Multiple Exposure A Sophie Medina Mystery (26 page)

It was the first time I had mentioned Nick all evening. Grace stared down into her wineglass and Ben busied himself relighting his pipe.

“We miss him, too, Soph,” Grace said in a soft voice. “I know this must be so hard for you.”

“If there’s anything you need or anything we can do,” Ben said, “all you have to do is ask. You know that. We love you like family, kiddo.”

“Thank you. Both of you.” My hands tightened around my wineglass. “I should be going. Ben, you don’t have to take me home. I’ll get a cab . . . it’s nearly midnight.”

“Absolutely not,” Grace said and Ben shook his head.

“No arguments,” he said. “I’ll pull the car around front. Meet you there whenever you two are ready.”

He went inside and Grace looked at her watch. “Lord, the kids are due home in nine and a half minutes. Someone better send me a text message saying ‘We’re on our way’ any second now.”

I smiled. “I’m sure someone will. Thanks for a lovely evening, Gracie. Next time, I’ll invite you all for dinner at my place. India left me a well-stocked kitchen. The apartment is gorgeous. I owe you.”

She hugged me good-bye at the front door and waited until I got into the car with Ben. “Thanks for doing this,” I said.

“My pleasure,” he said. “But to tell you the truth, I have an ulterior motive. I wanted to talk to you without Grace around.”

My brain flitted to “surprise party for her birthday,” but I knew where he was really going. “Oh?”

“My boss serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, in addition to chairing Foreign Relations,” he said. “I’m his designated spook staffer, so I’ve got clearances that go pretty high. Last spring before our hearings on Abadistan, Langley sent a group over to the Hill to brief us on the deteriorating situation between Russia and the Abadis. Crowne Energy got a big mention.”

“I see.”

The light turned red at the intersection of 18th Street and Columbia Road, the busy commercial strip that was the main thoroughfare of Adams Morgan. At this hour, the nightlife was in full swing, the streets and sidewalks filled with revelers who had been dancing at Club Heaven & Hell or dining on soul food and listening to the blues at Madam’s Organ or smoking hookah at Soussi or frequenting any of the dozens of ethnic bars, restaurants, and clubs.

“It didn’t take much to figure out that the CIA was getting some of its information on the ground from someone who knew Crowne Energy inside out,” Ben said as the light changed and he swerved to avoid an inebriated couple who preferred walking down the middle of 18th Street. “Colin Crowne was a Brit, so I figured it had to be Nick.”

“I see,” I said again.

“Look, Sophie,” he said, “I know you can’t talk about any of this and I’m not asking for confirmation. All I want to say is that I’ve been keeping tabs on that situation and it sounds like right before it all went to hell, Crowne Energy might have made a significant oil discovery in a place where no one expected to find anything because everyone thought it was dry. If that’s true, it completely changes the politics of the region and the Russians are going to be hell-bent to make sure Abadistan doesn’t decouple from the mother ship.”

He flicked his turn signal and made a right onto my block of S Street. I waited for him to continue, but he was silent until we pulled up in front of my house.

“I haven’t said anything to Grace,” he said, “but my CIA contacts got really touchy when I fessed up and told them Nick was a friend. I also got the feeling that, as Mark Twain said after learning that his obituary had been published in the newspaper, the rumors of his demise might have been greatly exaggerated.”

He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “If I can do anything—and I mean anything—to help, please let me know. This stays just between you and me. If Nick’s alive, and I suspect you know this as well, he’s in a hell of a lot of trouble. Not just from whoever forced him to disappear—the Russian mafia—but our guys are looking for him, too.”

“I know,” I said. “Believe me, I know.”

“You’ve got a CIA liaison, I presume?”

“Special Agent Napoleon Duval, though he’s not with the CIA at the moment. Do you know him?”

“Duval? No, doesn’t ring a bell. I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he said, “but be careful what you say to him. Sometimes the people you think are on your side have a different agenda from what they tell you. This might be one of those times.” He gave me a long look. “What do you think, Soph? You have good instincts. Do you trust the guy?”

I didn’t answer him right away. Finally I said, “I don’t know.”

“That,” Ben said, “sounds like a no to me. Watch it, sweetheart.”

