“Sometimes he reminds me of Leland the way he acts around women.”
Although my father’s indiscretions had been conducted away from home, I’d found out about them after he died. When I looked back, his laissez-faire attitude toward his wife and children probably explained why my mother had thrown herself into working so hard at the vineyard. And why she’d filled the void in her marriage with a close —and romantic—relationship with my late godfather.
As Tolstoy said, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Mine had parents who remained married and in love—except they were in love with other people.
Frankie shrugged. “I didn’t know your father, but you deserve better than a guy whose leitmotif is that it’s all about the thrill of the hunt. On and off a horse.”
That night at dinner Pépé ordered a spectacular bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild to go with our meal. “When I drink wine my pain is driven away and my dark thoughts fly to the ocean winds,” wrote Anacreon, one of the ancient Greek lyrical poets.
I ate and drank with my grandfather and enjoyed myself. For the rest of the evening I banished all thoughts of Mick, dark or otherwise, to the ocean winds.
Chapter 17
The phone woke me Sunday morning. I switched on the light and looked at the clock. Six a.m. The caller ID display showed Eli’s home number.
I picked up. “What’s wrong, Eli? Everything okay with Hope and Brandi?”
“Luce. Glad I got you. The girls are fine. At my in-laws for the weekend.” He sounded tense. “I just got a call from Sunny Greenfield. Someone broke into Jack’s wine cellar last night and tore the place apart. Jack heard something and went out to check on it. Whoever it was knocked him over the head and they had to take him to Catoctin General.”
I swung my feet over the side of the bed and reached for my cane. “Oh my God. Is he all right?”
“He’ll be okay but he’s got a huge bump on his noggin and a mild concussion, according to Sunny. They just got back from the hospital. Sunny said the sheriff’s deputies left a while ago but would be back later. She asked if I could drop by and look at the damage. I thought maybe you could come, too.”
“You mean, right now?”
“Why not?” he said. “She can’t get the door to close so I’ll try to fix it temporarily, but I could use you to see what’s what with his wine collection. Jack’s in no shape. Besides, you’re up, aren’t you?”
Thanks to him I was. “Give me half an hour to change and get over there. Maybe afterward you could come back for breakfast. Pépé’s been here since Tuesday. You really ought to see him.”
He made a noise like air leaving a tire. “I know, I know. It’s been on my calendar to call or drop by, but I’m just so damn busy all the time.”
“Well, you can drop by this morning. I know I can tempt you with breakfast, especially if you’re on your own.”
“Is that a dig about my weight?”
“No, it’s a dig about your calendar. I’ve got to get dressed. See you there.”
Eli’s Jaguar was already parked in the Greenfields’ driveway when I arrived just after six-thirty. We’d had the first hard freeze last night and the landscape, before the sun came up, glittered like diamonds.
The door to Jack’s wine cellar was ajar, as Eli had said. It looked like an animal had chewed it where it had been pried open. Sunny and Eli sat facing each other on stools at a new redwood bar. My impeccably dressed brother had his hands wrapped around the largest size of a coffee-to-go. Sunny nursed a glass of red wine. I saw the bottle. Château Haut-Brion. She was drinking first-class stuff.
Eli turned around. “Hey, Luce. Join us.”
“Want a drink?” Sunny asked. She was dressed in a maroon velour tracksuit and white turtleneck under a Burberry trenchcoat.
I’d been expecting a cool reception from her since our last few encounters hadn’t gone so well, but just now she seemed to have forgotten the rancor she felt toward me. Probably the result of exhaustion and a couple of glasses of wine before breakfast, if the level on the bottle was anything to judge by.
“Uh—no thanks.” I swiped Eli’s coffee. “I could use a little caffeine.” I sipped it and gave it back. Something with lots of whipped cream and a shot of something cloyingly sweet. “Any coffee in that?”
“Bring your own next time.” He used his finger to wipe the place where I’d drunk. “We’d like you to have a look and see if you can get any idea about what’s been taken.”
I glanced around. My brother hadn’t been kidding about a first-class renovation. Redwood paneled walls and wine racks, slate flooring, and recessed lights twinkling like dimmed stars. It was laid out like a library with long rows of shelves, but wine bottles instead of books filled the diagonal alcoves. Except for the damage to the door, the place looked fine. The way Eli had described it over the phone I’d been expecting a mess.
“I’ll try,” I said. “I’m not sure how much help I can be.”
“Jack’s the only one who can really say what’s been stolen but from what I can tell so far, it looks like they went after only the most expensive vintages,” Sunny said. “Cases and individual bottles.”
“That must have taken some time,” I said. “Not like breaking a store window and grabbing whatever you get your hands on.” I met her eyes. “They got the Washington bottle, didn’t they? I bet that was what they came for.”
Sunny smiled tiredly and lifted her glass. “A small triumph. We never brought it back out here. It’s still in the house. In the downstairs cellar.”
“Thank God for that,” I said.
“Do you think Lucie’s right and that bottle was what they were after?” Eli asked. “When they couldn’t find it, they took all the other stuff?”
“I don’t know. This seems like it was well planned. Almost like they had a list. Most people wouldn’t know the difference between a California cult wine like Screaming Eagle and a bottle of Château Mouthwash. These guys did. One of them must have been a wine expert,” Sunny said.
Or maybe someone who bought rare wines for wealthy clients. Hadn’t Quinn said Nicole was involved in Alan Cantor’s embezzlement scheme? Where had she been last night after her dinner with Mick?
“Did Jack get a chance to see any of the robbers? Any idea how many there were?” I asked.
“No and no,” Sunny said.
“Do you know how it happened?” Eli asked.
“Sorry.” She shook her head. “Jack stayed downstairs to watch the news at eleven and I went to bed. All of a sudden I woke up and he wasn’t there. When I went down to check on him, he wasn’t in the house. So I figured maybe he’d come here. I found him lying by the door.” She picked up her glass and drank with an unsteady hand. “Unconscious but still breathing.”
“What time was this?” I asked.
“I guess around midnight.”
“You called 911?” Eli said.
“An ambulance and a couple of deputies from the sheriff’s department came right away.”
I got up and walked over to the door, running my fingers over the new keypad that was part of what Eli had said was a state-of-the-art security system. “How did they get in with all this high-tech stuff?”
Sunny sighed. “It’s not hooked up yet. Isn’t that the ultimate irony? For years all we had was an old- fashioned lock that Jack bought at the hardware store. Then a few days before we get a new security system put in, we’re robbed.”
“Eli said Jack was worried about some wine thefts out in California,” I said.
“That’s not all. Jack pays a king’s ransom in insurance for this collection,” she said. “The problem is that over the years, we’ve been drinking some of it and he’s been buying more wine. At some point he lost track of how much it was all worth at today’s prices since he used an old composition book to record what he bought and it just got too time-consuming to continually update it. Shane finally persuaded him to put everything in a computer
