The Chardonnay Charade

Chapter 24

She made no sense except that I gathered she’d been driving and hit another car.

“Oh, God,” I said. “When? After you left Eli’s?”

“I never went there,” she sobbed. “He canceled. Look, can we talk about that when you get here? You gotta get me out of here.” She sounded panicked. “I didn’t do it, Luce. I don’t even remember getting in my car. I don’t care what they say.”

I closed my eyes. On top of everything she had blacked out, too. How much worse could it be?

I reached for my cane next to the bed. “I’m getting dressed right now, Mimi. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’m going to call Eli and Sam Constantine. I’ll see you in less than an hour.”

“Please hurry,” she begged. “I’m so scared.”

I hung up and called Eli. Not surprisingly, I woke him up. “Aw, Jesus H. Christ,” he said. “What did she do? I don’t need this right now.”

“Next time I’ll get her to plan her hit-and-run or whatever it is around your schedule,” I said coldly. “And for the record, she should have been with you last night. Getting the sober-up-or-else talk. What happened, Eli?”

“Don’t you blame me for something she did,” he yelled back. “I had to postpone dinner because a client wanted to meet last night. So I told her we’d do it another time.”

“When did you tell her that?” I said. “She told me she was going to your place last time I talked to her.”

“Right before she was supposed to come over,” he said wearily. “I had my back to the wall, Luce. I have a family to feed, you know. Client wants to meet, I say, ‘How high?’ That’s the way it is.”

“Well, then we both let her down,” I said. “Meet me at the hospital. I’m calling Sam.” I hung up before he could say anything.

I finally reached Sam on my mobile on my way to Leesburg.

“Where is she?” he asked, sounding sleepy and not too pleased to hear from me at this hour.

“Catoctin General.”

“She injured?”

“Lord.” I was stunned. “I never asked. She was crying pretty hard and she said the police say she killed someone. Says she doesn’t even remember getting behind the wheel of the car.”

“Aw, Christ.” He was wide awake now. “That’s bad already. She needs to keep her mouth shut.”

“I’m not even sure she’s sober at the moment.”

He groaned again. “I’ll get there as fast as I can. But if you reach her first, tell her to button it and not to sign anything. I’ll fax something over to the hospital so we’re on record in case I need to make a Fourth Amendment challenge to anything she says. You can bet they read her her Miranda rights, but if her BAC was above point-oh-eight, then she could have heard the Pledge of Allegiance.”

I put my foot down on the accelerator and checked my rearview mirror. I had Route 15, once the trail of Indians, to myself. Good thing, too, at my speed. I tried to keep the anxiety out of my voice. “She won’t go to jail for this, will she? If it was an accident?”

“At the moment, let’s just work on fixing things so they don’t lock her up today.”

He hung up and I sped toward Leesburg.

I got to the hospital parking lot fifteen minutes later. The same cop who had looked after me the morning I found Georgia was outside the building, talking into a microphone on his shoulder as I walked up to the entrance.

“Are you here with my sister?” I asked. “Mia Montgomery?”

“Just leaving. There’s a female officer with her now.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Didn’t put two and two together that she was your sister.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“She struck a Jeep Wrangler broadside at the intersection of the Snickersville Turnpike and Sam Fred Road about four a.m.,” he said. “Right now it appears she was operating a vehicle while intoxicated. So far there’s one fatality. He died in the ambulance. The other passenger is in serious condition.”

My voice was unsteady. “Oh, my God. Do you know who they are? The people in the other car.”

“Sorry. We’re still trying to reach the next of kin.”

“Was it kids?”

He hesitated, then said, “What’s left of ’em.”

I chewed my lip to keep from crying. I felt numb. “I’m so sorry. She says she didn’t do it. I know that sounds impossible. But she says she didn’t.”

Somebody squawked again on his shoulder, like a parakeet. “With all due respect, miss,” he said, “they all say that. ’Scuse me, please.”

He turned away and I walked blindly toward the emergency room doors. They closed behind me with the same hiss of finality I remembered from the night Quinn and I were here to see Hector. It seemed like a million years ago. This time the person behind the ER waiting room desk was taking orders from the police. I asked to see Mia and was politely but firmly turned down. Sam had no such problem.

“She has the right to counsel,” he barked. “Let me back there immediately.”

“I’ll give you a full report,” he said to me as the doors slid open. “Sit tight and don’t you talk to anybody, either.”

Eli was the last to arrive. God, had he taken the time to shower, shave, and put on pressed khaki shorts and another embroidered Hilton Head shirt? I’d pulled on the first pair of jeans I found, a T-shirt with dull purple stains on it, no makeup, and scraped my hair into a ponytail.

