Harvest of Secrets

by Ellen Crosby

  He let the door close and stared at me as if I’d just told him I came from Mars. He looked older and more heavyset than I remembered, perhaps how Jean-Claude would have looked in another twenty-five or so years had he lived. Snow-white hair, thick jowls, deep-set eyes, and a face gray with fatigue and grief, but the aristocratic bearing of someone used to being accommodated and getting what he wanted because of his wealth and title.

  “Lucie?” He stepped back, frowning. I was wet, bedraggled, and leaning on a cane. He hadn’t seen me since I was thirteen. Maybe he didn’t think I’d aged any better than he had. A faint look of disapproval crossed his face. “Is it really you? I was told you were the one who found Jean-Claude.”

  “That’s true. I’m so sorry,” I said again.

  He flicked his hand, irritated. “I plan to speak to the French ambassador as soon as I return home. He’s an old friend. I want him to insist that something be done to find out who murdered my son. Your sheriff ought to have arrested someone by now. I don’t understand why the detective I spoke with hasn’t done anything. I won’t tolerate incompetence.”

  “Bobby … Detective Noland is not incompetent and he’s done plenty,” I said, my own anger flashing. “He’ll find out who did this. Forgive me, Baron de Merignac, but Jean-Claude managed to make more than a few enemies in the short time he was here. And who’s to say his killer wasn’t someone from his past? It’s an open secret that you paid off people to keep quiet about the trouble he got into over the years.”

  For a moment I thought he might spit on me. The contempt and anger on his face was visceral. “Including,” he said with venom, “your cousin. I knew about her abortion after her affair with Jean-Claude. Your friend Detective Noland is now well aware of that fact, too.”

  “She said you never knew about it,” I said, stunned.

  “Then she was naive to believe I would not learn what happened. I found out when I took care of the other one, the American girl. The nanny. Dominique, at least, had the grace to keep her mouth shut. The bloody nanny wanted money. So American and greedy. I gave her enough to satisfy her but I made her sign papers that she would forfeit everything if she ever bothered us again.”

  “What American nanny?” I asked.

  “Some young woman. Coco, her name was. She was working for another family,” he said. “She managed to meet Jean-Claude and flirt with him. It wasn’t long before she got him into bed with her. Of course he had no intention of the relationship being anything more than a divertissement, an amusement. She had other ideas.”

  “What happened to her? Do you know?”

  He shrugged and said with disdain, “Why would I keep in touch with a servant? They move on, go elsewhere. Presumably she went back to America.” He flicked a hand, summoning the driver of the Town Car who emerged, opening a large black umbrella. “My jet is at the airport and my son’s coffin will be accompanying me. I have to go. Adieu, Lucie.”

  In French you said adieu to someone you expected never to see again. Au revoir meant “until we meet again.”

  “Adieu. And please give my sympathy to Baroness de Merignac.”

  The driver helped him down the stairs and into the car. I watched as it made a sweeping U-turn before heading down the long driveway. As the Town Car passed in front of the entrance to the funeral home, Armand de Merignac turned his head briefly and glanced at me, his face impassive. Then he looked away.

  The nanny. Coco … short for Colette?

  The other night Robyn had explained that Toby met Colette when he and his first wife lived in Bordeaux and she had been working as a nanny for a local family.

  Could Colette have been the other girl who had an affair with Jean-Claude that summer? Did he get her pregnant as well? What were the odds that Toby would unknowingly hire both of them within a few weeks of each other—Jean-Claude as his new winemaker and Colette, his longtime secretary whom he needed to help him write his memoirs? If Colette had kept her pregnancy a secret, Toby would never have known about her relationship with Jean-Claude. If Colette was the nanny Armand de Merignac had been speaking of.

  Somehow I thought she just might be. I ran back to the Jeep and called Bobby. His phone went to voice mail.

