The Bordeaux Betrayal wcm-3

by Ellen Crosby

  I didn’t mention the fines applied only to drivers with Virginia licenses. Or that our legislature had imposed the excessive penalties hoping they’d motivate the good citizens of the Commonwealth—some of whom also drove like bats out of hell—to behave better behind the wheel.

  “I don’t want to be a burden,” he said. “Harvest is such a busy time of year for you. I’ve got meetings with les vieux amis—my old friends—and several dinners planned. It would be better if I have my own transportation.”

  “Sure. You’ll get on the Beltway and think you’re on the Autoroute du Soleil,” I said. “It would be better to let Dominique or me drive than bail you out of jail.”

  “I drive like every other Frenchman.” He sounded miffed.

  “Exactly. So don’t rent the car. What time’s your flight?”

  He told me and I wrote it down.

  “Have you told Dominique you’re coming?” I asked.

  He sighed. “Not yet. You know how she fusses over me and treats me like an old man. I am not as old as she would like me to be, you know.”

  “You still need to call her. She should hear the news from you that you’re coming. You don’t want to hurt her feelings, do you?”

  “Mais non,” he said. “Of course not.”

  “Then call her. And don’t worry. Everything will be fine once you get here. We’ll have a good time.”

  “Mon trésor,” he said. “I forget how much I miss you until we speak. I cannot wait to see you.” Another sigh and the sound of a match being struck once again. “And your cousin.”

  I hung up and a moment later, the answering machine beeped. Tomorrow was harvest and another early start, but I was too restless to go to bed. I hit the delete button and erased our conversation.

  Maybe Quinn had gone back to the summerhouse. I put on a jacket and went outside. The Adirondack chairs were exactly where we’d left them last night.

  Where was he? Maybe I should call him. We often spoke late at night, especially during harvest when there was work to do in the barrel room. But this wasn’t work and we’d never crossed the line this far into intimate territory. Tonight would be a bad night to start.

  I went back inside, threw my jacket on the chair by the phone and walked into the library. It had been Leland’s book-lined office until a fire destroyed most of the room, along with much of the downstairs. As part of the renovation I’d had the cherry bookcases rebuilt as they’d been before. But the shelves, once jammed with double rows of Leland’s extensive collection of books by and about Thomas Jefferson, were nearly bare. It still startled me each time I saw the empty spaces.

  A copy of Jefferson’s diary of his voyage through the European vineyards, reprinted on the bicentennial anniversary of his trip, was one of the few books to survive the fire. I’d been trying to read Valerie’s tome before Pépé called. The bad reviews were justified.

  The odds weren’t good that Jefferson’s actual diary, written more than two centuries ago, would provide a clue to what Valerie had hinted at about the provenance of the Washington wine, but I pulled it off the shelf anyway. A slim volume, just over one hundred pages. I wiped dust off the cover. Thomas Jefferson’s European Travel Diaries. Jefferson’s Own Account of His Journeys Through the Countryside and Wine Regions of the Continent, 1787–1788.

  I took it upstairs and began reading in bed.

  Words to the Wise from the Author for Americans Traveling Abroad.

  When you are doubting whether a thing is worth the trouble of going to see, recollect that you will never again be so near it and that you may have to repent the not having seen it.

  What had Valerie seen in Bordeaux? Whatever it was, now I was the one who repented “the not having seen it.” And what about Jack Greenfield? A matter of “the not having said it.” Claiming no knowledge of how such a fabled bottle had come into his family’s possession. It seemed implausible. I closed the book and turned out the light. In a few hours it would be daylight and the second day of harvesting the Cab.

  In the morning, I’d see Quinn.

  He showed up before the crew arrived, unsteady on his feet and dressed in the clothes he’d worn yesterday. Bloodshot eyes, wild hair, and unshaven, he looked like something somebody forgot to shoot. When he came closer I thought I detected a faint scent of perfume clinging to his shirt, more Rite-Aid than Lord & Taylor. Hard to tell since it blended in with his own body odor and the essences of booze and stale tobacco. God, what had he done last night? Where had he been and who had he been with?

