The Chardonnay Charade

Chapter 2

A single bar on the battery display of my mobile phone after a long day—and night—of use meant I didn’t have much juice left. It survived the call to 911 and then another brief call to Quinn. His comment was, fortunately, succinct and to the point.

“Shit,” he said. “Where are you? Don’t move. I’m coming.”

The hardest call came next. I dialed Ross’s home number. Their answering machine picked up—his voice, not Georgia’s—and I disconnected. You didn’t leave a message about something like this. I managed to get a call through to his mobile phone. He answered immediately.

“Lucie!” He sounded tired, but I could tell I hadn’t woken him up. “What are you doing calling at this hour? Is everything okay?”

“Ross, I’m so sorry. I’m at the vineyard. I just found the Explorer when I was driving down the south service road. Did you and Georgia switch cars last night? I mean…she’s lying beside it…I’m so sorry.” I swallowed. “Ross, I think she had a seizure or something. She’s dead.”

For a moment I thought the phone had finally died, because of his silence. Then he said in a soft, stunned voice, “Oh, God. You found Georgia?” After that, more silence.

“Ross? Are you there? My phone battery is going. Look, I called 911 and they’re on their way.” The phone beeped in my ear. “Where are you?”

“Heading home,” he said. “I’ve been out all night. One of my patients had twins. I’ll be right there. Give me five minutes…”

Another beep and the display went black. I flung the phone on the passenger seat as Quinn’s metallic green El Camino came down the road from the opposite direction. He pulled up next to me and got out.

“You all right?” he asked. “Where is she?”

“Over there.” I pointed. “Next to the door by the driver’s side.”

“You’re sure she’s dead and not passed out?”

“She looked pretty dead to me.” My voice shook.

“Stay here.” When he came back, his face was somber. “I didn’t touch her, but she’s dead, all right. Looks like she puked her guts up. God, does Ross know yet?”

“He’s on his way. I got him on his mobile. On his way home after delivering twins all night.” In the distance, the sound of more tires on gravel. “I bet that’s him.”

A moment later Georgia’s burgundy Mercedes Roadster came into view. Ross, behind the wheel, looked grim.

“Where are the cops?” Quinn asked quietly. “I thought you told me you called 911 right before you called me.”

“I did. They should be here any minute.”

Ross got out of the Roadster and ran to the Explorer.

“He shouldn’t be alone with her,” I said. “I’m going to him.”

I’d gotten to within ten feet of where Ross knelt over his wife when I felt Quinn’s restraining hand on my shoulder. “Leave him, Lucie.” He kept his voice low.

As Quinn spoke, Ross gently turned Georgia over and took her in his arms.

“Oh, my God!” I cried softly. “What happened to her face? All those blisters and burn marks. How did they get there?”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Quinn sounded shaken. “Exposure to methyl bromide can do that.”

I stared at him, not wanting to believe what he’d just said. “You don’t think she got too near the fields?” His eyes connected with mine and then I got it. “Oh, my God. Someone did this deliberately?”

“Unless she crawled under one of the tarps—which I seriously doubt—then, yeah, it was deliberate. Christ, who would do that?”

I swallowed. “We better get Ross away from her.”

“It’s a gas. There’s nothing left. We should tell him, though.” Quinn sounded tense.

In the distance, sirens wailed. “The sheriff’s here,” I said.

“Sounds like they’re heading toward the winery,” Quinn muttered. “Didn’t you tell them where to come?”

“I think so. I don’t remember. My battery was dying, so I made it quick.”

He gave me his phone. “Call them. And this time tell them to get the hazmat guys here, too.”

“Looks like we can tell them in person.” The first tan and gold cruisers from the sheriff’s department seemed to change direction and now screamed down the service road toward us. “Looks like they found us after all.”

As the crow flies, Loudoun County, Virginia, is only about fifty miles from Washington, D.C.—a city that vies annually for the dubious honor of murder capital of the U.S. Here, though, in the rural affluent heart of horse and hunt country, the crimes are minor—mostly juvenile in nature, pranks gone awry. Toilet-papering some-one’s house at Halloween. Turning street signs around. Graffiti spray-painted on a wall somewhere. Harmless stuff.

