The Chardonnay Charade wcm-2

by Ellen Crosby

  “Hi, Stephanie. I thought I recognized your license plate. New truck?”

  “Yes.” She finished folding the sweater and set it on top of the other clothes. A tall, patrician blonde, she had the kind of ethereal all-American looks that smoldered rather than sizzled. If Georgia had been fire, Stephanie could be ice, until you got to know her and she trusted you. At least that’s what Dominique said.

  “Yes, it is new, as a matter of fact.” She raised an eyebrow and said with sweet irony, “I assume you’re not here to shop or talk cars?”

  Guilty as charged. “No. I came for Georgia’s funeral.”

  “Well, this is my volunteer day.” She pulled another shirt out of the bag. “How’s he doing?” The shirt was badly creased, so she placed it on the table, concentrating on smoothing out the folds.

  “Coping.”

  She paused in her work. “I heard the sheriff thinks he might have had something to do with it.”

  “At the moment he doesn’t have a verifiable alibi for the time of Georgia’s death. He delivered twins that night, but the mother was illegal and wouldn’t go to the hospital. So he went to her place. Now the whole family’s disappeared.”

  “Tough break.” She finished folding the shirt department-store-perfect. It didn’t sound like she felt too sorry for Ross. “But he’s not the only one dragged into this. The police came to see me, too. I thought he and that woman were out of my life for good.” She sounded bitter.

  “Really?” I said, startled. “You mean, just because you’re—”

  “His ex-wife?” She looked down at her long slender fingers and touched the place where a wedding ring would have been. “It’s a known secret I didn’t want the divorce at the time. And I resented Georgia for breaking up our marriage.” She shrugged and pulled another sweater from the bag. “I guess Ross and I have something in common. I don’t have an alibi, either.”

  “What were you doing, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  She rolled her eyes. “What any God-fearing person is normally doing at two in the morning. I was in bed, asleep. Alone.”

  “You’re not really a suspect, are you?”

  “No.” She laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “He was really a bastard when it was all over, you know? I felt so betrayed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was devastated when he told me about Georgia. One minute I thought everything was fine, we’d been talking about taking a safari in Kenya in the spring, then, boom. There’s another woman. He’d been seeing her for a while. I had no idea. He seems like an open book, but he’s not.” She twisted the sweater as she talked until it resembled a thick cord. “Oh, God, look at what I’m doing.”

  “I’m so sorry, Stephanie.”

  She shrugged again, unraveling the sweater. “Frankly, I’d be more likely to kill him than her.”

  Some years Memorial Day weekend already feels as if we’re well into full-blown summer because the weather has been blisteringly hot since mid-May and the swamplike humidity wrings you out like a damp dishrag. The haze fades the Blue Ridge Mountains until they are as white as the sky, vanishing from the horizon like smoke. Other years, like this one, the humidity stays at bay, the sunshine is pure gold, and the sky so achingly blue that pilots call this kind of weather “severe clear.” The air smells clean and fresh and full of the promise of indolent summer days to come.

  I had just finished breakfast on the veranda when the doorbell rang, which meant there was a stranger at the front door. Around here everyone knew the door was likely to be unlocked and protocol usually involved banging loudly, then opening it a crack and yelling, “Yoo-hoo, anybody home?”

  When I opened the door, Mick Dunne stood there. Definitely not a “yoo-hoo” kind of guy, though he was wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and brand-new blindingly white sneakers. This time the jeans hadn’t been ironed.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I’ve come to show you my land.”

  “I thought you might have come to show me your sneakers,” I replied.

  He laughed and stuck out a foot. “They are rather white, aren’t they? Look, Lucie, please say you’ll come. We need to straighten things out.”

  “You mean Quinn?”

  “I mean us. It would mean a great deal to me if you’d do this.” Suddenly he was serious. “Please?”

  There was no graceful way to get out of this—literally or figuratively—because he’d put one of his newly shod feet in the threshold and was standing there, arms folded, waiting me out.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll come.”

