by Ellen Crosby
“You never really told me what you did during the war.” Family lore was that he’d been a spy in the Resistance. I suspected my grandmother knew the truth, but as far as I knew she was the only one.
I wondered if he would tell me now.
“I was in France—well, Occupied France. And Spain.” He stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray, grinding it until it was nearly dust. “We got Allied airmen who had been shot down across the Pyrenees to Spain. Our escape trail was called ‘the Comet’ because we moved so swiftly.”
More than half a century later, that’s all he would say. “You must have some incredible stories.”
“We did what we had to do. It was a time of man’s worst inhumanity to his fellow man. It must never happen again.” He placed his hand on mine. “Enough sad talk. You said you had something to ask me, ma chère?”
“Let’s go to the barrel room,” I said. “I’ll get a thief so we can sample last year’s Cab. I’d like your opinion of how it’s developing. After that I want to show you the Washington bottle.”
“I would like to see that wine,” he said. “And an aperitif would be nice.”
The parking lot was empty. Frankie and Gina had closed the tasting room since it was after four. Quinn’s El was gone. A few days ago Frankie asked what I planned to do about planting fall flowers in the border gardens and in the barrels and hanging baskets in the courtyard. Sera had always taken care of it, but now that she was in Mexico nothing had been done. The summer impatiens, petunias, salvia, and geraniums looked tired, thinned out, and faded.
“I don’t know what to do,” I’d said to Frankie. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
She’d waved a garden flyer under my nose. “Leave it with me. Okay if I make some changes, or do I have to do what Sera did?”
“You can do whatever you like.”
She must have taken care of it this afternoon because when Pépé and I walked into the courtyard, the hanging baskets spilled over with yellow and white winter pansies and the halved wine barrels were brilliant with yellow, rust, and burnt orange mums. The surprise was the scarecrow, dressed as a farmer, except for the Hawaiian shirt, which she’d obviously pinched from Quinn. He sat on a hay bale next to the old Civil War cannon that was said to have been fired in the Battle of Middleburg. At the base of the cannon and the hay bale, Frankie had placed more pumpkins and mums. I could have kissed her. The courtyard looked wonderful.
I turned on the fans as soon as Pépé and I entered the barrel room. Already the primary fermentation, begun at harvest, was showing signs of slowing down. The cauldron-like bubbling and foaming had diminished to a simmer.
I got out the thief and two wineglasses. Pépé opened the bunghole of one of the barrels while I placed the glass thief—which resembled a chubby open-ended thermometer with a handle—inside and sucked a small amount of last year’s Cabernet Sauvignon into the chamber. Pépé reclosed the cask immediately to keep out fruit flies as I released wine into our glasses.
My grandfather swirled the contents of his wineglass, then put his nose in and sniffed deeply. I watched as he let the wine roll around in his mouth. The Cab still had one more year to mature in its barrel before we bottled it, but nevertheless we both would have a good idea of the wine it would become. I tried not to think of Pépé among his colleagues in the Chevaliers du Tastevin, tasting and evaluating some of the world’s fabulous wines as I waited for his verdict on my one-year-old Virginia Cabernet.
Finally he said, “Good nose. Nice structure. The finish is developing nicely. You make good wine, Lucie.”
“Do you mean it?”
“Would I lie to you?” he said. “Now let’s see that famous bottle.”
I brought out the Margaux and set it down in front of him at the winemaker’s table. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his reading glasses.
“Formidable,” he said. “Un vrai Margaux. I have never seen one of this age but I have seen others that were well along in their years.”
“Do you think there’s anything wrong with it?”
“Wrong—how?”
“I don’t know. Valerie Beauvais learned something about this bottle when she was in Bordeaux. I have no idea what it was.”
He examined the lettering, touching a finger to the date—1790. “Perhaps, even though the wine is old, it is not from that year. Maybe the lettering was etched later.”
“Then how can we tell how old the wine is?”
“You would need to open the bottle and test it. Carbon-dating. The process is expensive. You would need a special laboratory.”
“I wonder if Valerie saw another bottle just like it in France?”
“Or a similar one.”
“That could explain why Jack wants it back. To keep it from further scrutiny,” I said, “because he knows what she saw.”
“You realize it would still be difficult to ascertain the precise year, even with carbon-dating,” he said. “The most you can prove is that the wine was not made in the late twentieth century. If it were, the amount of Carbon 14 would be higher due to the nuclear atmospheric tests of the 1950s and 1960s.” He shrugged. “Otherwise all you know for sure is that it dates from sometime between the late 1600s and the mid-1900s.”
“Three hundred years! That’s no help.”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Would you kill to keep information like that a secret?”
Pépé looked startled. “Mon Dieu, of course not. Besides, anyone could be fooled. There have been many scandals involving fake Bordeaux over the years because the wines are so sought after.”
“I have to return this bottle tonight. Along with a bottle of Château Dorgon. Why don’t you come with me? I can introduce you to Jack.”
“I’m sorry, ma belle, but I have a dinner engagement. Perhaps I could meet him another time.” He polished his glasses on the sleeve of his jacket. “You have a bottle of Château Dorgon? May I see it?”
