The Bordeaux Betrayal wcm-3

by Ellen Crosby

  I climbed the spiral staircase in the dark so the hall light wouldn’t disturb Pépé. But when I got to the second floor, his bedroom door stood open and the bed hadn’t been slept in. My octogenarian grandfather was still out carousing on the town. I took two ibuprophen to ward off the effects of the alcohol in the morning and fell asleep in my clothes.

  When I woke, Pépé’s door was closed. What time had he come in? I scrawled a note and left it by the coffeepot, asking him to call me when he got up. On my way out the door to the villa, Kit called my cell. The display showed her office number in Leesburg.

  “Someone’s at work early,” I said.

  “Up getting the worm,” she said. “I’ve got business in Middleburg later. What if I make it around lunchtime and we grab a bite somewhere? I’ve got something to tell you.”

  Had she already decided about the Moscow job?

  “Good news or bad?” I said.

  “Neither.”

  “How can it be neither? What is it?”

  “You’ll just have to wait until lunch.”

  “You’re no fun. Meet me at the Red Fox. Noon. I’ll make reservations.”

  “I’m loads of fun. See you at noon,” she said and hung up.

  Shane Cunningham’s Porsche was parked next to Quinn’s car when I pulled into the vineyard parking lot. The villa was still locked which meant they were together in the barrel room. I walked through the courtyard. The early morning breeze was cool and the overcast sky obscured the Blue Ridge.

  What business did Shane have with Quinn? The only thing they had in common right now was Nicole. One had her. The other wanted her.

  But it was Nicole who was with Quinn, not Shane. I wondered if he’d loaned her the Porsche or if she’d borrowed it without asking. Shane was like Eli when it came to cars. If they had their way, they’d shrink-wrap passengers so they couldn’t touch the leather seats or leave a stray fingerprint on any surface.

  Quinn and Nicole were together at the far end of the room, engrossed in conversation. Neither looked up when I closed the door, though the thrumming noise of the fans, like the engine on a small plane, would have drowned out the sound. They stood directly under a spotlight near the winemaker’s table, facing each other. The white concentrated light made them seem like heavenly apparitions.

  I watched as Quinn leaned against one of the arches at the entrance to the bays and folded his arms across his chest. Nicole sat down in a chair so she faced Quinn. Her face was tilted toward his and her hands clasped together. She gestured as though she were praying—or pleading. He nodded as she talked. Reconciliation, maybe? An olive branch?

  Whatever she said, he seemed to accept it and held out his hand. It was too late for me to leave or move or pretend I hadn’t been doing anything but watching them. Quinn’s eyes grew dark as they walked toward me.

  “What are you doing here, Lucie?” In French there is an expression, c’est comme des cheveux sur la soupe, which means something is as welcome as hair on soup. He asked like I was the hair.

  I decided against the obvious answer, that I owned the place and could be anywhere I damn well pleased. Nicole Martin watched me, sly amusement in her long-lashed dark eyes. For the first time, I had a chance to study her, too. Exotic-looking with high cheekbones and a heart-shaped face. Only her mouth, which, in an unguarded moment, settled into a sneer, ruined her beauty.

  “The Porsche was in the parking lot so I thought Shane was visiting. I came by to talk to him.” I looked at Nicole. “What brings you here?”

  Quinn answered for her. “Nic wanted to see the Washington bottle before the auction. I’m taking her on a tour of the vineyard. We’ll be back in a while.”

  I could tell by the way his eyes held hers that I’d been right and they’d made some kind of peace with each other. She smiled at him and his eyes grew soft.

  “Enjoy yourselves,” I said. They were still holding hands.

  “I’m sure we will.” Nicole turned the smile to me but her eyes said to keep out of her business with Quinn. “Ready?” she asked him.

  He nodded and I wished I hadn’t decided to come by here after all. “One thing before you go,” I said.

  Her delicate eyebrows arched. “What’s that?”

  “I’m surprised Shane didn’t tell you Jack withdrew the Washington bottle yesterday. He wants it returned to his private collection.”

