The Bordeaux Betrayal wcm-3

by Ellen Crosby

  Shane shrugged. “I can make it look like an accident.”

  “Like Valerie?” I pointed to the Washington wine. “You killed her and Nicole for that bottle of wine? Or was it because of the Dorgon and what your father did during the war?”

  At the mention of the Dorgon, Jack came inside the room, slamming the door. “What about the Dorgon?”

  “Nothing. I got rid of it.” Shane looked Jack in the eye with the smooth assurance of a practiced liar.

  “No, he didn’t. The bottles are in the pond in your backyard,” I said. “The labels floated to the surface.”

  Shane blinked rapidly and twirled a finger by his temple. “She’s crazy. The wine’s gone.”

  “You bastard,” Jack said.

  “What did Valerie find out about the Dorgon, Jack?” I asked. “That your father was no hero during the war? That he didn’t really help the French winemakers protect what was theirs so the Nazis wouldn’t confiscate it? He stole and looted just like the others, didn’t he? Maybe worse.”

  Jack picked at something imaginary on the sleeve of his expensive blazer. When he looked up, his face was filled with rage. “You have no right to judge. What choice did my father have? You don’t understand…none of us do. None of us were there. He did what he had to do.”

  “Then why did you tell Sunny the wine was a thank-you gift from someone your father helped?” I asked. “Someone grateful for his bravery and courage.”

  He closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were haunted by betrayal. “Because that is what he told me. Because I believed he was a good man who tried to help others.”

  Whether Jack’s father genuinely believed he was acting as a patriotic soldier for the Fatherland obeying Hitler’s orders, or whether he’d been one of the thousands of Nazi soldiers who plundered and destroyed the vineyards of France was something I was sure he’d already answered for when he met his Maker. But he’d heaped even more shame on what he’d done because of the lies and the myth he’d perpetuated so the son believed that his father had courageously risked his life by defying his superiors, that he’d been a man of conscience, and that the bottles of wine he brought home were gifts in tribute to his heroism.

  Instead it was the spoils of war. Blood wine.

  “What did Valerie tell you?” I asked.

  “None of your business.”

  “Your father did something to the family who owned the vineyard, didn’t he?”

  Jack shrugged. “He was ordered to confiscate the property. The wine was needed for industrial alcohol. It was near the end of the war. We had nothing. And the château became a hospital for our soldiers.”

  We. Our. I flinched at his use of pronouns. “What happened to the family who lived there?”

  Another shrug. “They were Jewish.”

  “Your father sent them to the camps?”

  “I have answered enough of your questions.”

  Somewhere behind me, Pépé was listening to the son of a man who had fought against him during the war. I wondered if he was remembering his missions through France, leading those who needed to get to safety while Jack’s father condemned a family for the unforgivable sin of their religion.

  “Valerie tried to blackmail you. She was broke and she needed money so she came to you and threatened to tell what she knew and humiliate you. You needed to get rid of her and you tampered with her car.” I glanced at Shane. “Or someone else did.”

  “I don’t need to listen to this,” Jack said. “And you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “You killed Nicole, too. Valerie talked to her before she died, so Nicole knew something was up.”

  Jack glanced scathingly in Shane’s direction. “Nicole was a greedy young woman who stupidly tried to profit off her friend’s…misfortune.”

  “Not so stupid she didn’t help you set up your phony robbery,” I said.

  I caught the surprised look that passed between them. “She didn’t set up anything,” Shane said.

  “Then who did?”

  They were silent and that’s when the pieces fell into place. Or at least some of them. “You did?” I said. “You staged your own robbery? Who knocked you out, Jack? Shane? Sunny? You had to make it look real, didn’t you? Then what happened? Maybe after Nicole figured out you killed Valerie, she also learned about the fake robbery from Shane. She didn’t have much of a conscience but she did want the Washington wine—and now she had plenty of leverage to make you give it to her, didn’t she? So you killed her, too.”

  “Shut up,” Shane said. He looked at Jack. “I’ll handle this.”

