by Ellen Crosby
“The guy who owned the place before me was into organic pesticides.” She turned the steering wheel and swung the ATV down the Zinfandel block. “I’m following what he did, though it drives my dad nuts. But, hey, there’s no REI or PHI. It’s better for the grapes, better for the environment.”
REI stood for reentry interval, the amount of time after spraying before anyone could work safely in the vineyard; PHI was preharvest interval. Same thing. You couldn’t harvest grapes that were still coated with a potentially lethal pesticide, so PHI was critical: no spraying of toxic substances permitted a certain number of weeks before harvest. The time interval depended on the product.
I knew that Quinn’s eyes were rolling up into the back of his head as Brooke talked about organic spraying. He and I had the same discussion, regular as clockwork, every year: Organic pesticides may be better for people, but they aren’t effective at killing pests or fungus, especially with the climate we have in Virginia. So decide what you want, he’d say to me. A decimated crop because we sprayed the vines with nontoxic Bacillus thuringiensis, an organic product that didn’t require wearing masks or hazmat gear, or a guaranteed fruitful harvest because we suited up and used a heavy-duty pesticide that would really do the job, REI and PHI notwithstanding.
But Brooke had nudged open the door when she mentioned the previous owner, Teddy Fargo, and that was all I needed.
“So what did your predecessor use?” I asked. “Bt?”
“Yes,” she said over her shoulder. “He was into some other stuff, too. Not just for the grapes, but for the gardens, especially the roses.”
“Did any of it work?” Quinn asked. “Don’t tell me he was one of those New Age weirdos who put bull semen in animal horns and planted them under the vines?”
I wanted to poke him for being ornery and changing the subject, but he wasn’t sitting close enough so that I could do it unobtrusively.
“How’d you guess?” she asked. “You bury them at night during a full moon. After the ritual naked dance through the vineyard.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about trying that,” I said.
Quinn looked incredulous. “You’re not serious?”
Brooke caught my eye and grinned.
He caught on, finally. “All right, very funny. Both of you.”
“You started it,” she said. “You’re just like Daddy. An unbeliever.”
“Bull crap. That stuff’s voodoo, say what you want. You got six acres, Brookie. How much naked dancing and planting under the full moon are you willing to do?”
She took a corner too fast—I think on purpose—and hit the brakes. Quinn and I grabbed on to our seats. “Six acres’ worth. Eventually.”
I needed to reroute the conversation back to Fargo. “I’m interested in what else the former owner used. Even if Mr. Skeptic here isn’t.”
“There used to be a greenhouse up there.” Brooke pointed to one of the hills behind the vines.
“Where?” I asked. “It looks like nothing but woods and scrub.”
“There’s a dirt road that winds around behind those madrones if you follow the contours of the hill,” she said. “It was private, out of sight. I think Ted was into crop modification, but he didn’t want to experiment near the vines. He had a separate garden away from everything else.”
“Experiment?” Quinn said. “What kind of crops?”
“I have no idea.”
“Brookie, there are rumors the guy was growing marijuana here.”
Her eyes flashed. “There’s not a single marijuana plant anywhere on this property, okay?”
“Someone told me he grew black roses,” I said. “Did he ever say anything about that?”
For a long moment she was silent. “I don’t think so,” she said finally. “I’ve seen everything that he left behind.”
“What do you mean ‘that he left behind’?” I said. Allen Cantor said Fargo destroyed anything to do with his drug business.
“What’s with you two?” Brooke stopped the ATV and turned around and glared at me. Then her gaze swung back to Quinn. “Why so many questions about Ted? What’s going on?”
“Do you know him?” I asked.
She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “I bought this place from him, didn’t I? What do you think?”
“Where is he now?” Quinn said.
“Is he in trouble?” She folded her arms across her chest and looked stonily at Quinn. “What is this, a drug sting? Are you guys working undercover for DEA?”
