Poison Pen

“My goodness. I wonder how she had the gall to show up here.”

“Who, Mrs. Smythe?” Samuel de Kock asked, turning to see the direction in which his companion was launching the piercing daggers of her eyes.

The woman took a step away from where she, and her husband, Major Sydney Smythe, and Samuel and his wife, Melissa, were standing. The small group was tasting the first pouring of the Lady M Cabernet Sauvignon offering of the Marymount Wines vineyard on the Kaep Hangtip peninsula east of Cape Town, South Africa.

Major Smythe put a restraining hand on her arm and muttered, “Not here, dear. Leave it.”

The woman Georgia Smythe had been staring at, Susan Toliver, maiden sister of Pastor Henry Toliver, had just been getting out of a car in the car park next to the winery garden where the first pouring ceremony of the Lady M vintage was being held. The Toliver woman stopped one foot in and one foot out of the car, her eyes going to Mrs. Smythe, but more directly to an envelope protruding from Mrs. Smythe’s handbag--a lavender-colored envelope. The color drained out of Ms. Toliver’s face, she turned and snapped something to her brother, climbed back into the car, and, after the minister scurried around to the driver’s seat, the car backed out of the car park and disappeared down the hill.

“My word, I wonder--” Melissa de Kock, a startling beautiful, blonde women, a slight smile on her face, started to say, but was interrupted by Mrs. Smythe again.

“The nerve of that woman.”

“Come, Georgia, she’s gone now,” Major Smythe cajoled her. “And you know that no one here believes that gossip anyway.”

“Ah, there is the deputy premier and his wife,” Melissa said to her husband, Samuel, himself a golden boy, but a good five years Melissa’s junior and much more casual and easygoing then Melissa’s obvious marshalling of command. The winery was Samuel’s in name, having inherited it from his parents, who had made it the premier wine estate, save one, in South Africa. But everyone in the region around Overberg knew who wielded the sword in managing and building the business.

Melissa used her sugary-sweet voice. “We must do the welcoming duties and get wineglasses in their hands and photographs with them.” She smiled apologetically at the Smythes, while pulling another couple in to talk with them, the disengagement so smooth that whatever had set Georgia Smythe off was defused and she began chattering with the new couple. If she noticed that there was a lavender-colored envelope peeking out of the purse of the female half of the newly appearing couple, she said nothing.

The photo op with the province’s deputy premier, the prints of which would go directly to the society pages of the Cape Town Daily Sun, taken care of, Melissa and Samuel peeled off in different directions. Melissa made the rounds of the black African servants, a mix of Khoikoi and Zulu young men, to direct them, rather pointedly, in more active service of glasses of the new vintage wine, and of sweets and savories on trays. Those who didn’t want to try the new vintage, who wanted a previously proven white wine instead, were being served Master S, the winery’s standard Chardonnay.

For his part, Samuel headed toward a small group of vintners from other wineries to sound them out on how jealous they were that the Lady M Cabernet Sauvignon had turned out so well. But before he could get to them, the overseer of the vineyards, the Dutchman, Jan Townenaar, a bit too coarse and scruffy for this gathering--and overpoweringly intimidating in his height and muscular bulk--came from out of the vineyard fields surrounding the garden and caught Samuel’s eye. It was obvious that Townenaar was hard at work. He certainly wasn’t dressed to be at the wine tasting. It was also clear that he had no part in the publicity or sales of the product--or gave much regard for those who did.

Showing a bit of irritation, Samuel pulled over to him and said, “Yes, Jan. What is it you want? As you can see, we are busy presenting the new Cab Sauv.”

“I think there is something you need to see in the loft of the wine barrel shed, Mr. S,” Townenaar said. “Unless, of course, you’d like to take care of it right here.”

He towered over Samuel. He’d been overseer here since Samuel’s parents had been running the operation and, although in his early fifties, he was still an imposing figure--gray haired, with rugged facile features, a perpetual deep tan from a life working in the fields, a barrel chest, and massive biceps. He was well over six feet tall, at least five inches taller than the well-formed, if diminutive, stature of Samuel. But he worked for Samuel, and, in front of the important guests present today, Samuel had every intention of showing that he did. Townenaar didn’t fight him, but he obviously had a mind of his own--and something he needed to share with his employer.

