The Sauvignon Secret

Chapter 8

Even now when I think back on that night in Charles’s lodge, the three of us sitting around an absurdly comforting fire in the middle of July during the hottest summer since they started keeping records, I have a hard time remembering what really happened and what I imagined had taken place. Charles’s tale of Theo Graf—a scientist he’d believed was dead for more than twenty years who suddenly popped up in California and decided to exact revenge for the accidental death of the young girl who’d been his lover almost half a century ago—sounded like the frayed memories of an old man with a guilt-ridden conscience. Or a narcissist who believed that a series of coincidences involving other people somehow revolved around himself.

The tenuous thread that held Charles’s logic together was a set of wineglasses with the Mandrake Society’s “logo” on them found near the bodies of Mel Racine and Paul Noble, and a fearful belief that Graf might have faked his death, flipped his name around to Fargo, and, for no obvious reason, decided to make good on a decades-old threat.

I have even hazier recollections of discussing this with Pépé when Charles finally called on a gardener who lived on the premises to drive us home that unnaturally cold night. The man’s placid, almost bovine, demeanor when he appeared at the door to the lodge, minutes after Charles phoned him, made me wonder if this were a regular occurrence, and whether it was a little secret to be kept from Juliette that one of her groundskeepers moonlighted as a chauffeur for her husband’s boozy get-togethers. I suspected he was well paid for keeping this extracurricular activity to himself.

“Do you think it’s possible that Teddy Fargo is hunting down anyone who was associated with the Mandrake Society? And that he’s really Theo Graf?” I asked Pépé as the driver pulled out of the Thiessmans’ gravel driveway onto the two-lane country road.

The moon had disappeared and, out here in the middle of farmland, no streetlights illuminated the hairpin turns and unspooling ribbon of hills that our driver navigated with the speed of someone who believed he was being chased. With the exception of two carriage lanterns at the entrance to a gated driveway that flashed by and the dimmed instruments on the dash, the night closed around us like a cocoon.

My head rested on Pépé’s shoulder. I had finally gotten him to put his suit jacket back on. It felt comfortingly scratchy against my cheek, smelling of his cigarettes and old-fashioned aftershave with a mingled hint of my light floral perfume.

“It does sound far-fetched, doesn’t it?” he said. “Who knows what tricks his mind is playing on him after so many years? He’s obsessed with Juliette not knowing a thing about this—and he’s had no one else to discuss it with until tonight.”

“I wish he’d told us the truth about those wineglasses before we started drinking,” I said. “It was sort of creepy once we knew their history.”

“Charles always did have a flair for drama,” Pépé said. “And embellishment.”

“Maybe that’s all this is,” I said.

“You are going to check out this wine for Mick anyway, n’est-ce pas?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Then look for these so-called black roses and that will be the end of it with Charles. At least it will bring him some peace.” He patted my hand. “And Juliette, as well.”

His voice softened when he mentioned her name.

“Okay, I will.”

“And you will be with me for the trip out west,” he continued. “I’ll change the reservation at the hotel in San Francisco and you can stay with my friend Robert Sanábria when you go up to Napa. I’ll join you after my talk. He lives in Calistoga so you’ll be right where you need to be.” Another pat on the hand and he said, sounding happy, “It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow someone some good, eh, ma belle?”

I showed up at Mick Dunne’s for tea on Saturday morning, Bastille Day, looking and feeling like something the cat dragged in. His housekeeper, a pretty, petite Hispanic girl with long, dark hair pulled into a loose bun, told me Mick was out by the pool and asked me to wait while she went to get him.

“It’s okay,” I said. “He’s expecting me and I know where to go. I’ll find him myself.”

She was new. He’d had another housekeeper when we were seeing each other and I slept here from time to time.

“Of course.” She bobbed her head, courteous and respectful, but something about the heavy-lidded flicker of her eyes told me she’d heard that line before, and each time it had been a woman who’d said it.

With a little twinge of jealousy, I wondered whom Mick was sleeping with now. Surely there was someone.

