evening. Dusk had turned the sky faintly mauve. Beneath them, streets were beginning to light up. The illumination reflected from below gave Richard's face sinister beauty.

"You've gone about as far as you can with Cole Gioberti," Diana reminded him. "After all, it was our reporters who got him arrested in the first place."

"Arrested?" He whirled on her. Anger turned his face dead white. "I don't want him arrested," he said harshly, "I want him convicted!"

The trouble was, getting bailed out was almost as bad. Aside from his own family, did anybody believe he was innocent? Thanks to the Globe's strident campaign of half-truths and sly suggestions, Cole felt certain he already stood convicted in the minds of most people.

He tramped on the starter and the engine roare into life. Cole sent the cycle roaring forward along the road to ... ? Anywhere, he supposed. Anywhere but where he was.

He was zooming along a small paved road fifteen minutes later when he spotted a figure teetering precariously on the roof of a house. He knew the place, as he did most in the Valley. The Demery winery was one of those small holdings that produced very little wine, hardly enough to keep the family going.

He braked to a halt in a cloud of dust. A woman had climbed a rickety two-story stepladder and was half stretched across the roof shingles, holding on for dear life. "You okay?" Cole called out. She craned around to see him and promptly lost her hold, sliding a heart-stopping extra yard down the roof, breaking her fall only by grabbing desperately at the fragile aluminum gutter that hung from the eaves. "Help!" she screamed.

Cole lay the cycle on its side and ran for the house. Looking up, all he could see was a long, slim tanned pair of legs dangling just above his head.

He started to move the ladder toward her, then stopped when he noticed the gutter start to sag.

"That gutter won't hold!" he shouted. "You've got to turn loose. It's not far. Don't worry. I'll catch you."

"Do I have a choice?" the woman's voice called. "Here I come!"

Suddenly there was a flash of skin and a swirl of skirts and long hair. Cole braced himself and held out his arms.

"Gotcha!"

She was beautiful. Her face, flushed with exertion, was one of the prettiest Cole had ever seen. Her eyes were wide with fright. She clung to him and he could feel her young, firm body pressing against him.

For a moment they stood glued to each other. Then slowly Cole lowered her to the ground. She straightened her skirt and fluffed out her auburn hair. It fell in big, careless curls to her neck. Her face was still flushed, but Cole had the feeling she was more embarrassed now than frightened.

"What were you doing up there?" he asked.

"I've got a leaky roof. I thought..." She stopped and held out her hand, her bare arm as tanned as her legs and face. "Katharine Demery."

They shook hands. "Cole Gioberti."

He watched her face for a sign that she'd heard of the celebrated murderer, but her wide eyes remained clear of suspicion. "Cole, you saved my life."

"Maybe just a broken leg or two."

"How can I ever thank you?" She stared around her almost desperately, as if hoping to find some precious reward worthy of her savior. "Not much to look at, this place," she said then in a graver voice. "It's got me licked, I don't mind admitting."

Cole's glance followed hers. The Demery spread was small, all right, and run-down, to boot. Its vines looked as if they needed a good weeding and its winery shed sagged precariously to the right, as if ready to give up the ghost.

"What kind of help do you have here?"

She shrugged. Cole liked all of her gestures. Thev were open, concealing nothing. He liked the way she looked him straight in the eye when she spoke. "Since Jim died, not much. I sign on a few migratory people at harvest time. In between, well, you're looking at the full, complete staff of Demery Wines."

"Just you?"

She nodded. "Not quite up to your Falcon Crest standards."

So she did know who he was, Cole thought. And she hadn't treated him like some kind of leper; but then maybe she didn't read the papers?

"I sort of give my dad odd-job help at Falcon Crest," he said then, "when the cops aren't on my case, breathing hard."

She nodded again. "I read all about it in the Globe. Can't you sue those people? As far as I, can see, you just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Cole could hardly believe his cars. He cracked the first smile he'd been able to spare in some time now. "my lawyer's concentrating on bigger things, like getting me permanently out of trouble."

"And, in between, you're just sort of marking time?"

