The Sauvignon Secret (26 page)

We didn’t talk about Brooke or Charles or Teddy Fargo for the rest of the trip to Robert Sanábria’s guesthouse, which took all of ten minutes. The private drive off Highway 29 was so well screened from view that Quinn missed the turn and had to double back; then we nearly drove past the cottage, which was at the end of a small cul-de-sac. The rustic house with its weathered gray shingle roof and ivy-covered chimney was shaded by a giant redwood whose enormous branches enveloped the place like we were in a tree house. Quinn parked under a portico of logs and rough-hewn beams that was long enough for another car to pull in behind us.

“Bet this was a Prohibition roadhouse, the way it’s so well camouflaged in the woods,” he said. “It’s close to the highway but tucked far enough away so the cops wouldn’t see any lights or cars.”

“Pépé told me Robert lives at the top of the hill at the end of this private road,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s supposed to be quite a place.”

He set my suitcase next to the front door.

“I’ll call you after you get back to Virginia,” he said. “Make sure the rest of the trip went okay.”

I nodded. “I’ll see you in a few weeks for harvest.”

He looked as uncomfortable as I felt.

“Yeah, we’ll talk about dates and all that stuff.”

“Great.”

“See you then.”

“Quinn—” I touched his arm.

“What?”

“I’m sorry about what happened today. I don’t want it to ruin the rest of the trip, everything we did together.”

“I understand.”

I closed my eyes and wished he’d said he agreed or it hadn’t spoiled anything or not to worry. He sounded so formal and closed to me, a stranger. I tried not to think about last night in his bed or the shower together this morning as he bent and brushed my cheek with his lips.

“Tell Charles he got it wrong about Fargo when you get home,” he said as he got in the car.

“What about Maggie Hilliard and Stephen Falcone?”

“They’ve got nothing to do with Fargo.” His eyes locked on mine, a challenge. “Even if he is Theo Graf, which we don’t know and now won’t. You said yourself that Charles admitted Graf was gone by the time Maggie’s car went off the bridge, and he wasn’t at the lab the day Stephen died.”

“I know that.”

“But you’re still going to ask him about Maggie and Stephen, aren’t you? Now that you know about that affair.”

“Yes.”

“Dammit, Lucie, you don’t have to.”

I thought about the photo of Stephen. His smile and the trust in his eyes.

“I think I do.”

If I’d never seen that picture, maybe I’d agree with Quinn right now. But I had. Whatever Quinn and I were on the verge of repairing in our relationship was about to break apart one more time.

His voice was harsh. “You’re not going to change anything. It won’t bring them back.”

“I know nothing will bring them back, but I still think it matters.
They
matter.”

He lifted his hands off the steering wheel, and for a moment I thought we were at the beginning of another soul-wrenching argument.
Then he let them fall and hit the wheel with an exasperated finality before he started the engine.

He kept his eyes straight ahead as he drove out of the portico and snaked back in front of the cottage to the main driveway. I caught a glimpse of his angry, unyielding profile and heard him gun the engine, on purpose, as he roared out onto the highway.

Then he was gone.

I picked up my suitcase and went inside Robert Sanábria’s guest cottage. Large and airy, it smelled faintly of lemony furniture polish and woodsmoke. Soft tree-filtered light flickered through a picture window and made patterns like moving water on the polished hardwood floor and scattered tribal carpets. The centerpiece of the room was a stone fireplace that nearly filled an entire wall; the mantel held pillar candles melted to various heights, framed photographs, and a dried-flower arrangement. The furniture was large, masculine, and comfortable looking. A gold tinsel ball, probably left over from Christmas, hung from a chandelier in the middle of the ceiling, spinning lazily when it caught a draft of air from the open front door. A grape-colored doormat at my feet read,
WE SERVE ONLY THE FINEST CALIFORNIA WINES
.
DID YOU BRING ANY
?

Pépé had left me a note on the coffee table; he was up at the main house having drinks with Robert and I was invited to join them. Otherwise, the three of us were dining together at seven P.M. at a restaurant in Calistoga.

I found my bedroom, a cozy room in the back of the cottage with windows on two sides overlooking a small garden. Right now I didn’t feel like having drinks or dining with anyone. I threw myself on the king-sized bed and lay there.

The next thing I knew, my grandfather was shaking my shoulder, waking me from a deep sleep.

The dinner with Pépé and Robert Sanábria passed in a merry-goround blur of conversation, fabulous food, and even more fabulous wine. We went to the restaurant in the Mount View Hotel, a sleek and elegant place where the staff greeted Robert as an old friend.

He was about twenty years younger than Pépé, in his early
sixties, soft-spoken, and unpretentious. I liked the jaunty way he swung a bottle of his own private reserve Cab between his fingers as we walked into the dining room and the respect the waiter showed as he took it away to open it and let it breathe before our dinner. Robert gave me a slow, mischievous wink, deliberately and delightfully flirting as we sat down, and thereafter proceeded to charm me for the rest of the evening. Pépé and I had not yet spoken about Charles or Teddy Fargo. By the time we finished our appetizers, even that last tense scene with Quinn receded like a dream whose details had grown cloudy in my mind.

We lingered over dinner, talking and laughing as the restaurant reverberated with the noisy chatter of arriving dinner guests who knew Robert and one another, calling greetings, stopping by our table to be introduced. Robert took care of ordering as the waiters effortlessly slid little plates of fish and meat and vegetables in front of the three of us; my wineglass was never empty.

We had brandy back at the cottage, though by then I was more than a little tipsy. In a moment of recklessness I went into my bedroom on the pretext of getting a sweater and called Quinn. I shouldn’t have done it; it was stupid and I knew it. His phone went to voice mail and I left a goofy, inebriated message that I couldn’t remember ten minutes later.

