The Sauvignon Secret wcm-6

by Ellen Crosby

  Thelma settled herself in her rocking chair and straightened a pile of soap opera and gossip magazines on a little table next to her. “Oh, he’s working extra hours, all right. But it’s not hoeing and weeding. It’s that little side business he’s got goin’ on for Charles.”

  I bumped the stirrer too hard against the cup and nearly sloshed hot coffee on my lap. “What business would that be?”

  “Well, of course he’s never said, but you tell me what to think when a man shows up in my store first thing in the morning smelling like he just took a bath in a vat of perfume?”

  “Uh … I don’t know.”

  “He’s driving Charles’s girlfriends home, that’s what. After Charles finishes having his way with them in that little love nest he’s got in the woods. At first I thought the perfume was Juliette’s. Then I remembered what my grandmamma, a wise and proper lady, always said: A woman should pick one special fragrance to be her unmistakable scent for life and that’s how a man will remember her. Men find it very erratic, you know. Sort of a … turn on.”

  She plucked at imaginary lint on her dress. Her cheeks had gone pink.

  I’d heard that before, too—about the erotic and sensual power of scent, especially a woman’s signature perfume—when I worked as a translator at the perfume museum in Grasse, France, before I came home to run the vineyard. But right now I didn’t know what to say to Thelma because I had a feeling she knew more about my relationship with Charles than she let on—and this was another setup to see if I’d spill any information.

  I sipped my coffee. “It does sound very romantic, though it’s hard to wear perfume with what I do all day. Really screws things up when you’re trying to make wine.”

  “Don’t you see, Lucille?” She sounded frustrated that I had missed the point. “That’s how I knew!”

  Now I’d lost her. “Knew what?”

  “That it wasn’t Juliette who’d been in the car. Juliette wears Chanel Number 5. Trust me, I’ve got a nose like a bloodhound. In fact, all the Johnson women have very keen oligarchy systems.” She touched a finger to the side of her nose. “That poor man comes in here regular as rain for a morning cup of coffee just reeking of Dior or Ralph Lawrence or whatever the latest one was wearing. It’s just about killed Juliette, don’t you know?”

  I sat up in my chair. “Juliette knows about this?”

  “Lordy!” Thelma waved a hand at me. “She’s known for ages.”

  “How do you know she knows?”

  “When a man’s cheating on his wife the way Charles cheats on Juliette, she knows. Lately I’ve been thinking that it’s finally getting to her, after all this time,” she said. “Wouldn’t surprise me if she broke down and did something about it.”

  “Like what? You don’t mean something violent?”

  “There are other options, Lucille, that are less … drastic.” Thelma shrugged. “Maybe she’ll leave him.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “Not to me. But something’s weighing on her mind.” Thelma jumped up and bustled over to the glass-fronted cabinet where she kept the bakery items. She picked up a white towel and began rubbing imaginary spots on the glass. “I think she’s found somebody new herself.”

  I heard the catch in her throat, a tiny quiver. Then the room grew quiet, except for the rushing sound of the air-conditioning system and an indistinct squawking from the television in the back room. I held my cup with both hands and rocked in my chair, taking in what she’d just said. The old wood creaked, sounding like a baby animal crying. I stopped rocking.

  “I heard she and your grandfather are very old and special friends,” she said in a sad, quiet voice. “That she knew Luc’s wife, your grandmother, way back when in Paris.”

  “Yes,” I said, “that’s true.”

  It was an open secret that Thelma had a mad crush on Pépé. The likelihood of them ever getting together was about the same as the sun colliding with the moon, but my gallant grandfather had taken her to dinner at the Inn the last time he was in town, charming her with the European politesse and old-fashioned chivalry he showed every woman, being especially kind to a lonely spinster whose relationships with men had always ended in heartbreak and disaster, until she finally found vicarious comfort in her soap opera hunks.

  “Well, he is available,” she said. “And he’s quite a catch.”

  “My grandfather is an honorable man. She’s a married woman.”

