The Chardonnay Charade wcm-2 Page 7

  Georgia’s flashy Mercedes Roadster was the only car in the drive when I pulled in to Ashby. Ross opened the front door when I rang the bell, looking haggard but composed.

  “What have you brought?” He smiled tiredly as he kissed me. “Here, give me those. You wearing perfume? Smells kind of musky.”

  “It’s probably ‘eau de burned tire,’” I said. “We had another hard freeze last night in the vineyard. And this is dinner. Siri says you’ve been eating Chinese food for two days. Time for a change.”

  I followed him into the pristine kitchen and put the perishable items in the refrigerator. There was plenty of room. Nothing else in there except a bottle of Oregon Chardonnay, four beers, and some moldy cheese.

  “You went to too much trouble,” he protested.

  “I went to Safeway. It isn’t much, really. I got strawberries for dessert and asparagus to go with the steaks since they’re both in season. Are you growing your own penicillin in here?”

  He smiled that tired smile again. “Georgia and I didn’t eat at home much lately. She was always out campaigning and I…” He trailed off and looked at his hands. “I still can’t believe it.”

  “I have an idea,” I said briskly. “Why don’t I fix us a cup of tea?”

  “I have a better idea. Why don’t I fix us a drink? Come on. Stuff’s in the library.”

  The “stuff” looked like he’d gone to the state-run ABC store and bought one of everything. “What would you like?” he asked.

  “If it’s not too much trouble, a glass of that Chardonnay that was in the fridge. I’ll get it.”

  “I’ll get it,” he said. “You’re limping more than usual. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about a brace for that foot. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. And prop your foot up.”

  “I’m not limping,” I said. “And I don’t need a brace. Thanks, but I manage just fine.”

  He shook his head. “When you make up your mind about something, there’s no changing it, you know? I’ll get your wine.”

  Georgia had decorated the library, which doubled as Ross’s office, completely in black and white, including a faux zebra rug on the floor. The lone exception was the mahogany desk, which had a silver-framed cover-model photo of Georgia on one corner and an intriguing modern sculpture of a caduceus on the other. The rest of the desk was piled with medical journals, file folders, brochures from pharmaceutical companies, a stack of publicity announcements for the fund-raiser, and half a dozen dusty-looking books whose titles all related to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In the middle of the desk blotter was a plastic-encased piece of paper. Another Civil War document?

  I walked around and sat in his desk chair. The plastic sleeve contained a letter, written in pencil, but with the characteristic flourishes and swirls that belonged to a bygone era. One short paragraph on thick cream-colored paper, dated April 14, 1865.

  Dear Judah,

  I do not know when this will reach you, but I have only today learned from Surratt’s emissary that Harney was captured before his mission could be carried out. I have no reason to believe that our friend J. Wilkes Booth will not persevere in the manner of Ulrich Dahlgren.

  J. Davis

  Ross walked into the library with the opened bottle of Chardonnay while I was still at his desk.

  “I-I’m sorry,” I stammered, and stood up. “I couldn’t help reading it. Is this really a letter from Jefferson Davis?”

  He looked exasperated, but he didn’t seem too surprised that I’d snooped. “Yes, it is. Now go sit on the sofa and put that foot up. Here’s your wine.”

  He handed me the glass, then started fixing himself a martini at the bar. I had a feeling it wasn’t the first one today. Normally Ross wasn’t much of a drinker, but he’d been through a lot. Maybe if I got him talking about the letter it would get his mind off Georgia for a while.

  “Do you think ‘Judah’ is Judah Benjamin?” I asked. “Jeff Davis’s Secretary of War? I know Dahlgren was the Yankee who tried to blow up Richmond. I forget who Harney was except I think he was on our side.”

  Ross’s mouth twitched. His ancestors hadn’t been on our side.

  “Even after all these years I’m still impressed by how well Virginians know their history,” he said. “You’re mostly right, but by the time Judah Benjamin received that note, he was no longer the Confederate Secretary of War.” Ross emphasized the word “Confederate” ever so slightly. “He was Secretary of State. And Thomas Harney was a Confederate explosives agent sent to Washington to bomb the White House.”

