Ellen Crosby: The Bordeaux Betrayal

Which would be never. “I ought to be getting home, Thelma. Thanks for the coffee and I’ll pay you for the muffin. I also need some coffee beans and a loaf of that homemade sourdough bread for my grandfather.”

She caressed the paper bag that held the bread as she put it in a plastic carrier. “You tell Luc I sent this with my love, you hear me? And tell him don’t be a stranger, either. I know he likes red.” She smoothed her dress. “I’m wearing this just in case he drops by today.”

“He does,” I said. “And I’ll tell him.”

“Au revoir,” she said. “And you can also tell him that I’ve got a nice cross-ant waiting here special for him. Dans ma poitrine .”

I knew she meant vitrine, which was the large glass case where she kept all the baked goods, including her croissants. No point mentioning she’d told me instead that she was keeping it in her breast.

So Nicole Martin stopped by the General Store on her way to a meeting with a woman. Dressed in the suit she was killed in.

I drove home, making a mental list of possible candidates. It was pretty short.

I called the winery on my way back to the house. Frankie answered and said a couple of reporters had phoned about Nicole.

“What’d you tell them?” I asked.

“No comment.”

“Good for you. I just turned my phone on. Looks like I’ve got a bunch of messages.”

“Listen only if it’s someone you know,” she said. “I asked Gina to come in today. Hope you don’t mind, but I thought the boss could use a day off. We can cover anything that comes up.”

I smiled. “The boss wouldn’t mind a day off. Have you seen Quinn?”

“Jesus Lord.”

“Guess that’s ‘yes.’”

“He looked like hell.”

“He needs some sleep. I hope you told him to take a day off, too.”

“I tried. He went to the barrel room to get away from everything. A reporter showed up on his doorstep and wanted to talk to him,” Frankie said.

“What happened?”

“Quinn threw him off the property, then called his hunting buddy to come over and patrol the place. He’s supposed to be shooting crows and what have you, but I think he’s also supposed to put the fear of God into trespassers.”

“The spot near my mother’s cross is still a crime scene, Frankie. The sheriff’s department is coming by to search the place, too.”

“They’ve been here already,” she said. “I think they’re out by where you found Nicole now. Look, why don’t you let me handle all this? Go home and turn your phone off. Take your grandfather out for a drive or just get lost somewhere. There must be something you’d like to do.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “there is.”

When I got home around nine-thirty Pépé was still sleeping. I sat across from the bust of Jefferson in the foyer and listened to the messages on my phone. The only call I returned was Kit’s.

She answered on the first ring. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. No one answers at your house and your cell goes straight to voice mail.”

“My grandfather wouldn’t wake up if an army marched through his bedroom. I’ve been out.”

“Are you okay, Luce? I heard you two found Nicole.”

“We were visiting my mother’s cross. Whoever killed her left her body near there.”

“Bobby said she was beaten and strangled.”

“I know.”

“How’s Quinn taking it?”

“Like you’d think. He’s in the barrel room trying to work.”

“Look, I’m on my way to a briefing at the sheriff’s department so I’ve got to dash. Why don’t I call you this afternoon?”

“Sure. You’re writing the story?”

“Everybody in the bureau’s working on it.”

“You make any decision on the Moscow job yet?”

She hesitated and my heart sank. She was going to take it. “Yeah,” she said, “as a matter of fact I did. I turned it down.”

I smiled into the phone. “I’m really glad. What changed your mind?”

“Maybe it’s not so bad writing about school board meetings after all,” she said. “And Bobby finally said, ‘Baby, don’t go.’”

“Really? Things must be getting serious.”

“Yeah, sure. Mr. Speedy when it comes to romance. Like watching a glacier melt.” She chuckled at her own joke. “What are you doing today?”

“Errands.”

“Keep your mind off everything, huh? Take care of yourself. Talk to you later, kiddo.”

“Sure.”

I hung up and wrote Pépé a note about the coffee, adding a “p.s.” about Thelma and the bread—though I left out the red dress. My grandfather was sweet and chivalrous to every woman he met because that was his nature, but my grandmother had been the one and only love of his life. Deep down, I think Thelma knew that.

I put the morning newspaper on the coffee table in the library where he liked to read and emptied his ashtray. He’d left a neat pile of copies of the Washington Tribune containing Ryan’s columns. I gathered them up to put in the recycling bin on my way to the car.

If Nicole Martin had a meeting with a woman, there was one other woman—besides me—who didn’t want her leaving town with the Washington wine. Amanda Heyward. Had she tried to stop Nicole? Our relationship had cooled because of Kyra’s vandalism and the fact that I’d made her daughter clean my stone pillars. Quizzing Amanda about Nicole after her body had been found at the vineyard wouldn’t be much of a fence-mender.

I opened the side door to the carriage house and stuffed the copies of the Trib into the recycling bin. The newspaper on top had been folded open to Ryan’s column—the one he wrote about the Washington wine. I picked it up and read it again.

Ryan hadn’t only written about the Margaux, though that was the centerpiece of the article. He’d also mentioned the Domaine de Romanée-Conti and the Château Dorgon. Joe Dawson said Valerie had been upset because of something she’d learned in Bordeaux. I’d always assumed it had been the Margaux since both Valerie and Thomas Jefferson had visited that vineyard. The DRC was a Burgundy—but that also left the Dorgon. A vineyard that no longer existed.

The other night I’d finished reading Jefferson’s European travel diary. It had been a meticulously kept account of everything he saw, down to such mundane observations as the size and composition of bricks found in buildings along the Garonne River. Unlike me, he missed no details.

I went back inside and knocked on the door to Pépé’s bedroom. He answered, sounding sleepy.

“I’m sorry to wake you, but it’s important,” I said.

“Entrez.”

His blue-and-white-striped pajama top had a button undone, revealing a small triangle of pale white skin. His gray hair stuck up in tufts. Seeing him like this instead of dapper in a worn but elegant suit made him seem somehow vulnerable. My throat tightened and I leaned down to hug him, kissing his wrinkled cheek.

“What’s wrong? Sit, ma puce .”

“Do you want to come downstairs for coffee?” I asked. “Thelma sent you some fresh bread, too. In case you change your mind about eating breakfast.”

“You woke me at—” He leaned over and picked up his alarm clock, holding it close to his face so he could read it without his glasses. “ Mon Dieu . Nearly ten a.m., to ask me if I wanted breakfast?”

“No, no. I’m sorry. It wasn’t that. I wanted to ask you about the wine Jack Greenfield donated to the auction. Not the Margaux. The other Bordeaux—the Château Dorgon.”

“What of it?”

“Do you know why that château went out of business?”