The Sauvignon Secret wcm-6

by Ellen Crosby

  I left out Elinor on purpose, hoping he wouldn’t ask how I’d found this out. We didn’t have much time anyway.

  Charles set down his fork on the edge of his plate and stared at it wordlessly. Finally he looked up. “Well, I’ll be goddamned. All this time I thought it was Theo.”

  Though he sounded calm, his face gave him away. I knew as sure as if he’d said it what he was thinking: He’d let a beautiful girl insert herself into his life with the ease of the serpent slithering into the Garden of Eden and he’d missed it because he’d been too busy looking for a ghost in California. His worst fear had blossomed right here in his home.

  “The little bitch,” he said, an afterthought. “Every bit as devious as Maggie was.”

  Juliette’s voice rose, a little bubble of hysteria. “What is going on? What are you talking about?”

  “Charles will explain it to you later.” I tried to reassure her. “Everything is going to be all right. But the most important thing right now is getting Hope away from Jasmine with as little drama as possible. Then I think we’d better call the sheriff’s department. Everyone else in the Mandrake Society is dead but you, Charles. Why do you think Jasmine is here?”

  “I didn’t kill any of those people. Someone else did.” Jasmine Nouri stood in the doorway to the kitchen, holding Hope in her arms. “I figured it was you, Charles. It was, wasn’t it?”

  She brushed a strand of hair off the face of my sweet, pink-cheeked niece who was chewing on her favorite toy pony. The gesture sent such a sharp pang of fear for Hope’s safety through me that I gasped.

  “Hope,” I said, my voice cracking. “Come here, pumpkin. Beppy and I are going to take you home.”

  “Aunt Woozy.”

  Hope squirmed in Jasmine’s arms but she held tight to the child. I heard her murmur, “In a minute, sweetie. We have to finish something first.”

  “No one’s going anywhere.” Juliette’s eyes were hard. Something had changed in her and I’d missed it. All of a sudden she was in command, the feigned innocence and sweetness gone.

  She exchanged looks with Jasmine, a coded understanding that passed between them. Jasmine nodded, but I thought she looked scared. Before anyone could speak or move, Juliette strode over to the sideboard and reached inside a large urn. When she turned around, she was holding a revolver.

  “My God,” Charles said. “Where’d you get that?”

  She ignored him.

  “Why did you have to come here now?” Her voice was full of sadness. It took a moment before I realized she was speaking to my grandfather. “I would have come to you.”

  “Juliette!” Charles’s voice cracked like a whip. “Have you lost your mind? Give me that gun.”

  “No,” she said. “I can’t do that.”

  “Qu’est-ce que tu fais, ma chère?” Pépé asked. “Put the gun down, please. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  Juliette closed her eyes like she was blinking back tears. “Luc, don’t. Please don’t make this any more difficult than you already have.”

  She turned to Charles. “I know, Charles. I know everything. Jasmine told me. The only remaining mystery is what happened that night at the beach forty years ago. You’re the only one who knows because you were driving the car.”

  “No,” he said. “No.”

  “You were,” Jasmine said. “Vivian said you were. Maggie left the cottage on foot and you went after her. Somehow you persuaded her to get in your car. Then what?”

  Charles’s voice turned low and dangerous. “Viv told me when I saw her that someone had stirred up the past, brought it all back again. She let me believe it was Theo.”

  “You went to see Vivian when we were in Paris in February,” Juliette said. “That’s when you killed her.”

  “She died,” Charles said, “of a heart attack.”

  “I wonder if she really did,” Jasmine said. “The Préfecture de Police may want to investigate.”

  “What happened at the beach?” Juliette moved closer to Charles, the gun now trained on him. “What did you do?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pépé slowly lower his hands by his side. Juliette hadn’t noticed, nor, it seemed, had Jasmine.

  Charles picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth as though he had all the time in the world. “All right,” he said like he was placating a child. “I’ll tell you.”

  “Good.” His wife gave him a heavy-lidded look. “We’re all dying to know.”

