One
TODAY
I could see the car speeding toward me on Atoka Road, a small dark speck that was maybe a mile away but definitely traveling well above the limit on the two-lane country road that ribboned out in front of me. The car disappeared into the trough of a hill and then popped up again, accelerating as it grew closer. A cold, hard rain that had fallen for most of this early spring day had finally abated, leaving large puddles in the usual low spots and wet, slippery asphalt that could be treacherous if you took a turn too fast.
The driver was motoring like he had stolen something, fast and careless, weaving back and forth across the road into my lane. By now the car was close enough that I recognized the gold SUV that belonged to Jamie Vaughn, who six months ago had been a candidate for the office of president of the United States. It looked like Jamie was behind the wheel, alone in the car. Even though it was just past noon, I wondered if he’d been drinking. Like me, Jamie owned a family vineyard, and after a devastating loss in November, I’d heard rumors about how he was coping—or more like not coping—though I’d never actually seen him drunk.
He hadn’t shifted back into his own lane, so I leaned on my horn and waited for him to correct himself, then wondered why he didn’t. Maybe he was unwell—a heart attack, a stroke … something. By now we were both approaching the turn to Sycamore Lane and the entrance to my vineyard, heading directly toward each other like a pair of jousters preparing to do battle. I’d have to cut across the road in front of him to make it into the turnoff before he reached it since I assumed he’d keep barreling right past me—or through me if I didn’t get out of the way in time.
One more look at his car and the speed at which he was traveling and I knew I wouldn’t make it without being broadsided. I swerved hard onto the opposite shoulder and my Jeep bounced into a deep, rutted puddle, jolting me so hard my teeth rattled in my head. I swore under my breath and fought to hold tight to the steering wheel to avoid crashing through my neighbor’s split-rail fence. Jamie was driving like a lunatic.
I heard the screech of his tires before I could turn around to see what happened, followed by what sounded like a car engine accelerating. Then the crash—metal smashing into unyielding stone, so eerily reminiscent of my own accident ten years ago. I cut the engine to the Jeep and looked in my rearview mirror.
He’d hit the same pillar Greg had plowed into, and part of it had collapsed onto the hood of his car. I grabbed my phone from the console and my cane from the backseat, scrambling out of the Jeep. By the time I reached Jamie, I’d called 911. The air smelled of gasoline along with the acrid odor of deployed air bags. The impact and the toppled stone pillar had crushed the frame of the car so Jamie’s door was jammed shut, but luckily his window was open. A fine coating of air bag dust had settled over the car interior and on Jamie’s navy blazer and khakis. His dark brown hair looked like it had been coated with powdered sugar. Either he’d already unhooked his seat belt or he hadn’t been wearing one. I guessed it was the latter. Everyone around here knew he drove without buckling up. He’d even got called out on it during the presidential campaign.
There was blood on his face from a gash in his head, and he was wheezing as if he couldn’t catch his breath. His internal injuries were probably worse, maybe a gut punch from the air bag or he’d hit the steering column without the restraining protection of the seat belt.
I reached in and shook him gently. “Jamie, it’s Lucie. Lucie Montgomery. Can you move? We need to get you out of here. I smell gasoline and I think your engine is about to catch fire.”
He gave me a confused, glassy-eyed look. “No.”
I yanked on his door, which budged a little. “Help me,” I said, urgency creeping into my voice. “We haven’t got much time. Push against the door, will you? I’ll keep pulling.”
It was the same spot where I’d been trapped inside Greg’s Corvette. The exact same spot. That time the fire department needed the Jaws of Life to extract me, but at least the car hadn’t caught fire. I felt like I was going to throw up.
Jamie reached through the open window and clutched the sleeve of my jacket. His hand was red and raw, probably from air bag burns.
“I’m sorry,” he said, with surprising force. His eyes, now trying to focus on mine, were feverishly bright, and I wondered if he was a bit high, what he’d taken. “Tell him I’m sorry.”
I leaned closer and smelled alcohol on his breath. Maybe he’d mixed booze with pills. “What are you talking about? Jamie … we have to hurry.”
Something slipped through his fingers and fell to the ground, landing at my feet. A MedicAlert bracelet. It must have snapped and fallen off his wrist with the impact of the air bag. I picked it up and shoved it in my jacket pocket. When the ambulance arrived, they would need the information on it.
“Tell Rick,” he said and coughed up blood. “Do you hear me? Tell Rick I need him to forgive me.” He tried to wipe away the blood with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry. So very sorry.”
“Sure,” I said. Anything to placate him. “I’ll tell him. Now come on, you have to help me.”
“No,” he said again, his voice thick with blood. “S’okay. You promise, right?”
