The Merlot Murders (19 page)

“Well, she damn near killed us,” Hollis said. “So she’s lucky if a bad headache is the only thing she’s got.” He said, presumably to me, “Don’t you know drag racing’s against the law around here? You and your friend musta been doing close to a hunnerd. We all coulda been killed. You’re mighty lucky to be alive, sweetheart.”

It was the driver of the car I nearly hit. My pursuer, whoever he was, was gone. Unless he was somewhere nearby in the darkness.

“Not me. Someone else. Someone was chasing me,” I mumbled.

“Hollis,” said the female voice, “she’s still got her seat belt on. Help her out of there. She ought to see a doctor. She sounds delirious.”

“I am serious,” I said. Or maybe I said “delirious.” My head felt like someone was jackhammering from the inside, trying to get out.

“I can’t get to you,” Hollis said. “Can you undo that seat belt yourself?”

“I think so.”

Luckily the car was so old everything worked manually. He reached in and rolled down my window. “Good thing you’re small,” he said. “Door’s jammed. You’ll have to come out through the window.” He put his arms around me. “I’ll pull you. On three.”

He counted and pulled. My bad leg got caught on the steering wheel and I cried out.

“Take it easy, Hollis.” The woman sounded anxious. “You’re hurting her.”

“Are you doing this or am I doing this?” Hollis said to the woman. To me he said, “Come on, we just about got you free.”

I got my foot loose and he pulled me out. Then he sat me on the ground and played the flashlight over me. The backwash of light made shimmering halos around his face and the face of the woman standing next to him. Both were white-haired. I knew them.

They knew me, too.

“Well, I’ll be,” the woman said. “You’re the Montgomery girl, aren’t you? The older one. Linda.”

“Lucie.” The jackhammers wouldn’t quit.

“That’s right,” she said. “Lucie. Thelma was just telling me about you. I’m Ellie Maddox. Maybe you remember me? I used to work the checkout at Red’s Hardware in The Plains. I knew your folks real good, they were in all the time. And this here’s my husband, Hollis. Are you all right, honey? Maybe we ought to take you to Loudoun General.”

I shook my head and was immediately sorry I did. My brain felt like it had come loose from its moorings. I put both hands on the ground to stop the dizziness. “No hospital. I want to go home.”

“Well, you ain’t going anywhere in that car.” Hollis shone the flashlight on the Volvo. “That’s Lee’s car, isn’t it? Hell, those Volvos are built like tanks. You’re lucky, young lady, that you weren’t in one of them convertibles the kids are driving nowadays. You do somersaults in a car with no roof over your head and we wouldn’t be here havin’ this conversation.”

“Hollis,” Ellie admonished. “Look at her. She doesn’t care about that stuff right now. The child looks like she’s about to keel over. Let’s get her home.”

“Fine,” he said, “but she’s gonna care tomorrow when she doesn’t have any vehicle.” To me he added, “If you want, I’ll call Knight’s in the morning and have your car towed for you.”

“Call who tonight?” Their halos were growing fuzzier. I could hardly make out the features on their faces anymore.

“
Knight
’s. The garage over to Aldie. I’ll call them in the
morning
!” He raised his voice like he was talking to someone who didn’t understand English.

“Oh,” I said faintly. “Good.”

“Used to be Knight & Rust Auto Body. You remember, don’t you?” he said. “I still call it that ’cept now it’s Gas-o-Rama or some fool name, but they still got a halfway decent mechanic. Not as good as old Jimmy Knight, but then nobody’s as good as Jimmy, God rest his soul. Not even Rusty was that good. There wasn’t nothing he couldn’t fix if your car was acting up. Did great body work, too. He coulda fixed this car so it would look newer than the day you bought it.”

“Hollis,” Ellie warned. “There you go, running your mouth again. She’s gonna faint or something. Let’s get her out of here.”

Ellie was still fussing about the hospital, but when Hollis fished my cane out of the Volvo, I managed to walk reasonably steadily to their car, leaning on his arm. They agreed, reluctantly, to take me home.

