my balance. Half a dozen red rowboats with FLETCHER’S and numbers stenciled on the sides lay overturned at the end of the pier. It looked like fishing and boating had been canceled for the day.
A female officer told me to wait by a wooden locker filled with oars while she told Detective Horne I was here. She walked over to a tall, slim man with ebony skin, close-cut salt-and-pepper hair, and the bearing of an ex-marine, and spoke to him. He nodded and came over, cradling a cup of coffee the color of the river water. His badge was clipped to his belt next to his gun, and he wore khakis, a plaid dress shirt, and a black all-weather jacket with the department logo embroidered on it. He also looked dead tired, like he might be working his second shift of the day.
“Appreciate you coming,” he said, after shaking my hand and introducing himself. “I understand you’re sharing a suite at the Willard paid for by Rebecca Natale. And one of her colleagues said you were with her yesterday afternoon before she disappeared.”
“That’s right,” I said. “But I have no idea why she’d be here.”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out. Like I said on the phone, we have some clothes we’d like you to take a look at. They’re over here. See if you recognize anything.”
Each item was in its own brown paper bag, neatly laid out in a row on the dock. Horne showed them to me one by one. The shawl. The blazer. The jeans. The silk blouse. Even her shoes. There was something else, too. Blood on the shawl and the blouse.
“Take your time,” he said. “Be sure.”
Thank God I hadn’t eaten anything. I felt like I was going to be sick.
“I don’t need to take any time. These are Rebecca’s clothes. She was wearing them yesterday. Why is there blood on them? Where did you find them?”
“A park service employee discovered them this morning out on the river during a routine check. They were in one of her boats.”
“A boat? Where’s Rebecca?”
Horne cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Ms. Montgomery. We’re looking for her right now. I’ve got officers walking a grid and the marine squad is searching the river.”
As he spoke, two men in wet suits with tanks rolled backward off the side of the police boat into the muddy water, disappearing with a small splash.
“I don’t believe this,” I said.
Horne led me back to the oar locker, away from the evidence bags.
“I have a few questions,” he said. “When you were with Ms. Natale yesterday, did she seem depressed or upset about anything?”
“No, not at all.”
“She say anything about an argument with someone—boyfriend, coworker, anyone?”
“Nothing. No one.”
“Any reason to believe she might contemplate taking her life?”
“Look, Detective, you’re way off base if you think Rebecca committed suicide. She’s not the type. Besides, when she left me she was on her way to Georgetown to pick up an antique silver wine cooler that belonged to President James Madison. An errand for her boss.”
Horne nodded when I mentioned the wine cooler, so I guessed he knew about it now, too.
“Go on,” he said.
“She was wearing diamond-and-sapphire earrings and a matching necklace and carrying a Coach purse. Where are those things? Plus her identification and credit cards? What makes you so sure this wasn’t a robbery that went bad?”
He studied me. “Right now I’m not ruling out anything. A robbery homicide is one possibility. It’s also been my experience that a woman doesn’t remove her clothes before deciding to take her life, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen—that this isn’t some weird kind of suicide. What about a boyfriend? She have one?”
I thought about the birth control pills back in the hotel. “She didn’t mention anybody.”
“But?” He prompted me.
There was no reason not to tell him. “I hadn’t seen Rebecca in almost twelve years until yesterday. We spent about an hour together doing some sightseeing and then she said she needed to take care of that errand. I saw her birth control pills on the bathroom counter when I got back to our hotel room at the Willard, but I have no idea about a boyfriend.”
“You know if she’s monogamous?”
“I … no.”
“What you’re saying is you didn’t really know her that well,” Horne said.
“I used to. But that was a long time ago.”
He drank some of his dishwater coffee, then flung the rest of it into the river.
“Okay, thanks. That’s it for now. I don’t have any more questions, but I might be talking to you again depending on what happens.” He pulled a business card out of an overstuffed wallet that looked like it was about to split at the sides. “Call me if you think of anything else. And if she gets in touch with you, tell her to call me and make it quick. The chief gets cranky when we spend taxpayers’ money searching for someone who isn’t missing anymore.”
I nodded. “How long will you keep looking?”
“Hard to say. But right now the suspicious circumstances surrounding her disappearance and that missing White House wine holder mean we’ll keep at it for a while.” He paused and scratched his head. “Though I’ll be interested to see what the lab says after we get that blood analyzed.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You learn a lot from blood spatter. Whether it could have come from, say, a gunshot, or whether she merely cut herself and bled on her clothing. Either accidentally or on purpose.”
The implication of what he’d just said sunk in. “On purpose? Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know right now. But I mean to find out. Good day, Ms. Montgomery. Thanks for coming by. I’d better get back to work.”
“Good day, Detective.”
He returned to the group of men he’d been talking to when I arrived. A light breeze rustled the edges of a sheaf of papers attached to a clipboard on top of the locker. Boat rental tickets. Next to the clipboard sat a red plastic coffee can that had been converted into a tip jar. The cheery hand-drawn sign with jumping fish on it read, IT’S TIME TO FISH.
I stared at the coffee can. None of this made sense.
As I left the dock, a woman wearing a gray T-shirt with THE BOATHOUSE AT FLETCHER’S COVE stenciled on it in red sat on a large rock by the path to the boat rental trailer, smoking like her life depended on it. Horne said a woman found the rowboat with Rebecca’s clothes in it.
I changed direction and headed toward her.
She gestured to the dock with her cigarette. “Friend of yours, baby?”
I nodded. “You’re the one who found the boat?”
She wore a bucket hat secured under her neck with a cord that hid her hair and shaded most of her face. I couldn’t guess her age, but her voice was burred with years of smoking and her skin was nut brown and sun weathered.
“Yup. Out this morning around six putzing around when I saw it. Hung up on one of the Three Sisters. This one was weird, though.”
The Three Sisters were an outcropping of rocks downriver. Boaters watched out for them at their peril.
“Weird how?”
“Don’t see too many suicides folding their clothes before they jump.” She pulled a smashed pack of Marlboros out of her back pocket. “And she didn’t leave no ID. You go to all the trouble of killing yourself, you want someone to
“The clothes were folded?” I’d thought whoever bagged them had done that.
“Yep. Neat as a pin.” She paused to light up. “Didn’t leave her underwear. Maybe she was modest.”
“That detective says women who plan to commit suicide don’t usually take off their clothes,” I said. “Anyway, Rebecca didn’t kill herself. She had no reason to.”
