The Sauvignon Secret (35 page)

She aimed the gun.

“No!” I shouted. “Don’t!”

Jasmine’s hand cradled Hope’s head and as she turned my niece’s face so she couldn’t see what was happening.

“You will suffer,” Juliette screamed at Charles. “Just like that poor boy suffered.”

“You’re out of your mind. What are you talking about?” He
threw up his hands like a shield, knocking his wedding ring against his wineglass.

I flinched at the sharp little
clink
as Juliette’s words jackhammered inside my head.
Just like that poor boy suffered
.

Stephen died of anthrax poisoning.

I stared at Charles’s wineglass and his dinner plate. He’d been eating a salad whose contents had probably come from Juliette’s garden and drinking a bottle of his own wine. A clever scientist, Noah had said, could change a harmless pesticide like Bt into something that had the genetic makeup of anthrax. Spray it over crops and who would know … until someone ate the deadly meal or drank the poisoned cup. Even then, the reaction wasn’t instantaneous.

Juliette had poisoned Charles. She didn’t need the gun.

“Which is it, Juliette, the wine or the salad? Or both?” I asked. “Where did you get anthrax-laced Bt?”

Charles turned pale. “My God, Juliette, what did you do? Are you
insane
?” He, too, stared at the remnants of his meal. “It couldn’t be the wine … but the salad—”

“You have no one to blame but yourself,” she said in a cool voice. “Because my gardener was so busy ferrying your little concubines home at night, he didn’t have time to tend to his duties. So I did my own spraying. With a new pesticide.”

“Christ Almighty, you brought Theo here? Right into my own home?” Charles’s voice rose to a screech. “When? How? He’s dead.”

“So you heard,” she said. “A pity the way it happened, a shoot-out during a drug deal. And no, he never came here, Charles. I wouldn’t be that stupid.”

“Then how—?” He stared at Jasmine. “
You
. You got it for her. Theo gave it to you.”

Jasmine shrugged. “Does it really matter where it came from?”

“Juliette,” Pépé interrupted. “He needs to go to the hospital. You can’t let him die like this.”

“Sorry, but he’s not going anywhere,” she said. “If he tries to leave, I’ll shoot him. One way or another, he’ll die.”

“Don’t be an ass, Juliette.” For the first time Charles sounded scared. “You won’t get away with this unless you kill everyone in this room.”

Juliette turned to Pépé and me. “Your timing is really appalling, you know? No one ever would have suspected the real cause of death, even when they did an autopsy. There are hardly any cases in the United States of death by ingesting anthrax, so it probably would have been attributed to something else. A sad but tragic natural death. Why do you want to save him when you know what he has done? Go away and leave us alone. He ought to die … he deserves to die.”

“No,” I said. “No one deserves to die this way. Not even for what he did.”

“Luc,” Juliette’s voice beseeched him. “We could be together finally, after he’s gone. Begin again, the two of us.”

“No,” he said, “we couldn’t.”

“Please …” Her eyes filled with tears.

“Put the gun down, Juliette.” Pépé raised his arm and pointed Leland’s .45 at her as she gasped. “You know I’m an excellent marksman. If I have to pull the trigger, you’ll lose that hand. You’ll never get your shot off in time.”

“You won’t,” she said. “You wouldn’t. You’d never hurt me.”

“I would if you go through with this.”

It will be a long time before I forget the anguished look that passed between the two of them. Then Juliette took a deep breath, almost a sigh, and squared her shoulders.

“Ah, Luc, my darling, then you must forgive me.” She smiled at him and suddenly I saw a shadow of the young, beautiful girl she’d been in that beguiling portrait in Charles’s study.

I knew, then, that Pépé had been there when she sat for that painting. The teasing, provocative look had been meant for him. I caught a glimpse of Charles’s face. He knew, too.

Juliette aimed the gun, but her hand shook as though the weapon had become too heavy to hold.

“Don’t,” Pépé said.

Jasmine whirled around with Hope and ran into the kitchen. Hope started to wail.

“May you rot in hell, Charles.”

Juliette steadied the revolver, this time with both hands. My grandfather flinched, but he kept the .45 trained on her as she tilted her head almost flirtatiously at him.

“Adieu, mon amour,”
she said.

“No!” Pépé sounded panicked and I glanced at him in surprise.

Juliette took a step toward Pépé, and for a wrenching moment I thought she was going to shoot him before she killed Charles.

“Pépé, look out!”

“Je t’aime, Luc.”
With one fluid movement Juliette brought the gun to her heart and fired.

She moaned and dropped to the ground like a rag doll, the gun bouncing off the carpet with a dull thud and skidding under the table.

My grandfather was at her side instantly, murmuring her name, pleading with her to respond. He looked up.

“Lucie, call 911. Now!
Vite!
”

I nodded. “Yes, of course. There’s only a little blood … is she still alive?”

He bent his head so his ear was next to her mouth. “Barely.”

In the kitchen, Hope’s jagged crying had become hysterical as Jasmine frantically tried to calm her down.

“What about me, goddammit?” Charles asked. “I’m dying, too.”

Pépé said, with some contempt, “Don’t worry, Charles. We won’t forget you. I can see how moved you are that your wife just shot herself.”

“Don’t talk to me about how I should feel.” Charles was equally contemptuous. “You of all people. She married me after you exiled her to Washington and left for Belgium. She never stopped loving you. Don’t think I didn’t know it all these years. You’re as responsible as I am for this.”

