Multiple Exposure A Sophie Medina Mystery (23 page)

“I’d like to have a word with you,” she said. “In private.” She broke off as Elizabeth Quick joined us.

“Your lighting problem is taken care of, Sophie,” Elizabeth said. “And, Katya, I’m glad you’re here, dear. I heard your talk in Richmond yesterday was wonderful.”

Katya smiled. “Thank you. They had a very good turnout.”

Elizabeth noticed my puzzled look. “Dr. Gordon visited the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts yesterday. Many people don’t realize it has the largest collection of Fabergé imperial eggs outside Russia.”

“I guess I’m one of them,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

“You must see it sometime. It’s a wonderful museum.” Elizabeth glanced at her watch. “And now, Katya, we need to do a quick level check of your microphone since we’re recording your talk. Would you come with me, please?”

“I’ll be right there.” Katya leaned close to me. I smelled cigarettes and mints on her breath and the distinct jasmine scent of her perfume. “You and I will talk later.”

She left before I could reply. But from her ominous undertone, I knew this wasn’t about the photos from the National Gallery reception.

At noon, Elizabeth stepped up to the podium to introduce Katya to the overcrowded room. She repeated much of the biography Seth MacDonald had mentioned the other night, with one interesting footnote.

“Though this is the first time Dr. Gordon has lectured at Hillwood, she is no stranger to this beautiful museum and estate,” Elizabeth said. “Many years ago she worked here as a Visitor Center volunteer. Forgive me a bit of indulgence in hoping that experience influenced her decision to continue her studies, becoming one of our foremost scholars on Russian imperial art.”

Katya thanked Elizabeth and took her place at the podium to enthusiastic applause. Her talk was more detailed than the one she’d given at the National Gallery and, I had to admit, she was spellbinding as she recounted stories of how Fabergé had racked his brain year after year to come up with ideas for ever more fabulous Easter eggs that would delight first one, then two, empresses.

“I often compare him to Scheherazade, since they both had to use their wits to please and enchant royalty—Scheherazade spinning her nightly stories and Fabergé creating his exquisite concoctions each year. Though I will say that no one ever threatened to behead Carl Fabergé,” Katya said, as everyone laughed. “And finally, I’d like to conclude my talk with some news. You all are the first to know that there’s been an exciting development concerning the Blue Tsarevich Constellation egg.”

Elizabeth Quick clapped her hands and said, “How wonderful. Please, don’t keep us in suspense.”

Katya gave a rueful smile. “Unfortunately, that’s as much as I’m allowed to tell you.” She held up a hand, acknowledging the roomful of groans. “I know . . . I apologize. But I promise you, we’ll be holding a press conference as soon as a few details have been finalized. In the meantime, if you check the Vasiliev Collection website, we’ll give as much notice as possible about the announcement. Thank you all very much and I look forward to speaking with you during lunch in the gardens.”

I caught up with Luke outside in a formal knot garden of scrolled boxwood, whimsical statuary, a glass-tiled pool, and ivy-covered walls. Buffet tables had been set up around the corner under the columned portico of the mansion’s front entrance, and guests could sit in Marjorie’s lawn chairs under blue-and-white umbrellas with views overlooking the Lunar Lawn and Rock Creek Park beyond. After lunch, everyone was free to explore the acres of gardens for as long as they liked, though the event officially ended at one thirty.

“I’ll stay with Katya,” Luke said. “You want to do the detail shots again and get candids of some of the guests?”

He looked like he was finally starting to feel human.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll take the gardens. A lot of people brought their lunches over to the Rose Garden. It’s lovely there.”

It was one of Marjorie Merriweather Post’s favorite places, still fragrant with the last of the summer roses, a peaceful setting of Zen-like tranquillity. Katya Gordon found me there standing in front of a pink granite monument surrounded by summer begonias and sweet-smelling alyssum where Marjorie’s ashes were interred in an urn.

“Let’s take a walk,” she said.

“Lead the way.”

“I know who you are,” she said, as we walked under a wisteria-draped pergola. “I know Arkady spoke to you the other night about your husband and some valuable documents in his possession. Arkady will pay any price to have those papers. I hope you understand how important they are to him.”

