After lunch I went back to the house to check on Pépé. I found him perched on the sofa in the library, smoking a Boyard, reading a battered copy of yesterday’s
I kissed the top of his head. “Did you eat?”
“I had a coffee. You know I never eat until dinner,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll be going out shortly. One of my friends is coming to pick me up. I’ll be at the International Monetary Fund for a meeting this afternoon, then dinner at the embassy. Don’t wait up for me,
He could still amaze me. “No grass grows under your feet, does it?”
Pépé smiled through a cloud of bad-smelling smoke. Boyards were unfiltered and had the highest tar and nicotine content of any cigarette on the market when they were still being produced. My grandfather’s doctor told him to knock off smoking or it would kill him, but Pépé told him that at eighty-two he was going to die anyway and it may as well be doing something he enjoyed. The unmistakable acrid smell would be embedded in the house for weeks after he left, a lingering reminder of his visit haunting me like a ghost.
The IMF meeting probably wasn’t a courtesy call arranged for his benefit by a friend. More likely, they’d invited him to ask his counsel on some matter of trade or finance—and he was too modest to say.
“I have an appointment at four,” I said, “but I’ll be here when you get back.”
Outside, tires sounded on the gravel drive. He folded his newspaper and set it on the coffee table.
“That should be my colleague and his companion. Until tonight,
I walked him to the door and said hello to his friend, a man in his early nineties who had been one of Secretary of State Marshall’s aides. I was happy to see that the companion—an attractive woman who looked to be in her sixties—was behind the wheel.
The phone rang in the foyer after they drove off. I picked it up and sat in a blue-and-white toile Queen Anne chair next to the table. A bust of Thomas Jefferson—one of Leland’s prized possessions—watched me from an alcove across the room.
“Lucie, Jack Greenfield here.” He sounded tense and businesslike.
“Hello, Jack.”
“Probably best if I get right to the point.”
“Sure,” I said. Whatever the point was, it already didn’t sound good.
“I’ve decided to withdraw the Washington bottle from the auction.”
I sagged in the chair and closed my eyes. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“I said I’ve decided to keep the bottle. When all is said and done, it belongs in my family. I’ve had some time to think it over and I apologize for the inconvenience I might have caused. Don’t worry, I’ll give you something else. You’ll still raise a lot of money.”
What the hell was he talking about? Had someone gotten to him? Nicole Martin, maybe? She’d told Ryan she wasn’t going back to California without that bottle.
“It’s a lot more than inconvenient, Jack. Are you selling that wine to someone else?”
“Of course not!” He sounded insulted. “I just told you I’m keeping it.”
“You’re not selling it to Nicole Martin?”
“Who is Nicole Martin?”
He really didn’t know? “Look, Jack, would you please reconsider—?”
“Don’t make this difficult, Lucie. I feel bad enough already. But that bottle has been great for my business. I’ve been inundated with calls from all over the world ever since Ryan’s column ran the other day.”
Sure. So had we. People were coming out of the woodwork to attend our little auction. Now he wanted his prize donation back. How were we going to explain
I pinched the bridge of my nose. The headache that had begun after Quinn and I blew up at each other this morning now pulsed behind my eyes. There had to be some way to talk him out of this.
“You know how thrilled we were when you donated that bottle. Everyone at Shelter the Children has been beside themselves once they realized how much money it could raise and—”
He cut me off. “Stop right there. Don’t make me out to be Scrooge. I won’t stand for it. Besides, I’m not going to leave you with nothing. I’m swapping the Margaux for a jeroboam of Pétrus. You’ll do extremely well with that.”
Château Pétrus was another of the legendary Bordeaux, but we wouldn’t do nearly as well as we would have done with a bottle destined for George Washington. All the magic that had enveloped the auction would vanish like smoke. But he wasn’t going to change his mind and nothing I could do would persuade him otherwise. If he wanted the wine back, he wanted it back.
“I’ll bring it by your house tonight. I have a meeting with Amanda Heyward at four so I can drop it off afterward and get it over with.” I knew it sounded ungracious but I was mad and hurt.
He was as short with me as I’d been with him. “You can ‘get it over with’ tomorrow, please. Sunny and I are out this evening. And bring it to the house, not the store.”
“Of course.”
“One more thing.”
I closed my eyes as lightning bolts stabbed the back of my eyes. What now? “Yes?”
“I’d like the Dorgon back. You’ll thank me for that. I drank another bottle from that vintage last night and it had turned.”
“You didn’t find out until last night?” I asked. So he wanted me to return both Bordeaux.
“I would not purposely give you a bad bottle of wine.” He sounded surprised. I had offended him again. “Please bring it with the Margaux.”
“I’ll bring them both tomorrow evening.”
“Thank you.”
“By the way,” I said, “I was wondering if you knew Valerie Beauvais.”
He hesitated a second too long before answering. “You mean that woman who was in the car accident the other day?”
Damn right I did and he knew it, too. I doled out rope. “That’s right. The author. She followed Thomas Jefferson’s route through the European vineyards. Wrote a book about it.”
“I know her by reputation,” he said. “Knew her, that is. Never met her in person. Sorry, Lucie, I’ve got customers who just walked in. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He hung up and I contemplated the bust of Jefferson for a while. Jack Greenfield just lied about knowing Valerie and I wondered why.
Did the reason he’d asked for the Margaux back have anything to do with her death? Jack’s arthritis was so bad he had trouble corking wine bottles. He could hardly have loosened the lug nuts from Valerie’s wheel, could he? Besides, why would he want to harm her?
Unless he’d found out what she knew about the Washington wine. Which I was about to give back to him so it could disappear into his collection, away from public scrutiny.
Forever.
Chapter 11
I took more ibuprofen and lay down for a few hours before my meeting with Amanda. When I woke my headache had subsided but my anger had not. I still thought Valerie Beauvais was mixed up with Jack’s decision to withdraw the Washington wine, but I didn’t know how or why. And then there was Nicole Martin and her client with pockets that went all the way to China. They say everyone has a price. I wondered what Jack’s was. If Nicole offered him the moon and the stars for that bottle, would Jack sell his family’s prize possession and reap a huge profit—or would he keep it like he told me he intended to do?
