The Chardonnay Charade

Chapter 9

On the few occasions since my accident when I have walked through the entrance to a hospital—especially Catoctin General—I get a lump in my throat as though I’m trying hard not to cry. When the door hisses shut behind me, my heart starts to hammer in my rib cage and my breath comes short. It is in these moments of panic laced with dread that I understand that I am not done grieving for what might have been.

Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, I am perfectly fine dealing with my physical disability. But I have not been able to confront my invisible injury—that it is impossible for me ever to have children. I do not speak about it. Most people know me well enough not to ask. But something about being in a hospital brings it all back up, like bile.

I went straight to the emergency room. Obviously I wasn’t too far behind Quinn because I could see him, oddly refracted through multiple glass doors, talking to someone at the reception desk. I came up and touched his arm.

He turned to me. “The ambulance just got here. They’re bringing him inside. We have to wait.”

The receptionist, a large man wearing a pale yellow shirt and blue jean overalls, looked over the top of his glasses at us. “Yes, miss?”

“We’re here to see Hector Cruz,” I said.

“Only family members allowed in the ER,” he said.

“She’s his niece.” Quinn hooked a thumb in my direction. “I’m his nephew.”

The man’s face never changed expression. “That’ll be fine. I’ll call you. Please have a seat.”

The waiting room had the cozy warmth and appeal of all institutional places—it could as easily have been an airport or the DMV. Molded plastic chairs locked together in rows with an aisle down the middle, all facing an enormous television set that blared the latest news from CNN. Two magazines. Sports Illustrated predicting who was going to win last year’s Super Bowl and a well-thumbed copy of Car and Driver.

Quinn and I sat next to each other in two of the plastic chairs. “Niece and nephew?” I said.

“Well, we aren’t his kids. What’s left?”

“Nothing, I guess. So how did it happen?” I propped my cane against the chair next to mine.

“We were in the barrel room getting ready to top off the Pinot Noir. All of a sudden he grabbed his chest. I called 911 right away and Manolo went to get Sera. She looked like the world just ended when she saw Hector, but she kept it all together and never stopped talking to him until the ambulance came. They let her ride with him.”

“How long did it take to show up?”

“Too long.” He ran a hand through his long, unruly hair so I could see the furrow lines in his forehead, deep as canyons. His face was pinched with worry. When I first met him he’d worn his salt-and-pepper hair in a military brush cut. Then his girlfriend—now ex-girlfriend—decided she liked it long when she found out he had naturally curly hair. So he’d let it grow out into an untidy mop that always made me think of an unmade bed. After she moved out I figured he’d cut it again, but he hadn’t. Frankly, I liked it better long, too, though I’d never told him.

“Thank God I had some aspirin in the lab,” he added. “We got him to take that and maybe it helped.”

“He’s been working too hard. I told you he didn’t look too good the other day. I wish we hadn’t needed him to help out the night of the second freeze.”

“Yeah, then he insisted on taking those tarps off the new fields yesterday.”

I sat up straight. “He did what? I thought that was Manolo and César and the others. How could you let him do that?”

His voice rose. “What do you think, he asked my permission? You know him. He does what he wants.”

“Well he can’t. And you should have stopped him!”

He sat forward and steepled his hands like he was praying, resting his forehead against them. “I know. Lay off, will you? I feel bad enough.”

“We never should have used methyl bromide on those fields to begin with.”

“Oh, God. Don’t even go there.”

I ignored him. “Besides everything else, it depletes the ozone. I don’t want to use anything that toxic ever again. There’s got to be something more environmentally friendly that we can use instead.”

“Look, I heard about your tree-hugging days, so I know where this is going.” He sat up and glared at me. I knew he was talking about the work I’d done for an environmental group in Washington after I graduated from college. Back then—before my accident—I’d been law-school-bound. My life changed forever that rain-wrecked night the car slammed into the wall at the entrance to the vineyard.

Quinn turned toward me and smacked the side of one hand into the palm of the other to emphasize his words. “There is no alternative that works as well or we would have used it. I hate to break it to you, but we live in a chemical world. Look at Hector. You think a group hug and chanting prayers with lighted candles is going to save him? I don’t know about you, but I’m praying like hell they give him every goddam drug in the hospital pharmacy.”