I slept as soon as my head touched the pillow—in French we call it “sleeping on both ears”—as though I’d been drugged. When I woke at five thirty to my phone alarm going off, Pépé was already moving about in the bathroom. I sat up, with a hazy memory of Robert promising that his housekeeper would bring breakfast down from the big house at six, and then his limousine would be at the cottage door at six thirty to take us to the airport.

My grandfather is not a morning person—though he’s not grumpy, a conversation consists mostly of monosyllabic grunts— and I was still tired from the past two whirlwind days. So we padded around the cottage in silence, getting dressed and packing our bags, until a young woman showed up at the front door with a picnic basket containing a plate of steaming-hot scones with fresh butter and homemade blackberry jam, and a thermos of jasmine tea from Robert’s favorite tea shop in Chinatown.

The limo came at six thirty sharp. Robert followed the driver down in a Jeep to say goodbye. He and my grandfather embraced, and then he turned to me, bending in for a kiss. The damp chill of the early morning fog clung to him, mingled with cypressy cologne, and his lips were cold on my cheeks.

“Take care of him, Lucie,” he said in my ear.

He stood on the front steps and watched the big car pull away from the portico, catching my eye and flashing a thumbs-up, just before we turned the corner and he vanished from view as the redwood forest swallowed up the big car.

I leaned my head on my grandfather’s shoulder and slept. The next thing I knew it was light outside and we were at the airport. My phone rang as a porter took our bags from the limousine driver. I glanced at the display: Mick Dunne. He hadn’t wasted any time. I slipped the phone into my purse, letting it go to voice mail.

We got to the gate an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave. I got Pépé settled far enough away from a blaring television that he could resume reading the thick document he’d started in the limo, no doubt given to him by someone at the Bohemian Grove, and told him I’d find two ridiculously expensive cups of coffee for us somewhere on the concourse.

I got in a long line at a place called SFO Java and called Mick.

“How did it go? What’d you think of the wine?” he said.

“You’ll be happy. It’s very good. Quinn and I agreed on the blend yesterday. You just need to call Brooke Hennessey and set it up.”

“If it’s that good, maybe she’d be willing to sell more than we agreed on,” he said.

“Ask her.”

“Be a love and take care of it for me, will you?”

“I don’t think—”

“Damn, there’s my other line. Look, darling, it’s a chap I’ve been trying to reach for two days. He’s calling from London and I’ve got to take this. Ring me back after you speak with Brooke, all right?”

He hung up and I moved to the front of the coffee line. While I waited for two cafés au lait, I found Brooke’s number and called.

She answered after a few rings, sounding sleepy. “’Lo?”

“Brooke, it’s Lucie Montgomery. I’m sorry, is this a bad time?”

“No … wait, hang on a second, will you? I just need to throw on a pair of jeans.”

“You can call me back—”

I heard the male voice in the background asking something, then her giggle and a murmured reply.

“Two cafés au lait.” Someone called my order and set the coffees on the bar.

I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “Sorry, I’ve got to go. My flight’s leaving and I’ve got to get back to the gate. Mick Dunne will call you to sort this out.”

I disconnected before she could reply and grabbed the cardboard carton with the coffees, nearly tipping one of them over as I did. A man next to me reached out and saved the cup just in time.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yes, fine. Thank you so much.” I stuffed a bunch of napkins into the carton and fled.

The male voice on the other end of the receiver had been muffled, but of course I recognized it.

Quinn.

I didn’t even make it to the gate when my phone rang again. This time it was Quinn. I had no intention of taking that call. Not now, not ever.

He hated commitment, any commitment, so he had done what he always did when he felt the walls closing in. Found some sweet young nymph and had a quick roll in the hay to prove he was still free and unfettered. I knew all his girlfriends; he always picked someone who wanted to have fun without getting serious. No strings attached, no hard feelings when it ended.

The phone beeped that I had a message. Pépé looked up from his reading and I handed him his coffee.

“Quelque chose ne va pas, chérie?”
he asked.
“Tu as l’air troublée.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I’m fine. I spilled one of the coffees, so it was a mess. That’s all.”

He nodded and went back to his papers. I walked over to the window where I watched our plane pull up to the gate and deleted the message without listening to it. Then I drank my coffee and waited to board our flight back to Virginia.

Pépé and I finally talked about Teddy Fargo on the plane, cocooned in the relative privacy of our first-class seats, our quiet voices inaudible to anyone sitting near us above the noise of the engines. My grandfather pressed his hands together in front of his lips as though
he were praying as I took out the blurry photographs of the Mandrake Society and laid them on his tray table.

I waited while he studied them, wondering what he’d finally say, since I’d colored way outside the lines, bringing Quinn in on this, tracking down Allen, and searching Mel Racine’s wine vault.

“Whoever this guy was—Fargo or Graf—apparently he was into drugs. He was growing marijuana in the hills behind his vineyard and he was dealing,” I said. “That’s why he disappeared. Charles got it all wrong.”

“But Charles was right that Teddy Fargo was Theo Graf, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“You are sure. I can tell. You just don’t have proof, any more than Charles did.”

I pulled out the last two photos.

“Stephen Falcone.” I set down the yearbook portrait.

My grandfather focused on it, nodding.

“And this one.” I placed the explicit photo in front of him. “Charles never said a word about his affair with Maggie Hilliard, who was Theo’s girlfriend. I wonder why he lied about it. I also wonder if he lied about being at the beach house the night she died.”

Pépé’s expression shifted from shock to disgust. He flipped over the picture and shoved it to a corner of the tray table.

“Where did you get that?” His voice was sharp. “Juliette must never see it.”

“Mel Racine had it.”

“You took it to blackmail Charles?”