  “I’m sorry, Lucie.” Jack sounded like he meant the apology. “You understand we have no choice. My hands are tied.”

  I stared at him with contempt. “I bet that’s just what your father said to that family before he sent them to the concentration camps.”

  He walked over and slapped me hard across the face. “I was wrong. You deserve what you’re getting,” he said. To Shane he added, “Take her somewhere else. Don’t do it here.”

  “Why do you still trust him? He kept the Dorgon and he’s stealing from you,” I said. “I’m not just talking about the robbery, either.”

  “Shut up,” Shane said, but I had Jack’s attention again.

  “Mac Macdonald donated a jeroboam of Château Latour à Pomerol for the auction,” I said. “He said it was a thank-you gift from Shane, in return for investing a lot of money in wine futures and the Internet auctions. There’s an empty space next to the other Latour jeroboam on your wine rack.”

  Jack stared at Shane. “One bottle,” Shane said. “Big deal. We’re making a bundle. Sometimes you need to spend money to make money.”

  “We’ll talk about that later.” Jack sounded grim. He gestured to me. “Take care of this. I’ll see you at the store when you’re done.” He left without looking at me and a moment later I heard his engine start.

  “Let’s go,” Shane said. “I haven’t got all day.”

  “Go where?”

  “Outside.”

  The sound of glass on glass like bottles clanking against each other stopped him.

  “What was that? Who else is here?” He pointed the gun at me. “Whoever you are back there, you’d better come out. Unless you show yourself she’s a dead woman.”

  “He’s got a gun,” I said. “Stay where you are, Pépé.”

  For a moment Shane looked puzzled. Then he burst out laughing and lowered the rifle. “Your grandfather? That old man is here? You think he’s going to save you?” He crossed the room and grabbed my arm, twisting it behind my back. “First we’re getting rid of that damn cane. I don’t trust you with it.” He kicked it from my hand and it skidded across the room, disappearing under one of the shelves.

  “Okay, Pépé,” he said. “Get out here now before I kill your granddaughter. I can even count in French so you understand. “Dix…neuf…huit…sept…cinq…quatre…”

  I heard a soft thwack and Shane slumped against me.

  “Run, Lucie,” Pépé held a wine bottle in his hand. “I don’t know how long he’ll be out.”

  “My cane.”

  “No time.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me with him but my leg buckled and I fell.

  He helped me up. “Vite, vite! Hurry!”

  “Don’t move. Either of you.” Shane’s voice was thick behind us.

  Pépé hurled the wine bottle across the room like he was throwing a fastball. Shane turned away as it came toward him, shielding his face.

  My grandfather shoved me down one row and dove down another as Shane groaned and I heard the sound of breaking glass. “Go!”

  The aisles of Jack’s wine cellar were open-ended—we wouldn’t be able to hide for long. I saw Pépé’s shadow at the end of his aisle. He leaned out and signaled to me. He would draw Shane so I could get to the door. My phone was in the car, but that was a few hundred feet away. I pointed to my leg and shook my head. Then I pointed at him. He could run. I could not.r />
  “I’ll kill you both.” Shane’s voice echoed in the room. “No one’s leaving.”

  Pépé disappeared, silent as a ghost. I heard the sound of more glass on glass and Shane moving toward the noise. Pépé still meant for me to go for help and he was trying to draw Shane away from where I was. But I’d have to go the long way around the perimeter of the wine cellar before I could get back to the tasting area and the door without Shane seeing me. And I didn’t have my cane.

  “Hey, Lucie,” Shane said. “Guess who I’ve got?”

  I heard my grandfather’s “ouf” and the sound of something hard connecting with flesh. Then more breaking glass. Pépé must have fallen into one of the wine racks. Had Shane struck him with his rifle butt, or another wine bottle? He could have killed him if it had been a blow to the head.

  “What did you do to him?” I shouted. “Leave him alone!”

  “Then get over here,” he said. “Or I’ll really hurt him. You know what damage a broken bottle can do to a soft old skull?”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “Don’t. Please, don’t.”

  I walked around the corner. Pépé lay crumpled on the floor, his silver hair streaked with red. He wasn’t moving.

