The Bordeaux Betrayal (15 page)

Something about what Jefferson had written in his diary bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

And the only two people who could help me—Thomas Jefferson and Valerie Beauvais—were dead.

The next morning when I woke, I heard snoring through the door of Pépé’s bedroom. At home in Paris he never rose before midafternoon. With the jet lag—and how little sleep he’d gotten yesterday—I wondered if he’d stay in bed all day.

I made breakfast and set another place for him at the kitchen table, leaving a note that he could find croissants in the bread bin and cheese in the refrigerator. Usually he fasted for breakfast and lunch, making dinner his main meal, but maybe he’d make an exception since he was adjusting to the time change.

I drove to the winery and parked next to Quinn’s El. The door to the villa was locked, so he was probably in the barrel room. I found him there, punching down the cap with Manolo and Jesús. The two workers smiled and said hello. Quinn barely looked up, mumbling “good morning” before going back to his task. I stood and watched, growing angrier by the second as I waited for some sign from him that we had some air-clearing to do. Instead he doggedly pushed the sludgy mass of grape skins below the surface of one of the fermenting vats with a large flat paddle and ignored me. I saw Jesús’s uneasy glance in Manolo’s direction. Manolo shook his head lightly.

No need to keep them in the middle of this.

“I’d like to see you in my office as soon as you’re done here, Quinn.” All three of them were bigger and taller and older than I was. I sounded like a student teacher in over her head, trying to discipline an unruly pupil. No one looked at me.

“In case you’ve forgotten, I own this vineyard,” I said. “When I say something I don’t expect to be ignored.”

This time they all stopped what they were doing.

Manolo and Jesús nodded nervously. Quinn’s head jerked up and his eyes locked on mine. I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed or furious I’d spoken to him like that in front of the men, but his machismo was his problem and too damn bad if he’d lost face. When I left the barrel room I closed the door harder than I needed to.

I still hadn’t cooled off when I got to the villa. Gina flew out of the kitchen, holding a pot of coffee. Her eyes were huge.

“Oh, it’s you, Lucie. I heard the door bang shut. Guess a gust of wind must have caught it.” She stopped and stared at me. “What happened? Are you all right?”

If it had been Frankie with her calming, compassionate ways, I probably would have spilled everything. But not to lively, gossipy Gina, who began far too many sentences with, “I’m not supposed to tell you, but…”

Sharing a confidence with her wasn’t quite as bad as telling Thelma Johnson over at the General Store or the Romeos, but it would still make the rounds. The only difference was that everybody in two counties wouldn’t know by the end of the day. More than likely it would take a week or two.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just a gust of wind, like you said. Scared me, too. Sorry.”

She poured me a cup of coffee and I told her I’d be at my desk. I glanced in Quinn’s office on the way to mine. Kind of a cross between a low-rent motel room and a place where someone had nearly moved out. No photographs. Nothing personal. His cottage was the same. Maybe that’s how he’d been able to keep his marriage a secret—acting like he had no past. I would never understand that about him.

An hour later the heavy wooden door between the library and our offices opened and closed. He went first to his office. A few minutes later, he showed up in my doorway and pulled the door shut.

He jerked a thumb behind him. “We’ve got customers. Gina’s with ’em. If you’re going to yell, might be better if they didn’t hear.”

“I’m not going to yell.”

“But you want to.”

“Yes.” My voice shook. “I want to. What the hell happened yesterday?”

“I got stinking drunk, ma’am, and I shouldn’t have. Reported for work totally inebriated and that’s grounds for firing me. You can have my resignation on your desk, if that’s what you want. I’ll just go next door and write it.” He was staring hard at me but his eyes were haunted and bleak. Like he was going to push this conversation to the absolute limit, test us both…see who cried uncle first.

It felt like I was talking to a stranger.

“Don’t call me ‘ma’am,’” I said, hurt. “Just…don’t. And you know I don’t want your resignation. But I do think you owe me an apology.”

He bowed with mock formality. “Then I apologize. It will never happen again.”

“Quinn…”

“What?”

