Ellen Crosby - The Sauvignon Secret

Cantor laughed. “I’m talking about marijuana, honey. Supposedly the guy had quite a booming business. Growing it, selling it. He’s lucky he never got busted. I figured that’s why he sold his place all of a sudden and split town. Rumor is that he torched the evidence before he took off. No one’s seen him or heard of him since. He vanished.”

I felt like I’d been sucker punched. So Charles had been barking up the wrong tree, after all. Even if Teddy Fargo were Theo Graf—and who knew, now?—the reason he disappeared had to do with drug dealing and probably fleeing the law, not some ancient grudge that had to do with the Mandrake Society.

Quinn reached in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet again. He threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table.

“Thanks, Allen,” he said. “Get yourself something else to eat. Or a couple of beers. I think we’re done here.”

He stood up and waited for me.

“That wasn’t the information you were looking for,” Cantor said to me as I got up. “Was it?”

“No,” I said, “it wasn’t.”

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.”