“Jamie—”
“Lemme alone, Lucie. It’s too late.” He coughed, spitting a spume of blood like a projectile. It sprayed over me, stinging my face and leaving a trail across my jacket, my shirt, and my jeans, as shocking as a hard slap. For an instant I froze, then my brain kicked in again.
Get him out of there. He’s choking on his own blood.
“It’s not too late. Dammit, Jamie.” I was losing him. The heat from the fire that had started under the hood was as hot as if I were standing at the open door to a furnace. I tugged on the car door. “Come on.”
I didn’t hear the other vehicle until the brakes screeched as someone pulled up behind me. When I turned around, Mick Dunne, my next-door neighbor, was scrambling out of his Land Rover, hollering as he sprinted toward me.
“Lucie, get away from the car. The engine’s caught fire.”
I glanced at Jamie, who was now unconscious, eyes closed, blood still trickling from one side of his mouth. Black smoke poured from the front of the car and flames appeared through the front driver wheel well and around the edges of the smashed-in hood. The heat burned my skin. My clothes felt like they were becoming congealed to my body.
“I know,” I said. “Mick! Hurry!”
“Get out of there,” he yelled. “Now!”
“Jamie Vaughn is trapped inside. I can’t open the door. Help me!”
Mick reached me and easily scooped me into his arms. He smelled of horses and hay and sweat. “The engine’s going to blow up any second. Come on.”
“No!” I pummeled his shoulders with my fists. “We can’t leave him to die like this. He’s still alive. Mick, he’s your friend.”
Two pops sounded like gunshots and we both flinched. “That’s the tires exploding,” Mick said in a tense voice. “Lucie, dammit, we can’t save him.”
The thick smoke, which had morphed into a black funnel cloud, now engulfed us. My eyes stung and my lungs felt like they would explode. Over the roar of the blaze I heard Jamie’s agonized scream as the flames spread to the interior of the car, burning it like a funeral pyre.
Mick pulled my head down, jamming my face against his shoulder. “Don’t look,” he said as we moved away from the fire. “Just don’t.”
“Put me down. Get away from me.” My voice was muffled against the scratchy denim of his jacket. I punched his shoulder with my fist, but this time I knew it was too late. “Let me go.”
He obeyed, setting me down as soon as we were out of range of the fire and the vicious smoke. I stumbled away from him and dropped to my knees, gasping as I tried to catch my breath. My cane was somewhere near Jamie’s car. I’d dropped it when Mick picked me up.
“Lucie—” Mick was on the ground, too, coughing convulsively. “Lucie—”
“We let him die.”
Sirens wailed in the distance. I turned away so Mick wouldn’t see my tears. The smoke was now an enormous column that plumed into the sky like a dark, ominous genie. Below it, the fire blazed, turning the car into a charred metal skeleton like the picked-clean bones of an animal devoured by a predator.
Jamie was dead, gone, consumed by the fire.
Mick came over to me, grabbing my arm. “Don’t you ever say that again.” His mouth was next to my ear and his anger cut through me like a whip. “If we’d stayed to help him, we’d have been immolated just like he was. Do you hear me? I saved your damn life.”
He shook my arm hard and dropped it, walking away as the first fire truck roared up Sycamore Lane.
Immolated. Killed or sacrificed by fire.
What a bizarre word choice. Except I was the only person who’d actually witnessed Jamie’s car as it crashed into the wall. Or seen most of it. Not only had it seemed deliberate—he’d aimed directly for the stone pillar and hadn’t slowed down—but he also didn’t help me open the door and free him before the car caught fire.
Everyone knew how devastated he’d been by losing the election in spite of a gracious, upbeat concession speech. His loss had floored everyone—the media, the pollsters, his party … the country. What made it worse was that he’d won the popular vote but lost massively in the electoral college. Jamie’s opponent—now the president—had scooped up the big-prize states, claiming an overwhelming mandate, and even turned a few states the other way for the first time in decades. It had been Jamie’s first time in national politics, galvanized by the belief that he could do something to change the ugly polarization and deadlocked status quo that had mired Washington for decades. His charisma, boyish good looks, and personal charm had soon elevated him above the other candidates in his party so that he’d wrapped up the primaries early in the season, swept through the national convention as his party’s shining star: an appealing new candidate who was smart and telegenic, and possessed the savvy political instincts of a pro. A successful self-made businessman with a multimillion-dollar empire in international real estate, well known for his generous philanthropy, beloved in our community—one of our own—and a devoted family man. Jamison Vaughn had it all.
What had just happened?
And who was Rick, someone so obviously on Jamie’s mind—or his conscience? I realized now his dying request was for me to find him and tell him Jamie was sorry. So sorry, he’d said. Forgive me.
For what?
