The Bordeaux Betrayal

Chapter 15

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.”

The two feet between us could have been the Grand Canyon. Trying to keep him from getting dragged in to whatever Nicole was involved in was like throwing dust into the wind. Either it was going to get thrown back in his face or it would blow away and he’d be left with nothing. Whichever way it went with Nicole, he was going to lose.

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’m not the one who’s going to get hurt.” My voice shook I was so angry. I gestured to the floor. “You better be careful, when you clean up the mess you made. I’ll see you later.”

An hour later I watched through my office window as an unmarked Crown Vic pulled into the parking lot. Bobby got out and headed directly for the barrel room. He left about forty-five minutes later.

I wondered what he had asked and what Quinn had told him. But I did not go back to the barrel room to ask.

That night Quinn went to the summerhouse. I saw the red flashlight as I finished putting away my dinner dishes. Pépé was out with friends for the evening once again.

I got my jacket and a flashlight. As I crossed the lawn, I shone the light to make sure he’d know I was coming. Once I passed the rosebushes I switched it off to preserve his night vision.

He was setting up his telescope next to the Adirondack chairs, with the red light propped on an arm of a chair so he could see what he was doing.

“I knew you’d come,” he said without looking at me. “You want to know what Bobby said.”

I was tired of this war between us. “I came for you,” I said. “We’re barely speaking. I can’t take it anymore.”

This time he did turn his head. “Have a seat.”

I sat and laid my cane on the ground next to my chair. The chilly night air had swept away the clouds that had hung over the Blue Ridge at sunset. The moon looked like a scuffed silver coin in a star-filled sky.

“Are you all right?” I said.

He threw himself in the other chair and pulled out a cigar from his jacket pocket. “I’ve been thinking about Pluto.”

“Pardon?”

“Pluto. One minute it’s the ninth planet in the solar system, the next it’s bumped off the list and relegated to being a dwarf.”

“That’s what’s on your mind?” I didn’t smell alcohol on him. Why was he talking about that? “Pluto?”

“Despite the demotion it’s still the same ice ball it always was. Still takes 248 years to revolve around the sun because of its wonky orbit. Nothing’s changed except what people call it.”

“That’s too bad.” I watched him light his cigar. The flare of the match illuminated his face. He, too, looked the same as he always did, even though he sounded like he’d temporarily lost a marble or two.

“In its planet days, it was the planet that ruled Scorpio.”

“Really?” I read my horoscope for fun and believed it when it suited me.

“Nic’s a Scorpio. She’s really into all that voodoo junk.”

I waited.

“Did you know,” he said, “that Pluto’s moon—Charon—is bigger than it is and they orbit in a kind of dumbbell formation like they’re permanently locked in a power struggle to see which one can dominate?”

“I did not know that.”

“Kind of a metaphor for our marriage,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

He expelled a cloud of smoke. “Don’t be. It’s over. You know what else? It’s the goddamn planet of power and destruction and corruption. That is my beautiful ex-wife to a T. Almost makes you believe all that horseshit.”

“This is about what happened with Bobby today, isn’t it?”

“You know it is.” He was angry. “And you can stop pretending you’re not glad you were right about her.”

“I am not glad about anything and I am not going to be your whipping post again!” I was mad, too. “Until four or five days ago I never even knew you’d been married. How the hell would I know, anyway? You don’t talk about your past—your life in California—anything. You came to Virginia like you dropped in from—” I waved my arm above my head. “Some place up there. No history, no nothing.” I picked up my cane and stood up. “I’m going inside. I’m sick of you jumping down my throat no matter what I say. I understand why you don’t want to talk about Le Coq Rouge but—”

“Don’t go.” He wrapped his hand around my wrist like a vise. “Sit down and I’ll tell you. You don’t understand anything.”

I sat but his voice scared me.

“She was screwing Alan.” He sounded hoarse with anger, shame, and remembrance. “On top of everything else he did to me. She was in that whole scheme with him but I covered up for her so she could walk away free and clear without doing jail time. I left town with a goddamn cloud over my head because of the scandal and the trial. You have no idea what it was like—the way people looked at me.”

Alan Cantor was the winemaker at Le Coq Rouge. So Quinn’s old boss and his wife had had an affair, on top of the wine fraud and embezzlement, which finally forced the vineyard to close. I waited for Quinn to continue.

“When I left, I never wanted to see her again. Then she showed up here.” He expelled a long breath of smoke. “Shit, I just about died.”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s been rough for you since she’s been here.”

His mock-laugh almost sounded like a sob. “Rough. Yeah. That’s one way of putting it.”

“Does Bobby think she has something to do with Valerie’s murder?”

He rubbed his forehead with his thumb. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t surprise me if he did.”

“What did he ask you?”

Quinn looked at me. “I knew you wanted to know.”

At least in the darkness he couldn’t see my face burning. “Please tell me.”

“He asked about our relationship. When I was with her, whether I had any contact with her before she came to Atoka.”

I’d never thought of that. “And did you?”

“Jesus, Lucie. No.”

The wind had picked up. I shivered and pulled my legs up into the chair, wrapping my arms around them. “It’s cold out here. Come on. Why don’t we go inside and have a drink?”

“You go,” he said. “I’m not cold. I’d like to stay right here.”

“Then I’ll stay, too. I don’t mind.”

“No, thanks. I’d rather be by myself. No offense.”

I stood up and reached for my cane again. The chasm between us was beginning to narrow, but it was still there.

“See you in the morning,” I said.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” he said. “I’ll be in to check the Brix and make sure the cap’s punched down but otherwise I plan to get lost this weekend.”

“Oh. Well, sure. See you Monday, then.”

“Yep.”

I left him and walked back to the house. Nicole was ruled by the planet of death and destruction and corruption, he’d said.

And here we were, right in the middle of her maelstrom.