  “There’s a remedy for that, child. It’s called divorce,” she said. “And who could blame Juliette what with Charles having lovers coming and going all the time?”

  “I think you’re wrong, Thelma. Pépé’s one great love was my grandmother. That’s why he never remarried. And I don’t think he ever will.”

  “Someday when you’re my age,” she said, “you’ll realize that just simple companionship is more than enough. They could still be together and he wouldn’t have to marry her. She never gave up her French citizenship, so she could go back and live there easy as you please.”

  I finished my coffee and stood up. I didn’t want to think about the consequences of what she was saying. Pépé cared for Juliette, that I knew. And, okay, Juliette was a little in love with my grandfather. But what Thelma was implying, that there was some romantic liaison between them that went beyond the very proper behavior I’d witnessed at their party last week, was ridiculous—had I been that blind?

  “What do you need, child?” Thelma took my coffee cup and put it in the trash.

  I needed to think she was wrong, that her theory was way off base. “Pardon?”

  “Besides the muffins. You said you needed a few things.”

  “Oh. Milk, bread, peanut butter.”

  She wrapped my muffins while I got the items and paid her.

  “My grandfather respects Juliette as an old and dear friend,” I said as she walked me to the door. “He’s fond of her, but not in the way you think.”

  Thelma’s smile was tinged with sympathy and regret. “You’re his granddaughter. The man’s been alone for more than thirty years. Let me tell you something, Lucille. Juliette Thiessman is a strong-willed woman. If she wants your grandfather, she’ll get him. You can bet the farm on that.”

  She adjusted her glasses, blinking hard, and I couldn’t tell if she was holding back tears. Then she squared her shoulders and patted my arm. “I do run on sometimes, don’t I?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “Anyway, I guess it’s not up to either one of us what they do, is it?”

  “Nope.” She glanced at her watch, back to her old brisk self. “Lordy, will you look at the time? I’m missing Tomorrow Ever After. I just love that show. The people are just so real, you know? And Shay’s about to propose to Amber.”

  “Oh, gosh. You don’t want to miss that.”

  “Oh, honey, it’s television. This is July. They won’t finish their candlelight dinner on his yacht until sometime in August. Then he’ll take her to his bedroom.”

  “Then he asks her?”

  “No. They’ll argue—she’s very temperamental—and carry on until she finally tells him she’s pregnant. He’ll pop the question by Labor Day.”

  I grinned. “You’d better get back so you don’t miss any of it.”

  “I just love Shay,” she said. “He deserves better than Amber. It’s not his baby, you see. But he’s an honorable man and he’ll take care of her because he’s a gentleman. Toodle-oo, Lucille.”

  The sleigh bells rang as I closed the door. An honorable man and a gentleman: Had she been talking about Shay or my grandfather?

  My phone rang as I was putting the groceries in the Mini.

  “Hey,” Kit said. “Pay dirt.”

  “You found something in the archives?” I felt breathless. “Maggie’s accident?”

  “Sorry, not that. And definitely nothing about Stephen Falcone going missing.”

  “Then what?”

  “I got to thinking about his sister, since you said he might have live
d locally. Call me lazy, but I took the easy route after I couldn’t find anything right away in the archives. I looked up Elinor Falcone on the Internet phone number lookup site. It’s an unusual name.”

  “And?”

  “Got a pencil or pen?”

  “Give me a second.” I fumbled in my purse as my heart pounded against my ribs. “Okay, shoot.”

  “There’s an Elinor Falcone, age sounds about right, still living in D.C. Brookland, to be precise. Maybe you want to go pay her a visit?” She gave me the address and phone number.

  I looked at my watch. “I can be there in about an hour.”

  Chapter 23

  I raced home to drop off the groceries, since I didn’t want to drive into Washington with a gallon of milk in my car on a sultry summer day. As I pulled into the circular driveway, Eli walked out the front door balancing a plate with a towering deli sandwich, a large bottle of Coke, and a bag of chips big enough to get lost in.

