Multiple Exposure A Sophie Medina Mystery (15 page)

She had flown to London the day after I got back from the mountain search on the French-Italian border and stayed with me for a week. She made sure I ate and slept and changed my clothes and stumbled through the days and nights, until she finally had to get back home to her family to be there for all the important end-of-the-school-year activities—proms, awards ceremonies, final concerts—for her son and daughter. After that we talked regularly on Skype, usually midnight my time, or even later—I had insomnia for a while—when she got home from work. But in the last few weeks, ever since I’d found out Nick had been seen in Moscow and was possibly linked to Colin Crowne’s death, I’d been avoiding her. I went off-line so I didn’t see her calls, explaining in an e-mail that I was too busy with the details of moving back to the States and promising we’d catch up when I got home.

I saw her once, a few days after I moved into the Roosevelt. She came by with roses from her garden, a chilled bottle of fizzy white, and Chinese takeout, ready for an evening of girl talk. The two of us curled up on opposite ends of the sofa with the remnants of kung pao chicken, shrimp with lobster sauce, and a half-eaten carton of fried rice littering the coffee table. The visit hadn’t gone well; I pleaded a headache and told her I was jetlagged and overwhelmed. She left as soon as we finished eating, her mouth puckered in a line of bewildered hurt.

“I’ll call you,” I said, but I hadn’t.

Now she was trying again.

“Hey,” she said in a clipped tone when I finally answered. “I know it’s last minute, but are you free for lunch? You can’t duck me forever, you know. And don’t you dare tell me you’re not ducking me.”

She was done being polite and solicitous.

“I’m not ducking you,” I said. “I’m sorry, Gracie, I really want to, but I’m sort of backed up at work.”

“Fine. If you don’t tell me what’s going on,” she said in that same no-nonsense voice, “I’m going to call Harry and your mother and tell them I’m worried about you, tell them you’re shutting out your oldest and dearest friend, and that you haven’t been yourself since you moved home.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, yes, I would. Your mother would haul you off to a resort spa before you could say seaweed wrap or diamond-and-ruby facial, and Harry’s just dying to buy you a new wardrobe or a new car or build you a new house because he wants you to be happy again.”

“All right.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. First Duval, now Grace. I could feel a tension headache building behind my eyes like gathering storm clouds. “Please don’t call anyone. Can we have lunch tomorrow, maybe?”

“Sure,” she said, like she was going to drop it. “I guess I can wait until then to find out what really happened last night between Scott Hathaway and Yuri Orlov at that National Gallery reception. That must have been a hell of a scene.”

I sat up in my chair. “What are you talking about?”

“We ran a piece about it in
Lifestyle.
With a photo.”

“You did?” Where the hell had they gotten the photo?

“You mean you didn’t know? Oh, for cryin’ out loud, no wonder our circulation numbers are in the toilet. Even my best friend doesn’t read my newspaper.”

“Of course I do. It’s sitting right here on my desk. It’s been a busy morning. I didn’t get to it yet.”

I tapped a key on my computer and searched for “
Washington Tribune.
” Seth and Moses had been adamant about privacy because Vasiliev had insisted on it. All we needed was for them to think Luke or I was the source of that picture.

The story popped up on my screen, complete with an unflattering picture of the beet-faced Russian ambassador and Hathaway, with a make-my-day swagger, as he leaned in toward Orlov. Some wag who wrote the headline called it “Empire of the Firestorm” and the reporter who wrote the gossipy piece equated it to a return of the cold war.

“I know you’re typing,” she said. “Paper on your desk, my ass.”

Grace had the hearing of a bat and the eyesight of an eagle.

“That’s someone at the desk next to mine,” I said. “How’d you get a reporter into that party last night? It was closed to the press. Who took that photo?”

“Have lunch with me today and I’ll tell you,” she said. “In return, you tell me what’s going on—because I know something is—and I won’t call Caroline and Harry. I can pick up sandwiches at the Late Edition and take a cab to your office since you’re so busy.”

I wished I’d had the opportunity to introduce Grace to Nick’s people because she’d make a first-class interrogator. She just wears you down until you say “uncle.”

“Why don’t we meet somewhere in between my office and yours?” I said. “A park, maybe? It’s gorgeous out.”

“How about Dupont Circle by the chess tables?”

