The Riesling Retribution wcm-4

by Ellen Crosby

  Tyler, B.J., and a third man, who had to be Ray Vitale, made an incongruous-looking trio waiting for me in the parking lot. B.J. and Vitale looked as though they were posing for a daguerreotype, each with one arm across his breast and a soldier’s erect bearing. Both had longish hair—B.J.’s was the color of snow, Vitale’s chestnut brown—along with beards and muttonchop sideburns. Put them in their uniforms and you’d swear you were looking at Lee and Grant in the flesh, with their somber bearing and unsmiling faces.

  Tyler, by contrast, towered over the older men at six foot four, still possessing the gangly awkwardness of a kid newly adjusting to his height and long limbs. Unlike the others, he smiled and waved, his cherubic red-blond curls blowing in the light breeze as he pushed wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose with an index finger. His pale skin, which refused to tan, had turned strawberry colored from so much time working with the vines.

  I pulled up and idled the engine. Tyler waited for Vitale to climb into the backseat before hopping in behind him with a well-worn copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. B.J. got in front and introduced Vitale to me.

  I reached over the seat and held out my hand. Vitale pumped it once and released it. “How do you do, ma’am?”

  His voice was high-pitched and querulous. He gave me a cursory glance before settling back in his seat and focusing his attention on the scenery, ignoring me as though I were no longer of any consequence.

  I turned back to B.J. sitting next to me. He wore an I-told-you-he’s-eccentric expression and waggled his eyebrows, so I had to stifle a laugh.

  On the drive out to the field, B.J. kept up a one-sided explanation of the vineyard for Vitale’s benefit, talking about how successful we were as a small family business now run by the next generation. To hear B.J. tell it, I was on a par with the top women in the California wine dynasties. But by the time we reached the reenactment campsite, Ray Vitale’s monosyllabic comments had deflated BJ.’s well-intentioned patter and we all fell silent.

  I reached for my cane as the others climbed out of the Mule.

  “I don’t imbibe spirits, myself,” Vitale said in that reedy voice as I stepped down. “You know what the Bible says. ‘For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty.’ I’m glad to see that this site is well removed from your vineyard, Miss Montgomery. It’s not good to have temptation too near our young people. We do not allow any alcohol on the campground premises during the reenactment, you understand. I presume you will not be serving anything to those who come to watch, nor encouraging folks to visit your winery. We cannot have drunkenness marring these events.”

  His prissy choice of words was right out of another century, uncharitable and stinging. I was about to make a sharp retort when B.J. intervened.

  “What Ray means,” he said, in the soothing voice he used to comfort the bereaved, “is that it’s just common sense not to allow anyone to bring alcohol to the camp around guns and bayonets and the like.”

  “I certainly appreciate that,” I said. “But I’d just like to say, Mr. Vitale, that there’s a difference between drinking and drunkenness. As we all know, Jesus turned water into wine and even imbibed himself, since you bring up the Bible. I’m sure the adults who attend the reenactment can make their own decisions about whether they’d like to visit my vineyard or not.”

  B.J. placed a hand on my shoulder. “How about if Ray and I take a little walk so I can show him the campsite?” Under his breath he said in my ear, “Let me handle this.”

  He caught up with Vitale, who was striding over to take a look at the tornado damage. B.J. pulled a couple of cigars out of his breast pocket and offered one to Ray Vitale. They bent their heads and went through the ritual of slowly rotating the match flame until the tips glowed like early evening fireflies.

  Tyler showed up at my elbow as I watched the silhouettes of the two men, backlit by the setting sun, talking through a haze of smoke.

  “Where were you?” I asked.

  “Checking out that grave.”

  “You didn’t go inside the crime scene tape, did you?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t touch anything.”

  “Tyler! What were you thinking? It’s not there for decoration. Bobby Noland will give me hell if he finds out you were there.”

  “Don’t tell him.”

  “You mean lie if he asks?” I shook my head. “Just stay away from it, okay? I don’t want to catch you there again.”

