The Bordeaux Betrayal wcm-3

by Ellen Crosby

  By one o’clock we’d picked everything we were going to for the day. I was finishing the last Brix tests when he showed up in the doorway. We’d turned the fans on because fermentation had already started, giving off enough carbon dioxide to kill us both unless we kept the air moving.

  “The crew’s cleaning up and Manolo’s hosing off the crush pad.” He had to speak up over the drone of the fans and the noise of the circulation system cooling the whites in the tanks. “I think we’re done here until we have to punch down the cap this evening. I’m going over to Leesburg. I busted the channel lock wrench when I was working on the pump. We need a new one since the pump’s still acting up.”

  “Cheaper than a new pump.” I rinsed a beaker and hung it upside down on a rack to drain. “I need a new cell phone. Store’s in Leesburg. Want to go together?”

  His eyes narrowed and I blushed. He was staring at me like I’d just invited him on a date. I folded a dishtowel into a neat rectangle and set it on the counter.

  “On second thought, you go on ahead,” I said. “I need to go home and take a shower and change first.”

  Quinn looked down at his clothes, which were spattered with dull purple blotches, just like mine. We both looked like we’d been shot repeatedly. He stared at me some more and I could tell he was thinking about something other than my clothes.

  “You don’t need to change,” he said. “We’ll take the El. Meet me in the parking lot when you’re done here.”

  We didn’t talk much on the drive to Leesburg. He dropped me off at the phone store and said he’d pick me up when he’d done his errand. A teenager who looked like he spent most of his time and money at the tattoo parlor was busy transferring my phone number from the old phone to the new one when Quinn showed up carrying a bag from T. W. Perry Hardware.

  On the way back to the car I said, “You think we could stop by Jeroboam’s on the way home?”

  “Why?”

  “I thought maybe I’d ask Jack about the provenance of that Washington bottle.”

  The El was so old he had to unlock the doors manually. He unlocked mine and said, “What do you want to do that for? You already said he’d be insulted.”

  “I’m curious and I can be diplomatic. I’ll tell him it’s for the catalog.”

  “Follow your own advice and forget it.” He looked over at me. “Damn, Lucie. I can hear the gears whirring inside that little brain of yours. You gotta know, don’t you? You’re not going to let it go. Just like a dog with a bone.”

  “A girl could get a swelled head from all the nice things you say, you know that?”

  “Part of my charm.”

  He took Route 15 to Gilberts Corner, then Mosby’s Highway west to Middleburg, instead of the small country roads as I did. As usual he drove too fast, eyes riveted on the road, working a tiny muscle in his jaw that meant he was pondering something. I knew so little about him. An Italian father who abandoned him and his Argentine mother when he was a kid. She’d raised him on her own somewhere in California. He never talked about his parents, or any siblings, either. If he had any.

  We parked in an unmetered space on South Liberty near the old magnolia tree in the churchyard. Jeroboam’s was on the corner on East Washington. Washington Street—East and West—had gotten its name from George, who’d visited when he was surveying the region for Lord Fairfax. And here I was more than two centuries later wondering about a bottle of wine that Washington might have drunk if it had ever been delivered to Mount Vernon.

  Jack Greenfield bought Jeroboam’s sight unseen a year ago to appease his beautiful wife, the sensational Sunny, because she hated the commute from their home in Georgetown when she rode with the Goose Creek Hunt or visited her many Loudoun County clients for her interior design business. He hired someone to run Salmanazar’s, the D.C. wine store his family owned for sixty years, and called the new, smaller store in Middleburg “Jeroboam’s.” It was an inside wine joke since the biblical names were also the terms for large-sized bottles used for champagne—a Salmanazar being the equivalent of twelve champagne bottles and a Jeroboam holding four champagnes or six bottles of Bordeaux.

  In Middleburg, we still said that people who moved here came from “away,” which distinguished them from the locals who’d been born and bred in Loudoun and Fauquier Counties. Technically Jack and Sunny were from away, but they had generously invested time and talent, becoming well known as part of the community in the short time they’d lived here.

