The Bordeaux Betrayal wcm-3

by Ellen Crosby

  Mac shook his head. “Shane gave it to me. I just started buying wine futures from him and I purchased a couple of bottles of wine through his Internet auctions. He’s advising me since I’m still a novice, but I trust him.” He shrugged. “Whatever I buy I usually resell through him and it’s made me a tidy little profit. The wine was kind of a thank-you gift after I made a fairly substantial investment.”

  Some thank-you gift. “You don’t ever see the wine you buy through those auctions?”

  Mac hoisted his coffee mug. “You know I’m a teetotaler. But I do enjoy investing—and it’s fun getting involved in, you know, the world of wine.” He smiled like we were co-conspirators.

  I looked at the bottle. Jack Greenfield owned a couple of jeroboams of the Latour—I’d just seen them when I walked through his wine cellar on Sunday. And Shane was taking inventory of what Jack owned since Jack seemed to have lost track.

  “When did Shane give this to you?” I asked.

  “Couple of weeks ago, maybe a month. Why?”

  “Just curious. Thanks so much, Mac.”

  “You all right, sugar? I heard about you finding that young woman yesterday.” He put an arm around my shoulder. “What’s this world coming to where you kill a person and dump them like a sack of trash? Who would do something like that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure the sheriff will find whoever did it.”

  “Used to be so safe around here,” he said. “Now we’ve got all these people coming in from away. Including you bringing ’em in—you’re hiring ’em. I say we ought to send those folks back home where they belong. I’ll bet you one of them did it.”

  Fond as I was of Mac, I would never understand his ugly prejudices or his belief that white stood for purity and good. He thought America ought to be populated by Americans, not foreigners, but you could never tell him that the only real Americans had been here for centuries, long before the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery arrived in Jamestown in 1607. When all was said and done, he and all the rest of us were the foreigners.

  “If those men didn’t pick my grapes,” I said, “who would? They work hard, Mac. They send money home so their families can have a better life. A lot of them have more than one job.”

  “You wait and see,” he said. “When it all shakes out one of those people will be responsible for that woman’s death.”

  He said “those people” like he was talking about bird droppings.

  “I’m not sure about that,” I said.

  He bussed me on the cheek and left his empty cup on the bar. The pumpkins, I noticed, were no longer there.

  After he left, Frankie came over to me with her hands on her hips. “I moved the pumpkins out to the terrace because I knew they upset you,” she said, “but I swear, I was that close to throwing one of them at him.” She held up her thumb and forefinger. No daylight between them.

  “I wouldn’t have stopped you,” I said. “He’s always been like that. Usually he keeps it to himself.”

  “I would have called him on it.”

  I shook my head. “Today I just couldn’t.”

  “I could tell. Especially when I saw the look on your face when he handed you that wine. And what’s with the pumpkins?”

  “Nicole carved them when she was with Quinn the other night,” I said.

  Frankie’s hand went to her mouth. “I had no idea. I never should have taken them. What do you think I should do now?”

  “Put them back in the barrel room and let Quinn decide.”

  “All right.” She eyed the Latour. “Fabulous donation.”

  “It is, isn’t it? I’d better get back to the house. My grandfather’s waiting for me.”

  “You two going to do something nice together?”

  “I think I’m going to drive over to Sunny Greenfield’s place and drop off the artwork for the cover of the auction catalog.”

  She looked surprised. “Really? Well, if it will take your mind off everything that’s been going on, then good. The auction has kind of fallen by the wayside ever since Jack asked you to return his wine. We still have a lot to do to get ready, you know.”

  I drove back to the house and wondered about the Washington bottle. Had Nicole gone over to the Greenfields’ on Sunday and tried to buy it? Jack would have still been recovering from his concussion the night before. Thelma had heard Nicole on the phone, making plans to see someone she presumed was another woman. Had Nicole met with Sunny and not Amanda as I’d thought?

