The Bordeaux Betrayal (7 page)

“I don’t know. Or else I’ll call again and make it four. Where have you
been
?”

“Here and there. My cell is dead after a swim in Goose Creek.” I picked it up from the console table in the foyer. Definitely destroyed. “Looks like I need to replace it. What’s so urgent?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s so urgent’? You pulled that woman out of the creek. I’m writing the story. How about a little cooperation?”

“How about dinner? You buy, if you want me to talk.”

“The
Trib
isn’t made of money. Take my salary, for example.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Meet me at the Goose Creek Inn at seven. And you better have a lot to say. I already get grief about my expenses.”

The Goose Creek Inn, which had won every major award for dining and “most romantic setting” in the Washington area over the last forty years, was a whitewashed auberge on a pretty country lane just outside Middleburg. As usual, the parking lot was full, but I found a semilegitimate space small enough for the Mini and tucked it in there. Fairy lights twinkled in the trees and the air smelled of wood smoke.

The large foyer, with its walls of bright primitive oil paintings and vintage posters advertising French alcohol, cigarettes, and travel, was filled with groups waiting for their tables on a busy Friday night. Here people still dressed for dinner and men were required to wear jackets in the evening. Jeans were prohibited.

Provençal china and antique copper pots sat on a sideboard next to a copy of
The Goose Creek Cookbook.
As usual, the cookbook was opened to the recipe for the famous chocolate cheesecake created by my late godfather, who founded the place. I would have preferred not to know about the obscene amount of butter, dark chocolate, and cream cheese that went into Fitz’s cheesecake, but that recipe sold a lot of cookbooks.

Kit had arrived before I did and was talking to Dominique near the maître d’s stand. My cousin caught sight of me through the crowd and gestured for me to join them. One of the perks of being related to the owner. We would be seated right away, probably at her table.

Usually Dominique radiated the pulsing energy of a supernova, running the inn and Goose Creek Catering with a skimpy velvet glove over her small iron fist, but tonight she looked like she’d been dragged through a knothole. We both had inherited our ambition from our mothers, who’d been sisters. But unlike me, Dominique didn’t have an off-switch. She also had a way of acting like she’d just been invited to expand the Blessed Trinity to a quartet. When that happened, her staff usually tried to stay out of her way. This afternoon Joe had implied that her workaholic habits had finally gotten to him.

My cousin looked elegant in a black cashmere sweater, black trousers, and a thick gold necklace, but I smelled heavy cigarette smoke on her breath when she kissed me on both cheeks in the French way. She’d begun chain-smoking again.

Kit gave me an air kiss that wouldn’t ruin her Marilyn Monroe red lipstick. She wore a tight green mini-skirt with buttons down the front and a khaki-colored top that looked like it had spent too long in the dryer. All her clothes fit like that. She’d picked up forty pounds since high school and still managed to convince herself it was only twenty.

“We were just talking about the accident,” Kit said. “You don’t look so good. I heard you got kind of banged-up.”

“Some scratches on my back and a few bruises. I’ll be fine in a day or two.”

“A couple of the Romeos came in for cocktails this evening,” Dominique said. “That’s how I found out.
Mon Dieu,
it must have been awful.” She picked up two menus. “Someone said Joe was at Mount Vernon last night with the woman who was killed. Is that true?”

She’d probably learn soon enough that their evening hadn’t ended at Mount Vernon, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her right now. “Yes.”

“You’re at my table. I’ll take you there.” She turned so abruptly she almost collided with a waiter. I noticed two bright pink spots on her cheeks as she excused herself.

When we were seated, Kit pulled out a reporter’s notebook and a pen, setting them on the table. “What was that all about?”

I turned the small vase with its single red rose so the open flower faced us. “She and Joe broke off their engagement.”

Kit’s eyes narrowed. She’d overdone it with the eye makeup as usual so it looked like she had on football eye-black. “She tell you or he tell you?”

“He did.”

She opened her notebook and clicked her pen. “They’ve been engaged longer than some marriages last. What happened?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t elaborate and she hasn’t brought it up.”

