The Bordeaux Betrayal (21 page)

“No problem.” I gestured to the floral arrangement. “Your flowers are lovely. Did you do that?”

“Yes, for Jack. He gets such pleasure from the simplest things. I never fuss with making big professional-looking arrangements. My clients’ homes may end up in
Architectural Digest
but Jack likes his own home to be gemütlich. Good old down-home German charm.”

Sunny had made a fire in the stone fireplace. Schubert’s Trout Quintet came through two speakers in the bookcases on either side of the mantel. Her needlepoint—something floral—lay on the sofa.

“Sit, sit. Take Jack’s chair by the fireplace. I know it’s not really that cold outside but it felt good to make a fire,” she said. “Can’t I pour you something? How about a glass of wine? Come on. There’s some Cabernet Sauvignon open. French. I’m not drinking alone now that you’re here.”

I sat. “All right. One glass. Thanks.”

She handed me the wine and took up her needlepoint as she sat down on the sofa. “I hear you got some pressure from the Orlandos to close your farm,” she said. “Amanda said you told them to go to hell.”

“Something like that.”

“They’re serious about trying to outlaw foxhunting, you know.” Sunny reached for a pair of glasses and put them on, focusing on her canvas. “Stuart Orlando had a meeting at his house the other day to jump-start the whole thing. They’re going to try to slam us in the media, fight it out in the court of public opinion.” She looked up. “Place articles about how cruelly we treat the hounds. What we do to the poor fox.”

“How do you know about the meeting?”

She slipped her feet out of ballet flats, tucking her legs gracefully beneath her on the sofa. “A friend of mine got wind of it and asked if she could go along. The Orlandos don’t know everyone in town yet.” She pulled rose-colored floss through the canvas, looking pleased with herself.

“Can I change the subject?”

“Not if it’s about that Margaux.”

I watched her stab the needle again, this time with a jerky motion, and asked anyway. “Do you know if Jack met with Valerie Beauvais before she had that accident? The historian who was murdered.”

“I know damn well who Valerie Beauvais was. I read the papers. I would have known if he met her.” More stabbing.

“So he didn’t.”

“I just said so.”

“Then why is he withdrawing the wine?”

She set down her needlework and took off her glasses with some care. The gesture seemed to age her. “I’m going to tell you something. And it better not go any farther than this room. Jack told me that his father got that wine from a friend as a thank-you gift after the war. My father-in-law was sent to France in a Nazi uniform but he was sympathetic to the French because he had so many friends in the wine business. You can imagine what would have happened to him if word got back to Berlin about some of the things he did. Jack’s father took tremendous risks to help old friends and former business associates.”

“Did Valerie know about this?”

“She chose to believe lies. That he betrayed the French during the war.”

I wondered if Sunny realized she’d just contradicted herself about Jack knowing Valerie. She massaged her forehead with her fingers and reached for her drink.

She realized.

“Look, Lucie, you and I have no idea what it was like during the war. My father-in-law did the best he could under impossible circumstances. He still had to obey his superiors. Who are we to judge some of the choices he made—and who was
she
to judge? Valerie was going to drag Jack’s family through the mud. Bring up their Nazi past and humiliate my husband for no good reason other than to further her book sales. Can you imagine what it would do to his business? Let it go, can’t you?” Sunny finished her drink and got up to refresh it. This time she didn’t add much tonic.

I waited until she sat down. “I could,” I said, “if somebody hadn’t killed Valerie. You know, don’t you, that this gives Jack a motive for wanting her dead?”

She sat up ramrod straight. “How dare you? I was with Jack all evening. We had dinner at the Goose Creek Inn with Shane, then came home and went to bed.”

“Somebody killed her,” I said.

She looked like I’d slapped her. “Not my husband. You can see yourself out, Lucie. Thank you for dropping off the wine.”

I set my partially drunk glass of Cabernet on her coffee table. As I left the room, I glanced at her needlework. In the middle of a yellow flower she had taken a few stitches with rose-colored floss.

“I think you’ve made a mistake.” I pointed to the canvas.

