Ellen Crosby - The Sauvignon Secret

“Take care of him, Lucie,” he said in my ear.

He stood on the front steps and watched the big car pull away from the portico, catching my eye and flashing a thumbs-up, just before we turned the corner and he vanished from view as the redwood forest swallowed up the big car.

I leaned my head on my grandfather’s shoulder and slept. The next thing I knew it was light outside and we were at the airport. My phone rang as a porter took our bags from the limousine driver. I glanced at the display: Mick Dunne. He hadn’t wasted any time. I slipped the phone into my purse, letting it go to voice mail.

We got to the gate an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave. I got Pépé settled far enough away from a blaring television that he could resume reading the thick document he’d started in the limo, no doubt given to him by someone at the Bohemian Grove, and told him I’d find two ridiculously expensive cups of coffee for us somewhere on the concourse.

I got in a long line at a place called SFO Java and called Mick.

“How did it go? What’d you think of the wine?” he said.

“You’ll be happy. It’s very good. Quinn and I agreed on the blend yesterday. You just need to call Brooke Hennessey and set it up.”

“If it’s that good, maybe she’d be willing to sell more than we agreed on,” he said.

“Ask her.”

“Be a love and take care of it for me, will you?”

“I don’t think—”

“Damn, there’s my other line. Look, darling, it’s a chap I’ve been trying to reach for two days. He’s calling from London and I’ve got to take this. Ring me back after you speak with Brooke, all right?”

He hung up and I moved to the front of the coffee line. While I waited for two cafés au lait, I found Brooke’s number and called.

She answered after a few rings, sounding sleepy. “’Lo?”

“Brooke, it’s Lucie Montgomery. I’m sorry, is this a bad time?”

“No … wait, hang on a second, will you? I just need to throw on a pair of jeans.”

“You can call me back—”

I heard the male voice in the background asking something, then her giggle and a murmured reply.

“Two cafés au lait.” Someone called my order and set the coffees on the bar.

I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “Sorry, I’ve got to go. My flight’s leaving and I’ve got to get back to the gate. Mick Dunne will call you to sort this out.”

I disconnected before she could reply and grabbed the cardboard carton with the coffees, nearly tipping one of them over as I did. A man next to me reached out and saved the cup just in time.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yes, fine. Thank you so much.” I stuffed a bunch of napkins into the carton and fled.

The male voice on the other end of the receiver had been muffled, but of course I recognized it.

Quinn.

I didn’t even make it to the gate when my phone rang again. This time it was Quinn. I had no intention of taking that call. Not now, not ever.

He hated commitment, any commitment, so he had done what he always did when he felt the walls closing in. Found some sweet young nymph and had a quick roll in the hay to prove he was still free and unfettered. I knew all his girlfriends; he always picked someone who wanted to have fun without getting serious. No strings attached, no hard feelings when it ended.

The phone beeped that I had a message. Pépé looked up from his reading and I handed him his coffee.

“Quelque chose ne va pas, chérie?” he asked. “Tu as l’air troublée.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I’m fine. I spilled one of the coffees, so it was a mess. That’s all.”

He nodded and went back to his papers. I walked over to the window where I watched our plane pull up to the gate and deleted the message without listening to it. Then I drank my coffee and waited to board our flight back to Virginia.

Pépé and I finally talked about Teddy Fargo on the plane, cocooned in the relative privacy of our first-class seats, our quiet voices inaudible to anyone sitting near us above the noise of the engines. My grandfather pressed his hands together in front of his lips as though he were praying as I took out the blurry photographs of the Mandrake Society and laid them on his tray table.

I waited while he studied them, wondering what he’d finally say, since I’d colored way outside the lines, bringing Quinn in on this, tracking down Allen, and searching Mel Racine’s wine vault.

“Whoever this guy was—Fargo or Graf—apparently he was into drugs. He was growing marijuana in the hills behind his vineyard and he was dealing,” I said. “That’s why he disappeared. Charles got it all wrong.”

“But Charles was right that Teddy Fargo was Theo Graf, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“You are sure. I can tell. You just don’t have proof, any more than Charles did.”

I pulled out the last two photos.

“Stephen Falcone.” I set down the yearbook portrait.

My grandfather focused on it, nodding.

“And this one.” I placed the explicit photo in front of him. “Charles never said a word about his affair with Maggie Hilliard, who was Theo’s girlfriend. I wonder why he lied about it. I also wonder if he lied about being at the beach house the night she died.”

Pépé’s expression shifted from shock to disgust. He flipped over the picture and shoved it to a corner of the tray table.

“Where did you get that?” His voice was sharp. “Juliette must never see it.”

“Mel Racine had it.”

“You took it to blackmail Charles?”

I blushed. “I took it because it proves he lied.”

“And what do you expect to do with it?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I think Charles lied about a lot of things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, if he was keeping track of everyone in the Mandrake Society, wouldn’t he know that Teddy Graf disappeared because of the drugs? Especially if he thought Graf was really Theo?”

“Maybe he didn’t know about the drugs.” My grandfather still sounded angry. “As for why he said nothing, Charles operates on a need-to-know basis with everyone, including his wife. Surely you’ve figured that out by now?”

“Please, Pépé, don’t shoot the messenger. Whose side are you on?”

“Yours,” he said, “but I am thinking in the same calculated manner Charles would.”

“I’d like to know why he lied about the affair with Maggie. It would have been useful to know he was involved with Theo’s girlfriend before he sent me off to California to check out whether Theo was still alive and living under an alias.”

“It probably never occurred to him you’d find out about it.”

“Well, I did.”

“Charles’s womanizing, his petites amies , has always been an open secret. It destroyed his first marriage. Juliette knew about it, but she believed she could change him, and, of course, she was wrong. His infidelities hurt her deeply, even if he is discreet.”

Charles was discreet, all right. A private lodge in the woods and a groundskeeper who drove guests home after hours and kept his mouth shut.

“You don’t like him, do you?” I said.

“He is the husband of a very dear friend. If I want to see her, I have to spend time with him, n’est-ce pas ?”

He’d avoided the question. But that was Pépé, a gentleman who would never behave improperly toward another man’s wife, who believed in the sanctity of marriage, that the traditional vows—for better or worse, ’til death do us part—meant what they meant.

A flight attendant set down our menus and began taking drink orders for the first-class passengers at the front of the cabin. I scooped up the photos and tucked them into my purse.