The Sauvignon Secret (13 page)

I set my teacup down and pushed the saucer away. “Quinn didn’t know anything about what was going on, Mick. He was completely in the dark.”

“I heard that.”

“It’s true.”

“Quinn’s a smart guy—”

“He didn’t know.”

The vineyard had been called Le Coq Rouge. It went under after Cantor went to jail, and the owner, Tavis Hennessey, couldn’t recover his financial losses, coupled with the damaging impact of what had been written in the press. Quinn left and moved to Virginia. A few weeks before my father died he hired Quinn, deciding it wasn’t necessary to do a background check after Quinn told him his salary requirements were minimal. Back then Montgomery Estate Vineyard was nearly broke and our previous winemaker had returned home to France, so Leland was desperate. He saw Quinn as the answer to his prayers. Soon afterward Leland was gone and I took over the winery. Neither Quinn nor I bargained on the other, but we’d made it work somehow.

Mick reached over and took my hand. “I heard that Quinn might not be coming back here, that he might stay in California for good. You going to hire a new winemaker to take his place?”

So that was the current rumor going around. Quinn left poor Lucie in the lurch.

“He’ll be back for harvest.” I withdrew my hand, hoping I didn’t sound defensive. “I guess I’ll have to stop by the General Store and straighten out Thelma and the Romeos.”

In every small town in America there is someone who keeps tabs on everyone else, minds their business for them, and then genially shares it with everyone else on the planet. Our someone was Thelma Johnson, who owned the General Store, where she presided like a chatty, benevolent queen over her subjects, the good citizens of Atoka. Telling Thelma something was like the kids’ old-fashioned game of telephone: little whispers passed around a circle, only to find out that what was said originally had been burnished and revamped into a tabloid-worthy headline with the over-the-top drama and throaty angst of one of her beloved soap operas.

The Romeos, her henchmen, were just as guilty. Their name stood for Retired Old Men Eating Out, but it could as easily have been Retired Old Men Eavesdropping Obsessively. I knew all of them practically like uncles because Leland had been a Romeo. Their whereabouts on any given day were as predictable as animal
migration patterns: mornings gathered around the coffeepot at Thelma’s, laying siege to her fresh-made doughnuts and muffins, then whiling away long, lazy afternoons that stretched into “It’s five o’clock somewhere,” and the dinner hour with drinks and a meal at some restaurant or bar in Middleburg or Leesburg. Social networking on the Internet had nothing on the pack of them as a faster-than-a-speeding-bullet means of disseminating information.

“When’s the last time you talked to Quinn?” Mick asked. He kept his voice casual, but he was fishing.

“I can’t remember. Not that long ago.”

His eyes narrowed. “You can’t remember, huh? Why don’t you see him when you’re in California, Lucie? Straighten things out. You do know where he’s staying, don’t you?”

“There’s nothing to straighten out.” I folded my napkin and pushed back my chair. “Except the gossip about him not returning. Thanks for tea, Mick. I’ll call you after I get back from Napa.”

He caught my hand and pulled me up. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car. You do know you’re a lousy liar, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He slipped an arm around my waist, suddenly serious. “Sure you do. Look, love, I’ve been doing some thinking. About us.”

“Mick—”

“Hear me out before you say anything.” He put two fingers over my lips. “How’d you feel about giving us another chance? We know each other so much better now. We’d be good together, the pair of us—wouldn’t make the same mistakes.”

I shook my head and removed his hand. “I don’t think so.”

“I’m not taking an answer from you right now. Please at least promise me you’ll think about it.” We reached my car and he turned me so I faced him. “But first, darling, you’ve got to sort out your feelings about Quinn. I’m not talking about business, either, and you know it. See him in California, get it sorted once and for all. When you come back, let me know if you want to try us again.”

He bent and kissed me like a brother. I think I mumbled something about him being completely and totally wrong before I got in my car and drove home.

