by Ellen Crosby
That made two things I shouldn’t have said. “My affairs?” He looked bewildered, then his expression lightened. “Oh, so you’re talking about me and Bonita, is that it? Tell you what. How about if I take my telescope out of there so I won’t disturb your beauty sleep ever again? Would that suit you?”
“Wait—”
But he’d already left.
A moment later the front door to the villa slammed. I heard his car as it roared out of the parking lot. Probably going right over to the summerhouse.
I laid my head on my desk.
What had I done?
I had just gotten home for the day when my doorbell rang. Mick Dunne held a bottle of Dom Pérignon in one hand and a couple of shopping bags with the logo of an upscale grocery store in the other.
“I brought dinner,” he said. “I hope you’re hungry.”
“Oh…gosh…I…” I had been planning on microwaving anything in the refrigerator that still looked edible and eating dinner while soaking in the tub. Then straight to bed.
“Is that a yes or a no?” he asked. “It’s hard to tell with you sometimes.”
I opened the door and let him in. “It’s a yes. But I really need a shower. I just walked in the door.”
“Then show me where your kitchen is,” he said, “and go have your shower.”
He’d brought filet mignon, baking potatoes with sour cream, and white asparagus. A fabulous bottle of Pétrus to go with the dinner, and fresh local raspberries and blueberries for dessert.
By the time I got back downstairs he was making a vinaigrette for the asparagus. “This is very extravagant,” I said. “No offense, but I thought ‘British cuisine’ was an oxymoron.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about the British, then. Here, try this and tell me if there’s too much vinegar in it.” He held a spoon to my lips.
“It’s perfect.”
I didn’t have too many illusions and he wasn’t subtle. We started kissing in the kitchen and continued throughout dinner, which we ate at dusk on the veranda. I lit the candles and the torches that ringed the porch while he finished grilling the filet mignon.
He came around to my chair to refill my wineglass yet again and kissed my hair. Then he put the bottle down and started to rub my shoulders.
“You’re very tense,” he said. “Your shoulders feel like they’re made of concrete.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m serious. I’m giving you a massage tonight. You need it.”
If he meant what I thought he did, then he would finally see my bad foot, now well hidden under a floor-length halter dress. “Let’s take this kind of slow, okay?” I said. “I’m a little overwhelmed.”
He went back and sat down, then took my hands in both of his. “I signed the papers the other day so the Studebaker place is mine. I’m not going anywhere. We’ve got plenty of time.”
“When do you move in?”
His mouth twitched. I’d changed the subject and we both knew it. “I’m going back to Florida in a few days to wrap up matters there.”
“Are you going to stay with Ross in the meantime?”
Mick shook his head. “I took a room at the Hilton by Dulles Airport the day of the funeral. Ross needs some time on his own.”
“He stopped by this morning,” I said. “He thinks there might be a trial. Did you know he’s planning to leave Atoka once it’s over?”
Mick picked up his wineglass and slowly swirled the contents around, watching the long viscous legs slide down the side of the glass. “I’m not surprised. Easier to forget an unhappy chapter of his life. Beginning with his marriage to Georgia.”
“What do you mean? He adored her.”
“She was miles out of his league. Not financially, of course. He had the dosh she needed to be Madame la Marquise. But she was rather a tart, wasn’t she? All those affairs, left, right, and center. Ross put the old blinders on because he loved her so much as you said, but it hurt.” He stood up and came around, pulling me to my feet. “And now enough about Ross and Georgia. Right now I want to concentrate on you.”
He kissed me again, a long, deep kiss, then murmured, “I assume we’ve got the place to ourselves? It’s nice here under the stars. You’re very beautiful by torchlight, you know?” He untied the straps to my dress and moved his hands down my body.
I thought of Quinn’s telescope in the summerhouse. He’d removed it this afternoon. I hadn’t checked, but I’d figured that’s where he’d gone after our argument.
“Mick,” I protested, “I’m not sure…”
But he wasn’t listening. Before I knew it, he’d slipped my dress off and it fell around my feet. He unbuttoned his shirt, then picked me up in his arms and carried me over to the hammock. “I’ve wanted to do this ever since I met you,” he said.
“I thought we were going to wait and take it slow,” I whispered into his neck.
“We did wait,” he mumbled, laying me down as he finished undressing. He knelt over me and bent to kiss me again. “We finished dinner.”
Chapter 19
We drank the champagne tangled in each other’s arms, then made love again. I got the wedding-ring quilt off my bed and brought it outside. We finally fell asleep and when I opened my eyes as the first streaks of daylight appeared in the sky, he was watching me.
“Morning,” I said. “Have you been awake long?”
He reached down and picked up his wristwatch off the wood floor. “Morning, love. No, not long. Since it started getting light.”
“How did you sleep?”
“I think I’m going to feel like a contortionist when I stand up, but no regrets. You were wonderful.” He kissed me. “I hate to say this, but I’ve got to go. I have a meeting in Washington in a few hours, so I’d better head back to the hotel for a shower and a change of clothes.”
