The Merlot Murders wcm-1

by Ellen Crosby

  “I’ll take it for you,” he said, closing the refrigerator a second time. His voice sounded gentler than it had a moment ago. “I’ve got to meet someone in Bluemont so I’ll drop it off for you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “The money,” he said. “The sooner the better. You take care of that.”

  I left.

  Dominique was right. It was all about money.

  I drove to Middleburg, with no idea what to say to Seth. I parked in front of the ice cream parlor on Washington Street and walked the two blocks to Jay Street. Middleburg got its name as the midway point on an old stagecoach trading road that connected Alexandria and Winchester. George Washington’s cousin sold the land for the town to Leven Powell, a Revolutionary War officer who laid out the streets in a neat grid pattern and named them for friends who were signers of the Constitution. If Powell came back for a visit today, he’d still know the place, except for the lone traffic light at the intersection of Washington and Madison.

  I turned onto Jay Street. Mac Macdonald, who owned Macdonald’s Fine Antiques on the corner of Jay and Washington, stood over a window box deadheading petunias. Mac was one of the Romeos, tall and skeletally thin, dressed characteristically in a bone-colored linen suit, pale blue silk tie, and matching pocket handkerchief. Leland said once that Mac’s idea of casual dress meant he took off his tie clip. He was more stooped than he’d been two years ago and his white hair was a thinner monk’s tonsure. He’d been at the funeral yesterday but we’d only spoken briefly.

  He bussed me on the cheek. His cologne, something pleasantly old-fashioned, smelled like limes. “I heard the news,” he said. “You must be pleased.”

  “You mean, about Fitz?” I asked stunned.

  “Good Lord, of course not! I meant that the house passes to you.”

  “Oh. So you’ve been talking to Mason?”

  “Actually, I went ’round the general store this morning.”

  He heard it from Thelma. If that woman had her ear any closer to the ground, she’d spit dirt when she talked. If she knew, the whole town knew.

  “Eli says you’re going to sell the place.”

  “He’s been saying that.” I kept my face expressionless, but I’m not a good liar. If Mac found out the truth, it was a sure bet the news would boomerang right back to Thelma.

  “Lucie honey, let me be frank. I know we just buried Lee but I’d like to buy the contents of your parents’ estate. I’ll give you a good price, too.”

  I stared at Mac, not sure if I’d heard right. “You want to buy our furniture?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Furniture, books, jewelry, the lot. I sold your mother some of her…better…pieces of furniture before you were born, so I know what they’re worth. She did, too. She had a good eye for what was dross and what was the real thing. You have some very fine, very valuable items, my dear, including some interesting French pieces. They could fetch a nice sum for you.” He folded his arms and rocked back and forth on his heels, studying me. His eyes were sparrow-bright and twinkling.

  I said, truthfully, “I don’t know what to say, Mac.”

  He stopped rocking. “I could come ’round this afternoon and we could talk, Lucie.”

  The answer to my prayers.

  But to hand everything over to Mac? Just like that?

  I’d read once that an original handwritten version of one of George Washington’s undelivered speeches was found under a sofa in a cottage in some little hamlet in the middle of England. Later it had sold at an auction for a small fortune. Not that it was likely we had something lying around with that kind of provenance, but who knew? Leland, with his squirrely habits, my mother’s missing diaries, and the lost diamond necklace…it seemed a bit dangerous to let Mac back his moving truck up to the front door and cart everything off lock, stock, and barrel.

  “Mac,” I said, “what if I sold you a few pieces now and we could talk about the rest later on?”

  The eye-twinkling stopped. “Now, honey, if you’re going to make me buy it piecemeal, I can’t make you as good a deal as I can on the whole shebang. You got a few things there that ought to go straight to the dump. If I take them for you, it’ll save you hauling fees and a lot of fuss and bother.” He smiled benevolently, showing a lot of teeth, but there was something vaguely Big Bad Wolf about that smile.

  “I guess I’ll have to take my chances,” I said, “but I am interested in selling a few things right now.”

