by Ellen Crosby
A terra-cotta pot of red geraniums and variegated ivy lay on its side next to an old winepress. I knelt and tried to brush the dirt into the pot with my hands.
“Need some help?”
I looked up at Quinn. “Thanks.”
He took care of the dirt while I untangled the ivy and reset the plants. When we were done, he handed me a broken geranium.
I stared at it. “I could do with a drink.”
“Me, too. Why don’t I grab a growler and we can taste the Sauvignon Blanc?”
A growler is a bottle of wine we filled directly from one of the stainless-steel tanks or oak barrels. Though a lot of science and chemistry go into growing grapes and winemaking, there’s no substitute for drinking it at regular intervals to see how it’s coming along. We need to know how it tastes.
I nodded. “Everything still okay in the barrel room?”
“Yup. Generator’s working fine,” he said. “The villa’s okay, too, except there’s no power. Frankie got all the tables and chairs and umbrellas from the terrace moved inside in time, so no casualties there. But we’re going to have to stay closed until we clean up. Frankie said she’d be in early tomorrow to get started.”
Francesca Merchant ran our tasting room and had begun handling all our special events like concerts and festivals.
“If they ever figure out how to clone anything besides animals, Frankie would be my candidate for first human.” I tossed the geranium over the stone wall to the garden below. “How did we manage before we hired her?”
“We had you.”
I made a face. “Why can’t I decide whether that’s a compliment or an insult?”
He grinned. “I’ll get the wine. Let’s sit on the wall and drink here. The sunset’s going to be pretty tonight after that tornado.”
We sat on the low wall with its view of distant rows of vines and ridges of pines and deciduous trees. Framing the scene was the softly contoured Blue Ridge. The sun had turned the ribbon strips of clouds blood colored and the mountains had darkened from heathery blue to violet.
“I heard on the car radio that forty thousand households are without power in Loudoun County.” Quinn poured wine into two glasses and handed one to me. “Another twenty thousand in Fauquier.” He touched his wineglass to mine. “Here’s to not losing everything today.”
“To the glass half full. Did you get a chance to talk to anyone else who was at the roundtable?” I asked. “Anybody take a hit like we did?”
“When Harry Dye got back to his place he found he’d lost half of his crop,” Quinn said. “I can’t get hold of John Chappell at Mountain-view so maybe he lost phone service. No idea how bad it was there.”
I drank some wine. “Half the crop? Poor Harry. That’s going to kill him. Maybe we can sell him some grapes.”
Quinn pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket and fished in his trousers for a lighter. “That’s going to be tough with what we lost.”
“Have you done the math?”
He bent his head and lit the cigar, puffing on it until the tip glowed. “It’s gonna be a big number. Buying and planting new vines, then all that revenue lost waiting three years until the first harvest. Throw in the expense of buying grapes from somebody else while we’re waiting for our vines to produce, if you want to go that route.”
Though it was common for vineyards to buy fruit from other sources, he knew I didn’t like doing it. Our wines came from our own soil, our own terroir, and I was proud of it.
“I don’t know. I can’t even think straight right now.”
Quinn rubbed his thumb across his chin, the way he always did when he was thinking.
“We lost about two acres, so about twenty grand for vines and labor. As for the production loss, with three tons an acre that’s six tons of fruit times three years of no wine. Nine hundred gallons, all red fruit. Probably ninety thousand dollars, give or take. Buying more fruit, if we decide to do that. About twelve thousand per harvest, so times three. That’s—”
“Thirty-six thousand plus ninety plus twenty.” I tipped my head and swallowed a lot of wine. “Damn. If we don’t buy fruit we’ve lost a hundred and ten thousand. If we replace it, it’s almost a hundred and fifty.”
“Guess we won’t be buying another tractor for a while,” he said.
“Guess not.”
“Let’s talk about replacing the fruit another time.” I stared into my wineglass. “I really can’t wrap my mind around it tonight.”
For a vineyard to be profitable—or at least, self-sustaining—it was necessary to make a certain amount of wine. Make too little and you go broke. The break-even number, as we’d figured it, was about ten thousand cases. Today’s loss meant we’d be teetering on the precipice.
He refilled our glasses. “How’d it go with those deputies?”
I shrugged as a pair of barn swallows swooped over our heads and flew into the eaves of the arcade.
“They asked a bunch of questions, then tried the good cop/bad cop thing to see if they could scare me into admitting I had some idea who it is out there.”
“And did it work?”
“It spooked me, yes. But I have no idea who he is.”
“He?”
“Bobby showed up with the medical examiner. I think he’s Australian. Junius St. Pierre. He said it was an adult male. Caucasian. He’d probably been buried there for thirty or forty years.”
Quinn tapped his cigar with his thumb and ash dropped onto the wall. He brushed it off.
“So it happened while your parents were living here?”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so?”
“Okay, what if it did?”
He shrugged. “Maybe they knew something. Your father—”
I cut him off. “I knew you were going to bring up Leland. My father didn’t murder anyone.”