  I caught the flash of surprise in her eyes. “Of course he told me. The bottle’s still here, so where else would I go to look at it?”

  She’d come up with that retort fast enough, but she was lying. Either Shane knew about the wine and kept it from her, or Jack hadn’t told Shane. I wondered which it was. So, probably, did she.

  Quinn looked at both of us. His eyes were hard and I watched Nicole belatedly realize her error. “So how come neither of you ladies bothered to tell me?”

  “Because Nicole didn’t know and I only found out late yesterday.” Maybe it was churlish to expose her, but it had been a dumb lie. Now maybe Quinn would think twice about believing what she’d just told him in the back of the barrel room. I said, “And you and I didn’t get much chance to talk yesterday.”

  The shouting match in my office seemed like it had been a week ago, rather than less than twenty-four hours.

  “No,” he said, “we didn’t, did we?” He looked at Nicole and hooked a thumb at me. “She right?”

  She nodded like a child caught lying to a parent, but sure of forgiveness. “When are you returning the bottle?” she asked me.

  “We’re trying to get Jack to reconsider, so it’s up in the air.” I had no intention of helping her plan her strategy for going straight to him so she could buy it.

  “He won’t reconsider. Get real.” Nicole didn’t bother to hide her scorn.

  I wondered how I’d ever thought of her as fragile. Maybe that mistake was part of the reason she was so successful. People underestimated her and figured she was spun sugar instead of battery acid.

  “The money was supposed to go to charity,” I said.

  Her shrug said who cared. “Things happen. That bottle is priceless.”

  “I heard you’ve got a client who told you not to leave here without it.”

  She smiled, showing the sneer, and her eyes were challenging. “Did you, now?”

  “So it does have a price,” I said.

  “Which I’m prepared to pay.” She looked at Quinn. “I have a way of getting what I want.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” I said.

  “Maybe we ought to take that tour, Nic.” Quinn made a cut-it-off sign in my direction. “Let everybody cool off a bit. Come on. The Gator’s out by the barn. Let’s go.”

  He tugged on her hand, pulling her toward the door. Before they left he turned around and stared hard at me. I shook my head and it seemed to seal things between us—Nicole and I had drawn battle lines and he didn’t like it.

  After they left, I brought the Margaux out to the long table and, with a light touch, set it down and stared at it. Tonight it would be back in Jack Greenfield’s wine cellar—temporarily, that is, until Nicole Martin showered him with money and he parted with the bottle he’d said meant so much to him. I wondered if I’d ever hear how much Nicole paid and for whom she was buying it.

  And what about the scene I’d witnessed between Quinn and Nicole? Had he fallen for her all over again? Surely he’d know what a mistake that would be—though who was I to give advice to the lovelorn, considering what I’d just done last night at Mick’s place? Even though we were both probably going to get our hearts broken, to turn back now would be like trying to pour raindrops back into a cloud.

  Shane’s Porsche was still in the lot when I left to meet Kit at the Red Fox Inn just before noon. Where had Quinn taken Nicole on this tour? Charlottesville?

  I walked by the Porsche on my way to the Mini, glancing through the windshield. A copy of Valerie Beauvais’s book lay on the passenger seat. A piece of paper, like a bookmark, stuck out
of the top. Nicole hadn’t bothered to lock the car. Shane had installed a state-of-the-art alarm system and was so obsessed about that car I would have bet money he even locked it in his garage. If he found out Nicole left his precious baby unlocked and unalarmed, there’d be hell to pay.

  I opened the door and picked up the book. The paper held her place at the beginning of the chapter on Bordeaux. I flipped to the title page. The dedication, surprisingly, was written in French.

  Pour Nicole, en souvenir d’un temps sublime en France. Merci pour tout!

  Valerie

  Thanking Nicole for the fabulous time they’d spent together in France. When? During a tour of Jefferson’s vineyards? A summer holiday together on the Riviera?

  Was it just a coincidence that Nicole showed up in Atoka with Shane a few days after Valerie’s death, now that I knew they were friends? I doubted it. Maybe Valerie had told Nicole what she knew about the Washington bottle. Although if she did, Nicole would never share it with me. Instead she’d probably use the knowledge as leverage to make sure Jack sold her the Bordeaux.

