The Chardonnay Charade wcm-2

by Ellen Crosby

  That night a heavy blanket of clouds rolled in and no stars shone down from the sky. No telling if my mother was happy or not. But if she wasn’t, that made two of us.

  On my way to work Friday morning I found my mobile phone on the demilune table next to the charger. Only one bar on the battery. I unplugged the charger and brought it and the phone with me so I could recharge it in my office.

  Quinn was already at the villa when I drove up. He showed up in my office with two cups of coffee.

  “Morning.” He handed one to me and his eyes strayed to the red light on my desk. “Forgot to charge our phone again, did we?”

  “Thank you,” I said, indicating the coffee. “I think it’s the battery. It doesn’t hold a charge very long anymore.”

  He raised his eyebrows and blew on his coffee. “What would you do if somebody needed to get in touch with you and it was life or death?”

  “We didn’t always have mobile phones,” I said. “My mother and Jacques managed fine without them.”

  “You and I are not your mother and Jacques,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “We’re not.”

  “You bring them up all the time, you know?”

  “I do not!” I opened my desk drawer and pulled out a box that once held a roll of wine labels, now filled with packets of sugar. He took his coffee black, so I didn’t bother to offer him any. I ripped open two sugars and dumped them in the coffee, then stirred it with the eraser end of a pencil.

  “Yeah, you do. You ought to listen to yourself sometimes.” He shoved a pile of Virginia Wine Gazettes on my desk out of the way and sat on the edge, so he was staring down at me.

  I said, flustered, “Well, I don’t mean to.”

  “Talk to Mick recently?” he asked abruptly.

  “No,” I said. “Why?”

  “Just wondered.” He drank his coffee in noisy gulps. “I’m going out with the crew. They’re doing more leaf-pulling in the north vineyard and I need to spray the Cab.”

  I wanted to ask him the same question he’d just asked me, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead I said, “The Mosby dinner is tonight, so I’ll take care of setting up. You know after the dinner Joe’s giving the talk about Mosby founding the Partisan Rangers, since today’s the anniversary.”

  “How could I forget?” he asked. “Atoka’s patron saint.”

  I ignored that. “You think we ought to risk having it at the Ruins with this weather? If it rains, we’re sunk.”

  “Why not move it here?” he asked. “Then we don’t have to worry.”

  “Because it’s better to have it right there. Everyone will be at the exact spot Union soldiers burned while they were looking for Mosby,” I said. “Besides, his ghost still shows up on cloudy nights looking for men in blue coats.”

  “You believe that crap?” He picked up my coffee-stained pencil and examined it.

  “When we were kids we used to scare each other with stories that we saw him,” I said. “I never did, but I know people who swear his ghost is still around.”

  He stood up. “I better take off. Bonita’s waiting for me in the barrel room.”

  I dunked the pencil in my coffee so I didn’t have to look at him. “I forgot to ask her how Hector’s visit with the cardiologist went.”

  “He might need a pacemaker.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Better than the alternative. I’ll call you.” He motioned to my mobile. “Turn that thing on, okay?”

  After he left I picked up the phone and opened it.

  “Hey!” He was back in the doorway with one hand behind his back. “Got something for you.”

  I closed the phone, grinning like a giddy schoolgirl. Flowers, maybe? “What is it?”

  He whipped his hand around and held it up. Just like a bouquet of flowers. “A spoon,” he said. “That pencil’s really unsanitary.”

  I started to laugh and so did he. For once it was completely heedless and lighthearted. Then our eyes met and the old cautiousness returned.

  “Turn on your phone,” he said. “I gotta go.”

  “Sure.”

  I punched the button and the display came up. A second later the message icon blinked. Three messages and two missed calls. Both missed calls were from Mick. Last night. The first message, at 9:47 p.m., also from Mick, asked me to call him.

  The second message was from Eli. 10:13 p.m. “Luce. Me. I can’t get hold of Mia and I need to talk to her about dinner at our place tomorrow night. Have her call me, will you?”