My grandfather’s face went pale but his voice stayed firm. “Lucie—an ambulance. Call now.”

I started to dial as a door slammed in the kitchen. “Jasmine’s leaving and she has Hope.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They won’t go far. I took the liberty of disabling her car when we got here—just in case.”

I threw Pépé the phone. “Here. You give them directions. I’m going after Hope.”

In the kitchen, my niece’s cries grew louder as she called my name. A weight rolled off my chest.

“She’s here. She’s still here. Jasmine took off by herself.”

“Go stay with her,” my grandfather said. “Don’t let her see this.”

I nodded and pushed open the kitchen door. The last thing I saw before I left the room was the tableau of my grandfather cradling Juliette’s head in his arms, an expression of unspeakable grief on his face, as her husband watched them both with the cold dispassion of a spectator. Charles must have felt my stare because he looked over at me one last time, with eyes as empty and vacant as dead planets.

I shut the door and went to comfort Hope.

The expression of terror and gratitude on Eli’s face when he picked up Hope at the Thiessmans’ house was the same look you see on every television report or newspaper photo when parents get a reprieve from nearly losing a child to someone they thought they could trust and shouldn’t have done. He looked wrecked, choking back sobs as we stood there with our arms twined around each other, crushing Hope between us. We were outside by the kitchen door, the exact spot where Dominique and I had chatted only a week earlier as she sneaked a smoke.

The grounds around the house were overflowing with cruisers, vans, EMTs, sheriff’s department officers, crime scene investigators, ambulances, search dogs, even a fire truck. My head ached. It would be hours before I could go home.

I’d already called Dominique and warned her she’d have to make do at the dinner without Jasmine or me.

“What about the flowers?” she asked.

“You’ll have to make do without them, too.”

“What’s going on? Someone who just got here said she saw ambulances and sheriff’s department cruisers with their lights and sirens on making a beehive for the Thiessmans’ house,” she said.

“I’ll explain everything when I can.”

“Lucie?”

“I promise. I gotta go.”

Bobby showed up right behind the first responders, letting Eli leave with Hope but sequestering me in the kitchen and putting Pépé in, of all places, the library with Juliette’s portrait, until he could take our statements. Jasmine had vanished on foot since her silver Honda was still parked next to the back door.

“We’re looking for her. We’ll find her eventually,” Bobby said. “And, uh, Juliette Thiessman …”

“Yes?”

“Bullet went straight to her heart. She didn’t have a prayer.”

“Does Pépé know?”

“Yup.”

By the time he finished with us, it was nearly ten o’clock.

He came into the kitchen. “You two are free to go,” he said. “I could confiscate that gun of your father’s since Luc was carrying concealed without a permit. A French hunting license. Nice try.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Ah, forget it.” He rubbed his tired eyes with both hands. “You and I are going to be talking again.”

“I understand.”

Bobby stopped rubbing and looked at me, fatigue and worry making canyonlike furrows that creased his forehead and deepening the marionette lines on his face.

“Jesus,” he said, “isn’t this a hell of a mess?”

Pépé stayed in town for Juliette’s funeral. The press had a field day with the story; it was sensational, all the necessary elements—a secret society, murder, lust, greed, corruption, sex, and steeped in decades of lies and deception—that made it perfect for the tabloids. The Fauquier County police came out in force to keep the scrum of reporters and photographers away from what had turned into a major national media event as Pépé and I joined the other mourners at the old Episcopal church near Upperville.

The only person not in attendance was Charles, who was still in the hospital and expected to recover. Ironically, I heard from Kit that he was on a suicide watch. She had picked up the story for the
Trib
and kept me up-to-date on everything that happened in the weeks to come—that the police in Half Moon Bay were reinvestigating
the death of Mel Racine, and in Maryland, the case involving Maggie Hilliard’s accidental death was being reopened. The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department had also been in touch with French authorities concerning Vivian Kalman.

The day after Juliette’s funeral, Kit interviewed Elinor Falcone and broke the story about Stephen, precipitating the national firestorm of moral outrage and shocked incredulity that Charles had predicted. She kept my name out of it and I was grateful.

Jasmine Nouri turned up in a motel in Charlottesville. Bobby told me the charges against her, which included being an accessory to attempted murder, would probably be reduced. She might even get away with a suspended sentence by cooperating with the police in putting together their case against Charles.

After the funeral, Mick Dunne cornered me and led me outside to the cloisters, where we stood as the rain poured down around us in the swirling gray mist. I told him then that it wasn’t going to work between us.

“Because of Quinn?” he asked. “You got back together in California, didn’t you?”

“No,” I said, “we didn’t. You were right, Mick. He’ll be back for harvest this year, but that’s it.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Lucie.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m over it.”

I drove Pépé to the airport on a gray rainy morning, the day after the funeral. The depressing weather matched our moods.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“You mustn’t blame yourself for what happened,” I said. We had driven most of the route in silence. In another ten minutes we’d be at Dulles Airport yet again. “You didn’t believe what Charles said, did you?”

“I should have realized how depressed she was. Maybe I could have prevented her death.” He’d ignored the question.

“No. You couldn’t.” I was adamant. “Look, she thought she was going to be able to commit murder and escape a husband she loathed. When she got caught, she couldn’t face the consequences, so she took her own life. It has nothing to do with you.”