The Merlot Murders (20 page)

Harvest lunch was a tradition established by my mother and Fitz. Jacques continued it after her death, though he abandoned the practice of having guests each day during harvest since we were generally running flat out and couldn’t spare the time or the manpower to take guests around the vineyard. More important, my mother wasn’t there to hostess the event, which included chaperoning the guests to make sure no one got too near the equipment or decided to take one of the bung hole covers out of an oak barrel “just to see” what was inside. The one time that happened, we didn’t discover it for months and ended up with a couple hundred bucks worth of red wine vinegar instead of a few thousand dollars of Pinot Noir.

Today the guests included a California congressman and his staff, three D.C. restaurant owners, a wine-tasting club called
Les Amis du Vin
from Charlottesville, and an event planner from a public relations firm who was looking for a place to host a dinner party for a group of international clients.

Whether it was because I was distracted or due to the constant needling from the California congressman—an unctuous white-haired man in a sharp suit who called me “little lady”—the lunch wasn’t one of our better ones. But Dominique, as usual, had out-done herself with the menu, having gone to the farmers’ market in Frogtown that morning making sure nearly all the produce had been in someone’s garden only a few hours earlier.

After the tour, we ate in the gazebo. It faced my mother’s wild-flower garden, a rioting mass of cosmos, coreopsis, black-eyed Susans, and a spectacular assortment of daylilies, whose colors ranged from sherbet pinks, yellows, and peaches to deeper oranges, golds, and plums.

The congressman, who sat next to me, represented a concrete district in Los Angeles not far from Hollywood. He kept haranguing me about the superiority of California wines. “You know, little lady, I had dinner at the White House the other night and what do you think they served as wines? Every course?”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me they were California wines.”

“You bet, honey. They know their wines at the White House. Only the best.”

“Actually,” I said, “the first wines served at the White House were recommended by a Virginian. Thomas Jefferson stocked the wine cellar for George Washington and then for John Adams. And, of course, during his own presidency.”

He’d been chewing on a piece of grilled lamb with a fresh berry sauce. “The wines weren’t
from
Virginia, were they?” He grinned broadly so I saw the berry seed in his dentures.

“Give us time.” I stared at the berry seed. “Our winemaker came from Napa to work here in Virginia. Our climate is a lot like France and we do a lot of experimenting. I’m sure you know that a number of top restaurants in your district already serve Virginia wines.” I mentioned a couple of names.

“Good Lord.” He seemed visibly peeved, but not enough to refuse my offer of a refill. He also didn’t call me “little lady” or “honey” anymore. When he left, he bought a few bottles of Cabernet and Chardonnay, though he did wink at me and ask for the special “congressional discount.”

I gave it to him. “That’s in return for your promise to take one of these bottles along as a gift the next time you dine at the White House.” I didn’t wink back.

Dominique’s staff cleaned up while I sold more wine to
Les Amis du Vin
and spoke with the restaurant owners, two of whom wanted to come back and do a comprehensive tasting before choosing the wines for their wine lists. The publicist said her people would speak with my people to make arrangements for their “event.”

“I’ll let them know,” I said. Simpler than explaining that I was “my people.”

After the last guest left, I got in Hector’s pickup and headed for Aldie. The Scottish poet Robert Burns once described my ancestors as “a martial race, bold, soldier featured and undismayed.” The Montgomerys were one of Scotland’s oldest clans, warriors who came originally from Normandy—we were feared and respected. The symbol on our crest was a woman holding an anchor in one hand and a savage’s head in the other. Above it was our motto:
Gardez bien.

Watch well. Watch out for us.

Driving down Mosby’s Highway, I glanced constantly in my rearview mirror, in case someone was following me again.

This time I would be ready.

Sara Rust lived in an old stone cottage on Mosby’s Highway, not far from the famous mill that had given its name to the village of Aldie during the Civil War, when the Gray Ghost and a handful of his Rangers routed two hundred Union soldiers who’d been out looking for him.

I parked on the dirt and gravel driveway and climbed the stairs to the front porch, leaning on the railing, which creaked and swayed under my weight. A couple of cardboard liquor boxes full of newspapers and what looked like heaps of old magazines and papers were scattered haphazardly across the porch. She was cleaning out the place and, by the looks of it, doing it in a hurry. I rang the doorbell but nothing chimed. After a moment, I opened the sagging screen door and used the tarnished door knocker.

The door opened a few inches. Sara Rust had chained her front door shut. The door closed again and I heard metal scraping metal as she released it.

“I’m Lucie,” I said, as she let me into a dingy stone living room. The embedded, stale odor of wood smoke and dampness hung in the air. The only light came from two small windows.

