“I don’t know who it was. It was just one car.” But it wasn’t drunk teenagers, either.
Joe returned with a fifty-pound bag of sugar slung over one shoulder and a large bucket of yeast. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Not at all,” I said quickly, as Quinn joined us carrying a tape measure, calculator, and a clipboard.
“Private conversation?” He pulled a wax crayon from behind his ear.
“Nope.” Hector said, glancing at me.
“Then let’s get the show on the road,” Quinn said.
I watched while Joe sugared the wine and Hector dumped the yeast into a bucket of distilled water. It hissed as it heated up, bubbling and foaming like witch’s brew. He poured it into the tank as I stirred the mix with a large paddle.
When we were finished Quinn and Hector set up more hoses for siphoning the wine into barrels. Almost as soon as we filled the casks and closed them, the wine began bubbling in the see-through air locks. The noise level in the room grew exponentially louder. Fermenting wine sounds like a roaring river.
“You all right, Lucie?” Hector joined Joe and me as we moved down the row, checking the air locks to make sure the seals were tight.
“I think it’s the CO2,” I said. “It’s making me dizzy.”
Quinn came up behind us. “We’re about done here. If you’re feeling light-headed, maybe you should take off. I don’t want you passing out and I don’t need you anymore.”
He moved on before I could reply. “Come on, chiquita,” Hector said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
He spoke to Quinn in Spanish, “I’ll take her home. Then I’ll be back.”
“Don’t bother. You’ve done enough. Joe and I can take care of what’s left.” He, too, spoke Spanish and I’d noticed it was their preferred language of communication.
When we got to the parking lot Hector said, “How you gonna get around without a car, Lucita? Sounds like the Volvo will be in the shop for a few days.”
“Rent something, I guess.”
“You know,” he said, “you could borrow the truck if you want. Bonita left her car here when she went back to Colly-fornia. Her last year studying enology at U.C., Davis. I can use her Corvette. Needs driving, anyway.”
“That would be great, Hector. Thanks.”
“Only thing is, you gotta drop me back at the cottage.” He threw me the keys. “I need a ride.”
Hector and Serafina lived in one of the two remaining tenant cottages on our property—Quinn had the other one. They were located off the main road on a small dirt spur, near where the road split at the sycamore tree.
“So Bonita’s doing well at school?” I asked.
“Top of her class.” He smiled broadly. “She’s gonna be a first-class winemaker. You wait and see.”
“She had a good example.” I shifted the truck into first gear. “Maybe she could work here after she graduates. I don’t know how long Quinn will be around. We’ll need a first-class winemaker.”
“You got one. Queen’s a good man.” It sounded like a reprimand.
“What makes you so sure?”
“I’m a good judge of what’s in here.” He laid a hand over his heart. “He knows what he’s doing with the grapes, too. I know you miss Jeck, but you would be loca en la cabeza to let Queen go. I don’t know why you don’t like him.”
“I don’t like him because he swaggers around here like he owns the place and I’m in the way.” I swerved a bit too sharply, overcorrecting to avoid a pothole. “He was fired from the last place he worked. Did you know that?”
“He was not fired. He left.” Hector put a hand on the dashboard. “They drive like this in France?”
“Like what? And the winemaker is in jail. The vineyard had to close. Those aren’t sterling references.”
We pulled up in front of the red-brick cottage, which sat serenely in a clearing in the middle of the woods. A fresh coat of paint on the wraparound porch and masses of late summer impatiens, geraniums, and petunias blooming in garden beds and cascading from window boxes made it look like something out of a fairy tale. Pink, white, and lilac Rose of Sharon bushes lined both sides of a fieldstone walk.
I turned off the engine motor.
“You know, this is a great country you got here, Lucita. I’m proud my kids are citizens. Because in los Estados Unidos you believe someone is innocent until they are proven guilty.”
“Do you really think someone as sharp as Quinn could be completely in the dark about what his boss was doing?” I folded my arms across my chest and stared through the windshield, unwilling to meet his eyes. “That’s a bit of a stretch, Hector.”
“I think when you respect someone, or love them, it can make you blind sometimes. Your mama was like that. She didn’t see any of your papa’s…ways. Some of the things he did that maybe he shouldn’t oughta. I think it was like that with Queen. He respected that winemaker, that Cantor.” He reached over and put his hand under my chin, turning me so I faced him. “Sometimes it’s not about the cabeza, chiquita. Sometimes it’s the corazón. Entiendes?”
I chewed my lip and nodded. He got out of the car and I started the engine. I saw him waving at me through the rearview mirror. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Don’t drive too fast!”
I waved a hand out the window. He was still standing there as I rounded a corner and could no longer see him.
The answering machine was beeping when I walked through the front door. Two messages. Kit, asking me to call her as soon as I could and Hollis Maddox giving me the phone number of the Gas-o-Rama, in case I didn’t have it.
A stair tread creaked behind me as I copied down the number. Mia, tanned and gorgeous, dressed in a white mini-skirt and a cropped black sweater. She stood at the top of the stairs carrying a bright red canvas suitcase in one hand. In the other, she held Leland’s revolver.
It was pointed at me.
Chapter 21
“Oh God. Please, Mia,” I whispered. “Don’t.”
“Who’s there?” Her voice sounded unnaturally high-pitched. I saw the flash of light and heard the bullet whiz past me. A vase filled with drooping flowers left from Leland’s funeral shattered as she screamed. I knelt and covered my face with my hands against an explosion of water, porcelain, roses, gladiolus, and dagger ferns.
“Oh my God! Lucie! What are you doing here?” I didn’t hear her come down the stairs since my ears were still ringing but suddenly her arms were around me and she was crying. “I didn’t think it was you.”
She helped me up, our arms around each other. “Where’s the gun?” I asked. “Please, honey. We need to put it somewhere safe.”
She had left it on the bottom step, next to her suitcase. I unloaded the remaining bullets. “You got this out of my nightstand,” I said. “Why?”
“I was leaving you something.” She spoke through hiccupy breaths, her tears making canyonlike tracks in what looked like an excessive amount of face makeup. “I could have killed you. Oh my God. I could have killed you.”
“You didn’t. No one got hurt. I want you to go outside on the veranda, okay? I’m going to put this gun away like I should have done this morning, then I’m going to get you something to drink. I think I saw a box of chamomile tea in the pantry. Go on, now.”
“I’ll clean up this mess.”
“Leave it.”
“No. I’ll take care of it. It looks…awful.”
She must have worked quickly because she was swinging absently in the glider, twisting a strand of hair around and around one finger, when I came outside carrying the russet-and-gold autumn leaf Rosenthal teapot that had been our mother’s favorite. “Everything else is on a tray in the kitchen,” I said. “Do you think you could carry it out here for me? The tea needs to steep for a while.”
When she returned with the tray she said, “Mom used to make this for me when I got nightmares. Tisane, she called it. I haven’t had it for years.”