The Merlot Murders (23 page)

“Stay here,” Quinn ordered, “while I talk to Hector.”

Eli said he wasn’t coming to any more festival events because of some deadline at work. At least, that was his story. Why did he change his plans?

“Do you still think Eli’s involved in this?” She read my mind.

“He wasn’t supposed to be here tonight. I want to talk to him.”

“About what? Maybe trying to kill you tonight in the barrel room? Come on, Lucie,” Kit said. “I think we ought to get Bobby over here.”

“Absolutely not…I need to talk to Eli, Kit. It’ll turn into a three-ring circus when Bobby gets involved.”

Quinn’s footsteps crunched on the gravel.

“Tomorrow,” Kit said. “I’m calling Bobby tomorrow. At least tonight I know you’re with Quinn.”

“Give me twenty-four hours. Then I’ll call Bobby myself. I promise.”

She nodded imperceptibly as Quinn said, “All right. It’s all set up with Hector. Why don’t we get out of here? We’ve got harvest again tomorrow morning.”

Kit left in the Jeep before we did, driving fast enough to churn up a cloud of dust. Her way of letting me know she was not happy with the way our conversation had gone. The Toyota started, sounding like a dentist’s drill that just hit something bad.

I leaned my head back against the vibrating seat. Who tried to kill me tonight?

Someone who knew his way around the winery and how to work all the equipment. Eli?

Not him. He was too concerned about any more “accidents” happening at the winery and what it might do to discourage prospective buyers. However much I stood in his way, he wouldn’t have picked the winery as a place for yet another murder.

Then who?

Quinn? He could have shut the power off, then gone back to the concert. Maybe Kit met him on a return trip to the barrel room, double-checking to make sure I was dead and his “concern,” as Kit called it, was part of the ruse. Now he was adamant that I go home with him, instead of her.

Hanging out at Mom’s Place watching Angela, he could have gotten to know Sara Rust. Sure. He could be a suspect.

And now here I was going home with him. Alone.

Maybe I’d just played right into his hands.

Quinn’s cottage was on the same dirt spur as Hector and Sera’s place, about a half-mile in the other direction. The last time I’d visited, Jacques lived there.

Quinn hadn’t left any lights on and, with the heavy tree canopy overhead, no ambient light permeated the woods. His cottage seemed smaller than I remembered, but perhaps it was the deceptive way places have of shrinking when memory is finally confronted by reality, as though you’re looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

He stopped the car. “I’ll come ’round and get you.”

“I can manage.”

“No, you can’t,” he said. “I found your cane on the floor in the barrel room. It’s got a big dent in it. You can’t use it the way it is. Hector said he’d try to straighten it out, but he’s not sure he can do it without breaking it. You got another one?”

“No.”

“Then sit still. I don’t need you falling on your face.” He sounded annoyed, more than anything else.

He nudged open the screen door with his foot and flipped on the light switch with his elbow. We were in the middle of the living room. It was as soulless as a hotel room. This was a man without a past or a present.

“You take my bed,” he said. “You’ll be comfortable there.”

“I wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you.”

“The sheets are clean. I’ve been sleeping at the summerhouse. Or at Angie’s.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Nevertheless, I’d prefer to have you there.”

“In your bed.”

“I was thinking more in terms of you not being on the couch because it’s in a room with a door to the outside.”

“You think I might run away?”

“I think someone’s looking for you,” he said. “At least this way, they’d have to get past me first.”

He spoke in his characteristically blunt and unemotional way so it was hard to tell if he considered being my human shield as part of the maintenance responsibilities that came with his job or if he really cared what happened to me. Either way, his words were disturbing.

Quinn shifted my weight in his arms. “I need to set you down. My arm is going to sleep. Let’s get you into the bedroom.”

“I can walk.”

“You couldn’t even sit a while ago without getting dizzy.”

He carried me into the bedroom, a real monastic cell, and set me down on the bed.

“You want a drink?”

“What have you got?”

“Whiskey.”

“No wine?”

“I’ve got wine. You look like you could do with something stronger.”

“Carbon dioxide does that to me. Okay, then. Whiskey’s fine.”

The whiskey was somewhere in the living room. I could hear him rummaging around and then the sound of glasses clinking together. He showed up with two glasses and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He poured two shots and handed me one of them.

