Ellen Crosby - The Sauvignon Secret

“Why, Lucille! Speak of the devil.” She adjusted her thick trifocals and smoothed wrinkles out of a brilliant canary yellow knit dress that looked like it had shrunk a size or two in the dryer. “I was just talking about you a little while ago.”

It was too late to say that she was out of what I needed. She’d seen my hand, still on the doorknob, so she knew I hadn’t even set foot in the store. I could feel the wagons circling around me.

“Really? Who were you talking to?”

“One or two of the Romeos. Someone said you and Luc went out to California for a few days. Did you patch things up with Quinn? You did see him, of course? And come on in, child. You’re standing in that doorway like you grew roots.”

“How did you …?” There was no point conning her. She knew. “I mean, well, yes, Quinn and I saw each other.”

She clacked across the room in stiletto mules that matched her dress, a sly smile on her face. “Oh, I just put two and two together when I heard about you going to California. You know me, Lucille, and that special seventh sense I’ve got for knowing things before people tell me.” She tapped her forehead with a bony finger. “It’s called extraterrestrial perception.”

“You always say that.”

“Yes, indeedy.” She walked over to a table where three coffeepots were lined up in a tidy row and straightened the “Regular,” “Decaf,” and “Fancy” signs that hung above them. “How about a nice cup of java? We could talk a little.”

“Thanks, but I just stopped by to get a few groceries and those three blueberry muffins you’ve got left.”

“Deary me, I should have wrapped one of those muffins and put it away,” she said. “You can have two of’em. The other one’s for the Thiessmans’ gardener. He said he’d drop by this afternoon. The poor man looked falling-down tired when he showed up this morning. I felt so sorry that I opened up early, just for him.”

She stood there, hands on hips, regarding me. Thelma had extraterrestrial perception, all right. I wondered how much she knew about Charles using Juliette’s gardener as a late-night chauffeur for guests at his lodge, and my own firsthand experience being driven home half sloshed with Pépé in the wee small hours of the morning. Maybe Thelma was baiting me—again.

Who cared? I wanted to know what she knew.

“Come to think of it, that coffee does smell good and I’m still tired from the trip. What’s today’s Fancy? I think I’ve got time for a quick cup.”

“Course you do. And it’s Bean There, Done That. That’ll perk you up.” She reached for a Styrofoam cup. “Make yourself to home, Lucille.”

I took the coffee after she fixed it and sat in a spindle-back rocker across from the one she always sat in.

“Juliette Thiessman is selling Dominique a lot of produce from her garden for our dinner tonight. I guess that’s why her gardener’s working overtime.” I concentrated on stirring my coffee.

Thelma settled herself in her rocking chair and straightened a pile of soap opera and gossip magazines on a little table next to her. “Oh, he’s working extra hours, all right. But it’s not hoeing and weeding. It’s that little side business he’s got goin’ on for Charles.”

I bumped the stirrer too hard against the cup and nearly sloshed hot coffee on my lap. “What business would that be?”

“Well, of course he’s never said, but you tell me what to think when a man shows up in my store first thing in the morning smelling like he just took a bath in a vat of perfume?”

“Uh … I don’t know.”

“He’s driving Charles’s girlfriends home, that’s what. After Charles finishes having his way with them in that little love nest he’s got in the woods. At first I thought the perfume was Juliette’s. Then I remembered what my grandmamma, a wise and proper lady, always said: A woman should pick one special fragrance to be her unmistakable scent for life and that’s how a man will remember her. Men find it very erratic, you know. Sort of a … turn on.”

She plucked at imaginary lint on her dress. Her cheeks had gone pink.

I’d heard that before, too—about the erotic and sensual power of scent, especially a woman’s signature perfume—when I worked as a translator at the perfume museum in Grasse, France, before I came home to run the vineyard. But right now I didn’t know what to say to Thelma because I had a feeling she knew more about my relationship with Charles than she let on—and this was another setup to see if I’d spill any information.

I sipped my coffee. “It does sound very romantic, though it’s hard to wear perfume with what I do all day. Really screws things up when you’re trying to make wine.”

“Don’t you see, Lucille?” She sounded frustrated that I had missed the point. “That’s how I knew !”

Now I’d lost her. “Knew what?”

“That it wasn’t Juliette who’d been in the car. Juliette wears Chanel Number 5. Trust me, I’ve got a nose like a bloodhound. In fact, all the Johnson women have very keen oligarchy systems.” She touched a finger to the side of her nose. “That poor man comes in here regular as rain for a morning cup of coffee just reeking of Dior or Ralph Lawrence or whatever the latest one was wearing. It’s just about killed Juliette, don’t you know?”

I sat up in my chair. “Juliette knows about this?”

“Lordy!” Thelma waved a hand at me. “She’s known for ages.”

“How do you know she knows?”

“When a man’s cheating on his wife the way Charles cheats on Juliette, she knows. Lately I’ve been thinking that it’s finally getting to her, after all this time,” she said. “Wouldn’t surprise me if she broke down and did something about it.”

“Like what? You don’t mean something violent?”

“There are other options, Lucille, that are less … drastic.” Thelma shrugged. “Maybe she’ll leave him.”

“Did she say that?”

“Not to me. But something’s weighing on her mind.” Thelma jumped up and bustled over to the glass-fronted cabinet where she kept the bakery items. She picked up a white towel and began rubbing imaginary spots on the glass. “I think she’s found somebody new herself.”

I heard the catch in her throat, a tiny quiver. Then the room grew quiet, except for the rushing sound of the air-conditioning system and an indistinct squawking from the television in the back room. I held my cup with both hands and rocked in my chair, taking in what she’d just said. The old wood creaked, sounding like a baby animal crying. I stopped rocking.

“I heard she and your grandfather are very old and special friends,” she said in a sad, quiet voice. “That she knew Luc’s wife, your grandmother, way back when in Paris.”

“Yes,” I said, “that’s true.”

It was an open secret that Thelma had a mad crush on Pépé. The likelihood of them ever getting together was about the same as the sun colliding with the moon, but my gallant grandfather had taken her to dinner at the Inn the last time he was in town, charming her with the European politesse and old-fashioned chivalry he showed every woman, being especially kind to a lonely spinster whose relationships with men had always ended in heartbreak and disaster, until she finally found vicarious comfort in her soap opera hunks.

“Well, he is available,” she said. “And he’s quite a catch.”

“My grandfather is an honorable man. She’s a married woman.”

“There’s a remedy for that, child. It’s called divorce,” she said. “And who could blame Juliette what with Charles having lovers coming and going all the time?”

“I think you’re wrong, Thelma. Pépé’s one great love was my grandmother. That’s why he never remarried. And I don’t think he ever will.”