“Sam’s with her,” I told him. He exuded a powerfully sweet fruity scent. “Whoa. Did you take a bath in your cologne or maybe pour it on your head?”

He fingered the sleeve of my T-shirt. “Unlike you, I decided not to show up in what I slept in. If you must know, I was pretty shook up after you called. Dropped the damn bottle and it broke all over the marble floor in the bathroom. We might have to regrout where the cologne left a stain. At least the house smells good.”

“I don’t think there’s a dress code for when your sister might go to jail,” I said. “Eli, she was driving drunk and she killed a kid. The police told me she broadsided a Jeep Wrangler. The other passenger is in tough shape.”

He walked me over to the familiar rows of molded plastic chairs. Fortunately the television was off. “Oh, God,” he said as we sat down. “That’s manslaughter. If she was drunk it might be voluntary manslaughter. I’m not sure, though. Jesus, Lucie. She will do jail time for this.”

I swallowed hard. “Maybe she’ll get a suspended sentence.”

“Not if she killed somebody. Especially if she plowed into the other car. No way to get around that.”

“I wonder who the other family is. Or families.” My eyes watered and I swiped at them with the back of my hand. “How did it come to this?”

“Yesterday was graduation at all the high schools,” Eli said. “One of my coworkers had a daughter who finished at Blue Ridge High. Took the day off. They were having a big party. Probably not the only ones. And hell, graduation night. I’m sure some of those kids weren’t drinking lemonade before they started tooling around in Daddy’s BMW…or the Jeep Wrangler.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. “Here. Use this. It’s gross when you use your hand.”

I took it and wiped my eyes again. “She doesn’t remember getting behind the wheel.”

“Great. She must have been really wasted.”

“I don’t know. I talked to her. She was adamant that she didn’t do it.”

“Well, who was driving the damn car, then? Elvis? Come on. Her car. She was found at the scene.” He held out both hands, palms up, and shrugged. “What’s not to understand here?”

The door to the inner sanctum of the emergency room opened and we both spun around in our seats. Sam Constantine strode out, looking like he would dismember anyone who got in his way, then dine on their entrails.

“This isn’t good,” Eli muttered. He stood up and put out his hand. “Sam. Thanks so much for coming. Sorry I missed you before you went in to see her. What’s the story?”

Sam shook Eli’s hand. “The story,” he said, “is bad.” His eyes were the color of tombstones. He glanced at Eli. His nose twitched, but he said nothing.

“How bad?” I asked.

“Her car hit the Jeep. Graduation present for the eighteen-year-old driver, who had his high school diploma in his back pocket. The girlfriend’s seventeen. Looks like she’ll pull through. Sheriff’s on his way to visit the parents and tell ’em. Christ. I don’t envy him, knocking on those doors.” He ran a hand through his shaggy gray hair and looked up with anguished eyes. “Last thing Mia remembers is being at Abby Lang’s house. They were drinking something that goes by the name of ‘Southern Smasher.’ Cognac, Red Bull, and peach schnapps. God help us all. The Lang kid’s boyfriend dumped her and she was feeling sorry for herself. Mia wanted to be a good friend so she kept Abby company. Doesn’t remember how many she put away. Said she passed out in the bedroom.”

“How’d she get in her car?” Eli asked.

“She hasn’t got a clue.”

“Oh, God. Where was Hugo?” I asked.

“The senator wasn’t home. Just the two girls. Housekeeper had the weekend off.” Sam shrugged. “Next thing she knows, she’s facedown on the ground next to her car. Lights and sirens everywhere. The other driver and the girlfriend were drinking, too, but she hit them, so it’s clearly her fault. It must have stopped raining by then, because they had the top down, the whole nine yards, so it was like she hit a dune buggy or a golf cart. The driver didn’t have a prayer.”

I covered my mouth with my hands and clamped my lips shut, afraid I would scream.

“What does Abby Lang say?” Eli asked.

“That’s where I’m headed right now.” Sam sounded grim. “Assuming she’s in any shape to talk.”

“What about Mia?” I asked. “Is she going to jail?”

Sam looked at me with eyes that said he’d spent a lifetime talking to people like me after someone they loved had accidentally committed a felony and he was their salvation to make it go away.

“Honey,” he said, “right now I’d say the odds are pretty good that she will. They’re gonna draw blood here at the hospital to see what her BAC is. They’ve agreed to defer her arrest until they get the toxicology report because she’s known in the community and I said she wasn’t a flight risk.”

My throat was dry. “How long?”

