The Merlot Murders (5 page)

“Probably a stray cat. That little princess he married is very high maintenance, sugar.” Fitz sounded annoyed. “Don’t tell me he didn’t tell you about the palace they’re building over near Leesburg?”

I shook my head.

“It’s going to be Versailles when they’re done. Or the Disney Castle. I heard she wants a big ol’ fountain with swans floating around right there in the front yard. There’s no way can they afford a place like that on Eli’s salary.”

“Then he needs the money.”

He brushed a strand of hair off my cheek and tucked it behind my ear. “Exactly. And what he doesn’t need is all the bad publicity from a murder right there in the vineyard if he’s trying to put it on the market. See what I mean?”

I saw. “So do you think Eli’s involved with this person? Whoever might have had Leland killed?”

“People do a lot of things where money’s concerned. It’s a powerful motivator, especially when you haven’t got it and you need it. I don’t think Eli had anything to do with this directly, you understand,” he said. “But when you lie down with dogs, my chair, you get up with fleas.”

“God, Fitz. Do you know what this means?”

“I’ll tell you one thing it means.” He leaned forward and put his hands on my shoulders. “Since I’m part owner of the vineyard, thanks to your sweet momma, I get a vote in all this. You and me, we’re two against Eli and Mia. Without a majority vote, Eli can’t sell.”

“
What
are you doing?” Eli’s voice cut through the darkness. Both Fitz and I jumped this time, knocking over my cane, which clattered noisily on the porch floorboards.

He was standing in the shadows at the opposite end of the porch with his hands in his pockets. How long had he been there? How much had he heard? We’d been speaking quietly, but our voices could have carried.

“Talking,” I said sharply. “What are you doing, sneaking around like that? Good Lord, Eli, you scared the wits out of us.”

“Look who’s talking about sneaking around. You’re the one who left.” He sounded irritated. “Do you realize you’ve been gone twenty-one minutes? People are asking for you. Thelma’s here now and so are Joe Dawson and most of the Romeos. You need to come back inside. You have obligations, Lucie. Family obligations.”

“Sorry, Eli,” Fitz said, picking up my cane. “It’s my fault she’s here so long. She was feeling a bit woozy, that’s all, so we came out for some fresh air. Then we got to talking and catching up on things. She’ll be right along in.”

“Okay.” Eli stood there with his arms folded and waited.

“I’m coming, Eli.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

“You don’t have to. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“I need you
now
. Thelma wants to have a sing-along of Leland’s favorite songs.” He sounded grim. “I’m counting on you to distract her.”

This time we both heard the slamming of the front door as he left.

“I’d better go,” I said. “He’s pretty upset. Do you think he heard anything?”

“Naw.” Fitz took my hand and slipped something small and hard into my palm. “Here. Don’t lose it,” he whispered. “It was your mother’s.”

“What is it?”

“A key.”

“I know that. A key to what?”

“Possibly a jewelry box.”

“Why are we whispering? And how come you didn’t say anything about this until now?”

“Your mother didn’t want Lee to know. It was among some papers she left me. Private papers. I was…going through them recently. This seemed like the right time to turn the key over to you.”

“He’s dead. Do we still have to whisper?”

“Don’t you sass me, child. I did it for your own good.”

I stared at him. “Did what? And Mom kept her jewelry box on the dressing table in her bedroom. She never locked it. When I was little she used to let me try on the fabulous jewelry she inherited from Grandmama Bessette.”

“You must have been very young to have worn those.” He sounded disgusted. “Because she sold them all, one by one.” He saw the look on my face. “You didn’t know, did you? She did it to bail your poppa out of debt. I’m sorry, my chair. I don’t mean to upset you, but it’s time you knew the truth.”

“Then what’s this for?” I held out the key.

“The one thing that’s still left. At least I think it is. Her diamond necklace. Ever seen it?”

“Oh my God,” I said. “Once. She wore it to the White House when she and Leland went to a dinner for the French Prime Minister. I never saw it again.”

“It’s worth a fortune, Lucie,” he said in a low voice. “Not to mention the provenance. Your mother told me it belonged to Marie Antoinette. It came into the possession of that countess who was your ancestor. The one who was Thomas Jefferson’s friend.”

“The Comtesse de Tessé,” I said. “Do you think my mother hid it? Marie Antoinette’s necklace?”

“I hope so.” He closed my hand around the key. “No one has seen it since she died. At first I figured Leland sold it, but he swore he didn’t. Maybe for once he told the truth. That’s why I never said anything about this key. I wanted to make sure there was something left for you children that Lee couldn’t squander. If you sold the necklace now, you’d have enough to pay off the vineyard’s debts. I’m sure your momma would understand. You just have to find it first.”

