by Ellen Crosby
“Can I get you a beer? A glass of wine?” I asked after the others were gone.
Bobby shook his head. “I’m still on duty. What’s up, Lucie?”
“Dominique didn’t kill Jean-Claude.”
“Lucie—”
“She didn’t, Bobby.”
He gave me a pointed look. “She and Jean-Claude have a long history together going back to when she was still living in France. Baron de Merignac filled me in this evening.”
I froze. Had Armand de Merignac known about Dominique’s abortion—had he found out, maybe through an indiscreet employee at the clinic she’d gone to? If he knew, he might have told Bobby, especially if Bobby pressed him for information on anyone who held a grudge against Jean-Claude. Plus there was the Trib story that appeared yesterday, the morning Jean-Claude was murdered, which only reinforced the enmity between him and my cousin.
“You heard Miguel,” Bobby went on. “Jean-Claude had a shouting match with a woman and the two of them were speaking French.”
“Dominique’s not the only woman around here who speaks fluent French.”
“That’s right,” he said in an even voice. “You do, as well. So were you the one arguing with him?”
Was he serious? Me? “No. Jesus, Bobby. No, of course not.”
“Don’t worry, your alibi checks out. Unfortunately, Dominique’s does not,” he said. “And before we get into this any further—since it is an ongoing murder investigation and I’ve already said enough—I’m going to see myself out. Good night, Lucie.”
He started walking toward the front door.
“Bobby, Nikki Young was with Jean-Claude that morning as well. She told me they argued and he threw her out of his office. Literally.”
He spun around. “I’m aware of that. I’m also not any happier about the way this is shaking out than you are, Lucie, but I’ve got to do my job. That’s all I can say.”
I nodded, feeling numb, as the front door clicked shut. A few moments later, I heard his tires crunching on the gravel as he left the parking lot, then red taillights reflecting off the wall through the window.
A couple of lights were still on in the villa. I made the rounds, turning them off in Nikki’s office, Frankie’s office, and the kitchen. It was completely unlike Frankie, who was always so efficient and responsible, to leave for the day without closing up properly.
When I walked into the tasting room she was standing by the door, arms folded across her chest, looking like a volcano ready to erupt. She must have been in the barrel room or somewhere else on the property.
Frankie, who was always so calm and unflappable in the middle of any crisis—I’d never seen her this upset. I wasn’t sure how much more raw emotion I could take just now.
“Frankie—”
She cut me off. “What in the world happened, Lucie? What did you do?”
“It’s been a hell of a day. A lot of things happened and I’ve done a lot of things. Which one are you talking about and do you want a drink?”
“I’m talking about Nikki, and yes, I do.”
She stalked over to the bar before I could stop her, uncorked an open bottle of Cab Sauv, and poured two full glasses with a hand that shook badly. I joined her at the bar and sat on one of the stools.
I picked up my glass and said, “I fired her for insubordination.”
“She’ll apologize. She’s just upset about Jean-Claude.” She came around from behind the bar and sat on the stool next to me.
“She lied to us, Frankie. She went over to La Vigne that morning instead of driving out to the flower farm. She had it out with Jean-Claude and they argued. Apparently she scratched him up, so it got physical.”
“Lucie, she’s just a kid. She fell head over heels in love with Jean-Claude—show me any woman who wouldn’t—and when he dumped her, she came unglued. She’ll get over him. I’ve already spoken to her mother. Apparently there have been … other … incidents like this in the past,” Frankie said.
“Incidents like what?”
Frankie looked uncomfortable. “Nikki can be a bit possessive, maybe a little too jealous. Her mom said she has a hard time letting go when someone breaks up with her.”
“Then she needs counseling. Getting your heart broken is a rite of passage. It happens to everyone.” I drank some wine. “Look, she even accused me of being Jean-Claude’s newest girlfriend. I told her that was ridiculous but she didn’t believe me and stormed out of here.”
“I know. She called me, crying like the world was about to end. She said you were pretty harsh with her.”
