The Sauvignon Secret

Chapter 14

As reunions go, this one spiraled downhill and out of control before anyone realized what happened. When Quinn threw that twenty on the table, it was like tossing a live grenade into the middle of an edgy truce no one really wanted. It would take no more than the tiniest flick of a finger, the wrong look, a perceived insult, to blow it all to smithereens.

Cantor, predictably, told Quinn to take his money and shove it, but by then Quinn had disappeared into the growing crowd on the Boardwalk, as though it had suddenly become intolerable to breathe the same air as his ex-boss for one more second. Cantor stood up and came around the table so fast that I wasn’t sure if he was going to go after Quinn to jam the money in his pocket because he was embarrassed, or roundhouse him because he was furious.

“Let him go. Please?” I grabbed his arm and held on. “He did this for me.”

Cantor’s eyes fastened on my face and he was breathing hard, but at least I had his attention.

I let go of his arm. “Thank you for coming today.”

“It was worth it just to meet you, angel.” He took my cane from me and leaned it against the table. “You don’t need that right now. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you are gorgeous.”

I had no intention of falling for Allen Cantor’s patented and probably well-used chat-up line, even if he was turning the full wattage of his dangerous charm on me.

“Allen, don’t—” If Quinn came back to find out what was taking me so long and saw Cantor standing this close to me, his body language making it obvious what was happening …

“He’s a lucky bastard, you know that?” He kept right on devouring me with those wolfish eyes. “Bet he doesn’t appreciate you the way someone as beautiful as you ought to be appreciated. Quinn never was any good with women. If you were mine, darling, you’d be on a pedestal. I’d give you everything you wanted, things you never dreamed of.”

His hands slipped easily around my waist. Before I knew what he was doing, they had moved up under my breasts. He wasn’t talking about chocolates and flowers, or even diamonds.

“He does appreciate me.” I felt breathless, light-headed. “Take your hands off. Now.”

He lifted a hand and deliberately traced his finger along the contour of my cheek. “You’ve slept with him. I figured as much.”

My face burned. “That’s none of your business.”

“I wasn’t asking. I know you did.” He drew me closer and whispered into my hair, “Ever read the Kama Sutra? I have. Spend a night with me, baby. I promise it would be amazing.”

“No.” I jerked out of his grasp, reaching for my cane and wielding it like a club. “Come near me one more time and I’ll amaze you.”

I heard his taunting you-know-you-want-to laugh as I walked away, mocking me.

Quinn was sitting in the Porsche when I got to the parking lot, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and staring straight ahead at nothing. His sharp-edged profile glinted with anger and he acted deaf, dumb, and blind to my presence.

He wasn’t the only one who was mad. “Thanks for leaving me back there with Casanova.” I jerked open the passenger door. “You couldn’t have waited?”

He clenched and unclenched his fists. “I … no. I think I could have killed him. I’m sorry. He make a pass at you? Then I really would have lost it.”

I’d never heard Quinn like this before. For the first time, I was scared of what he might be capable of doing, things I’d never suspected. The anger drained out of me like he’d pulled a plug.

“He was just being a macho ass. I bet he’s like that with every woman he meets.” I slid into the passenger seat. “By now he’s probably working on getting the phone number of the cute girl who poured his beer at the restaurant, or asking her to have his baby. Besides, I can handle guys like him, especially ones who’ve had a few drinks. You should know that by now.”

“He asked you to have his baby?” He sounded stunned.

“I said no.”

It took him a second to get the joke and give me a weak grin. “What’d you do? Threaten to turn him into a eunuch with your cane?”

“Close enough. Wish I’d thought to use the word ‘eunuch.’”

He burst out laughing. “Damn, I’m sorry I missed that. I’d have sold tickets.”

I grinned. “Over my dead body. Do you think we can get out of here, please?”

He started the car. I reached over and turned on the radio. The Stones again. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Quinn turned it up loud and we roared out of the parking lot.

I had to yell over the music. “Where are we going now?”

He beat his palms on the steering wheel like he was playing backup on the drums. “HalfMoon Bay,” he yelled back. “Taking the Pacific Coast Highway. You’re gonna love it.”

My hair whipped in my eyes and I brushed it away.

“Harmony’s got a scarf in the glove compartment,” he said. “Or there’s a Giants baseball cap in back.”

