by Ellen Crosby
The phone in my pocket had dinged twice more as we were walking.
“Everything okay between you and Quinn?” Eli asked.
“Fine. Why?”
“You’ve been ignoring his texts. At least I’m assuming he’s texting you.”
“Nothing’s wrong. I left him at the grave site with the forensic anthropologist. They were going to cover it up after she took her bone samples so when Lolita arrives, it will be weather-tight and hopefully nothing will get damaged.”
He gave me a suspicious look. “If you say so.”
“I do. Yasmin Imrie, the anthropologist, found a cufflink with the initials CM on it. I did some checking. It’s possible CM was a distant cousin named Charles Montgomery and she was Susanna Montgomery, Hugh’s youngest daughter. I also found a letter about their engagement among Leland’s papers. Unfortunately Yasmin found evidence that the woman in the grave was probably bludgeoned to death. As for Susanna, there’s no record of her marriage or when she died. So it could be Susanna’s body we found.”
Eli didn’t speak for a few moments. Then he said, “That’s horrible. What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Charles killed her. Or someone else killed her and he buried her. Who knows?” I said. “Yasmin is sending her DNA to a lab and she swabbed me, so we’ll start by finding out if we’re related. Though I’d bet the farm she’s Susanna Montgomery.”
We had reached our vehicles. Eli walked me over to the ATV and I climbed into the driver’s seat.
“What are you going to do now?” he asked.
“Go back to the winery and get ready for Lolita. We’re picking Cab Franc on Saturday. Could you spare some time? We’re really shorthanded.”
“Sure. I can help out. Let me know if you find out anything more about that grave,” he said. “Or the body.”
My phone dinged one more time.
* * *
I WAITED UNTIL HE got into his car and drove off before checking my phone.
Leaving barrel room with Yasmin, heading over to the equipment barn.
She enjoyed the winery tour. He’d added a thumbs-up emoji.
Hey, are you okay?
Lucie???
There was a long break until his next-to-last text, which he’d just sent a moment ago.
We found a shovel. Yasmin says there’s a nick in the right place so it’s the one used to dig that grave.
Then one more text. Found a pickax, too.
I texted back. On my way.
I clicked off the phone and drove back to the winery. Somehow I had known the shovel with a nick in it would be there, that it was one of ours.
But like so many times in the past few days, I wished with all my heart that I hadn’t been right.
Fourteen
I found Quinn cleaning one of the stainless steel tanks when I arrived back at the barrel room. He turned off the hose when he saw me.
“I said it was okay for Yasmin to take the shovel and pickax to the site to confirm that they were the ones used to dig the grave,” he said, drying his hands on a towel. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”
“What was so urgent you had to go rushing off to see Eli?”
“He found an old stone house that neither of us knew was on our land. Eli thinks it was probably built in the eighteen hundreds, so I wonder if it could have been another Mosby hideout.”
“That couldn’t wait with everything else that’s going on?” Quinn sounded a bit irked. “I wish you’d been here when we found that shovel. And the pickax.”
“I know, but Eli thinks someone was in that house recently. Maybe last night.”
“Miguel?”
I nodded. “It would make sense. That helicopter was searching for him here last night.”
He looked stunned. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m not happy about it, but Eli and I agreed I’d call Bobby and let him know. Under the circumstances, I don’t think I have a choice.”
“Under the circumstances, I don’t think you do, either. By the way, I left the quilt and the bags with the clothing in them at the house. They’re in the library. I wasn’t sure where to put them.”
“Maybe I’ll drive back to the house and take a look at everything. I can call Bobby when I’m there. Then I thought I’d stop by the General Store and stock up on water, batteries, and a few other things in case we lose power when Lolita shows up. Hopefully Thelma hasn’t already been cleaned out by everyone else in town.”
“Let me know when you get back,” he said. “I’ll wait for you for lunch.”
I still needed to explain my absence while I met David Phelps at the Goose Creek Bridge. “I’m sorry. I promised Kit I’d meet her for lunch in town. I should have told you.”