I was not going to get into a she-said-she-said arm-wrestling match with Frankie, but I was still ticked off. “I was not. This is a murder investigation and she’s got a motive, Frankie.”
Frankie gave me a heavy-lidded look that said she knew better. “It doesn’t matter, Lucie. Nikki didn’t do it. She didn’t kill Jean-Claude. I’ll bet my job on it.”
“Tell me something,” I said. “Does Nikki speak French? Fluently, I mean?”
Frankie laughed. “Oh my good Lord, no. I mean, she tried—I think she took French 101 in college, but she gave up. It was like what Mark Twain said about his wife and swearing—she had the words but she didn’t know the tune. Franglais with a side of Southern drawl, y’all.” She tilted her head and stared at me. “Why do you ask?”
I took a huge swig of wine. “No reason,” I said. “I was just wondering.”
* * *
QUINN AND ELI WERE home by the time I arrived after Frankie and I finished our talk. On her way out the door, Frankie told me she planned to have Nikki spend the night at her house, her way of letting me know Nikki was practically a member of her family, another daughter. She also said she hoped I’d rescind my decision to fire her, maybe put her on thirty days probation as a compromise, if I felt some kind of disciplinary action was really necessary. I told Frankie I needed to sleep on it and would give her an answer in the morning.
I had no idea what I was going to say to either of them tomorrow and just now I couldn’t handle any more decisions or confrontations after the tumult of today’s events. Then there was this: Miguel had left the La Vigne barrel room while Jean-Claude was in the middle of a heated argument in French with a woman Miguel couldn’t identify. In other words, Miguel had no idea if that fight ended when the woman stabbed Jean-Claude in the back with his secateurs, or whether she left and he was still alive.
Though Frankie confirmed that Nikki couldn’t say more than “bone-jour y’all,” in French, it still didn’t mean she hadn’t been the one who killed Jean-Claude. She certainly had shown a different side of herself this afternoon—hostile, jealous, possessive—when I confronted her in her office. Plus she admitted she’d been to see Jean-Claude and their meeting had ended badly.
But just how badly? If Nikki turned out to be the killer, it wouldn’t matter if I reinstated her or not. She wouldn’t be returning here; she’d be heading to a Virginia penitentiary.
Quinn handed me a Scotch as soon as I walked into the parlor and he and Eli made room on the sofa between the two of them. The television was on mute and the mantel clock showed two minutes to six.
“Where’s Hope?” I asked.
“At Persia’s for the evening,” Eli said, unmuting the TV. “I don’t want her seeing any of this. Pippa O’Hara, your favorite reporter, has the top story on the six o’clock news on News Channel 3. Armand de Merignac is in town.”
“Bobby told us,” I said. “He met him at the airport and took him to the morgue.”
Pippa O’Hara put on her usual performance hyping the story, showing the de Merignacs’ private jet landing at Dulles “so a grieving father can take his only son and heir back to their ninth-century château in France on a final, heartbreaking journey. There he will lay Jean-Claude to rest in the family cemetery next to the legendary grapevines of Château de Merignac in Bordeaux, the most famous wine region in the world.”
“That woman,” Quinn said under his br
eath. “Someone ought to spank her.”
“Shh,” I said. “Listen. She’s talking to Bobby.”
Her cameraman had panned to Bobby when he was at the airport, looking uncomfortable and irritated as Pippa confronted him and asked why the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office still had not made an arrest for the murder of Jean-Claude. Bobby had given a smart-ass answer that would probably get him in trouble, but it had the effect of momentarily silencing Pippa.
“Because the Sheriff’s Office has a habit of waiting until we have definitive proof that someone committed a crime before we make an arrest,” he said. “This isn’t a television drama so everything wraps up before the last commercial. We also don’t answer to the media, Pippa. We answer to the citizens of Loudoun County.” Then he’d turned on his heel and walked away.
After that the camera cut to B-roll, generic shots of the airport, La Vigne Cellars, and finally a cameo of Baron de Merignac, looking elated and champagne-soaked along with his Formula One driver after winning the prestigious Monaco Grand Prix last year. Pippa did the voiceover to go with the photos, managing to get in another dig at the Sheriff’s Office for being clueless and letting a murderer run loose in Loudoun County. Quinn turned off the television.
