The Chardonnay Charade (10 page)

She spoke with such passion and longing that I wondered when the last time had been that some young man had ignited her flame into a blaze. I opened my mouth to speak when she put her glasses on and the old Thelma, with her va-va-voom persona, was back.

She cleared her throat. “Randy reminds me a little of my Tré.”

“Who?” Maybe she did have a boyfriend.

“Tré. He plays Dr. Lance Tarantino on
Tomorrow Ever After.
Such a nice young man, even if he does have to pretend he’s a serial killer. Even so, he’s got all the women in Silver Ridge just throwing their-selves at him. You ought to watch that show, Lucille. It’s just so
real.
These people are like family to me.”

“I’m sure they are,” I said gently. “Did you ever talk to Randy about Georgia?”

“I have my way of finding things out, but I never asked Randy direct, you understand. And Georgia…well.” She pursed her lips. “My store’s not classy enough for someone wears those Manolo Blanket shoes. She almost never came by.”

“When’s the last time Randy came in to pick up his mail?”

“Saturday morning,” she said promptly.

“We haven’t seen him at the vineyard since the fund-raiser Saturday night. Some people think he might have gone fishing.” Like I was doing right now.

Thelma rocked some more in her chair and regarded me thoughtfully. “Why, no, he hasn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he would have told me. He gets all those catalogs and such about guitars and music and what have you. I swear that boy’s on more mailing lists than I am. Fills that itty-bitty mailbox right up, so I put everything in a special place for him. He’s right regular about collectin’ it, too. If he’s not coming in for a few days, he’s pretty considerate about letting me know.”

“So where do you think he is?”

She stood up and began polishing imaginary spots off the spotless glass cabinet. “I wish I knew,” she said. “I really wish I knew.”

“If you hear from him, will you let me know? I’m concerned about him, too.”

“I’ll do some pokin’ around,” she said, “and see what I can find out. Everyone just seems to bare their souls to me, Lucille, so if there’s any news, you can be sure I’ll know about it.” She paused and added, “Now, keep me posted on that nice Mr. Dunne.”

“Mick Dunne? The English terrorist? I doubt I’ll see him except at Georgia’s funeral. He’ll be gone in a few days.”

Thelma put her hands on her hips. “Don’t you go mocking me, child. And you’ll see plenty of him, believe you me. Told me he’s planning on movin’ here. He’s looking to buy a nice piece of property. A vineyard.”

“A
vineyard
? Are you sure?”

“’Course I’m sure. I have a memory like a steel-trap door.”

“He seems to have confided in you quite a lot.”

“I told you. It’s my God-given way with people.” She grinned, raising one painted-on eyebrow flirtatiously. “I happen to have a particularly good repertory with men.” She glanced at the clock above the cash register. “Lordy, will you look at the time? I missed the first five minutes of my show. I gotta scoot, honey. Be seein’ you.”

She was gone before I got to the front door. When I climbed back in the Mini and picked up my mobile phone from the console, I saw three missed calls and a message. I punched a button. All of the missed calls—within minutes of each other—were from Quinn.

I listened to the message. He was shouting. “Where in the hell are you? As soon as you get this, get over to Catoctin General. Hector just left here in an ambulance. He had a heart attack. It doesn’t look good. I’m on my way there now and I hope I’m not too late.”

On the few occasions since my accident when I have walked through the entrance to a hospital—especially Catoctin General—I get a lump in my throat as though I’m trying hard not to cry. When the door hisses shut behind me, my heart starts to hammer in my rib cage and my breath comes short. It is in these moments of panic laced with dread that I understand that I am not done grieving for what might have been.

Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, I am perfectly fine dealing with my physical disability. But I have not been able to confront my invisible injury—that it is impossible for me ever to have children. I do not speak about it. Most people know me well enough not to ask. But something about being in a hospital brings it all back up, like bile.

I went straight to the emergency room. Obviously I wasn’t too far behind Quinn because I could see him, oddly refracted through multiple glass doors, talking to someone at the reception desk. I came up and touched his arm.

He turned to me. “The ambulance just got here. They’re bringing him inside. We have to wait.”

The receptionist, a large man wearing a pale yellow shirt and blue jean overalls, looked over the top of his glasses at us. “Yes, miss?”

“We’re here to see Hector Cruz,” I said.

“Only family members allowed in the ER,” he said.

“She’s his niece.” Quinn hooked a thumb in my direction. “I’m his nephew.”

The man’s face never changed expression. “That’ll be fine. I’ll call you. Please have a seat.”

The waiting room had the cozy warmth and appeal of all institutional places—it could as easily have been an airport or the DMV. Molded plastic chairs locked together in rows with an aisle down the middle, all facing an enormous television set that blared the latest news from CNN. Two magazines.
Sports Illustrated
predicting who was going to win last year’s Super Bowl and a well-thumbed copy of
Car and Driver.

