“Mon Dieu.” He put his arm around me. “Show me.”
“I’m not sure you should see—”
“Ma petite,” he said, “I have seen more than you can imagine in my lifetime. Let’s go.”
Like me, he pulled the lapel of his jacket over his nose and mouth when we got close enough to the putrid smell. He knelt by Nicole and examined her.
“She’s still fully clothed so it seems she was not raped,” he said, “but she was certainly beaten.”
I shuddered. Nicole was tough, though she looked like an angel. I bet she’d fought back at her killer. “We need to call 911. But first I have to tell Quinn.”
“First you must call the sheriff.” He sounded firm. “Before you tell anyone.”
“Quinn’s her ex-husband. He should know—”
“Lucie! You know as well as I do he will be a suspect.”
“Quinn did not kill Nicole, Pépé. He did not! I have to tell him about this—in person. Otherwise he’ll find out from the sheriff and he’ll know I didn’t come to him first.”
Pépé moved his tongue around in his mouth like he was probing for a toothache. His eyes never left my face. “You care very much for him, don’t you?”
“Of course, I do. He works for me.”
“You know that is not what I meant.” His stare was unwavering, but I wasn’t going to budge. “All right. Tell him. But I will stay here with this poor woman while you do that. She should not be left alone as carrion for the vultures.”
I called Quinn as I drove toward the winery. “Where are you?”
“Barrel room. Why?”
“Meet me in front of the villa, will you?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
I hung up without answering. It was going to be hard enough to face him in person.
“What is it?” he said when he saw me. Something flickered in his eyes and for a moment, I wondered if he didn’t already know what I was going to say and Pépé had been right to be suspicious.
I told him in simple words. His eyes grew dark but they stayed locked on mine. “My grandfather is with her. I wanted to tell you first but we need to call the sheriff right away.”
I didn’t know what reaction I expected from him—grief, rage, shock. Whatever he felt, he sealed it inside himself and said in a monotone voice that unsettled me more than if he’d been angry or violent, “Then let’s call and get back to your grandfather.” He took my arm. “I’ll drive. You call. Let’s go.”
I hooked my cane on my free arm and pulled my phone out of my jacket pocket again. “You all right?”
“Yup.”
I called 911.
When we got there he jumped out of the Mini and ran ahead of me to where Pépé still watched over Nicole. He knelt, then touched his fingers to his forehead like he was beginning to make the sign of the cross or else shielding his eyes from the horrific sight. By the time I reached the two of them, he was standing again and speaking in a low voice to my grandfather. Still emotionless.
“I appreciate you telling me before the sheriff shows up,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll have a few questions for me. The ex is always a suspect.”
Pépé’s eyes met mine briefly.
“You didn’t do it,” I said. “They’ll find whoever did.”
The wind had a knifelike edge to it in the waning daylight hours. Clouds whited out the mountains so they were nearly invisible against the colorless sky. Pépé tucked his hands under his armpits and I turned up my jacket collar. As near as I could tell Quinn, lost in his own world, wouldn’t have noticed if it started raining locusts.
In the distance came the wail of sirens.
“This is not going to be good,” Quinn said.
“No,” I said, “it isn’t.”
It was nearly midnight by the time Nicole’s body was lifted into the medical examiner’s van. I watched it drive off into the darkness, taillights bumping and jouncing on the rutted dirt road. Earlier Quinn, Pépé, and I had been separated and questioned. It didn’t take long before Pépé was allowed to return to the house. He wanted to stay with me, but he’d also been sneezing for the last hour and I worried that he could catch his death out here in the night air.
“Go home,” I said. “An officer will drive you. Make yourself something hot to eat and I’ll join you when I can.”
Finally he agreed.
Bobby Noland showed up just as Pépé left and took me aside. “We’d like permission to search your farm,” he said. “Including the winery. Barns, sheds, the whole ball of wax.”
“Why the winery?” I asked.
“Killer probably did it here somewhere.” He took a pack of gum out of his pocket and offered it to me.
I shook my head. To be honest, it hadn’t occurred to me that Nicole might have been at the vineyard—alive—before she was murdered.
“You don’t think she was brought to this place after she was dead?” I asked.
“Now why would someone strangle her, then lug her dead body all the way out here when they could dump her anywhere in the county?” He tucked the gum into his mouth. “Hell, yeah. I think it’s a very good possibility.”
“She was strangled?”
“Looks that way.”
“You’re saying someone who works here might have done it?”
“I’m not saying anything. Do you think someone who works here might have done it?” He blew a bubble.
“Quinn didn’t kill her,” I said.
He popped the bubble with a smack. “I didn’t bring up Quinn,” he said. “You did. Something you want to tell me?”
“Look, we have people in and out of here every day buying wine. On weekends during apple season they take this road to the orchard. The Goose Creek Hunt held a meet here yesterday. That’s a lot of cars and people coming and going,” I said.
“We’ll talk to everybody who came here to hunt, you can be sure of that. But I still think there’s a reason her body was left here.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Which is why I want to search your place. Are you gonna give me permission or not? I can always come back with a warrant.”
“You’ve got permission,” I said. “And you won’t find anything.”
“Maybe yes,” he said. “Maybe no.”
Pépé was sipping a glass of Armagnac and smoking a Boyard when I got back to the house.
“What happened after I left?” he asked.
“Bobby Noland thinks she might have been killed at the vineyard because we found her body here. They’re going to search the place.”
“That seems logical if that is what they believe.”
“It means they believe Quinn did it.”
“It doesn’t mean anything until they find something. And if he is innocent he has no worries.” He reached for the bottle of Armagnac. “A drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“Go to him.”
“What?”
“Go see Quinn, Lucie. It’s what you want to do.”
“Will you be all right if I go?”
“I think I can manage for one evening without you, mon ange.” His eyes were kind, but concerned. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
I kissed the top of his head and he patted my arm. “Que le Bon Dieu te portes bien,” he said.
I hoped God was listening to my grandfather because I was going to need all the help I could get.
A light shone in the living room window of Quinn’s cottage as I pulled up next to the El Camino. I sat in my car and stared at the house. Coming here was a mistake. Maybe I should just go home and leave him—
He tapped on the car window and I jumped. I hadn’t heard him come up.
He opened my door. “You waiting for a better parking place? Or did you think you’d sit out here all night and watch my house in case I make a run for it?”
“You scared the wits out of me. I never saw you come out of the house.”
“That’s because I went for a walk.” I thought he slurred his words slightly. “On your way home from the crime scene?”
“No. I came by to see if you were okay.”