  Then there was Shane, who I now suspected was pilfering wine from his partner’s wine cellar. He was also Nicole’s ex-boyfriend and nowhere to be found after the burglary the other day. How did he fit into all this?

  Pépé had finished his coffee when I got home.

  “Change of plans,” I said. “We’re not going to Amanda’s. We’re going by Sunny Greenfield’s to drop off something for the auction.”

  “Is she expecting us?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, “but that’s okay. I’ll be right back. The papers are upstairs in my study.”

  He was waiting in the library with his coat on when I returned.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “Fine. I just wanted my cigarettes.” He patted his breast pocket. “The reason we’re going to Sunny’s is not so you can leave some papers with her, is it?”

  “No,” I said, “it’s not.”

  “I didn’t think so,” he said.

  Chapter 26

  On the way over to the Greenfields, I told Pépé about the bottle of wine Mac had donated for the auction.

  “When Eli and Sunny asked me to look around on Sunday to see what had been stolen, I thought it was odd there weren’t any bottles pulled partially out of their places,” I said. “At the time, I wondered if it might be because the thief or thieves knew Jack’s cellar—and I figured Nicole was probably involved.”

  “Now you believe she was not?” Pépé asked.

  “Now I think I understand what happened. Nicole and Shane were partners—he knows that wine cellar inside out. Mac said Shane gave him the bottle of Latour a month or so ago. Maybe Shane was stealing wine from Jack’s cellar as he took inventory. Since he’s setting up the database, he can make sure it matches what’s on hand. Besides, Jack has thirty thousand bottles. That’s a lot of wine.”

  “So why the robbery, if he has been stealing wine quietly and not getting caught? Or at least, until now when you made the connection with the Latour,” Pépé said.

  “Maybe Nicole pushed Shane to do it,” I said. “Though I don’t think she was there during the robbery. She had dinner with Mick until nine and afterward went over to Quinn’s for the rest of the night. Quinn said she arrived around ten or ten-thirty.”

  “And between nine and ten?”

  “Sunny didn’t know what time the break-in occurred. All she knew was that when she went looking for Jack it was after midnight. That’s when she found him unconscious in the wine cellar—alone. The earliest he could have gone there was after eleven because she went to bed and left him watching the news.”

  “Perhaps Nicole showed up just to make sure all was in order,” Pépé said. “Then she drove over to be with Quinn.”

  I frowned. “Could she have done that in an hour? Drive from Mick’s to Jack’s to Quinn’s place?”

  “She could have met Shane elsewhere. Or called him.”

  “You know, their affair was over. I think Nicole’s the one who ended it. The timing seems odd.”

  Pépé smiled. “Perhaps it does to you, but I suspect they did not let their feelings get in the way of committing a crime together.”

  “Or they did get in the way and after the robbery Shane killed Nicole.”

  “Lucie,” he said, “we really ought to go to the sheriff with all this.”

  “We will, once I check out whether there’s a missing jeroboam of Latour in Jack’s cellar.”

  “How do you plan to do that? I knew you wer
e not planning to drop off any so-called papers with Sunny.”

  “Of course I am. That’s the reason we’re going over there. And they’re not ‘so-called papers,’” I said. “It’s the artwork for the cover of the auction catalog. We’re using one of Mom’s paintings of the vineyard. Sunny’s taking care of getting the catalog printed, so she needs this.”

  Pépé’s face grew soft. “May I see which painting you chose?”

  I reached into the backseat and got the folder. The photograph of the oil painting, one of my favorites, was of the vineyard in autumn. It was one of her last works during a period when she’d been experimenting with bold, brilliant colors and a more impressionistic style.

  He stared at it for a moment and closed the folder. “You haven’t answered my question. How do you plan to look around the wine cellar? You can’t tell Sunny what you want to do.”

  “Sure I can. I’m just going to ask her flat out if I can look around again,” I said. “Besides, I’m bringing my secret weapon. You. You’ll charm the socks off her.”

