The Chardonnay Charade wcm-2

by Ellen Crosby

  On the drive over to Leesburg he asked me about my helicopter ride.

  “How did you know about that?”

  “Mick stopped by after dropping you off. Wanted to talk some more about siting his vines. Sounds like you two had quite a time. I thought you were scared of heights.” He seemed to be concentrating intently on the road, even though we had it to ourselves.

  “You know I am,” I said. “He told me he wanted me to see his new property. Didn’t bother mentioning I’d be looking down at it from twelve hundred feet until we got to the airport. There was no getting out of it then.”

  “Pretty expensive date. He likes you.” He was driving the El with one palm on the steering wheel, his arm extended ramrod-straight, the other arm out the window, fingers tapping out a rhythm on the car door.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It wasn’t a date. We’re going to be sharing a common property line. It’s good he likes me. We’re neighbors now.”

  He glanced at me with a face like granite, hard and maybe a little cold. “We’re almost there.”

  Manolo was right. The minute I saw the main building with its oddly shaped pea-green arch, I knew why it was called what it was called.

  Emilio and Marta’s condo was a walk-up on the third floor of one of the many rabbit-warren complexes built around a series of large interconnected parking lots whose visual focal points were overfull dumpsters. Music, televisions, arguments, children crying. Any language but English. We heard it all as we climbed the stairs. Except in front of the door to Marta and Emilio’s place, where there was silence. Quinn leaned forward to listen, then knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  “Say we’re friends of Ross’s,” I whispered. “Maybe they’ll open up. If they’re there.”

  “¡Emilio, Marta! Somos amigos del doctor Greenwood. Él nos ha enviado. Por favor, abre la puerta.”

  “Ross did what?” I asked quietly.

  “Sent us,” he hissed. “I said we were Ross’s friends and that he sent us. And to open up.”

  A moment later the door cracked open slightly and a man stared out. In his late thirties, probably. Jet-black bedhead hair, a handlebar mustache, compact and lithely built. He wore the kind of sleeveless scooped-neck undershirt Leland used to refer to as a wife-beater and a pair of faded jeans.

  “Emilio?” I asked. “We’re friends of Ross Greenwood’s. Can we talk to you and Marta, please?”

  “No están,” he said.

  “¿Quién?” Quinn asked.

  “Marta y los niños.”

  “He says—” Quinn began.

  “That Marta and the kids aren’t here,” I said. “That much I got. Can we come in and talk to him, at least?”

  Quinn translated. Emilio shook his head and my heart sank. Then Quinn said something low and rapid that I didn’t catch. Whatever it was, it worked, and Emilio opened the door wide enough to let us inside.

  The apartment looked more like a place to camp than a home. A daybed with a faded purple blanket thrown over it, a floor lamp with a torn shade, a Formica table, and two mismatched chairs were the only pieces of furniture. No sign of children anywhere. Nothing. The sink and the kitchen counter were stacked with dirty dishes. They’d been there awhile. Maybe he was living here alone.

  Emilio reached for a crushed pack of Marlboros and kicked an overflowing ashtray that was on the floor so it was next to him. He sat on the daybed and lit up. No invitation to Quinn or me to sit, so I stood, leaning on my cane. Quinn spun one of the chairs, facing it backward, and parked himself like he’d mounted a horse.

  “Where are Marta and the children?” I asked.

  Emilio looked at me warily. “No están aquí,” he repeated.

  “They’re somewhere,” I insisted.

  “Lucie.” Quinn spoke warningly. “Let it go.”

  “We need both of them to say Ross was with them the night Georgia was killed,” I said.

  Emilio’s eyes darted from Quinn to me. I had a feeling he understood us better than he let on.

  “¿Mande?” he asked Quinn, who dutifully interpreted.

  Emilio said something rapid-fire.

  “He said, okay, fine, Ross was with them that night. All night.”

  “They’ve got to tell the police. It’s not enough to tell us.”

  For the first time he spoke English. “No police.”

