The Merlot Murders (16 page)

Joe Dawson, dressed in khaki shorts, docksiders, and a navy polo shirt, stood by the mosaic-tiled bar opening bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon. At the far end of the room and on the terrace Dominique’s staff set up the pre-theater buffet dinner. “Hey, sweetheart. You working here selling or helping out in the barrel room with the tasting?”

“Probably the barrel room.” I said as he kissed me on the cheek. “What’s left to do?”

“Get out the dump buckets and the bread baskets. Dominique left a couple of baguettes that need cutting up.”

I got the small buckets we used for guests who wanted to pour out the remnants of a wine they either didn’t want to finish or didn’t care for and set them on the bar. The multicolored baskets made for us by an artisan in North Carolina were under the counter.

“I heard you talked to Eli,” Joe said.

I set one of the baguettes on a bread board and began slicing it. “I was going to hire a Stearman from the Flying Circus down in Bealeton to pull one of those signs behind it in case anyone missed the details of what we said, but I guess I don’t need to.”

He grinned, showing the boyish dimples, but his eyes were grave. “You know how word gets around.”

“Who told you?”

“Seth Hannah. At the town council meeting this afternoon.” He set down the corkscrew and picked up a sponge, wiping an imaginary spill on the counter. “I thought you might appreciate a little head’s up, Lucie. Seth’s thinking about calling your loan. You’re into him for a lot of money. Over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Leland put up the house as collateral.”

The knife slipped. I missed the baguette, nicking the knuckle of my index finger instead. “Damnit!”

A red stain spread across the white bread. “Give me that.” He threw the sponge in the sink and took the knife from me. “The napkins are under the bar. You’re getting blood all over the place.”

I knotted a paper napkin around my finger and watched the blood seep through almost immediately. “I will pay him back. Completely. All I need is a little more time…he owes me that, at least. For Leland’s sake.”

Joe looked at me the way you look at a child when you finally have to explain the truth about Santa Claus. “Naw, sweetheart, that’s not gonna work anymore. In his lifetime Leland cadged money from just about every member of the Romeos and never paid most of ’em back. I swear to God there were some folks so mad at him they wouldn’t spit if he was on fire after he stiffed them. Seth held out longer than most, kept giving him extensions. Now he wants his money. All of it. The bank’s money, I mean.”

“You think we should sell the place, don’t you?” I said bitterly. “Just like Eli.”

“I’m wondering what choice you have, under the circumstances.”

“There are other things I can sell first. Like some of the furniture. I already sold a few things to Mac Macdonald.”

“That’s like owning a car but selling the engine,” he said. “Though I suppose if you’re bound and determined, you could sell the Jefferson letter. It won’t fetch much because it’s torn where it’s been folded and the contents are pretty tame. You’d get something, though. I can help you find a buyer, if you want.”

“What Jefferson letter?”

He looked surprised. “The one Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Countess de Tessé. That relative of your mother’s. He was helping her acquire American plants for her house near Versailles. The letter asked whether she received a shipment he’d sent. Nothing to set the world on fire, but still. Didn’t you know about this?”

“Nope. Not a word. What makes you so sure Leland didn’t sell the letter already?”

“It’s in his study in one of those hollow books where you hide things.
Crime and Punishment.
I saw it the other day when I borrowed a couple of books,” he said. “Besides, Leland thought anything that belonged to Jefferson was sacred. No offense, but he would have sold one of his kids before he sold anything Jefferson owned.”

“Family didn’t mean much to Leland.” I removed the napkin and examined my finger intently. “I guess no one knew that better than his children.” I looked up at him. “But, yes, I’d love some help finding a buyer. Maybe someone in that Blue Ridge Consortium.”

“Uh.” His eyes crinkled and he looked puzzled. For the first time I noticed deep marionette lines on either side of his mouth that belied the boyish features. “Why do you mention them?”

I shrugged and turned on the faucet under the bar, running my finger under cold water. “I found a letter from Nate Midas with Leland’s papers. He was asking for money. I don’t know why Leland got one of those solicitations, under the circumstances. But a ten-thousand-dollar donation? I guess you need real money to be part of that group. If they’re interested in preserving historic sites, maybe one of them would be interested in a historic letter.”

He lined up corks from the bottles he’d opened like a kid playing with soldiers. “I was thinking more of contacting the folks at Monticello. Or Sotheby’s.” He swiped at all of the corks with the side of his fist dumping them into the palm of his other hand. “I’d better clean this up and see what Dominique needs. And you’d better get over to the barrel room.”

