As soon as Quinn and I walked into the Goose Creek Inn, I remembered that Dominique’s interview at the White House had been yesterday. With everything that had happened, it had completely slipped my mind. I suspected Frankie, who usually never forgot anything, hadn’t remembered, either, because she, too, had been preoccupied by the events concerning Father Niall and Veronica House. Dominique hadn’t called me, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been offered the job. More likely, she had gotten it and was trying to figure out a way to tell everyone.
Hassan gave us a table in my favorite dining room next to the fireplace, where a bright fire blazed, and told us a waiter would be with us shortly. Quinn thanked him, and I said, “Is Dominique here tonight?”
“Not yet,” he said. “She said she might come by later. Shall I ask her to stop by if she arrives while you’re still here?”
“That would be great,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Everything okay with Dominique?” Quinn asked when Hassan left.
“Sure. Fine. Why?”
His eyes flickered. “Okay,” he said. “You’ll tell me what it is when you want to.”
I opened my menu. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Secrets,” he said. “In the end, they get us all in so damn much trouble.”
He was right. Like Eli had said the other day: “What you can’t say owns you. What you hide controls you.” Wasn’t that the truth?
* * *
DINNER WAS NICE, BUT subdued. Neither of us talked much and Quinn seemed more preoccupied than usual. Every so often I would catch him stealing a glance at me when he thought I wasn’t looking, until I finally said, “Do I have food in my teeth, or is it the bruises you’re staring at?”
He turned red. “Sorry. I’m not staring.”
We saw Dominique at the maître d’s station as Quinn was helping me on with my coat after dinner. “Give me a minute?” I said.
“Sure.”
My cousin and I exchanged kisses and I said under my breath, “I’m so sorry. I should have called yesterday to ask how it went.”
“I got in at midnight,” she said, “and passed out. You wouldn’t have reached me.”
“Well?”
She gave a self-conscious shrug. “The chief usher called this afternoon and asked me if I’d like to be the next White House executive chef.”
I had known they would offer it to her; she was talented, creative, unflappable, and a workaholic, all essential qualities for anyone who worked in the pressure-cooker/goldfish-bowl setting of the White House. Still, her news took my breath away.
“That’s fabulous. Congratulations, I’m so thrilled for you.” I hugged her and tried to sound like I meant it. Working at the White House would be like disappearing into a black hole. Anyone I knew who’d worked there said the price you paid was giving up family, friends, and a personal life. “We’ll have a party for you at the villa once it’s officially announced. It’s terrific news, Dominique. You ought to be so proud.… What?”
She was watching me, sober-eyed and serious.
“You didn’t turn it down,” I said, “did you?”
“I think you’re letting the horse close the barn door after it’s gone,” she said. “I haven’t given them an answer yet.”
“Why not?”
“They gave me twenty-four hours to think about it.”
I gave her an assessing look. “You’re just playing hard to get. If I know you, you’ve already got the first week’s menus figured out and you’re thinking about how you’re going to rearrange the White House kitchen.”
She smiled. “Perhaps. But I am going to think about it.” She put her finger to her lips. “Don’t say anything to anyone, okay?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Your secret is safe with me.”
* * *
ON THE DRIVE HOME, Quinn said, “I thought I might spend the night at your place again tonight. Maybe upstairs with you this time. Would that be okay?”
For the last three nights, he’d slept downstairs on the living room sofa. Once with a gun. We’d had a hell of a week, argued like cats and dogs about his family, Mercury was in retrograde, so it was a horrible time for relationships, and today was Friday the thirteenth.
Now he wanted to spend the night in my bed.
“Of course it would be okay,” I said. “It’s always been okay. Ever since you came back from California, when I thought you wanted to move in for good, it’s been okay.”
He gave me a guilty look. “I know. You’ve been great about that.… I mean, that I didn’t move in.”
It’s an open secret, from everyone here down to the day laborers, that he chickened out. Frankie had said that just the other day.
“If you want to spend the night, I have one condition.”
“I have to move in?”
“No guns in the bedroom.”
He laughed. “I’m sure we can figure out something creative to do that doesn’t involve firearms.”
It was good with him, as it always was. I’d nearly forgotten how passionate and tender he could be. But the day had been emotionally exhausting—my confrontation with Mac in his store, the session with Father Niall, the calls to Gino and Mac and Uma, plus Dominique’s news—so I fell asleep in his arms, and the last thing I remember was his voice in my ear, whispering things I had wanted him to say to me for a long time.
