Ellen Crosby - The Chardonnay Charade

Almost everyone who wasn’t actually working the Sunday lunch shift at the Inn showed up for the buffet. As expected, it was a subdued afternoon. I was in the kitchen removing the plastic wrap from another tray of hors d’oeuvres when Quinn showed up, sunburned from the beach and sporting a new Hawaiian shirt. He looked good.

He leaned against the doorway. “You’ve had the weekend from hell, haven’t you?”

“Not as bad as the weekend the family of the boy Mia killed is having.”

He walked over to me. “Why didn’t you call me?”

I said unsteadily, “It’s a family matter. And you were…away.”

“I would have come back immediately if I’d known.”

I hadn’t cried the whole weekend, for the dead boy, for the grief my sister had caused their family, for the absolute tragedy of the situation. “It has nothing to do with the vineyard. You don’t need to be involved.” The tears streamed down my face and I looked around for a napkin, anything, to wipe them away.

He pulled me to him and stroked my hair. “I’m sorry what I said about Mia before. I had no right to do that. It was out of line.”

“It’s okay,” I said into his shirt. “Don’t worry about it.”

He kicked the kitchen door shut with the heel of his boot and let me cry it out in choked hushed sobs while he held me. “What if they can hear me out there?” I said, finally. “Everyone will wonder. And I should take this tray out to the terrace.”

“Shhh,” he whispered. “No one wonders anything. I’ll take it out in a few minutes. Calm down and take a deep breath. That’s a good girl.” He handed me a cocktail napkin that said “Congratulations” on it in flowery script. “You going to be all right?”

I wiped my eyes. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I’ll be right back.” He picked up the tray.

“That’s not what I meant.”

He’d been about to open the door, but he stopped and set the tray back down. “What did you mean?”

I twisted the small napkin into a knot. “I don’t want you to leave the vineyard. I want you to stay.”

He looked at me for what seemed like an eternity and I could see the futility in his eyes that meant my plea was too little too late and the die was already cast. But all he said was, “I’ll be back.”

When he finally returned with two more empty trays, I was leaning against the counter with wet napkins pressed against my eyes like compresses. “How do I look?” I took away the napkins and blinked. “Can you tell anything?”

“You look fine,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get back out there.”

The party broke up not long after that. Dominique left for the Inn with Joe. Her staff stayed behind to clean up.

“We’ve got things under control here,” Quinn said to me. “Why don’t you take off?”

“You sure?”

He nodded. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Babysitting my sister.”

“Call me if you need anything,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. “How did it go in Virginia Beach?”

He smiled ruefully. “Okay, I guess. Bonita ran into some friends she knew from around here. She wanted to stay and party with them, so she’s still there. I came back alone. She’s catching a ride back later tonight with some guy she used to date.”

“Oh.” I studied him. “Everything all right with you two?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“No reason. Thanks for the reprieve on cleaning up. I owe you.”

“No, you don’t. See you tomorrow.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “With everything that happened, I’ve been holding off telling you. But you need to know. We heard from Belcher.”

The EPA verdict. “How bad?”

“A fine. We got off easy, considering. They’re going to throw the book at Lambert Chemical, though.” He handed me the paper. “I’m glad it’s over with. This thing with your sister. Georgia. Randy. Maybe now we can start moving on.”

“Yes,” I said, “now all I can think about is whether Mia is going to jail or not.”

He looked at me sadly. “Aw, honey. You poor kid. Go home and get some rest.”

I drove back to the house, completely confused. Was he leaving or wasn’t he? He never said, one way or the other.

I found Mia stretched out on the glider, drinking something straw-colored and thumbing through the book of prints I’d bought from Mac.

“What is that?” I hadn’t meant to sound sharp, but it looked like Chardonnay.

“Apple juice. I swear. Want to try?” She held up the glass.

“No, it’s okay. Sorry I snapped at you. But be careful you don’t slosh anything on that book while you’re lying there. It cost six hundred dollars. I think some of those prints will make nice labels for the new wines. If they get wet they’ll be ruined.”

She sat up and swung her long tanned legs around so her feet were on the floor. “Six hundred?” She looked stunned. “You paid six hundred dollars for a damaged book?”

My turn to be surprised. “Damaged how?”

“It’s got missing pages.”

I sat down next to her and the glider rocked back and forth. “Show me.”

She opened the book to the flyleaf. “Here. Looks like maybe one page was cut out.” Then she flipped to the back. “And here. Two pages. See those tiny edges? If you’re going to cannibalize it, I guess it doesn’t matter. Where’d you get it?”

“From Mac Macdonald. Someone bought it, then returned it. Mac knew I was looking for wildflower prints.”

Mia sipped her apple juice. “Probably whoever returned it found the cut pages after they bought it.”

Or maybe that person was responsible for the damage. “Wonder what was on those pages,” I said.

“Nothing. They were probably the blank pages at the beginning and end of a book. I bet there was an inscription or some notes on them and somebody decided to remove them.”

I glanced at my watch. “I’m going to call Mac and ask him about that.”

I got through to the antique store a minute after five p.m. and the phone immediately went to the answering machine. I hung up without leaving a message.

Mia was hungry for the first time all day and I’d been too distracted to remember to bring anything back from Dominique’s reception. I fixed her bacon and eggs in the kitchen while she sat at the old pine table and read the comics, like she used to do as a kid.

“Boy,” she said gloomily, “my horoscope’s dead right. ‘Sitting on hold is frustrating.’ Too bad I couldn’t have Mom’s. Taurus always has good ones. ‘Out of your efforts springs something magical.’”

“What’s mine?”

“Cancer. The crab.” She looked up and grinned. “‘Push yourself to do the very thing you don’t want to do.’ Ring any bells?”

“Too many,” I said. “Put that away.”

She went to bed after dinner. I cleaned up and threw the newspaper in the recycling bin. But not before I read the rest of my horoscope. “A great deal is accomplished alone and in silence.”

I got the book of prints and went to the library, which had been Leland’s office until the fire destroyed most of it. His extensive collection of books on Thomas Jefferson had literally gone up in smoke and none of the furniture had been salvageable. My mother had once gone tartan-mad in decorating the room—heavy doses of red and green plaid on a heathery purple background, the colors of our modern tartan. It had always seemed a bit eye-popping and agitated to me and I didn’t spend much time there.

After the fire I knew I wanted the original floor-to-ceiling bookshelves rebuilt and then, in honor of my clan—my family, my history—I again used the Montgomery colors, though this time opting for our ancient tartan in the calmer shades of sage green and Wedgwood blue. I sat in a tartan-covered wing chair by the fireplace and turned on the three-way reading lamp to its full wattage. Not that I needed it.