Ellen Crosby: The Sauvignon Secret

“We had September eleventh,” I said. “That changed everything. We have the Department of Homeland Security now. They reclassified wine as a food so we have to report every part of the production process to the Food and Drug Administration under some bioterrorism law. It’s mind-boggling, all the paperwork we have to file. Records of everything we transport, everything we receive, what we add to the juice, batch lots, packaging materials … even each batch of grapes and the blend of each wine. It drives Antonio and me crazy. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother or if they ever do anything with all that information.”

“The first time something happens, you won’t wonder anymore.” My grandfather sounded ominous.

“Who’d do something to wine?”

He shrugged. “How hard would it be? A group of tourists drive by a picturesque view of vines planted alongside a country road, say your vineyard on Atoka Road, and get out of the car to take a photograph. At the same time one of them scatters something that the wind will take and blow through your fields. They drive off and disappear forever. Gradually all your vines wither and die. Or a disgruntled employee adds something to one of your five-thousand-gallon tanks of wine just before bottling. How many people could he sicken or maybe even kill?”

We’d finally reached the turnoff for Route 50, Mosby’s Highway. The homestretch. I put on my turn signal and we left Route 28 as I thought about what he’d just said.

Maybe we weren’t so insulated from the kind of violence he was talking about. In France it was homegrown—a group of angry winemakers being driven out of business—not the threats of faceless foreigners. What would it take to push some of my fellow vineyard owners who had lost everything over the brink?

Maybe Pépé was right.

“I guess it wouldn’t be that hard to do after all,” I said. “Would it?”

Friday the thirteenth dawned bright and hot, promising to be another scorcher for the record books. I showered and dressed, tiptoeing past Pépé’s bedroom and avoiding the creaking treads on the grand spiral staircase. Halfway down the stairs I could still hear my grandfather snoring like a lumberjack from behind his door.

I fixed breakfast—coffee, croissants, and fresh goat cheese from a nearby farm—and carried it out to the veranda, along with the Washington Tribune . The heat and humidity had already leached the color from the sky, leaving it a dingy white. A film of haze had settled over the Blue Ridge.

Paul Noble’s death was billboarded at the bottom of page one of the Trib , though the story had been moved inside to Metro. I didn’t recognize the black-and-white thumbnail photo in the teaser; it looked like an old one taken years ago when Paul had more hair. Fortunately, the headline writers hadn’t come up with anything cute or sensational, so it simply read: “Loudoun Businessman Found Hanged.” The article was in the middle of the front page of Metro with a larger, more recent photo of Paul standing on the rooftop terrace of his luxurious Georgetown office building posing like a minor potentate. The Potomac and two backlit sculls whose rowers were perfectly in sync was the backdrop, probably a crew team from one of the D.C. universities. Thankfully the reporter wrote only that a “local woman” had discovered his body. No mention of anything kinky involving his death, so perhaps autoerotic asphyxiation had been discounted or maybe Bobby decided to keep that lurid possibility out of the press for now. Alcohol had been found at the scene, leaving the reader to draw his or her own conclusions about factors contributing to the tragedy.

A car door slammed in my driveway. I set down the paper and went inside. At this early hour it was probably Antonio. We’d been talking about whether we needed to do more spraying to deal with possible powdery mildew. But it was my brother, Eli, who let himself in the front door as I walked into the foyer. His red polo shirt had a stain like a Rorschach inkblot and his trousers looked like he’d slept in them. His dark brown hair, which he usually wore moussed or gelled in some gravity-defying style, fell naturally across his forehead as though he’d just stepped out of the shower. I liked it that way, glad he seemed to be shedding the manicured, pampered Ken doll persona his ex-wife had inflicted on him, even if he did trade it in for the rumpled, frazzled single-father-of-a-three-year-old look, which he was.

“Hey, babe,” he said. “What’s up?”

Calling me “babe” was still part of the Brandi hangover, though it was a lot better than some of the names he had for me when we were kids.

“Coffee’s hot,” I said. “And I have croissants. Did you eat breakfast?”

“I finished the milk and the soggy stuff at the bottom of Hope’s cereal bowl.” He glanced down at his shirt. “I dropped the bowl when I was cleaning up. I think it left a stain.”

“You can’t really see it,” I said. “Is Hope at day care?”

He nodded. “I feel like I’m abandoning her every time I drop her off. She won’t let go of my neck. It’s like I’m being strangled with love.”

Brandi’s rich new boyfriend had made it clear he wanted someone who could travel with him on a whim and wouldn’t be tied down with a child, so Eli ended up with full custody of his daughter. It had taken my breath away how fast my ex-sister-in-law had shed herself of Eli and Hope, but truth be told, I was glad she was out of the picture.

He rubbed a spot by his ear and my heart ached for him. “You two are coming here this weekend, of course?” I asked.

“You bet. We might not make it through fireworks, though. One of us gets nightmares.”

“Maybe when she’s older.”

“I meant me.”

I grinned. “The family pyromaniac? Ha. You’re lucky I never told Leland who stole all those Roman candles he thought he’d stockpiled the first time he and Mom decided to have fireworks for July fourteenth.”

“He guessed.” He looked rueful. “Hence the nightmares.”

He followed me down the back staircase to the kitchen and sat in his old childhood place at the scarred-up table while I fixed his coffee and got out a jar of my homemade strawberry jam—his favorite—for his croissant.

“Pépé upstairs sleeping?” He traced a finger over marks we’d made as kids pressing too hard with our pencils when we did our homework at the soft pine table. I nodded. “Hope still calls him Beppy. She can’t wait to see him.”

“He’s flying to California on Sunday,” I said. “Quick trip. But at least you’ll get to spend Saturday evening with him.”

“Uh-huh.” He was still tracing curlicues and squiggles.

“We thought we’d make the party a clothing-optional event.”

“That’s good.”

“Eli, are you listening to me?”

He looked up. “Huh? Sure, I am.”

“What’d I just say?” I set a plate and coffee mug in front of him. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but aren’t you supposed to be in Leesburg? Say, maybe, at work?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no.” He opened the jar of jam and carefully set the lid on the table. When he looked up, I saw just how beat down he really was. “Maybe I got laid off.”

“Oh, God, you’re kidding,” I said.

“Would I kid about that? I missed a couple of deadlines while Hope had chicken pox. Clients got pissed off and went to another architectural firm. I’m job hunting, babe, but with the housing market the way it is right now, there’s not much new construction out there, which means no work for builders and even less for architects like me.” He touched his thumb and forefinger together showing no daylight. “And I’m that far away from getting evicted from our apartment because I can’t make rent. It was either that or pay the day care bill.”