She was watching the fire and didn’t turn her head. I let myself out. The needlework wasn’t her only mistake.

A pickup truck with a flatbed trailer showed up in my driveway the next morning while I was still drinking my coffee. The driver was a young, athletic deputy sheriff.

“I’m here for your car,” he said when I answered the front door.

“You’re what?”

He pulled a folded paper out of his pocket and looked at it. “Montgomery? Donating a Volvo station wagon to the sheriff’s department?”

“Of course. Sorry,” I said. “Let me get the keys. And the registration.”

One night last summer as I was driving home from the Goose Creek Inn, the front end of Leland’s ancient Volvo collided with the back end of a deer as it emerged from the woods and tried to cross Atoka Road. In all my years of driving it was the first time I’d ever hit anything. I wasn’t hurt—Volvos are built like tanks—but my mechanic took one look at the car, which had more than two hundred thousand miles on it, and told me to put it out of its misery, like Animal Control had done with the deer.

I’d nearly forgotten I promised to give the car to the sheriff’s department after Bobby Noland told me they were always looking for vehicles to use on their training track to add realism to simulated high-speed chases. The SWAT team liked to try out new ammo on something besides a paper target and the fire department sought out opportunities to practice extinguishing vehicle fires or using the Jaws of Life. If the Volvo—the car I’d learned to drive on as a kid—had nearly come to the end of its days, at least it would go out with style.

“It’s not that road-worthy anymore,” I told the deputy. “Are you sure you’re going to be able to use it on your track?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I work at the CRU. Our mechanics are tops. We’ll go over it before we run it. Can I take those plates off for you?”

“Sure. Thanks.” So he worked for the Crash Reconstruction Unit.

He got a screwdriver from a toolbox in the truck. The front plate, which had been on the car since Leland bought it, was rusted to the holder.

“Did you work on the SUV that went into Goose Creek about ten days ago?” I asked as he knelt by the front bumper and tried to unscrew the license plate.

“Yes.” He gave up and went around to the back of the car. “Why? Did you know the victim?”

The back plate came off with no trouble. He got a different screwdriver and worked on the front plate again, this time concentrating on the holder.

“I pulled her out of the creek.”

He stood up and his glance strayed to my cane. “I heard about that. Pretty gutsy.” He handed me my license plates. “Sorry I couldn’t get that front one out of the holder for you.”

“It’s okay. Thanks.”

“Detective Noland told me he’d take care of getting you a donation letter. I’ll call him and let him know we finally picked up the car. I apologize for taking so long to get to you. I think I caught you off-guard when I showed up this morning.”

“A little,” I said. “By the way, did you find anything else when you went over that SUV besides the wheel coming off?”

If he was surprised by my question, he didn’t let on. “We gave our report to the guys who are handling the case, but it’s still an ongoing investigation so I can’t comment,” he said. “And one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t forget to turn those plates in to DMV.”

Bobby called later that afternoon when I was in my office and thanked me again for the Volvo.

“Much appreciated, though it’s going to be weird seeing it out on the track,” he said. “I remember being in it with Eli when we were in high school. And some of the stuff we did—”

For a moment I remembered the high school boy who used to be a regular in detention hall and how I’d tutored him to earn honor society service hours because he was flunking algebra. He was smart enough, but back then he thought algebra was, as he used to tell me, as useful as tits on a bull.

“Tell me about it,” I said. “Eli never would.”

“Better not,” he said. “The statute of limitations isn’t up yet.”

“That’s a joke, right?”

His heh-heh laugh was all I got. “I can drop your letter off this afternoon since I need to come by.”

“Buying some wine?”

“Talking to your winemaker.”

“Is he in trouble?” I asked.

“I just want to talk to him.”

“About what?”

“This and that.”

“Come on, Bobby, it’s me. What’s up?”

“I need to ask him about an acquaintance of his.”

“Oh,” I said. “Nicole Martin.”

I heard him let out a breath. “I understand she’s Quinn’s ex-wife. Also that she’s here in town.”