“Three to four weeks.”

“Then what?” Eli asked.

He sighed again. “If it’s above point-oh-eight, she’ll be charged with vehicular manslaughter because she was DUI. In that case she’ll do time. Below that level…” He shrugged. “We might get it knocked down to involuntary manslaughter. Suspended sentence and community service. Teach an alcohol awareness class in schools for a year, eighteen months. And go to AA.”

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“Besides wait?” he said. “Well, they’re going to release her shortly. So get her home and chain her to something, because if she so much as puts a whisker out of line before that tox report comes back, they’ll lock her up before you can say jackrabbit.”

“Yes, sir,” Eli said.

“Do you think she did it, Sam?” I asked. “What if she’s telling the truth?”

“She is an unreliable witness,” he said, eyeing me. “But I’m going to talk to the Lang girl.”

“How can we thank you?” I said.

He smiled without showing any teeth. “Oh, don’t you worry,” he said. “There’s a little something I like to call ‘the bill.’ All the thanks I need.”

He left and I looked at Eli.

“God,” I said, “what has she gotten us into?”

Dominique became a U.S. citizen later that afternoon. Joe took her down to the community center in Alexandria where, along with two hundred or so others, she signed her naturalization document in front of the judge, then pledged allegiance to the United States of America. After that, she was an American.

The only people allowed in the crowded room were the newly minted citizens-to-be, so Joe never got to witness the big moment. When they got back to the vineyard, we carried on with plans for a family dinner at the house, though the atmosphere was more like a funeral than a party. No one spoke about what had happened, but it was like trying to ignore a hundred elephants in the room. Fortunately, the presence of a baby—Eli and Brandi had brought Hope—provided a welcome distraction. Mia excused herself when we brought out the cake and Dominique didn’t want us to serve the champagne, but I insisted.

The party we’d scheduled for all of her friends on Sunday afternoon at the villa was now up in the air, especially after the news of the accident made the front page of the newspapers, including photographs of Mia and the two other kids. The last thing anyone felt like doing was celebrating.

“Why don’t we postpone?” Dominique said. “It’s terrible timing.”

“I’m so sorry about this. Maybe in a few weeks we can reschedule,” I said. “But we ordered all the food, so what if we just invite your staff over for a buffet? We can call everyone else. I don’t think we’ll have to explain much. If we miss anyone or someone does show up, they can join us.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll get a couple of my waitresses to make the calls.”

“I’ve ruined her citizenship party along with everything else I’ve done,” Mia said the next morning as she sat cross-legged on my bed, watching me change into a sundress. “She’s waited years for this. I’m not going, you know, even if it is just the staff from the Inn. Everyone will look at me like I’m a monster.” She pulled a pack of tissues out of the pocket of her jeans, tears streaming down her face. “I can’t believe I killed that boy,” she said. “I just can’t.”

“You don’t remember anything,” I said. “So what makes you so sure you didn’t? You already have a history of drinking and driving. You pushed your luck that you didn’t get caught before. This time you did and you killed someone.” I was so angry with her, but so scared for her, too.

“No,” she insisted. “That’s not true! Okay, I drank. But I never drove, not even after one drink. I’m not stupid. I always went with a DD.”

“You actually thought about a designated driver? What about that ticket?”

“Of course I did. And the ticket was for public drunkenness. Just a fine. Not DUI.”

“Did any of the kids you were hanging out with drink and drive?”

She made a face like she’d just eaten something nasty. “A few.”

“Who?”

“Brad. Abby’s boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. And a couple of the others. I don’t know them too well.”

“I don’t know why Abby didn’t take your keys away from you,” I said. “‘Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.’”

Mia swallowed. “She’s no friend anymore. Not after what she told Mr. Constantine. She was already loaded when I got there, crying about Brad. She found out he slept with someone else. I thought she was gonna kill him. It’s not true that I’m the one who insisted on making those drinks. Anyway, I had a horrible headache when I got there. She gave me something for it and I lay down for a while. When I woke up she handed me a drink.”

“What’d she give you for your headache?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I dunno. I thought it was aspirin. Whatever it was, it worked.”

“Well, the way this is going down it’s your word against hers. Sam said she claimed you took off before she could stop you. Her father said Abby was home when he got in around midnight. In bed. He knew she had been drinking, but she’s not underage. Sam wasn’t sure Hugo wasn’t going to get fined or worse for allowing a minor to consume alcohol on the premises, considering what you did after you left there. The fact that he wasn’t home doesn’t get him off the hook, but it’s probably a mitigating factor.”

