early.”
“Do you know what you’re looking for?” I asked.
“Sure,” he sighed. “A needle in a haystack. We didn’t find anything first go-round. We might not find anything this time, either. But we gotta look. And I want to talk to your crew again, too.”
A couple of the officers who showed up the next morning spoke Spanish, but Bobby wanted Hector and Quinn to interpret because our crew looked so scared.
Afterward I sat with Quinn on the stone wall in the courtyard staring at the comforting view of the serene Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance and the well-ordered rows of vines in the foreground. The cloudless sky was so sharply blue it hurt my eyes and the air was clear and sweet. Hector’s wife, Sera, had just finished planting all the flowers now that the frost danger had passed and the weather had become more springlike. Everywhere I looked, halved wine barrels overflowed with pink, white, and purple petunias, and the mossed baskets, which hung throughout the loggia, spilled over with dark red fuchsia and lacy white geraniums. The courtyard looked lovely.
“The guys were afraid Bobby was going to yank their green cards. They didn’t believe he only wanted to know about Georgia.” Quinn pulled a cigar out of a shirt pocket. Yet another Hawaiian design, part of the extensive collection that had become his trademark fashion statement. This one, yellow and brown with dancing monkeys and bananas all over it, had to be a favorite, since he wore it so often.
“The police didn’t find the murder weapon this time, either,” I said. “Maybe Randy took it with him.”
Quinn unwrapped his cigar. “You really got Randy pegged for this?”
“Looks like you were right about him and Georgia having an affair. Ross confirmed it. Last night he showed me a note that came back with Georgia’s dry cleaning. Someone asked her to meet up at ‘the usual place’ after the fund-raiser,” I said. “Ross is pretty sure Randy wrote the note. Apparently he came by all the time to deliver groceries. That’s when Ross reckoned it started. The note said something about an apology. I bet it all went south and maybe Randy lost his temper.”
“Ross has a note from Randy?” Quinn lit the cigar and puffed on it. “Pretty convenient, don’t you think? Deflects suspicion from the husband.”
“Ross did not kill Georgia,” I snapped. “He was delivering twins that night. Look, I like Randy and I don’t want to believe it, either, but Georgia’s dead and he’s gone.”
“I thought you told me this morning the medical examiner said she had sex with someone before she died. Not the thing you do before you kill somebody, is it? At least, I don’t.” He tugged on a thick gold chain he wore around his neck. I used to think it was odd he wore more jewelry than I did, but I’d finally gotten used to it.
I blushed and reached down to pick up a handful of stones from the gravel courtyard, and let them sift through my fingers. “We won’t go there. Maybe it wasn’t consensual. Or maybe it wasn’t Randy and he found out about it and lost his temper.”
“The fact that she had sex with somebody other than Ross still gives him the strongest motive for killing her.”
“Then explain why Randy disappeared right after Georgia was murdered,” I countered.
Quinn shrugged. “Maybe he did go fishing.”
“Oh, come on.”
“All right, then you explain the methyl bromide. Why not just kill her with whatever she got hit with?” he asked.
“Because the blow didn’t kill her, so he had to use something else to finish the job. The methyl bromide canisters were right there. Those fields aren’t that far from the barn. Randy knew where to find everything, and besides, he could have kept the protective gear he wore when he put up the warning signs.”
Quinn shook his head. “Doesn’t sound like Randy, all that premeditated stuff.”
“You mean the same Randy who told us he was using the barn for band practice and then set it up as a little hideaway for trysts with a married woman?”
He blew a perfect smoke ring, then watched it vanish. “There’s a big difference between lust and murder.”
“I don’t know about that. With either one, you get caught up in something that makes you lose your head.” I reached for my cane and stood up. “I’d better get over to Middleburg. We need the payroll money and you want that check for the rootstock. Maybe I’ll stop by Mac’s antique store as long as I’m in town.”
“And do what?” Quinn stood up, too. “See if Mac knows anything about where Randy’s gone? Honey, I got news for you. Bobby sent somebody to talk to Mac first thing this morning. I heard him. You better not get in the way of a murder investigation, playing amateur detective.”
“Give me a little credit,” I said. “I’m trying to help a friend.”
“I take it you mean Ross,” he said, “and that boy is going to need all the help he can get. With no alibi and a damn good motive for murder—better than Randy’s, if you ask me—it doesn’t look so good for him.”
“I know that,” I said. “Believe me, I know.”
Chapter 7
I took care of my banking at Blue Ridge Federal and accepted the offer of an unnaturally bright blue lollipop from the septuagenarian teller.
“What flavor is this?” I pulled off the wrapper.
“Blue,” she said. “Enjoy.”
I finished it before I got to Mac’s store. He meant it about no eating or drinking around his antiques. I’d once watched him ask a customer to leave because she was chewing gum.
Macdonald’s Antiques was located in a graceful old Federal building on the corner of Washington and Jay Streets in the center of downtown Middleburg. The town, founded in the mid-1700s, had once been the midway stop on the main stagecoach road between Alexandria and Winchester—which was how it got its name. Long before that, the area had been the hunting ground of the Sioux Indians.
More than three centuries later, hunting was still popular, though it was now the gentleman’s sport of fox- hunting. In the early 1900s wealthy Northerners had rescued our sleepy little region from the severe economic hardship we suffered during the Civil War. As more and more people moved to the area, we were back on the map, but this time as the wealthy heart of Virginia’s horse and hunt country.
A small bell on the front door tinkled as I walked into Mac’s store. He was sitting at the large partner’s desk where he did all his paperwork, talking on the phone. I got a wave, then he twirled a finger to indicate that he’d only be a moment and I should have a look around.
I could look to my heart’s content, but I already knew everything in the place was way out of my price range, since it had probably belonged to a famous Virginian like Washington, Jefferson, or Stonewall—or one of their kin. I ran my hand across the silky wood of a burled walnut end table with mother-of-pearl inlay, then propped my cane against a chair with a pretty back that resembled a lyre. The price of the table was on the reverse side of a tag decorated with Mac’s familiar hand-stenciled pineapple logo, the colonial symbol for “welcome.” I turned it over.
“Good Lord.”
“You interested in that table, Lucie?” Mac asked. I hadn’t heard him hang up the phone, nor come up behind me. He shifted my cane so it rested against the wall instead of his expensive chair.
“Didn’t mean to scare you, sugar,” he continued. “I can come down a bit on that price. It’s a beautiful piece. Belonged to the Lee family. Wonderful provenance.”
“Robert E. Lee?”
“No, not Robert. Someone who was kin to an earlier Lee. Francis Lightfoot Lee. Friend to Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry.”
Off by nearly a century. Which explained the sum he was asking for it. I turned the price tag back over. “It’s beautiful, Mac. Too rich for my blood, unfortunately.”
“What brings you here, then? Social visit?”
“Randy hasn’t shown up at the vineyard the past two days. I was wondering if he said anything to you about
