It was just after noon when I left police headquarters. In a nearby courtyard, a hot dog vendor was doing a brisk business with the lunchtime crowd. Now that the butterflies in my stomach were gone, I was starved. I joined the queue of men and women in business suits and officers in uniform. This part of D.C. wasn’t for tourists; everyone waiting in line worked in the nearby courts or for the local government or at MPD.
“Lucie?”
It had been a dozen years since I’d seen Linh Natale on the Mother’s Day weekend of her daughter’s graduation. She had been etched in my memory as the joyous, exuberant woman who looked and acted more like Rebecca’s older sister than her mother. Now her beautiful dark hair was streaked with gray and her face was pinched with age and grief. For a moment I thought Rebecca’s spirit had returned from the future.
“Mrs. Natale? I’m so sorry—”
Her eyes filled. I put my arms around her and felt her shoulders shake as she clung to me.
“I should have called,” I said into her hair. “I feel awful.”
She didn’t speak. After a long moment she squared her shoulders and took a deep breath.
“It’s okay.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m glad to see you, my dear. A familiar face. It’s been too long.”
“Where’s Mr. Natale?” I asked. “You’re not here by yourself, are you?”
“He’s at home. Boston. He’s not well.” Her hand rested on her heart. “This dreadful news hasn’t helped.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
She shrugged with the weary resignation of someone running out of options. “Pray for a miracle. I think that’s all we have left.”
She looked me over—including the cane. I saw the same fleeting look of shock that had been in Rebecca’s eyes.
“Why are you here? Is it about Rebecca?” she asked.
There was a faint note of hope in her voice. I smiled, feeling bleak, unwilling to be the bearer of more bad news. If Rebecca had gone out with Ian for a while, I suspected Linh Natale would know him.
“Not exactly.”
She reached in the pocket of her coat and pulled out a crumpled tissue. “Then what is it? Please, Lucie. Anything you can tell me will be of help.”
The queue at the hot dog stand had advanced.
“Are you in line?” A dark-haired man in a sharp suit tapped me on the shoulder.
“Yes.” I turned to Mrs. Natale. “Have you eaten? Can I buy you a hot dog and perhaps we could talk somewhere?”
She gave me a blank look and said, “You know, I’m famished. I’d love a hot dog. But can we please get away from this place and go somewhere else? I’ve been here every day since … well, since.”
“I’m parked in a garage a few blocks away. Let’s get a bite to eat and then we can find somewhere with more privacy where we can talk.”
“I know a place,” she said, “but it’s not nearby. I would very much like to see the bonsai gardens at the National Arboretum. I don’t suppose you would like to visit it?”
“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, Mrs. Natale. But maybe we should eat our food before it gets cold.”
“Call me Linh,” she said. “Please.”
“Linh.”
We sat on a park bench and ate our hot dogs and drank the Cokes I’d bought.
“There was a botanical garden in Saigon, but the war destroyed it,” Linh said in her carefully accented English. “It was beautiful. I went there often as a young girl. Now it’s gone, all gone.”
“We can spend as much time at the arboretum as you wish,” I said.
“Thank you, dear. You’re very kind. I need to calm my soul.” Her voice broke and my heart ached for her. “It’s unbearable to think of life without my daughter. The police have no news … nothing. The waiting is torture.”
“I know,” I said. “Come, let’s walk to my car.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d visited the arboretum, but it was so long ago that I had to check the map for directions. The twenty-minute drive was a straight shot out of the center of the city, over railroad tracks and through a blighted industrial area to the pretty 450-acre park tucked away in the far eastern reaches of Washington.
I drove through the front gate, and the pollution and noise of the city faded. Dogwood and flowering cherry trees bloomed along the winding drive to the Bonsai and Penjing Museum. Here the warm spring air smelled fresh and clean.
“There is no one except us,” Linh said. “It is so quiet.”
“It’s a weekday,” I said. “Looks like we might have the park to ourselves.”
“In Saigon our gardens are always filled with people,” she said. “They find tranquility in nature.”
“In Washington it’s our buildings that are filled with people,” I said. “Government workers. And there’s no tranquility.”
She smiled. “I prefer the ways of my country.”
“What is ‘penjing’?” I asked.
“An older form of bonsai. From China.”
I pulled into a gravel strip parking lot by a low pavilion next to one other car. In front of us at the crest of a hill surrounded by meadows nearly two dozen Corinthian columns rose like a ruined temple transported from ancient Greece. Blindingly white against an azure sky, they made a spectacular tableau in the middle of nowhere.
