by Ellen Crosby
“We got him,” one of the paramedics said to me as he pulled off Harlan’s blankets and began tearing open his shirt. “How long have you been at it?”
“A couple of minutes I think.”
“Any idea how long he was in the water?”
“No.”
A blond woman in a yellow Loudoun County Fire Department jumpsuit helped me up. “Thanks, hon. Come on over here. Let them take care of your husband.”
Dulcie came over and stood next to me. She seemed calmer now, though she still looked pale. The blond showed me Ali’s pill bottle as the paramedics hooked Harlan up to a heart monitor and fitted an oxygen mask over his face. It took them about thirty seconds.
“I found these out front on the table next to an empty tequila bottle,” she said. “What’s he got in his stomach?”
I heard the man who had ripped open Harlan’s shirt say, “Body temp ninety-three point four. He’s got no pulse. Get the pads.”
Dulcie moaned and I put my arm around her.
“Half a bottle of tequila,” I said to the woman. “I don’t know how many pills.”
We watched a third paramedic unpack a defibrillator.
“Don’t look,” I said to Dulcie. She buried her head on my shoulder and I closed my eyes.
I heard the jolt as the machine went off and then someone said, “We got something. He’s back, but just barely.”
The blond said to me, “You can go to the hospital with him if you want. The battalion chief just showed up. He’ll drive you, but you ought to go inside and get out of those wet clothes first.”
“It’s not my house,” I said. “I’m just a friend of the family.”
She looked momentarily nonplussed, then turned to Dulcie. “Can you take her inside and get her something dry to wear, please?” To me she added, “Sorry. I thought you were his wife. Where is she?”
“The head groom is trying to find Señora Jennings,” Dulcie said.
“Jennings?”
“You don’t know whose house this is?” I asked.
“I’m new to the area. Sorry.”
“That’s Harlan Jennings lying there. Senator Harlan Jennings.”
“Oh, God. I read the paper this morning. That article on the front page.” She shook her head. “What a waste. Go change, hon. You’re shivering.”
I followed Dulcie as the two paramedics lifted Harlan, who now wore a cervical collar, onto a backboard. I wondered if they would put him on a suicide watch in the hospital. Would he try again to take his life?
I was changing into some of Ali’s clothes in the guest bathroom when I heard her frantic voice in the foyer. I finished dressing and went to find her.
She looked surprised to see me. “Why are you wearing … Oh, God! Dulcie told me you found him. I didn’t realize …”
“Sorry. My clothes were wet.” I fingered the buttons of her sweater. “I’ll return these later.”
“It’s okay, don’t be silly. Keep them. I’m so glad you were here. He could have died …”
“Don’t think about it,” I said. “He didn’t. Go to the hospital with him and everything will be fine.”
She laughed a mirthless laugh. “That’s so funny. Nothing will be fine. Not now, not ever. It’s over. Finished. We’ve lost everything.”
“Mrs. Jennings.” The battalion chief opened the front door and stuck his head inside. “We have to go. Would you like to ride in the ambulance or with me?”
“With you.” Ali laid a hand on my arm. “Good-bye, Lucie.”
I went outside as the ambulance pulled out of the driveway, sirens blaring. A Loudoun County fire engine followed and the battalion chief’s cruiser brought up the rear, first circling around the driveway in front of Dulcie and me. Dulcie clutched Harlan’s jacket against her chest like a shield. Ali never looked at either of us as the cruiser drove off.
“Thank you for saving his life,” Dulcie said.
“It was both of us,” I said. “We did it together.”
I got in the Mini and thought about Harlan and what Ali had just said before she left for the hospital. The latest—and probably not the last—casualty as the Asher empire continued its downward trajectory of destruction and ruin.
Chapter 26
Something slid around the cargo space behind the Mini’s rear seat as I took the turn off Atoka Road onto Sycamore Lane a little too fast. The Viognier. I’d forgotten to deliver it. Maybe I should void the sale and forget about it. Ali wouldn’t want the wine now.