I had to walk through his gardens to get to the pool. When Mick bought his home a few years ago, he discovered that the previous owner, who had studied botany as an avocation, had worked with a horticulturist to identify and label the many exotic species of trees, shrubs, and flowers that bloomed on the parklike grounds of his estate. Mick tracked down the horticulturist and persuaded him to take the job of full-time groundskeeper, giving him carte blanche to purchase whatever new or unusual specimen he wanted. The current passion was succulents, or so I’d heard. Desert plants and cacti that looked like modern sculpture and could wound like weapons weren’t my thing; my favorite was the lush, luxurious sunken rose garden with its pretty two-tiered fountain. Mick told me that coming upon the rioting tumble of roses—espaliered climbers, bushes, shrubs, floribunda, tea roses, hybrids—the first time he saw the house had brought back a flood of memories of his childhood in London and the days when his route walking to and from school had been through Regent’s Park and Queen Mary’s Rose Gardens. He’d bought the house on the spot.

After that, each time I came here I couldn’t help but hear schoolboy voices and see shadows flicking in and out of the sunlight, imagining blazers heaped in a pile on the ground, dress shirts untucked, ties askew, the thud of a soccer ball being passed back and forth imitating the agile footwork of the current football idol who played for Arsenal or Man United.

Mick was on the phone by the side of the pool, still dressed in riding attire after being out with the horses for their morning exercise. He sat at a glass-topped table under an umbrella, legs splayed out in front of him, running a hand through his long, dark hair, intent on the conversation and the caller. I could tell by the way he sat, and his demeanor, that it was business.

He looked up and saw me, raising a finger to indicate that he would be only a moment as the housekeeper came outside carrying a silver tray with a Portmeirion teapot, matching dishes, a cloth-covered basket, and a pretty cut-glass bowl of summer berries.

Mick’s house, like mine, had been built on a hill where it commanded a spectacular view of the Blue Ridge. The former owner had taken advantage of the way the hill dropped off to a long vista of the Piedmont anchored by distant mountains and had put in an infinity pool—a swimming pool with no edge or rim on one side that gave the effect of water disappearing at the horizon, almost as if it were joining the sky. In reality it cascaded like a waterfall into a smaller pool below where it was pumped through filters back into the main pool. The effect always took my breath away.

Mick clicked off his phone and tossed it on the table, getting up and pulling me to him. He kissed me swiftly on the lips and held me so close I smelled horses and sweat, and a faint whiff of whatever his housekeeper used to wash his clothes. His arms tightened around me.

I placed my hands on his chest. He sensed the restraint and pulled back.

“What does it take for a girl to get fed around this place?” I asked. “You did promise tea.”

I hated that his easy sexuality could still knock me off balance—and that he knew it—the implied intimacy of lovers who had just gotten out of bed or the shower together. Mick was a man of angles and planes, nothing soft or yielding about him, both in his business dealings and his physical features. His face was fair and smooth shaven, but it had been burned brown by years in the Florida sun and wind whipped from riding fast horses while foxhunting and playing polo at dizzying breakneck speed. He looked lean and hard muscled, more like a rugged American cowboy than an English gentleman.

“I’ll feed you myself,” he said and grinned. “It’s good to see you, love. Thanks for coming by. Please …” He gestured to the table and two chairs.

We sat across from each other and, as if she had been waiting behind the boxwood hedge, the housekeeper appeared with another tray, this one with little bowls filled with jam and thick cream, a plate of lemon slices for the tea, a sugar bowl, and a small pitcher of milk.

“Do you fancy coffee?” he asked. “Or is tea okay?”

“Tea’s fine,” I said as he picked up the pot, nodding dismissal at the girl. “This looks lovely.”

“You look absolutely shattered,” he said as the gate to the pool closed and we were alone again. “Something wrong?”

“My grandfather and I had drinks with Charles Thiessman at his lodge last night. Or more like very early this morning.”

Mick smiled. “That gardener bloke drive you home, too?”

I nodded and our eyes met like a couple of guilty underage kids who’d conspired to get drunk as lords behind their parents’ backs. “I told him you and I had spoken about this California wine he talked you into buying. He seemed surprised we’d discussed it.”

What Charles hadn’t said was how much he had told Mick about Teddy Fargo, or Theo Graf, and about his obsession with learning whether black roses grew somewhere on the property. My guess was that Mick knew only what Charles believed he needed to know and nothing more.

“Truth be told, I was surprised he came to me with the information in the first place. Apparently he’s got loads of contacts in the wine world out in California.” Mick indicated the rose garden. “I think it was the connection with roses. This place in Calistoga is supposed to have quite the fabulous rose garden attached to it.” He gave me a lopsided grin. “Which probably explains why they call it Rose Hill.”

