The Sauvignon Secret (5 page)

“The police suspect
you
?”

“Not really. Bobby Noland showed up later. He knows I didn’t do it.”

“Ah, Bobby. I have a couple of cigars for him,” he said. “Do you think someone wanted to cast suspicion on you by leaving your wine bottle there?”

I moved from one slow-moving lane of traffic to another that crawled along only slightly faster. “No, that’s too far-fetched. Besides, no one knew I was planning to drop by today.”

“You’d be surprised how angry people become when they believe they are being cheated, or their livelihood is being stolen,” he said. “It doesn’t take much to push them to the kind of violence we’ve had in France. You’ve heard of the CRAV, haven’t you? The Regional Committee of Viticulture Action, in English. A clandestine group of winemakers who, a couple of years ago, sent the president a video promising blood would flow if he didn’t stop importing cheap wine from Algeria and Spain, and didn’t do something about the overproduction driving down the price of French wine on the world market.”

“I read about those people. They sounded scary.”

“They were scary. They bombed government buildings, tanker trucks, supermarkets,” Pépé said. “They drained thousands of euros’ worth of wine from tanks at agricultural cooperatives and let it seep into the ground. Once someone tried to plant a bomb along the route of the Tour de France. Thank God he was caught in time. The press called it ‘wine terrorism.’ ”

“It isn’t like that here, Pépé. It’s nowhere near that bad,” I said. “Plenty of people were mad at Paul, but not enough to consider blowing up his warehouse. And I honestly don’t believe it was murder, after what the crime scene detective said about how hard it is to fake a suicide. I think Paul killed himself and we’ll probably find out why sooner or later.”

“It wouldn’t take much to tip the scale for that kind of anger and violence to take hold in America.” Pépé shook a warning finger at me. “It’s what I’ve been asked to talk about in California next week—the lessons your government can learn from what happened to us.”

“We had September eleventh,” I said. “That changed everything. We have the Department of Homeland Security now. They reclassified wine as a food so we have to report every part of the production process to the Food and Drug Administration under some bioterrorism law. It’s mind-boggling, all the paperwork we have to file. Records of everything we transport, everything we receive, what
we add to the juice, batch lots, packaging materials … even each batch of grapes and the blend of each wine. It drives Antonio and me crazy. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother or if they ever do anything with all that information.”

“The first time something happens, you won’t wonder anymore.” My grandfather sounded ominous.

“Who’d do something to wine?”

He shrugged. “How hard would it be? A group of tourists drive by a picturesque view of vines planted alongside a country road, say your vineyard on Atoka Road, and get out of the car to take a photograph. At the same time one of them scatters something that the wind will take and blow through your fields. They drive off and disappear forever. Gradually all your vines wither and die. Or a disgruntled employee adds something to one of your five-thousand-gallon tanks of wine just before bottling. How many people could he sicken or maybe even kill?”

We’d finally reached the turnoff for Route 50, Mosby’s Highway. The homestretch. I put on my turn signal and we left Route 28 as I thought about what he’d just said.

Maybe we weren’t so insulated from the kind of violence he was talking about. In France it was homegrown—a group of angry winemakers being driven out of business—not the threats of faceless foreigners. What would it take to push some of my fellow vineyard owners who had lost everything over the brink?

Maybe Pépé was right.

“I guess it wouldn’t be that hard to do after all,” I said. “Would it?”

Friday the thirteenth dawned bright and hot, promising to be another scorcher for the record books. I showered and dressed, tiptoeing past Pépé’s bedroom and avoiding the creaking treads on the grand spiral staircase. Halfway down the stairs I could still hear my grandfather snoring like a lumberjack from behind his door.

I fixed breakfast—coffee, croissants, and fresh goat cheese from a nearby farm—and carried it out to the veranda, along with the
Washington Tribune
. The heat and humidity had already leached the color from the sky, leaving it a dingy white. A film of haze had settled over the Blue Ridge.

Paul Noble’s death was billboarded at the bottom of page one of the
Trib
, though the story had been moved inside to Metro. I didn’t recognize the black-and-white thumbnail photo in the teaser; it looked like an old one taken years ago when Paul had more hair. Fortunately, the headline writers hadn’t come up with anything cute or sensational, so it simply read: “Loudoun Businessman Found Hanged.” The article was in the middle of the front page of Metro with a larger, more recent photo of Paul standing on the rooftop terrace of his luxurious Georgetown office building posing like a minor potentate. The Potomac and two backlit sculls whose rowers were perfectly in sync was the backdrop, probably a crew team from one of the D.C. universities. Thankfully the reporter wrote only that a “local woman” had discovered his body. No mention of
anything kinky involving his death, so perhaps autoerotic asphyxiation had been discounted or maybe Bobby decided to keep that lurid possibility out of the press for now. Alcohol had been found at the scene, leaving the reader to draw his or her own conclusions about factors contributing to the tragedy.

A car door slammed in my driveway. I set down the paper and went inside. At this early hour it was probably Antonio. We’d been talking about whether we needed to do more spraying to deal with possible powdery mildew. But it was my brother, Eli, who let himself in the front door as I walked into the foyer. His red polo shirt had a stain like a Rorschach inkblot and his trousers looked like he’d slept in them. His dark brown hair, which he usually wore moussed or gelled in some gravity-defying style, fell naturally across his forehead as though he’d just stepped out of the shower. I liked it that way, glad he seemed to be shedding the manicured, pampered Ken doll persona his ex-wife had inflicted on him, even if he did trade it in for the rumpled, frazzled single-father-of-a-three-year-old look, which he was.

“Hey, babe,” he said. “What’s up?”

Calling me “babe” was still part of the Brandi hangover, though it was a lot better than some of the names he had for me when we were kids.