But I knew, just as Mick did, that I couldn’t go on flying solo. If there was going to be any future for Quinn and me—that meant the winery’s future as well as our own—then Mick was right. I needed to seek out Quinn when I was in California and get some answers.

Whether I liked them or not.

Since childhood, I’ve always had a secret hideaway—a refuge where I can lick wounds, grieve a broken heart … cry. Growing up, it was the Ruins, the crumbling-but-elegant shell of a tenant house that had been torched by Union soldiers searching for the Confederacy’s most famous renegade: Colonel John Singleton Mosby, the Gray Ghost, and his Partisan Rangers. After we converted what was left of the old building to a stage for concerts, plays, and lectures, I retreated farther, to the family cemetery. Generations of Montgomerys were buried there, beginning with Hamish Montgomery, who chose the site in the late 1700s after receiving the land for service during the French and Indian War, and ending, at least so far, with my parents.

Hamish had picked the flattened crest of a hill for its view of his beloved Blue Ridge Mountains, which now watched over him forever. Over the years, more of my ancestors were laid to rest on that open-air place, until the mid-1800s when Thomas Montgomery—who later died as one of Mosby’s Rangers—built a low redbrick wall to surround and perhaps fortify the little cemetery, with a wrought-iron gate at its entrance.

I drove straight there from Mick’s, parking at the bottom of the hill next to a grove of oaks and tulip poplars. Years ago, my mother had discovered a pair of mulberry trees struggling to live in the dense underbrush on one of the many occasions she’d brought Eli
and me along to pull weeds and tidy up the grave sites. She called it our duty to our ancestors. Eli called it a waste of time; the weeds always grew back and it wasn’t like the ancestors noticed anyway. For some reason I didn’t mind the work, and that annoyed the hell out of Eli.

Finding the mulberry trees changed everything. It became a ritual during the summer months to stop and look for berries, picking handfuls and cramming them into our mouths until our lips and fingers were stained with sticky dark red juice. Eli thought it was hysterically funny to pretend he was dripping in blood and began popping up from behind a headstone where I was weeding, saying in a fake Transylvanian accent, “Bwah-hah-hah, I’ve come to bite you and suck your blood.” The first few times he scared me until I dumped a vase of dirty rainwater on him and that was the end of the vampire act.

Out of habit, I checked the trees for fruit. Not quite ripe, but I ate some berries anyway and thought about Eli waving his red fingers like wriggling worms on a hot bright July day like this one, the three of us trudging up the hill with our trowels and rakes and a thermos of my mother’s fresh-made lemonade or sweet tea. Now she was always here, and I was the one who cared for the graves, fulfilling the family duty to our ancestors.

I picked some wildflowers blooming nearby—joe-pye weed, black-eyed Susans, wild chicory, and Queen Anne’s lace—and made a small bouquet. The gate creaked as I pushed it open, another chore for Eli’s to-do list. I’d been here ten days ago on the Fourth of July to leave small flags at the headstones of all those who fought in wars as far back as the Revolution, so the cemetery still looked neat and tidy.

I dumped the wilted roses from the vase at my mother’s grave and replaced them with the wildflowers. Then I sat, my back against her sun-warmed headstone, and called Quinn.

He answered on the third ring, breathing hard like I’d caught him in the middle of doing something involving intense physical labor.

“Lucie? Hey, what’s going on? Haven’t heard from you in a while. Everything okay?”

I leaned farther into the stone until I could feel the chiseled grooves of the words of my mother’s epitaph:
I will go before you and light the way so that you may follow
.

Quinn’s familiar baritone was so matter-of-fact, so normal, that for a moment it seemed like he’d never left, and I was just calling to find out where he was. At that moment, I missed him—and all the times we’d spent together in our up-and-down relationship—unbearably.

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “How’s it going with you?”

“Good.”

I should have known it would take a crowbar to pry anything out of him. Or some form of torture banned by the Geneva Conventions.

“What are you doing?” I asked. His breathing had slowed but it still sounded as though he’d been running or lifting heavy objects.

