The Viognier Vendetta wcm-5 Page 3

  Olivia Tarrant cut me off. “I know that. She should have been back here two hours ago. I can’t reach her anywhere and she’s not answering her phone. I spoke to Dr. Shelby. He told me she kept her taxi waiting while she picked up a package for Sir Thomas and Lady Asher. Rebecca didn’t spend ten minutes there.”

  I opened the door wider and gestured to the room. “I don’t know what to tell you, but she’s not here, either.”

  “May I?” Olivia sailed past me before I could answer.

  She walked over to one of the two windows overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue and pulled the sheer privacy curtain aside as though she expected to find Rebecca hiding there. I wondered if she planned to look under the beds as well.

  “You were with her before she left for Georgetown?” She didn’t turn around.

  “Yes.”

  “When was that?” She released the curtain and faced me.

  “I met her at one o’clock at the Lincoln Memorial. We did some sightseeing.”

  “What time did she leave?”

  “I don’t know. Probably around two, maybe a little before. I didn’t check the time.”

  “Did she say anything else, about where she might go?”

  In a moment, I figured Olivia Tarrant would read me my rights. “No.”

  She fiddled with her phone some more, turning it over and over. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell Lady Asher.”

  “Maybe Rebecca met someone for coffee or a drink afterward.”

  The winged eyebrows arched in annoyance. “First of all, she was supposed to return directly here. Second, if that’s what she did then she shouldn’t have turned off her phone.”

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m not Rebecca or Lady Asher. Go tell them.”

  Her mouth dropped open, then she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. But you have no idea how valuable that package she retrieved is.”

  I don’t have a good poker face. Everyone tells me that. I tried, anyway, to look like I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Rebecca is very responsible. I’m sure everything’s fine and she’ll show up any minute.”

  Olivia Tarrant crossed her arms, sizing me up. “How well do you know her?”

  Right now I could have told her I wasn’t so sure anymore and that would be the truth. Instead I said, “Do you always ask so many questions?”

  For the second time she looked taken aback. “I suppose I do. It’s part of my job. You can’t imagine how many people want my boss’s time and attention … and money. It’s my responsibility to know who he’s dealing with.”

  She seemed to relish the power of her position as gatekeeper and all-roads-pass-through-me. Sir Thomas may have made the Forbes list of billionaires every year for the past decade and was well-known for his philanthropy, but he still put his pants on one leg at a time just like every other man I knew. I wasn’t as impressed with him as she was.

  “I don’t want any of those things and I’m an old friend of Rebecca’s. She invited me to be her guest for the weekend.”

  “You’re in investment banking as well?”

  “I own a vineyard.”

  She did a double take and said, “So you flew in from the West Coast?”

  I hate it when people think the only place anyone makes wine in America is California.

  “I drove here from Atoka, Virginia. It took me about an hour,” I said.

  “Atoka,” she repeated. “Is that near Middleburg or Upperville?”

  “It’s in between. Why do you ask?”

  “Sir Thomas’s brother just bought an estate there. Upperville, I think it was.”

  “He’s moving to Virginia?”

  “No.” Her smile was tolerant. “It’ll be a weekend place when he’s not at one of his other homes.”

  Her phone rang before I could reply.

  “Yes, sir?” Olivia turned away from me and walked back to the window. “No, I’m sorry. She’s not in her suite, either. Yes, sir. Right away.”

  She tapped her phone and I heard the click of a disconnected call.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  “That was Sir Thomas?”

  She ignored the question and walked to the desk, bending over to write something on a hotel notepad. She tore off the page and handed it to me.

  “My number. Please call me if you hear from Rebecca. And for God’s sake, tell her to call me and get the hell back here,” she said. “I’ll see myself out.”

  I folded the paper and threw it on the desk. Somehow I didn’t think I’d be calling Olivia Tarrant.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon reading a book on canopy management—pruning, spraying, and how often to do it—and trying not to glance up at the door to the suite every five minutes as though I expected Rebecca to waltz in with some breezy tale of a drink with another friend in Georgetown.

