The Chardonnay Charade wcm-2

by Ellen Crosby

  A shop in Middleburg sold me an extra-long rectangular Scandinavian table with twenty matching chairs and our electrician hung swags of pinpoint spotlights so they cast overlapping arcs of white light above each seat. To keep it from looking too stark, Dominique designed centerpieces of gilded grapes and twining silk ivy meant to replicate our logo. Finally I hung my mother’s cross-stitched sampler with a quote from Plato—“No thing more excellent nor more valuable than wine was ever granted mankind by God”—on one of the arches between the bays. Quinn teased me that it looked like an operating room, but I ignored him. If my mother had seen it, I think she would have been happy.

  I saw Quinn and Bonita through the large lab window at the far end of the barrel room as I let myself in the side door. Neither glanced up when it shut with a heavy metal clank, but with the hum and whir of fans, air-conditioning, and refrigeration equipment, they wouldn’t have heard Lee’s army arrive.

  It had been three years since I last saw Bonita, just before she left for her freshman year of school and a few weeks prior to my accident. Back then she’d been all soft curves and baby fat, dressing in a way that Hector once described to me with some anger and disgust as llamativa. I figured out pretty fast that the loose English translation was “what are you waiting for?” followed by “you bet I will.”

  Now, from what I could see, the softness had turned to angles and she looked well muscled as though she worked out regularly. The cocky confidence in the tilt of her head said she’d been around the block with the boys since she left home. Definitely more than once. She sat perched on a barstool, wearing shorts that matched the color of her car and a low-cut white tank top that set off her golden brown skin and glossy black hair. She was leaning toward Quinn, who was holding a beaker—probably more Chardonnay sampling—as he gestured to its contents a little too expansively, the way I’d seen him do when there was an attractive woman around who needed impressing. Judging by their body language, they were hitting it off just fine for a first meeting. In fact, maybe better than fine.

  They both turned toward me when I walked through the door. Bonita’s eyes went immediately to my cane.

  I cannot bear pity, even when it’s involuntary. She slid off her barstool and stammered hello. “You look great, Lucie. I mean, like, really great. I mean, not that you didn’t look great before and all…” Her eyes never left my cane.

  “Thanks.” I cut her off before she could say “great” one more time. “Your father didn’t say you were back from school. Welcome home.”

  Bonita brushed her shoulder-length hair off her face and I saw the dark circles under her eyes. She still looked embarrassed, but she was no longer staring at the cane. “I just got in on the red-eye a few hours ago. I’m still, you know, real punchy.”

  “Have you been to the hospital yet?” I asked.

  She tugged on the hem of her ultra-short shorts. “No. I’m on my way there now. My mom told me to stop by here first and, like, talk to you about work. I hope it’s okay.”

  I caught Quinn’s eye. “Why don’t we talk about it some other time? Go see your dad and get some sleep. There’s no rush.”

  She blushed. “I know Pop. He, like, probably twisted your arm to give me this job. He’s gonna ask me about it when I show up at the hospital. You know what a cabeza dura he is. So bull-headed.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “Tell him you’re not running the place just yet.”

  Her color deepened. “Oh, God. That bad, huh? So, like, what did he ask you to do for me?”

  “He wasn’t that specific,” I said.

  “Look, honey, here’s the deal,” Quinn said, and I glanced at him warningly. “We’re giving your dad’s job to Manolo. He’ll take care of the equipment and the crew from now on. We haven’t exactly worked out what you’re going to do here.”

  Before she could reply, I said, “How much of your studies did you complete at Davis before you dropped out?”

  Her eyes flashed. “I didn’t drop out! I took some time off. I did good in the enology classes. I like making wine. It’s really cool. But, like, viticulture’s not really my thing. I just suck at pests and diseases and working out in the field.”

  “Let her help out in the barrel room,” Quinn said to me.

  “That would be awesome.”

  “It’s not always awesome,” I told her. “You know what hard work it is. Cleaning the tanks, sterilizing the barrels. It can get pretty boring at times.”

  “I don’t care.” She smiled for the first time, an incandescent light-up-a-room smile that reminded me of her father. “Grapes, yes. But not bugs. God, I, like, hate bugs.” She pulled a car key out of a pocket in her shorts and smiled that thousand-watt smile again. Quinn didn’t take his eyes off her. “I better get over to the hospital.”

  “Tell your dad I’ll be by to see him later,” I said.

  After she left I said to Quinn, “You can reel your tongue in now. She’s way too young and she’s Hector’s daughter.”

  “She’s, like, cute,” he said. “And I know she’s just a kid.”

  “Except we’re not paying her to be cute. She’s got to pull her weight. At least she was up front enough to admit that Hector nearly broke my arm twisting it in the ER last night,” I said. “I told him she could stay for a year and he was okay with that. She and Mia used to compete for the hell-raiser of the year award when they were growing up.”

  He grinned. “I can see that. But, hey, I like a woman with a bit of spirit. It’ll come in handy when she’s here with the rest of the boys.”

  “You are such a chauvinist.”

  “I am not.” He paused, then said, “I guess I was kind of hard on you last night.”

  “You were.”

