by Ellen Crosby
“Harlan?”
“Lucie? What are you doing here?” He looked up like a man coming out of a dream.
“Looking for you. Ali’s downstairs trying to ward off a migraine. She doesn’t want to take her pain medicine because she’s afraid she won’t make it through her talk tonight. She was in the ladies’ room by the Mainz Bible the last time I saw her.”
“Ali?” He looked confused, then his face cleared. “Oh, right. What a shame. She gets those real bad headaches. Hell of a time for this one to come on.”
“Don’t you want to see her?”
“Sure.”
“Harlan, what are you doing here? Everyone’s downstairs or looking at the Asher Collection.”
“Thinking,” he said. “About things.”
“I know how bad it is. Ali told me.”
“You have no idea.” He seemed, just now, like someone who had come unmoored from his soul. “It’s worse than bad.”
All my life growing up I had looked up to him, respected him. Right now I wanted to shake him.
“Are you really surprised?” I said. “Didn’t you know what was going on inside Asher Investments? Or at least guess? Didn’t you ask questions?”
“What the hell do you think?”
I thought the answer was no, because if he had he never would have invested the money of friends and neighbors in a Ponzi scheme, that’s what I thought.
“Tommy told me it was highly sophisticated, too complicated to explain,” he said. “Jesus, Lucie. It was like a gift from God. Who was I to say no when everyone was making so goddamn much money?”
“When did you find out it was all gone?”
“It’s not all gone. Tommy says we’ll be okay if we can get through this. It won’t be like it was before, but it’ll be okay.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Harlan! You still believe anything he says?”
His eyes were bleak. “I have no choice.”
I’d heard that before.
“What about Rebecca? Did she know what was going on? Surely she told you something since you two were—” I broke off, embarrassed.
“Screwing?” He raised an eyebrow. “Is that the word you were looking for?”
I blushed. “Didn’t she say anything to you?”
“Our affair didn’t last long. Rebecca was looking to hook a bigger fish.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “She came to see you the day she disappeared. To tell you she was—”
The look in his eyes stopped me. He didn’t know.
“She was what?” he said. “Don’t tell me she was pregnant. Was she?”
“I thought—”
“What? That it was mine?”
“Yes.”
His smile mocked me. “You flatter me, my dear. I fire blanks these days. No little surprises anymore. A vasectomy.”
I could feel the color draining from my face. “Then who?”
He shrugged. “Rebecca didn’t confide in me about her latest lover—or lovers. She kept that information to herself.”
“Do you have any idea where she is now? Did she say anything about leaving or going away that day when she came to see you?”
He held out his hands as if trying to ward me off. “I’ve been all over this with the police. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
So much for being accompanied by noble thoughts. Harlan was definitely alone here.
“How do you think I got invited tonight?” I gestured at the book-filled room. “Rebecca put my name on the guest list, that’s how. She wanted me to come. Look, Harlan, if you know what happened to her, please tell me. Her mother is completely distraught, devastated, not to know—”
“No!” He moved closer to me, no longer friendly and suddenly a menacing stranger. I retreated, my back pressed against the glass. “Let it go, Lucie, will you? I have no idea what happened to her. And now if you’ll excuse me I’d better go find Ali.”
I listened until I could no longer hear his staccato footfalls. My face was hot with embarrassment and anger. In the middle of the bookshelf in front of me, a tiny book in Latin lay open. We had been standing in the section called Reason. I leaned over to read the card. A copy of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, dating from 1555.
Utopia, a perfect world where everything was bliss.
This wasn’t it.
Somehow we all managed to get through the rest of the evening, though Dominique’s nerves showed when she spilled a glass of red wine during dinner, barely missing the Oriental rug in the exquisite private room normally reserved for functions involving members of Congress. I hoped Simon would chalk it up to jitters and the beautiful setting. Fortunately, Harlan and Ali sat at another table. Her talk seemed flat and dispirited, probably a combination of the migraine and the heartbreak of realizing that the collection she had spent so much time putting together was about to be scattered to the winds. As for Harlan, he never looked my way as I watched him down glass after glass of wine. At the end of the evening he was leaning on his wife’s arm and not walking too steadily as everyone moved toward the exit.
Mick, too, had gone quiet, lost in his thoughts on the drive home. I didn’t need to do much to hold up my end of the conversation. He turned the radio on as a buffer, I thought, though this time he chose a classic rock station that had a one-hour tribute to Jackson Browne. Tonight, it seemed, I found irony in everything, including the playlist, “Running on Empty” and “Here Come Those Tears Again,” as though we’d requested them.
Mick noticed, too, and killed the music. At my front door, his voice was hoarse in my ear. “Why don’t I stay tonight? I think we both need it.”
Sex to forget all his problems?
“It’s not what I need, Mick. I can’t do this.”
His lips brushed mine and he left. No doubt he’d find what he was looking for in someone else’s arms. I went upstairs and threw myself on the bed. As evenings went, this had been one I would rather forget.
The overcast skies Sunday morning only added to my gloom and a sense of foreboding that the other shoe was about to drop. Exactly one week ago Rebecca’s clothing had been found in that rowboat on the Potomac.
