Chapter 5: Cellar Nine

The Whitman estate in Napa is three hundred acres of vines, and at eleven at night it is just a long dark hill with a few security lights.

Malcolm cut the headlights at the bottom of the gravel road and let the car roll the last stretch in silence.

"Is this legal?" I whispered.

"You're the daughter of the house," he said. "I'm the trustee of its owner. I'd call it a family visit."

"Its owner."

"Later."

He had said that three times since Monday, and I had started to hate the word.

We walked up the hill with one flashlight between us.

The oldest part of the property is a set of stone caves dug into the slope, where the barrels sleep.

I had played in them as a child, until my mother died and my father put a padlock on every door that wasn't the tasting room.

Malcolm stopped at the far end, where the tunnel narrowed, and swung the light across an iron door painted the same grey as the rock.

A small brass plate had a number on it.

I had never noticed it before.

"It's been behind a rack of empty barrels for fifteen years," he said. "I moved the barrels this morning."

My hand was shaking so badly that it took three tries to fit the key.

The lock turned with a clean, oiled click.

The door swung inward, and cool air that smelled of cedar and old paper came out to meet us.

It was a small room.

There was a leather armchair, a rolltop desk with a green lamp, and a shelf of ledgers.

Along the back wall, in a wooden rack, stood a row of bottles with hand-lettered labels.

I stepped in and read the first one.

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