A flock of geese honked noisily overhead as they flew in an untidy V. I stopped in front of Rebecca’s roses and did some math. Richard Boyle would have been among the last to die—in 1975—based on Rebecca’s age. I put my hand on the Wall and stared at my reflection in the polished stone, letting the heat from the hot granite warm me. Why didn’t she want to find him? Being late to pick up a package in Georgetown sounded like a made-up excuse.
I scanned the names of the dead and missing from 1975 and 1974. Any earlier and the numbers really didn’t add up. More than fifty-eight thousand names were engraved here, commemorating decades of sorrow and loss for an unpopular war. Wherever Richard Boyle IV was, I didn’t find him. Maybe Rebecca knew more than she told me and that’s why she asked me to say nothing about our visit here.
The sun slipped behind a wall of clouds and the breeze grew sharper. I turned up my jacket collar and decided to return to the Willard. On my way back to Ohio Drive, I passed others who, like me, knew Vietnam from history books. For us, this place was a tourist attraction the same as the eternal flame at Arlington or the other monuments scattered throughout the city honoring dead heroes. But for some, like the woman who’d left the letters, it had to be like visiting a grave at a cemetery.
On the cab ride to the hotel, I couldn’t get Rebecca’s face or the face of that woman out of my mind. Both left me unaccountably melancholy.
They were still serving lunch at the Occidental Grill when I got back from my trip downtown. Another Washington landmark, it was located next door to the Willard. A man in a dark suit seated me in a booth where I could study the rows of black-and-white head shots of unsmiling political celebrities from an earlier era that covered every wall. I ate a club sandwich and drank a glass of unsweetened ice tea before walking back to the hotel.
The lobby was noisier and more animated than when I had checked in. Underneath the sound of laughter, chatter, and the clink of glasses from the bar around the corner, a piano played “The Way You Look Tonight.” Most of the couches and chairs were now occupied. I wondered how many were hotel guests and how many were well- dressed people watchers. I walked down an opulent corridor called Peacock Alley, passing a few people taking tea and peeking into ballrooms and salons set up for some upcoming event. One of them looked like someone’s wedding reception. Finally I rode the elevator to the seventh floor.
More Beaux Arts elegance in our suite, which was decorated in regal shades of scarlet and gold. Someone had placed my suitcase on a small mahogany bench with a red-and-gold-striped satin cushion. Rebecca’s suitcase occupied the matching bench next to it. A floor-length, one-shoulder black evening gown hung in the closet next to my garment bag. In the bathroom her makeup—mostly Chanel and La Prairie—spilled out of a Vera Bradley cosmetic bag on the marble countertop. Among the blush, lip gloss, and eye shadow was a package of birth control pills.
She’d left her red leather planner, closed and bristling with papers, in the middle of the desk in the sitting room. Next to it, bound in green cloth with gilt-edged pages, was a very old copy of
I brought the book over to the gold damask sofa and sat down to look at it. The second dedication—to her —was on the title page and had been crossed out, though I could still read what had been written.
Underneath, Rebecca had written her own message:
Presumably the words were originally written by Alexander Pope—Connor’s declaration of love and Rebecca’s bitter recrimination. But there, in a nutshell, was their affair and the breakup. I closed the book feeling like I’d violated her privacy, though obviously she meant for me to see it if she were giving it to me as a present. I put it back on the desk as someone knocked on the door to the suite.
A woman about my age wearing a businesslike white oxford blouse and a slim-fitting navy skirt stood there, long tapered fingers playing with her cell phone. Heart-shaped face, delicate winged eyebrows, English rose complexion, light brown hair pulled up into a chignon, she wore almost no makeup except for lipstick in Madonna red.
When she saw me, she frowned. “Ms. Montgomery?”
She had to be hotel staff since no one else knew I was here. Maybe they needed a credit card on file, after all.
“Yes. You’re with the Willard?”
She looked taken aback. “Good Lord, no. I’m Olivia Tarrant. Sir Thomas Asher’s personal assistant.”
Tommy Asher seemed to surround himself with beautiful young women. Somehow I expected that his personal assistant would be a man—someone older who’d been with him for years. A private secretary or a faithful butler.
“What can I do for you?” I asked.
“I’m looking for Rebecca.”
“She had an errand in George—”
Olivia Tarrant cut me off. “I know that. She should have been back here two hours ago. I can’t reach her anywhere and she’s not answering her phone. I spoke to Dr. Shelby. He told me she kept her taxi waiting while she picked up a package for Sir Thomas and Lady Asher. Rebecca didn’t spend ten minutes there.”
I opened the door wider and gestured to the room. “I don’t know what to tell you, but she’s not here, either.”
“May I?” Olivia sailed past me before I could answer.
She walked over to one of the two windows overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue and pulled the sheer privacy curtain aside as though she expected to find Rebecca hiding there. I wondered if she planned to look under the beds as well.
“You were with her before she left for Georgetown?” She didn’t turn around.
“Yes.”
“When was that?” She released the curtain and faced me.
“I met her at one o’clock at the Lincoln Memorial. We did some sightseeing.”
“What time did she leave?”
“I don’t know. Probably around two, maybe a little before. I didn’t check the time.”
“Did she say anything else, about where she might go?”
In a moment, I figured Olivia Tarrant would read me my rights. “No.”
She fiddled with her phone some more, turning it over and over. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell Lady Asher.”
“Maybe Rebecca met someone for coffee or a drink afterward.”
The winged eyebrows arched in annoyance. “First of all, she was supposed to return directly here. Second, if that’s what she did then she shouldn’t have turned off her phone.”
“Hey,” I said. “I’m not Rebecca or Lady Asher. Go tell them.”
Her mouth dropped open, then she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. But you have no idea how valuable that package she retrieved is.”
I don’t have a good poker face. Everyone tells me that. I tried, anyway, to look like I had no idea what she was talking about.
