Ellen Crosby - The Riesling Retribution

“Show her, Annie,” Sumner said. “Then she’ll understand.”

Annabel slowly raised her hands and tried to unhook her pearls.

“Help me,” she said to Sumner.

When he removed them, I saw the large red welt—an enormous slash that girdled her neck—that had been hidden by her jewelry.

“Beau did that,” she said. “I nearly died.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Let me tell you something.” She gripped the arms of the chair and this time I could see the bones of her fingers sharply defined against her thin, taut skin. “I never asked Leland if he did it, but we both knew he did. Afterward your father wouldn’t let go of me, and that terrified me. If he could kill Beau, what could he do to me? Especially because I could link him to Beau’s murder. Your father called constantly, hounding me until I would no longer answer the phone. One time he drove to Richmond. I left my house by the back door and ran away to spend the night at a friend’s place. Then there were the letters. So many letters.”

“Some of which you kept as blackmail.”

She drew back. “I prefer to think of it as insurance. They were the only proof I had that Leland killed Beau.”

“All it proves is that you were having an affair.”

“Motive,” she said. “It gave him a motive. Leland knew Beau abused me and he probably saved my life by killing him. But I couldn’t bring myself to continue the affair, once I knew what he’d done.”

“You wrote him letters.”

“Asking him to leave me alone.” Her eyes swept over me. “You seem like a nice young woman, Ms. Montgomery. Believe it or not, I admire your spunk and your courage in coming here today. It may surprise you, but I hoped your father would return to your mother and his new daughter. You have a brother, too, I believe?”

“And a younger sister,” I said. “You said my father was crazy about you. Did you take advantage of that and set him up to kill Beau?”

“This is over,” Sumner said. “I will not allow my wife to be subjected—”

“No,” Annabel’s voice cut through his. “No, I did not. At least, I never asked him outright. I told you he was madly in love with me. He would have done anything for me. Anything to have me. Anything to save me. Your father knew if I stayed with Beau, I would end up dead. The beatings were growing more savage.”

“How did it end with Leland?”

“Badly. I left him. Finally ran away and hoped I’d never see him again. I moved to Charlottesville and tried to start my life over. Later I married my Sumner. He’s given me a wonderful life.” She patted Sumner’s hand and he smiled. “That part of my old life is over now. Except for one last thing. Something I’d like you to do for me.”

I hadn’t expected the request. “What is it?”

“I would like to see the place where your father buried Beau.”

“Annabel!” Sumner chided her, stroking her shoulders. “My darling, you don’t want to do that. Let me send one of the company photographers—”

“I’d be glad to take you there,” I said. “But it has to be today. We have a Civil War reenactment on the farm this weekend. There’ll be hundreds, perhaps as many as a thousand, people attending.”

“What time today?” she asked.

I looked at my watch. “Noon. Meet me in the winery parking lot. And I suggest changing your clothes, or at least your shoes. We have to walk and it’s muddy out there.”

After I left, I heard their voices rise and fall behind the closed door. Sumner didn’t want her to see the grave site. She wasn’t giving in.

I drove back to the vineyard and wondered why Annabel wanted to do it. What if she were lying about not seeing Leland again after Beau was murdered? Suppose she killed Beau and then got Leland to help her bury the body? She seemed like the sort of woman to go over the edge if someone pushed her too far and maybe that’s what Beau had done. If Leland were besotted, it wasn’t hard to imagine him agreeing to help her out. That made him an accessory to Beau’s murder, but not a murderer. Nevertheless, it had made it easy for Annabel to shift the guilt solely to my father, absolving herself. He’d been involved—just not the way she said.

After the brutal beatings Beau had inflicted on Annabel, I couldn’t say I blamed her for killing him. Maybe in her shoes, I’d do the same thing—or would I?

But why revisit Beau’s grave? Unless she hadn’t come along when he was originally buried there, so she’d never seen the site and now merely wanted to satisfy a morbid curiosity. Gloat to herself and to Beau’s memory that she’d managed to get away with murder.

Maybe at noon she’d tip her hand and I’d find out. Maybe this was the instance of Locard’s principle Officer Mathis had tried to explain to me—that a killer either takes something away or leaves something at the scene of the crime.

Annabel Chastain was finally leaving something behind by visiting Beau’s grave nearly thirty years later.

Her guilt.

When I took over running the vineyard, I stopped believing there are six degrees of separation between people before they find a connection with one another. Maybe it’s the Internet and social networking. Maybe it’s because everyone travels so much that sooner or later someone bumps into someone whose brother dated a college roommate’s sister and that conversation happens to take place at an outdoor café in, say, Salzburg, Austria. I figure we’re now down to about four degrees of separation among all of us. In Atoka, however, it shrinks to two.

For that reason I’m not often surprised when two individuals with no apparent connection discover a quirky or circuitous link that moves them inside the same circle. Today was an exception.

Sumner and Annabel Chastain’s burgundy Mercedes with its vanity license plates pulled into the parking lot at twelve sharp. Through the villa window I caught sight of Sumner helping Annabel out of the car and hollered to Gina, who was fixing lunch in the kitchen, that I’d be back in half an hour. The Chastains were dressed casually in brightly colored polo shirts and khakis. Both of them wore boots.

Ray Vitale’s Honda Accord drove up as I came down the walk to greet the Chastains. Vitale parked next to the Mercedes and Sumner swiveled his head to look. When he turned back to Annabel, I recognized the don’t-ding-my-car expression my brother often wore anytime someone with an unworthy clunker parked too close to the Jaguar.

“Hey, you!” Vitale said. “Are you Chastain?”

He was dressed in a full Union officer’s uniform: navy wool jacket with gold braid, Dresden blue trousers, blue kepi, and a fringed scarlet sash around his waist.

Sumner turned around again, this time to see who was talking. He looked startled by the uniform.

“I am,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Raymond Vitale.”

Sumner’s expression was suitably bored. “I meet a lot of people.”

“And you don’t give a damn about most of them or what you build. That’s because you employ the shoddiest construction crews and you bribe inspectors to sign off on crap that isn’t up to code.” Vitale’s querulous voice cracked with pent-up anger. “A few years later the problems start. Take my buildings, for instance. Cracks in the foundation. Faulty wiring. Heating systems that don’t work. In a nursing home. Old people live there with wheelchairs and walkers. Want me to go on?” As Vitale talked, he moved closer to Sumner, who looked askance but showed no sign of being intimidated.

After yesterday’s episode with Chance and Quinn, the last thing I wanted was another fistfight. Of the two men, Sumner had the physical advantage. But he didn’t have Ray Vitale’s scrappiness or his bottled-up fury. Sumner stepped forward until he and Vitale were well inside each other’s comfort zones.