A murder was a big deal. This one was about to be an even bigger deal when we told the police what we suspected. A couple of uniformed officers went straight to Ross, who was cradling Georgia in his lap. Another officer approached Quinn and me.

“What happened?” he said. “Do you know who she is?”

“Georgia Greenwood. That’s her husband.” My mouth tasted like I’d just chewed sawdust. “I found her and called him. But there’s something you need to know right off the bat. We treated some nearby fields with a pesticide called methyl bromide yesterday. It’s a gas, but it’s highly toxic. We’ve got tarps over the fields and we posted warning signs.” I glanced at Quinn and continued. “But there’s still some of the stuff here at the vineyard. We’re storing it for the company that applied it for us.”

The officer’s eyes grew big. “Where here?”

“About half a mile away,” Quinn said. “But those blisters on her face. They could be from exposure to methyl bromide.”

“Holy shit.” He turned and called to the other officers. “We got a hot zone here. Methyl bromide. It’s a pesticide.”

He had their undivided attention.

“Then we better get the fire boys here quick,” one of them said. “I heard the hazmat team was looking for volunteers so they could run a drill. Looks like they got lucky. We got the real thing.”

I lost track of the number of vehicles and uniformed men and women who showed up, but it looked—from a distance—like every cop, firefighter, and EMT in Loudoun and Fauquier Counties was on the scene. While we waited for the hazmat team to arrive, Quinn, Ross, and I were isolated with the officers and Georgia in the area they’d called the hot zone. Two officers escorted Ross over to where Quinn and I stood, though he hadn’t wanted to leave his wife.

Last night he’d been elegant in a tuxedo. Now he looked exhausted in faded jeans, running shoes, and a plaid flannel work shirt over a gray athletic T-shirt. He was sandy-haired, with a fair complexion and pale eyes, and when I first met him as his patient I thought Ross looked like someone who could have been delicate or often sick as a kid—an easy target for bullies. I’d been right, but years of taunting and bullying the child had shaped the man into someone tough as old boots when he needed to be. He’d earned a black belt in karate and ran the Marine Corps marathon every year. And ever since he’d joined the clinic, he’d been tireless in caring for the large local immigrant community. Legal or illegal, insured or uninsured, it didn’t matter.

“I don’t think we’re in any danger ourselves from being exposed to Georgia,” Ross was now saying tiredly. “But I guess the hazmat guys will probably err on the side of caution.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“They may want to decontaminate us, though I doubt it.”

A large black man wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit, a mask, an oxygen tank, and salmon-colored rubber boots came over to us. “What do we got, folks?” His voice, through his mask, sounded muffled.

I opened my mouth to explain, but Ross took the lead. “Possible exposure to methyl bromide.” He spoke now with a doctor’s brisk efficiency. “I’ve treated a number of farmworkers for it. If any of us have been affected, there’ll be signs of respiratory distress, probably in the next four to twelve hours. Otherwise, we’re looking for headaches, dizziness, nausea, slurred speech…and I don’t think we’ve got any of that here. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think you need to keep us in the hot zone.”

Something nearby beeped. “What is that?” I asked nervously. “Is something wrong?”

The firefighter shook his helmeted head. “Calm down, miss. Happens when one of us stands still too long. You hear a beep in a burning building and maybe you got a buddy dead or passed out somewhere.”

“Oh.” My head started to ache, along with my bad foot and just about everything else, but it was probably the lack of sleep and maybe dehydration after drinking so much coffee. And maybe the power of suggestion. Ross said we were in no danger, even if we were being treated as though we might suddenly start glowing.

One of the other yellow-suited men called to our firefighter.

“I gotta look at this. Stay put, folks,” he told us, and left.

“How would they decontaminate us? What do they do? And how do you know so much about it?” I asked Ross.

“I’ve been helping out with the mandatory hazmat training at the hospital,” he explained. “We’re doing terrorism drills just like the police and the fire department. Like I said, I don’t think they’re going to put us through it today. But if they did, first we’d have the gross decon, where they’d make us strip and then hose us down.”

“Hose us down with what?” My heart began thudding against my ribs.

