The Averys had hired local kids to take care of valet parking for their party, driving guests’ cars from the Castle entrance to an adjacent meadow. Since we were the last to leave except for Kit, Bobby, and Win, our navy-blue Jeep was parked out front and the keys were in the ignition. Win’s vintage wood-paneled station wagon and the SUV that belonged to Bobby and Kit were there as well. And the kids were gone.
Quinn opened the passenger door and helped me in.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he asked after he climbed into the driver’s seat. “What that last conversation was all about, you asking Victoria about her perfume? I Regret Nothing. What kind of name is that?”
“It’s the name of a song. Edith Piaf’s signature song, actually.”
“Edith who?”
“Edith Piaf. She was a French cabaret singer in the 1940s and ’50s. She had one of those voices that makes you think of Montmartre and smoke-filled clubs where everyone drinks whiskey or absinthe. My mother used to play her music all the time.”
“Why did you ask Victoria about her perfume?”
“I smelled it in the elevator when I took it back to the main floor the first time I left Prescott,” I said. “The funny thing is, I didn’t have to call the elevator to the basement. It was already waiting. So either she took it downstairs for some reason, or she took it to one of the upper floors and when she was finished, she sent it back to the basement.”
“Huh. Maybe she went upstairs to, you know, powder her nose. Or use the bathroom.”
“First of all, no woman powders her nose anymore. Second, if she did go upstairs, don’t you think it’s odd the elevator was waiting in the basement?”
“Well, then, whatever it is you do with your makeup when you need to fix something. And, like you said, she could have sent it back downstairs after she used it.”
“Except people don’t usually do that.”
“So what are you saying?”
“That it’s more likely she took it downstairs.”
“And did what?”
“Unless she wanted to go swimming or bowling or get something out of the storage rooms, I’d say she wanted to talk to Prescott,” I said.
“You didn’t run into her.”
“No, but you saw what a maze it’s like down there. Maybe she wanted to wait until I left.”
“So she waited somewhere out of sight until you were gone and then went to see Prescott?” He paused. “Don’t you think that sounds a bit far-fetched?”
It did.
“Maybe,” I said. “But I’m certain she used the elevator.”
“Right. Okay, suppose she did go to see Prescott. Do you think she was with him when he fell?”
“If she was, you’d think that she would have gone for help. Since she didn’t, I’d say he was still alive, still fine,” I said. “The two of them chatted, she left, and then he fell and hit his head.”
Quinn started the Jeep. “Okay, she waited downstairs until you were gone, had a quick word with Prescott about something, and then she left? It couldn’t have taken long if you saw her upstairs with Clayton, right?”
“Yes … I suppose … or maybe you are right. Maybe she didn’t go down there.” My what-ifs were seeming more and more implausible.
He turned onto the dirt-and-gravel road that wound around a wooded hill leading from Hawthorne to Route 50, the main east-west highway. This far west of Washington, D.C., it was called Mosby’s Highway in honor of Colonel John Singleton Mosby, the Confederate rebel who was also known as the Gray Ghost. After the highway sliced through the top of Virginia, it continued due west, practically a straight arrow across the country passing through small towns in America’s heartland until it ended in Sacramento, California, three thousand miles from where it began in Ocean City, Maryland.
There were days when I wondered what would happen if Quinn and I stayed on Route 50, instead of taking the turnoff for home, if we kept driving until we reached California. Maybe continue a bit farther until we arrived at the Pacific Ocean.
“Hey.” Quinn said. “Are you still with me?”
“Yes. Sorry. Just thinking.”
A nearly full moon was starting to rise on the horizon and in the pale silver wash of light, I could see him frowning. He looked as if he were trying to work out the logistics of who had been where when Prescott died.
“Why couldn’t Victoria have waited to talk to Prescott until after the party?” he asked. “What was so urgent, so important? Assuming she did go see him.”
I yawned. The caipirinhas, the Madeira, and the warmth of the heat from the car radiator were making me drowsy. “Maybe she was upset that she and Clay didn’t get to announce their engagement at the party. I suspect Prescott might have ruined their moment with his own announcement about a family board meeting in the morning. You said yourself that Scotty and Alex were so angry they shouldn’t be around sharp knives. Not the time to break out the champagne and celebrate an upcoming wedding.”
“So maybe she’d had a few too many caipirinhas and she went downstairs to talk to Prescott without Clay there?”