He pretended to duck. “Whoa, sweetheart. I never said that. You’re being awful defensive.”
He was right. I was.
Leland had hired Quinn shortly before he died, but Quinn had spent enough time with my father to take his measure. A lousy judge of character, a sap for every crummy business deal that came down the pike, and a womanizer. Everyone in Atoka knew it, too. As my godfather, Fitz, used to say about him, when you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Leland had been a man with a chronic itch from all the fleas.
“The minute word gets out about this everyone in town is going to try my father, convict him, and say something like, ‘What’d you expect from Leland Montgomery, anyway?’” I said. “Though they’ll do it behind my back.”
“People are always going to talk. You can’t stop that.”
“What you mean is, I can’t stop Thelma or the Romeos.”
They say three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. The exception to that rule would be if the one person still living was either Thelma Johnson, who owned the General Store, or one of the Romeos, a cantankerous group of senior citizens whose name stood for “Retired Old Men Eating Out.” Tomorrow morning the number-one topic of conversation around the coffeepot in the General Store would be the body on my farm. Maybe I should just give up and sell tickets.
“What’s the matter, Lucie?” Quinn said, when I remained silent. “You’re worried there might be something to it, aren’t you?”
The clouds were now dark against a bright sky and the layered lines of the Blue Ridge had blended into a single silhouette, reminding me of a negative from a print photograph. It was too early for the fireflies to begin their balletic performance, but as the birds quieted down, the cicadas’ comforting serenade became more audible. Usually I liked this time of evening, especially in summer, when everything seemed so peaceful.
Tonight, though, I felt restless and jumpy.
“Of course I’m not.”
“You’re a lousy liar, you know that?”
I played with the stem of my wineglass. “I just don’t want Leland to be judged before we have any facts.”
“You know the folks who gossip will say their piece, regardless. Your friends will wait and see what happens. And they’ll stick up for you.” Quinn picked up the bottle and poured the last of the wine into my glass. “Doesn’t the Bible say something about giving wine to those that be of heavy hearts? Come on, drink up.”
I drank, but my heart was no less heavy. The tornado had left its visible mark on the vineyard and it would take a long time for us to recover. But I also feared that by uncovering that grave we hadn’t seen the last of the maelstrom. If I were right, then what was in store would be worse than anything that had happened today.
Chapter 5
I fell asleep in the hammock on the veranda. When I woke the next morning I was still in my clothes and the power was still out. The airless house felt like a sealed tomb. Out of habit I headed for the kitchen before remembering no electricity meant no refrigerator and no running water. At least I had a gas stove so I could heat water for instant coffee. The orange juice was nearly room temperature, which meant it wouldn’t be long before everything in the refrigerator went bad. I poured a glass of tepid juice, found a baguette in the bread box, and drank a cup of boiled-tasting coffee.
Upstairs I splashed bottled water on my face and rubbed a damp washcloth over the rest of my body. As I was on my way out the door, Quinn called on the landline to say he’d be in the field with the crew working on cleanup. I promised to join him after checking on Frankie in the villa.
The weather report on my car radio said the temperature would hit the upper nineties but promised low humidity and no rain. A newscaster reported that “only” thirty thousand homes were without power in Loudoun and another ten thousand were in the dark in Fauquier. They were working around the clock but it might take days to get everyone back online. No specifics whether that meant two or ten.
I switched off the radio. A lot of people still didn’t have electricity. Maybe we needed to plan for the long haul. At least the weather was good news. It had been a hot, dry summer so far, which was terrific for the vines. If we could get past yesterday’s setback, we might still have a good harvest with the grapes we had left. Maybe even a great one.
When I arrived at the villa just after eight, Frankie Merchant had already opened the four sets of French doors onto the terrace and was busy moving the wicker patio furniture back outside. Early morning sunshine made pale stripes on the Persian carpets and quarry tile floor. A light breeze ruffled the floor-to-ceiling curtains and the reproduction tapestry from the Musée de Cluny in Paris that showed winemaking and coopering in the Middle Ages. Half a dozen copies of the tasting notes for our wines blew off the tiled bar and sailed to the floor.
I retrieved the papers and put them back, weighing them down with a corkscrew. Most of the patio tables and the chairs with their green-and-white-striped cushions were still inside, stacked everywhere.
“I’ll help you with these,” I said. “Where’s Gina?”
“Late.” Frankie brushed tendrils of strawberry blond hair off her face. Her cheeks were pink and she was perspiring.
“You look like you didn’t get much sleep,” she said. “Want coffee?”
“Real coffee? I’d kill for it. Where’d you get it? The General Store?”
“You think I’d let myself get grilled by Thelma about what’s been going on around here? Please. I’d rather climb into a tank of piranhas.” She headed for the kitchen and called over her shoulder. “We got our power back at home. Came on around three a.m. I brought in a thermos.”
She returned, handing me a mug. We sank into patio chairs.
“I got here early and brought all the crews’ coolers home so I could fill them with ice water since it’s going to be a scorcher.”