  Mick left the final message twenty minutes ago. “Lucie,” he said. “I’m just about to board my flight. I rang you last night at home and on this number several times. I wish we’d been able to talk before I left for Florida. Quinn and I spoke yesterday afternoon about the…” The commotion in the background drowned out the rest of whatever he’d been trying to say. Finally I heard him shout, “No use! I can’t…ring you from Miami…” The line went dead.

  So that’s why Quinn asked if I’d spoken to Mick. They did have the job talk, after all. If Quinn was leaving, why didn’t he tell me himself? Had he decided to stay? Or did Mick want to prepare the terrain with me first because he’d just hired my winemaker?

  The two of them were turning my life upside down. I didn’t know what to think anymore.

  I phoned the house and left a message for Mia to call Eli. She’d slept at home last night and was probably still in bed. Then I called Quinn.

  “Yeah, what?” He sounded harassed and irritated.

  I lost my nerve. “My phone works.”

  Silence. Then, “I’m very happy for you. Now can I get back to business? The damn sprayer’s acting up again.”

  “Sure. Sorry.”

  He disconnected and I closed my phone, feeling foolish.

  We held the Mosby dinner at the Ruins after all, and by some miracle it didn’t start raining until we’d finished cleaning up.

  “This’ll be good for the grapes,” Quinn said. “At least it held off long enough for the spray to take on the Cab.” We were back in the parking lot. He leaned against his car. “Guess I’ll see you at Dominique’s shindig on Sunday. Bonita and I are heading down to Virginia Beach, but we’ll be back in time for her citizenship party.”

  I bit my lip, glad for the darkness so he couldn’t see my eyes. “I didn’t know you liked the beach.”

  “I’m a California boy, remember? Bonita said they’ve got a store there that sells tie-dyed Hawaiian shirts. Gotta check that place out.”

  “Right. Something new for the collection, huh?” I said. “Well, enjoy it. When are you leaving?”

  He glanced at his watch. “’Bout half an hour. She wants to watch the sunrise on the beach. If there is one. Maybe they’re not getting rain down there.”

  My legs felt suddenly unsteady and I leaned on my cane. “I hope not, for your sake. Have a wonderful time. See you on Sunday.”

  I did not sleep well at all that night, though the last time I remember looking at my alarm clock it read just after four a.m. When the phone rang, it was already light outside. Six-thirty. Not Quinn—he was gone. And it was Saturday.

  I picked up the phone. Mia. She sounded like she was drunk or crying or both. “Lucie, it’s me,” she said through hiccupy sobs. “I’m at the hospital. Catoctin General. The police are here. They say I killed someone.”

  Chapter 24

  She made no sense except that I gathered she’d been driving and hit another car.

  “Oh, God,” I said. “When? After you left Eli’s?”

  “I never went there,” she sobbed. “He canceled. Look, can we talk about that when you get here? You gotta get me out of here.” She sounded panicked. “I didn’t do it, Luce. I don’t even remember getting in my car. I don’t care what they say.”

  I closed my eyes. On top of everything she had blacked out, too. How much worse could it be?

  I reached for my cane next to the bed. “I’m getting dressed right now, Mimi. I’ll be t
here as soon as I can. I’m going to call Eli and Sam Constantine. I’ll see you in less than an hour.”

  “Please hurry,” she begged. “I’m so scared.”

  I hung up and called Eli. Not surprisingly, I woke him up. “Aw, Jesus H. Christ,” he said. “What did she do? I don’t need this right now.”

  “Next time I’ll get her to plan her hit-and-run or whatever it is around your schedule,” I said coldly. “And for the record, she should have been with you last night. Getting the sober-up-or-else talk. What happened, Eli?”

  “Don’t you blame me for something she did,” he yelled back. “I had to postpone dinner because a client wanted to meet last night. So I told her we’d do it another time.”

  “When did you tell her that?” I said. “She told me she was going to your place last time I talked to her.”

  “Right before she was supposed to come over,” he said wearily. “I had my back to the wall, Luce. I have a family to feed, you know. Client wants to meet, I say, ‘How high?’ That’s the way it is.”

  “Well, then we both let her down,” I said. “Meet me at the hospital. I’m calling Sam.” I hung up before he could say anything.