“I don’t think . . . ,” Samuel started to say, but then he looked across the garden, past the gathered groups of guests, and saw Melissa entering the main house behind the servant Koson, a strapping Zulu young man of particularly striking good looks and cut body. “OK, yes, I’ll meet you up there in ten or fifteen minutes,” he said.

Without waiting for Townenaar’s response, Samuel went looking for his vintner, Christian Devour, and his wife, Sheila, the winery’s publicity manager, to tell them they’d have to hold down the fort at the garden party for a while. He had made sure that, in appearances, Jan Townenaar was subordinate to him, but both he and Jan knew that when Jan said he needed to go to him someplace, Samuel would go.

And he doubted that Melissa would be back for at least the next twenty minutes. She probably thought that he was totally blind, but his eyesight was good enough--nearly of X-ray quality--to be looking through the walls of the second floor of the main house, where the master bedroom was located--knowing that Melissa and Koson would be there now, on the four-poster master bed, with Melissa writhing under big-cocked Koson as he frenziedly fucked her missionary style, her dress pushed up to her waist and her panties dangling on one of her ankles.

Melissa’s devotion to him--Samuel--although total and worshipful in the public eye, was, he knew, grounded on the winery and the prestige it gave her. She fought to get him all of the best of everything--showing much more ambition than he did--but it was because whatever he had represented what she had and controlled.

When he reached the loft of the wine barrel shed, he found that Townenaar didn’t want to talk. Samuel hadn’t thought for a moment that was what he wanted. Townenaar wanted to assert his mastery and control over Samuel, taking him away from the wine-pouring party on purpose just to show he could--to show who had control between the two of them. Samuel had known this before he’d come up here. The winery might be in Samuel’s name and nominally under his control, but he was at least third in line on who really controlled.

The loft had a window overlooking the garden, where the party was going on. It also gave Samuel a vantage point over the windows into the master bedroom in the main house and told him he was right about Melissa and Koson. They were on the bed, Koson covering and mounted on Melissa, his plump, berry-brown buttocks undulating with his rhythmic thrusts inside her. Koson, like Jan, was asserting his control over Melissa, taking her away from the party because she had spoken sharply to him and the other native servants before all those white people.

For the same reason Jan Townenaar had taken Samuel away from the party. As Samuel leaned over a table set against the window in the loft overlooking the garden, his trousers and briefs puddled on the floor around his ankles, Townenaar crouched over his back, holding Samuel’s hips between his hands, holding the younger man steady, as Townenaar fucked him in the ass from behind.

Tearing his eyes away from his wife and the black servant and not wanting to look down into the garden either where he should be, Samuel looked up the hill, up the line of the rows of grapevines neatly spread on wires held up by wooden posts. The vines stretched all the way to the summit of the hill. They weren’t all his, though. They weren’t all part of Marymount Wines. His winery was the best in reputation in South Africa, save one. At the summit of the hill, the smaller, but repeatedly better awarded winery, BeauView Winery, teased and beckoned to him.

Once BeauView was part of the De Kock family holdings--back when the Khoikoi and Zulus here were no better than slaves and back when this was just a farming area, before it was discovered that it was good for grapevines. When Apartheid collapsed and the natives working the farm no longer had to do so for slave wages, the dominant native family here, the Curries, were given what was then considered inferior farming land at the summit of the hill in exchange for continuing to work the De Kock farms.

But the land up there had proved to be better land for growing wine grapes than the land down here, and now it was the Zulu native Daniel Currie who had the better winery. Samuel de Kock coveted Currie’s winery. But he coveted far more than that.

All that Melissa de Kock knew, though, was that her husband coveted the winery as the top of the hill--and thus she did too.

* * * *

“Where are you off to, Sam?” Melissa was cutting roses in the garden the next day when Samuel came out of the house and climbed into his BMW convertible.

“Up the hill to talk to Daniel again. One more stab at getting him to sell.” He did want Daniel to sell the BeauView Winery to him, but that wasn’t why he was going up there. He’d been keyed up since the previous day. The garden party had been broken up with the news that the pastor’s sister, Susan Toliver, took an overdose of sleeping pills after she’d abruptly left the party. This had set off a buzz, but it was more of a guarded, never directly stated discussion of why that might have been than how she was doing. And the ones who seemed to be in the know were all women--and most had had those lavender-colored stationery envelopes peeking out of their purses.

Melissa had seemed a little rattled afterward, after everyone had gone home, but she refused to tell him why. He knew that Melissa and Susan Toliver had had a little tiff about something a week before, but he didn’t think that Melissa gave the old maid much of a thought.