Quinn and I sat next to each other in two of the plastic chairs. “Niece and nephew?” I said.

“Well, we aren’t his kids. What’s left?”

“Nothing, I guess. So how did it happen?” I propped my cane against the chair next to mine.

“We were in the barrel room getting ready to top off the Pinot Noir. All of a sudden he grabbed his chest. I called 911 right away and Manolo went to get Sera. She looked like the world just ended when she saw Hector, but she kept it all together and never stopped talking to him until the ambulance came. They let her ride with him.”

“How long did it take to show up?”

“Too long.” He ran a hand through his long, unruly hair so I could see the furrow lines in his forehead, deep as canyons. His face was pinched with worry. When I first met him he’d worn his salt-and-pepper hair in a military brush cut. Then his girlfriend—now ex-girlfriend—decided she liked it long when she found out he had naturally curly hair. So he’d let it grow out into an untidy mop that always made me think of an unmade bed. After she moved out I figured he’d cut it again, but he hadn’t. Frankly, I liked it better long, too, though I’d never told him.

“Thank God I had some aspirin in the lab,” he added. “We got him to take that and maybe it helped.”

“He’s been working too hard. I told you he didn’t look too good the other day. I wish we hadn’t needed him to help out the night of the second freeze.”

“Yeah, then he insisted on taking those tarps off the new fields yesterday.”

I sat up straight. “He did
what
? I thought that was Manolo and César and the others. How could you let him do that?”

His voice rose. “What do you think, he asked my permission? You know him. He does what he wants.”

“Well he
can’t.
And you should have stopped him!”

He sat forward and steepled his hands like he was praying, resting his forehead against them. “I know. Lay off, will you? I feel bad enough.”

“We never should have used methyl bromide on those fields to begin with.”

“Oh, God. Don’t even go there.”

I ignored him. “Besides everything else, it depletes the ozone. I don’t want to use anything that toxic ever again. There’s got to be something more environmentally friendly that we can use instead.”

“Look, I heard about your tree-hugging days, so I know where this is going.” He sat up and glared at me. I knew he was talking about the work I’d done for an environmental group in Washington after I graduated from college. Back then—before my accident—I’d been law-school-bound. My life changed forever that rain-wrecked night the car slammed into the wall at the entrance to the vineyard.

Quinn turned toward me and smacked the side of one hand into the palm of the other to emphasize his words. “There is no alternative that works as well or we would have used it. I hate to break it to you, but we live in a chemical world. Look at Hector. You think a group hug and chanting prayers with lighted candles is going to save him? I don’t know about you, but I’m praying like hell they give him every goddam drug in the hospital pharmacy.”

“That’s not the point—”

“If you don’t like the way I run things, then hire another vintner.” The iciness in his voice meant I’d hit the trip wire that put us in dangerous territory. “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding someone who thinks it’s not moronic to put soap shavings and human hair all over the fields to keep away deer and crows. And I can probably find myself a vineyard where the owner is a realist who wants—someday—to turn a profit.” He sat back in his plastic seat with such force the row of chairs jumped and my cane bounced and landed on the Astroturf carpet.

It had been a long time since we’d had an argument this bad. If we kept it up—especially in the taut emotional setting of the ER waiting room—we’d cross lines we never meant to cross. And knowing the two of us, we’d leave no path that led back to compromise or reason.

He’d just thrown down the gauntlet with that threat to leave. Again. It would be stupid for me to pick it up, especially with Hector here in the hospital. I needed him right now. We couldn’t leave things like this between us.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I’m upset about Hector, so I’m probably overreacting to everything. It wasn’t fair what I said about you trying to keep Hector from removing those tarps. I apologize.”

I didn’t expect him to say “Me, too,” but I did think he would at least be gracious enough to acknowledge an olive branch. Instead, he got up and went over to the television, punching buttons until a baseball game appeared on the screen. After that, we sat together in stony silence and watched the Nationals slug it out with the Mets.

I leaned back and closed my eyes. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I jerked upright in the cramped seat. Sera stood behind me, pale and anxious. “Lucie,” she said. “Sorry to wake you, but the doctor said you can see him for a few minutes. He wants to talk to you.”

I rubbed my eyes. The television set now showed talking heads and the logo of a sports network. The baseball game was over. “What time is it? Where’s Quinn?”

She looked around. “I don’t know. Maybe he went to get a cup of coffee or probably he went for a smoke. And it’s seven o’clock. I’m sorry you had to wait so long.”

“Don’t be silly. How is he?”

“Resting. He needs to stay here for at least two days, maybe more. The doctor told him he was lucky this time. But his heart is not good. Come. He is anxious to see you.”