“Well, that was entertaining. Anyone for dinner? I’m starved. I missed lunch,” he said. “Persia left slices of cold roast beef and a salade niçoise.”
“I had lunch,” Eli said, “but it was hours ago. Oh, by the way, Luce, I ran into Kit. She was getting a sandwich at The Upper Crust as I was picking up my order. She wants you to call her.”
Quinn set the TV remote on the coffee table and walked out of the room without saying a word.
Eli glanced at me. “What just happened? What did I miss? Was it something I said?”
“No,” I said. “It was something I said. I was supposed to have lunch with Kit and … it didn’t work out. I forgot to mention it to Quinn.”
He looked perplexed. “Okay. I see.”
Which meant he didn’t.
Although I’d taken Quinn out to the cabin in the woods so I could finally tell him about David, my plans had gone awry when Miguel turned up. But right now I wasn’t ready to say anything in front of my brother, who I knew would react differently than Quinn to the news that our father had had an affair that produced a son that none of us had known about. Before I told Eli or Mia about David, I wanted to talk things over with Quinn.
As a result of the obvious friction between Quinn and me, the dinner table conversation consisted of Eli talking about the Couple from Hell and the latest progress on the house he was designing for them. We were just finishing dinner when the doorbell rang.
“I wonder who that is.” Eli sounded relieved at the reprieve from our tense meal. “I’ll get it.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll go.”
I stood before he could stop me and left. It was Dominique and she looked like hell.
“Why did you ring the bell?” I asked. “You have a key. Come in … is everything all right?”
I pulled her inside.
“I … left the key somewhere,” she said, her voice shaking. “I don’t know where it is.”
I heard footsteps and turned as Quinn and Eli walked into the foyer.
“What’s going on?” Eli said. “Dominique, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“She looks like she’s in shock,” Quinn said. “I’ll get her something to drink.”
I put my arm around my cousin’s shoulders. “Tell me what happened.”
“I just left the Sheriff’s Office in Leesburg,” she said. “I couldn’t go back to the Inn tonight … I just couldn’t … so I came here.”
“It’s okay,” I said, but my heart was thumping wildly and my hands felt clammy. “What happened?”
Her eyes were wide with fear. “Bobby’s been going over everything I’ve done in the past few days with a fine-tuned comb,” she said. “I think I’m going to be arrested tomorrow.”
“You can’t be serious,” Eli said. “For what?”
“It seems Bobby believes I murdered Jean-Claude.” She looked at all of us, still glassy-eyed. “What do I do now?”
Seventeen
It took a while to calm Dominique down and persuade her that she ought to spend the night at Highland House, but truth to tell, her news rattled and upset everyone. The four of us had moved into the parlor and someone plonked the bottle of Scotch in the middle of the coffee table along with four glasses. It was going to be that kind of night.
Eli called Persia and asked if Hope could stay over and spend the night in her apartment. Persia, bless her, hadn’t asked why; she just said she’d be happy to take care of her little angel for as long as Eli needed her to help out.
We were in the middle of a heated discussion about whether Dominique needed a lawyer right now when my phone rang. The tiff between Quinn and me that had been playing out at the dinner table had been forgotten. We were sitting next to each other on the sofa, his arm draped over my shoulders.
He passed me my phone. “Robyn Callahan,” he said, squinting at the screen. “Want to let it go to voice mail?”
Robyn. Why couldn’t she be a more plausible candidate to murder Jean-Claude than my cousin? Maybe there were some things Bobby didn’t know about her and Jean-Claude. Yet.
“I left a message with Colette earlier today asking if Robyn would have time to look at the quilt Susanna Montgomery’s body was buried in,” I said. “I bet she’s calling back about that. I should take this.”
“To talk about a quilt?” Eli refilled his glass. “Now?”