“Can we do it in an hour? I’ve got some editing to wrap up.”

“Twelve thirty. Be there,” she said, “or else.”

*

The first time I laid eyes on Grace Lowe in English class at St. Michael the Archangel High School I hated her. She had been named for Grace Kelly thanks to her mother’s romantic obsession over an American actress’s fairy tale marriage to the rich, handsome prince of Monaco; growing up, her family’s nickname for her was “Princess.” Grace looked and acted exactly like her namesake: blond, beautiful, patrician, perfect, and aloof. I thought she was a horrible snob.

But a few weeks after school started, a gang of girls confronted me one afternoon as I was walking home alone, teasing me in crude ninth-grade Spanish about my dark skin and hair, my heritage, and that I must be someone’s rejected child, a bastard, probably, because I looked nothing like my Anglo mother and stepfather. Grace showed up out of nowhere, returned the girls’ crudeness with some equally crass remarks about their own family relationships, and before we knew it, fists were flying and it turned into an all-out brawl. She ended up with a dislocated finger and I had a hell of a shiner and two bruised ribs, but we held our own against four slow-witted bullies and had marched home together arm in arm, bloodied but unbowed. Over time, the story of our amazing bravery and martial prowess grew into a whopping tale that bore no resemblance to reality, but no one ever teased me again, and Grace and I bonded during the next few weeks of detention and cleaning up litter on the school grounds.

She was already waiting at a park bench near the chess tables when I arrived, still as gorgeous and alluring as the other Grace flying along the Grande Corniche in that convertible with Cary Grant at her side in
To Catch a Thief
.

She saw me and stood up. Our hug was awkward.

“Hope you’re hungry,” she said. “I brought you tuna on sourdough . . . it used to be your favorite.”

“It still is,” I said. “Thanks, Gracie. What do I owe you?”

She gave me a look and said, “An explanation.”

We sat and she doled out the deli bags, passing me a bottle of water. Across from us two African-American men played chess, whiling away a pleasant afternoon in retirement.

I hadn’t been to this part of town since I’d returned home, but Dupont Circle hadn’t changed in twelve years. Still bustling with the lunchtime crowd as it always did: men from nearby offices in rolled-up shirtsleeves and ties flung over their shoulders, women with skirts hiked up to take advantage of the last slanting rays of summer sunshine, students from Johns Hopkins just down Massachusetts Avenue reading or sitting and talking in groups. As always, the prime real estate was the steps of the two-tiered fountain—Washington, like London, is a city of fountains—which was as packed as the beach on Labor Day weekend with lovers and friends and sun worshipers listening to a trumpeter play “When I Fall in Love” like he meant it.

One of the lazy weekend pastimes Nick and I had enjoyed in London had been a long afternoon walk along one of the paths of the city’s many parks. Our favorite was St. James’s, bounded by the Mall, Birdcage Walk, and Horse Guards Road, with its beautiful lake and postcard-perfect view of Buckingham Palace. We’d bring stale bread from home to feed the rare breeds of swans, ducks, geese, and pelicans that lived on Duck Island. At the end of the day we’d walk over to the Blue Bridge, where we’d watch the setting sun gild the palace walls and turrets and towers or catch the graceful arc of the Eye as it slowly revolved.

“Sophie,” Grace said, “you’re a million miles away.”

“Sorry. Just . . . thinking.”

She set her sandwich on the deli wrapper. “Remember I told you Ben and I bought a summer place in North Carolina last winter? On Bald Head Island? It’s lovely and tranquil and the beaches are deserted after the kids go back to school. No cars allowed, so the only way to get around is by bike or golf cart. It’s heaven. The house is yours for as long as you need it. I can come with you or you can stay there by yourself. But I can’t stand seeing you all wrecked up like this.” She covered my hand with hers. “I know it’s been hell with everything that happened to Nick. And you haven’t even had any real closure since they never found him.”

“Thanks.” I squeezed her hand tight. “Your house sounds wonderful, but right now I need to keep busy. I’m not sure I could handle solitude. Maybe later.”

She nodded and snapped her fingers, a quick syncopated beat like she’d just thought of something. “Hey, I know. Why don’t you come over for dinner? Ben and the kids are dying to see you, and that includes your fifteen-going-on-twenty-one-year-old goddaughter. We’ll throw some steaks on the grill and Ben will make his award-winning margaritas. How about tomorrow, Friday night?”

