behind.”
“What do you mean ‘that he left behind’?” I said. Allen Cantor said Fargo destroyed anything to do with his drug business.
“What’s with you two?” Brooke stopped the ATV and turned around and glared at me. Then her gaze swung back to Quinn. “Why so many questions about Ted? What’s going on?”
“Do you know him?” I asked.
She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “I bought this place from him, didn’t I? What do you think?”
“Where is he now?” Quinn said.
“Is he in trouble?” She folded her arms across her chest and looked stonily at Quinn. “What is this, a drug sting? Are you guys working undercover for DEA?”
We’d pushed too hard. I tried to make a joke out of it. “If we were, we obviously aren’t very good at it, are we? Look how fast you made us.”
“Come on, Brooke.” Quinn touched her arm. “We’re just wondering if you know where he is. He’s gone missing ever since he sold you this place.”
“Why do you care? Does he owe you money?”
Quinn cut a look in my direction. “No, he doesn’t. And it’s kind of a complicated story.”
“Go on.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We can’t.”
Brooke stared out at the place where Fargo’s greenhouse had been.
“He told me that if anyone came around asking about him that I’d be smart to keep my mouth shut. I thought he was kidding, but I guess I was wrong.” Her voice wavered and she looked into Quinn’s eyes. “I wasn’t expecting the person who asked to be you.”
Quinn rubbed her shoulder like he was comforting a child. “You know about the drugs, don’t you, kiddo? He was a dealer and he grew the stuff right here.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. He burned some fields and cleaned out the greenhouse and the lab before he left. Then he tore down those places, too.”
I sat up straight. This was the first I’d heard about a laboratory.
“Why did he have a lab? What did he do there?” I asked.
“It’s where he made the pesticides. What did you think? That it was a meth lab?” She sounded irritated.
“God, no.”
“The only drug I heard about was weed,” she said. “One of these days they’re going to legalize it in California. There are people who say alcohol is worse. I’m not going to judge what he did, but I’m no dealer and I don’t grow it.”
“What about the burned field? What was there?” Quinn said.
“Presumably his marijuana crop. He put barbed wire around that field; it wasn’t much land, half an acre, and nailed up KEEP OUT signs. Warned me not to go near it or let my dog or any animal near there,” she said.
“Did he say why?” Quinn asked.
“Told me he was worried about some of the stuff he’d experimented with. He wasn’t sure about the REI. Said it could be a really long time.”
That didn’t make sense.
“But why worry about that if he was using organic pesticides on the vines and gardens?” I said.
Brooke gave an impatient flick of her hand and started the ATV. “Look,” she said, “I don’t need to be cross- examined by either of you. Whatever Ted did or grew or experimented with, it’s all gone now. Legal, illegal, whatever. You can’t see where it was from here and it was on private property. So what the hell? Are we done now?”
There was no point asking her if we could see where the lab and greenhouse had been, or even the field with its barbed-wire fence and KEEP OUT signs. No one spoke as she drove us back to the Porsche.
“I’m sure Mick Dunne will be in touch with you in the next day or two about the wine,” I said.
“Fine.” She’d clammed up.
I caught Quinn’s eye. “I’ll wait in the car.”
I got into the Porsche and heard his voice, low and soothing, talking to Brooke. I didn’t catch what he said, or her murmured replies, but he seemed to be comforting her and she was still upset. Finally, he put a hand on her shoulder again and she nodded.
“Be seein’ you,” he said and kissed her forehead.
He didn’t say anything to me until we were back on the Silverado Trail.
“She’s worked up. We shouldn’t have gone at her like that.”
“I’m sorry. I know she is. But it does sound like Teddy Fargo could have been Theo Graf, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “No black roses.”
“The guy had a lab where he made pesticides.”
“The guy was into drugs. A lab comes in useful. Saying he used it as a place to make pesticides for his garden could be just to keep people off his back.”
“Then he disappears and tells her not to talk to anyone about him?”
“I repeat. Drugs.” He gave me an ominous look. “What are you going to tell Charles? All he wanted to know was whether there were any black roses and now you know the answer is no.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to tell him,” I said. “This has gone down a whole different road from what we expected.”
“I think it’s over.” Quinn spoke with finality. “Charles was barking up the wrong tree. Let it go. If Fargo, or whoever he is, finds out Brooke talked to us about his little side business and his cash crop, and you get Charles and some of his spook friends involved—”
He left that remark hanging on purpose, but I knew what he meant. Leave it alone. Walk away.
I nodded, but we both knew that was no longer possible; I needed to finish this. Wherever it led, whatever the consequences.
Even if it included losing Quinn.
Chapter 18
We didn’t talk about Brooke or Charles or Teddy Fargo for the rest of the trip to Robert Sanábria’s guesthouse, which took all of ten minutes. The private drive off Highway 29 was so well screened from view that Quinn missed the turn and had to double back; then we nearly drove past the cottage, which was at the end of a small cul-de-sac. The rustic house with its weathered gray shingle roof and ivy-covered chimney was shaded by a giant redwood whose enormous branches enveloped the place like we were in a tree house. Quinn parked under a portico of logs and rough-hewn beams that was long enough for another car to pull in behind us.
“Bet this was a Prohibition roadhouse, the way it’s so well camouflaged in the woods,” he said. “It’s close to the highway but tucked far enough away so the cops wouldn’t see any lights or cars.”
“Pépé told me Robert lives at the top of the hill at the end of this private road,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s supposed to be quite a place.”
He set my suitcase next to the front door.
“I’ll call you after you get back to Virginia,” he said. “Make sure the rest of the trip went okay.”
I nodded. “I’ll see you in a few weeks for harvest.”
He looked as uncomfortable as I felt.
“Yeah, we’ll talk about dates and all that stuff.”
“Great.”
“See you then.”
“Quinn—” I touched his arm.
“What?”
