Ellen Crosby - The Bordeaux Betrayal

My grandfather shoved me down one row and dove down another as Shane groaned and I heard the sound of breaking glass. “Go!”

The aisles of Jack’s wine cellar were open-ended—we wouldn’t be able to hide for long. I saw Pépé’s shadow at the end of his aisle. He leaned out and signaled to me. He would draw Shane so I could get to the door. My phone was in the car, but that was a few hundred feet away. I pointed to my leg and shook my head. Then I pointed at him. He could run. I could not.

“I’ll kill you both.” Shane’s voice echoed in the room. “No one’s leaving.”

Pépé disappeared, silent as a ghost. I heard the sound of more glass on glass and Shane moving toward the noise. Pépé still meant for me to go for help and he was trying to draw Shane away from where I was. But I’d have to go the long way around the perimeter of the wine cellar before I could get back to the tasting area and the door without Shane seeing me. And I didn’t have my cane.

“Hey, Lucie,” Shane said. “Guess who I’ve got?”

I heard my grandfather’s “ouf” and the sound of something hard connecting with flesh. Then more breaking glass. Pépé must have fallen into one of the wine racks. Had Shane struck him with his rifle butt, or another wine bottle? He could have killed him if it had been a blow to the head.

“What did you do to him?” I shouted. “Leave him alone!”

“Then get over here,” he said. “Or I’ll really hurt him. You know what damage a broken bottle can do to a soft old skull?”

“Oh my God,” I said. “Don’t. Please, don’t.”

I walked around the corner. Pépé lay crumpled on the floor, his silver hair streaked with red. He wasn’t moving.

“Let me take care of him,” I said. “Please.”

“Don’t be stupid. Now I’ve got two of you to deal with. You first. Let’s go.” Shane jabbed the rifle barrel in the small of my back. “Step around that mess. There’s glass everywhere.”

He forced me back to the tasting area, his hands and jacket covered with wine and blood from where he’d been cut by broken glass. “Over to the sink,” he said. “Grab a towel and get it wet. I’ve got to clean up.”

I reached for the towel and caught a glimpse of my grandfather, bloody and wine-stained, as he peeked around the corner of one of the shelves. Shane, facing the sink, had set down the rifle and was wrapping the towel around his hand. He didn’t see Pépé. I looked down so my eyes wouldn’t give anything away.

“Don’t test my marksmanship.” My grandfather’s voice was surprisingly strong as he cocked the hammer of Leland’s Colt .45 semiautomatic pistol and aimed it at Shane. “Put the rifle down on the floor and move away from it.”

“No.” Shane reached for his gun as I grabbed the Washington wine.

“Do what he says or I’ll drop this,” I said.

He swung around. “No! Don’t do it!”

I brought the bottle down hard on his arm. He swore and fired the rifle, hitting a bottle of wine, which exploded off the shelf. I hit him again and this time he dropped the rifle. I held the Margaux in my hands, amazed that the bottle had not broken.

Pépé walked over to us, keeping the pistol pointed at Shane. He nudged the rifle out of the way with his foot.

“Put the bottle down and get the rifle, Lucie,” he said. “And take it with you when you call the sheriff.”

I obeyed and started for the door.

“Oh my God—no! Look what you’ve done!” Shane was staring at the bottle, now cracked with a spiderweb of tiny fissures. Slowly the wine seeped out like blood from a wound. “We have to save it! My God, do you know what this wine is worth?”

“Two lives too many,” I said.

“Let it go,” Pépé said. “The man it was destined for never drank it. Go along, Lucie.”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I thought I’d teach our friend to count to ten in French while we’re waiting. He forgot six, you know. Besides, I am here with the spirits of two of your most famous presidents. I’ll be fine.”

The fresh-faced paramedic who showed up was the one who had treated me the day Valerie died.

“You get around,” he said.

“I think my grandfather should go to the hospital,” I said.

“Not on your life,” Pépé said. “Most of this is wine, not blood. I have a small cut on my head but it will heal. I’m not going to any hospital.”

“I see orneriness runs in the family,” the paramedic said.

I watched a deputy handcuff Shane and take him over to a cruiser. His eyes met mine as the deputy pushed his head down and he slid into the car.

By the time Bobby Noland showed up, he said a couple of deputies had already picked Jack up at Jeroboam’s. Bobby walked into Jack’s wine cellar and saw the mess of broken bottles and wine on the floor.

“All this over some old bottles of wine,” he said. “Give me a beer any time. If it’s old, you know it’s bad.”

Pépé’s friend had left a message on the answering machine when we got back to the house. Château Dorgon, he reported, had been taken over by a Nazi officer named Johannes von Gruenfeld. None of the family had survived the camps, but a year or so ago an American woman had shown up, claiming to be a distant relative.

“In English, ‘Gruenfeld’ translates into ‘Greenfield,’” Pépé said.

“A distant relative. Valerie? My God, if Valerie was related to the family Jack’s father sent to the camps, she must have really wanted revenge,” I said. “Why didn’t she confront him right away?”

“Maybe she wanted to see the wine first,” Pépé said.

“I wonder if Nicole knew Valerie was related to the family who owned Château Dorgon,” I said. “Though I think all Nicole cared about was having the leverage to blackmail Jack so he’d sell her the Washington wine—or maybe give it to her outright.”

“From what you’ve told me, I doubt Valerie would have confided something like that in Nicole,” my grandfather said.

“So Nicole was telling the truth—she didn’t know what Valerie knew. Except I thought it had to do with the Margaux,” I said.

“In a way, it did,” Pépé said. “Both women wanted it and both of them tried to blackmail Jack and Shane—but for different reasons.”

“What do you bet Shane would have resold all the ‘stolen’ wine through his Internet auctions once they collected the insurance money?” I said. “Though Shane betrayed Jack as well, hanging on to the Dorgon and pilfering from his wine cellar.”

My grandfather shook his head. “Such a tragedy. At least now it is finished.”

“Maybe you ought to think about postponing your trip home,” I said. “You really have quite a nasty cut on your head.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I need to get back to Paris. A few of les vieux potes are planning another trip.”

The old chums. His buddies. The friends he’d gone to China with. “Another trip? Where are you going this time?”

“Egypt. To see the pyramids.” He smiled. “I remember watching when they were built. It would be nice to see what they’ve done with them since then.”

I burst out laughing. “Are you really going to Egypt?”

His smile broadened. “But, of course.”

The day before he left for Paris, Pépé planned his own farewell party, inviting Dominique, Eli, Quinn, Thelma, and me to join him at the villa. He’d brought a bottle of 1945 Château d’Yquem from France, intending to drink it with his colleagues to commemorate the year the war ended in Europe. Instead, he decided to share it with us.

“One last memory bottle,” he said. “To lay old ghosts to rest.”