Everyone Had a Key but Me novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: The Empties
Dario found the wine by six on Wednesday morning.
He told us in the hotel corridor, with the doorman's door shut behind him and a coffee going cold in his hand.
"The freight dock camera's wiped for that night. Bruno's firm runs it. But the dock is on a bridge route, and a van with a Pellegrino Imports plate went through the toll at 12:20 a.m. the night the safe was emptied. Heading east."
"East where?" Gabe said.
"One place the company owns out that way. The winery on the North Fork."
Gabe looked at me.
"No," I said, before he could ask. "I'm coming."
We drove out through the grey light, the three of us and two of Dario's men in a second car.
The island narrowed to a single road between bare fields.
The vines on either side were cut back to black sticks, and the sky hung low and grey.
Pellegrino Cellars sat at the end of a gravel drive, a long stone barn with a tasting room in front and a cellar door cut into the hill behind.
A caretaker in a canvas coat came out of the barn, saw Gabe, and took off his cap.
"Don Gabriele. Mr. Bruno didn't say you were coming."
"He doesn't know," Gabe said. "I want to see the cellar."
The old man hesitated.
"Mr. Bruno keeps the key."
"Then I'll walk in the open parts."
The open cellar was a long cold room with a vaulted ceiling and racks of bottles on both sides.
Dario's men went along the racks.
I went with Gabe to the back, where the loading doors stood open on a stack of empty crates.
Every one of them was branded with a red Pellegrino label.
One sat apart from the others, on a pallet by itself.
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