“One’s my limit,” I said.
David regarded the choices and eyed Kit. “You want the chocolate-covered one with the sprinkles, don’t you?”
“I’ll take anything. Take that one if you want it.”
He picked up a glazed donut. “I can’t. Your initials are written in the sprinkles.”
“Where?” She studied the box and looked up. “Oh, for God’s sake. Why do I believe you anymore?”
He bit into his doughnut and winked at me. “She finds me irresistible.”
“Yeah, well, I’m working on resisting him,” Kit said. “I’m nearly there.”
David set his doughnut on a napkin. “I thought you should know that Ian Philips mailed me copies of his notes as sort of a backup. He was worried about the threats he’d been receiving.”
I stared down at the creek, which flowed peacefully beneath us. Rebecca wanted Ian and me to be her backups—and she was gone. Now Ian had gone to David Wildman before he died.
“When did you get them?” I asked.
“They were postmarked Tuesday. The day he died. He sent them to the newsroom. I didn’t get ’em until yesterday. They were sitting on another reporter’s desk by accident and he was out sick. Caught me completely by surprise.”
Me, too. At least now I knew Ian trusted David.
“Who knows you have them?”
“Besides Kit and my editor, only you.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked as a chill went through me.
“Right now I’m still reading them. A lot of dense economics—numbers, formulas, terminology—that I’m trying to wade through. It’s slowing me down. I really don’t want to ask our business reporter for help since I’d like to keep it on the down low that I’ve got this stuff.” He eyed me. “There is one glaring omission.”
“Ian had no proof of any falsified trades or how the money got moved around,” I said. “You need what Rebecca left him.”
Kit licked sprinkles off her doughnut. “If she left anything. What if Tommy Asher’s right and she’s dirty, too?” She caught me glaring at her. “Sorry. You know how I feel about her. I did meet her, you remember.”
“I remember.”
“Look,” she said, “be honest. Rebecca would either have to be incredibly dumb or incredibly blind not to know what was going on, especially if she was one of Asher’s trusted advisers. His protégée.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s say you’re right and Rebecca did take the money,” I said. “What if she only took enough to get lost, change her identity, and set herself up somewhere she wouldn’t be found? Rebecca was fundamentally a casuist. At least she was when we were in school.”
“English, please?” Kit said.
“A person who uses reasoning to solve a moral problem,” I said. “Casuists decide what to do based on ethics—except they consider the circumstances of each situation before they make their decision. So stealing may be wrong, but taking enough money to live on because you need to disappear after turning in your boss for bigger stealing is okay because that’s the greater good.”
“Phooey. Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Kit said.
“I’m not justifying it,” I said. “Just explaining it.”
Kit wiped her fingers on a napkin and looked cross. “Why didn’t she just give you the damn papers or external drive or whatever it is? Why have this cloak-and-dagger scavenger hunt? It’s ridiculous.”
“Because she needed to make sure she could pull off her disappearing act first. Otherwise, she’d be hanging a noose around her own neck,” I said.
David had leaned back with his arms folded across his chest as he followed our back-and-forth discussion like he was watching a tennis match.
“Feel free to jump in at any time,” I said to him. “With your two cents.”
“I grew up with five sisters,” he said. “I know when to keep my mouth shut.”
“He waits to weigh in until after all the blood is spilled,” Kit said. “Less messy.”
David flashed a brilliant knowing smile as she reached for another doughnut.
“Eating comforts me in times of stress.” She made a face at him. To me she said, “What I don’t understand is why they haven’t found her body yet.”
“I still believe Rebecca’s plan was to disappear,” I said. “What I don’t know anymore is whether someone got to her and she really is dead.”
“I heard she might have been pregnant.” David spoke up finally.
“Are you serious? I didn’t know—” Kit turned to me. “Luce?
“Her mother told me.”
Kit exploded. “Pregnant! That changes everything. Who’s the father?”
“It might be Harlan Jennings,” I said. “They were having an affair.”
Kit snorted. “Harlan and Rebecca. Oh, my God, poor Ali. Though our Senate reporter always said he had a roving eye. But a baby—wow. You never know about some people, do you?”
The Pope book was in my carryall. I got it out.
“Rebecca left me this. Well, not this book exactly. The D.C. police have the copy she gave me.” I opened it to the epistle to Richard Boyle. “I got a chance to look at her copy when I talked to Detective Horne. She marked a couple of passages.”
David took the book and Kit moved closer so she could read over his shoulder.
“What’s this supposed to be?” she asked after a few minutes. “A clue?”
“I guess so. If it isn’t, we’re really lost.”
David rubbed his chin. “If it’s a place, it sounds like she’s referring to a formal garden. You think she left something there?”
“Wherever it is, it has to be in D.C.,” I said.
“Dumbarton Oaks? Hillwood? The Botanic Gardens? There’re a bunch of gardens in this city,” he said.
“I’d been thinking it was around one of the monuments. But Dumbarton Oaks is in Georgetown,” I said. “Rebecca disappeared for a few hours after she left me at the Vietnam Wall to pick up the Madison wine cooler in Georgetown. She spent some time at Harlan’s place and left.”
“Where’s Harlan’s place?” Kit asked.
David consulted his notes. “Thirty-second Street, a few houses down from the intersection of Reservoir Road. I parked near Dumbarton Oaks when I went to check it out.”
“So she could have walked there,” I said. “It would have only taken her ten, maybe fifteen minutes to drop something off.”
David sounded eager. “The timing would be right, wouldn’t it?”
I nodded. “My mother took me to those gardens when I was little. There are several fountains, I think.”
“Any of them defunct?” Kit asked. “‘With here a fountain, never to be play’d.’”
“There’s only one way to find out,” I said. “I’m sure the gardens are open today.”
“Whoa!” David held up a hand. “It’s cherry blossom season and those grounds are going to be overrun with visitors. I’ve got a friend who works at the museum there. Let me call her and see if we can get in when it’s closed to the public. We need to keep this off the radar, especially if all three of us show up looking like a posse.”
He made a call and left a message.
“Well,” he said, “we’ll have to wait and see what she says.”
I finished my coffee. “So which of you is covering the opening of the Asher Collection tonight?”
Kit and David exchanged glances.
“Neither of us,” she said. “Change of plans. It’s now closed to the press and it’s being billed as a private event.”
“When did that happen?”
“Yesterday,” David said. “If it turns out that collection was acquired with dirty money, it’s only a matter of time before the library announces it’s no longer accepting the Ashers’ donation. They’re already backing away. In the meantime Tommy Asher paid to use the Great Hall. They can’t pull the plug on that.”
“You’re going, right, Luce?”
I nodded. “With Mick Dunne.”