As soon as they drove away I locked the front door. The lock groaned when I turned the key, nearly frozen from lack of use. I slid the deadbolt into place with some effort, then went into Leland’s study and knelt by his gun locker. His old .22-caliber handgun was where he’d always kept it and so was the ammunition. I loaded the gun and—with excruciating slowness—climbed the stairs to my bedroom. No more sleeping on the veranda.

I lay in bed, exhausted and aching, the thrumming noise of the old fan blowing barely cooled air over me acting like white noise, blocking out all thoughts.

Except one.

Someone tried to kill me tonight out on Mosby’s Highway.

It was still dark when my alarm went off. I turned on the light and saw the gun. It took a moment before I remembered why I’d put it there and still longer before I remembered that the reason the alarm had gone off so early was because today was harvest. I sat up, moving like an arthritic marionette. The first thing I did was unload the bullets, putting them and the gun in the drawer of my nightstand. My head throbbed from the effort.

I took a shower that turned my skin the color of cooked lobster. It helped the stiffness but I needed drugs. I had forgotten about the bottle of postaccident painkillers that was still in the medicine cabinet. Past its sell-by date, but they’d still be potent. My hand hovered between that bottle and the ibuprofen next to it.

It had been pure hell weaning myself from the pain-free bliss of those drugs. Right now it would be so easy to start again.

I picked up the ibuprofen and took two with a glass of water. Then I shook out a half dozen bullet-shaped capsules and shoved them in my jeans pocket. I flushed the pain pills down the toilet.

Surprisingly after two cups of coffee and a toasted baguette, the ibuprofen kicked in and I felt somewhat human. Eli’s bicycle was in the carriage house, but I wasn’t sure I could navigate the pedals with my bad foot and my aching joints. There was nothing else with wheels or a motor that was going to get me to the winery. The darkness was slowly fading and the air was cool and still. I decided to walk.

Quinn was kneeling by a small pump on the crush pad, fiddling with a hose clamp when I finally got there. He wore jeans and a T-shirt and a goofy-looking straw hat instead of the customary fatigues and Hawaiian print.

He looked surprised to see me. “I didn’t hear your car.”

“I walked. The Volvo’s in the shop.”

“You should have called. Someone would have run you over.”

I knew what he meant, but it still sounded strange. “It’s okay. Have we got enough help?”

“Ten guys from the camp. We should be good.”

“Angela coming, too?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“Check those hoses, will you, and make sure the clamps are fitted securely? I’m going out to the field to get the first lot of lugs.”

“Sure.”

Whatever he had or hadn’t done in California, right now I needed him. Before he took off in the Gator our eyes met. What happened from now on depended on his judgment and intuition and how much we didn’t screw up what the grapes had already done for us. We are, essentially, farmers, tied to the whims of nature however much we try to control our destiny and the fruits of our harvest. Despite his arrogant cockiness, I could tell he was wrestling with the nerve-wracking second-guessing that happens when there are no sure bets. By the end of the morning we’d have a pretty good idea whether he was right…or wrong.

He left for the fields, the flatbed trailer fishtailing in the red clay dust as he sped away. I walked over to the pump and slowly bent down to check the clamps on the hoses as he’d asked.

In the distance, the putt-putting of the Gator sounded like bees at their hive. Hector was probably riding on the trailer as it moved up and down the rows, jumping off to pick up the lugs where the men had left them under the cooler shade of the vines. Occasionally the workers called out to each other in Spanish. Though a mechanical harvester—which looked like an alien space creature on stilts—could bring in the grapes faster and cheaper, we still picked by hand as they’d been doing since the time of the Romans. Most vineyards, the good ones, at least, did it the same way.

By the time Quinn arrived back at the crush pad with a full load of lugs, the rest of the crew was waiting. Someone turned up the volume on a boombox. One by one the men stripped off their shirts, laughing and singing with the pulsating Spanish beat. Quinn jumped off the Gator and started handing the lugs piled with translucent green-gold grapes to workers who set them on the scales. After they were weighed someone tipped the contents into the destemmer, then hurled the empty container onto a growing mountain of yellow plastic bins on the ground nearby.