“That’s not the point—”

“If you don’t like the way I run things, then hire another vintner.” The iciness in his voice meant I’d hit the trip wire that put us in dangerous territory. “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding someone who thinks it’s not moronic to put soap shavings and human hair all over the fields to keep away deer and crows. And I can probably find myself a vineyard where the owner is a realist who wants—someday—to turn a profit.” He sat back in his plastic seat with such force the row of chairs jumped and my cane bounced and landed on the Astroturf carpet.

It had been a long time since we’d had an argument this bad. If we kept it up—especially in the taut emotional setting of the ER waiting room—we’d cross lines we never meant to cross. And knowing the two of us, we’d leave no path that led back to compromise or reason.

He’d just thrown down the gauntlet with that threat to leave. Again. It would be stupid for me to pick it up, especially with Hector here in the hospital. I needed him right now. We couldn’t leave things like this between us.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I’m upset about Hector, so I’m probably overreacting to everything. It wasn’t fair what I said about you trying to keep Hector from removing those tarps. I apologize.”

I didn’t expect him to say “Me, too,” but I did think he would at least be gracious enough to acknowledge an olive branch. Instead, he got up and went over to the television, punching buttons until a baseball game appeared on the screen. After that, we sat together in stony silence and watched the Nationals slug it out with the Mets.

I leaned back and closed my eyes. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I jerked upright in the cramped seat. Sera stood behind me, pale and anxious. “Lucie,” she said. “Sorry to wake you, but the doctor said you can see him for a few minutes. He wants to talk to you.”

I rubbed my eyes. The television set now showed talking heads and the logo of a sports network. The baseball game was over. “What time is it? Where’s Quinn?”

She looked around. “I don’t know. Maybe he went to get a cup of coffee or probably he went for a smoke. And it’s seven o’clock. I’m sorry you had to wait so long.”

“Don’t be silly. How is he?”

“Resting. He needs to stay here for at least two days, maybe more. The doctor told him he was lucky this time. But his heart is not good. Come. He is anxious to see you.”

The receptionist pressed a buzzer from somewhere below his desk and a set of double doors swung open. My hands were clammy and my chest felt tight. The door to Hector’s room, just off the main nurses’ station, was ajar. Sera went in first and gestured for me to follow. Hector was breathing through an oxygen mask, and some kind of intravenous drip hung next to him with multiple tubes that were taped, with lots of gauze, to one of his hands. The display on his EKG was turned toward us and to me it looked like his heart was now doing all the right things. My breathing grew more normal.

“Hey,” I said softly. “How are you? You gave us a bad scare, you know? Why don’t you take it easy here for a few days and get some rest? You’ll be home in no time.”

He moved his head from side to side. “No.” His voice sounded weak and far away.

“Sure you will…” I smiled hopefully.

“My heart is worn out, chiquita. The doctor told me I cannot work anymore with the vines.”

“I know that,” I said. “But you can be the jefe like you’ve always been, and keep an eye on the men. Manolo will do all the heavy physical work from now on. If you just coach him, he knows…”

“Not Manolo.” As weak as he was, there was a steeliness in his voice.

I said, surprised, “César? I’m not sure he’s—”

“No. Bonita. I want her to take my place. She just turned twenty-one. She’s ready. Promise me.”

His only daughter. I hadn’t seen it coming.

Bonita was supposed to be getting her degree in enology from the University of California at Davis, probably the top place in the country to study the business of wine making and growing grapes. But I’d heard differently about what she was really studying.

Another time or place and I would have made a plausible case why I couldn’t do this, why I shouldn’t do it. Though I loved him more than I’d loved my own father, I was stunned that he would wrap that devotion around my neck like a noose, but maybe I should have known that blood was blood. I glanced at Sera, whose expression was benignly inscrutable. They had discussed this already, right before she asked me to come see him.

