The Bordeaux Betrayal

“Valerie tell you that?”

“Valerie didn’t get a chance to tell me anything before her car went off the road into this creek,” I said. “A few miles further upstream.”

Nicole wrapped her hands around her cup. “Shane told me what happened. You’re the one who pulled her out.”

“I did,” I said. “It was too late.”

She sipped her coffee. “I was sorry to hear about her death.”

She didn’t sound that sorry. “It’s a murder investigation,” I said. “The sheriff doesn’t think it was an accident.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised.”

“Why not?”

“I’m just not. Valerie didn’t always get involved with the best people.” I wondered if she included herself in that group. Nicole continued sipping. “You didn’t tell me how you knew we were together in France.”

“If I do, will you answer a question?”

“Depends. What’s the question?”

“What you know about the provenance of the Washington wine.”

“Sure,” she said. “Be happy to.”

As easy as that. “Your copy of her book was on the passenger seat of Shane’s car. My apologies, but I looked at the inscription.”

“You’ve got a hell of a nerve.”

“Valerie was on her way to see me when she died. She was going to tell me something about that bottle,” I said. “I figure you’re the only other person who knows what that was.”

“’Fraid not,” she said. “I can’t help you.”

She threw what was left of her coffee into Goose Creek and it disappeared into the water below, along with my hopes.

“Can’t or won’t? You were there,” I said. “You were with her in Bordeaux.”

Her lips curved as she seemed to take stock of my logic and where this conversation was going.

She shook her head. “You’ve got it wrong. Not Bordeaux. I bumped into Valerie in Epernay. The Champagne region. I was with a few friends who liked to party. She joined us.”

“What about her book?”

“She sent it to me. Wanted me to show it to some of my clients because she hoped they might be interested in buying it.”

It still didn’t mean Nicole hadn’t talked to Valerie about the Bordeaux. I wasn’t ready to give up.

“Either you heard about the Margaux from Valerie after she read Ryan Worth’s column or Shane told you when he found out Jack was donating it—even before Valerie would have known. So maybe you went back and had a conversation with her.”

“You seem to think we were best friends,” she said. “It was a business relationship. We talked about her book.”

“What about the Margaux?”

“What about it?”

“Did she say anything about its provenance?”

“Not to me.” Nicole tapped her index finger against her mouth, as though she were debating something. “I examined that bottle this morning, remember? As far as I’m concerned, it’s real enough. More important, the right people believe it’s genuinely a bottle of wine bought by Thomas Jefferson for George Washington.” Her expression was scornful. “Come on, Lucie. A lot of wine collecting is done off the books between buyers and sellers once it leaves the château. There is no paper trail. Who can say for sure where it originally came from?”

“Or bother to try finding out,” I said. “Right?”

She smiled with a trace of a sneer. “Right.”

“What are you going to do now?”

She shrugged. “Go back to Shane’s place.”

“I meant about the wine. You work out a deal with Jack yet? Or is Shane helping you with that?”

“Shane.” She rolled her eyes. “He’d be the last person I’d ask.”

“Trouble in paradise?”

“Paradise. What a laugh.” She wasn’t laughing. “The sex is good enough, I suppose, but I’m done with him. Thanks for the coffee. I’ve got to go.”

“You never said whether you’ve made a deal with Jack yet.”

“Me to know and you to find out, sweetie.” Another derisive smile. What had Quinn ever seen in her?

“Maybe you shared the news with Quinn.” I leaned on my cane and stood up. “By the way, how did your tour of my vineyard go?”

She looked away. “It was nice.”

“Leave him alone, Nicole. Leave him in peace.”

She squeezed her Styrofoam cup and it split open. “That’s none of your business.” Her façade suddenly seemed to be cracking. Right along the fault line.

“He never told anyone here he’d been married,” I said. “He never talked about you.”

I should not have said that, but in a day or two she’d walk out of his life again and I’d be left watching him go through whatever private hell he still lived in when he thought of her.

She placed a hand over her heart like she was covering a wound. “You have no right to judge me. I was young. He was my oldest brother’s best friend. I was just a kid.” Her voice shook. “He knew me since I was ten, watched me grow up. We eloped the day I turned eighteen. I had to get out of the house and he—” She stopped as the tears fell down her face.

“I’m sorry.” I meant it.

“I have to go.” She smeared her eyeliner and mascara when she wiped her eyes, so they looked like two bruises. I watched her walk toward the gate as though she was leaning into a strong wind.

She turned around. “You don’t deserve to know this, but he cares about you, Lucie. Why, I’m not sure.”

She slipped through the gate and ran to her car. After she left I sat back down on the parapet and watched the waters of Goose Creek flow toward the Potomac, feeling somehow shamed by Nicole Martin who had—in the end—been kinder to me than I’d been to her.

She did not have a deal with Jack Greenfield—yet. At least I didn’t think she did. She probably wouldn’t leave town until she did. I did not want to see her again while she was here and I hoped that she would not meet up with Quinn.

As it turned out, I did not get either of my wishes.

Chapter 14

When I got home Pépé was in the library sitting in his familiar place on the sofa reading The Economist. A Boyard sat in an ashtray and his half-finished cup of coffee looked cold. He never could get used to American coffee but then I couldn’t drink the high-octane brew he loved without feeling my heart slamming against my chest. He smiled when I came into the room.

“Any good news in the world? Where did you get The Economist?” I kissed him on the cheek and sat next to him. The legendary animus between the French and the British—“the frogs” and “les rosbifs”—went back to Joan of Arc, but my grandfather was broadminded. He read the British press.

“The usual. The world is falling apart but at least intelligent people are writing about it, which makes it seem more palatable.” He closed the magazine. “One of my colleagues drove me to the General Store in Atoka but we did not find it there, so we went to Leesburg.”

“I’m afraid Thelma only stocks local papers,” I said. “And the tabloids, because she’s addicted. I’m sorry you