Ross pointed over to the fire trucks. “Those.”

“Oh, my God.”

“You mean strip to our underwear?” Quinn asked.

“Nope. Right down to our birthday suits. Then after the hoses, a second shower or lots more water to remove whatever’s left.”

“I do not need to do this,” I said emphatically, leaning on my cane. “I’m fine.”

Ross had seen my ugly twisted foot often enough, but I never let anyone else get close enough to look. I’d take my negligible chances of chemical poisoning over parading around naked in front of every firefighter and cop in two counties. Stupid, maybe, but we all have our vanities.

“It’s for your own good,” Ross said. “And they wouldn’t ask, either. But don’t worry, it’s probably unnecessary in this case.” His voice shook a little. “On the other hand, they will decontaminate Georgia.”

For a moment I thought he might break down. They would hose Georgia’s body down like they were cleaning a fish on a pier. I said, chagrined, “I’m so sorry. Sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut.”

Our firefighter returned and led us out of the hot zone through a maze of emergency vehicles. It had been less than two hours since I’d found Georgia alone on this deserted road. Now there were easily a hundred people milling around. Ross, Quinn, and I were separated, each of us accompanied by a police officer.

I lost sight of them in the crowd, but I didn’t have much time to speculate where they went before Bobby Noland, carrying a reporter’s notebook with a pen clipped to it, stood in front of me looking none too happy. We’d known each other since I was in the second grade and he was in the fourth. Now he was a detective with the sheriff’s department and caught criminals. He unclipped the pen and clicked it like he was detonating something.

“Hey, Lucie,” he said. “I need to talk to you. First, I’m asking as a formality if we’ve got your permission to be here so we can process the scene. If you say no, I’ll be back with a search warrant.”

If it had been anyone else but Bobby, I might have been intimidated. “Of course you have permission. But be careful around the vines, okay? It’s easy to knock the grapes off and that’s our harvest.”

Bobby tapped the pen against his notebook and looked annoyed. “You got a homicide here. Not to mention a serious EPA violation on your hands. From what I hear, that menthol bromite is supposed to be under lock and key.”

“Methyl bromide.” I said. “I know. It’s a long story.”

“Well, you’ll get to tell it to someone from the EPA soon enough. And speaking of stories, is it true you were here all night with a helicopter flying overhead that had a searchlight on it? And nobody saw anything? Not even that chopper?”

“He was paying attention to a couple of blocks of vines, flying about fifteen feet off the ground. It was all he could do to see them. Quinn and I wore protective headgear because of the noise. We wouldn’t have heard a bomb go off,” I said.

In the past hour the mist had rolled in, softening the hard edges of the scene unfolding around us. The earlier cacophony of sirens, walkie-talkies, and shouting voices overlaid with the droning engines of emergency vehicles grew muted as though filtered through gauze.

“You had a party last night, too,” he said. “Georgia Greenwood came.”

“Along with almost everyone else in Atoka,” I said. “We hosted the fund-raiser for the free clinic.”

“When’s the last time you saw Georgia? Alive.”

“When the party ended around eleven.”

“What was she doing? Was she with anyone?”

I nodded. “Just saying good night to everyone. Then she left with Hugo Lang.”

Bobby rolled his eyes. “He was the last person you saw with her before she got popped? Aw, jeez. A U.S. senator. Just what I need. Where was Ross?”

Popped. I winced. “He got called away early. One of his patients went into labor. He was out all night delivering twins.”

Bobby wrote in the notebook. “What time did he leave?”

I tried to remember. Last time I’d seen him he’d been talking to Siri Randstad, the clinic’s executive director.

“I think it might have been when the band finished their last set. So around ten-thirty.”

“I need a guest list,” Bobby said. “Everyone who was there. Also waiters, waitresses. And anyone you got working at the vineyard.”

“The guest list is in my office at the winery. Quinn has the information on our workers and the day laborers. Dominique can tell you about the catering staff.”

“Anybody else I missed? You have any music or entertainment?”

“Randy Hunter’s band played all night.”

Bobby looked up from his notes. “You kiddin’ me? No offense, but what’s a redneck band doing playing for that kind of fancy-dress crowd?”

