The Viognier Vendetta wcm-5

by Ellen Crosby

  “I don’t know.” She sounded dubious and I could tell she’d wondered about it herself. “I’m not sure I believe you about these illegal dealings, as you call them, Lucie. Of course I would like to think my daughter is alive, but did you know Sir Thomas is paying for my trip to Washington? He flew me down here, first class. He has taken care of everything for me—a suite at the Willard hotel for as long as I need to be here, all my meals, expenses, everything. I even have a driver at my disposal when I wish. He is a good man. He and Lady Asher do so much for charity. So much good work.”

  “But if Ian’s right—”

  “Why would Rebecca run away?” she asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Because she was afraid of the repercussions of her actions,” I said. “And if Ian Philips’s death turns out not to be an accidental drowning—which I don’t believe it was—then maybe Rebecca had good reason to be scared.”

  “Because someone from Asher Investments murdered Ian, or had him killed to keep him from testifying?” Linh sounded incredulous. “And my daughter set up some … some charade to convince everyone she was dead—even her own mother and father—because she, too, feared for her life?”

  “It’s also possible,” I said, “that she didn’t succeed in getting away. Maybe the homicide is real—though the police haven’t found a … haven’t found Rebecca yet.”

  Linh walked to the edge of the foundation and stared out at a meadow of untidy rows of tufts of dried fountain grass that stretched to a distant road. Beyond it were more woods. I went over and stood next to her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s what you believe, Lucie?” There was both sorrow and anger in her voice. “Because they have not found my daughter?”

  “It’s only a theory,” I said.

  She turned to me. “She was involved with someone. You knew that, didn’t you? She seemed so happy this time.”

  My heart constricted as I thought of Ali Jennings explaining to me that the affair between Harlan and Rebecca was over.

  “Rebecca didn’t tell me herself,” I said, “but I know she was at Harlan Jennings’s home in Georgetown on Saturday afternoon. His, uh, his wife said the affair was over.”

  Linh looked surprised. “The former senator? That Harlan Jennings?”

  I’d let some cat out of God knew what bag. “Isn’t that who you were referring to?”

  “I didn’t know his name,” she said, “but whoever it was—Senator Jennings or someone else—Rebecca had a very good reason not to disappear on Saturday.”

  “What was that?”

  Her voice wavered. “Because she was spotted on a surveillance camera at a pharmacy in Georgetown around five P.M. on Saturday. The police found the clerk who waited on her. She bought one of those pregnancy tests. And that’s why I’m sure my daughter didn’t run away somewhere. Because she thought she was pregnant. And knowing Rebecca, she would be deeply in love with the man who would have been her baby’s father.”

  Chapter 15

  I drove Linh back to the Willard after that. It was a mostly silent trip—forty-five minutes through Washington’s bottlenecked traffic—with each of us absorbed in her thoughts.

  If Rebecca were pregnant, that put an entirely new spin on things. Who was the father? Presumably Harlan—which meant that the affair definitely was not over. I’d seen Rebecca’s birth control pills in the bathroom of our suite at the hotel. Had she been careless, taking them erratically? Or had the decision to get pregnant been deliberate, because she wanted the child of her current lover? Ian told me that he’d been thrown over for an old, rich guy. Harlan was older and he was rich.

  Whether the pregnancy had been an accident or not, it gave both Harlan and Alison even stronger motives to want Rebecca out of the way. Especially Harlan, if the reason Rebecca wanted to see him on Saturday was to tell him what would surely be unwelcome news.

  But how did this fit in with Ian’s death and the postcards? Were they related, or two entirely separate incidents whose timing was coincidental?

  I pulled up in front of the hotel. Linh put her hand on the door handle, as though eager to flee. Then she glanced out the car window.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Not another reporter with a camera. Be a dear and drive around the corner, will you? I think I’ll take a walk before I go inside. Find another entrance.”

  I turned off Pennsylvania Avenue onto Fifteenth Street and pulled up to the curb. “Are you going to be all right?”

