The Bordeaux Betrayal

Chapter 4

If I was right and it came from Valerie’s car, then someone had tampered with her wheel while she was in the cottage. I reached for my cell phone to call the sheriff before remembering the phone was waterlogged and I’d left it at home. Jordy wouldn’t be happy about the sheriff showing up at the Fox and Hound twice in one day, especially if what I’d found was something that had fallen off a lawnmower. Whatever it was, I left it where I’d found it and headed back to the house.

A young redheaded woman with a scowl on her face came out onto the back porch, slamming the door hard behind her. She muttered something before she saw me and realized I’d been watching. Her face turned scarlet.

“Afternoon, miss.” She spoke with an Irish lilt. “May I help you?”

“No, thank you. I’m just on my way to talk to Mr. Jordan.”

“I believe he’s in his office,” she said. “Sorry about the door. Long day.” She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her purse and fished around until she found a book of matches.

“I’m sure. You work here?”

“I do.”

“I guess you were here when the sheriff showed up?”

“Oh my, yes. Such goings on.” She moved closer and extracted a cigarette from the pack. “Everyone was in a state. Especially Miss Grace and Mr. Jordy.”

I didn’t have to prod much. She was full of the importance of what she knew.

“It must have been difficult.” I kept my voice friendly and noncommittal. “Did you talk to one of the deputies?”

She lit up and dropped the match on the ground, blowing out a stream of smoke. “No, they only spoke to the girls who take care of Cornwall Cottage.” Her smug smile lit up her pale green eyes. “No one asked me, so I didn’t say nothin’. Didn’t want to get him in trouble, he’s such a fine man and all. Tips me nice when I look after one of their guests.”

“Get who in trouble? One of what guests?”

She examined her cigarette and I knew I’d pushed too hard. “Oh. Well, nobody. I shouldn’t be talkin’ this way.”

I slid my purse off my shoulder and took a twenty out of my wallet. “I’d really like to know. Do you think you could tell me?”

She barely contemplated the money. No wrestling with her conscience before she took it and tucked it in her bra. I’d half-expected her to hold out for more.

“Dr. Dawson,” she said. “His school puts guests up here all the time and he comes round a lot.”

“He was here last night?”

She nodded. “With Miss Boo-vase. I’d finished up the dinner dishes and stepped out for a quick fag. Saw his car as he drove past me on the way to Cornwall Cottage.”

“What time?”

“About eleven. Just after she showed up.”

“He saw you?”

She colored again. “I didn’t have the porch light on, so I suspect he didn’t.”

“Did you see him leave?”

“No, but he stayed a while.” I waited and she added, “I overheard a couple of deputies who came into the dining room for coffee. They found…well, he’d been takin’ precautions, you see.”

Mick had been right. Still lovers. “A condom?”

She puffed on her cigarette. “Several.”

“Oh.” It was my turn to blush. “What’s your name?”

“Bridget. Why?”

“You need to tell the sheriff about seeing Dr. Dawson, Bridget.”

“Lord have mercy, no! I cannot!” She dropped the cigarette and stubbed it out under a heavy-soled shoe. “I’ll get in trouble. I’m not supposed to be smokin’ on the job. And Mr. Jordy will think I’ve been spyin’ on the guests.”

No point stating that Mr. Jordy would have been right.

“I’m sorry, but you have to. You won’t get in trouble. I’ll make it okay with Mr. Jordy. Come on.”

“No. Really, I can’t.”

I held out another twenty. “Please?”

She shrugged and took the money, then bent and picked up the cigarette butt and her match. I almost missed the sleight of hand as she tossed them behind a rhododendron next to the house. Probably not the first time.

I rang the doorbell as Bridget squirmed next to me, popping a breath mint in her mouth. Somehow she didn’t seem destined for a long period of employment at the Fox and Hound.

After I’d explained everything, Jordy handed me the phone and eyed Bridget. I called Bobby Noland, whom I’d known since we were kids. Now a detective with the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department, he’d done a one-eighty since high school when he’d been a regular in the principal’s office. His decision to go into law enforcement surprised everyone except his mother, who claimed it was irrefutable proof that God answered prayers.

Bobby arrived in an unmarked cruiser a short while later, wearing jeans and a black polo shirt with the sheriff’s department logo embroidered on the pocket. He shook hands with Jordy and Bridget and nodded at me. We’d adjourned to the parlor where Grace had brought tea and scones, frowning at Bridget as she left the room.