“You don’t need my permission to have lunch with Kit.” He scrutinized me. “What’s going on, Lucie?”
“Nothing.”
“It doesn’t seem like nothing. Never mind. You’ll tell me when you want to.” He turned on his heel and walked back to the tank he’d been cleaning. When he turned the hose on again, the spray came on with full force, a violent hissing sound like an angry snake.
I left without saying a word. But just now I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about David, about Leland’s son with another woman and how hurt I felt after discovering that my father had betrayed my mother, Eli, Mia, and me. Plus I was still reeling from the possibility that Charles Montgomery, one of my cousins, might have murdered his fiancée. And gotten away with it.
I needed to get my complicated, bruised feelings about my family straightened out before Quinn and I got married. Quinn was hurt and mad that I shut him out and I knew it. How could I tell him that it was because I loved him? That I needed to make peace with my family’s complicated past once and for all.
It was the only way I knew to go forward.
* * *
I REACHED BOBBY NOLAND on his private number when I got back to Highland House a short time later. He sounded distracted, which was a sure sign he was driving, meaning he was focusing on the road, whatever incident he was headed to, and more or less what I was telling him. So I didn’t have his undivided attention.
He didn’t exactly have mine, either. I was in the library kneeling next to the coffee table, sliding each of the garments Quinn had brought back from the grave out of its protective paper bag so I could examine them more closely. If I had thought I would get any sense of the woman who’d worn these clothes nearly a century and a half ago, it didn’t take long to realize that they were now just pieces of fabric, tatters of what had once been a dress or an undergarment.
“I’ll send a cruiser by to check out that cottage,” Bobby was saying. “But like I told you yesterday, we just want to talk to Miguel. He’s a person of interest at the moment. Not a suspect.”
“So who do you consider a suspect?” I wasn’t going to get an answer fishing like that and I knew it.
“Someone with a motive.”
“Such as?”
“You tell me. I know Jean-Claude and Miguel had a beef, but I’ve got a list as long as your arm of women who had a relationship with him. That boy got around. Do you know anything about his lover-boy reputation?”
I sure did. I’d fallen for him nearly twenty years ago myself. So had Dominique. As for now, Nikki was the latest conquest that I knew about. And the rumors about Robyn. Did Bobby believe either of them had motives for murder?
“The de Merignacs and my family have known each other for years, Bobby. Generations. Jean-Claude has had a reputation as a playboy for as long as I can remember.”
“What about recently? Since he arrived at La Vigne Cellars?”
When I didn’t reply right away, he said, “Lucie?”
He expected an answer. An honest one.
“Apparently he was seeing Nikki Young,” I said. “You remember her, don’t you? She started working for us in June.”
“Sure, I do,” he said in a neutra
l voice, which meant he already knew about Nikki. “Anyone else?”
The paper bags were making a rustling sound that I was sure he could hear so I slipped the last of the items back in its place and sat down on the sofa.
“No one I have firsthand knowledge of.”
“But you do have secondhand knowledge of someone.” A statement, not a question.
“Not really.” I can’t lie. I never get away with it.
“So far I know of two women who talked to Jean-Claude the morning he was killed,” Bobby said in his best no-nonsense cop voice. “Nikki Young and your cousin.”
“Dominique?” I said, startled. “Are you sure?”
“I hope that was a rhetorical question,” he said. “Of course I’m sure. Dominique had a meeting with Robyn at the house first thing in the morning about some party for Toby. Apparently after that she drove down to the winery to have a talk with Jean-Claude over that article in the Trib. According to Robyn your cousin was pretty angry.”
I could hardly catch my breath. “Dominique wouldn’t kill Jean-Claude.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. She just wouldn’t.”
Her abortion happened nearly twenty years ago. If she hadn’t said anything to Jean-Claude in all these years, she wouldn’t bring it up now.
Would she?
