The Chardonnay Charade

his hands trembled. So he had a verifiable alibi.

“I didn’t mean to offend you, Senator. But the sheriff thinks Ross Greenwood killed her and he’s innocent, too.”

The temperature between us hovered near absolute zero. “Then let the sheriff do his job and mind your own business. I need to get back to my guests. I think we’re done here.”

After the limousines had gone and Quinn and I were cleaning up, he said to me, “What the hell happened with you and Lang out there on the terrace? What’d you do to him to get him so royally pissed off?”

“I tried to talk to him about his daughter and my sister, who spend their evenings together getting drunk,” I said. “He said Abby’s over twenty-one and that was the end of the conversation.”

“What else?”

“What do you mean?” I was stalling and he knew it.

“Don’t make me drag it out of you. Right after he came back in I heard him ask Bonita for a glass of water. He took a pill and I saw his hands shaking so bad he spilled the water. Must have been something you said to him.”

“I asked him about Georgia,” I said. “So did the sheriff. He said he did one of those DNA swabs proving he didn’t have sex with her. I guess talking about it rattled his cage.”

Quinn put a cork in a bottle of Cab and set it under the bar. “So he’s off the hook, is he?” He looked at me soberly. “You never should have said anything to him. He’s right. You were out of line.”

“Maybe so, but you know something? I think he’s hiding something.” I wiped the tile counter with a sponge, then wrung it out like it needed strangling. “Lot of that going around lately.” I slapped the sponge down on the edge of the sink.

“Something else bugging you?” he asked. “You’ve been in a rotten mood all day. Ever since you came back from Leesburg.”

“I feel great,” I snapped. “See you tomorrow.”

Afterward at home neither the novel on my bedside table nor an old movie on television held my interest, so I finally gave up around midnight and went downstairs to the kitchen. An open bottle of California Chardonnay—what else?—in the refrigerator looked pretty good. I poured a glass and drank it sitting in the glider, pushing myself back and forth with my good foot.

I didn’t see the faint light coming from beyond the rosebushes until my eyes adjusted to the moonlit darkness. Quinn must have gone to the summerhouse with his telescope. He probably couldn’t sleep any more than I could. Maybe the tension between the two of us kept him awake, too.

I picked up my cane and walked across the dew-damp grass. In the stillness, his voice startled me. I was about to call out when I heard the other voice. Female. For a moment I stood there like I’d grown roots, waiting.

Then I heard her giggle. “You are so awesome.”

Less than a day and he already made a move for Bonita. Their voices rose and fell, sweet chuckles and gentle teasing. Too quiet to understand what they were saying, but expressive enough to know what they were doing.

He’d asked me to look at the stars with him—but that was before he met her. If I had secretly hoped Quinn’s invitation to go stargazing was anything more than a casual offer, then it was my own stupid fault. I walked back to the veranda and threw the rest of the Chardonnay onto the lawn. Halfway up the spiral staircases on my way back to bed, the phone rang.

“Sorry to be calling so late, but I knew you’d want to know.” Kit sounded agitated. “Bobby just told me the D.C. police found Randy.”

“D.C.?” I said. “What’s he doing in Washington?”

“He probably didn’t start out in D.C.,” she said. “They found his car upstream parked near White’s Ferry. The cops fished his body out of the Potomac. He must have floated downstream. You were right. He’s dead. Shot himself through the head at point-blank range.”

Chapter 13

The news about Randy overshadowed everything that was—or wasn’t—going on between Quinn and me. I told him first thing the next morning when we got to the villa.

“Christ, that’s awful.” He was standing in the doorway to my office. “I can’t imagine him wading out into the water…and bang. How do they know it was suicide? Randy doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d do something like that, if you ask me.”

“Kit told me the police fished his gun out of the water at White’s Ferry. He left a note. In his car. All it said was, ‘I’m sorry.’ It makes me sick thinking about it.”

“They have any idea how long he’d been in the Potomac?”

“Long enough to float,” I said, “or they wouldn’t have found him. His body would have sunk at first. Then…the gases…so he’d float. Plus there are so many rocks and falls between White’s Ferry and T. R. Island that his body could have caught on something and got stuck upstream for a while.”

“That’s where he washed up? Teddy Roosevelt Island?”

I nodded. “I’m meeting Kit for a drink tonight at the English pub in Upperville before Georgia’s wake. I’ll get the rest of the story then.”

“Damn shame,” he said. “Keep me posted.”

Yesterday we’d decided he’d spend the day in the barrel room with Bonita and Jesús to finish filtering the Chardonnay and get the bottles washed and sterilized. I’d be in the fields with the rest of the crew, planting rootstock. Today I wasn’t sorry we weren’t going to be in each other’s company. He didn’t know about my near- miss viewing of him and Bonita in flagrante delicto. If I heard him asking her to open and close the ball valve in the tank, I know I’d start thinking about other things and my face would probably show it.

Manolo picked me up in front of the entrance to the villa, Spanish music blaring loudly through the open windows of Hector’s Super-man-blue pickup truck. He turned the music down as I threw my garden gloves and cane on the passenger-side floor and climbed in.

“How many guys have we got?” I pulled on Eli’s old New York Mets baseball cap and tucked my hair into it.

“Ten,” Manolo said. “César’s with a couple of them, digging fence-post holes for the Norton block. The rest are planting.”

“Let’s try to get all the Viognier done today,” I said. “If there’s time, we can start the Seyval. Or maybe a few of the men can help César put up trellis wires.”

He nodded. “We should finish the Viognier, easy. Then we can see how far along César is.”

Manolo had been with us almost since the vineyard opened, though he was a good thirty years younger than Hector. My mother and Hector hired Manolo almost as soon as he arrived from Mexico. He’d told Hector he was eighteen, to which Hector reportedly replied, “Sure you are, and I’m Benito Juárez.” We finally found out he was only fifteen. At first he worked for us during the season and washed dishes for local restaurants the rest of the year. Gradually, as we became more established, we were able to keep him on year-round. For the last few years he’d been the unofficial jefe when Hector wasn’t there and the men respected him. I knew he had a string of girlfriends but no one serious enough to marry. He also liked to hang out in the Hispanic bars around Herndon and Sterling, but what he did on his own time was his business and he never once showed up for work drunk or hungover. Though he wasn’t as steady and methodical as Hector, he had good instincts and a sense of humor. I liked him. He would be a good manager.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“Sure,” he said easily.

“Do you know Emilio Mendez?”

He didn’t take his eyes off the road, though he could have driven it with them closed. “I heard the cops are looking for him.”