  “What’s up?” he said. “You look kind of frazzled. I just took a break to make lunch.”

  “I picked up some things at Thelma’s. Where’s Hope?”

  “At the Ruins with Jasmine and Dominique. They’re getting ready for tonight.”

  I got out of the car and grabbed the groceries. “I’ve got to get this stuff inside. See you later.”

  “You’re running like you stole something, Luce. What’s going on? The girls have got things under control.”

  “I’m sure they do … uh, actually I’ve got an errand in town. I might be a little late.”

  He frowned. “I thought that’s where you just came from.”

  “I mean D.C.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “You’re driving all the way to D.C.? Why?”

  “I need to see someone. Won’t take long.” I held up the bag. “Better get the milk in the fridge.”

  He looked puzzled by the brush-off, but he didn’t push it. “Yeah, sure. See you later.”

  * * *

  It took me an hour and a half to get into Washington, thanks to a highway-paving project that funneled traffic to a single lane and slowed it to a crawl. By the time I crossed the Potomac over the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge and drove down Constitution Avenue toward the Capitol, the temperature gauge in my car read 105 degrees. In the hazy humidity and blinding sunlight, the Federal Reserve, the Commerce Department, and the Archives seemed to shimmer. Cars, tourists, and even the occasional crazy jogger along the Mall moved with slow motion torpor.

  I didn’t know the Brookland area well, except that it was where Catholic University was located, off North Capitol Street and Michigan Avenue. There is an intrinsic logic to how Washington is laid out. A medallion under the crypt in the Capitol Rotunda is the geographic center of a city that originally was intended to be a perfect square—though it isn’t—and from there, four quadrants radiate away from it as northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest. Within each quadrant, alphabet streets run east-west and numbered streets are north-south in a large grid. What throws off the simplicity are the state-named streets, which cut diagonally across this symmetry and the circles—Dupont, Logan, Thomas, et cetera—which can really screw you up if you don’t know what you’re doing.

  Still, it wasn’t too hard to figure out where Elinor Falcone lived. The alphabet streets had moved into two-syllable words by the time I drove past the bright blue mosaic-domed Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, so it was clear that Lawrence Street was between Kearney and Monroe and 13th Street was a block beyond 12th.

  The university hadn’t overrun the local community, so there was a mixture of college bars and restaurants, and a corridor of thriving businesses on 12th Street. The surrounding neighborhood of wood, stucco, and brick bungalow homes looked like they dated back to the 1920s or thereabouts.

  Elinor lived in the middle of the 1300 block of Lawrence Street in a well-looked-after tan stucco Craftsman-style home. Half a dozen steps led up to a wide front porch with heavy tapered columns, a white railing, and a low-pitched roof. I parked across the street and got out of my car. A frail, white-haired woman sitting in a wheelchair on the porch watched me as I made my way between two closely parked cars and started up her front walk.

  “What do you want?” Her high-pitched voice was querulous. “No soliciting allowed here.”

  “I’m not soliciting,” I said. “I’m looking for Elinor Falcone. Would that be you, ma’am?”

  I saw her hands drop to the brakes of her wheelchair and she called over her shoulder. “Alice? Can you come here?”

  The front screen door banged open and a graceful African-American woman in her fifties wearing a short pink apron over red shorts and a white sleeveless top came outside.

  “You all right, Miss Elinor?” she asked. She gave me a wary look. “May I help you?”

  “My name is Lucie Montgomery,” I said. “I was hoping to have a word with Elinor Falcone. I’ve just driven here from Atoka, Virginia.”

  “Where’s that? Roanoke?”

  I smiled. “Not that far. Just past Middleburg in western Loudoun County. I won’t take more than a couple of minutes, I promise.”

  Alice’s hand strayed protectively to the back of the wheelchair. “And what do you want to talk to her about?” she asked. “That you’ve come all this way.”

  “Her brother Stephen.”

  Elinor gave a faint cry and Alice placed both hands on the old woman’s shoulders, bending down to murmur in her ear. When she stood up, her face was impassive.