“Look, Kit said the rumor going around the Trib staff at the party was that Prescott wanted to sell the paper, along with some of the other newspapers that belong to Avery Communications. And Grant told you the Averys are in such financial trouble that once they auction off the art, jewelry, and furniture that was promised in the Caritas Commitment, they’re not going to be able to hang on to Hawthorne. A lot of this news and new information seemed to bubble to the surface this afternoon,” I said. “Victoria knows the art world better than any of the family because of what she does for a living. Maybe she wanted to appeal to Prescott without any of them around, ask him not to completely dismantle the incredible art collection they owned, not throw the baby out with the bathwater. A few caipirinhas can make anybody bolder, more reckless.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Taking on a cagey old lion like Prescott wouldn’t be her best idea. Say Victoria did manage to get down to the wine cellar and back upstairs in time for you to see her in the dining room with Clay—she’s pretty fit. But as Clay’s future wife, Prescott’s decision to sell is going to affect her financially as well. I’ve heard that she thought she was marrying Daddy Warbucks.”
I smiled. “Well, by now she knows she’s not.”
We had reached Mosby’s Highway. Like the Averys’ private road, it, too, was dark and deserted. Over the next week or so, folks would decorate their homes for the holidays. There would be lights woven through bushes and trees and along rooflines, Christmas trees placed so they could be seen through living room windows, sweet tableaus of a happy, festive season, reindeer sparkling on front lawns, and an inflatable snowman or a Santa with spotlights on them to brighten the road.
We drove through the village of Upperville in silence. By the time Quinn turned onto Atoka Road, I was still going around in circles. He slowed for the turn onto Sycamore Lane at the entrance to the vineyard.
“If Victoria had been there when Prescott fell, I don’t think she would have left him, said nothing when she got back upstairs, and let him bleed to death,” I added.
“Unless,” he said with a shrug.
“Unless what?”
He didn’t reply until we reached the fork in Sycamore Lane where the two-hundred-year-old tree that had given the road its name was now cleaved in half after lightning had struck it a few years ago. Quinn’s headlights caught the ivy that had grown over the jagged trunk and some of the now-bare branches that still lived. He turned right toward the house.
“Unless she deliberately pushed him.”
“My God,” I said, “I hope you’re wrong. That’s murder.”
Murder. The word hung between us in the frigid November air as it if were encased in a frozen speech bubble.
WE WERE BOTH STUFFED too full of black beans, pork, and flan and buzzed from caipirinhas to have dinner or another drink, so Quinn made a fire in fireplace in the parlor and we ended up on opposite ends of the sofa with our feet up—Quinn reading The Wild Vine, about the discovery of the Norton grape, by Todd Kliman, until he dozed off, and me engrossed in an Ian Rutledge mystery by Charles Todd.
A couple of logs collapsed on each other, sending a noisy spray of sparks up the chimney. Quinn stirred and woke up.
“Welcome back,” I said.
“I wasn’t sleeping. Just resting my eyes.” He sat up and swung his feet onto the carpet. “Another log or should we let it die down?”
“We’re both tired,” I said. “Why don’t we let it die and then go to bed? It won’t take long.”
“It’s only eight-thirty. I’m hungry.” He gave me an evil grin. “How about a piece of your pumpkin pie?”
“I will explode if I eat another bite today.”
He got up. “I’ll bring a big slice and two forks.”
He returned with the pie a few minutes later and set the plate on the coffee table. “Would you like a glass of Madeira? Goes perfect with your pie.”
Madeira. I couldn’t. At least not tonight.
“I’d rather have a glass of Riesling. There’s a chilled bottle of ours in the wine refrigerator. Riesling goes with pumpkin pie and it’s not as heavy as Madeira.”
We were one of the few Virginia vineyards that made Riesling. It was a difficult grape to grow here and our wine always sold out, but we’d kept back a few bottles from our last vintage to drink at home.
“Okay.” He gave me a puzzled look. “I’ll get it.”
When he came back with the two glasses of wine, we moved to the floor, piling up throw pillows to lounge against as we sat cross-legged in front of the fire.
“Have you gone off Madeira?” He passed me a fork. “You looked like I’d suggested drinking rat poison when I brought it up.”
I coughed and a piece of pie went down the wrong way. When I finally caught my breath I said, “It’s not that.”
He waited.
“I had a glass of thirty-two-year-old Malmsey with Prescott this afternoon when we were together in his wine cellar. He knew it was bottled the year I was born, which was why he served it,” I said. “That wine was amazing.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was impressed or envious. Or both. “Why did he lure you away from a great party to have a glass of thirty-two-year-old Malmsey? Just the two of you.”
I told him about the two-hundred-and-ten-year-old cases of Madeira that Prescott said he was certain my family still owned. And about how after Ian Montgomery had found them in the tunnels under the U.S. Capitol during Prohibition and had hung on to them once he realized their provenance and value.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Quinn said. “Even one bottle of that wine would be worth a fortune today.”