I shot her a miserable look, then took a deep breath and made myself say calmly, “I thought she was going to stay in California after she graduated and work out there. Besides, she’s only finished her junior year. She has another year to go.”

“She dropped out last semester. Said school was boring. You know kids. So she’s been working as a waitress out in Collyfornia. We told her we want her to come home.” He glanced at Sera, who nodded. “We think it will be good to have her here again where we can keep an eye on her. She will pull her weight, mi hija.” For a man on oxygen and a heart monitor, he suddenly sounded pretty tenacious.

“I would really prefer someone with a degree, Hector…”

“I left school when I was eleven years old, Lucita. Bonita is smart. She will learn.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want the job.”

“I will take care of that. But first I want your word.”

“Why?” I picked at the sheet on his hospital cot, fiddling with it so I didn’t have to look into those dark brown eyes and let him see in mine the betrayal I felt. “Why are you making me promise this? It’s not going to work. I need someone who can do all the physical—”

“Yes or no? Give her one year. If it doesn’t go well, then let her go.”

“One year?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said dully. “She has one year.”

“You won’t regret it, Lucita.” He grasped my hand.

I already did. But I just held his tightly and said nothing.

It did not go down well when I told Quinn.

“So now I’ve got to take care of her, too?” He sounded disgusted as we left the hospital, heading for the parking lot. “Come on, Lucie. I can’t believe you agreed to do this.”

I ignored the “too.” “I didn’t have any choice. He and Sera ambushed me when I walked into his hospital room,” I said. “He was lying there on oxygen with tubes coming out of him and that damn machine beeping every few seconds. What could I do? Say no and then he’d have another heart attack? Let’s talk about it in the morning, okay? Why don’t we go home? It’s been a horrible day.”

“You go home.” He was curt. “I need a drink.”

“Where are you going?”

“Mom’s. See you tomorrow.”

He wasn’t talking about visiting his mother. Mom’s Place was a nightclub on the way to Bluemont, run by Vinnie Carbone, a guy I’d gone to high school with. Vinnie ran a low-budget, low-life operation, particularly when it came to the nearly nonexistent costumes for his waitresses and the dancers who swung around poles onstage. The joke about that particular strip joint was that all the men who hung out there told their wives or girlfriends they were going to “Mom’s,” which sounded fine. The first time.

A few seconds later the headlights of the El slashed my rearview mirror as he sped out of the parking lot.

I drove home and had my own mad-at-the-world drink.

It didn’t help.

Kit called the next morning as I was leaving the house for the winery. “Want to meet me for lunch?” she asked. “Got a couple of things I want to run by you about Randy Hunter.”

“Has he turned up?”

“Nope. Bobby says he’s now a person of interest in Georgia’s murder investigation.”

“So they’re not focusing on Ross anymore?”

“Ross isn’t off the hook, either, sweetie. Pick me up at my office. How about lunch at Tuskie’s at twelve-thirty?” she said. “And I heard about Hector. I’m so sorry.”

The El Camino was already in the parking lot when I pulled in. Next to it was a black Corvette with a license plate that read “Boneeta.”

Less than twelve hours after Hector twisted my arm to hire his daughter, she showed up ready to start work. How come Hector forgot to mention that she was already back from California?

And what was she doing here so fast? Alone with Quinn, who probably wasn’t giving her the newcomer’s welcome speech, either. I walked as quickly as I could through the courtyard to the barrel room.

If the airy light-filled villa was the yang of the vineyard, then the semi-underground cave where we made wine was the yin. About the length of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, it had thirty-foot ceilings, fieldstone walls, and four deep interconnected bays where most of our oak barrels lay undisturbed in cool darkness. As always, it smelled of the tangy, slightly acrid odor of fermenting wine.

In my mother’s day it had been a somewhat utilitarian place, reserved strictly for the serious business of making wine. But a few months ago I told Quinn I thought we should have a more elegant, atmospheric setting for the place and maybe start using the barrel room to host small private dinners. Quinn was the kind of guy who thought elegant meant you went all out and removed the wrapper from the butter before putting it on the table or actually used a glass when you wanted to drink anything besides wine or Scotch. He didn’t have a problem with pushing together a couple of unused wine casks and setting some folding chairs around them, so finally I told him I’d handle this.