We’d pushed too hard. I tried to make a joke out of it. “If we were, we obviously aren’t very good at it, are we? Look how fast you made us.”
“Come on, Brooke.” Quinn touched her arm. “We’re just wondering if you know where he is. He’s gone missing ever since he sold you this place.”
“Why do you care? Does he owe you money?”
Quinn cut a look in my direction. “No, he doesn’t. And it’s kind of a complicated story.”
“Go on.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We can’t.”
Brooke stared out at the place where Fargo’s greenhouse had been.
“He told me that if anyone came around asking about him that I’d be smart to keep my mouth shut. I thought he was kidding, but I guess I was wrong.” Her voice wavered and she looked into Quinn’s eyes. “I wasn’t expecting the person who asked to be you.”
Quinn rubbed her shoulder like he was comforting a child. “You know about the drugs, don’t you, kiddo? He was a dealer and he grew the stuff right here.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. He burned some fields and cleaned out the greenhouse and the lab before he left. Then he tore down those places, too.”
I sat up straight. This was the first I’d heard about a laboratory.
“Why did he have a lab? What did he do there?” I asked.
“It’s where he made the pesticides. What did you think? That it was a meth lab?” She sounded irritated.
“God, no.”
“The only drug I heard about was weed,” she said. “One of these days they’re going to legalize it in California. There are people who say alcohol is worse. I’m not going to judge what he did, but I’m no dealer and I don’t grow it.”
“What about the burned field? What was there?” Quinn said.
“Presumably his marijuana crop. He put barbed wire around that field; it wasn’t much land, half an acre, and nailed up KEEP OUT signs. Warned me not to go near it or let my dog or any animal near there,” she said.
“Did he say why?” Quinn asked.
“Told me he was worried about some of the stuff he’d experimented with. He wasn’t sure about the REI. Said it could be a really long time.”
That didn’t make sense.
“But why worry about that if he was using organic pesticides on the vines and gardens?” I said.
Brooke gave an impatient flick of her hand and started the ATV. “Look,” she said, “I don’t need to be cross-examined by either of you. Whatever Ted did or grew or experimented with, it’s all gone now. Legal, illegal, whatever. You can’t see where it was from here and it was on private property. So what the hell? Are we done now?”
There was no point asking her if we could see where the lab and greenhouse had been, or even the field with its barbed-wire fence and KEEP OUT signs. No one spoke as she drove us back to the Porsche.
“I’m sure Mick Dunne will be in touch with you in the next day or two about the wine,” I said.
“Fine.” She’d clammed up.
I caught Quinn’s eye. “I’ll wait in the car.”
I got into the Porsche and heard his voice, low and soothing, talking to Brooke. I didn’t catch what he said, or her murmured replies, but he seemed to be comforting her and she was still upset. Finally, he put a hand on her shoulder again and she nodded.
“Be seein’ you,” he said and kissed her forehead.
He didn’t say anything to me until we were back on the Silverado Trail.
“She’s worked up. We shouldn’t have gone at her like that.”
“I’m sorry. I know she is. But it does sound like Teddy Fargo could have been Theo Graf, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “No black roses.”
“The guy had a lab where he made pesticides.”
“The guy was into drugs. A lab comes in useful. Saying he used it as a place to make pesticides for his garden could be just to keep people off his back.”
“Then he disappears and tells her not to talk to anyone about him?”
“I repeat. Drugs.” He gave me an ominous look. “What are you going to tell Charles? All he wanted to know was whether there were any black roses and now you know the answer is no.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to tell him,” I said. “This has gone down a whole different road from what we expected.”
“I think it’s over.” Quinn spoke with finality. “Charles was barking up the wrong tree. Let it go. If Fargo, or whoever he is, finds out Brooke talked to us about his little side business and his cash crop, and you get Charles and some of his spook friends involved—”
He left that remark hanging on purpose, but I knew what he meant. Leave it alone. Walk away.