Samuel didn’t feel he could lie about where he was going. There were too many chances that workers in the vineyards would see where his car went and Melissa would somehow hear of it. Besides, it would be difficult for her not to know that he nosed the car uphill at the gateposts rather than down, and the only thing above Marymount on the hill was BeauView. He admitted that was where he was going; he just wouldn’t be truthful about why he was going up there.

“He doesn’t seem to be tempted by money,” Melissa said, her voice distant like she was lost in thought.

“He’s getting old and arthritic. And he has no heirs,” Samuel said. “He’ll give in sometime. I’ve asked him to sell to me but to stay on and manage it as long as he wants.”

“I don’t think that’s wise,” Melissa said. “He scares me. He’s a Zulu of the old sort. I don’t feel safe around him.”

Yes, I know, Samuel thought. You prefer the young, virile Zulus--ones with big cocks. She was referring to the earlier days of native uprisings against Apartheid, of course. He’d told her that Daniel’s family had been protective of his in those years, but she either hadn’t believed him or didn’t want to. She saw Daniel Currie as a threat. Samuel knew a reason why she should, but he was equally sure that she had no inkling of what the reasoning might be.

“He and his family are part of the history here,” Samuel said. “I won’t be the one who runs him off.”

“But you wouldn’t mind if someone else did, would you?” Melissa fairly hissed. “You never care if someone else does your dirty work.”

At that, he slammed the door of the car, brutally turned the key in the ignition, and made Melissa step back to avoid being pelted with gravel thrown off by spinning tires.

He was still angry and driving faster than he should on the curves up to the top of the hill through the vineyards--his and Currie’s, divided by a chain-link fence, Currie’s vines looking a whole lot better to him than his own.

When he pulled the convertible to a stop, it was next to where Currie, well-muscled, but gnarled, once an extremely handsome man and still with a commanding presence, was standing next to a water pump in the yard beside his rambling shack and sluicing himself off. He was naked except for low-slung cargo shorts that had been doused with water and clung to his still-muscular legs. His manhood also was low-slung and was easily traced in the soaked basket of his shorts.

“You would be wasting your time, son,” he turned and said, as Samuel brought the BMW to a stop next to him.

“I won’t stop asking you to sell, Daniel,” Samuel said. “But that’s not what I came for. I can’t stay away.”

“Then you best come into the house,” Daniel said. “And walk away from me. These days I feel like there are eyes everywhere.”

Samuel knew exactly what the older black man meant. He felt it too. It had broken to the surface the previous day with Susan Toliver’s attempt on her own life. He’d heard enough of the buzz on that to have figured that rumors were going around about Susan and the headmistress of the girls’ school. They didn’t surprise or even disturb him, but they seemed in keeping with a series of malicious subjects of gossip going around the community. It’s not like there had been no reason for gossip before, but it suddenly seemed to have turned insidious--and somehow organized and pointed. Daniel was hinting that he and Samuel weren’t immune to it. And if their true relationship came out, it would be explosive.

As they entered the shack, Samuel bugged the older man again about having his large oil tank leaning against the side of the wooden house.

“That tank is going to blow your house up one of these days, Daniel. You need to get it moved away from the house.”

“If it blew, it could help me decide to finally get around to renovating the place,” Daniel answered.

“Daniel,” Samuel said, sternly.

“Yes, I know. I’ll get to it this winter when the vines don’t need attention.”

“You need more help working the vineyard too, Daniel.”

“That takes money I don’t have, Samuel. The bank won’t expand my loan.”

Samuel was very much aware why the bank hadn’t extended Daniel’s loan. It had been Melissa’s idea to trade on their friendship with the bankers, coupled with cases of gift wine, to put Daniel into a financial bind and further squeeze him to sell his winery. Melissa had an endless supply of such ideas.

Daniel led the way back to a bedroom through the dimly lit ramshackle rooms that seemed to have been added on to the structure without plan or reason--and certainly with no bow to building codes or safety. Daniel took a towel off the back of a straight chair, dropped his wet shorts without the least sign of embarrassment, and toweled himself off. He was magnificently hung and already in half erection.

“Best you undress yourself,” he said. “And I’m afraid it’s been a rough day. I’m not sure--”

“I understand,” Samuel said in a low voice. “I just couldn’t stay away. I needed you. If you’ll just lie back on the bed, I’ll take care of it.” As he spoke, he was stripping off his own T-shirt, shorts, and briefs; folding them; and putting them on the seat of the straight chair.