She still wanted to save me, make everything okay again. “Let me check and get back to you . . .”

“About
tomorrow
? You don’t know what you’re doing
tomorrow
?” Her voice went up in disbelief. “I still have your parents’ number on speed dial. Just sayin’.”

In the poignant silence that followed—broken by cheers as someone across the way triumphantly called out “checkmate”—I knew I couldn’t keep doing this. I couldn’t keep putting up barriers and shutting everyone out of my life because of secrets I was forced to keep and fears I couldn’t share. Grace, who’d stuck by me ever since that after-school battle so many years ago, wouldn’t turn her back on me if she knew the truth: that my husband was alive somewhere, on the run, and his name had been linked to the grisly murder of his boss in Vienna. Was that what I was scared of? I’d have to listen to a lifetime litany of I-told-you-that-boy-was-no-good-but-you-wouldn’t-listen from my mother, but Grace would never utter a word against Nick because she knew I loved him.

“There are some things I can’t talk about right now,” I said. “Can you just trust me that I’ll tell you when I can?”

“Are you in trouble?” she asked.

“I . . . no. I’m not. Just . . . trust me, Gracie. Please? And I’d love to come to dinner tomorrow. Thanks for inviting me.”

She cocked her head and stared past me, her mouth tight with the realization that I wasn’t going to take her into my confidence, no matter how dear our friendship.

“Hey, you were going to explain how you guys got someone into that reception last night.” I needed to change the subject. “And please don’t be angry with me, okay?”

She sighed and squared her shoulders. “We didn’t have anyone from the paper there,” she said in a quiet voice. “Apparently Hathaway went back to the Hill, some last-minute Senate business. He ended up drinking in his Capitol hideaway with a couple of members of his staff, and he was in a pretty foul mood. Our Senate correspondent ran into one of the staffers after she moved on to the Hawk ’n’ Dove. Hathaway’s person was pissed off and she’d had a few, so she started talking about some scene with Orlov at the National Gallery.” She shrugged. “It didn’t take our reporter long to find a couple of independent sources who confirmed it. And someone had a camera phone.”

I wondered if the angry staffer had been the young woman I thought had a crush on Hathaway. “That was lucky.”
For you, not us.

“So what happened?” she asked. “Were you there?”

I nodded. “There’s not much to say that you don’t already know. Actually, you got everything right, except for the cheesy comment about it being the worst face-off between Russia and America since the Cuban missile crisis,” I said.

“That’s
Lifestyle,
” she said with the ghost of a grin. “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. So how’d it end?”

“Katya Gordon, the Russian art history professor who organized the exhibit, showed up and charmed them into neutral corners. Then she disappeared with Hathaway and gave him a private tour while his wife and the director of the National Gallery helped Orlov find the exit,” I said.

We ate our sandwiches in silence until I said, “Do you know much about Scott Hathaway, whether he’s a skirt chaser?”

She eyed me over her water bottle. “Why do you ask?”

“One of his aides—I think she was about twelve—was acting sort of possessive around him. I just got a vibe . . . something like that.”

“Ben says they’re called ‘Hathaway’s Hotties,’ ” she said. “He’s got an almost all-female staff. Every single one of them looks like a Victoria’s Secret model but brainy as hell—Rhodes Scholar or top of their class at some Ivy. Ben said he’s thinking of instituting the same policy for his committee staff. I told him, ‘Do that, buddy, and you’re sleeping with the dog.’ ”

I laughed. Ben Glass was majority staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He’d come to the Hill straight out of Johns Hopkins, where he’d gotten his master’s in international relations. His boss, the senior senator from Virginia and chairman of the committee, had been in office longer than some marriages last.

“Hathaway has at least two men working for him,” I said in an offhand way. “His chief of staff and his deputy chief of staff. They were on the guest list last night. Are they hotties, too?”

She flapped her hand. “Eric Nettle and David Epps. They’ve been to our Christmas parties once or twice. Eric could be Hathaway’s kid brother, same Boston Brahmin way of walking, talking, and preppy dressing—
pahk the cah in Hahvahd yahd.
If you go for that type, I’d say he’s good-looking.”