She buried her head in her hands. Her voice was muffled. “God, I just don’t know. It didn’t happen like that, I swear.”

“Then how did you end up at the scene of an accident?” I demanded. So far I’d been trying to keep my voice even, but what she said was physically impossible. I ticked things off on my fingers. “You were banged up. You were driving that car. No one else was there except you and the other two kids. What other explanation is there?”

She looked up, her pretty young face ravaged and grief-stricken. “I swear on Mom’s grave, Lucie. I think I got set up. But I don’t know how.”

“Stay here,” I said, “while I’m at the villa. And stay out of trouble. The strongest thing you can drink is coffee. Got that?”

“What should I do?” she wailed. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“I don’t know,” I said, exasperated. “Watch a movie. Watch TV. Read a book. Do your laundry. But do not leave this house under any circumstances.”

She nodded, looking completely broken. I swallowed the lump in my throat and left for the villa. I should have hugged her and told her it would be okay. But it wasn’t okay and she’d been playing with fire. She had taken a life. The newspaper photographs were the high school photos for all three of them. The boy had been a good-looking kid, though the bow tie of his tuxedo was slightly askew and his smile had a bit of the devil in it. But his eyes were intelligent and hopeful and now there would be one lucky wait-listed person who would take his place at Princeton. At least his girlfriend was reported to be in stable condition, thank God.

Almost everyone who wasn’t actually working the Sunday lunch shift at the Inn showed up for the buffet. As expected, it was a subdued afternoon. I was in the kitchen removing the plastic wrap from another tray of hors d’oeuvres when Quinn showed up, sunburned from the beach and sporting a new Hawaiian shirt. He looked good.

He leaned against the doorway. “You’ve had the weekend from hell, haven’t you?”

“Not as bad as the weekend the family of the boy Mia killed is having.”

He walked over to me. “Why didn’t you call me?”

I said unsteadily, “It’s a family matter. And you were…away.”

“I would have come back immediately if I’d known.”

I hadn’t cried the whole weekend, for the dead boy, for the grief my sister had caused their family, for the absolute tragedy of the situation. “It has nothing to do with the vineyard. You don’t need to be involved.” The tears streamed down my face and I looked around for a napkin, anything, to wipe them away.

He pulled me to him and stroked my hair. “I’m sorry what I said about Mia before. I had no right to do that. It was out of line.”

“It’s okay,” I said into his shirt. “Don’t worry about it.”

He kicked the kitchen door shut with the heel of his boot and let me cry it out in choked hushed sobs while he held me. “What if they can hear me out there?” I said, finally. “Everyone will wonder. And I should take this tray out to the terrace.”

“Shhh,” he whispered. “No one wonders anything. I’ll take it out in a few minutes. Calm down and take a deep breath. That’s a good girl.” He handed me a cocktail napkin that said “Congratulations” on it in flowery script. “You going to be all right?”

I wiped my eyes. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I’ll be right back.” He picked up the tray.

“That’s not what I meant.”

He’d been about to open the door, but he stopped and set the tray back down. “What did you mean?”

I twisted the small napkin into a knot. “I don’t want you to leave the vineyard. I want you to stay.”

He looked at me for what seemed like an eternity and I could see the futility in his eyes that meant my plea was too little too late and the die was already cast. But all he said was, “I’ll be back.”

When he finally returned with two more empty trays, I was leaning against the counter with wet napkins pressed against my eyes like compresses. “How do I look?” I took away the napkins and blinked. “Can you tell anything?”

“You look fine,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get back out there.”

The party broke up not long after that. Dominique left for the Inn with Joe. Her staff stayed behind to clean up.

“We’ve got things under control here,” Quinn said to me. “Why don’t you take off?”

“You sure?”

He nodded. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Babysitting my sister.”

“Call me if you need anything,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. “How did it go in Virginia Beach?”

He smiled ruefully. “Okay, I guess. Bonita ran into some friends she knew from around here. She wanted to stay and party with them, so she’s still there. I came back alone. She’s catching a ride back later tonight with some guy she used to date.”

“Oh.” I studied him. “Everything all right with you two?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“No reason. Thanks for the reprieve on cleaning up. I owe you.”

“No, you don’t. See you tomorrow.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “With everything that happened, I’ve been holding off telling you. But you need to know. We heard from Belcher.”

The EPA verdict. “How bad?”

“A fine. We got off easy, considering. They’re going to throw the book at Lambert Chemical, though.” He handed me the paper. “I’m glad it’s over with. This thing with your sister. Georgia. Randy. Maybe now we can start moving on.”

“Yes,” I said, “now all I can think about is whether Mia is going to jail or not.”

