by Ellen Crosby
Kit watched me. “That bothers you, huh?”
“I don’t like her very much.”
“Is this about the green-eyed monster, Luce?”
“Don’t be an idiot. Why would I be jealous of her?”
“You tell me,” she said. “You know, I used to think you and Quinn cared about each other. At least a little.”
The waiter set down the bill. “It’s a professional relationship.” I reached for the leather folder. “We’re keeping it that way.”
Kit rolled her eyes as I set down a credit card. “If you say so,” she said. “Thanks for lunch.”
When we got outside she glanced at her watch. “I’d better get back to work. You know how the place falls apart without me. You going back to the vineyard?”
“Not right away. I’ve got an errand to do.”
“What are you up to? What errand?”
“I thought I’d track down Nicole Martin and have a chat with her without Quinn around.”
“So you can talk about him?”
“No. So we can talk about the Washington bottle.”
“I’ll bet you talk about Quinn, too,” she said.
After she drove off in her Jeep, I got in the Mini. Now that I knew Nicole and Valerie were friends, maybe I’d get some answers to my questions about Jack Greenfield and what Valerie knew about the Washington wine.
But Kit’s words bothered me, too, like a dull ache that I knew wasn’t going to go away any time soon. Was my animosity toward Nicole really petty jealousy?
Or was I right that Nicole Martin was nothing but trouble?
Chapter 13
Nicole hadn’t returned the Porsche to Jeroboam’s after Quinn’s tour. I drove past the store and down the alley to the small parking lot. Where else would she go with the car? Shane’s place?
He lived in a rented cottage in Paris—Virginia, not France—the last town on the highway in what was known as Mosby Heritage Area. The name came from the city in France as a tribute to Jefferson’s good friend the Marquis de Lafayette, but our Paris, unlike the City of Lights, was a tranquil village.
I turned west onto Washington Street, which soon became Mosby’s Highway. Dead ahead, the Blue Ridge Mountains looked solid and comforting. Already ancient when the Indians lived here a thousand years ago, they had never been scoured by glaciers like the mountain ranges farther north, which accounted for their gentle speed-bump contours.
A few cumulous clouds speckled shadows on the foothills. I didn’t know for sure why the mountains were blue—I’d heard it had to do with the pine trees releasing a chemical compound that caused a permanent bluish haze—but whatever the reason, the hue varied depending on the light, time of day, and season. Here the scenery turned to farmland as horses and cattle grazed in pastures and farmers mowed their fields for the last time this year. It looked as though summer had finally faded like an old watercolor.
The Porsche was just outside Paris, parked in front of a small convenience store. I pulled in as Nicole came outside, phone pressed to her ear, engrossed in conversation. Her eyes widened when she saw me.
“I’ve got to go,” I heard her say. “Don’t worry, I’ll handle it. No, I haven’t booked it yet. I’ll call you later.”
She snapped the phone shut and walked over to my car. Minis, by definition, are low-slung. Nicole wasn’t tall, but she did have the psychological advantage of looking down on me.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Looking for you.”
I could tell I’d caught her off-guard, but then her blasé self-confidence returned. “Is this about Quinn?”
I kept my eyes on hers. Was I that transparent? “No. It’s about you.”
Her eyes roamed over me and my cane propped against the passenger seat. I’d seen that look plenty of times in the faces of people who believe those of us with disabilities asked for it or somehow deserved what we’d gotten. Her look said it all. It could never happen to her. I almost felt sorry for her arrogance and stupidity. Almost.
“You want to talk about the Margaux, don’t you?” she said.
I moved to open my car door and she stepped back.
“Buy you a cup of coffee or a cold drink?” I said.
She squinted, appraising me like she was trying to figure out my angle. “You want to have coffee? Here?”
“Coffee’s pretty good. They get it from a place in Leesburg.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, sure, I’ll have a cup of coffee.”
She came inside while I bought two coffees. When we were back in the parking lot I said, “Unless you want to talk here, I know a place that’s not too far away. It’s nicer and more private.”
“Why all the secrecy?”
“No secrecy. It’s just an interesting place. You might like it.”
Another shrug. “I’ve got nothing else to do right now.”
She followed me to the old Goose Creek Bridge. In high school, Kit and I used to sit on the stone parapet and watch the creek while we drank unlabeled bottles of wine I’d stolen from the barrel room. The bridge dated back to Jefferson’s presidency but had been abandoned in the 1950s when Mosby’s Highway was rerouted. Now the garden club looked after it. We parked on a nearby dead-end road and walked over to a rusted gate at the entrance that kept cars out, but not people.
“What is this place?” Nicole asked as we walked down the gravel path to the bridge.
“The site of a Civil War battle. In the spring of 1863 Jeb Stuart’s troops fought Union soldiers, hoping to delay them so Lee’s army could get to Pennsylvania.”
She looked around at the quiet hills and surrounding woods. “And did they?”
“No. Gettysburg was ten days later.”
“The Civil War,” she said, “is ancient history.”
“Not around here. Gettysburg was one bloody campaign in Pennsylvania, but most of the war was fought right here on Virginia soil. Lee-Jackson Day is a state holiday.”