  “Not until after the Yankees tried to destroy Richmond,” I said, “now that you mention it.”

  He picked up the cocktail shaker that he’d filled with vodka and a splash of vermouth, a wry expression on his face. “Supposedly Harney was following direct orders from Davis and Benjamin. By then Richmond had fallen, Davis had fled to Mexico, and Lee had already surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. The war was officially over.” He paused to shake his concoction. “Unfortunately for Harney, he was caught before he got near the White House. John Wilkes Booth heard about it and that’s supposedly what tipped him over the edge and made him decide to kill Lincoln himself.”

  “What about Dahlgren? Where does he fit in? He was already dead.”

  “Exactly. Killed while trying to stage that attack on Richmond.” Ross strained his martini into a glass, then dropped an olive into it. “But he had papers on him when they found his body. Orders to kill Davis and his entire cabinet, then burn the city. The Confederates knew Lincoln was so desperate to end the war he’d try anything. So they figured these were direct orders from Old Abe himself.”

  “I’ve heard that story,” I said. “That Lincoln had something to do with a plot to assassinate Jefferson Davis.”

  Ross sat down next to me and clinked his glass against mine. “Until now nobody’s ever been sure Davis didn’t want an eye for an eye. There’s always been speculation that he might have been involved in Lincoln’s assassination. This letter proves that he was. Especially if he got the news from Mary Surratt.”

  It was a major historical coup. If it were genuine.

  “No way,” I said. “Jeff Davis would never be involved in something like that. He wasn’t that kind of man.”

  “Lucie,” Ross said firmly, “he was.”

  I got up and went over to his desk, staring at the penciled note written on fine, thick paper. It looked old, all right. But it couldn’t be authentic. Could it?

  “I thought they had ink in those days.”

  “Of course they did. But Davis liked pencil.”

  “Look,” I said. “Mary Surratt was hanged for her role in Lincoln’s assassination. She had every reason in the world to confess that there was a plot. But she didn’t. Neither did anyone else who was hanged along with her. Same goes for John Wilkes Booth, who could have made a deathbed confession after those Union soldiers shot him at Garrett’s farm.”

  Ross fished the olive out of his glass. “None of that negates the fact that the letter proves Davis knew about the plot. At the very least.”

  “Have you told any of the Romeos about it? You’re really going to stir up a hornet’s nest, you know? Especially since a lot of them are Sons of Confederate Veterans or historical reenactors.”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Except for Siri and me, you’re the only other person who’s seen it. I’m sorry you’re so upset. But this is quite a historical find, you know.”

  I knew. “Where did you get it?”

  “An estate sale in Manassas. Behind a framed photograph of Mosby. I bought the photo and when I got home, I took out the picture to clean the glass. There it was. That’s why the paper looks so pristine. It obviously hasn’t been exposed to light for years.”

  “Ross,” I said, “are you absolutely positive that it’s the real thing? Jeff Davis was a good man who was just trying to do right by the South. Heck, when they came to his house to tell him that he’d been elected president of the Con
federacy, he was pruning bushes in his rose garden. He didn’t want the job, but he did it for the South.”

  He said brusquely, “I know you don’t want Davis’s image tarnished, but there’s always been speculation about this. Just no concrete proof, one way or the other. Now there is. I’ll get it authenticated by a third party, of course. But I know I’m right.”

  Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to get him talking about this. I tried to shift the conversation to safer ground. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I haven’t decided.” He still sounded annoyed. “Like you said, it’s bound to stir up a lot of controversy and right now…” He lifted his martini glass and drained what was left. “I’ve got to start planning Georgia’s funeral.”

  I went back to the sofa and sat next to him, laying my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have upset you more than you already are. I know you know what you’re talking about.” My voice grew unsteady. “Ross, I am so…so terribly sorry about what happened. I feel like it’s partially my fault that Georgia’s dead because we left that methyl bromide out where her killer could get to it.”