“Sure.”

He walked through the arched doorway that led to the wine library and the offices. I left for the barrel room in the dreamlike twilight. It was too early for the fireflies but the crickets were singing in full voice. Somewhere beyond the courtyard two bullfrogs called back and forth to each other.

Had Joe clammed up when I mentioned the Blue Ridge Consortium or was I imagining it? If the group bought land to turn it into parkland—preserving the wild and historic places in the region—was it possible the person who approached Leland about selling was representing the consortium? Fitz said whoever it was had offered a lowball price and Leland refused to sell. Had the buyer been one of the people Leland stiffed for money?

Maybe this was about revenge.

During the past two years when I’d worked at the Perfume Museum in Grasse, I’d honed my sense of smell, learning to distinguish a number of essences without knowing beforehand what they were, a useful talent in wine making as well. Perfume has three notes—top, middle, and bass—which refer to their volatility, or the speed with which they diffuse into the air. When a bottle of perfume is opened, the first fleeting scents are the top or headnotes, which disappear almost instantly. Next are the middle notes, which are the heart of a perfume, until finally what lingers are the forceful bass notes. My life seemed as layered and complex as the most exotic scent right now.

The bass note, or what stayed with me, was the need to hang on to the vineyard, whatever it took to do it. The middle notes, or the heart notes, were pretty clear, too. I had to find out what really happened to Leland—and Fitz. What eluded me were the top notes, the headnotes. There were too many of them and they were too ephemeral—the unknown person who wanted to buy the vineyard and whether Eli was involved in that, Fitz’s murder, Dominique’s money woes, and now the news that Quinn might have been involved in embezzlement and fraud before he came to us.

What I needed to do, before I could understand the headnotes, was to stay with the heart. I needed to probe it and understand its essence, which somehow seemed to have its origin in Leland’s death.

When I arrived in the barrel room, Quinn was already talking to a small group of people, including a heavyset woman wearing enough bracelets to rival the percussion section of a small orchestra and a broad-brimmed hat that threw everyone around her into shadow. She was visiting from England.

“No, ma’am,” he was saying. “In the United States we name our wines by varietal, not region. It’s different than Europe. A wine in this country can be labeled with a particular varietal designation—like Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir, for example—as long as seventy-five percent of the wine is made from that grape.”

“Give me a good Bordeaux any day,” she said. “I’m a bit of a purist.”

“Actually,” Quinn said politely, “most of the great Bordeaux are blends of more than one kind of grape. It gives the wines more structure and complexity.”

“You don’t say.”

The barrel room, dramatically illuminated by electrified candles in wrought iron wall sconces and recessed can lights glittering like tiny stars, was becoming more crowded. Someone had placed the hurricane lamps we’d used at the outdoor dinner on the tables where Angela and I had arranged the wineglasses. The flickering light from the real candlelight made the huge room seem warmer and more intimate. I preferred it like this, moody and romantic, rather than the heavy industrial lighting we needed for working purposes.

Quinn introduced me as one of the owners but it was clear he was in charge. He stood behind a large old barrel on which my mother had stenciled the vineyard’s twining vine logo and used the top as a table for his notes and bottles of wine as everyone gathered around him. On the wall behind him hung another one of her cross-stitched prints, our logo and a quote from Plato—“No thing more excellent nor more valuable than wine was ever granted mankind by God.”

I stared at the print and thought of her as Quinn began talking, raising his voice so he could be heard over the hum of the fans and the gentle gurgling of the glycol-and-water solution circulating inside the refrigeration jackets on the stainless-steel containers. For someone who’d only been here a few months, he’d done his homework about our history.

“We’ll start with our newest Chardonnay,” he said, moving to the tables behind and filling rows of glasses about a quarter full. “We just released it, so congratulations, everyone. You’re the first to try it. It’s been aged in French oak for about seven months, then bottle-aged for another year. My predecessor, Jacques Gilbert, used French-oak barrels exclusively, which are sweeter than American oak. We’re going to be mixing things up from now on and this year’s harvest will be aged in barrels purchased from a Missouri cooper. Come back in two years and see if you can tell the difference.”

I leaned over and said in his ear, “I didn’t know that.”

“That French oak is sweeter than American oak?”

“That you were switching to American oak.”

