“After cocktails and wine with dinner, no doubt,” he said. “So was he drunk?”
“He kept pace with us, then he switched to brandy. He wasn’t slurring his words until the end. But he wasn’t that bad.”
“Maybe that’s all it was, then. He got sloshed and started babbling about something he’s lived with like a noose around his neck for four decades.”
“You could have chosen another metaphor,” I said.
“Huh? Oh, sorry. Paul.”
The waitress stopped by with dessert menus. “I couldn’t eat another thing,” I said. “Just coffee, please.”
“Look,” he said after the waitress left. “If Charles is right, then something must have happened recently to this Theo guy, or Teddy Fargo, to open an old wound and get him thinking about revenge out of the blue.”
“Presuming Teddy Fargo is Theo Graf,” I said.
“Presuming.”
“I think it’s odd that both Paul and the other guy, Mel Racine, died with those Mandrake Society wineglasses next to them,” I said. “That’s got to be more than just a bizarre coincidence.”
“I don’t know why that name rings a bell,” Quinn said. “Mel Racine. When I get back to the boat tonight, I’ll look him up on the Internet.”
“He moved out to the Bay Area,” I said. “And he owned car dealerships. Those guys pester you with advertisements and deals worse than politicians at election time. If he’s local, I’m surprised you wouldn’t have heard of him.”
“That’s because you probably don’t realize how much geography you’re talking about in a big state like California,” he said. “The Bay Area goes as far south as Santa Cruz and as far north as Napa.”
I spun my coffee spoon around on the linen tablecloth like a needle on a compass. Quinn figured something must have happened to prompt Theo, or Fargo, to make good on a forty-year-old threat. What if he was almost right?
“Maybe it wasn’t something that set Theo off,” I said. “Maybe it was someone.”
The waitress set down two coffees and the check.
“So who is the someone?” Quinn slid the leather billfold to his side of the table.
I poured cream in my coffee and automatically started to put some in his before I caught myself.
He smiled. “Go ahead. You know how I take it.”
“A little cream and strong enough to strip paint.” I finished pouring and opened a couple of sugar packets for mine. “To get back to your question, I haven’t got the foggiest idea who it could be. All the players are dead, except Charles—and, I guess, Theo. And he’s the only one who knows the answer. Too bad Theo’s gone. Wonder if he’s still in California.”
“Whoa, there, sweetheart. Hold your horses. If this guy’s running around bumping off his ex-colleagues, you really think it’s a good idea to look him up and ask him what’s going on?” Quinn said. “He might not like it too much.”
“I didn’t say I was going to do it.” I gave him a cross-eyed stare. “But I wonder what he knows. And who or what made him go off after all those years.”
Quinn set his coffee mug on the table. “There might be a way to find out what you want to know about Fargo without talking to him.”
“Sure. Ask Brooke Hennessey. She bought the place from him,” I said. “Though if I make her nervous once she realizes why I want to know, she might decide not to let me take a look around.”
“I wasn’t thinking of Brooke.”
I waited, but he didn’t elaborate. Finally I said, “Quinn?”
He worried his lower lip and stared out the window. “I know someone who would know anything that’s out there about this Fargo guy. Good, bad, indifferent. Especially the bad stuff.”
I wondered if whoever this was belonged to the old history Quinn never wanted to talk about.
“This guy sounds scarier than tracking down Fargo.” I tried to make a joke. “Care to tell me who it is?”
“I need to make a call first,” he said. “And if he’s okay with it, I’ll take you for a drive tomorrow. Show you more sights.”
“Okay.” He was talking in a deadpan voice that unsettled me. “Sure. But do you mind telling me what this is all about? I feel like I’m a couple of chapters behind, all of a sudden.”
He lifted his head, a rueful expression in his eyes. “I should have guessed you’d be the one to make me face all my old ghosts, Lucie. Asking me to see Brooke again after all these years … that was such a kick in the teeth when you said her name the other day on the phone.”
What was he talking about? “All what old ghosts? Who are we going to see tomorrow?”
He drummed his fingers on the edge of the table and resumed staring outside. When he spoke, I had to lean close to catch what he said.
“Allen Cantor.”
The winemaker who had destroyed Brooke’s father’s business and brought Quinn down with him.
“I thought he was in jail,” I said.
He worked the muscle in his jaw that always meant he was upset.
“He was.” His voice was grim. “He got out.”
Chapter 12
By the time we left Scoma’s, the lunchtime crowd had thinned to a few remaining tables of diners, mostly couples lingering over coffee as we had done. It looked like the staff was beginning to set up for dinner.
Outside on the pier, the breeze had picked up and the sun had sunk lower in the sky. The light held an end-of-day tinge and our shadows were long and soft.
“What time is it?” I asked.
Quinn glanced at his watch. “Going on quarter to five.”
“I should get back to the hotel, to Pépé.”
“My car’s in the lot down the road,” he said. “I could drive you. Or you could catch the five o’clock ferry, if you want. It’d probably be faster, with all the weekend traffic heading into San Francisco.”
“I wouldn’t mind taking the ferry,” I said. “Save you a trip into town through traffic, and then driving back here again.”
“Yeah, you’ll enjoy that, especially at this hour. There’s some fog, but you might get a view of the Golden Gate again.”
“Then that settles it,” I said. “Walk me to the pier?”
“Sure.”
He took my hand and we threaded our way single-file through the slow-moving crowds that clogged the sidewalk and lingered in front of the art galleries and pretty shops that lined Bridgeway. When we got to the ferry landing, Quinn handed me a ticket.
“I bought two round-trip tickets this morning. Kind of figured you’d want to take the boat back to San Francisco.”
My mouth dropped open. “How’d you know … you had this all planned out, didn’t you?”
“Who, me?” He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You don’t want to miss your boat. It’s leaving soon.”
“There are so many ways I could respond to that.”
He grinned and brushed his finger across my lips. “I’ll call you about tomorrow after I talk to Allen.”
“You sure about doing this, Quinn?”
“Yup.” But his voice had tightened. “Off you go. Enjoy the view. Keep my jacket, you’ll need it.”
“Thanks.”
I stayed on deck and watched him as the ferry pulled away from the pier. The wind gusted and nipped at his clothes, but he just stood there with his hands in his pockets and waited until the boat had left the harbor. I watched until he was so small I could barely tell when he turned and started up Bridgeway to his car.
The Golden Gate glowed vivid orange against the soft dark folds of the Marin Headlands and the sky looked like it was on fire. I found a sheltered spot on the deck where I watched the bridge drift in and out of view through wisps of mist—a tower or a section of the suspension cables or part of the deck—until finally the thickening fog swallowed all of it up for good. The breeze, now sharp as needles, was cold so I went into the cabin and watched the looming San Francisco skyline grow larger.
If Allen Cantor agreed to talk to us tomorrow, I might learn more about Teddy Fargo and who he really was or was not. The more I thought about it, the more I felt sure the answers I needed were here in California.