“Oh, and one other thing,” said Steph. “Jeff and I were almost driven off the road yesterday. I didn’t tell my parents, since I don’t want to alarm them, but Jeff got the license plate off the dashcam.” And as she supplied the details to Chase, who gratefully jotted them down, she said,“My dad seems to think it’s the Kosinskis, but I don’t know. I’ve known them for years, and even though they’re not exactly great neighbors, I don’t think they’d do a thing like this. And besides, why would they? They have no reason to.”
“Who are these Kosinskis?” asked Odelia.
“Beniamino Kosinski. He’s the owner of the Kosinski Winery, along with his son Dominic. They’re our closest neighbors, and also our competitors. Dad and Beniamino have never gotten along, but I doubt he’d start throwing stones through our windows. But I just thought I’d mention it, since Dad seems to feel very strongly about this.”
“Beniamino Kosinski,” said Odelia as she wrote this down on her tablet. “And son Dominic. Competing winery.”
“There’s some discussion as to who was here first,” Steph explained. “The Stewarts or the Kosinskis. Both wineries were founded in the seventies, though neither can claim to have been the first on Long Island. The Hargraves founded that one, in 1973.” And as she gave us a brief history ofHamptons wine, Chase called in the license plate number. When he received a reply, he was frowning.
“Guess who owns the car that almost drove you off the road yesterday,” he said as he joined us again. “Edmundo Crowley.”
Steph was obviously dumbfounded.“I knew it,” she said finally, when she had recovered from the shock. “I knew he was behind this business with the slander. Both at WelBeQ and Sofie Fashion.”
“Sofie Fashion?” asked Odelia.
“Oh, I haven’t told you this yet, but there has been a new development,” said Steph. “Or developments, plural. And I’m sure Crowley is behind both of them.” And she proceeded to tell us about her latest job offer that hadn’t gone through. All because someone had sent those same photographs to Sofie Fashion, a Paris fashion house that had offered Steph a job. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the same person had convinced Jeff’s godmother that Steph was some kind of addict. As a consequence, the woman had drawn up a new will, cutting out her godson. And to add insult to injury, she had bequeathed her vast fortune to a dog shelter!
“A dog shelter,” said Dooley, as appalled as I was. “Who in their right mind gives all of their money to a shelter for dogs? The woman must have been crazy.”
“I’m sure she had her reasons,” I said, not wanting to get sidetracked here. Though I have to say I agreed wholeheartedly with my friend.
“Now if she would have given her money to a cat shelter, that would be fine,” Dooley continued. “But a dog shelter, Max! A shelter for dogs!”
“I know what a dog shelter is, Dooley,” I said. “And truth be told, there must be a lot of dogs in Paris who could use the benefit of a shelter.” As we all know, cats are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, but the same cannot be said about dogs, who always seem to need a human to take care of them. “So we shouldn’t judge Jeff’s godmother too harshly,” I finished my assertions.
“I guess you’re right,” said my friend. “Dogs need shelters. Cats don’t. So maybe this woman, even if she wasn’t right in the head, did the right thing.”
Not according to Jeff, though. That stalwart young man had joined us, and when he heard that the same person was responsible for almost driving them off the road, and also thwarting his wife’s chances at landing her dream job, he uttered a few choice curse words. At least I thought that was what they were. I don’t speak French, you see, and the young man cursed exclusively in his native tongue. The only thing I understood was the word ‘merde,’ which means poo.
“What’sesp?ce de merde?” asked Dooley, who had been listening attentively.
“I’m not sure aboutesp?ce, butmerde means poo,” I said. We once spent a couple of days in Paris, and I’d picked up a few words here and there from a nice French cat named Marion.
Odelia must have overheard our conversation, for she smiled and bent down, and whispered into my ear,“Esp?ce means piece.”
“So basically he’s calling Edmundo a piece of poo?” asked Dooley.
“Something like that,” I said. Obviously Jeff was very upset. And when he showed us the footage from his dashcam, I can’t say I blamed him. This Edmundo character could have killed them. Talk about road rage.
“He’s a very angry young man,” said Odelia, and that was putting it mildly.
“We’ll go and have a chat with him,” Chase assured the young couple.
“Please do,” said Steph. “I filed a complaint with the NYPD, just like you said, but I don’t think they took me seriously. They didn’t seem to think it was important enough for them to bother with.”