He squeezed my fist so tight the key cut into my palm. I winced and he loosened his grip. “Sorry, sugar.”

“I don’t know how to thank you for this,” I said, finally.

“Well,” he said, and something in his voice made it clear he was going to tell me precisely how I could do just that, “there is something you could do for me.”

I extracted my hand. He sounded vaguely Faustian. “What is it?”

“There’s something else that hasn’t been found since your momma died. Her diaries.”

“My mother never kept a diary,” I said.

It had been a family joke that Chantal Montgomery was single-handedly responsible for Atoka having its own post office rather than us being lumped in with Middleburg. I never saw her desk when it wasn’t heaped with stacks of writing paper, boxes of note cards, pens with different colored ink, sealing wax, and embossed address labels. During her life she had written thousands of letters, postcards, and notes. But as many times as I’d watched her writing, her head bent over some piece of correspondence or her gardening journals as Edith Piaf warbled “La Vie en Rose” on one of her old records, I didn’t ever recall seeing a diary.

Fitz clasped his hands to his chest and for a second, I thought he might be having a heart attack. “I am not
asking
you if she kept a diary. I am
telling
you she did. And when you clean out that compost heap of a house that used to be your mother’s pride and joy—and I know you will—you are going to find them. And then…” He shook a finger in my face, revving up with the fury of a Bible-belt preacher taking a sinning congregation to task. “And
then
you are going to turn them over to me.”

Them. More than one. “Why?”

“So I can burn them. It’s what she would have wanted.”

My mother baked cookies for every school bake sale, library fund-raiser, and church social I could remember. She sewed our Halloween costumes by hand and never missed a sports event, dance recital, or school concert. She read the same bedtime stories over and over and decorated elaborate birthday cakes in cute shapes and knitted mittens with animal faces on them.

She was not someone who wrote a diary that needed to be burned. Her life—to continue the metaphor—was an open book.

At least I’d always thought it was.

“What makes you so sure?” I asked. “I mean, I think I would have known…”

“Honey.” Fitz pulled me to him and stroked my hair. His voice was soft in my ear, a gentle wheeze. “You’re gonna give them to me when you find them, you hear me? Let your poor momma rest in peace. I’m asking you.”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice quavered. “I suppose I am.”

“Good.” He crushed me in another bear hug. “Now go along inside, like Eli said. They’re waiting on you.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Lord, no. I came to see you, that’s all. I already made my peace with Lee.” He stepped back, stumbling unexpectedly.

“Careful!” I grabbed his arm to steady him and he clung to it, pulling like it was a lifeline. I let go of my cane and wrapped the other arm around a porch balustrade to keep us both from falling. We swayed together until he found his footing.

“Whoops.” His chuckled giddily. “Almost lost my step there, didn’t I?”

“Why don’t you come inside, Fitz? Rest a bit.”

“Naw, I’m fine. Besides I need to get over to the winery. We’ve got a wedding tomorrow afternoon at the inn and the bride and groom ordered some bottles with custom labels. Quinn said he’d leave the cases out for me.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be driving…”

“Don’t you start, Lucie. How do you think I got here?”

“Please, Fitz?” I smiled. “Let me take you to the winery after the wake is over. We can talk some more. Come on.”

His genial bonhomie evaporated. “Now you pay attention, you hear? You’ve been listenin’ too much to that brother of yours. He ought to mind his own business for once. I am fine and I know what I’m doing. So stop patronizing me!”

“I’m not…”

“Oh yes, you are. And you of all people ought to know better.” He stabbed a finger at my chest. “Robs a body of his own dignity when people act like you can’t take care of yourself, doesn’t it, my chair? It’s humiliating.”

I was silent, wondering how I’d betrayed myself and let him find the soft place in my shell of invulnerability.

He nodded. “I thought you’d understand. Go inside now.” He still sounded cross, but he leaned over and his lips brushed my forehead. “Good night, sugar.”

A moment later the darkness swallowed him except for the tapping sound of his receding footfalls and then the noise of a car door slamming.

I went slowly back to the Green Room. Fitz had turned the tables neatly so that now it was Eli’s motives I was wondering about. Everything he’d said had made sense. If only he hadn’t begun slurring his words right before he left.

Upstairs, I could hear them singing. “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” One of Thelma’s favorites.

Eli met me at the door, scowling. “Just in time to close the barn door after the horse bolted. Thanks a bunch.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What happened to Fitz?”