  “Please, Emilio,” I said. “Ross—Dr. Greenwood—said to tell you that if you do this he will take care of your family. But he can’t help you if he’s in jail. He said to tell you he gives his palabra de honor.”

  Emilio blew out a stream of smoke. “He said ‘palabra de honor?’”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?” he asked in English.

  I glanced at Quinn, who regarded me placidly.

  “How much what?” I said.

  Emilio made the universal gesture for money.

  “Aw, Emilio…” I began.

  “Es muy caro vivir aquí,” he said.

  “He’s not gonna talk otherwise, Lucie,” Quinn said. “He says the cost of living here’s killing him. How much you got on you?”

  I opened my purse and pulled out my wallet. “Fifty-five dollars.”

  “Give it to him.”

  I handed over the money to Emilio, who pocketed it, then said, “I want more.”

  “Here’s mine,” Quinn said. “An even hundred.”

  I looked at Emilio and tried to keep the contempt out of my eyes. “We’ll set up a meeting at the vineyard,” I said. “Tomorrow. You and Marta must come with the babies. I promise there will be only one police officer. A detective. Tell him what you told us. Then you can leave.”

  “I work. After ten.” Emilio exhaled more smoke and bent down to crush his cigarette in the ashtray. “Outside. Not inside. No buildings.”

  “What about the parking lot?” Quinn said. “Do you have a car, Emilio?”

  “No.” He lit another cigarette.

  “Maybe Manolo can pick them up.” I waved away the fug of smoke. My eyes burned.

  Quinn negotiated with Emilio in Spanish, then said, “Okay. We’re set. Manolo will get him at nine-thirty and bring him to us.”

  “Marta and the babies, too,” I insisted.

  Emilio shrugged. “Cost you more I bring them.”

  “How much more?”

  “Five hundred bucks.”

  I exchanged glances with Quinn, who remained mute. My crusade. My money.

  “Okay,” I said evenly. “Five hundred. Only if everyone’s there.”

  Emilio looked me up and down. “Señorita,” he said. “I know what to do.”

  He stood up and stubbed out the barely smoked cigarette in a plate that had dark smears and bits of dried food on it. Then he walked over the door and opened it.

  “Hasta mañana.”

  When we were back in the El, I said angrily to Quinn, “What a humanitarian! Ross took care of his family for free. He can’t stand up and do the right thing for someone who helped him when he needed it? They’re not even in the country legally, for God’s sake. Maybe he ought to go back where he came from.”

  Quinn jerked the car in reverse so abruptly I had to put my hand on the dashboard to steady myself as he roared out of the parking lot. When we were back on the main road he said, “I’m surprised you could get the words out of your mouth around that silver spoon, sweetheart. Say we did send Emilio and his family back to the mud hut they call home in Salvador. Then who’s gonna clean all the toilets in the restaurants around here? Mow all the rich people’s lawns? Wash dishes all night, then jump on the back of the garbage truck first thing in the morning in the pouring rain or freezing cold? You wanna do that?”

  We were back on Route 15 now, headed to Gilbert’s Corner. I didn’t want to look at his speedometer, but we were going well past the limit.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. But that was extortion.”

  “Do you blame him?” Quinn was still
mad. “Beats making minimum wage with no benefits, don’t you think? Maybe he’ll splurge and take the family to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal now that he’s so rich.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. I said I’m sorry. But we still had to buy Ross’s life from him. I would rather have given him a job than hand over cash like that. We could at least pay him a living wage.”

  Quinn kept staring straight ahead, palm on the steering wheel once again as we hammered down the road. “Doesn’t work that way,” he said. “We’d have a mutiny on our hands with the rest of the crew who waited their turn and got green cards so they’re legit. You know that as well as I do.”

  “There’s something else,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t think the speed limit’s eighty.”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw, but at least he let up on the accelerator. When we got back to the vineyard I said as I got out of the car, “Bobby is coming to the concert tonight with Kit. I’m going to ask him to come early so we can talk to him then and set up the meeting for tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Fine.” He headed toward the steps to the winery, taking them two at a time.

