Port Sonoma

I had tweaked my security program and I finally figured how to screen out all the spam that bombarded my e-mail box. There was an email from Roger Hillerman with info on the mayor’s donor and another one from someone named Harlan Cain.
I opened the Hillerman email first. The donor’s name was Rocky Doyle. I opened up a search engine and entered his name. The info that came up was from a local newspaper article that reported he had recently bought the Simenon vineyards under the business name, RD Investments.
The Simenon family had migrated to this area in the eighteen-nineties from France. They had operated one of the biggest dairies in the county until the early nineteen-seventies when one of the family members had the good sense to test the soil to see if it was good for grapevines. It was. They sold off their dairy cows and planted over five hundred acres of pinot noir grapes. Ten years later their wine won awards around the world.
Since the vineyard and Doyle’s companies were privately held, the sale price was not publicly disclosed. But vineyard acreage in Sonoma County sold for over one hundred thousand dollars an acre, so Doyle must have paid about fifty million dollars for the winery.
I did a search of his company’s name and came up with a blank. Who was this guy and where did he get his money? It was time to contact Stewart. Stewart Ellroy worked as a financial investigator for the County Attorney’s office. I had worked with him when I delved into pot growers’ financial records. He was the