Harvest of Secrets

by Ellen Crosby

  His lips tightened. “I just turned thirty-two.”

  “I’m thirty-one,” I said, and my heart hurt. “And my brother Eli is thirty-three.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if your parents were married when Leland and my biological mother … got together.”

  Somehow I had known David wouldn’t be the love child of a relationship that took place before my father met my mother. But it didn’t mean I hadn’t hoped it would turn out that way.

  “It would have been nice to think Leland was crazy about my mother, still devoted to her, when they were starting to have a family,” I said, hoping he didn’t catch the quiver in my voice, “but I guess even then he had a wandering eye.”

  He reached over and covered one of my hands, which was resting on the parapet, with his. “My biological mother wasn’t married then,” he said. “I figured maybe her relationship with Leland was a fling—or an accident—because she got married a year after I was born. Divorced her first husband not long after that, so maybe it was a rebound relationship. She’s been married to the same guy now for something like twenty-five years.”

  “Have you tried to contact her?”

  He nodded. “She didn’t reply. I don’t think she wants to hear from me. She may have never told either of her husbands about me, so it would be inconvenient for me to show up after all this time. Plus there’s her political career to think about.”

  Inconvenient. It was my turn to say, “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “What am I going to do? I can’t butt in where I’m not wanted. Back in those days no one would have thought DNA testing would be so common, so accessible to everyone and his grandmother. She probably fully expected her secret to stay that way and for her son never to be able to find out who she was.”

  “But you did.”

  Yasmin had warned me about this the other day. Not all stories of someone discovering a lost or unknown relative had a happy ending. In some cases, they were traumatic. Heartbreaking.

  “She’s entitled to her privacy.” He said it in a reasonable enough way, but I could tell how deeply it had hurt him to realize his biological mother would not even acknowledge his existence. “The good news, though, is that I found you. And you did want to meet me. You have no idea how happy I am about that.”

  I squeezed his hand. “Me, too.”

  Somewhere in the trees a woodpecker rat-a-tat-tatted and birds chirped. In the silence we could just barely hear the occasional car drive by on Mosby’s Highway.

  “Who is she?” I asked, finally.

  He hesitated so long I wondered if he was going to tell me. “Her name’s Olivia Vandenberg,” he said. “You might know her. Or have heard of her.”

  “Congresswoman Olivia Vandenberg? Married to the Treasury Secretary? That Olivia Vandenberg?”

  “Yep.”

  She was the House Majority Whip, and there were whispers she was in line to be the first African-American Speaker of the House of Representatives next year when the current Speaker retired. A prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus and, as if that weren’t enough, a glamorous, brainy fashion icon who frequently appeared in Vogue and Ebony.

  “She’s your biological mother?” I said.

  “Yep.”

  “My God. I wonder how—or where—she and Leland ran into each other.”

  “I guess we’ll never know.” He eyed me. “You’re not going to march into her office on Capitol Hill and ask her, are you?”

  “Good Lord, of course not. It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to know.”

  “You and me both. Interestingly, though, she and her husband don’t have any kids.”

  “Huh. Wonder why?”

  “I read everything I can find on her. All she ever says is something like ‘it just didn’t work out.’ Who knows what that means?”

  I didn’t want to say “maybe she didn’t want any.” “Maybe she couldn’t have any more children after she had you.”

  “Maybe.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, continuing on the subject of who knows what, does your fiancé know about me? Or your brother or sister?”

  “Not yet. In fact none of them even know I sent off a saliva sample to the Genome Project,” I said. “I thought I’d tell Quinn—my fiancé—first. I think you two will like each other.”

  He smiled. “Getting to know the family. That would be amazing.”

  “It’s going to be harder for Eli and Mia to learn about you, I’m afraid. Mia was Daddy’s little girl when she was a baby. Later she turned into the wild child from the Seven Hells after my mother was killed. Now she lives in Manhattan. She’s always been sort of fragile.”

