by Ellen Crosby
She held the door open. “May I ask you a personal question?”
“You can ask.”
She indicated my cane. “You can’t run. Doesn’t that scare you sometimes? What if you were attacked or you needed to get away from somebody?”
“You’re right that I can’t run.” I looked her in the eye. “But you know what they say about losing one of your five senses, don’t you? That the others become more acute. It’s kind of the same thing with me. I’ve learned to compensate for what I’ve lost. And to answer your question, I don’t scare easily.”
She fingered the necklace again, though this time she rubbed the medallion like it was a talisman. “Maybe I underestimated you,” she said.
“You wouldn’t be the first,” I said.
Quinn was in his office in the villa when I got back. “How’d it go with the Orlandos?” he asked.
“Better than I expected,” I said. “I talked to Claudia. Stuart was at work. She was pretty horrified but she understood why we need to call the sheriff. Said she had no clue who might have done it. Swore it was no one they’ve been meeting with to lobby against foxhunting.”
“I got some good news.” He looked pleased with himself. “A clue.”
He opened one of the side drawers in his desk and took something out. “Look at this. I found it near the spot where the paint ran out. Whoever did it brought their dog with them.”
I picked up the black leather collar with the silver studs on it. “She didn’t bring her dog,” I said. “She wears it as jewelry.”
“What are you talking about—she?”
It was the collar Amanda’s sulky daughter Kyra had worn at the Point-to-Point on Saturday.
The paint. The fox. What better way to get back at her mother—the secretary of the Goose Creek Hunt—than to attempt to sabotage one of their meets? I only hoped she hadn’t taken her juvenile anger one step further and tampered with the trails or jumps her mother and the rest of the hunt might take tomorrow. What she’d done had been stupid and malicious but at least no one had been hurt.
So far.
Chapter 21
“I don’t see any reason to call the sheriff anymore, based on what we know now,” I said to Quinn after I explained about Kyra. “But I do need to call Amanda. And Claudia.”
“Why’d she do it?” he asked. “The kid, I mean.”
“If you met her, you’d know. She’s like Mia used to be at her age. Maybe worse. In a permanent stage of rage.”
“Glad I don’t have kids. Never did want them.”
I set down Kyra’s ugly collar. It was the first time he’d ever said something like that. Unlike Quinn, I wanted children. But after my car accident, the doctor told me that the odds were against it, given the internal damage.
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “Never, ever wanted them?”
He shrugged and picked up a tennis ball from the corner of his desk, tossing it in the air and catching it, over and over. When he was really thinking, he’d bounce it off the wall opposite his desk. It had left scuffmarks and annoyed the hell out of me.
“Long story.” He threw the ball against the wall.
“I wondered if that might be another secret from your past,” I said. “A son or daughter growing up in California?”
He looked at me so intensely I blushed. “Not that anyone told me,” he said.
“Sorry. That was out of line. Guess I’d better make those phone calls. I don’t suppose you’d stick around while I do it?”
He swished the tennis ball through a hoop attached to his empty trash can. It bounced a few times and he retrieved it. “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go out on the terrace and you can call there. The sunset’s going to be nice tonight. How about if I get us a couple of glasses of Cab?”
It was the first time since his ex-wife had shown up in town that he seemed like his old self. Maybe he’d finally managed to free himself of whatever hold she had on him.
“I’d like that,” I said.
I called Amanda first and kept it short and to the point. There was a long silence when I finished.
Finally she said, “While I was talking to you this morning, I went to Kyra’s bedroom. She got Freddie the Fox as a gift from her grandparents a few years ago. He was gone.”
“So you suspected her since this morning?”
“I’m so sorry, Lucie. You have no idea how embarrassing and upsetting this is for me. Her father and I will deal with her, I promise,” she said. “I’ll take care of having your wall professionally cleaned. I know a good company.”
I shook my head and looked at Quinn, who frowned at me and mouthed, “What?”
“She wants to pay for the cleanup,” I said with my hand over the receiver.
He shook his head. “No dice.”
“Thank you but no,” I said. “I want Kyra to come over here this evening to apologize and explain why she did it. Then I want her to clean the wall and the pillars. She and anyone else who helped her deface them. She can take her fox back, too. I cleaned up my driveway from that one.”
“Let me handle this, Lucie. She’s my daughter.”
“By covering for her and bailing her out? No. Sorry, but she has to take responsibility for what she’s done.”
“She won’t come. She won’t listen to me. Why should she listen to you?” Amanda sounded stiff.
“Because if she doesn’t listen to me she’ll have to deal with the sheriff. He’s a lot less tolerant than I am.”
“You’d call the sheriff?” She seemed stunned.
“I would. Look, if this goes any further…if she’s done something out in the field and someone gets hurt tomorrow, she’s in big trouble.”
There was a silence on Amanda’s end.
“God, Amanda,” I said, “don’t tell me she did something to the jumps and fences?”
Quinn set down his wineglass and stared at me, his lips compressed in a thin line.
“I took care of it.” Her words were clipped. “Everything’s fine. Don’t worry.”