“He went over to the winery to pick up some cases of a special label wine for a wedding. Who’s Quinn?”

“Quinn Santori. The new Jacques.”

Jacques had been both our winemaker and viticulturist since my parents first opened the vineyard. The rootstock for the original vines came with him from France, so in the beginning we produced only
vitis vinifera,
the so-called noble wines made from Old World or European grapes. He had lived in one of the tenant houses on our property, but most of the time he was either in the fields or at the winery.

“Where’s Jacques?”

“He had a stroke a few months ago. His daughter came over from Giverny and took him back to France.” He took my elbow. “Come on. Maybe we can head her off before she starts ‘Climb Every Mountain.’”

“A stroke? When did that happen? Somebody could have told me.” At least now I knew why Jacques hadn’t answered my last letter.

“I guess we forgot. Sorry, babe.” He smiled pleasantly, but his eyes were mocking. One more life event I’d missed during my long absence. He jostled my arm. “Let’s go.”

I still had Fitz’s little key in my hand and it fell, bouncing on the wooden floor. Eli reached down automatically and picked it up. “What’s this?”

“My suitcase key.”

I didn’t intend to lie. But as he handed it over our eyes met. He knew Fitz had just put me wise to what was really going on.

I closed my hand around the key and smiled back. “Thanks.”

“Sure. Come on.” He turned away and I followed him into the Green Room. I realized then that I didn’t trust him.

Though judging by the expression on my brother’s face, it was pretty clear that he didn’t trust me, either.

The punishing heat didn’t let up for Leland’s funeral. The Blue Ridge had vanished, bleached by the haze until it disappeared, blending into the colorless sky. The horizon looked disturbingly flat and closed-in. Eli reported before we left for the funeral home that when Hector’s men dug the grave for the coffin, they broke a shovel trying to penetrate the concrete-like clay soil. The drought was reported as the lead news story on the local radio station, instead of being lumped with the rest of the weather forecast.

Once again, everyone in town showed up for the short ceremony, crowding in to our brick-walled cemetery, standing shoulder to shoulder, drenched to the skin in heat-seeking dark clothing. It seemed surreal as all funerals do, the bizarre intersection of time when Leland was and wasn’t among us—a lifeless body inside a glossy wooden casket soon to be lowered into the ground. I stared at my mother’s headstone, unable to clearly conjure the sound of her voice in my head anymore, however much I might want to hear it again.

The bagpiper played “Amazing Grace,” and it was achingly lovely. Next to me Mia sobbed quietly into a handkerchief. I put my arm around her thin shoulders, half-expecting her to pull away and gratified when she leaned against me protectively. I stroked her hair. Eli reached over and took her hand.

Then Reverend Martin said, “Please bow your heads.”

After a few minutes I noticed Eli glancing at his watch. His lips were moving.

“Stop it, will you?” I whispered behind Mia’s back. “It will be over when it’s over. Leland won’t come back and haunt you if it doesn’t end precisely at sunset. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

“It’s far from perfect,” he snapped. “Fitz was supposed to give one of the eulogies. He’s not even here. Mason’s doing it instead.”

I looked around. “Where is he?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Reverend Martin cleared his throat loudly and Eli and I looked up. He was staring directly at us. Mason Jones, our lawyer, was standing next to him, hands clasped around a Bible. I blushed and quickly bowed my head as my brother did the same. We didn’t speak again until after the last note of “Taps” sounded as the sun disappeared, leaving a Technicolor sky behind.

“So what’s going on with Fitz?” Eli asked in a low voice. He handed me his handkerchief. “Here. Your mascara’s running.”

The three of us were standing in an untidy receiving line at the gate to the cemetery with Dominique. Mia was no longer crying but her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen.

I pressed Eli’s handkerchief against my watery eyes. If I started to cry, she’d lose it again, too. I tried to keep my voice steady. “I don’t know. Do you think he’s all right?”

“This isn’t like him.” Dominique twisted her jet-bead necklace around her fingers until it became a choker. “I can’t imagine where he could be.”

“He reeked of booze last night,” Eli said. “You wouldn’t have wanted to light a match near him. Maybe he went home, had a few more belts, and is still sleeping it off.” He looked at me pointedly. “You were the last one to see him, weren’t you?”

“I suppose I was,” I said. “He told me he was coming here to pick up some cases of specially labeled wine for a wedding. I assumed after that he was going by the inn.”