  “Angie called.” He picked up a beaker and swirled around the straw-colored liquid, watching it intently. “While you were in with Hector.”

  Angela Stetson was Quinn’s ex-girlfriend and a former high school classmate of mine. They’d met when she was a dancer at Mom’s Place.

  “How’d that go?”

  He shrugged. “She’s getting married. Again. To the guy she was seeing when she was living with me.”

  “Oh, God. I’m sorry. She called to tell you that?”

  “I think she’d had a few.” He set the beaker down and got two glasses. “She was feeling bad about what she did to me. Wanted to put things right before she married Bozo.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is that why you went back to Mom’s last night?”

  He looked up. “I never went. I came here instead. To the summerhouse. You’re still okay with me setting up my telescope there?”

  I watched him fill the glasses. My mother had the little screened-in summerhouse built as an outdoor retreat, not far from the main house and behind the rose garden. When I was growing up we used to have dinner parties there or use it as a hideaway to get lost in a book. It was now a dumping place for broken or rusted outdoor equipment, and Quinn had started bringing his telescope there because it was perched on the edge of a bluff, a great observation site with its panoramic view of the night sky.

  “Be my guest. But I thought you gave up stargazing.”

  “For a while. Angie didn’t like it, so I quit.” He handed me a glass. “Those two nights we were out when it was freezing…God, the skies were so clear you could see clear up to the floor of heaven.” He clinked his glass against mine. “I thought about calling you and asking if you wanted to join me, but I figured you were probably dead on your feet.”

  I drank a large mouthful of wine, then after a moment spat it into a dump bucket. “Well, one foot, at least.”

  He spat, too. “Aw, jeez. I didn’t mean that. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m pulling your leg…oh, God, now I’m doing it.” We both laughed. “Thanks for the invite. It would have been nice. Maybe another time?”

  “Sure.” He held up his glass. “What do you think of this one?”


  “I like it, but—”

  “I’m sorry, sir, we’re closed here,” Quinn cut me off. He was addressing someone behind me.

  I turned around. Mick Dunne, wearing jeans that had been ironed and an expensive-looking oxford shirt, stood in the doorway.

  “I beg your pardon.” He was staring at me with the same intensity I remembered from the first time we’d met. “Hello, Lucie. Lovely to see you again. Your assistant in the other building told me I could find you here. I apologize. I didn’t realize I’d be interrupting your work.” To Quinn he added, “You must be Quinn. Mick Dunne.”

  Quinn gave me a sharp what’s-up look as he shook Mick’s hand.

  “Mick’s a friend of Ross’s, Quinn. He’s here for Georgia’s funeral. And he’s in the market for a vineyard,” I added. “Or so I’ve heard.”

  For an instant, I’d knocked his cocky self-confidence off kilter. Then he grinned. “So I am. News travels fast.”

  The room was already a nippy sixty degrees thanks to the air-conditioning and the refrigeration equipment. As I watched Quinn take stock of Mick Dunne—who wore brilliantly polished black wing tips along with the pressed jeans and starched shirt—the temperature seemed to plummet nearer to freezing.

  Both men looked about the same age, though Mick could have been a few years younger, perhaps in his late thirties. Like Quinn, he had the fit, lean build of an athlete. But where Quinn’s sunburned ruggedness came from years of hard physical labor in the vineyard, Mick, who wore a gold signet ring on the pinky finger of his right hand, looked like the type who got his exercise at the country club. Something about the cut of the clothes he’d worn the night I met him said he spent most of his life wearing a suit and tie and working in an office. Wing tips with the jeans pretty much confirmed it.

  “This one’s not for sale,” Quinn said rudely. “Sorry.”

  “I know it’s not,” Mick said. “But I’d very much like a tour of your place, Lucie, if it’s not too much trouble. I’m particularly keen to see how you laid out your fields and what grapes you’ve planted.” The request sounded like a polite command. Whatever he did for a living, he was used to being in charge.

  “Uh…” He’d caught me off guard. “You don’t mean now?”

  “I’m meeting an estate agent this afternoon and I expect I’ll make my decision rather quickly,” he said. “Right now would be lovely. Thanks very much.”

  I opened my mouth to explain that wasn’t what I’d intended to say when Quinn cut in. “Do you know anything about running a vineyard? The English aren’t really known as great winemakers, are they?”

  When the good angels were handing out the gifts, they went a little light with Quinn in the tact and diplomacy department.

  “He meant that there aren’t many vineyards in England,” I explained.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  I frowned at him, but Mick grinned, apparently no offense taken. “Fair enough, but you do remember that when the English arrived in Jamestown, making wine was practically the first thing we did, don’t you? England was desperate for its own wine industry in the sixteen hundreds. That’s why we made our first wine only two years after we got here. Mind you, it was bloody awful.” He was still smiling. “I’m just following in my countrymen’s footsteps.”

  “Why Virginia? Why not California?” Quinn sounded more curious than combative. Mick Dunne had gotten his attention.

  “Because they’re not experimenting as much in California anymore. Though it’s impressive, the world-class wines they produce. But you lot in Virginia seem to enjoy taking risks with your wines, growing some interesting varietals. Didn’t Thomas Jefferson try to grow twenty-two kinds of grapes at Monticello?”

