Multiple Exposure A Sophie Medina Mystery (28 page)

“Scott Hathaway and Taras Attar argued over a girl?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, ’twasn’t like that. But all of a sudden she was gone and no one knew where she went. The police came round to investigate when the club she worked at finally reported she hadn’t shown up for a few days. Scott was brought in for questioning, then his father flew to Washington—he was a well-known criminal prosecutor in Massachusetts—and that was the end of that. But the romance caused quite a rift between Scott and Taras. You had to wonder if Taras didn’t fancy her, too, though I’m not sure that was the problem.”

“Do you remember the dancer’s name?” I asked. “And what year it was?”

“Hard to forget. Jenna. Jenna Paradise. The usual dirty jokes went around about Scott going missing because he was ‘in paradise,’ that sort of boys’ own thing,” he said, blushing faintly. “As to when, it was spring of our senior year just before graduation.”

Scott and Taras’s senior year had been the same year Katya Gordon attended Georgetown.

“How could she just disappear?” Jack asked.

A plane flew directly over us, casting a shadow like an enormous bird. Father Pat glanced up, squinting at it.

“Earlier that year two women were assaulted while they’d been out for a run on the trail in Glover-Archbold Park behind the university,” he said. “One in broad daylight, the other at dusk. Jenna was a runner, too, had to keep fit with that dancer’s career of hers. So was Scott. The last person to see her, a girlfriend, I believe it was, said she was on her way to the park to meet someone for a run. Scott claimed it wasn’t him because she’d dumped him and they’d stopped seeing each other. Jenna never turned up again—it was like she vanished into thin air. There was some speculation that whoever was behind those assaults might have attacked her and that time he went too far.”

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, someone mentioned Glover-Archbold Park along with Scott Hathaway’s name.

“How do you get to the park from here?” I asked.

“It’s about a three-minute walk down Canal Road,” Jack said. “Great place for a run. But if I were a woman, I’d think twice about doing it alone.” He gave me a meaningful look. “I’m serious, Soph. If you want to see it—and I know that look in your eye, so obviously you do—I’ll go with you.”

Father Pat stood up. “That sounds like my exit cue,” he said. “I’ve got a homily to finish before Mass tomorrow. I’ll leave you good people to a pleasant walk in the woods. Perfect day for it.”

“You sure you have time to do this?” I asked Jack after Father Pat bussed me on the cheek and gave Jack a man hug before disappearing into the JesRes.

“It’s only half a mile each way, at least this part of the trail is. We can walk it and be back here in half an hour, forty minutes tops. Sure, let’s go.”

“The Hathaways live on the other side of Glover-Archbold Park,” I said. “I forgot it also bordered the Georgetown campus.”

He nodded. “It follows the western boundary from the sports complex up to the hospital on Reservoir Road.”

We walked past tennis courts and down a steep curved drive until we reached Canal Road. Cars whizzed by a few inches away as Jack, always the gentleman, maneuvered me so that I walked on the inside of the narrow sidewalk.

“You all right?” he said. “You seem sort of subdued.”

“Napoleon Duval summoned me to a meeting just before I saw you. Someone slit the throat of Nick’s CIA handler in Abadistan.”

As he had done when I told him about Ali, Jack made the sign of the cross. “What happened? Why was he murdered?”

“They don’t know, but they think Nick does. They want me to do everything in my power to get him to come in and talk to them. They have a picture of him in Iskar, the capital, the same day the guy was killed.”

“Good Lord. They don’t think Nick did it, do they?” Jack looked stunned.

“Duval says if Nick doesn’t turn himself in soon, it’s going to look like he’s got something to hide.”

“What’s keeping him from doing that? Do you have any idea?”

“I think he’s been set up. It might even be someone in the CIA.” I shrugged. “Who knows? Duval might even be part of it.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I’m pulling out all the stops.” Jack slipped an arm across my shoulders and hugged me. “I’m praying for you guys.”

“By ‘all the stops’ do you mean Saint Jude?” I couldn’t help sounding forlorn.

The patron saint of lost causes, the saint everyone turned to when you despaired of all hope.

“He’s on my list,” Jack said. “And so is his big boss. Have faith, kiddo. It’s going to work out, I promise.”