“Georgia set it up,” I said. “Randy did it for free because it was good exposure, plus it was for charity.”

“She did, did she? All right. Anything else I should know?” When I hesitated, he added, “Make my job easy, Lucie. If you don’t tell me, I’ll find out anyway.” He tapped his pen on the notebook.

“Harry Dye got drunk and gave Georgia a piece of his mind.”

“Talk to me.”

“She and Hugo Lang went up onstage during one of the band’s breaks so she could announce that he was endorsing her for state senate.”

“Harry went with them?”

“No, of course not. Actually…” I stopped.

He was right on top of me. “Yeah? What?”

“Harry’d just finished having it out with Randy. Then Georgia started to talk and Harry started in heckling her. Something about, ‘Gals like you ought to stay home where you belong instead of trying to mind everybody else’s business.’”

“You mean he had words with Georgia and Randy? Jeez. What’d he say to Randy?”

“I didn’t hear.”

“All right. Go on about Georgia.”

“It was over pretty quickly. The place went completely quiet, then Georgia told him he’d obviously had one too many drinks and that he wasn’t a good advertisement for his own vineyard,” I said. “Polite, but you could tell she was ready to rip his insides out and tie them in a knot. Luckily, a couple of the Romeos hauled Harry out of there right away. I think they took him home.”

The Romeos were a group of retired businessmen whose name stood for “Retired Old Men Eating Out.” Patrons of a grateful network of local restaurants and cafés, they played poker, solved the world’s problems, and, along with Thelma Johnson, who owned the general store, were the richly vibrant source of local information otherwise known as gossip. In Atoka the six degrees of separation rapidly compressed to two.

“Which Romeos?” Bobby asked.

“Austin Kendall and Seth Hannah.”

He noted that, then said, “You got any idea what Georgia would be doing on your service road in the middle of the night?”

“No. It’s not open to the public unless it’s apple-picking season. The only people who used it yesterday were the caterers and the people who brought in the tents. The guests came by the main road and parked in the winery parking lot. Then they walked to the Ruins.”

“Everybody leave the way they came?”

“I’m not sure, since I took off around midnight. But usually once the guests leave, the staff takes Sycamore Lane. The service road’s full of potholes. If you don’t know where they are—especially in the dark—it’s hard on your alignment.”

He shut the notebook. “I’d appreciate having that guest list. My officer will drive you over to the winery.”

“Okay if I take my car?” I asked. “It’s over by where Georgia…The hazmat guys don’t need to decontaminate it, do they?”

Bobby eyed me. “I’ll ask. Stay here.”

He returned about fifteen minutes later. “You can take your car. They don’t need to do any decon,” he said. “By the way, who uses that old hay barn you got over by the creek?”

“We let Randy’s band practice there,” I said.

“Practice what?”

“Music. What else would they be practicing?”

Bobby eyed me skeptically. “One of my men just radioed from your barn. He found an open package of condoms in the loft. Some quilts and a sleeping bag, too. You know anything about that?”

I blushed and said, surprised, “No, I did not.”

“Any idea what women Randy and his band might have brought there?”

“No.” I’m a terrible liar. My face always turns red. Bobby’d been watching it do that since I was eight.

“Lucie?” He waited.

“Just a rumor about Randy. He, uh, might have brought Georgia.”

Now it was his turn to look surprised. “Are you kidding me? Randy and Georgia, huh?” He shook his head wonderingly. “You see him leave the party last night?”

“When it was over and the band packed up. About eleven-thirty.”

“Was he with anyone?”

“Nope. Alone. The rest of the band left earlier.” I leaned on my cane. My throbbing left foot felt like hundreds of pins and needles were stabbing it. “Anything else, or can I go now?”

“As a matter of fact, there is something else,” he said. “I got good news and bad news for you. The good news is that considering the location of the crime scene, we’re not going to make you temporarily close your winery while we do our investigation.”

“I appreciate that. And the bad news?”

“The EPA might not be feeling so generous by the time they get through with you. Those boys could slap a big ole fine on you and take your bonded license away for leaving that menthol stuff out by those new fields.” He looked at me severely. “In other words, they could shut you down for good.”