The Bordeaux Betrayal

His heh-heh laugh was all I got. “I can drop your letter off this afternoon since I need to come by.”

“Buying some wine?”

“Talking to your winemaker.”

“Is he in trouble?” I asked.

“I just want to talk to him.”

“About what?”

“This and that.”

“Come on, Bobby, it’s me. What’s up?”

“I need to ask him about an acquaintance of his.”

“Oh,” I said. “Nicole Martin.”

I heard him let out a breath. “I understand she’s Quinn’s ex-wife. Also that she’s here in town.”

“That’s right. Is she in trouble?” Maybe Bobby’d figured out how to connect her to Valerie and the Washington wine.

“Sounds like you know her, too.”

“I’ve seen her a couple of times. She dropped by here yesterday.”

“What for?”

“To look at a bottle of wine Jack Greenfield donated for our auction. Actually, donated, then asked for it back.”

“I heard about that. That wine is supposed to be worth a bundle,” he said. “You talk to the Martin woman yourself?”

Knowing Bobby, he already knew the answer to that question and all the others he’d just asked.

“Yes.”

“Yes, what? Don’t play games with me, Lucie.”

“Okay, okay. Nicole was friends with Valerie Beauvais, so I asked Nicole if Valerie talked to her about the provenance of Jack’s wine,” I said.

“Provenance?”

“History of its ownership.”

“Why would Valerie talk to Nicole about that?”

“Because they met up in France when Valerie was doing research for her book,” I said.

“Is that so? What’d Nicole say?”

“That as far as she was concerned the wine was genuine.” I left out her comments about the muddiness of documenting the trail of ownership of a two-century-old wine. “And that she and Valerie didn’t discuss the subject of provenance.”

“Huh.”

Something about his noncommital tone made me realize he knew they’d spoken and he was trying to fit what I’d told him into what he could already confirm. The deputy from the CRU who picked up my Volvo said they’d just wrapped up their investigation on Valerie’s car. They must have found something—her cell phone, maybe?

“You got the records from her cell phone, didn’t you? So you know they talked to each other recently?”

“No comment.” But he sounded irritated, which meant I’d guessed right.

I wanted Quinn to hear from me that Bobby would be dropping by and it wouldn’t be a social visit. I knew I’d find him in the barrel room running the Brix tests on the Cabernet since we needed to determine whether or not primary fermentation had finished and the sugar had fully converted to alcohol. Once that happened, we’d press the wine and add bacteria to start the malolactic, or secondary, fermentation.

As I expected, he was in the lab recording test results. Now that the weather had cooled off he’d retired the Hawaiian shirts until next spring. Today he wore faded jeans and a Henley shirt with frayed cuffs. The Hawaiian shirts were loose and baggy. I couldn’t help noticing that the Henley, which looked like it had shrunk with wear, revealed how muscular and fit he was.

He threw down his pencil when he saw me. “What’s up?”

We hadn’t talked since he gave Nicole the vineyard tour yesterday. “You finish Brix?”

He squinted at me. “It’s around thirteen. I want to take the free run juice before we press. So we have at least two or three more days before it goes to zero and we start ML fermentation.”

“Sounds good.”

“You could have called, if that’s all you wanted to know,” he said. “Something’s up. You’ve got that bug-eyed look you always get when you’re trying to pull a fast one. I can tell every time. What’s going on?”

Sometimes I wondered why I bothered trying to spare his feelings since he usually ran over mine with an eighteen-wheeler. “Bobby Noland’s coming by to see you.”

“He say why?” He focused on something over my head. Who was he to talk about conning someone? He may not have known why, but he sure knew who.

“He wants to ask you some questions about Nicole.”

He kept his voice bland. “Is she in trouble?”

“Bobby knows she knew Valerie Beauvais.”

“How do you know that?”

My mother always said if you tell the truth then you don’t have to remember what lie you made up. “She had a copy of Valerie’s book. It was inscribed to her. I saw it on the seat of Shane’s car when you two were taking your tour of the vineyard.”

“You really have it in for her, don’t you? Why can’t you stay out of this?” He banged his fist on the metal lab table. A beaker that had been sitting next to his calculator bounced and hit the concrete floor. It shattered and glass flew everywhere.

“Stay out of what? Why did you have to break that beaker? She lied to you yesterday and and I’m pretty sure she lied to me, about what she and Valerie talked about before Valerie died. Bobby already knows, Quinn. So don’t you go lying to protect her, okay?”

Quinn looked at the floor and then he looked at me. “I think it would be a good idea if you left. There’s a lot of broken glass here and you might cut yourself.”

The two feet between us could have been the Grand Canyon. Trying to keep him from getting dragged in to whatever Nicole was involved in was like throwing dust into the wind. Either it was going to get thrown back in his face or it would blow away and he’d be left with nothing. Whichever way it went with Nicole, he was going to lose.

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’m not the one who’s going to get hurt.” My voice shook I was so angry. I gestured to the floor. “You better be careful, when you clean up the mess you made. I’ll see you later.”

An hour later I watched through my office window as an unmarked Crown Vic pulled into the parking lot. Bobby got out and headed directly for the barrel room. He left about forty-five minutes later.

I wondered what he had asked and what Quinn had told him. But I did not go back to the barrel room to ask.

That night Quinn went to the summerhouse. I saw the red flashlight as I finished putting away my dinner dishes. Pépé was out with friends for the evening once again.

I got my jacket and a flashlight. As I crossed the lawn, I shone the light to make sure he’d know I was coming. Once I passed the rosebushes I switched it off to preserve his night vision.

He was setting up his telescope next to the Adirondack chairs, with the red light propped on an arm of a chair so he could see what he was doing.

“I knew you’d come,” he said without looking at me. “You want to know what Bobby said.”

I was tired of this war between us. “I came for you,” I said. “We’re barely speaking. I can’t take it anymore.”

This time he did turn his head. “Have a seat.”

I sat and laid my cane on the ground next to my chair. The chilly night air had swept away the clouds that had hung over the Blue Ridge at sunset. The moon looked like a scuffed silver coin in a star-filled sky.

“Are you all right?” I said.

He threw himself in the other chair and pulled out a cigar from his jacket pocket. “I’ve been thinking about