“How beautiful,” Linh said. “What is it?”
We got out of the car and I went over to read a brown-and-white park sign.
“The Capitol Columns,” I said. “They used to be part of the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol. It says here they were removed and put in storage in 1958 when some expansion work was done on the building. Moved to this site in the late 1980s and dedicated in 1990.”
“Perhaps we can walk up there after we see the bonsai,” Linh said.
We crossed the parking lot and entered the outdoor pavilion of the bonsai exhibit through a Japanese-style wooden gate that led to a path called the Cryptomeria Walk. Linh fell silent as we toured the grounds, fingers pressed to her lips as she paused to contemplate each of the ancient miniature trees from Japan and China, some several centuries old. Her breathing seemed to slow, as though their mysticism and timelessness did, in fact, calm her troubled spirit.
Though I tried to connect to her Zen-like serenity, I couldn’t. Instead I felt restless, edgy. I had questions I wanted to ask, but it would be wrong in this almost sacred place. Perhaps when we visited the columns.
“Rebecca loved gardens. Did you know that?” Linh asked.
We had come to the North American pavilion, the last of the outdoor exhibits, where more bonsai were displayed in rustic simplicity on weathered wooden tables. The afternoon sunshine cast silhouettes onto the white stucco walls, transforming the miniature trees into bizarre shadow puppets.
“No, I didn’t.”
“We used to visit some of the grand estates together. Biltmore, Winterthur, Longwood. She loved doing that.”
I thought of the passage referring to a garden that Rebecca had marked in the epistle to Richard Boyle. Would Linh find some significance in it that Ian, Horne, and I did not?
“My mother also loved gardening,” I said. “We went to those same places and she brought me here to the arboretum many years ago. But her favorite place was Monticello. She followed Thomas Jefferson’s Garden Book like a bible.”
“I’ve never been there.” Linh faced me, folding her arms across her thin chest. “Do you want to tell me what’s bothering you, Lucie? It’s about Rebecca, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
We passed under the branches of a gnarled cherry tree as a sudden breeze blew the puffball clusters of blossoms, sending petals like fat snowflakes swirling around us and making a pale pink carpet on the ground.
Linh bent her head and, for a moment, I wondered if she were praying. When she looked up, her eyes were again bright with tears.
“What do you want to know?”
I wanted to know things that were really none of my business, things that were intensely personal that Rebecca had perhaps not shared even with her mother. But Rebecca had dragged me into the middle of this. Whether or not she was still alive, Ian was dead and I couldn’t help but think his death was somehow related to her disappearance.
“I don’t want to upset you,” I said.
“There is little chance of that.” She tilted her chin. “I knew my daughter, Lucie. Flaws and all. And I loved her. She was my life. You know that.”
“I know. And I know she loved you just as much.”
Linh linked her arm through mine. “Ask your questions.”
“Let’s talk while we walk to the columns,” I said.
“This isn’t too difficult for you?” She indicated my cane.
“I can do everything I used to do. It just takes me longer. Though my running and cross-country days are over.”
She pressed her lips together again. “You, too, have had your share of problems.”
The dirt footpath had been worn smooth into a narrow meandering trail that led to the grassy knoll where the enormous columns stood like an ancient ruin. They had been placed on a foundation made of stones taken from the east side of the Capitol. A constant wind whistled across the wide-open scrubby meadow as we made our way like pilgrims journeying to a holy site. Except for the flowering trees and a budding magnolia, everything else in the surrounding woods was brown and bare, just as it was back home in Atoka.
“You know Rebecca and I hadn’t seen each other since she graduated,” I said. “Until last weekend. The only time I heard from her was when she sent me flowers in the hospital.”
“I was aware of that, yes.”
“Do you know why she wanted to see me, out of the blue, after all these years?”
“Perhaps because she wanted to connect with an old friend?”
So Linh didn’t know.
“I, uh, think it might have been more than that,” I said. “I think there was something she wanted me to do … or something she wanted me to know.”
Linh tugged my arm and we left the path so she could admire an enormous flowering cherry tree. Across from us a young couple sat talking on a wooden bench, absorbed in each other.
“And you don’t know what that is?” Linh asked.
“I think I’m beginning to have an idea. Did Rebecca ever mention someone named Ian Philips to you?”
