The Chardonnay Charade (13 page)

“Lucie,” he said. “Come in, my dear. What can I do for you? What’s the occasion for the flowers?”

Noah and my mother had worked closely together when she restored the gardens around our house and later when she decided to undertake more substantial landscaping projects at the villa, the Ruins, the family cemetery, and the pond. As a result we’d spent tens of thousands of dollars at Seely’s over the years, which meant there was a gold star next to our name on their ledger. Anyone who showed up from Montgomery Estate Vineyard got VIP treatment.

“Hector’s in the hospital,” I said. “He had a heart attack yesterday afternoon.”

“Good Lord. I hadn’t heard. I’m so sorry. How is he?”

“He seems to be doing all right,” I said. “They’re keeping him for a few days. He’s at Catoctin General.”

“I’ll have to drop by and see him.”

“He’d like that. Thanks, Noah.”

His desk chair creaked as he sat back in it. “I haven’t seen you since that nasty business with Georgia at the vineyard. I was so sorry to hear about it. She wasn’t one of my favorite people, as you might imagine, but still. We’re all God’s creatures. It shouldn’t have happened.”

“That’s very charitable, considering what she did to you.”

“It’s finished.” He picked up a pencil and held it between his index fingers, studying it as if he were gauging its length. “I guess all that’s left is for the sheriff to arrest whoever did it.”

“They’re looking for Randy Hunter,” I said.

“So I understand.” Noah set the pencil down.

“Were you around when Amy Dye and her goddaughter ran into Randy the other day?”

He shook his head. “No, but Jennifer was. I heard about it, of course. Gabrielle—I think that’s her name—apparently has quite a temper on her. Jen and Amy had a job on their hands getting her calmed down.”

“It’s Gabriella. What did she say?”

Noah pulled his glasses off his forehead and looked through the lenses as if seeing into a crystal ball. “If you really want to know, you should ask Jen, honey. She can fill you in better than I can.”

“I think I will.” I blew him a kiss. “See you, Noah.”

I found Jennifer Seely out in the back watering bedding plants, as I’d been told. She handed off the hose to one of her employees and said, smiling, “What can I do for you, Lucie? You find everything you need today?”

I’d known Jen for most of my life, since she’d been two grades behind me in school. A pretty, quiet-spoken girl with her father’s sunny temperament who wore her straight brown hair beguilingly in a long French braid, you could count on her to win a blue ribbon at the county fair each year for something she’d grown in her garden. After high school she went to Virginia Tech to study agriculture, never doubting that her destiny was taking over the nursery one day.

“I just talked to your dad,” I said. “Randy Hunter hasn’t shown up for work at the vineyard since last Saturday. I heard about what happened here when he ran into Harry Dye’s goddaughter the other day. Gaby Manzur.”

My unanswered question hung in the air.

Jen’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, it was quite a scene. Thank God Amy dragged her out of here right away. She was hysterical. Screaming and completely out of control. I was afraid she was going to start hitting him or throwing things.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing worth repeating.” She seemed uncomfortable. “Called him a bunch of names. Said she hated him for what he’d done to her and that he’d pay for it someday. Poor Randy. I felt so sorry for him. He looked like he had no clue who she was and why she was saying all those horrible things.”

“He did?” I found that hard to swallow.

“Well…he told me afterwards he remembered meeting her, but he kind of went blank on the details. Uh, there was alcohol involved.” We had moved over by the little market packs of petunias and she’d automatically begun deadheading the flowers, avoiding my eyes. Finally she looked up. “Look, he told me he wasn’t exactly a saint when he was growing up. But he’s changed. He’s a good guy now.”

“Yes.” No point mentioning that, good guy or not, I thought he was the prime suspect in Georgia’s murder. “Do you have any idea where he is?”

Jen shook her head. “It’s not like him to drop out of sight like this. Even the rest of the band doesn’t know where he went.”

She held a bunch of dead petunias in one hand. We both stared at the spent flowers.

“I guess you probably heard the rumors about him and Georgia Greenwood,” I said. “And now that Georgia’s dead—”

“Of course I’ve heard.” She cut me off. “It’s a load of crap. Randy told me why he was seeing Georgia. One of her cousins owns a recording company in Nashville. She was going to set up a meeting between her cousin and Randy after he finished cutting his CD. The reason Randy and Georgia were seeing each other was business. Not some stupid affair.”

“He said that?”

“He wouldn’t lie to me. I know him, Lucie.” She was adamant.