“I just told you.” He wasn’t going to back down.

“No,” I said. “You told me nothing. I’ve never seen you do something like that before. Ever. I know you’re upset about seeing her…and the fact that she’s with Shane now—”

He cut me off. “You don’t know
anything
!” he shouted.

“Then tell me! Just tell me!” I shouted back.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

That hurt, too. “Why?”

“It’s complicated.”

For a long moment we just stood there and stared at each other. I knew, just as sure as I knew he loved her, that he wasn’t going to tell me how she had hurt him or what she had done to be able to still torment him like this.

I looked away before he did, picking up the first piece of paper I found on my desk. An unsolicited letter from another local limousine company who wanted us to use their services so our guests could sightsee without worrying about drinking and driving.

“I’ve got to take care of this right away.” I indicated the paper. “I think we’re done here. Apology accepted but I’ll hold you to your word it won’t happen again.”

The fire in his eyes changed to ice and all his interior chambers slammed shut. “And I’ve got business in the barrel room, if we’re finished. Don’t worry, Lucie. It’ll never happen again.” He opened my door. “You want this open or closed?”

“Closed. Please.” I managed to say it and still meet his eyes.

But the moment he left I reached blindly for the sweatshirt I’d left on the back of my chair and buried my face in it until I no longer felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

Amanda Heyward called mid-morning and asked if I could meet her at Mick’s place to discuss the tent and a few other things about the auction. I hadn’t seen or talked to Mick since the evening at Mount Vernon. Amanda didn’t mention whether he would be there today or not.

Another complicated relationship with another complicated man. I seemed to collect them. Maybe Mick would be busy with his horses, but I didn’t want to ask Amanda. Then she’d ask whether it was on or off with Mick and me and I didn’t feel like discussing it with her. Especially since I couldn’t answer the question myself.

“Sure, I can meet you,” I said. “What time?”

“Four work for you?”

“See you at four.”

“Are you all right, Lucie?” she asked. “You don’t sound too good.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Sorry to cut this short, but I’ve got somebody in my office.”

“Sure, sure. Didn’t mean to interrupt. See you later.”

I hung up and swung my chair around, resting my bad foot on the credenza. For a long time, I stared at the wall.

Shortly after twelve someone knocked on my door. Not Quinn. Gina.

She poked her head inside. “I brought you lunch. Hope you don’t mind.” She opened the door all the way and set down a plate. A croissant filled with sliced avocado, sprouts, and Brie cheese.

She knew.

“Did you talk to Quinn?” I asked.

At least she didn’t beat around the bush. “I didn’t talk to anybody. Didn’t have to.”

“Oh God. Did those customers hear us?”

“Not everything. They left before you two were finished.” She sat across from me in a wing chair covered in a pretty flame-stitch fabric. My mother had upholstered that chair. In all the years she and Jacques had occupied the offices Quinn and I now used, I don’t think I ever heard them raise their voices at each other. “Want to talk?” she said.

“Not really.”

She traced the fabric’s design on an arm of the chair with her finger. “You had every right to yell at him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Showing up for work drunk like that.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed a spot in the middle of my forehead that had started to throb. “How did you hear about it?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly hear about it from anybody,” she said. “Just put two and two together after what happened just now. My boyfriend works at a bar over in Leesburg. Quinn came in so drunk he wouldn’t serve him. Charlie took his keys and called a cab for him. I guess Quinn was in pretty bad shape for harvest yesterday, huh?”

Sometimes I should just keep my big mouth shut. “Yes,” I said, “he was. Look, Gina, please don’t say anything about this, okay?”

She stood up, her dark eyes big and serious. “Don’t worry. I won’t breathe a word.” She made a zipper motion across her lips. “You can count on me.”

After she left I stared at the sandwich. In two weeks, everyone from here to Richmond would know about our shouting match and my drunken winemaker. I had just started eating when I saw one of the phone lines in the tasting room light up on my phone.

Nah, not two weeks. It’d only take one.

