Frankie showed up in the tasting room as Alison finished paying me for the Viognier for Harlan’s party. Her eyes flitted between the two of us as I handed Ali her credit card.
“How are the boys, Ali? I don’t see you so often anymore now that our kids aren’t together at school.” She smiled her serene smile, ignoring the gloomy fug that hung in the air.
Frankie was the person you wanted on your side in a hostage crisis or a nuclear standoff because she could defuse tension in a room faster than anyone else I knew. It was an inside joke among the tasting room staff that she heard more confessions than the priests at St. Stephen’s in Middleburg—from both customers and employees. Everyone talked to her, trusting the compassion in those clear blue eyes.
Alison seemed to brighten. “They’re doing great. Boarding school agrees with them. How about yours?”
“Looking at colleges. Can’t believe we’ll be paying double tuition soon.”
“I know what you mean. We’re so blessed my father-in-law invested in blue chips way back when and that Harlan inherited his dad’s good head about money,” she said. “Speaking of money and investing, did I hear that Quinn is looking to buy some farmland?”
Ali was looking directly at me. I saw Frankie’s imperceptible nod out of the corner of my eye.
“Why, yes, he is,” I said. “What makes you ask?”
“Harlan and I have some acreage we’d like to sell,” she said. “To the right buyer. It’s adjacent to our property, so we’d like the new owner to continue to use it for agriculture—cattle, horses, farming. If Quinn’s planning to put in a vineyard, that would be even better.”
Frankie closed her eyes slowly and opened them. Another yes.
“That’s his plan,” I said.
“Terrific. I’ll talk to Harlan and make sure he gets in touch with Quinn.”
The moment the door closed behind Alison, I said to Frankie, “How long have you known about Quinn looking for land?”
“Lucie, calm down.”
“I am calm.”
She pulled out a bar stool for me.
“Sure you are,” she said. “I can tell. Look, I found out over the weekend. A couple of the Romeos dropped by for a drink just as we were closing yesterday. I’m not sure how they heard about it, but it’s obviously no secret if Ali knows.”
“Quinn probably dropped a hint someone overheard and brought up over morning coffee at the General Store,” I said. “Meaning Thelma found out and told her partners in crime, the Romeos. Which is why everyone knows about it from here to Richmond—except me.”
The Romeos, whose name stood for Retired Old Men Eating Out, were the second worst source of gossip in Atoka after Thelma Johnson, who owned the General Store. Between them they vacuumed up every scrap of news—real or imagined—and then spread it to the four corners of the county and beyond.
“You were out of town,” Frankie said.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Maybe he was trying to find the right time.”
“I knew he inherited some money from his mother after she passed away, but it wasn’t a lot,” I said. “How’s he going to finance something like this?”
There’s a sad-but-true saying among vineyard owners that the fastest way to make a small fortune growing grapes and selling wine is to start with a large one. Quinn, as near as I knew, didn’t even have a small fortune.
“Maybe he’s got a couple of partners who are willing to invest with him.”
I nodded, stunned. “He always said he wanted his own place. I guess I thought we’d combine forces. It would be something we’d do together.”
“Oh, Lucie.” Frankie’s eyes were full of sympathy. “Don’t beat yourself up over this. You know Quinn and how ambitious he is. It’s sort of a natural progression, don’t you think?”
Maybe she was right. Maybe it was, but I hadn’t wanted to see it.
“Sure. Of course it is. Hey, thanks for telling me. At least I found out from you and not the Romeos or Thelma. That would be gossip fodder for a month of Sundays.”
“He’ll tell you himself, you wait and see.” She picked up her gardening gloves and patted me on the shoulder. “Guess I’d better get back to those beds. Are you going to be all right? When I came into the room, Ali looked like hell and you didn’t look much better.”
I stood up and went behind the bar. “You know something about that, too?”
“Not directly, but I can add two and two. Mac Macdonald was one of the Romeos who came in for a drink,” she said. “You know how close he is to his money. Made sure I wouldn’t charge him for a glass of water before he drank it.”
Mac was a teetotaler and a querulous old dear who owned an upscale antiques store in Middleburg. One of my parents’ oldest friends, his penny-pinching went beyond zealousness. If anyone were going to figure out a way to take it all to the eternal reward that awaited in the afterlife, it would be Mac.
“He’ll never change,” I said.
“Did you know Harlan Jennings manages his portfolio?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t. I thought Mac kept his money in his mattress.”
“Apparently he goes to D.C. regular as clockwork to check up on how his investments are doing.” Frankie gave me a significant look. “He bumped into your friend Rebecca a couple of times. Thought she worked as a secretary for Harlan, who never disabused him of the idea. Then he saw her picture on the news and found out she was Sir Thomas Asher’s golden girl. So he wondered why Harlan didn’t explain who she really was.”
“Is there something you’re trying to say?” I asked. “Or not say?”
“Okay,” she said. “You asked. Ali’s got a lot of friends who think she got a raw deal when Harlan abdicated his responsibilities out here and moved to town. All that nonsense about needing to be in Washington because that’s where his clients are. Please!” She waved a hand like she was shooing a pesky fly. “As if she doesn’t make that same drive every day. She loves Harlan so much she’s blind to … well, let’s just leave it at blind.”
