The Merlot Murders (12 page)

I woke, crumpled over on the wicker love seat. My empty wineglass was in my lap and the radio was still on, though now it was broadcasting the farm report. Quinn Santori was standing over me holding two mugs of coffee.

“You follow the farm report, do you?” He handed me one of the mugs.

“I’ve been known to.” I set the wineglass on the coffee table. I was still in my dress from the night before.

“Rough night?” He stared at the wineglass.

An excessively cheery voice sang that we were listening to WLEE, “the number-one station for you and me.” I turned it off. “I must have dozed off before I could get upstairs to change. Thanks for the coffee.”

He sipped from his own mug and gestured generally at my hair and clothes. “No problem. I like a woman who doesn’t care what she looks like when she wakes up in the morning. The natural look suits you.”

He walked back into the house, letting the screen door bang shut.

I sat on the love seat and nursed my coffee. He’d been wearing the now-familiar combat fatigues, dirt-stained and wrinkled, yet another Hawaiian shirt—this one with dozens of monkeys eating bananas—and the customary clanking collection of heavy metal around his neck and wrists. His eyes were bloodshot and he hadn’t shaved. Who was he to give fashion advice?

I set down the coffee mug and tried to pat down my hair, which was probably sticking up so I looked like Tintin. Finally I gave up and went inside. Quinn was pacing the floor, an ear attached once again to a mobile phone. I walked past the dining room and he motioned to me. He put a hand over the mouthpiece. “I need to talk to you.”

“Fine, but I’d like to shower and change first.”

“Make it fast, then.”

I banged my cane on the floor more sharply than usual as I climbed the stairs.

I showered and changed into jeans and a yellow T-shirt, twisting my damp hair into a knot to keep it off my neck since it was going to be another scorcher. By the time I came back downstairs, I was sweating.

Quinn was still on the telephone and held up a finger, indicating that I should wait for him to finish his conversation. I pointed toward the kitchen and left.

Dominique had put some of the leftover food from last night’s dinner in the refrigerator. I lifted lids to casserole dishes and foil wrapping on platters. Cold roast pork didn’t appeal for breakfast, so I found a baguette in the bread box, sliced a piece lengthwise and put it in the toaster oven. Quinn joined me as I was spreading Dominique’s homemade gooseberry jam on my toasted bread.

He opened the refrigerator and pulled out the platter of meat. “There’s something I need to ask you.” He set jars of mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup on the counter. Then he took out a tomato, a small dish of leftover green beans and morels, another of fingerling potatoes, and the remnants of a platter of local cheeses. “Is there anymore of that bread?”

I passed the rest of the baguette over to him. “What?”

He sliced the entire piece in half, spread goat cheese thickly on it and began laying slices of meat on top. “Are you people putting the vineyard up for sale? Because if you are, I think I have a right to know.” He dumped the morels, beans, and potatoes on top of the meat and arranged them with his fingers.

I sat down at the kitchen table. “Who said we were selling?”

“How dumb do I look?” He opened a drawer and pulled out a sharp knife. For someone who had only been here a day, he’d sure learned his way around the kitchen.

“We’re not selling.”

“You and Eli gonna work this thing out?” He sliced the tomato and laid it on top of the potatoes.

I finished chewing my baguette. “I said we’re not selling. Okay?”

“That’s not what it sounded like.” He was busy completing his masterpiece with heavy doses of mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup.

“That’s not what
what
sounded like?” That noise in the garden. It had been a lot of noise for one cat, come to think of it. “Were you here last night?”

“I was in the area.”

“You were eavesdropping!”

“Honey, they could hear you two hollering clear out to Upperville. That was some fight you and Eli had.” He came over to the table and set down a plate with his oversized sandwich on it. It drooped off the edges. “Is that homemade jam? What kind is it?”

“Gooseberry. It doesn’t go well with ketchup,” I said, coldly. “And my conversation with Eli was none of your business. Don’t you have any respect for people’s privacy?”

“If you want to fight in private, go inside and shut the door. You were outside, bellowing.” He sat down across from me and picked up the jar of jam, staring at the label.

“The tenant cottage where you live is nowhere near this house.”

He set the jar down. “I asked your father if it would be okay to use that abandoned summerhouse you’ve got if I repaired the places where the wood’s rotted, and he said it was fine by him. I had no intention of listening in on you and Eli, but it happened I was there when you two started yelling like a couple of banshees.”

“We were
not
yelling like banshees and if you had any decency, you would have said something so we would have known you were there.”

“It didn’t seem like a good idea,” he snapped. “I’m a winemaker, not a social worker.” He picked up his sandwich and studied it.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m hungry.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“I’m not a mind reader, either.”

“The vineyard.
This
vineyard. Why did you leave California for Virginia?”

He bit into the sandwich and began chewing placidly, staring into my eyes. He swallowed and said, finally, “Why wouldn’t I? I like the pioneering spirit you Virginia folks have got. I’d like to settle down here, maybe someday buy some land and run my own place. As for this place, it’s a good vineyard. It has potential. You’ve got a lot of acreage you ought to be planting out. There’s some new varietals I think we ought to be trying. I know your former vintner stuck with
vitis vinifera,
but those grapes aren’t the be-all and end-all. I’ve sent off some soil samples to Virginia Tech and the results are pretty good.”

“They are?”

He took another hearty bite. Ketchup dripped down his chin. He wiped it with the back of his hand. I got up and opened the pantry door and took out a bag of paper napkins. I slapped one down next to him. He looked at it, then went back to eating.

“Mmpfh,” he said. “Thizis bery dub beat.”