“That’s right. Is
she
in trouble?” Maybe Bobby’d figured out how to connect her to Valerie and the Washington wine.

“Sounds like you know her, too.”

“I’ve seen her a couple of times. She dropped by here yesterday.”

“What for?”

“To look at a bottle of wine Jack Greenfield donated for our auction. Actually, donated, then asked for it back.”

“I heard about that. That wine is supposed to be worth a bundle,” he said. “You talk to the Martin woman yourself?”

Knowing Bobby, he already knew the answer to that question and all the others he’d just asked.

“Yes.”

“Yes, what? Don’t play games with me, Lucie.”

“Okay, okay. Nicole was friends with Valerie Beauvais, so I asked Nicole if Valerie talked to her about the provenance of Jack’s wine,” I said.

“Provenance?”

“History of its ownership.”

“Why would Valerie talk to Nicole about that?”

“Because they met up in France when Valerie was doing research for her book,” I said.

“Is that so? What’d Nicole say?”

“That as far as she was concerned the wine was genuine.” I left out her comments about the muddiness of documenting the trail of ownership of a two-century-old wine. “And that she and Valerie didn’t discuss the subject of provenance.”

“Huh.”

Something about his noncommital tone made me realize he knew they’d spoken and he was trying to fit what I’d told him into what he could already confirm. The deputy from the CRU who picked up my Volvo said they’d just wrapped up their investigation on Valerie’s car. They must have found something—her cell phone, maybe?

“You got the records from her cell phone, didn’t you? So you know they talked to each other recently?”

“No comment.” But he sounded irritated, which meant I’d guessed right.

I wanted Quinn to hear from me that Bobby would be dropping by and it wouldn’t be a social visit. I knew I’d find him in the barrel room running the Brix tests on the Cabernet since we needed to determine whether or not primary fermentation had finished and the sugar had fully converted to alcohol. Once that happened, we’d press the wine and add bacteria to start the malolactic, or secondary, fermentation.

As I expected, he was in the lab recording test results. Now that the weather had cooled off he’d retired the Hawaiian shirts until next spring. Today he wore faded jeans and a Henley shirt with frayed cuffs. The Hawaiian shirts were loose and baggy. I couldn’t help noticing that the Henley, which looked like it had shrunk with wear, revealed how muscular and fit he was.

He threw down his pencil when he saw me. “What’s up?”

We hadn’t talked since he gave Nicole the vineyard tour yesterday. “You finish Brix?”

He squinted at me. “It’s around thirteen. I want to take the free run juice before we press. So we have at least two or three more days before it goes to zero and we start ML fermentation.”

“Sounds good.”

“You could have called, if that’s all you wanted to know,” he said. “Something’s up. You’ve got that bug-eyed look you always get when you’re trying to pull a fast one. I can tell every time. What’s going on?”

Sometimes I wondered why I bothered trying to spare his feelings since he usually ran over mine with an eighteen-wheeler. “Bobby Noland’s coming by to see you.”

“He say why?” He focused on something over my head. Who was he to talk about conning someone? He may not have known why, but he sure knew who.

“He wants to ask you some questions about Nicole.”

He kept his voice bland. “Is she in trouble?”

“Bobby knows she knew Valerie Beauvais.”

“How do you know that?”

My mother always said if you tell the truth then you don’t have to remember what lie you made up. “She had a copy of Valerie’s book. It was inscribed to her. I saw it on the seat of Shane’s car when you two were taking your tour of the vineyard.”

“You really have it in for her, don’t you? Why can’t you stay out of this?” He banged his fist on the metal lab table. A beaker that had been sitting next to his calculator bounced and hit the concrete floor. It shattered and glass flew everywhere.

“Stay out of
what
? Why did you have to break that beaker? She lied to you yesterday and and I’m pretty sure she lied to me, about what she and Valerie talked about before Valerie died. Bobby already knows, Quinn. So don’t you go lying to protect her, okay?”

Quinn looked at the floor and then he looked at me. “I think it would be a good idea if you left. There’s a lot of broken glass here and you might cut yourself.”