by Ellen Crosby
“Or I could just let dead dogs sleep,” she said. “No one but you knows I met him.”
In the silence that fell between us, I knew she wrestled, as I did, with the impact her news would have on my father’s case if she spoke to Bobby versus saying nothing. A Hobson’s choice that had already been made, ingrained in our psyches because of who our mothers raised us to be.
“It would probably go better for Leland if you kept quiet,” I said. “Telling the truth corroborates what Annabel Chastain told Bobby, especially since no one knows where Leland went after Beau left, or what he did. Until now.”
I shrugged and shook my head. Her smile was melancholy as she hugged me.
“Shall I call Bobby now or do you think it can wait until tomorrow?” she asked.
“Better get it over with. You wouldn’t want to change your mind.”
She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “There’s no way to sweep the rug under the carpet on this one, is there?”
“Nope,” I said, as she made her call.
The next article about the murder of Beau Kinkaid to appear in the Washington Tribune was not on the front page of the news section. Instead it showed up first thing Monday morning on the front page of Lifestyle. Lead story, this time above the fold. Pictures, too. The real kicker was the headline: “Sauterne Death: Who Killed the Victim in the Vineyard?”
I had never seen the photograph they used of Leland in his NRA cap. He’d probably been hunting and hadn’t shaved for a few days so he looked particularly scruffy. A real gun-toting wacko. Chastain Construction’s press machine had most likely provided the photo of Beau Kinkaid, who looked as all-American as a Boy Scout, sitting at a linen-covered table at some dinner event with a bank of American flags behind him. He was smiling, showing a lot of bad teeth, but even the smile didn’t hide the fact that, as Dominique said, the man was as ugly as a roach.
I read the article with growing disgust. The obvious conclusion any fool would make—though it was never explicitly stated—was that Leland, a man of dubious business acumen, blurred-edge morals, and questionable relationships, killed one of his former partners and had gotten away with it. Until now.
Frankie was the first to arrive at the villa. She came straight to my office and the guilty look on her face, when she found me at my desk with the newspaper lying open, made it clear she’d hoped to do something outrageous, like burning every copy she could get her hands on before I saw it.
“Too late,” I said. “But thanks.”
“I’m really sorry, Lucie.”
“Me, too. Anyone who still wondered whether Leland was innocent or guilty before reading this garbage won’t have any doubts now.”
She leaned against the doorjamb, her clear blue eyes filled with consternation. “They didn’t say he did it.”
“No, they just hinted, implied, insinuated, alluded, intimated…have I left any words out?”
“You’re doing fine.”
“I think I’ll take a drive over to Leesburg.” I stood up and reached for my cane.
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“Do you think I should let them get away with this?” It came out sharper than I intended.
Her cheeks reddened and she pressed her lips together.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t be taking my anger out on you.”
“Maybe you could just ignore it. If you dignify it by reacting, it’ll just keep the whole thing alive. Don’t go over there and roll around in the mud.”
“They’re throwing it. Besides, how much more attention could we get than this?” I waved the paper. “We’re going to be bombarded with press calls all day. Wait and see. Anyway, it’s too late to ignore it.”
She gave me a warning look. “That article didn’t have Kit’s byline on it. Be careful, Lucie.”
The Loudoun bureau of the Washington Tribune was a small redbrick house on Harrison Street on the edge of Leesburg’s historic district. I parked on Loudoun Street in front of the quaint log cabin that now housed part of the town’s museum.
The last time I’d gone to see Kit when she’d been working in the D.C. office of the Tribune, I’d been required to pass through a metal detector, send my purse through an X-ray machine, and show my driver’s license, which had been scanned—bad-hair photo and all—and became my stick-on badge for the day. Even then Kit had to show up at the front desk and escort me wherever I went. That included the ladies’ room. But here in Leesburg, life was different. I opened the front door of the Loudoun bureau without knocking or being buzzed in and walked inside. The receptionist, whom I knew from experience was working on the Times sudoku puzzle in pen, looked up as the door closed. Normally we exchanged chitchat, but today I nodded without speaking and walked straight through the large open room where reporters and photographers sat at their computers, to Kit’s office at the far end of the building.
Her door was open and she was leaning against the front of her desk, arms folded, one leg crossed over the other. Waiting for me. She’d been warned.
“I heard you left scorch marks on the ceiling on your way here,” she said. “I’m sorry you’re angry.”
I leaned on my cane with both hands. “That story was straight out of the gutter. How come you didn’t put it in the gossip column? Or maybe the comics, since it was such a joke?”
There were two pink spots on her cheeks. “I have nothing to do with Lifestyle. It’s a completely different part of the paper. Different editors, different staff.”
“Really? So where do they get their headline writers? Show up at the Comedy Club and recruit there? I’m sure that article sold a bunch of newspapers.”
The flush now stained her face and neck. “The story was supposed to run on Saturday,” she said. “I used up a lot of capital getting it delayed until today so it wouldn’t ruin your weekend and your anniversary celebration.”
We were going down a path of destruction, but now neither one of us was going to pull back.