  I put the book back where I’d found it and drove to Middleburg, parking around the corner from the Red Fox. As I crossed the street at the lone traffic light at the intersection of Washington and Madison, two men walked toward me. One wore a baseball cap with a logo on it. “The Hunt Is On.” The word on was a bull’s-eye.

  I decided to track down Nicole Martin after lunch.

  The hunt was definitely on.

  The Red Fox Inn had been around since colonial days—or at least, there had been a building on that site for nearly three hundred years. The sign hanging out in front of the building read “ca. 1728.” The inn, which was now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, had been the heartbeat of Middleburg ever since the stagecoach days when it was a midway stop on the road from Alexandria to Winchester. During the Civil War, Colonel Jeb Stuart met the Gray Ghost here. One of the pine bars had once been a field-operating table for an army surgeon serving with Stuart’s cavalry.

  I got there before Kit did and was seated at a table next to the stone fireplace in the Tap Room. The fireplace still worked and, like the hand-hewn ceiling beams and the stone and plaster walls, dated back to the 1700s as part of the original structure.

  Kit showed up fifteen minutes late, windblown and out of breath. She dropped her satchel on the red leather banquette where I was sitting and sat in the Windsor chair across from me.

  “Sorry. I got stuck at the office.” She looked me over. “What happened to you? You get any sleep last night? You look terrible.”

  “Thank you. Of course I got some sleep. You know how busy it gets at harvest.” If I told her about Mick, she’d be all over me for details. Kit thought my sex life was like walking on the surface of the moon. Treacherous and full of craters.

  We waved away menus and ordered the crab cakes, as usual. Kit asked for peanut soup and a beer. I had a glass of house red.

  “I thought we might be breaking out the vodka to celebrate your imminent departure for Moscow,” I said.

  She stared at the collection of pewter tankards on the shelves next to the fireplace. “If we break out the vodka, it’s because I could use a little liquid courage to help me decide. One minute I’m fed up with writing about the school board meeting and I feel like life is passing me by. I want to go somewhere and write about something important. A civil war or a world summit. Stuff that matters.” She shifted her gaze and met my eyes. “Then I chicken out and figure I’ll stay because it’s just too damn far from my mom.”

  “Just because school board meetings don’t make national headlines doesn’t mean they aren’t important. What they decide matters to lots of people.”

  “Yeah. Anyone with a kid in the school system. No one else cares.”

  “You finally tell Bobby?”

  “I did. He said, ‘You gotta do what you gotta do.’ That’s a direct quote.”

  “Sounds like Bobby. Not profound but nevertheless deep.”

  “He could have said, ‘Baby, don’t go.’”

  “Maybe he knows how you feel about school board meetings and he wants you to be happy.”

  “I don’t know anymore. Let’s not talk about it. It’s all I’ve been thinking about and it’s driving me nuts.”

  Her soup showed up.

  “So what’s the news?” I said. “You said you had something to tell me.”

  She picked up a spoon. “You’re not going to believe this. A couple of deputies from the sheriff’s department came by. They confiscated Ryan’s laptop and brought him down to the station for a little chat. At least they didn’t cuff him.”

  “The sheriff thinks Ryan killed Valerie?”

  “Right now they’re just talking to him. He told me Bobby found an e-mail he’d written her that she’d saved on her computer. Unfortunately he wrote it the night before she died. Sometimes you should hit the delete button after getting something off your chest.”

  “What was in the e-mail?”

  “A threat. Dumb, huh? You’d think he would have called. No paper trail.”

  “A threat like he was going to remove the lug nuts from her wheel?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sure. That’s just what he said. Did you know he’s considering insuring his nose because he uses it professionally? Ryan’s body is his temple. If he’d wanted to kill her, it wouldn’t have involved physical activity. He’d be too worried about cutting up his hands or something. What he did say was that when he got through with her the only thing she’d be writing would be her grocery list.”