  We took his car, a shiny black Mercedes convertible with a GPS system. “Where did you get the car?” I asked.

  “From a nice chap at the Mercedes dealership. I gave him some money and he let me drive off with it.”

  We took Atoka Road and at Route 50, Mosby’s Highway, the GPS female voice told him to signal right toward Middleburg.

  “Where is this land?” I asked. “Can I scroll down the display and see where we’re going?”

  “Absolutely not. It would ruin the surprise.”

  “Are we going to Middleburg to pick up Erica or Austin?”

  “No, but we are meeting someone.”

  We drove through Middleburg behind a slow-moving horse trailer, passing Federal Street and the offices of Kendall Properties. By the time we made it through Aldie, stopping at the light at Gilbert’s Corner—the turnoff for Route 15 toward Leesburg—I was baffled. The smooth-talking GPS told him to turn right on 15, south toward Haymarket and Gainesville.

  “Where are you taking me? And who’s the real estate agent we’re meeting?”

  He smiled. “I never said we were meeting a real estate agent. You said that. I told you, it’s a surprise. You’re going to like it.”

  He didn’t clue me in until the GPS directed him to make another left toward Manassas.

  “We’re going to Manassas Airport,” he said. “I’ve rung your friend Chris Coronado. He’s taking us up in his helicopter so we can get a good view, not just of my place, but of the whole region.”

  Ever since I fell through the rotted floorboards of an old tree house when I was eight and broke both arms, I’ve been scared of heights. Even climbing a ladder still frightens me. The thought of getting into a helicopter—a giant glass bubble—was terrifying.

  “W-we are?” I stammered.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve never been in a helicopter before.” Maybe I could talk him out of this without admitting my acrophobia, but he was clearly oblivious to my growing panic.

  “That’s fantastic,” he was saying, “because you’re going to love it.”

  We drove through the entrance of an industrial park, following signs on the narrow twisted road to the small regional airport. A chain-link fence separated us from a series of corrugated metal warehouses belonging to freight and passenger service companies.

  “Destination is straight ahead,” the disembodied GPS voice announced. “You have arrived.”

  Mick stopped the car and called Chris on his mobile phone. “Hey, mate,” he said. “We’re here.” He covered my hand with his. “Don’t be nervous. I do this all the time.”

  I nodded wordlessly as Chris drove up in a golf cart, waving a hand over his head by way of greeting. He did something to a panel in the wall and the gate slowly slid open. The Mercedes followed the golf cart onto the tarmac and Chris gestured for Mick to park next to the hangar door of a warehouse with a red and white sign that read “Coronado Aviation. Aerial Photography, Cargo, Observation, Sightseeing, Surveying.”

  Mick picked up an oversized book of regional road maps from the back seat of the Mercedes as I got my cane. Together we walked through the open hangar door into the warehouse. The helicopter looked more fragile than I remembered.

  “We’ll take the MD-500,” Chris said. “It’s fueled and ready for takeoff, if you two are ready.”

  “Why are we taking a book of road maps?” I aske
d. “We’re going to be in the air. Don’t tell me you need to look at a road map to see where we’re going. Don’t you know?”

  “She’s a bit jumpy,” Mick explained to Chris. “Never been in a helicopter before.”

  “It’ll help get your bearings in the air,” Chris said, “if we follow the roads.”

  “You’re going to look at a map and fly a helicopter at the same time? How can you pay attention to where we’re going?”

  He smiled and competently patted his head and rubbed his stomach. “I can multitask,” he said. “Don’t worry, Lucie. If I can fly night-blind in the dark over your vines, flying today with unlimited visibility is a piece of cake.”

  The men pushed the helicopter outside and moved it to the take-off area. Chris climbed in first, then he and Mick helped me inside.

  “Breathe,” Mick murmured in my ear. “I haven’t heard you breathe since we sat down.”

