She did not have a deal with Jack Greenfield—yet. At least I didn’t think she did. She probably wouldn’t leave town until she did. I did not want to see her again while she was here and I hoped that she would not meet up with Quinn.
As it turned out, I did not get either of my wishes.
Chapter 14
When I got home Pépé was in the library sitting in his familiar place on the sofa reading The Economist. A Boyard sat in an ashtray and his half-finished cup of coffee looked cold. He never could get used to American coffee but then I couldn’t drink the high-octane brew he loved without feeling my heart slamming against my chest. He smiled when I came into the room.
“Any good news in the world? Where did you get The Economist?” I kissed him on the cheek and sat next to him. The legendary animus between the French and the British—“the frogs” and “les rosbifs”—went back to Joan of Arc, but my grandfather was broadminded. He read the British press.
“The usual. The world is falling apart but at least intelligent people are writing about it, which makes it seem more palatable.” He closed the magazine. “One of my colleagues drove me to the General Store in Atoka but we did not find it there, so we went to Leesburg.”
“I’m afraid Thelma only stocks local papers,” I said. “And the tabloids, because she’s addicted. I’m sorry you had to go all the way to Leesburg.”
“I enjoyed it. We passed in front of Dodona. I see they’ve made General Marshall’s home a museum.” He shook his head and reached for his cigarette, relighting it. “I had dinner there a couple of times when I was at the embassy. I feel like a dinosaur, ma belle.”
“You are not a dinosaur.”
“Apparently one now needs an appointment to see the house.” He puffed on his cigarette. “I also had a nice chat with your Thelma. She was asking about you. And my visit here. And anything else I could tell her.”
The General Store was a chokepoint for all local gossip and Thelma, who’d been around since God was a boy, did the gentle choking. Maybe it was her vampy, flirtatious ways, or her dress-to-kill wardrobe, but she had an almost mystical ability to wangle information out of everyone who dropped by. Very little got past Thelma’s trifocals and bat-antennae hearing.
“Did she bleed you dry?”
Pépé grinned. “We could have used her in the Resistance. Don’t worry, I didn’t say much. I think she likes me.”
“That’s because you’re such a charmer. I guess that means you’ve replaced her previous boyfriend. Some hunky doctor from one of her soap operas.”
“Not such a dinosaur after all, eh?”
I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Want to go for a ride? I’d like to show you around the vineyard. And there’s something I want to ask you.”
I got his jacket from the closet in the foyer.
“I see you still have Leland’s guns locked up,” he said. “I saw the gun cabinet in the library.”
“I probably ought to sell them,” I said, “since no one uses them now.”
He slipped on his jacket. “And what about you?”
“You know I don’t hunt or shoot.”
We took the Mini instead of the Gator, because it was more comfortable and Pépé could use the ashtray when he smoked. Since Hurricane Iola back in August, we’d had almost no rain and had been warned to be careful with matches and open fires. My grandfather listened as I told him about this year’s harvest while we drove through the established vineyards. Next I showed him the new fields and the vines we’d planted last spring.
“Your mother would have been pleased that you are expanding,” he said. “You are like her. Both so ambitious.”
We had stopped at the split-rail fence, which surrounded the larger of our two apple orchards. In the fall we opened it to the pick-your-own crowd, who had been coming steadily for the past few weeks. After last weekend, the trees were nearly bare of fruit.
Pépé smoked quietly and stared at the Blue Ridge.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Is it about my mother—?”
“A little. But I have also been thinking about the past on this visit—the old days,” he said. “There are not so many of us left for this reunion, I’m afraid.”
“That must be hard,” I said. “You miss your friends, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He smiled but his eyes were sad. “Did you know that some of the money from the Marshall Plan helped the French vineyards get back on their feet after the war?”
I knew the stories of how the Germans had moved into the premier wine-producing regions of France and commandeered production. Thousands of cases of the best French wine had been shipped to Germany to sell on the international market to help pay Hitler’s crippling war expenses. Lesser vintages went to their troops on the front.
“I knew the vineyards were in a bad way,” I said.
“You cannot possibly imagine how much wine the Nazis stole—how they looted the vineyards and châteaus.” His eyes grew dark and his voice was suddenly strident. “What they took was as bad as plundering art from the Louvre. Do you know when the French finally arrived at Hitler’s hideaway on that mountaintop in Berchtesgaden they found over half a million bottles of our best wines? And that was only for Hitler, a man who did not drink.” My grandfather’s normally serene face contorted with anger. “They took whatever they needed—even using it for industrial alcohol when they were desperate.”
“Did you have anything to do with getting the Marshall Plan money to the vineyards?” I wanted to get him off the subject of Nazi thuggery. His face had turned an unhealthy shade of red.
“No, I was in Washington during that time. But some of my colleagues were involved.” He sounded calmer.
“You never really told me what you did during the war.” Family lore was that he’d been a spy in the Resistance. I suspected my grandmother knew the truth, but as far as I knew she was the only one.
I wondered if he would tell me now.
“I was in France—well, Occupied France. And Spain.” He stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray, grinding it until it was nearly dust. “We got Allied airmen who had been shot down across the Pyrenees to Spain. Our escape trail was called ‘the Comet’ because we moved so swiftly.”
More than half a century later, that’s all he would say. “You must have some incredible stories.”
“We did what we had to do. It was a time of man’s worst inhumanity to his fellow man. It must never happen again.” He placed his hand on mine. “Enough sad talk. You said you had something to ask me, ma chère?”
“Let’s go to the barrel room,” I said. “I’ll get a thief so we can sample last year’s Cab. I’d like your opinion of how it’s developing. After that I want to show you the Washington bottle.”
“I would like to see that wine,” he said. “And an aperitif would be nice.”
The parking lot was empty. Frankie and Gina had closed the tasting room since it was after four. Quinn’s El was gone. A few days ago Frankie asked what I planned to do about planting fall flowers in the border gardens and in the barrels and hanging baskets in the courtyard. Sera had always taken care of it, but now that she was in Mexico nothing had been done. The summer impatiens, petunias, salvia, and geraniums looked tired, thinned out, and faded.
“I don’t know what to do,” I’d said to Frankie. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
She’d waved a garden flyer under my nose. “Leave it with me. Okay if I make some changes, or do I have to do what Sera did?”
“You can do whatever you like.”
She must have taken care of it this afternoon because when Pépé and I walked into the courtyard, the hanging baskets spilled over with yellow and white winter pansies and the halved wine barrels were brilliant with yellow, rust, and burnt orange mums. The surprise was the scarecrow, dressed as a farmer, except for the Hawaiian shirt, which she’d obviously pinched from Quinn. He sat on a hay bale next to the old Civil War cannon that was said to have been fired in the Battle of Middleburg. At the base of the cannon and the hay bale, Frankie had placed more pumpkins and mums. I could have kissed her. The courtyard looked wonderful.