He smiled for the benefit of the crowd and murmured to me, “You do now. Let’s get these glasses filled, shall we?” He raised his voice and added, “We’re also planning to keep some Chardonnay exclusively in stainless steel. We’ll get a brighter fruit that way.”

Another news flash. Jacques would have had a coronary.

I helped him pour wine in silence, then we passed glasses through the crowd. “We always start tastings with the lightest wines,” he said. “This particular Chardonnay comes from some of our oldest vines. The older the vine the more complex the wine.” He raised his glass. “To your health, everyone.”

There was a murmured response and quiet clinking of glasses.

Quinn turned to me. “A good harvest.”

“A very good harvest.”

We drank in silence. The wine reminded me of Jacques. Elegant and smoky like the French oak he loved. Okay, some sweetness. What would Quinn’s American-oaked wine taste like? Big and brassy? Definitely no sweetness.

“So how old are the vines this wine comes from?” the English woman asked.

Quinn raised an eyebrow at me. “Uh, probably…eighteen to twenty years old. Or thereabouts.”

I nodded. “Probably.”

He leaned over. “I asked you for that information the other day. And where you bought the root stock.”

“You’ll get it,” I said. “As for information, in the future I wouldn’t mind getting briefed about your plans in private before everyone else in the world hears about them.”

“We have a deal,” he said in a low voice. “My running the place includes not questioning my every decision—or when I reveal it.”

I set my glass down a bit sharply on the barrel. “What’s next?”

“Merlot. We’re doing a vertical tasting.”

As opposed to a horizontal tasting, which features the same wines from a region or varietal—such as Virginia Cabernet Sauvignons from the same year—a vertical tasting featured the same wine from the same winery, but grown in consecutive years. It was an ideal way to educate people because it became immediately apparent how the weather affected the way the same vines could produce such different wines from one year to the next.

Quinn was good at leading the group through our last five Merlots, four in bottles that Jacques had blended with a small amount of Cabernet Sauvignon. The fifth and most recent harvest was still in barrels, where we always kept it for at least twenty months.

“This wine will probably be in barrels for a total of sixteen, maybe eighteen months,” Quinn was saying. “I’ll siphon some from one of the barrels with this hose we call a ‘wine thief’ and you can see how it’s developing.”

I chewed my lip and watched him work. Was he putting his own stamp so definitively on our wines, changing absolutely everything that Jacques had done, because of his ego? Or because it was a smart decision? He was moving a lot more aggressively than I’d realized.

After the last person had left, either to buy wine at the villa or head over to the performance at the Ruins, it was just the two of us cleaning up.

Finally he said, “I’ve been around enough women in my life to recognize the silent treatment when I’m getting it. You’re mad because I’m not coloring inside the lines the way you think I ought to be. I told you I’m not going to be put on a leash and you agreed.”

“I didn’t think that meant changing absolutely everything we ever did.” I set an empty wineglass box on one of the tables and glared at him. “People buy our wines because of our reputation. Because of the reputation Jacques established for us. What do you think you’re doing, anyway?”

“Me? What about you? Your grip on this place is getting more tenuous every day, from what I hear. You sold your soul to the company store, Lucie. Or Leland did. Now you have to pay back what you owe and you can’t.”

“Do not underestimate me,” I said. “I can and I will.”

“That remains to be seen,” he snapped. “I think we’re done here.” He strode around the room and began turning off banks of lights.

“What are you doing?”

“Closing up. Then, if it’s any of your business, I’m going to watch Angie. She’s doing something new for her last show. I’d like to see her.”

How many different ways were there to take off your clothes? Somehow I figured Vinnie ran a cut-rate operation that didn’t include extras like costumes and accessories. “I’ll finish here,” I said. “You can go.”

“I can handle it.” He walked over and stood in front of me, staring at me with those dark, intimidating eyes I’d noticed the first time I saw him—when he told me Fitz was dead.

I said sharply, “You don’t need to be so defensive. I’d like some time alone here. Please leave.”

“Suit yourself.” He let the door bang shut, on purpose, when he left.

Maybe I was mistaken about him. I had thought he was extremely ambitious, just like me, and that we could be a good team professionally, even if personally we were about as compatible as bulls and china shops. But maybe “extreme ambition” was a polite way of papering over ruthlessness and greed.

The article in the
Mercury News
said the police never found any of the money Allen Cantor had embezzled from Le Coq Rouge and that he’d probably parked it in some offshore account. What if he’d paid off his assistant winemaker as well, and bought his silence? The day Quinn took me out in the fields he said he might like to buy land in Virginia, own his own vineyard someday.