He looked at me sadly. “Aw, honey. You poor kid. Go home and get some rest.”

I drove back to the house, completely confused. Was he leaving or wasn’t he? He never said, one way or the other.

I found Mia stretched out on the glider, drinking something straw-colored and thumbing through the book of prints I’d bought from Mac.

“What is that?” I hadn’t meant to sound sharp, but it looked like Chardonnay.

“Apple juice. I swear. Want to try?” She held up the glass.

“No, it’s okay. Sorry I snapped at you. But be careful you don’t slosh anything on that book while you’re lying there. It cost six hundred dollars. I think some of those prints will make nice labels for the new wines. If they get wet they’ll be ruined.”

She sat up and swung her long tanned legs around so her feet were on the floor. “Six hundred?” She looked stunned. “You paid six hundred dollars for a damaged book?”

My turn to be surprised. “Damaged how?”

“It’s got missing pages.”

I sat down next to her and the glider rocked back and forth. “Show me.”

She opened the book to the flyleaf. “Here. Looks like maybe one page was cut out.” Then she flipped to the back. “And here. Two pages. See those tiny edges? If you’re going to cannibalize it, I guess it doesn’t matter. Where’d you get it?”

“From Mac Macdonald. Someone bought it, then returned it. Mac knew I was looking for wildflower prints.”

Mia sipped her apple juice. “Probably whoever returned it found the cut pages after they bought it.”

Or maybe that person was responsible for the damage. “Wonder what was on those pages,” I said.

“Nothing. They were probably the blank pages at the beginning and end of a book. I bet there was an inscription or some notes on them and somebody decided to remove them.”

I glanced at my watch. “I’m going to call Mac and ask him about that.”

I got through to the antique store a minute after five p.m. and the phone immediately went to the answering machine. I hung up without leaving a message.

Mia was hungry for the first time all day and I’d been too distracted to remember to bring anything back from Dominique’s reception. I fixed her bacon and eggs in the kitchen while she sat at the old pine table and read the comics, like she used to do as a kid.

“Boy,” she said gloomily, “my horoscope’s dead right. ‘Sitting on hold is frustrating.’ Too bad I couldn’t have Mom’s. Taurus always has good ones. ‘Out of your efforts springs something magical.’”

“What’s mine?”

“Cancer. The crab.” She looked up and grinned. “‘Push yourself to do the very thing you don’t want to do.’ Ring any bells?”

“Too many,” I said. “Put that away.”

She went to bed after dinner. I cleaned up and threw the newspaper in the recycling bin. But not before I read the rest of my horoscope. “A great deal is accomplished alone and in silence.”

I got the book of prints and went to the library, which had been Leland’s office until the fire destroyed most of it. His extensive collection of books on Thomas Jefferson had literally gone up in smoke and none of the furniture had been salvageable. My mother had once gone tartan-mad in decorating the room—heavy doses of red and green plaid on a heathery purple background, the colors of our modern tartan. It had always seemed a bit eye-popping and agitated to me and I didn’t spend much time there.

After the fire I knew I wanted the original floor-to-ceiling bookshelves rebuilt and then, in honor of my clan—my family, my history—I again used the Montgomery colors, though this time opting for our ancient tartan in the calmer shades of sage green and Wedgwood blue. I sat in a tartan-covered wing chair by the fireplace and turned on the three-way reading lamp to its full wattage. Not that I needed it.

The uneasiness that had been haunting me all evening had bloomed to real fear. And anger. Mac wouldn’t have lied to me about the condition of the book. He was an eccentric businessman, but he was an honest one. I flipped through the pages one more time. I’d seen that distinctive thick cream paper somewhere else.

The letter Jefferson Davis wrote to Judah Benjamin.

If Ross had cut out the pages before returning the book to Mac, then to whom had he given them so that person had been able to forge the letter? Had he done it himself? The forgery had obviously been good enough to fool some expert analyst who believed it was genuine. Meaning the forger had to be a real master at what he did.

I left the book in the library and got a bottle of one of our best Chardonnays from the wine cellar. This time I went to the summer-house.

Ross told me once that in medical school he’d been taught to diagnose disease and illness by their own version of Occam’s razor—that usually there is a common, logical, and easily understandable diagnosis for a patient’s symptoms. When you hear hoof beats, first think horses, not zebras. Assume the easiest and most obvious explanation.

But as I sat there watching the stars for the second time in two nights, wishing Quinn were here with his telescope to distract me, I couldn’t help myself. There were exceptions to every theory. And God help me, this time I did not think horses.

I thought zebras.