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  CABERNET capers

  BY DAN Kelly

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  Daniel Kelly

  Copyright © 2015 by Daniel Kelly

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  PUBLISHERS NOTE:

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced , stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  Dan Kelly

  CABERNET CAPERS

  Chapter 1

  Wine has been pleasing and intoxicating mankind for millenniums, going back to biblical times. However, for some individuals besides its alcoholic content it has another intoxicating feature, its ability to generate wealth and power. Two such individuals are the identical twin Paganelli brothers, Duilio and Riccardo.

  Like their grandfather, Basilio, and their father, Alfonso, they have been vintners their entire adult lives, but unlike them they aren’t in the business because they can make a good living doing something they love. They are in it strictly for the potential wealth, prestige and power it affords them and have no scruples when it comes to dealing with the competition.

  Basilio and Alfonso learned their trade by working for some of the larger wineries in Italy and in the early 1980s when they had saved up enough money emigrated along with Grandma Paganelli, Mariella, to America and purchased some land in Napa Valley, California. That was the beginning of Paganelli Wineries.

  Unlike their father and grandfather, Duilio and Riccardo have never had to work as field hands. When they came along the family business was steadily growing and bringing in decent revenue. They went to good schools and both graduated from the University of California - Santa Barbara, Duilio with a degree in Ecology and Riccardo with a degree in Economics. Upon graduating from university, they both joined the family business as management trainees.

  They don’t look like the pencil pusher type even though their stature is average in height because their builds are like those of men used to heavy physical labor. Their features reflect what many people of Italian heritage possess, thick wavy dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, a nose with a small hump and a slightly drooping tip and skin the color of a newly acquired tan. They have no problems in the dating arena, but are driven by other desires.

  They have just turned thirty and in the past eight years have mastered the ins and outs of running a winery, so much so that Dad and Granddad have turned the reins over to them and retired. Now that they are in charge, the company’s business development plan is going to be put the through the wringer and go through some major overhauling. The founders’ strategy was to rely on the quality and variety of their wines to reach the buying public through limited advertising and word of mouth which would foster growth, but on a scale that would enable them to continue to manage the company themselves. They didn’t want to get too big too fast and have to deal with the kinds of problems that would engender.

  The brothers, however, have much more grandiose ideas for growing the business, including mergers and acquisitions, the establishment of franchised retail outlets, going international, aggressive advertising and perhaps even going public. They have also just hired a team of horticulturists to explore the possibility of developing a new grape hybrid to give them an edge over the competition.

  On the surface this looks quite normal, but to implement these ideas costs money, lots of it, and targets for mergers and acquisitions aren’t always going to appreciate someone trying to muscle in on their operations. This is where their paucity of scruples comes in. The brothers are willing to do anything to remove any obstacles that get in their way, anything.

  Chapter 2

  Derrick Chandler is a deputy sheriff holding the rank of detective sergeant with the Napa County Sheriff Department and he’s been with the department ten years. At the age of thirty-five, he still looks twenty-five and attributes that to good dirty living and drinking a bottle of wine every day.

  Besides standing six foot three inches in his stocking feet, weighing two hundred and ten pounds most of which is rock hard muscle which he keeps in shape with rigorous physical training and martial arts programs and having a face that most women would call ruggedly handsome, he has a good sense of humor. His head sports a shock of curly black hair and a set of dark blue eyes that relay his mood very effectively and his family doesn’t have any idea where these genes came from. He’s always kidding his parents that he believes he’s adopted and for some reason they’re keeping it a secret.

  He’s just gotten off the phone with David Bedel, the Chief Operations Officer at a small family winery, Aragon Winery, who had an alarming tale to tell. It was alarming because it was similar to several other calls he has received over the past two weeks from small wineries in other sections of the county.

  Over the past several months, the owners of Aragon Winery have been approached by an independent business broker acting on behalf of a client with offers to buy the winery. At first the offers were reasonable for the area, but after each refusal the successive offers became more and more aggressive.

  Depending on the location, the cost of an acre of land in Napa Valley ranges from $50,000 to $300,000. When you add the value of the business to this, the final price tag can be quite large. The business broker’s client seems to have deep pockets and is willing to pay more than what the land and business is currently worth. When asked why, the business broker replied that his client is very optimistic about the future growth of the winery business and wants a piece of the action.