  “I’m sure you’ll know when—or if—it’s the right time to tell them,” he said. “Please don’t think I’m pressuring you in any way. I’m well aware how much of a shock it must have been for you to learn about me.”

  “Thank you.” I shifted on the parapet so I was facing him. “Look, I know we have a lot to talk about, David, but I’m afraid I can’t stay much longer. I’m so sorry. With the hurricane coming, there’s a million things to do at the vineyard to get ready. But at least we got to meet today.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Of course. We’ve got lots of time, I hope.”

  “Absolutely. Perhaps we can meet at Highland House once … the others know. You must know where I live … I imagine you’ve checked?”

  He nodded. “You imagine right. You’re not far from the vineyard where that winemaker was murdered the other day.”

  “It’s next door,” I said. “I’m the one who found him.”

  “God, how awful for you.”

  “It was worse for him.”

  He looked startled and then gave me a roguish grin. “I suppose it would be. Have they found the killer yet?”

  It was too complicated to go into detail. “Not yet.”

  “Before we go.” He gave me a questioning look and started to lift his camera to his eye. “May I?”

  “Of course. Go right ahead.”

  He clicked off what sounded like ten or fifteen pictures and lowered the camera. “Thanks,” he said, checking the viewing screen. “You’re very photogenic. I’ll send you a couple of these if you’d like.”

  “I would. Maybe you could send me a few pictures of yourself?”

  “I think that could be arranged.” He grinned and swung his legs over to the other side of the parapet and stood up. Before I could say anything he reached out a hand to pull me up and automatically passed me my cane as if he’d done this dozens of times before.

  I wondered if he was, or had been, a caregiver for someone, and if so, who that person was. Perhaps a conversation for another time.

  He picked up an expensive-looking khaki canvas camera bag that had been lying on the ground and looked as if it had been dragged around the world more than once. We started back down the path to Lemmon’s Bottom Road. Along the way he pulled at a strand of honeysuckle.

  “I know these plants are invasive, but I love the scent of honeysuckle when it’s in bloom,” he said.

  “So do I.”

  He caught my eye and we both grinned. Was liking the same floral scent one of those weird similar anthropological traits Yasmin had spoken about, like having perfect pitch or red hair? How much did David Phelps and I have in common?

  “Look,” he was saying, “I meant it about not pressuring you to get together again, okay? Besides, it sounds like we’re going to get walloped by Hurricane Lolita and I know you’ve got a lot on your mind running the vineyard.”

  “That’s part of it,” I said. “But I also seem to have been inundated by unexpected family … relationships … all at once.”

  He gave me a one-eyed squint. “Oh, yeah? You mean, I’m not the only unknown relative to drop into your life?”

  I smiled. “Well, the other person didn’t exactly drop in. It’s more like she turned up.”

  By now we were back at our respective cars. We leaned side by si
de against the front fender of my sun-warmed Jeep and I told him about Susanna Montgomery, her fiancé Charles, and what Thelma had told me about Susanna’s interest in Quakerism.

  “Apparently she fell in love with an African-American man who lived in Lincoln,” I said. “They were going to run away together.”

  “Lincoln, as in the little Quaker village next to Purcellville?”

  “That’s right.”

  His smile was lopsided. “I guess that means your father and Olivia weren’t the first illicit interracial relationship in the Montgomery family.”

  “I guess not. Susanna and whoever he was fell in love at least a century and a half before they did.”

  My words dropped into a pool of silence. Neither of us knew whether Leland and Olivia’s relationship had been a passing fling, a one-night, forgettable, alcohol-fueled event, or a passionate, forbidden love affair. If I were David, I’d want to think it had been the latter, to be a child of love rather than a careless accident.

  “In those days, especially during the Civil War, a relationship like that took guts,” he said. “For both of them. Especially in Virginia.”

  “Because it was illegal?”