Bobby took a scone but passed on tea. Then he got right down to it. “There’s crime scene tape all around that cottage, Lucie. What were you doing there? I could haul you in for messing around where you’re not supposed to be.”

If it had been anybody else but Bobby, I probably would have been intimidated. We had too much history together growing up. I knew his weaknesses and he knew mine.

“I didn’t go inside,” I said.

“You still shouldn’t have been there,” he said. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

“Valerie Beauvais was on her way to see me when her car went into the creek,” I said. “She wanted to talk to me about some of the wine that’s been donated for our auction.”

“What about it?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I dropped by—in case she left anything behind. When I found her car this morning in the creek, I thought her accident was an accident. How was I supposed to know you put crime scene tape up?”

“Well, we did. So maybe that should have been your first clue the place was off limits.”

“I found a lug nut.”

“You found what?”

“A lug nut. At least, I think that’s what it is. By Cornwall Cottage.” For his benefit I added, “I didn’t touch it.”

“Let’s go take a look.” He didn’t sound happy.

“Before we go, there’s something else you should know.” I glanced at Bridget. “Go on, tell him. He won’t bite.”

Her cocky confidence had disappeared and her voice was barely louder than a whisper. “Miss Boo-vase had a guest last night. I saw Dr. Dawson’s car drive by on his way to the cottage.”

If they’d found condoms, Bobby already knew Valerie had been with a man. Hard to tell if the identification of her visitor was news or not. His eyes met mine, giving away nothing, then slid to Bridget. “What time?”

She told him. He asked a few more questions and said to me, “Show me that lug nut now. Jordy, Bridget, thanks for your help.”

I set my dishes on the silver tray and nodded at Bridget. Jordy walked Bobby and me out.

“I promised Bridget she wouldn’t get in trouble if she told the truth,” I said. “I gave my word.”

Jordy sighed. “All right.”

“Thank you.”

When Bobby and I got to Cornwall Cottage, I showed him what I’d found. Turned out it was a lug nut, though Bobby said it didn’t mean it came from Valerie’s car. Still, he took photos with a digital camera and bagged it.

“I’ll bet you anything it’s from her wheel,” I said. “What about the other lug nuts? Did you find them?”

“You know I can’t say.”

“You didn’t, did you? That means this one’s really important.”

“No comment.”

We walked back to the parking lot. “Joe didn’t tamper with Valerie’s car, Bobby.”

“What was he doing here last night if he’s engaged to your cousin?”

“The engagement’s off.”

He rubbed a hand across his forehead and closed his eyes like he was trying to excise a headache. “Is that so? You know anything about Joe’s relationship with Valerie Beauvais? Whether or not it was sexual?”

I decided not to mention that Bridget had told me about the condoms. “I saw them together last night at her lecture at Mount Vernon. They kissed a couple of times, but that’s all I saw.”

He still held the bag with the lug nut between his thumb and forefinger. “I wonder if he was the only visitor she had,” he said. “Guess I’ll be talking to your cousin’s ex-fiancé.”

I nodded. More than one lover—I hadn’t thought of that. Either way, it didn’t look too good for Joe.

My answering machine beeped as I walked in the front door of my house just after six o’clock. Three messages. All from Katherine Eastman sounding increasingly irate.

Kit, like Bobby, went back to my sandbox days. Best friends all twelve years of school, we’d finally split up in college—she studied journalism in North Carolina and I went to Williamsburg for history and French. We got back together after graduating, both landing jobs in D.C. She worked in the newsroom of the Washington Tribune, a place she used to refer to as “the shark tank.” I got a job with an environmental group that tried to convince policy makers that scientists hadn’t invented global warming to scare the public or obtain more funding.

Three summers ago Kit’s mother suffered a stroke and a few weeks later a car I was in, driven by a now-ex-boyfriend, slammed into the wall at the entrance to our farm as he brought me home one night in the middle of a rainstorm. Kit returned to Atoka to be near her mom, asking for a transfer to the Trib’s Loudoun bureau. I spent a few months in Catoctin General learning to walk again before moving to a house my French mother’s family still owned on the Côte d’Azur, where I spent two years adjusting to life with a cane.

The time stamps on the answering machine indicated Kit had been calling for the past three hours. I listened to her last message. “Dammit, how come you don’t answer your cell anymore? I finally tried here. Four times. Where the hell are you? Call me or else.”

I took more ibuprofen and called. “It was only three times. Or else what?”

“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.