I’d gone fishing and Bobby had unspooled enough baited line to hook me with that comment about Dominique. Now he was reeling me in and I wasn’t supposed to realize what was happening.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “What about Nikki?”
What about her? It was news to me that she’d gone to visit Jean-Claude the morning he was killed instead of driving out to Culpeper to visit the flower farm for ideas and prices for Antonio and Valeria’s wedding like she’d said she was going to do.
I hesitated. “I don’t know. She’s a sweet kid whose ambition is to make the world a better place. We’re just a temporary stop for her until she finds a real job. She carries moths and crickets outside and sets them free if she finds them in the villa because she can’t stand to kill one of God’s creatures. I don’t think she’d be capable of murdering a human being if she lets a centipede live.”
Bobby grunted and I wasn’t sure if it was assent or disagreement. “What about Miguel?”
“No. He’s innocent.”
Another question, casually tossed out. “Okay, what about Robyn Callahan?”
So he knew the rumors about Robyn sleeping with Jean-Claude when Toby was out of town. “I … no. Not her, either.”
“If you know anything, Lucie,” he said, in a way that let me know that I now had his undivided attention, “you need to tell me. Got that?”
“Yes. Got it.”
“Good. Thanks for the heads-up on Miguel. I’ll be talking to you.”
The phone went dead.
* * *
BEFORE I LEFT THE house I took a look at what remained of the quilt that had been wrapped around the skeleton. It had survived better than any of the clothing had, possibly because there were three layers: the beautiful lattice-weave top, the batting, and the back, which consisted of red-and-white-striped linen feed bags that had been taken apart and stitched together to form a single piece of fabric. Plus there was the elaborate quilting—tiny, even stitches that held the three layers together, the handiwork of a talented seamstress.
Maybe Robyn would know about this particular patchwork pattern, with its individual blocks forming a larger series of what must have been eye-catching geometric designs. Whoever made this quilt had had access to a lot of different fabrics. Beautiful, colorful fabrics. I slipped the quilt back into its paper bag and called Robyn’s mobile. The call went to voice mail so I tried the house and got Colette.
“I’ll let her know about your quilt, Lucie,” she said. “She’s pretty torn up about Jean-Claude’s death and she shut herself into her art studio by herself. Let me figure out when it’s a good time to tell her you called, okay? It might do her some good to focus on something else instead of what happened.”
I said thanks and wondered if Colette wasn’t hinting that there was more to Robyn’s grief over Jean-Claude’s death than just the shock of a murder and the loss of a valued employee whose family was longtime friends with Toby. Then I yelled good-bye to Persia, closed the door to the library, and drove over to the General Store.
* * *
IN SMALL-TOWN AMERICA—IN THE Main Street one traffic-light towns like Middleburg, or the blink-and-you’ve-missed-it villages like Atoka—there is always a meeting place, a hub where everyone gathers to find out what’s going on. It is the heartbeat, the nexus of news, the first place you want to be in good times and bad because the friends and neighbors you care about will be there, too. In Atoka, it was the General Store. Thelma Johnson, who owned the place for as long as I could remember, had her finger on our collective pulse, along with an uncanny ability to know what was going on in the community almost before it happened. If she didn’t know, she would sweet-talk—some would say “weasel”—the information she wanted from you before you realized what had happened. She called her special knowledge and prescience her “extraterrestrial psychotic sensibility” and not many people disagreed with her. Thelma, who was certain she could contact people like my mother and father who had passed over to “The Great Beyond” on her Ouija board, lived in a world bounded by otherworldly spirits and soap-opera television. It was an unusual place to inhabit.
Surprisingly there were no cars in any of the four spaces Thelma liked to refer to as “the parking lot” when I pulled up to the store ten minutes later. Maybe everyone else had already stocked up for Lolita. I got gas at one of the two pumps out front in case the power went out as it so often did during a hurricane and took the parking space next to the front door.
The sleigh bells that hung on the door handle jingled when I walked in. From the back room Thelma’s reedy voice called, “Coming. I’ll be right there as soon as Amber finishes telling Gianni she’s getting a divorce from Shay because she loves his identical twin brother.”