“That’s too bad.” She clicked her pen a few more times. “So tell me about finding the Beauvais woman’s car.”

Kit was Bobby Noland’s girlfriend, but she’d told me once that he’d made it clear pillow talk would get his ass kicked by the sheriff and that she should expect to go through the same channels every other member of the press did for her information. I gave her the expurgated version of what happened and waited to see what other questions she asked.

A waitress brought two glasses of a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, a bread basket filled with warm
petit pains,
and took our orders. Kit clinked her glass against mine. “I heard that the car might have been tampered with,” she said.

“The rear wheel on the driver’s side was gone.”

“So I understand.” She watched me. “You know something.”

“You can’t use it.”

“Aw, come on—”

“Sorry.” I folded my lips and shook my head.

“Okay, okay. What is it?”

“I found a lug nut by her cottage at the Fox and Hound. Bobby came by and bagged it.”

Kit set her wineglass on the table. Her red lipstick had left a perfect kiss mark on the rim. “What were you doing at the Fox and Hound?”

“This doesn’t go in your story, either. It’s probably not even relevant to what happened.”

“Talk to me.”

“It has to do with Ryan’s column today. I assume you read it.”

“I don’t have to. He reads them to me himself since he’s got the office next to mine. Some days I could strangle him with the power cord from his laptop.” She eyed me. “So go on.”

“Clay Avery brought Valerie here for lunch the other day and showed her the column. Last night Valerie said—in front of Ryan—that Clay wanted to hire her to write for the
Trib
. She suggested he dust off his résumé.”

Kit pulled back the napkin that covered the breadbasket and took a roll. “News to me.”

“Really?” I said. “Then just as we were leaving Mount Vernon, Valerie found me and said she knew something about the provenance of the wine Jack donated. But she had to come by and see it before she’d tell me what it was.”

“You mean that bottle Jefferson bought for Washington?”

“She asked how I’d managed to get hold of it—like I had to sleep with Jack or something.”

“Jeez, did she really?” Kit made a face. “That’s disgusting. Provenance, huh? Do you think she meant the bottle might have been stolen?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m worried she was going to tell me it was counterfeit.”

“Fake wine?”

“Sure. People do it all the time. Blend a couple of okay wines to taste like something world-class or put phony labels on mediocre wine—stuff like that. Collectors buy those bottles to lay down—if they ever drink it at all. So it’s years before they figure out they’ve been duped.”

Our dinners arrived—cassoulet for Kit, ragout of autumn vegetables with orzo for me. We’d ordered a bottle of Swedenburg Estate Cabernet to go with our meal. The waiter opened it and poured some for me to try. I nodded and he filled our glasses.

“How are you going to find out if it’s fake or not?” Kit asked.

“I don’t know. You know what else? I’m not even sure I ought to believe her. Ryan said she plagiarized parts of her book. So she wasn’t exactly honest.”

Kit set down her fork. “You mean she might have made the whole thing up?”

I sighed and stared into my wineglass. “I have no idea. Maybe she was just trying to stir up trouble.”

“She sure sounds like someone who knew how to do it. Could be that’s what got her killed.”

“Ryan couldn’t stand her.”

“Ryan has a temper and an ego,” she said, “but I don’t think he’d do anything that drastic. You’re talking about manslaughter.”

“An act of passion or extreme provocation,” I said. “You know what Bobby says. Under the right circumstances—or the wrong ones—anyone is capable of anything. Even something that seems out of character.”

“There’s your answer. Maybe he did it, maybe he didn’t.”

“Somebody did it.” I didn’t want to bring in Joe and the fact that he and Valerie were probably in flagrante delicto at the moment someone was outside her cottage tampering with her car. “Sorry I wasn’t much help with your story.”

“Forget it.”

It wasn’t like Kit to let me off the hook so easily. I looked at her plate. She’d hardly touched her food. “You feeling all right?”

“Yeah, fine.” She kept her eyes downcast.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you…wait a minute. Are you pregnant?”