“Too bad you didn’t use your capital getting it—what’s that journalism expression you use? Spiked?”
“There was no way they were going to kill that story.”
“It belonged in a supermarket tabloid, not a serious newspaper in a major metropolitan area.”
Kit uncrossed her legs and held on to the edge of her desk with both hands as she leaned toward me. “Believe me, I looked at that piece under a microscope when it showed up. Nothing in it is untrue, Lucie.”
“You yourself said Chastain Construction is spinning the way this story plays out.”
“I did not.”
“I’ve got to go.”
“Wait.” Her voice was soft. “Let’s not leave it like this between us. Please, Luce. I wanted to come by after work today and ask you something. I was hoping…well, counting on, that you’d be my maid of honor.”
I saw the smear of lipstick on her front teeth from where she’d bitten her lip as she waited for my reply. We stared at each other across a chasm that had opened up in the few feet between us that seemed as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon. Here was the one favor that symbolized what we’d meant to each other for so many years.
I struggled to control my voice. “Maybe this isn’t the best time—”
“Of course,” she said. “I understand.”
I turned and walked blindly out of her office, no longer caring that tears were flowing down my cheeks. Kit’s office door clicked shut, and a moment later I heard a muffled sound like a sob. I kept on walking, this time without even a nod to the receptionist, who said nothing as I passed her desk.
I stepped outside and closed the front door. From here, there was no turning back.
Chapter 14
Quinn’s salt-and-pepper head was bent over the record book in the lab when I showed up in the barrel room forty-five minutes later. I’d checked the rearview mirror in the Mini before getting out of the car. My eyes were no longer red-rimmed from crying. He’d never know.
I p
aused in the doorway as he closed the lab book and slid it over to a corner of the workbench. His eyes zeroed in on my face.
“You look like hell. I heard you paid Kit a visit. Guess it didn’t go too well, huh?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He pushed his bar stool back a few feet and studied me some more. “What do you want to talk about?”
I picked up a graduated beaker and examined it.
“How about the Riesling? Have you decided when you want to pick?”
He stuck his pencil behind an ear and folded his arms across his chest. Today he wore a gray athletic T-shirt and jeans with a hole in one knee. The usual chains around his neck and the leather and steel bracelet around one wrist.
“No later than Thursday,” he said. “Before Edouard gets here.”
“Who?” I set the beaker down.
“The newest hurricane. We’re whipping right through the alphabet. This one may not hit us, either, but we’re going to get slammed with rain.” He wrinkled his forehead. “You haven’t been following it, have you?”
“Of course I have.”
“So where is it now, weather girl?”
“The Atlantic,” I said. Hurricanes always started there.
He rolled his eyes. “I knew you didn’t know. Look, I got a reefer truck coming in since we’re going to have to move fast to get those grapes picked.”
A reefer truck was short for refrigerated truck. We could keep the fruit chilled until we were ready to start processing it—putting it through the destemmer, pressing it, and moving it to the tanks to begin fermentation. It bought us time.
“Okay.”
“I told Chance we’ll need extra pickers that day.”
“Okay.”
Quinn stood and shoved me gently into the barrel room. “You aren’t listening to a word I say.” He walked me over to the long pine table and pulled out a chair. “Have a seat.”
I sat.
“If you insist on talking about the Riesling,” he said, leaning against the table, “I’ve been on the phone with Harry and John. They both think making a dessert wine is a terrific idea. I want to pick twice. Now and after the first hard freeze.”
Harry Dye and John Chappell owned vineyards not far from ours. We helped one another all the time, sharing problems and successes with the types of grapes we could grow since our soil and climate were practically identical.
“Harry and John don’t grow Riesling.”
“That’s why it would be unique to us.”
I shook my head. “Too risky that late in the year because of the weather. And you know we’re screwed if we don’t get it picked in one night and the next day it warms up.”
“I think we can do it.”
We could probably put this argument on a loop and hit replay, we’d had it so often. As a winemaker, he wanted to experiment and push the boundaries of what he could do. As the one who paid the bills, I wanted to be able to pay the bills. Pick everything now and I’d sleep at night knowing we would have the cash to do it. Our Riesling was so good we generally sold out before we released our next harvest.
“Quinn”
“Back me on this, Lucie. You’re too distracted with everything else that’s going on. Let me do it the way I want.”
“I want to think about it,” I said. “Give me one more day.”
I expected him to balk when I said that, but instead he said, “All right. As long as you do something for me.”
“What?”
“Take the rest of the day off. Go clear your head.”
How many times had he said that to me lately?
“If I go home, I’ll just—”
“Who said anything about going home? I gave Tyler some time off. He wants to take you to Ball’s Bluff battlefield. It’s a nice day. You’ll learn some history.”
I cocked my head. “Why did you give Tyler time off?”
“Someone left a bunghole cover open. We might have lost the entire barrel.” He paused. “It was Pinot.”
An entire barrel of wine. Five thousand dollars.
“Dammit. Are you saying Tyler did that?”
