“Sorry, not that. And definitely nothing about Stephen Falcone going missing.”
“Then what?”
“I got to thinking about his sister, since you said he might have lived locally. Call me lazy, but I took the easy route after I couldn’t find anything right away in the archives. I looked up Elinor Falcone on the Internet phone number lookup site. It’s an unusual name.”
“And?”
“Got a pencil or pen?”
“Give me a second.” I fumbled in my purse as my heart pounded against my ribs. “Okay, shoot.”
“There’s an Elinor Falcone, age sounds about right, still living in D.C. Brookland, to be precise. Maybe you want to go pay her a visit?” She gave me the address and phone number.
I looked at my watch. “I can be there in about an hour.”
Chapter 23
I raced home to drop off the groceries, since I didn’t want to drive into Washington with a gallon of milk in my car on a sultry summer day. As I pulled into the circular driveway, Eli walked out the front door balancing a plate with a towering deli sandwich, a large bottle of Coke, and a bag of chips big enough to get lost in.
“What’s up?” he said. “You look kind of frazzled. I just took a break to make lunch.”
“I picked up some things at Thelma’s. Where’s Hope?”
“At the Ruins with Jasmine and Dominique. They’re getting ready for tonight.”
I got out of the car and grabbed the groceries. “I’ve got to get this stuff inside. See you later.”
“You’re running like you stole something, Luce. What’s going on? The girls have got things under control.”
“I’m sure they do … uh, actually I’ve got an errand in town. I might be a little late.”
He frowned. “I thought that’s where you just came from.”
“I mean D.C.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You’re driving all the way to D.C.? Why?”
“I need to see someone. Won’t take long.” I held up the bag. “Better get the milk in the fridge.”
He looked puzzled by the brush-off, but he didn’t push it. “Yeah, sure. See you later.”
It took me an hour and a half to get into Washington, thanks to a highway-paving project that funneled traffic to a single lane and slowed it to a crawl. By the time I crossed the Potomac over the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge and drove down Constitution Avenue toward the Capitol, the temperature gauge in my car read 105 degrees. In the hazy humidity and blinding sunlight, the Federal Reserve, the Commerce Department, and the Archives seemed to shimmer. Cars, tourists, and even the occasional crazy jogger along the Mall moved with slow motion torpor.
I didn’t know the Brookland area well, except that it was where Catholic University was located, off North Capitol Street and Michigan Avenue. There is an intrinsic logic to how Washington is laid out. A medallion under the crypt in the Capitol Rotunda is the geographic center of a city that originally was intended to be a perfect square— though it isn’t—and from there, four quadrants radiate away from it as northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest. Within each quadrant, alphabet streets run east-west and numbered streets are north-south in a large grid. What throws off the simplicity are the state-named streets, which cut diagonally across this symmetry and the circles—Dupont, Logan, Thomas, et cetera—which can really screw you up if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Still, it wasn’t too hard to figure out where Elinor Falcone lived. The alphabet streets had moved into two- syllable words by the time I drove past the bright blue mosaic-domed Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, so it was clear that Lawrence Street was between Kearney and Monroe and 13th Street was a block beyond 12th.
The university hadn’t overrun the local community, so there was a mixture of college bars and restaurants, and a corridor of thriving businesses on 12th Street. The surrounding neighborhood of wood, stucco, and brick bungalow homes looked like they dated back to the 1920s or thereabouts.
Elinor lived in the middle of the 1300 block of Lawrence Street in a well-looked-after tan stucco Craftsman- style home. Half a dozen steps led up to a wide front porch with heavy tapered columns, a white railing, and a low-pitched roof. I parked across the street and got out of my car. A frail, white-haired woman sitting in a wheelchair on the porch watched me as I made my way between two closely parked cars and started up her front walk.
“What do you want?” Her high-pitched voice was querulous. “No soliciting allowed here.”
“I’m not soliciting,” I said. “I’m looking for Elinor Falcone. Would that be you, ma’am?”
I saw her hands drop to the brakes of her wheelchair and she called over her shoulder. “Alice? Can you come here?”
The front screen door banged open and a graceful African-American woman in her fifties wearing a short pink apron over red shorts and a white sleeveless top came outside.
“You all right, Miss Elinor?” she asked. She gave me a wary look. “May I help you?”
“My name is Lucie Montgomery,” I said. “I was hoping to have a word with Elinor Falcone. I’ve just driven here from Atoka, Virginia.”
“Where’s that? Roanoke?”
I smiled. “Not that far. Just past Middleburg in western Loudoun County. I won’t take more than a couple of minutes, I promise.”
Alice’s hand strayed protectively to the back of the wheelchair. “And what do you want to talk to her about?” she asked. “That you’ve come all this way.”
“Her brother Stephen.”
Elinor gave a faint cry and Alice placed both hands on the old woman’s shoulders, bending down to murmur in her ear. When she stood up, her face was impassive.
“That won’t be possible. You should leave now.”
“Please.” I looked directly at Elinor. “Someone else might have died because of what happened to Stephen. I know it was a long time ago, and I don’t mean to upset you, Miss Elinor, but could I please ask you a couple of questions?”
Elinor’s eyes locked on mine as she sized me up. I held my breath. If she wouldn’t talk, there was no one else left to ask.
“Why do you want to know what happened? Are you kin to the other person who died?”
“No, ma’am, no relation. I think I know what happened to your brother and I just want you to tell me if I’m right or not.”
“Go on.”
“What I know is that he agreed to take money in return for participating in an experimental drug study for a new vaccine. But they had to infect him with the disease first and he died before they gave him the antidote.”
“So you know everything.” Her voice was harsh. “You’ve been talking to the other girl, haven’t you?”
I moved closer to the stairs. “What other girl?”
“Stay where you are.”
I held my ground. “I don’t know who you mean. And I haven’t been talking to anyone.”
“She showed up one day, just like you did. I don’t remember when it was. Last winter, I think. No, wait. It was Thanksgiving.”
Elinor glanced at Alice, who said, “You may as well come up here so we don’t have to be shouting to the whole neighborhood about it.”
I climbed the stairs, feeling their eyes on me.
“What happened to you?” Elinor asked when I stood across from her. “Awful young to be using a cane.”
Up close, her deep-set eyes looked haunted and her downturned mouth looked like she hadn’t known much happiness. I glanced at Alice, whose face revealed nothing, though she continued to watch me like a mother hovering over a delicate child.
“A car accident,” I said. “And you?”