  I finally reached Sam on my mobile on my way to Leesburg.

  “Where is she?” he asked, sounding sleepy and not too pleased to hear from me at this hour.

  “Catoctin General.”

  “She injured?”

  “Lord.” I was stunned. “I never asked. She was crying pretty hard and she said the police say she killed someone. Says she doesn’t even remember getting behind the wheel of the car.”

  “Aw, Christ.” He was wide awake now. “That’s bad already. She needs to keep her mouth shut.”

  “I’m not even sure she’s sober at the moment.”

  He groaned again. “I’ll get there as fast as I can. But if you reach her first, tell her to button it and not to sign anything. I’ll fax something over to the hospital so we’re on record in case I need to make a Fourth Amendment challenge to anything she says. You can bet they read her her Miranda rights, but if her BAC was above point-oh-eight, then she could have heard the Pledge of Allegiance.”

  I put my foot down on the accelerator and checked my rearview mirror. I had Route 15, once the trail of Indians, to myself. Good thing, too, at my speed. I tried to keep the anxiety out of my voice. “She won’t go to jail for this, will she? If it was an accident?”

  “At the moment, let’s just work on fixing things so they don’t lock her up today.”

  He hung up and I sped toward Leesburg.

  I got to the hospital parking lot fifteen minutes later. The same cop who had looked after me the morning I found Georgia was outside the building, talking into a microphone on his shoulder as I walked up to the entrance.

  “Are you here with my sister?” I asked. “Mia Montgomery?”

  “Just leaving. There’s a female officer with her now.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Didn’t put two and two together that she was your sister.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “She struck a Jeep Wrangler broadside at the intersection of the Snickersville Turnpike and Sam Fred Road about four a.m.,” he said. “Right now it appears she was operating a vehicle while intoxicated. So far there’s one fatality. He died in the ambulance. The other passenger is in serious condition.”

  My voice was unsteady. “Oh, my God. Do you know who they are? The people in the other car.”

  “Sorry. We’re still trying to reach the next of kin.”

  “Was it kids?”

  He hesitated, then said, “What’s left of ’em.”

  I chewed my lip to keep from crying. I felt numb. “I’m so sorry. She says she didn’t do it. I know that sounds impossible. But she says she didn’t.”

  Somebody squawked again on his shoulder, like a parakeet. “With all due respect, miss,” he said, “they all say that. ’Scuse me, please.”

  He turned away and I walked blindly toward the emergency room doors. They closed behind me with the same hiss of finality I remembered from the night Quinn and I were here to see Hector. It seemed like a million years ago. This time the person behind the ER waiting room desk was taking orders from the police. I asked to see Mia and was politely but firmly turned down. Sam had no such problem.

  “She has the right to counsel,” he barked. “Let me back there immediately.”

  “I’ll give you a full report,” he said to me as the doors slid open. “Sit tight and don’t you talk to anybody, either.”

  Eli was the last to arrive. God, had he taken the time to shower, shave, and put on pressed khaki shorts and another embroidered Hilton Head shirt? I’d pulled on the first pair of jeans I found, a T-shirt with dull purple stains on it, no makeup, and scraped my hair into a ponytail.

  “Sam’s with her,” I told him. He exuded a powerfully sweet fruity scent. “Whoa. Did you take a bath in your cologne or maybe pour it on your head?”

  He fingered the sleeve of my T-shirt. “Unlike you, I decided not to show up in what I slept in. If you must know, I was pretty shook up after you called. Dropped the damn bottle and it broke all over the marble floor in the bathroom. We might have to regrout where the cologne left a stain. At least the house smells good.”

  “I don’t think there’s a dress code for when your sister might go to jail,” I said. “Eli, she was driving drunk and she killed a kid. The police told me she broadsided a Jeep Wrangler. The other passenger is in tough shape.”

  He walked me over to the familiar rows of molded plastic chairs. Fortunately the television was off. “Oh, God,” he said as we sat down. “That’s manslaughter. If she was drunk it might be voluntary manslaughter. I’m not sure, though. Jesus, Lucie. She will do jail time for this.”

