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Chapter 14

Ask

“Are you serious?” Erin’s dad looked at her from across the table in the brightly lit Bo’s Burger Bistro three blocks west and two blocks south of the bagel shop. As always, Gordy had been right on time and they beat the dinner crowd that always seemed to fill the Village favorite. They had already ordered from the extensive menu and were enjoying a basket of crispy onion rings and glasses of lemonade while they waited for their culinary delights. Bo’s burgers really were the best.

“So, let me get this straight,” Gordy began. “Hazel hasn’t been seen around the village for two days, and you’re worried something has happened to her because she left a voicemail for you late at night and she sounded scared.”

Erin nodded her head. “I know that’s not much to go on, but you always taught us to observe what’s going on around us, and if we see something, say something, right? Well, I’m saying something, but nobody’s taking it very seriously.” She grabbed another onion ring and chomped down on it in frustration.

Trying to channel her inner Kinsey Malone, Erin tried a different angle. “What do you know about Green Glass Vineyards and Winery?”

“Did we just change subjects here,” Gordy asked, “or does this still have to do with Hazel?”

Not wanting to admit to her dad that she was snooping around Hazel’s house, yet really wanting information that might help her make heads or tails out of what was going on, Erin hesitated. Deciding to just jump in with both feet she said, “It’s still about Hazel. I found a business card outside her garage that didn’t look like it had been out in the elements very long. It made me wonder that her disappearance and the winery might be connected.”

Their server arrived with their burgers just then, steaming plates of golden wheat buns and thick, juicy burgers that set Erin’s mouth to watering as soon as she caught sight of them. Had she forgotten to eat lunch again? All the works on her Red Zone burger and bacon and avocado on Gordy’s Touchdown were definitely the right choices. As was their habit, they cut each burger in half and swapped so they could share. It was too hard to narrow it down to just one choice.

This delay gave Gordy an opportunity to let his frustration over Erin’s foolhardy trip to Hazel’s cool down a bit before he made any comment. She cared, that was the main point, and he didn’t want to derail her completely from her concern for Hazel’s wellbeing. “OK, let’s look at this logically,” he said, swallowing his first bite. “I’ve known Hazel for a long time. She was destroyed by Bernie’s and Bryan’s deaths. She’s literally never been the same.”

“It’s so sad,” Erin responded, picking up her burger and holding it over her plate so that all the gooey goodness dripped there instead of on her shirt. “Bernie worked for the government, right?”

Gordy nodded because his mouth was full. “We weren’t completely sure what area he worked in, but we never got the idea that it was very dangerous. But they never talked about his work much.”

“So it’s conceivable that he could have gotten on the wrong side of some bad guys,” Erin insisted, offering Gordy the last onion ring, which he waved off. “You didn’t answer my question about Green Glass Winery. What do you know about them?”

Gordon chewed for a minute, trying to recollect what he knew over the years. “I know that a lot of the vineyards in Napa Valley and Sonoma and all over up there hit a hard time financially in the early 90s, but I don’t know too many of the details. That wasn’t really my realm.”

Erin looked up from her burger with interest. “Do you know if Green Glass was among them?”

“I don’t know specifically,” Gordon answered, pushing his gold-rimmed glasses further up on his nose, “Wine is a really big business in California, in case you didn’t know.” He grinned. He might be the economist in the family, but Erin held her own in the business end of things. “I know that many had to take out huge loans in order to stay in business. I don’t know specifically about Green Glass, but I do know that they’ve been around for a really long time.”

“So, it’s not outside the realm of possibility,” Erin pushed, “that Green Glass could have found some illegal way to stay afloat, and Bernie found out about it and wanted to blow the whistle.”

“No, it’s not,” her dad conceded, “But we never had any reason to believe that Bernie’s job had anything to do with criminal activity.”

Erin tucked all this information into the filing cabinet in her brain, and they finished their meal in companionable conversation, not wanting to spend the whole time on a heavy subject. Erin was very grateful for the relationship she had with her dad. Every since her mom’s death seven years earlier, they had been even closer than before.

As they settled the bill and were walking out the door, Erin took his arm. “Thanks for letting me ask all these questions. Gives me some things to think about. So, are we going to see Ellen this weekend?” Ellen was the 50-something widow “friend” her dad had been spending a lot of time with in the past year. Although she was an economist for the city of San Diego, she made the trip to the Bay Area often to see her adult kids, and a certain graying economics professor she had taken a liking to.

“I think that’s the plan,” he answered. “I’d like to see if you and Tyler and family could come for Sunday dinner. Haven’t seen enough of that grandson of mine lately.”

“Sounds good,” Erin said as they approached the parking lot where their cars were parked. “Just let me know when and if I should bring something. I was just thinking of texting Ty to see if I could see them, so this would work out great. “ She gave her dad a big hug, opened the door of her car and started up the distinctive VW Bug engine. Her dad waved as she backed out and he headed to his own car.