The quartet was playing a baroque piece by Telemann.
“There’s a big difference between Beethoven and Vivaldi. You just don’t pay attention.” I fingered the collar of yet another of his Hawaiian shirts, this one with skimpily clad girls in grass skirts and postage stamp bras, swaying, presumably, to a hula. “Couldn’t you have worn a different shirt?”
“Why, is there a stain on this one?”
“Never mind.”
My brother Eli showed up midafternoon without my sister-in-law Brandi and my one-year-old niece Hope. As always he looked a little too dapper and even a bit feminine. I knew why. Brandi now picked out all his clothes, like Barbie dressing Ken. She favored pastels so I was getting used to seeing Eli in sherbet colors like the pale yellow shirt and matching linen trousers he wore now.
“Hey, babe,” he said. “Thought I could sponge off you this afternoon. What’s to eat? The girls went to my in- laws’ for the weekend.”
“Tapas. I’ll make you a deal. Help us out for the next few hours and I’ll send you home with leftovers.”
Eli pushed his Ray-Bans up so they sat on top of his perfectly gelled hair. “I guess I could stick around for a while.” He placed his hands on the complacent paunch that had once been his washboard stomach. “I could use a bite now, though. Woke up too late for breakfast and spent all morning at Jack and Sunny Greenfields’.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Jack’s renovating his wine cellar.”
“Moonlighting?”
Eli suddenly looked weary. “Helps pay the bills.”
I knew he was just scraping by. He adored Brandi and couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell her the money tree had been picked clean. Last I’d heard he’d borrowed the equivalent of the GNP of a small country to cover what they already owed.
He walked over to one of the tables, returning with a plate filled with enough food for three people. “Good stuff.” He stabbed a sausage with a toothpick. “Where’d you get these?”
“The organic butcher in Middleburg. What’s Jack doing to his wine cellar?”
“Everything.” Eli spoke through his chorizo. “Installing a security system, upgrading the cooling system— really shelling out the bucks for glass murals, limestone flooring, redwood wine racks, map drawers showing where the wine comes from. The whole caboodle. And a computerized inventory—finally. Shane’s handling it. Jack’s been paying insurance out the wazoo for years without knowing the actual value of his collection.”
“Why does he need a security system all of a sudden?”
Eli licked his fingers. “Got a napkin? I don’t want to get grease on these clothes. First time I’ve worn them.”
I handed one to him.
“Jack’s got, oh, easily thirty thousand bottles. He wants to protect his investment.” He picked up a fork and dug into a small mountain of marinated piquillo peppers. “Plus he heard about those wine cellar thefts in California. Decided he needed something more than a padlock on the door. The security guy came by this morning and did his spiel, explaining all the things they can do. I felt like James Bond when M demonstrates the toys.”
“It’s Q. M is his boss. Q does toys.”
“Whatever.”
“If you’re done with your snack, James,” I said, “how about helping me pour wine in the villa?”
“Shaken not stirred,” he said. “Just let me grab some more chorizo.”
Frankie stood behind the bar in the tasting room when Eli and I walked into the villa. A pretty strawberry blonde in her early fifties, I liked her low-key, capable ways and gentle, dry sense of humor. So, apparently, did our customers. Since she joined us, she’d acquired a small but faithful group of regulars who dropped by on weekends, claiming they came for the wine. I knew they came to talk to Frankie. You could find an ocean of compassion in those clear blue nonjudgmental eyes.
“Go get something to eat and enjoy your string quartet,” I said to her. “Eli and I will take over for a while. I think he left you a sausage. Maybe two.”
She smiled. “Thanks. Amanda Heyward called about half an hour ago. Said she planned to drop by to give you the fixture cards for the next few months. Also something about a guest list.”
A fixture card was a one-month calendar listing dates and locations of meets for a foxhunt. For more than a century, my farm had been part of the territory of the Goose Creek Hunt. During hunting season their meets commenced at Highland Farm once every five or six weeks. Amanda, the GCH’s secretary and an old family friend, was responsible for distributing the cards.
As thanks for letting the hunt ride through our farm so often, she’d also offered to take charge of the guest list for our auction and mail the invitations. Amanda had worked in corporate fund-raising for heavyweight multinationals and big-name museums for years until too many eighty-hour workweeks burned her candle to a charred wick. Her offer was a godsend.
She showed up in the tasting room dressed in mud-spattered jodhpurs, riding boots, and a high-necked white blouse, her long gray-brown hair pulled up in a windblown knot, ruddy face sunburned after an afternoon of galloping across the countryside. She kissed Eli and me and accepted the glass of Cabernet Sauvignon he poured for her.
“I just went riding with Sunny.” She climbed up on one of the bar stools and dropped a leather satchel on the floor. “Heard you were there this morning discussing Jack’s wine cellar, Eli. All that security stuff he wants to install is driving Sunny crazy. Costs a fortune. What does he keep in there worth that kind of money? The goblet they used at the Last Supper?”
“You’d be surprised,” Eli said. “He’s got some wines you’ll never find anywhere anymore.”
“Yeah, but around here everyone’s got fantastic or expensive vintages on their sideboard or in the basement. I know I do—and half the time we don’t even bother to lock our front door it’s so safe.” She set her glass on the bar and tucked a stray piece of hair back into her French knot.
“Among other things, Jack has verticals of some of the legendary Bordeaux,” Eli said.
“What’s a vertical?” Amanda asked.
“A bottle of wine for every single year it was made. Sorry,” he said. “I thought you knew wine jargon.”
Amanda babysat for us when we were kids and she’d changed Eli’s diapers. Mine, too. Eli, acting pompous, didn’t impress her.
“I know enough about wine to know some of those years had to be duds,” she said. “So he’s got swill among the gems.”
“Not exactly.” I joined her on another bar stool. Some days my bad leg ached worse than others. Today was one of those days. “Most wine is drunk in the year it’s produced. It’s only the good stuff that gets laid down to drink later. If the year was a dud, as you said, those bottles generally were consumed right away. Later it’s harder to find that vintage, which drives up the price. The value of owning verticals comes from the fact that it’s a complete collection.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “But I still think the last time anyone had to worry about locking something up around here was when the Yankees were in town during the War of Northern Aggression. Jack’s going really over the top with that bionic password stuff or whatever it is he’s thinking about.”
I saw Eli suck in his breath. He wasn’t going to let this go. I glared at my brother and said to Amanda, “Didn’t you want to talk about the guest list for the auction?”
“Oh, sure.” She bent to retrieve her satchel from the floor and missed seeing Eli make a face at me and roll his eyes. When she sat up, she put on a pair of reading glasses and opened a paisley folder, pulling out a spreadsheet.
“We have just over one hundred sixty people coming so far. That’s not counting the RSVPs we’ve received since Ryan’s column on the Washington wine ran in the
“What a shame,” I said. “Why don’t we talk to Mick about setting up a tent in his garden? Then we don’t have to turn away anybody.”
“His house is magnificent,” Amanda said, “now that Sunny almost finished redecorating. I’d hate not to use it. We could put a tent any old place.”
