Ellen Crosby - The Riesling Retribution

“You were right.” She sounded relieved. “Here it is. At the bottom of my purse. Wonder how that happened?”

“Maybe you forgot to put it back the last time you used it. Or Tom used it and forgot to tell you?”

She shook her head. “I doubt it. Tom has his own credit cards.”

“Why don’t you call the bank and make sure everything’s okay? You’ll probably feel better.”

“Maybe I’ll just drop by. It’s Blue Ridge Federal, so I pass it on the way to the bakery.”

She returned forty-five minutes later with the sandwiches and two glazed white bags from the bakery.

“I brought you a couple of cowpuddles from the Upper Crust. They just finished baking them. Place smelled great,” she said. “Sorry it took so long.”

She didn’t look happy.

“What happened?” I asked.

She pulled up the wing chair and took her sandwich out of the wrapper. “I canceled my credit card. Someone did use it. Today. Can you believe it? Two thousand dollars’ worth of stuff at Neiman Marcus.”

I set down my croissant. “It wasn’t Tom?”

“Tom’s allergic to shopping. I buy all his stuff. And I don’t spend two grand at Neiman’s.”

“Maybe it’s a mistake and got charged to the wrong account?”

Frankie bit into her sandwich. When she finished chewing she said, “I’m calling them after lunch. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but Brandi and Eli were in your office by themselves yesterday. My purse was in your closet like it always is.”

“Neiman’s is Brandi’s favorite store,” I said. “Why don’t you call them now?”

She called while we ate. Her end of the conversation was a lot of “uh-huhs” and “yups.”

“My husband must have ordered that,” she said, finally, “and forgot to tell me. I apologize. Umm, would you mind canceling the order, though? Thanks. Sure. I appreciate that. Sorry for the mix-up.”

She disconnected and met my eyes.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A couple of designer dresses and a jacket. They were supposed to be delivered to Forty-forty Hunting Horn Lane in Leesburg.”

Eli and Brandi’s address.

I felt ill. Brandi had told Eli to rob a bank if that’s what it took to get money. But there was a difference between being on the brink of homelessness or having nothing to eat and doing something stupid and reckless like stealing a credit card to buy designer clothing from an upscale department store.

“I don’t even know how to begin to apologize,” I said. “And I don’t understand why she’d do something this dumb. I’ll get a keyed lock put on that closet so no one but us has access to it from now on.”

Frankie was still watching me.

“If you want to press charges,” I said, “go ahead. I’m not going to make this difficult or awkward for you.”

“Lucie.” She picked at a piece of ham. “Brandi was never in your office on her own. Eli was. She joined him and then she left before he did. Even if she used the card, he would have had to know about it.” She let the rest of that thought hang in the air between us.

“You’re saying Eli used it?” I asked. “Sent Brandi a gift?”

“Maybe. Or at least knew she got the card and copied down the information.”

“That doesn’t sound like Eli. Desperate, yes. Dishonest, no.”

“How else do you explain it?” Frankie asked.

I put my sandwich down and folded the wrapper around it. I had lost my appetite.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not going to press charges,” she said. “The credit card’s canceled so it can’t be used again. The stuff wasn’t shipped. Tom makes two thousand dollars in a couple of days, so it’s not about the money. But I am mad and I want an explanation and an apology. In return, I won’t report it to the sheriff.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Do you want me to talk to Eli, or do you want to do it?”

“You can do it.”

I nodded, feeling heartsick. My father had been called a murderer. Now my brother was branded a thief.

How much worse could it get?

I confronted Eli that night when we were having drinks on the veranda before dinner.

“What are you talking about?” he said. “You actually think I’d steal Frankie’s credit card and buy clothes for Brandi?”

“Either you did it or she did it,” I said. “Neiman’s confirmed the shipping address was your house.”

“It must have been Brandi because it wasn’t me.”

“Frankie said you both were in my office yesterday. She keeps her purse in that closet because we figured it was safer than stashing it under the bar.”

“I used the john,” he said. “Maybe she did it then.”

“Brandi needs to apologize in return for Frankie not reporting this to the sheriff.”

He snorted. “She’ll probably deny she did it.”

“Then the sheriff can ask her about it.”

“I’ll call her,” he said.

He took a long drink from his glass and looked at me like he was about to eat his last meal before the execution. “I’m accusing my soon to be ex-wife of credit card theft. She’s gonna love that.”

He went inside and made the call out of my earshot. Ten minutes later he returned. I noticed he had made himself another gin and tonic while he was in the house. Light on the ice.

“Well, that went down just great.” He sat down in the glider. “She thinks I’m out of my fricking mind and that it’s the beginning of a campaign to prove she’s an unfit mother so I can get custody of Hope.”

“She said she didn’t do it?”

“Nope. Said it’s some sick trick of mine.”

“You didn’t do it, either?”

“I told you already. No.”

I reached for my wineglass. “This doesn’t make sense.”

He set his drink on the glass-topped coffee table and moved it around and around in overlapping circles.

“I love her,” he said. “Even now. But she really is flipped out about being broke and on the verge of bankruptcy. I’m sure she’s in denial about a lot of stuff.”

“You mean denying she stole the card and bought those things?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, I guess it’s up to Frankie what she’s going to do about this,” I said.

“I thought you said she wasn’t going to report it to the sheriff’s office.”

“That was before nobody admitted responsibility. She’s mad, Eli.”

“I’ll call her,” he said. “Maybe I can persuade her to let this slide. It’s not like anything happened since she was able to cancel the order. No harm, no foul. Right?”

He stood up and unclipped his phone from his belt again.

It wasn’t right. But he’d already gone back inside to call Frankie. When he came back, he looked relieved as he waved a hand at me.

“All taken care of,” he said. “She’s cool with it.”

I got up to make dinner, but my stomach was churning. What had happened to Eli? He used to know the difference between right and wrong. Getting away with something didn’t make it right. It just meant he’d gotten away with it and Frankie was too decent to hold either of them accountable. So now the theft was compounded by lying. What was cool about that?

I didn’t recognize any of the workers who showed up with Chance when we picked the Riesling the next morning. Quinn left me on the crush pad to supervise getting the grapes weighed and moved to the refrigerator truck.

“I’m going out in the field with these guys. Wait until I get back before we put the grapes through the destemmer,” he said. “I don’t have a good feeling about this crew. Some of them look like they never set foot in a vineyard before. Watch ’em all cut themselves with their pruning shears first thing when they start picking. I hope no one takes off a finger.”