Something so awful that it had driven him to commit suicide? Surely there had to be another explanation for why he drove into my wall. Not suicide, but a tragic accident. Maybe a lethal combination of drugs and booze.
Jamie’s death would be national—no, international—news. As the only witness, there was no way I wanted to tell anyone I suspected it had been suicide and destroy the reputation of a man who had done so much good in his lifetime.
But in my heart of hearts that’s exactly what I thought had happened: Jamie Vaughn had deliberately taken his own life in a gruesome and violent way.
And I was the only one who had witnessed what he’d done.
Two
The first fire truck from the Middleburg Fire and Rescue Station roared into Sycamore Lane, lights flashing and sirens blaring, followed by a blur of emergency rescue vehicles, an ambulance, and a brown-and-gold Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department cruiser. A moment later the battalion chief’s car pulled up. A man suited up in firefighting gear got out of the SUV.
“I’ll handle this,” Mick said.
Before I could protest, he sprinted over to the battalion chief, pointing to the flames shooting out of Jamie’s car and to me. Then he shook his head. I knew why. He was saying we’d arrived on the scene too late to save Jamie.
I wrapped my arms around my waist and watched two firefighters train a hose on the SUV. It didn’t take long for the flames to subside and the sooty black smoke to dissolve into a grayish-white mushroom cloud enveloping what remained of the chassis and drifting over nearby rows of my dark brown grapevines on the verge of bud break.
Mick and the battalion chief split up and he joined me again. “You obviously told the nine-one-one dispatcher it was Jamie’s car, which is why a battalion chief showed up right away,” he said. “I told him what happened.”
“Yes, I’m sure you did.” I kept my eyes locked on the firefighters who were still dousing the SUV with water.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“No.” I gave him a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look. “I’m not. You shouldn’t be, either, after what just happened.”
He blew out a short, angry breath. “Bloody hell, Lucie, we couldn’t have saved him.” His voice had an edge that I didn’t like. “You’re not going to say anything different, are you?”
Part of me knew he was right, that we probably couldn’t have gotten Jamie out of the car before the fire reached him. What bothered me—actually, haunted me—was that Jamie hadn’t wanted to escape and Mick hadn’t tried to yank open the car door. He and Jamie had known each other for decades; they’d met their freshman year of college at the University of Virginia, and Mick, who was from London, had practically been adopted by Jamie’s family, spending every holiday and school break at the Vaughns’ home in Richmond when he didn’t return to England. Everyone knew they were as close as brothers. Did Mick know Jamie had some kind of death wish?
Or why?
“I’m not going to lie,” I said to Mick, my voice stiff with anger, “if that’s what you mean.”
There is also some history between Mick Dunne and me: We’ve slept together. Sex changes the dynamics of everything, especially if it’s in the past and the relationship didn’t end well. Forever afterward you know each other with an intimacy that leaves you vulnerable and more emotional when you’re together, plus there’s a hidden subtext in every remark or casual comment you make. At least we’d managed to stay friends—we were, after all, neighbors who owned adjacent vineyards—but the backstory of our tumultuous affair still tripped us up. Like it was doing now.
“Lucie.” He reached for my shoulder, but I jerked away and kept my arms folded across my chest.
A female EMT with close-cropped gray hair and wearing a navy jumpsuit walked across Sycamore Lane, striding toward Mick and me. Her medical bag was in one hand and she was looking intently at us like she was on a mission. When she came closer, I realized that her face was young and the gray was probably premature. She pointed to my blood-spattered face and clothes.
“Are you injured?” she asked. “What happened?”
“It’s not my blood,” I said. “It’s Jamie Vaughn’s. I got to him before he lost consciousness. He started spitting up blood before he passed out.”
“Would you like me to clean your face?”
“Yes, please.”
She knelt and opened her kit, pulling on a pair of purple exam gloves. Then she took a couple of gauze pads from a box and sprayed them from a bottle marked “Saline Wound Wash.”
Her touch was gentle and I closed my eyes as she wiped the blood off my face. “He probably sustained some pretty severe internal injuries, which caused the vomiting,” she said. “More than likely a couple of crushed or broken ribs. There … all done.”
“Thank you.” I opened my eyes. “He wasn’t wearing a seat belt.”
She groaned. “Seat belts save lives. He might still be alive if he’d used his. Did you see the crash?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I had to pull off onto the opposite shoulder to avoid him. He was speeding down Atoka Road, probably doing at least sixty. I heard the impact, then I turned around and saw his car smashed into the pillar.”
“Can you stick around?” she asked. “I’ll let the deputy from the sheriff’s department know you were there when it happened.”
“I live here,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere. Thank you for … what you did.”
“You’re welcome. I’m just sorry we were too late for Jamie Vaughn.”
