by Ellen Crosby
He smiled again and got in his car. “Nah. It’s a good ghost story, though, isn’t it?”
Tyler pulled out first and I followed him down Sycamore Lane. At the split in the road, he went right and I went left. I watched his brake lights in my rearview mirror until they disappeared around a turn. The road felt odd and exposed without the sheltering branches of the old sycamore. My headlights caught stacked piles of wood moved off to one side.
Tyler was right. Whoever had lain out there in that field was an unknown soul. If he had been murdered, his killer had never been brought to justice.
I drove back to my still-dark, quiet house. That thought alone was enough to haunt me.
Chapter 8
That night I slept in my own bed, instead of in the hammock on the veranda. The last time I remembered looking at my alarm clock was just after three. When sleep finally came, I dreamed about the cemetery at Ball’s Bluff and the grave on my land. I woke when a fox began crying in the middle of the night. It sounded like someone was strangling a baby. I sat up, seeing figures in the shadows that I could not persuade myself were imagined.
At five o’clock I quit pretending I’d sleep if I kept my eyes closed long enough, and got out of bed. The now-familiar absence of sound, like the house had stopped breathing, was a letdown. Another day without power. If we didn’t have electricity, and especially air-conditioning, restored by tomorrow, we needed to think about implementing Plan B for the weekend and our anniversary celebration.
I went downstairs and threw out the contents of my refrigerator and freezer, unplugged it, and propped the doors open. I found a box of baking soda in the pantry and put it on one of the refrigerator shelves, hoping it would absorb the sour odors of spoiled food.
The pantry search had also turned up a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts left over from the last time Eli’s daughter, my two-year-old niece, Hope, had visited. The sell-by date had passed, which wasn’t a surprise. Brandi once called my house a living mausoleum and made no bones about how much she disliked coming here. If I wanted to see Hope, the mountain went to Mohammed. But then, Brandi didn’t much care for me, either, since she knew I disapproved of her profligate ways. Mostly I saw my niece when her mother went on a shopping spree up to New York or spent the weekend in Washington with one of her girlfriends.
I brought a foil-wrapped packet of Pop-Tarts back upstairs and started my post-tornado routine for getting ready for work. Another cold sponge bath from a bottle of water followed by rooting through the laundry basket to find my least dirty pair of jeans. Too bad I hadn’t washed my clothes before the tornado, but the previous weekend at the winery had been hectic and I’d never gotten around to it. At least I still had clean T-shirts. We’d be back out in the fields today removing debris, so whatever I wore would be filthy by tonight.
Quinn called from the barrel room as I was trying to decide what to do with my hair. The last time I washed it had been Sunday, four days ago.
“I figured you’d be up,” he said.
“I couldn’t sleep. Tossed everything in my fridge. The cupboard is officially bare. I’ll be over in a few minutes. I just need to braid my hair. It’s getting disgusting.”
“You could wash it here,” he said. “There’s hot water in the barrel room.”
I picked up a strand of light brown hair that looked and felt dirty. “Maybe I will.”
“Come on over now and you can have the other half of my breakfast while it’s still hot. I picked up two fried biscuit sandwiches at the convenience store off Route 17. Egg, ham, and cheese. And an extralarge coffee.”
I was in the middle of opening the package of Pop-Tarts with my teeth. “I can’t eat your breakfast.”
“You just said the cupboard was bare. I bet you’re down to eating whatever old stuff is still in your cabinets, aren’t you?”
“Of course not.”
“Ha! Knew I was right. Come and get it before the grease congeals. The biscuits are great, but if they get cold they sit in your stomach like cannonballs.”
“Give me five minutes.”
I threw the pastry in the wastebasket and got my shampoo and a towel from the bathroom. If Quinn had any unclogged arteries before he reached his fiftieth birthday, someone should write about him in a medical journal.
