aloud to Emma from a dog-eared pamphlet as she knit something lacy in pale blue and cream.
Emma saw me first and smiled, setting her knitting in her lap. She wore a brown-and-white sprigged cotton dress and a crocheted hairnet over her white-gold hair.
“Why, Lucie,” she said, straightening a lace shawl around her shoulders, “how nice to see you, dear. Come join us. Barnaby, pull up a chair for the child.”
I’d forgotten that B.J.’s first name was Barnaby. He caught my eye and grinned. “Glad you could make it.”
“How was camping last night?” I sat down in another Adirondack chair.
Emma shook her head. “We’re getting too old for this. We brought cots and a porta potty for our tent. No more sleeping on the ground. Or latrines.”
“Emma! You’re supposed to let her think we’re roughing it.” B.J. winked at me.
“Why don’t you get Lucie a glass of lemonade or a cup of coffee, dear?”
B.J. seemed not to mind being ordered around by his wife. “What’ll it be?” he asked. “Lemonade’s fresh made from real lemons.”
I took the lemonade.
“Are you going to be ready when the gates open?” I asked.
“Don’t you worry,” he said. “We got all kinds of things planned, besides the usual drilling and some practice on the firing range. I’ll be giving a talk at noon on the battle.”
“The Black Widow is here,” Emma said. “She’s always a treat.”
“The who?”
B.J. chuckled. “A woman who dresses completely in black. Didn’t you see her when you walked through camp? She’s got a knock-your-socks-off exhibit on death and mourning during the Civil War. What she doesn’t know about burials and grieving a hundred and fifty years ago isn’t worth knowing.”
“Occupational curiosity for a funeral director?” I drank some lemonade.
He grinned. “You ought to pay her a visit, missy. You might learn a thing or two.”
“You should hear her talk about the body watchers,” Emma said. “It’s like listening to a ghost story.”
“The who?”
“People who sat vigil to make sure the dead person had truly passed.” B.J. shook his head. “Course it doesn’t happen anymore, but those were the days before embalming when they’d put the body on ice. Every so often one of ’em would sit up and scare the bejesus out of folks.”
He put his thumb and forefinger together so there was no light between them. “Sometimes they’d come that close to burying someone alive.”
“Barnaby,” Emma said. “Lucie’s gone all pale. Get her some more lemonade, will you?”
B.J. jumped up and took my tin cup. “Didn’t mean to upset you, honey.”
“It’s all right.”
“I never should have brought that up with what you’ve just been through. I’m sorry, dear. It was thoughtless.” Emma picked up her knitting. “How are you coping, by the way? I saw the articles in the paper. One of the tellers at the bank told me the sheriff’s department has decided to close the case. I guess that must be a relief.”
“Not the way it turned out,” I said. “Especially if everyone in town’s talking about it.”
“Folks are always going to talk, Lucie,” Emma said. “But they soon forget and life goes on.”
The sound of a fife floated through the air, followed by the martial beat of a drum. Emma cocked her head to listen as B.J. pulled a cigar out of his pocket and lit up.
“I always like the music on these weekends,” he said. “Kind of haunts me.”
We listened to “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”
When it had finished I said, “I guess I should be going.”
The music changed to a sweet, mournful tune I didn’t recognize.
“I’ll walk with you.” B.J. stood up. “I need to check on Tyler. Make sure he’s okay.”
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
“Making his ammunition for tomorrow.”
“You make your own ammunition?”
“It’s not hard. Can of gunpowder and a brass loader. It’s basic math. We’re only making blanks, of course. No live ammo.”
“How can you be sure it’s not live?” I asked.
“We do safety checks. Don’t worry. There are hardly ever accidents at these events.”
“BJ. says you might be coming by for the dance tonight with that winemaker of yours,” Emma said. “I know you can’t participate since you won’t be in period clothes, but I think you might enjoy the music.”
I turned red. That winemaker of mine and I were barely speaking.
“I’ll try to come, but I don’t know about Quinn. He’s, uh, rather busy in the barrel room at the moment.”
The music shifted to “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Great timing.
“Nonsense,” B.J. said. “Bring him. It’ll do him good.”
“I hope we’ll see you,” Emma said. “Don’t stay away.”
Her eyes were bright, but there was something different in the way she looked at me. Was it curiosity? Or pity? Maybe it was both.
Quinn called after lunch when I was back at the villa checking on how Frankie and the waitresses from the Goose Creek Inn were coping with the crowds.
“Don’t expect to see me there today,” he said. “I’m not leaving the barrel room.”
Yesterday’s chilliness hadn’t thawed, but he also sounded ominous.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been adding the yeast to the Riesling and racking it into new tanks, but I can’t get fermentation to start.”
That was bad. Without fermentation, we had tanks of grape juice. No wine. Nothing.
“How many strains of yeast have you added so far?” I asked.
We had agreed to experiment with three different types of yeast now that it was clear there would be no ice wine. Each one would bring out different esters—the flavors people perceived in the wine—and a different bouquet. Blending them after they fermented would result in a more complex, interesting wine. Or so we hoped. If fermentation didn’t start, something was wrong.
“Two.”
I could tell he was worried.
“Temperature okay?”
The juice, or must, had just spent a couple of days chilling in the refrigerator truck. Maybe it was still too cold. Until the wine warmed up to a certain temperature, which depended on the strain of yeast, nothing would happen.
But Quinn would know all that. It was Winemaking 101.
“I’m going to check again.”
“Do you think someone could have dumped the yeast into the tank all at once?”
I racked my brain for all the reasons I could remember why fermentation might not start. Adding the yeast too abruptly was another one. It was like throwing a naked person outside in an arctic snowstorm. The result would be such a bad shock the yeast would die.
He didn’t sound happy. “If Chance or Tyler had been here I would have said it was a definite possibility. But I’ve got Benny and Javier. They know what they’re doing.”
“Keep me posted,” I said.
“When I get a handle on it, you’ll be the second to know.”
I was glad, at least, he hadn’t said “If.”
I returned to the battlefield just before two o’clock after Gina called with an SOS that she was swamped at