The receptionist pressed a buzzer from somewhere below his desk and a set of double doors swung open. My hands were clammy and my chest felt tight. The door to Hector’s room, just off the main nurses’ station, was ajar. Sera went in first and gestured for me to follow. Hector was breathing through an oxygen mask, and some kind of intravenous drip hung next to him with multiple tubes that were taped, with lots of gauze, to one of his hands. The display on his EKG was turned toward us and to me it looked like his heart was now doing all the right things. My breathing grew more normal.

“Hey,” I said softly. “How are you? You gave us a bad scare, you know? Why don’t you take it easy here for a few days and get some rest? You’ll be home in no time.”

He moved his head from side to side. “No.” His voice sounded weak and far away.

“Sure you will…” I smiled hopefully.

“My heart is worn out,
chiquita.
The doctor told me I cannot work anymore with the vines.”

“I know that,” I said. “But you can be the
jefe
like you’ve always been, and keep an eye on the men. Manolo will do all the heavy physical work from now on. If you just coach him, he knows…”

“Not Manolo.” As weak as he was, there was a steeliness in his voice.

I said, surprised, “César? I’m not sure he’s—”

“No. Bonita. I want her to take my place. She just turned twenty-one. She’s ready. Promise me.”

His only daughter. I hadn’t seen it coming.

Bonita was supposed to be getting her degree in enology from the University of California at Davis, probably the top place in the country to study the business of wine making and growing grapes. But I’d heard differently about what she was really studying.

Another time or place and I would have made a plausible case why I couldn’t do this, why I shouldn’t do it. Though I loved him more than I’d loved my own father, I was stunned that he would wrap that devotion around my neck like a noose, but maybe I should have known that blood was blood. I glanced at Sera, whose expression was benignly inscrutable. They had discussed this already, right before she asked me to come see him.

I shot her a miserable look, then took a deep breath and made myself say calmly, “I thought she was going to stay in California after she graduated and work out there. Besides, she’s only finished her junior year. She has another year to go.”

“She dropped out last semester. Said school was boring. You know kids. So she’s been working as a waitress out in Collyfornia. We told her we want her to come home.” He glanced at Sera, who nodded. “We think it will be good to have her here again where we can keep an eye on her. She will pull her weight,
mi hija.
” For a man on oxygen and a heart monitor, he suddenly sounded pretty tenacious.

“I would really prefer someone with a degree, Hector…”

“I left school when I was eleven years old, Lucita. Bonita is smart. She will learn.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want the job.”

“I will take care of that. But first I want your word.”

“Why?” I picked at the sheet on his hospital cot, fiddling with it so I didn’t have to look into those dark brown eyes and let him see in mine the betrayal I felt. “Why are you making me promise this? It’s not going to work. I need someone who can do all the physical—”

“Yes or no? Give her one year. If it doesn’t go well, then let her go.”

“One year?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said dully. “She has one year.”

“You won’t regret it, Lucita.” He grasped my hand.

I already did. But I just held his tightly and said nothing.

It did not go down well when I told Quinn.

“So now I’ve got to take care of her, too?” He sounded disgusted as we left the hospital, heading for the parking lot. “Come on, Lucie. I can’t believe you agreed to do this.”

I ignored the “too.” “I didn’t have any choice. He and Sera ambushed me when I walked into his hospital room,” I said. “He was lying there on oxygen with tubes coming out of him and that damn machine beeping every few seconds. What could I do? Say no and then he’d have another heart attack? Let’s talk about it in the morning, okay? Why don’t we go home? It’s been a horrible day.”

“You go home.” He was curt. “I need a drink.”

“Where are you going?”

“Mom’s. See you tomorrow.”

He wasn’t talking about visiting his mother. Mom’s Place was a nightclub on the way to Bluemont, run by Vinnie Carbone, a guy I’d gone to high school with. Vinnie ran a low-budget, low-life operation, particularly when it came to the nearly nonexistent costumes for his waitresses and the dancers who swung around poles onstage. The joke about that particular strip joint was that all the men who hung out there told their wives or girlfriends they were going to “Mom’s,” which sounded fine. The first time.

A few seconds later the headlights of the El slashed my rearview mirror as he sped out of the parking lot.

I drove home and had my own mad-at-the-world drink.

It didn’t help.

Kit called the next morning as I was leaving the house for the winery. “Want to meet me for lunch?” she asked. “Got a couple of things I want to run by you about Randy Hunter.”

“Has he turned up?”

“Nope. Bobby says he’s now a person of interest in Georgia’s murder investigation.”

“So they’re not focusing on Ross anymore?”

“Ross isn’t off the hook, either, sweetie. Pick me up at my office. How about lunch at Tuskie’s at twelve-thirty?” she said. “And I heard about Hector. I’m so sorry.”

The El Camino was already in the parking lot when I pulled in. Next to it was a black Corvette with a license plate that read “Boneeta.”