She left and Mick picked up where we’d left off. “It’s going to utterly gut Elena and the boys if this goes down as a suicide, Lucie.”
I flinched at the word “suicide.” “If it wasn’t deliberate, then what happened?”
“I don’t know. He was taking medication to deal with … losing the election and that brutal campaign. He’d also been drinking more than he ought to. He could have mixed alcohol and pills and then made an unwise decision to get behind the wheel of a car.” He shrugged and gave me a look I didn’t understand. “To tell you the truth, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“You’re right about the alcohol,” I said. “I smelled it on his breath. And I think he’d taken something, too. He seemed kind of … I don’t know … out of it.”
“Which would mean he was driving while impaired. That doesn’t make it suicide, Lucie. Just a horrible accident.”
Maybe Mick was right. But something had weighed on Jamie’s mind before he died, and now I wondered if it had upset him enough to prompt him to mix that deadly combination of alcohol and pills. “Who’s Rick?” I asked. “Do you have any idea?”
“Pardon?” He frowned. “Rick?”
“Before you got here, Jamie asked me to tell someone named Rick he was sorry,” I said. “I wondered if you knew who he meant.”
Mick gave me a long, steady look. When he spoke, his voice was cool. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Jamie was unconscious when I reached him. If he said anything a moment before he passed out, you can hardly expect it made sense.”
“It didn’t make sense, but it’s what he said.”
“You also just told me he’d been drinking and possibly mixed it with drugs. Look, Lucie, Jamie’s had a hell of a comedown since November. It hit him hard. He’s been trying to deal with it as best he could. Forget what you think he said to you and don’t stir up trouble or hurt anybody with speculation you can’t justify. Think of Elena and Jamie’s sons. And the millions of people who voted for Jamie, believed in him.”
I stared at him, open-mouthed. Mick had been the one who walked—no, ran—away from that car without trying to help open Jamie’s door. And I was supposed to feel guilty if I told Jamie’s wife what I’d seen and heard? Wouldn’t she want to know?
“You can’t be serious, Mick.”
“Let it go, Lucie. I mean it.”
I stared at him in frustration and disbelief. Then I turned my back on him.
Two more sheriff’s department cruisers pulled up on the shoulder of Atoka Road in front of where Mick and I were standing, forming a barrier between us and a gathering crowd of neighbors and curious passersby who had stopped their cars to watch the unfolding tragedy. With the front entrance to the vineyard blocked, someone—probably Quinn Santori, my winemaker and, as of a few weeks ago, my fiancé—had opened our south service gate farther down the road. I guessed that a lot of the cars driving past us came from the vineyard itself, people who’d stopped in to taste or buy our wine. One of the deputies began directing traffic, which had backed up along the road as cars slowed down to see what had happened. The other deputy took over crowd control, herding everyone who was standing around like spectators riveted to a sports event where something has gone horribly wrong, until they moved across the street and out of the way. Two people I didn’t recognize were filming the scene with their cell phone cameras. My stomach churned. We’d probably be watching someone’s homemade video of Jamie’s burned-out car on the evening news.
I pulled out my own phone to call Quinn. There were half a dozen missed calls, three from him and a couple of text messages. He answered even before I heard the phone ring. “There’s an accident at the main gate,” he said. “A car hit the wall and caught fire. Antonio put up barricades at the turnoff on our side of Sycamore Lane and we’re having folks leave through the service entrance.” He paused. “I hope whoever was driving managed to get out before the fire started.”
“It was Jamie Vaughn,” I said, “and he didn’t. I saw the crash.”
“Jamie Vaughn? Oh, my God … Jamie.” He sounded stunned. “Lucie, are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“No … no, I’m not hurt. I’m fine.”
“What happened? He lost control of his car? Was anyone with him?”
“No, just Jamie.” There would be time later to explain to him that I wasn’t sure it was an accident. “I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”
“Where are you now?”
“By the entrance, with Mick Dunne.”
“Mick,” he said, not sounding happy. The relationship between my fiancé and my ex-lover wasn’t always smooth. “What’s he doing there?”
“I’ll tell you about that when I see you, too.”
“Give me five minutes,” he said. “And you can tell me everything.”
* * *
BY THE TIME QUINN’S pickup truck pulled up behind the two police cruisers, a misty drizzle had turned the landscape into a washed-out watercolor. The deputy who’d been the first to arrive, a young guy with a buzz cut and the demeanor of an ex-marine, had taken me aside—away from Mick—to question me about the accident. I told him the truth, about Jamie’s speeding down the wrong side of the road before turning into Sycamore Lane and crashing into the pillar. And that I’d smelled alcohol on his breath.
Over his shoulder, I could see Quinn talking to Mick. If body language was anything to go by, it didn’t look like the conversation was going well.
“Are you saying you think he was drunk?”
