Ellen Crosby - The Bordeaux Betrayal

After the hostilities the other day at the winery, the wariness was justified, but at least she made an effort to be civil.

“I wanted you to find this out from me,” I said. “There’s been some vandalism on my property. I haven’t called the sheriff yet, but I will probably report it later today.”

Claudia’s hand went to her beautiful medallion. She knotted the cord around her fingers. “We left New York to get away from the crime, for God’s sake.”

“Well, it’s—”

She wasn’t listening. “Stuart promised me it’d be safe here. Now I suppose we’ll have to get an alarm system put in.” She looked around the room at her possessions as though they might vanish while we sat here. “At least in New York if you scream, someone will hear you. Here there’s…no one.”

“Claudia,” I said. “Please let me explain.”

She looked blank. “Explain what?”

“What happened at my farm.”

“Oh.”

“On Saturday morning someone left a stuffed animal on my front doorstep. Freddie the Fox. They sell him around here. He was torn apart and there was red paint all over him like blood.”

Her hand moved from her necklace to her throat. “Oh my God,” she said. “How horrible.”

“Today we found more red paint on the pillars at the entrance to the vineyard. I think the same person or persons was responsible for both. Someone doesn’t want the Goose Creek Hunt riding on my property is the way I figure it. They’re trying to scare me. Or possibly threaten me.” I stopped and watched her face. It didn’t take long.

“Have you come here to accuse—?”

“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. But whoever did this knows you are campaigning against foxhunting here. And I bet they know you asked me to close my farm.”

She looked stunned.

“Any ideas?” I asked.

“My God,” she said again. “No, of course not.”

“Once I call the sheriff,” I said, “someone will probably be by to talk to you about this. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I have much choice about whether or not to report it. My winemaker and I are afraid their next move might be tampering with the jumps and fences.”

Her face turned the color of the bone-white fabric on a club chair opposite us. “Someone could get hurt.”

“Yes. Or one of the animals.”

Claudia moistened her lips with her tongue. “I’ll call Stuart. Right away. He’ll come home.”

“Who else have you been talking about this to?” I asked. “I understand you’ve had some meetings.”

She looked surprised that I knew. “We certainly don’t advocate violence. And I don’t think anyone involved with this movement would—” She fell silent.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, “but it looks like someone did. I know foxhunting is an emotional issue for some folks. Like you and Stuart. But the people involved in hunting are some of the staunchest environmentalists and advocates for preserving open space. Why do you think it’s still so beautiful here? No shopping malls, no apartment complexes—no kitschy-themed amusement park. I’m sure it had something to do with the reason you moved to this region, didn’t it?”

Claudia studied her manicure and pursed her lips. “We will not change our minds about the brutality of what you people do.” She stood up, signaling the end of our meeting. “But I appreciate you coming by to talk to me.”

In the front hall I said, “I know it’s a lot quieter here than New York and very different. But it’s also a place where everyone helps everyone else out. We’re a close-knit community. If you need something, your neighbors are there for you. We take care of each other.”

She held the door open. “May I ask you a personal question?”

“You can ask.”

She indicated my cane. “You can’t run. Doesn’t that scare you sometimes? What if you were attacked or you needed to get away from somebody?”

“You’re right that I can’t run.” I looked her in the eye. “But you know what they say about losing one of your five senses, don’t you? That the others become more acute. It’s kind of the same thing with me. I’ve learned to compensate for what I’ve lost. And to answer your question, I don’t scare easily.”

She fingered the necklace again, though this time she rubbed the medallion like it was a talisman. “Maybe I underestimated you,” she said.

“You wouldn’t be the first,” I said.

Quinn was in his office in the villa when I got back. “How’d it go with the Orlandos?” he asked.

“Better than I expected,” I said. “I talked to Claudia. Stuart was at work. She was pretty horrified but she understood why we need to call the sheriff. Said she had no clue who might have done it. Swore it was no one they’ve been meeting with to lobby against foxhunting.”

“I got some good news.” He looked pleased with himself. “A clue.”

He opened one of the side drawers in his desk and took something out. “Look at this. I found it near the spot where the paint ran out. Whoever did it brought their dog with them.”

I picked up the black leather collar with the silver studs on it. “She didn’t bring her dog,” I said. “She wears it as jewelry.”

“What are you talking about—she?”

It was the collar Amanda’s sulky daughter Kyra had worn at the Point-to-Point on Saturday.

The paint. The fox. What better way to get back at her mother—the secretary of the Goose Creek Hunt—than to attempt to sabotage one of their meets? I only hoped she hadn’t taken her juvenile anger one step further and tampered with the trails or jumps her mother and the rest of the hunt might take tomorrow. What she’d done had been stupid and malicious but at least no one had been hurt.

So far.

“I don’t see any reason to call the sheriff anymore, based on what we know now,” I said to Quinn after I explained about Kyra. “But I do need to call Amanda. And Claudia.”

“Why’d she do it?” he asked. “The kid, I mean.”

“If you met her, you’d know. She’s like Mia used to be at her age. Maybe worse. In a permanent stage of rage.”

“Glad I don’t have kids. Never did want them.”

I set down Kyra’s ugly collar. It was the first time he’d ever said something like that. Unlike Quinn, I wanted children. But after my car accident, the doctor told me that the odds were against it, given the internal damage.

“I didn’t know that,” I said. “Never, ever wanted them?”

He shrugged and picked up a tennis ball from the corner of his desk, tossing it in the air and catching it, over and over. When he was really thinking, he’d bounce it off the wall opposite his desk. It had left scuffmarks and annoyed the hell out of me.

“Long story.” He threw the ball against the wall.

“I wondered if that might be another secret from your past,” I said. “A son or daughter growing up in California?”

He looked at me so intensely I blushed. “Not that anyone told me,” he said.

“Sorry. That was out of line. Guess I’d better make those phone calls. I don’t suppose you’d stick around while I do it?”

He swished the tennis ball through a hoop attached to his empty trash can. It bounced a few times and he retrieved it. “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go out on the terrace and you can call there. The sunset’s going to be nice tonight. How about if I get us a couple of glasses of Cab?”

It was the first time since his ex-wife had shown up in town that he seemed like his old self. Maybe he’d finally managed to free himself of whatever hold she had on him.

“I’d like that,” I said.

I called Amanda first and kept it short and to the point. There was a long silence when I finished.