  “I don’t understand why he showed up at Mount Vernon to introduce her a few hours before he sent that e-mail if he hated her that much.”

  “I bet he was being paid.”

  I thought about it. “You’re right. He was. Mentioned something about wishing he weren’t such a whore and hadn’t accepted.”

  “Because he’s broke.” Kit took a roll out of the breadbasket and helped herself to butter. “Or at least, he’s got money problems. I answered his phone yesterday when he stepped out. His landlord. Told me to tell Ryan his rent check bounced. Again.” She raised her eyebrows and I could see her peach and green eye shadow. Kit applied eye shadow the same way she slathered butter on bread.

  “What did he say when you gave him the message?”

  “Are you kidding? At first I didn’t want to pass it on because then he’d know I knew, but this guy sounded like such a bad-ass I figured I better do something,” she said. “So I taped a note on a bottle of wine that was on his desk. He didn’t bring it up, and I didn’t either.”

  Our crab cakes arrived, steamy and fragrant, and we dug in.

  “I wonder how he got into money trouble,” I said. “He drives an old car, doesn’t wear flashy clothes—where does he spend it?”

  “Wine. Where’d you think?”

  “That’s a business expense.”

  “He buys a lot of wine,” she said through a mouthful of coleslaw. “I’m always listening to him talk about how much he paid for some rare bottle of Château Whatever. I’m sure he’s got a cash-flow problem. Plus he’s buying stuff that’s still in the barrel.”

  “Futures?”

  “I guess. There’s something else. You were right. Clay was actually thinking about letting Valerie work for us.”

  “No fooling? Wonder if Clay read her book. I tried to get through it. It was terrible.”

  “Clay’s been lonely since his wife died. I don’t imagine it was a decision he made with his head, especially after I saw her author photo. Blonde. Tan. Young. Clay probably ate her up with a spoon.”

  I stabbed a piece of crab cake with my fork. “I don’t think Ryan killed Valerie. He came by the winery the other night to look over the donations for the auction since he’s writing the notes for the catalog. We talked about her. He admitted he was glad she was dead but told me flat-out he didn’t do it.”

  “Do you think he would have told you flat-out if h
e did?”

  “Okay. But I still don’t think he’s guilty.”

  Our waiter seated two women at the next table. As he handed them menus he accidentally bumped my cane, which clattered to the floor. He picked it up, apologizing.

  I took it and tucked it into the alcove near the fireplace. “My fault. I shouldn’t have left it in your way.”

  He smiled and cleared our dishes. I ordered coffee and Kit asked for a cappuccino with a slice of chocolate torte.

  After he left Kit leaned forward. “Sounds like you have an idea who is guilty.”

  “I know this might sound off the wall, but I think Jack Greenfield might be involved.”

  “No way. Jack Greenfield has arthritis. He could never have done it.”

  “He withdrew the Washington bottle from the auction yesterday. Whatever you do, don’t tell Ryan. Amanda is going to ask Sunny to lean on Jack to let us keep it.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Jack asked for that wine back? Why?”

  “He says it’s too valuable to let go.”

  The waiter set down our coffees and Kit’s dessert.

  “How do you connect that to killing Valerie? Sorry, kiddo. This time I agree you’re off the wall.”

  “Think about it,” I said. “Valerie knew something about the provenance of that wine and died before she could tell anyone. Now Jack’s taking the bottle back and he’s either going to keep it in his wine cellar or sell it privately. If he sells it, I bet it will be to someone who wants to remain anonymous.”

  “So the bottle more or less disappears.” Kit dumped three packets of sugar into her cappuccino and stirred so the spoon made clinking sounds against the mug. “Where would he find a buyer like that?”

  “Nicole Martin knows someone.”

  “Shane’s girlfriend. The wine broker.”

  “And Quinn’s ex-wife.”

  “I heard about that over at the General Store. Everyone in Atoka’s talking about it. They must have hated each other’s guts when the divorce rolled around for him never to mention someone who looks like that.”

  “She came by this morning to see the Washington bottle. Afterward he took her on a tour of the vineyard. They left holding hands.” I lined up her empty sugar packets in a neat row.