The Bordeaux Betrayal

time.”

I shrugged. “You know, Valerie didn’t have much professional credibility with Ryan.”

“I heard his story. She stole his idea. That’s a load of crap. She wrote that book on Jamestown. She got rave reviews.” His voice was hard.

“Ryan said someone handed it to her on a platter.”

“Ryan can go to hell. She told me she ran out of time to get the Jefferson book done so she panicked. Plus she was in a bind financially and that put even more pressure on her. I’ve known her for a long time. Valerie was a good scholar, Lucie.”

“So you think this bombshell, whatever it is, is legitimate?”

“Yeah, I do.”

I banged my cane against the ground in frustration. “Dammit, what am I going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll figure out something. Wish I could help but I got my own fish to fry right now.”

He left me at the entrance to the villa. I watched him walk down to the parking lot and get into his car.

Whatever Valerie knew, now I really had to find out.

They say when you want to dig up some dirt, go find yourself a worm. As it happened, I knew just the worm.

I called Ryan Worth on his cell and caught him on his way out the office door to an evening wine event in D.C.

“What are you doing at work on a Saturday?” I asked.

“Since it’s Columbus Day weekend, the place is quiet. I thought I’d get a jump on the next column so I could take a few days off next week. If I don’t get some down time I’m going to go nuts. What’s up?”

He sounded friendly but guarded.

“Could I ask a favor?”

“What is it?”

“You were right about the national attention your column would bring our auction,” I said. “The winery is getting calls from all over the place. Jordy Jordan told me the day it ran he booked every room at the Fox and Hound for that weekend.”

“Glad to hear it. So what’s this favor?”

So much for trying to butter him up.

“It’s not a local fund-raiser anymore. Now it’s a big deal,” I said. “Before that column ran we accepted any donation we got, meaning wines that came straight out of people’s wine cellars. Bottles they’d gotten as gifts or wine they’d been storing for a while. I haven’t begun to catalog any of it, nor do I have any idea what prices to set for the opening bids. Now I think we’re going to have a savvy, street-smart crowd bidding on them. Nothing like we anticipated.”

“You want me to help catalog your wines?” He blew out a short, sharp breath. “Do you know how much work that is?”

“Please, Ryan. I’m begging. It’s for charity. And, uh, one other favor? I’d like you to be the auctioneer. We need a pro now. You’d be terrific.”

I could hear him drumming something on the top of his desk, a pen or a pencil, while he thought about it. The rat-a-tat stopped. “You paying for my expertise?”

“Of course.” I should have seen that coming. “What’s your fee?”

“I’ll cut you a break,” he said, “since it’s for charity. Pay me a thousand and I’ll handle the catalog and raise a bundle for your charity. Deal?”

I wondered what his noncharity price tag was. Everyone else was doing this for free.

“Deal,” I said.

“Okay, get me a list of everything you’ve got and shoot it to me in an e-mail. I’ll start figuring out your floor prices.”

“I’ll get you the list, but do you think maybe you could come over here instead?” I asked.

“Why do I have to come over there?” He sounded ominous. I was on my third favor and thin ice.

“I just want to make sure the donations we’ve got are the real thing. So I’d like you to actually look at the bottles.”

“If you want me to do that, I need to ask twelve-fifty.”

I hadn’t even bargained on paying him the thousand, but I couldn’t afford to lose him. “Okay, okay. Twelve- fifty. We’ll pay you after the auction. From the proceeds.”

“Yeah, fine. I know you’re good for it.”

“How about coming by tomorrow evening?”

“Hang on.” I waited, probably while he scrolled through his electronic calendar. “Looks like I could do five.”

“Five’s good. See you then.”

“How come you didn’t corral Jack Greenfield into doing this? Or Shane Cunningham?” he said. “You know Shane’s running Internet wine auctions now. He and Jack do this stuff all the time.”

Shane was Jack’s business partner. I knew about the wine auctions but I’d been too busy with harvest to check out what he was selling. Might as well come clean and tell Ryan the truth before he got here tomorrow.

“Because one of the bottles I’m worried about is the Washington wine and I can’t ask Jack or Shane.”

He barked a laugh. “Well, you can relax about that one. I did look that bottle over when Jack had it. I guarantee you, it’s the real deal.”

“You’re sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? What’s up?”

“Valerie Beauvais said there was something I didn’t know about its provenance. She was on her way here to look at it the morning she died. I never found out what she knew.”

Ryan snorted. “Valerie—God rest her soul—wouldn’t have known provenance if it walked up and slapped her upside her head.”

When I was silent he said, “Okay, sorry. That was rude. When I’m over there tomorrow, I’ll show you why I’m so sure you don’t have anything to worry about. Satisfied?”

I said “yes” but he’d already hung up.

He seemed to know a lot about Valerie Beauvais. And he’d been astute enough to recognize the source of the plagiarism in her book as Joe’s dissertation—something he’d had to go looking for at the UVA library.

But if it were true that Clay Avery had been thinking of hiring Valerie to write for the Washington Tribune, then Ryan couldn’t be too sorry that she was dead and no longer a thorn in his side. And if she were right about the Washington bottle, he’d look like a fool for having staked his reputation on its authenticity.

Which gave him—even more than Joe—more than one motive for murder.

Chapter 6

Another big crowd came through the winery on Sunday as the glorious weather continued to hold. It had only been two weeks since the sun moved from the northern to the southern hemisphere on the autumnal equinox, but the longer, lower rays of sunlight already bathed the vines and fields with a gilded light that came only at this time of year.

We had moved the tasting outside to the courtyard to take advantage of the view and the weather. Francesca Merchant had hired a string quartet to play chamber music for the afternoon.

“I know you like this classical stuff, but it just doesn’t do it for me. Frankie says they’re good musicians, but everything sounds like the same guy wrote it. Vivaldi, Beethoven—whoever,” Quinn said to me as we stood in the shade of the loggia and watched Gina hand out tasting sheets and explain our wines to three older men who’d arrived in a limo with three good-looking young women.