I took a look at the scarf, a vintage Emilio Pucci kaleidoscope design of swirling water-and-sky colors. It looked like something Marilyn Monroe or Grace Kelly would have worn, with oversized sunglasses, about fifty years ago. I folded it and put it back in the glove compartment.

“Pretty.” I reached around back for the cap, pulling down the sun visor and opening the mirror.

“Suits you.” He smiled as I adjusted the cap and tucked in a strand of hair.

If Quinn could have ordered up a day to dazzle me, along with the breathtaking scenery of the coast road, it would have been this one. The highway wound in and out of one pretty little bay after another, the Pacific flashing cobalt and turquoise, whitecaps crashing onto a rocky shoreline dotted with drifts of wildflowers. In some places, the heathery Santa Cruz Mountains telescoped out into the ocean, and the serpentine road cut inland so deeply that it looked like we were driving straight into the mountains. Then the highway would make a corkscrew turn and we’d wrap around another bend where the outside edge of the road fell away to a vertigo-inducing drop off a jagged cliff to the ocean below.

South of Half Moon Bay, the road curled away from the water and became farmland.

“Now where are we going?” I asked.

“The Miramar Beach Restaurant. Local landmark, been around for decades. Good food and it sits right on the edge of the water. I don’t know about you, but I’m famished,” he said. “After lunch we can head into town and check out Mel Racine’s bank.”

“Great.”

“Maybe you could call the real estate agency and set up an appointment. See if he’s available in about an hour or so.”

“See if who’s available? Did you already call? You did, didn’t you? What happened?”

He shrugged, looking sheepish. “I might have tried to pry some information out of them. It’s possible I kind of pissed off one half of O’Hara and Romano Estate Agents.”

“Oh, brother. The old Santori charm.” I pulled out my phone. “Got a phone number?”

He handed me his wallet. “On that folded piece of paper. Why don’t you ask for O’Hara?”

“Why don’t you let me make the call and stop micromanaging?”

Connor O’Hara had a gentle Irish lilt and an opening in his schedule for one thirty. We agreed to meet at the bank.

“You didn’t even have to work for that.” Quinn parked in front of the restaurant, sounding disappointed. “My luck, I got the hard-assed partner. You got the pushover.”

“Says you. Or maybe I’m just naturally charming. Unlike some people.”

The sand-colored Miramar was a comfortable, rambling old place with a long row of picture windows that looked out on the rocky coastline and the Pacific a few feet away. Inside, a gray-haired pianist with a ponytail played Broadway show tunes near the bar, and the restaurant bustled with the business of a lunchtime crowd. A hostess seated us by an ocean-view window and left oversized menus.

“This place is wonderful,” I said. “And if that was your idea of flirting with the hostess to show me up for what I said about your lack of charm, she looked like she thought you had some weird eye tic.”

Quinn pulled his sunglasses down off his head and put them on. The sun, streaming through the window, was so dazzlingly bright that I did the same. I could see my reflection in his.

“She was being discreet,” he said. “I think she likes me.”

“Give the waitress a big tip and keep the glasses on. Then they’ll all like you.”

A cute redhead showed up with a water pitcher and breadbasket and told us about the specials. I chose Seafood Louie with more Dungeness crab; Quinn took the fish and chips. We both decided to have sweet iced tea.

“This used to be a Prohibition roadhouse,” Quinn said after she left. “Half Moon Bay was a great place for rumrunners to bring their illegal hooch ashore. The, uh, bordello was upstairs.”

“Bordello?”

“Yup. Don’t look like that. It’s not a bordello now.”

“I kind of figured,” I said. “And I was just free-associating when you said ‘bordello.’ Made me think of Allen Cantor.”

“What about him?”

“Not him exactly, what he said about Teddy Fargo. We’re no nearer to knowing if he’s Theo Graf,” I said. “And if he is, it sounds like the reason he’s on the lam is his little drug business. Which has nothing to do with the Mandrake Society and the deaths of Mel Racine and Paul Noble.”

Quinn shrugged. “So end of story. You can still ask Brookie about the black roses, if you want to. But the drug dealing—selling and cultivating marijuana is a felony in California—is a lot more credible explanation for why the guy took off than Charles’s cock-eyed idea about a forty-year-old vendetta.”

Brookie. Allen said she’d had a mad crush on Quinn and that she was a knockout. I stifled envious feelings and said, “Then tell me why two members of the Mandrake Society died with those wine-glasses next to their bodies within a couple of weeks of each other.”

