by Ellen Crosby
“Don’t worry too much about your mom,” I told her. “She’s tough. She’ll do fine.”
“Thanks.” She gave me a guilty look. “Actually, I didn’t just happen to drop by.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised. You want to know about that skull Antonio and Jesús unearthed for a story for the Trib.”
“Bobby said it’s so old there’s no crime involved anymore. But once you find out something I’d absolutely like to know who it was. It is newsworthy.”
“If it’s not the skull, then … what?”
She pulled the bowl of trail mix onto her lap and helped herself to another handful. “I found this out late this afternoon. I wanted to give you a head’s up.”
I sat up as something zinged down my spine. Kit had started picking out the peanuts in the trail mix so she wasn’t looking at me.
“About what?”
She quit her halfhearted search and looked up. “You can’t say a word about where you heard this, okay?”
She waited until I said okay and crossed my heart with my finger like we used to do as kids. “One of our reporters happened to be at the Goose Creek Inn the other night having dinner. He was sitting at a table next to Jean-Claude de Merignac who was there with a friend. A woman. Apparently totally, utterly gorgeous. No idea who she was.”
I already knew I didn’t like where this was going. “And?”
“Well, it seems Jean-Claude complained so much about his meal that his waiter finally called in the big guns and Dominique showed up. The waiter hadn’t realized who his guests were and when Dominique saw Jean-Claude, things got ugly.”
Oh, brother. Dominique had managed to avoid Jean-Claude as much as possible ever since he moved to Atoka. For all I knew this might have been the first time they’d seen each other in years, after the stormy end to their relationship in France.
“Ugly?”
She sighed and nodded. “They had a pretty sharp exchange of words until your cousin finally told him dinner was on the house, but he had to leave right then and there and never return again.”
I set my glass on the table and gave her a dismayed look. “You’ve got to be kidding. Dominique would never, ever do something like that … throw someone out.”
Kit wagged an admonishing finger at me. “Oh, but she did. Our reporter wrote the whole conversation down without either of them realizing it. It’s, um, going to be in ‘Around Town’ tomorrow … I’m sorry, Luce. I thought I should at least let you know what’s coming. Jean-Claude and his friend, uh, were drinking a bottle of your Cabernet Sauvignon.”
“Around Town” was a column in the Lifestyle section in which Tribune reporters and other reliable sources of gossip reported on sightings of Hollywood actors and actresses who were in town, celebrity weddings, big-ticket charity events, and anything else that happened in the metro Washington region that might be of interest to readers. Truth be told, I read it all the time.
“He trashed my wine, too?”
“I think the only thing he didn’t dislike was the silverware and the china. Maybe the carpet.”
“What about Dominique? Are you going to tell her about this?”
“The web version of the story goes online this evening,” she said. “I, uh, thought maybe you could let her know.”
“Me?”
“She’s your cousin.”
“It’s your story,” I said. “She’ll go nuclear. She and Jean-Claude do not get along.”
“That was obvious.”
Kit finished the last of the trail mix and set the bowl on the table. I was certain she had no idea she’d eaten all of it herself.
The other day when Dominique and I were discussing the catering for Antonio and Valeria’s wedding, Dominique had mentioned that Robyn Callahan had also hired her to cater a surprise birthday party she planned to throw for Toby. Robyn had met Dominique at the Inn to discuss the menu and do a sample tasting, but Dominique had also dropped by Toby and Robyn’s home a few times when Robyn was sure Toby wouldn’t be around.
A few hours ago Jean-Claude insisted someone was trying to kill him and sabotage La Vigne Cellars. And now Kit told me about a nasty public feud between my cousin and Jean-Claude de Merignac. Dominique certainly had a motive to want Jean-Claude to leave Atoka. And since she’d been over at Toby and Robyn’s house, she’d also had the opportunity to do something about it. Plus she’d helped out at our family’s vineyard in France and mine in Virginia, which gave her the means to pull off any of the incidents Jean-Claude had described to me. But my sweet, wonderful cousin would never act on her anger, never go so far as to resort to violence, never consider murder as an option for getting rid of Jean-Claude. She wasn’t capable of killing someone and I was foolish for even letting the thought flit through my mind.