They stood without speaking for a long Moment. There was nothing uneasy about the silence, Cole realized. It was as if the two of them didn't need to keep talking. And yet they were communicating, of that he was sure.

"Looks like you could use an odd-job man around here," he said then.

"You? I'm sure your dad needs you."

"He's got dozens of people to help," Cole insisted.

"I couldn't pay you what he does."

"Oh, I don't know," Cole said, dead-pan. "What I'm getting, basically, is room and board."

"I could manage that," Katharine Demery said. There was another of those easy pauses between them. "But at a time like this, you're better off with your own folks. There's no substitute for T.L.C."

"Is that what I'm getting?" Cole asked. He stared off across the Demery vineyard.

When she said nothing, he found himself wondering about the nature of Tender Loving Care, the T.L.C. she thought he was getting at home. What it came down to was sympathy from his sister, Vickie, and his grandmother, Jacqueline, when she came out from the city now and then. But from Maggie and Chase what he was getting was tension, their own anguish, their own sense of helplessness, their own anger at the sheriff and the Globe. He would hardly call that T.L.C.

"Listen, Mrs. Demery," Cole said at last, "real all around odd-job men don't come down the pike every day in the week. Do we have a deal?"

Her smile was beautiful as it spread slowly across her face, brightening the air like a separate sunrise. Cole found himself wondering about her: he knew that she had been widowed for nearly two years, but she couldn't be that much older than he was. Early twenties? Mid-twenties? When she smiled she looked like a kid.

"You can weed?" she said then.

"With the best of 'em."

"And handle the vats? Cleaning, vinifying, botding?"

"Sure."

"But can you fix a leaky roof"

"Hey, Mrs. Demery, that was my major in school. I have a diploma in Roof Fixing." They burst into laughter. She put out her strong hand again.

"Cole, let's give it a whirl. On one condition."

"Name it."

"I don't care what you call me - Katharine, Kate, Katie or hey-you - but if you're working for me, no more Mrs. Demery. Understand?"

Cole shook her hand. Neither of them seemed anxious to let go. "Kate," he said then. "I like Kate best, I think. Okay, Kate. We have a deal."

Chao-Li arrived at her bedroom door with a small tray on which sat a pot of coffee, toast and a tall glass of iced tea, decorated with lemon and mint leaves.

"You ... ah ... might prefer something more bland than coffee?" he suggested.

"Chao-Li, you're a mind reader. Take the rest away, including the toast."

"Miss Melissa needs her energy."

"Miss Melissa needs a lot of things."

The Chinese bowed solemnly and left. Melissa slowly sipped the tea. It stayed down. If she hadn't glanced up at that moment, she would have missed Lance walking by her door.

"Hardworking husband," she called.

He peered in the doorway. "I like to keep busy."

"Day and night. Not many wives would put up with such a busy husband."

He smiled coldly. "Not many wives have painted themselves into the corner you have."

She returned the smile. They did seem to delight in taking swipes at each other, didn't they, she thought. "Getting out of tight spots," she told him, "is one of my specialties. Will you be home for dinner?"

"Don't hold your breath." He was gone.

She waited until his footsteps faded away. Then, stifling a moan, she got up and went to her dressing table. She started to pick up a lipstick, then thought better of it. The wan, pained look was much more effective.

When she made her way downstairs to the breakfast room, Angie and Julia were already there. "The new batch of Zinfandel is going off," Julia was saying. "It's loaded with tartaric acid crystals. I'm not sure what caused it."

"How much is spoiled?" her mother wanted to know.

"One vat."

"Can you filter out the crystals and convert it to vinegar?"

"That's not the point. I have to..." Julia stopped, staring at Melissa as she entered the room. "Good morning, dear. Are you all right?"

"I didn't sleep."

She sat down with her back to the brilliant sunlight filtering through the windows. Her face looked even more drawn in the half-shadow. Julia reached across to take her hand. "It's all too soon after your father's death, Melissa. Grief takes time to pass."

"I never sleep well when Lance has to work all night," the younger woman said in a small voice.

"What?" Angie thundered. "All night?"

"But wasn't last night another natural childbirth class?" Julia chimed in.

"Oh, yes. Lance took me there."

"But ... ?"