  Chris passed us headsets and went through his checklist. Then he switched on the engine and asked for takeoff clearance as the blades began to rotate over my head. I closed my eyes and the helicopter lifted off the ground.

  It was noisier than I expected and the only way to communicate was through the headsets.

  “You can look now, love.” Mick’s voice sounded so close it could have come from inside my head. “And if you can unclench your fingers from my wrist for just a second, I’ll get the maps.”

  The view was nothing like what I expected. Chris said we were flying at an altitude of about twelve hundred feet, but it was—at least to me—surprisingly easy to see what was going on below us on the ground.

  “Okay, that’s Route Fifteen down there.” Chris glanced over his shoulder at us and pointed to the road. “The way you would have come. We’ll turn left at Gilbert’s Corner and head west on Mosby’s Highway.”

  “We really are following the road map, aren’t we?” I said.

  He nodded as Mick squeezed my hand. “This is where you come in. You’ve lived here almost all your life. I want to see this place through your eyes.” His voice was a caress in my ear. “You know where we are. Show it to me.”

  And so for the next hour we crisscrossed the land George Washington had once surveyed, following the silver thread of Goose Creek as it meandered through Fauquier and Loudoun Counties. We flew mostly over the region known as the Mosby Heritage Area, the stretch of Route 50 that began in Aldie and ended in the pretty village of Paris on the edge of the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The highway acted like a needle on a compass to orient me and gradually my jitters subsided and I grew more confident in pointing out farms and landmarks, explaining their history as we moved steadily west toward the peaceful-looking mountains that dominated our view. Here the land was almost all rolling hills, pastures, and farmland, the boundaries outlined by split-rail fences and divided like a giant checkerboard by stacked-stone walls.

  We flew over the old Goose Creek Bridge and I showed Mick where, in June 1863, the forces of Colonel J. E. B. Stuart tried unsuccessfully to hold off the Union cavalry that was pushing toward the Shenandoah Valley. Ten days later the two armies met at Gettysburg.

  “You all right?” Mick asked at one point. “You seem calmer. At least you’re not digging into my hand and drawing blood anymore.”

  “Oh, God, was I really?” I asked. “I’m so sorry. You know, we’ve seen everything but your land. Now it’s your turn with the map.”

  “That won’t be necessary. You know where to go, Chris,” Mick said. “Let’s fly over Lucie’s place first.”

  Chris banked the helicopter and we crossed Mosby’s Highway again. I could see our shadow on the ground as we swooped, graceful as a bird, over the bucolic scene below.

  We flew over my toy-sized house, the vineyard, and all the buildings and barns. I saw the grove where I’d found Georgia, and from the air, the distance to the barn where Randy’s band had practiced seemed like a hop, skip, and a jump.

  “So there it is,” Mick was saying.

  “There what is?”

  “Were you woolgathering?” He put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “Look over there. My land. That’s our common property line. Yours and mine.”

  “What are you talking about?” I was stunned. “Did you buy the Studebaker place? That’s a stud farm. There’s not a vine anywhere on that property. It’s completely set up for horses.”

  “I know. But someday there’ll be vines,” he said. “The owners and I agreed on a price last night. I’m signing the documents early next week.”

  “Are you serious? How can you do that so fast?”

  He looked pleased with himself. “It’s the only way I do things. I like results. Besides, it’s a cash deal. It speeded things along.”

  “Folks, I hate to interrupt, but I just want to let you know it’s time to head back,” Chris said. “We’ve been out for about seventy-five minutes.”

  “Fine,” Mick agreed. “We’ve had our tour. Cheers, Chris.”

  “Oh, my God, are we running out of fuel?” I sat up and craned my neck to get a view of Chris’s gauges. “Is that why we have to go back?”

  Chris said, “No,” as Mick said, “Of course not.”

  “You wouldn’t lie to me?”

  “We’re safe as houses,” Mick assured me. “There are FAA standards about how little fuel you can have left before you’re required to land. Relax, love. We could fly to Richmond with what we’ve got left.”