17

Ben walked me to the front door and waited until I found my house key and let myself in. By the time I got upstairs and looked out the bay window in my new living room, his car was gone and the street was dark and quiet. I went up to the tower room, which I’d claimed as my bedroom, and got undressed. Before I fell into the big four-poster bed, I opened the windows, letting the cool breeze rustle the curtains as a silvery wash of moonlight pooled on the floor. Once or twice a car purred down the street and, for a while, the cicadas sang their fading end-of-summer serenade. Otherwise, all was quiet except for the faint
tick-tick
of the house; comforting little creaks that already seemed familiar as it settled for the night, calming like the regular breathing of sleep.

I closed my eyes, trying to slow my heartbeat to match that rhythm and stop the slideshow racing through my head of people I knew morphing into strangers like a child’s mix-and-match book, all crazy with different flipped-around heads and middles and feet until they became unrecognizable. Ben’s last remarks rattled me because I’d always assumed I knew who was on Nick’s side and who wasn’t. He’d asked me outright if I trusted Duval and I finally had to face facts.

I wasn’t sure if I did.

*

Sleep came late. The last time I checked the time it was five fifteen. The next thing I knew, something was ringing in the middle of my dreams. When I finally scrabbled around after knocking my phone on the floor next to the bedside table, the caller had hung up.

Missed call.
Home
.

Either my mother or Harry, calling at precisely nine o’clock. It rang again in my hand.

“Were you in the shower?”

“Harry?” I sat up and ran a hand through my hair, pushing it off my face.

“No,
me
.”

“
Mom?
What happened to your voice?”

“Laryngitis,” she said in a raspy whisper. “I’ll be quick. You need to be Harry’s date tonight at a party in town, stand in for me. You’ll wear my dress.”

“Wait a minute.” I swung my feet onto the floor. “What are you talking about?”

“Too much to explain . . . my voice.” She paused for a coughing fit. When it was finished she added, “He’ll be there at six with the dress.”

“Mom, I’m not staying at the Roosevelt anymore. I moved to a place near Dupont Circle. And I don’t need a dress. I have my own clothes.” I fell back on the bed, having just capitulated to accompanying Harry to some stuffy event with people I probably didn’t know and making only a feeble protest about what to wear. How did she manage to do that to me?

“Not for this you don’t. Trust me.” Another pause as she sipped something through a straw. “You couldn’t tell your own mother you moved?”

“I was going to . . . it only happened yesterday. Look, what party? You didn’t even ask if I have plans tonight.”

“Sweetheart, I know you,” she said. “Doing laundry doesn’t count as having plans. It’s time you started getting out again. Now, e-mail Harry and me your address so he knows where to be tonight and I know where my daughter lives. Don’t forget . . . I’ve got to go . . . someone’s calling on the other line.” She hung up in the middle of another coughing fit before I could get a word in.

I threw the phone on the bed, got up, and found my running clothes. Then I went for a long, pounding run during which I tried, for the millionth time, to dissect the convoluted relationship I had with my mother, which I knew was tangled up in an accidental pregnancy and misbegotten marriage when she was a nineteen-year-old student who tumbled into love—and bed—with a soccer player she met in Madrid. The divorce followed two years later, but I would always be the child who reminded her of a mistake and a deeply unhappy time in her life. The person who saved us from each other, and rescued me, was Harry. I honestly never understood what this good man saw in my flighty, self-absorbed mother, but he loved her—and me—unconditionally and we adored him. Eventually we found a neutral place where we could co-exist with Harry as our buffer, and when my half brother and half sister were born, I did my best, for his sake, to make our blended family work.

At the end of my run I stopped by the 17th Street Safeway to pick up groceries and by the time I got back to S Street, it was just after ten. My phone rang as I was climbing the stairs to my apartment. The display said “Private number.”

“Ms. Medina?” The male voice sounded familiar.

“Yes. Who’s calling?”

“This is Special Agent Duval.”

I set the grocery bags on the kitchen counter. “Good morning.”

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.”

He didn’t hope anything of the kind. He had an agenda and I was on it.

“What can I do for you, Agent Duval?”

“Perhaps you have time to meet with me? Say, later this morning?”