“Want breakfast?” I sat up and held the quilt over my breasts.
He moved to the edge of the hammock and carefully stood up so I didn’t go sailing off the other side. “I wish I could.”
“How about dessert?”
He turned and looked at me. “That,” he said, “is another matter altogether.”
Afterward, I walked him to the front door, still wrapped in the quilt like it was a sari. “I’ll give you a ring,” he said, running a finger down my bare arm.
I shivered, then he kissed me again and left.
I showered, changed, and cleaned up from last night’s dinner. Though it was early, I drove to the winery. I’d been at my desk for about half an hour when I heard Quinn arrive. Normally whoever got here first stopped by the other’s office. Maybe he didn’t think I was in.
I picked up my coffee mug and went next door. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” Whatever he was searching for on his desk, it apparently required all of his attention, because he didn’t look up.
“Everything okay?”
“Yep.”
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said. “Truce?”
He looked up and said coldly, “No apology needed. I picked up my telescope last night. I won’t be bothering you when you’re out on the veranda again.”
Last night. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask what time he’d been there, but I couldn’t. My mouth went completely dry and my throat got a lump in it.
Finally I stammered, “I-it wasn’t about the telescope…”
“I said I won’t be invading your privacy again.” He was curt.
He’d been there when Mick and I were out on the veranda. He knew. I nodded. “I understand.”
“By the way,” he added, “I ran into your sister last night. She’d been drinking again.”
“Where? When?”
“At the No-Name. That bar on the Snickersville Turnpike. Obviously they weren’t checking for ID. ’Course, those guys wouldn’t.”
“The shack on the way to Philomont? The biker bar? What was she doing there?”
“Drinking and playing pool
.”
“Oh, God. What time did you see her?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed and he stared hard at me. “Late,” he said. “I walked in around one a.m. and it was last call. She was there with the Lang girl and a couple of guys who were trying too hard to make sure everyone knew they were stinkin’ rich but they could go slummin’ for a night with the white trash, if you know what I mean.”
I leaned against the doorjamb and closed my eyes. “I get the picture,” I said. “Thank you for telling me.”
“That kid is heading down the road to perdition,” he said. “She’s going to do herself some real harm. And maybe take somebody down with her.”
“I know,” I said quietly. “I don’t know how to stop her.”
“Well, you better figure out something,” he said. “Because if you don’t, there’s going to be hell to pay. It’s only a matter of time.”
When he left a short while later to join the crew in the fields, the tension between us was still as taut as an overwound clock. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I told one of the girls who’d just arrived for work that she could reach me on my mobile if something came up.
I had an errand in Leesburg.
Eli’s office was down the street from the old courthouse on West Market Street. I found a parking space around the corner on Church and walked past the pretty white-columned brick building as the bell in the tower serenely chimed ten o’clock. Out front, a statue of a Confederate soldier, dedicated to the thousands of Rebel soldiers who died fighting for a cause they believed in, stood guard. Elsewhere on the grounds the old stocks and whipping posts memorialized past methods of law enforcement. The way I felt about my sister just now, maybe they knew a thing or two about discipline in those days.
Eli’s dark-haired young receptionist was on the telephone as I walked in. She nodded at me and pointed to the stairs, giving me thumbs up to indicate that my brother was in.
He had his back to me, sitting on a high stool hunched over a set of drawings spread across his drafting table. The room was neat as a pin, except for the empty soda cans on top of the filing cabinet—although not surprisingly they were aligned in a perfectly straight row. A scale model of a shopping center occupied another table. Photographs of Brandi and Hope were crowded on top of a credenza, above which hung a corkboard covered with drawings and photos of buildings in various stages of completion. His Filofax, which he practically chained to his wrist, sat on his desk open to today’s date. Judging by the amount of writing on the page, he had a full schedule.
“Hey,” I said finally. “Sorry to bother you.”
He jumped and swung around. “Luce! I didn’t know you were there. What are you doing? What’s wrong?” “Why does something have to be wrong for me to drop by?” I asked.
“Nice try,” he said. “When your face goes all red like that and you don’t blink for a long time, I know it’s bad. What’s up?”
“Mia,” I said. “Quinn saw her at the No-Name last night. That biker bar on the Snickersville Turnpike.”
“Oh, jeez. That dump. What was she doing there?”
“What do you think? Drinking. And playing pool. She came in absolutely falling-down drunk the other night. I had to put her to bed.”
“It’s her age. We were like that, too. I remember when you and Kit used to steal bottles of wine from under Jacques’ nose and drink them over at Goose Creek Bridge.”
“Kit and I didn’t get drunk.”
“Sure you didn’t.”
“You’re not helping. She’s underage.”
“You can count the days until she’s not.”
“She has a problem, Eli. Binge drinking. God knows what she gets up to when she’s at school in that sorority house.”
“We can’t babysit her. Look, I’ll talk to her, okay?”
“Good. She won’t listen to me.”
He rolled his eyes. “Because you’re always on her case.”
“What am I supposed to do when she comes home throwing up and I have to take care of her?” I banged my cane on the floor. “Tell her it’s okay?”