“Took care of what? Why didn’t you tell me about this right away?” Whatever else Kyra had done, it was far more serious than defacing the stone pillars. Worse, Amanda seemed to be trying to minimize it. I could feel my anger growing.
“Because I checked everything,” Amanda said. “You don’t need to worry.” I pointed my index finger to my head like a gun and pretended to pull the trigger. Quinn looked grim.
“What’d she do, Amanda?” My voice was tight with disbelief. She really intended to let her daughter off the hook.
“She, uh, rigged one of the fences so it would come apart when a horse went over it.”
I closed my eyes. That was how my mother had died. “I’m canceling the hunt.”
“It’s not necessary, Lucie. I talked to Kyra. It was only the one fence and it’s fixed. She didn’t do anything else.”
“I absolutely want her to come over here tonight. We can talk about whether or not the hunt goes on after she explains herself and apologizes.”
“I’ll talk to her, but I can’t guarantee she’ll come.”
“Then the sheriff will be by and it won’t matter what she feels like doing.”
“You’ve made yourself quite clear.” Amanda sounded terse and unhappy as she hung up.
“She’s mad at you, isn’t she?” Quinn said when I snapped the phone shut.
“Yes, dammit. Stupid, stupid kid. Someone really could have gotten hurt. Amanda was acting like it was no big deal.”
“We’ll take care of that tonight.” He still looked grim.
I called Claudia next. That conversation went better.
Quinn and I finished our wine as the sun turned into a hard orange ball that hovered just above the horizon. Higher in the sky a line of clouds like beads on a necklace changed from blood-colored to violet, then washed out into flannel gray as the sky darkened behind them.
Quinn picked up our empty wineglasses when all that remained was a line
of gilded brightness separating the sky from the mountains. “What are you going to do now?”
“See my grandfather off for his big reunion tonight,” I said, “then wait for Kyra and Amanda to show up.”
“You think they will?”
“They’d better.”
“You doing anything for dinner?” he asked.
“Probably something involving a can opener and the microwave. Or cheese and crackers. I’m beat.”
“What if I bring takeout over to your place, say, in about an hour? Chinese, maybe,” he said. “You might need some backup, especially if the kid refuses to admit what a jerk she was.”
I sat up in my chair and looked at him in surprise. “That sounds nice—even if the kid doesn’t admit she was a jerk. I can handle her on my own, you know. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“I’m not worried about you,” he said. “I’m worried about her and Amanda. I’ll bet you they start going at each other.”
“I don’t think it will get violent.”
“I know it won’t,” he said. “That’s what I’m there for.”
My grandfather, looking like a gracefully aging matinee idol in his double-breasted dinner jacket, was waiting in the foyer when I walked through the door twenty minutes later.
“Tu es magnifique!” I said.
He grinned as though I’d just confirmed a well-known truth. “Merci beaucoup.”
“Someone’s coming to get you?”
“My colleague,” he said. “You met him and his friend the other day.”
“I’ll wait up for you. I’d like to hear all about your reunion.”
“I’ll be home after breakfast,” he said. “You may want to get some sleep.”
I heard a car pull into the driveway, the tires crunching on the gravel. “How do you do it?” I asked. “I know people who are twenty, thirty years younger than you and couldn’t keep up with half of what you do. You’re amazing.”
He caressed my cheek. “I have always looked at whatever came my way in life and tried to find the good in it. It brings one energy and joie de vivre.”
“Even during the war?”
“Especially during the war.”
I smiled at him and felt like my heart would break. “I love you, Pépé.”
“I love you too, mon ange,” he said.
I walked with him to his friend’s car, his posture as erect as a soldier’s. As he climbed into the back passenger seat he said, “I have been thinking. Perhaps tomorrow we could visit your mother’s grave?”
“Of course,” I said. “Whatever you wish.”
He held his hand up in a small salute as the car pulled out of the driveway. I went inside and tried not to think about how much I would miss him when he returned to France in a few days.
Quinn brought enough Chinese takeout to feed our entire crew when he showed up a few hours later. We ate dinner in the parlor in front of a fire I’d made in the fireplace. Last spring when the men cleared additional acreage so we could plant more vines, a couple of the guys split the logs into firewood and everyone was told to take whatever they wanted. They stacked half a cord for me near the carriage house next to my dwindling old woodpile.
“Did you use that new wood for this fire?” Quinn asked as a log crackled and popped, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.
“Most of it’s the old, seasoned logs. Maybe I accidentally brought in one or two new ones.”
“Still too green,” he said. “You might end up with burns in your nice new carpet if more sparks shoot off in the wrong direction. You should know better, country girl.”
“I guess I’m distracted about tonight,” I said as I put the small white takeout boxes back in the bag he’d brought them in so he could bring home the leftovers.
“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” He moved so he was lying on his side with his chin propped on one hand, watching the fire.
I sat on the rug across from him with my back against the sofa. “I hope so.”
“Another two weeks and we’ll be ready to blend the Cab,” he said.
