Hers, like mine, were filled with nostalgia and melancholy.
When we got home, Pépé went directly to bed. I’d given him the room Dominique had lived in when she came to help take care of Mia after my mother died. After the fire, I’d gotten rid of the swimming pool–sized chafing dishes, sixty-cup coffee urns, and door-sized platters Dominique had stored in there for her catering business, turning it into a proper guest room.
The Jefferson diary lay open on my bedside table next to Valerie’s book. I picked it up and leafed through the Foreword, which discussed Jefferson’s tour in the vineyards of France, Italy, and Germany, and a brief trip to Holland, explaining that the trip was partly to quell an insatiable curiosity in everything around him and partly to indulge a lifelong passion for wine.
The diary itself was an almost encyclopedic catalog of everything Jefferson saw and did. I turned to the section on Bordeaux. He’d spent five days in the region from May 24–28, 1787, after passing through Italy. By then he was on his way back to Paris, wrapping up the first of his two voyages.
Jefferson wrote about the countryside in Bordeaux, naming four vineyards in the region which he said were “of the first quality”—Château Haut-Brion, Château Latour, Château Lafite, and Château Margaux. More than two hundred years later, it was clear Thomas Jefferson had known his stuff. In 1855, at Napoleon III’s insistence, the French instituted a classification system for French wine still used today. The four vineyards Jefferson listed in his diary were awarded premier cru or “first-growth” status, making them the top wines in France.
Jefferson’s last Bordeaux entry dealt with wine merchants. After listing the principal English and French wine sellers, he wrote,
Desgrands, a wine broker, tells me they never mix the wines of first quality but that they mix the inferior ones to improve them.
He was talking about blending—a practice used by forgers who mixed wines from different regions and even different countries, occasionally throwing in a little port, to produce a cocktail that could fool someone into believing they were drinking a first-class wine. All the wines Jack had donated were first quality, except the Dorgon. Had that one been blended, as Jefferson implied? If it had, how would I ever know?
Valerie had hinted that what she knew was significant. Whether or not the Dorgon was a mishmash of several inferior wines didn’t seem that earth-shattering. I put the diary back on my bedside table.
I slept badly again. My nightgown chafed the cuts on my back, my skin felt like it had been stretched taut over my bones, and the bruises, now purple and green, were a lurid reminder of Valerie’s death.
Something about what Jefferson had written in his diary bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
And the only two people who could help me—Thomas Jefferson and Valerie Beauvais—were dead.
Chapter 10
The next morning when I woke, I heard snoring through the door of Pépé’s bedroom. At home in Paris he never rose before midafternoon. With the jet lag—and how little sleep he’d gotten yesterday—I wondered if he’d stay in bed all day.
I made breakfast and set another place for him at the kitchen table, leaving a note that he could find croissants in the bread bin and cheese in the refrigerator. Usually he fasted for breakfast and lunch, making dinner his main meal, but maybe he’d make an exception since he was adjusting to the time change.
I drove to the winery and parked next to Quinn’s El. The door to the villa was locked, so he was probably in the barrel room. I found him there, punching down the cap with Manolo and Jesús. The two workers smiled and said hello. Quinn barely looked up, mumbling “good morning” before going back to his task. I stood and watched, growing angrier by the second as I waited for some sign from him that we had some air-clearing to do. Instead he doggedly pushed the sludgy mass of grape skins below the surface of one of the fermenting vats with a large flat paddle and ignored me. I saw Jesús’s uneasy glance in Manolo’s direction. Manolo shook his head lightly.
No need to keep them in the middle of this.
“I’d like to see you in my office as soon as you’re done here, Quinn.” All three of them were bigger and taller and older than I was. I sounded like a student teacher in over her head, trying to discipline an unruly pupil. No one looked at me.
“In case you’ve forgotten, I own this vineyard,” I said. “When I say something I don’t expect to be ignored.”
This time they all stopped what they were doing.
Manolo and Jesús nodded nervously. Quinn’s head jerked up and his eyes locked on mine. I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed or furious I’d spoken to him like that in front of the men, but his machismo was his problem and too damn bad if he’d lost face. When I left the barrel room I closed the door harder than I needed to.
I still hadn’t cooled off when I got to the villa. Gina flew out of the kitchen, holding a pot of coffee. Her eyes were huge.
“Oh, it’s you, Lucie. I heard the door bang shut. Guess a gust of wind must have caught it.” She stopped and stared at me. “What happened? Are you all right?”
If it had been Frankie with her calming, compassionate ways, I probably would have spilled everything. But not to lively, gossipy Gina, who began far too many sentences with, “I’m not supposed to tell you, but…”
Sharing a confidence with her wasn’t quite as bad as telling Thelma Johnson over at the General Store or the Romeos, but it would still make the rounds. The only difference was that everybody in two counties wouldn’t know by the end of the day. More than likely it would take a week or two.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just a gust of wind, like you said. Scared me, too. Sorry.”
She poured me a cup of coffee and I told her I’d be at my desk. I glanced in Quinn’s office on the way to mine. Kind of a cross between a low-rent motel room and a place where someone had nearly moved out. No photographs. Nothing personal. His cottage was the same. Maybe that’s how he’d been able to keep his marriage a secret—acting like he had no past. I would never understand that about him.
An hour later the heavy wooden door between the library and our offices opened and closed. He went first to his office. A few minutes later, he showed up in my doorway and pulled the door shut.
He jerked a thumb behind him. “We’ve got customers. Gina’s with ’em. If you’re going to yell, might be better if they didn’t hear.”
“I’m not going to yell.”
“But you want to.”
“Yes.” My voice shook. “I want to. What the hell happened yesterday?”
“I got stinking drunk, ma’am, and I shouldn’t have. Reported for work totally inebriated and that’s grounds for firing me. You can have my resignation on your desk, if that’s what you want. I’ll just go next door and write it.” He was staring hard at me but his eyes were haunted and bleak. Like he was going to push this conversation to the absolute limit, test us both…see who cried uncle first.
It felt like I was talking to a stranger.
“Don’t call me ‘ma’am,’” I said, hurt. “Just…don’t. And you know I don’t want your resignation. But I do think you owe me an apology.”
He bowed with mock formality. “Then I apologize. It will never happen again.”
“Quinn…”
“What?”
“What happened?”
“I just told you.” He wasn’t going to back down.
“No,” I said. “You told me nothing. I’ve never seen you do something like that before. Ever. I know you’re upset about seeing her…and the fact that she’s with Shane now—”
He cut me off. “You don’t know anything!” he shouted.