Ellen Crosby - The Sauvignon Secret

He was trouble, all right, but in the beautiful, dangerous way a lot of women had found irresistible. Quinn should have warned me, but I understood at once why he hadn’t. Allen Cantor looked me over the way some men look at women who come into a bar alone. I couldn’t stop staring back into those hypnotic blue eyes.

Physically he could have been Quinn’s older brother—the same fit, taut build, same salt-and-pepper curls, though Cantor wore his hair longer, the same deep crow’s-feet laugh lines around the eyes. It even looked like they’d broken their noses in the same place. But there was something in Cantor’s don’t-you-want-to-know-more? stare that gave me goose bumps and dared me not to look away.

“Allen,” Quinn’s voice was sharp. “Knock it off, will you? This isn’t a singles’ bar. Stop trying to put a move on her already, goddammit.”

Cantor tore his gaze from me. “Just appreciating a beautiful woman, buddy. Nothing wrong with looking.”

He’d done more than that. He’d mentally undressed me.

“Keep it that way,” Quinn said.

“Nice to see you, too, Quinn. What do you want? I haven’t got all day.”

“Oh, yeah? Where you working these days, buddy?” He emphasized buddy . “Who are you making wine for?”

Cantor stood up. “Screw you, Santori. I was just trying to do you a favor because you asked. I don’t need to take your crap. I’m out of here.”

“No.” I reached for his arm. “Please, don’t go. Both of you, can you please not do this right now?”

Allen Cantor looked down at my hand on his arm and sat down. “What do you want? Lucie, isn’t it?”

I removed my hand and nodded. “Yes. Quinn, are you all right?”

“Yeah.” He jerked his head in a nod and looked out at the ocean. “I’m just frickin’ fine.”

He sat, too, but I could feel his leg shaking violently under the table. I nudged him with my knee and he stopped. Cantor noticed.

“Maybe we could all use some coffee,” I said. “I’ll get it.”

“I’d like a beer,” Cantor said. “And some eggs.”

“I’ll take care of this.” Quinn dug in his pocket for his wallet. “That was the deal. Beer and breakfast in return for information, if you’ve got it.”

There was an edge in his voice when he got in that last faint taunt and I glared at him. “That would be great,” I said.

He walked across to the restaurant. Cantor looked at me again, steadily.

“I heard about Nic,” he said. “Sorry for Quinn’s loss, but she was trouble for him from the day he put the ring on her finger. You his girl now?”

He meant Nicole Martin Santori, Quinn’s ex-wife, a raven-haired beauty I’d met briefly once, long after they’d split and shortly before she was killed by a jealous lover. Allen, as I recalled, had also been one of her paramours and now that I knew him, the two of them getting together seemed as inevitable as night following day.

I gave him a brittle smile. “I’m not anybody’s ‘girl.’ ”

He didn’t flinch. “You should be.”

Quinn set down the beer and some fries. He went back for coffees for the two of us and sat down again next to me. “Talking about the weather, are we? Your eggs and sausage will be ready in a couple of minutes.”

I opened the coffee and found that Quinn had already put cream and sugar in mine.

“We’d like some help,” I said to Cantor.

“Information about a winemaker who used to work in Napa. Outside Calistoga,” Quinn added.

“I don’t know much about that anymore,” Cantor said. “Don’t keep in touch with many people … I think that’s my order over there.”

He got up and walked across to the restaurant counter, picking up a bottle of ketchup. After drowning whatever was on his plate, he joined us again.

“What makes you think I’ll know this dude?” he asked through a mouthful of eggs. “It is a guy, isn’t it?”

I wondered how regular his meals were these days and what he did now for a living. Then I wondered why I was wondering.

I nodded. “Yes.”

He looked from Quinn to me. “I get it. He’s dirty, isn’t he?”

“I … no. I mean, we don’t know,” I said. “He might be someone who changed his identity, is all.”

“Or it might just be blowing smoke and someone got their wires crossed.” Quinn shrugged. “Set Lucie up for something they want to know, asked her for a favor.”

That was shrewd, making me the damsel in distress and being purposely vague about my anonymous favor. The two of them exchanged more testosterone-laced looks.

Cantor took a long swallow of beer. “Who is it?”

“Teddy Fargo. Owned a vineyard called Rose Hill up in Calistoga,” Quinn said.

“Rose Hill.” Cantor slapped a hand down on the table so hard it made his plate jump and shook his head, flashing a knowing smile. “Well, I’ll be damned. Small world isn’t it, Quinny? You know who owns it now, don’t you?”

Quinn glanced sideways at me. “Brooke.”

“Yup.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and set it on the table. “You keep in touch with her?”

“Nope. You?”

“You must be kidding. But I do keep an eye on her. Graduated top of her class from Davis. She’s a smart winemaker, did it right, starting small. She wants to control everything. Not let anyone pull the wool over her eyes, the way I did with her old man.” He paused, a shadow crossing his face that could have been remorse, or maybe regret. Then it was gone and his eyes glittered. “So you haven’t seen her, then?”

“I said no, didn’t I?” Now Quinn was the one who sounded edgy.

“Well, well,” Cantor said. “Are you in for a surprise. She turned out to be quite a beauty. Guess she got all her mother’s looks. A knockout, man.”

“Is that so?”

Cantor drank some more beer. “You ought to pay her a visit. You know she always had a thing for you.”

“I didn’t notice.” A slow flush stained Quinn’s face. “I was married, remember?”

“Could we get back to Teddy Fargo?” I brought my hand down hard on the table and Cantor’s plate jumped a little. “Before you two wander any further down memory lane and someone kills somebody.”

They both gave me an astonished look, and Cantor burst out laughing.

“I like you,” he said and licked his lips.

“Moving on.” I held up a finger to silence Quinn before he could open his mouth. “Teddy Fargo.”

“I don’t know him personally. But I heard about him.”

“Heard how?” Quinn asked.

“The guy was a good winemaker, really smart. He used to be a chemist or something like that before he got into wine.” Cantor rattled off the facts so easily that I knew he still kept up with what was going on in Napa and Sonoma more than he had let on. “He had kind of a boutique winery. Only made a couple thousand cases a year and sold it all in his tasting room.”

He paused.

“And?” Quinn said.

Cantor picked up his beer glass and stared into it, waving it back and forth.

“Want another one, Allen?”

“I wouldn’t say no.”

Quinn got him a second beer. “So what else about Fargo?”

“Just a rumor.”

“Goddammit, Allen, stop messing with us.”

“Quinn,” I said. “Please. Don’t.”

Cantor drank his beer, but I noticed his hand shook and he sloshed some liquid on the table. He wiped it with his fist.

“He had a little operation up in the hills behind his winery. Grew some stuff up there and apparently had the knowledge and background to get some very fine results, if you know what I mean.”

“Are you talking about roses?” I asked. “As in exotic roses?”

Even Quinn flashed me a look of surprise.