  “That won’t be possible. You should leave now.”

  “Please.” I looked directly at Elinor. “Someone else might have died because of what happened to Stephen. I know it was a long time ago, and I don’t mean to upset you, Miss Elinor, but could I please ask you a couple of questions?”

  Elinor’s eyes locked on mine as she sized me up. I held my breath. If she wouldn’t talk, there was no one else left to ask.

  “Why do you want to know what happened? Are you kin to the other person who died?”

  “No, ma’am, no relation. I think I know what happened to your brother and I just want you to tell me if I’m right or not.”

  “Go on.”

  “What I know is that he agreed to take money in return for participating in an experimental drug study for a new vaccine. But they had to infect him with the disease first and he died before they gave him the antidote.”

  “So you know everything.” Her voice was harsh. “You’ve been talking to the other girl, haven’t you?”

  I moved closer to the stairs. “What other girl?”

  “Stay where you are.”

  I held my ground. “I don’t know who you mean. And I haven’t been talking to anyone.”

  “She showed up one day, just like you did. I don’t remember when it was. Last winter, I think. No, wait. It was Thanksgiving.”

  Elinor glanced at Alice, who said, “You may as well come up here so we don’t have to be shouting to the whole neighborhood about it.”

  I climbed the stairs, feeling their eyes on me.

  “What happened to you?” Elinor asked when I stood across from her. “Awful young to be using a cane.”

  Up close, her deep-set eyes looked haunted and her downturned mouth looked like she hadn’t known much happiness. I glanced at Alice, whose face revealed nothing, though she continued to watch me like a mother hovering over a delicate child.

  “A car accident,” I said. “And you?”

  “MS.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s terminal, as you probably know,” she said. “I have good days and bad, but now it’s come to this.” She lifted a hand and I wondered if “this” meant the wheelchair, or her life in general. “Before I tell you any more, I want to know why you’re here.”

  “Because Stephen’s death shouldn’t have been covered up like he never existed.”

  “It had to be that way,” she said in a flat, dull voice. “The man who talked to me told me I couldn’t say anything a
bout it. He called himself Mr. Smith. John Smith. Believe that and I’ll sell you the Shrine for a good price. He said I had to tell people that Stephen ran away. He gave me money and, God help me, I took it.”

  John Smith. Charles hadn’t been very creative. Maybe he didn’t care if Elinor knew it was a fake name.

  “What about the girl who came to visit you? Who was she? How did she know how to find you?”

  “Because of her aunt’s diaries,” she said. “That’s how she knew. Came across them in her mother’s house after her mother passed last year.”

  “Was her aunt … autistic, like your brother?”

  “Good Lord, no. Her aunt was one of the researchers. Turns out I knew her, too. I met her, by chance, when I went to the park in Adams Morgan where a lot of homeless people slept rough. It was one of the places where they recruited volunteers. Easy pickings when your home is a cardboard box. A friend of Stephen’s told me where to go.” I waited as Elinor rubbed her forehead with a hand, trying to recall details of a meeting forty years ago. “I had to find out what happened to him, you see. So this woman, a girl, actually, took my name and address and said she’d see what she could do. I could tell she was upset. The next thing I knew John Smith came to see me and offered me money. I presumed they worked together.” She looked up at Alice. “Molly, wasn’t it? Molly Harris?”

  “No, dear,” Alice said. “Molly Harris is one of the church ladies who come to visit sometimes. Her name was Maggie.”

  “Maggie Hilliard,” I said.

  I’d figured it had to be Maggie or Vivian. What I hadn’t guessed was that Maggie had a niece who had tracked Elinor down. Recently.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Why did Maggie Hilliard’s niece come to see you?”

  “She had questions, same as you,” she said. “She told me her aunt wanted the human testing to stop until they did more research after what happened to Stephen. No one else at the laboratory wanted to do that, so she threatened to tell the truth. That’s why they killed her.”

  Elinor said it in such a matter-of-fact manner that at first I didn’t think I’d heard right.