He laughed and I said, “As long as we’re on the subject of fantasy, what about Nathaniel Bacon the Elder burying documents he brought over from England under that bell tower over there?” I pointed to the church. “Supposedly they were moved to Williamsburg during the fire set by the other Nathaniel Bacon when he burned Jamestown. Or maybe even earlier.”

Josie raised an eyebrow and turned to look at the bell tower. “I’ve heard all those stories. No one really knows precisely when the documents were moved to Williamsburg. Or, to be honest, if there were any documents to move.” She held up the index and middle fingers of both hands to put quotation marks around “documents.”

“You don’t believe there was anything to the story?” Quinn asked.

“In all this time, no one has found proof that there was anything to it. Just a lot of theories. Some of them crazier than others. I’m a scientist. I deal in facts.” She looked over and gave me a wry smile. “I can see you’re disappointed, Lucie.”

“Is it possible you were digging at the wrong place at Bruton Parish?” I asked. “What if the documents had already been moved?”

“You mean moved from Bruton Vault?”

I nodded.

“For one thing, we didn’t find a vault,” she said. “Even an empty one.”

I shivered and she said, “Come on, let’s walk over to the Archaearium. We’ll be warmer inside. There’s an exhibition on the Sea Venture I know you wanted to see. It wasn’t there in 2007, either. You can have a look and then we should head over to Williamsburg. I’m afraid I’ve got a two o’clock appointment at William & Mary that just came up this morning.”

“We appreciate you giving us this time here,” I said. “And we haven’t even spoken about the problems at the vineyard.”

“I looked both of you up,” she said. “And your vineyard. Now that I’ve met the two of you, I might be willing to take you on. It’s a close working relationship so I’ve got to like my clients or it doesn’t go well. My only condition, as I’ve told you, is that you have to be willing to go along with what I advise if I’m going to put in the kind of work I intend to do for you. I want you to make good wine. Actually, I want you to make great wine. Wine that wins national prizes, maybe even international prizes. That’s the plan.”

She hadn’t said anything about us liking her. I wondered if the jury was still out with Quinn.

He started to say, “We’d—”

I elbowed him before he could finish. I wanted her to work with us. She was the best and she knew what she was doing.

“Love to,” I said. “That would be terrific, Josie. Thank you so much.”