I made coffee and toasted a piece of baguette with some Brie for breakfast. Then I drove over to the winery. David Wildman’s article on Asher Investments had made the front page of the Washington Tribune. Frankie was in the middle of reading it when I got there.
“How is it?” I asked.
She slid the paper across the bar. “Bad, if your name is Tommy Asher, or maybe Harlan Jennings. Here, read for yourself while I make us a pot of coffee.”
It was bad, all right, but factual and well written, putting together Rebecca’s disappearance, Ian’s death, and the canceled Senate hearing so the puzzle started to look like a picture of cover-ups and subterfuge at Thomas Asher Investments. David had alluded to Rebecca’s frequent visits to Harlan’s office and tied Harlan to Tommy as an old childhood friend from their London days, making it seem implausible that Harlan didn’t know what was going on or at least have suspicions. He left out the romance and stopped short of using the term “Ponzi scheme,” though he did have a couple of investment fund managers from two of the big New York firms on record saying they wondered how Tommy Asher never had a down year, even when the market was in the toilet.
I set the newspaper on the bar. It was the beginning of the end. Or maybe the middle of it.
Frankie came back with our coffee.
“How did last night go?” She set a mug in front of me.
“Like a train wreck where you know you ought to look away but you can’t.” I sipped my coffee. “Which reminds me, Ali told me that we never delivered the Viognier she ordered for Harlan’s birthday party. I said I’d see to it myself first thing this morning.”
“I can’t believe she wants to hold a party for him after all this,” Frankie said. “Anyone else I’d say it was a little tone-deaf, but that’s Ali for you. Standing by her man.”
“She told me none of this is Harlan’s fault. He’s a victim, too.”
Frankie shrugged. “You’re not going to change her mind. As for the delivery, let one of the guys do it. It’s their job.”
“Not this time.”
“At least let someone load the boxes in your car.”
“All right.” I picked up a corkscrew and studied it. “Seen Quinn?”
“Not today. He told me yesterday he was going out last night with a bunch of guys. Then he thought he’d get lost today.”
I spun the worm with my index finger. “Okay.”
“Lucie, let it go. You can’t go on like this. The two of you are tearing each other apart.”
I slapped the corkscrew back on the bar. “Go on like what?”
“Do you act obtuse on purpose, or does it just come naturally? I’m still trying to figure it out.”
“Who’s being obtuse?”
“I give up. Make your delivery. Don’t worry about a thing around here, either. I got it covered. Don’t need you. Don’t even want you. Go away and do something nice for yourself after you drop that wine at the Jenningses’ place.”
I blew her a kiss on my way out the door.
But I did not do something nice after I brought the wine to the Jenningses’ place.
Chapter 25
Harlan and Alison Jennings lived at Longmeadow, a two-hundred-acre estate off Zulla Road that had been in Harlan’s family for generations. A working farm with outbuildings and tenant houses since the time Leven Powell founded Middleburg in 1787, it had a storied and colorful history. On New Year’s Eve in 1850, a fire of questionable origin destroyed the modest stone house that had been there since colonial days. In its place, Harlan’s great-grandfather, recently married to a tobacco heiress with a taste for lavish entertaining, built a Greek Revival mansion with a columned front porch and a grand pedimented gable that rivaled the James River plantations. Their parties, especially during Prohibition, were legendary.
Harlan’s BMW convertible was parked in the circular drive when I pulled up in front of the house. I got out of the Mini and walked up the flagstone path lined with masses of pink and white tulips and daffodils of every shade of yellow, white, and orange. Ivy twined around the two columns flanking the front door. Stone urns were filled with fragrant-smelling Easter lilies. It looked as if someone recently had been sitting outside despite the dull day, leaving a glass and an empty bottle on a wicker table next to a Windsor rocking chair. A jacket—Harlan’s by the look of it—hung over the back of the chair.
I rang the doorbell and heard the Westminster chime echo inside. While I waited I stole a look at the bottle. Tequila, nearly empty. A brand I didn’t recognize. Maybe Harlan had read the Trib and decided to move directly from breakfast to happy hour.
A pretty Hispanic maid in a gray uniform opened the door. Her face was composed but she looked like she was in some distress.
“May I help you?”
“I’m Lucie Montgomery,” I said. “Dr. Jennings ordered a couple of cases of wine from my vineyard for her husband’s birthday party. I promised her I’d deliver them this morning. Is she around?”
She shook her head. “The señora went riding. Didn’t the senator tell you?”
“Harlan? No—I didn’t see him.”
She stepped out onto the porch and her eyes fell on the tequila bottle.
“Díos mio,” she said. “He drank all that?”
“All what?” I said. “You don’t mean he drank a whole bottle of tequila just now, do you?”
Good Lord, it would kill him.
“No, no. It was already open.” She gave me a reassuring smile that didn’t mask the lie. He’d drunk a lot and she knew it.
I picked up the bottle and held it up. “How much?”