  For a long moment he played with the stem of his glass, twirling it between his fingers. “Thank you for saying that,” he said, finally. “But I don’t blame you for anything. You shouldn’t blame yourself, either.”

  “I want to know who did it,” I said. “I want to know what happened.”

  “We all want to know.”

  “Do you have any ideas?”

  “A lot of people aren’t sorry Georgia’s dead,” he said. “I’m under no illusion about that. She was a controversial and complicated woman. But as a matter of fact, I may know who killed her. I think he wrote her a letter. It arrived about an hour ago.”

  Chapter 6

  I watched him, stunned, as he walked over to a large bay window overlooking the swimming pool and the impeccably manicured gardens beyond. The underwater light in the pool had been turned on. Against the dusky blues of the twilit garden and the darker-hued sky, the brilliant turquoise water shimmered like a tropical jewel.

  “What do you mean, the killer wrote her a letter?” I asked.

  “Sometimes it’s the stupidest things.” He looked at me musingly. “I loved Georgia very much. As different as we were, I adored her.”

  “I know.” I knew better than to rush him. Ross took his time with his stories.

  He gestured to the Jefferson Davis letter. “Sometimes I get too caught up in my work. If I’m not at the clinic, I’m chasing down papers at an estate sale or on the phone with a historian or an auction house…you know how I can be.” He smiled ruefully. “I think Georgia got the idea to run for state senator because she wanted a project, a crusade…something to do since I wasn’t around that much. At first I was all for it. But then it turned out that we really never saw each other. And I think she was…” He paused, searching for words. “I think she was seeing someone else. It may not have been the first time, either.”

  I held the bowl of my wineglass with both hands. It would be good to have a drink to get through what was turning into an auto-da-fé. As though he read my thoughts, he walked over to the bar and picked up the Chardonnay bottle and held it up.

  “Yes, please.” I lifted my glass. “Do you know who it was?”

  He poured my wine and strained what was left in the cocktail shaker into his own glass. “I do now,” he said. “The delivery boy from the dry cleaner’s just dropped her clothes off. There was a plastic bag attached to one of the hangars because they’d found some personal effects in one of her pockets. Including this.”

  He pulled a small folded paper out of his pocket and passed it to me.

  Darling—I’m sorry about what happened and I know your mad. You know I didn’t mean it and I would never do anything to hurt you. Meet me Saturday night at our special place after the party. I can explain everything.

  No signature. I turned it over. Nothing written on the back.

  “Do you know who wrote it?”

  “My guess is Randy Hunter.” He looked deep into his martini glass as if he’d found the answer there. Then he raised his eyes and said steadily, “I, ah, had a pretty good idea that they were having an affair. All of a sudden we were getting groceries from that new store in Middleburg. All the time. I think Randy delivered them. And stuck around for his tip.”

  “Oh.”

  I thought of the box of condoms at the barn. If the police had told Ross about them, he wasn’t saying—and I didn’t want to bring that up.

  He added, “At least it gives somebody besides me a motive for killing her.”

  “You?” I said, startled. “What are you talking about? You were at the hospital delivering twins. That’s a rock-solid alibi.”

  “Unfortunately not.” He returned to the sofa and sipped his martini. “My patient wouldn’t go to the hospital, so I went to her boyfriend’s place. Marta Juarez and Emilio Mendez. Illegal and scared, the pair of them. Especially after Marta’s teenage son got involved in a gang fight a few days ago. The cops showed up, but the kid managed to get away, so he didn’t get picked up. Marta was afraid they might be looking for the boy, so after I delivered the twins, they bolted. I have no idea where they went.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Find them,” he said. “I have to or I’m in trouble.” He cocked his head. “I hear a car. That’s Siri…and Mick. Excuse me. I’d better get the door.”