He was sitting on the courtyard wall drinking coffee when I arrived. I set my cane down and joined him. The early morning sky was the color of a robin’s egg and sun-gilded wisps of clouds dotted the sky. A breeze riffed the flowers in the hanging baskets and the halved wine barrels and the air was fragrant with wild honeysuckle. From here the vineyard looked serene and pastoral. Who would guess that just out of view a bulldozer sat amid enormous piles of rotting fruit, splintered posts, and trellis wire lethal as razors?
“Gonna be nice today.” Quinn handed me a white paper bag with stains on it.
“Looks like it.” I pulled out the sandwich, which was wrapped in more stained white paper, and opened it up. “Someone took a bite already.”
“That would be me. It’s only one bite.”
“You’re still hungry.” I tried to give it back to him. “I can’t take this.”
He waved me off. “Sure you can. Trust me, I’m full. It may look small, but one of those things will keep you going all day.”
The sandwich, I had to admit, tasted terrific. “You ever find the dodine?”
“On the floor next to some barrels in one of the bays. I almost stepped on it. If I find out who did it, heads will roll. How’d your evening go with B.J. and the other guy?”
“The other guy’ is a teetotaler and one of those hard-core types who want everything to be authentic Civil War era right down to your eyeglasses. Ray Vitale. He also wants to put the winery off-limits to all the reenactors.”
“What’d you say?”
“No way. B.J. talked to him, too.”
“Can’t wait to meet him.”
“Mmpfh.”
“Good sandwich, huh?”
He passed me the extralarge coffee in a Styrofoam cup. I nodded and took a sip. Quinn liked his coffee brewed so road crews could use it to fill potholes if they ran out of tar.
“I know you don’t mean ‘heads will roll’ literally,” I said.
“It was careless and I spent a goddamn hour looking for the thing. You bet I do. Ever see anyone do sabrage?”
The art of beheading a champagne bottle with a saber. I’d seen it done once, years ago. I knew he was joking, but after what Chance had claimed last night, I wish Quinn had said straight out that it was a figure of speech.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be so hard on the men.” I crumpled the sandwich bag.
He drew his head back in surprise. “What are you talking about? Hard on the men? It’s screwup city every day now. You ought to be as upset as I am about it.”
“I am. I mean, not as upset as you are. But maybe you could just…go a little easier on them.”
The truth, it seemed to me, had to lie somewhere between Chance’s accusations of bullying and abuse and Quinn’s feeling that he was justified in being angry at sloppy work and holding the crew accountable. Hell, it was my vineyard. Of course I didn’t like all the careless mistakes and incompetent fieldwork. But if I tipped my hand to Quinn at what Chance said last night, would it be like pulling the pin from a grenade?
“Sometimes I don’t understand you.” He took the sandwich bag from me and crumpled it into a tighter ball. “Don’t you care that all these mistakes are setting us back? Costing us money? Having an impact on the kind of wine we’re able to make?”
“Sure I do, but—”
“But what?”
I closed my eyes and breathed in and out. When I opened them, he was staring at me with that dark, brooding look he sometimes wore. It usually meant we were headed for a showdown.
“What if…well, maybe you could be a little less demanding of the guys. Maybe we’d get better results. You know, encourage them rather than intimidate them.”
It sounded, even to me, like I was pleading with him. His mouth hung open.
“Let me get this straight. The reason we have so many problems in the field and the barrel room is that I scare the crew? It would have nothing to do with the fact that they’re so inexperienced they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. And in some cases, they don’t even seem to care.”
“Please,” I said. “I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. But please, try to take it easy on yourself and the men.”
“Sure,” he said. “Next time someone leaves off a bunghole cap and ruins a barrel of wine worth five grand, I’ll smile and ask if he’ll please pay more attention so it doesn’t happen again. God forbid I should hurt someone’s feelings. Is that what you want?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m glad you can at least give me a straight answer.”
I held his coffee cup with both hands and stared unhappily into it.
