Free The Bordeaux Betrayal by Ellen Crosby Page B

lot about Valerie Beauvais. And he’d been astute enough to recognize the source of the plagiarism in her book as Joe’s dissertation—something he’d had to go looking for at the UVA library.
    But if it were true that Clay Avery had been thinking of hiring Valerie to write for the
Washington Tribune,
then Ryan couldn’t be too sorry that she was dead and no longer a thorn in his side. And if she were right about the Washington bottle, he’d look like a fool for having staked his reputation on its authenticity.
    Which gave him—even more than Joe—more than one motive for murder.

Chapter 6
    Another big crowd came through the winery on Sunday as the glorious weather continued to hold. It had only been two weeks since the sun moved from the northern to the southern hemisphere on the autumnal equinox, but the longer, lower rays of sunlight already bathed the vines and fields with a gilded light that came only at this time of year.
    We had moved the tasting outside to the courtyard to take advantage of the view and the weather. Francesca Merchant had hired a string quartet to play chamber music for the afternoon.
    “I know you like this classical stuff, but it just doesn’t do it for me. Frankie says they’re good musicians, but everything sounds like the same guy wrote it. Vivaldi, Beethoven—whoever,” Quinn said to me as we stood in the shade of the loggia and watched Gina hand out tasting sheets and explain our wines to three older men who’d arrived in a limo with three good-looking young women.
    The quartet was playing a baroque piece by Telemann.
    “There’s a big difference between Beethoven and Vivaldi. You just don’t pay attention.” I fingered the collar of yet another of his Hawaiian shirts, this one with skimpily clad girls in grass skirts and postage stamp bras, swaying, presumably, to a hula. “Couldn’t you have worn a different shirt?”
    “Why, is there a stain on this one?”
    “Never mind.”
    My brother Eli showed up midafternoon without my sister-in-law Brandi and my one-year-old niece Hope. As always he looked a little too dapper and even a bit feminine. I knew why. Brandi now picked out all his clothes, like Barbie dressing Ken. She favored pastels so I was getting used to seeing Eli in sherbet colors like the pale yellow shirt and matching linen trousers he wore now.
    “Hey, babe,” he said. “Thought I could sponge off you this afternoon. What’s to eat? The girls went to my in-laws’ for the weekend.”
    “Tapas. I’ll make you a deal. Help us out for the next few hours and I’ll send you home with leftovers.”
    Eli pushed his Ray-Bans up so they sat on top of his perfectly gelled hair. “I guess I could stick around for a while.” He placed his hands on the complacent paunch that had once been his washboard stomach. “I could use a bite now, though. Woke up too late for breakfast and spent all morning at Jack and Sunny Greenfields’.”
    “What were you doing there?”
    “Jack’s renovating his wine cellar.”
    “Moonlighting?”
    Eli suddenly looked weary. “Helps pay the bills.”
    I knew he was just scraping by. He adored Brandi and couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell her the money tree had been picked clean. Last I’d heard he’d borrowed the equivalent of the GNP of a small country to cover what they already owed.
    He walked over to one of the tables, returning with a plate filled with enough food for three people. “Good stuff.” He stabbed a sausage with a toothpick. “Where’d you get these?”
    “The organic butcher in Middleburg. What’s Jack doing to his wine cellar?”
    “Everything.” Eli spoke through his chorizo. “Installing a security system, upgrading the cooling system—really shelling out the bucks for glass murals, limestone flooring, redwood wine racks, map drawers showing where the wine comes from. The whole caboodle. And a computerized inventory—finally. Shane’s handling it. Jack’s been paying insurance out the wazoo for