It was just after noon when I pulled into my driveway. Quinn’s fifteen-year-old Ford Mustang, which seemed to spend more time at the mechanic’s than on the road, was parked in front of the house. Frankie said he planned to take today off, so I didn’t expect to see him here. I parked next to him and caught my shoe on the hem of Ali’s trousers climbing out of the car. I rolled up both hems to make cuffs and did the same to the sleeves of her fuzzy equestrian-themed sweater.
I called Quinn’s name, checking the rooms when I got inside. He wasn’t here. I knew, then, where to find him, though I didn’t know why. The summerhouse in the backyard by the rose garden. When Quinn first came to work for Leland, he’d asked permission to set up his telescope out there since the wide-open view of the Piedmont and the Blue Ridge was perfect for stargazing. Quinn’s fascination with the stars, planets, and anything else in the night sky had always intrigued me because it seemed so out of character with his brash, macho personality. But over the years—as I thought about it now—my sweetest and most memorable nights with him had been spent not in his arms in bed but sitting next to him in one of my mother’s old Adirondack chairs outside the summerhouse, staring at the velvet silhouette of the mountains and the star-spangled sky over the valley. One of us always brought a bottle of wine and we’d drink it while he recounted the history of one of the constellations or explained why Pluto had been demoted as a planet or told me some piece of astronomical trivia that fascinated him. Then he’d position the telescope—a Starmaster, the Rolls-Royce of telescopes—so all I had to do was look through the eyepiece as the familiar scent of his cigar floated through the air and we listened to the summer night sounds of a hoot owl or a crying fox or the autumn serenade of the tree frogs and cicadas.
This was the first time he’d been out there during the day. I grabbed a jacket from the mudroom and threw it on over Ali’s clothes. As expected, he was in his customary chair, smoking a Swisher Sweet cigar and staring at the valley. I knew he must have heard me, though he didn’t turn his head.
“Harlan Jennings tried to commit suicide this morning.” I sat next to him in my own chair. “He tried to drown himself.”
That roused him.
“Oh, my God, you’re kidding.” He looked at the rolled cuffs of my pants and the horsey sweater. “Whose clothes are those? You own a sweater with saddles and bridles on it? Where have you been?”
“The clothes are Ali’s. And I’ve been in their swimming pool, pulling Harlan off the bottom.”
“Jesus, is he alive?”
“He was breathing with the help of a respirator when the ambulance left, but he wasn’t conscious.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that.”
“Me, too.”
“Why did he do it?”
“Why do you think? Didn’t you read the Trib this morning?”
“No,” he said. “I figured a news blackout for the next six months or so would do me good until this blows over. Why, what’s in the Trib? More dirt on Thomas Asher Investments and what a crook he is?”
“In a word, yes.”
He knocked the ash off his cigar and watched it drop to the ground. “Suicide is a coward’s way out. You leave behind everyone else to clean up your mess. I feel sorry for Ali and the boys.”
“Me, too.”
“If he recovers, I’d like to punch his lights out.”
“Quinn!”
“So sue me. I would.” He shifted in his chair and looked me in the eye. “I lost abs
olutely everything, Lucie. Every cent of my mother’s money and all my savings. I’m flat broke.”
I reached for his hand with both of mine, but he pulled away.
“We’ll start over,” I said. “Mick asked me to buy his grapes for the fall harvest. I can’t possibly do that without you—”
His laugh was harsh. “Yeah, I heard about that. Mick lost a bundle, too.”
“Mick still thinks Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again.”
“There isn’t enough Crazy Glue in the world. It’s over, Lucie. And thanks for your offer, but no, thanks.”
“What do you mean, ‘no, thanks’?”
“I’m not interested.”
What was he talking about? He was still the winemaker here.
I said, “You think it’s too much for us to handle? You want to bring on an assistant winemaker?”
“Do whatever you want,” he said. “I’m out.”
“Out how? You’re not quitting?”
“Look, back off, will you? I got enough stuff to deal with right now without you hammering at me.”
“I’m not hammering at you.” I reached for my cane. “All I asked is whether you quit or not?”