  Hope squirmed again and Jasmine shushed her. “It’s okay, angel. Just a few more minutes.”

  “I want Aunt Woozy.”

  “Soon,” she said. “Get on with it, Charles. You heard what Juliette said.”

  He pushed his chair back, flashing a scornful look at the two of them as he crossed one leg over the other.

  “What do all of you know? Nothing. You weren’t there.”

  “If you don’t start talking, I’ll shoot you in the knee,” Juliette said. “Maybe that will jog your memory.”

  Charles glared at her. “Don’t be such a drama queen, darling. It doesn’t suit you. You probably couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn, anyway.”

  Juliette moved her finger over the trigger. “Would you like to find out?”

  “All right.” He held up a hand. “Point that thing somewhere else before you hurt someone. I said, do it.”

  She lowered her arm, a contemptuous look on her face. But Charles had won that small round.

  “It was an accident,” he said. “It just happened. A dark night with no moon, heavy clouds. Pitch-black. We’d all been drinking. Maggie wanted to talk about Stephen and there was a huge fight among all of them. She left, said she was going for a walk on the beach, so I went after her. She could hardly walk a straight line. I found her, persuaded her to get in the car. I figured we’d get away from the cottage, find a motel for the night, and work it out. Theo had already taken off in a fit of rage. God, he could be so complicated sometimes.”

  He shrugged. “To be honest, the next thing I remember was the car hitting the water. Obviously I drove off the bridge. In my condition …”

  No one said a word. In another room, a clock chimed five.

  “Somehow I got out. Got my door open and made it to the surface. Neither of us was wearing a seat belt. I figured Maggie got out, too; she was a good swimmer. But when I couldn’t find her—I kept shouting her name but it was so goddamned dark—I started diving. Six, seven times, ten, I don’t know. I knew it was too late.” Another shrug, but I noticed that he avoided looking at Jasmine. “So I walked back to the cottage and told the others. Everyone was scared out of their minds. I told them we all needed to stick to the same story or we’d hang together. Maggie took my car and drove it off the bridge. The cops knew she didn’t have a license and she was drunk. They couldn’t prove anything different, no evidence to the contrary. We were four witnesses who could all alibi each other.”

  “In return you covered up Stephen’s death and protected their careers.”

  “They were brilliant scientists,” he said. “Their country needed them, all that they could offer. Science is research and sometimes things go wrong. It happens.”

  “ ‘Things go wrong’?” Juliette said. “My God, Charles. You’re inhuman.”

  The tension in the room escalated with an almost audible click as she raised her arm again.

  “Juliette,” I said, “please put the gun down. There’s a child—”

  She gave me a scornful look. “That time has passed, Chantal.”

  Pépé caught my eye. Don’t correct her.

  “Before you shoot me, I have a question for Jasmine,” Charles said in a conversational tone. “Did Vivian give you the photo of Maggie and me? Then you mailed it to all of us, along with the photo of Stephen Falcone, didn’t you?”

  She nodded. “I wanted you all to know that somebody still remembered. But I never thought you’d kill the others.” Her voice rose. “Except maybe for Paul. I think he must have
been the one Maggie called Chicken Little in her diary. The timid one. He hanged himself rather than face what was coming.”

  “What a bastard you are, Charles.” Juliette’s voice was cold. “I’ve never told you that, but you always have been. You let that innocent girl die, and you covered up the death of a disabled man who had no idea what he got into. Then you hunted down your former colleagues and killed them to finally silence everyone who knew what happened, to save your own skin.”

  She aimed the gun.

  “No!” I shouted. “Don’t!”

  Jasmine’s hand cradled Hope’s head and as she turned my niece’s face so she couldn’t see what was happening.

  “You will suffer,” Juliette screamed at Charles. “Just like that poor boy suffered.”

  “You’re out of your mind. What are you talking about?” He threw up his hands like a shield, knocking his wedding ring against his wineglass.

  I flinched at the sharp little clink as Juliette’s words jackhammered inside my head. Just like that poor boy suffered.

