“I’m sorry about what happened today. I don’t want it to ruin the rest of the trip, everything we did together.”
“I understand.”
I closed my eyes and wished he’d said he agreed or it hadn’t spoiled anything or not to worry. He sounded so formal and closed to me, a stranger. I tried not to think about last night in his bed or the shower together this morning as he bent and brushed my cheek with his lips.
“Tell Charles he got it wrong about Fargo when you get home,” he said as he got in the car.
“What about Maggie Hilliard and Stephen Falcone?”
“They’ve got nothing to do with Fargo.” His eyes locked on mine, a challenge. “Even if he is Theo Graf, which we don’t know and now won’t. You said yourself that Charles admitted Graf was gone by the time Maggie’s car went off the bridge, and he wasn’t at the lab the day Stephen died.”
“I know that.”
“But you’re still going to ask him about Maggie and Stephen, aren’t you? Now that you know about that affair.”
“Yes.”
“Dammit, Lucie, you don’t have to.”
I thought about the photo of Stephen. His smile and the trust in his eyes.
“I think I do.”
If I’d never seen that picture, maybe I’d agree with Quinn right now. But I had. Whatever Quinn and I were on the verge of repairing in our relationship was about to break apart one more time.
His voice was harsh. “You’re not going to change anything. It won’t bring them back.”
“I know nothing will bring them back, but I still think it matters.
He lifted his hands off the steering wheel, and for a moment I thought we were at the beginning of another soul-wrenching argument. Then he let them fall and hit the wheel with an exasperated finality before he started the engine.
He kept his eyes straight ahead as he drove out of the portico and snaked back in front of the cottage to the main driveway. I caught a glimpse of his angry, unyielding profile and heard him gun the engine, on purpose, as he roared out onto the highway.
Then he was gone.
I picked up my suitcase and went inside Robert Sanábria’s guest cottage. Large and airy, it smelled faintly of lemony furniture polish and woodsmoke. Soft tree-filtered light flickered through a picture window and made patterns like moving water on the polished hardwood floor and scattered tribal carpets. The centerpiece of the room was a stone fireplace that nearly filled an entire wall; the mantel held pillar candles melted to various heights, framed photographs, and a dried-flower arrangement. The furniture was large, masculine, and comfortable looking. A gold tinsel ball, probably left over from Christmas, hung from a chandelier in the middle of the ceiling, spinning lazily when it caught a draft of air from the open front door. A grape-colored doormat at my feet read, WE SERVE ONLY THE FINEST CALIFORNIA WINES.
Pépé had left me a note on the coffee table; he was up at the main house having drinks with Robert and I was invited to join them. Otherwise, the three of us were dining together at seven P.M. at a restaurant in Calistoga.
I found my bedroom, a cozy room in the back of the cottage with windows on two sides overlooking a small garden. Right now I didn’t feel like having drinks or dining with anyone. I threw myself on the king-sized bed and lay there.
The next thing I knew, my grandfather was shaking my shoulder, waking me from a deep sleep.
The dinner with Pépé and Robert Sanábria passed in a merry-goround blur of conversation, fabulous food, and even more fabulous wine. We went to the restaurant in the Mount View Hotel, a sleek and elegant place where the staff greeted Robert as an old friend.
He was about twenty years younger than Pépé, in his early sixties, soft-spoken, and unpretentious. I liked the jaunty way he swung a bottle of his own private reserve Cab between his fingers as we walked into the dining room and the respect the waiter showed as he took it away to open it and let it breathe before our dinner. Robert gave me a slow, mischievous wink, deliberately and delightfully flirting as we sat down, and thereafter proceeded to charm me for the rest of the evening. Pépé and I had not yet spoken about Charles or Teddy Fargo. By the time we finished our appetizers, even that last tense scene with Quinn receded like a dream whose details had grown cloudy in my mind.
We lingered over dinner, talking and laughing as the restaurant reverberated with the noisy chatter of arriving dinner guests who knew Robert and one another, calling greetings, stopping by our table to be introduced. Robert took care of ordering as the waiters effortlessly slid little plates of fish and meat and vegetables in front of the three of us; my wineglass was never empty.
We had brandy back at the cottage, though by then I was more than a little tipsy. In a moment of recklessness I went into my bedroom on the pretext of getting a sweater and called Quinn. I shouldn’t have done it; it was stupid and I knew it. His phone went to voice mail and I left a goofy, inebriated message that I couldn’t remember ten minutes later.
I slept as soon as my head touched the pillow—in French we call it “sleeping on both ears”—as though I’d been drugged. When I woke at five thirty to my phone alarm going off, Pépé was already moving about in the bathroom. I sat up, with a hazy memory of Robert promising that his housekeeper would bring breakfast down from the big house at six, and then his limousine would be at the cottage door at six thirty to take us to the airport.
My grandfather is not a morning person—though he’s not grumpy, a conversation consists mostly of monosyllabic grunts— and I was still tired from the past two whirlwind days. So we padded around the cottage in silence, getting dressed and packing our bags, until a young woman showed up at the front door with a picnic basket containing a plate of steaming-hot scones with fresh butter and homemade blackberry jam, and a thermos of jasmine tea from Robert’s favorite tea shop in Chinatown.
The limo came at six thirty sharp. Robert followed the driver down in a Jeep to say goodbye. He and my grandfather embraced, and then he turned to me, bending in for a kiss. The damp chill of the early morning fog clung to him, mingled with cypressy cologne, and his lips were cold on my cheeks.
“Take care of him, Lucie,” he said in my ear.
He stood on the front steps and watched the big car pull away from the portico, catching my eye and flashing a thumbs-up, just before we turned the corner and he vanished from view as the redwood forest swallowed up the big car.
I leaned my head on my grandfather’s shoulder and slept. The next thing I knew it was light outside and we were at the airport. My phone rang as a porter took our bags from the limousine driver. I glanced at the display: Mick Dunne. He hadn’t wasted any time. I slipped the phone into my purse, letting it go to voice mail.
We got to the gate an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave. I got Pépé settled far enough away from a blaring television that he could resume reading the thick document he’d started in the limo, no doubt given to him by someone at the Bohemian Grove, and told him I’d find two ridiculously expensive cups of coffee for us somewhere on the concourse.
I got in a long line at a place called SFO Java and called Mick.
“How did it go? What’d you think of the wine?” he said.
“You’ll be happy. It’s very good. Quinn and I agreed on the blend yesterday. You just need to call Brooke Hennessey and set it up.”
“If it’s that good, maybe she’d be willing to sell more than we agreed on,” he said.
“Ask her.”
“Be a love and take care of it for me, will you?”
“I don’t think—”
“Damn, there’s my other line. Look, darling, it’s a chap I’ve been trying to reach for two days. He’s calling from London and I’ve got to take this. Ring me back after you speak with Brooke, all right?”
He hung up and I moved to the front of the coffee line. While I waited for two cafés au lait, I found
