“Blue Ridge,” she yelled back. “Terrorism seminar. He says he’s sorry he can’t be here tonight, but duty calls.”
We moved away from the music and the lights and stood in the shadow of the archway that led to the villa and the parking lot beyond.
“What kind of terrorism?” I asked.
Though Washington was fifty miles away, we were still considered to be the outer fringe of the D.C. Metro area, which was permanently on a state of high alert. The plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 had left from Dulles Airport on the eastern border of Loudoun County. Ever since that day, the sheriff’s department seemed to be participating in a regular routine of training exercises and readiness drills.
“The bad kind,” she said.
“Now I know why you’re the Trib’s Loudoun bureau chief,” I said. “What’s your saying? ‘If it’s news, it’s news to us’?”
She grinned. “It’s called agroterrorism. People doing bad things to crops or the water supply or livestock. Really remote far-out stuff. Don’t worry, they didn’t get an alert or anything like that. They just need to know about it.”
I didn’t smile back. “Agro terrorism?”
“Well, you know. Loudoun’s still an agricultural county, in spite of all the high-tech businesses out on Route 28. They’re just preparing for whatever, unlikely as it is.”
Whatever. The topic of Pépé’s discussion at the Bohemian Grove in a few days. All of a sudden someone was talking about agroterrorism every time I turned around.
“Sure,” I said as a small shudder ran down my spine.
“Looks like a good party.” She scanned the crowd.
“It is. You missed dinner, but Dominique made so much food we’ll have leftovers until Labor Day. You hungry? There’s French onion soup.”
“Oh, God. I’ve died and gone to heaven. I’m starved. I didn’t leave the office all day. Ate the leftover stuff in the kitchenette. I think the sell-by date passed on a can of microwave chili.” She patted her stomach and looked uneasy. “Can you get botulism from that?”
“I don’t know. You feel all right?” I flagged down a waitress and asked her to bring Kit a bowl of soup and fix a dinner plate.
“I’m beat. More layoffs. The buyout days are over. Do more with less. You know the newspaper biz these days,” she said. “What’s left of it.”
“Is your job in jeopardy?”
She shrugged and looked defeated. “Everyone’s job is in jeopardy.”
The waitress showed up with Kit’s soup and two glasses of white wine.
“Mud in your eye,” Kit said and we clinked glasses. “Bobby told me you found Paul Noble the other day. That must have been grim.”
“It was. I don’t suppose he shared any information about the autopsy results. If the medical examiner confirmed yet whether it was suicide or not.”
“I sleep with the guy and it still doesn’t cut any ice. You know Bobby. Sometimes I think I’m the last to find out anything. He makes me work my ass off for it, too.”
“I guess that’s a no.”
“You guess right.” She picked up her spoon. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Flying to California with my grandfather.”
“You’re going, too? Wow, when did that happen? You taking him sightseeing?”
“It just happened and it’s business for both of us. Pépé’s giving a talk and Mick asked me to check out some wine he might buy from a vineyard in Napa. We’ll be back Wednesday.”
“Bobby told me about Luc’s talk. Why is Mick buying California wine?”
“Someone put him on to a good deal.”
She nodded and I was glad, suddenly, that Bobby hadn’t come along tonight because the reason I was traveling out West was indirectly linked to Paul Noble’s death—at least in Charles Thiessman’s mind. I didn’t want to lie to Kit and I sure as hell couldn’t lie to Bobby, especially if there turned out to be some truth to what Charles had said.
I sipped my wine and changed the subject to wedding talk, which Kit easily and willingly fell into. The deejay changed generations, switching from Stevie Wonder to Sinatra crooning “Fly Me to the Moon.” I leaned back against the stone arch, letting the music and candlelight and animated voices and laughter wash over me.
Tomorrow I’d be in California, on the other side of the country, ostensibly to do an errand for Charles Thiessman and to accompany Pépé. But deep down I knew the real reason I was going was Quinn.
Eli and I once threw dice to see whether we’d keep the vineyard or sell it after Leland died, and I won. Seeing Quinn felt like another all-or-nothing gamble. Did he miss me the way I missed him, and would he come back to Virginia or stay in California for good?
I tilted my head and finished off my wine. By tomorrow at this time I’d probably know one way or the other.
I fought off the feeling of foreboding that our meeting wasn’t going to go well and went back to discussing flowers and table linens with Kit as though I didn’t have a care in the world.
Chapter 10
I bolted upright in bed when my alarm went off at three thirty A.M., disoriented until memory kicked in. Our flight left at seven; I’d booked a town car for just after four o’clock. Across the hall, I heard my grandfather stirring. Maybe he’d never even gone to sleep. Forty-five minutes later a sleek black car waited outside the house, dashboard lights and GPS glowing eerily as the driver got out to put our bags in the trunk. Pépé and I dozed as the car sped off in the inky darkness, waking as the swooped gull-like wings of the main terminal at Dulles came into view against a rosy sky.
The direct flight to San Francisco International arrived just before ten A.M. Pacific time. The Bay glittered like crushed dark diamonds as we began our final approach, and then the silvery blue city appeared from the thin haze of the marine layer, tip-tilted through the airplane window, a modern-day Atlantis emerging from the sea.
Pépé had booked us at the Mark Hopkins, where he had often stayed after the war when the embassy sent him to the West Coast on business. The half-hour taxi ride zipped along a highway that hugged the Bay, passing an enormous white-lettered sign embedded in the side of a mountain that read SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, THE INDUSTRIAL CITY. Pépé narrated our route as we drove by the stadium and reached the beginning of the Embarcadero where the driver turned up Market Street and cut over to California.
American and California state flags snapped in the wind as we pulled into the hotel’s circular redbrick drive. A valet opened the cab door, letting in an unexpected sharp, cool breeze. Perhaps I imagined it carried the mingled exotic scents of nearby Chinatown spices and the salt tang of the Pacific, but whatever it was, the air smelled different here, nothing I recognized from home in Virginia.
The hotel lobby was old-world opulent, alive and buzzing on a Sunday morning. I waited under a massive beaded crystal chandelier while Pépé sorted out our reservation for adjoining rooms with a Bay view, and then we took the elevator to the fourteenth floor. The first thing we did was open the curtains all the way and Pépé pointed out landmarks: the endless toy-sized bridge to Oakland, the TransAmerica pyramid, rows of piers jutting into the slate-colored water like an unfinished puzzle on the Embarcadero, and, peeking through holes in the marine layer, glimpses of Alcatraz, Treasure Island, and the round-shouldered mountains where Oakland and Berkeley lay on the other side of San Francisco Bay.
I touched my grandfather’s arm. He looked pale and drawn in the cool morning light.
“Would you like to lie down? We didn’t get much sleep last night.”
For a moment I thought he was going to be annoyed with me for mothering him like Dominique did, but he nodded. “I might do that. What are your plans, chérie? Shall I order room service? You didn’t eat much breakfast on the plane.”