  Stephen died of anthrax poisoning.

  I stared at Charles’s wineglass and his dinner plate. He’d been eating a salad whose contents had probably come from Juliette’s garden and drinking a bottle of his own wine. A clever scientist, Noah had said, could change a harmless pesticide like Bt into something that had the genetic makeup of anthrax. Spray it over crops and who would know … until someone ate the deadly meal or drank the poisoned cup. Even then, the reaction wasn’t instantaneous.

  Juliette had poisoned Charles. She didn’t need the gun.

  “Which is it, Juliette, the wine or the salad? Or both?” I asked. “Where did you get anthrax-laced Bt?”

  Charles turned pale. “My God, Juliette, what did you do? Are you insane?” He, too, stared at the remnants of his meal. “It couldn’t be the wine … but the salad—”

  “You have no one to blame but yourself,” she said in a cool voice. “Because my gardener was so busy ferrying your little concubines home at night, he didn’t have time to tend to his duties. So I did my own spraying. With a new pesticide.”

  “Christ Almighty, you brought Theo here? Right into my own home?” Charles’s voice rose to a screech. “When? How? He’s dead.”

  “So you heard,” she said. “A pity the way it happened, a shoot-out during a drug deal. And no, he never came here, Charles. I wouldn’t be that stupid.”

  “Then how—?” He stared at Jasmine. “You. You got it for her. Theo gave it to you.”

  Jasmine shrugged. “Does it really matter where it came from?”

  “Juliette,” Pépé interrupted. “He needs to go to the hospital. You can’t let him die like this.”

  “Sorry, but he’s not going anywhere,” she said. “If he tries to leave, I’ll shoot him. One way or another, he’ll die.”

  “Don’t be an ass, Juliette.” For the first time Charles sounded scared. “You won’t get away with this unless you kill everyone in this room.”

  Juliette turned to Pépé and me. “Your timing is really appalling, you know? No one ever would have suspected the real cause of death, even when they did an autopsy. There are hardly any cases in the United States of death by ingesting anthrax, so it probably would have been attributed to something else. A sad but tragic natural death. Why do you want to save him when you know what he has done? Go away and leave us alone. He ought to die … he deserves to die.”

  “No,” I said. “No one deserves to die this way. Not even for what he did.”

  “Luc,” Juliette’s voice beseeched him. “We could be together finally, after he’s gone. Begin again, the two of us.”

  “No,” he said, “we couldn’t.”

  “Please …” Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Put the gun down, Juliette.” Pépé raised his arm and pointed Leland’s .45 at her as she gasped. “You know I’m an excellent marksman. If I have to pull the trigger, you’ll lose that hand. You’ll never get your shot off in time.”

  “You won’t,” she said. “You wouldn’t. You’d never hurt me.”

  “I would if you go through with this.”

  It will be a long time before I forget the anguished look that passed between the two of them. Then Juliette took a deep breath, almost a sigh, and squared her shoulders.

  “Ah, Luc, my darling, then you must forgive me.” She smiled at him and suddenly I saw a shadow of the young, beautiful girl she’d been in that beguiling portrait in Charles’s study.

  I knew, then, that Pépé had been there when she sat for that painting. The teasing, provocative look had been meant for him. I caught a glimpse of Charles’s face. He knew, too.

  Juliette aimed the gun, but her hand shook as though the weapon had become too heavy to hold.

  “Don’t,” Pépé said.

  Jasmine whirled around with Hope and ran into the kitchen. Hope started to wail.

  “May you rot in hell, Charles.”

  Juliette steadied the revolver, this time with both hands. My grandfather flinched, but he kept the .45 trained on her as she tilted her head almost flirtatiously at him.

  “Adieu, mon amour,” she said.

  “No!” Pépé sounded panicked and I glanced at him in surprise.

  Juliette took a step toward Pépé, and for a wrenching moment I thought she was going to shoot him before she killed Charles.

  “Pépé, look out!”

  “Je t’aime, Luc.” With one fluid movement Juliette brought the gun to her heart and fired.