His eyes locked on mine and I knew we were on the brink of crossing another of those can’t-go-back boundary lines we’d crossed once or twice before in our relationship. A winning combination—as Frankie would say—of bullheaded ego and stubborn pride because he wouldn’t back down and I couldn’t.
This time, though, it was for all the marbles. If he quit and left, I’d lose him for good. We needed to step back from this ledge before one of us jumped.
“Wait,” I said. “Don’t answer that. Forget I asked. We’re both upset and overwrought. We don’t have to do this now.”
“Why?” he said. “It isn’t going to change anything or get any easier.”
“Quinn,” I said. “For the love of God, just … don’t say anything right now, okay? I don’t think I could take it.”
“This isn’t about you, Lucie, so stop acting like it is.”
I never should have said what I said next, but I did—and there was no taking it back. An hour ago I was on my knees trying to breathe life into Harlan Jennings who toxed himself up with enough alcohol and drugs to ease the pain of walking off a diving board into nine feet of water. No, it wasn’t about me, but I’d been pulled into it, anyway.
“What do you know about it? Rebecca Natale dragged me into the middle of Asher Investment’s free fall and she didn’t ask my permission. Since then she’s gone missing and presumed dead, Ian Philips is dead, and Harlan Jennings just tried to kill himself.” I ticked their names off on my fingers as my voice rose. “It’s too bad you lost your money but at least you’re still around to talk about it, which is more than any of them are. So stop wallowing in self-pity and venting your anger at me. It’s not my fault you built your future on a house of cards. I’m only trying to help.”
His eyes blazed, and now the point of no return was well in the rearview mirror.
“I’m going inside,” I said before he could speak. “Do whatever you have to do or want to do. I need a shower and my own clothes. I’ll see you tomorrow for work and we’ll figure out where we are then.”
I got up and left and didn’t look back. He never said a word. I made my way through rosebushes that were just beginning to shake off their winter dormancy, and banged the veranda door shut on my way inside in case he hadn’t figured out just how mad I was.
By the time I showered and changed, the Mustang was no longer in the driveway. I walked into the library and threw myself on the sofa, knocking the book of Alexander Pope’s poetry, which I’d left on one of the cushions, to the floor. It landed faceup, open to the much-viewed epistle to Richard Boyle. I picked it up and read, for the hundredth time, the long passage Rebecca had marked.
No artful wildness to perplex the scene;
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other.
The suff’ring eye inverted Nature sees,
Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees;
With here a fountain, never to be play’d;
And there a summerhouse, that knows no shade.
What if I’d been looking for the wrong landmark? What if there was a summerhouse—like mine—somewhere in Washington? I got my laptop off the desk and brought it back to the sofa. The Internet search took me to the U.S. Capitol website in seconds. The Summer House was a small open-air, hexagonal, brick building designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in the late 1800s and set in a secluded grove on the Senate side of the Capitol.
There was a picture of the place with its charming arched entrances, basket-weave brickwork, wrought-iron gates, and Spanish mission tile roof. It looked like a whimsical folly, completely different from the elegant, austere Capitol. I kept reading. Built as a resting place for visitors and their horses to get a cool drink of water on a hot day, Olmsted’s original fountain had been replaced by modern drinking fountains. Plans for a southern summerhouse near the House of Representatives had been scuttled by Congress over concerns improprieties could be already taking place on Capitol grounds since the northern building was so secluded and well hidden from public view.
I had read about this last night at the Library of Congress—the last display showing Olmsted’s landscaping plans for the Capitol—though only the grotto had been mentioned, not the summerhouse. It meant, at least, that Rebecca must also have known about it. Could this be what Ian and I had been looking for? Each alley has a brother, grove nods at grove—the House and the Senate were mirrors of each other. But what about the fountain never to be played?
After a few more minutes of research I found it. Olmsted planned for a small water-powered carillon to be set in the middle of the rock garden and produce what he’d called “musical murmurings.” Unfortunately, the only one that was built—made by Tiffany & Co.—never worked, so it was removed and sent to a government warehouse and no one had seen it since. Not a fountain, but close enough.