A shop in Middleburg sold me an extra-long rectangular Scandinavian table with twenty matching chairs and our electrician hung swags of pinpoint spotlights so they cast overlapping arcs of white light above each seat. To keep it from looking too stark, Dominique designed centerpieces of gilded grapes and twining silk ivy meant to replicate our logo. Finally I hung my mother’s cross-stitched sampler with a quote from Plato—“No thing more excellent nor more valuable than wine was ever granted mankind by God”—on one of the arches between the bays. Quinn teased me that it looked like an operating room, but I ignored him. If my mother had seen it, I think she would have been happy.

I saw Quinn and Bonita through the large lab window at the far end of the barrel room as I let myself in the side door. Neither glanced up when it shut with a heavy metal clank, but with the hum and whir of fans, air-conditioning, and refrigeration equipment, they wouldn’t have heard Lee’s army arrive.

It had been three years since I last saw Bonita, just before she left for her freshman year of school and a few weeks prior to my accident. Back then she’d been all soft curves and baby fat, dressing in a way that Hector once described to me with some anger and disgust as llamativa. I figured out pretty fast that the loose English translation was “what are you waiting for?” followed by “you bet I will.”

Now, from what I could see, the softness had turned to angles and she looked well muscled as though she worked out regularly. The cocky confidence in the tilt of her head said she’d been around the block with the boys since she left home. Definitely more than once. She sat perched on a barstool, wearing shorts that matched the color of her car and a low-cut white tank top that set off her golden brown skin and glossy black hair. She was leaning toward Quinn, who was holding a beaker—probably more Chardonnay sampling—as he gestured to its contents a little too expansively, the way I’d seen him do when there was an attractive woman around who needed impressing. Judging by their body language, they were hitting it off just fine for a first meeting. In fact, maybe better than fine.

They both turned toward me when I walked through the door. Bonita’s eyes went immediately to my cane.

I cannot bear pity, even when it’s involuntary. She slid off her barstool and stammered hello. “You look great, Lucie. I mean, like, really great. I mean, not that you didn’t look great before and all…” Her eyes never left my cane.

“Thanks.” I cut her off before she could say “great” one more time. “Your father didn’t say you were back from school. Welcome home.”

Bonita brushed her shoulder-length hair off her face and I saw the dark circles under her eyes. She still looked embarrassed, but she was no longer staring at the cane. “I just got in on the red-eye a few hours ago. I’m still, you know, real punchy.”

“Have you been to the hospital yet?” I asked.

She tugged on the hem of her ultra-short shorts. “No. I’m on my way there now. My mom told me to stop by here first and, like, talk to you about work. I hope it’s okay.”

I caught Quinn’s eye. “Why don’t we talk about it some other time? Go see your dad and get some sleep. There’s no rush.”

She blushed. “I know Pop. He, like, probably twisted your arm to give me this job. He’s gonna ask me about it when I show up at the hospital. You know what a cabeza dura he is. So bull-headed.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Tell him you’re not running the place just yet.”

Her color deepened. “Oh, God. That bad, huh? So, like, what did he ask you to do for me?”

“He wasn’t that specific,” I said.

“Look, honey, here’s the deal,” Quinn said, and I glanced at him warningly. “We’re giving your dad’s job to Manolo. He’ll take care of the equipment and the crew from now on. We haven’t exactly worked out what you’re going to do here.”

Before she could reply, I said, “How much of your studies did you complete at Davis before you dropped out?”

Her eyes flashed. “I didn’t drop out! I took some time off. I did good in the enology classes. I like making wine. It’s really cool. But, like, viticulture’s not really my thing. I just suck at pests and diseases and working out in the field.”

“Let her help out in the barrel room,” Quinn said to me.

“That would be awesome.”

“It’s not always awesome,” I told her. “You know what hard work it is. Cleaning the tanks, sterilizing the barrels. It can get pretty boring at times.”