  She moaned and dropped to the ground like a rag doll, the gun bouncing off the carpet with a dull thud and skidding under the table.

  My grandfather was at her side instantly, murmuring her name, pleading with her to respond. He looked up.

  “Lucie, call 911. Now! Vite!”

  I nodded. “Yes, of course. There’s only a little blood … is she still alive?”

  He bent his head so his ear was next to her mouth. “Barely.”

  In the kitchen, Hope’s jagged crying had become hysterical as Jasmine frantically tried to calm her down.

  “What about me, goddammit?” Charles asked. “I’m dying, too.”

  Pépé said, with some contempt, “Don’t worry, Charles. We won’t forget you. I can see how moved you are that your wife just shot herself.”

  “Don’t talk to me about how I should feel.” Charles was equally contemptuous. “You of all people. She married me after you exiled her to Washington and left for Belgium. She never stopped loving you. Don’t think I didn’t know it all these years. You’re as responsible as I am for this.”

  My grandfather’s face went pale but his voice stayed firm. “Lucie—an ambulance. Call now.”

  I started to dial as a door slammed in the kitchen. “Jasmine’s leaving and she has Hope.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “They won’t go far. I took the liberty of disabling her car when we got here—just in case.”

  I threw Pépé the phone. “Here. You give them directions. I’m going after Hope.”

  In the kitchen, my niece’s cries grew louder as she called my name. A weight rolled off my chest.

  “She’s here. She’s still here. Jasmine took off by herself.”

  “Go stay with her,” my grandfather said. “Don’t let her see this.”

  I nodded and pushed open the kitchen door. The last thing I saw before I left the room was the tableau of my grandfather cradling Juliette’s head in his arms, an expression of unspeakable grief on his face, as her husband watched them both with the cold dispassion of a spectator. Charles must have felt my stare because he looked over at me one last time, with eyes as empty and vacant as dead planets.

  I shut the door and went to comfort Hope.

  Chapter 25

  The expression of terror and gratitude on Eli’s face when he picked up Hope at the Thiessmans’ house was the same look you see on every television report or newspaper photo when parents get a reprieve from nearly losing a child to someone they th
ought they could trust and shouldn’t have done. He looked wrecked, choking back sobs as we stood there with our arms twined around each other, crushing Hope between us. We were outside by the kitchen door, the exact spot where Dominique and I had chatted only a week earlier as she sneaked a smoke.

  The grounds around the house were overflowing with cruisers, vans, EMTs, sheriff’s department officers, crime scene investigators, ambulances, search dogs, even a fire truck. My head ached. It would be hours before I could go home.

  I’d already called Dominique and warned her she’d have to make do at the dinner without Jasmine or me.

  “What about the flowers?” she asked.

  “You’ll have to make do without them, too.”

  “What’s going on? Someone who just got here said she saw ambulances and sheriff’s department cruisers with their lights and sirens on making a beehive for the Thiessmans’ house,” she said.

  “I’ll explain everything when I can.”

  “Lucie?”

  “I promise. I gotta go.”

  Bobby showed up right behind the first responders, letting Eli leave with Hope but sequestering me in the kitchen and putting Pépé in, of all places, the library with Juliette’s portrait, until he could take our statements. Jasmine had vanished on foot since her silver Honda was still parked next to the back door.

  “We’re looking for her. We’ll find her eventually,” Bobby said. “And, uh, Juliette Thiessman …”

  “Yes?”

  “Bullet went straight to her heart. She didn’t have a prayer.”

  “Does Pépé know?”

  “Yup.”

  By the time he finished with us, it was nearly ten o’clock.

  He came into the kitchen. “You two are free to go,” he said. “I could confiscate that gun of your father’s since Luc was carrying concealed without a permit. A French hunting license. Nice try.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Ah, forget it.” He rubbed his tired eyes with both hands. “You and I are going to be talking again.”

  “I understand.”

  Bobby stopped rubbing and looked at me, fatigue and worry making canyonlike furrows that creased his forehead and deepening the marionette lines on his face.