“Nice move,” I said.
“Where’d they go?” Mia asked.
“Over here.” Mason pointed under an end table. He stood up and peered at the spot he’d just indicated. “It’s too dark. Hand me that lantern, will you?”
Mia gave it to him. “Be careful or you’ll get lamp oil on yourself.”
He bent over cranelike and angled the light nearer to the floor. “If that doesn’t beat all.” He stood up and set the lamp back on the table. “Snake eyes.” He pulled a folded handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped his hands.
“What?” Eli said.
“A two. You rolled a two.” He refolded the handkerchief and stuffed it carefully back in his pocket.
“Lucie won?” Mia sounded incredulous.
“A three beats a two,” Mason said.
“Are you sure it’s a two?” Eli asked. “It’s pretty dark.”
“Check for yourself, son.” Mason looked levelly at my brother and, for a moment, I thought Eli actually might get down on his hands and knees and crawl under that end table. But if he did, it was as good as calling Mason a liar.
He shifted uncomfortably and looked away. “It’s okay. I’m sure you’re right.”
“Well, we’ll talk about all this later, children,” Mason stood and picked up the folder. “I’d best be getting home now.”
“Lucie and I’ll be talking about things, too,” Eli said, glancing at me.
“What’s going on?” Brandi, wide-eyed and alert, stood at the door to the veranda.
“Well, hello there, angel face. Nothing’s going on. Mason just stopped by for a drink.” Eli had jumped up at the sound of her voice. “Did you have a good nap?”
“I’m hot,” she said. “I want to go home.”
“Of course, princess. We’ll leave right away. I’ll bring the car up to the front door so you don’t have to walk too much.”
If he could have, I’m sure he would have driven it right on to the veranda so princess didn’t have to walk at all. I don’t know why it grated on me so much, but Eli’s transformation into the arche-typal touchy-feely sensitive male seemed about as genuine as those publishing house letters announcing you’ve just won $10 million. He hadn’t exactly been in touch with his feminine side when he dated Kit. Back then, his idea of a fun evening was for her to watch him play Formula 1 video games all night with the guys at one of the truck-stop restaurants on Route 29.
As he walked past me, he leaned over and said in a calm, low voice, “You need to be reasonable about all this, Luce. We’ll be talking.”
“I’m always reasonable,” I said quietly, but I could feel the skin prickle on the back of my neck.
“I’ve got to get something upstairs,” Mia said. “Then I’m going, too.”
We walked through the ovenlike house to the driveway. Mason got into a silver Mercedes. Brandi nodded a cool good-bye as Eli helped her into the Jag. A moment later Mia bounded outside.
“What did you get?” I asked curiously.
She blushed and discreetly slid a slim plastic case out of her pocket. Birth control pills. “I, um, forgot the other day. I need to start being more careful. See you.”
She pulled out of the driveway before the others, the red Mustang churning gravel as she sped down the road. I had nearly shut the front door when I heard Mason’s voice. I left it slightly ajar and listened.
“What are you going to do, son?”
“We’re selling.” Eli sounded completely confident. “Lucie was talking some sentimental crap about hanging on to the house, but I’m sure she’ll agree to sell the vineyard. It’s too much hard physical labor, especially for someone in her…well, you know.”
“So she’d still keep the house? You’d have to sell the land in two parcels,” Mason said.
“Nah, don’t you worry. She’ll change her mind. I can talk her into selling this albatross along with the vineyard in return for letting her stay in the place in France. She hasn’t got the money or the stamina to maintain it, especially the way it’s deteriorated. Hell, Doc Harmon told me she was exhausted when she insisted on walking from the cemetery over to the winery after Leland’s funeral. She’s real touchy when you bring it up but just look at her. She’s a cripple now. She needs to deal with it.”
I’d heard enough. Quietly, I closed the door.
It probably wasn’t the smartest decision in the world to try to hang on to the vineyard when Leland had left us nearly bankrupt. Our new vintner seemed like the kind of guy you’d hire as a bouncer at a night club. Eli was right that Highland House, neglected for years, needed repairs that were well beyond our bank balance.
The vineyard had not been a business with a bottom line for my mother and Fitz, as Eli now saw it. It had been a labor of love. It was part of the goût de terroir—the taste of the land. The blend of the tangible—grapes, soil, and sunlight—and the intangible, which came from the passion and personality of the winemaker who created it. People had been trying to grow grapes in Virginia since the Jamestown settlement when the House of Burgesses, the country’s first legislature, required every male over twenty to plant at least ten grape vines. Years later Jefferson wrote that we could make wines to rival the best European ones.
My mother had been excited by the renaissance in Virginia wine making that took place in the 1970s, among the first to see the possibilities of converting some of our acreage from growing hay to growing grapes. To give up now on her dreams, when our vines were just coming into their best production years, was unthinkable.
In France I had learned, of necessity, to take life slower, to measure time by seasons, not deadlines. A life that required me to fit into nature’s schedule, and not the other way around, held great appeal. More pragmatically, I had been educated by Philippe, on the rare occasions when he was home, in the useful skills of carpentry, plumbing, plastering, and tilework. On my own, I’d cleared the land around the farmhouse and replanted the gardens. I was not—as my brother believed—completely helpless or useless.
He’d changed since he married Brandi. That was clear. But less clear was how far he’d go to please her, where his loyalties now belonged.
He was still my brother. We shared parents, genes, a life history. To imagine him tangled in some twisted twenty-first-century version of a Greek tragedy so he could have gold-plated faucets on his bathtub was lunacy.
I went back to the veranda and stared at the star-filled night sky. My Chardonnay was tepid. I flung it into the garden and watched the drops sparkle in the yellow light of a citronella torch. Who else, besides Eli and me, had known Fitz was stopping by the winery last night?
Could he have brought Brandi home, then doubled back and confronted Fitz in the barrel room? He had a motive and opportunity—but also an alibi, thanks to his wife.
I blew out the candles and went inside. Eli was right that the house was uncomfortably warm and anyway, I was now too restless to sleep.
The little key that Fitz had given me last night was upstairs in my bedroom. I went upstairs and got it, running my thumb and forefinger over its notched edge. Like most everyone in Atoka, Fitz never bothered to lock the door to his house. Maybe I’d take a little drive over there and have a look around. He might not have told me everything he knew last night about who was pressuring Leland to sell.
Though if I discovered Eli was connected to this business, then what? I might learn soon enough how far he would go to get what he wanted. Now that the house belonged to me.
I’d just moved to the top of the list of people who stood in his way.
Chapter 8
I finally located the keys to Leland’s Volvo station wagon where I should have looked in the first place. In the ignition. The car probably qualified for antique vehicle license plates and it was clearly on its second trip around the numbers on the odometer. The last time I remember it reading eleven thousand miles, I’d been learning to drive.