“I figured you take it straight,” he said.

“Do I look as bad as that?”

“That foot must really bother you at the end of the day. It looks pretty twisted. I’m sure it hurts.”

I must have shrunk back against the headboard as though he’d just seen me naked. “I don’t really think that’s any of your business.”

Outside the bedroom window a flash of silver light illuminated the silhouettes of trees and bushes. I jumped.

“Calm down. Storm’s a long way off. We won’t get any rain tonight.” As if to validate his statement, distant thunder rumbled like muffled drums. “Not until tomorrow or the day after. Give me your foot, Lucie. I’ve had some training in this.”

I shifted on the bed so that my left foot was tucked underneath my right leg. “If you mean you’ve been practicing back rubs on Angela, thanks, but I’ll pass.” There was no way I was going to let him touch my foot. He’d have to look at it. I managed fine by keeping it hidden under a dress or long pants. To display it, in all its misshapen deformity, made me feel like Superman without the cape and special suit.

“I was talking about medical training. Therapeutic massage.” He reached over and slid my dress up my leg. “Come here. Give me your foot. I won’t hurt you.”

I had to look away while he did it, but he was right. He knew what he was doing.

“Why did you change your name?” I asked abruptly.

On cue, the thunder crashed around us. He looked at me in the washed-out light, his face all angular planes and dark shadows. “What are you talking about?”

“Isn’t your real name Paolo Santori?”

“Legally. But I’m not real big on Paolo. It was my old man’s name.”

There was another crack of thunder, but this one was so close it sounded like a cannon going off in the front yard. I sloshed whiskey down the side of my glass and caught the drip with my finger, licking it.

“What happened in California?” I asked.

He reached for the bottle and poured us both refills. “How’d you hear about that?”

“Leland had a copy of the
San Jose Mercury News
among his papers. Surely you didn’t think I wouldn’t find out. Why didn’t you say something?”

He walked over to his dresser and opened the top drawer. For some reason, my heart started doing the war drum thing again. Then I saw the box of Swisher Sweets and resumed breathing. He removed a cigar and came back over to the bed. “Hand me that ashtray, will you?” he said.

It was on the bedside table, next to me. I gave it to him. He fished a lighter out of the pocket of his camouflage trousers. He lit up, walked over to the window, and stared outside. Lightning flashed and the lights went out briefly and came on again.

“I never kept it a secret.”

“Did Leland know?”

“Of course. I told him up front.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he appreciated my honesty. Most people would have tried to cover up something like that.”

It was also true that when Leland checked his references, he would have found out anyway. Maybe Quinn was just trying to get in front of a bad situation. Besides, the “honesty” remark didn’t sound quite like Leland, a man who had his own reputation for playing fast and loose with the truth. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Fire away. You seem to be on a roll tonight.”

I ignored that. “Did you know about Leland before you applied for a job here?”

“What about him?”

“His past was a bit…shaky. He had some questionable business partners. And you seem to know a lot about our financial problems.”

He swung around. “Meaning what?”

The lights went out again but this time they didn’t come back on. Quinn was silent.

“I think we just lost power.” My voice sounded small.

There was a metallic click and then a flash of fire. He held his lighter aloft. “Yeah, this time for real. I’ve got candles.” He sounded mad.

He left the room holding his lighter like a torch. I heard the front door open and close. Where did he keep his candles? In the bushes? I sat in the dark as a bead of perspiration ran down my cheek.

The front door opened and closed again. The living room glowed faintly orange and he walked back into the bedroom, shielding a candle against air currents with one hand. “I just tried to call Hector on my mobile. He must have turned his off and the phones are out. I think I’d better go back over there and see if the generator came on. You’re coming, too. I don’t want you here by yourself.”

“I can walk to the car.”

“You can hopscotch for all I care. Come on, let’s go. I’ve got a flashlight by the front door.”

I walked unsteadily to the car. Neither of us spoke on the drive back to the vineyard. The thunder rumbled more quietly now than before and the lightning zigzagged in the distance, toward the west and the mountains. He pulled into the parking lot. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back. You’ll be all right for a few minutes. Lean on the horn, if you need me.”

He took the flashlight, then sprinted up the stairs in the direction of the loggia and the barrel room. He disappeared out of the swath of light made by the car headlights and I was alone. I switched on the radio and hit the button until I got to WLEE.

