Ellen Crosby - The Sauvignon Secret

“Since I presume you are going to show Charles this photo, or at least make him aware of it, suppose he admits the affair with Maggie?” Pépé said. “What of it?”

“I’m betting he knows what really happened the night she died.”

Pépé steepled his fingers and I wished I could read his mind. So far our conversation had been like a lawyer gently cross-examining a nervous witness, giving no hint that the hammer was about to come down.

“And you believe he will make a confession to you? Lucie, don’t be naïve.” He leaned back in his seat. “He won’t say a word.”

The rebuff stung, even if it was probably true. “If Charles had any culpability in Maggie’s death, he’s managed to get away with it a very long time. I think he’s worried Theo discovered something that could incriminate him and the truth will finally come out,” I said.

“Theo is gone and Charles won’t talk. Nothing will come out.” Pépé sounded just like Quinn. “You don’t need to get involved. And you haven’t told me why you are so sure this man Fargo is Theo Graf.”

“Teddy Fargo had training as a chemist. He set up a lab where Brooke said he made his own organic pesticides.”

“You saw it?”

“No. When he left, he destroyed it and a greenhouse. He also burned a field and put barbed wire around it. What do you bet he grew marijuana on that land?”

“What did I tell you? You can’t prove anything, not even the drugs.”

“No.”

“Then forget about it, ma belle . It’s finished. Why bother now, after all this time?”

“Because if Maggie had lived she would have made sure Stephen Falcone’s death wasn’t swept under the carpet. After she died no one was left to speak up for him anymore. Charles erased Stephen like he was a lab experiment gone wrong.”

My voice cracked and Pépé laid a hand on my arm. Now I was the one who was angry. “People who are handicapped don’t get a break in life, you know? You’re treated as less than a whole person, not quite good enough because you’re deformed or, if you’re mentally disabled, you’re slow and stupid. Or your behavior is bizarre. Somehow it’s your fault, or else you’re too dumb to realize how different you are so people think they can talk in front of you the way they talk in front of a pet. You don’t have emotions or feelings like ‘normal’ people—”

I couldn’t stop talking, trying to make him understand the harsh twilight universe of the disabled where everyone rushes past you—all those perfect people—and you just can’t keep up, though you want to so badly. Stephen’s world wasn’t my world exactly, and my very minor disability paled in comparison to what he lived with, but I understood it well enough to be outraged at how he had been taken advantage of and used.

Pépé covered my hand with his. “Chérie,” he murmured. “It’s okay.”

My voice had grown steadily louder and more ragged. The woman across the aisle glanced up from her copy of Cosmopolitan , a look of surprise and annoyance flashing across her face. Any moment I was going to start crying like a child for someone I never knew who died more than four decades ago. It was crazy.

Pépé pulled a neatly folded linen handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to me. I dabbed my eyes and blew my nose.

“All right, tomorrow we’ll call Charles,” my grandfather said, in the voice he used when I was a child who’d skinned my knee or been tormented by Eli and his friends, “and pay him a visit. I can stay on for an extra day or two until this is resolved.”

“Something to drink? Sir? Miss?” Our flight attendant stood next to us.

“Champagne,” Pépé said. “For two.”

It was just past noon Pacific time; three hours later at home.

“Why champagne?” I asked.

“Because, as Napoleon said, in victory you deserve champagne and in defeat you need it,” he said. “After what you just told me, I believe a glass of champagne would be a good idea, though I can’t decide whether it’s because we deserve it or we need it.”

“Maybe a little bit of both,” I said. “Either way, it’s still a good idea.”

But it was Charles who called first. He didn’t waste any time, phoning Pépé the next morning as we were finishing breakfast on the veranda. I was on my third cup of coffee, lounging in the glider and still groggy from so little sleep the last few days. My grandfather had astonished me by rising before noon. He sat across from me, smoking a Gauloise in the love seat where he could watch the mountains change color as the early-morning sky deepened behind them.

I heard the faint buzz of his cell phone vibrating. He pulled it from his pocket, frowned at the display, and answered. I knew at once who it was by the tightening of his lips. Their conversation, in French, lasted less than a minute.

My grandfather disconnected and said in a disgusted voice, “Quelle cochonnerie.”

“What do you mean, ‘what rubbish’? Are you talking about Charles?”

“I don’t understand him. He agreed to join us for a drink at five o’clock this evening at the Goose Creek Inn, only because I insisted on a face-to-face meeting. He can’t stay long because he and Juliette are attending a political fund-raiser in Georgetown.”

I raised an eyebrow and sipped my coffee. “That’s awfully cocky of him. I would have thought he’d want another clandestine meeting in his lodge as soon as possible.”

“Actually, he didn’t want a meeting at all.”

Pépé lit another Gauloise with sharp, jerky motions. It took me a moment to realize he was really angry.

“You’re kidding? What did he say?”

“He asked how the trip to the Bohemian Grove went and whether we had a good time in California.”

“That’s it? Nothing about Teddy Fargo?”

“He said, ‘Oh, that. Don’t give it another thought, Luc.’ Like it was something I was concerned about. What a nerve he has.”

I was stunned. “What’s going on?”

He blew out a cloud of smoke. “I guess that’s what we’re going to find out later today.”

He was still upset. I opened my mouth to say something that would calm him down, but from inside the house I heard footsteps clattering down the grand staircase, followed by Eli’s deep voice and Hope’s giggles and squeals. Pépé met my eyes, a tacit agreement. End of conversation.

“Daddy, Daddy! Noooo! I don’t want to walk. Carry me. Now!”

Eli laughed and there were more happy shrieks from Hope as the screen door banged and the two of them came outside. He was carrying Hope dangled over his shoulder; my brother unshaved and tousle headed, his daughter’s long, dark hair swirling around her like a cloud, baby doll pretty in pink shorts and a ruffled top. Her chubby hands clutched his shirt.

Pépé stubbed out his cigarette at once, a smile creasing his face, and I held up my arms for my niece.

Eli and Hope had moved in while we were in California. When we got home last night just after midnight, I’d been startled to find her rocking horse in the middle of the foyer—I thought a fox had gotten inside until I turned on the light—and the contents of a dollhouse had been strewn throughout the room. The child herself was snug in her new room where she’d been asleep for hours, but Eli had come padding downstairs in a pair of shorts and a Virginia Tech T-shirt to join us for a nightcap.

“Here,” Eli said to me now, flopping Hope onto my lap. “I’ve got a delivery for you. A sack of potatoes. Watch out, though. It wiggles.”

“Da- dee ! I’m not a sack of’tatoes, am I, Aunt Woozy?”

“No, you most certainly are not.” I hugged her tight, kissing her soft cheek and rocking the glider back and forth with my good foot. “Give Beppy a kiss, too, angel. We missed you when we were in California.”