  I nearly asked if he’d cruised some bar and picked up somebody—anybody—to console himself after seeing Nicole with Shane, but it was none of my business. What was my business was that in twenty minutes the crew would be here and they’d see their boss looking like he’d single-handedly drunk Loudoun County dry in one night.

  We worked around dangerous equipment. I couldn’t let him stay here in his state.

  “Go home.” My voice was hoarse with anger and disappointment. “You’re drunk, you stink, and you look like hell. I don’t want anyone else seeing you right now. You have a goddamn nerve showing up like this. Especially today with what’s at stake for us.”

  “Well, good morning to you, Susie Sunshine. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed of nails, did we, darlin’?” He still slurred his words. I wanted to strangle him.

  “Get out of here! Go home and sleep it off. I don’t want to see you until you’re sober.”

  He straightened up. “I’m fine.” His eyes looked crossed as he tried to focus on me and he swayed slightly.

  “You are still drunk. You will not be here when the crew shows up.” My voice shook and so did my hands. “That’s in fifteen minutes. Just—go, will you? Please!”

  “Who are you tellin’ to go?” He lurched closer.

  For a moment I thought he might fall down at my feet. I wanted to move away from him and the messiness of this tawdry scene, but I gritted my teeth and said, “My employee.”

  He looked like I’d just slapped him. I turned and half-walked, half-ran into the barrel room, leaning on my cane like an old woman. My legs felt like jelly as I slammed the door without looking to see if he’d followed. It took me so long to turn on the fans to dissipate the overnight buildup of CO2 I began to feel light-headed from the gas.

  I hoped he hadn’t noticed how badly I was trembling. Though in his state he probably wouldn’t have noticed if Manolo ran him over in the pickup. God help him if he was still there when the crew showed up. But when I went back outside ten minutes later, he was gone.

  When Manolo arrived I told him Quinn was sick and, ignoring the surprise in his eyes, said the two of us were running the show. Manolo was young and good-looking and he knew the bars, too. If he’d run into Quinn, he wasn’t talking.

  “Lucie,” Manolo said. “You all right? I just said something twice and you didn’t answer. You don’t look too good. Maybe what Queen has, you got, too?”

  “I’m pretty certain what Quinn has isn’t contagious,” I said. “Sorry. I was distracted. Let’s get to work.”

  The fact that we had one less person helping out—and it happened to be the one who usually ran the show—kept me focused, too busy to think about the kick-your-stupid-ass speech I planned to deliver once he’d sobered up enough to hear it. We had less to pick today, but we also had a delivery of Petit Verdot to deal with. Quinn had ordered it from a Culpeper vineyard that grew grapes but didn’t make wine. I’d nearly forgotten about it until the truck drove up to the crush pad.

  The phone rang when I was in the lab running the final tests. Frankie, calling from the villa. “Sorry to bother you, Lucie. Someone’s here to see you.”

  “Who is it?”

  The deliberate silence on her end was the code we’d set up to identify someone who’d sampled a few too many wines and was getting out of hand.

  “I’ll get Manolo to come with me,” I said.

  “These guests have asked specifically for you.”

/>   I wondered why she wanted me to come alone. “I’ll be right there. By myself.”

  “Great.” She sounded grim.

  I did not recognize the well-dressed man and woman sitting on one of the sofas around the stone fireplace in the center of the tasting room. Frankie was the only other person there, reading behind the bar.

  She walked over to the couple when I entered. “Lucie, these are your new neighbors, Claudia and Stuart Orlando. Mr. and Mrs. Orlando, meet Lucie Montgomery.”

  For Frankie not to like someone they had to break at least three of the Ten Commandments. She clearly didn’t like the Orlandos. She pivoted on her heel and went back to the bar to retrieve a gardening catalog.

  “I’ll be outside on the deck. Call me if you need me,” she said to me.