Her cheeks turned scarlet. “Jee-sus, Lucie! Don’t be ridiculous. How could you even think such a thing?”

I waited.

“Okay,” she said. “It’s something, but not that. I’ve been offered a job in Moscow. Number-two correspondent in the bureau.”

“Moscow,
Russia
?”

“We don’t have a bureau in Moscow, Idaho.”

“Oh my God, you’re serious. You’re thinking about taking it?”

“Will you stop looking at me like I said they want to shoot me into outer space with a cannon? I was on the foreign desk before I got transferred to Loudoun, in case you forgot.”

“I remember. But it’s just so…far away. I thought you needed to stay here because of your mom.”

“My mom says I need a life and it shouldn’t be chained to hers.” She picked up a piece of roll and sopped up some of the sauce from her cassoulet. “I’ve never owned a passport in my life. First time I’d really get to see the world. All those places named Something-Stan.” She sounded wistful.

“You sure you’re ready for something that drastic?”

“It’s a honking big pay raise.”

“Because it’s a senior job?”

“Because it’s a hardship post and they don’t have people falling all over themselves to volunteer for it.”

“What does Bobby say?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“You sound like you’re ready to say yes.”

She shrugged. “I have to make up my mind by the end of the month. Language training starts after Christmas. I wouldn’t leave until June.”

“Just after the snow melts in Russia?”

“Ha, ha. You want dessert?”

I shook my head. “That chocolate mousse looks out of this world,” she said. “Maybe I’ll ask them to box up my cassoulet and take it and some dessert to go. I’ve got to get back to the office.”

She asked for the check and we drank the last of our wine.

“I’ll miss you if you take that job,” I said.

“I’ll miss you, too.” She signed the bill as the waiter set down a Styrofoam box. “I don’t know what to do. One minute I want to go, the next I don’t.”

When we got back to the lobby Dominique was still at the maître d’s stand, talking to some of her guests. Kit waved good night but I stayed and waited until she was free.

“How was your dinner?”

“Excellent. It’s always excellent. You know that,” I said.

She smiled but her eyes were grave. I didn’t want to keep up this façade any longer. “Joe told me, Dominique. I’m so sorry. Are you going to be okay?”

She put out her hand as if to physically ward off my words. “Of course I am. Anyway, I expected it. It’s not rocket surgery to understand why we decided to break up.”

When Dominique got upset, her English—especially the idioms—usually took a nosedive.

“Want to talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to say. And you don’t have to walk on kid gloves around me, either.”

I hugged her. Her bones felt brittle and hollow as a bird’s. She was already so thin she looked anorexic. “Call me if you change your mind.”

“I’ll be fine.”

I said good-bye and went outside. She was wrong. Once word got around about Joe spending the night with Valerie before she died, putting him at the cottage where the lug nut to her wheel had been found, there’d be plenty to say.

And none of it would be good.

On weekends, especially when the weather is gorgeous, people flee Washington in droves to soak up the pleasures of country life. On a typical day we can have between two and four hundred visitors passing through the vineyard to taste and buy wine. Some rent limos or pick a designated driver so everyone in the party doesn’t have to watch their limit. If we’re the last stop on their wine tour and they’d had a few, it could get lively.

Quinn and I finally hired full-time help to work in the tasting room—Francesca Merchant and Gina Leon—who took over organizing events, booking groups, and supervising the tastings. We also compiled a list of waiters and waitresses from the Goose Creek Inn who would moonlight for us on their days off, especially weekends.

The buildings making up the winery had been planned by my mother, a talented artist with an eye for design. She’d wanted something that harmonized the neoclassical architecture she’d grown up with in France with the simpler colonial style of Highland House, built by my father’s pragmatic Scottish ancestors. The ivy-covered building that now housed a tasting room, small kitchen, wine library, and our offices looked more like a villa than a commercial structure and the name stuck. A European-style courtyard and porticoed loggia connected it with the barrel room and laboratory where we made and stored wine.