  “Hell, yeah, it was illegal,” he said with feeling. “The statute prohibiting marriage between individuals of different races in America dates back to the late seventeenth century, to when we were still the thirteen colonies. The old word for interracial marriage—miscegenation—was first used in 1863 during the Civil War. In Virginia it remained illegal until the Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia. Mildred and Richard Loving. That was in 1967. ‘Illegal’ as in being sentenced to a year in jail because they fell in love with someone they were told they couldn’t love. That it was a damned crime.”

  “I saw the movie about that case,” I said. “It was heartbreaking. But the Lovings got the law changed. Something good came of it. Their love mattered, not just for them but for everyone who came after them.”

  “Took a long damn time,” he said, and for the first time I heard bitterness in his voice.

  I laid my hand on his arm. “My family owned slaves,” I said. “There are a lot of things that happened in the past that you and I can’t change or control now.”

  He put his hand over mine and I was surprised how hot it felt. Leland had been like that, too. My mother called him hot-blooded. “For the record, they’re also my family. And you’re right, of course. Plus, we can’t whitewash history. Pun intended. Including what happened between Leland and Olivia.” He paused. “Which would be me.”

  “I’m glad you happened, if that doesn’t sound too weird.”

  “Me, too. And it doesn’t.” He smiled. “Look, speaking of Lincoln, I did some work for the Loudoun Preservation Foundation when they needed a photographer to take pictures for a coffee table fund-raiser book a couple of years ago. I spent some time there shooting the Goose Creek Meeting House, the Quaker school, the burial ground … Grace Church, the abandoned African-American Methodist church. It’s a pretty little village. Really peaceful. A lot of free African-Americans lived in Lincoln, because the Quakers were friendly and welcoming. Plus they were passionately anti-slavery.”

  “I haven’t been out there in ages—maybe twenty-five years or more. It sounds like it hasn’t changed much.”

  “Not really. Except for the Loudoun Preservation Foundation trying to raise money to restore Grace Church,” he said. “Did you know it’s one of the oldest black churches in Loudoun?”

  “I’d forgotten that.”

  “If you ever decide you want to go out there, let me know. I’d like to show you around.” He roused himself off the Jeep fender. “And now I should let you go. We’ve been another half hour talking since we left the bridge.”

  I pulled out my phone. It was nearly three-thirty. And there were two where are you texts from Quinn. I thumbed off the display.

  “I’d better get back,” I said. “I’ll call you. Or we can text or email.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Anytime. Take your time.”

  “I will be in touch.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  “David.”

  “What?”

  “There are some things about Leland that aren’t so … flattering.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’d rather know than not know. I’m not Leland. I’m me. Or as Abraham Lincoln supposedly said, ‘I don’t know who my grandfather was; I’m much more concerned to know who his grandson will be.’ And in my case, that’s really true about my grandfather. Good-bye, Lucie.”

  He leaned in, giving me a sweet brotherly kiss on the cheek. When he pulled back, his eyes held mine for a long time.

  After we’d both gotten into our cars, he waited until I turned around and drove down Lemmon’s Bottom Road before following me in the BMW to the turnoff for Mosby’s Highway. We both turned left headed toward Middleburg, but at Atoka Road I signaled right and he passed me, tooting his horn and sticking a hand out the window in a good-bye salute.

  I honked back. After his car disappeared I swiped at tears that were suddenly making it hard to see the road, and headed for home.

  * * *

  WHEN I DROVE INTO the winery parking lot ten minutes later I was reasonably composed, but not ready to see Quinn. He would know, as he always did, that something had happened, and he would want me to talk about it, tell him what was wrong. Before I said anything about where I’d been this afternoon—first Thelma’s, then with David—I needed some time to wrap my head around what I’d learned.

  There were no guests in the tasting room when I walked into the villa, which wasn’t unusual on a weekday at 4 P.M. I poked my head through the door of Frankie’s office. Her computer and desk lamp were on, and a huge ring of keys lay in the middle of her desk, so she was around but not here. Disappointed, I walked down the corridor and stopped outside Nikki’s office. Her door was ajar, so I knocked and opened it wider.