We left the pergola and began to make a slow loop past brilliantly colored rosebushes, each one in a different bed in the circular garden.

“Why is this of any concern to you?” I asked.

Two tiger swallowtail butterflies chased each other, landing on a white Margaret Merrill rosebush. Somewhere in the distance, above the swan song of the summer cicadas, was the gentle beating sound of a helicopter.

Katya gave me an astonished look. “I beg your pardon?”

“Did Mr. Vasiliev ask you to talk to me, Dr. Gordon?” I said. “Because if he did, you can tell him this: I still don’t know if my husband’s even alive, I still don’t know where those documents are, and breaking and entering is a crime in America.”

She looked stunned. “What are you saying?”

“Someone searched my apartment yesterday,” I said. “I assume he worked for Mr. Vasiliev.”

“I know nothing about that.” She sounded shocked and I almost believed her.

“Then why are we having this conversation?” I said as we resumed our stroll. “Why are you getting involved in his business?”

“Because of my daughter,” she said. “Why else?”

“Surely she’s old enough not to need you to run interference for her.”

“Do you have children?” she asked.

“No.” Nick and I had tried desperately, but it didn’t work out. It was one of the heartbreaks of our marriage, but that was none of Katya’s business.

“Then you couldn’t possibly understand a mother’s wish to help her child,” she said, and her words wounded. “Lara is my only daughter. Arkady is ambitious, but he is also generous. He has built schools and hospitals, funded scholarships for young artists and musicians, quietly helped many people who needed it. Together he and Lara can do much good; already they are a powerful and influential couple. It would not surprise me if one day Arkady became president of Russia.”

If only he didn’t have those pesky ties to the Russian mafia and a reputation for ruthlessness and over-the-top extravagance, he’d probably be eligible for sainthood someday, too. “What does that have to do with Nick?”

“Those papers,” she said, “are important to Russian interests.”

“They’re also important to Mr. Vasiliev’s business interests,” I said. “Let’s not confuse greed with altruism.”

It wasn’t smart to bait her like that, but Nick was gone, Colin was dead, and the Shaika had destroyed whatever was left of Crowne Energy’s operations in Abadistan. She could tell me black was white all she wanted. It didn’t make it true.

“How dare you?” Her voice rose in anger. “You have no idea what life is like in my country, how things work there, and how business is done. Arkady wants what is best for Russia. That’s all there is to it.”

“I can’t help you and I can’t help Mr. Vasiliev.” We had come full circle back to the granite monument. Marjorie Merriweather Post’s family coat of arms was engraved in the pink stone, along with an inscription. “Do you read Latin, Dr. Gordon?”

She looked at the words. “
In me mea spes omnis
. All my hopes rest in me.”

The motto of a strong, self-sufficient woman who could take care of herself, handle anything that life threw at her.

“Tell Mr. Vasiliev from me that I’m not scared of him,” I said. “Tell him that he’d better leave me alone. I think we’re done here.”

15

I caught sight of Elizabeth Quick’s bright yellow pantsuit like a flash of sunshine through the dark green shrubbery, as she climbed the winding stairs from the French knot garden on the lower level to where Katya and I still stood in the middle of the Rose Garden.

“I’ve been looking for both of you,” she said. If she’d picked up on the tension that still hung in the air, she chose to overlook it. “Katya, we have a volunteer standing by to drive you back to your hotel whenever you’re ready. And, Sophie, Luke’s gone back to the mansion to have another look around. One of the security guards moved your equipment cases to the kitchen for safekeeping and they’re locked up. I have the key.”

Katya flashed one last warning look in my direction and turned to Elizabeth. “Thank you, Elizabeth, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather be driven to the National Gallery. I have a meeting there at two thirty.”

“Of course,” Elizabeth said. “Your driver will take you wherever you like.”

“Luke and I should be leaving, too,” I said. “I’ll find him and we’ll get our gear.”

We followed Elizabeth single-file down the narrow staircase through an ivy-covered archway that led to the knot garden. Over her shoulder Elizabeth said, “Luke told me your grandfather is Charles Lord, Sophie. You do know we have one of his photographs on the wall in the Visitor Center?”

“Yes,” I said. “Granddaddy used to tell me stories about Mrs. Post’s parties. He loved coming here and he was very fond of her.”