“Of course not. But why don’t you try reasoning with her for a change?”
“I did reason with her. Now it’s your turn. We have to get her to knock this off. Otherwise she’s going to end up an alcoholic. She’s already got a head start.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll call her.”
“It needs to be face-to-face, Eli. Why don’t you invite her to spend the weekend? You’ve got, what, ten bedrooms in that palace?”
“Only eight.” He sounded miffed. “And ixnay on the weekend thing. Brandi’s been getting migraines. She needs to have things kind of quiet.”
“How about dinner? Could you have her over to dinner one night?”
He considered the suggestion. “Sure. But not this week. I’m completely slammed with work. Next week sometime.”
“When?”
“I dunno. How about Friday?”
“You can’t do it before then?”
“Look, most nights I barely make it home for dinner myself. At least Friday I know I’ll be there. That’s the best I can do.”
“Okay. Next Friday. You’ll call her, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll call her.” Eli reached over and picked up his bulky Filofax, scribbling something on the page. “Jeez. I gotta write everything down these days or I’ll forget. Just so damn much stuff going on. I can’t keep track anymore.”
“Thanks for doing this,” I said. “Call me afterwards and let me know how it went, okay?”
He picked up the Filofax again. “Damn. I’d better write that down, too.”
Half a block from his office I stopped at a store called Leesburg Little Ones and bought a shopping basket’s worth of coloring books, picture books, boxes of crayons, and cases of colored pencils.
“Are you a teacher?” The woman at the cash register smiled as I handed her my credit card.
“No.”
“Run a day-care center?”
“Nope,” I said. “They’re for a friend.”
The Patowmack Free Clinic opened for business in half an hour, but already every rocking chair on the front porch was occupied. Children and adults sat on the railing or on the porch floor, and a line, mostly of elderly people and mothers with babies, snaked from the front door down the stairs and around the border gardens into the parking lot.
I threaded my way through the mostly Spanish-speaking crowd and went around the side to the staff entrance. A volunteer let me in.
Ross and Siri kept a large basket of donated children’s books near the waiting room. Every child who came to the clinic—either as a patient or accompanying a parent—went home with either a book or a coloring book. While the mothers and fathers might not speak English, the children did. When I’d been here the other day, the basket had looked like it could do with replenishing.
“Lucie!” Siri came out of the kitchen carrying a small box. “What are you doing here?”
I held up my shopping bags. “Books, coloring books, crayons, colored pencils. Shall I put them in the donation basket?”
“How thoughtful of you! No, I’ll take them. Let me just set this down.” She placed her box on a table next to the kitchen door. The pink flip-flop still hung on it. “Thanks, honey. I appreciate it.”
I glanced in the box she’d just put down as I handed over the shopping bags. “More donated medicine?”
She nodded. “We take what we can get. Thanks for stopping by. I’ll get these out right away. They’ll be gone in no time.”
“Where’s Ross? Is he in?”
“Uh-huh. With a patient in his office.”
“I thought you didn’t open until eleven.”
“This is sort of an exception.” Siri sounded flustered, then she shrugged. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter if you know. Marta’s here with the twins. She’s keeping a low profile because of her older boy, but Ross wanted to look at the babies and make sure they’re okay.”
“I don’t think that would be such a good idea.” The request seemed to fluster her even more. “Anyway, Marta just got here, so I think they’ll be awhile.”
I took the hint. “Tell Ross I stopped by, then, will you?”
“Of course,” she said. “And thanks again.”
In retrospect it was a good thing I left when I did. Because otherwise I would have missed seeing the car that sped out of the rear parking lot, tires squealing as it took the corner a little too fast onto North King Street. A black substantial something-or-other—I’m hopeless at identifying make and model—but I’m keen-eyed enough to recognize a license plate.
U.S. Senate tags.
They disappeared in a blur.
Chapter 20
It was not a good omen that a white car with Washington, D.C., government vehicle license plates on it was already waiting in the winery parking lot when I showed up for work the next morning. Our appointment with the Environmental Protection Agency inspector wasn’t scheduled for another hour.
I got out of my car as he climbed out of his. He carried a clipboard. In his early fifties, a slight build, bad haircut, brown plaid polyester suit.
I smiled, though my heart sank, and held out my hand. “Good morning. You must be from the EPA. We weren’t expecting you until nine. I’m Lucie Montgomery. I own the vineyard.”
He shook my hand and pulled a card out of his vest pocket. “John Belcher, EPA.”
I took the card. He was all business. And he didn’t smile back.
I indicated the villa. “Can I offer you a cup of coffee or tea before we go out into the fields, Mr. Belcher?”
Calling him John didn’t seem like a good idea.
“No, thanks, Mrs. Montgomery. I’ve got a thermos and some bottled water in my car. And I’ve already been out in your fields, thanks.”
He caught me off guard and I could tell that had been his intention all along. Already I was on the defensive. There was probably no way we could justify to his satisfaction how the methyl bromide had been left out instead of being locked in the chemical shed. The corner we were painted into just got smaller.