  “Let me take care of him,” I said. “Please.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Now I’ve got two of you to deal with. You first. Let’s go.” Shane jabbed the rifle barrel in the small of my back. “Step around that mess. There’s glass everywhere.”

  He forced me back to the tasting area, his hands and jacket covered with wine and blood from where he’d been cut by broken glass. “Over to the sink,” he said. “Grab a towel and get it wet. I’ve got to clean up.”

  I reached for the towel and caught a glimpse of my grandfather, bloody and wine-stained, as he peeked around the corner of one of the shelves. Shane, facing the sink, had set down the rifle and was wrapping the towel around his hand. He didn’t see Pépé. I looked down so my eyes wouldn’t give anything away.

  “Don’t test my marksmanship.” My grandfather’s voice was surprisingly strong as he cocked the hammer of Leland’s Colt .45 semiautomatic pistol and aimed it at Shane. “Put the rifle down on the floor and move away from it.”

  “No.” Shane reached for his gun as I grabbed the Washington wine.

  “Do what he says or I’ll drop this,” I said.

  He swung around. “No! Don’t do it!”

  I brought the bottle down hard on his arm. He swore and fired the rifle, hitting a bottle of wine, which exploded off the shelf. I hit him again and this time he dropped the rifle. I held the Margaux in my hands, amazed that the bottle had not broken.

  Pépé walked over to us, keeping the pistol pointed at Shane. He nudged the rifle out of the way with his foot.

  “Put the bottle down and get the rifle, Lucie,” he said. “And take it with you when you call the sheriff.”

  I obeyed and started for the door.

  “Oh my God—no! Look what you’ve done!” Shane was staring at the bottle, now cracked with a spiderweb of tiny fissures. Slowly the wine seeped out like blood from a wound. “We have to save it! My God, do you know what this wine is worth?”

  “Two lives too many,” I said.

  “Let it go,” Pépé said. “The man it was destined for never drank it. Go along, Lucie.”

  “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I thought I’d teach our friend to count to ten in French while we’re waiting. He forgot six, you know. Besides, I am here with the spirits of two of your most famous presidents. I’ll be fine.”

  Chapter 28

  The fresh-faced paramedic who showed up was the one who had treated me the day Valerie died.

  “You get around,” he said.

  “I think my grandfather should go to the hospital,” I said.

  “Not on your life,” Pépé said. “Most of this is wine, not blood. I have a small cut on my head but it will heal. I’m not going to any hospital.”

  “I see orneriness runs in the family,” the paramedic said.

  I watched a deputy handcuff Shane and take him over to a cruiser. His eyes met mine as the deputy pushed his head down and he slid into the car.

  By the time Bobby Noland showed up, he said a couple of deputies had already picked Jack up at Jeroboam’s. Bobby walked into Jack’s wine cellar and saw the mess of broken bottles and wine on the floor.

  “All this over some old bottles of wine,” he said. “Give me a beer any time. If it’s old, you know it’s bad.”

  Pépé’s friend had left a message on the answering machine when we got back to the house. Château Dorgon, he reported, had been taken over by a Nazi officer named Johannes von Gruenfeld. None of the family had survived the camps, but a year or so ago an American woman had shown up, claiming to be a distant relative.

  “In English, ‘Gruenfeld’ translates into ‘Greenfield,’” Pépé said.

  “A distant relative. Valerie? My God, if Valerie was related to the family Jack’s father sent to the camps, she must have really wanted revenge,” I said. “Why didn’t she confront him right away?”

  “Maybe she wanted to see the wine first,” Pépé said.

  “I wonder if Nicole knew Valerie was related to the family who owned Château Dorgon,” I said. “Though I think all Nicole cared about was having the leverage to blackmail Jack so he’d sell her the Washington wine—or maybe give it to her outright.”

  “From what you’ve told me, I doubt Valerie would have confided something like that in Nicole,” my grandfather said.

  “So Nicole was telling the truth—she didn’t know what Valerie knew. Except I thought it had to do with the Margaux,” I said.