“If we still owned it. And, yes, Prescott told me just how much it would be worth—and that he was willing to pay even more to have Ian’s Madeira.”
Quinn let out a long, low whistle. “You think it’s gone? Do you think Leland sold it?”
I shrugged. “Or drank it.”
“He would do something like that, wouldn’t he?”
“He would.”
Quinn got up and picked up the fireplace poker, stirring the fire, which had burned down to glowing embers. “What made Prescott bring this up today, all of a sudden? And why the super-secret negotiation? Unless he wanted to show off his wine cellar, remind you what a serious collector he was.”
He put the poker back in its stand and sat down across from me again. “I’ve only seen one other wine cellar like that one in my lifetime and it was in a fourteenth-century château in Bordeaux after a Chinese investor bought it and completely restored it. No expense spared.”
“Prescott said all the stone had been quarried on his property. I don’t think he spared any expense, either.”
There was one small bite of pie left. Quinn pushed the plate over to me. “Finish it.”
I did.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “Why today?”
Prescott was dead. Was it really necessary for me to keep his secret now? From Quinn? Was I still bound by my promise not to say anything about the Jefferson copy of the Declaration of Independence he’d just acquired? I knew why he didn’t want his family to know: they thought he was a spendthrift chasing frivolous purchases. His unicorns. But as soon as Clay walked into that special Masonic shrine next to the wine cellar, he’d know about Prescott’s latest acquisition.
Besides, now it belonged to Clay—unless it was one of the items to be sold as part of the Caritas Commitment.
I told Quinn everything. About Prescott’s Masonic hideaway and how he’d wanted to drink the Madeira when he unveiled his copy of the Declaration of Independence to his brother Masons.
“I don’t know much about the Freemasons,” he said when I was done. “Except they’re a men-only club and sometimes they dress up in weird costumes that remind you of Halloween. And they have special ceremonies that no one can talk about.”
“I don’t know much, either, but Prescott says there’s a lot more to being a Mason than the secret handshakes and the unusual costumes. They do quite a lot of charity work,” I said.
“Well, I suppose it fits that Prescott wants to present the Declaration of Independence to his Mason brotherhood in a special ceremony and toast it with Leland’s Madeira.”
“Which we don’t have.”
“Prescott’s sure the labels say the Madeira was supposed to be drunk by James Madison on the Fourth of July at the Capitol?”
I nodded.
“And you really have no idea where it is, what happened to it?”
“We don’t have it,” I said again. “I never heard of it before today. That’s why I’m sure it’s gone. Leland never could hang on to anything of value. He was always selling things to pay off his gambling debts. Besides, we would have found it by now, don’t you think?”
“Probably. But damn. I would have given anything to taste two-hundred-year-old Madeira. Not to mention how much money those cases would be worth.”
“Two hundred and ten years. Even if we found the wine, Clayton’s not going to buy it. The deal’s off,” I said. “Prescott told me Leland had a safe-deposit box at Blue Ridge Federal. He thought maybe he might have left a clue there about where he hid the Madeira.”
Quinn’s eyebrows went up. “You cleaned out his safe-deposit box after he died. There wasn’t much in it, as I recall.”
I drank the last of my Riesling. “Prescott hinted there was a second safe-deposit box. Where Leland kept … private stuff. Things he didn’t want my mother knowing about.”
Maybe there had been more affairs and more children we weren’t aware of. Maybe Leland had robbed a bank and stashed the cash there. With my father you never knew.
“If there was another safe-deposit box,” Quinn said, “you would have known about it by now. Somebody would have said something at the bank, don’t you think? Seth Hannah is one of the Romeos and he’s practically an uncle to you, Eli, and Mia. It’s a neighborhood bank and you know everyone there.”
Seth Hannah was the president of Blue Ridge Federal and Quinn was probably right. We would have known about a second safe-deposit box by now. Seth would have told us.
Quinn got up and pulled me to my feet. “The fire’s out. Why don’t you go upstairs and get ready for bed? You’ve had a hell of a day. I’ll clean up here and join you in a few minutes.”
He caressed my face with the back of his hand. “Let’s try to forget about all this, sweetheart. At least for tonight. Okay?”
I nodded.
But later that night I awoke, bolting upright in bed, my heart pounding hard against my rib cage. Downstairs the grandfather clock’s rich chime sounded three times as Prescott’s last words came back to me. He’d said he was on the verge of uncovering a four-hundred-year-old secret that powerful people didn’t want known and my father had provided an important clue that had led Prescott to his discovery.
And for his safety—as well as mine—I couldn’t tell anyone about our conversation. Because whatever this mysterious secret was, anyone who knew about it was in danger.
Now I guess that included me.