“Call me after you talk to that detective. You’re probably going to have to go down to headquarters on Indiana Avenue and give a statement.”
“I know.”
“You’d better be careful, kiddo. Otherwise you’re going to end up in a hole so deep you may not be able to climb out.”
I set my phone on the counter after she disconnected, heaping sugar in my coffee.
“Having sugar with your coffee? You already did that,” Quinn said. “Who’s Ian?”
“A friend of Rebecca’s,” I said. “The police found him this morning. It looks like he drowned in a hot tub sometime last night.”
“You were with him last night?”
I nodded.
“What’s going on, Lucie?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t think he drowned.”
I left Quinn in the kitchen and called Detective Ismail Horne from my office. As Kit predicted, he issued a personal invitation to come down to Indiana Avenue and explain my side of the story. If I chose not to do so, Horne promised he’d send someone to fetch me, with a matching pair of bracelets to accessorize my ride. And they probably wouldn’t roll out the red carpet when I arrived if we did this the hard way.
“Do I need a lawyer?” I asked, shaken.
“You’re not being charged with anything,” he said. “We just want to talk with you. That’s all. But if you do lawyer up, then we need to read you your rights and it starts getting complicated. Your choice.”
“Ian Philips was alive and well when I left him last night,” I said. “But he’d been drinking. I called him several times when I got home and he never answered, so I figured he’d gone to bed and I left a message on his machine.”
“I know,” Horne said. “I heard. That’s why it looks better that you called me than me calling on you. Come on in here. Later this morning would work just fine for me.”
On my way out, I walked by Quinn’s office. His door was ajar and he was talking on the phone, his deep voice carrying into the hallway.
“Sure, Ali … thanks … yeah, I’d love to see it. Give me a call when it’s convenient.”
My heart gave another unwelcome lurch. He hadn’t wasted any time calling Alison Jennings about their land. Was he really going to go through with this? I had just slipped past his door when he called my name.
“You leaving again?” He stood in his doorway, hands in his pockets as he leaned against the jamb.
I couldn’t read the expression in his eyes, but I could sense a new energy in him, anticipation about the possibilities that had opened up since he’d come into that inheritance—a chance to put his own stamp on a vineyard, his name on a wine label. I wanted to be glad for him. Really I did. But how could I not have noticed his restlessness before this?
“I’m going into D.C. Again. Sorry, but I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Can we put off the bench trials another day?”
“Sure. Your call. Want me to come with you? You’re talking to the police, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “And you’re going over to the Jenningses’ place to see their land.”
He reddened. “Not for a while. Look, I’m not going to jump ship tomorrow, okay? And if this works out, it’s not like I’m leaving Atoka. I’ll still be around. We’ll still see each other.” His smile was self-conscious; he knew he wasn’t conning me, but I played along.
I tried to smile, too. “I know.”
“You understand, don’t you? You know I’m not unhappy here. That’s not why I’m doing it.”
Sure, I understood. I just didn’t want him to leave. And it wasn’t about the wine, either. “You caught me by surprise, that’s all.”
He flashed a cheeky grin like a kid who hooked a big fish with nothing but string and a worm. “If you want to know the truth, it surprised me, too. But financially things are looking up so I think I can pull this off sooner than later. With the recession, it’s a good time to buy land. Prices are down.”
“You’re talking about the money from your mother’s estate?”
“That and a few investments.”
“I’ll miss you,” I said.
“What are you going to miss? I told you I’ll still be by to give you grief, like I always do.”
“Something to look forward to.” I hooked a thumb in the direction of the door. “I’d better get going. They’re waiting for me.”
“You never said whether you want me to come.”
“Thanks, anyway, but I can handle this on my own.”
He seemed surprised by the rebuff, but all he said was, “Sure. I know you can.”
As I closed the door I thought I heard him say, “I’ll miss you, too, sweetheart. I’ll miss you, too.”
Perhaps I imagined it, but I thought he sounded wistful and even a little melancholy.
It took me almost as much time to find a parking place near D.C. police headquarters as it did to drive from Atoka to Washington. Finally I gave up on meters and found a garage a few blocks away. Once I got inside the building it took another twenty minutes to get past security to the third floor where the homicide division was located.
I’d obviously watched too many television cop shows because I was expecting to be interrogated in a large room with a grungy table, a couple of beat-up wooden chairs, a mirrored window—where someone would watch me from the other side—and a legal pad and pencil for me to write it all down. Instead Ismail Horne ushered me into a space slightly larger than a freight elevator, containing only a laminate table and two molded plastic desk chairs. No window. I glanced up. Of course, a surveillance camera. This was real life, not television. When he closed the door, I felt claustrophobic.
We sat across from each other.
“Suppose you start from the beginning,” he said.
So I told him about Ian and the postcards, and something flickered in his eyes that made me realize he’d found the one Rebecca had sent Ian, though he said nothing.
“We met at the Tidal Basin,” I said. “That was Ian’s suggestion.”
“First time you met?” he asked.
“No. I encountered him at the Willard hotel on Saturday night. He was looking for Rebecca and didn’t know her room number.”
“Encountered?”
“He asked me to wait with him in the hotel bar when he found out I knew Rebecca. He’d been drinking and sort of made a pass at me so I said no. A hotel concierge escorted him out, or at least I think he did. By then I’d taken the elevator to my room.”
I took Horne through the rest of it—dinner at the Tune Inn, running into Summer Lowe, and finally ending up at Ian’s place trying to figure out whether Rebecca had somehow given us a coded message as to where she’d left information that could help Ian in his testimony before the Senate Banking Subcommittee.
If trying to find a clue in a poem written in 1731 by Alexander Pope had seemed far-fetched last night, the expression on Detective Horne’s face as I continued talking made me wonder if he thought he was listening to someone who was waiting for her mother ship to return from her planet.
“So,” he said, leaning closer to me, “did you figure out this secret code, Ms. Montgomery?”
He emphasized “secret code” ever so slightly and I blushed. Maybe he did think I was nuts.
“No, we didn’t. Look, Detective, I know it must seem completely loony to you, but here’s what’s absolutely true: Rebecca Natale sent Ian and me identical postcards that she bought at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday with our phone numbers on them and a quote from Alexander Pope. She left flowers at the Wall for a man named Richard Boyle, whom she said was her biological father, but there’s no Richard Boyle listed as having been killed in 1975. There is, however, a poem written by Pope to Boyle, and Rebecca planned to give me a book of Pope’s poetry, which she’d inscribed to me. I assume you’ve got it since you confiscated all of her things when you searched our hotel room.”