  He did some lightning quick calculating. “Let’s see. I’ll take the tall case clock and the Duncan Phyfe rolltop desk in the parlor. Also the two Hepplewhite chairs and the Federal mirror in the upstairs hall.”

  I closed my eyes. He’d certainly cherry-picked the finest items, especially the clock. The house would be tomblike without ever hearing its gentle, comforting chime again.

  “How much?” My voice wavered.

  “Five thousand.”

  “No,” I said. “They’re worth far more than that.”

  He sighed noisily, to let me know he was not pleased at having to dicker. “Six thousand.”

  “Ten.”

  “Ten thousand? Good Lord, child! Absolutely not. Seventy five hundred.”

  “Ninety-five hundred.”

  “I’ll give you nine thousand, but it’s robbery. I won’t make any money at that price.” He sounded definite and a bit peeved. “I’m only doing this for your parents.”

  Mac was a good soul, but he was the kind of person who’d peel postage stamps off letters if they hadn’t been canceled and reuse them. He wasn’t going to lose money on this deal, in spite of the Sarah Bernhardt speech.

  “I appreciate that.”

  He harrumphed again. “Why don’t I stop by your house this afternoon and pick them up? Randy’s going to be here from the Georgetown gallery, so I’ll have the truck.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that he wanted to move so quickly, but I was. Probably best to get it over with. “Sure. Fine. I’ve got to be over at the winery so maybe we could take care of the money right now. Then you could stop by any time you want. The door’s unlocked.”

  Mac’s face softened. “I haven’t got nine thousand in cash, Lucie honey. I can give you a thousand, though, and the rest in a check. Will that fix you?”

  I nodded.

  I wandered around his gallery and stayed generally away from the mahogany partners’ desk he used for his paperwork, while he scratched out a check and fetched the money. He put an arm around my shoulders and walked me to the door. “Call me when you’re ready to talk.”

  “Okay.” He handed me an envelope, which I shoved into my purse. “Thanks, Mac.”

  He kissed me again and this time it was gentle. “Thank you. And, by the way.”

  “Yes?”

  “Randy will take your things directly to Georgetown. You won’t be seeing them here.”

  I bit my lip and nodded. The silvery bell on his door tinkled merrily as it closed.

  Enough money to solve all the immediate problems.

  I was no longer broke, but I sure felt poor.

  * * *

  Kit was sitting on the battleship-gray wooden swing on the deli’s front porch when I got there. Today she wore a shocking pink sleeveless shirtdress with a gold belt, gold stiletto mules, and more troweled-on makeup. She held up a white paper bag and waved it at me. “You’re late. I ordered. A Reuben with the works for me and a vegetarian on a croissant for you. I also got us each an iced tea, even though what I could really use is a drink.”

  “Me, too.”

  She squinted at me. “You look like something they forgot to shoot. We don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. We could go some place more private.”

  “Too late for that,” I said. “Thelma must have had the bullhorn out this morning.”

  “I, er, heard about you and Eli throwing dice for the house. Wish I’d been there to see his face when he lost.” She grinned. “Congratulations.”

  “Who
told you?”

  She jerked her thumb toward the door to the deli. “Hazel did, when she was making our sandwiches. She gave me your dill pickle since she remembered you hate them.”

  I sat down in the swing next to her and leaned my cane against the porch railing. She handed over my sandwich and the tea and for a split second, time rewound and we were a couple of kids whose feet didn’t touch the ground yet, sitting here exactly like this, doing exactly what we were doing right now. For a flash of a moment I saw us as we had been, filtered through the refracted light that made the grass greener and the skies bluer. A time when life was simple and our problems inconsequential.

  If education is what’s left after you’ve forgotten everything you’ve learned, then memories—especially the good ones—are, as someone once said, a second chance at happiness. The swing creaked as it always did and the street noises of Middleburg faded to a peaceful thrumming of blurred summer sounds. We ate in silence.

  “I stopped by the inn,” Kit said after a while, “looking for your cousin.”