“Coincidence?” he said. “Maybe they were as haunted by those deaths as Thiessman is. Racine was in his sixties, Charles said. That’s not old, but he wasn’t a spring chicken, either. As for Paul, who knows what demons tormented him that made him decide suicide was a better option than sticking around?”

“It’s possible, I suppose. I don’t know,” I said as our waitress set down our seafood. “Right now I’m totally confused.”

I bent my head and dug into my Seafood Louie. The timing of Charles’s request and the deaths of Mel Racine and Paul Noble bothered me. After so many years of silence, why should what happened to Stephen Falcone and Maggie Hilliard rise up out of the past all of a sudden? Charles thought Theo was behind all this, but who or what had provoked Theo? That is, if he was still alive and living under an alias as Teddy Fargo.

Someone else must have surfaced and vanished like a ghost.

But who was it?

Mel Racine’s bank, which he’d transformed into wine storage for serious collectors needing a safe place to store their priceless bottles, was on Main Street in the historic district of Half Moon Bay. I fell in love with the romantic Spanish Mission Revival building the minute I laid eyes on it. It looked like classic early California architecture with its putty-colored stucco walls, orange tile roof, and arched wooden front doors decorated with filigreed ironwork and surrounded by brightly painted ceramic tiles.

Connor O’Hara stood under the eaves in front of the massive doors, talking into his cell phone as Quinn and I parked next to a black Mercedes sporting a license plate with a realtor’s logo. He was of medium height with bright red hair sticking out from under a flat tweed cap, trimmed beard, dark trousers, white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a tailored linen vest.

His eyes went to the Porsche first. Then he took stock of the two of us as we walked toward the bank, slowly focusing on me as he registered my unabashed appreciation of the elegant old building.

He shook hands with Quinn, then me. “I’m Con O’Hara. Mr. Santori, Ms. Montgomery. Welcome to the Wine Vault. We’ve had a lot of interest in this place, don’t you know? I’m sure we’ll be havin’ a contract on it any day now.”

I liked the lilt in his voice. He’d already checked my hand for a wedding ring. Probably trying to figure out if this was a business deal between two partners or which one of us was the potential buyer.

“It’s still on the market, though, right?” Quinn asked.

“Oh, sure, sure.” O’Hara pulled a round metal ring with what looked like old-fashioned jailers’ keys on it and a smaller ring with half a dozen modern keys from his pocket. “This one’s a wee bit special. A historic building datin’ back to the early 1900s. Not often something as fine as this comes available.”

“I suppose that explains why the seller is asking so much more than the assessed value of the property?” Quinn asked.

I pretended to study the patterns in the glazed ceramic tile. We were supposed to be casual lookers, not acting like we might actually purchase the place.

“I believe we’ll get it.” O’Hara unlocked the front door with one of the jail keys. I felt a rush of cool air like the building had been holding its breath.

If potential buyers had besieged Mel Racine’s bank, they must have floated through here on a magic carpet. Dust motes hung suspended like fine silt in the dim sunlight filtering through two small, high windows. Shadows cast by the grillwork made a graceful design on the marble floor. I brushed my fingers across the back of a saddle-colored leather sofa that had been pulled up to a glass coffee table and felt grit.

“The former owner used the upstairs as a gathering place to host wine tastings and the like,” O’Hara said. “Set up a small kitchenette in the back and turned the counter where folks did their banking into a bar. He liked to feature a different wine at each of the tellers’ windows. Clever, wasn’t it?”

Quinn nodded, hands behind his back, as he wandered around the large room, peering behind the counter to check out the kitchenette setup. A moment later, O’Hara and I heard the ding of a cash register drawer popping open next to one of the tellers’ windows.

“He loves toys,” I said to O’Hara. “He’s just a kid at heart.”

“Where’s the vault?” Quinn shot me a dirty look that O’Hara couldn’t see. “I understand the owner redid it as high-end wine storage.”

“That he did.” O’Hara grinned. “You’d not be guessing the place has such a large basement as it does, would you? Perfect temperature to store wine, and the adobe foundation keeps it nice and cool.”

Two closed doors were on the other side of the room. I pointed to them. “Do you get to the basement through one of those?”

He nodded. “The one on the left leads to the corridor where the offices are located. The stairway to the vault and another storage area is through the door on the right.”

“Can we see the vault, please?” Quinn asked.

O’Hara pulled out the jail keys again. “Course you can. Right this way.”