“I’m saying he didn’t seem like himself.”
“Well, it’s a single-vehicle crash and there aren’t any skid marks, which is consistent with someone not trying to stop,” the deputy said. “Did you see him swerve to avoid something, an animal, maybe? Any indication he was distracted? On his phone? Texting?”
I shifted my gaze away from Mick and Quinn and focused on him. “I don’t know. I couldn’t say one way or the other. I was too busy trying to avoid him and then keep control of my own car so I wouldn’t crash through my neighbor’s fence.”
“Then you didn’t actually see Mr. Vaughn make that last turn?”
“No, but his car didn’t levitate off the ground and make a sharp right on its own.”
He gave me a don’t-be-a-wiseass-to-a-cop look. “There’s no such thing as an earwitness, Ms. Montgomery. You just said you didn’t know if Jamie Vaughn was avoiding something or otherwise distracted and lost control of the car because you didn’t see that crash happen.”
Black or white. Yes or no. All or nothing.
“That’s correct,” I said. “But there’s something else.”
He paused from making notes in a reporter’s notebook and looked up. “Yes?”
“He was conscious when I got to him, and he said something. He asked me to tell someone named Rick that he was sorry.”
The deputy tapped the end of his pen on his pad. “Do you know who he was talking about?”
“No, I don’t. He also didn’t want me to help him get out of the car.”
More pen tapping while he considered that. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “Just what I said. He wouldn’t help me try to get his door open. He told me to move away from the car, to leave him.”
“Was he trapped in the car?”
“Yes.”
“Could the two of you have opened the door?”
“It would have been very difficult … I don’t know. Probably not.”
“Do you think Mr. Vaughn realized that it was futile to try to rescue him and that the car was about to catch on fire?”
“I suppose so.”
“In other words he might have been trying to save your life. Make it easier for you to walk away.”
“I … maybe. I mean, yes.” Mick had said practically the same thing.
The officer wrote something in his notebook, then closed it and clicked his pen. Even to my own ears it sounded like I wasn’t sure about anything anymore. Unreliable witness. Maybe that’s what he’d just written down.
“Thank you for your help, Ms. Montgomery.”
“You’re welcome. What happens now?”
“We’ll inform his next of kin and the ME will perform an autopsy. As to whether it was an accident or something else, our investigation will track with what the medical examiner’s office determines is the cause of death.” He rested a hand on my shoulder. “Take it easy, okay? You’ve just witnessed an awful crash, someone you know perishing in a fire. It’s going to affect you. There’s no way it won’t.”
I nodded because I was afraid my voice would crack if I spoke. Afraid I would crack. He walked back to his cruiser. Quinn broke away from Mick as soon as I was by myself and ran over to me. In the past few minutes the rain had turned into a cold, steady drizzle. The drops of blood on my clothes started to run like pink Rorschach inkblots.
“Mick gave me this. He said you dropped it.” Quinn handed me my metal cane, a puzzled look on his face that turned to shock as his eyes took in my blood-spattered clothes. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
Obviously Mick hadn’t explained the circumstances that led me to drop the cane, that he’d been carrying me kicking and screaming away from where Jamie still remained trapped inside a burning car.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
Quinn pulled me into his arms. “You’ve got blood on your clothes.”
“It’s Jamie’s.”
He hugged me tight, his chin resting on the top of my head. “Come on, let’s get you out of here,” he said in my ear. “It’s going to start pouring any minute. I just saw a television crew arrive. One look at you and they’ll be all over you for a story.”
“I wonder if anyone called Elena,” I said as we walked back to the truck. “Or the kids. It would be awful if they found out on television or through some social networking site.”
“Mick’s on his way to Elena’s,” Quinn said. “He phoned her while you were talking to that deputy. I didn’t realize those two were so friendly with each other.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. Just some vibe I thought I picked up.”
“They’ve known each other for decades. Of course they’re good friends. Mick is godfather to one of the twins. Owen, I think.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He opened the passenger door to the truck and held it for me. “You look like you could use a drink. And a shower.”
“Yes to both.” I said. “Wait a minute. My car is still where I left it after Jamie ran me off the road. I ought to get it before anyone else puts two and two together that I was here when Jamie crashed. I’ll meet you at the house.”
“Leave that to Antonio or one of the other guys,” he said. “You’ll be mobbed by people asking questions before you get anywhere near your car. This is going to be enough of a three-ring media circus as it is, once word gets out that Jamie Vaughn died in a fiery crash practically at our front door—if it isn’t already out by now.” He held out a hand. “Here, give me your keys.”
I climbed into my seat and gave them to him. “You’re probably right.”
“I know I’m right.” He climbed into his seat, put the truck in reverse, and did a neat three-point turn.