“I know who you are. Did you bring the money?” She had thick Titian-colored hair, which fell in massed curls around her shoulders, alabaster skin, and hazel-green eyes. She seemed familiar enough that I recognized her in the way you recognize people you don’t really know when you live in a small community. It must have been at least five or six years since I’d last seen her, though. Now she was tall and reed-slender, with that same suggestive sexuality about her that I saw in Angela. I wouldn’t have called her beautiful, but there was something about her that would make a man take a second look. Barefoot and dressed in a pair of raggedy jeans with holes in the knees and a sports bra that belonged at the gym, she looked her age until I saw her eyes. Someone had already knocked the sense of wonder out of her.

She also appeared to be scared and dead tired.

“We agreed I’d pay you after we talk.”

“I haven’t got long. I’m leaving in a few hours.” The room was nearly empty except for a floor lamp with a torn lampshade, a dirty beanbag chair pulled next to the fireplace, and two wooden crates full of file folders. The words “Knight & Rust Auto Body” were stenciled in black on the sides of the crate. The air-conditioning was on and the thermostat had been set to “arctic.” I shivered.

Maybe a moving company had already come and taken away her furniture. Or maybe I was looking at the place fully furnished.

“I’d offer you a seat, but…” She gestured vaguely at the beanbag.

“I’m fine.” I leaned on my cane.

“What do you want?”

“Angela told me you quit your job because someone was stalking you.”

She walked over to one of the deep-silled windows and picked up a pack of cigarettes balanced against an overflowing ashtray. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?” She smacked the small box and extracted a cigarette, lighting it with the fluid movements of a well-practiced habit.

“You’re the one in a hurry.”

Through a blast of smoke she said, “It’s true. What’s it to you?”

“Who was it?”

She was standing almost in profile, caught in a shaft of mid-afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window. It cast her face in shadow and edged her silhouette—especially that russet hair—so she appeared to be backlit like some heavenly apparition. Another deep pull on the cigarette. “I don’t know.”

“Then how did you know it was an old man?”

“Because he left a calling card.” She crossed the room to the fireplace mantel and picked up a pair of eyeglasses. She came over to where I stood and held them out. “Know what these are? Old people’s glasses. You know, when you get old and you can’t read small print anymore? He left them when he tossed my house.”

I looked at the half-glasses and felt guilty relief. They weren’t Leland’s. He’d worn bifocals. “Some old man robbed you? What did he take?”

Sara shrugged. “Nothing. At least, I don’t think anything is missing. He just trashed the place. I mean, he trashed everything.”

“That’s bizarre.”

“He had a good time in my underwear drawer, let me tell you.” She stubbed out the cigarette in the too-full ashtray. “Some people are sick.”

“Did you report it to the police?”

She kept stubbing out the cigarette. “Nope.”

“Why not?”

“I occasionally have, uh, friends over after work. I had a guest that night. We shared a couple of joints and I didn’t want the cops around. Obviously I got on the wrong side of some jerk.”

“And you’re running away because…” I paused, trying to figure out how to say it. “Someone broke into your house and didn’t take anything?”

“Oh,
please
. Whoever it was tried to burn this house down.” She lit another cigarette. “With me in it.”

“Oh my God.”
Not
Leland. “What happened? When was this?”

“Two nights ago.”

Definitely not Leland. “You stopped him?”

“My friend smelled gasoline. It was three in the morning. We weren’t sleeping, thank God. He went outside. Next thing, I heard him shouting, then a car engine started and someone took off.”

“He didn’t go after him?”

“Not in his birthday suit he didn’t. His wife might have been a little upset if he got picked up for indecent exposure.” She inhaled deeply. “By then whoever it was probably was halfway to Philomont. Or wherever.”

“Do you mind if I have a look around your yard?”

“Knock yourself out. You won’t find anything. I hosed everything down the next morning.” Sara flicked an ash into the fireplace. “I still don’t know why you’re asking all this.”

Neither did I. Except there was some connection between us. I couldn’t figure out what it was. “I found your name and phone number in a file that belonged to my father, Leland Montgomery. Did you ever talk to him? Did he ever come to see you at work?”

She snorted. “There were loads of guys who came to see me at work. You lose track, you know? And, to be honest, when I’m up on that stage dancing, I never focus on the faces. I wear contacts and I take them out when I dance so everyone is a blur. That way I never know who is out there. It’s better that way.”

That explained her tough as nails machismo. “What about the other entertaining you do? They’re not faceless,” I said. “Are they?”

“No.” She flushed. “But it’s over now. I’m out of here. I’m getting so lost in New York no one will ever find me.”

“What about Greg Knight?”

“What about him?”

“He was hanging around you a lot at Mom’s.”

She stared pointedly at my cane. “Don’t tell me you’re still carrying a torch for him. He made you the way you are now.”

My turn to flush. The way I was now. Just what, exactly, was that? “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“So what do you want to know about him?”

“Were you sleeping with him?”

Her laugh made me think of long shards of broken glass. She squashed her cigarette in the ashtray and mashed it down hard.

“Then why was he hanging around you?” I persisted.

“Our fathers were business partners,” she said. “He was looking for a few things that belonged to his old man. Thought I might have them. Rusty took all the stuff from the garage after Jimmy died.”