Daniel lay on his back on the bed, his hands gripping Samuel’s waist, as Samuel impaled himself on the big, black cock and rode the older man--the man who had initiated Samuel in the first place one summer when Samuel came home from college and worked in his parents’ vineyard and who had been Samuel’s lover for some fifteen years--to a mutual ejaculation.

Yes, Samuel coveted BeauView Winery, and its seemingly more robust grapes and sweeter-tasting wine, but not at the expense of losing the man he loved far more than any other living soul any sooner than nature parted them.

When Samuel drove back down to his own, much larger and more stylish house, Melissa was sitting at her secretary in the living room when he entered, whistling. She was writing notes on lavender stationery.

“You seem pleased with yourself,” she said as she looked up. “Has he budged on the winery?”

“Not a bit,” Samuel said. “But some of his vines didn’t look too good. I think we may have a better year than he does. And if we can take over some of his sales, we can bring him close to bankruptcy and willingness to sell. I’m glad I went up and took a look.” It, of course, was all lies. Daniel’s vines looked great. There was little likelihood that Daniel’s clients would desert him, even though both Samuel and Melissa had been trying to peel them away from the old man. It would take something more and different than the quality of the wine to make them desert Daniel Currie--even the ones who grumbled about having to work with a black man. Old prejudices died hard in South Africa. But economic necessities were helping to force a change. Wines made from Daniel Currie’s grapes sold faster than they could be bottled.

“I know how badly you want that winery,” Melissa said. “I want you to have it. I think I can help.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Samuel said, as he took a beer out of the refrigerator behind the bar and headed out to the covered patio overlooking the vineyard. “But he’s getting older. I know it will all work out.”

He’s not getting older fast enough, Melissa thought, as she turned back to her desk. “And I don’t doubt for a minute that there’s something I can do,” she murmured as she picked up her pen and moved another sheet of lavender stationery in place. In fact, she’d already been working on a plan.

* * * *

“Great photo,” Samuel said. He and Melissa were spending a rare morning together on the patio by the pool next to the garden, he reading the Sunday Cape Town Daily Sun and her writing notes on her lavender paper on a laptop desk. The Daily Sun had done a good spread, complete with the photo of Samuel and Melissa with the Western Cape deputy premier. Samuel continued checking out the social pages to see if there were other mentions or photos of them. Melissa, with her beauty queen blondness and women’s club activities, was a favorite photo target for the paper.

Their daily routines these days had them on separate tracks more often than not, and they both seemed to be content with that. Melissa was American, not South African. They’d met in the United States, in Georgia, where Samuel had been studying agricultural technology and Melissa, a beauty queen from humble, rural origins, had been studying landing a rich husband and striving for the ever-elusive Miss Georgia crown. Samuel had fit the bill. Finding a wife who would publicize the Marymount Winery had been one of Samuel’s assignments when he was sent to the States. Melissa had fit that bill. That he was supposed to marry for money was forgiven by his parents when he returned with a smart-as-a-whip beauty queen.

They’d been hot and heavy and lovey-dovey to satisfy his parents until the two senior De Kocks had perished in a small plane crash. Now they were business partners, each aware that the other sought solace elsewhere--in a direction that was not socially acceptable to acknowledge. This did not prevent them from being solid business partners.

“Shit,” Samuel exclaimed, rattling the page of the newspaper in his hand.

“What is it?” Melissa asked languidly, looking at the beefy Zulu servant, Koson, who was serving her a glass of fruit juice, rather than at her husband.

“Just the stock market,” Samuel answered. But it wasn’t just the stock market. Included in the gossip column he was reading was a teasing question of what some native black who owned a winery was growing on his hilltop in addition to grapes. The soil would be equally fertile for pot, the column suggested, and also who could tell the difference between equipment for making wine and illegal gin?

There was only one black man who owned a winery in South Africa to Samuel’s knowledge. The gossip columnist was being as pointed as she was malicious. The De Kocks knew her--Grace Winston. Samuel would have to make a point of finding out from her where she was getting her information and why she was dishing this shit. There usually was an iceberg under the ice cube Grace dropped into her column. Daniel Currie wasn’t raising pot or distilling illegal gin. He could barely keep up with the needs of his wine production, especially since he insisted on doing most of it himself and he was increasingly getting crippled by arthritis. But then Samuel had the sinking feeling that the old man might at least be growing pot for personal use to fight the arthritis. But why would that make its way into a Cape Town newspaper’s gossip column?

