Ellen Crosby: The Sauvignon Secret

Neither of us said a word about his new cane, but this time I put up only a faint protest over the luggage cart since I was going to lose the battle anyway. He patted my hand as he always did, and we walked down the ramp to glass doors leading to the shuttle buses and the hourly parking lot, which automatically slid open.

“I’m sorry,” I said, hearing his small ouf as we stepped outside and he absorbed the brutal temperature change. “I should have warned you. It’s over a hundred today. With the humidity it feels like one hundred and eight. Probably more. We’re setting new records with this heat wave.”

Across the street, rows of cars shimmered like a mirage. The asphalt felt squishy beneath my feet. Pépé pulled a handkerchief out of the pocket of his trousers and mopped his forehead.

“You forget how many summers I spent in Washington at the embassy after the war. In those days there was no air-conditioning.” He glanced sideways at me. “Is something wrong? You seem upset.”

“Are you sure you’re all right? I know it was a long trip for you—”

I shouldn’t have said it. He stopped the cart, looking exasperated.

“Now don’t you go treating me like an old man. Just because I’m a little tired and maybe a bit unsteady on my feet is no reason to act like I’ve got one foot in the grave,” he said. “That’s your cousin’s department. I can take one of you nagging me to take a nap or hovering over me like I’m in my dotage, but not both. Don’t you start, too.”

The reprimand had been delivered lightly, but he meant it and I’d hit a nerve. He pushed the cart over to the car without speaking and put his suitcase and satchel in the trunk when I opened it.

“Don’t be upset with me,” I said. “I just worry, that’s all. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

His face softened. “One does not like to admit that one is getting older. I’m sorry, chérie . I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

We climbed into the stifling car and I blasted overheated air-conditioning through the vents.

“We’ll be seeing Dominique tomorrow, by the way,” I said. The refrigeration kicked in and I switched the blower to low so it didn’t sound like a jet engine before takeoff. “Juliette is using the Inn to cater her dinner. Dominique will be working, but she promised to take a break from supervising in the kitchen to see you. And she’s coming to the vineyard on Saturday for our party.”

Dominique’s mother and my mother had been sisters, two years apart in age but so alike they could have been twins. Ten years ago, after my mother died when her horse threw her jumping a fence, Dominique moved from France to help Leland take care of my wild-child kid sister, Mia. My capable cousin, who’d been studying to be a chef, managed to get Mia under her thumb while also landing a job at the Goose Creek Inn, a local restaurant with an award-winning reputation for its romantic setting and superb cuisine. Dominique took over the fledgling catering business, and before long it, too, was racking up accolades just like the Inn. When the owner, who had been my godfather, passed away a few years ago, he’d left her both businesses in his will.

“Ah, then Dominique will have plenty of opportunities to monitor my napping,” Pépé said to me.

We both grinned.

“She loves you. We all do.”

“And I love you all, too. Now please tell me why you’re so agitated, ma belle ? That’s twice you’ve missed the turn for the exit out of the parking lot.”

I gave him a lopsided smile and pulled up to the tollbooth. After I paid the parking fee I told him about Paul Noble.

“The police believe he died while playing a sexual game?” Pépé asked.

“That’s one possibility. The other is that he deliberately hanged himself,” I said. “Except people commit suicide because they’re depressed or they feel hopeless. A couple of days ago Paul called me and bullied me to sell him my wine practically at cost. I wouldn’t have pegged him as either depressed or hopeless after he was done working me over. He was pretty ruthless. Talked about business plans for next year, too. Who does that if he’s thinking about ending it?”

“Nevertheless you don’t seem to believe that it was an accident?”

“If Paul was into erotic fantasies or extreme sexual games, then you’d think there would be rumors. There wasn’t so much as a peep about him.”

“You knew him well?”

“No, though I tried. I thought it would make dealing with him easier, but he was so … cold, I guess. All business, no social chitchat. After a while I gave up. Besides, he didn’t seem to care about working with the local vineyard owners like his older brother did. A lot of people were mad at him because he was heartless. Folks blamed him when two really good wineries went out of business last year. They couldn’t make a go of it anymore. Nice people. Lost everything.”

“Could one of the owners have been angry enough to kill him?”

I signaled to turn onto Route 28 and merged with the usual early evening rush-hour logjam.

“Oh, gosh no. At least I don’t think so. I mean, they weren’t like that.”

He gave me a don’t-be-naïve look.

“No, Pépé. Neither of them did it. I’m sure,” I said. “Believe it or not, for a while the deputy from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department who turned up on the scene thought I might have done it. There was an empty bottle of my Sauvignon Blanc and a wine-glass next to Paul’s body. Plus it was no secret I disliked him. The reason I drove over there was because I was mad at him.”

“The police suspect you ?”

“Not really. Bobby Noland showed up later. He knows I didn’t do it.”

“Ah, Bobby. I have a couple of cigars for him,” he said. “Do you think someone wanted to cast suspicion on you by leaving your wine bottle there?”

I moved from one slow-moving lane of traffic to another that crawled along only slightly faster. “No, that’s too far-fetched. Besides, no one knew I was planning to drop by today.”

“You’d be surprised how angry people become when they believe they are being cheated, or their livelihood is being stolen,” he said. “It doesn’t take much to push them to the kind of violence we’ve had in France. You’ve heard of the CRAV, haven’t you? The Regional Committee of Viticulture Action, in English. A clandestine group of winemakers who, a couple of years ago, sent the president a video promising blood would flow if he didn’t stop importing cheap wine from Algeria and Spain, and didn’t do something about the overproduction driving down the price of French wine on the world market.”

“I read about those people. They sounded scary.”

“They were scary. They bombed government buildings, tanker trucks, supermarkets,” Pépé said. “They drained thousands of euros’ worth of wine from tanks at agricultural cooperatives and let it seep into the ground. Once someone tried to plant a bomb along the route of the Tour de France. Thank God he was caught in time. The press called it ‘wine terrorism.’ ”

“It isn’t like that here, Pépé. It’s nowhere near that bad,” I said. “Plenty of people were mad at Paul, but not enough to consider blowing up his warehouse. And I honestly don’t believe it was murder, after what the crime scene detective said about how hard it is to fake a suicide. I think Paul killed himself and we’ll probably find out why sooner or later.”

“It wouldn’t take much to tip the scale for that kind of anger and violence to take hold in America.” Pépé shook a warning finger at me. “It’s what I’ve been asked to talk about in California next week—the lessons your government can learn from what happened to us.”