“You’re an angel. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
She smiled a serene, knowing smile and crossed her legs, swinging a sandaled foot that showed off a perfect pedicure and stylish neon pink polish on her toes.
“Oh, don’t you worry,” she said. “There will be payback.”
I burst out laughing. “Whatever you want.”
She cocked an eyebrow as she sipped her coffee. “You think I’m kidding.”
I didn’t know much about Frankie’s past but I did know her children were grown and her husband worked for a D.C. law firm with hours so long he often slept at work. She’d taken this job to keep from going stir-crazy at home. I’d bet money when her kids were growing up she probably ran the PTA and never missed a sports game, concert, bake sale, or field trip. She was probably one of the stalwarts at school fund-raisers, the kind of person everyone counted on because she never let anyone down. Like now.
“I think we should have a backup plan for the weekend,” I said. “In case we don’t get our electricity back.”
“I thought I’d work on that today,” she said. “After I get this place cleaned up.”
Twenty years ago this weekend my parents had sold their first bottle of wine. We’d been planning our anniversary celebration for months.
“You going to talk to Dominique?” I asked.
My cousin Dominique Gosselin owned the Goose Creek Inn, a small auberge founded by my godfather forty years ago that had become one of the region’s most popular and well-loved restaurants. Over the years it increasingly attracted Washington’s high and mighty who liked its cuisine, romantic charm, and distance from the nation’s capital. Dominique probably knew more secrets than the CIA about off-the-radar trysts and furtive romances. Many nights when I dined there the Secret Service hung around being visibly invisible, keeping an eye on some guest and his or her “friend.”
“I thought I’d go over to the Inn for lunch, if that’s all right with you. Get things sorted out.” She grinned. “Your treat.”
The Inn’s waiters and waitresses often helped us out on weekends serving wine in the tasting room or working at our dinners. Goose Creek Catering, which Dominique also ran as part of the Inn’s expanding franchise, handled all our big events.
“You meant it about the payback, huh?”
The landline phone on the bar rang and I stood up.
“Let me,” she said. “You don’t want to take that.”
I heard her end of the conversation. “Sorry, no comment…no, she’s not available. We sustained a lot of damage from that tornado yesterday and she’s got her hands…no, we’re closed for the foreseeable future until our power is restored…the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department might be able to answer that…would you like the number?…no?…no problem…good-bye.”
She came back and flopped down in her chair. “I’ve lost count how many of those we’ve gotten.”
“Reporters?”
“You want to see the messages?”
I shook my head. “Who called from the Trib? I would have thought Kit would have tried to reach me directly.”
Kit Eastman was my best friend since we’d played together in the sandbox and, for the past two years, she’d been Bobby Noland’s girlfriend. A few months ago she’d been named Loudoun bureau chief for the Washington Tribune. A story like this would be a big deal for her paper. If it didn’t make the A section, it would at least be above the fold in Metro.
“From the Trib?” Frankie wrinkled her forehead. “Some guy. I think he’s new because I didn’t recognize his name. He got the standard reply. Maybe Kit’s going to drop by and ambush you here.”
“Maybe Bobby already told her all there is to know, which is nothing.”
Frankie stood up. “Speaking of Bobby,” she said, “he’s coming up the front walk. Looks like he’s got some papers. What’s that all about?”
I took a deep breath. “Search warrant.”
“Oh.”
Bobby looked like he’d slept better than I did, but he still looked tired. Frankie offered him coffee and he accepted. She left to get it and he handed me the paper.
“I’m sure you know what this is,” he said, leaning against the bar.
“Yep. I’ve got nothin
g to hide, Bobby.”
“I know. We’re just doing it nice and legal, that’s all.”
“What are your plans for today?”
Frankie returned with Bobby’s coffee, then busied herself sweeping the terrace.
“We’ve got guys out there with metal detectors right now looking for bullets or anything else like that.” Bobby picked up his mug and drank. “Might clear out some of your brush, too, if we need to expand our search. We’ll bag the remains and send them back to the lab. That’s the first priority.”
“You mean you’re taking him apart?”
“What do you suggest? Levitate him? There’s nothing to hold him together, no flesh.”
“Then you put him back together again in your laboratory?”
“Just like Humpty Dumpty.”
“Funny. More like a human jigsaw puzzle.”
There were 206 bones in an adult male. I’d found most of the skull and Bruja had unearthed one of the long bones—maybe a tibia or a femur. How many would Bobby and his crew find?
“It’s the only way to find out who John Doe is and how he got there.”
“So what happens next?” I asked.
Bobby squinted at me like he was weighing how much to reveal. “Take it easy, Lucie. I’m sure we’ll be talking. This guy has probably been here since before you were born. It’s someone else’s story.”
“But you and your deputies already think it has something to do with my family.”
He expelled a long breath and stared at the tapestry as though he might find the answer woven through the threads. “It isn’t engraved in stone, but there are a few things that happen so often in cases like this that you can almost predict how it’s gonna turn out.”
“Such as?”
“Such as fifty percent of the time, the victim is found on property owned or controlled by the perpetrator.”