Wasn’t I?
Six
When Kit and I walked back into the tasting room after finishing our drinks on the terrace, a man wearing a straw boater had let himself in and was standing at the bar with his back to us, apparently absorbed in something he was writing.
“I’m sorry, sir, we’re closed for the day,” I said.
“Lucie, my dear.” Winston Churchill Turnbull turned around and removed his hat. “My apologies, I didn’t realize you were closed. The front door was open so I just walked in. I was returning from a meeting with my forensic anthropologist friend at the Smithsonian. I figured I’d make a detour through Middleburg and take the back road home to Purcellville so I could pass on some news in person.”
Win Turnbull looked like the kind of man who didn’t text or tweet or even leave messages on answering machines. He seemed old-fashioned, a doctor who would still make house calls to care for his patients and preferred to be speaking directly to you when he had something to say. Particularly if it was bad news.
“Dr. Turnbull,” I said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you. Thanks for coming by.”
“Please. It’s Win.”
Kit spoke up. “Dr. Winston Turnbull? You’re the new medical examiner. It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Kit Noland. Bobby Noland is my husband. He has only wonderful things to say about you.”
Win gave her a warm smile. “It’s nice to meet you, too. Bobby is a good man, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. We’ve spent some time talking about our experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq. I admire your husband tremendously. Our country could use more men like him. It would be a better place.”
Bobby never talked about Afghanistan but it didn’t surprise me that, of all people, Win Turnbull would be the one who would manage to draw him out, coax him to talk about horrors he wouldn’t share with anyone he knew, not even his wife. Help him purge his demons, if that was even possible.
Win had clearly caught Kit off-guard. Her voice wavered. “Thank you. That means a lot.”
“It’s the truth.” Win smiled at her and walked over to hand me the note he’d been writing. “Why don’t I just leave this with you, Lucie? It’s some information about what we’ve been discussing. Feel free to call me when you have a moment.”
“This is about the skull,” Kit said to me under her breath. “Isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Kit’s a good friend, Win. Whatever information you have you can discuss it with her here.”
“I see,” he said. To Kit, he added, “I understand you’re a reporter.”
Translation: I’m not divulging anything in front of you.
Kit corrected him. “Actually I’m the Loudoun bureau chief for the Washington Tribune. I also never burn a source, never use something that’s said in confidence or off the record. I wouldn’t be in the business long if I did. But if you’d rather talk to Lucie alone, I completely understand.”
Win caught my eye and I nodded. “If Lucie trusts you, that’s good enough for me,” he said. “Unfortunately I’ve got some bad news, but I’ve got good news, too.”
Bobby had said the exact same thing to me this morning. This time I wanted to hear the bad news first and get it out of t
he way. Hopefully it would make the good news seem so much better.
“In that case,” I said, “would you care for a glass of wine before you tell us all about it?”
“Thank you, but no. I’m afraid it would go right to my head and I need to drive home. But I wouldn’t mind a glass of water, if it’s not too much trouble.”
I went behind the bar and got a bottle of water from the refrigerator and a glass. “More wine, Kit?”
She held up a hand. “I’m good. I need to drive, too.”
The two of them sat on bar stools and faced me. I leaned forward with my elbows on the bar and said, “What’s the bad news?”
“My friend—the one I met in Iraq who works at the Smithsonian—is busy working with the FBI on one of their cases. So he’s not available to help you right now.” He sipped his water. “However, I did find someone else who’s willing to come out here and excavate your remains. I don’t know her personally, but my friend says she comes highly recommended.”
“That’s good,” I said, heartened. So far the bad news didn’t sound as bad as Win had made it out to be.
“Who is she?” Kit asked.
“Her name is Yasmin Imrie,” he said. “She’s also a forensic anthropologist like my friend. His expertise is the medieval period; her specialty is more modern—colonial America, specifically colonial Virginia. In fact, she’s working on the Colchester dig right now, so she’s nearby. She’s also worked at Jamestown.”