“Yes,” I said in a firm voice, “but more important it would give me an opportunity to find out whether Robyn speaks French. Fluent French. Do any of you happen to know?”
There was momentary silence in the room.
“Uh … no,” Eli said.
“No idea,” Quinn said and Dominique shook her head.
I pressed the green button on my phone. “Hey, Robyn, thanks for getting back to me.”
Colette had told Robyn enough about the unusual-looking quilt to pique her interest, and she told me she’d be happy to take a look at it if I wanted to bring it by her house in the morning. We settled on meeting at nine o’clock, and then I asked how she was doing.
Her sigh sounded weary and exasperated. “We’ve still got the press camped out at the entrance to La Vigne and it’s driving Toby mad. Plus he had a rather unpleasant meeting with Jean-Claude’s father this evening.”
“Unpleasant?”
“Baron de Merignac more or less accused Toby of being responsible for Jean-Claude’s death,” she said. “He said we’ve turned into a gun-toting, trigger-happy bunch of vigilantes over here and that if we didn’t allow everyone and his cousin to buy a gun along with a liter of milk at the grocery store, make it so easy, there would be far fewer deaths in America.”
“You can’t buy a gun at the grocery store and Jean-Claude was stabbed to death by a pair of secateurs used at a vineyard,” I said. “Did he have anything to say about that?”
She sighed again. “No. The man was grieving, so of course you have to forgive that kind of emotional outburst. He just needed some place to vent his anger and sorrow. Toby offered to accompany him to the airport tomorrow night with Jean-Claude’s coffin since he’s going straight back to France, but he turned Toby down.”
“Hopefully Bobby will catch whoever did it soon, and Jean-Claude’s family will at least have closure knowing his killer was brought to justice,” I said. “Bobby seems to be focusing on anyone who had a romantic interest in Jean-Claude.”
“Yes,” she said in a tight, clipped voice. “I’m aware of that.”
“Miguel turned himself in tonight,” I said. “He was hiding out in an abandoned cottage on my land. Quinn and I persuaded him to talk to Bobby, so he did. He told Bobby he overheard Jean-Claude in his office arguing with a woman right before he was murdered.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. He
said they were speaking French.”
“I see. Look, Lucie, I’ve got to go. It’s been a long day. See you tomorrow morning at nine, okay?”
“Sure,” I said, “thanks for doing this.” But she had already disconnected.
I clicked off my phone and looked around at Quinn, Eli, and Dominique, who had been listening to my side of the conversation.
“Well?” Eli asked. “What happened?”
“She didn’t bite when I brought up what Miguel said about someone speaking French with Jean-Claude the morning he was killed,” I said. “I’ll find out tomorrow if it could have been her or not. But I can tell you this: she got very uptight and nervous all of a sudden.”
“Do you think she’s guilty?” Quinn asked. “Could she have done it?”
“Done what? Are you saying Robyn could have killed Jean-Claude?” Dominique sounded so startled I reckoned she hadn’t heard the rumors about Robyn sleeping with Jean-Claude.
“Bobby seems to think it was a crime of passion, as near as I can tell,” I said to her. “He may think you had a motive and possibly the opportunity, but the truth of the matter is you didn’t kill Jean-Claude.”
“I didn’t,” she said, “but Bobby’s making me so nervous I’m not sure I’m going to answer when he starts asking questions. I’m an American citizen now. I might tell him I’ve decided to exercise my sixth amendment rights.”
“The sixth amendment,” Eli said, “is the right to a speedy trial.”
“Well, one of the other ones then.”
“Before you do anything,” I said, “we have to find out who the real killer is.”
Though as Bobby said, this wasn’t going to end well. Whoever was found guilty, it was going to tear apart our close-knit community.
Because the murderer was almost certainly one of us.
* * *
WE HAD MADE A significant dent in the bottle of Scotch when a deafening crash sounded outside as if the sky had split in two. Between the alcohol and the topic of conversation—finding a murderer—we were all already twitchy enough to jump out of our skin. Dominique, who had been about to pick up her glass, bumped it with her hand and sloshed Scotch on the coffee table.