  “All right. Sorry.” He bowed his head, repentant. After a moment he said, “I guess you told that Vitale guy, huh, Lucie.”

  “Trying to sweet talk me now, are you?” I said, as he reddened. “I didn’t tell him anything. You can’t persuade people who stand on the moral authority of the Bible to change their mind. They’re too self-righteous.”

  Tyler waved his book. “Read this and people like him won’t bug you so much.”

  “He doesn’t bug me.”

  He looked at me over the top of his glasses.

  “Okay,” I said. “A little.”

  “Then stop letting him. Deny your emotions and you can free yourself from the pain and pleasure of the material world.”

  “Where’d you get that? You sound like a television evangelist.”

  “It’s Stoicism. Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic. They were into all kinds of denial not to feel things.”

  “Sorry, a painless world would be nice, but not one without pleasure. Besides, what’s the point of living if you don’t feel anything?”

  Tyler tapped the book’s cover with its hollow-eyed bust of the philosopher set against a stark black background. “Vitale got under your skin not because of what he did, but because of how you reacted to him. Same with you getting mad at me just now. What I did was no big deal.”

  “I don’t agree it was no big deal, but what’s your point?”

  “Aw, come on. I’m just a harmless kid.” Tyler grinned a rogue’s grin and indicated the crime scene tape. “I’ve heard things, Lucie. I know it’s none of my business but you need to stop letting everything that’s going on get to you. Don’t worry about what other people say. It doesn’t matter.”

  I wanted to ask him what other people were saying, but perhaps it was better that I didn’t know. Instead I said, “Maybe I’ll have to borrow that book.”

  He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Anytime. Too bad I can’t talk Quinn into reading it. He’s the one who could really use it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means Quinn isn’t someone who stifles his emotions. Especially when he’s mad.”

  “Quinn’s got a lot on his mind right now.” I studied Tyler. “Are you trying to tell me things aren’t good between the two of you?”

  He shrugged. “I guess they’re okay.”

  “You guess they’re okay?”

  Tyler bent his book back and forth into a U-shape. “He got mad at me when we were topping off the barrels and I overfilled one of them.”

  “How mad?”

  “He yelled a lot. Plus he thinks Chance or I lost that stirring paddle. The dodine.”

  Was it my imagination or did Tyler seem uneasy discussing Quinn? Funny thing was, I would have pegged Quinn as a Stoic like Marcus Aurelius, someone good at keeping his emotions bottled up. What had changed? Was he losing his temper at Tyler and the other men because those pent-up feelings finally were boiling over?

  “Hey, Lucie.” Tyler kept his voice low. “Here come B.J. and Vitale.”

  “I don’t think we’ll have any trouble working around that tornado damage, Lucie,” B.J. was saying. “We’ll have to move some of the campgrounds into the woods, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Depends, of course, on how many people show up.”

  “How many do you expect?” I asked.

  Vitale puffed on his cigar. “We cut registration off last weekend. Four hundred total.” He gave me a stern look. “How much longer will that area be a crime scene?”

  “I’m sure the tape will
be down by next week,” I said. “The remains that were found there were removed today.”

  I saw one of B.J.’s eyebrows go up, but all he said was, “Why don’t we head over to the battlefield? I’d like Ray to see it before it gets too dark.”

  “It’ll be faster if I drive you,” I said.

  “No one’s going to drive us on the day. I’d like to get an idea of the terrain,” Vitale said. “We’ll walk.”

  “Be my guest,” I said, and caught Tyler’s eye. “Whatever suits you.”

  Vitale exhaled a cloud of smoke and Tyler coughed.

  “Confederate bug spray,” Vitale said. “Better get used to it, son. The whole camp’ll be smoking cigars all weekend to keep down the mosquitoes.”

  “Except the ladies,” B.J. said. “They use lavender.”

  “Lavender doesn’t work for beans,” Vitale said.