  “Bobby,” I said, “I think you might want to find out whether Colette Barnes ever knew Jean-Claude de Merignac before Toby hired her a few months ago. Armand de Merignac just told me his son had an affair with an American nanny whose name was Coco years ago and got her pregnant. She extorted a lot of money from the de Merignacs to keep quiet about the baby and terminate the pregnancy. I think you were right about this being a crime of passion. But it wasn’t Dominique who was angry with Jean-Claude. I think it was Colette—who I suspect speaks fluent French—who confronted Jean-Claude the other day in the barrel room. Just before she killed him.”

  Twenty

  Robyn Callahan’s car was in the parking lot next to the villa when I got there just after five o’clock. So was Nikki’s. Certainly by now Robyn and Toby would have finished talking to Bobby. We were closed but maybe Robyn had come by to discuss something about the kente quilt. Nikki, who was supposed to be packing up her office, must have let her in. Maybe Robyn knew something beyond what she’d said the other night about Colette’s early days when she’d first met Toby—though I doubted she knew about the affair with Jean-Claude.

  The door to the villa was unlocked but no one was in the tasting room. I set my purse on the bar and called Robyn’s and Nikki’s names. A muffled noise like two people scuffling came from the corridor where the offices were located. I started to head back there and for the second time in an hour nearly collided with someone in the doorway. This time it was Colette. She was wearing jeans and a La Vigne Cellars T-shirt. One hand was behind her back.

  “Lucie,” she said with a genial smile, “I’m glad to see you. I stopped by because I heard you might be shorthanded for help tomorrow. I’m no expert at picking grapes, but I thought I might be able to help out in some way. Toby just finished with a big deadline for his editor so we’re taking a day off before plunging in to the next part of his memoirs.”

  She was fiddling with a gold chain around her neck with the hand that wasn’t behind her back.

  “Thanks for the offer.” I tried not to let my eyes stray to that hidden hand. “What were you doing just now?”

  “Looking for someone so I could tell them that I’d be willing to help out, of course.”

  There was another noise from the back, this time a moan of pain.

  “What’s going on?” I said, raising my voice. “Nikki? Are you okay? Move out of the way, Colette.”

  The blade of her hunting knife flashed as she brought it around and brandished it in my face. There was blood on it. “Not so fast,” she said. “Nikki’s a bit tied up at the moment.”

  I took a step backward. “What have you done to her?”

  “Never mind. Let’s go.” Colette moved closer, lowering the knife so the blade was aimed at my heart. “Don’t try anything, Lucie. I’m not afraid to use this.”

  “Like you did when you killed Jean-Claude? What did you do to Nikki?”

  “Shut up,” she said. “And move.”

  I cast a quick sideways glance at my purse on the bar. Why hadn’t I hung on to it?

  “Where’s your phone?” Colette read my mind.

  “In my purse.”

  “Good,” she said. “That makes things simpler.”

  We walked outside. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still leaden and gloomy and the air was damp with humidity. Everyone was either in the barrel room or out in the field. Even Frankie had called in sick, her way of letting me know she was upset about my decision to let Nikki go. There was no one around but Colette and me.

  I tried to stall. “What do you have in mind? We can’t go very far, you know.”

  Colette’s eyes fell on the red ATV parked at the bottom of the stairs. Antonio had put roofs back on both vehicles the other day after Quinn and I got soaked.r />
  “Come on, we’re going for a drive,” she said. “Let’s go. Before someone shows up.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said. “Someone is going to show up. They’re going to find Nikki and then they’re going to come after you.”

  “Hopefully not until after I’ve taken care of you.” Her voice was menacing. We had reached the ATV. “Get in. You’re driving.”

  “Where am I going? It would be useful to know.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass,” she said. “Drive to your cemetery.”

  My throat closed. Why would she want to go there? And then I knew. Susanna’s grave. No one had filled it in.

  Yet.

  “How could you work for a good man like Toby all these years and he never figured out about you and Jean-Claude?” I put the ATV in gear. “Never knew that you extorted money from the de Merignacs in return for keeping quiet about your abortion.”

  I shouldn’t have provoked her. She flicked her knife blade along my arm and an angry bright red line appeared. It stung like hell. I shut up.

