Multiple Exposure A Sophie Medina Mystery (20 page)

Whoever owned Bar Humbug had a sense of humor because the walls were filled with photos and prints of legendary scam artists and charlatans. Charles Ponzi and Frank Abagnale had places of honor. We sat down at the far end of the bar across from a picture of Victor Lustig posing in front of the Eiffel Tower, which he once tried to sell, and Gregor McGregor. Jack ordered two Perriers and I read him the caption under McGregor’s photo. A Scotsman who fought for South American independence in the 1800s, he returned to Britain as the “cazique” of the Central American nation of Poyais, where he recruited investors and colonists to invest their toil and treasure in a patch of water off the coast of Honduras.

The bartender set down our drinks. “Either we’re going to need a bigger place or else we have to start hanging pictures on the ceiling. The owner wants to add Madoff, Ebbers, Kozlowski, the Enron guys, and Alan Stanford to the wall of shame.” He shook his head. “You’d think people would learn that too good to be true is too good to be true. Haven’t seen you guys in here before. Welcome to Bar Humbug.”

Jack said thanks, but I could tell he didn’t want to get lured into small talk about sports and the neighborhood, which would inevitably lead to having the details mined about who we were and how we’d ended up here. The bartender gave us a curious sideways look before drifting to the other end of the room, where a flat-screen television showed a West Coast game with the Dodgers being annihilated.

Jack clinked his glass against mine. “You all right?”

I nodded. “Fine.”

In London my favorite local pub had been a wonderfully atmospheric place called the Holly Bush and, when we were both in town, Nick and I had dined there at least once a week. It was a higgledy-piggledy rabbit warren of rooms, the building dating from the 1600s, a former stable with worn oak floors, the original gas lamps, and—my favorite—a great roaring fire in the fireplace all winter long. Maybe someday I would stop comparing every experience in D.C. with something I’d lost and left behind in London, but this was my first time in a bar since that night in the Cheshire Cheese with Perry and everyone from IPS.

“Your nose just grew longer,” Jack said to me now. “You don’t look so fine.”

“Sorry. I was thinking about London.”

“You really miss it, don’t you?”

“I do. I miss everything.”

He reached over and squeezed my hand. “It’s going to work out, Soph. You and Nick are going to be together again. This is all going to be in the rearview mirror someday and you’ll be stronger for coming through it.”

I blew out a long breath. “How can you be so sure?”

He pointed to the ceiling. “Connections.”

I gave him a weak smile. “I hope you’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” he said. “In the meantime, where’s your friend? It’s ten to eleven.”

“Maybe he got hung up getting out of the Kennedy Center parking lot or the fund-raiser went late.” I checked my phone. “Wonder why he didn’t send another text?”

“Ask him.”

After five minutes with no reply, Jack said, “Maybe you should call him.”

But when I did, the phone rang and rang until I got an automated message saying that there was no mailbox set up for that number yet. I tried two more times with the same result.

“That’s odd,” Jack said. “He’s the public relations director for the National Gallery of Art. Those people are accessible twenty-four/seven.”

“Maybe he got a new phone today. I wonder if Luke has a different number for him, his work number.”

Jack shrugged. “Worth a try.”

I clicked on my contacts and found Luke’s number.

When he answered, loud music and a swirl of voices blasted through the phone. “Sophie?”

I said to Jack, “I’d better take this outside.”

More swiveled heads followed as I left the bar without Jack and moved under the light of a streetlamp. I had to raise my voice to be heard above the din still blaring through the phone.

“Luke, are you at the Goodnight Club?”

“I tole you that’s where I was goin’.” He was slurring his words. “You comin’ over here?”

“What? No, I’m sorry, I can’t. Are you okay?”

“I’m jes’ havin’ a li’l whiskey to remember Ali.”

He sounded like he was jes’ havin’ a whole bottle of whiskey. “You didn’t drive there, did you?”

He snorted into the phone. “Hell, no. I’m not stupid. I walked.”

“Can you get someone to take you home or get a cab for you?”

“Is that why you called?” He sounded irritated. “To check up on me?”

“No,” I said. “But promise me you’ll be careful. I called because I was wondering if you have Moses Rattigan’s phone number?”

“What for?”