  By the time they climbed into the Mule fifteen minutes later, I had to turn the headlights on. All that was left of the sun was a bright line of light illuminating the undulating curves of the Blue Ridge. A few stars glittered in the blue-black sky, but everything else—bushes, trees, rocks—was now absorbed into the velvety dusk of a warm summer evening. A few tree frogs sang, accompanied by the usual serenade of the cicadas.

  “Pity we’re not really going to take full advantage of that creek,” Vitale said from the backseat as I drove down the south service road. “I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a farby event, B.J. If we were doing it hard-core, you can bet a lot of soldiers would get wet.”

  “What’s farby?” I asked.

  B.J. swallowed and I could see his Adam’s apple bob. “It’s reenactor jargon. Stands for “far be it from me,” and it refers to reenactors who do or wear something that isn’t correct or isn’t period. “Far be it from me to criticize that inauthentic whatever—jacket, trousers, shoes, even eyeglasses—since they didn’t wear that in the early 1860s.’”

  “It’s amateur.” Vitale’s voice rose like it was a punishable crime. “I personally don’t participate in farby events.”

  “This one’s going to be unique, Ray, and you know it,” B.J. said over his shoulder. “It’s never been done as a water-based reenactment around here before. We’ll attract hundreds of spectators.”

  “What are you going to do about the creek?” I asked. “Are you going to have Union soldiers swimming downstream after the battle?”

  “Too dangerous, plus it’s hell on everyone’s uniform and equipment,” B.J. said. “Though we will be demonstrating the Union panic as their soldiers retreated down the bluffs to the river.”

  “And we will be using boats,” Vitale said. “Three canoes.”

  “Why only three?” I asked.

  “That, Miss Montgomery, is historically accurate,” Vitale said. “Two eight-man wooden skiffs and a sixteen-man metal lifeboat.”

  “That’s why so many died or drowned,” B.J. said. “It’s why the Union lost Ball’s Bluff. Not enough boats.”

  My headlights caught Ray Vitale’s car in their wash as I turned into the winery parking lot, illuminating a pair of bumper stickers: “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers” and “Gun control is using two hands.”

  No mistaking the man’s politics.

  After everyone climbed out of the Mule, Ray Vitale shook hands with B.J. and Tyler, then bowed to me.

  “I’ll be back in a week to finalize those battle plans, B.J.,” he said.

  “That’d be fine.”

  Vitale saluted B.J. “The Union forever.”

  “The South shall rise again.”

  “They don’t call it the “Lost Cause’ for nothing. Be seeing you.”

  After he drove off, I said, “Do you always say things like that to each other?”

  “Aw, there’s plenty of back-and-forth that goes on. Besides, the Union guys are jealous of us.”

  “Why?”

  He looked surprised at the question. “Because everyone wants to be a Confederate, that’s why. We’re gentlemen. The whole ‘romance of the South’ thing. Who wants to play the role of a Yankee? That’s why there’s always more of us at these events.”

  “Seriously?”

  B.J. nodded. “Thanks for being a good sport. I know Ray’s a little tough to take.”

  “Far be it from me to criticize.”

  B.J. grinned and then turned solemn. “When we were out there talking alone, he told me a few things. Both his wife and daughter were alcoholics. Wife died awhile back and he doesn’t know where his daughter is.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.”

  “Then a couple of years ago he nearly lost his business and almost had to declare bankruptcy. Says he trusted someone he shouldn’t have. He’s still dealing with it.” He shook his head. “That’s why he probably seemed bitter.”

  “At least now I know why.”

  B.J. pulled his key ring out of his pocket. It looked like he had enough keys on it to open every store in a major shopping mall. “Need a ride home, Tyler?”

  “I’ve got my car. Thanks, anyway.”

  “I guess I’ll get going, then. Emma will have dinner waiting. I’ll be in touch to go over the logistics, once we sort out the tactical matters,” he said. “I almost forgot. The Virginia Fiddlers are coming.”

  “The who?”

  “You don’t know the Fiddlers?” He searched the ring and plucked out what was presumably his car key. “Lordy, child. They’re probably the best Civil War camp string band around. Made a couple of CDs. Been in a movie or two. They’re famous. They’ll be a huge draw for the spectators, plus they’ll be playing for the camp dance Saturday night.”