“Charles Lord is your grandfather?” Katya stopped walking and swung around so abruptly that we nearly collided. “My late husband gave me one of his photographs of Red Square in the 1950s. It’s hanging in my office.”

“Your photograph is probably worth a good deal of money,” I said. “When Edward Steichen put together his
Family of Man
exhibit at MoMA in 1955, he chose another of my grandfather’s Moscow photos for that exhibition—an old woman sweeping leaves with a twig broom in a park by the Moscow River. My grandfather took that picture and the one you have during a trip to the Soviet Union in 1953 just after Joseph Stalin died.”

“I grew up near that park,” Katya said. “I know it well.”

“Granddaddy gave me his original contact sheets of the photos from that trip as a college graduation present,” I said. “He took some incredible pictures.”

Her voice was soft. “I would love to see them. Those photographs should be turned into a book. Charles Lord really captured the Russian soul, the
dushá
.”

The Russian soul. Nick always talked about the
dushá
as though it were something you could see in an X-ray, as real as a beating heart or lungs breathing in and out. Russians believed the soul was inextricably bound up with one’s character and that it was the essence of Russianness; it had been written about in their literature by no less than Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and Tolstoy. To know the Russian soul was the key to understanding how a people could endure so much suffering and despair over centuries of history—much of the cruelty self-inflicted—yet nevertheless possess great resilience, compassion, and inner strength. To me the concept was something poetically mystifying—like trying to figure out the geographic location of heaven when I was a kid—but it explained perfectly how Katya Gordon could treat me with icy anger one minute and now be nearly misty-eyed with tenderness and memory.

I said, knowing she would understand the subtext of my words, “Perhaps we can work out a mutually suitable arrangement sometime.”

Her chin came up and the chilliness returned. “Yes, perhaps.”

A young woman in a white blouse and navy skirt and holding a set of car keys appeared from the house: Katya’s driver. Elizabeth and Katya exchanged kisses while I got a brief nod—I was still the hired help, after all—and she left.

“Did I miss something?” Elizabeth asked in a bland voice.

I grinned as she gave me a shrewd look. “You didn’t miss a thing. Did you know her when she worked at Hillwood?”

Elizabeth waved a hand. “Oh, goodness, no. I’ve only been here ten years. She was here long before that. As I understand, Katya was one of the first interns to come to Hillwood from Georgetown’s art and museum studies program. Everyone else was clamoring to work at the Smithsonian or Sotheby’s . . . she chose us.”

“Katya Gordon went to Georgetown?” I said. “When?”

“I couldn’t say,” she said. “But Hillwood first opened to the public in 1977 and we started our internship program a few years later in the early 1980s.”

“So maybe thirty years ago?”

Elizabeth frowned like she was doing mental math. “That sounds about right.”

Was that how Katya knew Scott Hathaway? They were old school friends?

“Come,” Elizabeth said, “let’s find Luke.”

He was in the kitchen finishing up a conversation on his mobile.

“That was Roxanne Hathaway,” he said to me after he hung up. “She’d like to talk to us about a project she’s working on and asked if we could drop by her house.”

“Now?” I said.

“Now. The Hathaways live in Georgetown. It’s on the way back to the studio.”

We said good-bye to Elizabeth Quick and walked back to the Visitor Center.

Halfway across the Motor Court Luke stopped and said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” Behind him, a winged statue of the Greek god Eros pulling an arrow from his quiver was backlit by the afternoon sun.

“Yesterday before you left the studio you made a comment about ‘another’ conversation at the National Gallery. At first I thought I misheard, but then I started wondering if it had something to do with why you called me at the bar last night and asked for Moses’s phone number,” he said.

His alcohol-fogged powers of recall had returned and he’d caught my careless slip-up after all. “To answer your question,” I said, “no.”

“No, what?”

“No, asking for Moses’s phone number didn’t have anything to do with another conversation at the National Gallery.”

“Okay,” he said, in a patient voice. “And what other conversation would that be?”

“Arkady Vasiliev asked to meet me in Seth’s conference room to talk about something.”

Luke folded his arms across his chest. “I have an idea. Why don’t you just tell me the whole story and that way I won’t have to ask ‘and then what?’ after every sentence. It’ll save a lot of time.”