The pain in Alison’s eyes stopped me. Sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut. What had I missed? Were there problems between her and Harlan?
“It’s the horses. I stay out here for them.”
“Of course. I forgot about the horses.”
“I saw you at the gala. Talking to Harlan.”
Surely she wasn’t hinting about something between her husband and me? I looked her directly in the eyes. “Yes, that’s right. The only familiar face in the crowd.”
“Except for Rebecca Natale, if she’d been there.” Her voice grew harsh. “I didn’t know you were old friends from college, Lucie. She’s the one who invited you the other night, isn’t that right?”
It sounded like an accusation.
“Yes,” I said, “it is. What’s wrong, Ali?”
Alison drained her glass and set it down on the bar.
“When you and she were at school together, Rebecca had an affair with the husband of a colleague who happens to be my best friend. Jill O’Brien.” She brushed a tendril of hair off her face with a swift flick of her hand. “She’s Jill Walsh now and she teaches in the history department with me at Georgetown. I’m sure you knew all the sordid details of what happened with Rebecca since the two of you were such good friends. Jill said it was the talk of the campus for months.”
So that explained why Alison was here in person.
“I tried to ignore the gossip and, believe it or not, Rebecca and I never spoke about it,” I said. “I’m sorry. I had no idea it involved a friend of yours.”
“Jill called her a scheming little vixen. Lured poor Connor into the affair and then threatened to expose him if he didn’t continue to see her.”
She folded her arms and waited for my reply. Ali was sure it was all Rebecca’s fault. But Connor’s dedication to Rebecca in the volume of Pope’s poetry hadn’t exactly read like an older man pushed unwillingly into a relationship with a beautiful coed. Then there was Rebecca’s remark the other day about no one giving a damn what Connor had done to her.
“I’m sure there are two sides to every story. Even this one.”
“Rebecca destroyed their marriage. What other side could there be?”
Ali banged her hand on the counter. Something else was going on here that I was missing. Then she filled in the blanks.
“I suppose you’ve been seeing her when she came to D.C. on all those so-called business trips?”
“All what so-called business trips?”
“Come on, Lucie. I know about it, so you don’t have to pretend, okay? Rebecca’s been traveling to Washington every few weeks because Tommy manages a couple of Harlan’s funds.” Her voice wavered. “Jill warned me what might happen.”
I got it now. Harlan and Rebecca.
I opened the small wine refrigerator under the bar and found a half-full bottle of Viognier, splashing it into two glasses. It wouldn’t do much for her headache, but it was her heart that really hurt.
“I had no idea.” I set one of the glasses in front of her. “Honest to God. The first time I saw Rebecca since she graduated twelve years ago was last Saturday. Were Harlan and Rebecca … seeing each other?”
Alison threw back her head and drank. Her eyes were anguished.
“A quaint way to refer to an affair,” she said. “Yes, they were.”
“How did you find out?”
“The usual. A note in the pocket of his suit trousers when I was sending it to the cleaners. I still take care of his dry cleaning. So stupid, isn’t it?” she said. “I confronted him and he told me he’d ended it. The note I’d found, about meeting her, was to break it off.”
“Did he?”
“Of course. He gave his word.” Alison set her glass down for a refill. “Unfortunately, Rebecca called Harlan Saturday afternoon after she picked up the Madison silver and said she had to see him. Said it was urgent, a matter of life or death. Could he come get her in Georgetown so they could talk? He went to meet her and she told him she wanted to go back to our place.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Alison shrugged. “Harlan says she clammed up as soon as she walked through the door. Wanted a drink so he gave her one. Only one. Then he told her she had to go. He tried to call a cab for her, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”
“What did she want to talk about?”
“He has no idea.” She took a long swallow of wine. “Now he feels like he should have pushed harder, made her talk about what was bothering her. He feels responsible for what happened to her.”
I drank my wine, trying to recall the time line Saturday afternoon after Rebecca left me at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. According to Olivia Tarrant, Rebecca’s cab driver said he dropped her off in Georgetown and thought she was waiting for someone. He’d been right: Harlan. But then where did she go after she left the Jenningses’ Georgetown home?
As though she read my mind, Alison said, “After Rebecca left, that’s the last time Harlan saw her. She told him she wanted to walk for a while and clear her head.”
“Do the police know that?”
She laughed. I couldn’t tell if it was derision or hysteria.
“Do they know? Oh, you bet they know. They’ve been to the Georgetown house and searched it with tweezers and a microscope. My God, there was nothing too minute that didn’t fascinate those evidence people. Wait until word gets out about this.”
“But if nothing happened and Rebecca left—”
“Harlan had to tell them about the affair, Lucie. He wasn’t going to lie about that, even if—” She looked into her glass.
“Even if it gave him a motive for murder?” I said.
She pressed her lips together. Her expression was bleak.
“Do you have any idea where she went after she left our place? Did she say anything, drop any hint? Please, if you know anything …”
I shook my head, and the light drained out of her eyes.
“The police have been all over that with me, Ali. I wish I could help you, but to be honest, I’m still trying to work out why Rebecca called me out of the blue and wanted to get together. That doesn’t make sense, either.”
“Without something concrete for the police to go on, it’s Harlan’s word against no one’s that she left our place that afternoon. It’s like she vanished into the ether. Except for her clothes in that boat and this Robin Hood, or whoever he is, who handed over her things to that homeless man.”
“Have the police charged Harlan with anything?”
“They brought him in for questioning and then released him. Apparently he’s not considered a flight risk.” She drank some more wine. “But they believe he had motive and opportunity.”
“He didn’t do anything, Ali.”
“Of course he didn’t. It’s too ridiculous to even consider.”
I thought about Harlan joking with me at the gala, his little kiss, our banter about his election campaign, and his wistful interest in watching a sunset at the vineyard with Alison. There was no way he was so cold-blooded and calculating that he would show up at a party hours after killing an ex-lover, flirting and acting like he didn’t have a care in the world. At least I couldn’t believe he was capable of doing so—even though his story sounded a little far- fetched. I wondered if Ali thought it did as well but didn’t want to admit it. Though I did believe there was more to what had gone on between Harlan and Rebecca than what he’d told his wife or the police.
I wondered what Harlan was covering up. I also wondered if Rebecca were alive or dead—and if Harlan knew something about that, too.