I leaned on my cane. “Do you mind terribly if I stay up here? The stairs … I’m sorry … I don’t feel up to … maybe I could check out the office space while you two have a look at the vault?”

O’Hara looked alarmed. “Can I get you a glass of water or something, Ms. Montgomery? There’s a sink in the kitchenette and I’m sure I can find a glass in one of the cupboards. There’s no elevator, I’m afraid.”

“No, no, I’ll be fine. Take your time. Quinn, you’ll tell me all about it?”

“You bet, sweetheart. Just take it easy, okay? I don’t want you to overdo it.” He gave O’Hara a knowing look. “The little woman doesn’t know when she’s pushed herself too hard.”

The little woman was going to kick him in the shins as soon as we left the bank and O’Hara disappeared.

“Are the offices unlocked?” I asked.

“I’ll take care of that for ye.”

He opened the door on the left and began matching keys to doors.

“Keep him downstairs as long as you can,” I said under my breath to Quinn. “Stall, do anything. Talk to him about collecting expensive wine.”

“Look, Nancy Drew, I’ll do what I can, but it’s not like I’m touring Fort Knox. It’s a damn vault. Four walls, floor, ceiling …”

“You know, you could be a little more supportive—”

“Everything all right, folks?” O’Hara asked.

“Fine,” we said in unison.

“Grand.” He made a sweeping gesture toward the door. “All right, then, after you, Mr. Santori.” To me he added, “Sorry, Ms. Montgomery, but there are still items from the owner in those offices. The place is a bit of a mess, I’m afraid.”

Hallelujah. Now if I just had enough time to look around while Quinn chatted up O’Hara in the vault.

“No apology necessary,” I said. “I’ll just have a quick peek at everything.”

He nodded and they clattered down the stairs. A minute later I heard the clank of a metal door opening followed by Quinn’s amazed whistle and his voice, indistinct but nevertheless sounding impressed. The vault must be quite a place. I pulled my phone out of my purse and checked the time. One forty-five. I’d give them five minutes; if Quinn got garrulous and O’Hara was intrigued by cases of wine that cost more than his Mercedes, maybe ten minutes.

The three rooms off the small corridor with its arched ceiling, wrought-iron sconces, and whitewashed walls all had the same fusty, abandoned look about them, as though the occupants had left temporarily, expecting to return but never did. I glanced into each of them, beginning with the smallest, which was nearest to the outside door.

It had been used as an office supply depot—computer paper, printer cartridges, envelopes, invoice forms, a carton of light-bulbs—everything stacked on the floor or piled pell-mell on an otherwise unused desk. Another office belonged to a secretary, judging by the desktop computer bristling with sticky note phone numbers tacked to the monitor, a multiline telephone, and an overflowing in-box. Surprisingly, there were no personal effects, no family photo or calendar with circled dates or corny newspaper cartoons tucked under the desktop glass. Probably removed before the place went on the market. My heart sank. What if Mel Racine had a wife or kids who’d come in and cleared out his personal things, and all that was left was just paperwork related to the Wine Vault?

The largest office had obviously been his, the walls lined with framed posters of vintage cars—Vauxhall, Bugatti, Citroën—as well as brochures and catalogs from his dealerships piled like snowdrifts on a credenza across from his desk. He, too, had a full in-box. I rifled through it, but everything appeared to belong to the wine storage business and his tasting events—leases, catalogs for auctions, wine price lists, an old issue of Decanter, a couple of copies of Wine Spectator. No family photos or memorabilia on his desk, either, except for an expensive silver-framed portrait of an Irish setter with JENNY written in calligraphy on the mat, and a small hand-painted oval frame with a candid snapshot that could have been Jenny or another dog.

I checked my phone again. One forty-nine. I’d been counting on Mel to have pictures from his old life hanging in his office as Charles had done. All he had was two photos of his dog sitting on his desk. I pulled open his top right-hand desk drawer, stifling my guilty feelings. As it turned out, I needn’t have felt bad. Nothing but the usual desk junk in that drawer and the two others below it.

The top drawer was locked. I looked around the room for a place to hide a small key and hoped O’Hara didn’t have it swinging from a key ring. Where—?

One fifty-three. I lifted the blotter and there it was. The drawer, predictably, stuck and I had to yank it open. It banged into the desk chair and my heart thudded against my rib cage. Downstairs had gone quiet all of a sudden. Had Quinn and O’Hara heard the noise and figured I tripped over something in my weary state and fell over? Were they on their way upstairs to check on me?

