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“A castle that’s been here since the Spanish.”
    “Halton Mountain?” I said. “I think I read something about that.”
    “The finest grape-growing land in all of California,” said Craig, “and the most hotly contested.”
    “Why?”
    “Perfect conditions for a vineyard,” Craig said. “Some vintners would kill to own a piece of it.” He must have realized his comment was provocative because he added, “Figuratively speaking, of course.”
    “Of course.”
    “I don’t know the specifics,” said Margaret, “but people have been talking for years about Halton Mountain as though it possesses some sort of magical grape-growing powers.”
    “Hillsides are always prime land for vineyards,” Craig offered. “Halton Mountain evidently is better than most.”
    “Who owns the mountain?” I asked.
    “That’s what’s being contested,” Margaret replied. “As I understand it, Ladington and other vintners are claiming rights to a prime area of it. According to rumors, the dispute has turned ugly. So, Jess, tell us more about your Scotland Yard friend.”
    “George? That’s exactly what we are, friends, nothing more.” I recounted how we’d met in London but had found so little time to nurture a relationship. “I’m sure he’ll love the room the count slept in. Bonzi?”
    “Yes. Your timing was perfect. I’m sure you noticed that we’re short on guests this week. Only three of the six rooms are occupied, including yours. It runs in cycles. Some weeks we’re fully booked, with dozens of callers being turned down. Then we have a week like this. Plenty of room at the inn.”
    “Not good for the bottom line,” Craig said with a laugh. “But that’s the nature of the business.”
    “I’ve tried to clear the slate for the week so we can bounce around together,” Margaret said. “Still don’t drive?”
    “No, but I fly,” I said, which led to some good-natured kidding as I told them about having become a licensed private pilot. “And don’t feel a need to chauffeur me. George is renting a car in San Francisco.”
    We feasted on the crusted sea bass and topped off dinner with raspberry tarts and coffee, then sat up until midnight back at the inn, chatting away, joined briefly by the only other guest, a Mrs. Marshall, whose husband had died within the past year and who was taking a long, leisurely car trip to help lessen her grief.
    “Time for bed,” I said.
    “Breakfast is between nine and nine-thirty,” Margaret said. “My special almond French toast in honor of our special guest and friend.”
    I changed for bed in the Churchill Chamber and picked up the paperback of Playing with Cobras, a novel written a few years back by a close friend, Craig Thomas, whose work I admire. Craig and his wife, Jill, live outside London, and I’d been their houseguest on a few occasions.
    But as I reclined in bed and was about to start reading, my eyes strayed to a heavy chest of drawers across the room. I got up, went to it and picked up a leather-bound, oversized book I’d noticed earlier but hadn’t opened. It was a diary of sorts written by previous occupants of the room, mostly honeymooners. Their entries waxed poetic about their stay at Cedar Gables, and some included rather intimate details of their first nights together in the two-person whirlpool tub. I took the book back to bed with me and spent the next half hour chuckling at some of the entries, tearing up at others. It always amazes me—and often touches me—that people are willing to bare their personal lives to strangers. Many of the entries went back a long time, long before Margaret and Craig had bought Cedar Gables and renovated it. Some people inserted their photographs along with their entries. There were crushed flowers, labels from the bottles of wine they had enjoyed on their stay, poems (Neil Schwartz would have cringed at most of them), and reviews of local restaurants.
    My eyes closing, I placed the diary on the nightstand