All evening we’d kept the conversation on neutral ground, talking mostly about work. Nicole’s name hadn’t come up once.
“Are we going to have three hundred samples until you achieve perfection?” I asked.
“No more than two-fifty. I don’t like to go overboard.”
I laughed. “You’re spoiled here in Virginia, you know that. In California you make the same wine every year since your weather is sunshine and more sunshine. Here it’s like Bordeaux and you can experiment your blending little heart out because every year the weather is different from the year before. Or the year before that.”
“I’ll ignore that highly oversimplified comment and chalk it up to ignorance,” he said. “You make it sound like California is the land of homogenized wine.”
“Terroir matters much less there,” I said, “because of the climate.”
“Not true,” he said. “California winemakers may have a lot less variation in their harvests from year to year, but we must be doing something right. Remember the ‘Judgment of Paris’?”
I did. Everyone in the wine world did.
More than thirty years ago a small wineshop in Paris sponsored a blind tasting of French and California wines. To everyone’s astonishment—not least of all the French—the California wines won hands down. The event made worldwide news thanks to a Time magazine correspondent named George Taber, who was there. After that California’s reputation as a world-class wine producer skyrocketed.
“Talking about judgments—” I said as the sweep of headlights coming into the driveway flashed through the front parlor window. “They’re here.”
“Yup.” He stood and helped me up, handing me my cane. “Show time.”
Chapter 22
“Listen to me,” Quinn said as the doorbell rang. “We’re going to play this as good cop, bad cop. Okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “Which one am I?”
“Go answer the door.”
Kyra’s fashion sense—and her attitude—hadn’t changed since I saw her at the Point-to-Point. Dressed in black from head-to-toe, lots of metal. In need of a bath or a dose of flea powder.
I led her and Amanda into the parlor where Quinn waited and invited them to have a seat. Amanda sat on the sofa. Kyra stood where she was.
“You were asked to sit down,” Quinn said to Kyra. “Do it.”
I’d only heard him use that tone of voice a couple of times since I’d known him. She sat. Quinn leaned against the fireplace mantel and glared at her. I sat in the wing chair opposite them, hands in my lap.
Kyra resumed her sullen hostility while I questioned her about what she’d done. Finally Quinn, who’d been growing increasingly exasperated, said, “Do you know why you’re here?”
“Yeah. Because if I didn’t come she’d call the sheriff on me.”
“Is that so?” A muscle twitched in Quinn’s jaw. “The right answer, sweetheart, is that you came to explain why you did what you did—and apologize for it.”
“Sorry.”
Quinn looked like he wanted to flog her. I caught his eye. We weren’t going to get anywhere with her.
“Kyra,” Amanda said, warning her.
“I said, ‘Sorry.’”
“Don’t go into acting,” Quinn said. “I don’t think you’ve got much of a future.”
I glanced at him again and shook my head slightly.
“Do you realize how much trouble you could be in if a horse went over the fence you tampered with and the rider took a spill?” I asked. “Eight years ago something spooked my mother’s horse so he threw her going over a jump. She broke her neck and died in the ambulance.”
That got through to her. Her eyes, raccoonlike with too much eyeliner and mascara, widened and, for the first time, she looked scared.
“Did you booby trap another jump that your mother didn’t find?” I asked. “Do anything else we need to know about?”
“No,” she said.
Quinn pointed a finger at her. “If you are lying, my dear…” He didn’t finish.
“I’m not. I didn’t. I promise.” Her words came out in a rush.
“All right,” I said. “I believe you.”
She nodded and I could see her start to relax.
“We’re not done yet,” I said. “I expect you to clean the pillars and the stone wall. They need to look exactly like they did before you threw paint on them.”
“Where’ll I get the water?” she said.
“I’m sure you’ll figure out something,” I said.
“It’ll take forever.”
“No. But it will take a while.”
“Why did you do it?” Quinn asked.
Kyra looked at him warily. “I dunno. I don’t like foxhunting, I guess.” She glanced over at her mother and said, “I think it’s stupid. People who do it are stupid.”
Amanda had looked like she’d been biting her tongue ever since she walked into the room. Now her face flushed dull red.
“That’s enough, Kyra. Time to go.” If Amanda’s words had been in a little balloon above her head, they would have been encased in ice.
“I don’t foxhunt,” I said.
“No, but you let them do it.” She jerked her head toward Amanda. “Your farm’s part of their territory.”
“It’s one of several farms. Why single me out?”
She cocked her head and shrugged. “I heard my parents talking about that woman who died when her car went into Goose Creek. And how you’re trying to find out something she was going to tell you,” she said. “I thought maybe you’d wonder if someone was after you, too. And you’d be scared enough to cancel the hunt.”
Quinn and I exchanged glances. I cleared my throat. “I see.”
Amanda’s face was a mixture of anger and embarrassment. “I’ll deal with her at home,” she said to us.
“And we’ll see her tomorrow,” Quinn said. He glanced at Kyra. “Right?”
She nodded, with a trace of the old sulkiness.
“Oh, don’t you worry. She’ll be here as soon as school’s out,” Amanda said.