“He sent me a text message a few hours ago and asked me to meet him at a bar on the Hill. I figured it was either about the pictures or maybe he talked to Duval and wanted to hear my side of the story. He’s almost half an hour late and I can’t reach him on the number he texted me on.”

Luke snorted again. “You think I been drinking? How much have you had? When I sent the photo link to Seth and Moses tonight, Seth wrote back and said Moses had a family emergency. He left for New York this afternoon. He’ll be back Monday.”

My throat went dry.

“Hello . . . hello? You still there?” he said.

“Are you sure about that?” My voice cracked.

“Of course I’m sure.” Suddenly he sounded alert and sober. “Are you sure it was Moses who sent that text?”

“Not anymore.”

“Sophie,” he said. “What the hell’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

“Call me when you get back to the Roosevelt,” he said. “And you’re the one who should take a cab, not be driving all over town this time of night on that damn Vespa.”

“I’m staying with a friend,” I said. “We came in his car. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I’ll see you in the morning at Hillwood. I’d better go. Good night, Luke.”

Jack took one look at my face as I walked into the bar, slapped a bill on the counter, and told the bartender good night and to keep the change. He met me before I’d taken half a dozen steps, grabbed my arm, and spun me around. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “It wasn’t your friend, was it?”

“He’s in New York.” By now we had the attention of almost everyone in the place. I looked around the room and said in a low voice, “What if whoever sent it is here right now?”

“Don’t move.” Jack disappeared and circled around the rows of booths at the back of the bar. When he emerged, he caught my eye and shook his head.

“Is there a problem, sir?” the bartender asked.

“We thought a friend might be here and we’d crossed signals finding him,” Jack said. “False alarm.” To me he said under his breath, “A booth full of Marines and two couples who are more interested in each other than anything going on around them. I don’t think he’s here . . . whoever he is.”

“It’s someone who wanted me to come here,” I said. “I wonder why?”

“He probably expected you to come alone,” Jack said, sounding grim. “Now I’m really glad I insisted on being your date. Let’s get out of here.”

We walked outside, tense and alert, as a man moved out of the shadows and started weaving toward us. Jack put his arm around me.

“Spare some change, buddy?” A drunk who was unsteady on his feet.

“Sorry, not tonight.” Jack hustled me past him. “Get over to the McKenna Center at St. Al’s. They can help you there.” To me he said, “Come on. The sooner we get to the car, the better. Let’s run for it.”

His car was where he’d left it, sitting in a column of moonlight at the end of the street. I heard the click of his doors unlocking as he hit the button on his key ring.

“Get in,” he said.

“Wait. There’s something on the windshield.” I pulled an envelope out from under a wiper. Nothing written on it.

Jack started the engine and checked the rearview mirror. “Someone could be watching. Don’t read it now. Let’s get out of here.”

He set his phone to speaker and called Gloria House.

“Everything okay there?” he asked when a deep voice answered.

“Everything’s fine. Is there a problem?” the voice said.

“I hope not. See you in two minutes.”

We sped down 8th Street through the quiet darkness of residential neighborhoods, occasional yellow squares of lighted windows flashing by us, and turned left on Mass Ave. Jack’s eyes kept straying to his mirrors; I watched my side mirror for headlights or even a vehicle without lights moving down the shadowy streets trailing us like a ghost.

“We’re not being followed,” I said finally.

“Maybe not now,” he said, “but someone knew you were at Gloria House and followed us to Bar Humbug. How else would he have known this was my car?”

It was hard to argue with his logic. “How could I have missed someone following me to Gloria House? They would have tailed me all the way across town from the Roosevelt.”

“Were you paying attention?”

“I think I would have noticed a car, especially after what happened when I left the National Gallery.”

“Have you got your phone’s GPS turned on? There are programs that can monitor a person’s whereabouts by tracking their phone.”

I groaned, got out my phone, and turned it off as Jack made a sharp turn into the parking lot at Gloria House. He punched in numbers on a keypad and the wrought-iron gate opened. He waited until it closed behind us and pulled into an empty space near the back entrance.

“Let’s make sure everything’s okay in the house,” Jack said.

“Why would anyone want to break in here?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But until we know who we’re dealing with, I think it’s a good idea to make sure no one tried.”

