Ellen Crosby - The Sauvignon Secret

Charles looked up as we entered the room, anger flashing in his dark eyes. He hadn’t forgiven us for last evening’s blowup at the Inn.

“We need to talk to you, Charles,” Pépé said. “I’m sorry, but Juliette should know about this, too. It has to do with the matter we were discussing yesterday.”

“Where is Jasmine?” I asked.

Juliette tugged on her pearls again. “What’s this about? She’s in the kitchen. What about Jasmine?”

I kept my voice low. “Jasmine Nouri is Maggie Hilliard’s niece, Charles. Maggie left a diary, which Jasmine read. I’m pretty sure she tracked down Vivian Kalman in Paris, as well.”

I left out Elinor on purpose, hoping he wouldn’t ask how I’d found this out. We didn’t have much time anyway.

Charles set down his fork on the edge of his plate and stared at it wordlessly. Finally he looked up. “Well, I’ll be goddamned. All this time I thought it was Theo.”

Though he sounded calm, his face gave him away. I knew as sure as if he’d said it what he was thinking: He’d let a beautiful girl insert herself into his life with the ease of the serpent slithering into the Garden of Eden and he’d missed it because he’d been too busy looking for a ghost in California. His worst fear had blossomed right here in his home.

“The little bitch,” he said, an afterthought. “Every bit as devious as Maggie was.”

Juliette’s voice rose, a little bubble of hysteria. “ What is going on? What are you talking about?”

“Charles will explain it to you later.” I tried to reassure her. “Everything is going to be all right. But the most important thing right now is getting Hope away from Jasmine with as little drama as possible. Then I think we’d better call the sheriff’s department. Everyone else in the Mandrake Society is dead but you, Charles. Why do you think Jasmine is here?”

“I didn’t kill any of those people. Someone else did.” Jasmine Nouri stood in the doorway to the kitchen, holding Hope in her arms. “I figured it was you, Charles. It was, wasn’t it?”

She brushed a strand of hair off the face of my sweet, pink-cheeked niece who was chewing on her favorite toy pony. The gesture sent such a sharp pang of fear for Hope’s safety through me that I gasped.

“Hope,” I said, my voice cracking. “Come here, pumpkin. Beppy and I are going to take you home.”

“Aunt Woozy.”

Hope squirmed in Jasmine’s arms but she held tight to the child. I heard her murmur, “In a minute, sweetie. We have to finish something first.”

“No one’s going anywhere.” Juliette’s eyes were hard. Something had changed in her and I’d missed it. All of a sudden she was in command, the feigned innocence and sweetness gone.

She exchanged looks with Jasmine, a coded understanding that passed between them. Jasmine nodded, but I thought she looked scared. Before anyone could speak or move, Juliette strode over to the sideboard and reached inside a large urn. When she turned around, she was holding a revolver.

“My God,” Charles said. “Where’d you get that?”

She ignored him.

“Why did you have to come here now?” Her voice was full of sadness. It took a moment before I realized she was speaking to my grandfather. “I would have come to you.”

“Juliette!” Charles’s voice cracked like a whip. “Have you lost your mind? Give me that gun.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t do that.”

“Qu’est-ce que tu fais, ma chère?” Pépé asked. “Put the gun down, please. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Juliette closed her eyes like she was blinking back tears. “Luc, don’t. Please don’t make this any more difficult than you already have.”

She turned to Charles. “I know, Charles. I know everything. Jasmine told me. The only remaining mystery is what happened that night at the beach forty years ago. You’re the only one who knows because you were driving the car.”

“No,” he said. “No.”

“You were,” Jasmine said. “Vivian said you were. Maggie left the cottage on foot and you went after her. Somehow you persuaded her to get in your car. Then what?”

Charles’s voice turned low and dangerous. “Viv told me when I saw her that someone had stirred up the past, brought it all back again. She let me believe it was Theo.”

“You went to see Vivian when we were in Paris in February,” Juliette said. “That’s when you killed her.”

“She died,” Charles said, “of a heart attack.”

“I wonder if she really did,” Jasmine said. “The Préfecture de Police may want to investigate.”

“What happened at the beach?” Juliette moved closer to Charles, the gun now trained on him. “What did you do?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pépé slowly lower his hands by his side. Juliette hadn’t noticed, nor, it seemed, had Jasmine.

Charles picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth as though he had all the time in the world. “All right,” he said like he was placating a child. “I’ll tell you.”

“Good.” His wife gave him a heavy-lidded look. “We’re all dying to know.”

Hope squirmed again and Jasmine shushed her. “It’s okay, angel. Just a few more minutes.”

“I want Aunt Woozy.”

“Soon,” she said. “Get on with it, Charles. You heard what Juliette said.”

He pushed his chair back, flashing a scornful look at the two of them as he crossed one leg over the other.

“What do all of you know? Nothing. You weren’t there.”

“If you don’t start talking, I’ll shoot you in the knee,” Juliette said. “Maybe that will jog your memory.”

Charles glared at her. “Don’t be such a drama queen, darling. It doesn’t suit you. You probably couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn, anyway.”

Juliette moved her finger over the trigger. “Would you like to find out?”

“All right.” He held up a hand. “Point that thing somewhere else before you hurt someone. I said, do it.”

She lowered her arm, a contemptuous look on her face. But Charles had won that small round.

“It was an accident,” he said. “It just happened. A dark night with no moon, heavy clouds. Pitch-black. We’d all been drinking. Maggie wanted to talk about Stephen and there was a huge fight among all of them. She left, said she was going for a walk on the beach, so I went after her. She could hardly walk a straight line. I found her, persuaded her to get in the car. I figured we’d get away from the cottage, find a motel for the night, and work it out. Theo had already taken off in a fit of rage. God, he could be so complicated sometimes.”

He shrugged. “To be honest, the next thing I remember was the car hitting the water. Obviously I drove off the bridge. In my condition …”

No one said a word. In another room, a clock chimed five.

“Somehow I got out. Got my door open and made it to the surface. Neither of us was wearing a seat belt. I figured Maggie got out, too; she was a good swimmer. But when I couldn’t find her—I kept shouting her name but it was so goddamned dark—I started diving. Six, seven times, ten, I don’t know. I knew it was too late.” Another shrug, but I noticed that he avoided looking at Jasmine. “So I walked back to the cottage and told the others. Everyone was scared out of their minds. I told them we all needed to stick to the same story or we’d hang together. Maggie took my car and drove it off the bridge. The cops knew she didn’t have a license and she was drunk. They couldn’t prove anything different, no evidence to the contrary. We were four witnesses who could all alibi each other.”

“In return you covered up Stephen’s death and protected their careers.”