  She took oversized sunglasses and a scarf out of her purse. “I’ll be fine. Thank you for taking me to the arboretum, Lucie. It was a comfort.”

  “My pleasure. Will you be staying in Washington much longer?”

  “I don’t know.” She tied on her scarf. “It depends on when they find Rebecca.”

  I didn’t want to say it, but what if there was no one to find because Rebecca was on the lam? Would she contact her anguished mother and let her know she was alive?

  “Please stay in touch,” I said. “You’re more than welcome to come out to the vineyard if you want a break from D.C. I’ve got plenty of room and it’s peaceful and quiet in Atoka. There wouldn’t be any reporters lurking on your doorstep.”

  “That’s very kind. I’ll call you.” Linh donned the sunglasses and I had a flashback to Rebecca, the same gesture, almost the same sunglasses, as she said good-bye to me for the last time at the Wall.

  Linh touched my cheek and slipped out of the car. No one followed her. I hadn’t thought about her being hounded by the press, but I knew she wouldn’t visit me at the vineyard, nor would she call, in spite of what she’d just said. In her shoes—grappling with the loss of her beloved daughter and the obvious media frenzy the story had generated—I wouldn’t, either.

  Before I pulled away from the curb, I turned on my phone. In D.C. it was against the law to talk while driving; the fines were horrendous. Two messages, one from Kit, demanding that I report in on my session with Detective Horne, the other from Frankie, saying someone named Summer Lowe had been phoning all afternoon trying to get in touch with me.

  I called Frankie.

  “The fourth time I let that woman’s call go to voice mail,” Frankie said. “What an annoying person. Who is she, anyway?”

  I told her. “Did she say what she wanted?”

  “Yeah. You. And she told you to call her; she didn’t ask,” Frankie said. “You going to talk to her?”

  “I think I will,” I said. “I probably won’t be home until later this evening. Can you lock up?”

  “Sure.” She paused. “Quinn’s not here, either. He, uh, might have gone over to the Jenningses’ place.”

  My stomach churned. Was Quinn ready to make a down payment on their land as soon as he took a look at it? He’d said he figured on being around for two more months. At the speed he was moving, he’d be gone in two weeks.

  “He told you that’s what he was doing, didn’t he?”

  “Well, yes. I guess he did.” I heard her sigh. “Look, he’s going to be staying in Atoka. It’s not like he’s moving back to California.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t worry, Lucie. It’ll be all right. You’ll find a new winemaker and it will work out with Quinn. I’m sure of it.”

  “Yeah, everything will be fine. Thanks.” I kept my voice light, but she probably wasn’t fooled.

  Frankie was right that I’d have to find a new winemaker. But I wasn’t so sure it would work out with Quinn. We’d drifted apart, not closer. Once he was gone, he could easily turn what was left of our relationship into out of sight, out of mind.

  Summer Lowe answered her phone midway through the first ring.

  “You’re the Lucie Montgomery I met last night at the Tune Inn with Ian, aren’t you?”

  Last night? It seemed like last year.

  “Yes, I am. How’d you find me?”

  “How else? The Internet.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look, I need to talk to you ab
out Ian. Could you come by my office on the Hill? Today? It’s important.”

  I didn’t care for her officious tone.

  “Ian,” I said. “May God rest his soul. You do realize you were one of the last people to see him alive, don’t you?”

  “Oh, jeez. I mean, yes. Of course I do. God, what a tragedy. I was so sorry to hear about it … him.”

  I wondered if she believed Ian’s death was an accident, or whether it had crossed her mind that maybe it had something to do with sticking his neck out as a whistle-blower who was supposed to testify before her subcommittee. It wasn’t her fault Ian was dead, but couldn’t she at least sound like the permafrost on her words hadn’t yet reached her heart?

  “Yes, you sound all broken up.”

  I heard her draw in a breath like a hiss. “You have no right to judge me.” Finally, some real emotion. She was mad.

  “You called me. Four times. It’s been nice shooting the breeze with you, Ms. Lowe. I’ve got to go—”

  “Wait! Please don’t hang up!”