  Claudia Orlando was a pretty redhead with porcelain skin who looked like she could have stepped out of a painting by Titian. Stuart was big and beefy with a ruddy spider-veined face that said unhealthy lifestyle. Older than his wife by at least a decade, if not more. He colored his hair. It was too black.

  I’d bet money they’d come to talk about the Goose Creek Hunt, but I figured I’d wait for them to bring it up. “What can I do for you, Mr. and Mrs. Orlando?” I sat down on an adjacent sofa and propped my cane next to me.

  “It’s Claudia and Stuart, hon.” Her delicate beauty and the nasal Brooklyn accent were a total disconnect. She pronounced her name “Claw-dee-er.”

  Stuart indicated my cane with a finger that looked like an overstuffed sausage. “Hunting accident?” he asked pleasantly, but I knew he was probing.

  I smiled. “No.”

  He waited for the rest of my explanation. When I remained silent, his eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. “We’ll get right to the point, Lucie. Claudia and I, here, have decided that our land will be off limits to those fox hunters who claim that it’s part of their so-called territory. We believe strongly that what they do is inhumane. Not just what they do to the fox, but also to those poor dogs.”

  “It’s cruel,” Claudia said. “They’re just so helpless.”

  “Hounds,” I said.

  “Pardon?” Stuart asked.

  “They’re not called dogs. They’re called hounds.”

  “Hounds, shmounds.” He waved a hand like he could care less. “We’re here to ask you to join us. We can shut them down, or at least curtail what they do, if both of us prohibit them from hunting on our land.” He smiled. “It’s a start. And then we can take it to the next level.”

  “The next level?”

  “Why, outlawing foxhunting.” Claudia tapped a finger on the glass coffee table and a wristful of wire-thin gold bracelets jingled like wind chimes. “Stuart is a lawyer. A smart lawyer. Orlando and Thomason. You must have heard of the firm. They represent most of the animal rights groups.”

  I nodded. No point telling them I’d heard from the secretary of the Goose Creek Hunt. “I have.”

  Stuart looked satisfied. “Are you with us, Lucie? I certainly hope so.”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said. “The Goose Creek Hunt has been hunting on my family’s land for more than a century. They will always be welcome here, as long as I have something to say about it.”

  “Why?” Claudia looked puzzled and distressed. “What they do is savage.”

  “This isn’t England,” I said. “They rarely kill the fox and when they do it’s usually because the animal is old and diseased, or has rabies. It’s more like fox chasing. It’s not a blood sport in this country.”

  “I do not understand how you can condone it.” Stuart had switched to what I assumed was the courtroom voice he used to eviscerate an unfriendly witness.

  I flinched and he saw it. He pressed on.

  “I don’t like making threats.” He smiled in a way that said he relished it. “But this could escalate into an unfortunate situation and I’m sure neither of us wants that to happen.”

  Meaning I didn’t want it to happen. He looked smug, but Claudia still looked shocked. Maybe I had a chance if I tried explaining things to her.

  “George Washington went foxhunting in this valley.” I looked her in the eyes and ignored Stuart. “So did Lord Fairfax. Foxhunting began right here in the earliest days of our country. We are, at heart, a farm community. Nature takes its course and hunting is part of it. I’m sure coming from Manhattan it must seem totally alien to you, but hunting and racing are an integral part of life and the culture of our region. You’ve only just moved in. Why don’t you spend some time learning about your neighbors before you judge and criticize us?”

  Stuart reached for his wife’s hand and leaned over to whisper in her ear. I heard him anyway. “She’s hopeless, sugar pie. Forget it.”

  I reached for my cane and stood up. Claudia looked upset but I’d just baited Stuart and the ugly expression on his face said he planned to come out swinging next round. They stood as well.

  “For the record,” I said, “I don’t hunt.”

  “You’re going to regret this, Mrs. Montgomery,” he said. “I promise you.”

  We’d moved back to formal names. “I doubt that very much,” I said. “And it’s ‘Miss.’”

  Claudia looked at me with pity. “That explains a lot,” she said. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

  Frankie walked inside as the door to the villa slammed behind the Orlandos. My face burned. The spinster remark stung.