  We touched down, surprisingly gently, about ten minutes later. I refused to get out of the helicopter until the blades stopped turning. Then Mick lifted me into his arms and set me down before retrieving my cane.

  After he paid Chris, we drove to the main gate.

  “I suppose you could convert those stables into a tasting room,” I said as it closed behind us

  “The horses would hate it.”

  “You’re planning on raising horses and running a vineyard?”

  “Not single-handedly. But yes. I guess I didn’t get around to telling you that I used to play polo. At university in the U.K., then more recently in Florida.”

  “So what, exactly, did you do for this pharmaceutical company in Florida?” I asked.

  “Ever heard of Dunne Pharmaceuticals?”

  “Oh, my God. Yes, of course. That’s you?”

  “Was me. I sold to Merck.”

  “Why?”

  “I got bored.” He put his foot on the accelerator and we sped past a pickup truck. “I wanted to do something different.”

  “Like own a vineyard?”

  “Precisely.”

  We finished the drive back to Atoka in silence with only our GPS friend interrupting occasionally to tell him to turn right or left. When we got to my house, he turned off the engine and came around to open my door.

  “That was an extravagant way to see your new property,” I said. “Why did you do it?”

  “I wanted you to see it that way. I did it for you.” He kissed me as I knew he would. No peck on the cheek this time. “I still owe you dinner,” he murmured. “What are you doing tonight?”

  I said breathlessly, “Working. A jazz concert and a wine tasting.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  His persistence was making me dizzy. “Can I let you know? We’ll be busy all day. I’m not sure when I’ll be through.”

  After he left I went inside and thought about that kiss. Was he trying to start something? And why me? Somehow I didn’t think I fit the prototype of the other women he’d been with. I figured him falling for the tall, leggy knockouts who spent their days caring for themselves so they glittered at night for the men who owned them. Rich, exotic, privileged—just like he was. Not someone who got her hands dirty—literally. And whose only experience with pampering was a physical therapist’s muscular massages as she rubbed my deformed foot in hopes of discovering even one nerve that wasn’t dead.

  The phone rang while I was still in the foyer. Siri, sounding distraught.

 
“Lucie.” Her voice shook. “They’ve arrested Ross. He’s been charged with Georgia’s murder. He just left the clinic in handcuffs.”

  Chapter 15

  I calmed Siri and told her to call Sam Constantine. He’d know what to do. He’d straighten out a horrible mistake. After I hung up with her, I called Manolo.

  “Did you have any luck tracking down Emilio and Marta?” I asked. “Please say yes.”

  “I got an address last night from someone.” He didn’t sound happy about it. “I don’t know if it’s still good.”

  “It’s better than nothing.”

  But when he told me, I didn’t recognize the Leesburg address.

  “The new place. You know, the toilet bowl?” he asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “That’s what the kids call it,” he explained. “The arch over the entrance to the main building’s shaped like a toilet bowl. I think it was supposed to be a horseshoe, but that’s not what anybody calls it now. When you see it you’ll know what I mean.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I owe you.”

  “For this,” he said, “you do. You don’t want to know what I had to do to get it.”

  My next call was Quinn. Granted, we weren’t on the best of terms at the moment. But I trusted him and I knew he wouldn’t let me down. Besides, this was for Ross. I’d already gone on my knees to Manolo. I was getting used to the view.

  “I might need an interpreter,” I told him. “Please, please say you’ll come.”

  “Yeah, I’ll come.” He sounded just like Manolo, that same hard, flat voice. “I don’t want you wandering around there by yourself. Even in daylight.”

  “You know this place?”

  “Everybody knows the toilet bowl,” he said ominously. “You can buy anything you want there. Women, drugs. Tough crowd.”

  “I’ll pick you up in ten minutes,” I told him.

  “You will not. I’m not getting in that windup toy today. I feel like a sissy riding in it, and besides, someone will probably pick it up and carry it off while we’re talking to them,” he said. “I’ll be by to get you. We’re taking the El.”