Ellen Crosby - The Merlot Murders

He turned the color of a June strawberry. “Jeez, Luce. I get it, okay? But Brandi…you don’t realize how precarious…she nearly lost the baby during her first trimester. It’s been a difficult pregnancy. We’ve got to be very careful.” He cocked his head at the sound of a car roaring up the driveway. “Who’s that?”

I crossed the foyer and glanced out one of the parlor windows. “Mia. Driving like she stole something. Where’d she get the red Mustang convertible?”

“It’s Greg’s. He must have let her borrow it while he’s at work. Wonder what brought her back here?”

“Does she know about Fitz…?” I began.

The front door opened and Mia burst in. “Know what about Fitz?” She sounded breathless. “They finally found him?”

She had changed from her black funeral dress into a pale yellow lace-trimmed camisole and matching shorts. Her blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail and she’d tucked a daisy behind one ear. When she was a baby, my mother called her mon ange —my angel. There was still something fragile and gossamer about her, both physically and emotionally. She lacked the steely stubbornness Eli and I had inherited, and our mental toughness. The news about Fitz—on top of Leland’s death—would crush her. Eli and I exchanged glances.

“Let’s go sit on the veranda,” I said gently. “We’ll talk there.”

With its worn herringbone-patterned wooden floors, white columns connected by arched latticework, and old-fashioned ceiling fan that whirred like a large dragonfly, the veranda was the place where everyone gravitated to read or nap or daydream—and to watch the vividly hued sunsets with their backdrop of the graceful Blue Ridge.

Not surprisingly it was in the same sorry state as the rest of the house. Planters and urns, which had once been filled with flowers, were moss-covered and sprouted weeds. The white wicker furniture looked scarred up and some pieces needed mending. The paint on the columns was peeling and scaly.

I sat with Mia on the wicker love seat, trying to ignore the stains and worn spots on the cushions made from my mother’s favorite Provençal fabrics. Eli sat across from us in the glider, rocking back and forth. Its springs needed oiling.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Mia sounded weary. “First Pop, now Fitz. What happened? Tell me.”

I put my arm around her once again and this time her muscles went tense and rigid. “I’m so sorry, honey,” I said.

Eli shot me a look before he said, “We think he was trying to stop a robbery at the winery. I’m sorry, babe. Someone pushed him into a purged tank.”

She turned white under her suntan and her hand went to her mouth. “I’m going to throw up,” she said and bolted.

Eli got to her faster than I did. He held her shoulders as she stood retching into a flower bed that was now nothing but a mass of weeds. “Get some water, will you?” he muttered to me.

The front door closed as I came back through the foyer. I held a pitcher in the hand I didn’t need for my cane and had tucked a glass between my elbow and my ribs.

Mason Jones let himself in without bothering to ring the doorbell. He’d changed from the expensive-looking dark gray suit he wore at the funeral to an expensive-looking blue-and-white seersucker suit. In all the years I’d known him, I’d never seen Mason in anything but a suit. His shirts were handmade and had discreet monograms on the pockets and all his ties were silk, ordered from London.

“I came as soon as I found out.” He was carrying a zippered butter-soft black leather folder. Also monogrammed. “What are you doing there, Lucie love? Let me help you. You’re going to drop something.” He came over and extracted the glass. “You all right?”

“We just told Mia,” I said. “She and Eli are out on the veranda. She took it pretty hard.”

Mason held the door for me as we went outside. Eli had moved to the love seat. Next to him Mia sat with her elbows on her knees, holding her head in her hands.

“Look who’s here,” I said.

Mia looked up. “Hi, Uncle Mason.” Her voice trembled. Eli handed her the glass of water after I poured it.

Mason sat in an oversized matching wicker chair after first checking out the condition of the seat cushion. He put his leather folder between the cushion and the arm of the chair.

“I’m so sorry, children,” he said. “I don’t know what to say. This is horrible…horrible.”

“Who told you?” Eli asked.

“I was over at the inn when Elvis Harmon came by,” he said. “I was supposed to have dinner with him and a couple of the boys.” He shook his head. “We put it off for another time.”

“Dominique knows, then,” I said. “She’s probably devastated.”

He smiled sadly. “Aw, honey, you know your cousin. She just soldiers on, no matter what. I stayed with her in the kitchen while she cried, poor thing. Then she pulled herself together like she always does. She was terribly distraught though, on account of the way things stood between Fitz and her before…” He faltered. “Well, before.”

“You knew they were having problems?” Eli said.

“You know how word gets around, son.”

“How about a drink, Mason?” Eli asked. He gestured to Mason’s leather folder. “This isn’t strictly a social visit, is it?”

Mason’s smile didn’t make it all the way to his eyes. “As it happens, I do have some business to discuss. I didn’t expect to find all three of you here, but since everyone’s present perhaps we ought to take advantage of the situation, difficult as it is. And I’ll take bourbon and water, if you’ve got it.”

He was an old-school Southern lawyer, silver-tongued and silver-haired, with highly polished manners and old-fashioned gallantry but the killer courtroom instincts of a barracuda. Even though I really wanted to crawl into bed and forget this day, there was something in his voice that implied it was more than a polite invitation. If Mason had something to say, you didn’t turn him down. As a kid I’d called him “Uncle Mason” like Mia still did, but that didn’t change the fact that he handled all our affairs, personal and professional, as though counters behind his eyes were calculating billable and nonbillable hours. The billable hours bought him a lavish horse farm, where the President and the First Lady occasionally came to ride, and a gorgeous wife who frequently graced the society pages of the Washington Post, the Tribune, and Vanity Fair because of her glamorous fund-raising parties for local charities. There weren’t many nonbillable hours.

“Is this about the will? Is there some kind of problem?” Eli suddenly sounded tense.

“Don’t you worry,” Mason said. “Everything’s fine. Let’s all have a little drink and then we can chat about it.”

“I’ll get the bourbon,” I said. “It’s on the sideboard.”

“Stay here. I’ll get everything,” Eli banged into the glass-topped coffee table in front of the love seat as he stood up. Mason’s remark had obviously unbalanced him. He was worried about something. “What are you girls drinking?”

“White wine please,” I said. “Whatever’s open.”

“Nothing for me,” Mia said.

While he was inside I lit the citronella torches in the border garden and set an oil lamp on the coffee table. Eli returned with a tray and the drinks—and Leland’s best Scotch for himself.

He drank Scotch when he was upset.

Mason raised his glass. “To Lee and Fitz.”

After we drank Eli said, “So what’s this about, Mason?”

Mason set down his glass and picked up the leather folder. He pulled out a few papers and reached into his inside jacket pocket for a pair of half-glasses. I could tell Eli was squirming and that Mason was going to take his sweet time about this. “Well, Fitz’s death changes things, children.”