Ellen Crosby - The Sauvignon Secret

I nodded, but we both knew that was no longer possible; I needed to finish this. Wherever it led, whatever the consequences.

Even if it included losing Quinn.

We didn’t talk about Brooke or Charles or Teddy Fargo for the rest of the trip to Robert Sanábria’s guesthouse, which took all of ten minutes. The private drive off Highway 29 was so well screened from view that Quinn missed the turn and had to double back; then we nearly drove past the cottage, which was at the end of a small cul-de-sac. The rustic house with its weathered gray shingle roof and ivy-covered chimney was shaded by a giant redwood whose enormous branches enveloped the place like we were in a tree house. Quinn parked under a portico of logs and rough-hewn beams that was long enough for another car to pull in behind us.

“Bet this was a Prohibition roadhouse, the way it’s so well camouflaged in the woods,” he said. “It’s close to the highway but tucked far enough away so the cops wouldn’t see any lights or cars.”

“Pépé told me Robert lives at the top of the hill at the end of this private road,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s supposed to be quite a place.”

He set my suitcase next to the front door.

“I’ll call you after you get back to Virginia,” he said. “Make sure the rest of the trip went okay.”

I nodded. “I’ll see you in a few weeks for harvest.”

He looked as uncomfortable as I felt.

“Yeah, we’ll talk about dates and all that stuff.”

“Great.”

“See you then.”

“Quinn—” I touched his arm.

“What?”

“I’m sorry about what happened today. I don’t want it to ruin the rest of the trip, everything we did together.”

“I understand.”

I closed my eyes and wished he’d said he agreed or it hadn’t spoiled anything or not to worry. He sounded so formal and closed to me, a stranger. I tried not to think about last night in his bed or the shower together this morning as he bent and brushed my cheek with his lips.

“Tell Charles he got it wrong about Fargo when you get home,” he said as he got in the car.

“What about Maggie Hilliard and Stephen Falcone?”

“They’ve got nothing to do with Fargo.” His eyes locked on mine, a challenge. “Even if he is Theo Graf, which we don’t know and now won’t. You said yourself that Charles admitted Graf was gone by the time Maggie’s car went off the bridge, and he wasn’t at the lab the day Stephen died.”

“I know that.”

“But you’re still going to ask him about Maggie and Stephen, aren’t you? Now that you know about that affair.”

“Yes.”

“Dammit, Lucie, you don’t have to.”

I thought about the photo of Stephen. His smile and the trust in his eyes.

“I think I do.”

If I’d never seen that picture, maybe I’d agree with Quinn right now. But I had. Whatever Quinn and I were on the verge of repairing in our relationship was about to break apart one more time.

His voice was harsh. “You’re not going to change anything. It won’t bring them back.”

“I know nothing will bring them back, but I still think it matters. They matter.”

He lifted his hands off the steering wheel, and for a moment I thought we were at the beginning of another soul-wrenching argument. Then he let them fall and hit the wheel with an exasperated finality before he started the engine.

He kept his eyes straight ahead as he drove out of the portico and snaked back in front of the cottage to the main driveway. I caught a glimpse of his angry, unyielding profile and heard him gun the engine, on purpose, as he roared out onto the highway.

Then he was gone.

I picked up my suitcase and went inside Robert Sanábria’s guest cottage. Large and airy, it smelled faintly of lemony furniture polish and woodsmoke. Soft tree-filtered light flickered through a picture window and made patterns like moving water on the polished hardwood floor and scattered tribal carpets. The centerpiece of the room was a stone fireplace that nearly filled an entire wall; the mantel held pillar candles melted to various heights, framed photographs, and a dried-flower arrangement. The furniture was large, masculine, and comfortable looking. A gold tinsel ball, probably left over from Christmas, hung from a chandelier in the middle of the ceiling, spinning lazily when it caught a draft of air from the open front door. A grape-colored doormat at my feet read, WE SERVE ONLY THE FINEST CALIFORNIA WINES. DID YOU BRING ANY ?

Pépé had left me a note on the coffee table; he was up at the main house having drinks with Robert and I was invited to join them. Otherwise, the three of us were dining together at seven P.M. at a restaurant in Calistoga.

I found my bedroom, a cozy room in the back of the cottage with windows on two sides overlooking a small garden. Right now I didn’t feel like having drinks or dining with anyone. I threw myself on the king-sized bed and lay there.

The next thing I knew, my grandfather was shaking my shoulder, waking me from a deep sleep.

The dinner with Pépé and Robert Sanábria passed in a merry-goround blur of conversation, fabulous food, and even more fabulous wine. We went to the restaurant in the Mount View Hotel, a sleek and elegant place where the staff greeted Robert as an old friend.

He was about twenty years younger than Pépé, in his early sixties, soft-spoken, and unpretentious. I liked the jaunty way he swung a bottle of his own private reserve Cab between his fingers as we walked into the dining room and the respect the waiter showed as he took it away to open it and let it breathe before our dinner. Robert gave me a slow, mischievous wink, deliberately and delightfully flirting as we sat down, and thereafter proceeded to charm me for the rest of the evening. Pépé and I had not yet spoken about Charles or Teddy Fargo. By the time we finished our appetizers, even that last tense scene with Quinn receded like a dream whose details had grown cloudy in my mind.

We lingered over dinner, talking and laughing as the restaurant reverberated with the noisy chatter of arriving dinner guests who knew Robert and one another, calling greetings, stopping by our table to be introduced. Robert took care of ordering as the waiters effortlessly slid little plates of fish and meat and vegetables in front of the three of us; my wineglass was never empty.

We had brandy back at the cottage, though by then I was more than a little tipsy. In a moment of recklessness I went into my bedroom on the pretext of getting a sweater and called Quinn. I shouldn’t have done it; it was stupid and I knew it. His phone went to voice mail and I left a goofy, inebriated message that I couldn’t remember ten minutes later.

I slept as soon as my head touched the pillow—in French we call it “sleeping on both ears”—as though I’d been drugged. When I woke at five thirty to my phone alarm going off, Pépé was already moving about in the bathroom. I sat up, with a hazy memory of Robert promising that his housekeeper would bring breakfast down from the big house at six, and then his limousine would be at the cottage door at six thirty to take us to the airport.

My grandfather is not a morning person—though he’s not grumpy, a conversation consists mostly of monosyllabic grunts— and I was still tired from the past two whirlwind days. So we padded around the cottage in silence, getting dressed and packing our bags, until a young woman showed up at the front door with a picnic basket containing a plate of steaming-hot scones with fresh butter and homemade blackberry jam, and a thermos of jasmine tea from Robert’s favorite tea shop in Chinatown.

The limo came at six thirty sharp. Robert followed the driver down in a Jeep to say goodbye. He and my grandfather embraced, and then he turned to me, bending in for a kiss. The damp chill of the early morning fog clung to him, mingled with cypressy cologne, and his lips were cold on my cheeks.