“He did mention the roses.” I stabbed a slice of lemon with a tiny fork. “Did he say anything specific about them to you?”

Mick didn’t answer right away. “About the roses? What do you mean?”

I stirred my tea. Mick was shrewd. I shouldn’t have brought up the subject if I didn’t want him to connect the dots.

“Nothing. I just thought he went to a lot of trouble getting my grandfather invited to this Bohemian Grove meeting and then indirectly arranged through you for me to accompany Pépé to California.”

Mick burst out laughing. “You’ve got this the wrong way around. Being invited to give one of the lakeside talks at the Bohemian Grove is huge, Lucie. The most important men on the planet belong to that club. Crikey, it’s easier to marry a royal and get yourself a title than it is to join that lot. I have friends whose fathers were still on the waiting list when they died—and I’m talking decades.”

“So you know about this Bohemian Club, too?”

He nodded. “Who doesn’t? I think it was Herbert Hoover who called their July campout ‘the greatest men’s party on earth.’ I’d cut off a limb to be a member, even with some of the boys’ own silliness that goes with it.”

He untucked the cloth that swaddled the breadbasket, releasing the warm, fragrant aroma of fresh scones.

“Did your housekeeper make these? They smell heavenly.”

He smirked. “Taught her everything she knows about English cuisine. Quick study, that Victoria.”

“Oh, so she had five minutes to learn, did she? ‘English’ and ‘cuisine’ don’t belong in the same sentence, you know.”

“You bloody frogs are all alike.” He made a face as he broke open a scone and heaped berries on it. “Think you invented cooking.”

“No, we just perfected it.” I drank some tea. “What about the silliness at the Bohemian Grove? Is Pépé going to have to put on a goofy hat or wear his underwear outside his trousers, like some fraternity hazing right of passage?”

“Nothing that unimaginative. There’s clotted cream for the berries, English clotted cream.” He passed me the bowl. “They’ve got this opening ceremony each year that could sound a little dodgy, if you didn’t realize it was just a bunch of lads letting off steam and bonding. The caveat is they’re the richest, most powerful men in the world. The club has a motto: ‘Weaving spiders come not here.’ Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It means no business is to be transacted while you’re at the Grove, but let me tell you, a hell of a lot happens during that campout.”

“What do they do for their opening ceremony?”

“Oh, they dress in robes like monks and light some funeral pyre in the middle of a lake to represent worldly cares and cremate the bloody thing. So for a couple of weeks, you shrug off the burdens and worries you haul around the rest of the time and you’re free to do things like pee openly against trees and drink like a fish. They also put on concerts, plays … the entertainment is supposed to be incredible.”

“How very bohemian sounding,” I said. “Especially the tree peeing.”

He waved a hand and said through a mouthful of berries, “Not that kind of bohemian—long hair, unwashed tie-dyed shirts, and angst-filled poetry. Don’t forget they were founded in the 1870s. It meant London, beau monde, a club that was a place for eminent men who used their wealth to do good.”

I picked up the teapot and refilled our cups. “It sounds like a combination Boy Scout jamboree and fraternity party, if you ask me. No girls allowed.”

Mick winked at me. “That’s half the fun. Luc will have a grand old time.”

“In the meantime, I’ll be at Rose Hill Vineyard talking to the winemaker about your Cab,” I said. “And discussing the blend.”

“I spoke to her yesterday. She’s expecting you.” He pulled a paper out of his shirt pocket. “Here’s her contact information. Said to ring her when you want to show up. She’s fairly tethered to the place so she’ll be there.”

He handed me the paper. I stared at the name and phone number in his bold scrawl.

“Brooke Hennessey?” I rubbed my thumb over his writing. “That name sounds familiar.”

“You know her? Not too many female winemakers out there. I should have figured you did.”

“No, not that. Hennessey … I wonder if she’s related to Tavis Hennessey?”

“Who’s that?” he said.

“He owned a vineyard in Napa awhile back. Quinn worked there,” I said and stopped.

Atoka was a small enough town that everyone knew the gossip about everyone else, but Mick and I had never discussed Quinn’s past in California and the shadowy circumstances under which he left his former employer. Even I didn’t know exactly what had happened. Quinn avoided any questions or even an attempt to bring up the subject.

“Oh, so that’s the guy?” Mick said. “I heard about it. It’s common knowledge; you must know that. The winemaker at Quinn’s old winery got caught selling adulterated wine on the black market in Eastern Europe and went to jail. Canfield, wasn’t it?”