  “Hey!” I called.

  He stopped and turned around. “What?”

  “Are you still mad at me? I’m sorry about what I said. I mean it.”

  He threw his hands up in the air. “I don’t know what I am anymore,” he said. “Especially where it involves you. Go call Bobby. I got stuff to do in the barrel room.”

  I called Kit instead.

  “Sure, we can come early,” she said. “Why, what’s up?”

  “I need to talk to Bobby and it’s better if I do it face-to-face.”

  “Uh-oh. Luce, it better not be about Ross. Bobby’s been up to his ass in alligators ever since they arrested him at the clinic. Apparently the sheriff department’s been getting calls—a lot of ’em on 911—saying Ross didn’t do it and the police are a bunch of pigs. Bobby’s had about all he can take.”

  “Please do this favor for me,” I said. “Please? You won’t be sorry.”

  “Somehow I think I already am,” she said. “The things I do for you. See you at six.”

  At five-thirty I fixed a tray with four wineglasses, four plates, a basket of crackers, and Dominique’s tapenade in the villa’s small kitchen. Quinn found me uncorking a bottle of wine at the bar.

  “Bobby is gonna smell a setup a mile away.” He picked up the bottle and whistled. “Where’d you get a bottle of Angelus? I’ve never seen that. An eighty-dollar bottle of wine ought to buy you plenty of help.”

  “Leland’s wine cellar,” I said. “And it’s not a setup. All of us can have drinks on the terrace. It’ll be easier to talk that way.”

  “He’s gonna hate this.”

  Bobby and Kit arrived at six sharp. I smiled and Bobby’s eyes grew wary as his eyes slid from Kit to me.

  “Told you,” Quinn said under his breath.

  “Hi,” said Kit brightly. “Here we are.”

  “How about a drink? We can sit on the terrace,” I said. “Hey, Bobby. Thanks for coming.”

  Quinn poured a small amount of wine into his glass, then filled the others before finally topping off his own. I passed the crackers and tapenade.

  “What is this stuff?” Bobby asked.

  “Tapenade,” I said.

  Kit spread some liberally on a cracker and took a bite. “Kind of a fancy olive dip,” she said, licking a finger. “Try it. It’s good.”

  We clinked glasses and drank, then Bobby said, “What gives, Lucie? You want to talk about Ross Greenwood, don’t you?”

  I set my wineglass down. “What if we can prove Ross couldn’t have killed Georgia?”

  “Then you would know more than the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department does.”

  He spoke with such complete conviction that it rattled me. “What if we get Emilio and Marta to talk to you? And they say Ross was at their place all night delivering their twins?” I folded my hands in my lap and squeezed them tightly together like I was praying. And waited.

  “Lucie,” Bobby said carefully, “we think we have a strong case or we wouldn’t have arrested him.”

  “You could be wrong! How could he have killed her if he was with them?”

  “Bring them to the station,” he said, “and we’ll talk.”

  “They won’t go to the station,” Quinn said. “They’re scared they’ll be deported.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “Marta’s son was involved in a gang fight recently. He managed to slope off before he got picked up,” Quinn said.

  “I know,” Bobby said. “Kid’s only fourteen. Marta oughta pay more attention to what he’s up to or she’ll be visiting him in juvie before his next birthday.”

  “What about meeting her and Emilio here at the vineyard?” I asked.

  “Set it up and call me.”

  “It is set up. Ten o’clock tomorrow night. Here in the parking lot.”

  Bobby’s eyes held mine and his mouth twitched. “What a surprise.”

  “Will you come?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll come. And now I got something to ask you.”

  I sat up straight. “Yes?”

  “I’ve had the day from hell. Your wine’s real good, but I’d give anything for a cold beer. You got anything like that around here?”

  Our luck with the glorious weather—clear, sharp sunshine, azure sky, tufts of cottonball cumulus clouds—continued on Sunday, the day of our first annual “Memorial Day Weekend Run Through the Vineyard.” It had been my idea to raise money for the soup kitchen near Bluemont where we often donated leftover food from our events. As soon as we announced it, Blue Ridge Federal, the Washington Tribune, and Kendall Properties offered to sponsor the race, paying for advertising, special T-shirts, and other promotional expenses.