Hadn’t he lied to her about Gaby Manzur? Or did he really have amnesia about a sexual relationship that produced a child? Either way, Jen sounded pretty defensive.

“So you and Randy are close, then?” I asked.

“We’re
friends.
I was dating Josh for a while, so I saw Randy all the time.”

“Josh?”

“The drummer in their band. We broke up, but I still hang out with the guys. I go to most of their gigs.”

“When’s the last time you talked to Randy?”

Her answer was evasive. “I left a couple of messages on his mobile asking him to get in touch.”

“Did he?”

She hesitated, then said, “No. The last time I called, his mailbox was full.” A walkie-talkie on her hip beeped and she unclipped it. “This is Jennifer.”

A garbled voice said something about a customer needing help with plants for a shade garden.

“Tell her I’ll be right there.” She smiled a tight little smile. “Gotta run, Lucie. Can’t keep the customers waiting.”

“Before you go,” I said, “were you and Randy involved…?”

“I told you already that Randy and I are just friends. So let it go, okay, Lucie?”

She turned and stalked away. I watched her leave and headed for my car. Though the story about Georgia’s cousin’s recording studio was plausible, it didn’t sound right considering how defensive Jen had been when I asked about Randy.

That mobile phone was his lifeline. She admitted he hadn’t returned any of her calls and now his voice mailbox was full.

As far as I was concerned, that meant one of two things.

Either Randy was hiding out.

Or he was dead.

Though it would have been faster to take the Snickersville Turnpike to Aldie and pick up the main roads to Leesburg, I decided to take the long way on the winding back roads. It gave me time to speculate on why Jen might be lying about her relationship with Randy. If he’d killed Georgia and she knew something, then Jen was an accessory to murder. All the reason in the world to tell a few whoppers.

Unless there was something else. Something I hadn’t figured out yet.

I followed the turnpike to Mountville, where it made an elbow-shaped turn thanks to Ezekial Mount’s decision back in the 1800s to plant a single apple tree in the middle of the road and call it an orchard. In those days the town laws forbade disturbing orchards, so the pike had to be rerouted around the tree. While the tree was long gone, the kink in the road remained.

You could drive for miles without ever running into another car on these bucolic country lanes edged with undulating gray ribbons of low stacked-stone walls dating from Civil War days. Usually I liked the solitude and the serenity as the view opened up each time I rounded one of the many serpentine turns to reveal farmhouses, barns, and stables with their backdrop of sweeping expanses of fields and pastures dotted with placid cattle and expensive thoroughbreds—and always the lovely, hazy Blue Ridge Mountains defining the scene. But today I stared at the mountains and wondered where the hell Randy was.

Alive or dead, the answers lay with him.

I pulled into the parking lot at Catoctin Hospital about twenty minutes later and got Hector’s flowers from the backseat of the Mini. Hector was asleep, but Sera, who’d been reading in an uncomfortable-looking fake leather chair next to the bed, stood up and came over when I tapped gently on the door. She wore her steel-gray hair in a bun, as neat and tidy as everything else about her. As she got up, she removed her glasses, letting them hang around her neck on a silky black cord. I caught sight of her book.
A Farewell to Arms.
Hemingway.

“Don’t disturb him,” I whispered. “Let him sleep. Please tell him I stopped by when he wakes up, though.”

“These are beautiful, Lucie.” She set the book down so she could take the flowers with both hands. “Thank you so much.”

She looked tired, though she seemed less tense than the night Hector had been brought to the emergency room. I watched as she took an empty vase next to the small sink in his room and filled it with water. She set it on a window ledge and began arranging the flowers.

“You’re welcome,” I said, as her hands worked their magic. “Before I forget, I wanted to tell you how lovely the courtyard looks. Thank you for planting all those flowers and for the roses from your garden. I don’t know when you found the time.”

“I was glad to do it. Kept my mind off worrying. Besides, I’ve done it every year since your mother asked me. I can’t quit now.” She finished with the vase, turning it so the arrangement pleased her, and regarded me. “What roses?”

“The vase of red roses you left in the villa,” I said. “It was very thoughtful.”

She looked surprised. “They weren’t from my garden. Though I wish they had been. They came in the shipment from Seely’s.”

“Really? That’s funny,” I said. “Although maybe Noah sent them to say thanks for our business. He’s done that before, though usually it’s a plant. By the way, he sends his best and says he’ll try to come by later.”

“He’s a good man. Hector will like that.” She picked up her book again. “Thank you for coming. And for what you did for Bonita. We are grateful.”

