“The wine in this bottle,” I said, “is not in very good condition.”
“Would you be in good condition if you were almost two hundred and fifty years old?” He brushed his finger lightly over the rough-etched lettering in the glass—1790, Margaux, and the initials, G.W. “Look at that color, though. Spectacular.”
“A lot of the wine is gone,” I said.
“Down to mid-shoulder.” Ryan said. “I don’t have a problem with that. You know you’re going to get seepage in a wine this old. The cork is slightly dry, but in excellent condition, considering.”
What he didn’t mention, though, was that the ullage—the space between the wine and the cork—was filled with oxygen. Just as too much oxygen can rust metal or turn apples brown, too much air kills wine.
“It’s a shame the châteaus didn’t keep records that long ago,” I said. “I guess we’re lucky Jefferson did.”
“Exactly.” Ryan drained his wineglass. “Here’s what you’ve got. The bottle is the right age. Mid-shoulder level is consistent with a wine that old. And here’s the clincher. When Jefferson came back to the United States after serving as ambassador to France, he wrote a letter in 1790 ordering a large quantity of Bordeaux for himself and George Washington. In that letter he specified that the shipments should be marked with their respective initials so they’d get to their proper destinations. You’re looking at one of the bottles he never got.”
I chewed my lip and stared at the initials.
“Why are you shaking your head?” he said.
I leaned closer to the bottle of wine. “I wonder what Valerie knew that we don’t.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Are you still on about her?” He threw up his hands and accidentally brushed against the bottle. It teetered and we both grabbed for it. I caught it.
“Jesus.” He looked stunned. “Wouldn’t that have been something, knocking it over right here?”
“I’ll just put this big boy back where he belongs for safekeeping. You sit tight.”
When I returned he was rolling the balloon of his wineglass between both hands, staring into it like he was looking into a crystal ball.
“You’re absolutely sure that it’s authentic?” I said. “Stake your reputation on it?”
He smiled wickedly. “Not 100 percent sure. But there is a way of finding out.”
“What’s that?”
“We could drink it.”
“Nice try.” I swiped his wineglass and put both of our glasses on a counter for washing in the morning. “Thanks for your time.”
“You’ll get my bill.”
I walked him to his car. “How well did you know Valerie Beauvais?” I asked.
“Well enough to know what a snake in the grass she was.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Gives me a motive for killing her, doesn’t it?”
“You need more than a motive,” I said. “What about opportunity?”
“Apparently I had that, too,” he said. “Two deputies already talked to me and they don’t like my alibi.”
“Which is?”
“Home alone in bed. I’ve got a witness but the dog doesn’t like officers of the law so he’s not talking.”
I smiled. “Did you do it?”
He looked startled. “Hell, no.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket and tossed them in the air. As he caught them he said, “Guess I got lucky. Someone else beat me to it.”
Chapter 7
A beam of red light shone outside my kitchen window as I finished my dinner dishes. I watched it bob up and down as it moved past the rosebushes toward the summerhouse. When Quinn wanted to preserve his night vision he used a red flashlight. It was just after eight o’clock. Early for him.
Of all the surprising discoveries I’d made about my eccentric winemaker, the most unexpected was his passion for astronomy. Before he died, my father gave Quinn permission to bring a telescope to the summerhouse with its panoramic and mostly un-light-polluted view of the night sky from the valley all the way to the Blue Ridge. But Quinn and I had a falling out a while back when I thought he was turning the place into a love nest. In a fit of anger, he’d removed the telescope and his copies of Stardate, a magazine I once thought pertained to online dating.
Maybe he’d brought the telescope back and forgotten our tiff. I pulled on a hooded sweatshirt that had been hanging on the back of a chair and got my cane. My night vision hadn’t adjusted as well as his and I yelped when I got caught on the thorns of one of the rosebushes.
He came out of the summerhouse. “What are you doing here?”
“Impaling myself in the dark. What do think I’m doing here? I came to see what you’re looking at.” I tugged the sleeves of my sweatshirt so they covered my hands. It was cooler than I expected. “Did you bring your telescope?”
In the near darkness his face was darker shadows and planes, his eyes black pools of negative space. “I thought you didn’t want me stargazing out here.”
He hadn’t forgotten the argument.
“That was a misunderstanding and you know it,” I said.
“It’s still at my place,” he said. “Packed up.”
“You could bring it back, if you wanted.”
“Is that so?” he said. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”
I didn’t like the way he kept staring at me. “If you don’t have your telescope, what made you come here tonight?”
“Wanted a view of the harvest moon. There’s only one each year. Tonight’s the night. Too many trees at my place for a good view.” He walked back to the summerhouse and opened the door. I heard something scraping inside. “Grab that door, will you?”
He hauled one of my mother’s weather-beaten Adirondack chairs outside and positioned it so it looked out over the valley.
“You staying?” he asked. “Or were you just checking up on me?”
“I’ll stay.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I’d like to. Unless you’d rather be alone.”
“Don’t complicate things. I asked, didn’t I?” He went back inside and got another chair.
“There are lots of harvest moons,” I said.
“Nope. There’s only one that’s closest to the autumnal equinox. That’s the real harvest moon.” He set the second chair close to the first. “Have a seat. Moon’s behind that cloud bank. When it moves away, you’ll see it.”
I set my cane down and sat next to him, leaning against the weather-coarsened wood. He pulled a cigar out of his jacket pocket, unwrapped it, and rustled in another pocket for matches. I watched the familiar ritual as his match flared and he bent his head, puffing until the cigar was lit. The tip glowed like a mini-moon and I breathed in the familiar scent of his tobacco.
He sat back as the clouds slowly moved off and the enormous moon, the color of a ripe wheel of Leicester cheese, hung in the sky above our heads.
“It’s gorgeous,” I said.
“Yup.” He stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them.
“You know in France, they used to care for the grapes according to the phases of the moon,” I said. “Planting, picking, pruning. Maybe we should try it some time.”
“The French also believe it’s bad luck to have women around at harvest.” He looked at me and puffed on the cigar. “I don’t suppose you’d like to try that sometime?”
I tucked my feet under me and wrapped my arms around my knees. “You are such a Neanderthal, you know that?”
He laughed. “I just don’t buy into that crap, that’s all. Give me science any day. Speaking of which, I’ve been thinking about the Cab blend.”
“You think about it nonstop.” But to tell the truth, so did I. Until we got the grapes picked and into the barrels, I’d be as restless and preoccupied as he was.
“Damn lucky for you that I do,” he said. “I want this year to be out of this world. We could screw up everything else, but you know how much rides on this one.”
I didn’t expect him to sound so somber. Most of the time he acted like he had a grace and favor relationship with St. Vincent, the patron saint of winegrowers, who whispered in his ear. But I understood what he meant. Of all the wines we produced, Cabernet Sauvignon was our most valuable—the one whose sales really paid the bills at the vineyard.