Just before the intersection of Canal Road and Foxhall Road, Jack said, “Turn here.”

We walked through a shade-dappled clearing past a National Park Service sign with a list of rules—no collecting natural or historic items, no bicycles or motor vehicles, leash your pets, and no littering—and headed toward a dirt path that led into deep woods. Directly above us, an abandoned trestle bridge surrounded by trees and overgrown vines looked as though it was suspended in midair as it cut across the park.

“What is that?” I reached around for my camera, which was hanging off my shoulder, and lifted it to my eye. “It’s fabulous.”

“It used to be part of the old D.C. streetcar line that ran from Union Station to Georgetown,” Jack said. “Every so often you hear about students who’ve had too much to drink clowning around up there on the tracks or some bright light deciding to play Superman.”

“It looks like it would be fun to climb on,” I said. “A massive set of monkey bars.”

Jack gave me a stern look and said, “Don’t get any ideas. Kids hang out at the top of the hill by that abutment where you can see the graffiti to talk and smoke dope and do whatever, but I’d want to have my tetanus shot up-to-date before I did any climbing on those rusty girders and old tracks. Come on, let’s walk the trail.”

We passed a brown-and-white park sign that indicated, as Jack said, that it was just over half a mile to the end of this section of the trail, which then continued on for another two and a half miles to Tenleytown. The woods soon closed around us like an enchanted forest where the vines and trees wove together magically and the entrance disappeared unless you knew exactly where to find it again. Though civilization wasn’t far away and the sound of airplanes and cars was still comfortingly audible, I could understand why a woman who came alone to this forest would be vulnerable, an easy target for a predator.

“Roxanne Hathaway said the streambed is nearly dry at this time of year,” I said as the sweet song of a mockingbird sounded above us in the trees. “I can’t even tell where it is.”

Jack grabbed my arm as I stumbled over a tree root. “Watch your step. They do a good job of keeping the trail cleaned up, but you can still take a header if you’re not careful. As for Foundry Branch, we had a drought over the summer before you moved home and that was the end of the stream. There’s one place up ahead where we might still find water.”

We had to break away from the trail and clamber over dead limbs and downed trees with Medusa-like root systems to find the spot Jack was talking about. A partially submerged car tire poked up through the mud in a shallow, still pool of water.

I crouched down to take pictures. “It looks stagnant and it stinks of something rotting.”

“When the rains come the stream will start running again,” Jack said. “From here it flows through the park and into a pipe under Canal Road. Eventually it dumps into the Potomac. Then they turn it into our drinking water.”

“Oh, God, they do, don’t they.” I made a face. “What a revolting thought.”

“Well, they do one or two things to clean it up and treat it before it comes out of your tap.”

“I feel so much better.”

He grinned. “So there you go. Now you’ve seen Foundry Branch.”

“This is it? This puddle?”

“This is it for now. There’s a storm grate near the trestle bridge where you can hear it flowing underground.” He held out his hand and pulled me up. “Come on. We’re almost at the end of the trail.”

He was right; a couple of minutes later we stood at the edge a large bowl-shaped field. At the top of the hill we could hear traffic buzzing along Reservoir Road.

“Folks use this field for soccer, baseball, what have you,” Jack said. “The French embassy is half a block down the street. Georgetown Hospital’s not far away.”

“And that’s Scott and Roxanne Hathaway’s house.” I pointed to a series of steeply pitched red-tile roofs visible above the tree line to our left. “Roxanne says the senator won’t use this park anymore because his dog died before they got married years ago after getting sick from stream water.”

“Really?” he said. “I wonder how long ago that was. Foundry Branch wasn’t always as polluted as it is now. There was a time when the water was clean and the stream ran all year.”

“Seems hard to imagine.”

“Come on,” he said. “I think we’ve depressed ourselves enough for one afternoon. My car is in the garage near the JesRes. I can drop you by your place if you want.”

On the drive back to S Street, Jack asked if I had plans for the evening.

“I’m Harry’s date for some black tie event. My mother’s sick, so I’m taking her place.”

“What event?”

“No idea.”

“You volunteered for something and you don’t know what it is?”

“I didn’t volunteer.”

He looked disgusted as he pulled up in front of my house. “No comment.”