I blushed. “What about you? Is there anything you need?”

Sera’s eyes grew misty and she held Hemingway against her chest like a shield. “Everything I need,” she said softly but deliberately, “is here in this room.”

I kissed her cheek, my own eyes brimming with tears. “I know that. But call me. In case there’s something else.”

I stopped in a bathroom on the way out and splashed cold water on my face, wiping my eyes. Then I drove the few blocks to Kit’s office, parking outside the small gray clapboard building with “Washington Tribune, Loudoun Bureau” stenciled in elegant gold script on the plate-glass front door. Kit’s office manager looked up from her crossword puzzle when I walked in.

“She’s expecting you,” she said. “Go on back.”

I found her staring out the window. “Knock-knock.”

“Hiya,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. I’m starved.”

We walked half a block to Tuscarora Mill, a nineteenth-century grain mill that had been converted to a restaurant. The bar was full and the restaurant buzzed pleasantly with the noise of the Leesburg lunch crowd. If the Romeos weren’t at the Inn, they ate at Tuskie’s. Kit’s table was in the main dining room, which still had the original broad timbers, belts, pulleys, and scales from the days when it had been a working mill.

The hostess seated us and our waitress took drink orders. Kit wanted a glass of Pinot Noir. I asked for unsweetened iced tea.

“What, no wine?” Kit said.

“I’ve been sampling Chardonnays for the last few days. I need a break.”

“On the subject of drinking”—Kit folded her hands and leaned toward me, lowering her voice—“there’s something you ought to know. It’s about Mia.”

This wasn’t going to be good. “What about Mia?”

“Sorry, Luce, it’s going to be in the
Trib
police blotter tomorrow. She got charged with public drunkenness. Not a criminal offense, just a misdemeanor. She has to pay a fine. This time. I asked Bobby about it. He said she was with a bunch of kids who’ve taken to drinking—of all places—in that old field where they used to have temperance picnics during Prohibition.”

“I’ll kill her,” I said. “I told her to knock it off. She had a monster hangover the other morning when I found her in the kitchen. And it wasn’t the first time, either.”

The waitress returned with our drinks and we ordered, a chef’s salad for me and the meatloaf for Kit.

“I know we weren’t saints,” Kit said after she left, “snitching bottles from your wine cellar and drinking them down at Goose Creek Bridge, but jeez. Bobby said they were drunk off their asses. He said Abby Lang gave the patrol officer who caught them a lot of lip and the do-you-know-who-my-father-is routine. Bobby said his officer told Abby her old man could be the next face they were putting on Mount Rushmore, but if it happened again he wouldn’t cut them any slack. They’d be spending the night in the drunk tank.”

I clamped my lips together and shook my head, visualizing the scene she’d described. “Ever since my mother died, Mia’s been out of control. It’s almost like she has a death wish sometimes, you know?”

“Or she’s wearing the superhero suit so she’s invincible. Lot of that going around with those kids. Did you know they drag-race late at night on Route Fifteen? All the way from Leesburg to Gilbert’s Corner. Sometimes when I’m coming home from work really late, I’ll see a lot of parked cars in one of the lay-bys. Someone’s gonna get killed.”

“God, Kit, what am I going to do?”

She shrugged. “Talk to her.”

“She won’t listen.”

“What about Eli? She listens to him and Miss Apple Blossom, doesn’t she?” My sister-in-law had once been the queen of the Winchester apple festival. She’d also been the woman who stole Eli away from Kit. It still rankled.

Our food arrived. Kit doused her meatloaf with salt, then ketchup. She bit into a piece. “I love their meatloaf.”

“Why didn’t you taste it before you put salt on it?”

“Because it needed salt.” She picked up the saltshaker again. “So, get Eli to shoulder some responsibility for a change and talk to her. Unless he’s too busy arranging his tie collection by color. Or maybe he does it by designer.”

“Miaow.”

Kit smiled, unrepentant. “I’m allowed. He’s turned into such a wimp ever since he married the Queen Bee.”

“No comment. I’ll talk to him, although he’s at the beach right now. Hilton Head.” I pushed a tomato around on my plate.

“What did he do? Rob a bank? How can he afford Hilton Head on the salary he makes?”

“I guess with his share of the money from selling my mom’s diamond necklace. Plus I bought out his interest in the vineyard.”

“When he gets back, tell him you need him to pull his weight and help out with your sister.” Kit poured gravy on her mashed potatoes. “Especially since she’s not hanging around the best crowd. Abby Lang is trouble.”