Quinn joined me, eating grapes he’d picked from a bunch off one of the lugs. “Here, try these. They’re good. Nearly everything’s ripe.” He leaned close to my ear so I could hear him over the racket of the destemmer as it spat barky stems into a barrel.

Even at this early stage it was possible to tell what the final product would be. I ate the grapes he’d handed me. He was right. They were good.

“All right,
hijos,
let’s move everything into the press,” he shouted. To me he said, “Grab the end of the hose and make sure it’s aimed properly into that press.”

The heavy-duty hose swayed like a snake being charmed as he flipped the switch on the pump. I held on though the jolting reactivated every ache and pain the ibuprofen had quelled. I gritted my teeth and watched the sludgy mass of grapes work its way from the destemmer toward the press. It would take a couple of trips from the field before the press, a large stainless-steel tank with an enormous drum, was filled. But after so much rushing to get the grapes in before the heat became oppressive, at this stage we had to slow things down. The process of gently squeezing the grapes to release the juice would take an hour or two, depending on how much Quinn wanted to extract. Pressing too hard would make the liquid harsh and bitter so it was his judgment call when to stop.

The hose continued to thrash about in my hands as the last of the grapes moved into the press. “I’m going back to the field,” Quinn said to me. “What’s wrong? You got a toothache or something? Why are you making that face?”

“I think I pulled a muscle last night. You go on back to the field.”

He shrugged and left as a voice behind me said, “Here. I got that.” Joe Dawson took the hose out of my hands. “You don’t look too good, sweetheart.”

I took two more ibuprofen out of my pocket. “I’m okay. Pulled muscle. Thanks for the help.” I took the pills with a cup of tepid water from one of the nearby coolers we left out for the crew.

I knew Angela Stetson had arrived as soon as the catcalls and wolf whistles began. Dressed in bottom-skimming blue jean cutoffs, she also wore a deep V-neck hot pink halter top with “Babe” written in silver sequins and stiltlike hot-pink sandals.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Who in the world is that?” Joe asked.

“Your eyes look like they’re bugging out of your head,” I said. “It’s Angela Stetson. Quinn’s girlfriend. I thought you knew her.”

“What’d she do? Have a whole body transplant? Didn’t she go to school with you? I don’t remember her looking like that.”

“She took a lot of vitamins. Reel your tongue back in and keep an eye on things, will you? I need to talk to her.”

Angela appeared to be reveling in the attention she was getting as the men continued to grin and wink at her. She’d come a long way from her Marian-the-librarian persona of our high school days.

“Okay,
hijos,
” Hector said. “Everyone back to work. Leave the lady alone.”

“Can I talk to you?” I asked her. “Somewhere out of this heat?”

We walked together to the open hangar door to the barrel room.

Though it was only 9
A.M
., the sun was already boiling. The air smelled of sweet wine mixed with the faintly unpleasant tinge of carbon dioxide as the grapes began fermenting. Black flies edged the outlines of the hangar door and yellow jackets swarmed anywhere we’d spilled the sweet, sticky grape juice. Quinn had turned the fans on earlier to clear out the CO
₂
, but overnight it would build up in the airtight room to levels that could kill a person. We stepped inside. It was marginally cooler.

“I’ve never done this before.” Angela was chewing gum. “I think I’m overdressed.”

“Actually, you’re dressed too nicely. Those clothes are going to be filthy when you’re done.”

“I thought they stomped grapes in the nude.”

“Uh, some French vineyards still do it that way, but not us. It’s pretty boring but we use a nine-iron from Leland’s set of golf clubs and Eli’s old baseball bat.”

“That’s kind of special.” She arched an eyebrow. She’d worn full makeup, too. “Well, no big deal. I’m, like, totally washable. What did you want to ask me?”

“I was wondering if you knew whether Sara Rust is working at Mom’s Place tonight?”

“Nope. Not tonight or any other night. She quit yesterday. Gave Vinnie her notice and said she’s leaving town.”

“Why? Did something happen?”