I nodded, but we both knew that was no longer possible; I needed to finish this. Wherever it led, whatever the consequences.
Even if it included losing Quinn.
Chapter 18
We didn’t talk about Brooke or Charles or Teddy Fargo for the rest of the trip to Robert Sanábria’s guesthouse, which took all of ten minutes. The private drive off Highway 29 was so well screened from view that Quinn missed the turn and had to double back; then we nearly drove past the cottage, which was at the end of a small cul-de-sac. The rustic house with its weathered gray shingle roof and ivy-covered chimney was shaded by a giant redwood whose enormous branches enveloped the place like we were in a tree house. Quinn parked under a portico of logs and rough-hewn beams that was long enough for another car to pull in behind us.
“Bet this was a Prohibition roadhouse, the way it’s so well camouflaged in the woods,” he said. “It’s close to the highway but tucked far enough away so the cops wouldn’t see any lights or cars.”
“Pépé told me Robert lives at the top of the hill at the end of this private road,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s supposed to be quite a place.”
He set my suitcase next to the front door.
“I’ll call you after you get back to Virginia,” he said. “Make sure the rest of the trip went okay.”
I nodded. “I’ll see you in a few weeks for harvest.”
He looked as uncomfortable as I felt.
“Yeah, we’ll talk about dates and all that stuff.”
“Great.”
“See you then.”
“Quinn—” I touched his arm.
“What?”
“I’m sorry about what happened today. I don’t want it to ruin the rest of the trip, everything we did together.”
“I understand.”
I closed my eyes and wished he’d said he agreed or it hadn’t spoiled anything or not to worry. He sounded so formal and closed to me, a stranger. I tried not to think about last night in his bed or the shower together this morning as he bent and brushed my cheek with his lips.
“Tell Charles he got it wrong about Fargo when you get home,” he said as he got in the car.
“What about Maggie Hilliard and Stephen Falcone?”
“They’ve got nothing to do with Fargo.” His eyes locked on mine, a challenge. “Even if he is Theo Graf, which we don’t know and now won’t. You said yourself that Charles admitted Graf was gone by the time Maggie’s car went off the bridge, and he wasn’t at the lab the day Stephen died.”
“I know that.”
“But you’re still going to ask him about Maggie and Stephen, aren’t you? Now that you know about that affair.”
“Yes.”
“Dammit, Lucie, you don’t have to.”
I thought about the photo of Stephen. His smile and the trust in his eyes.
“I think I do.”
If I’d never seen that picture, maybe I’d agree with Quinn right now. But I had. Whatever Quinn and I were on the verge of repairing in our relationship was about to break apart one more time.
His voice was harsh. “You’re not going to change anything. It won’t bring them back.”
“I know nothing will bring them back, but I still think it matters. They matter.”
He lifted his hands off the steering wheel, and for a moment I thought we were at the beginning of another soul-wrenching argument. Then he let them fall and hit the wheel with an exasperated finality before he started the engine.
He kept his eyes straight ahead as he drove out of the portico and snaked back in front of the cottage to the main driveway. I caught a glimpse of his angry, unyielding profile and heard him gun the engine, on purpose, as he roared out onto the highway.
Then he was gone.
I picked up my suitcase and went inside Robert Sanábria’s guest cottage. Large and airy, it smelled faintly of lemony furniture polish and woodsmoke. Soft tree-filtered light flickered through a picture window and made patterns like moving water on the polished hardwood floor and scattered tribal carpets. The centerpiece of the room was a stone fireplace that nearly filled an entire wall; the mantel held pillar candles melted to various heights, framed photographs, and a dried-flower arrangement. The furniture was large, masculine, and comfortable looking. A gold tinsel ball, probably left over from Christmas, hung from a chandelier in the middle of the ceiling, spinning lazily when it caught a draft of air from the open front door. A grape-colored doormat at my feet read, WE SERVE ONLY THE FINEST CALIFORNIA WINES. DID YOU BRING ANY?