“I don’t care.” She smiled for the first time, an incandescent light-up-a-room smile that reminded me of her father. “Grapes, yes. But not bugs. God, I, like, hate bugs.” She pulled a car key out of a pocket in her shorts and smiled that thousand-watt smile again. Quinn didn’t take his eyes off her. “I better get over to the hospital.”

“Tell your dad I’ll be by to see him later,” I said.

After she left I said to Quinn, “You can reel your tongue in now. She’s way too young and she’s Hector’s daughter.”

“She’s, like, cute,” he said. “And I know she’s just a kid.”

“Except we’re not paying her to be cute. She’s got to pull her weight. At least she was up front enough to admit that Hector nearly broke my arm twisting it in the ER last night,” I said. “I told him she could stay for a year and he was okay with that. She and Mia used to compete for the hell-raiser of the year award when they were growing up.”

He grinned. “I can see that. But, hey, I like a woman with a bit of spirit. It’ll come in handy when she’s here with the rest of the boys.”

“You are such a chauvinist.”

“I am not.” He paused, then said, “I guess I was kind of hard on you last night.”

“You were.”

“Angie called.” He picked up a beaker and swirled around the straw-colored liquid, watching it intently. “While you were in with Hector.”

Angela Stetson was Quinn’s ex-girlfriend and a former high school classmate of mine. They’d met when she was a dancer at Mom’s Place.

“How’d that go?”

He shrugged. “She’s getting married. Again. To the guy she was seeing when she was living with me.”

“Oh, God. I’m sorry. She called to tell you that?”

“I think she’d had a few.” He set the beaker down and got two glasses. “She was feeling bad about what she did to me. Wanted to put things right before she married Bozo.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Is that why you went back to Mom’s last night?”

He looked up. “I never went. I came here instead. To the summerhouse. You’re still okay with me setting up my telescope there?”

I watched him fill the glasses. My mother had the little screened-in summerhouse built as an outdoor retreat, not far from the main house and behind the rose garden. When I was growing up we used to have dinner parties there or use it as a hideaway to get lost in a book. It was now a dumping place for broken or rusted outdoor equipment, and Quinn had started bringing his telescope there because it was perched on the edge of a bluff, a great observation site with its panoramic view of the night sky.

“Be my guest. But I thought you gave up stargazing.”

“For a while. Angie didn’t like it, so I quit.” He handed me a glass. “Those two nights we were out when it was freezing…God, the skies were so clear you could see clear up to the floor of heaven.” He clinked his glass against mine. “I thought about calling you and asking if you wanted to join me, but I figured you were probably dead on your feet.”

I drank a large mouthful of wine, then after a moment spat it into a dump bucket. “Well, one foot, at least.”

He spat, too. “Aw, jeez. I didn’t mean that. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m pulling your leg…oh, God, now I’m doing it.” We both laughed. “Thanks for the invite. It would have been nice. Maybe another time?”

“Sure.” He held up his glass. “What do you think of this one?”

“I like it, but—”

“I’m sorry, sir, we’re closed here,” Quinn cut me off. He was addressing someone behind me.

I turned around. Mick Dunne, wearing jeans that had been ironed and an expensive-looking oxford shirt, stood in the doorway.

“I beg your pardon.” He was staring at me with the same intensity I remembered from the first time we’d met. “Hello, Lucie. Lovely to see you again. Your assistant in the other building told me I could find you here. I apologize. I didn’t realize I’d be interrupting your work.” To Quinn he added, “You must be Quinn. Mick Dunne.”

Quinn gave me a sharp what’s-up look as he shook Mick’s hand.

“Mick’s a friend of Ross’s, Quinn. He’s here for Georgia’s funeral. And he’s in the market for a vineyard,” I added. “Or so I’ve heard.”

For an instant, I’d knocked his cocky self-confidence off kilter. Then he grinned. “So I am. News travels fast.”

The room was already a nippy sixty degrees thanks to the air-conditioning and the refrigeration equipment. As I watched Quinn take stock of Mick Dunne—who wore brilliantly polished black wing tips along with the pressed jeans and starched shirt—the temperature seemed to plummet nearer to freezing.

