He untucked the cloth that swaddled the breadbasket, releasing the warm, fragrant aroma of fresh scones.
“Did your housekeeper make these? They smell heavenly.”
He smirked. “Taught her everything she knows about English cuisine. Quick study, that Victoria.”
“Oh, so she had five minutes to learn, did she? ‘English’ and ‘cuisine’ don’t belong in the same sentence, you know.”
“You bloody frogs are all alike.” He made a face as he broke open a scone and heaped berries on it. “Think you invented cooking.”
“No, we just perfected it.” I drank some tea. “What about the silliness at the Bohemian Grove? Is Pépé going to have to put on a goofy hat or wear his underwear outside his trousers, like some fraternity hazing right of passage?”
“Nothing that unimaginative. There’s clotted cream for the berries, English clotted cream.” He passed me the bowl. “They’ve got this opening ceremony each year that could sound a little dodgy, if you didn’t realize it was just a bunch of lads letting off steam and bonding. The caveat is they’re the richest, most powerful men in the world. The club has a motto: ‘Weaving spiders come not here.’ Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It means no business is to be transacted while you’re at the Grove, but let me tell you, a hell of a lot happens during that campout.”
“What do they do for their opening ceremony?”
“Oh, they dress in robes like monks and light some funeral pyre in the middle of a lake to represent worldly cares and cremate the bloody thing. So for a couple of weeks, you shrug off the burdens and worries you haul around the rest of the time and you’re free to do things like pee openly against trees and drink like a fish. They also put on concerts, plays … the entertainment is supposed to be incredible.”
“How very bohemian sounding,” I said. “Especially the tree peeing.”
He waved a hand and said through a mouthful of berries, “Not that kind of bohemian—long hair, unwashed tie-dyed shirts, and angst-filled poetry. Don’t forget they were founded in the 1870s. It meant London, beau monde, a club that was a place for eminent men who used their wealth to do good.”
I picked up the teapot and refilled our cups. “It sounds like a combination Boy Scout jamboree and fraternity party, if you ask me. No girls allowed.”
Mick winked at me. “That’s half the fun. Luc will have a grand old time.”
“In the meantime, I’ll be at Rose Hill Vineyard talking to the winemaker about your Cab,” I said. “And discussing the blend.”
“I spoke to her yesterday. She’s expecting you.” He pulled a paper out of his shirt pocket. “Here’s her contact information. Said to ring her when you want to show up. She’s fairly tethered to the place so she’ll be there.”
He handed me the paper. I stared at the name and phone number in his bold scrawl.
“Brooke Hennessey?” I rubbed my thumb over his writing. “That name sounds familiar.”
“You know her? Not too many female winemakers out there. I should have figured you did.”
“No, not that. Hennessey … I wonder if she’s related to Tavis Hennessey?”
“Who’s that?” he said.
“He owned a vineyard in Napa awhile back. Quinn worked there,” I said and stopped.
Atoka was a small enough town that everyone knew the gossip about everyone else, but Mick and I had never discussed Quinn’s past in California and the shadowy circumstances under which he left his former employer. Even I didn’t know exactly what had happened. Quinn avoided any questions or even an attempt to bring up the subject.
“Oh, so that’s the guy?” Mick said. “I heard about it. It’s common knowledge; you must know that. The winemaker at Quinn’s old winery got caught selling adulterated wine on the black market in Eastern Europe and went to jail. Canfield, wasn’t it?”
“Cantor. Allen Cantor.”
“Cantor. Yeah, that’s right.”
He sipped his tea like he was waiting for me to rush to Quinn’s defense, a jury member who needed extra convincing the defendant didn’t do it. So Mick believed the rumors that where there was smoke there had been fire.
I set my teacup down and pushed the saucer away. “Quinn didn’t know anything about what was going on, Mick. He was completely in the dark.”
“I heard that.”
“It’s true.”
“Quinn’s a smart guy—”
“He didn’t know.”
The vineyard had been called Le Coq Rouge. It went under after Cantor went to jail, and the owner, Tavis Hennessey, couldn’t recover his financial losses, coupled with the damaging impact of what had been written in the press. Quinn left and moved to Virginia. A few weeks before my father died he hired Quinn, deciding it wasn’t necessary to do a background check after Quinn told him his salary requirements were minimal. Back then Montgomery Estate Vineyard was nearly broke and our previous winemaker had returned home to France, so Leland was desperate. He saw Quinn as the answer to his prayers. Soon afterward Leland was gone and I took over the winery. Neither Quinn nor I bargained on the other, but we’d made it work somehow.
Mick reached over and took my hand. “I heard that Quinn might not be coming back here, that he might stay in California for good. You going to hire a new winemaker to take his place?”
So that was the current rumor going around. Quinn left poor Lucie in the lurch.
“He’ll be back for harvest.” I withdrew my hand, hoping I didn’t sound defensive. “I guess I’ll have to stop by the General Store and straighten out Thelma and the Romeos.”
In every small town in America there is someone who keeps tabs on everyone else, minds their business for them, and then genially shares it with everyone else on the planet. Our someone was Thelma Johnson, who owned the General Store, where she presided like a chatty, benevolent queen over her subjects, the good citizens of Atoka. Telling Thelma something was like the kids’ old-fashioned game of telephone: little whispers passed around a circle, only to find out that what was said originally had been burnished and revamped into a tabloid-worthy headline with the over-the-top drama and throaty angst of one of her beloved soap operas.
The Romeos, her henchmen, were just as guilty. Their name stood for Retired Old Men Eating Out, but it could as easily have been Retired Old Men Eavesdropping Obsessively. I knew all of them practically like uncles because Leland had been a Romeo. Their whereabouts on any given day were as predictable as animal migration patterns: mornings gathered around the coffeepot at Thelma’s, laying siege to her fresh-made doughnuts and muffins, then whiling away long, lazy afternoons that stretched into “It’s five o’clock somewhere,” and the dinner hour with drinks and a meal at some restaurant or bar in Middleburg or Leesburg. Social networking on the Internet had nothing on the pack of them as a faster-than-a-speeding-bullet means of disseminating information.
“When’s the last time you talked to Quinn?” Mick asked. He kept his voice casual, but he was fishing.
“I can’t remember. Not that long ago.”
His eyes narrowed. “You can’t remember, huh? Why don’t you see him when you’re in California, Lucie? Straighten things out. You do know where he’s staying, don’t you?”
“There’s nothing to straighten out.” I folded my napkin and pushed back my chair. “Except the gossip about him not returning. Thanks for tea, Mick. I’ll call you after I get back from Napa.”
He caught my hand and pulled me up. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car. You do know you’re a lousy liar, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He slipped an arm around my waist, suddenly serious. “Sure you do. Look, love, I’ve been doing some thinking. About us.”
“Mick—”
“Hear me out before you say anything.” He put two fingers over my lips. “How’d you feel about giving us another chance? We know each other so much better now. We’d be good together, the pair of us—wouldn’t make the same mistakes.”
I shook my head and removed his hand. “I don’t think so.”