She brushed a strand of hair off her face and stepped up onto the parapet, staring down into the creek. “I’m sure that’s fascinating for you, but I just can’t relate to any of it.”
I sat on the bridge and swung my feet so they dangled above the creek. “Have a seat,” I said.
“Looks dirty. I’ll stand.”
“It’s not dirty.” I took the top off my cup and turned so I could look up at her. “Why did you go with Valerie Beauvais to the vineyards Thomas Jefferson visited in France, if you’re not interested in history?”
She blew on her coffee. Mine was already tepid. Hers was, too. She was stalling.
“Valerie tell you that?”
“Valerie didn’t get a chance to tell me anything before her car went off the road into this creek,” I said. “A few miles further upstream.”
Nicole wrapped her hands around her cup. “Shane told me what happened. You’re the one who pulled her out.”
“I did,” I said. “It was too late.”
She sipped her coffee. “I was sorry to hear about her death.”
She didn’t sound that sorry. “It’s a murder investigation,” I said. “The sheriff doesn’t think it was an accident.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised.”
“Why not?”
“I’m just not. Valerie didn’t always get involved with the best people.” I wondered if she included herself in that group. Nicole continued sipping. “You didn’t tell me how you knew we were together in France.”
“If I do, will you answer a question?”
“Depends. What’s the question?”
“What you know about the provenance of the Washington wine.”
“Sure,” she said. “Be happy to.”
As easy as that. “Your copy of her book was on the passenger seat of Shane’s car. My apologies, but I looked at the inscription.”
“You’ve got a hell of a nerve.”
“Valerie was on her way to see me when she died. She was going to tell me something about th
at bottle,” I said. “I figure you’re the only other person who knows what that was.”
“’Fraid not,” she said. “I can’t help you.”
She threw what was left of her coffee into Goose Creek and it disappeared into the water below, along with my hopes.
“Can’t or won’t? You were there,” I said. “You were with her in Bordeaux.”
Her lips curved as she seemed to take stock of my logic and where this conversation was going.
She shook her head. “You’ve got it wrong. Not Bordeaux. I bumped into Valerie in Epernay. The Champagne region. I was with a few friends who liked to party. She joined us.”
“What about her book?”
“She sent it to me. Wanted me to show it to some of my clients because she hoped they might be interested in buying it.”
It still didn’t mean Nicole hadn’t talked to Valerie about the Bordeaux. I wasn’t ready to give up.
“Either you heard about the Margaux from Valerie after she read Ryan Worth’s column or Shane told you when he found out Jack was donating it—even before Valerie would have known. So maybe you went back and had a conversation with her.”
“You seem to think we were best friends,” she said. “It was a business relationship. We talked about her book.”
“What about the Margaux?”
“What about it?”
“Did she say anything about its provenance?”
“Not to me.” Nicole tapped her index finger against her mouth, as though she were debating something. “I examined that bottle this morning, remember? As far as I’m concerned, it’s real enough. More important, the right people believe it’s genuinely a bottle of wine bought by Thomas Jefferson for George Washington.” Her expression was scornful. “Come on, Lucie. A lot of wine collecting is done off the books between buyers and sellers once it leaves the château. There is no paper trail. Who can say for sure where it originally came from?”
“Or bother to try finding out,” I said. “Right?”
She smiled with a trace of a sneer. “Right.”
“What are you going to do now?”
She shrugged. “Go back to Shane’s place.”
“I meant about the wine. You work out a deal with Jack yet? Or is Shane helping you with that?”
“Shane.” She rolled her eyes. “He’d be the last person I’d ask.”
“Trouble in paradise?”
“Paradise. What a laugh.” She wasn’t laughing. “The sex is good enough, I suppose, but I’m done with him. Thanks for the coffee. I’ve got to go.”
“You never said whether you’ve made a deal with Jack yet.”
“Me to know and you to find out, sweetie.” Another derisive smile. What had Quinn ever seen in her?
“Maybe you shared the news with Quinn.” I leaned on my cane and stood up. “By the way, how did your tour of my vineyard go?”
She looked away. “It was nice.”
“Leave him alone, Nicole. Leave him in peace.”
She squeezed her Styrofoam cup and it split open. “That’s none of your business.” Her façade suddenly seemed to be cracking. Right along the fault line.
“He never told anyone here he’d been married,” I said. “He never talked about you.”
I should not have said that, but in a day or two she’d walk out of his life again and I’d be left watching him go through whatever private hell he still lived in when he thought of her.
She placed a hand over her heart like she was covering a wound. “You have no right to judge me. I was young. He was my oldest brother’s best friend. I was just a kid.” Her voice shook. “He knew me since I was ten, watched me grow up. We eloped the day I turned eighteen. I had to get out of the house and he—” She stopped as the tears fell down her face.
“I’m sorry.” I meant it.
“I have to go.” She smeared her eyeliner and mascara when she wiped her eyes, so they looked like two bruises. I watched her walk toward the gate as though she was leaning into a strong wind.