  Sunny had decorated Jeroboam’s with her customary flair so it resembled a fine English hunting lodge, whose walls happened to be filled with wine bottles. The few empty spaces, including the little stairway that led to a lower-level tasting room, had been turned into an informal art gallery with all of the paintings for sale. Jack was clearing up glasses and bottles in the dark-paneled tasting room when we arrived. He dressed to sell wine like he worked for a Fortune 500 company—bespoke blazer, starched shirt, silk tie, fine wool slacks, and well-polished tasseled loafers. He came around from behind the bar when he saw us.

  Usually I got a friendly kiss on the cheek, but Jack took one look at our wine-stained clothes and held back. “You two look like you could use a drink,” he said.

  “Don’t mind if we do,” Quinn said. “What’s cookin’, Jack?”

  “Plenty of things are cooking.” He walked back to the bar.

  Jack was no nonsense, with a strong face and silver hair, stylishly combed back from a high forehead. Jet-black eyebrows that slanted downward toward the bridge of his nose gave him the look of an erudite devil.

  “My esteemed business partner has gone to the airport to pick up his latest girlfriend.” The eyebrows arched with the resigned look of a parent lamenting a child’s behavior. “Sunny and I’ve decided that Shane needs a wife. Too much time being the playboy. Left me here to handle a tasting for a temperamental caterer handling a wedding reception in Upperville next spring. Couldn’t make up her mind about anything.”

  “That’s women for you,” Quinn said. I elbowed him.

  Jack set out two glasses. “Try this Cab from a vineyard near Charlottesville. Give it a moment to open.”

  I drank my wine. “Lovely. Good nose, nice long finish. I like the pepper.”

  “A bit young for me,” Quinn said.

  “He’s such a critic when he’s thinking about our blend,” I said. “Ignore him.”

  Jack smiled. “So what’s cooking with you?”

  Quinn concentrated on his nice, young wine. He wasn’t going to help me ask about the Margaux.

  “I was hoping you could tell us more about the provenance of the Washington bottle,” I said. “Ryan’s writing the notes for the auction catalog and that bottle is now the star of the show.”

  “I know it is,” Jack said. “I’ve been getting calls from all over the world. People want to know if I’ve got another bottle, or even if they can buy a case.” He tapped his forehead with his index finger. “You wonder, sometimes.”

  “Not me,” Quinn said. “We get people who want to know if we put real apples in the Riesling when we say it tastes like apple. Or how much pepper we put in the Pinot when we talk about the peppery taste. Do we grind it or put in whole peppercorns?”

  Jack laughed. “Good thing you don’t tell them it tastes like leather.”

  “So how did it come into your possession?” I asked. We’d veered away from the Margaux.

  With some difficulty, he recorked the wine we’d just tasted. Quinn and I both noticed.

  Jack looked rueful. “Arthritis acting up again. Don’t get old. To answer your question, Lucie, my family was in the wine trade in Germany from the mid-1700s until just after the Second World War. Then my father moved here and started again in America. In Germany we used to have close ties to every major producer in Europe, especially the French. I found the bottle in the cave at my family’s old warehouse in Freiburg after my father passed away. Someone could have given it to us, or it could have been there for a cent
ury.”

  “Your father never mentioned that Bordeaux to you?” I asked. “Ever?”

  “He did not. When I found it, it was not in good condition which makes me suspect that we acquired it after a previous owner kept it poorly cellared. Or else it was badly transported. Possibly both. I told you it’s probably vinegar by now. But I know you will get a lot of money for it. Some people will pay a small fortune for the thrill of owning a wine once destined for George Washington.”

  The last line sounded like a mild rebuke. It was Quinn’s turn to do the elbowing. “We know that, Jack,” he said. “And we’re grateful for your donation. It was extremely generous of you, right, Lucie?”

  “It was,” I said. “But if you think of anything between now and the auction—”

  “My dear, I’ve already told you everything.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Everything.”