  “In a way, it did,” Pépé said. “Both women wanted it and both of them tried to blackmail Jack and Shane—but for different reasons.”

  “What do you bet Shane would have resold all the ‘stolen’ wine through his Internet auctions once they collected the insurance money?” I said. “Though Shane betrayed Jack as well, hanging on to the Dorgon and pilfering from his wine cellar.”

  My grandfather shook his head. “Such a tragedy. At least now it is finished.”

  “Maybe you ought to think about postponing your trip home,” I said. “You really have quite a nasty cut on your head.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I need to get back to Paris. A few of les vieux potes are planning another trip.”

  The old chums. His buddies. The friends he’d gone to China with. “Another trip? Where are you going this time?”

  “Egypt. To see the pyramids.” He smiled. “I remember watching when they were built. It would be nice to see what they’ve done with them since then.”

  I burst out laughing. “Are you really going to Egypt?”

  His smile broadened. “But, of course.”

  The day before he left for Paris, Pépé planned his own farewell party, inviting Dominique, Eli, Quinn, Thelma, and me to join him at the villa. He’d brought a bottle of 1945 Château d’Yquem from France, intending to drink it with his colleagues to commemorate the year the war ended in Europe. Instead, he decided to share it with us.

  “One last memory bottle,” he said. “To lay old ghosts to rest.”

  We drank it at sunset before going to dinner at the Goose Creek Inn. When Thelma arrived in another flaming red dress, Pépé kissed her hand. She blushed and glowed like a young girl. Quinn, to my surprise, showed up in a well-tailored blazer, a pair of wool trousers, and a black crewneck sweater. No jewelry. A first for him.

  He caught my stare and held it.

  Pépé proposed the first toast, to the future.

  “What are you going to do about the auction, after everything that’s happened?” Dominique asked. “I heard Sunny Greenfield left town and she’s not coming back. Jeroboam’s is locked up with a sign that says CLOSED INDEFINITELY.”

  “We’ll still hold it, of course,” I said. “I think we’ll manage to raise a lot of mon
ey—nothing like what we expected—but it will be something.”

  “I can’t get over that Shane,” Thelma said. “He was always so nice to me but, you know, there was something kind of fishy about him. Usually I’m pretty good about figurin’ folks out, but I guess my extrasensory precipitation wasn’t working so hot this time. I just can’t believe he killed those poor women.” She looked over at my grandfather. “You’re a brave man, Luc Delaunay. You and Lucie could have been killed.”

  Quinn moved so he was standing next to me and laid a hand on my shoulder. He leaned down. “Thelma’s got quite a crush on your grandfather.”

  “Mmm.”

  Pépé smiled at Thelma and raised his glass to her. “‘He did not wear his scarlet coat, for blood and wine are red. And blood and wine were on his hands when they found him with the dead. The poor dead woman whom he loved, and murdered in her bed.’”

  “Why, Luc!” Thelma’s face turned the color of her dress. “That’s real poetry. Aren’t you the clever one? Did you make that up?”

  “Ah, no.” He smiled at her. “I am not so gifted. Oscar Wilde wrote it. ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol.’”

  “How funny—it describes Shane perfectly,” Dominique said. “The scarlet coat. Killing the woman he loved. Even the blood and wine on his hands.”

  “Speaking of blood and wine, Ryan Worth is going to fly to Switzerland to get the Washington wine tested,” I said. “He called this afternoon. There was enough left in the bottle.”

  “I still can’t believe you hit Shane with that bottle,” Eli said. “Thirty thousand to choose from in that wine cellar and you picked that one?”

  “I had to get his attention,” I said. “And he was holding a gun.”

  “You know, if Valerie hadn’t shown up and scared Jack by threatening to expose his father, Shane would probably still be getting away with that scam,” Dominique said.

  “I suppose we’ll never know,” Quinn said. “Or if Nicole hadn’t come to town for that Margaux.” His hand was still on my shoulder. He said in my ear, “Jaime came to get her yesterday. We went out for a few drinks last night.”

  “You okay?”