“Cheaper than a new pump.” I rinsed a beaker and hung it upside down on a rack to drain. “I need a new cell phone. Store’s in Leesburg. Want to go together?”
His eyes narrowed and I blushed. He was staring at me like I’d just invited him on a date. I folded a dishtowel into a neat rectangle and set it on the counter.
“On second thought, you go on ahead,” I said. “I need to go home and take a shower and change first.”
Quinn looked down at his clothes, which were spattered with dull purple blotches, just like mine. We both looked like we’d been shot repeatedly. He stared at me some more and I could tell he was thinking about something other than my clothes.
“You don’t need to change,” he said. “We’ll take the El. Meet me in the parking lot when you’re done here.”
We didn’t talk much on the drive to Leesburg. He dropped me off at the phone store and said he’d pick me up when he’d done his errand. A teenager who looked like he spent most of his time and money at the tattoo parlor was busy transferring my phone number from the old phone to the new one when Quinn showed up carrying a bag from T. W. Perry Hardware.
On the way back to the car I said, “You think we could stop by Jeroboam’s on the way home?”
“Why?”
“I thought maybe I’d ask Jack about the provenance of that Washington bottle.”
The El was so old he had to unlock the doors manually. He unlocked mine and said, “What do you want to do that for? You already said he’d be insulted.”
“I’m curious and I can be diplomatic. I’ll tell him it’s for the catalog.”
“Follow your own advice and forget it.” He looked over at me. “Damn, Lucie. I can hear the gears whirring inside that little brain of yours. You gotta know, don’t you? You’re not going to let it go. Just like a dog with a bone.”
“A girl could get a swelled head from all the nice things you say, you know that?”
“Part of my charm.”
He took Route 15 to Gilberts Corner, then Mosby’s Highway west to Middleburg, instead of the small country roads as I did. As usual he drove too fast, eyes riveted on the road, working a tiny muscle in his jaw that meant he was pondering something. I knew so little about him. An Italian father who abandoned him and his Argentine mother when he was a kid. She’d raised him on her own somewhere in California. He never talked about his parents, or any siblings, either. If he had any.
We parked in an unmetered space on South Liberty near the old magnolia tree in the churchyard. Jeroboam’s was on the corner on East Washington. Washington Street—East and West—had gotten its name from George, who’d visited when he was surveying the region for Lord Fairfax. And here I was more than two centuries later wondering about a bottle of wine that Washington might have drunk if it had ever been delivered to Mount Vernon.
Jack Greenfield bought Jeroboam’s sight unseen a year ago to appease his beautiful wife, the sensational Sunny, because she hated the commute from their home in Georgetown when she rode with the Goose Creek Hunt or visited her many Loudoun County clients for her interior design business. He hired someone to run Salmanazar’s, the D.C. wine store his family owned for sixty years, and called the new, smaller store in Middleburg “Jeroboam’s.” It was an inside wine joke since the biblical names were also the terms for large-sized bottles used for champagne—a Salmanazar being the equivalent of twelve champagne bottles and a Jeroboam holding four champagnes or six bottles of Bordeaux.
In Middleburg, we still said that people who moved here came from “away,” which distinguished them from the locals who’d been born and bred in Loudoun and Fauquier Counties. Technically Jack and Sunny were from away, but they had generously invested time and talent, becoming well known as part of the community in the short time they’d lived here.
Sunny had decorated Jeroboam’s with her customary flair so it resembled a fine English hunting lodge, whose walls happened to be filled with wine bottles. The few empty spaces, including the little stairway that led to a lower-level tasting room, had been turned into an informal art gallery with all of the paintings for sale. Jack was clearing up glasses and bottles in the dark-paneled tasting room when we arrived. He dressed to sell wine like he worked for a Fortune 500 company—bespoke blazer, starched shirt, silk tie, fine wool slacks, and well-polished tasseled loafers. He came around from behind the bar when he saw us.
Usually I got a friendly kiss on the cheek, but Jack took one look at our wine-stained clothes and held back. “You two look like you could use a drink,” he said.
“Don’t mind if we do,” Quinn said. “What’s cookin’, Jack?”
“Plenty of things are cooking.” He walked back to the bar.
Jack was no nonsense, with a strong face and silver hair, stylishly combed back from a high forehead. Jet-black eyebrows that slanted downward toward the bridge of his nose gave him the look of an erudite devil.
“My esteemed business partner has gone to the airport to pick up his latest girlfriend.” The eyebrows arched with the resigned look of a parent lamenting a child’s behavior. “Sunny and I’ve decided that Shane needs a wife. Too much time being the playboy. Left me here to handle a tasting for a temperamental caterer handling a wedding reception in Upperville next spring. Couldn’t make up her mind about anything.”
“That’s women for you,” Quinn said. I elbowed him.
Jack set out two glasses. “Try this Cab from a vineyard near Charlottesville. Give it a moment to open.”
I drank my wine. “Lovely. Good nose, nice long finish. I like the pepper.”
“A bit young for me,” Quinn said.
“He’s such a critic when he’s thinking about our blend,” I said. “Ignore him.”
Jack smiled. “So what’s cooking with you?”
Quinn concentrated on his nice, young wine. He wasn’t going to help me ask about the Margaux.
“I was hoping you could tell us more about the provenance of the Washington bottle,” I said. “Ryan’s writing the notes for the auction catalog and that bottle is now the star of the show.”
“I know it is,” Jack said. “I’ve been getting calls from all over the world. People want to know if I’ve got another bottle, or even if they can buy a case.” He tapped his forehead with his index finger. “You wonder, sometimes.”
“Not me,” Quinn said. “We get people who want to know if we put real apples in the Riesling when we say it tastes like apple. Or how much pepper we put in the Pinot when we talk about the peppery taste. Do we grind it or put in whole peppercorns?”
Jack laughed. “Good thing you don’t tell them it tastes like leather.”
“So how did it come into your possession?” I asked. We’d veered away from the Margaux.
With some difficulty, he recorked the wine we’d just tasted. Quinn and I both noticed.
Jack looked rueful. “Arthritis acting up again. Don’t get old. To answer your question, Lucie, my family was in the wine trade in Germany from the mid-1700s until just after the Second World War. Then my father moved here and started again in America. In Germany we used to have close ties to every major producer in Europe, especially the French. I found the bottle in the cave at my family’s old warehouse in Freiburg after my father passed away. Someone could have given it to us, or it could have been there for a century.”
“Your father never mentioned that Bordeaux to you?” I asked. “Ever?”
“He did not. When I found it, it was not in good condition which makes me suspect that we acquired it after a previous owner kept it poorly cellared. Or else it was badly transported. Possibly both. I told you it’s probably vinegar by now. But I know you will get a lot of money for it. Some people will pay a small fortune for the thrill of owning a wine once destined for George Washington.”
The last line sounded like a mild rebuke. It was Quinn’s turn to do the elbowing. “We know that, Jack,” he said. “And we’re grateful for your donation. It was extremely generous of you, right, Lucie?”