The Merlot Murders

I drove to the winery after I’d changed into an off-the-shoulder white knit top and a long gauzy gypsy-like skirt. What would I say when I saw him? “So, how’s the wine market in Eastern Europe? Do they drink a lot of lite wine over there? I’d like to hang around if you do any blending.”

But I would keep my mouth shut and play it cool. Besides, maybe he and Leland had already worked out a deal about his past. All I’d do is get him stirred up if I confronted him without knowing the facts. Then he’d threaten to quit. Again. If he walked out on us just as harvest started, I might as well hand the keys over to Eli.

Dominique was in the courtyard, conferring with two waitresses. Unlike the house, the winery still looked like somebody cared for it. The halved oak wine barrels my mother had set out as planters along the loggia’s curved perimeter were filled with lacy red geraniums and trailing variegated ivy, which overflowed the containers and spilled onto the ground. Her collection of vintage wine-making equipment placed between the planters was clean and still looked in working order. The one exception was the Civil War cannon, now strictly decorative, which reportedly had been used at the battle at Goose Creek Bridge when Confederates delayed Union forces, allowing Lee’s Army to march north to Gettysburg.

Dominique turned at the sound of my footsteps and the tap of my cane on the gravel. “You’re just in time.”

“The place looks lovely. The flowers are gorgeous.”

“You can thank Serafina. Leland let her do whatever she wanted after Jacques left. He didn’t really care much.”

We walked to the far edge of the courtyard where the terrain fell away, giving a clear vista of grape-laden vines aligned like soldiers in precise rows. Beyond them a sweep of interwoven low green hills and a darker ridge of conifers and deciduous trees stretched nearly to the edge of a horizon neatly bisected by the powdery blue flatline of the mountains and the milky light of a late-afternoon sky.

“Do you think Quinn will take care of things the way Jacques did?”

She shrugged with Gallic expressiveness. “Bah. Who knows? He doesn’t talk much, that one.”

“What do you think of him?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know. There’s something about him. He seems sort of crispy all the time.”

She meant crispé. Tense. Fidgety. She reached in the front pocket of her mini-skirt and fished out a crumpled pack of cigarettes with a book of matches stuffed inside the cellophane wrapping.

“I heard you finally told Eli you didn’t want to sell the vineyard.” She lit a cigarette and blew out the match, which she dropped on the ground, grinding it under her sandal. “That was some argument you had.”

“You know about it, too? Was somebody recording us or something?”

“The Romeos were talking about it this morning when they came by the inn for breakfast. You and Eli didn’t exactly discuss things between closed walls, from what I heard. By now they probably know all the way to Paris.”

I’m sure she meant Paris, Virginia, the last town in the stretch of what was called the Mosby Heritage area. Paris got its name from Paris, France, as a tribute to George Washington’s good friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, because it was his hometown.

“Which Romeos?”

“Austin, Mason, Doc Harmon…I forget who else was there.”

“Oh Lord. I bet Eli told Erica who told Austin, who told the rest of the Romeos,” I said. “They probably know about it all the way to Richmond. What else did you hear?”

She took a drag on her cigarette. “Brandi’s upset, too, and spent the day in bed. Eli won’t be coming by tonight. He said to tell you he probably won’t be coming by the vineyard for harvest. Or any more festival events, for that matter. He’s got some deadline at work.”

“That’s an excuse. He’s playing hardball. He really wants to sell.”

“She really wants to sell,” Dominique said. “They need the money.”

“I thought her family had money.”

She rolled her eyes. “Her father’s an actor and her mother is a dancer. Brandi says they travel all the time because of their work. I think they travel to avoid paying their bills.” She looked at me significantly. “Brandi thought Eli had money. And of course she was impressed that he has relatives who are counts and countesses in France. Eli made it sound like she was going to be ‘Madame la Marquise’ when she married him. I think she wasn’t too happy when she found out the family ties were so remote it’s like saying we’re all related to Adam and Eve.”

“Do you think she loves him?”

She chose her words carefully through a cloud of exhaled smoke. “I think she likes the way he treats her. Like she is some kind of goddess.”

“He carries it a bit far, don’t you think?”

She stared at the lighted end of her cigarette. “Well, that depends. He didn’t used to act like this before Gregory moved back to Atoka.”

“What do you mean?”

“You of all people,” she said, “ought to know exactly what I mean.”

I looked across at the mountains, already growing paler in the silky light. “She said nothing happened that night.”

“Well, what would she say? That she seduced him and cheated on Eli? Especially after Gregory dropped her like a dead balloon.”

“So what’s going on now?”

She dropped her cigarette and ground the butt under her foot. “I heard a rumor about the two of you the other night. Is it true?”

“He made a pass at me. I lost my head. It was stupid,” I said. “Besides, there’s Mia. Do you think there’s something new going on between Greg and Brandi?”

“I think he makes Brandi nervous now that he’s back here,” she said, bending down and picking up the cigarette butt. “If those old rumors are true and I were Brandi, I’d want the rug swept under the carpet, too. Wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose I would.”

She glanced at her watch. “We’d better get moving. Be an angel. Can you go down to the barrel room and make sure there are enough wineglasses? I asked one of the men to set them out, but I’m not sure he understood where he was supposed to put them. Quinn said he’d be tasting Chardonnay and Merlot in the barrel room and in the villa it will be the new Cab and Sauvignon Blanc.”

I hadn’t been in the barrel room since I’d returned home. I expected the sudden drop in temperature—nearly forty degrees colder than it was in the courtyard—but I still shivered. It was an enormous space, the length of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, with thirty foot ceilings, fieldstone walls, and four deep interconnected bays where oak barrels were kept in cool darkness. It smelled of the familiar tangy odor of fermentation, an acrid scent like vinegar but infinitely more potent and complex.

Near where I stood by the roll-up hangar door were pallets stacked with cases of wine being held back until they had been in bottles long enough. The wine that was ready to be sold was on another section of pallets. Along the right wall were the numbered stainless-steel fermenting tanks, some with wax-crayon writing on the front panel indicating the variety and how many hundred gallons were in the tank, but most with the hatch door popped open ready for harvest. In the middle of the room and along the other long wall were rows of oak barrels on metal stands. Quinn’s glassed-in lab was at the back of the room.

I didn’t see him when I walked in, but I heard voices. He must have heard the metal door as it shut because a moment later he stepped out from behind a row of barrels.

“Hi. Looking for something?” Somewhere, surely, there was a world shortage of Hawaiian shirts because it seemed most of them hung in his closet. This one was gray with pink flamingoes.

I smiled brightly. “Yes, actually I am. The wineglasses for tonight’s tasting. Dominique asked me to make sure they were set out where they’re supposed to be.”

He must have wondered what was going on with the toothpaste-ad smile because he looked puzzled, then turned and spoke to someone obscured by the wine casks. I didn’t catch what he said but a willowy blonde stepped out from behind the barrels. “Hello, Lucie. I was just starting to do that. Long time no see.”