The Riesling Retribution (15 page)

Quinn’s salt-and-pepper head was bent over the record book in the lab when I showed up in the barrel room forty-five minutes later. I’d checked the rearview mirror in the Mini before getting out of the car. My eyes were no longer red-rimmed from crying. He’d never know.

I paused in the doorway as he closed the lab book and slid it over to a corner of the workbench. His eyes zeroed in on my face.

“You look like hell. I heard you paid Kit a visit. Guess it didn’t go too well, huh?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He pushed his bar stool back a few feet and studied me some more. “What do you want to talk about?”

I picked up a graduated beaker and examined it.

“How about the Riesling? Have you decided when you want to pick?”

He stuck his pencil behind an ear and folded his arms across his chest. Today he wore a gray athletic T-shirt and jeans with a hole in one knee. The usual chains around his neck and the leather and steel bracelet around one wrist.

“No later than Thursday,” he said. “Before Edouard gets here.”

“Who?” I set the beaker down.

“The newest hurricane. We’re whipping right through the alphabet. This one may not hit us, either, but we’re going to get slammed
with rain.” He wrinkled his forehead. “You haven’t been following it, have you?”

“Of course I have.”

“So where is it now, weather girl?”

“The Atlantic,” I said. Hurricanes always started there.

He rolled his eyes. “I knew you didn’t know. Look, I got a reefer truck coming in since we’re going to have to move fast to get those grapes picked.”

A reefer truck was short for refrigerated truck. We could keep the fruit chilled until we were ready to start processing it—putting it through the destemmer, pressing it, and moving it to the tanks to begin fermentation. It bought us time.

“Okay.”

“I told Chance we’ll need extra pickers that day.”

“Okay.”

Quinn stood and shoved me gently into the barrel room. “You aren’t listening to a word I say.” He walked me over to the long pine table and pulled out a chair. “Have a seat.”

I sat.

“If you insist on talking about the Riesling,” he said, leaning against the table, “I’ve been on the phone with Harry and John. They both think making a dessert wine is a terrific idea. I want to pick twice. Now and after the first hard freeze.”

Harry Dye and John Chappell owned vineyards not far from ours. We helped one another all the time, sharing problems and successes with the types of grapes we could grow since our soil and climate were practically identical.

“Harry and John don’t grow Riesling.”

“That’s why it would be unique to us.”

I shook my head. “Too risky that late in the year because of the weather. And you know we’re screwed if we don’t get it picked in one night and the next day it warms up.”

“I think we can do it.”

We could probably put this argument on a loop and hit replay, we’d had it so often. As a winemaker, he wanted to experiment and push the boundaries of what he could do. As the one who paid the bills, I wanted to be able to pay the bills. Pick everything now and I’d sleep
at night knowing we would have the cash to do it. Our Riesling was so good we generally sold out before we released our next harvest.

“Quinn”

“Back me on this, Lucie. You’re too distracted with everything else that’s going on. Let me do it the way I want.”

“I want to think about it,” I said. “Give me one more day.”

I expected him to balk when I said that, but instead he said, “All right. As long as you do something for me.”

“What?”

“Take the rest of the day off. Go clear your head.”

How many times had he said that to me lately?

“If I go home, I’ll just—”

“Who said anything about going home? I gave Tyler some time off. He wants to take you to Ball’s Bluff battlefield. It’s a nice day. You’ll learn some history.”

I cocked my head. “Why did you give Tyler time off?”

“Someone left a bunghole cover open. We might have lost the entire barrel.” He paused. “It was Pinot.”

An entire barrel of wine. Five thousand dollars.

“Dammit. Are you saying Tyler did that?”

“Someone did it. My guess is he did. He was with Chance stirring the barrels yesterday.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“You bet I did. I gave him hell but he claims he didn’t do it. He can’t be doing chores with his nose in a goddamn Latin book. I don’t care how boring the work is and too damn bad if he thinks he’s too smart to be doing manual labor. We lose enough with the angels’ share as it is.”

The angels’ share was the name vintners give to the natural process of evaporation in the barrels. The story was that it went to the angels who liked drinking wine up in heaven. Depending on the humidity and temperature, the angels got as much as half a bottle a month per barrel. Not a bad share.

I wondered what kind of “hell” Quinn had given Tyler.

“That barrel is definitely spoiled?”

“I racked it over and I’m working on it,” he said. “I’ll let you know. After you come back from your field trip.”

“How come I feel like I’ve been set up? You talked to Frankie about this, didn’t you?”

His poker face was perfect. “Would I do something like that?”

I called Tyler, who agreed to meet me in the parking lot a few minutes later. He’d been primed, too, but he’d apparently gotten mixed signals from either Frankie or Quinn because he acted like the idea for the tour was a surprise to him.

He was wearing a T-shirt with something in Latin inscribed on it, baggy low-riding shorts like all the kids wore, and a UVA baseball cap.

“What does your shirt say?” I asked.

“If you can read this, you are an intelligent person.’”

“Oh.” I smiled. “Well, it’s all Greek to me.”

He adjusted his baseball cap and gave me a tolerant smile.

“Chance is meeting us at the battlefield,” he said. “He had to pick something up at the hardware store in Leesburg so he’s over there, anyway. Said he thought it would be interesting to see the place. He’s never been there, either.”

“Does Quinn know about this?”

Tyler shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. Why?”

“Because with you babysitting me for the day, he could use the help, that’s why.”

He looked guilty. “I’m not babysitting—”

“It’s okay. Let’s go. We’ll meet Chance there and I’ll have a word with him.”

When we got in the Mini he said, “Chance isn’t going to get in trouble for this, is he?”

