Sure. So had we. People were coming out of the woodwork to attend our little auction. Now he wanted his prize donation back. How were we going to explain that?
I pinched the bridge of my nose. The headache that had begun after Quinn and I blew up at each other this morning now pulsed behind my eyes. There had to be some way to talk him out of this.
“You know how thrilled we were when you donated that bottle. Everyone at Shelter the Children has been beside themselves once they realized how much money it could raise and—”
He cut me off. “Stop right there. Don’t make me out to be Scrooge. I won’t stand for it. Besides, I’m not going to leave you with nothing. I’m swapping the Margaux for a jeroboam of Pétrus. You’ll do extremely well with that.”
Château Pétrus was another of the legendary Bordeaux, but we wouldn’t do nearly as well as we would have done with a bottle destined for George Washington. All the magic that had enveloped the auction would vanish like smoke. But he wasn’t going to change his mind and nothing I could do would persuade him otherwise. If he wanted the wine back, he wanted it back.
“I’ll bring it by your house tonight. I have a meeting with Amanda Heyward at four so I can drop it off afterward and get it over with.” I knew it sounded ungracious but I was mad and hurt.
He was as short with me as I’d been with him. “You can ‘get it over with’ tomorrow, please. Sunny and I are out this evening. And bring it to the house, not the store.”
“Of course.”
“One more thing.”
I closed my eyes as lightning bolts stabbed the back of my eyes. What now? “Yes?”
“I’d like the Dorgon back. You’ll thank me for that. I drank another bottle from that vintage last night and it had turned.”
“You didn’t find out until last night?” I asked. So he wanted me to return both Bordeaux.
“I would not purposely give you a bad bottle of wine.” He sounded surprised. I had offended him again. “Please bring it with the Margaux.”
“I’ll bring them both tomorrow evening.”
“Thank you.”
“By the way,” I said, “I was wondering if you knew Valerie Beauvais.”
He hesitated a second too long before answering. “You mean that woman who was in the car accident the other day?”
Damn right I did and he knew it, too. I doled out rope. “That’s right. The author. She followed Thomas Jefferson’s route through the European vineyards. Wrote a book about it.”
“I know her by reputation,” he said. “Knew her, that is. Never met her in person. Sorry, Lucie, I’ve got customers who just walked in. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He hung up and I contemplated the bust of Jefferson for a while. Jack Greenfield just lied about knowing Valerie and I wondered why.
Did the reason he’d asked for the Margaux back have anything to do with her death? Jack’s arthritis was so bad he had trouble corking wine bottles. He could hardly have loosened the lug nuts from Valerie’s wheel, could he? Besides, why would he want to harm her?
Unless he’d found out what she knew about the Washington wine. Which I was about to give back to him so it could disappear into his collection, away from public scrutiny.
Forever.
Chapter 11
I took more ibuprofen and lay down for a few hours before my meeting with Amanda. When I woke my headache had subsided but my anger had not. I still thought Valerie Beauvais was mixed up with Jack’s decision to withdraw the Washington wine, but I didn’t know how or why. And then there was Nicole Martin and her client with pockets that went all the way to China. They say everyone has a price. I wondered what Jack’s was. If Nicole offered him the moon and the stars for that bottle, would Jack sell his family’s prize possession and reap a huge profit—or would he keep it like he told me he intended to do?
Amanda’s Range Rover was already in Mick’s driveway when I pulled up behind her and parked. Even though Mick and I shared a common property line, between us we owned more than a thousand acres, so it wasn’t like we swapped cups of sugar across a backyard fence. It was nearly a mile between the entrance to my place and his.
Unlike my home, which had always been a working farm, Mick’s place, with its parklike grounds, reminded me of an English manor house. Saucer magnolias and dogwoods lined the private road leading to his home. In the spring drifts of daffodils and tulips bloomed alongside the trees. The previous owner had a professional horticulturist put landscape labels on all the trees surrounding the formal gardens. Mick contacted the horticulturalist, offering him a job as full-time groundskeeper. Then he asked Sunny Greenfield to take on redecorating the house, giving her carte blanche so he could focus on his real love—renovating and upgrading his extensive stables. He’d also supervised the planting of thirty acres of vines.
Before he moved to Virginia, Mick owned Dunne Pharmaceuticals, a Florida-based mom-and-pop business he’d transformed into a multinational conglomerate, which he’d sold in a deal that made the front page of major financial newspapers. If he never worked again for two lifetimes, he’d still be richer than Midas. I wondered how long someone so restless would be content racing thoroughbreds and growing grapes. I’d often wondered whether he was more captivated by the romantic notion of a gentleman farmer from Virginia than the reality of that life. One day would he wake up and discover he was bored?
A maid met me at the front door. “Mr. Dunne is in the stables, miss. He asked you to stop by when you’ve finished your meeting with Mrs. Heyward. She’s waiting for you in the drawing room. You know the way, I believe.”
I passed an enormous silver urn filled with several dozen red and white roses. If the Queen of England ever came for tea, she’d feel right at home. Sunny had knocked herself out redecorating the place and Mick had put no limits on what she could spend. The result was too grandiose for my taste but I knew Mick liked that kind of stately baronial splendor, even reveled in it.
I hadn’t seen the drawing room since Sunny finished redoing it in masculine shades of rust and royal blue. Persian carpets covered the floor, setting off the fine European and American antiques. The art looked like she’d borrowed a few treasures from a major museum.
Amanda stood by the fireplace, staring at a portrait of George Washington. She was dressed hunt country casual in a tweed blazer, silk blouse, and well-cut jeans. I joined her.
“That painting,” I said. “Isn’t it—?”
She nodded. “Yes. A Gilbert Stuart.”
Maybe Sunny really had borrowed it from a museum. “Where did Mick get it?”
“Sunny wouldn’t say. But Mick paid a bundle for it. Did you know Stuart painted over a hundred portraits of Washington? I had no idea there were so many out there.”
“Me, neither. This one’s fabulous.”
“That’s why I really want to hold the auction in the house, rather than a tent. This place is gorgeous.”
“The tent might not be a problem anymore.”
“What are you talking about?” Her eyebrows knitted together. “What’s wrong?”
“Why don’t we sit down?”
We sat on a large camelback sofa covered in pumpkin-hued brocade. Amanda’s overstuffed planner and her paisley folder, now thick with papers, lay on the coffee table.
“Jack Greenfield is withdrawing the Washington bottle from the auction.”
Amanda put a hand over her mouth like she was going to be ill. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she looked tragic. “Sunny never said a word. I was just with her at the kennels.”
“Maybe he didn’t tell her.”
“Well, shit!”
“I know.”
“Why did he do it?” She picked up the folder and opened it. Then she closed it again. “Dammit, he can’t!”