“She’s not blind. But she does love him more than anything else in the world.” I thought of the surprise party she was planning, even after the tawdry situation Harlan had dragged her into over Rebecca.
Frankie traced a finger around a cabbage rose on one of her gloves. “Ali would go to the ends of the earth for him or the boys. You’re right about that.”
She went outside, leaving me to mull over what she’d said. Just how far would Alison Jennings go to protect Harlan? What would she do to preserve her marriage and his upstanding reputation in the community?
She’d been in Washington on Saturday, arriving late to the gala—plus she would have realized Rebecca would be in town for such an important event honoring her boss. An athlete and a good shot, Ali was probably strong enough to take on Rebecca if she needed to do so. How hard would it have been to find out from her historian colleague that Rebecca planned to drop by earlier in the day to pick up the Madison wine cooler?
And of course, Alison already knew about the affair.
The police had questioned Harlan about Rebecca’s disappearance. But so far, it seemed no one suspected his wife. Was she setting things up to protect herself?
Had Ali just played me to cover up a murder—that she’d committed?
On Tuesday morning, my cell phone rang as I was pouring a cup of coffee in the galley kitchen in the villa. Another D.C. number, but I didn’t recognize this one.
“Who is this?” a male voice asked when I answered.
“You called me. Why don’t you go first?”
“Don’t I know you?” he said. “I’m sure I do.”
I disconnected and dropped the phone on the counter as though he could detect my location if I held on to it. He called back twice. Each time I let the call go to voice mail, but he never left a message. Was it a prank caller? Persistent wrong number?
Shortly before noon, Frankie showed up in my office with the mail. “You might want to take a look at this. I wasn’t snooping, but I couldn’t help noticing it when I was sorting through everything.”
She set a postcard in front of me. The Lincoln Memorial at night.
“It’s from Rebecca,” I said. “Postmarked yesterday. I don’t believe this. She’s alive.”
There was no mistaking Rebecca’s sprawling handwriting: “To err is human, to forgive divine.” And a phone number.
“She bought this postcard when we were together on Saturday,” I said. “In fact, she bought several. All the same. She made a point of showing them to me.”
“Is that her phone number?” Frankie asked.
“No.” I picked up my phone and scrolled through the calls. “It belongs to this guy, whoever he is. He called me three times. I bet he got a postcard with my number on it.”
Frankie sat down in a red-and-white flame-stitched wing chair across from me and folded her arms across her chest.
“Do you know who he is? What’s going on? And what’s up with the Shakespeare quote?”
“I don’t think it’s Shakespeare. I bet it’s Alexander Pope.” I ran my thumb over the postmark. “It was mailed yesterday in Georgetown. What do you bet Rebecca’s alive and hiding somewhere?”
“It was postmarked yesterday. She could have dropped it in a mailbox on Saturday knowing it wouldn’t get picked up until Monday. Maybe it was sort of insurance in case anything happened to her—which it did.” Frankie’s forehead creased with worry. “What are you going to do? Whatever’s going on, it’s getting dangerous.”
“I’m going to call the guy who has been calling me and find out what he wants. He didn’t know who I was—and I didn’t know who he was until I got this.” I tapped the postcard and picked up my phone. “Rebecca sent these for a reason. I need to meet him and find out why and what happened to her.”
He answered in the middle of the second ring. “You finally decided to return my call, did you?”
“I got a postcard, too,” I said. “What does yours say, besides my telephone number?”
I heard a long expelled breath on his end. “‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’ That’s Alexander—”
“Pope. Mine says, ‘To err is human, to forgive divine,’” I said. “You’re Ian Philips, aren’t you?”
“And you’re Rebecca’s college friend. Lucie Martin.”
“Close enough. Montgomery.”
“I think we should talk,” he said.
“Where’s Rebecca?”
“Somewhere in the Potomac River. Haven’t you been watching the news?”
“What if she’s not?” I said. “I was with her when she bought these postcards on Saturday just before she disappeared. She planned to send them to us. I’m sure of it.”
“I’m not following you.”
“She’s setting up something—actually, she’s setting us up for something. What if she faked her death and vanished?”
Frankie’s eyebrows went up and I shrugged. Wasn’t it possible, as the woman at Fletcher’s had suggested? An image of Rebecca, laughing her head off drinking a latte in some exotic café, popped into my head. Right now, it seemed as plausible as any other explanation.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think she sent these as backup, in case anything happened to her.”
“You mean as insurance?” I said as Frankie nodded her head and mouthed “yes.”
“Exactly. Look, I don’t think we ought to continue to discuss this over the phone. How’d you like to take a walk around the Tidal Basin and enjoy the cherry blossoms? They’re nearly at their peak today.”
I looked at Frankie, whose normally untroubled face was lined with concern. Whatever was going on, I wanted to keep it as far away from the vineyard as possible.
“I can be in Washington by two. Where should we meet?”
“You know the FDR Memorial?”
“It’s huge. Spans Roosevelt’s life and the entire three-term presidency.”
“Since you obviously know it, how about meeting me at the blocks? I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.”
A set of what looked like life-sized child’s building blocks hewn out of granite. I knew what was carved on them. Roosevelt had initially tried to remain neutral during World War II, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor provoked America into finally entering the war.
“I hate war,” I said. “Those blocks?”
“See you there,” he said and hung up.