The Merlot Murders

private before everyone else in the world hears about them.”

“We have a deal,” he said in a low voice. “My running the place includes not questioning my every decision— or when I reveal it.”

I set my glass down a bit sharply on the barrel. “What’s next?”

“Merlot. We’re doing a vertical tasting.”

As opposed to a horizontal tasting, which features the same wines from a region or varietal—such as Virginia Cabernet Sauvignons from the same year—a vertical tasting featured the same wine from the same winery, but grown in consecutive years. It was an ideal way to educate people because it became immediately apparent how the weather affected the way the same vines could produce such different wines from one year to the next.

Quinn was good at leading the group through our last five Merlots, four in bottles that Jacques had blended with a small amount of Cabernet Sauvignon. The fifth and most recent harvest was still in barrels, where we always kept it for at least twenty months.

“This wine will probably be in barrels for a total of sixteen, maybe eighteen months,” Quinn was saying. “I’ll siphon some from one of the barrels with this hose we call a ‘wine thief’ and you can see how it’s developing.”

I chewed my lip and watched him work. Was he putting his own stamp so definitively on our wines, changing absolutely everything that Jacques had done, because of his ego? Or because it was a smart decision? He was moving a lot more aggressively than I’d realized.

After the last person had left, either to buy wine at the villa or head over to the performance at the Ruins, it was just the two of us cleaning up.

Finally he said, “I’ve been around enough women in my life to recognize the silent treatment when I’m getting it. You’re mad because I’m not coloring inside the lines the way you think I ought to be. I told you I’m not going to be put on a leash and you agreed.”

“I didn’t think that meant changing absolutely everything we ever did.” I set an empty wineglass box on one of the tables and glared at him. “People buy our wines because of our reputation. Because of the reputation Jacques established for us. What do you think you’re doing, anyway?”

“Me? What about you? Your grip on this place is getting more tenuous every day, from what I hear. You sold your soul to the company store, Lucie. Or Leland did. Now you have to pay back what you owe and you can’t.”

“Do not underestimate me,” I said. “I can and I will.”

“That remains to be seen,” he snapped. “I think we’re done here.” He strode around the room and began turning off banks of lights.

“What are you doing?”

“Closing up. Then, if it’s any of your business, I’m going to watch Angie. She’s doing something new for her last show. I’d like to see her.”

How many different ways were there to take off your clothes? Somehow I figured Vinnie ran a cut-rate operation that didn’t include extras like costumes and accessories. “I’ll finish here,” I said. “You can go.”

“I can handle it.” He walked over and stood in front of me, staring at me with those dark, intimidating eyes I’d noticed the first time I saw him—when he told me Fitz was dead.

I said sharply, “You don’t need to be so defensive. I’d like some time alone here. Please leave.”

“Suit yourself.” He let the door bang shut, on purpose, when he left.

Maybe I was mistaken about him. I had thought he was extremely ambitious, just like me, and that we could be a good team professionally, even if personally we were about as compatible as bulls and china shops. But maybe “extreme ambition” was a polite way of papering over ruthlessness and greed.

The article in the Mercury News said the police never found any of the money Allen Cantor had embezzled from Le Coq Rouge and that he’d probably parked it in some offshore account. What if he’d paid off his assistant winemaker as well, and bought his silence? The day Quinn took me out in the fields he said he might like to buy land in Virginia, own his own vineyard someday.

Maybe he already had the money to do it. He obviously knew how dire our financial situation was. Maybe he’d been the one to make that fire sale offer and that’s why no one knew about it.

Because it had been an inside bid.

I drove too fast on the short trip back to the house, pushing the Volvo harder than it deserved. It responded like the workhorse it had always been, immune to my irritable mood. As soon as I was in the house I went straight to Leland’s office and found the copy of Crime and Punishment on his bookshelf. The Jefferson letter was, as Joe warned, not in good condition. I put it back on the shelf as the small clock on the fireplace mantel struck ten. On my way out of the room I stopped in front of my mother’s painting of Hugh Montgomery’s grave.

There was something about it that eluded me. The clue to the necklace’s hiding place was either in the painting, or possibly at the cemetery itself. It wasn’t a random choice that she’d left the key and written the lines from Richard II in that note card. Somewhere there was a locked chest and somehow—if I believed what she’d written—it was tied up in her life and honor.

It was late, but I was in no mood to sleep. Instead I went to Leland’s once well-stocked wine cellar, now nearly empty. I picked out one of the few remaining bottles, a Pomerol, and brought it outside to the veranda. While it breathed, I lit every candle and torch until it looked like the entire place was bathed in liquid gold.

Then I switched on the radio. WLEE. He was playing Coltrane. It matched my mood and perfectly plumbed the depths of my solitude and mined the ache in my heart. Why had I let him kiss me again? What was it that made me seek out the good-looking untamable bad boys like Greg and Philippe? Both were as seductive and dangerous as heroin and probably more addictive. Fatal charm. Devastating looks. James Dean bad-boy charisma. Any idiot knew how it was going to end. I always lost my heart to someone who didn’t have one.

I always ended up alone.

Fortunately no one was around when I woke up the next morning, cradling yet another empty wineglass in my lap, still dressed from the night before. The farm report was on the radio. Someone was talking about the drought and the toll it was taking on livestock all over the state. We were in for some relief though, the announcer said. After one hundred and thirty-three dry days, there was rain on the way.

Not today, though. I walked to the edge of the veranda and looked out at the horizon. The sun was already punishing, a sharp-edged disk in a white-hot sky. The outline of the Blue Ridge was as soft and faint as a whisper.

I ate breakfast, showered, and changed into a black tank top and jeans. Then I did something I’d been avoiding ever since I came home. I went to my mother’s study. The tight feeling in the back of my throat from the early days after her death was no longer there when I opened the door, but I did stand in the doorway for a while before I walked into the room. It had the museumlike quality of a shrine, preserved almost exactly as she’d kept it. The decaying odors that pervaded the rest of the house seemed not to have seeped into this space. Instead the chemical smells of paint and varnish hung in the air.

I opened the windows to air out the room. Mia must have been using it as her studio. A sheet draped over my mother’s easel hid the outlines of a large canvas and on a table next to it were brushes, paints, and a much- used artist’s palette, where my mother always kept them. I lifted the sheet. A partially finished painting of four women drinking wine at an outdoor café. There was a lightness that was almost ethereal about the scene— the colors, the expressions on the faces, the filtered sunlight and soft shadows on hair and clothing. Had I not known better, it could have been my mother’s artwork—but it was my sister’s.

I lowered the sheet and walked over to an antique trestle table where the phonograph sat. It looked like Mia had been listening to Mom’s old vinyl records. An early Jacques Brel—“Ballades & Mots d’Amour”—was still on the turntable. The album jacket lay next to it. I switched on the machine and the needle dropped into place.

“Ne Me Quitte Pas.” One of his signature songs. “If You Go Away” it was called in English. It had been a huge hit here, too. Everyone had covered it, from Frank Sinatra to Dusty Springfield, but no one sang it like the man who wrote it. I listened to that cigarette-raspy voice lamenting heartache and loneliness. Then I went over to the bookcase and got my mother’s copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

She had bookmarked the page from Richard II with a pressed red rose. The edge of a petal crumbled when I touched it. I closed the book. Brel’s voice soared and he sang about sailing on the sun and