  “She’s over at the Ruins trying to organize this dinner we’re having tonight.”

  “The pig roast? You’re going to go through with that?”

  I bit into my croissant and nodded.

  “She didn’t waste any time.” Kit stuck a straw in her iced tea and sucked on it. “Fitz isn’t even dead twenty-four hours.” She looked sideways at me. “You know Dominique’s got a motive, Luce.”

  Had Kit already found out about the money? I said neutrally, “What makes you say that?”

  “They had a huge argument the day before he died. She threatened to kill him.” She drank more tea and fiddled with her straw. “I was at the inn having lunch when it happened. On my way to the ladies’ room.”

  “They were arguing right there in the lobby?”

  “More like in his office.”

  “His office is nowhere near the ladies’ room.”

  “So sue me. I took a little stroll to walk off a piece of cheesecake.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. You snooped!”

  “I guess that means you don’t want me to tell you what she said.” She glanced sideways again when I was silent and grinned. “I knew you’d want to know. She wants to take over running the inn by herself and he told her no way.”

  “I already heard that from Eli.”

  “Yeah, but did Eli tell you that she said Fitz couldn’t stop her?”

  “She threatened him?”

  “It sounded like it to me. Too bad I never made it past French 1. She didn’t count to ten or say anything about colors or the days of the week. What does ‘John ate Mark’ mean?”

  “John ate…oh, Lord. J’en ai marre. It means ‘I’m sick of it.’”

  “Well, she said that a few dozen times.” She lowered her voice. “Then he said something about having her green card yanked for what she’d done.” She narrowed her eyes, which with all the mascara she was wearing made it look like her eyelids had temporarily fused together. “The next thing you know he’s dead.”

  “Dominique did not kill Fitz,” I said. “Whatever it sounded like. Besides, you heard Bobby. We were robbed. Fitz surprised that guy Zeus, or whoever it was, in the middle of taking the payroll money out of the safe in Quinn’s lab.”

  “The cases of wine Fitz was supposed to pick up that night were in the villa,” Kit said. “What was he doing in the barrel room?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he saw a light or the door propped open and went to check it out.”

  “Maybe.” She stood and collected our sandwich wrappers and iced tea cups. “You want dessert? I saw a few pieces of Hazel’s homemade peach pie when I got our sandwiches. The peaches are from her orchard.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “A latte? With a shot of hazelnut or chocolate syrup in it?”

  “Just coffee.” I reached for my cane and started to stand up. “Black.”

  “Sit there. I got this.” She opened the screen door to the deli. “Well, it was just a theory. That robbery sounds too pat to me.”

  The door banged shut. I leaned my head against the swing and pushed off the floor with my good foot. So maybe Fitz did know about the seventy-five thousand dollars. Dominique hadn’t actually told me what the argument had been about.

  Kit returned holding a tray with some whipped cream concoction in a soup-bowl-sized mug, my coffee, and a large slice of peach pie. “I brought two forks,” she said.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “I can’t finish this myself.” She dug her fork into the pie. “What are you going to do after you sell the vineyard? Go back to France?”

  “We’re not selling.”

  She said through a mouthful of peaches and crust, “Eli change his mind?”

  “Nope. But now that I own the house, I have two votes in the company and I vote not to sell.”

  “What did Mr. Control-Freak say when you told him?”

  “We didn’t exactly have that talk yet,” I said. “But what can he say?”

  “Jesus, Luce. Plenty. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you tell him. Eli doesn’t lose an argument. You know that.” She picked up her mug and stirred the slurry mixture of chocolate, whipped cream, and coffee. “So who’s going to run the place?”

  “I am. And Quinn. And Hector.”

  “Quinn,” she said. “Somebody ought to send that man to charm school. He’s a bit tough to take. I never understood how Leland could have thought he would replace Jacques.”

  “Eli said he was the low bidder for the job.”

  “I believe it.” She paused. “Are you sure you’re capable of taking on something like that? I mean, it’s a hell of a job for a normal person and…” She broke off. “Oh God, I wish I hadn’t said that. I’m really sorry.”