“Talking to you.”

“Okay, wise guy, maybe I’ll just hang up—”

“Hey, please don’t!” He didn’t seem to realize that I was kidding. “I’m sorry. It’s good to hear you. I’m glad you called … I’ve been thinking about you.”

Something caught in my throat. “I’ve been thinking about you, too. When are you coming home?”

He took a long time to answer, too long. Maybe I shouldn’t have said “home.” He was, after all, from California, born and raised. Maybe he was home.

“Soon … I promise. I’ve still got a few things to wrap up.”

“Thelma and the Romeos are spreading the word that you’re staying out there for good,” I said.

His laugh sounded self-conscious. “Good old Thelma. I even miss her, too. Tell her that Ouija board of hers isn’t always dead-bang right. And say hi to the Romeos for me.”

I wanted to say I wished he’d deliver those messages himself in person, but I couldn’t do it. “Sure, next time I see them. I guess if it’s soon, you must have finally sold your mother’s house?”

“Maybe. Cross your fingers.”

“Quinn, even my eyes are crossed. Will you be here for harvest like you promised?”

“I won’t let you down. You have my word.”

He had said the right thing, but something was still missing. My heart, which had been pounding in my chest, slowed to a dull thud.

“Well,” I said, “I’ve got some news. I’m coming to California with my grandfather. We’re flying in to San Francisco.”

A swallow flitted past me, landing on a nearby headstone. The cicadas seemed to amp up their volume, drowning out the silence on the other end of the phone.

Finally I asked, “Are you still there?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“I can tell that news went over big. Look, it’s just a quick trip and I’ll probably be pretty busy. I’m sure you are, too—”

“Hold on,” he said. “You caught me off guard, that’s all. I’ve been working flat out all week. I owed an old friend a favor. We wrapped up bottling last night and I just finished racking over some Chardonnay. My head’s someplace else.”

“Oh.” The racking over at least explained the huffing and puffing.

“So what’s the deal? Pleasure trip? Sightseeing? When do you get here?”

“Tomorrow. It’s business, not pleasure. Pépé will be in some town called Monte Rio in Sonoma to give a talk at the Bohemian Grove.”

He whistled. “The Bohemian Grove? Are you serious? Luc must be going to that big summer shindig in the woods they have every July. Every mover and shaker in the country flies in for that. It’s huge.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“What are you going to do? That place is men-only.”

“Going to Napa—Calistoga—to check out some wine Mick Dunne is considering buying. He wants something to sell this fall before his own wine is ready … and he wants me to make the blend for him.”

“Good for you.”

“I can’t do it without you. Please say you’ll help me?”

He sidestepped that. “Where are you staying in Napa?”

“With a friend of Pépé’s. Robert Sanábria.”

“Sanábria? Jesus, Lucie, you’re full of surprises. You know who Sanábria is, don’t you? California Winemaker of the Year a couple of years ago. One of the heavyweights in Napa. I didn’t know your grandfather knew him.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“What question?”

“Will you or won’t you help me blend this wine? You’re so much better at this than I am.”

“You must really want my help if you’re buttering me up.”

“You make it sound like I’m asking you to hang the moon someplace new,” I said. “Mick pays well, you know that.”

“Whose wine?”

“Cab from a vineyard called Rose Hill. It’s in Calistoga on the Silverado Trail.”

“I’ve heard of it,” he said. “Winemaker is some guy named Fargo, I think.”

“There’s a new owner. It’s probably a coincidence, but her name is Brooke Hennessey. I don’t suppose she’s related—”

He cut me off. “Jesus, Lucie! You left that until the end on purpose, didn’t you? She’s his daughter. Man, of all the gin joints in the world, Ilsa. Why’d you have to pick that one?”

“Please don’t be angry. I didn’t pick it.” He’d blown up like a volcano as soon as I mentioned Brooke. “There’s a lot more to the story that you don’t know. I can’t go into it now; it’s too complicated.”