The Merlot Murders

through the hoses from the smaller to the larger tank.

“Okay. One of the guests was a congressman who brought his staff.”

“Great!”

“He was from California.”

“Oh. Hard sell, hunh?” He tapped his finger against the gauge on the side of the tank. “I think after we rack this and number five over and sugar them, Quinn wants to move everything into barrels. What’s left in the other tanks stays in stainless steel.”

The pump sounded like it was beginning to suck air. Joe switched it off, unclamping the hose and unlocking the large port-holelike panel on the front of the tank. “Hit that switch, will you?”

He opened the man-sized porthole door and disappeared inside the tank from the waist up, taking the hose with him. I switched on the pump again and heard him vacuuming the remaining wine out of the dish at the bottom. A minute later his voice reverberated eerily against the stainless steel. “Okay!”

I flipped the switch and he popped back out of the tank, like a life-sized jack-in-the-box. “Let’s get the other one. Number five.”

Hector moved the ladder and popped the top of the second tank. “Stop flirting with Lucie, Joe, and get the sugar and the yeast.”

Joe winked at me and left.

“You doing all right, Lucita?” Hector climbed down the ladder and reclamped the hose to the second tank. “Okay, you can turn the pump on.”

I obeyed. “I’m doing fine.”

“How come you didn’t tell Joe the truth about your car?” He saw the look on my face and added, “You’re lucky to be alive, you know?”

“How did you find out? Please don’t say it was Thelma. I won’t be able to go by the general store for a year.”

He grinned and shook his head. “Hollis Maddox dropped by. He said to tell you the Volvo’s at the Gas-o-Rama and the mechanic wants you to call him so he can tell you how much it’s gonna cost.” The pump was sucking air again so Hector switched it off. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I think someone tried to run me off the road last night.”

He vacuumed the rest of the wine from the dish. “I bet it was those kids. They get borracho—drunk—then they drag race along that flat stretch of Mosby’s Highway. Didn’t used to be like that when everyone knew everyone else around here. Now we got all those new subdivisions over in Leesburg and Sterling and parents too busy making money to spend time with their kids. So they get up to no good.”

“I don’t know who it was. It was just one car.” But it wasn’t drunk teenagers, either.

Joe returned with a fifty-pound bag of sugar slung over one shoulder and a large bucket of yeast. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Not at all,” I said quickly, as Quinn joined us carrying a tape measure, calculator, and a clipboard.

“Private conversation?” He pulled a wax crayon from behind his ear.

“Nope.” Hector said, glancing at me.

“Then let’s get the show on the road,” Quinn said.

I watched while Joe sugared the wine and Hector dumped the yeast into a bucket of distilled water. It hissed as it heated up, bubbling and foaming like witch’s brew. He poured it into the tank as I stirred the mix with a large paddle.

When we were finished Quinn and Hector set up more hoses for siphoning the wine into barrels. Almost as soon as we filled the casks and closed them, the wine began bubbling in the see-through air locks. The noise level in the room grew exponentially louder. Fermenting wine sounds like a roaring river.

“You all right, Lucie?” Hector joined Joe and me as we moved down the row, checking the air locks to make sure the seals were tight.

“I think it’s the CO₂,” I said. “It’s making me dizzy.”

Quinn came up behind us. “We’re about done here. If you’re feeling light-headed, maybe you should take off. I don’t want you passing out and I don’t need you anymore.”

He moved on before I could reply. “Come on, chiquita,” Hector said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

He spoke to Quinn in Spanish, “I’ll take her home. Then I’ll be back.”

“Don’t bother. You’ve done enough. Joe and I can take care of what’s left.” He, too, spoke Spanish and I’d noticed it was their preferred language of communication.

When we got to the parking lot Hector said, “How you gonna get around without a car, Lucita? Sounds like the Volvo will be in the shop for a few days.”

“Rent something, I guess.”

“You know,” he said, “you could borrow the truck if you want. Bonita left her car here when she went back to Colly-fornia. Her last year studying enology at U.C., Davis. I can use her Corvette. Needs driving, anyway.”

“That would be great, Hector. Thanks.”

“Only thing is, you gotta drop me back at the cottage.” He threw me the keys. “I need a ride.”

Hector and Serafina lived in one of the two remaining tenant cottages on our property—Quinn had the other one. They were located off the main road on a small dirt spur, near where the road split at the sycamore tree.

“So Bonita’s doing well at school?” I asked.

“Top of her class.” He smiled broadly. “She’s gonna be a first-class winemaker. You wait and see.”

“She had a good example.” I shifted the truck into first gear. “Maybe she could work here after she graduates. I don’t know how long Quinn will be around. We’ll need a first-class winemaker.”

“You got one. Queen’s a good man.” It sounded like a reprimand.

“What makes you so sure?”

“I’m a good judge of what’s in here.” He laid a hand over his heart. “He knows what he’s doing with the grapes, too. I know you miss Jeck, but you would be loca en la cabeza to let Queen go. I don’t know why you don’t like him.”

“I don’t like him because he swaggers around here like he owns the place and I’m in the way.” I swerved a bit too sharply, overcorrecting to avoid a pothole. “He was fired from the last place he worked. Did you know that?”

“He was not fired. He left.” Hector put a hand on the dashboard. “They drive like this in France?”

“Like what? And the winemaker is in jail. The vineyard had to close. Those aren’t sterling references.”

We pulled up in front of the red-brick cottage, which sat serenely in a clearing in the middle of the woods. A fresh coat of paint on the wraparound porch and masses of late summer impatiens, geraniums, and petunias blooming in garden beds and cascading from window boxes made it look like something out of a fairy tale. Pink, white, and lilac Rose of Sharon bushes lined both sides of a fieldstone walk.

I turned off the engine motor.

“You know, this is a great country you got here, Lucita. I’m proud my kids are citizens. Because in los Estados Unidos you believe someone is innocent until they are proven guilty.”

“Do you really think someone as sharp as Quinn could be completely in the dark about what his boss was doing?” I folded my arms across my chest and stared through the windshield, unwilling to meet his eyes. “That’s a bit of a stretch, Hector.”

“I think when you respect someone, or love them, it can make you blind sometimes. Your mama was like that. She didn’t see any of your papa’s…ways. Some of the things he did that maybe he shouldn’t oughta. I think it was like that with Queen. He respected that winemaker, that Cantor.” He reached over and put his hand under my chin, turning me so I faced him. “Sometimes it’s not about the cabeza, chiquita. Sometimes it’s the corazón. Entiendes?”

I chewed my lip and nodded. He got out of the car and I started the engine. I saw him waving at me through the rearview mirror. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Don’t drive too fast!”

I waved a hand out the window. He was still standing there as I rounded a corner and could no longer see him.

The answering machine was beeping when I walked through the front door. Two messages. Kit, asking me to