  “We should be going,” Quinn said. “Thanks for the wine.”

  When we got outside Quinn said, “You can thank me now for saving your bacon. He was getting pretty pissed at you playing Spanish Inquisitor with him. If you’d pushed any harder I bet you he would have asked you to return the bottle.”

  “I just asked where it came from. That’s all.”

  “He didn’t like it.”

  “I know,” I said. “I wonder why.”

  “Don’t go there, Lucie. I mean it.”

  A gunmetal-colored Porsche pulled up and parked behind Quinn’s El Camino. “That’s Shane,” I said, “and his new friend.”

  We watched him help a stunning brunette from the car. “She’s lovely,” I said.

  “Goddamn.” Quinn sucked in his breath. “What the hell is she doing here?”

  “You know her?” I asked.

  The raw pain in his voice gave away he not only knew her, but she’d broken his heart when he did.

  “Yes,” he said, “she’s my wife.”

  Chapter 8

  He was married.

  How had he managed to keep that a secret? To keep her a secret?

  “What’s she doing with Shane,” I asked, “if she’s married to you?”

  “Ex-wife, I meant.” He was curt. “We’re divorced.”

  I watched Shane and the brunette cross the street and saw recognition dawn in her eyes. Her step faltered and Shane, unaware of the lightning arcing between his girlfriend and my winemaker, slid his arm around her slim waist.

  Quinn’s eyes never left her face.

  When they joined us, he said, “Hello, Nicole. Long time no see.”

  It was clear they hadn’t parted amicably. And that she still got to him. Hard to tell what was going through her mind other than the shock of seeing him again.

  She wore a russet suit that set off her dark hair, brown-black eyes, and honey-colored skin. Short, fitted skirt and flared jacket. Silk blouse unbuttoned just low enough to tantalize. Lace bra showing through the sheer fabric. The suit was either Armani or Versace. Quite the contrast to the classic outfit I had on. Levi’s and the Gap. Torn, dirty, and stained.

  “Quinn—” She spoke his name like a caress. “What a surprise. What are you doing here?”

  “I live here. What about you, Nic?” His voice was like cold steel.

  “You two know each other?” Shane’s eyes roved between Nicole and Quinn. Though Shane was always pleasant to me, I thought there was something a little too beautiful and preening about him that came across as what the French call m’as-tu vu?—“have you seen me?” I’d heard stories that he was a high school dropout who grew up in a rough part of Baltimore, but he’d shed his past—including the Bawlmer, Murlin, accent—so thoroughly that anyone who didn’t know better figured Daddy left him a nice trust fund after he’d graduated from an East Coast university. He certainly lived like he had a rich relative with the expensive cars, knockout women, and gambling trips to Vegas.

  “We know each other,” Quinn said, “don’t we, Nicole?”

  She blushed. I watched as she put her arm through Shane’s and twined her fingers with his. “Quinn is my…that is, we used to be married. A long time ago.”

  Shane pulled Nicole closer and kissed her hair, his eyes on Quinn. “Then you’re divorced. Nikki and I met in Vegas a few months ago. We’ve been together ever since.” He still looked taken aback by the news.

  “Good for you.” I recognized Quinn’s go-to-hell voice. It seemed like Nicole did too, judging by the way her expression turned cold. “See you ’round some time.”

  Quinn laid his hand on my shoulder and started to propel me across the street.

  “You’re not going to introduce me to your friend?” Nicole called after us. It sounded like a taunt.

  Quinn stopped and we both turned around. “Lucie Montgomery meet Nicole…what name are you going by these days, sweetheart? It was hard to keep track for a while.”

  “My maiden name.” Her eyes flashed. “Martin.” Then she looked at me, taking in the cane and my limp. “Where have I heard of you?”

  “I have no idea.” The sooner we got out of here, the better. She kept staring, like she was trying to recall some forgotten piece of information. “I’m sure we’ve never met,” I said for emphasis.