He looked up to say something to Melissa, but she already was retreating into the house behind Koson.

Bitch, he thought. He knew what she was going to be doing and that she and Koson would be at it for some time to come. He felt the anger welling up inside him. It isn’t that he wanted her anymore. There was a mean, cold streak that went through his wife that made her superficial beauty all the more repellant to him. She made him feel downright lazy and unambitious. He had grown up with all sorts of plans to build up Marymount, but those interests had been challenged by the sudden deaths of his parents before he was fully prepared to take over the operations and then had been diluted by having discovered his preference for men, first with Daniel Currie and then when he came under the control of his own overseer, Jan Townenaar.

And speaking of Jan Townenaar, there he was, on the hillside above, walking between the rows of wired-up grape vines. He was bare-chested, tanned, and muscular, his torso gleaming in the sunlight from a sheen of sweat. He was a hard worker--just as he was a hard cocksman. He didn’t take Sundays off. Samuel heard the sound of a giggle through the open window of the master bedroom above his head. Melissa. Melissa and Koson. Angry and frustrated, he pushed up from the patio chair and started walking into the vineyard, up the hillside, between the rows of vines.

Townenaar watched Samuel as he approached and correctly discerned the intent in the younger man’s eyes. The older man had his trousers unzipped and flared and his cock out of them and in his hand before Samuel reached him, went onto his knees, and took Townenaar’s cock in his mouth. They were hidden here in the vineyard from every vantage point save the windows on the near façade of the main house’s second floor, which included the master bedroom. Samuel didn’t care whether he could be seen sucking his overseer’s cock from the windows of the master bedroom--in fact, he rather hoped he was being observed.

Townenaar had pressed Samuel onto the ground between the rows of grapevines, onto his back, depleted of his shorts and briefs, and with his legs spread and bent, providing space for Townenaar to sink between his thighs and a welcoming angle for Townenaar to begin to work his cock into Samuel’s channel when all hell broke loose in the form of police car sirens.

“What the hell?” Samuel cried out as he rose from under Townenaar and both men stood and grabbed for their trousers. Samuel instinctively looked up at the windows of the master bedroom, where Melissa appeared, her breasts exposed. She looked out toward the road up the hill, which she could see and could be seen from where Samuel stood. Her eyes were wide with something that wasn’t the concern it should have been, but she only was at the window briefly. Two dark-brown hands came around her chest, fanned out over her breasts, and pulled her away from the window and back into the interior of the bedroom.

“Sounds like police,” Townenaar muttered. “Coming here?” He said it like he had half a thought that the police were coming for him, and, indeed, he brawled enough in the bars down in Overberg that that possibility wasn’t out of the question.

That was Samuel’s immediate question too, but by the time he had formed an opinion to voice, the sound of the sirens had moved on up the hill. He wanted to go find out where they’d gone--there was only one place they could have gone if not here and that was BeauView Winery--but Townenaar was still hard and throbbing. He pulled Samuel back down to the ground, on his back, and slapped the younger man’s legs apart. Neither of them had pulled his trousers back on. Samuel cried out, arched his back, and rolled his pelvis up, as Townenaar forced his knees under Samuel’s buttocks, grabbed Samuel’s wrists and forced the younger man’s arms over his head, hovered over Samuel’s torso, thrust inside Samuel’s channel with his hard, thick cock, and began to pump. Groaning and moaning, Samuel turned his cheek to the side, let his tongue hang out, and took the hard, rough thrusts of the older man’s cock. He had asked for this.

When Samuel had been able to disengage from his overseer and had driven up to the top of the hill, he found policemen searching for some evidence of drugs or an illegal still. Samuel wasn’t worried that they’d find anything, but he was concerned to learn that Daniel Currie had been taken down to Overberg for questioning. He went back to his car and called his lawyer in Overberg.

“You want me to go to the station and represent Daniel Currie?” the lawyer asked, his voice laced with disbelief. “Rumors had it you were trying to get him off that land and get it yourself.”

“Fuck the rumors,” Samuel said. “I didn’t start them. His family and mine have been close for centuries. I don’t think the police have anything on Daniel. See if you can spring him loose. And even if they find something, I’m good for his bail.”