  It was the “please” that stopped me. “Why not?”

  “I admit I didn’t take Ian seriously,” she said.

  “But now you do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Uh, I’d rather not say on the phone. That’s why I want to meet in person.”

  “I’m at the Willard.”

  “You could be on the Hill in ten minutes.”

  “I have to park.”

  “Oh. Well, half an hour, then.”

  “Where do I meet you?”

  “There’s a desk for Senate visitors at the CVC.”

  “The what?”

  “Capitol Visitor Center.”

  “Wouldn’t this be easier if I came straight to whichever Senate Office Building you work in?”

  “We’re not going to be meeting in my office.”

  I wondered what she had in mind. “What do I do? Sign in and someone comes to get me?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for you. I suggest you take the tunnel from the Library of Congress, the Jefferson Building, because it brings you directly inside the second floor of the visitor center. Otherwise you have to hassle with the crowds in the Capitol plaza and the tour lines in Emancipation Hall. When you come into the library on the street level, the hallway to the tunnel is on the left. If you get to the Senate desk before I do, whatever you do, for God’s sake don’t sign in.”

  The parking situation on the Hill was even worse than it had been around police headquarters. I wedged the Mini into a spot on a residential street behind the Supreme Court and walked the few blocks to the Library of Congress. For some people, Washington, the federal city, conjures images of the monuments or the White House or the Capitol dome on the skyline. For me, it’s this place—East Capitol and First streets—where the Capitol, the Library of Congress, and the Supreme Court sit across from one another, their classically elegant façades representing the confluence of law, letters, and justice at a quiet tree-lined intersection.

  Security inside the Jefferson Building on the basement level was not complicated—I passed through a metal detector and set my purse and cane on an X-ray conveyor. I retrieved my things and found the corridor to the tunnel just as Summer described it. At the bottom of a flight of stairs the Capitol police had set up their own security checkpoint with more metal detectors and X-ray machines. I nearly asked what they thought I might have acquired to warrant the belt-and-suspenders mentality of double searches within a few hundred feet of each other when I’d never left the library. Maybe it was a territorial thing.

  The well-lit marble corridor that led to the Capitol coiled like a snake as it sloped deeper under First Street. At the height of cherry blossom season, I expected this walkway to be cheek by jowl with tourists, Hill staffers, and library researchers heading from one building to the other. Instead, my footfalls echoed eerily as I passed framed posters from the Library’s many collections. The only other sound was the steady hiss of the air circulating through the tunnel. Otherwise I was alone, unable to see around the corkscrew curve ahead of me or behind me. It wasn’t until I heard a child’s laughter and the chatter of her mother and father that I realized I’d been holding my breath—imagining shadows and wisps of voices, and hearing the echo of Ian’s remark yesterday that he was being followed.

  I was relieved when a set of double doors spilled me onto the upper level of the visitor center with its bustle and noise and crowds. Straight ahead, two men in fire engine red blazers sat behind a large desk. The din on the lower level sounded like an army massing for battle and I leaned over the railing to see what was going on. An enormous white plaster cast of the bronze Freedom statue that stood atop the Capitol dome dominated a light-filled marble room where hundreds of people waited in lines for tours and tickets. Above me through a fretted skylight was the Capitol dome as close as if I were on the roof of the House of Representatives.

  A tour guide in a red vest told me I was standing next to the desk for House visitors. The Senate desk was at the opposite end of the corridor.

  Summer Lowe spotted me before I reached it. Today her tawny hair was done up in a sleek chignon and she wore a vintage black-and-white houndstooth checked suit with peep-toe heels. She would have looked at home on the set of a Bogart film.

  She took my arm and pulled me away from the desk.

  “Come on,” she said under her breath. “Ladies’ room.”

  Before I could reply, she pushed me into the handicapped stall and followed me in, closing the door behind us and sliding her oversized canvas tote off her shoulder. She reached in and pulled out something.

  A Senate ID on a lanyard. I looked at the photo. Someone named Lana Davidson. We looked vaguely alike.