Last night’s conversation with Fitz in the tropical darkness, his whispered accusations and revelations in the shadowy recesses of that porch, still haunted me. For the rest of the evening I’d felt like a sleepwalker, the jet lag clouding my judgment about what was real and what I’d imagined.

“If he was supposed to stop by the inn, he never made it,” Dominique said.

“Maybe somebody should go look for him,” Brandi suggested. “But not you, Eli. I need you to stay with me.” She folded her arms protectively over her belly. She’d been playing the baby card with a heavy hand ever since I’d laid eyes on her. Last night at the wake she’d had Eli dancing around like a Mexican jumping bean, getting her water, fanning her, massaging her feet. At this rate, by the time the blessed event rolled around he’d probably go into labor for her.

“Are you all right, angel?” He looked worried.

“The heat.” She put a hand to her forehead. “I need to lie down.”

“We’ll go right away,” he said. “I brought the Jag. Anyone else want a ride?”

“I’ll go with Greg,” Mia’s voice still shook. “He said he’d wait for me.”

I’d noticed him standing with a few of the Romeos next to an ancient oak tree. He’d nodded to me when we gathered for the service, but we hadn’t spoken. Mia left us, threading her way through the crowd and ran into Greg’s arms, clinging to him. He bent his head and I could see him talking to her. She nodded and began crying again.

I looked away, feeling mildly ashamed like a voyeur caught watching an intimate moment.

“I’ll go,” Dominique was saying. “I should check on my staff. I need to make sure there’s enough for everyone to eat.”

“We could feed Lee’s Army,” I said, “with what the neighbors dropped off before the service. Plus all the catered food you brought, Dominique.”

“Well, yes,” she said, “but I just hired two new girls and they’re a little green behind the ears.”

“In that case,” Eli said, pulling his keys out of his pocket, “let’s go. Come on, Lucie. You’re coming with us, of course.”

“You go on without me. I need to clear my head. I’ll catch up. Maybe I’ll go the long way and stop by the winery.”

Eli looked irritated. “I don’t think you ought to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Well, because. For one thing it’s going to take you a long time.” He saw the expression on my face. “That’s not what I meant. What I’m saying is everyone expects you to be at the house.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Leave her, Eli,” Brandi said. “Let her do what she wants. Can we please go?”

He turned back to his wife, who looked bored and unhappy. “I’m sorry, babe. Of course we can. We’ll go right now. Dominique? You ready?”

Dominique squeezed my arm. “Be careful,” she murmured. “And forget about Mia and Gregory, okay?”

The three of them walked toward the Jaguar, and Eli’s headlights swept past me a moment later.

There was no one left at the graveside except Hector and two young Mexican workers who were standing about fifty feet from the gate, leaning on shovels. Hector raised his baseball cap in a small salute and walked toward me. The others followed. For an old man, Hector still moved with the compact fluid grace of a panther. I reckoned he had to be close to sixty-five, maybe even older. Now he and Fitz were the only ones left who could remember every one of our harvests.

“You okay, Lucita?” he asked. “Why aren’t you going with the others?”

“I’m fine. I just need a little time before I go back to the house.”

“Sure, sure. I understand. We’ll be taking care of Mr. Lee now.” He made the sign of the cross. “We wait until you’re gone.”

“Thank you,” I said. As I walked away I could hear the rhythmic chipping sound of their shovels moving earth from one place to another, which seemed to be amplified in the ovenlike twilight stillness. I walked as quickly as I could down the road toward the winery.

If those cases of wine were still there then Fitz never made it before he disappeared. Maybe a cop had pulled him over for DUI and he’d spent the night in the drunk tank.

Next time, no matter what he said, I’d take his car keys.

The winery was located just past the stone bridge where Sycamore Lane crossed over Goose Creek. I made it to the bridge and sat on one of the parapets, resting my sore foot. In the gathering dusk the deep fissures in the streambed were still visible and there was only a pathetic meandering gleam of water that looked like someone had forgotten to completely shut off their garden hose. That was Goose Creek.

A pair of headlights caught me in their glare. A white pickup truck came down the road from the direction of the winery. The driver tooted his horn and waved a hand out the window as he pulled up next to me. Harmon Animal Clinic and a telephone number were stenciled in black on the truck door.

“Lucie honey, what are you doing here? Are you all right?” Doc Harmon was one of the Romeos, another of Leland’s poker and drinking buddies. He’d been at both the wake and the funeral.

He had the sad-eyed long face and countenance of a basset hound, but a pit bull’s aggressiveness when it came to treating farm animals humanely. Though his hands were the gentlest of anyone I knew, I’d heard he once punched out a farmer in Philomont after showing up unannounced to look after a sick colt and discovering a cockfight going on for the pleasure of a large group of spectators. Doc made the farmer donate the proceeds of his little side business to the animal shelter.