  The last offer was received and refused about a month ago and nothing has been heard from the broker since. However, some strange things have begun to occur over the past several weeks and Mr. Bedel thinks the broker and/or the client might have something to do with them.

  Equipment malfunctions, leaks in vats, truck breakdowns and computer problems being the most prominent of a series of abnormal incidents and if the true cause of these issues isn’t quickly addressed, the effect on the winery’s bottom line could be quite serious.

  As he’s tapping his desk with his pen thinking about how he wants to proceed with his investigation, Bill Bemis the County Sheriff walks into the outer office and heads for his inner sanctum. Derrick follows him into this private enclave to apprise him of the latest development.

  “Bill, if you have a minute I’d like to give you a heads up on the latest with respect to the rash of winery incidents that have begun to pop up.”

  “Whatcha got?”

  Derrick gives him a summary of his conversation with Mr. Bedel and then ends it with his gut feeling. “Bill, we’re talking big bucks here. These winery operations aren’t giants like Gallo, The Wine Group or Constellation, but they are apparently big enough and successful enough to attract the at
tention of someone with the resources to put some very tempting offers on the table.

  “In all of the instances that I’m aware of, the offers have been repeatedly refused and soon thereafter the companies begin to experience operation difficulties. I’m very suspicious whenever coincidence rears its head and I strongly believe that all of these occurrences are somehow related. I just don’t know what the common denominator is yet.”

  “I agree, Derrick. Wineries are a key industry in our state and if someone’s gotten it into his head to start messing with it, we’ve got to put a stop to whatever they’re up to before it gets out of hand. Put this on top of whatever else is on your plate at the moment and keep me in the loop regarding your progress. This could turn into a real political brouhaha if we don’t make damn sure we dot all of the Is and cross all of the Ts, to say nothing of putting anyone breaking the law where they belong. What’s first on your to-do list?”

  “I’m going to check out the business broker, a Giuseppe Pelegrinno, and then pay an unannounced visit to the wineries involved to sniff around for something that might not smell right.”

  “Okay, get to it and it might be a good idea if you have someone watching your back on this one. Take your pick of anyone in the stable of deputies out there. Just let me know who it is so I can remove him or her from the daily roster.”

  “Will do.”

  Chapter 3

  Duilio and Riccardo are sitting in Riccardo’s office discussing a phone call Riccardo has just received. “Duilio, that was Nick Petrillo and he wants to turn up the heat on our expansion targets. I told him our eyes and ears are picking up some disturbing bits of information concerning the Napa County Sheriff’s Department being brought into the picture and we are trying to keep their involvement to a minimum through covertness and subtlety. In his inimitable way with four letter words he said that he has no problem with that if it gets results, but he isn’t seeing any and his folks don’t like to dawdle around with circuitous routes to get where they want to go when there are more direct routes to get to their destination.”

  “Nick said that. I didn’t think words like dawdle and circuitous were in his vocabulary.”

  Chuckling Riccardo says, “Well, I edited his remarks a little. The bottom line though is our benefactors are running out of patience and want to see some results. Although Nick didn’t come right out and say it, he certainly intimated that our tactics should become much more intimidating.”

  “What? Is he suggesting that we start threatening people with bodily injury or worse? I’m not ruling that out, but it’s at the bottom of my list of ways to persuade. If we’re determined to keep the Sheriff’s Department involvement to a minimum that definitely isn’t the way to go.”

  “Duilio, I wouldn’t rule that out either, but there are a lot of ways to intimidate without using violence. One in particular immediately jumps to the front of the line.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Black mail. Everyone has something they’d like to keep under wraps because revelation would be very embarrassing, damaging to their reputation and relationships or even put them behind bars. The key to this tactic is finding out the secret or secrets that have been buried without it being detected until we want to use it to our advantage. That way there will be no time allowed for any attempts to cover up what we ‘ve uncovered.”

  “How are we going to do that in a time frame that will keep our partners happy?”

  “Do you remember Gerry Haggerty?”