I went through the top drawer as quickly as I could with fumbling hands. My time was running out. The envelope was all the way in the back, taped to the top of the desk. I unstuck it and pulled out half a dozen faded color photographs. And there they were: the Mandrake Society.

It must have been one of their parties at the beach house, possibly at sunset. The colors had gone a little orangey after so many years, but the rich warm light burnished the five of them like beautiful bronzed statues. They could have been posing for a magazine cover shoot or a Christmas card photo of the perfect family, sitting on sand-rumpled towels and sprawled in beach chairs with the flat horizon line separating the cobalt ocean and the sunlight-and-cloud-threaded sky behind them. What shocked me was how young they were. Charles had said so, but I hadn’t taken in the fact that they were kids, barely out of college.

They’d been a close-knit group, tactile and comfortable with one another, changing the order of who stood or sat next to, or on, whom, but always arms draped over shoulders, someone’s legs in someone’s lap, one of the girls tucked into a protective embrace with one or two of the guys. I couldn’t stop staring; they didn’t look cold and heartless despite Charles’s sybaritic depiction of their drinking and sexual habits. In fact, they looked enviably happy and carefree, as though their futures were something wonderful they held in the palms of their hands.

I wondered when it all changed.

Instinctively I knew who was who, somewhat by process of elimination. I recognized Paul Noble well enough to pick him out. He had the same sharp features, but back then his hair had been dark and glossy and he’d been a lot slimmer and fitter. Mel had to be the one with sandy blond hair and horn-rimmed glasses, looking somewhat professorial and bookish. Theo Graf was the oldest of the group by a number of years and the only one not wearing a bathing suit. Instead, he had on a pair of bleached jeans and a tie-dyed Woodstock T-shirt. Maggie was the dark-haired beauty with an upturned nose and radiant smile. In one photo she sat on Theo’s lap clowning around; the camera had caught them both in profile, heads thrown back in laughter, arms twined around each other. That made Vivian the perky blonde, petite and a little pudgy.

Quinn’s easygoing baritone and O’Hara’s higher-pitched tenor floated up the stairs and I nearly dropped the photos. It sounded like they were wrapping up the tour. For a moment, I was tempted to shove the pictures back in the envelope and stick it in my purse. Who would know now, anyway? Instead I turned on my camera phone and quickly photographed them one by one. These were not my pictures. They were someone else’s sweet memories. Already I felt like a grave robber.

O’Hara slammed the vault door shut and I jumped. His voice and Quinn’s grew louder, along with the sound of quick footsteps on the stairs. I taped the envelope back where I’d found it and pulled my hand away. My fingertips brushed something glossy that seemed to have gotten stuck between the drawer and the desk. I tugged on it. More photos, two of them.

These hadn’t been with the others and they were completely different. A school yearbook picture of a young man dressed in a tuxedo. His features seemed somehow off-kilter, or unaligned, and he looked askance at the photographer. I turned the picture over, though I already knew it was Stephen Falcone. He had printed his name in irregular uphill letters and the date: September 1967.

The second picture was blackmail, pure and simple. Maggie Hilliard and Charles Thiessman making love outdoors somewhere. After seeing the photos in the hunting lodge the other night, I recognized Charles, even in profile. The two of them were lying on what looked like a daybed on a sunporch or balcony and obviously unaware of the photo being taken since they were in the middle of having sex. Maggie was half sitting, half lying against a couple of pillows with Charles on top of her, fondling her breasts. I turned the explicit picture over. My face felt hot, as though I’d been the one to catch them in the act.

So that’s what Charles had left out of his story. Maggie, who was supposedly Theo’s girlfriend, was also having an affair with Charles. Had Theo known? If he’d seen this picture, he did. I wondered who had taken it, but it was probably another member of the Mandrake Society.

Charles said he didn’t spend time with them at the Pontiac Island cottage, but the wicker furniture and the blurred background in that photo looked sort of beachy. Had Charles been there the night Maggie died, and lied about that, as well?

I heard Quinn’s muffled voice shout my name. “Where are you?”

“Here! I’m coming!”

If O’Hara caught me rifling through Mel Racine’s desk … I swept up the photos and put them in my purse, along with my phone, and joined Con O’Hara and Quinn.

There was no going back from here.