Someone who knew Virginia and its early tumultuous history—many of the Founding Fathers were Virginians—seemed to me to be a better fit for this project than a medieval expert.
“What,” I said, “is the Colchester dig?”
He grinned. “I didn’t know anything about it, either, until this afternoon. Apparently Colchester was a colonial port town—a deepwater port, in fact—on the Occoquan River. It was located on what today is land that belongs to Fairfax County.”
The Occoquan was a tributary of the Potomac River that lay south of us. It was only about twenty-five miles long and for years people referred to it as Occoquan Creek until it finally got upgraded to being called a river. Growing up, Kit and I had gone canoeing on it with friends during high school summer vacations. I had memories of lazy afternoons drifting on the river, our inevitable sunburns, and sneaking an occasional illicit beer.
Kit met my eyes and I knew she was remembering those days, too. “The Occoquan isn’t a deepwater river,” she said to Win.
“It was in the seventeen hundreds,” he said. “Until it started silting in. Colchester used to be a tobacco town that competed with Alexandria, it was that important. But in the early eighteen hundreds a fire destroyed almost all of it. The town was never rebuilt and today you’d never know there used to be homes, shops, a tavern—even a vineyard—on that land.”
“A vineyard?” I asked.
Win nodded. “That’s what I was told. Now it’s the site of an historic excavation. Yasmin runs the dig and I understand she really knows Virginia history. I have no idea how old that skull out by your cemetery is, but if Yasmin doesn’t have answers for you she’ll know someone who does.”
“I really appreciate this,” I said. “Do you think the skull dates back to the colonial era?”
He gave me a reluctant smile. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I couldn’t say. Don’t worry, my dear, Yasmin will be able to tell you a lot more.”
“Of course.”
“You seem quite concerned about this woman, Lucie,” he said. “You do realize she’s someone you couldn’t possibly have known, nor anyone from your parents’ generation, either, for that matter. I will tell you this: she has been in that grave for quite a while.”
“What’s bugging you, Luce?” Kit asked. “Is it that you think she might be related to your family?”
“I think the odds are good that she is,” I said. “I wish I understood why we found her more or less right next to the cemetery. If she were buried before the cemetery was there, meaning she died in the seventeen hundreds, it would be … less upsetting, I guess.”
“And if she was buried afterward?” Kit said.
“Then it’s like some sort of punishment. As if she were banished from being with the rest of the family because of something she did. Something … wrong. I don’t know … illegal.”
Kit’s eyes widened, but Win extended his hands, palms down, and patted the air, as if he were trying to slow the gathering momentum of my runaway thoughts before they rocketed out of the gate.
“I know it’s difficult,” he said, “but I don’t think you ought to jump to conclusions like that until we know more.”
Win was right. But deep down I was almost certain the anonymous young woman was related to me. Whether she’d done something she deserved to be punished for or not, her story was part of my story.
And any day now, I’d be getting results, learning more about who my ancestors were from the Genome Project. After what had happened yesterday I wasn’t sure whether I was dreading it … or looking forward to what I was about to find out.
* * *
QUINN WAS WAITING AT home when I got there twenty minutes later after Win and Kit had left and I finished locking up.
“Toby Levine just called,” he said. “We’re invited for cocktails at six-thirty. I hope you don’t mind, but I accepted. Afterward I thought we could have dinner at the Inn. I made a reservation for seven forty-five. Eli’s joining us. Sasha is in Charlottesville with Zach, visiting her mother. Persia’s going to take care of Hope and the two of them—Eli and Hope—plan to spend the night here.”
Today my head was so filled with everything that had happened I probably couldn’t have boiled an egg without screwing it up. Dinner at the Inn sounded great. And it would be nice to have my sweet niece home again. We could deliberate whether Barbie should wear the glittery princess ball gown or the scuba-diving outfit for the day and rearrange the furniture in Barbie’s bubblegum-pink house yet again. Things that mattered when you were four and a half.