* * *
THE QUIET SOUND OF footsteps outside my bedroom door woke me. Quinn had been with me when I’d fallen asleep. Now I was alone. And naked.
I started to look for my clothes, which I’d scattered across the floor as we’d undressed, when the door opened and he came in carrying my mother’s heavy silver tray. On it was a wine bucket with a chilled bottle of champagne, two Waterford champagne flutes, a red rose in a cut-crystal vase, and my grandmother’s silver candelabra with two lighted candles.
“What in the world—”
“Happy Valentine’s Day.”
I pulled the covers around me, trying to mask my astonishment. “Happy Valentine’s Day to you, too.”
He set the tray on my bedside table and kissed me. “I figured I’d get an early start.”
“You did,” I said as the rich sound of the grandfather clock chiming the hour sounded downstairs. “It’s just turned midnight.”
He opened the champagne. “I was considering sabrage, but you said no weapons in the bedroom.”
Sabrage is the art of beheading a bottle of champagne with a sword. It dates back to the era of Napoléon’s cavalry, the Hussars, who celebrated their many conquests and victories by slicing open champagne bottles with their sabers. I’d seen it performed once when I was living in France. It was as dramatic as it sounds.
I laughed. “I would have made an exception if I’d known.”
He handed me a glass. “To us.”
“To us.”
After we drank, I said, “You’re full of surprises. Champagne, roses, and candlelight at midnight. I’m afraid I didn’t even get you a card.”
Mostly because I hadn’t thought we would be celebrating Valentine’s Day together, based on the way our week had gone. Besides, I was going to tomorrow night’s—no, tonight’s—party with Mick Dunne.
“You’ll pay for that,” he was saying. “I’ll collect at the party.”
I had to tell him about Mick. “Quinn—”
“Wait,” he said. “Before you say anything, there’s something I need to tell you. The other night when I got here and saw you beat-up and bruised after that guy attacked you, I just about died. I don’t know what I would have done if anything had happened to you.” He was staring into his glass, rubbing a thumb over the pattern in the cut-glass flute.
“It’s okay. I’m okay.”
He looked up. “Don’t stop me. You know how hard it is for me to talk about this stuff. Besides, I know everyone who works at the vineyard thinks when I came off the assembly line, I bypassed the station where they give you a heart.”
“That’s not true—”
“You know it is,” he said. “Frankie thinks my outsides are made of rubber and my insides are made of cast iron. Nothing sticks to me and I’m coldhearted.”
He set my champagne glass on the bedside table and reached for my hands.
“Lucie Montgomery,” he said, “I love you and I’m asking you to be my Valentine. Will you?”
When I could speak, I said, “Of course I will. And I love you, too.”
* * *
QUINN WAS ALREADY AWAKE when I opened my eyes the next morning. He was propped up on an elbow and watching me with an intense, serious look, as if he had been studying me while I slept. For a moment, I wondered if I had dreamed last night. Then I wondered if I hadn’t dreamed last night, but maybe he had regrets or morning-after remorse about what he’d said and what we’d done. It wouldn’t be the first time.
As if reading my mind, he leaned down and kissed me. Before long we were making love again in the soft gray dawn and it was as good and sweet and satisfying as it had been the night before. We showered together without saying much, partly because we didn’t want to wake Eli or Hope and partly because by now I knew he was preparing himself for the upcoming meeting with Gino.
Eli walked into the kitchen while we were eating breakfast. His eyes went from Quinn to me to the silver tray on the counter, where Quinn had left it with the remnants of our romantic evening.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “Love is in the air. Happy Valentine’s Day, you two.”
“Shut up, Eli,” I said, unperturbed.
He helped himself to a cup of coffee and said, “So what’s on for today?”
“Frankie could use a hand at the villa setting up for tonight,” I said. “Maybe you and Hope could drop by and help out.”
“Sure, no problem,” he said. “What about you two?”
Quinn and I cut a look at each other. “We’ve got something to take care of in the barrel room,” he said.
Eli shoved two pieces of bread in the toaster. He hadn’t missed a thing. “Well, good luck with whatever it is.”
“Thanks,” I said as Quinn said, “We’ll need it.”
