Ryan spoke French like a Spanish cow. “As for you,
He raised an eyebrow, waiting for explanations. Our grandfather may have feigned polite ignorance with dictators, but his own flesh and blood didn’t get off so easily.
“I’ll go first,” I said to Dominique, letting her off the hook.
The auction intrigued him, especially Jack’s donation of the Margaux. I avoided mentioning Valerie’s remark about its provenance in front of my cousin because I didn’t want to involve Joe. I’d tell him about it later. But I did say that Jack had no idea where the bottle came from.
“Jack Greenfield said he found it in a wine cellar belonging to his family’s import-export business after his father passed away,” I said. “In Freiburg. He told me the bottle is in such poor condition because whoever possessed it before he did didn’t take care of it.”
Pépé shrugged. “I find that quite plausible. A lot of the wine-producing châteaus didn’t keep records of where their wines were sold until recently, nor modernize the way you Americans have done. Don’t forget, until the 1950s some vineyards were still using cattle to plow their fields.”
He paused to let that sink in.
“Wherever it came from,” he said, “it’s an extraordinary donation, even if the wine has turned. The person who acquires it will possess a memory bottle connected with two of your most famous Founding Fathers. The value is inestimable.”
“A memory bottle,” I said. “I’ve never heard that before.”
“Every year on our wedding anniversary your grandmother and I drank a bottle of Clos du Vougeot from the year we were married. It’s what we drank at our wedding reception. We called it our memory bottle.”
“You never told us that,” Dominique said.
“I think it’s very romantic,” I said.
“It was.” Pépé smiled. “And of course there is such a strong link between wine and memory. I’m sure you both know that. Most of what people think they taste in wine is actually what they smell. Because scent is the strongest of the five senses, it can trigger memories we’d scarcely remember otherwise.” He picked up his wineglass. “Who knows when we’ll be together again,
We touched glasses. I drank, but there was a lump in my throat. Dominique brushed something out of her eye. Though he seemed hale and hearty, I knew that it had been my grandfather’s gentle way of reminding us he was slowing down and would not always be with us.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of my wine, willing myself to memorize that link to this night and to him. When I opened them, I saw Dominique was doing the same. Our eyes met across the table.
Hers, like mine, were filled with nostalgia and melancholy.
When we got home, Pépé went directly to bed. I’d given him the room Dominique had lived in when she came to help take care of Mia after my mother died. After the fire, I’d gotten rid of the swimming pool– sized chafing dishes, sixty-cup coffee urns, and door-sized platters Dominique had stored in there for her catering business, turning it into a proper guest room.
The Jefferson diary lay open on my bedside table next to Valerie’s book. I picked it up and leafed through the Foreword, which discussed Jefferson’s tour in the vineyards of France, Italy, and Germany, and a brief trip to Holland, explaining that the trip was partly to quell an insatiable curiosity in everything around him and partly to indulge a lifelong passion for wine.
The diary itself was an almost encyclopedic catalog of everything Jefferson saw and did. I turned to the section on Bordeaux. He’d spent five days in the region from May 24–28, 1787, after passing through Italy. By then he was on his way back to Paris, wrapping up the first of his two voyages.
Jefferson wrote about the countryside in Bordeaux, naming four vineyards in the region which he said were “of the first quality”—Château Haut-Brion, Château Latour, Château Lafite, and Château Margaux. More than two hundred years later, it was clear Thomas Jefferson had known his stuff. In 1855, at Napoleon III’s insistence, the French instituted a classification system for French wine still used today. The four vineyards Jefferson listed in his diary were awarded
Jefferson’s last Bordeaux entry dealt with wine merchants. After listing the principal English and French wine sellers, he wrote,
Desgrands, a wine broker, tells me they never mix the wines of first quality but that they mix the inferior ones to improve them.
He was talking about blending—a practice used by forgers who mixed wines from different regions and even different countries, occasionally throwing in a little port, to produce a cocktail that could fool someone into believing they were drinking a first-class wine. All the wines Jack had donated were first quality, except the Dorgon. Had that one been blended, as Jefferson implied? If it had, how would I ever know?
Valerie had hinted that what she knew was significant. Whether or not the Dorgon was a mishmash of several inferior wines didn’t seem that earth-shattering. I put the diary back on my bedside table.
I slept badly again. My nightgown chafed the cuts on my back, my skin felt like it had been stretched taut over my bones, and the bruises, now purple and green, were a lurid reminder of Valerie’s death.
Something about what Jefferson had written in his diary bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
And the only two people who could help me—Thomas Jefferson and Valerie Beauvais—were dead.
Chapter 10
The next morning when I woke, I heard snoring through the door of Pépé’s bedroom. At home in Paris he never rose before midafternoon. With the jet lag—and how little sleep he’d gotten yesterday—I wondered if he’d stay in bed all day.
I made breakfast and set another place for him at the kitchen table, leaving a note that he could find croissants in the bread bin and cheese in the refrigerator. Usually he fasted for breakfast and lunch, making dinner his main meal, but maybe he’d make an exception since he was adjusting to the time change.
I drove to the winery and parked next to Quinn’s El. The door to the villa was locked, so he was probably in the barrel room. I found him there, punching down the cap with Manolo and Jesús. The two workers smiled and said hello. Quinn barely looked up, mumbling “good morning” before going back to his task. I stood and watched, growing angrier by the second as I waited for some sign from him that we had some air-clearing to do. Instead he doggedly pushed the sludgy mass of grape skins below the surface of one of the fermenting vats with a large flat paddle and ignored me. I saw Jesús’s uneasy glance in Manolo’s direction. Manolo shook his head lightly.
No need to keep them in the middle of this.
“I’d like to see you in my office as soon as you’re done here, Quinn.” All three of them were bigger and taller and older than I was. I sounded like a student teacher in over her head, trying to discipline an unruly pupil. No one looked at me.
“In case you’ve forgotten, I own this vineyard,” I said. “When I say something I don’t expect to be ignored.”
This time they all stopped what they were doing.
Manolo and Jesús nodded nervously. Quinn’s head jerked up and his eyes locked on mine. I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed or furious I’d spoken to him like that in front of the men, but his machismo was his problem and too damn bad if he’d lost face. When I left the barrel room I closed the door harder than I needed to.
I still hadn’t cooled off when I got to the villa. Gina flew out of the kitchen, holding a pot of coffee. Her eyes
