To my surprise, I slept. My alarm clock, which I’d set a lifetime ago, before a masked intruder left me to freeze outside on my own back porch, went off as usual at 6:00 A.M.
I switched it off and turned on the light on my nightstand. The female EMT who’d treated me last night was right. I felt like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz before Dorothy found the oilcan.
The bottling truck would be at the crush pad in an hour and a half. Maybe if I took a hot shower and threw down a couple of Tylenol, some of the aches and stiffness would subside. What I really didn’t want to do was look in the mirror. I could tell without even seeing myself that I was more ready for Halloween—without the costume—than Valentine’s Day.
I made my way across the bedroom, a slow shuffle into the bathroom, and took a shower. I saved the mirror for last. The woman who stared at me was unrecognizable. No amount of makeup was going to be able to camouflage the Technicolor bruises that ran along my right cheekbone and down the side of my nose, along with my spectacular-looking black eye.
My mother had owned a pair of enormous sunglasses that she had laughingly called her “Jackie O glasses” because they covered so much of her face. After she died, I’d found them in her car and tucked them away in the top drawer of my dresser. Until now, I’d never worn them.
Quinn was finishing a cup of coffee when I walked into the kitchen. He took one look at me and my sunglasses and said, “And just where do you think you’re going, Suzy Sunshine?”
“We’re bottling today,” I said in a bright voice, “if I remember correctly.”
“Lucie,” he said, “we’ve got enough people coming to get it done without your being there. Go back to bed, sweetheart.” He came over and gently removed the sunglasses, staring at my face. “If I find the son of a bitch who did this to you, I will personally tear him limb from limb.”
“What did you do with your gun?” I asked, taking the glasses back. “I heard you and Eli get guns out of Leland’s gun cabinet last night.”
He poured me a cup of coffee. “I made it weaker than I normally do, just for you, since I know you think I make sludge,” he said, passing me the mug. “And, to answer your question, I took the bullets out and put everything back where it belongs. Eli’s going to be here with you today, so you’ll be all set.”
“All set” meant Eli planned to be armed.
“I love you both,” I said, “but I’m not going to lie in bed and be waited on. If there’s anything I learned after the car accident, it’s that the sooner I get up and start moving, the better. Otherwise, everything hardens into concrete. And Eli needs to lock up his gun, too. I’ll tell him when he gets up.”
The kitchen door swung open and my brother said, “Tell me what?” He was fully dressed, and I wondered if he’d slept that way. He took one look at my face and swallowed hard.
Quinn pointed to the coffeepot and Eli nodded.
“How are you holding up, Luce?” he asked.
“Put the gun back in Leland’s cabinet, Eli,” I said. “Please. We agreed no weapons in the house that weren’t locked up as long as you and Hope live here.”
“That was then,” he said. “This is now.”
“I’m not staying home today,” I said. “I took a shower and a couple of Tylenol and I’m feeling better than I thought I would. Which is why I’m going to work, just like I do every day, and live my life just as I always have. This guy isn’t going to win. I’m not going to let him.”
“Hold on just a second, tiger,” Quinn said, glancing at Eli. “Before you take on the world, you need to hang around here for a while. Bobby’s coming over this morning to talk to you. It’s better if you do it here, rather than at the winery, don’t you think? No point upsetting the staff any more than they’re already going to be once they find out. And, uh, especially after they get a look at your face.”
I slipped on the sunglasses, suddenly self-conscious. Too late, I caught Eli’s double take and wished I’d said something to him about where I’d gotten them before he saw me wearing them.
“What about the staff?” I asked, turning to Quinn. “We need to figure out how we’re going to tell them about what happened last night, try to keep this contained. There hasn’t been any crime worth mentioning in Atoka or Middleburg since someone stole the ox and the ass from the manger outside the Episcopal church at Christmas.”
My phone rang in my pocket just as Quinn’s phone, which he’d set on the kitchen counter, went off.
