Ellen Crosby - The Riesling Retribution

Something could come of Savannah’s happy hour visit this evening. But it wouldn’t have anything to do with sharing information about whatever Bobby had missed finding out in that field. She was attracted to Quinn and now it seemed the feeling was mutual.

I turned on my computer and, with a heavy heart, began wading through my own clogged in-box. I was not looking forward to tonight.

Savannah showed up at the villa just after five. The knees of her jeans were stiff with mud and she had a smear of dirt across one cheek in the shape of a crescent moon. Her nose and the tops of her shoulders were bright pink with sunburn.

“Want to wash up?” I asked. “We might have some aloe for that burn.”

“I forgot my sunscreen. Can you believe it?” She sounded rueful. “And I thought I had washed up. I’ve got hand sanitizer in my car.”

“You missed a spot on your face.”

Quinn arrived while she was still cleaning up in the bathroom. Since I’d seen him a few hours ago, he’d found time to change yet again. This time into one of his favorite Hawaiian print shirts, the blue one with fish swimming all over it. If at some time during the course of our drinks he mentioned to Savannah that it was a vintage shirt—and quite special—then he’d dressed to impress her.

“Savannah’s here,” I said.

“I know. She called and said she was on her way over. Want a beer?” His dark eyes met mine and I saw no spark of the affection or attraction I’d imagined I’d seen before. Just a friend, waiting for the reply to a question.

“Lucie? You all right?”

“Sorry. I’ll have wine. I’ll get it.”

“I got it. White or red?”

“I don’t care.” Why hadn’t I figured out some last-minute chore to do?

“I hate it when you say that. Go sit on the terrace and wait to be surprised.”

I went outside and sat at one of the tables next to the railing, staring out at the mountains. Though it was only the beginning of August, already the shadows were less harsh than they’d been a few weeks ago. We still had nearly two more months of summer left—technically—but I always felt let down when the sunlight lost its sharp clarity, becoming milky and viscous as it was now. Nature sent better signals than the date on the calendar.

Savannah’s laughter, bright and heedless, floated through the open French doors, followed by the sound of Quinn’s deep voice murmuring something else that made her giggle. She came outside first, carrying a tray with a bottle of Riesling in an ice bucket and a wineglass. Quinn held two beers splayed between his fingers and a bag of chips. I’d gotten used to his preference for consuming his food in its most natural state. Beer from the bottle, chips from the bag.

“Great shirt,” Savannah was saying.

“Thanks. It’s vintage. See here? You can tell the quality of the print by how thin the fish lips are.”

“No fooling?”

Too bad I hadn’t bet somebody how fast he’d use that line. They sat down across from me. Savannah reached over and grabbed the bottle opener while Quinn poured my wine. She popped the cap with well-practiced ease and took a swig.

“Just what I needed.” She leaned her head back against her chair and closed her eyes. “This is the life.”

Quinn hoisted his beer. “To the life.”

I raised my glass and we drank. His eyes met mine over his bottle before he turned to Savannah. “How’d it go today? Any luck?”

“It went all right.” She cocked an eyebrow and for a second she reminded me of Peter Pan with her gamine boyishness and perky attitude. “I’m done.”

“You finished everything?” I asked. “That was fast.”

“You’re not coming back?” Quinn asked.

She smiled, showing the dimples. “Not for work, at least.”

I saw Quinn’s self-conscious grin and set my glass down, sloshing wine on the table.

“You found what you were looking for, then?” I swiped the puddle with the side of my fist.

“I hope so,” she said. “I’ll know more after I get back to the lab and check things out.”

“Any idea how long that will take?”

Savannah straightened up. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t talk about this, but if I get called into court to testify, you think I’d like to risk being the one who leaked evidence and caused the case to be thrown out on a technicality? The judge would have my butt in a sling unless the sheriff got it first.”

I met Quinn’s eyes briefly with an I-told-you-so look.

“You must have been looking for something small,” he said. “That small bone in the throat, maybe? The hyoid. You could tell if he was strangled if it was broken.”

Savannah studied us like a teacher trying to figure out if we’d cheated by copying each other’s exam papers. “Sure, just like on television. Look, guys, it’s not that simple. Say I did find a broken hyoid. First of all there’s a difference between a postmortem and an antemortem fracture. The crystalline structure in bone after death is different from injury to so-called living bone. Bone with no collagen in it will shatter like glass. Just because you find broken or fractured bones doesn’t mean it has anything to do with the cause of death.”

Quinn poured more wine into my glass and pointed a finger at Savannah’s nearly empty bottle of beer. “Refill?”

“Sure. Why not?”

He left to get the beers.

“He’s nice,” she said to me.

“Yes.”

“How’d you get interested in making wine?”

I suppose I couldn’t blame her for wanting to change the subject, which she’d just done with sledge-hammer subtlety. “Family business. How’d you get interested in skeletons?”

“I majored in archaeology as an undergrad,” she said as Quinn returned with the beers, this time already opened. He handed her one of them and she nodded thanks. “My specialty was Egyptology.”

“Mummies and pyramids?” Quinn asked.

“Mummies and pyramids are only part of it. The ancient Egyptians had an amazing funerary culture in their society,” she said. “When you think of all the artifacts unearthed in roomlike tombs and the fabulous royal cemeteries, you realize how important death and preparing someone for the afterlife were to them.”

“That’s why it’s true what they say about cemeteries. People are just dying to get in,” Quinn said.

Savannah gave him a look that would wilt concrete. “Gee, did you make that up? I never heard it before.”

“Ignore him,” I said. “That’s what I do.”

Quinn smirked at both of us and drank his beer. “It’s a long way from the Egyptians to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Not as long as you’d think,” Savannah said. “The Egyptians buried their dead in the desert where the preservation of bodies is exceptional. Finally it became sort of obvious that what I really enjoyed was looking at skeletons. Particularly trying to figure out how someone died. So I got a forensics degree in graduate school and then my doctorate.”

“Guess you were dying to do it,” he said.

“Will you shut up?” both of us said in unison.

He grinned some more and leered at us over his beer.

“So now you work full-time for the medical examiner?” I asked.

She shook her head. “They can’t afford me full-time. I only get called in on the cases where there’s been so much decomp the medical examiner can’t do a proper autopsy.”

“What else do you do,” Quinn asked, “when you’re not working for the county?”

“Teach forensics in northern Virginia and D.C. Every so often I get to go back to Egypt to do research.”

“That must be pretty cool.” He eyed her.

“It is. The pyramids are incredible. If you’ve never been, you ought to visit them sometime.”