  Where was she?

  The book wasn’t a page-turner, but I forced myself to concentrate because it was a subject I needed to know more about. A lot of people think owning a vineyard means living a glamorous life of days spent wandering among the grapevines sipping champagne and admiring God’s handiwork. The reality is that it’s backbreaking, mind-numbing, tedious work, often in withering heat or the damp chill of a wine cellar. During harvest, we put in eighteen-hour days for weeks on end. Tempers are short because no one gets much sleep and we’re usually racing against the clock and the weather. A good day is when only a few things go wrong. As for glamour, I wouldn’t like to say how much scrubbing it took to get most of the dirt out from under my fingernails before I showed up here today. Dark red nail polish did the rest. Luckily, my clothes concealed the Technicolor bruise on my thigh from banging into a metal rack when one of the five-hundred-gallon wine barrels slipped in the middle of turning it. That said, I love what I do.

  By six o’clock Rebecca still hadn’t turned up. I tried her number one more time and it again went to voice mail. No point leaving a third message. Next I called Quinn Santori, my winemaker, to see how things had gone at the vineyard today. This time of year we were gearing up for spring, which meant the beginning of weeding and planting new vines. For a few more weeks, though, it would still be relatively quiet in the winery until we began bottling in May. Lately we’d been doing wine trials—blending wine in varying ratios from different barrels and stainless-steel tanks to decide how we’d make the wine we eventually bottled.

  Quinn and I didn’t see eye to eye on this—in fact, lately, we didn’t seem to agree on much of anything. Eight months ago we broke our long-established rule of not mixing personal and professional relationships and had gone to bed together. Foolishly, I thought we could handle what happened the next morning and the mornings and days after that.

  He was a passionate and exciting lover, and reliving that first night and the handful of others that followed, still made my face go hot. Then in December his mother passed away in California. As far as I knew, she was the only family Quinn had left since he kept a monastic vow of silence about his life before he came to work at Montgomery Estate Vineyard three years ago. My father had hired him shortly before his death without doing much of a background check. Quinn never bothered to fill in any of the blanks.

  He remained in San Jose for a month after his mother’s funeral, leaving Antonio, our new farm manager, and me to run the place. When he returned from California, something was different. He was different. Not quite distant, but remote, I guess. Or restless maybe. By unspoken mutual agreement, he stopped showing up at my house at night anymore. We never discussed the reason, but the fallout was that we didn’t spend much time in each other’s company during the day, either, unless it was business. Personally, I was miserable. I had no idea how he felt.

  His phone, like Rebecca’s, went to voice mail.

  “Hi, it’s me,” I said, after his message. “Just checking in. No need to return the call unless something’s come up. See you tomorrow.”

  Then I took a long shower and go
t ready for the gala.

  At six forty-five Olivia Tarrant knocked on my door again. She’d gone from buttoned-up to siren, glamorous in a red satin gown with a plunging neckline. A black cashmere evening coat and a black sequined purse were draped over one arm. This time she wore plenty of makeup—theatrical smoky eyes, rouged cheeks, and that Madonna red lipstick that made her look like some doll on the cover of a ’50s pulp novel—except for the phone that she still clutched in one hand and the vexed expression on her face.

  “I guess you haven’t heard from Rebecca,” I said, “or you wouldn’t be here. You look very nice.”

  She looked me over and seemed surprised by what she saw. My own dress came from an upscale consignment shop called Nu-2-You where I occasionally bought clothes since I always needed something for one of the many formal parties and charity events we hosted at the vineyard. This dress was my favorite—silk black-and-gray large floral print, low, square-cut neckline, beaded shoulder straps, and a deeply pleated skirt that swirled gracefully when I moved.

