The Bordeaux Betrayal

“I promised Bridget she wouldn’t get in trouble if she told the truth,” I said. “I gave my word.”

Jordy sighed. “All right.”

“Thank you.”

When Bobby and I got to Cornwall Cottage, I showed him what I’d found. Turned out it was a lug nut, though Bobby said it didn’t mean it came from Valerie’s car. Still, he took photos with a digital camera and bagged it.

“I’ll bet you anything it’s from her wheel,” I said. “What about the other lug nuts? Did you find them?”

“You know I can’t say.”

“You didn’t, did you? That means this one’s really important.”

“No comment.”

We walked back to the parking lot. “Joe didn’t tamper with Valerie’s car, Bobby.”

“What was he doing here last night if he’s engaged to your cousin?”

“The engagement’s off.”

He rubbed a hand across his forehead and closed his eyes like he was trying to excise a headache. “Is that so? You know anything about Joe’s relationship with Valerie Beauvais? Whether or not it was sexual?”

I decided not to mention that Bridget had told me about the condoms. “I saw them together last night at her lecture at Mount Vernon. They kissed a couple of times, but that’s all I saw.”

He still held the bag with the lug nut between his thumb and forefinger. “I wonder if he was the only visitor she had,” he said. “Guess I’ll be talking to your cousin’s ex-fiancé.”

I nodded. More than one lover—I hadn’t thought of that. Either way, it didn’t look too good for Joe.

My answering machine beeped as I walked in the front door of my house just after six o’clock. Three messages. All from Katherine Eastman sounding increasingly irate.

Kit, like Bobby, went back to my sandbox days. Best friends all twelve years of school, we’d finally split up in college—she studied journalism in North Carolina and I went to Williamsburg for history and French. We got back together after graduating, both landing jobs in D.C. She worked in the newsroom of the Washington Tribune, a place she used to refer to as “the shark tank.” I got a job with an environmental group that tried to convince policy makers that scientists hadn’t invented global warming to scare the public or obtain more funding.

Three summers ago Kit’s mother suffered a stroke and a few weeks later a car I was in, driven by a now-ex- boyfriend, slammed into the wall at the entrance to our farm as he brought me home one night in the middle of a rainstorm. Kit returned to Atoka to be near her mom, asking for a transfer to the Trib’s Loudoun bureau. I spent a few months in Catoctin General learning to walk again before moving to a house my French mother’s family still owned on the Côte d’Azur, where I spent two years adjusting to life with a cane.

The time stamps on the answering machine indicated Kit had been calling for the past three hours. I listened to her last message. “Dammit, how come you don’t answer your cell anymore? I finally tried here. Four times. Where the hell are you? Call me or else.”

I took more ibuprofen and called. “It was only three times. Or else what?”

“I don’t know. Or else I’ll call again and make it four. Where have you been?”

“Here and there. My cell is dead after a swim in Goose Creek.” I picked it up from the console table in the foyer. Definitely destroyed. “Looks like I need to replace it. What’s so urgent?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s so urgent’? You pulled that woman out of the creek. I’m writing the story. How about a little cooperation?”

“How about dinner? You buy, if you want me to talk.”

“The Trib isn’t made of money. Take my salary, for example.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Meet me at the Goose Creek Inn at seven. And you better have a lot to say. I already get grief about my expenses.”

The Goose Creek Inn, which had won every major award for dining and “most romantic setting” in the Washington area over the last forty years, was a whitewashed auberge on a pretty country lane just outside Middleburg. As usual, the parking lot was full, but I found a semilegitimate space small enough for the Mini and tucked it in there. Fairy lights twinkled in the trees and the air smelled of wood smoke.

The large foyer, with its walls of bright primitive oil paintings and vintage posters advertising French alcohol, cigarettes, and travel, was filled with groups waiting for their tables on a busy Friday night. Here people still dressed for dinner and men were required to wear jackets in the evening. Jeans were prohibited.

Provençal china and antique copper pots sat on a sideboard next to a copy of The Goose Creek Cookbook. As usual, the cookbook was opened to the recipe for the famous chocolate cheesecake created by my late godfather, who founded the place. I would have preferred not to know about the obscene amount of butter, dark chocolate, and cream cheese that went into Fitz’s cheesecake, but that recipe sold a lot of cookbooks.

Kit had arrived before I did and was talking to Dominique near the maître d’s stand. My cousin caught sight of me through the crowd and gestured for me to join them. One of the perks of being related to the owner. We would be seated right away, probably at her table.

Usually Dominique radiated the pulsing energy of a supernova, running the inn and Goose Creek Catering with a skimpy velvet glove over her small iron fist, but tonight she looked like she’d been dragged through a knothole. We both had inherited our ambition from our mothers, who’d been sisters. But unlike me, Dominique didn’t have an off-switch. She also had a way of acting like she’d just been invited to expand the Blessed Trinity to a quartet. When that happened, her staff usually tried to stay out of her way. This afternoon Joe had implied that her workaholic habits had finally gotten to him.

My cousin looked elegant in a black cashmere sweater, black trousers, and a thick gold necklace, but I smelled heavy cigarette smoke on her breath when she kissed me on both cheeks in the French way. She’d begun chain-smoking again.

Kit gave me an air kiss that wouldn’t ruin her Marilyn Monroe red lipstick. She wore a tight green mini-skirt with buttons down the front and a khaki-colored top that looked like it had spent too long in the dryer. All her clothes fit like that. She’d picked up forty pounds since high school and still managed to convince herself it was only twenty.

“We were just talking about the accident,” Kit said. “You don’t look so good. I heard you got kind of banged- up.”

“Some scratches on my back and a few bruises. I’ll be fine in a day or two.”

“A couple of the Romeos came in for cocktails this evening,” Dominique said. “That’s how I found out. Mon Dieu, it must have been awful.” She picked up two menus. “Someone said Joe was at Mount Vernon last night with the woman who was killed. Is that true?”

She’d probably learn soon enough that their evening hadn’t ended at Mount Vernon, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her right now. “Yes.”

“You’re at my table. I’ll take you there.” She turned so abruptly she almost collided with a waiter. I noticed two bright pink spots on her cheeks as she excused herself.

When we were seated, Kit pulled out a reporter’s notebook and a pen, setting them on the table. “What was that all about?”

I turned the small vase with its single red rose so the open flower faced us. “She and Joe broke off their engagement.”

Kit’s eyes narrowed. She’d overdone it with the eye makeup as usual so it looked like she had on football eye-black. “She tell you or he tell you?”

“He did.”

She opened her notebook and clicked her pen. “They’ve been engaged longer than some marriages last. What happened?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t elaborate and she hasn’t brought it up.”

“That’s too bad.” She clicked her pen a few more times. “So tell me about finding the Beauvais woman’s car.”