“What about Dahlgren? Where does he fit in? He was already dead.”
“Exactly. Killed while trying to stage that attack on Richmond.” Ross strained his martini into a glass, then dropped an olive into it. “But he had papers on him when they found his body. Orders to kill Davis and his entire cabinet, then burn the city. The Confederates knew Lincoln was so desperate to end the war he’d try anything. So they figured these were direct orders from Old Abe himself.”
“I’ve heard that story,” I said. “That Lincoln had something to do with a plot to assassinate Jefferson Davis.”
Ross sat down next to me and clinked his glass against mine. “Until now nobody’s ever been sure Davis didn’t want an eye for an eye. There’s always been speculation that he might have been involved in Lincoln’s assassination. This letter proves that he was. Especially if he got the news from Mary Surratt.”
It was a major historical coup. If it were genuine.
“No way,” I said. “Jeff Davis would never be involved in something like that. He wasn’t that kind of man.”
“Lucie,” Ross said firmly, “he was.”
I got up and went over to his desk, staring at the penciled note written on fine, thick paper. It looked old, all right. But it couldn’t be authentic. Could it?
“I thought they had ink in those days.”
“Of course they did. But Davis liked pencil.”
“Look,” I said. “Mary Surratt was hanged for her role in Lincoln’s assassination. She had every reason in the world to confess that there was a plot. But she didn’t. Neither did anyone else who was hanged along with her. Same goes for John Wilkes Booth, who could have made a deathbed confession after those Union soldiers shot him at Garrett’s farm.”
Ross fished the olive out of his glass. “None of that negates the fact that the letter proves Davis knew about the plot. At the very least.”
“Have you told any of the Romeos about it? You’re really going to stir up a hornet’s nest, you know? Especially since a lot of them are Sons of Confederate Veterans or historical reenactors.”
“Not yet,” he said. “Except for Siri and me, you’re the only other person who’s seen it. I’m sorry you’re so upset. But this is quite a historical find, you know.”
I knew. “Where did you get it?”
“An estate sale in Manassas. Behind a framed photograph of Mosby. I bought the photo and when I got home, I took out the picture to clean the glass. There it was. That’s why the paper looks so pristine. It obviously hasn’t been exposed to light for years.”
“Ross,” I said, “are you absolutely positive that it’s the real thing? Jeff Davis was a good man who was just trying to do right by the South. Heck, when they came to his house to tell him that he’d been elected president of the Confederacy, he was pruning bushes in his rose garden. He didn’t want the job, but he did it for the South.”
He said brusquely, “I know you don’t want Davis’s image tarnished, but there’s always been speculation about this. Just no concrete proof, one way or the other. Now there is. I’ll get it authenticated by a third party, of course. But I know I’m right.”
Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to get him talking about this. I tried to shift the conversation to safer ground. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I haven’t decided.” He still sounded annoyed. “Like you said, it’s bound to stir up a lot of controversy and right now…” He lifted his martini glass and drained what was left. “I’ve got to start planning Georgia’s funeral.”
I went back to the sofa and sat next to him, laying my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have upset you more than you already are. I know you know what you’re talking about.” My voice grew unsteady. “Ross, I am so… so terribly sorry about what happened. I feel like it’s partially my fault that Georgia’s dead because we left that methyl bromide out where her killer could get to it.”
For a long moment he played with the stem of his glass, twirling it between his fingers. “Thank you for saying that,” he said, finally. “But I don’t blame you for anything. You shouldn’t blame yourself, either.”
“I want to know who did it,” I said. “I want to know what happened.”
“We all want to know.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“A lot of people aren’t sorry Georgia’s dead,” he said. “I’m under no illusion about that. She was a controversial and complicated woman. But as a matter of fact, I may know who killed her. I think he wrote her a letter. It arrived about an hour ago.”
Chapter 6
I watched him, stunned, as he walked over to a large bay window overlooking the swimming pool and the impeccably manicured gardens beyond. The underwater light in the pool had been turned on. Against the dusky blues of the twilit garden and the darker-hued sky, the brilliant turquoise water shimmered like a tropical jewel.
“What do you mean, the killer wrote her a letter?” I asked.
“Sometimes it’s the stupidest things.” He looked at me musingly. “I loved Georgia very much. As different as we were, I adored her.”
“I know.” I knew better than to rush him. Ross took his time with his stories.
He gestured to the Jefferson Davis letter. “Sometimes I get too caught up in my work. If I’m not at the clinic, I’m chasing down papers at an estate sale or on the phone with a historian or an auction house…you know how I can be.” He smiled ruefully. “I think Georgia got the idea to run for state senator because she wanted a project, a crusade…something to do since I wasn’t around that much. At first I was all for it. But then it turned out that we really never saw each other. And I think she was…” He paused, searching for words. “I think she was seeing someone else. It may not have been the first time, either.”
I held the bowl of my wineglass with both hands. It would be good to have a drink to get through what was turning into an auto-da-fé. As though he read my thoughts, he walked over to the bar and picked up the Chardonnay bottle and held it up.
“Yes, please.” I lifted my glass. “Do you know who it was?”
He poured my wine and strained what was left in the cocktail shaker into his own glass. “I do now,” he said. “The delivery boy from the dry cleaner’s just dropped her clothes off. There was a plastic bag attached to one of the hangars because they’d found some personal effects in one of her pockets. Including this.”
He pulled a small folded paper out of his pocket and passed it to me.
No signature. I turned it over. Nothing written on the back.
“Do you know who wrote it?”
“My guess is Randy Hunter.” He looked deep into his martini glass as if he’d found the answer there. Then he raised his eyes and said steadily, “I, ah, had a pretty good idea that they were having an affair. All of a sudden we were getting groceries from that new store in Middleburg. All the time. I think Randy delivered them. And stuck around for his tip.”
“Oh.”
I thought of the box of condoms at the barn. If the police had told Ross about them, he wasn’t saying—and I didn’t want to bring that up.
He added, “At least it gives somebody besides me a motive for killing her.”
“You?” I said, startled. “What are you talking about? You were at the hospital delivering twins. That’s a