I kissed Quinn. “Why would I mind having a drink with Toby and Robyn?”
He put his arms around me and pulled me to him. “You didn’t get much sleep last night. I know you’re still preoccupied about that skull since you went by this afternoon to check on it. I wasn’t sure how tired you’d be when you got home.”
“I’m okay,” I said, wishing I had told him up-front that the real reason I went to the cemetery was to meet Jean-Claude.
If I told Quinn the truth now he’d wonder why I’d lied, or as Frankie, a devout Catholic would call it, committed a “sin of omission.” Maybe he’d figure it had something to do with that long-ago crush on Jean-Claude because I still wasn’t over him. And what if I told him about my bruising argument with Jean-Claude over whether someone was out to kill him, as well as his parting shot about Quinn’s—and my—competence as winemakers? Jean-Claude had warned me to keep my mouth shut or he’d destroy my vineyard. I had no doubt he’d do it.
Quinn brushed a lock of hair off my forehead and looked down into my eyes. I saw concern in his, but a shadow of something else, too. Doubt? Curiosity? He was always so good about waiting me out, giving me time to tell him whatever I’d been holding back, which was what he was doing now.
Trust.
I didn’t ever want to destroy that, to give him any reason to believe he couldn’t trust me. And I always wanted to be able to trust him.
“You don’t look okay,” he said. “Is anything else wrong?”
“Kit came by for a drink after visiting Faith, and Win Turnbull stopped in with the name of a forensic anthropologist who will take a look at the skull,” I said. “That’s why I’m late. Give me a few minutes to change and freshen up, okay?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be watching the news in the parlor. Find out what that bad girl Lolita’s up to now.”
I changed into a long sundress and found a pashmina shawl. After I ran a brush through my hair and put on pink lip gloss, I sta
red at myself in the bathroom mirror. Before I told Quinn anything I needed more information about Jean-Claude’s accusations. Tonight over cocktails with Toby and Robyn I could discreetly ask about the mishaps taking place at the vineyard, Jean-Claude’s so-called nonaccident-accidents.
Maybe learn what was really going on at La Vigne Cellars.
* * *
THERE WAS ALMOST NOTHING Toby and Robyn hadn’t changed about the nineteenth-century Georgian house they moved into except its name: Wicklow. Mick Dunne, the previous owner, had hired a decorator whose only requirement had been to remain true to the bones and history of the house, and Mick had spared no expense for historically correct details and fine English and American antiques. The walls had been painted in dark, saturated colors and the art that hung on them looked as if he had raided the Constable and Turner rooms at the National Gallery of Art, along with paintings of fox hunting, hounds, horses, and portraits of his English ancestors in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century finery. Many of them posing with horses and hounds. The house, when Mick lived there, always reminded me of a museum.
Toby and Robyn collected modern art and sculpture; Robyn was a painter whose works paid homage to the early-twentieth-century American modernist movement, but she was also branching out into mixed media, especially textiles, and more avant-garde work. The walls of every room in their home had been painted white, the better to display their impressive collection, which contained originals by Picasso, Matisse, Stuart Davis, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Yayoi Kusama. They also collected art by new up-and-coming artists, especially Rosemarie Forsythe, a local artist who created stunning jewel-like botanicals and intricate geometric paintings incorporating mathematical and scientific formulas. It was as if someone had thrown open all the windows at Wicklow and let in sunshine and fresh air.
Toby himself opened the door when Quinn and I rang the doorbell just after six-thirty. He wore a severely starched blue-and-white pinstriped shirt, navy Dockers, and slip-on boat shoes without socks. A pair of reading glasses hung on a bright red braided cord around his neck. He was short and fit looking, except for a small paunch that hung over his belt. His snow-white hair was thinning and his craggy, lined face showed the consequences of years of sun- and windburn. His most striking feature was his eyes, a piercing electric blue so intense that I occasionally wondered if they could bore right through my skull and read my thoughts.