Greg’s voice. “…has been real hard on the local economy. One of the worst droughts on record.”

“Well, it’s too late for me,” a male voice said. “I sold my cattle last week. Nothing for them to eat. They were starving to death.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Ron,” Greg said.

“You and me both.”

“Looks like we’re not going to get a break from the heat any time soon,” he said. “The National Weather Service is predicting more hot, dry weather for the next few days.”

What weather forecast was he listening to? It was big news that we were finally in for some rain. Unless, of course, he’d actually had this conversation with Ron some other time.

He was rebroadcasting an old show.

“I know,” Ron was agreeing. “A hunnert and thirty days with no rain. A record.”

“Look, how about I play something by Art Pepper for you? ‘Here’s That Rainy Day.’ We can always dream, right?”

“You dream, son. But, sure, I like old Art. Dedicate it to Mandy, would you? We’ll be married thirty-four years tomorrow.”

“That’s great, thirty-four years. Okay, Mandy, here’s Art Pepper with Gerry Mulligan playing ‘Here’s That Rainy Day.’ Happy Anniversary from Ron. This is WLEE in Leesburg, Virginia, and you’re listening to
Knight Moves
.”

I saw headlights in the rearview mirror of Quinn’s car just as the haunting sexy sound of a sax began to wail. The driver wasn’t coming to the winery. It sounded like the car was heading toward the house. There weren’t too many engines that purred like that.

Eli’s Jag.

I slid over to the driver’s seat of the Toyota, put it in gear and backed out of the parking lot. By the time I got to the house, the Jaguar was parked next to the front door. The power was out here, too. Inside the house was black as a coal mine. My flashlight was still in the picnic basket where I’d left it since my trip to the Goose Creek Bridge with Kit. Quinn had taken his with him. I waited until my night vision adjusted to the gloomy foyer. A beam of light played upstairs. He’d come prepared.

I climbed the stairs quietly, holding the railing with both hands since my cane was gone. I heard him in Mia’s room and the sound of opening and closing drawers. I stood in the doorway and watched as he pulled a small bundle of letters out of the drawer to her nightstand.

“Do you mind telling me what you’re doing?”

He let out a yelp as he shot up from where he’d been kneeling in front of the nightstand and whacked his knee on the corner of the open drawer.

“Jesus H. Christ, Lucie! What are you doing, sneaking up on me?”

I walked over to him, limping heavily without my cane. “What’s that?”

“None of your damn business.” He jerked his hand out of my reach and an envelope slithered out of the package he was holding and fell to the ground. He shone the flashlight around our feet. “Damnit.”

“It’s probably under the bed. We’ve got spiders, by the way. Want to get it?”

His fear of spiders was legendary, as bad as my fear of heights. “You made me drop it. You get it.”

“Give me the flashlight. I can’t see a thing.”

I held on to the bed and knelt on my good leg. The envelope was addressed to Greg Knight and the return address was from Brandi Simone. Eli helped me up and I gave it to him. “Are all of those envelopes full of letters she wrote him?”

“I have no idea.”

“How did you know they were here?”

“Mia got them.”

“From Greg?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“She stole them from him?”

“They belong to Brandi.”

“What’s in them?”

“I have no idea,” he repeated. “They’re private.”

“He was blackmailing her, wasn’t he?” I said. “What did he want from her?”

“Look,” he said, “she’s having false labor again. I’ve got to get back home right away.”

“What are you talking about? Haven’t you been here all night?”

“I came from home,” he said stiffly.

“You were at the jazz concert.”

“So what? It’s a free country last I checked. I stopped by, then I went home.”

“She sent you back to get these letters, didn’t she?”

“No, I’m psychic. I knew they’d be here.”

“They must be pretty important. Aren’t you going to look at them?”

His voice was harsh. “I don’t think that would do a damned bit of good. They’re ancient history.”

“You really love her, don’t you?”

“You have no idea, babe,” he said. “Not a clue.”

Then he brushed by me and I heard him clatter down the stairs. A minute later, the Jag’s motor leaped to life and roared away.

I groped down the stairs hand over hand, clinging to the walnut banister. Two thirds of the way down I knew someone else was in the foyer standing in the shadows.

Waiting for me.