  “If you keep talking like that,” she said in a calm voice, “I’ll keep cutting you. I didn’t have the abortion. My son, John, is alive and well and living in Boston. He’s the sole heir to the de Merignac fortune and the title, now that Jean-Claude is dead.”

  We had reached the cemetery.

  “Drive up the hill,” she said. “Park next to the shed.”

  The cut on my arm was bleeding freely. Colette shoved me out of the ATV.

  “You’re going to remove the tarp over that open grave,” she said. “And be quick about it.”

  “I’m not quick.”

  She touched the tip of her knife to my heart and withdrew it. “You’d better be.”

  I could only move so slowly before she would grow impatient and use that knife again. Finally I pulled the tarp away from Susanna’s grave.

  “Now, get in,” she said.

  “You’re not going to bury me alive.” My voice quaked but I made sure my words came out as a statement, not a question.

  “I said get in.” She walked over and gave me a rough shove. I lost my footing and stumbled backward, falling into the grave and landing hard on one shoulder. At least it wasn’t the side that was bleeding. At least I hadn’t hit my head and passed out, making it easy for her to quickly fill the grave with dirt.

  Yasmin had said that most graves dug in haste were usually too shallow and too short. I couldn’t get out of this hole easily without someone helping me, but it wasn’t so deep I couldn’t stand up with my head and shoulders aboveground. I scrambled to my feet as Colette set down her knife and found the shovel that Charles had used to bury Susanna.

  The first shovelful of dirt caught me full in the face. I spat dirt, coughing and gagging. “Don’t. Please stop.”

  She ignored me and turned back for more dirt. My cane had fallen into the grave with me. I picked it up and held it down at my side, ready for her when she threw that next shovelful at me.

  “Hey.” I was still coughing. “There’s something down here. You’d better see it.”

  She fell for it. She came over to the edge of the grave and before she could react, I hooked my cane around her ankle and yanked hard. The ground was slick and slippery from the rain. She landed on her back with a dull thud. For a moment I thought I’d knocked her out, but then she swore and started to move. I held on to both feet and pulled her into the grave with me.

  Somehow she had managed to grab the knife before she fell in. It flashed, lethal and deadly, as she raised her arm to plunge it into my chest. I grabbed my cane and swung it hard at her arm. It connected with her wrist with a loud crack and the knife flew out of her hand into the air. I moved and the blade landed between Colette’s neck and shoulder. She screamed as a bright bloom of red appeared and quickly grew. I grabbed the hilt and pulled it out, shoving her against the wall. A small geyser of blood erupted and she moaned.

  My turn to give instructions. “Give me your phone,” I said. “Now.”

  “No.”

  “You’ll bleed to death. It looks like the knife struck an artery. You won’t last long. Give it to me or you’re going to die.”

  She fished the phone out of her pocket and moaned again, slumping down the wall until she was sitting on the ground. Her face was ashen and I suspected she was going into shock.

  The sirens sounded in the distance before I even made the call to 911 for the third time this week. Bobby’s unmarked cruiser and Quinn’s truck arrived together with a screech of brakes and a lot of shouting. Someone called for more ambulances at the cemetery, in addition to the one that was already at the villa.

  It was Quinn who lifted me out of the grave and pulled me into his arms. “You’re bleeding. Thank God you’re safe.”

  Someone in a uniform—I don’t remember who it was—took my place next to Colette and began tending to her.

  “It’s just a superficial cut. It hurts like crazy but it’ll be okay. Better than being buried alive,” I said.

  “My God.”

  “What about Nikki?”

  Bobby joined us and heard my question.

  “Nikki lost a lot of blood but she’s on her way to the hospital,” he said. “Frankie is going to meet her there. Colette wasn’t expecting to find Nikki when she showed up at the villa. She came over to plant the nitrile gloves she used when she murdered Jean-Claude in Nikki’s office. She stabbed Nikki a couple of times but she may have missed any vital organs. At least Nikki was lucid enough to tell us what happened. She heard Colette talking about going somewhere with you. Once Quinn realized the red ATV was missing, we came looking. Looks like we got here just in time.”