“You don’t say.”

He finished chewing and switched back to English. “I was thinking of planting a few acres of hybrids like Vidal, Seyval, or Chambourcin. Maybe even try Norton since it’s a native Virginia grape. I’d like to do some experimenting with blending wines, too, not just the standard stuff you’ve been doing. Use a little creativity for a change.”

Vitis vinifera
are the grapes Noah planted after the Flood. These were the seeds found with the mummies of the pharaohs in the pyramids in Egypt, the noble grapes that make some of the world’s most fabled wines like Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, or Chardonnay—all of which we grew at the vineyard.

Maybe Jacques had been a bit of a purist, just keeping us in top-drawer French wines, but in his defense, Virginia’s climate is a lot like Bordeaux where he came from and those were the vines he knew best. Still, Quinn was right. Maybe we should try something new.

I ignored the implied jab at Jacques’s abilities as a winemaker and said neutrally, “Where were you thinking of doing this?”

“I’ll show you,” he said. “Come on.”

“Aren’t you going to finish your breakfast?”

“I’ll take it with me.” He held out half the sandwich. “Want a bite?”

“No, not really.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing.” He wrapped the napkin around it. “I brought the Gator over here. My car wouldn’t start this morning. I’ll get the field test stuff in the dining room and meet you outside in a minute.”

He left and I cleaned up. Then I got two bottles of water from the refrigerator and retrieved Eli’s old New York Mets cap from the floor of the front hall closet. The sun would boil us like lobsters out in the fields.

Quinn was waiting in the Gator with the motor running by the time I joined him. I set my cane on the wagon bed and climbed into the passenger seat. There was no sign of the sandwich, just a crumpled napkin shoved in the open glove compartment.

“When are you going to work things out with your brother and sister?” he asked, as he shifted into first gear and we motored down the driveway toward the winery.

“I own the house,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing to work out.”

“It didn’t sound like that to me.”

“We’ve been over this. Why don’t you run the vineyard and let me handle my family, okay?”

As we pulled into the parking lot next to the winery, he said, “I heard you sold your clock and some other furniture to raise the cash for the destemmer motor.”

“How I got the money is none of your business.”

“Your brother and your father were a whole lot easier to deal with.”

“I was just thinking the same thing about Jacques.”

“You know, one of the reasons I came here is because this place is so underdeveloped and there’s a lot I could do. No offense to your buddy Jacques, but he was resting on his laurels,” he said. “I could put this winery on the map. I could produce some award-winning wines that would give the Californians a run for their money. I could get us noticed.”

I, I, I. I like a man who’s comfortable in his skin. Quinn seemed a bit oversized for his, like the Michelin Man untethered, to be precise. Could he really do all that? Or was he just blowing more hot air?

“Jacques was a very skilled enologist,” I said.

“If you lived in the nineteenth century. Honey, this doesn’t have to be a cottage industry.”

“I’m not looking to mass-produce plonk in a six-pack with screw-top bottles, Quinn,” I said. “
Vin de ramassage,
Jacques used to call it. Wine from the bottom of the barrel.”

He put the Gator in gear and we roared out of the back of the parking lot, climbing onto the rougher terrain leading toward the vineyards. I held on to the edges of my seat with both hands.

“Look,” he said, “let’s get something straight. When your father hired me, he said he was a hands-off manager and he’d let me do the job the way I saw fit. If you’re going to big-foot every decision I make, then we’re not going to get along and I need to be looking for another job.”

I hate ultimatums or being backed into a corner. My first instinct was to take him up on his offer to move on. Surely I could find someone equally qualified who would be more pleasant to work with. How hard could it be to find a winemaker who didn’t have the personality of Dirty Harry and dress in Salvation Army couture?

Though, of course, it was possible he actually could deliver on those boasts. What if he were good enough to make us into a first-class vineyard, like he said? He was ambitious, like I was. Actually, he was pushy. But we both wanted the same thing.

Too bad Leland wasn’t the best judge of character. Eli said he’d hired Quinn because he came cheap. But why would Quinn sell himself short if he thought he was so good? It was possible he’d left California, the Mecca of American wine making, to come to Virginia because the potential here appealed to his maverick side. But it was also possible he’d left for another reason and Leland hadn’t bothered to inquire about it.

I couldn’t afford to have Quinn walk out now, just before harvest. But I wasn’t going to let him run the place as blindly as Leland intended, either.

“The difference between Leland and me,” I said, “is that he wasn’t interested in the vineyard. I am. Just like my mother was.”

“Meaning?”

“My mother and Jacques worked together, as a team. He made the call about when to pick, when to blend, when to press…all those decisions. But he consulted with her on everything and she had her own opinions.”

“I assume she knew something about what she was doing?”

“I’m not a novice,” I said. “Give me some credit. I grew up here. Jacques taught me and I paid attention. The summer before I…before my accident, I worked here full time.”

“A hobby,” he said, “is not the same as a profession.”

“It was my mother’s life’s work! My family’s name is on every bottle of wine that leaves here. It is not a hobby. It is a
passion
! They’re different.”

He was silent, but he’d shifted the Gator back into first gear so now we’d slowed considerably as we approached the beginning of the Chardonnay block.

“Besides,” I continued, as his silence grew into a substantial void, “unlike Leland, I’d sell every piece of furniture we own to finance the expansion you’re talking about.”

That unstuck his tongue. Money. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll listen to what you have to say, but I run the show. Completely. We’ll see if it works. If it does, I’ll stay. If it doesn’t, I’m gone at the end of harvest.”

“Fine.”