She put out her hand as if to physically ward off my words. “Of course I am. Anyway, I expected it. It’s not rocket surgery to understand why we decided to break up.”
When Dominique got upset, her English—especially the idioms—usually took a nosedive.
“Want to talk about it?”
“There’s nothing to say. And you don’t have to walk on kid gloves around me, either.”
I hugged her. Her bones felt brittle and hollow as a bird’s. She was already so thin she looked anorexic. “Call me if you change your mind.”
“I’ll be fine.”
I said good-bye and went outside. She was wrong. Once word got around about Joe spending the night with Valerie before she died, putting him at the cottage where the lug nut to her wheel had been found, there’d be plenty to say.
And none of it would be good.
Chapter 5
On weekends, especially when the weather is gorgeous, people flee Washington in droves to soak up the pleasures of country life. On a typical day we can have between two and four hundred visitors passing through the vineyard to taste and buy wine. Some rent limos or pick a designated driver so everyone in the party doesn’t have to watch their limit. If we’re the last stop on their wine tour and they’d had a few, it could get lively.
Quinn and I finally hired full-time help to work in the tasting room—Francesca Merchant and Gina Leon—who took over organizing events, booking groups, and supervising the tastings. We also compiled a list of waiters and waitresses from the Goose Creek Inn who would moonlight for us on their days off, especially weekends.
The buildings making up the winery had been planned by my mother, a talented artist with an eye for design. She’d wanted something that harmonized the neoclassical architecture she’d grown up with in France with the simpler colonial style of Highland House, built by my father’s pragmatic Scottish ancestors. The ivy-covered building that now housed a tasting room, small kitchen, wine library, and our offices looked more like a villa than a commercial structure and the name stuck. A European-style courtyard and porticoed loggia connected it with the barrel room and laboratory where we made and stored wine.
We held picnics, dinners, and concerts in the courtyard with its breathtaking view of the vines and mountains, and served wine and small meals on the villa’s cantilevered two-story deck. But most of our events took place at Mosby’s Ruins, the remains of an old tenant house near the winery. During the Civil War, it had been a hideout for the Gray Ghost, Colonel John Singleton Mosby, until Union soldiers burned it down trying to flush him out.
On Saturday, McNally’s Army, an Irish rock band from D.C., came to play for the afternoon. Guests brought picnic lunches and sat on blankets and deck chairs on the hill in front of the area we’d converted to a stage. We sold wine by the glass or bottle and light snacks. The Army always pulled in a big crowd. Their music, which I loved, blended Celtic and country and their female vocalist had a voice that could haunt like a lost lover.
Joe Dawson showed up as the concert wrapped up and guests were leaving. He came over to the Ruins and stood there, looking like a train wreck, as he watched me pay the band.
“Want a glass of wine?” I asked. “Or a bottle and straw?”
He gave me a hangdog smile. “Got a minute?”
“Sure.”
I found an open bottle of Pinot and two glasses with our logo etched on them. He took them and helped me climb up on the raised stage, which once had been the first floor of the old house. We sat on the edge with our legs dangling over the side and watched the sun turn into a fireball as it began its descent behind the Blue Ridge.
Joe poured the wine and handed me a glass. “Looks like I need a lawyer. I called Sammy Constantine.”
One of the Romeos, Sam Constantine helped Mia out of a jam last spring. A good man, no bullshit, a straight talker. Hiring him cost a bundle.
“Have you been charged with anything?”
“Not yet. But they linked me to Valerie’s cottage at the Fox and Hound that last night,” he said. “She, uh, invited me back after her talk at Mount Vernon. The cops, uh, found things. Someone must have seen my car.”
I looked into my wineglass. “One of the maids saw you.”
He chewed his lip, nodding. “I should have figured.”
“Couldn’t you have waited, Joe? Why did you have to go right from Dominique’s bed to Valerie’s? You and Dominique have been together for
He held his hands up. “Whoa! Hold it right there, okay? What do you want me to say? It’s done. I’m paying for it, too, aren’t I?”
The sun had moved lower in the sky. It was starting to cool off. He was right. It was over and done with.
I quieted down. “Why do you need a lawyer? You don’t have a motive for killing her—do you?”
He didn’t look happy that I’d asked. “This is where it gets complicated.”
A bad start to a story that already involved sex and lawyers. “What do you mean?”
He drank more wine. “When Valerie was writing her book she needed additional information about Jefferson’s efforts to establish a wine industry in the United States. She asked if I could send her a copy of my dissertation, so I did. You can find it in the UVA library, of course, but I never got around to getting it published anywhere else.”
I knew where this was going. “She lifted parts of your dissertation for her book?”
He shook his head, like he couldn’t believe it himself. “Not just parts. Whole sections, which she didn’t footnote or even acknowledge in the bibliography. You know who else read my dissertation? Ryan Worth. That guy must have a photographic memory because he recognized it. I guess he wanted to share the love because he contacted her editor. And the editor, who got contacted by Bobby Noland, told Bobby.”
“That’s your motive? Professional revenge for plagiarism?”
“That’s what they want to know.”
“Did you ever confront her about it?”
Joe stared at the horizon. “I only skimmed the first chapter. Never got beyond page fourteen. Of course they think I’m lying. But honestly I had no idea about the plagiarism and probably nobody else on the planet would have either, except for frigging Ryan Worth.”
He refilled our glasses.
“Valerie sought me out at Mount Vernon after her talk,” I said. “Told me she knew something about the provenance of one of the wines Jack Greenfield donated for our auction. Kind of taunted me that I didn’t know what I had. Then the guy from her publishing house dragged her off.” I swirled wine in my glass. “Any ideas?”
“Nope. She mentioned it to me, too, but didn’t want to give up any details. Said it would be a bombshell when word got out.”
“You weren’t curious?”
“I didn’t really think about it, you know?”
I looked at him, remembering how Valerie had kissed him in the colonnade at Mount Vernon and the tangled sheets in the bedroom at Cornwall Cottage. “I guess you must have been preoccupied with other things.”
His cheeks turned red. “Okay. She did say she never would have known about whatever it was if she hadn’t retraced Jefferson’s vineyard journey through Bordeaux.”
“Bordeaux? The only vineyard both Valerie and Jefferson visited in Bordeaux was Château Margaux. That’s the Washington wine.” I set my empty wineglass down. “The other place, Château Dorgon, doesn’t exist anymore. The third wine Jack donated is a Domaine de Romanée-Conti—a burgundy.”
Joe hoisted himself off the stage with both hands and landed on the hard-packed ground. “Come here.” He held out his arms. “I’ll help you down.”
“Thanks, I’ll take the stairs.” I knew Joe didn’t kill Valerie, but he was getting dragged into whatever brought her down. Part of me thought he didn’t deserve it, but another part of me thought that we reap what we sow.
Joe seemed to acknowledge the rebuff as he picked up the empty bottle and our glasses. We walked down the path toward the villa at some distance apart.
“I know you’re mad at me because of Dominique,” he said. “Wish I could change things. Or turn back
