When you are doubting whether a thing is worth the trouble of going to see, recollect that you will never again be so near it and that you may have to repent the not having seen it.
What had Valerie seen in Bordeaux? Whatever it was, now I was the one who repented “the not having seen it.” And what about Jack Greenfield? A matter of “the not having
In the morning, I’d see Quinn.
He showed up before the crew arrived, unsteady on his feet and dressed in the clothes he’d worn yesterday. Bloodshot eyes, wild hair, and unshaven, he looked like something somebody forgot to shoot. When he came closer I thought I detected a faint scent of perfume clinging to his shirt, more Rite-Aid than Lord & Taylor. Hard to tell since it blended in with his own body odor and the essences of booze and stale tobacco. God, what had he done last night? Where had he been and who had he been with?
I nearly asked if he’d cruised some bar and picked up somebody—anybody—to console himself after seeing Nicole with Shane, but it was none of my business. What was my business was that in twenty minutes the crew would be here and they’d see their boss looking like he’d single-handedly drunk Loudoun County dry in one night.
We worked around dangerous equipment. I couldn’t let him stay here in his state.
“Go home.” My voice was hoarse with anger and disappointment. “You’re drunk, you stink, and you look like hell. I don’t want anyone else seeing you right now. You have a goddamn nerve showing up like this. Especially today with what’s at stake for us.”
“Well, good morning to you, Susie Sunshine. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed of nails, did we, darlin’?” He still slurred his words. I wanted to strangle him.
“Get out of here! Go home and sleep it off. I don’t want to see you until you’re sober.”
He straightened up. “I’m fine.” His eyes looked crossed as he tried to focus on me and he swayed slightly.
“You are still drunk. You will
“Who are you tellin’ to go?” He lurched closer.
For a moment I thought he might fall down at my feet. I wanted to move away from him and the messiness of this tawdry scene, but I gritted my teeth and said, “My employee.”
He looked like I’d just slapped him. I turned and half-walked, half-ran into the barrel room, leaning on my cane like an old woman. My legs felt like jelly as I slammed the door without looking to see if he’d followed. It took me so long to turn on the fans to dissipate the overnight buildup of CO2 I began to feel light-headed from the gas.
I hoped he hadn’t noticed how badly I was trembling. Though in his state he probably wouldn’t have noticed if Manolo ran him over in the pickup. God help him if he was still there when the crew showed up. But when I went back outside ten minutes later, he was gone.
When Manolo arrived I told him Quinn was sick and, ignoring the surprise in his eyes, said the two of us were running the show. Manolo was young and good-looking and he knew the bars, too. If he’d run into Quinn, he wasn’t talking.
“Lucie,” Manolo said. “You all right? I just said something twice and you didn’t answer. You don’t look too good. Maybe what Queen has, you got, too?”
“I’m pretty certain what Quinn has isn’t contagious,” I said. “Sorry. I was distracted. Let’s get to work.”
The fact that we had one less person helping out—and it happened to be the one who usually ran the show —kept me focused, too busy to think about the kick-your-stupid-ass speech I planned to deliver once he’d sobered up enough to hear it. We had less to pick today, but we also had a delivery of Petit Verdot to deal with. Quinn had ordered it from a Culpeper vineyard that grew grapes but didn’t make wine. I’d nearly forgotten about it until the truck drove up to the crush pad.
The phone rang when I was in the lab running the final tests. Frankie, calling from the villa. “Sorry to bother you, Lucie. Someone’s here to see you.”
“Who is it?”
The deliberate silence on her end was the code we’d set up to identify someone who’d sampled a few too many wines and was getting out of hand.
“I’ll get Manolo to come with me,” I said.
“These guests have asked specifically for you.”
I wondered why she wanted me to come alone. “I’ll be right there. By myself.”
“Great.” She sounded grim.
I did not recognize the well-dressed man and woman sitting on one of the sofas around the stone fireplace in the center of the tasting room. Frankie was the only other person there, reading behind the bar.
She walked over to the couple when I entered. “Lucie, these are your new neighbors, Claudia and Stuart Orlando. Mr. and Mrs. Orlando, meet Lucie Montgomery.”
For Frankie not to like someone they had to break at least three of the Ten Commandments. She clearly didn’t like the Orlandos. She pivoted on her heel and went back to the bar to retrieve a gardening catalog.
“I’ll be outside on the deck. Call me if you need me,” she said to me.
Claudia Orlando was a pretty redhead with porcelain skin who looked like she could have stepped out of a painting by Titian. Stuart was big and beefy with a ruddy spider-veined face that said unhealthy lifestyle. Older than his wife by at least a decade, if not more. He colored his hair. It was too black.
I’d bet money they’d come to talk about the Goose Creek Hunt, but I figured I’d wait for them to bring it up. “What can I do for you, Mr. and Mrs. Orlando?” I sat down on an adjacent sofa and propped my cane next to me.
“It’s Claudia and Stuart, hon.” Her delicate beauty and the nasal Brooklyn accent were a total disconnect. She pronounced her name “Claw-dee-er.”
Stuart indicated my cane with a finger that looked like an overstuffed sausage. “Hunting accident?” he asked pleasantly, but I knew he was probing.
I smiled. “No.”
He waited for the rest of my explanation. When I remained silent, his eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. “We’ll get right to the point, Lucie. Claudia and I, here, have decided that our land will be off limits to those fox hunters who claim that it’s part of their so-called territory. We believe strongly that what they do is inhumane. Not just what they do to the fox, but also to those poor dogs.”
“It’s cruel,” Claudia said. “They’re just so helpless.”
“Hounds,” I said.
“Pardon?” Stuart asked.
“They’re not called dogs. They’re called hounds.”
“Hounds, shmounds.” He waved a hand like he could care less. “We’re here to ask you to join us. We can shut them down, or at least curtail what they do, if both of us prohibit them from hunting on our land.” He smiled. “It’s a start. And then we can take it to the next level.”
“The next level?”
“Why, outlawing foxhunting.” Claudia tapped a finger on the glass coffee table and a wristful of wire-thin gold bracelets jingled like wind chimes. “Stuart is a lawyer. A smart lawyer. Orlando and Thomason. You must have heard of the firm. They represent most of the animal rights groups.”
I nodded. No point telling them I’d heard from the secretary of the Goose Creek Hunt. “I have.”
Stuart looked satisfied. “Are you with us, Lucie? I certainly hope so.”
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “The Goose Creek Hunt has been hunting on my family’s land for more than a century. They will always be welcome here, as long as I have something to say about it.”