Getting in his car, he drove back down the hill. He didn’t stop at Marymount; he continued driving all the way to Cape Town and to the offices of the Daily Sun, where he tracked down the gossip columnist, Grace Winston.

“I got the information from several sources,” she said. “I wouldn’t have printed it if it was just from one source. Running rumor is what the column is all about, though, Sam. Besides, from what Melissa tells me, you’d be happy to see that man go--that you want his winery.”

Melissa.

“Did any of the rumors reach you by mail, Grace?”

“Yes, of course.”

“From Melissa?”

“No. Melissa and I talk. We don’t send letters to each other.”

“Any of the rumors come on lavender--lavender stationery in a lavender envelope.”

“Yes, the first one did--an anonymous source.”

Melissa.

Samuel drove back to Overberg, at breakneck speed, and to the police station there. Daniel had already been sent home. They hadn’t found anything incriminating at his place and Samuel’s lawyer had done his work.

“How did you know to get a search warrant on his place?” Samuel asked the chief inspector. “It couldn’t just been from a rumor in the newspaper.”

“We received several letters too,” the policeman answered.

“Anonymous?”

“Some; not all. But enough that we couldn’t just ignore them.”

“Because he’s not white?” Samuel asked.

“Enough not to ignore no matter what color he is,” the answer came back somewhat belligerently. “Here. Here’s a stack of the letters.”

Three of them were on lavender stationery, anonymously sent. Melissa. The others used the same phrasing that the lavender stationery notes used. It was a vicious circle of gossip and innuendo.

Samuel hauled ass back up to BeauView Winery. He found Daniel sitting, his stance dejected, amid a living room that had been torn apart in the search.

“I’m sorry, Daniel. This shouldn’t have happened. I didn’t want this to happen.” Samuel sank down on his knees beside Daniel. The consolation moved to embracing, and then to kissing. Samuel unzipped Daniel’s trousers and took possession of the older man’s cock, first with a hand and then with his mouth. They both heated up, which led to Samuel sitting in Daniel’s lap, impaled on his cock and riding the older man to a mutual ejaculation.

Afterward, while Daniel went flaccid inside Samuel’s channel, they cuddled and murmured to each other.

“I didn’t want this to happen,” Samuel repeated.

“It might be for the best,” Daniel answered. “I have been thinking of leaving here anyway. I can’t get the vines to give better grapes here no matter what I’ve tried.”

“What do you mean?” Samuel asked. “You have the best grapes in the country. Your wine is the best.”

“Not because of these grapes,” Daniel said. “These grapes are good, yes. But they are the same as your grapes. They could be even better. They are better grown somewhere else. The wine of mine that gets top awards doesn’t come from these grapes. Those grapes come from my other fields.”

“Your other fields?”

“Yes, this is only a small part of what I use to produce BeauView wines. I have raised the better grapes off the West Coast Road, by the Atlantic, on the Darling Wine Route, between the towns of Yzerfontein and Malmsbury. I have more extensive fields and better facilities there than here. I live here mainly because this has been the family holding for so long. I don’t tell anyone I’m producing there, of course. It’s hard enough for a black man to claim owning fields this size. I would receive even more trouble than I do now if it was known how extensive my holdings were.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were having trouble. And I’m only now finding out how much of that trouble is being generated by me.”

Melissa.

* * * *

Samuel left the top of the hill determined to put a stop to this persecution and poison pen campaign against his old family friend, Daniel Currie. He was particularly mortified because at the base of it was an effort to wrest Currie’s vineyard away from him so that Samuel could have it--or Samuel and Melissa, and maybe eventually just Melissa. He had been such a sluggard, letting Melissa take over so much--too much.

He had to plan some way to make it stop. In the event, though, he almost was too late to stop it. He made a plan and started preparations for it, but Melissa made her next move too quickly for him. It was less than a week after that and it unfolded in a bar down in Overberg, where both Samuel and Jan Townenaar coincidentally were having a drink, Samuel after one of several trips to his lawyer and the bank and Townenaar while in town for supplies.

All were boisterous and the liquor was free flowing, as those in the bar were watching a rugby match on the television. All slowly went quiet, though, as their attention was drawn to the entrance to the bar where a disheveled and bruised Melissa de Kock stood--or, rather staggered until someone near her moved to her to help her stand. Her hair was a mess--something that no one anywhere had seen in Melissa’s appearance before--and her dress was torn, one breast nearly exposed. The silence in the room was quickly replaced by gasps and questioning exclamations.