  “I’m glad you did,” I said. To Quinn I added, “As soon as Lolita’s finished with us, I want to fill in this grave and take down the rest of the shed. Then I want to plant something in memory of Susanna before we rebury her in the cemetery.”

  He kissed me. “We’ll do that,” he said.

  Twenty-one

  It will be a long time before any of us forgets harvest this year. Hurricane Lolita thrashed us, but by the time she arrived in Virginia she had been downgraded to a Category 3 hurricane, which still made her a powerful storm but didn’t wreak the kind of devastating damage folks in the Caribbean and Florida had to deal with. One of the two bridges that ran over Goose Creek on Highland Farm was washed out and destroyed and we lost power for four days. But I think we got off lucky, considering.

  As soon as Nikki was released from the hospital, she decided to go home and work in her mother’s florist shop for a while. So Frankie, Valeria, Isabella, and I put together the flowers for Antonio and Valeria’s wedding, which took place in the courtyard on a spectacular Indian summer Saturday in October. The dancing and partying went on until the wee hours.

  I told Eli about David one evening a few days before the wedding when just the two of us were sitting on the veranda with a bottle of wine. Hope had already gone to bed and, by a previous arrangement, Quinn said he wanted to do some stargazing at the summerhouse. Eli took it better than I’d expected—in fact he’d come across an old photograph of Olivia Vandenberg hidden under a false bottom in a hand-carved box Leland used for his keys and spare change that sat on his dresser for years.

  “I always wondered who she was,” he said. “And why Leland hid her picture.”

  “Maybe he really did love Olivia,” I said. “Since she won’t talk to David, or even acknowledge him, David has no idea if he was the result of a one-night stand or an affair of the heart.”

  “Based on how well Leland hid that picture—keeping it on his dresser in a box he used every day of his life—I’d say it was the latter,” Eli said. “It stinks for you and me and Mia, and especially Mom, but I bet David would probably like to know his father loved his mother.”

  “Are you going to give him that photograph?”

  He nodded. “I thought I might.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about it when you found it
?” I asked. “I would have liked to know.”

  He poured more wine for both of us. “For the same reason you didn’t tell me as soon as you found out about David, Captain Obvious.”

  “Ouch. Touché.”

  We picked up our glasses and he clinked his against mine. “Every family has a story,” he said. “Welcome to ours.”

  * * *

  THE REBURIAL CEREMONY FOR Susanna Montgomery at the end of October was more like a celebration than a funeral. David came to lunch at Highland House with Eli, Quinn, and me beforehand and that’s when he met them for the first time. After a few awkward moments, the talk got around to sports, the bonding language of all males. The three of them got along like a house on fire after that—though I knew there would be other sessions where we would discuss the painful subjects that were still too raw to bring up on Day One.

  We had invited everyone to the cemetery: Robyn, Toby, Ginna, Thelma, Yasmin, Kit, Bobby, Frankie, all the tasting room staff and the workers. A few days earlier the results had come back from Yasmin’s lab with a DNA match, and although it was good to have that confirmed, I think we’d all long ago made up our minds that the remains belonged to Susanna. Ginna had gone over her files one more time, eventually tracking down the descendants of the Cooper-Wells family, an elderly African-American couple living in New Jersey, who confirmed that both Henry and Rejoice had managed to make it to New York and were buried in a cemetery in Queens. Henry never married.

  The subject of whether Charles had killed Susanna before burying her remained a touchy one with Thelma, who assured me no kin of hers—and mine as well, for that matter—was a murderer. Someone else must have done it. She did, however, produce a photograph of Charles, which Ginna was able to enlarge enough to determine that the cuff link Yasmin found in the grave belonged to him.

  As for the ceremony, we agreed we would keep it simple. Antonio, Benny, and Jesús had dug the new grave near Susanna’s parents and siblings the previous day; they were going to fill it in after everyone left. It was still traumatic for me to watch dirt being thrown over a casket in the ground after what had nearly happened with Colette.