“Look,” he said. “Maybe my fuse is a little short because of so many things going wrong. But I just don’t get it. It’s like we’re cursed all the time. Ever since Chance came.”
“You can’t blame it on him.”
“Watch me.”
“It isn’t all his fault. Maybe we tried to expand too fast, too soon,” I said. “A couple of years ago we were able to handle things with just you, me, and Hector. Plus we usually had the same crew of day laborers. Now I don’t recognize anybody since we started competing for workers with all the new vineyards springing up like weeds after rain. They need help, just like we do. We’re all looking for a few good men. The same good men.”
“The ‘few good men’ are working for someone else. We get the bottom of the wine barrel as regular as clockwork.” He held up a hand as if to physically stave off my response. “Okay, I’ve said my piece. And now if we’re done here, you want to wash your greasy hair before the guys show up?”
I ran my fingers along my braid, feeling self-conscious. “You think it looks greasy?”
“You’re the one who said it was. Okay, don’t wash it. It looks fine.”
“Now you’re patronizing me.”
“Believe me, I would never be that stupid.”
“So you think it looks fine, then. Not greasy.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. You know, someone once told me that when a woman asks a man what he thinks, all she really wants is to hear her own opinion in a deeper voice. After two years of working with you, I now realize the wisdom of those words.”
“You’re impossible, you know that?”
He held out his hand and I let him pull me up. Together we walked over to the barrel room and he held the door. As I walked past him, he leaned close to my ear. “You look great, sweetheart, just great.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, and he laughed.
I undid my braid and went over to the deep sink we used to wash out equipment. “Guess I’ll get this over with.”
I waited for the water to warm up, then ducked my head under the goosenecked faucet.
“What are you doing?” Quinn asked.
I brought my head up to reply and banged it against the lip of the faucet.
“Ow! I’m trying to see if I can knock myself unconscious if I hit my head hard enough.”
“Don’t move.”
“Where am I going to go?”
He came back with one of the chairs we used for winemaker’s dinners and set it down facing away from the sink.
“Have a seat.”
“I can’t wash my hair sitting down like that.”
“That’s why I’m going to wash it. Sit.”
I sat.
His hands were strong and gentle. Almost against my will I could feel myself begin to relax as he massaged my temples and my forehead. His gaze roamed over my face and my body until finally I had to close my eyes so he wouldn’t guess how erotic I found his touch.
It had been nearly one year since we’d each been involved with other people. My relationship had been a torrid, stormy affair with Mick Dunne, an Englishman who lived next door. Quinn had fallen hard for Bonita, the daughter of our previous farm manager, and she had lived up to her name as a stunning beauty. They drifted apart, as Mick and I had done, until finally Bonita moved to California with her mother after Hector died.
But if he had any clue about my feelings as he wrapped the towel around my head and helped me up, he gave no indication.
“How was that?”
“You give great massages.” I unwrapped the towel and began drying my hair, aware that his eyes were fixed on what I was doing. “Thank you. That felt terrific.”
“You, ah, wouldn’t consider…?” He paused. “Never mind.”
My heart began pounding against my ribs. I wouldn’t consider what? Maybe he had read my thoughts after all?
“What is it?” I asked.
“Do you think I could borrow your shampoo?”
My shampoo.
“Be my guest. It promotes shine and brings out highlights.”
He grinned and picked it up, tossing it in the air. “Guess I’ll have to switch brands. Mine doesn’t do that.”
“Sit,” I said.
“Oh, come on.” But he sat. Then he said, “Wait a minute.”
He got up and stripped off his shirt, keeping his eyes on mine as he did it. I didn’t often see him bare chested. He looked good.
To be honest, he looked terrific.
He wrapped his fingers around my wrists as I shampooed his hair and massaged his temples, as he had done with me. But this time there were no romantic overtones and we were back to our usual banter.
“You look good from this angle,” he said.
“Upside down?”
“For some people, it’s their best side.”
