The Riesling Retribution

Chapter 11

I went back to the fields and spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up storm debris. When I got home that evening, Eli’s Jaguar was sitting in my driveway. I parked behind it and listened as piano music flooded through the open windows of the sunroom. It sounded like Chopin—something torrential and passionate played on my great-great-grandmother’s Bösendorfer concert grand, a wedding present purchased by her husband on their Austrian honeymoon. I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me. Eli could have gone to Juilliard or studied with some top teacher and actually made a living as a concert pianist, he was that talented.

The piece crashed to an end with a dissonant chord Chopin hadn’t written. I went inside, wondering what had happened to bring my brother here again. Maybe he was even more desperate for money than the last time we’d spoken.

He looked up from the keyboard when he heard me. Disheveled and unshaven, his eyes had the look of a dog that had been kicked repeatedly and had no idea why. In the cheery room filled with light pouring in through the banks of windows and reflecting off walls painted the color of liquid sunshine, he seemed dark, disturbed—and broken.

I crossed the room and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “What happened? Where are Hope and Brandi? Are they all right?”

He shrugged and ran his finger across the top of the music stand as though checking for dust. “I suppose they’re all right. They’re probably at home.”

“Why aren’t you at home?”

“I’m not living there anymore. We’re splitting. Trial separation.”

I bent down so my cheek rested on top of his head. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yup.” His voice sounded strangled.

“You all right? Where’d you sleep last night?”

“My car. My office.”

He hadn’t answered the first question. “Since when?”

“Couple of nights.”

“Why didn’t you come here?”

“I couldn’t.”

I closed my eyes, not wanting to imagine what he’d done on those nights.

“You’re staying here tonight,” I said. “And as long as you need, until you get things sorted out.”

“Thanks.” He patted my arm, but he still sounded lost.

“You going to see a marriage counselor?”

“Don’t think so. Right now she just wants her space.”

“Where’s your stuff?”

“I grabbed some clothes and threw them in the car. Everything else is still at the house.”

“Well, get what you’ve brought and put it upstairs in your room. I’ll go fix us drinks and dinner. I stopped at Safeway today and restocked my fridge after the power failure. You okay with grilled chicken and asparagus? If you want to take a shower, I’ll start getting it ready.”

“I’m not hungry. Thanks, anyway.”

“You have to eat.”

He got up and looked around the familiar room. “What am I going to do, Luce? What am I going to do?” His voice broke.

“First you’re going to get your clothes out of the car. Then you’re going to take a shower and change. After you eat something you’re going to get a decent night’s sleep in a bed. The rest will come.” I shoved him gently toward the door. “Go on.”

He showed up in the kitchen twenty minutes later wearing old jeans and a faded maroon-and-orange Virginia Tech T-shirt. His dark hair was still wet and he hadn’t bothered with the usual gel, so it fell across his forehead the way it used to before Brandi began masterminding his clothes and appearance, turning him into her own personal dress-up doll.

“Where’d you get that T-shirt?” I uncovered a ceramic bowl of homemade topping for bruschetta.

“There’s still a couple of things in my old dresser upstairs.” He stuck a finger in the bowl and licked it. “Tomato salad?”

“It’s for the bruschetta. Use a spoon if you want to taste it. It’s gross when you use your finger.”

“My finger is very clean. Don’t worry.” He rummaged in the silverware drawer and found a spoon, helping himself to another mouthful. “Tastes good.”

“It ought to. Tomatoes and basil are from my garden.” I pulled a baking pan with half a dozen slices of toasted baguette drizzled in olive oil out of the broiler and handed him a spoon. “Here. The tomatoes go on top of the baguette. Not too much or it gets messy. I’ll finish the asparagus.”

“Brandi orders from every restaurant in Leesburg. Otherwise, it’s frozen.” He heaped tomatoes on a piece of bread and ate it. “Where’d you learn to make this?”

“Dominique served it as an appetizer a couple of times at the Inn. It’s her recipe. Are you planning on eating everything as you fix it, or will you leave some for our drinks?”

“Sorry.” He unclipped his phone from his belt and checked it, setting it on the counter. “I stopped by the General Store. Heard they identified the guy you found. An old friend of Leland’s.”

“Business associate. Doesn’t sound like they were friends,” I said. “His name was Beau Kinkaid. Does it ring any bells?”

Eli picked up his phone and checked his messages again. “Nope. I was probably in diapers when it happened. I was precocious, but not that precocious.”