  I swallowed hard. “Maybe she’ll get a suspended sentence.”

  “Not if she killed somebody. Especially if she plowed into the other car. No way to get around that.”

  “I wonder who the other family is. Or families.” My eyes watered and I swiped at them with the back of my hand. “How did it come to this?”

  “Yesterday was graduation at all the high schools,” Eli said. “One of my coworkers had a daughter who finished at Blue Ridge High. Took the day off. They were having a big party. Probably not the only ones. And hell, graduation night. I’m sure some of those kids weren’t drinking lemonade before they started tooling around in Daddy’s BMW…or the Jeep Wrangler.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. “Here. Use this. It’s gross when you use your hand.”

  I took it and wiped my eyes again. “She doesn’t remember getting behind the wheel.”

  “Great. She must have been really wasted.”

  “I don’t know. I talked to her. She was adamant that she didn’t do it.”

  “Well, who was driving the damn car, then? Elvis? Come on. Her car. She was found at the scene.” He held out both hands, palms up, and shrugged. “What’s not to understand here?”

  The door to the inner sanctum of the emergency room opened and we both spun around in our seats. Sam Constantine strode out, looking like he would dismember anyone who got in his way, then dine on their entrails.

  “This isn’t good,” Eli muttered. He stood up and put out his hand. “Sam. Thanks so much for coming. Sorry I missed you before you went in to see her. What’s the story?”

  Sam shook Eli’s hand. “The story,” he said, “is bad.” His eyes were the color of tombstones. He glanced at Eli. His nose twitched, but he said nothing.

  “How bad?” I asked.

  “Her car hit the Jeep. Graduation present for the eighteen-year-old driver, who had his high school diploma in his back pocket. The girlfriend’s seventeen. Looks like she’ll pull through. Sheriff’s on his way to visit the parents and tell ’em. Christ. I don’t envy him, knocking on those doors.” He ran a hand through his shaggy gray hair and looked up with anguished eyes. “Last thing Mia remembers is being at Abby Lang’s house. They were drinkin
g something that goes by the name of ‘Southern Smasher.’ Cognac, Red Bull, and peach schnapps. God help us all. The Lang kid’s boyfriend dumped her and she was feeling sorry for herself. Mia wanted to be a good friend so she kept Abby company. Doesn’t remember how many she put away. Said she passed out in the bedroom.”

  “How’d she get in her car?” Eli asked.

  “She hasn’t got a clue.”

  “Oh, God. Where was Hugo?” I asked.

  “The senator wasn’t home. Just the two girls. Housekeeper had the weekend off.” Sam shrugged. “Next thing she knows, she’s facedown on the ground next to her car. Lights and sirens everywhere. The other driver and the girlfriend were drinking, too, but she hit them, so it’s clearly her fault. It must have stopped raining by then, because they had the top down, the whole nine yards, so it was like she hit a dune buggy or a golf cart. The driver didn’t have a prayer.”

  I covered my mouth with my hands and clamped my lips shut, afraid I would scream.

  “What does Abby Lang say?” Eli asked.

  “That’s where I’m headed right now.” Sam sounded grim. “Assuming she’s in any shape to talk.”

  “What about Mia?” I asked. “Is she going to jail?”

  Sam looked at me with eyes that said he’d spent a lifetime talking to people like me after someone they loved had accidentally committed a felony and he was their salvation to make it go away.

  “Honey,” he said, “right now I’d say the odds are pretty good that she will. They’re gonna draw blood here at the hospital to see what her BAC is. They’ve agreed to defer her arrest until they get the toxicology report because she’s known in the community and I said she wasn’t a flight risk.”

  My throat was dry. “How long?”

  “Three to four weeks.”

  “Then what?” Eli asked.

  He sighed again. “If it’s above point-oh-eight, she’ll be charged with vehicular manslaughter because she was DUI. In that case she’ll do time. Below that level…” He shrugged. “We might get it knocked down to involuntary manslaughter. Suspended sentence and community service. Teach an alcohol awareness class in schools for a year, eighteen months. And go to AA.”