“A member of the wine club, yes,” Elliot said. He wouldn’t be a member of the wine club for much longer, Luke was pretty sure. “This isn’t a collective, you know; you don’t own a piece of the winery.”
“He drove us here,” the woman said. “But I don’t want to get in a car with him again. I can get myself home.”
“We can take care of getting you home,” Elliot said.
“Come with us,” Luke said. “Hold on.”
He and Elliot got the guy into the tasting room, where the guy sat down on one of the couches and immediately passed out. Elliot stood watch over him, while Luke went behind the bar to find the number of the tow truck company they used. Then he texted Margot.
LUKE
He’s passed out in the tasting room—his date says they drove here. I’ll get his car towed somewhere and get a taxi for him
She texted him back so fast he was sure she’d been waiting for it.
MARGOT
Perfect. Thank you for handling this. Make sure to get his name.
When he got off the phone, Elliot was coolly sliding the guy’s wallet back into his pocket.
“His name really is Porter Eldridge,” he said. “Incredible.”
It was all fixed within twenty minutes. Porter Eldridge and his car were both off the property—the car attached to a tow truck, an angry Porter in a taxi—and he was off the wine club list, his fee refunded. His date had refused to let Noble pay to take her home, but had bought half a case of wine as a thank-you and had taken off in a rideshare. By the time Luke walked back out to the party, it was like nothing had ever happened. Margot was chatting and laughing with some latecomers, Taylor was pouring wine and talking to Avery, and the woman from the Chronicle was eating tacos.
Luke looked closer at Margot. Okay, it wasn’t quite like it had never happened. He could sense the tension in her, from all the way across the lawn. He could sense it in the way one of her hands was in a fist at her side, in the way she glanced down at her phone with narrowed eyes, in that forced, fake laugh she let out.
The party was supposed to be from noon to three, but at three, there were still plenty of people there. The food tables were all cleaning up, and Taylor and Daisy had disappeared into the barn to pack up wine for guests, but there was still some food left over that the guests were nibbling on as they hung out in the sun and drank wine. Luke checked to see what Margot was doing: still chatting with people who looked like VIPs, and it seemed like she’d be doing that for a while. So he went to go help Taylor and everyone else with the wine.
“You shouldn’t be doing this,” Taylor said when he picked up a box. “You don’t work here anymore, remember?”
“I know,” he said. “Where do you want these?”
She sighed.
“The boxes of wine that guests bought today should go by the door to the barn, so we can easily bring them out to their cars when they leave. Make sure there’s a name on each one.”
Eventually, the guests all got the hint and started filing out, most of them with at least one box of wine tucked in the trunk of their car.
Margot walked over to Taylor just as Luke picked up a guest’s wine. She was still smiling, but Luke didn’t believe that smile.
“Thanks for taking over the cleaning up,” she said to Taylor. “Sorry, I was occupied, I had to talk to Elizabeth—she was a friend of Uncle Stan’s. I’m just going to—”
Luke didn’t hear the rest of what she said as he followed the guests to their car. He loaded the wine into their car, thanked them for coming, and went back to the lawn. He was worried about Margot. He needed to try to get her out of here, see if she’d go home, relax, maybe even get some sleep. He knew she’d probably gotten here before sunrise.
He also knew that she wouldn’t leave here until everyone else was gone.
He looked around for her when he got back to the lawn, but he didn’t see her anywhere.
“Where’s Margot?” he asked Taylor, who was closing up all of the folding tables with Avery. Avery grinned at him.
“She said she had to grab something out of her office,” Taylor said. “She’ll be right back. Was someone looking for her?”
He was.
“Yeah, but I can see if one of us can answer their question,” he said.
He turned toward the winery building. He couldn’t get that look out of his mind: that look on Margot’s face when Porter Eldridge had made a scene, that look of despair in her eyes. He didn’t really care if people wondered why he went after her. He just knew he had to find her.