After lunch I went back to the house to check on Pépé. I found him perched on the sofa in the library, smoking a Boyard, reading a battered copy of yesterday’s
Le Monde
. He’d probably brought it with him from Paris.

I kissed the top of his head. “Did you eat?”

“I had a coffee. You know I never eat until dinner,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll be going out shortly. One of my friends is coming to pick me up. I’ll be at the International Monetary Fund for a meeting this afternoon, then dinner at the embassy. Don’t wait up for me,
ma belle
. I’ll probably be late.”

He could still amaze me. “No grass grows under your feet, does it?”

Pépé smiled through a cloud of bad-smelling smoke. Boyards were unfiltered and had the highest tar and nicotine content of any cigarette on the market when they were still being produced. My grandfather’s doctor told him to knock off smoking or it would kill him, but Pépé told him that at eighty-two he was going to die anyway and it may as well be doing something he enjoyed. The unmistakable acrid smell would be embedded in the house for weeks after he left, a lingering reminder of his visit haunting me like a ghost.

“Eh, bien,”
he said. “One likes to keep occupied,
n’est-ce pas
?”

The IMF meeting probably wasn’t a courtesy call arranged for his benefit by a friend. More likely, they’d invited him to ask his counsel on some matter of trade or finance—and he was too modest to say.

“I have an appointment at four,” I said, “but I’ll be here when you get back.”

Outside, tires sounded on the gravel drive. He folded his newspaper and set it on the coffee table.

“That should be my colleague and his companion. Until tonight,
mon trésor
.”

I walked him to the door and said hello to his friend, a man in his early nineties who had been one of Secretary of State Marshall’s aides. I was happy to see that the companion—an attractive woman who looked to be in her sixties—was behind the wheel.

The phone rang in the foyer after they drove off. I picked it up and sat in a blue-and-white toile Queen Anne chair next to the table. A bust of Thomas Jefferson—one of Leland’s prized possessions—watched me from an alcove across the room.

“Lucie, Jack Greenfield here.” He sounded tense and businesslike.

“Hello, Jack.”

“Probably best if I get right to the point.”

“Sure,” I said. Whatever the point was, it already didn’t sound good.

“I’ve decided to withdraw the Washington bottle from the auction.”

I sagged in the chair and closed my eyes. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“I said I’ve decided to keep the bottle. When all is said and done, it belongs in my family. I’ve had some time to think it over and I apologize for the inconvenience I might have caused. Don’t worry, I’ll give you something else. You’ll still raise a lot of money.”

What the hell was he talking about? Had someone gotten to him? Nicole Martin, maybe? She’d told Ryan she wasn’t going back to California without that bottle.

“It’s a lot more than inconvenient, Jack. Are you selling that wine to someone else?”

“Of course not!” He sounded insulted. “I just told you I’m keeping it.”

“You’re not selling it to Nicole Martin?”

“Who is Nicole Martin?”

He really didn’t know? “Look, Jack, would you please reconsider—?”

“Don’t make this difficult, Lucie. I feel bad enough already. But that bottle has been great for my business. I’ve been inundated with calls from all over the world ever since Ryan’s column ran the other day.”

Sure. So had we. People were coming out of the woodwork to attend our little auction. Now he wanted his prize donation back. How were we going to explain
that
?

I pinched the bridge of my nose. The headache that had begun after Quinn and I blew up at each other this morning now pulsed behind my eyes. There had to be some way to talk him out of this.

“You know how thrilled we were when you donated that bottle. Everyone at Shelter the Children has been beside themselves once they realized how much money it could raise and—”

He cut me off. “Stop right there. Don’t make me out to be Scrooge. I won’t stand for it. Besides, I’m not going to leave you with nothing. I’m swapping the Margaux for a jeroboam of Pétrus. You’ll do extremely well with that.”

Château Pétrus was another of the legendary Bordeaux, but we wouldn’t do nearly as well as we would have done with a bottle destined for George Washington. All the magic that had enveloped the auction would vanish like smoke. But he wasn’t going to change his mind and nothing I could do would persuade him otherwise. If he wanted the wine back, he wanted it back.