She touched her heart with one hand like she was trying to catch her breath or compose herself. “It’s not for me to say anything about what my boss does, you know?”
“Maybe you ought to tell me your name. And it is for you to say if he drank as much as you seem to think he did. You’d better tell me what you know. He could be suffering from alcohol poisoning, meaning he needs medical help.”
The girl looked like a guilty child who’d been caught flat out in a lie. “My name is Dulcie. He drank half, maybe two-thirds.”
I groaned.
“Well, Dulcie, at least he didn’t get behind the wheel of his car,” I said. “Any idea where he is now, where he might have gone?”
“He might have gone back inside while I was upstairs,” she said.
I didn’t like the growing urgency in her voice, which now matched my own escalating anxiety. She still wasn’t telling me everything.
“What is it?” I asked. “Come on.”
The girl hesitated, too well trained to tell tales about her employers to strangers.
“Please,” I said. “I know about what’s going on, about the money problems. We need to find Senator Jennings. Right now.”
“He and the señora had an argument. They were screaming so loud I covered my ears, but I could still hear. When you came, I was cleaning up in the bedroom.”
“Cleaning up?”
“A broken lamp. I think Señora Jennings threw it. Then she left. That’s when he must have gotten the tequila. To get borracho.”
I knew that word. Drunk.
“You check the house,” I said. “I’ll look in the garden first. Then I’ll drive down to the stables.”
“He didn’t go to the stables,” she said. “That fight was pretty bad. She might … leave for a while.”
If Ali were contemplating walking out on Harlan, it must have been a fight for the record books.
“Okay,” I said, but Dulcie had already vanished.
I bumped into the rocking chair as I turned to leave the porch, knocking Harlan’s jacket to the ground. When I picked it up, something rolled out of one of the pockets.
A pill bottle. Alison’s prescription, her migraine medicine. At least it wasn’t empty. Tequila and pain pills. He wouldn’t be feeling a thing.
In fact, he might not even be breathing, wherever he was.
“Oh, God, Harlan,” I said. “Please don’t have done anything stupid.”
He’d be drunk and disoriented. I doubted he’d gotten far. The swimming pool in the backyard. It was heated and they kept it open year-round. One of Middleburg’s more eccentric traditions was the Jenningses’ annual impromptu pool party in honor of the first snowfall. No one admitted without a bathing suit—and you had to go swimming.
I stuck my head through the front door and yelled to the maid. “Call nine-one-one and tell them to send an ambulance. Tell them to hurry!”
He was facedown at the bottom of the deep end, fully dressed except for his shoes, socks, and a sweater that he’d taken the trouble to leave in a neat pile next to the diving board.
I dropped my cane, stripped off my jacket, and kicked off my own shoes. As I dove in, the image of Rebecca’s folded clothes on the dock last week flashed through my mind. Was I trying to rescue the man responsible for her disappearance? The water felt almost tropically warm. Thank God for small blessings. The air temperature was probably in the fifties. In an unheated pool with hypothermia brought on by the consumption of so much alcohol, he’d probably be dead within minutes. I touched the bottom, grabbing one of his arms with two hands and pulling on it. His body floated up enough for me to crook an arm around his neck and drag him with me.
Dulcie was on her knees by the steps in the shallow end when I surfaced with Harlan.
“Madre de Díos,” she said. “He’s dead.”
“We don’t know that. Come on, help me pull him out.” The contrast between the water and air temperatures felt like a slap across the face. “Hurry!”
We wrestled Harlan up the stairs and hauled him onto the deck of the pool. I rolled him onto his back. His lips and eyelids were blue and his skin looked waxy.
Dulcie started to cry. “What do I do?”
She rubbed her eyes with her fists like a child. “Okay.”
“Where’s the ambulance?”
“Coming.” She got up and started for the house.
“Run!” I yelled at her.
I tilted Harlan’s head back and put my ear against his chest. He wasn’t breathing. My hands were shaking too much from the cold to tell if he had a pulse. It had been years since I’d learned CPR and I’d never done it on anything except a dummy.
Dulcie returned with an armful of blankets that looked like they’d been pulled off someone’s bed.
“One for you, too,” she said. “You are shivering.”
She wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and we piled the others on top of Harlan.
“You push on his chest with both hands,” I said to her. “Like this. Do it when I tell you. I’m going to blow air into his lungs.”
I have no idea how long we worked together, me pinching Harlan’s nose and blowing into his mouth as hard as I could while Dulcie pumped his chest. She began murmuring in Spanish and I recognized the Lord’s Prayer. In spite of the blanket, I couldn’t stop shivering as my hands cramped up and I began losing feeling in my fingers.
It felt like I was losing Harlan, too, his life ebbing away in spite of our efforts. He had wanted to die. I needed him to want to live.
Finally we heard the sirens. Dulcie lifted her head and made the sign of the cross.
“Go around to the front and show them where we are,” I said.
This time she ran. I heard shouting and footsteps running toward the swimming pool. Two men in navy fire and rescue uniforms knelt on either side of Harlan. Around me voices swirled and colors flashed. Someone put her hands on my shoulders and gently moved me aside.