“What do I look like, her mother? How should I know? We don’t talk a lot.” She blew a bubble and popped it. “But I heard from one of the other girls that she had enough and she wanted out.”

“Vinnie too hard on her?”

“Vinnie’s a pussycat. Nah, it was something else. Someone’s, like, stalking her. Some old guy was creeping her out, so she’s splitting. At least that’s what Desiree said.”

I thought of my pursuer last night in the black SUV. Whoever he was, he didn’t seem like an “old guy.” The car, the speed. Someone young. “Did she know who it was?”

“Nope.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you asking so many questions? What’s it to you?”

“Lucie!” Joe’s voice cut through a lull as someone turned the pump off. He was waving a mobile phone. “Dominique says she needs you right now down at the gazebo. Something about harvest lunch.”

“Tell her I’ll be right there.” I turned to Angela. “Sorry. I better go. Thanks for the information.”

“Yeah, sure.” She was looking past me to where Quinn had just pulled up on the crush pad. He jumped out of the Gator and she ran to him, hanging her arms around his neck and swinging on him. He grinned foolishly down at her and put his silly hat on her head. They were like a couple of love-struck teenagers.

I left without looking back.

Dominique seemed tense and unhappy when I found her standing in the gazebo in front of a Limoges vase of pink and white roses.

“Can you take over today and run harvest lunch for me?” she asked.

“Sure. Why? Are you okay?”

She set down the pair of gardening clippers she’d been using to even the lengths of the roses. “Bobby called. He wants to see me.” She began haphazardly sticking roses in the vase.

“Give me those. I’ll do that.” I took the clippers. “Well, go talk to him then. How bad can it be?”

Her cigarettes were next to the vase. She picked up the packet and extracted one. “I don’t have an alibi for the time of Fitz’s death. I was alone at the inn when he was killed.”

“You didn’t do it, Dominique. There must have been someone who saw you. Do you remember what time you got to Joe’s?”

“Sure I remember. Two o’clock. I was listening to Gregory’s radio program in the car. He was talking to someone who wanted to know if she should leave her husband after twenty-four years of marriage because she fell in love with her UPS guy.” She lit her cigarette.

“Oh, yuck. Don’t tell me what he told her.” I finished with the vase. “Bobby can check on that. He should be able to ask Greg. They must keep some kind of log or record of callers.”

“Maybe.” She dumped the barely smoked cigarette into a Styrofoam cup of water. “Can you believe he told me if I don’t show up on my own he will send someone for me with the cuff links?”

“I can’t believe he’d do something like that.”

“I’d better go.” She gave me the list of lunch guests and left, still looking grim.

After I finished at the gazebo I borrowed Hector’s blue pickup and drove back to the house to change. Leland’s folder with the information on the Blue Ridge Consortium was still on his bedside table next to the phone. I sat on the bed and called Sara Rust’s number.

Her answering machine kicked in again and this time I left a message. “Hello, Sara, this is Lucie Montgomery. I’m a friend of Angela Stetson’s and I was wondering if I could talk to you. Angela said you’re leaving town and…”

“Hello? Who is this?” Monitoring her calls.

“My name is Lucie Montgomery and I…”

“Mia’s sister. Yeah, I know. Is she okay?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised. “She’s fine. I was wondering if we might meet?”

“Why?”

Angela was right about her being scared. “I think we have something in common. We ought to talk.”

“I’m sure we don’t, but if you want talk it’ll cost you.” I heard a click, like a cigarette lighter, then an expelled breath. “Fifteen minutes. A hundred bucks.”

“A hundred…? Oh, come on!”

“Good-bye.”

“Wait! Okay. A hundred dollars.”

“A hundred and fifty.”

“You just said one hundred!”

“Those were old prices, from a minute ago. Yes or no?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “But since I’m paying for this, we’ll meet when it’s convenient for me. Three o’clock. And I’ll pay you
after
we talk.”

“What do I care? Fifteen minutes, as long as it’s before six and you come to me.” She gave me directions to an address in Aldie, then disconnected.

I changed into a white eyelet skirt and white sleeveless blouse and drove back to the vineyard.