“What things?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. Papers. Records.” She gestured to the crates. “He came over once and looked through these.”

“Did he find what he wanted?”

“I guess. I don’t know,” she said again. “He was here by himself. It would have been simpler if he took the crates like I told him to. Save me getting rid of them.”

“How long ago did he look through the papers?” I asked.

She looked at the ceiling and frowned. “Two months ago. Maybe a little less.”

“Did he give you money to help you get out of town?”

“What of it?”

So maybe Greg had been telling the truth. Sara was like a kid sister to him and he was helping her out of a jam.

“So where’s yours?” she added. “The
money
.”

I took it out of my purse and handed it to her. “Can I keep those glasses?”

“I don’t want them.” She stuffed the bills inside her sports bra. “You still haven’t said why you’re asking me all this. You think the old guy might have been your father? Is that it?”

“No!” I said sharply. “These aren’t his glasses.”

“Your fifteen minutes are up.” She shrugged then. “Time to go.”

She held the door as I left and slammed it behind me. I heard the chain slide back in place before I got to the first step.

Most of the grass in her backyard was dead and the garden beds were bare spots and weeds. I walked slowly around the perimeter of the house and saw nothing. The same in the garage, except for two foul-smelling trash bins with flies buzzing around them. I turned my face away as I lifted the lids and then looked inside quickly.

Garbage.

I glanced at the house and saw a curtain move in a window. Sara Rust, spying on me. Unless it was someone else.

I had assumed she was home alone. Maybe I assumed wrong and she was still entertaining.

I had to return Hector’s pickup, so I drove directly to the winery after leaving Aldie. The crush pad had been cleaned and someone had closed the hangar doors to the barrel room. I let myself in through the steel-plated side door. The exhaust fans made their usual heavy thrumming sound as they moved the cooling air around, clearing out the buildup of carbon dioxide. A grapevine thermometer on the wall near the door read sixty-seven degrees. The room needed to be between fifty-five and sixty-five. Jacques had drummed it into me the first time I left the door ajar when I was about six years old that air and heat are the two greatest destroyers of wine.

I moved into the room and saw Quinn through the glass laboratory window. He poured something from a beaker into a row of test tubes, then looked up briefly and nodded at me before returning to his work. Joe and Hector were over by the row of stainless-steel tanks, on their knees straightening out hoses. I joined them, holding up the keys to Hector’s pickup.

“Your truck is in the parking lot. Thanks for the loan.”

“No problem.” Hector smiled, showing even white teeth against caffe latte skin, but he looked tired as he pocketed the keys.

“Where’s the Volvo?” Joe asked.

“Garage.”

“What happened?”

“It wouldn’t start this morning.”

“Tough break.” He leaned a ladder against the tank.

“I’ll do that, Joe,” Hector said as Joe put a foot on the bottom rung. “You take care of the hoses. You do a good job getting the seals tight. This tank and number five need to be racked into number seven.”

“I’ll get the clamps,” I said as Joe fitted the hoses between the smaller three-hundred-fifty-gallon tank, which had the ladder against it, and number seven, one of the large thousand-gallon tanks. I handed him the clamps and he fixed them so there was an airtight seal around the outlets.

Hector climbed the ladder as nimbly as a monkey and popped open the cover so the tank wouldn’t collapse as it emptied. We’d only forgotten to do that once and ended up with something that looked like a crumpled oversized soda can.

Joe turned on the pump. “How was harvest lunch?” he asked above the noise of gurgling wine moving through the hoses from the smaller to the larger tank.

“Okay. One of the guests was a congressman who brought his staff.”

“Great!”

“He was from California.”

“Oh. Hard sell, hunh?” He tapped his finger against the gauge on the side of the tank. “I think after we rack this and number five over and sugar them, Quinn wants to move everything into barrels. What’s left in the other tanks stays in stainless steel.”

The pump sounded like it was beginning to suck air. Joe switched it off, unclamping the hose and unlocking the large port-holelike panel on the front of the tank. “Hit that switch, will you?”

He opened the man-sized porthole door and disappeared inside the tank from the waist up, taking the hose with him. I switched on the pump again and heard him vacuuming the remaining wine out of the dish at the bottom. A minute later his voice reverberated eerily against the stainless steel. “Okay!”

I flipped the switch and he popped back out of the tank, like a life-sized jack-in-the-box. “Let’s get the other one. Number five.”

Hector moved the ladder and popped the top of the second tank. “Stop flirting with Lucie, Joe, and get the sugar and the yeast.”

Joe winked at me and left.

“You doing all right, Lucita?” Hector climbed down the ladder and reclamped the hose to the second tank. “Okay, you can turn the pump on.”

I obeyed. “I’m doing fine.”

“How come you didn’t tell Joe the truth about your car?” He saw the look on my face and added, “You’re lucky to be alive, you know?”

“How did you find out? Please don’t say it was Thelma. I won’t be able to go by the general store for a year.”