I glanced in my side mirror. A petite woman in a bright blue windbreaker with a D.C. Channel 3 news station logo stitched on it ran toward us. Her hood shielded her hair and face from the rain so I couldn’t get a look at her. Before Quinn could pull out onto Atoka Road, the deputy who had been directing traffic pointed at us and held up his hand, indicating for Quinn to wait until one of the fire trucks maneuvered onto the road on its way back to the station.
“Damn,” I said as the reporter came around and rapped on my window, an engaging smile on her face as she tried to make eye contact. Her cameraman was right behind her.
Quinn frowned. “Ignore them.”
I groaned. “That’s what’s-her-name from Channel 3. She’s a pit bull.”
I stared at my hands in my lap and pretended not to see either the reporter or her cameraman as Quinn drove away. Thank God that EMT had cleaned Jamie’s blood off my face. I checked the mirror again and saw the cameraman filming the truck, and the reporter, no longer smiling as she stabbed her finger in our direction.
This would not turn out well.
“I don’t want to talk to anybody,” I said to Quinn. “Or answer questions about what happened. I mean it.”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” He sounded like a parent soothing a child who just insisted monsters were hiding under the bed. He shot me a perplexed look. “What’s wrong, Lucie? You look almost like you’re about to pass out.”
Here it was. I took a deep breath. “I don’t think that crash was an accident. I think Jamie deliberately drove his car into our wall.”
“Jesus, are you serious? You think it was suicide?”
I nodded, and his eyes held mine as he took in the implication of what that meant.
“How sure are you?” he asked.
“I heard him accelerate right before he hit the wall. Unfortunately—or fortunately—I didn’t see the actual crash because Jamie ran me off the road and I ended up in that puddle on the shoulder where you saw the Jeep. So according to the deputy who interviewed me, I’m not technically an eyewitness. And there was alcohol on Jamie’s breath.”
Quinn had taken the long way back to the house, through the vineyard with its neat rows of dark brown vines and down an allée of pink flowering Yoshino cherry trees my mother planted years ago. Though the blossoms had reached their peak a few days ago, the trees were still lovely and ethereal, jarringly beautiful after the fire-charred wreckage we’d just left behind. Today’s rain and wind had scattered hundreds of petals so they carpeted the road like pink snow. It was one of the places where I always felt most at peace, and I guessed that was why Quinn had brought me here.
He stopped the truck under the sheltering protection of the trees in a spot where their lacy branches crisscrossed above us. A few flowers drifted down and landed on the windshield. “Here’s what I think we should do,” he said in a gentle voice. “I think we need to call Frankie. Warn her that the vineyard is probably going to be swarmed by reporters nosing around for a story in the next day or so. If that woman back there knew you were a witness, it won’t be long before the rest of the pack gets wind of it, and you’re going to be hounded.”
“What are we going to tell her?” I asked. My brain felt like it had frozen.
“That if anybody asks, all she should say is that Montgomery Estate Vineyard has no comment except that our hearts go out to the Vaughn family. The less said the better.”
Francesca Merchant—Frankie—ran our tasting room and the day-to-day retail operation of the vineyard with military efficiency. She’d be more than up to coping with anyone who came around or called asking questions about the crash or trying to pry into my knowledge of what had happened.
“I’ll call her,” I said. “I’m the one who was there.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket as he reached for his. “Who are you going to call?”
He gave me a long look. “Persia. It might be a good idea to get Hope out of the house before you get home, don’t you think? Maybe she can stay at Persia’s place until you get cleaned up.”
Last fall I hired Persia Fleming, a middle-aged Jamaican woman who’d recently become a widow, as my housekeeper when it finally got to be too much to keep up Highland House, my family’s 225-year-old home, along with my increasing responsibilities at the vineyard. A few months later my brother Eli and his three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Hope, moved in after Eli’s marriage fell apart. It hadn’t taken long for him to poach Persia as Hopie’s daytime caregiver when she wasn’t at preschool, but Persia adored Hope as if she were her own and the house had never run so smoothly.
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “What are you going to tell her?”
“As little as possible for now. She’ll just fret, otherwise.”
My thoughts moved in a straight line from Persia to Hope to Eli. “Oh, God, Quinn, what about Eli? He needs to know. I think he had client meetings all day so he’s spending the day driving all over Loudoun County. If he’s in his car, he’ll have satellite radio tuned to some music station.”
“First call Frankie,” Quinn said. “Then call your brother. Though if Elena knows, he might have found out by now as well.”