“Of course.”
I got the Dorgon. Pépé put on his glasses again and examined the bottle.
“I haven’t seen one of these for many years. The château stopped making wine after the war. Why are you returning it?”
“Jack drank another bottle recently and said it had turned.”
“Quel dommage.”
“I know,” I said. “A real pity.”
We drove back to the house with Jack’s wine bottles, which I had repacked in the original shipping cartons from Jeroboam’s. Pépé went upstairs to change.
While I waited for him, I called Amanda to see if she’d had any luck persuading Sunny to talk to Jack.
“She’s on our side,” Amanda said. “She thinks Jack made a big P.R. faux pas donating it, then asking for it back. But she won’t talk to him.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. She just clammed up and said, ‘You deal with him.’ So I did.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, I talked to him, but he finally hung up on me.”
“I guess that means I’m driving over there and returning it.”
“We’re in a hell of a mess.”
“Why don’t you call Ryan,” I said, “and tell him what happened. He’ll get the word around that the wine will no longer be at the auction and we’ll just deal with the consequences.”
“Before I do I’m going to pour myself a very tall glass of Johnnie Walker Blue,” she said, “and spend the evening trying to figure out why Jack Greenfield is being such a son of a bitch.”
“Enjoy yourself.”
“Only if you promise that when you see him you’ll kick him in the shins for me.”
I hung up as Pépé came down the stairs, dapper in a charcoal suit with a red and gold paisley tie and matching pocket handkerchief.
After he left, I drove over to Jack’s. I was not looking forward to this errand.
Sunny met me at the front door, cocktail glass in hand, a pleasant but questioning smile on her face. �
�Lucie, what a surprise. What can I do for you?”
“I should have called,” I said. “But Jack did say tonight.”
She glanced at the carrier in my hand. “Did we invite you to dinner?”
She looked serene and elegant in a long Indian-print caftan. Her shoulder length hair, which she usually wore pulled back or in a French twist, hung loose around her face, making her look younger than a woman in her mid-fifties.
“Your husband asked me to come by tonight and return these. The auction bottles. Is this a bad time?”
She waved me in with her glass. “No, no, it’s not. And I’m sorry about the misunderstanding over these wines. I’m having a vodka tonic. Jack’s still at the store going over something with Shane. Join me?”
“Thanks, but I can’t stay.” Misunderstanding?
The Greenfields lived in a converted stable that had once been part of a larger estate. When the original owners fell on hard times in the late nineteenth century, they divided the land and sold it in three parcels. Jack’s and Sunny’s property came with several outbuildings from the larger place, including a small one-story tenant cottage they’d converted into Jack’s wine cellar.
“At least come in for a minute,” she said. “For your trouble.”
I relented and stepped inside.
A plain glass vase filled with dusky orange hypericum berries, coral Gerber daisies, and dark peach sweetheart roses sat on a table in the foyer.
“You probably want to get this over to your wine cellar right away.” I set the carrier on the floor next to the table. “Unless you want me to do it?”
“We’ve got a small temperature-controlled cellar downstairs.” She smiled at my surprised expression. “Yes, I know. Two cellars. A real extravagance. I’ll put these bottles there myself. Thanks for offering.”
“No problem.” I gestured to the floral arrangement. “Your flowers are lovely. Did you do that?”
“Yes, for Jack. He gets such pleasure from the simplest things. I never fuss with making big professional-looking arrangements. My clients’ homes may end up in Architectural Digest but Jack likes his own home to be gemütlich. Good old down-home German charm.”
Sunny had made a fire in the stone fireplace. Schubert’s Trout Quintet came through two speakers in the bookcases on either side of the mantel. Her needlepoint—something floral—lay on the sofa.
“Sit, sit. Take Jack’s chair by the fireplace. I know it’s not really that cold outside but it felt good to make a fire,” she said. “Can’t I pour you something? How about a glass of wine? Come on. There’s some Cabernet Sauvignon open. French. I’m not drinking alone now that you’re here.”
I sat. “All right. One glass. Thanks.”
She handed me the wine and took up her needlepoint as she sat down on the sofa. “I hear you got some pressure from the Orlandos to close your farm,” she said. “Amanda said you told them to go to hell.”
“Something like that.”
“They’re serious about trying to outlaw foxhunting, you know.” Sunny reached for a pair of glasses and put them on, focusing on her canvas. “Stuart Orlando had a meeting at his house the other day to jump-start the whole thing. They’re going to try to slam us in the media, fight it out in the court of public opinion.” She looked up. “Place articles about how cruelly we treat the hounds. What we do to the poor fox.”
“How do you know about the meeting?”
She slipped her feet out of ballet flats, tucking her legs gracefully beneath her on the sofa. “A friend of mine got wind of it and asked if she could go along. The Orlandos don’t know everyone in town yet.” She pulled rose-colored floss through the canvas, looking pleased with herself.
“Can I change the subject?”
“Not if it’s about that Margaux.”
I watched her stab the needle again, this time with a jerky motion, and asked anyway. “Do you know if Jack met with Valerie Beauvais before she had that accident? The historian who was murdered.”