Pépé had left me a note on the coffee table; he was up at the main house having drinks with Robert and I was invited to join them. Otherwise, the three of us were dining together at seven P.M. at a restaurant in Calistoga.
I found my bedroom, a cozy room in the back of the cottage with windows on two sides overlooking a small garden. Right now I didn’t feel like having drinks or dining with anyone. I threw myself on the king-sized bed and lay there.
The next thing I knew, my grandfather was shaking my shoulder, waking me from a deep sleep.
The dinner with Pépé and Robert Sanábria passed in a merry-goround blur of conversation, fabulous food, and even more fabulous wine. We went to the restaurant in the Mount View Hotel, a sleek and elegant place where the staff greeted Robert as an old friend.
He was about twenty years younger than Pépé, in his early sixties, soft-spoken, and unpretentious. I liked the jaunty way he swung a bottle of his own private reserve Cab between his fingers as we walked into the dining room and the respect the waiter showed as he took it away to open it and let it breathe before our dinner. Robert gave me a slow, mischievous wink, deliberately and delightfully flirting as we sat down, and thereafter proceeded to charm me for the rest of the evening. Pépé and I had not yet spoken about Charles or Teddy Fargo. By the time we finished our appetizers, even that last tense scene with Quinn receded like a dream whose details had grown cloudy in my mind.
We lingered over dinner, talking and laughing as the restaurant reverberated with the noisy chatter of arriving dinner guests who knew Robert and one another, calling greetings, stopping by our table to be introduced. Robert took care of ordering as the waiters effortlessly slid little plates of fish and meat and vegetables in front of the three of us; my wineglass was never empty.
We had brandy back at the cottage, though by then I was more than a little tipsy. In a moment of recklessness I went into my bedroom on the pretext of getting a sweater and called Quinn. I shouldn’t have done it; it was stupid and I knew it. His phone went to voice mail and I left a goofy, inebriated message that I couldn’t remember ten minutes later.
I slept as soon as my head touched the pillow—in French we call it “sleeping on both ears”—as
though I’d been drugged. When I woke at five thirty to my phone alarm going off, Pépé was already moving about in the bathroom. I sat up, with a hazy memory of Robert promising that his housekeeper would bring breakfast down from the big house at six, and then his limousine would be at the cottage door at six thirty to take us to the airport.
My grandfather is not a morning person—though he’s not grumpy, a conversation consists mostly of monosyllabic grunts— and I was still tired from the past two whirlwind days. So we padded around the cottage in silence, getting dressed and packing our bags, until a young woman showed up at the front door with a picnic basket containing a plate of steaming-hot scones with fresh butter and homemade blackberry jam, and a thermos of jasmine tea from Robert’s favorite tea shop in Chinatown.
The limo came at six thirty sharp. Robert followed the driver down in a Jeep to say goodbye. He and my grandfather embraced, and then he turned to me, bending in for a kiss. The damp chill of the early morning fog clung to him, mingled with cypressy cologne, and his lips were cold on my cheeks.
“Take care of him, Lucie,” he said in my ear.
He stood on the front steps and watched the big car pull away from the portico, catching my eye and flashing a thumbs-up, just before we turned the corner and he vanished from view as the redwood forest swallowed up the big car.
I leaned my head on my grandfather’s shoulder and slept. The next thing I knew it was light outside and we were at the airport. My phone rang as a porter took our bags from the limousine driver. I glanced at the display: Mick Dunne. He hadn’t wasted any time. I slipped the phone into my purse, letting it go to voice mail.
We got to the gate an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave. I got Pépé settled far enough away from a blaring television that he could resume reading the thick document he’d started in the limo, no doubt given to him by someone at the Bohemian Grove, and told him I’d find two ridiculously expensive cups of coffee for us somewhere on the concourse.