We ran quietly up the basement stairs into the foyer. Jack reset the security alarm and made a quick tour of the first-floor rooms and the chapel, turning on lights and checking around. I heard him speaking to someone in the chapel, probably the priest he had phoned.

“I’m going upstairs,” I said.

“Wait for me,” he called, but I’d already disappeared.

My room was just as I’d left it.

“Everything okay?”

I hadn’t heard him come up the stairs behind me. “Jesus Lord, you scared me. Yes, everything’s fine.”

“Good,” he said. “Come on, I need a drink. I’ll fix us a couple of brandies and we can see what’s in that envelope.”

While he got the bottle of brandy, I sat on his sofa and slit open the envelope. Inside was a folded sheet of paper. When I pulled it out, a photograph and a news clipping fell onto the glass coffee table. I looked at the picture first. Taken with a telephoto lens, it was a crowd shot of a bustling commercial district along a lake or river, a busy outdoor café next to a small marina, the bistro tables filled with patrons enjoying a meal or an aperitif at sunset. A male figure in the middle of the crowd caught my attention and I squinted at him. Dark blond uncombed hair, a scruffy beard; he wore faded jeans and a rough-looking leather jacket. The way he stood with his hands jammed in his pockets, the slope of his broad shoulders, the way his straight hair fell across his forehead like it always did when he didn’t bother with hair gel: The beard was a surprise and so was the hair color, but it was Nick.

I picked up the article. The typescript had the familiar look of something that had appeared in the
Telegraph
; the dateline was last Sunday. Had whoever sent this to me recently been in London?

VIENNA, 10 September. Austrian police are cooperating with Scotland Yard in light of “new information” concerning the suspicious death of Colin Crowne, principal at Crowne Energy LLC, a British oil exploration and development company most recently involved in an exploratory project in the Abadistan region of Russia. The lifeless body of Mr Crowne, 55, of London, was discovered floating in a section of the Danube River that flows through Vienna—where OPEC headquarters are located—on 12 May. Mr Crowne, who was unable to swim, was originally believed to have fallen into the river near a
commercial district filled with shops and restaurants, possibly after becoming ill whilst on an early morning walk. A preliminary investigation had revealed no physical signs of violence on his body. Two weeks before Mr Crowne’s death, his business associate and close personal friend Nicholas Canning was reportedly abducted from his home in Hampstead and remains missing to this day. Recent reports have surfaced about a dispute between Mr Canning and Mr Crowne over business matters prior to Mr Canning’s disappearance.

The folded piece of paper was a grainy photocopy of an article from the
International Herald Tribune
reporting the discovery of Colin’s body in the Danube back in May. There was a headshot of him taken from his profile on the company’s website and a photo of the place along the river where a passerby had seen him and called the police.

Jack sat next to me and handed me a brandy snifter. “What’s all this?”

I stared at the
IHT
photo and the photo of Nick. They were taken on or around the same spot, a nearly identical view of the Vienna skyline across the Danube. I turned over the photograph. Someone had written 12/5 in black marker on the back. In Europe they write dates with the day first: this was May 12, not December 5. Nick had been in Vienna the day Colin died, just as Baz told me that day in the Abbey.

I took a fiery gulp of my drink and said, “Someone’s trying to frame Nick for Colin’s death. Baz told me MI6 is looking into the possibility that Nick might have killed Colin to get his hands on the well logs. With Colin out of the way, Nick would be the only person who knew what was in them and he knew how valuable they were. That newspaper article says Nick was ‘reportedly’ abducted and claims he and Colin were arguing right before Colin died. Someone’s leaking information to the press because they found out Nick’s still alive and they’re setting him up for murder.”

“Who sent this?” Jack asked. “Why?”

“One of Arkady Vasiliev’s acolytes, probably. As to why, I think he’s starting to dial up the pressure. Last night at the National Gallery, Vasiliev was polite, but he was livid when he left the room because I wouldn’t admit Nick was still alive. So first he has someone search my room to make sure I don’t have the well logs. Then he delivers these.” I gestured to the papers on the coffee table. “Supposedly that photo proves Nick was in Vienna the day Colin died. Vasiliev’s trying to scare me, let me know he’s watching me so carefully he can pretend to be someone I know, like he did tonight.”