  “Let’s go.” Quinn walked me over to the El and opened my door, holding it while I got in. Across the street, I saw Shane whisper something in Nicole Martin’s perfect ear. She watched us, nodding. Guess he’d explained what was what. Or who.

  Quinn revved his engine. “Do not hit that Porsche,” I said. “I don’t care how much you hate him for being with your ex-wife.”

  “I don’t hate him,” he said. “He’s welcome to her.”

  We drove back to the vineyard in silence that echoed. He looked at me just once—his face like granite, his eyes dark as obsidian. I knew then that seeing her again had opened a wound that had never healed. Now she was walking around in his mind.

  He was grieving, hurt, angry. And still very much in love with his ex-wife.

  When we got back to the vineyard he dropped me at my house and said, “I’m going out in the field for a while. And don’t worry about punching down the cap tonight. I got it covered.”

  I nodded. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  I knew better than to offer sympathy, let alone pity. He would have thrown it right back in my face. So I let him go, saying nothing, and tried not to think about the look in his eyes when he talked about going out into the field alone.

  Around nine o’clock the phone rang. I was in the parlor, trying to plow through European Travels with Thomas Jefferson’s Ghost. The nearest telephone was in the foyer. I reached for my cane and half-ran to catch it, hoping it might be Quinn. By the time I picked up the receiver, the answering machine had kicked in.

  “Lucie, ma chère.” The well-loved voice on the other end sounded slightly muffled—filtered, no doubt, through the smoke of a bad-smelling Boyard and a snifter of Armagnac, before being piped through my machine. It was 3 a.m. in Paris. My eighty-two-year-old grandfather would be an hour or so away from calling it a day and going to bed. “Desolé que tu n’est pas la—”

  “I’m here, Pépé,” I said in French. “How are you? It’s so good to hear your voice.”

  My end of the conversation reverberated like a bad echo through the two-story foyer and I regretted not getting to the phone sooner since now I’d have to hear the entire conversation in stereo.

  “I’m well,” he said. “Very well. I just returned from China.”

  I often hoped I’d lucked out and inherited most of my DNA from my mother’s family rather than any of the self-indulgent, weak-willed genes my father might have passed along. Pépé had sent a postcard from the Great Wall, writing that he and a few friends hiked part of it. They’d also traveled the Silk Road as far as Kyrgyzstan.

  “I hope you’re going to take it easy after that trip. It sounded quite strenuous,” I said.

  I heard the flare of a match. Probably relighting his cigarette. Bo
yards, banned years ago by the European Union because of their toxicity, were made of black tobacco and maize paper. The only cigarette I knew that constantly extinguished itself. Pépé allowed himself one or two a day from his dwindling hoard.

  “I shall definitely be taking it easy. My next trip is to Washington.”

  “Here? It is? When?”

  He paused. “I am sorry to spring this on you at the last moment, mon ange, but I’m flying in tomorrow.” Another pause. “I have a hotel reservation at the Marriott near Dulles Airport but I hope we can see each other and you’ll let me take you to dinner at least once while I’m in town.”

  Pépé had been a career diplomat. He was unfailingly polite. I knew better than to be hurt that he hadn’t asked if he could stay with me, because he’d worry he was imposing. He probably hadn’t even unpacked from China, much less gotten over jet lag. I thought about the refrain from a song Leland used to teasingly sing to my mother, lamenting how hard it was to keep ’em down on the farm after they’d seen Paree. You couldn’t even keep my grandfather in Paree.

  “First of all, you can cancel your reservation at the Marriott,” I said. “You’re staying here with me. And second, what time does your flight get in? I’ll come get you.”

  “Absolument pas,” he said. “I’m renting a car. Not to worry, I’ll drive myself to your place.”

  I didn’t realize he was still driving. I adored Pépé but he drove like a Formula One racer hell-bent on breaking the record. Most of the rest of the family—in particular, Dominique—flat-out refused to get in a car with him any more.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said. “They’ve raised the penalties for traffic violations here in Virginia. A thousand dollars for reckless lane-changing. Some fines are even higher. I’ll drive you wherever you need to go.”