“Don’t say it. I need to start standing up to my mother.” I sighed. “Thanks for the lift. Can I offer you a drink? Give you a quick tour of my new place?”

“How about a rain check? I’m on duty tonight. I’d better get back to the house.”

“Sure,” I said. “Another time.”

Jack leaned over and gave me a kiss. “Look, I’m not trying to beat you up about Caroline. She’s always been the way she is, but one day you need to have the Come to Jesus talk with her.”

“I will.”

“At least you get to spend an evening with Harry,” he said. “Come to think of it, that’s probably a good thing. He’ll take care of you.”

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” I said. “I’ve been in war zones, remember?”

“I know you have,” he said. “But I was thinking about that conversation you had with Napoleon Duval earlier today. I know they’re desperate to find Nick. But you yourself said you think he might be on the run because someone betrayed him from inside the CIA. Duval’s playing a dangerous game, Soph. It sounds like he’ll do anything to track Nick down. Including using you as his bait.”

19

When Harry Wyatt, my stepfather, showed up at my front door a few minutes before six, he was dressed in his drinking pinks, the formal evening attire worn to a hunt ball: scarlet tails, white tuxedo shirt, white vest, white bow tie, and black tuxedo trousers. Draped over one arm was an oversized garment bag.

“Hi, kitten,” he said, leaning in for a kiss. “I come bearing gifts.”

Harry was a master of the Goose Creek Hunt, one of the oldest foxhunting clubs in Virginia whose territory comprised land once surveyed by George Washington. Later it became part of what was called Mosby’s Territory, in honor of John Singleton Mosby, the legendary Confederate guerrilla commander known as the Gray Ghost. I’d been to the GCH’s formal balls when I lived at home, and the dress code for these events was as tradition steeped as foxhunting itself. Men had two choices: evening hunting attire, which meant their drinking pinks or a tuxedo. Women had one choice: a black evening gown.

“Why didn’t Mom tell me this was a hunt ball?” I said. “I have a black dress.”

Harry followed me up the stairs to my apartment and said, “It’s not a hunt ball. It’s a costume party, sort of.”

“A costume party? Are you kidding me? It’s not even Halloween.”

“It’s for charity,” he said. “Roxanne Hathaway is throwing a shindig to raise money for the Save the Potomac Foundation. She got the idea to tie the evening to the Fabergé exhibit at the National Gallery and she’s re-creating the interior of a Paris restaurant that hosted a meal called the Three Emperors Dinner back in 1867. Two of the emperors were Russian and the French food was apparently out of this world. Everyone’s supposed to dress in what they wore in those days.”

So that explained the ballroom-size tent in the Hathaways’ back garden and the upscale caterer. Yesterday I thought Roxanne wanted to hire Luke and me to photograph her party; tonight I would be there as a guest. And so, perhaps, would the Hathaways’ houseguest, Taras Attar.

Harry handed me the garment bag and said, “I appreciate you doing this, sweetheart. I know it’s not your cup of tea, but you might meet some interesting people. It could be fun.”

“I get to spend an evening with you, which is all that counts,” I said. “Honestly, Harry, did they really wear drinking pinks in 1867?”

He gave me a roguish grin. “This is as dressed up as this old man gets. I’ll just tell everyone I’m a British redcoat.”

I smiled and said, “You’ll be the handsomest redcoat there. What am I wearing?”

“You know your mother. She said to tell you it’s a copy of a dress from the House of Worth . . . she wasn’t kidding about the worth part. I just got the bill.” He shook his head. “Try it on. You’ll look stunning, Sophie.”

The dress was fabulous, as Harry said, a blue-green iridescent color that reminded me of tropical water, a Cinderella fairy tale confection of lace, silk, and chiffon that moved gracefully when I spun around, beaded embroidery in the whorled pattern of shells, an off-the-shoulder bodice so low cut I blushed when I looked in the mirror. Happily the shoes were peep-toe satin pumps to match the dress, not the towering stilettos my mother usually wore. I found an antique ivory lace and satin shawl and a silver evening bag that Nick bought me on one of our romantic getaway weekends in Paris and went downstairs to show off to Harry.

He was checking out the eclectic collection of books India had left on the library bookshelves when I walked into the living room, suddenly nervous.

“How do I look?”