Besides his practice, which catered mostly to horses, he was on the staff of the Animal Swim Center, which specialized in rehabilitating injured animals. Increasingly he spent time on the road traveling to racetracks or even the Olympics with owners who wanted him available when one of their horses was competing.

“I wanted to walk a little before I went back to the house,” I said. “I was just heading over to the winery. I haven’t seen it since I came home.”

“You look all done in. It’s getting dark, too. Jump in and I’ll drive you there.” He peered at me. “You feeling all right?”

“Fine,” I said. “Hot. I forgot how wilting the humidity can be.”

“You could fry an egg on the hood of my truck, if you had a mind to,” he said. “You’re awfully flushed, darlin’. Let’s get you out of this heat.”

I went around and climbed into the passenger seat. He took my cane as I did so and propped it between us. “Stick working okay for you? You doing any physical therapy?”

“I was. And a lot of swimming.”

He grunted and backed up the truck, heading toward the winery. “Swimming’s good. Hydrotherapy. It works wonders for the animals, too, moving around in that water without having to worry about fighting gravity. Keep it up now, you hear?”

I nodded and he barreled down the road, pulling into the parking lot.

“Thanks for the lift, Doc. What were you doing at the winery?”

“Wanted to make sure the truck didn’t get caught in that mass of cars you got over at the big house. I’m on call. I got a few minutes, though. Need me to wait for you? Were you going to fetch something? I can run you back there when you’re done.”

“That would be great, if you don’t mind. I just need to check something. It won’t take long.”

“Take your time.” He lifted a mobile phone off a cradle on the dashboard. “I need to call the answering service anyway. This heat’s getting to the animals, too.”

I climbed down from the truck and walked up the fieldstone path to the winery. The rambling ivy-covered brick building was largely my mother’s design. She’d sketched dozens of pictures of ideas until she finally settled on one that harmonized the romantic neoclassical architecture she’d grown up with in France with the simpler colonial style of Highland House designed by Leland’s pragmatic Scottish ancestors. The result looked more like a graceful old villa than a commercial structure, which was exactly what she wanted—and what we’d named it.

She originally wanted the villa to be situated on a bluff much like Highland House but the architect she hired advised against it, urging her instead to build into the side of a hill. That way he could design the complex to take advantage of the natural cooling properties of the soil by locating the wine cellar partially underground. They found a place where the view of the Blue Ridge wasn’t quite as spectacular as she’d wanted, but the logistics worked for the cellar. Then he showed her a plan for a European-style courtyard and porticoed loggia that would connect the villa, which would consist of a tasting room, offices, and wine library, to the production area, where a crush pad, barrel room, and laboratory would be located. It was also close to the old dairy barn, redesigned as storage for the tractor and the other tools and equipment used in the fields. My mother fell in love with the whole idea.

The place was exactly as I remembered it though it seemed the ivy that grew on the building, extending its tentacles in graceful arcs over the windows, had grown even more lush and thick. In the autumn the leaves would become flame-colored and in winter, the bare brown skeletal vines would look like latticework twining elegantly on the brick façade.

The door was unlocked. I walked inside and flipped on the lights at the bank of switches. The cathedrallike coolness of the tasting room was a sharp but welcome relief from the withering heat. I read once that scientists have discovered the existence of “place cells” in the human brain, allowing us to store maps of locations that have particular importance or meaning. When we return to one of these mind-mapped places, our brain cells react differently, provoked by the potent cues of sight, smell, or sound associated with where we are. I stood in this room, which had been mapped not just in my memory but in my heart.

Even after so many years, it still retained my mother’s indelible stamp—her attention to detail, her love of beauty—everywhere I looked. It was a grand rectangular room with a vaulted ceiling and four sets of floor-to-ceiling French doors leading to the fieldstone terrace with its serene view of braided hills, vineyards, and the layered Blue Ridge in the far distance. There was an enormous open working fireplace in the center of the room with sofas and chairs pulled around it on all four sides. Persian carpets from my mother’s home in France covered the quarry-tile floors. Her paintings of the vineyard hung on the walls, along with a handmade reproduction of a tapestry from the Musée de Cluny in Paris, showing coopering and wine making in the Middle Ages. The tiled bar was at the far end of the room, with the brilliantly colored mosaic of grape-laden vines and fruits my mother had designed for the façade illuminated by one of the overhead spotlights, making the colors glow like jewels.