  “Yes,” I said, surprised at the depth of his knowledge, “as a matter of fact, he did.”

  Though I’d thought he was talking to me, I now wondered if Mick was playing to Quinn, who’d straightened up and was looking at him with new respect, especially after Mick brought up the subjects of experimenting and taking risks in wine making.

  “Where are you from?” Quinn asked. “Besides England.”

  “Florida, for the last eight years.”

  “What was in Florida?”

  “A pharmaceutical company.”

  “Quinn,” I said finally, “give the poor man a break. He just asked for a tour. We don’t interview our prospective employees this intensively.”

  “Yeah, especially the last one we hired,” he said.

  I turned to Mick. “I’d love to show you around. I’m sure Quinn can spare me for an hour or so.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  The wall phone in the lab rang. Quinn grabbed it. “Montgomery Estate Vineyard.”

  “Come on,” I said to Mick. “We’ll take my car.”

  “Do you two always get on like that?” Mick asked as we walked outside.

  I could have asked, “Like what?” but there was no point trying to con someone as perceptive as he was.

  “No,” I said. “We’re both upset about Hector being hospitalized. And then there’s Georgia’s death. That pesticide should have been locked up. Maybe if it had been, she’d still be alive. So we’re getting on each other’s nerves more than usual just now.”

  We reached the Mini. I’d left the top down because of the glorious weather. As I set my cane on the sun-warmed backseat he said quietly, “Well, the viewing is set for tomorrow evening and her funeral will be on Friday morning. Once the police find her killer, then maybe Ross will have some peace. And so will everyone else.”

  As we got in the car, my mobile phone rang. Quinn, calling me.

  I flipped it open. “Miss me already?”

  “Like a toothache after it’s gone,” he replied. “Listen, Mary Sunshine, I’ve got some news. That call was the EPA. They’re coming out to pay us a little courtesy call next week. And the guy I talked to sounded like he’s planning on playing hardball.”

  Chapter 10

  “What did you tell him?” I asked.

  “What do you think I told him?” he retorted. “Your wish is my command. He wants to see all our paperwork, the whole megillah. We got a week to get ready.”

  “We’ll be ready.”

  “Like we have a choice? Have a nice tour.” He hung up.

  Mick was watching me. “Everything all right?”

  “Just fine,” I said, and put the car in gear. “The EPA is going to drop by next week. Come on. I’ll take you to see the vines. At least for now, it’s still business as usual around here.”

  It is a truism among winemakers that good wine is made in the vineyard—as opposed to the winery—which means that all the additives in the world won’t make a silk-purse wine out of sow’s-ear grapes if we’ve botched things up in the fields. I planned to take Mick through the south vineyard because of its spectacular view of the peaceful, layered Blue Ridge Mountains and because we’d managed to escape any damage from the freezing temperatures among these vines. Here, at least, we still had the promise of a good harvest.

  I cut through the parking lot to the south service road and veered off-road at the first opportunity, so we were driving alongside the large orchard.

  “Are you going to be all right?” Mick asked. He’d laid his arm across the back of my seat, without touching my shoulder.

  “We’ll be fine,” I said, aware of his arm and the pleasant, masculine cologne he wore. “You know, if you’re serious about setting up a vineyard, you really ought to be talking to the people at Virginia Tech or the agricultural extension office. They’re the experts.”

  “Oh, I’ve rung them,” he said. “But I wanted to talk to you, too.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because we’re alike, you and I. I heard how you took over this vineyard after your father died and what you’re doing to make a go of it,” he said. “I also heard about what you went through after your accident.”

  I could feel the color drain from my face. “Ross told you about that?”


  “Lucie.” His fingers brushed my shoulder. “He didn’t violate doctor-patient confidentiality. I didn’t mean that at all. But he did tell me about you.”

  I pulled over and stopped the car by a pale pink clematis that twined through the split-rail fence. I felt, just then, like the Wizard of Oz when Toto pulled back the curtain and the old man stood there in front of Dorothy and the gang, exposed, vulnerable—and feeling like a fool.

  “My medical history,” I said coldly, “has absolutely nothing to do with running a vineyard.”

  “On the contrary,” he said, “it has everything to do with it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re so determined to beat the odds.”

  “No offense,” I said, “but I do know a thing or two about making wine. Unlike you.”

  “None taken,” he replied. “And I didn’t mean to upset you. It was the farthest thing from my mind. I’m terribly sorry.”

  We sat in silence for a while until Mick said, “Those apple trees look quite old.”

  I appreciated the change of subject, even if it had been anything but subtle. “There have been apple trees on this land since my family settled here after the French and Indian War,” I said. “When Lord Fairfax received a land grant from the King of England, he made each of his tenants agree to plant either apple or peach trees as a condition of their tenure.”

  “Sounds like the English,” he said. “Look, if you’re not still angry with me, do you think we could take a look at your grapes?”

  “I’m not angry,” I relented. “But I don’t like talking about what happened to me. It’s in the past. It’s over. I’ve dealt with it. Now I just want to move on.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll keep it all business from now on. You have my word.”