“Someone did it. My guess is he did. He was with Chance stirring the barrels yesterday.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“You bet I did. I gave him hell but he claims he didn’t do it. He can’t be doing chores with his nose in a goddamn Latin book. I don’t care how boring the work is and too damn bad if he thinks he’s too smart to be doing manual labor. We lose enough with the angels’ share as it is.”
The angels’ share was the name vintners give to the natural process of evaporation in the barrels. The story was that it went to the angels who liked drinking wine up in heaven. Depending on the humidity and temperature, the angels got as much as half a bottle a month per barrel. Not a bad share.
I wondered what kind of “hell” Quinn had given Tyler.
“That barrel is definitely spoiled?”
“I racked it over and I’m working on it,” he said. “I’ll let you know. After you come back from your field trip.”
“How come I feel like I’ve been set up? You talked to Frankie about this, didn’t you?”
His poker face was perfect. “Would I do something like that?”
I called Tyler, who agreed to meet me in the parking lot a few minutes later. He’d been primed, too, but he’d apparently gotten mixed signals from either Frankie or Quinn because he acted like the idea for the tour was a surprise to him.
He was wearing a T-shirt with something in Latin inscribed on it, baggy low-riding shorts like all the kids wore, and a UVA baseball cap.
“What does your shirt say?” I asked.
“If you can read this, you are an intelligent person.’”
“Oh.” I smiled. “Well, it’s all Greek to me.”
He adjusted his baseball cap and gave me a tolerant smile.
“Chance is meeting us at the battlefield,” he said. “He had to pick something up at the hardware store in Leesburg so he’s over there, anyway. Said he thought it would be interesting to see the place. He’s never been there, either.”
“Does Quinn know about this?”
Tyler shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. Why?”
“Because with you babysitting me for the day, he could use the help, that’s why.”
He looked guilty. “I’m not babysitting—”
“It’s okay. Let’s go. We’ll meet Chance there and I’ll have a word with him.”
When we got in the Mini he said, “Chance isn’t going to get in trouble for this, is he?”
“He reports to Quinn. If he’s going to take off for a couple of hours, he should clear it with Quinn first.” I looked over at Tyler as I pulled out of the parking lot. “You seem like you’re pretty tight with Chance.”
He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I like him. He’s a cool guy. And he’s nice to me.”
Though he didn’t say it, I understood the implicit message. Unlike Quinn.
Chance and Bruja were waiting when Tyler and I pulled into the gravel parking lot at Ball’s Bluff Battlefield Regional Park in Leesburg half an hour later. Although two other cars were parked next to the vineyard’s blue pickup, there was no sign of anyone except the three of us and the dog. I had just driven through a subdivision and passed a sprawling outlet shopping mall, but we could have been in the middle of nowhere it seemed so quiet and deserted.
“They’ve got leash laws in the park,” Tyler said to Chance.
Chance opened the passenger door to the truck and got Bruja’s leash, clipping it to the dog’s collar.
“Does Quinn know you’re here?” I asked him.
He gave me a roguish smile and winked at Tyler like a coconspirator.
“I’m with the boss. Figured it would be okay for just a little while.”
“You need to call him,” I said.
“It’s a dead zone for phone service.” Tyler held up his cell phone. “I never get
anything here.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “I don’t have anything, either.”
“Same here,” Chance said. “We won’t be long, Lucie. Besides, I had an errand in Leesburg, anyway. This is just a little detour.”
I didn’t like being an unwilling accomplice in deceiving Quinn about Chance playing hooky for part of an afternoon, but right now it seemed I had no choice in the matter.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We walked down a gravel path that cut through a heavily wooded area. The trees made a cathedral-like canopy above us, though enough sunlight filtered through in bright pockets to keep it from being gloomy. Still, it wasn’t difficult to imagine why anyone who came here at dusk or at nighttime might believe this place was haunted. I’d never claimed to see Mosby’s ghost near our ruins, but here, where so much blood had been spilled, something unsettling pervaded the air. Blue jays cawed from the trees and Chance had to restrain Bruja from chasing after the squirrels scurrying across tree limbs or diving into the vegetation. In the brooding silence, the rise and fall of the cicadas’ metallic symphony seemed amplified.
“Which way?” Chance asked as we reached a fork in the path.
“The path on the left was made by the Corps of Engineers, which is why it’s wider,” Tyler said. “The one on the right is the old cart trail where the Union pulled a cannon and two howitzers up from the river. What you’re looking at down there is where the Federals were.” He waved at an expanse of woods at the bottom of a gently sloping hill. “Behind us in the parking lot is where the Confederates waited for them.”
“I thought the battle took place in a field,” I said.
“It did,” he said. “In 1861 this place was a field. All these trees have grown up here since then.”
“Let’s go right.” Chance pulled Bruja away from the stinging nettles that grew dense on either side of the path. “The way the troops came.”
“You going to be okay, Lucie?” Tyler eyed my cane.
“I’ll be fine.”
The cart path was narrow but we still managed to walk three abreast with me in the middle. Chance’s arm kept brushing against mine and once he looked over and gave me that heart-catching smile.