Over the winter my older brother, Eli, had begun going out with Sasha Vaughn, Jamie’s daughter from a brief marriage to a college girlfriend who inconveniently got pregnant. Eli and Sasha met at Hope’s preschool where his daughter and her four-year-old son were in the same class. Before long I knew Eli was timing his school pickups and drop-offs so he could “accidentally” bump into Sasha. It was a rebound relationship for both of them—Eli’s first since his acrimonious split up with Brandi and, for Sasha, the first time she’d dated since her marine husband filed for a divorce and went back to Iraq to marry his girlfriend. In recent weeks it seemed to me things between them had become even more serious.
“Elena’s going to call her own sons and make sure Owen and Oliver are okay before she tells Sasha,” I said. “They don’t have the easiest stepmother-stepdaughter relationship. Eli still might not know.”
Frankie answered her phone over the blare of a television. It sounded like people were shouting.
“Lucie.” Her voice was breathless and agitated. “Are you okay? I’m watching CNN. They’re saying that an eyewitness said two cars were involved in the crash that killed Jamie Vaughn at our front entrance. The story is all over the place.”
“I’m fine,” I told her. “I wasn’t anywhere near his car when it hit the wall. And there wasn’t anyone else around when it happened. So if there’s another eyewitness, it’s news to me.”
“Thank God you’re okay. Look, I closed the tasting room for the rest of the day and sent all the staff home. Do you want to come by for a drink? You probably could use one.”
“Thanks. I think I’m just going to head home with Quinn and get cleaned up.”
“Cleaned up?”
“I’m … uh … all muddy.”
She let that go and we discussed what she should say if anyone called the vineyard, specifically anyone from the media.
I hung up with Frankie as Quinn clicked his phone off after talking to Persia. “Persia is going to take Hope over to her apartment and give her dinner there,” he said. “She’ll bring her back later in time for bed.”
“Good,” I said. “I guess I’d better call Eli.”
Quinn laid a hand on my arm. “He knows. He’s on his way home, too. First he wants to see you. Then he’s going over to Sasha’s place. She canceled all her patients for the rest of the day and went to pick up Zach from preschool.”
“That poor little boy,” I said. “I hope Sasha can keep him from seeing or hearing any stories on the news so he doesn’t have to know how his grandfather died. It’s going to be hard enough explaining death to him as it is.”
Quinn started the truck. The rain was coming down hard, drumming on the roof in a metallic staccato that jangled my nerves. “Persia and Hope are probably gone by now,” he said. “You look wiped out. Let’s go home.”
* * *
I FOUND QUINN AND Eli on the sofa in the parlor drinking beer out of the bottle when I came downstairs after showering and changing. I had scrubbed for a long time under a stream of hot water as if Jamie’s blood had somehow penetrated my clothes clear through to my skin.
The television was on mute and a commercial flashed on the screen, a couple cavorting in a field on a sunny day with a dog. You never know what they’re selling anymore. Based on the rest of the images it could have been a sexual performance–enhancing drug or a cell phone plan.
My brother got up and gave me a look as if he hadn’t been sure what to expect when he saw me. Like Leland, our father, Eli wasn’t good with weepy, emotional women. For that matter, neither was Quinn. I am neither weepy nor emotional, but I was pretty wrung out.
“Relax,” I said, forcing lightness into my voice. “I’m okay.”
He gave me a one-arm hug. “You sure?” His smile was halfhearted.
“Absolutely.”
“What can I get you to drink, sweetheart?” Quinn asked.
“Scotch, please. Neat. The shower helped. I threw out my jeans and my shirt. I can’t wear them … again.”
Eli’s eyelids flickered, so I knew Quinn must have told him about the blood.
“Jamie’s death is going to be the lead story on the local news at six,” Quinn said. “They’ve been talking about it nonstop. We don’t have to watch if you’d rather not.”
He left the room, his hand caressing the back of my neck on his way out. Eli and I sat down on the sofa. “When Quinn and I left the accident scene about an hour and a half ago, a reporter from Channel 3 and a cameraman were already there,” I told him.
“One?” he said. “Just one? I saw half a dozen as I drove by a few minutes ago. If this keeps up, we’re going to end up with more satellite trucks and reporters doing their stand-ups outside the vineyard entrance than the O.J. trial.”
Quinn returned with my Scotch and caught the tail end of what Eli said. “Was Jamie’s car still there?” he asked.
Eli nodded. “They were moving what was left of it onto a flatbed truck. It was too wrecked to tow. Fortunately, there were a couple of officers from the sheriff’s department handling crowd control, keeping people away from the actual crash site. What’s still standing of the pillar looks pretty unstable. We’re going to have to rebuild it eventually. Along with that whole section of the wall.”
I was glad he didn’t say “again” or mention that it was the same one Greg’s car had crashed into. Last year when Eli and Hope moved in with me, we made a deal that in return for free rent, my brother—an architect who had converted the lower level of our old carriage house into his studio—would supervise all construction work at the vineyard pro bono. I knew he’d take care of fixing the wall as well. I also knew that when it was finished there would be no trace of today’s destruction, no seam between the old stonework and the new repair. Nothing visible to remind me—or anyone else—of what had happened there. He would make sure of it.