  His smile was fleeting. “Even if you are right that doesn’t prove Shane stole it. Or that Nicole had anything to do with it.”

  “A lot of people we know are buying wine from Shane through his auctions and his futures. Mac’s never seen a single bottle of wine that he’s bought. What if it’s all just a sham? A Ponzi scheme?”

  “Lucie.” Pépé shook his head. “I’m telling you, this is dangerous. Nicole was murdered and that other woman died because someone tampered with her car. Look in the wine cellar if you must, but then we should talk to your friend Bobby. This is no business for us.”

  I turned into the Greenfields’ driveway. The sun had finally come out and the sky was clotted with clouds. I pulled up and parked in front of the house.

  “Looks like they’re both gone,” I said. “No cars.”

  “Don’t forget your folder.” Pépé handed it to me as we got out of the car. “If you came to talk about the auction, you should have your papers with you.”

  “Good point.” I rang the doorbell. “I don’t think anyone is home. Maybe we should try the wine cellar.”

  “First, let’s check the house more thoroughly. I’ll go around back. You wait here in case someone’s home after all,” Pépé said.

  He disappeared and I peered through one of the sidelights. The house was quiet.

  “Lucie!” Pépé gestured for me to follow him. “Come take a look.”

  A split rail fence, with a morning glory twining through it, marked the boundaries of their half-acre backyard. There was a brick patio with the lawn furniture still set out and a small pond with a weeping willow along one side of the property line near the path to the cottage where the wine cellar was located. In the center of the pond, a large white clump of something floated like an ungraceful lily pad.

  “What is that?” I asked. “It looks like paper.”

  “It is paper. Wait a minute.” Pépé walked over to the barbecue grill on the patio and unhooked a long meat fork and metal spatula that were hanging on the side.

  He handed me the spatula. “Let’s see if we can find out what it is.”

  We splashed the water with our tools like a couple of kids, stirring it up until the mass of paper finally drifted within reach. Pépé speared it with the fork, but by now I could tell it was wine labels. A lot of them.

  “All Château Dorgon,” I said. “You think the bottles are in the bottom of the pond?”

  “It would be logical. Whoever did this did not think about the glue dissolving and the labels rising to the surface.”

  “But why put the wine here? Why not drink it or dump it out, if you wanted to get rid of it?” I asked.

  “Because someone did not want to get rid of it. They merely wanted to hide it temporarily,” he said.

  “Sunny told me that Valerie accused Jack’s father of stealing wine from the French when he was stationed in Bordeaux during the war,” I said. “But Sunny said it was just the opposite and that Jack’s father risked his life helping the local vineyard owners. Do you suppose Valerie was right—that this wine really was stolen from Château Dorgon during the war and Jack has been lying for his father all along?”

  “Or it’s possible Jack told the truth as he knew it,” Pépé said. “Maybe he believed that his father really did help the French. Then Valerie showed up and told a different story of a man who was not so noble. You know, some of the vineyard owners were sent to the concentration camps.”

  “Oh God! What if he did something like that and Valerie found out and threatened to blackmail him?” I said. “So he tampered with her car, or had someone do it for him.”

  “Possibly.”

  I gestured to the labels. “But Jack wouldn’t hide this wine. He’d want to destroy it once he knew the truth. Someone else did this.”

  “Shane, perhaps,” Pépé said. “Or maybe Sunny?”

  “Sunny? Would she?” I stared at him. Maybe that’s what Shane and Sunny had been talking about the day I saw them together at the Point-to-Point. “Come on. Let’s see if we can get into the wine cellar.”

  “I guess we could take a look around.”

  A slate path bordered on either side by azaleas and rhododendron led from the pond to the small building. The door still hadn’t been repaired and there was a new-looking padlock through the hasp. I tugged on it. Locked.

  “Give me the paper clips from those pages in your folder,” Pépé said. “I’ll unlock it.”