  “That dress,” Olivia said, “is absolutely stunning. And no, we haven’t heard from her. We’re contacting cab companies in D.C. to see if we can find out who picked her up and where they dropped her off.”

  “Why didn’t you ask that professor what cab company she used?”

  She pursed her lips. “Are you kidding? He couldn’t even remember the color. Said he didn’t really pay attention.”

  “What about contacting the D.C. police?”

  “Sir Thomas has his own security people looking into this. He isn’t ready to involve the police yet. Rebecca’s actually more AWOL than missing. So far.”

  “What about the fact that she picked up something quite valuable?” I asked. “She’s nearly four hours late now. Maybe someone followed her and robbed her. I know Rebecca. She’d put up a fight.”

  Olivia didn’t look happy that I appeared to have some knowledge of why Rebecca had gone to Georgetown. I had a feeling she was dying to ask me how much I knew. Instead she changed the subject.

  “Our people are checking all the hospitals. If she’s anywhere, we’ll find her.” She pulled on her evening coat. “I have a car waiting downstairs to take me to the National Building Museum. You’re welcome to join me if you’d like.”

  I didn’t feel much like going to the gala under the circumstances, but Olivia and Sir Thomas would be the first to hear if their security people found Rebecca, and that’s where they’d be. It was a quick ride from the Willard to the Building Museum—though I still thought of it by its former name, the Pension Building—but Olivia, who never seemed to tire of asking questions, continued to quiz me about Rebecca.

  “How did you two meet?”

  “In college.”

  “What was she like back then?”

  “Smart, ambitious. Like she is now.”

  “She never talks about her family, but I have a feeling she didn’t come from money.” Her tone of voice implied that this was a major character flaw.

  “Oh, really?” I’d had enough of being grilled and Rebecca’s private life was none of her business. “You know, the only person we haven’t talked about since we met is you. How’d you get this job, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I … well.” She sat up straighter. “I’ve known Sir Thomas all my life. My father manages several private investment funds and he and Sir Thomas do business together. When my predecessor moved to our London office five years ago, he asked Daddy if I’d be interested in the position.”

  I’d never called my father anything but “Leland,” which is what he wanted me to call him. He wasn’t a daddy kind of dad.

  “Thomas Asher Investments is a family business,” Olivia went on, emphasizing the word “family.”

  “Sir Thomas and Lady Asher take care of us like we’re their children. As a result we’re a pretty tight-knit group—we party together, take vacations together, that sort of thing. That’s why we’re so well run and successful. Everyone’s incredibly loyal to them. Outsiders just don’t get that. Sir Thomas watched me grow up and he knew I’d understand the world he lives in. Knew I’d understand what would be involved in working as closely with him as I do.”

  She was starting to sound like an infomercial … or a cult member.

  “Rebecca is part of the family, too?”

  Olivia hesitated. “Of course she is. She, ah, … well, yes.”

  Maybe only because Rebecca was Tommy Asher’s protégée. It didn’t sound like much love lost there. Perhaps Olivia was jealous.

  Her phone rang and she turned away to answer it. I heard a series of “uh-huhs” as our driver pulled up in front of the redbrick Pension Building. Though it was a full city block long, the curbs were choked with limousines, taxis, and cars with official or diplomatic license plates. Police directed traffic as men with wires in their ears scanned the crowd.

  Then Olivia said, sounding grim, “Sure, I’ll tell him.”

  She disconnected.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Rebecca’s cab dropped her off in front of some restaurant in Georgetown after she retrieved Sir Thomas’s package,” she said. “Near the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and P Street, wherever that is. The cabbie said she stood there as though she were waiting for someone to pick her up.”

  I thought about Rebecca and her trysts at school with Connor. Both of them had managed to keep their affair off the radar for more than a year until someone spotted her slipping into a motel room and recognized his car in the parking lot with its faculty-parking sticker.

  “What time?” I asked.

  “Around three.” She checked the clock on her phone. “That was four hours ago.”

  “Perhaps she’s still with her friend.”