I don’t know what I expected from the meeting with Gino, how it would go after we told him about Father Niall’s blackmail and then introduced him to Mac and Uma. It didn’t help that relations between Mac and Uma were already tense; between Gino and Quinn, they were downright combustible. And Mac had warned that what he knew wouldn’t make everyone happy, including me. How many more land mines could there be?
At least the weather wasn’t going to give us any heartache, because it was already turning out to be a spectacular day with hard, bright sunshine and skies the cloudless cobalt blue of a van Gogh painting. For the first time in weeks, temperatures were expected to rise above freezing to a tropical forty degrees.
We had the winery to ourselves, since everyone else was at the villa helping set up for the party, so I was pretty sure nobody saw Gino Tomassi slip in through the door he’d used that first day when he’d barged in on us, accusing Quinn of blackmail. He gave Quinn a curt nod and turned to me, his eyes widening as he took in my bruises, which had faded from vivid purple to an unflattering shade of puce.
“You thought I was responsible for that?” he said to Quinn, pointing to my face. “Why you—”
“What?” Quinn said, his fists already balled up.
“No fighting.” I stepped between the two of them. “Stop it, both of you. Why don’t we adjourn to the office, where it’s warmer. And maybe everyone could calm down a little. This is hard enough as it is.”
We took the same seats we’d taken the other day, Gino on the sofa and Quinn and I on the two club chairs across from him.
“I could use something to wet my whistle,” Gino said.
“We can make coffee,” Quinn said.
“Something stronger.”
I got up before Quinn could say anything more and said, “Red okay?”
Gino nodded, so I got a glass and found an open bottle of Bordeaux. After I gave him his wine, I put a filter and coffee in the coffeepot and filled the carafe with water. Then I hit the brew button and sat down.
Quinn and I had agreed that he would do most of the talking, but before he began, I said to Gino, “Mac MacDonald, the nephew of Roxy Willoughby, the woman who was Zara’s daughter, is going to be here in about twenty minutes. Mac is aware someone was blackmailing you, but he doesn’t know we learned the identity of the person behind it, and Uma Lawrence, Roxy’s granddaughter, doesn’t know anything about it at all. We didn’t think there was any reason for either of them to find out, so that’s why you’re here by yourself right now.”
Gino took a sip of his wine and crossed one leg over the other. “Go on.”
Quinn took him through everything, explaining about Izzy and Roxy and how Mac’s comment about a priest forging the original documents when Zara’s baby was born had led to Father Niall, Roxy’s confessor and good friend, as the blackmailer. Gino’s head kept swiveling in my direction as Quinn talked, but I kept my mouth shut and got up when the coffeepot beeped so that I could busy myself with fixing two coffees.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen to Father Niall,” Quinn said, “whether he’s going to do jail time because he embezzled the money. But in the short term, the scandal is probably going to hurt Veronica House.”
Gino set his empty glass down on the coffee table. “I’m sorry to hear about that.”
“I’m glad you are,” Quinn said, “because Lucie and I were thinking it might be nice if you made a donation to Veronica House before you leave town. We’re hosting a fund-raiser for the place tonight. A generous check from you would be a big help.”
I hadn’t known that was on the table, but Quinn went on. “Then there are those two vineyards you and Dante Bellagio are looking at buying out in Angwin for your joint venture. The owners don’t want to sell. If I find out they do and that you’re behind it, I guarantee you that I will sell the whole sordid story of Zara and Warren Harding and Johnny to the highest-paying tabloid out there. No skin off my nose, but I bet you wouldn’t be too happy about it.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“That’s blackmail.”
“I don’t think of it that way,” Quinn said. “You don’t run your neighbors out of business. And as for the donation to Veronica House, Roxy would have given that money to the shelter if she hadn’t found out she was adopted right before she died. I think it’s more a Tomassi family debt of honor, to finally right old wrongs.”
I avoided looking at him. He didn’t know what had been in Roxy’s original will, any more than I did.
“You said you had the birth certificate,” Gino said. “So far, all this is just talk.”
“I do have it,” Quinn told him. “But I’m not going to give it to you.”
Gino got to his feet. “I’ve had enough—”
“Calm down, Gino, and sit down, will you? I haven’t finished.”
Gino glared at him, but he sat.