This had to be the place. I studied the photo, growing more excited. Sheltered from the weather and small enough so it shouldn’t be too difficult to locate whatever Rebecca had left—even something as small as a portable external drive. Maybe she’d hidden it under one of the twenty-two chairs. Who would have guessed?
I got my phone from the foyer and scrolled through the recent calls until I found David’s number from last night. It went straight to voice mail. His office number. He wouldn’t be there on Sunday afternoon, especially after working so late yesterday. I left a message. Too bad I didn’t have his cell number. Kit knew it and she could reach him. But she didn’t answer her phone, either. I tried every number I had for her—D.C. apartment, cell, office—and left messages on all of them.
It would take me at least an hour to get to Washington. By then one or both of them would have checked their voice mail and called back. I shut down the laptop and got my jacket and car keys.
The trip to Washington took only forty-five minutes since I pushed the speed limit as fast as I dared. But I was excited, apprehensive, and dead certain I’d solved the mystery behind Rebecca’s two-hundred-year-old clue woven through the poetry of Alexander Pope.
Chapter 27
I kept an eye on my rearview mirror as I sped into Washington, but I didn’t see anyone following me. The skies grew increasingly darker as I drove east. By the time I crossed the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge, a fine mist of rain coated my windshield. It turned to spit as I continued up Constitution Avenue and soon would become a steady downpour, probably before I reached the Capitol. The weather seemed to have chased away all but the most determined tourists, and they’d come prepared with umbrellas. I reached behind me and felt along the backseat of the car. No umbrella, and my jacket didn’t have a hood.
At least it wasn’t hailing, which hurt, or a thunderstorm, which was dangerous. And there was one bonus with the awful weather: I
was practically guaranteed to have the summerhouse to myself.
I spent twenty minutes circling Madison and Jefferson drives by the museums, searching for a parking place. A Volvo sedan pulled away from the corner of Maryland Avenue and Third Street next to the Botanic Gardens as I turned onto Third. I slipped into the spot and sat in the car calling Kit and David one more time as the rain drummed on my roof. Already it was quarter to three and we were supposed to meet at Dumbarton Oaks across town at five. I tried Kit first. Still no answer.
David picked up right away. “Where are you?”
“The Botanic Gardens,” I said.
“What’s at the Botanic Gardens?”
“Nothing. Well, plants and flowers are there. Did you know there’s a summerhouse at the Capitol?” I rubbed condensation off my car window with the side of my fist. To my left, the stepped sand-colored dome of the American Indian museum had darkened in the rain giving the building an unusual two-toned look.
He said nothing, so I went on.
“I saw a reference to it last night at the Library of Congress when I was looking at some drawings by Frederick Law Olmsted that were part of the Asher Collection. They only referred to a grotto, but I did some research on the Internet. There’s a summerhouse on the site as well. It has a working fountain, but the water carillon Olmsted intended to put there wouldn’t work so it was never played. Everything else in that passage of Pope’s poem fits. The House and the Senate—two halves reflecting each other.”
The silence continued on his end.
“Hey,” I said after a moment, “are you still there?”
I checked the display. Call lost. Where was he and when had I lost him? How much had he heard? I hit Redial, but he was still out of range because his phone switched over to voice mail.
“Call me,” I said.
By now the rain was coming down steadily, the kind of rain my mother used to call “a nice rain” as in something that would soak the ground and be good for her gardens and flowers. I could either wait for David or check out the summerhouse by myself before it turned into a downpour. I didn’t even know where he was or how long it would take him to get to me. For all I knew he hadn’t heard a word I said after mentioning the Botanic Gardens and assumed I was still going to meet him and Kit in Georgetown. I got out of the car and headed for the Capitol. The only people I saw were a young couple pushing a baby in a plastic-encased stroller toward the entrance to the Botanic Gardens. Otherwise the streets were empty. Across Maryland Avenue gulls flew over the slate-colored Capitol Reflecting Pool, landing in a bedraggled lineup on the ledge by the sidewalk. A few sailed across to the equestrian statue of Ulysses S. Grant and settled there.