“Watch it. I control the water and you’re in a vulnerable place. By the way, you do a good job of covering that bald spot.”
He jerked upright, splattering water down the front of my T-shirt and jeans. “What bald spot?”
I laughed and eased him back in the chair. “Calm down. You’ve got more hair than a Chia Pet.”
He chuckled and let me finish rinsing the shampoo out of his hair. When I was done, he sat up and I handed him my towel.
“Sorry it’s so wet. I only brought one.”
“It’s okay.” His eyes held mine. “I don’t mind at all.”
At the far end of the barrel room, the outside door opened and closed. A woman’s voice said, “Knock-knock? Hello?”
“Sorry, we’re closed,” Quinn said. He threw the towel on the workbench and headed toward the front door, trying to pull on his shirt, which had gotten tangled up in itself. I shoved the shampoo under the towel and followed him.
A waiflike blonde with a boyish haircut, jet-black eyebrows, and exotic cheekbones waited by the door, hands in the back pockets of jeans that looked like she’d painted them on. Red high-top sneakers and a bright yellow tank top that didn’t meet the waistline of her jeans. She looked about sixteen. Her gaze traveled from Quinn to me, taking stock of our wet hair and water-stained clothes.
Quinn still hadn’t managed to get his shirt completely untangled. I reached over and tugged on it as our visitor watched, an amused smile creeping into her eyes.
“We’re, ah, definitely closed,” I said.
“I apologize for…interrupting,” she said. “But a blond woman in the other building told me I could find the owner here. And I didn’t come to buy wine.” She zeroed in on me. “Lucie Montgomery?”
“Yes?”
She held out her hand. “Savannah Hayden. I work for the medical examiner. I need access to the site where those remains were recovered. Thought I’d stop by and let you know I’ll be out there for a while.”
I froze, with my hand half outstretched toward hers. “Is something wrong? Detective Noland told me last night they were finished.”
Her voice was cool. “Maybe Detective Noland was finished, but I’m not. I need to take another look
around and resurvey the area.” She clasped my hand and shook it. “I trust there’ll be no problem with that.”
“Are you a doctor, Savannah…Miss Hayden?”
“Not an MD,” she said. “But it is Dr. Hayden. I have a PhD in forensic anthropology.” She looked over at Quinn, who had not taken his eyes off her since she’d introduced herself.
“What did they miss?” he asked. “It must be important or the medical examiner would be doing this. They wouldn’t have sent a forensic anthropologist.”
Savannah’s smile was tolerant, but it looked like she appreciated the shrewdness of Quinn’s remark. “I’m sorry, Mr….?”
“Quinn Santori.”
“Mr. Santori. I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation. But I need to see the site so I can put things in context.”
“I’m not sure how much context you’re going to get,” I said. “The bones were already scattered when I discovered the grave the other day. That was before Bobby Noland and his deputies spent all day yesterday digging the place up.”
She folded her thin arms across her chest. “I understand. Still, it’s possible to learn a lot from visiting the site.” She shrugged. “Maybe I’m looking for different things than they were.”
“Like what?” I asked. “Generally speaking, that is.”
“Generally speaking, you’d be surprised what can be determined by knowing the orientation of a body in the surroundings where it’s found. Was it on a hill or in the woods? Facing which way? How deep was the grave? You look for clues that help you determine whether he or she had been killed somewhere else.”
“So why didn’t you come out here with the others to begin with?” Quinn asked. “Since you’re asking all the good questions.”
Another smile, this one revealing dimples in both cheeks. She was cute in a tomboyish way.
“Money. I’m a luxury. I get brought in only when they can’t find everything they need and they hope I’ll uncover something new.”
“Need a ride out there?” Quinn asked. “I can take you in one of our ATVs.”
“Thanks. I’ve got a map and a Jeep.” She rocked back and forth on the outsides of her red high-tops, a sweet, self-conscious trait that reminded me of my younger sister, Mia. “I’d better get going.”