“Frankie,” I said, looking at mine.
“Antonio,” Quinn said.
“So much for keeping things contained,” Eli said.
* * *
BY THE TIME BOBBY Noland rang the doorbell at 9:00 A.M., Eli, Quinn, and I had concocted a plan for Hope to spend the day at Persia’s, arranged for Antonio to supervise the bottling truck until Quinn could get over there, and I had the house landline and my cell phone forwarded to the villa, where Frankie would tell anyone who called that everything was just fine and dandy. If they persisted, the official story was that I had stumbled on an intruder before he could rob us and he’d gotten away, but the Sheriff’s Department had good leads and would soon catch the guy.
Eli answered the door and let Bobby in. Quinn and I were waiting in the foyer like an official welcoming committee. I held my mother’s sunglasses in one hand, figuring it was better to get this over with, let him see me in all my black-and-blue glory, and then we could move on.
“Hey, Eli,” I heard Bobby say as Eli opened the door wider and Bobby’s eyes fell on me. He paused mid-step, glancing at Eli before he looked back at Quinn and me. “Looks like you went a little heavy on the eye makeup this morning, kiddo.”
It was typical of Bobby, that mordant cop sense of humor, but it made me feel better that he was acting normally around me.
“I got dressed in the dark,” I said, and put on the sunglasses. “What can I say?”
“Coffee, Bobby?” Eli said. “Before we do this?”
“Thanks, but I’m caffeinated up the wazoo,” he said, “and I need to talk to Lucie on her own, guys.”
“Actually,” Quinn said, “you need to talk to me, as well. And since Eli knows everything and he lives here, he should hear this, too.”
“In that case,” Bobby said, “why don’t we sit down someplace and do this?”
We adjourned to the parlor, Quinn and me on the sofa and Bobby and Eli in the two wing chairs across from us on opposite sides of the fireplace. With everything that had happened, no one had cleaned the hearth from the fire the night before last, when Quinn and I had pored over the Harding love letters and the photos, so the room smelled of the faint tang of woodsmoke.
It still upset me to think those letters were now themselves ashes, but I held my tongue and didn’t interrupt as Quinn told Bobby all of it: Gino’s visit and the blackmail, how Gino was trying to cover up the nearly century-old death of Zara Tomassi, her baby, and the now-destroyed love letters written by Warren Harding.
When he was finished, I got the envelope with the pasted-together warning. Bobby pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his back pocket and examined it.
“You think this is from Gino?”
“I do,” Quinn said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t see Gino sitting in his hotel room dressed up in his tuxedo ready to go to a White House state dinner, cutting letters out of the newspaper and gluing them onto a piece of paper. And having it delivered by some thug who tied me up and dumped me on my porch.”
“Crude,” Quinn said, “but effective.”
“You said the guy had a Hispanic accent,” Bobby said. “What about your crew or a day laborer with a grudge? We still need to consider the possibility that it might not be Gino. Last night he was at a shindig, some political fund-raiser, at the National Building Museum in D.C. that went past midnight. A buddy of mine moonlights as hired security and he worked that party.”
I caught Quinn’s look of surprise when Bobby spoke about Gino’s whereabouts with such precision, but I hadn’t told him about how Bobby had questioned me the other day in front of Mac’s shop, asking about Gino’s visit to the vineyard. And his cryptic remark implying he knew that Gino and Quinn were related. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how much of what Quinn had told Bobby just now about Gino was news to him, either.
“I don’t know,” Quinn was saying. “I still think it’s Gino.”
“We’ll look into it,” Bobby said. “Obviously.”
“What about Gino’s blackmailer?” I asked.