"He doesn't attend the class. He never has." Melissa's eyes were downcast. "One of the other women gives me a lift home. Lance is too busy working."

Julia glanced angrily at her mother. "Night work," she said. "And it isn't even harvest time yet. I think . . ." She stopped, took a final sip of coffee and got to her feet. "I think I'll speak to Lance. He's working much too hard."

This corner of the warehouse was reserved for special wines, the more expensive types - some of them selling for as much as thirty or forty dollars a bottle - and the champagnes. Lance was slowly checking over the contents of a great rack when his mother arrived.

For a long moment she watched him, wondering how to begin her little speech. They had never been close enough for straight talk in an atmosphere of relaxed give and take. There was a hardness to Lance that made him almost impossible to mother properly.

"Must be a special occasion."

Lance whirled. "What? Oh, the wine. Yes, something to go with Dungeness crab."

Julia went to another rack. "This might be just the thing."

"Not bad." He took a bottle of the Chardonnay.

"Tonight we're having Chao-Li's boeuf bourguignon. So you must be eating out ... again."

The silence hung between them, growing heavier the longer it lasted. Finally, Lance smiled, somewhat crookedly. "I'm having Dungeness crab."

"This is most upsetting. You-"

"It doesn't upset Grandmother," he countered. "We have a deal. As long as I come home to roost now and then, she doesn't worry about any birdwatching I manage to do."

"You have no such deal with me, Lance. Your wife's having a baby. She needs you."

"Melissa can take care of herself," Lance said matter-of-factly.

"What choice does she have? You even leave her stranded alone at her childbirth classes."

"She doesn't keep many secrets, does she?"

"I want you to go with her from now on," Julia insisted.

"No way."

"Lance, she's the mother of your child."

With a certain light sarcasm, Lance asked, almost to himself, "Now why do I keep forgetting that?" He paused, as if in thought. "You know something?"

"What?"

"On second thought, I'm taking two bottles of Chardonnay." He lifted a second one from the rack and left the warehouse.

Julia stood there in despair. What she had always feared she knew to be true, that Lance could be influenced only by his grandmother, certainly not by his mother. It was an unnatural state of affairs, Julia told herself, but given her mother's strong personality, it wasn't surprising.

The two of them. Both headstrong. Both wrapped up in their own egos. They were a match for each other, Julia knew. Certainly she was no match for her own son. He had turned out to be-

The telephone rang and she answered it quickly. "Yes."

"Julia Cumson, please?" a man's voice asked. It had a pleasingly taut quality to it, as if the single thing on his mind was to find her and her alone.

"Speaking."

"Julia! It's Richard Channing."

"What?"

"Your half brother, Julia."

"I ... I knew you were in t-" She paused, realizing she was babbling. "Yes," she managed to go on more smoothly. "I thought I caught sight of you at Carlo Agretti's funeral. That was you with the knockout blonde?"

"With Miss Hunter, my associate. Julia," Richard surged on, "we've remained strangers too long. I'd like to see you for lunch today."

"Out of the question."

"Come on, Sis," he teased. "I won't bite."

"There's too much for me to do here, Richard."

"Don't you lead the life of leisure?"

"I'm head oenologist for Falcon Crest. This time of year-"

"This time of year," he cut in, "you can't be all that busy. The grapes are doing all the work. What about that nice new French restaurant at the head of the Valley. Say one o'clock?"

"Not possible."

"Then tomorrow."

"Can't be done." Julia took a long, steadying breath. "Let's leave it till later, Richard. When I've got some free time, I'll call you."

"Don't call me, I'll call you?" Richard quoted sarcastically. He laughed. "Then you don't want to be rich, is that it?"

"I have all the money I need."

"I mean independently wealthy for the rest of your life."

"I am already, Richard."

He sighed. "You have no notion of how rich you could be in your own name. If you won't have lunch with me, I'll just have to drop in on you."

"What? When?"

"One of these days."

"I am quite busy," she protested.

"One of these days." Richard laughed softly. "When you least expect me. When you're totally off guard. When you're distracted with work. That's when I'll strike, little half sister. That's when I'll strike."

The line went dead.

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