“How’s Sasha?” I asked him.
“In shock.”
“How’d she find out? From Elena?”
He drank his beer and made a face. “No. Garrett called her. He and Owen and Oliver were at the house with Elena.”
Garrett Bateman was Jamie’s shadow, his indispensable right-hand man. He’d been the director of communications and a senior adviser for the presidential campaign. Before that Jamie jokingly called him the vice president of everything, since Garrett played an integral role in every aspect of Jamie’s international real estate empire. Like Mick, Garrett met Jamie at UVA, so they went back a long way. No doubt Jamie’s death was as hard for Garrett to deal with as it was for Elena and Jamie’s children.
I wondered whether he would know if something had been troubling Jamie before he died. Maybe he even knew who Rick was. If anyone understood Jamie Vaughn and could get inside his head, it was Garrett Bateman.
“The six o’clock news,” I said. “It’s starting.”
Quinn picked up the remote. “Sure you want to watch?”
“Yes. Channel 3, please.”
He switched channels and clicked on the sound as the theme music for News Channel 3 came on and an authoritative Voice of God introduced the male and female anchors. The lead story was, as promised, Jamie Vaughn’s tragic death. The words BREAKING NEWS kept flashing across the screen and the anchors went straight to Pippa O’Hara, their investigative reporter on the scene, who had an “exclusive interview” that would be a “bombshell revelation.” The camera cut to a petite redhead in a blue windbreaker.
I groaned. “Pippa O’Hara. She’s the woman we drove away from, Quinn. She hypes everything. I wonder what her bombshell is.”
“Shh,” Eli said. “Listen.”
“… right here,” Pippa was saying as she strolled down Sycamore Lane and pointed to the yellow police tape that had been strung up around the vineyard entrance, “where former presidential candidate and international real estate mogul Jamison Vaughn died tragically in a fiery car crash earlier this afternoon. His SUV, reportedly traveling at high speed, crashed into a stone wall at the entrance to Montgomery Estate Vineyard in Atoka and caught fire.”
She went on about what a sleepy little village we were in the middle of Virginia’s affluent horse-and-hunt country and what a close-knit community Atoka was. By now she was standing next to the sign for the vineyard.
“News Channel 3 has obtained exclusive information”—she paused for maximum dramatic impact—“that there was a witness to this accident. Lucie Montgomery, owner of Montgomery Estate Vineyard, was on the scene when Jamie Vaughn’s car crashed into the stone wall at the entrance to her vineyard.”
“How in the hell did she find out—”
“Shhh,” Eli said again as the camera cut from Pippa to the earlier footage of Quinn’s truck speeding away this afternoon, along with a close-up of my Jeep tilting at a crazy angle in the mud puddle where I’d left it.
“Unfortunately, Ms. Montgomery, whose vehicle you see here, refused our request for an interview,” she said.
“I did not—”
“However, we spoke to a neighbor off-camera who told us there is a history of tragedy on this very spot. Ten years ago, Ms. Montgomery herself was involved in a high-speed car crash when a vehicle driven by a former boyfriend ran into this same wall, destroying part of it and seriously injuring Lucie Montgomery. That man, Gregory Knight, is now serving time in jail for murder.”
I caught my breath. How had she found out? Who told her about my accident, remembered those precise details from ten years ago? I thought the only one who carried around a cinematographic memory of what happened to me was me. And maybe Greg.
The camera panned the accident scene again, lingering on the heat-scorched stone wall, the charred earth where the car had burned, and the rubble where the pillar had been demolished. Then it refocused on Pippa. Her smile was grave, but there was a satisfied gleam in her eye as if she’d hauled in the biggest fish of the day while everyone else still had bait on their lines. “Keep it on News Channel 3 for the latest updates on this developing story. I’ll have more for you at eleven, but now back to you in the studio.”
Quinn hit Mute on the television remote as the picture returned to the two anchors, and the three of us sat in silence. I caught Quinn and Eli exchanging uneasy glances, but inside I was raging.
There was no reason to tie my accident to what had happened to Jamie, to drag up the past as though it had some connection or link to the present. I told Quinn I didn’t want to talk to a single soul about Jamie’s death because if I did and I told the truth, the only conclusion anyone could reach would be that Jamie had deliberately taken his own life. The shock waves from that news would reverberate far and wide. Now Pippa O’Hara had just dragged me into the middle of the maelstrom in a very public way.
I wondered what would happen next, because I had no doubt there would be more.
Much more.
Copyright © 2017 by Ellen Crosby