  “You have a dance?”

  He smiled. “Highlight of the weekend for all the women and the young people. Right, Tyler?”

  Tyler reddened. “Yes, sir.”

  “You ought to plan to stop by, Lucie. Bring that winemaker of yours. I’m afraid we’ve got our rules about not participating unless you’re dressed in period clothes, but seeing as you’re hosting us we’d love to have you come along and see what it’s all about,” B.J. said.

  Now it was my turn to blush. The last place in the world I could imagine bringing Quinn was an old-fashioned dance where a Civil War string band provided the music.

  “Sure. Yes. Thanks.”

  B.J. studied me. “I mean it. You bring him now, hear? By the way, I know you didn’t want to talk about this in front of Ray, but I ran into Junie St. Pierre over at the hospital this afternoon.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sounds like they’re going great guns trying to identify those remains. Must have been a huge surprise for you to find that unmarked grave out there after all these years. Some unknown person buried on your land.”

  “Like Ball’s Bluff,” Tyler said.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “The cemetery at Ball’s Bluff. Twenty-five graves. No one knows who’s buried in twenty-four of them.”

  “That was different, son,” B.J. said. “People knew the bodies were there. They just didn’t get to them for a while.”

  He saw me staring. “You don’t know the story, Lucie?”

  I shook my head, glad to divert the conversation from the body on my land. “Nope.”

  “It took some time before the Union bodies were buried after the battle. The original graves were shallow, so eventually rain and the other elements exposed them again. It was only a matter of time before the animals who used the place as a grazing field found the remains. Chewing on bones and the like.”

  Like Bruja had done. “How gruesome,” I said.

  “If you’ve never been to Ball’s Bluff, you ought to see it before the reenactment,” Tyler said.

  “I know I should. I’m embarrassed I haven’t ever visited it.”

  “You and lots of other folks,” B.J. said. “Plenty of people living around here don’t know anything about the battle or have any idea the cemetery’s right there at
the edge of the Potomac. It’s a pretty little park now. Real peaceful.”

  “Come on, B.J., it’s haunted,” Tyler said. “It’s not peaceful at all.”

  “Rubbish.” He waved an arm at Tyler and kissed me on the cheek. “Don’t believe him. But go see it.”

  After B.J. left, I said to Tyler, “What are you talking about?”

  “All those scattered bones,” he said. “When the army finally built a proper cemetery after the war, they filled the twenty-five coffins with the body parts of fifty-four soldiers, since no one was still…intact.”

  “You mean, random body parts in the same coffin?”

  “Yup.” He sounded cheerful. “Except for one guy. James Allen. But based on the number of casualties, it’s a known fact that there were more soldiers out there whose remains never made it inside the cemetery. Their ghosts still haunt the place.”

  “Hogwash.”

  He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I swear to God. People see lights, like candles, in the woods after dark. And tree branches shake when there’s no breeze. Some of the sheriff’s deputies who get assigned to patrol the area don’t like it because they’ve seen things, too.”

  A light breeze blew up. I found myself glancing at the villa to see if there were unexplained lights shining in the windows.

  Tyler followed my gaze. “I’m not making this up.”

  “There’s got to be a rational explanation,” I said. “I agree with B.J.”

  Though I, too, had heard stories about Mosby sightings. Folks who swore they’d seen the Gray Ghost on moonless nights returning to look for Union soldiers. Some even said he haunted our ruins, and Eli had teased me about it when I was a kid.

  “Suit yourself.” Tyler grinned. “Want to visit the place at dusk? We could see who’s right.”

  “Are you trying to spook me?”

  “Maybe.”

  He walked me over to my car, which I’d left in the lot, and I slid into the front seat.

  “I wonder if the spirit of whoever was buried out by the vineyard is still wandering around,” he said. “No one knows who it is, and whoever killed him got away with it. That would be reason enough to still roam the earth, don’t you think?”

  “You really are trying to spook me.”