She turned around. “You don’t deserve to know this, but he cares about you, Lucie. Why, I’m not sure.”
She slipped through the gate and ran to her car. After she left I sat back down on the parapet and watched the waters of Goose Creek flow toward the Potomac, feeling somehow shamed by Nicole Martin who had—in the end—been kinder to me than I’d been to her.
She did not have a deal with Jack Greenfield—yet. At least I didn’t think she did. She probably wouldn’t leave town until she did. I did not want to see her again while she was here and I hoped that she would not meet up with Quinn.
As it turned out, I did not get either of my wishes.
Chapter 14
When I got home Pépé was in the library sitting in his familiar place on the sofa reading The Economist. A Boyard sat in an ashtray and his half-finished cup of coffee looked cold. He never could get used to American coffee but then I couldn’t drink the high-octane brew he loved without feeling my heart slamming against my chest. He smiled when I came into the room.
“Any good news in the world? Where did you get The Economist?” I kissed him on the cheek and sat next to him. The legendary animus between the French and the British—“the frogs” and “les rosbifs”—went back to Joan of Arc, but my grandfather was broadminded. He read the British press.
“The usual. The world is falling apart but at least intelligent people are writing about it, which makes it seem more palatable.” He closed the magazine. “One of my colleagues drove me to the General Store in Atoka but we did not find it there, so we went to Leesburg.”
“I’m afraid Thelma only stocks local papers,” I said. “And the tabloids, because she’s addicted. I’m sorry you had to go all the way to Leesburg.”
“I enjoyed it. We passed in front of Dodona. I see they’ve made General Marshall’s home a museum.” He shook his head and reached for his cigarette, relighting it. “I had dinner there a couple of times when I was at the embassy. I feel like a dinosaur, ma belle.”
“You are not a dinosaur.”
“Apparently one now needs an appointment to see the house.” He puffed on his cigarette. “I also had a nice chat with your Thelma. She was asking about you. And my visit here. And anything else I could tell her.”
The General Store was a chokepoint for all local gossip and Thelma, who’d been around since God was a boy, did the gentle choking. Maybe it was her vampy, flirtatious ways, or her dress-to-kill wardrobe, but she had an almost mystical ability to wangle information out of everyone who dropped by. Very little got past Thelma’s trifocals and bat-antennae hearing.
“Did she bleed you dry?”
Pépé grinned. “We could have used her in the Resistance. Don’t worry, I didn’t say much. I think she likes me.”
“That’s because you’re such a charmer. I guess that means you’ve replaced her previous boyfriend. Some hunky doctor from one of her soap operas.”
“Not such a dinosaur after all, eh?”
I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Want to go for a ride? I’d like to show you around the vineyard. And there’s something I want to ask you.”
I got his jacket from the closet in the foyer.
“I see you still have Leland’s guns locked up,” he said. “I saw the gun cabinet in the library.”
“I probably ought to sell them,” I said, “since no one uses them now.”
He slipped on his jacket. “And what about you?”
“You know I don’t hunt or shoot.”
We took the Mini instead of the Gator, because it was more comfortable and Pépé could use the ashtray when he smoked. Since Hurricane Iola back in August, we’d had almost no rain and had been warned to be careful with matches and open fires. My grandfather listened as I told him about this year’s harvest while we drove through the established vineyards. Next I showed him the new fields and the vines we’d planted last spring.
“Your mother would have been pleased that you are expanding,�
� he said. “You are like her. Both so ambitious.”
We had stopped at the split-rail fence, which surrounded the larger of our two apple orchards. In the fall we opened it to the pick-your-own crowd, who had been coming steadily for the past few weeks. After last weekend, the trees were nearly bare of fruit.
Pépé smoked quietly and stared at the Blue Ridge.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Is it about my mother—?”
“A little. But I have also been thinking about the past on this visit—the old days,” he said. “There are not so many of us left for this reunion, I’m afraid.”
“That must be hard,” I said. “You miss your friends, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He smiled but his eyes were sad. “Did you know that some of the money from the Marshall Plan helped the French vineyards get back on their feet after the war?”
I knew the stories of how the Germans had moved into the premier wine-producing regions of France and commandeered production. Thousands of cases of the best French wine had been shipped to Germany to sell on the international market to help pay Hitler’s crippling war expenses. Lesser vintages went to their troops on the front.
“I knew the vineyards were in a bad way,” I said.
“You cannot possibly imagine how much wine the Nazis stole—how they looted the vineyards and châteaus.” His eyes grew dark and his voice was suddenly strident. “What they took was as bad as plundering art from the Louvre. Do you know when the French finally arrived at Hitler’s hideaway on that mountaintop in Berchtesgaden they found over half a million bottles of our best wines? And that was only for Hitler, a man who did not drink.” My grandfather’s normally serene face contorted with anger. “They took whatever they needed—even using it for industrial alcohol when they were desperate.”
“Did you have anything to do with getting the Marshall Plan money to the vineyards?” I wanted to get him off the subject of Nazi thuggery. His face had turned an unhealthy shade of red.
“No, I was in Washington during that time. But some of my colleagues were involved.” He sounded calmer.