  She had been crying—that was obvious—but she seemed more angry than upset. Her eyes flashed and she said, “Please don’t come into my office. I didn’t say ‘come in.’”

  I stepped inside the room and closed the door behind me. She was sitting in her desk chair, bare feet tucked under her, slim arms wrapped around her knees, which poked through a pair of fashionably ripped jeans.

  I leaned against the door and said, “It’s a little late for that, plus I’m your boss and this is my winery, so it’s my office, too. What’s going on?”

  Her eye makeup was smeared, her eyes were puffy, and she looked like an emotional wreck. Her blond hair, which she usually wore pulled up and styled with pretty combs or flowers, had been wound into a messy knot and held in place by a pencil that had been stabbed through it.

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Lucie. Please go away and leave me alone.”

  It would be Jean-Claude.

  “I wasn’t asking if you wanted to talk about it, Nikki. You need to talk to me. Bobby Noland told me you were at La Vigne Cellars the morning Jean-Claude was murdered,” I said, trying to keep my temper in check. “Not in Culpeper having a discussion with a florist about what colors of alstroemeria or ranunculus were available for Valeria’s wedding bouquet, which is where you said you were going to be.”

  I had come off like a parent lecturing a truant teenager and she gave me a defiant look that said she didn’t care.

  When she didn’t answer, I went on. “Nikki, it’s a murder investigation. The Sheriff’s Office is looking for a killer. Someone with a motive. You’ve got one. Bobby knows Jean-Claude broke off your relationship and a scorned ex-girlfriend is always a good suspect. Plus you lied about where you were going to be. That didn’t help.”

  “I didn’t kill Jean-Claude,” she burst out. “I didn’t do it. That’s what I told him.”

  “Told who? Bobby?”

  She nodded, her eyes tearing up again. I handed her a box of tissues that were on the corner of her desk. She pulled out half a dozen and blew her nose.
/>   “Then what were you doing there?” I asked. She gave me a stony look and I added, “Trying to patch things up?”

  She nodded.

  “And?”

  “He laughed at me.” I couldn’t tell whether she was hurt or irate, as in he-doesn’t-know-who-he-messed-with.

  She was only ten years younger than I was, but right now she came across as a spoiled little girl used to getting what she wanted.

  Join the queue. I almost said it. Instead, I said, “I’m sorry he laughed at you. What happened after that?”

  Her anger kicked in again. “He told me to go home and find a boyfriend my own age. Can you believe it?”

  Oh, yes, indeed. “Did you leave?”

  “I told him I wasn’t going anywhere, so he came over and grabbed me by the arm,” she said, rubbing a spot on her forearm as though she were reliving the memory. “He sort of dragged me out of his office.”

  “You let him do that?”

  “I might have fought back a little. Maybe scratched him. But he was stronger. He just kept laughing and closed the door in my face. Locked it, too. Then I heard him on the phone. Calling someone … a woman, of course. Saying ‘mon amour’ and ‘ma chérie’ and that he wanted to see her. How much he missed her and wanted to make ‘looove’ to her. Faire l’amooouur. I think he wanted me to hear.” Nikki mimicked Jean-Claude’s accent, capturing it with wicked perfection. She raised her head and glared at me. “Was he calling you, Lucie?”

  I started to laugh. “Me? Are you kidding? Of course not.”

  “You were with him the other day. We both know you lied and made up some story about him helping you with something that had to do with the grapes.” If she’d been a cat, her claws would have been out.

  I wasn’t about to tell her Jean-Claude was worried someone was trying to kill him and that’s why he’d wanted to see me. Not when she appeared to be a prime suspect in Bobby’s eyes.

  “What we talked about is none of your business, but Jean-Claude and I weren’t involved with each other. Okay?” She was … obsessed.

  “You’re the one who found him,” she said, still insistent. “You went to see him that day. The day someone killed him. Maybe you did it.”