  About three hundred people signed up to run. The course started in front of the winery and, for the more serious runners, consisted of a ten-kilometer circuit through the south vineyard along the service road, then down Atoka Road to our main entrance and up Sycamore Lane. For the less intrepid, it was four and a half laps around Sycamore Lane, which was exactly five kilometers. There also was a 2k fun walk-run for anyone who just wanted to stretch their legs.

  Quinn had thought we could pace off the course using the odometer in the El.

  “Absolutely not,” I had said. “We’ll get Marty Gamble to come over with a measuring wheel and walk off an accurately measured course. He runs with the Downtown Athletic Club.”

  “The place that used to give the Heisman Trophy? No fooling?” Quinn rubbed his chin with his thumb.

  “No, no. This is a group of guys over in Leesburg. They meet at the Dunkin’ Donuts.”

  “What’s the difference between the odometer and that wheel thing?” Quinn asked.

  “If you’re a runner,” I explained, “you’re always trying for a personal best. If we’re sloppy and it’s really an almost-but-not-quite-ten-k, then just imagine what happens when some guy is high-fiving his buddy and whooping and hollering after he crosses the finish line because he’s sure he just shaved ten or twenty seconds off his best time. You want to be the one to tell him it’s fifty meters short?”

  “Okay,” he’d said. “I get your point.”

  So I was surprised when Quinn met me at the villa first thing in the morning wearing running shorts and a T-shirt. There is no time when I am more aware of the limitations of my disability than when it comes to sports. In high school, Kit and I had run cross-country and I’d been pretty competitive, but those days were gone forever. When I was in the hospital, my physical therapist had been an adorable ninety-nine-pound sprite who looked like she’d blow away in a stiff breeze. I found out soon enough that she’d trained with the Marines and their elite “tip of the spear” lead-the-pack aggressiveness had rubbed off on her but good. She ended every one of our sessions with a sweet smile and the promise that she would be back the next
day to, as she said, “kick your butt from hell to breakfast.”

  Besides Ross, she was the best thing that happened to me, accident-wise. Part of kicking my butt meant she never let me feel sorry for myself and, hard-ass that she was, she wasted no pity on me, either. “Listen to me, Lucie,” she’d said during one of our sessions, “your disability is a part of who you are now, but it isn’t all of who you are. It doesn’t define you. Don’t make it that way.”

  I hadn’t. But days like this were still hard.

  “I didn’t know you were going to run,” I said now to Quinn. “You never mentioned it.”

  He looked embarrassed. “Bonita talked me into it.”

  “Good for you. You doing the ten-k or the five-k?”

  “My pride wants to do the ten-k like a hot dog, but my knees are telling me to do the five-k.” He grinned, still self-conscious.

  I laughed. “Listen to your knees.”

  Then he turned serious. “Manolo called. He’s gonna pick up Emilio tonight after he gets off work. He should be here by ten.”

  “What about Marta and the babies? I got the money.”

  “He didn’t say one way or the other,” Quinn said.

  “I’m not sure Bobby will buy this without the children there,” I said.

  “Then you’d better pray to whoever you pray to that they come.”

  Almost all of our events at the vineyard—except for apple picking—are geared to adults since they revolve around wine, but the daytime charity race brought families with children. Some of the parents ran with their kids and a few pushed baby strollers as they walked and chatted during the laps around Sycamore Lane. Besides the local Girl Scout troop handing out bottled water along the way, we gave flavored Popsicles to the kids and before long every child had a brightly colored tongue.

  Sera surprised us by showing up with Hector, who had just gotten out of the hospital the day before. “I didn’t want him to come,” she murmured. “But you know him. He insisted.”

  Hector patted her hand. “This woman worries too much.”

  But his face was pale and the heartiness seemed forced. I kissed him on the forehead. “Let me know if you need anything.”