“I’ve been in touch with Father Niall,” Quinn said. “Now that he’s had some time to think through what happened, he’s decided he wants to meet you face-to-face. Tell you how sorry he is, ask your forgiveness. We’re going to see him when we’re done here. I thought he should give you the birth certificate, since he’s the one who found it. And you can tell him about your donation to Veronica House.”
I had to work to keep a poker face. When had Quinn found time to talk to Father Niall? We’d been together every single moment since going to bed together last night, except when he’d gotten up to get the champagne some time before midnight. I wondered who had gotten in touch with whom.
“That’s probably Mac,” I said as footsteps clattered on the metal staircase a moment later.
“Mac MacDonald is Roxy’s nephew,” Quinn said to Gino. “He’s the son of her younger sister.”
Mac knocked and I got up and opened the door. He walked in carrying a leather satchel under his arm and a chip on his shoulder. His eyes immediately went to Gino as he said to me with uncharacteristic formality, “Good morning, Lucie. I trust I’m not arriving too early? Hello, Quinn.”
Quinn introduced Gino and Mac, pulling up his desk chair for himself so Mac could take the seat next to me. I fixed him a cup of coffee while Quinn eased him into telling Gino the life story of the woman he’d believed was his aunt until he’d found out differently, her stormy relationship with his grandmother, and the secret Roxy had kept about giving birth to a daughter in England. I saw Gino exchange looks with Quinn and knew what he was thinking: that history, unknowingly, had repeated itself, two unplanned pregnancies, two daughters raised by different mothers, and the life-changing consequences that had rippled through generations.
When Mac was done, I said, “Do you know what really happened to Zara, Mac? Izzy went to California to be there for the birth of the baby, so presumably she was there when Zara died.”
He looked down into his coffee mug as though he would find the answer in the bottom of it.
“I don’t know everything,” he said. “But I do know things that I’m quite certain have never come to light.”
Gino gave him a skeptical look. “And how would you know these ‘things’?”
“Because Pauline Chase, my grandmother—Izzy—kept a journal.”
The remark dropped into chilling silence like a stain polluting a clear pool of water.
Gino leaned toward him. “Where is this journal?”
“My mother destroyed it. She never wanted Roxy to learn the truth about what had happened to Zara.”
“What did happen, Mac?” Quinn asked. “You’ve been beating around the bush ever since you got here.”
“Oh, come on, folks.” Mac threw up his hands. “Don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out by now. Zara’s death wasn’t an accident. Just planned to look like one.”
I caught my breath. Quinn and Gino exchanged looks.
“Who killed her?” Gino asked. “Was it Johnny?”
Mac pursed his lips in a tight smile. “Have any of you ever read Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Gino said as Quinn shook his head. “Can’t you just answer the question?”
“He did answer it,” I said after a moment. “Everyone did it. A murder was committed on board a train—the Orient Express—when it was stranded in the snow for a few days after it left Istanbul. Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s detective, figured out that either a total stranger on board the train had killed the man and then slipped away or else all the other passengers were in on it together. As it turned out, each of them had a motive, so Poirot concluded that everyone had to be guilty.”
Mac’s smile tightened. “Precisely.”
“Zara fell into a ravine while she was out walking at Bel Paradiso,” Quinn said. “Are you saying more than one person pushed her?”
“I’m not saying anything of the kind.” Mac sounded irritated. “She wasn’t out walking anywhere.”
“What did happen?” I asked.
“Zara wanted to take the train down to San Francisco,” he said, “to pay a visit to President Harding at the Palace Hotel when he was in town on his western trip. Apparently, she was desperate to see him. Johnny wouldn’t let her out of the house—her baby was due any day—and Pauline backed him up. According to Pauline’s diary, Johnny and Zara had a huge fight, screaming at each other, even throwing things. By that time, Zara’s father—Congressman Ingrasso—had gotten involved, too. He told Johnny to keep Zara away from the president, do whatever it took, because the affair had become such a political embarrassment to him.” Mac glanced at me. “Lucie, I told you yesterday that Lucky Montgomery was involved, as well. What I didn’t tell you was that she was a good friend of both Pauline and Zara, and that she was also seeing Warren Harding, if you know what I mean. Pauline knew about Lucky’s affair, but Zara didn’t. At least not at first.”
I heard Gino’s sharp intake of breath. He hadn’t heard about Lucky’s being in the picture. For that matter, Quinn didn’t know, either.
Two women, two friends, sleeping with the same man. A love triangle. I swallowed hard and said, “I see.”