“It seems it happened thirty years ago,” I said. “So you would have been one.”

“My two-year-old memories are kind of dim.”

“Bobby said Beau Kinkaid’s ex-wife is coming up here from Charlottesville to talk to him. She says the last time she saw her husband alive, he was mad at Leland and wanted to settle things.”

Eli finished fixing the bruschetta and went over to the refrigerator. “What do you have to drink around here? I don’t see any beer.”

“I didn’t know you were coming. There’s a nice bottle of Crémant.”

“Fizzy white. I guess I could drink that.”

We brought the wine and hors d’oeuvres outside to the veranda. Eli took the glider and I sat in the love seat. He popped the Crémant cork and poured, but when we clinked glasses neither of us made a toast. I watched him check his phone yet again.

“Beau Kinkaid’s ex-wife is now Mrs. Sumner Chastain,” I said. “You ever run into Chastain Construction in any of your projects?”

“Chastain Construction has tentacles that reach every state in the southeastern United States. It’s impossible not to run into them.”

“Do they have a good reputation?”

He bit into a piece of bruschetta and thought while he chewed. “Let me put it this way. You know how Quinn talks about the homogenization of the wine world where everybody ultimately ends up making the same Chardonnay or the same Pinot? No distinguishing characteristics of terroir, nothing to reflect the land and soil it came from, or the personality of the winemaker?”

“They build the same buildings?”

“Over and over and over again. Churn ’em out, one homogeneous subdivision, shopping mall, and planned community after another.”

“Nice.”

“They’re big and they get the job done.” He shrugged. “You can’t fight big.”

“Their press people are in charge of managing Annabel Chastain. Kit tried to talk to her. They’ve erected a fortress,” I said.

He glanced at his phone for a few seconds and did some scrolling, then set it on the coffee table.

“You keep doing that,” I said.

“Habit.”

“More like an addiction. Though I don’t blame you for checking in case—”

He cut me off, looking pained. “I’m not just looking to see if she called. I gotta stay on top of stuff at work. This thing gets e-mail, you know.”

“Which you read the millisecond it comes in.”

“So sue me, I’m curious. Anyway, that last one was personal. Remember Zeke Lee? From high school?”

“Vaguely. Friend of yours.”

“He’s coming to that reenactment. Says he belongs to B.J.’s regiment. He asked if I’ll be there.”

“You are coming, I hope?”

“He means as a participant. He says he can loan me whatever clothes and gear I need, if I’m interested. It’s too late to sign up, but I could be a walk-on.”

“They didn’t have cell phones during the Civil War. Or e-mail.”

“What, you think I can’t do without twenty-first-century gadgets for a weekend?”

“Not really. Do you?”

“Of course I can.”

“Maybe you should try it. You mind lighting the grill? I’ll get the chicken.”

“Where’s the electric fire starter?”

“I knew it,” I said and left for the kitchen.

We ate dinner outside by candlelight. By tacit mutual agreement we avoided the subject of Brandi and his marriage. Finally, I brought up Annabel Chastain again.

“Beau’s dead and Leland’s dead. That leaves her,” I said. “That means it’s going to be her word against no one’s. I think she’s setting Leland up for this.”

“If she’s got the Chastain Construction public relations machine behind her, she’s got no worries. They’ll roll right over Leland and that’ll be the end of it. That company’s got more lawyers on their payroll than you got grapes in the vineyard.”

“Well, we’ll just have to fight back.”

“Luce…” He leaned his elbows on the table and massaged his temples. “How are we going to do that? They’ll keep hammering at us until we quit. We haven’t got the money or the resources to go up against them.”

“So you’re saying we should just give up?”

“Look, they must have found a thirty-eight slug if they came by and took Leland’s thirty-eight. What if they find a match? The guy was buried on our land. The ex-wife says there was bad blood. So if I were a betting man I’d say it’s not looking too good for our side.”

“What if he didn’t do it?”

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know.”

Eli clasped his hands behind his head as he stared out toward the mountains.

“I don’t want to believe it, either, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence to refute that he didn’t murder that guy and then cover it up for thirty years.”

“There has to be something,” I said.

Eli looked at me with something between resigned sadness and pity.

“If there is,” he said, “it’ll take a damn miracle to find it. And you can bet Chastain Construction will do their best to make sure you don’t turn up anything. Be careful, Luce. You’re playing with fire.”