  “You’re going to pick the lock?”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Uh, no. It’s just that I had no idea you knew how to do that.”

  “I’ll teach you sometime,” he said. “It’s not so hard.”

  He opened one of the two paper clips and pulled the wire at a ninety-degree angle.

  “Can you hold this, please?” He handed it to me and opened the second paper clip, doubling it back on itself.

  I watched as he jammed it in the keyhole, putting his ear next to the lock. As he jiggled the paper clip, he moved his tongue from side to side as though it were following the zigzag trajectory past the lock pins.

  After a moment he said, “Please give me the other paper clip.”

  A few seconds later, he pulled on the lock and it opened.

  I rolled my eyes at the satisfied smile on his face. “Ladies first. But let’s be quick. This is breaking and entering. Have your look around, then let’s get out of here.”

  I flipped on the lights and Pépé whistled. “Nice, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Someone spent a lot of money.”

  “Look. The Washington bottle,” I said. It was in a small alcove above the bar on its own, caught in the soft wash of a low-wattage spotlight. “So Nicole didn’t get it, after all. I guess Jack or Sunny must have moved it back here after the break-in.”

  “Let’s go see where you found the Latour,” Pépé said. “And then I think we should leave.”

  The tiny twinkling spotlights shining on the dark walls and slate floor made the place seem moodily theatrical. We walked past the stair-stepped freestanding wine racks to the rows of shelves and their floor-to-ceiling racks containing bottles of wine. I led Pépé down what seemed like endless mazelike rows until we came to the Bordeaux. The jeroboams were in a separate location since they didn’t fit in the standard racks.

  I pointed to an empty space next to a jeroboam of Latour. “I bet Shane took it from here.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Now we go to the sheriff.”

  The sound of the front door closing—loudly, as though a blast of wind caught it—sent my heart into my throat. Pépé’s eyes met mine and he put a finger to his lips.

  “Stay here,” I whispered. “It’s probably Jack or Sunny. I’ll say the door was unlocked and tell them about the auction papers.”

  I walked around the corner and stepped into the light pool of a small spotlight.

  “Well, well. What are you doing here, Lucie?�
�

  Shane Cunningham stood in the doorway, dressed as though he’d been out riding. He was holding a hunting rifle and he did not look pleased to see me.

  Chapter 27

  “I came by to see Sunny,” I said. “There was no one at the house so I checked here. It was unlocked so I came in.”

  “That’s odd.” He came into the room and closed the door. “I was here earlier working on the inventory and I know I locked up. Sunny’s got a meeting in Charlottesville and Jack is at the store. Sorry about the gun, but I thought maybe whoever broke into the place the other night had come back. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I laughed, giddily relieved at the reprieve. “Don’t apologize. Sorry I scared you, too.” I walked over to the marble and redwood bar where I’d left the folder. “I brought this for Sunny—”

  “What the hell’s going on here?” The door opened once again. Jack Greenfield seemed to block all the available light coming from the outside. He looked from me to Shane and the rifle and his eyebrows knitted together. At that moment I knew he was guilty of something because he looked like the devil himself.

  “Good God, Shane. What are you doing with that?” Jack stared hard at me as though I’d somehow let him down and shook his head. “Why did you come here, Lucie? Why couldn’t you have stayed out of it?”

  “Shut up!” Shane said. “Shut up, you fool.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Jack looked at Shane and the light went out of his eyes. “How was I supposed to know? You’re standing there with the goddamn rifle.”

  “And you’re supposed to be at the store. She was here when I arrived. I told her I thought whoever broke into the place the other night might have come back.” Shane raised his rifle like a club and said to me, “You don’t know what you’ve just done. Jack’s right. You should have stayed out of it.”

  “Stayed out of what?” I said. My hands were slick with sweat and my legs were shaking. I leaned on my cane for support.

  “She knows,” Shane said to Jack. “Or she wouldn’t be here.”

  “Now what do we do?” Jack asked.