“Cantor. Allen Cantor.”

“Cantor. Yeah, that’s right.”

He sipped his tea like he was waiting for me to rush to Quinn’s defense, a jury member who needed extra convincing the defendant didn’t do it. So Mick believed the rumors that where there was smoke there had been fire.

I set my teacup down and pushed the saucer away. “Quinn didn’t know anything about what was going on, Mick. He was completely in the dark.”

“I heard that.”

“It’s true.”

“Quinn’s a smart guy—”

“He didn’t know.”

The vineyard had been called Le Coq Rouge. It went under after Cantor went to jail, and the owner, Tavis Hennessey, couldn’t recover his financial losses, coupled with the damaging impact of what had been written in the press. Quinn left and moved to Virginia. A few weeks before my father died he hired Quinn, deciding it wasn’t necessary to do a background check after Quinn told him his salary requirements were minimal. Back then Montgomery Estate Vineyard was nearly broke and our previous winemaker had returned home to France, so Leland was desperate. He saw Quinn as the answer to his prayers. Soon afterward Leland was gone and I took over the winery. Neither Quinn nor I bargained on the other, but we’d made it work somehow.

Mick reached over and took my hand. “I heard that Quinn might not be coming back here, that he might stay in California for good. You going to hire a new winemaker to take his place?”

So that was the current rumor going around. Quinn left poor Lucie in the lurch.

“He’ll be back for harvest.” I withdrew my hand, hoping I didn’t sound defensive. “I guess I’ll have to stop by the General Store and straighten out Thelma and the Romeos.”

In every small town in America there is someone who keeps tabs on everyone else, minds their business for them, and then genially shares it with everyone else on the planet. Our someone was Thelma Johnson, who owned the General Store, where she presided like a chatty, benevolent queen over her subjects, the good citizens of Atoka. Telling Thelma something was like the kids’ old-fashioned game of telephone: little whispers passed around a circle, only to find out that what was said originally had been burnished and revamped into a tabloid-worthy headline with the over-the-top drama and throaty angst of one of her beloved soap operas.

The Romeos, her henchmen, were just as guilty. Their name stood for Retired Old Men Eating Out, but it could as easily have been Retired Old Men Eavesdropping Obsessively. I knew all of them practically like uncles because Leland had been a Romeo. Their whereabouts on any given day were as predictable as animal migration patterns: mornings gathered around the coffeepot at Thelma’s, laying siege to her fresh-made doughnuts and muffins, then whiling away long, lazy afternoons that stretched into “It’s five o’clock somewhere,” and the dinner hour with drinks and a meal at some restaurant or bar in Middleburg or Leesburg. Social networking on the Internet had nothing on the pack of them as a faster-than-a-speeding-bullet means of disseminating information.

“When’s the last time you talked to Quinn?” Mick asked. He kept his voice casual, but he was fishing.

“I can’t remember. Not that long ago.”

His eyes narrowed. “You can’t remember, huh? Why don’t you see him when you’re in California, Lucie? Straighten things out. You do know where he’s staying, don’t you?”

“There’s nothing to straighten out.” I folded my napkin and pushed back my chair. “Except the gossip about him not returning. Thanks for tea, Mick. I’ll call you after I get back from Napa.”

He caught my hand and pulled me up. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car. You do know you’re a lousy liar, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He slipped an arm around my waist, suddenly serious. “Sure you do. Look, love, I’ve been doing some thinking. About us.”

“Mick—”

“Hear me out before you say anything.” He put two fingers over my lips. “How’d you feel about giving us another chance? We know each other so much better now. We’d be good together, the pair of us—wouldn’t make the same mistakes.”

I shook my head and removed his hand. “I don’t think so.”

“I’m not taking an answer from you right now. Please at least promise me you’ll think about it.” We reached my car and he turned me so I faced him. “But first, darling, you’ve got to sort out your feelings about Quinn. I’m not talking about business, either, and you know it. See him in California, get it sorted once and for all. When you come back, let me know if you want to try us again.”

He bent and kissed me like a brother. I think I mumbled something about him being completely and totally wrong before I got in my car and drove home.

But I knew, just as Mick did, that I couldn’t go on flying solo. If there was going to be any future for Quinn and me—that meant the winery’s future as well as our own—then Mick was right. I needed to seek out Quinn when I was in California and get some answers.

Whether I liked them or not.