Maybe he already had the money to do it. He obviously knew how dire our financial situation was. Maybe he’d been the one to make that fire sale offer and that’s why no one knew about it.

Because it had been an inside bid.

I drove too fast on the short trip back to the house, pushing the Volvo harder than it deserved. It responded like the workhorse it had always been, immune to my irritable mood. As soon as I was in the house I went straight to Leland’s office and found the copy of
Crime and Punishment
on his bookshelf. The Jefferson letter was, as Joe warned, not in good condition. I put it back on the shelf as the small clock on the fireplace mantel struck ten. On my way out of the room I stopped in front of my mother’s painting of Hugh Montgomery’s grave.

There was something about it that eluded me. The clue to the necklace’s hiding place was either in the painting, or possibly at the cemetery itself. It wasn’t a random choice that she’d left the key and written the lines from
Richard II
in that note card. Somewhere there was a locked chest and somehow—if I believed what she’d written—it was tied up in her life and honor.

It was late, but I was in no mood to sleep. Instead I went to Leland’s once well-stocked wine cellar, now nearly empty. I picked out one of the few remaining bottles, a Pomerol, and brought it outside to the veranda. While it breathed, I lit every candle and torch until it looked like the entire place was bathed in liquid gold.

Then I switched on the radio. WLEE. He was playing Coltrane. It matched my mood and perfectly plumbed the depths of my solitude and mined the ache in my heart. Why had I let him kiss me again? What was it that made me seek out the good-looking untamable bad boys like Greg and Philippe? Both were as seductive and dangerous as heroin and probably more addictive. Fatal charm. Devastating looks. James Dean bad-boy charisma. Any idiot knew how it was going to end. I always lost my heart to someone who didn’t have one.

I always ended up alone.

Fortunately no one was around when I woke up the next morning, cradling yet another empty wineglass in my lap, still dressed from the night before. The farm report was on the radio. Someone was talking about the drought and the toll it was taking on livestock all over the state. We were in for some relief though, the announcer said. After one hundred and thirty-three dry days, there was rain on the way.

Not today, though. I walked to the edge of the veranda and looked out at the horizon. The sun was already punishing, a sharp-edged disk in a white-hot sky. The outline of the Blue Ridge was as soft and faint as a whisper.

I ate breakfast, showered, and changed into a black tank top and jeans. Then I did something I’d been avoiding ever since I came home. I went to my mother’s study. The tight feeling in the back of my throat from the early days after her death was no longer there when I opened the door, but I did stand in the doorway for a while before I walked into the room. It had the museumlike quality of a shrine, preserved almost exactly as she’d kept it. The decaying odors that pervaded the rest of the house seemed not to have seeped into this space. Instead the chemical smells of paint and varnish hung in the air.

I opened the windows to air out the room. Mia must have been using it as her studio. A sheet draped over my mother’s easel hid the outlines of a large canvas and on a table next to it were brushes, paints, and a much-used artist’s palette, where my mother always kept them. I lifted the sheet. A partially finished painting of four women drinking wine at an outdoor café. There was a lightness that was almost ethereal about the scene—the colors, the expressions on the faces, the filtered sunlight and soft shadows on hair and clothing. Had I not known better, it could have been my mother’s artwork—but it was my sister’s.

I lowered the sheet and walked over to an antique trestle table where the phonograph sat. It looked like Mia had been listening to Mom’s old vinyl records. An early Jacques Brel—
“Ballades & Mots d’Amour
”—was still on the turntable. The album jacket lay next to it. I switched on the machine and the needle dropped into place.

“
Ne Me Quitte Pas.”
One of his signature songs. “If You Go Away” it was called in English. It had been a huge hit here, too. Everyone had covered it, from Frank Sinatra to Dusty Springfield, but no one sang it like the man who wrote it. I listened to that cigarette-raspy voice lamenting heartache and loneliness. Then I went over to the bookcase and got my mother’s copy of
The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

She had bookmarked the page from
Richard II
with a pressed red rose. The edge of a petal crumbled when I touched it. I closed the book. Brel’s voice soared and he sang about sailing on the sun and riding on the rain. If I had been hoping for a clue to the location of the “jewel in a ten-times-barr’d-up chest,” I found none.

The shelf below held her gardening journals, a neat row of green leather-bound volumes with gilt-edged pages and the title stamped in gold on the spine. I pulled out the first one and opened it.