“Coffee’s hot,” I said. “And I have croissants. Did you eat breakfast?”

“I finished the milk and the soggy stuff at the bottom of Hope’s cereal bowl.” He glanced down at his shirt. “I dropped the bowl when I was cleaning up. I think it left a stain.”

“You can’t really see it,” I said. “Is Hope at day care?”

He nodded. “I feel like I’m abandoning her every time I drop her off. She won’t let go of my neck. It’s like I’m being strangled with love.”

Brandi’s rich new boyfriend had made it clear he wanted someone who could travel with him on a whim and wouldn’t be tied down with a child, so Eli ended up with full custody of his daughter. It had taken my breath away how fast my ex-sister-in-law had shed herself of Eli and Hope, but truth be told, I was glad she was out of the picture.

He rubbed a spot by his ear and my heart ached for him. “You two are coming here this weekend, of course?” I asked.

“You bet. We might not make it through fireworks, though. One of us gets nightmares.”

“Maybe when she’s older.”

“I meant me.”

I grinned. “The family pyromaniac? Ha. You’re lucky I never told Leland who stole all those Roman candles he thought he’d stockpiled the first time he and Mom decided to have fireworks for July fourteenth.”

“He guessed.” He looked rueful. “Hence the nightmares.”

He followed me down the back staircase to the kitchen and sat in his old childhood place at the scarred-up table while I fixed his coffee and got out a jar of my homemade strawberry jam—his favorite—for his croissant.

“Pépé upstairs sleeping?” He traced a finger over marks we’d made as kids pressing too hard with our pencils when we did our homework at the soft pine table. I nodded. “Hope still calls him Beppy. She can’t wait to see him.”

“He’s flying to California on Sunday,” I said. “Quick trip. But at least you’ll get to spend Saturday evening with him.”

“Uh-huh.” He was still tracing curlicues and squiggles.

“We thought we’d make the party a clothing-optional event.”

“That’s good.”

“Eli, are you listening to me?”

He looked up. “Huh? Sure, I am.”

“What’d I just say?” I set a plate and coffee mug in front of him. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but aren’t you supposed to be in Leesburg? Say, maybe, at work?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no.” He opened the jar of jam and carefully set the lid on the table. When he looked up, I saw just how beat down he really was. “Maybe I got laid off.”

“Oh, God, you’re kidding,” I said.

“Would I kid about that? I missed a couple of deadlines while Hope had chicken pox. Clients got pissed off and went to another architectural firm. I’m job hunting, babe, but with the housing market the way it is right now, there’s not much new construction out there,
which means no work for builders and even less for architects like me.” He touched his thumb and forefinger together showing no daylight. “And I’m that far away from getting evicted from our apartment because I can’t make rent. It was either that or pay the day care bill.”

“Move in here.” I said it without thinking.

He looked up and our eyes locked. “Is that a serious offer?”

“Of course it is. It’d be great to have someone in the house besides me. Mia’s not coming back from New York and I just rattle around here by myself. It gets … lonely sometimes.”

What I didn’t want to say, much less think about, was that I never expected to be living on my own with my thirty-first birthday looming on the horizon in a few weeks. I always thought that by now there would be someone to share it with, maybe even a family.

He was silent for a moment. “I’ll pay you rent, we’re not freeloading. Cover our share of the groceries …”

“We can talk about that later. You know what I really need? Someone to fix the gazillion things that need repairing around the place. We could trade that in return for room and board.”

“Luce, I don’t want your charity.”

“Eli, you haven’t seen my list.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“I think it would be great. I’ll get to spend more time with Hope.” He eyed me. “And you, of course.”

He grinned and punched me lightly on the arm. “You know, I just thought of something. How about if I fix up the old carriage house and turn it into a studio? Maybe I could pick up enough work on my own to make a go of it, especially if I could keep Hope at home with me. What do you say?”

He busied himself spreading a perfect layer of jam all the way to the edge of his croissant while I stood there and watched him.

“I say your nose just grew an inch, Pinocchio. ‘I just thought of something.’ Jeez, Eli, I must be losing my edge. You didn’t used to be able to play me that easily. You had this whole scheme all cooked up before you showed up, didn’t you? Please don’t tell me you spilled milk on your shirt on purpose and fished an old pair of pants out of the laundry basket just to make me feel sorry for you,” I said.

He looked sheepish. “Ixnay to the clothes stunt. To be honest, I didn’t think of it.”

“Eli!”

He pretended to duck. “I didn’t mean to set you up, but you’re a good sister, Luce. Family means everything to you, so I kind of figured you might offer to take us in. Well … hoped.”

“But you
did
set me up.”

He flashed a cheeky grin and I threw a dish towel at him.

“In the nicest possible way. All kidding aside, I owe you. Raising a kid on my own … man, who knew? Now Hope will have you around because, let me tell you, I just don’t get this girl stuff.” He shook his head and set the towel on the counter. “Did your barrettes have to match the lace thingies on your socks when you were little?”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You bet they did.”

“I don’t suppose you have a to-go mug I could borrow? I could take this on the road. And, uh, I could get a van lined up from a buddy, but I can’t have it until Sunday. We don’t have much stuff. That work for you?”

He’d started rummaging through the cabinets for the mug, but I knew it was so I wouldn’t see the giveaway expression of “mission accomplished” on his face.

“Jesus, Lord, Eli! Yeah, of course it’s fine. I’ll have the housekeeper air out your old room in the attic. Hope can have Mia’s room since Dominique’s bedroom has turned into the guest room. Pépé’s got it now … that is, unless you’ve got other plans you haven’t let me in on yet?”

He turned around grinning as he tossed the to-go mug in the air and caught it one-handed. “Nope, that’s kind of what I figured you’d do.”

“Glad I at least called that one right.”