“He reports to Quinn. If he’s going to take off for a couple of hours, he should clear it with Quinn first.” I looked over at Tyler as I pulled out of the parking lot. “You seem like you’re pretty tight with Chance.”

He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I like him. He’s a cool guy. And he’s nice to me.”

Though he didn’t say it, I understood the implicit message.
Unlike Quinn.

Chance and Bruja were waiting when Tyler and I pulled into the gravel parking lot at Ball’s Bluff Battlefield Regional Park in Leesburg half an hour later. Although two other cars were parked next to the vineyard’s blue pickup, there was no sign of anyone except the three of us and the dog. I had just driven through a subdivision and passed a sprawling outlet shopping mall, but we could have been in the middle of nowhere it seemed so quiet and deserted.

“They’ve got leash laws in the park,” Tyler said to Chance.

Chance opened the passenger door to the truck and got Bruja’s leash, clipping it to the dog’s collar.

“Does Quinn know you’re here?” I asked him.

He gave me a roguish smile and winked at Tyler like a coconspirator.

“I’m with the boss. Figured it would be okay for just a little while.”

“You need to call him,” I said.

“It’s a dead zone for phone service.” Tyler held up his cell phone. “I never get anything here.”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “I don’t have anything, either.”

“Same here,” Chance said. “We won’t be long, Lucie. Besides, I had an errand in Leesburg, anyway. This is just a little detour.”

I didn’t like being an unwilling accomplice in deceiving Quinn about Chance playing hooky for part of an afternoon, but right now it seemed I had no choice in the matter.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We walked down a gravel path that cut through a heavily wooded area. The trees made a cathedral-like canopy above us, though enough sunlight filtered through in bright pockets to keep it from being gloomy. Still, it wasn’t difficult to imagine why anyone who came here at dusk or at nighttime might believe this place was haunted. I’d never claimed to see Mosby’s ghost near our ruins, but here, where so much blood had been spilled, something unsettling pervaded the air. Blue jays cawed from the trees and Chance had to restrain Bruja from chasing after the squirrels scurrying across tree limbs or diving into the vegetation. In the brooding silence, the rise and fall of the cicadas’ metallic symphony seemed amplified.

“Which way?” Chance asked as we reached a fork in the path.

“The path on the left was made by the Corps of Engineers, which is why it’s wider,” Tyler said. “The one on the right is the old cart trail where the Union pulled a cannon and two howitzers up from the river. What you’re looking at down there is where the Federals were.” He waved at an expanse of woods at the bottom of a gently sloping hill. “Behind us in the parking lot is where the Confederates waited for them.”

“I thought the battle took place in a field,” I said.

“It did,” he said. “In 1861 this place was a field. All these trees have grown up here since then.”

“Let’s go right.” Chance pulled Bruja away from the stinging nettles that grew dense on either side of the path. “The way the troops came.”

“You going to be okay, Lucie?” Tyler eyed my cane.

“I’ll be fine.”

The cart path was narrow but we still managed to walk three abreast with me in the middle. Chance’s arm kept brushing against mine and once he looked over and gave me that heart-catching smile.

As we hiked downhill, the path meandered off to the right, deeper into the woods. There was no sign of whoever owned the other cars in the parking lot. It felt like we were all alone, and I was annoyed that it bothered me.

“Why did they pick this place to fight?” Chance asked. “The edge of a cliff with the Potomac below. There’s no way to escape except the river.”

“It was an important river crossing between Maryland and Virginia because it was so narrow,” Tyler said. “Don’t forget, all the bridges between Harpers Ferry and Washington had been burned. Neither army picked Ball’s Bluff as a battle site. Both sides screwed up some things and they ended up fighting each other.”

“Screwed up what things?” he asked.

Tyler took off his baseball cap and scratched his head. His hair had been flattened by the cap except where the reddish curls stuck out around his ears. He reminded me of a clown.

“The area above and below Leesburg was important strategically
because of the ferry crossings. Both armies were keeping an eye on it and placed troops in the region. But one of the Confederate commanders, Colonel Evans, got worried that his soldiers might be picked off by the Union troops. So without telling anyone, he decided to pull out of town and regroup somewhere else.” We stopped walking as he bent down and picked up a stick.

“Here’s Leesburg and here’s the river with the two ferry crossings.” He knelt and drew a map in the dirt with the point of his stick. “Evans pulls out of Leesburg and the Union troops over here watch him leave, figuring the town had been abandoned. What the Union didn’t know was that Evans’s commanders ordered him to return. Leesburg was too important to lose.” He tapped the ground, indicating the Union soldiers. “These guys never saw Evans come back.”

“Then what?” Chance asked, pulling Bruja’s leash as she lunged for Tyler’s stick. “No, girl. Leave it.”

The dog obeyed and Tyler scratched behind her ears.

“After Evans left, a group of Union scouts crossed the Potomac from Harrison Island and climbed Ball’s Bluff, figuring Leesburg had been evacuated. It was dark when they got here so they had to look around by moonlight. Unfortunately they saw a grove of trees”—Tyler paused to draw two stick trees—“and thought it was an abandoned Confederate camp, which is what they reported to their commander. The next day they came back with reinforcements to clear it out.” He shrugged. “Evans’s troops were waiting for them.”

“It must have been a slaughter,” Chance said.

“Not exactly. There were several skirmishes. Took all day. But in the end, the Confederates backed the Union soldiers up against the cliff. Over two hundred Federals died trying to escape or else drowned in the river.”

He stood up and flung the stick into the woods as we continued down the path. Through a break in the trees I could see a chest-high stone wall and behind it an American flag hanging on a flagpole. The cemetery.