“What about it?” Bobby said. “If Gino doesn’t ask for help from law enforcement, we can’t go busting in on what he says is a private matter. The only time we can get involved is if someone breaks the law and we find out about it. And even then, it’s not as easy as you think. Last week we answered a nine-one-one call from a woman in Leesburg, half hysterical, reporting a stabbing in her home. We show up and, sure enough, there’s a guy lying on a sofa with a knife next to him, a stomach wound, and blood everywhere. You know what she says then?” He gave us a disgusted look. “Horseplay. Her husband and his brother got a little rough. Sorry to bother us over nothing. The two guys backed her up, so we left when the ambulance arrived. It was over. Finito.”
“So you can’t do anything?”
“Nope. At least now I know why my deputy thought you were holding back something last night, Lucie,” Bobby said. “I’m going to need names from you. Anyone who worked here who might have left on bad terms, any unhappy clients. As soon as possible. In the meantime, I think Lucie and I need to finish up this discussion alone. Gentlemen, you’re free to go.”
“I’ll be in the library, getting some work done,” Eli said. “Bobby, stop by before you leave, will you?”
“I’ll be on the crush pad with the bottling truck,” Quinn said.
After they left, I said to Bobby, “You didn’t learn one new thing from what Quinn told you about Gino. You already knew all of it.”
“Now where did you get that idea?”
“You were already watching Gino Tomassi. And I know you.”
Bobby stretched out his legs and crossed one ankle over the other. “Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment,” he said. “The letter told you to mind your own business. You and Quinn immediately jumped to the conclusion that Gino sent that message.”
“Well, he did threaten us.”
“True,” he said. “But according to Kit, you’re also looking into why my mother-in-law believes someone murdered Roxy Willoughby, aren’t you?”
I hadn’t seen that coming. “Oh, come on, Bobby, are you serious? I’m just trying to placate Faith, find out who might have argued with Roxy before she died. All I did was talk to Mac MacDonald. Don’t tell me you think he’s behind this?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Mac? No, I can’t say I do. Did you talk to anyone else?”
“No—wait. Yes. Father Niall. Another likely suspect?”
He grinned. “Okay, not him, either. That’s it?”
“Faith’s maid. Pilar. To be honest, I’m not sure she understood what I was asking, since she barely speaks English.”
“I’m just covering the bases, kiddo. It’s what I do.”
“Do you agree that it was probably Gino, then?”
“Gino looks good for this, but I still need a list of people who worked here, anyone who might have it in for you. How about you work on that while I have a chat with Eli? You can give it to me before I go.”
* * *
BY THE TIME BOBBY was ready to leave, I’d come up with a short list of the names of former employees and day laborers who hadn’t left the vineyard on the best terms. Stealing, falsifying time sheets, and not knowing a ripe grape from an unripe one at harvesttime were the three main reasons we let anyone go. I gave it to him in the foyer after he finished talking with Eli.
“The work is seasonal, Bobby,” I said. “These guys come and go. I doubt most of the people on this list are in the area in February.”
He shrugged. “It’s a place to start. You’re sure this guy was Hispanic?”
“He said only a couple of words, but he had an accent.”
“My men found boot prints from your back porch over to a place next to the Ruins. They ended at some tire tracks. Seems like this guy knew the lay of your land. He must have just drove out.” He waved my list at me. “You keep your doors and windows locked, you hear me?”
“I will.”
At the front door, he said, “Though I don’t usually get involved in what goes on between you and my wife, I have been ordered to tell you that if you don’t call her once I leave here, she is driving over to drag the story out of you. She says you’ve forwarded all your calls to Frankie.”
“I’ll call her,” I said, adding in a half-joking way, “and she’d better not try to send a photographer if she plans to cover this for the Trib.”
Bobby gave me a grave look. “Don’t worry, no photographer, but she does have to report the story; you know that. You look like you’ve been to hell and back.” He touched my shoulder lightly. “We’re both just so glad you’re okay. You’re lucky, all things considered.”
He left and I leaned against the door, thinking about what Bobby had said. If it wasn’t Gino or some lackey who worked for him, then what had I done and whom had I angered enough to drive him to break into my house and dump me outside in the frigid cold?
And was the officer who questioned me last night right that it was someone I knew?