  I swung around to Frankie. “You were eavesdropping.”

  “You bet I was,” she said. “He’s despicable. Unfortunately, she’ll do whatever he tells her.”

  “He threatened me,” I said. “I don’t like that.”

  “I don’t think he threatened you,” Frankie said. “I think he just declared war.”

  Chapter 9

  I told Frankie to close up early and take the rest of the afternoon off.

  “Where’s Quinn?” she said. “He hasn’t been around here all day.”

  “He came down with a bug so he stayed home.”

  She frowned. “And missed harvest? What’d he have? Bubonic plague?”

  “I don’t know. Look, I’d better get going. My grandfather’s plane arrives at Dulles at half-past four and you know what a bear traffic is.”

  She nodded. “Your nose is growing, Pinocchio. See you tomorrow.”

  My face was still red. She’d probably drop by Quinn’s on her way home to find out if he’d recovered from his mysterious ailment and then she’d know. I wasn’t sure why I made up that lie and didn’t tell her outright—or maybe I was.

  It was just after three o’clock. Was Quinn still sleeping it off or did he get lost for the day like he’d done in the past? I detoured by his cottage on my way to the airport.

  He’d parked the El Camino at an odd angle in front of his porch. The blinds on the front windows were closed. He was probably still sleeping. Manolo had promised me earlier that he and a couple of the men would punch down the cap this evening, so it didn’t matter whether or not Quinn showed up in the barrel room today.

  Punching down the cap was a chore that lasted as long as the wine continued to ferment, and not anybody’s favorite task. The “cap” was a ten-to twelve-inch-thick layer of wineskins and pulp that floated to the top of the fermenting vats and congealed into wet purple concrete. It was a product of the chemical process that occurred as the yeast that was added to the grape juice converted the fruit sugar to alcohol—so everything bubbled like the witches’ brew in Macbeth.

  Twice a day we needed to break up the sludgy mass and submerge it in order to give the wine its tannins, taste, and color. The larger vineyards handled this mechanically but we still did it the old-fashioned way, using paddles, Eli’s old baseball bat—and our hands. Each vat contained a ton of wine so it was a physically demanding task that involved being submerged in wine up to our armpits and pushing against a solid purple block that didn’t want to give way. My shoulders always felt like they were coming out of their sockets and my fingernails remaine
d stained for weeks. I got out of performing the chore today because I needed to go to the airport, but my turn would come soon enough.

  Pépé’s flight from Paris arrived on time. I waited in the cordoned-off area of the international arrivals terminal and watched the lighted board blink with information on which flight had landed and when the passengers moved on to customs. My grandfather finally came through the automatic double doors, pushing a luggage cart, staring straight ahead, a slightly puzzled and bemused look on his face as though something about the eccentricities of my country had already tickled his fancy even though he’d barely set foot on American soil.

  I called to him and waved from behind the low metal barricade. His well-lined face lit up and he waved back. When we met, he kissed me three times and murmured my name. I hugged him and took in the smell of Boyards and a whisper of his familiar old-fashioned cologne. But what I mostly smelled were the memory scents of the things I loved—and missed—about Paris. Years ago my mother told me I was my grandfather’s namesake—his first name was Luc—and it was an open secret in the family that I was his favorite.

  He refused to let me push his luggage cart and I didn’t bother to argue. My grandfather came from the generation where chivalry and gallantry were as instinctive as breathing. Luckily I’d managed to park near the terminal so we didn’t have far to walk. He insisted on stowing his suitcase in the Mini, also without help, though when he sat next to me in the car, he seemed winded by the exertion.

  “Tu vas bien?” I asked.

  “Oui, oui.” He flicked his hand, brushing away my concerns. “Un peu fatigué, c’est tout.”

  “You can rest when we get home,” I said.

  “Mais non. We’re having dinner this evening at the Goose Creek Inn with Dominique.” His eyes crinkled with amusement. “So you see, I did call your cousin.”

  “You sly old dog. I knew you’d come round.”