feminine, but it suits you.”
The sound of the barrel room’s large hangar door opening behind us cut off Eli’s reply. Two paramedics wheeled out a stretcher with a body bag strapped to it. Bobby walked behind them, looking grim. No one spoke as they crossed the courtyard and loaded Fitz into the waiting ambulance.
I pulled out Eli’s handkerchief yet again. Kit put her arm around me and the coil of her reporter’s notebook dug into my shoulder.
Bobby walked over to us after the ambulance moved slowly off in the darkness. “Hey, Kit,” he said. “You here on business or as a friend of the family?”
“Both.”
“Public affairs will have a statement. Probably tomorrow morning.”
“I need something tonight, Bobby.”
He chewed his gum for a moment, like a cow ruminating. “Sorry. No can do.”
She closed her notebook. “Off the record? Come on. Fitz was a friend.”
He chewed some more, then said, “Your word?”
Kit nodded.
“I wouldn’t tell her anything,” Eli said stiffly.
Bobby stared at him, then flipped open his own notebook. “Looks like Fitz might have surprised someone in the middle of a robbery. One of the workers didn’t show up today. A couple of the men say he left the camp they have near Winchester and no one’s seen him since last night. Santini said he had the payroll money in a safe in that lab he’s got next to the barrel room since today is payday. Picked it up from the bank yesterday because he didn’t want to mess with it on the day of Leland’s funeral. A couple of the guys from the crew were there when he locked it up, including the guy who’s missing. Name of Zeus.” He looked up.
“So how did Fitz end up in the tank?” I asked.
“I’m getting to that part,” he said. “Don’t rush me.”
“Sorry.”
“We think someone might have forced him into the tank,” he said. “The guys are checking for prints and going over everything. One of your hammers is missing from that pegboard you got with all your tools. Neat idea to draw an outline of everything so you know where stuff belongs.” He sounded approving. “Could be it’ll turn up somewhere and someone just forgot to put it back, but we found evidence of blunt trauma to the head. The hammer could have been used as a weapon, but that’s just speculating.”
“Oh my God,” I said.
“Enough of a blow to kill him?” Kit asked. “Do you think he was dead before someone put him in the tank?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. The ME will let us know when they do the autopsy.”
“Who would want to do that?” I asked. “Why Fitz?”
“Sounds pretty random to me,” Eli said. “Wrong place, wrong time.”
“I’m going to Winchester.” Bobby closed his notebook and stuck his pen behind one ear. “I’ll see you folks later.”
“I’m taking off, too,” Kit hugged me again. “I’ll call you tomorrow. We need to talk. Lunch, maybe?”
After they left, Eli said, “That woman is a parasite.”
“You didn’t always think so.”
“I saw the light.” He folded his arms across his chest. “You know, I don’t understand you anymore. If she writes some lurid tabloid story, it’s going to affect you, too.”
“How can you expect this not to come out in the press?”
“Yeah, I suppose we could get ahead of the curve and advertise it ourselves. How about this? ‘We’ll knock you dead at Montgomery Estate Vineyard. Try our full-bodied Merlot.’”
“That’s disgusting!”
“No fooling. That’s why I’m trying to tell you that the last thing we need now is more bad press. Do you know what it’s going to do to the value of this place now? It’s going to tank. We’ll probably have to
“We’re not selling, Eli.”
He looked scornful. “Says who?”
“I do.”
“We outvote you, babe. Mia and me. We’re selling.”
“Family discussion?”
We both jumped. Quinn Santori stood there holding an unlit cigar that he caressed with his fingers. He looked at me the way men in bars stare at women who walk in alone.
“A little chat,” Eli said. “We were just finishing. What can I do for you, Quinn?”
He pulled a pack of matches out of a pocket of his camouflage trousers, bent his head, and concentrated on lighting the cigar. After a few puffs he said, “Well, we’re shut down, it’s harvest, and you got yourself a group of pickers nervous as bunch of barnyard turkeys at Thanksgiving because one of ’em is apparently a prime suspect in a murder. What do you people want to do?”
“It might not be for long,” I said.
He looked at me. “Ma’am?”
“I said, we might not be shut down for long. I’m sure we can work something out with Bobby to speed up the investigation so we’ll be back in business in a few days.”
He stroked his chin with the thumb of the hand that held the cigar. “You think so, do you?”
I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. “Yes.”
He puffed on the cigar. “Well then, I’ll need to set up some place temporarily in the meantime. I figure the big house would be the best bet. I’d like to move over there as soon as possible.”
“You can move in tomorrow morning,” I said. “We can talk about how we’re going to handle things then.”
“Pardon?” he said. He flicked an ash off his cigar and looked at me like I’d just sprouted another head. “We?” He glanced over at Eli and cleared his throat. “Eli?”
Eli cleared his throat, as well. “Uh, Lucie. Why don’t we let Quinn take care of business the way he wants? We don’t know what in the hell we’re doing here.”
“What are you talking about? Of course we do. We’ve helped with harvest since we were old enough to walk,” I said. “It’s our vineyard.”
“Look, babe,” he said, “I’m an architect. I’ve got a day job that pays the rent and feeds the wife and kid-to- be. I can’t work here. Mia doesn’t want to work here. As for you…” He stopped. If he was going to say something about me being handicapped, he changed his mind. “You’ve been selling perfume the last two years.”
I glanced over at Quinn. He looked relieved, and even a little amused.
“I didn’t
“Okay, so you talked about perfume,” Eli said.
“I’ve spent plenty of time helping out with harvest. I worked with Jacques that last summer before…” I didn’t finish.
Eli put his arm around me and it felt like a vise. “You’ll have to excuse her. She’s a bit jet-lagged,” he said to Quinn. “I think we’d better finish this conversation back at the house, hadn’t we, Lucie, and let Quinn get on with whatever he needs to do?”
If Eli and I were going to have it out, then I didn’t want Quinn as a spectator, either. I removed his arm from my shoulder, keenly aware that he had just done a first-rate job of sandbagging me in front of our winemaker.
“There’s nothing more to discuss,” I said. “See you tomorrow, Quinn.”
Quinn’s eyes went back and forth between Eli and me. They were hard and black like coal. His voice was hard, too. “You’d better get this worked out, folks. When Leland hired me he promised me free rein to run the place. No one standing over my shoulder and telling me what to do. If you’re going to move the goalposts, or if you don’t even know where the goalposts are anymore, I want to know it.”
“Jacques never had carte blanche to run the vineyard,” I said. And he never talked back like this smart- mouthed guy, either. “He and my mother always worked closely together.”