  “Yeah, he was in several of our classes in high school and he lived around the corner from us. I never hung out with him though because he was a sneaky and nosy sucker who never would mind his own business. Why?”

  “I ran into him a couple months back in Santa Rosa. After working for a big security firm in San Francisco for ten years he decided to go out on his own where he could decide what cases to take on and what his fees would be. He said corporate America wasn’t for him and, according to him, he’s doing quite well. We exchanged business cards and I’ve added his to my collection. He might be just the person we need to do some digging. We don’t have to tell him what we’re really up to. We can explain our interest by saying it has something to do with some merger and acquisition activity we’re contemplating which is entirely true.”

  “We’ve got nothing to lose. Give him a call. We’ve got to show some real progress or Petrillo and his pals are going to be very difficult to deal with.”

  “Nick was happy with our recent acquisitions regarding our retail outlets and the launching of our new advertising campaign, but by results he’s referring to significant amounts of new money flowing into their accounts.”

  “Well, when we invited them to the party, we knew it wasn’t going to be a picnic. Without the kinds of bucks they can give us and the influence they can exert, we weren’t going to get our new business plan off the ground for a long time. Make the call.”

  Initially, the brothers thought they would get a lot of support from the banking community in their area because the winery has been around for a long time, it has been profitable every year of its existence, their credit is good and they already have significant working capital lines with the banks. The winery is in a steady growth pattern and they just want to speed up the process which should also present opportunities for many other enterprises in the area to participate in their growth as well, including the banks. This coupled with the fact that they provide a lot of jobs for people in the area and additional growth should provide additional employment opportunities for the community had them feeling fairly confident that they would receive significant backing from the banks. It didn’t happen. The banks thought there was too much risk involved.

  They next looked to the venture capital market for financing and found capital was available that they could tap, but the terms were unacceptable and they would been required to have representatives of these investors sitting on their board of directors which would mean interference with how the company was managed.

  When these two options fizzled out, the brothers turned to less conventional sources to finance their expansion, hence Nick Petrillo.

  Many people think that the Mafia is nothing more than a memory now in the 21st Century. They are very much mistaken. It is very much alive and well, but it’s now under new management that recognizes the importance and value of keeping its presence low key. It still has the need for laundering money and using the accounts of established business enterprises is an excellent way to accomplish that. Riccardo was well aware of this and figured this need might give him an entrée to the financing they needed.

  Riccardo’s circle of friends includes a relative of someone in the higher echelon of the ‘family’ businesses and he used that friendship to approach the appropriate people with a proposition. Soon after he talked with his friend he got a call from Nick Petrillo who explained that he was representing some interested parties regarding the investment opportunity Paganelli Wineries would like to discuss. Riccardo had figured correctly.

  Via Nick, Riccardo proposed that since Paganelli Wineries is a privately held corporation, 49% of the company be sold to them at the current market value to be determined by an independent business broker in exchange for which the new buyer(s) would agree to invest additional monies as needed for the implementation of the new business plan. The net profit after taxes and after setting aside 10% of the net for unanticipated expensed would be shared on a 51:49% basis annually. The details of the agreement such as future dissolution of the agreement or the sale of the business could be worked out later.

  The Paganelli brothers knew they were offering a good deal, but still anticipated getting a lot of static when it came to revenue sharing. Neither of them has the patience for haggling, so they made the proposal on a take it or leave it basis and hoped they weren’t inviting trouble.

  The very next day they received a counter offer. These potential investors didn’t like to haggle either. On a take it or leave it basi
s, they offered to provide whatever capital is needed on an ongoing basis for as long as it takes to implement the new business plan which cannot take longer than three years to accomplish, but they will garner 50% of the net profit after taxes and before anything is set aside for unanticipated expenses from all of the winery’s operations, both current and future, on a quarterly basis. There would be a cap on the amount of the investment which would be determined after the investors see a detailed business plan with the associated costs. The funds will be provided by a group of investors know as Investors Anonymous and if the relationship is to be terminated all of the investment capital must be repaid on a monthly basis over a five year period at a rate of Prime plus 5% with additional prepayments allowed. There would be nothing in writing and they would have the right to audit the books whenever they wanted to audit them.