“Have dinner with me,” she pleaded. “We can talk then.”
“Come here and I’ll cook.”
“No offense, but I want more than the rabbit food you usually have on hand. Let’s go to the Inn.”
“I’m really grimy. I need a shower.”
“So take one. I’ll book us a table. Pick you up in forty-five minutes.”
I got out of bed and retrieved my clothes off the floor. My mobile phone fell out of my jeans pocket, landing on the bed. Dead as a doornail.
I plugged it in to the charger next to the answering machine downstairs as I was on my way out the door. Then I called Ross. A woman answered.
“Greenwood residence.”
“Siri?” I should have figured she’d be there looking after him. She was devoted to Ross, in awe of the way he’d been turning the clinic around ever since she’d persuaded him to take the job as chief physician. “It’s Lucie.”
“Hi, honey.” She sounded weary, but relieved. “The press has been calling nonstop, hounding him. Ross is absolutely shattered. He’s asleep, so I’m manning the fort.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing, nothing. Thanks for asking. The best thing now is to leave him alone and give him some time to deal with what’s happened. He might be better tomorrow, but tonight he’s…well, it’s pretty bad. I’ll let you know when he’s ready to see friends.”
“Sure. I’d appreciate it.” I said goodbye and hung up.
Siri had lost her husband to lung cancer three years ago. It had been only a few weeks from the time Karl Randstad was diagnosed, after complaining of chest pains when he returned from his daily three-mile run, until he passed away. He hadn’t touched a cigarette a day in his life. No one could believe it.
Karl and I had been patients at Catoctin General Hospital at the same time, though he was in the oncology wing and I was, by then, in a general ward. Siri made a point of stopping by to see me each day for a few minutes when she wasn’t keeping vigil at Karl’s bedside. We didn’t know each other well, but I was Ross’s patient and she had just opened the clinic and was in the process of persuading Ross to come work for her.
I suppose I will always remember when Karl died, for the irony of it. He was scheduled to begin chemo the next day. That afternoon Siri stopped by to see me as usual, and for the first time since they found out about the cancer she’d sounded upbeat and hopeful.
I couldn’t make it to his funeral, but Ross told me later there wasn’t a dry eye in the church. I lost touch with Siri when I moved to France, but when I came home to Atoka, I’d been stunned the first time I saw her. Her once- glossy shoulder-length dark brown hair was prematurely streaked with gray and the worry lines around her eyes and her mouth belonged on someone much older.
Kit’s khaki-colored Jeep pulled into the driveway just as I finished dialing Quinn. His phone went to voice mail.
“If you’re getting this message, I’m not available. You know what to do. Here comes the beep, so do it.”
“Hi. Me. I’m going out to dinner with Kit,” I said. “My cell phone’s dead, so leave a message at the house if you need me. Otherwise I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Kit pulled a map book and some papers off the dashboard and crumpled a large empty chip bag as I opened the door to the Jeep, tossing it all in the backseat.
“Climb in.” She picked up a cloth satchel from the passenger seat and flung it over her shoulder. “I’ve made room.”
The floor was littered with copies of the
“Where am I going to put my feet? You don’t have to keep this stuff in perpetuity, you know. That’s why they make garbage cans.” I moved the tray with the tip of my cane and sat down. “I just stepped on something squishy.”
“So that’s where the bubble-wrap mailer went.” She sounded cheerful. “Hand it to me, will you? My mom bought something from one of those home shopping channels and I’m sending it back.”
I slid an envelope out from under a file folder and gave it to her. “What’d she buy? Must have been tiny, to fit in here.”
“A lace teddy. Cost a fortune.”
“Good for her. Why can’t she keep it? Too expensive?”
“Too small. She thought she ordered a size twenty, but a size two showed up.”
“Oh, brother. Hey, do me a favor? Go through the parking lot at the winery and take the south service road. I want to see what the police and the hazmat guys did to the place. We had every cruiser, fire truck, and emergency vehicle in two counties here this morning.”
“You don’t have to ask me twice. I’m dying to see it.” She glanced at me. “You know I didn’t mean that.”
When we got there, she stopped the Jeep and we got out of the car. The ground where Georgia’s body had lain was still waterlogged. Ross hadn’t been kidding about the decontamination process.
Kit read my mind. “I heard they had to turn the fire hoses on Georgia to wash that pesticide off her.”
I nodded and touched my fingers to my lips.
“You okay, Luce?” Kit squeezed my shoulder. “You look like you’re going to lose your cookies.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“What kind of sicko would do something like this?”
“Someone who knew about the methyl bromide being left out in the field. Or saw it when we were setting up for the fund-raiser.”
“Well, it had to be premeditated. Man, I heard about that stuff not being locked up. That is such bad news.”
“I know.” I shivered. “Okay, I’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here while there’s still daylight left. It’s getting cold again, too.”
Kit drove too fast as usual, one hand on the wheel and the other gesticulating as she talked. By tacit agreement, we avoided discussing Georgia’s murder, my EPA woes, or her relationship with Bobby. Instead she asked about Chris Coronado’s helicopter and last night’s freeze and I answered halfheartedly. I needed food. And a drink.
The Goose Creek Inn sat on a quiet country lane about ten minutes from the center of Middleburg. For anyone who didn’t know exactly where it was—meaning the nonlocals—it seemed to materialize suddenly out of the woods around a sharp bend in the road. A pretty half-timbered ivy-covered building whose silhouette was now outlined by tiny white lights, it glowed softly in the gathering twilight as if plucked out of a fairy tale. Kit pulled into the parking lot as waiters illuminated electric candles in the arched picture windows. We found a space at the far end of the nearly full lot. When we got out of the Jeep, the cathedral-like canopy of trees overhead hushed all sound except for rushing water where Goose Creek tumbled through a boulder-filled ravine nearby.
“Too bad it’s too cold to eat outside. It’s nice sitting on the terrace so you can hear the creek,” Kit said.
“At least it won’t be as cold as last night,” I said. “The temperature’s supposed to stay above freezing, thank God.”
A wreath of dried flowers and rushes hung on the fire-engine-red front door. I pushed against the latch and it swung open. My late godfather, Fitzhugh Pico, had opened the Inn many years ago and it had won every dining award in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., region. My cousin Dominique, Fitz’s former business partner, now owned the place and wisely changed nothing when she took over, so guests still felt like they were dropping by for dinner at the home of good friends.
The large foyer was full of dark-suited men and pretty women. Fitz had consulted my French mother on the Inn’s décor and as a result, the place resembled a comfortable auberge with its whitewashed walls, quarry- tiled floor, and eclectic collection of gaily hued oil paintings and vintage posters advertising French alcohol, cigarettes, and travel. At night the staff wore tuxedos, so the three men who hovered near the maître d’s stand debating the seating plan reminded me of a small flock of well-groomed penguins.
“Lucie.” The head maître d’ bussed me on both cheeks. “