Both men looked about the same age, though Mick could have been a few years younger, perhaps in his late thirties. Like Quinn, he had the fit, lean build of an athlete. But where Quinn’s sunburned ruggedness came from years of hard physical labor in the vineyard, Mick, who wore a gold signet ring on the pinky finger of his right hand, looked like the type who got his exercise at the country club. Something about the cut of the clothes he’d worn the night I met him said he spent most of his life wearing a suit and tie and working in an office. Wing tips with the jeans pretty much confirmed it.

“This one’s not for sale,” Quinn said rudely. “Sorry.”

“I know it’s not,” Mick said. “But I’d very much like a tour of your place, Lucie, if it’s not too much trouble. I’m particularly keen to see how you laid out your fields and what grapes you’ve planted.” The request sounded like a polite command. Whatever he did for a living, he was used to being in charge.

“Uh…” He’d caught me off guard. “You don’t mean now?”

“I’m meeting an estate agent this afternoon and I expect I’ll make my decision rather quickly,” he said. “Right now would be lovely. Thanks very much.”

I opened my mouth to explain that wasn’t what I’d intended to say when Quinn cut in. “Do you know anything about running a vineyard? The English aren’t really known as great winemakers, are they?”

When the good angels were handing out the gifts, they went a little light with Quinn in the tact and diplomacy department.

“He meant that there aren’t many vineyards in England,” I explained.

“No, I didn’t.”

I frowned at him, but Mick grinned, apparently no offense taken. “Fair enough, but you do remember that when the English arrived in Jamestown, making wine was practically the first thing we did, don’t you? England was desperate for its own wine industry in the sixteen hundreds. That’s why we made our first wine only two years after we got here. Mind you, it was bloody awful.” He was still smiling. “I’m just following in my countrymen’s footsteps.”

“Why Virginia? Why not California?” Quinn sounded more curious than combative. Mick Dunne had gotten his attention.

“Because they’re not experimenting as much in California anymore. Though it’s impressive, the world-class wines they produce. But you lot in Virginia seem to enjoy taking risks with your wines, growing some interesting varietals. Didn’t Thomas Jefferson try to grow twenty-two kinds of grapes at Monticello?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised at the depth of his knowledge, “as a matter of fact, he did.”

Though I’d thought he was talking to me, I now wondered if Mick was playing to Quinn, who’d straightened up and was looking at him with new respect, especially after Mick brought up the subjects of experimenting and taking risks in wine making.

“Where are you from?” Quinn asked. “Besides England.”

“Florida, for the last eight years.”

“What was in Florida?”

“A pharmaceutical company.”

“Quinn,” I said finally, “give the poor man a break. He just asked for a tour. We don’t interview our prospective employees this intensively.”

“Yeah, especially the last one we hired,” he said.

I turned to Mick. “I’d love to show you around. I’m sure Quinn can spare me for an hour or so.”

“I’ll manage.”

The wall phone in the lab rang. Quinn grabbed it. “Montgomery Estate Vineyard.”

“Come on,” I said to Mick. “We’ll take my car.”

“Do you two always get on like that?” Mick asked as we walked outside.

I could have asked, “Like what?” but there was no point trying to con someone as perceptive as he was.

“No,” I said. “We’re both upset about Hector being hospitalized. And then there’s Georgia’s death. That pesticide should have been locked up. Maybe if it had been, she’d still be alive. So we’re getting on each other’s nerves more than usual just now.”

We reached the Mini. I’d left the top down because of the glorious weather. As I set my cane on the sun-warmed backseat he said quietly, “Well, the viewing is set for tomorrow evening and her funeral will be on Friday morning. Once the police find her killer, then maybe Ross will have some peace. And so will everyone else.”

As we got in the car, my mobile phone rang. Quinn, calling me.

I flipped it open. “Miss me already?”

“Like a toothache after it’s gone,” he replied. “Listen, Mary Sunshine, I’ve got some news. That call was the EPA. They’re coming out to pay us a little courtesy call next week. And the guy I talked to sounded like he’s planning on playing hardball.”