I looked at the clock on the wall. Nearly 11:30 A.M., which meant Tomorrow Ever After, her favorite soap opera, was ending for the day.
She walked out a moment later, wiping her kohl-lined eyes behind thick trifocals with a tissue. “Why, Lucille,” she said in a voice that wavered, “how nice of you to drop by. Forgive me, child. I’m just having a moment here.”
“Take your time, Thelma. I’ll get what I need. Don’t worry about me.”
She nodded and dabbed her eyes again.
Thelma liked to wear what I called her va-va-voom outfits—dresses that were always a little too short, too tight, and revealed too much of her ample bosom. If she’d been younger—say by about sixty or seventy years—she would have been sent to her room to change into something respectable before she was allowed out of the house. Her age was a more closely guarded secret than the nuclear codes: if anyone dared hint at it, she always patted her bright orange hair, wiggled her hips, and said with a Mae West vamp, “Oh, you’d be surprised, honey. Believe it or not, I’m not as young as I look.”
Today she reminded me of an aging canary, in a vivid yellow knit dress, a bright yellow-and-orange scarf she’d wound around her neck, and stiletto sling-backs with pompoms on them that looked like two smashed egg yolks.
I got one of her small grocery carts and filled it with gallon jugs of water, packages of different sized batteries, fuel for the camping stove, and a small plastic tarp to put over a window well so it wouldn’t fill up with rainwater. Thelma was composed and back to her usual self by the time I pushed my cart to the counter where she stood at the cash register, although her mascara and eyeliner had smudged, making her look like an elderly raccoon. The Washington Tribune lay in front of her folded so the dashing bon vivant picture of Jean-Claude de Merignac stared up at me. I wanted to either cover it with my hand or turn it over.
“I heard tell you’re the one who found Jean-Claude, L
ucille.” Thelma tapped a bony finger on the photograph. “Who would do such a thing? He was always so sweet to me every time he was in here, I can tell you. And that sexy French accent. Just made my heart go pitter-patter to hear him ask if I had any ‘cross-ants’ left in the bakery case, so I always tried to keep one by in case he came in. Plus he was so good-looking, a regular Greek Adidas, don’t you think?”
“Uh … yes.” It could be hard to follow the thread of Thelma’s conversation at times.
“So it’s true? You did find him.” She perked up, leaning her chin on a propped hand, her eyes fixed on me. Today even her nail polish was yellow. “Tell me everything, Lucille. Every detail. That poor, poor man. I just want to weep.” She got out the bunched-up tissue from where it had been tucked under her sleeve.
“There’s nothing more to say besides what you read in the Trib,” I said in my blandest voice. “He was dead when I got there. I called nine-one-one, of course, but it was too late. That’s everything.”
She shot me a look that said she wasn’t done cross-examining the witness yet.
“I know they’re looking for that Hispanic boy,” she said. “The one who works over to La Vigne. But my money’s on a woman. Could have been a lover’s quarrel or maybe a jilted lover.”
Her logic seemed to mirror Bobby’s investigation, but I was surprised to hear Thelma sound so certain a woman had murdered Jean-Claude. He had been strong and fit after so many years of physical labor working in a vineyard. Whoever plunged those secateurs into him had been quick and must have caught him unaware. He or she had been quite strong as well.
“Who do you think did it?” I asked.
“Why, that was what I was going to ask you.”
I shrugged. “No idea. Honest.”
“Really?” she said. “Although I can’t say I’m surprised or even that I blame you. It’s hard not to have blinders on, especially when it involves family, and you feeling all protective of her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why, your cousin,” she said. “Dominique. I heard from one of the Romeos who heard from someone having dinner at the Red Fox Inn last night that she was over to La Vigne yesterday morning right before Jean-Claude was killed. And her throwing him out of her restaurant a few days before that after some big brouhaha. She had to be mad enough to want to do something about that story ending up in the newspaper.”