  “Put it on and give me your jacket.”

  “Why are we doing this?” I asked.

  She stuffed my jacket in her bag. “So you don’t have to sign in. No one knows you’re here, except me.”

  “And presumably Lana Davidson.”

  “She owed me a favor. Luckily I’d seen what you look like. This’ll do.”

  “Does Lana use a cane?”

  Summer’s eyes flickered briefly to my leg. “No, but I’m counting on not running into someone who knows her. As for everyone else noticing, anyone can have a temporary injury and you don’t drag your foot around like a real cripple. Looks like you just use it for balance.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Her cheeks turned pink. “That was sort of crude, wasn’t it? Sorry.”

  I eyed her. “Where are we going?”

  “The Capitol. My boss’s hideaway. Here’s how we’re going to do this.” She reached again into her tote bag, pulling out a sheaf of papers and a softbound book with a green cover that she handed to me.

  “Lana Davidson and I are going to leave here and take the escalator to the Capitol. There’ll be a bunch of Capitol Hill police by the escalator. They expect to see you wearing either a stick-on visitor’s pass or a Hill ID. Otherwise you wouldn’t be going anywhere. Once we get past them, no one is going to give you a second look. Just act like you own the place and we’ll be fine.”

  Just act like I owned the U.S. Capitol. I read what was written on the cover of the book she’d given me. “S. 576. A bill to provide rules for the modification or disposition of certain assets by real estate mortgage investment conduits pursuant to division A—”

  Summer shook my arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We left the ladies’ room and headed down a corridor with signs pointing to the Capitol. As she warned me, at the escalator four Capitol Hill police officers watched everyone come and go as they talked among themselves.

  Maybe it was my nerves showing or maybe it was the fact that one of them nudged the other to check out the two of us—guys ogling girls—but Summer suddenly said in a loud voice, “It’s going to be in markup next week, but God knows when they’ll get it to the floor. If it does pass, the Senate ver
sion is so different from the House we’ll probably end up in reconciliation, anyway.”

  The officers were still watching.

  “Why don’t you talk your boss into waiting until you get more support?” I said. “You’ve got a year and a half before sine die. Bring it up during the second session.”

  Summer didn’t reply, but her mouth twitched like she was trying to control her expression. She waited until we entered the dimly lit Crypt, which had originally been planned as George Washington’s burial place.

  “Not bad, Lana. Where did you learn the inside baseball stuff about the legislative process?”

  “Thanks for the curveball. Working for a small environmental nonprofit a few years ago. Not one you heard of. My boss sent me to hearings and markups, or else I’d stop by one of the galleries to watch a vote,” I said, as she whisked me around the corner to a set of worn marble stairs in a dim corridor. “Yeah, I know. I could have just turned on C-SPAN. But it’s not the same as being here.”

  We entered the Capitol Rotunda and I caught my breath. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but I watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington at least once a year. It gives me hope.”

  Summer grinned. “I guess I underestimated you.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first.” I stared up at Brumidi’s fresco The Apotheosis of Washington nearly two hundred feet above our heads.

  “Let’s go.” Her voice was urgent once again. “I can’t be gone long. Someone’s going to miss me and ask where I’ve been. We haven’t got much time.”

  She led me down a corridor into the small Senate Rotunda with its columned arcade surrounding a spectacular crystal chandelier.

  “You know that chandelier used to be in a vaudeville theater?” she said as we turned down another hallway.

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “The things you learn working here. Turn left.”

  We raced down a corridor of private rooms that was well away from any public tour. Summer pulled a key out of her jacket pocket and stopped in front of a nondescript door with a sign on the wall that read S-206. I’d heard about senators’ hideaways and what did and didn’t go on inside. There were the legitimate reasons—a quiet place to get work done away from constituents and staff or to hold a meeting. Some hideaways had sofas or daybeds, convenient for when the Senate was in session all night and it was too far to walk back to the Dirksen or Russell or Hart office buildings between votes. That was the aboveboard stuff. Then there was the hanky-panky, most of which involved alcohol and sex.