“I know damn well who Valerie Beauvais was. I read the papers. I would have known if he met her.” More stabbing.
“So he didn’t.”
“I just said so.”
“Then why is he withdrawing the wine?”
She set down her needlework and took off her glasses with some care. The gesture seemed to age her. “I’m going to tell you something. And it better not go any farther than this room. Jack told me that his father got that wine from a friend as a thank-you gift after the war. My father-in-law was sent to France in a Nazi uniform but he was sympathetic to the French because he had so many friends in the wine business. You can imagine what would have happened to him if word got back to Berlin about some of the things he did. Jack’s father took tremendous risks to help old friends and former business associates.”
“Did Valerie know about this?”
“She chose to believe lies. That he betrayed the French during the war.”
I wondered if Sunny realized she’d just contradicted herself about Jack knowing Valerie. She massaged her forehead with her fingers and reached for her drink.
She realized.
“Look, Lucie, you and I have no idea what it was like during the war. My father-in-law did the best he could under impossible circumstances. He still had to obey his superiors. Who are we to judge some of the choices he made—and who was she to judge? Valerie was going to drag Jack’s family through the mud. Bring up their Nazi past and humiliate my husband for no good reason other than to further her book sales. Can you imagine what it would do to his business? Let it go, can’t you?” Sunny finished her drink and got up to refresh it. This time she didn’t add much tonic.
I waited until she sat down. “I could,” I said, “if somebody hadn’t killed Valerie. You know, don’t you, that this gives Jack a motive for wanting her dead?”
She sat up ramrod straight. “How dare you? I was with Jack all evening. We had dinner at the Goose Creek Inn with Shane, then came home and went to bed.”
“Somebody killed her,” I said.
She looked like I’d slapped her. “Not my husband. You can see yourself out, Lucie. Thank you for dropping off the wine.”
I set my partially drunk glass of Cabernet on her coffee table. As I left the room, I glanced at her needlework. In the middle of a yellow flower she had taken a few stitches with rose-colored floss.
“I think you’ve made a mistake.” I pointed to the canvas.
She was watching the fire and didn’t turn her head. I let myself out. The needlework wasn’t her only mistake.
Chapter 15
A pickup truck with a flatbed trailer showed up in my driveway the next morning while I was still drinking my coffee. The driver was a young, athletic deputy sheriff.
“I’m here for your car,” he said when I answered the front door.
“You’re what?”
He pulled a folded paper out of his pocket and looked at it. “Montgomery? Donating a Volvo station wagon to the sheriff’s department?”
“Of course. Sorry,” I said. “Let me get the keys. And the registration.”
One night last summer as I was driving home from the Goose Creek Inn, the front end of Leland’s ancient Volvo collided with the back end of a deer as it emerged from the woods and tried to cross Atoka Road. In all my years of driving it was the first time I’d ever hit anything. I wasn’t hurt—Volvos are built like tanks—but my mechanic took one look at the car, which had more than two hundred thousand miles on it, and told me to put it out of its misery, like Animal Control had done with the deer.
I’d nearly forgotten I promised to give the car to the sheriff’s department after Bobby Noland told me they were always looking for vehicles to use on their training track to add realism to simulated high-speed chases. The SWAT team liked to try out new ammo on something besides a paper target and the fire department sought out opportunities to practice extinguishing vehicle fires or using the Jaws of Life. If the Volvo—the car I’d learned to driv
e on as a kid—had nearly come to the end of its days, at least it would go out with style.
“It’s not that road-worthy anymore,” I told the deputy. “Are you sure you’re going to be able to use it on your track?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I work at the CRU. Our mechanics are tops. We’ll go over it before we run it. Can I take those plates off for you?”
“Sure. Thanks.” So he worked for the Crash Reconstruction Unit.
He got a screwdriver from a toolbox in the truck. The front plate, which had been on the car since Leland bought it, was rusted to the holder.
“Did you work on the SUV that went into Goose Creek about ten days ago?” I asked as he knelt by the front bumper and tried to unscrew the license plate.
“Yes.” He gave up and went around to the back of the car. “Why? Did you know the victim?”
The back plate came off with no trouble. He got a different screwdriver and worked on the front plate again, this time concentrating on the holder.
“I pulled her out of the creek.”
He stood up and his glance strayed to my cane. “I heard about that. Pretty gutsy.” He handed me my license plates. “Sorry I couldn’t get that front one out of the holder for you.”
“It’s okay. Thanks.”
“Detective Noland told me he’d take care of getting you a donation letter. I’ll call him and let him know we finally picked up the car. I apologize for taking so long to get to you. I think I caught you off-guard when I showed up this morning.”
“A little,” I said. “By the way, did you find anything else when you went over that SUV besides the wheel coming off?”
If he was surprised by my question, he didn’t let on. “We gave our report to the guys who are handling the case, but it’s still an ongoing investigation so I can’t comment,” he said. “And one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget to turn those plates in to DMV.”
Bobby called later that afternoon when I was in my office and thanked me again for the Volvo.
“Much appreciated, though it’s going to be weird seeing it out on the track,” he said. “I remember being in it with Eli when we were in high school. And some of the stuff we did—”