Again with the imperative tone. He should have just told me where and when.

“May I ask what this is all about?”

“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone. How about Meridian Hill Park at eleven? It’s not far from you.”

I had spent exactly one night in my new home, but already he knew where I lived. Was Duval or one of his people watching me now? I walked outside onto the balcony and stared at Max Katzer’s peaceful Japanese garden. Two squirrels played tag along a stone wall before disappearing up a white oak tree in India’s backyard. On the other side of the high fence that enclosed the garden, the alley looked deserted. The sweet jewel-box carriage house was silent and closed up, sitting in a pocket of shade. A stray ray of sunlight glinted off the glass panes of the dormer window, turning them into mirrors. Just for the hell of it, I waved.

“Sure,” I said. “Just tell me where.”

“I’ll be at the bottom of the fountain as you come through the main entrance,” he said. “See you then.”

He hung up and I went inside, fixed myself coffee and toast, and took it into the living room, where I rearranged a Queen Anne chair and a gateleg table in front of the sunny bay window. I got my laptop and sat down. The morning barrage of e-mail brought nothing from Nick as usual, but Perry had written to say that the IPS bureau in Washington finally brought down the axe yesterday and let five people go, including two senior photographers. There was also a two-line note from Harry.

Hey, kitten, don’t forget to send your mom & me your address & thanks for doing this. See you at 6. Love you to pieces, H

I wrote him an affectionate reply, asked what it was I’d agreed to do, and sent the address. Next I looked up directions to Meridian Hill Park: 16th and Florida, close enough to walk, as Duval implied. Last, I did a search for Katya Gordon and Georgetown University, something I’d been meaning to do since yesterday, when Elizabeth Quick had connected those two dots. It took a while before I found a match: a review of a book Katya had contributed to on the Russian avant-garde art movement in which the reviewer mentioned that she had attended Georgetown for one year—he even mentioned which year—before transferring to Columbia. I looked up Scott Hathaway’s biography and found what I suspected all along: Scott and Katya were there at the same time, meaning they could have known each other as students.

I opened my photo gallery and studied the pictures I’d taken of them that night at the National Gallery, enlarging them until the faces were so pixilated I could no longer distinguish any features. I still hadn’t shown this set of photos to anyone, or told Duval or Luke about the argument I’d witnessed. Now I wondered if it was a lovers’ quarrel as I’d assumed that night—or maybe something else.

You have no choice, Scott. You know that.

No choice about
what
?

I closed my laptop, got my camera, and left for my high noon meeting with Special Agent Napoleon Duval.

*

The moment I walked up the steps past the greenery-filled urns at the 16th Street entrance of Meridian Hill Park and entered the main plaza, I fell in love. Built into the side of a hill on two levels, this could have been the grounds of a romantic Renaissance villa, something you’d expect to come across on a day trip outside Rome. It was a place that belonged to the neighborhood and its residents rather than another tourist shrine, a surprise if you didn’t know there could be such beauty and tranquillity in this not-so-upscale part of D.C.

Its centerpiece was a dramatic waterfall of thirteen linked basins that cascaded down a steep slope. Symmetrical staircases of honey-colored stone flanked the waterfall and led to a grand terrace on the upper level. The lower level was dominated by an enormous reflecting pool whose waters caught the swirling greens of the oak trees that anchored each corner and the brilliant blue of the cloudless sky.

I climbed one of the staircases to take photographs, hoping for a panoramic view of the city since the park was directly in line with the White House. Instead, a large apartment building across the street obstructed the view, its solid bulk casting a shadow like an eclipse over the reflecting pool. For a city that had been planned so carefully by Pierre L’Enfant, there were places in Washington that evoked the randomness of a yard sale, with monuments, memorials, and buildings inserted haphazardly into the landscape. This was one of them.

Meridian Hill had its own quirky collection of statues and memorials: an eclectic group including Dante, Joan of Arc, and—my meeting place with Duval—a granite monument dedicated to our fifteenth president, James Buchanan, whose term ended on the eve of the Civil War. It was a good choice for a rendezvous if you wanted privacy: semienclosed and slightly isolated, at the far end of the park beyond the reflecting pool.