Ellen Crosby - The Bordeaux Betrayal

“A couple of the Romeos came in for cocktails this evening,” Dominique said. “That’s how I found out. Mon Dieu, it must have been awful.” She picked up two menus. “Someone said Joe was at Mount Vernon last night with the woman who was killed. Is that true?”

She’d probably learn soon enough that their evening hadn’t ended at Mount Vernon, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her right now. “Yes.”

“You’re at my table. I’ll take you there.” She turned so abruptly she almost collided with a waiter. I noticed two bright pink spots on her cheeks as she excused herself.

When we were seated, Kit pulled out a reporter’s notebook and a pen, setting them on the table. “What was that all about?”

I turned the small vase with its single red rose so the open flower faced us. “She and Joe broke off their engagement.”

Kit’s eyes narrowed. She’d overdone it with the eye makeup as usual so it looked like she had on football eye-black. “She tell you or he tell you?”

“He did.”

She opened her notebook and clicked her pen. “They’ve been engaged longer than some marriages last. What happened?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t elaborate and she hasn’t brought it up.”

“That’s too bad.” She clicked her pen a few more times. “So tell me about finding the Beauvais woman’s car.”

Kit was Bobby Noland’s girlfriend, but she’d told me once that he’d made it clear pillow talk would get his ass kicked by the sheriff and that she should expect to go through the same channels every other member of the press did for her information. I gave her the expurgated version of what happened and waited to see what other questions she asked.

A waitress brought two glasses of a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, a bread basket filled with warm petit pains, and took our orders. Kit clinked her glass against mine. “I heard that the car might have been tampered with,” she said.

“The rear wheel on the driver’s side was gone.”

“So I understand.” She watched me. “You know something.”

“You can’t use it.”

“Aw, come on—”

“Sorry.” I folded my lips and shook my head.

“Okay, okay. What is it?”

“I found a lug nut by her cottage at the Fox and Hound. Bobby came by and bagged it.”

Kit set her wineglass on the table. Her red lipstick had left a perfect kiss mark on the rim. “What were you doing at the Fox and Hound?”

“This doesn’t go in your story, either. It’s probably not even relevant to what happened.”

“Talk to me.”

“It has to do with Ryan’s column today. I assume you read it.”

“I don’t have to. He reads them to me himself since he’s got the office next to mine. Some days I could strangle him with the power cord from his laptop.” She eyed me. “So go on.”

“Clay Avery brought Valerie here for lunch the other day and showed her the column. Last night Valerie said—in front of Ryan—that Clay wanted to hire her to write for the Trib . She suggested he dust off his résumé.”

Kit pulled back the napkin that covered the breadbasket and took a roll. “News to me.”

“Really?” I said. “Then just as we were leaving Mount Vernon, Valerie found me and said she knew something about the provenance of the wine Jack donated. But she had to come by and see it before she’d tell me what it was.”

“You mean that bottle Jefferson bought for Washington?”

“She asked how I’d managed to get hold of it—like I had to sleep with Jack or something.”

“Jeez, did she really?” Kit made a face. “That’s disgusting. Provenance, huh? Do you think she meant the bottle might have been stolen?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m worried she was going to tell me it was counterfeit.”

“Fake wine?”

“Sure. People do it all the time. Blend a couple of okay wines to taste like something world-class or put phony labels on mediocre wine—stuff like that. Collectors buy those bottles to lay down—if they ever drink it at all. So it’s years before they figure out they’ve been duped.”

Our dinners arrived—cassoulet for Kit, ragout of autumn vegetables with orzo for me. We’d ordered a bottle of Swedenburg Estate Cabernet to go with our meal. The waiter opened it and poured some for me to try. I nodded and he filled our glasses.

“How are you going to find out if it’s fake or not?” Kit asked.

“I don’t know. You know what else? I’m not even sure I ought to believe her. Ryan said she plagiarized parts of her book. So she wasn’t exactly honest.”

Kit set down her fork. “You mean she might have made the whole thing up?”

I sighed and stared into my wineglass. “I have no idea. Maybe she was just trying to stir up trouble.”

“She sure sounds like someone who knew how to do it. Could be that’s what got her killed.”

“Ryan couldn’t stand her.”

“Ryan has a temper and an ego,” she said, “but I don’t think he’d do anything that drastic. You’re talking about manslaughter.”

“An act of passion or extreme provocation,” I said. “You know what Bobby says. Under the right circumstances—or the wrong ones—anyone is capable of anything. Even something that seems out of character.”

“There’s your answer. Maybe he did it, maybe he didn’t.”

“Somebody did it.” I didn’t want to bring in Joe and the fact that he and Valerie were probably in flagrante delicto at the moment someone was outside her cottage tampering with her car. “Sorry I wasn’t much help with your story.”

“Forget it.”

It wasn’t like Kit to let me off the hook so easily. I looked at her plate. She’d hardly touched her food. “You feeling all right?”

“Yeah, fine.” She kept her eyes downcast.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you…wait a minute. Are you pregnant?”

Her cheeks turned scarlet. “Jee-sus, Lucie! Don’t be ridiculous. How could you even think such a thing?”

I waited.

“Okay,” she said. “It’s something, but not that. I’ve been offered a job in Moscow. Number-two correspondent in the bureau.”

“Moscow, Russia ?”

“We don’t have a bureau in Moscow, Idaho.”

“Oh my God, you’re serious. You’re thinking about taking it?”

“Will you stop looking at me like I said they want to shoot me into outer space with a cannon? I was on the foreign desk before I got transferred to Loudoun, in case you forgot.”

“I remember. But it’s just so…far away. I thought you needed to stay here because of your mom.”

“My mom says I need a life and it shouldn’t be chained to hers.” She picked up a piece of roll and sopped up some of the sauce from her cassoulet. “I’ve never owned a passport in my life. First time I’d really get to see the world. All those places named Something-Stan.” She sounded wistful.

“You sure you’re ready for something that drastic?”

“It’s a honking big pay raise.”

“Because it’s a senior job?”

“Because it’s a hardship post and they don’t have people falling all over themselves to volunteer for it.”

“What does Bobby say?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“You sound like you’re ready to say yes.”

She shrugged. “I have to make up my mind by the end of the month. Language training starts after Christmas. I wouldn’t leave until June.”

“Just after the snow melts in Russia?”

“Ha, ha. You want dessert?”

I shook my head. “That chocolate mousse looks out of this world,” she said. “Maybe I’ll ask them to box up my cassoulet and take it and some dessert to go. I’ve got to get back to the office.”