“Daniel Currie. Daniel assaulted me. Over by the church. Tried to drag me into the graveyard. I barely fought him off,” she gasped. Both Samuel and Townenaar immediately went to her.

The gasps increased and the exclamations surging around the room turned murderous. A black assaulting a white woman. It hadn’t been that long since that was a lynching offense in South Africa. And dragging her onto the church grounds, into the cemetery--a prominent white woman; a young beauty.

Townenaar’s voice lifted out over all the others. “Come on, boys. Let’s us find some rope and this fucker and do him!”

As he spoke, Samuel--and only Samuel--caught Melissa’s eye. A sly little smile floated across her face. He would have known anyway that Daniel could not have done this--he was crippled up, barely able to move; he rarely left the hilltop vineyard; and he had no sexual interest in women--certainly not in Melissa, whose nature and ambition he’d warned Samuel about for years. Of course Melissa had orchestrated this. The poison pen letters weren’t acting fast enough. The horror for Samuel, though, was that she obviously knew of the relationship between Samuel and Daniel and she was twisting the knife. Her private smile was for him and was one of triumph.

“Wait, Jan. That’s not the way,” Samuel cried out over the crowd. “Let’s not get anyone else in trouble over this. Yes, guys, prepare yourselves. But, Jan, go to the police station. Get the proper warrant and police backup. Leave Daniel to me for now. I’ll go up there and make sure he’s there when the police arrive. It’s my right. What man here will say it’s not my right to be there first?” He stood, facing them all down--but not before giving Melissa a look of hatred and knowledge that made her turn her face away--that ended whatever they once had forever. He took a stance that faced down all of them, including Jan. It was a man’s world here. They understood and accepted his prerogative.

As he raced for his car, Townenaar and some other men headed for the police station.

It took less than an hour for the police to obtain the arrest warrant and to head for the BeauView Winery, with a cavalcade of cars following them. But they’d barely reached the Marymount Winery on their way to the hilltop when they heard the explosion.

When they arrived, the rambling wooden shack that Daniel Currier called home was engulfed in flames, the oil tank leaning against it finally having exploded. Currier’s old Renault was there, close to the house, also in flames and still in the drive, impeding the arrival of the police cars--and, ultimately, the fire trucks--was Samuel’s BMW convertible, the driver’s door still open, but the ignition key gone so that it became a problem to move the car out of the drive.

Hours later, the fire settled down to not much more than ash and with little left of the smoldering wreckage, the fire chief came over to Melissa de Kock.

“Tomorrow, when the fire is completely out, we will see if we can find the bodies.”

“No need,” Melissa answered. “Just bulldoze the whole place into that empty swimming pool over there and write up a report that declares them both dead. We’ll fill in the pool as a grave for both of them.”

This was working out better than she’d ever imagined it would. She had done her research. The granting of this land to the Curries by the De Kocks long ago had included the stipulation that if the Currie line died out, which, with Daniel, it did, the land reverted to the De Kocks. And with Samuel dead as well, the De Kock holdings reverted to Melissa. She didn’t need bodies to be recovered. She only needed death certificates to be issued. Certificates would come quicker if they didn’t have to sift through the ash for evidence of bodies.

* * * *

Weeks later, at the larger Currie vineyard on the west coast, in the Darling wine country, a vineyard registered in Daniel Currie’s other, Zulu, name of Bandile Diamini, Bandile looked up from where he was sitting and sipping wine on the patio of his vineyard home to watch the man once known as Samuel de Kock drive up. Samuel exited the Land Rover Diamini had bought weeks earlier and parked at the foot of the other side of the hill from the drive up to the BeauView Winery.

“All done?” Diamini asked as the younger man walked to him and settled, with a sigh, in the chair beside him.

“Yep, all new documentation. I’m Scott Easton now. Recently arrived from the States. All the money I took out of the Overberg De Kock accounts and from the remortgaging of Marymount Winery is also deposited in the Easton name. I’d sorely like to see Melissa’s face when she finds out the assets have been wiped out. We’ll have to get this place a name, though, so we can start bottling its wine in some other name than BeauView. Good thing you never attached that name to these fields.”

“Can that wait a day or two?” Bandile asked. “I feel like celebrating our freedom at this moment.”

“Sure. And how would you--?”

“You know how I’d like to celebrate. Shall we go inside?”

“Yes. I can’t think of anything I’d like to do more.”