“Lucky had come to San Francisco for the same reason Zara wanted to travel there,” Mac said. “To see the president. But by that time, Harding was so sick that his wife, the First Lady, made it clear they wouldn’t be welcome. So Pauline persuaded Lucky to go to Bel Paradiso and help her baby-sit Zara instead.”
He sipped his coffee. “This has gone a bit cold. Do you think you could warm it up, Lucie?”
“Sure.” I got up, dumped the coffee in the sink, and poured him a new cup.
When I handed it to him, he blew on it and said, “Where was I?”
“Lucky went to Bel Paradiso to baby-sit Zara,” Quinn said in a tense voice.
Mac nodded. “That’s right. She arrived on August second, the night Warren Harding died in his hotel room and Zara gave birth to a daughter at Bel Paradiso. The next morning, Zara overheard one of the maids crying because Harding was dead. She became hysterical.” He set his mug on the table and folded his hands together. “This is where it becomes complicated.”
“Why am I not surprised,” Gino said.
“Please.” Mac gave him a pained look. “This is difficult enough.”
I frowned at Gino, who shrugged. Mac drank more coffee, but it seemed like a stalling tactic while he pulled himself together.
Finally, he said, “Lucky was so upset about Harding’s death that Zara put two and two together and guessed that he’d been sleeping with her, as well. There was another shouting match and Zara left the house, left the baby with one of the maids and just ran off. Lucky told Johnny and Pauline, but by then Johnny was so fed up, he said to let her go.”
“That’s when she fell?” Quinn asked.
“No,” Mac said. “Eventually, Pauline and Lucky decided they’d better go look for her—she’d just had a child, after all—so they got the keys to Johnny’s car and took off. I don’t know who was driving, since Pauline left that out of her account of what happened, but Johnny saw them leave, so he ran after them, chased them down. They stopped the car and he got in.”
He sighed again, his shoulders slumping. “Zara hadn’t gotten very far and she hadn’t reached the entrance to Bel Paradiso, but she was heading that way. When she heard the car, she started running.”
I felt my heart constrict. “They hit her? Deliberately?”
“They ran her over,” he said in a strangled voice. “That wasn’t in the diary. My grandmother told my mother right before she died.”
“Good God, who was driving? Whoever was behind the wheel is the one who actually killed her.” Gino sounded stricken. “Didn’t Pauline tell your mother who it was?”
Quinn’s mouth hung open. I felt sick to my stomach. Each of us was related to someone who had participated in the murder of a woman in cold blood nearly a century ago. And then had covered it up.
All I could think of at that moment was how Jay Gatsby claimed he’d been driving the car that killed Myrtle Wilson, rather than letting Daisy Buchanan, the woman he adored, take the blame. No one—not Johnny, Pauline, or Lucky—had taken responsibility for killing Zara.
“I don’t know who was driving,” Mac was saying. “But Pauline wrote that they were all in a complete panic, terrified. That’s when they came up with the idea that she had fallen down a ravine. And that’s where she was found, so to speak, a few hours later. By then she was dead.”
The silence in the room went on for a long time, broken only by the noise of Gino refilling his glass with the last of the Bordeaux.
“I don’t suppose Pauline knew who Zara’s baby’s father was,” he said to Mac in a dull voice.
“Even Zara herself wasn’t sure. Apparently, there were a couple of possibilities.”
Gino threw back his wine and set the glass down hard. “Great,” he said. “Just great.”
“She would have gotten pregnant in December if the baby was born in August,” I said. “She came back to Washington for Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays, so it must have happened here. In other words, it’s possible the father could have been Warren Harding.”
“Possibly, but Johnny came to Washington for Christmas, as well,” Gino said. “He and Zara stayed with the Ingrassos and all of them dined at the White House on more than one occasion. Johnny always took care of the wine.”
“So that doesn’t rule Johnny out as the father,” Quinn said.
“No,” Gino said, “but at least we have a way to find out—Zara’s great-granddaughter.”
“Who should be here,” I said, glancing at my watch as Quinn’s phone rang.
“It’s Frankie,” he said, and answered the call. “Hey, what’s up? Oh yeah? Well, can you give her directions to the office? Thanks.” He hung up. “Uma Lawrence is on her way. She got lost.”
He got up to get a new bottle of wine and more glasses. Then he gave us all a mirthless smile. “Showtime,” he said.