  “That last summer before the accident,” I said, “before I was supposed to go to law school, I spent every day helping Jacques in the fields and in the winery. Remember?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “I’m not a neophyte. I’ve helped with harvest since I was old enough to hold a pair of pruning shears. I know what I’m doing. Give me a little credit, Kit. Eli’s got a career and Mia’s not interested in the winery. I am. I love it here. Why shouldn’t I run my family’s vineyard?”

  “What happened to law school? And saving the planet? You could probably get your old job back or work for some other environmental group. You were good at that.” She set the plate of peach pie in my lap and handed me the clean fork. “Finish this. You’ve gotten so skinny you’ll blow away in the next strong wind.”

  “I want to continue what my mother started.” I picked up the fork. “After the time I spent in France, I understand even more why it was important to her.”

  “Because the French drink a lot of wine?”

  “Because the French know how to live.” I chewed on a fresh peach from Hazel’s orchard and closed my eyes. “I mean, in France everyone slows down to…enjoy life. It’s hard to explain. But taking time over a meal, shopping for the ingredients, preparing the food, choosing the wine…and then lingering to talk after it’s finished. Or even sitting in a café with a coffee or a glass of wine. People enjoy that. Here they think you’re loony. Or lazy. Everyone’s in such a rush to grab something at some fast food place and keep on going like life’s a big race and the first one to get to the finish line wins. In France you want to enjoy the journey.” I opened my eyes and glanced at Kit. “You think I’m strange, don’t you?”

  She scraped the last of the whipped cream from her mug and licked the spoon. “I think you’ve changed.”

  I drank my coffee as a monarch butterfly landed on the railing close by. “I like the fact that wine is somehow connected to so many pleasurable things in life. It’s got romance, history, mystery…what more could you ask?” The butterfly disappeared gracefully into the bushes below. “I like the fact that archaeologists found wine jugs in the tombs of the pharaohs and that Noah is supposed to have owned the first
vineyard.”

  “That sounds more like the old you. An impossible romantic.” She stood up and brushed crumbs off her dress. “Well, okay. Count on me for moral support. You’re gonna need it if you take on your brother. He’ll do anything to please the Queen Bee and I’m sure she’s the reason he’s so hot to sell the place. She wants him to build her Buckingham Palace.”

  “I heard.”

  She walked me to the Volvo and waited while I got in and rolled down the window. “Hey,” she said, “with all that talk about lingering over a glass of wine, how about meeting for a drink down at the Goose Creek Bridge like the old days? I’ll even bring the hooch.”

  “I’ll come, but I’m bringing the wine. The stuff you used to bring either tasted like motor oil or grape soda pop.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Be a wine snob. See you.”

  Some of the haze had evaporated for the first time since I’d come home and I could see the faint outline of the Blue Ridge as I drove back to Atoka. There were no glacier white peaks that awed like the Alps did, just a lovely blue line of gently folding hills older than time.

  George III had once declared them the easternmost boundary of colonial settlement, since they were a naturally prohibitive barrier. What lay beyond them seemed uncertain and possibly dangerous.

  Just like my future.

  Chapter 10

  When I arrived at Mosby’s Ruins, Quinn Santori was helping Dominique set up for the dinner, along with Hector and the rest of the crew. The cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was gone, but a few people were fiddling with scenery and lights and the air was heavy with the fragrant smoky scent of spit-roasted pig.

  Quinn took the cash Mac had given me and stuffed it in his pocket without a word. It was hard to tell if he was surprised that I actually showed up with it, since he immediately turned his attention to two sweat-drenched Mexicans who were stoking the coals in the charcoal pit underneath the gently hissing, sizzling pig.

  I joined Dominique, who was setting up buffet tables and covering another in aluminum foil to be used later as a carving station for the meat.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said. We started laying ropes of ivy down the middle of the row of linen-covered picnic tables, twining them around the bases of the hurricane lamps she’d placed every few feet. “Did Fitz know about the problem with the equipment you ordered?”