Ellen Crosby: The Merlot Murders

I stared at him. “Did what? And Mom kept her jewelry box on the dressing table in her bedroom. She never locked it. When I was little she used to let me try on the fabulous jewelry she inherited from Grandmama Bessette.”

“You must have been very young to have worn those.” He sounded disgusted. “Because she sold them all, one by one.” He saw the look on my face. “You didn’t know, did you? She did it to bail your poppa out of debt. I’m sorry, my chair. I don’t mean to upset you, but it’s time you knew the truth.”

“Then what’s this for?” I held out the key.

“The one thing that’s still left. At least I think it is. Her diamond necklace. Ever seen it?”

“Oh my God,” I said. “Once. She wore it to the White House when she and Leland went to a dinner for the French Prime Minister. I never saw it again.”

“It’s worth a fortune, Lucie,” he said in a low voice. “Not to mention the provenance. Your mother told me it belonged to Marie Antoinette. It came into the possession of that countess who was your ancestor. The one who was Thomas Jefferson’s friend.”

“The Comtesse de Tessé,” I said. “Do you think my mother hid it? Marie Antoinette’s necklace?”

“I hope so.” He closed my hand around the key. “No one has seen it since she died. At first I figured Leland sold it, but he swore he didn’t. Maybe for once he told the truth. That’s why I never said anything about this key. I wanted to make sure there was something left for you children that Lee couldn’t squander. If you sold the necklace now, you’d have enough to pay off the vineyard’s debts. I’m sure your momma would understand. You just have to find it first.”

He squeezed my fist so tight the key cut into my palm. I winced and he loosened his grip. “Sorry, sugar.”

“I don’t know how to thank you for this,” I said, finally.

“Well,” he said, and something in his voice made it clear he was going to tell me precisely how I could do just that, “there is something you could do for me.”

I extracted my hand. He sounded vaguely Faustian. “What is it?”

“There’s something else that hasn’t been found since your momma died. Her diaries.”

“My mother never kept a diary,” I said.

It had been a family joke that Chantal Montgomery was single-handedly responsible for Atoka having its own post office rather than us being lumped in with Middleburg. I never saw her desk when it wasn’t heaped with stacks of writing paper, boxes of note cards, pens with different colored ink, sealing wax, and embossed address labels. During her life she had written thousands of letters, postcards, and notes. But as many times as I’d watched her writing, her head bent over some piece of correspondence or her gardening journals as Edith Piaf warbled “La Vie en Rose” on one of her old records, I didn’t ever recall seeing a diary.

Fitz clasped his hands to his chest and for a second, I thought he might be having a heart attack. “I am not asking you if she kept a diary. I am telling you she did. And when you clean out that compost heap of a house that used to be your mother’s pride and joy—and I know you will—you are going to find them. And then…” He shook a finger in my face, revving up with the fury of a Bible-belt preacher taking a sinning congregation to task. “And then you are going to turn them over to me.”

Them. More than one. “Why?”

“So I can burn them. It’s what she would have wanted.”

My mother baked cookies for every school bake sale, library fund-raiser, and church social I could remember. She sewed our Halloween costumes by hand and never missed a sports event, dance recital, or school concert. She read the same bedtime stories over and over and decorated elaborate birthday cakes in cute shapes and knitted mittens with animal faces on them.

She was not someone who wrote a diary that needed to be burned. Her life—to continue the metaphor—was an open book.

At least I’d always thought it was.

“What makes you so sure?” I asked. “I mean, I think I would have known…”

“Honey.” Fitz pulled me to him and stroked my hair. His voice was soft in my ear, a gentle wheeze. “You’re gonna give them to me when you find them, you hear me? Let your poor momma rest in peace. I’m asking you.”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice quavered. “I suppose I am.”

“Good.” He crushed me in another bear hug. “Now go along inside, like Eli said. They’re waiting on you.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Lord, no. I came to see you, that’s all. I already made my peace with Lee.” He stepped back, stumbling unexpectedly.

“Careful!” I grabbed his arm to steady him and he clung to it, pulling like it was a lifeline. I let go of my cane and wrapped the other arm around a porch balustrade to keep us both from falling. We swayed together until he found his footing.

“Whoops.” His chuckled giddily. “Almost lost my step there, didn’t I?”

“Why don’t you come inside, Fitz? Rest a bit.”

“Naw, I’m fine. Besides I need to get over to the winery. We’ve got a wedding tomorrow afternoon at the inn and the bride and groom ordered some bottles with custom labels. Quinn said he’d leave the cases out for me.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be driving…”

“Don’t you start, Lucie. How do you think I got here?”

“Please, Fitz?” I smiled. “Let me take you to the winery after the wake is over. We can talk some more. Come on.”

His genial bonhomie evaporated. “Now you pay attention, you hear? You’ve been listenin’ too much to that brother of yours. He ought to mind his own business for once. I am fine and I know what I’m doing. So stop patronizing me!”

“I’m not…”

“Oh yes, you are. And you of all people ought to know better.” He stabbed a finger at my chest. “Robs a body of his own dignity when people act like you can’t take care of yourself, doesn’t it, my chair? It’s humiliating.”

I was silent, wondering how I’d betrayed myself and let him find the soft place in my shell of invulnerability.

He nodded. “I thought you’d understand. Go inside now.” He still sounded cross, but he leaned over and his lips brushed my forehead. “Good night, sugar.”

A moment later the darkness swallowed him except for the tapping sound of his receding footfalls and then the noise of a car door slamming.

I went slowly back to the Green Room. Fitz had turned the tables neatly so that now it was Eli’s motives I was wondering about. Everything he’d said had made sense. If only he hadn’t begun slurring his words right before he left.

Upstairs, I could hear them singing. “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” One of Thelma’s favorites.

Eli met me at the door, scowling. “Just in time to close the barn door after the horse bolted. Thanks a bunch.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What happened to Fitz?”

“He went over to the winery to pick up some cases of a special label wine for a wedding. Who’s Quinn?”

“Quinn Santori. The new Jacques.”

Jacques had been both our winemaker and viticulturist since my parents first opened the vineyard. The rootstock for the original vines came with him from France, so in the beginning we produced only vitis vinifera, the so-called noble wines made from Old World or European grapes. He had lived in one of the tenant houses on our property, but most of the time he was either in the fields or at the winery.

“Where’s Jacques?”

“He had a stroke a few months ago. His daughter came over from Giverny and took him back to France.” He took my elbow. “Come on. Maybe we can head her off before she starts ‘Climb Every Mountain.’”