“I know. I wonder if her father knows what she’s up to.”

“He’s got his mind on other things, if you ask me. Like the vice presidential nomination. Pass the rolls, please?”

I passed them. “He left the fund-raiser with Georgia. That was the last time I saw her alive.”

“Hugo Lang is the Mr. Clean of the U.S. Senate. Hell, of the entire Congress,” Kit said. “I can’t think of a single reason he’d have for killing Georgia, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Do you think they might have been romantically involved? Not that I do, but it would explain things. Like why he endorsed her.”

“No, I don’t.” She was definite. “Come on, Luce. He still wears his wedding ring. There’s something kind of heartbreaking about a man who does that when his wife’s been dead that long. He could have gotten married again loads of times.”

“I know.” I watched her slab butter on a roll. “Okay, next subject. What did you want to say about Randy? Bobby tell you something?”

“Just that they’re looking for him,” she said. “I was hoping you might have some news.”

“Only that Jennifer Seely’s been leaving messages on his mobile phone voice mail. She said his mailbox is full,” I said. “Randy can’t go five minutes, never mind five days, without talking on that phone.”

“Meaning what?” Kit asked.

I set my fork on my plate. “Either he’s dead or on the run.”

She considered the options. “My money’s on him being on the lam. Otherwise someone would have found him…his body…by now.”

“Not necessarily. We have five hundred acres. A lot of it’s woods and underbrush. Say he was leaving the barn and someone confronted him. It wouldn’t be hard to ditch a body someplace where it might not get found for a long time.”

She shuddered. “So if Randy’s dead, are you thinking his killer is the same person who killed Georgia? Someone had a busy night.”

“I don’t know. But what if that person was really after Randy—and Georgia was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“I need a scorecard. Who wants Randy dead?”

“Harry Dye’s goddaughter,” I said. “Gaby Manzur. She’s one possibility. I heard about her yesterday. Randy got her pregnant at beach week in Cancún awhile back. She ran into him at Seely’s when she was visiting Harry and Amy. Jen said she went nuts. Told him he’d pay for what he did to her. Jen said Randy didn’t recognize her and that really sent her over the edge.”

“Jeez. You think she was mad enough to kill Randy?”

“Mad enough, yes. Capable, I don’t know. But she was alone at the Dyes’ place the night Georgia was killed. And then Randy disappeared.”

Kit looked puzzled. “So who killed Georgia? You think she did that, too?”

“Maybe Gaby knew Georgia was with Randy in the barn, then waited until she left. Or it could be that Randy killed Georgia like we’ve been thinking all along. The note said he wanted to make up for something, but maybe she wasn’t buying it.”

“I don’t know. Sounds pretty sketchy to me.”

“Fair enough. But I still wonder if we’ve got this the wrong way around. Instead of looking for who killed Georgia, maybe we need to figure out who was after Randy. And that goes down a completely different road with a completely different pool of suspects.”

Kit finished her meatloaf and sopped her roll in gravy. “You know, kiddo, you’re overlooking the one obvious person who would have wanted them both dead. I heard Ross still can’t produce the parents of the babies he supposedly delivered that night.”

“Ross didn’t
supposedly
deliver twins,” I said. “If he says he did, then he did.”

“Why are you so defensive? He’s got a motive and no alibi. Why does that make him any different than Randy’s Cancún girlfriend?”

“He’s a doctor. He saves lives. He saved me.”

Kit shook her head slowly. “Aw, Luce.”

Our waitress showed up and offered us dessert menus.

“No, thanks. Just coffee for me.” I glanced at Kit. “You having dessert?”

“I shouldn’t.” She scanned the menu. “Oh, God. Strawberry shortcake with fresh strawberries in season. I’ll take one of those, please, with extra whipped cream. And we’ll have two forks.”

I rolled my eyes. “No way.”

“You eat like a bird. You’re pushing yourself awfully hard,” she said. “When’s the last time you had a physical?”

“What are you, my keeper? I’m fine.”

“It seems like that foot of yours is bothering you more and more. You ought to have it looked at.”

“I talked to Ross about it,” I said. “I’m telling you, I’m
fine.
”

After lunch, she walked me to my car.

“Are you coming to any of our Memorial Day events this weekend?” I asked.

“I’m on duty Sunday, but Bobby and I are coming to the concert Saturday night.” She fished in her purse and pulled out lipstick and a mirror.