  Olivia’s eyes flashed as she flounced out of the car. “Then she’s got a hell of a lot of explaining to do. A few of us are ready to kill her.”

  She sounded like she meant it literally. I wondered who else at Thomas Asher Investments was on the list of people who did not like Rebecca … and where she was and with whom on a cold, dark evening when she was supposed to be at her boss’s star-studded gala. The sleek black dress hanging in the closet in the Willard, her invitation to me to be her guest—Rebecca meant to be here.

  If she wasn’t, it was because something or someone had detained her. And I didn’t think it was willingly, either.

  Chapter 3

  The staid exterior of the Pension Building gave no clue that inside the Great Hall, with its massive Corinthian columns and double-tiered arcaded galleries lining the football-stadium-sized atrium, would be so spectacular. The galleries, columns, and an enormous terra-cotta fountain in the center of the hall were stage-lit a soft yellow. Pinpoint spotlights in jewel reds, yellows, or blues shone on hundreds of tables set for dinner with matching colored linens. The rest of the huge room was bathed in a burnished bronze light.

  An enormous screen hung behind a raised stage that had been erected between two columns. Currently the screen was dark and the stage empty, though it looked like the band had set up for later. If they wanted to host the opening ceremony for the Olympics or maybe the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor after we were finished, it would have been no problem.

  “I must find Sir Thomas.” Olivia shrugged out of her evening coat. “Get yourself a drink and mingle. There are seating charts on easels next to each of the bars, and staff will help you find your table. You’re sitting at Rebecca’s table with some of the other analysts from the firm. I checked.”

  “Thanks,” I said as an attendant in a tuxedo took my coat. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

  But she had already disappeared into the crowd, which seemed to swallow her up. I looked around hoping to catch someone’s eye, maybe find a companion to talk to. In my business, I meet strangers all the time and it’s my job to put them at ease, show them a good time. But Washington is a different kettle of fish. Here people are more interested in who they’re seen with than whet
her they’re enjoying themselves. When I worked for an environmental nonprofit the summer before my accident, I’d finally realized that the reason no one ever looked you in the eye when talking to you at a Washington cocktail party was that they were really looking over your shoulder in case someone more interesting or important came into view.

  Why had I come? Rebecca wasn’t here. Would Olivia notice if I left before dinner?

  “Lucie?”

  I turned around. Former senator Harlan Jennings, boyishly handsome in a tuxedo, stood there grinning at me, a roguish glint in his eyes that conveyed both gravitas and let’s raise hell.

  “I thought it was you.” He leaned forward and took my arm, brushing my cheek with his lips so I caught the scent of his musky aftershave mingled with the trace of another woman’s perfume. “You look absolutely beautiful in that dress. Not that cute roly-poly little girl I remember from visiting your parents’ winery when it first opened. You’re gorgeous, darlin’.”

  My heart gave a small leap. The days of the schoolgirl crush were over, but Harlan’s Irish charm and the promise of mischief in those bright blue eyes still seduced me. Vanity made me wish he’d forgotten my roly-poly era, but he was right that I’d changed. He, on the other hand, had not. The crow’s-feet and laugh lines had deepened, but otherwise he was magically unscathed by the years. Dark haired and handsome in a rugged, Kennedyesque way.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Glad you recognized me without the puppy fat. And just when I thought I didn’t know a soul here.”

  Harlan burst out laughing. “Stick with me. Let’s get a drink and I’ll introduce you to a few people. You shouldn’t be on your own tonight.”

  He held out his arm and I took it. “I’d like that. And speaking of the vineyard, why don’t you stop by with Alison? Come over some evening to watch the sunset on the terrace over a bottle of wine.”

  We walked toward one of the many bars that lined the room along the arcades.

  “That sounds wonderful.” He sounded wistful. “Lately I’ve seen more sunrises than sunsets I’m so busy with work. How’s life treating you now that you’ve taken over the winery?”