  I heard Siri’s musical voice, caroling, “Here he is!” followed by a deep, well-bred British voice saying Ross’s name, then a murmured exchange. A few minutes later, the three of them walked into the study.

  “I’d like you to meet someone, Mick,” Ross was saying. “Lucie’s one of my patients, but she’s also a good friend. Lucie, meet Michael Dunne.”

  I’d met Ross’s friends before. Most of them were just like he was—low-key, reserved, a bit scholarly. Not Michael Dunne, who walked into the library like he owned the place—occupants included. His frank stare was unnerving. I stared back. Well dressed, sophisticated, urbane. And he knew it.

  I am always leery of spending much time in the company of men like that. You feel like a third wheel because you’re dealing with the life-sized ego that goes everywhere with Mr. Wonderful. Still, there was something arresting about those startling green eyes and the way they held mine.

  “It’s Mick,” he was saying. “I’ve heard so much about you, Lucie. Nice to finally meet you.” He took my hand in both of his.

  I’d never heard anything about him. I pulled my eyes and my hand away and glanced inquiringly at Ross. He wore the stricken expression of a deer in the headlights. Great, just great. What, exactly, had he told Casanova here?

  “Nice to meet you, too,” I said neutrally to Mick.

  “How about a drink, everyone? Mick? Siri? Lucie, there’s still some more wine left.” Ross didn’t fool anybody with the fake heartiness, but at least it worked as a subject-changer.

  “Lovely,” Mick was saying. “Great idea.”

  After two glasses of wine I did not want—or need—more alcohol. Mick Dunne unbalanced me and it seemed like a good idea to keep my wits about me. Or what was left of them.

  “How about if I start dinner and let you all have your cocktails?” I said. “If I have another glass of wine, we’ll never eat, and I’m sure Mick must be hungry after that flight.”

  I could tell, without looking, that he was still studying me.

  “I’ll help,” Siri volunteered immediately. “Let the boys talk.”

  “Who is he?” I asked when we were alone in the kitchen. “I never heard anything about him. He comes at you like a freight train. And it felt like he was mentally undressing me, the way he kept staring.”

  Siri blushed and ran a hand self-consciously through her hair. So he’d done it to her, too. “Yeah, he does give that impression, doesn’t he? He and Ross went to boarding school together. They were roommates for a year. Lost
touch, then hooked up again at some medical convention in Florida.”

  “Roommates? They’re like night and day.”

  “Ross says Mick used to be really shy.”

  “He’s not shy anymore,” I said. “When he walked into Ross’s office it felt like he sucked all the oxygen out of the room.”

  “I know what you mean, but he I think he’s harmless. The rich playboy act is part of his charm. Besides”—she raised an eyebrow—“he’s really good-looking.”

  “In a kind of aging-rock-star way, I suppose,” I said, “with that longish hair and too-perfect tan. Nice eyes, though. But I’ve kind of had it being around men who got shot with the testosterone gun too many times.”

  Siri grinned. “You mean Quinn?”

  “Quinn owns his own gun. Uses it daily.”

  It didn’t take long to get dinner ready. We ate in the dining room because the wind had picked up, making it too cool to eat on the terrace, though thankfully there were no freeze warnings tonight. I lit new candles in the silver candelabra and everyone helped bring the food and dishes to the table. Ross opened the dinner wine, a California Cabernet Sauvignon.

  “No Virginia wine tonight?” Mick asked, surprised.

  “Lucie brought the wine,” Ross said. “In fact, she brought the whole dinner.”

  “Why California?” Mick persisted. “Don’t you drink your own vintage?”

  “Of course,” I said, “but drinking too much of your own wine gives you what’s called a ‘cellar palate.’ We try a lot of different wines. We’re always analyzing bottles from other vineyards.”

  He picked up his glass and looked at it. “You’d analyze this?”

  “Sure. Test it, compare it to other Cabs. If I were home, I’d probably take the rest of the bottle to our lab so we could figure out what the winemaker did to it. What yeast was used, how much it was sugared, if anything was added in case the smell had gone funky…”