Ellen Crosby - The Bordeaux Betrayal

I smiled. “I assume we’re at her table?”

“She thought you might enjoy eating outside. Is that all right?”

“Yes. Lovely.”

“Your waiter will take you there. If you can wait un petit instant ?”

Dominique showed up just after I was seated. She kissed me absently and set an ashtray next to her place, pulling a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her black trousers.

It seemed to be my day for being with people who looked like they’d spent the weekend being run over by a tractor-trailer rig.

“I’m glad you came.” She lit up and took a deep drag, closing her eyes.

My cousin hadn’t chosen to eat outdoors because of the glorious weather. She needed to smoke and it was off-limits in the restaurant.

“My pleasure. What’s going on? No offense but you look rotten.”

“I feel rotten. How about a glass of champagne?” She raised her hand and our waiter appeared at our table. “Deux coupes de champagne, s’il vous plaît.”

After he left she said, “Joe and I have split up for good. He’s leaving.”

Napoleon once said that in victory you deserve champagne but in defeat, you need it. My cousin needed it.

“Leaving what?” I said.

“Everything. The academy. Atoka.” Her eyes were anguished. “Me.”

I reached for her hand as our champagne arrived. “I’m sorry.”

She sucked on her cigarette like it was life-sustaining. “A couple of parents got wind that one of their daughters’ teachers was involved in a murder investigation. They didn’t think someone like that ought to be on the staff at the academy.”

“He got sacked?”

Dominique nodded. “Two weeks’ notice. By the way, I ordered our lunch before you got here.”

Her world could be falling apart but she still had to be Super-woman, taking care of everything and everyone. “Great,” I said. “And Joe’s not guilty of killing anybody.”

“Doesn’t matter. He buttered his bread when he slept with that woman and now they’re making him lie in it.”

“I guess so,” I said. “Though it seems pretty harsh.”

She shrugged as the waiter set two plates of salmon tartare in front of us. I hoped she was going to put her cigarette down while she ate. Even outside, the smoke was annoying.

“What’s he going to do?” I asked.

“Move to D.C. You know how desperate they are for teachers in that school system. He’ll find a job right away, even in the middle of the school year.”

“Why does he have to move there? Why can’t he stay here and commute?”

She lit a cigarette off the end of the previous one. “He feels like he has crow all over his face if he stays in Atoka.”

“You’re going to give yourself lung cancer.”

She eyed me. “We come from good genes. Look at Pépé. He’s been smoking since the dinosaurs roamed the earth and he’s fine.”

She had a point. “How are you doing?” I asked.

“I’d like to strangle Joe for what he did. Otherwise, I’m fine.”

“At least you’re not keeping your emotions pent up. That’s a good sign.”

Our empty salmon plates vanished and a salad of bitter greens with herbed chèvre croutons arrived. Dominique asked for more bread.

“I made some calls,” she said. “I found out about her.”

“Valerie?” I looked up from my salad. “Why did you do that?”

Another drag on the cigarette. “I wanted to know.” She glanced at me. “Don’t look at me that way. In my place you’d do the same thing.”

I thought about my questions to Mick yesterday and, this morning, prodding Quinn for information in the barrel room. We also came from inquisitive genes.

“UVA fired her and she was in debt. No permanent address after she came back from France. She lived with various friends in Charlottesville to avoid paying rent.” My cousin stabbed her salad aggressively with her fork. “Promised everyone who loaned her money she would pay them back after she finished writing the Jefferson book, but she never did.”

I watched her eat. “That’s a lot to find out from a few phone calls. What’d you do? Hire a private investigator?”

She tossed her head. “I didn’t hire anybody. You forget I have clients who have known me for years. Maybe I take care of a gentleman who wants a discreet dinner with a lady friend and maybe he’d like to show his appreciation that I provide a private dining room for him and his friend each time they show up and never say a word when he returns with his wife.”

“Oh,” I said. “Payback. A lesser form of blackmail.”

“What goes around comes around.” She smiled sweetly. “I wonder where Valerie thought she’d get the money.”

“Not from book sales, that’s for sure. Maybe she was trying to blackmail Jack Greenfield, though Jack wasn’t the one who fooled around with her car.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know. Nicole Martin is trying to get him to sell her the Washington wine for one of her clients,” I said. “Did you know she and Valerie were friends?”

“Isn’t that interesting?” Dominique rolled her eyes as she sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. “Some friend. Now Valerie’s dead and Nicole gets that bottle.”

“Nicole didn’t come to town until after Valerie died,” I said. “But it’s an odd coincidence.”

“If it’s a coincidence. It seems like there’s still a missing piece to the puzzle,” my cousin said. “Somewhere in the middle of this is a smoking mirror. All you need to do is find it.”

“Sure.”

Unless I was trying to put together the wrong puzzle. I was beginning to wonder about that.

Claudia and Stuart Orlando lived in a large stone house that had been built in the late nineteenth century from stone quarried on their own property. As I turned in their driveway I noticed they had replaced the white metal mailbox that had been there for years with something large enough to hold mail for an entire condo complex.

Claudia answered the door when I rang the bell. Perfect makeup, impeccable clothes. In the middle of a conversation on a portable phone. She didn’t look overjoyed to see me, but at least she gestured for me to come in.

She put her hand over the receiver and whispered in her raspy New York accent, “I’m just finishing up here. Why don’t you have a seat in the living room?”

I followed the direction of her manicured ruby fingernail and nodded. She strolled into another room which looked like a study or her office.

“Call Hong Kong,” she said into the phone. “Find out if they’ll go along with it.” The door to the room closed. Based on her tone of voice, Hong Kong needed to go along with it.

The living room was modern, with a palette that ranged from parchment to cream. More Claudia than Stuart. The neutral tones reminded me of a beach. Several small artifacts, oriental and quite ancient, sat on a lighted étagère. The paintings were modern, also in restful neutral shades. A black lacquered coffee table and two black-shaded lamps on the end tables provided counterbalance to all the whiteness. On the sofa were Shantung silk pillows with oriental designs in black, white, and scarlet. Not my taste, but I liked the effect.

Claudia entered the room while I was sitting on the cream-colored sofa, admiring her collection of bronzes. I noticed for the first time that she was dressed in black and white, like her room. An ivory and black medallion hung around her neck on a black velvet cord. Her perfume smelled of jasmine.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been trying to put this deal together for weeks.”

“What do you do?”

“Import-export. Almost exclusively Asia. The time difference is a killer. Sometimes I’m up all night and sleep all day.” She clasped her hands together as though she were praying and joined me on the sofa. “To what do I owe the pleasure? I have a feeling it’s not a social visit.”