“Yes, of course. They worked together before she left to join Asher Investments. They went out a few times, I believe. But when she moved on, their relationship ended. I think he was angry with her for leaving. Perhaps a little jealous of her advancement.”
“Rebecca got back in touch with Ian recently,” I said. “She called him the week before she disappeared, but they never managed to connect. Then she sent Ian and me identical postcards with each other’s phone numbers on them. They came yesterday. Did you know he was scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill tomorrow about possible improprieties at Asher Investments?”
We began walking again. “No, I did not. Why did you say ‘was’?”
“I’m so sorry, Linh. I didn’t want to tell you. Ian was found dead this morning at his row house on Capitol Hill. He’d been drinking last night. It seems he drowned in his hot tub.”
Linh made a brief sign of the cross and kept her hand over her heart.
“That poor boy! How did you find out?” She turned to me. “That’s why you were at police headquarters, isn’t it?”
We had nearly reached the top of the knoll. Set in the middle of the plaza where the columns rose to the sky was a dry fountain. In the summer, a channel flowed from the fountain down a small hill where it fed a shallow rectangular pool at the base of the columns. It reminded me of the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial and I wondered, suddenly, if Rebecca had been here recently and this was the place she was referring to in the passage of Alexander Pope’s epistle.
Except this small fountain and the shallow pool had been drained for the winter and would be turned on again once there was no chance of freezing weather. The Pope verse described a fountain “never to be played” in a park that was well manicured, not untamed as it was here.
“Lucie.” Linh shook my arm. “What’s going on? Did the police question you about Ian’s death?”
I nodded. “I was with him last night. Probably only a few hours before he died.”
Linh leaned against one of the massive sandstone columns, her slight shadow crossing mine. In the distance, the couple that had been sitting on the bench made their way to their car and drove out of the parking lot. We were now completely alone, with only the noise of the wind and birdsong from the trees in the surrounding woods for company.
“You think Ian’s death and Rebecca’s disappearance are related?” she asked.
“I think,” I said, “that Rebecca may have been trying to pass Ian some documents or information about illegal business dealings at Thomas Asher Investments.”
The color drained from her face. “What are you talking about, illegal?”
I told her, but I stopped short of using the words “Ponzi scheme.”
“Ian told Rebecca what he suspected a few months ago. At first she didn’t believe him and even got angry with him. But it seems she might have discovered something recently that changed her mind,” I said. “It’s possible Rebecca planned to hand Ian the proof he needed for his testimony and then disappear. One scenario is that this is all an elaborate hoax and she’s alive and well somewhere.”
Linh’s voice was hoarse with disbelief and hope. “Scenario? You think she faked her death?”
“The story about a mysterious stranger—Robin Hood—giving the Madison wine cooler and Rebecca’s jewelry to a homeless man down by the river sounds a little far-fetched, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know.” She sounded dubious and I could tell she’d wondered about it herself. “I’m not sure I believe you about these illegal dealings, as you call them, Lucie. Of course I would like to think my daughter is alive, but did you know Sir Thomas is paying for my trip to Washington? He flew me down here, first class. He has taken care of everything for me—a suite at the Willard hotel for as long as I need to be here, all my meals, expenses, everything. I even have a driver at my disposal when I wish. He is a good man. He and Lady Asher do so much for charity. So much good work.”
“But if Ian’s right—”
“Why would Rebecca run away?” she asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Because she was afraid of the repercussions of her actions,” I said. “And if Ian Philips’s death turns out not to be an accidental drowning—which I don’t believe it was—then maybe Rebecca had good reason to be scared.”
“Because someone from Asher Investments murdered Ian, or had him killed to keep him from testifying?” Linh sounded incredulous. “And my daughter set up some … some charade to convince everyone she was dead—even her own mother and father—because she, too, feared for her life?”
“It’s also possible,” I said, “that she didn’t succeed in getting away. Maybe the homicide is real—though the police haven’t found a … haven’t found Rebecca yet.”
Linh walked to the edge of the foundation and stared out at a meadow of untidy rows of tufts of dried fountain grass that stretched to a distant road. Beyond it were more woods. I went over and stood next to her.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s what you believe, Lucie?” There was both sorrow and anger in her voice. “Because they have not found my daughter?”
“It’s only a theory,” I said.
She turned to me. “She was involved with someone. You knew that, didn’t you? She seemed so happy this time.”
My heart constricted as I thought of Ali Jennings explaining to me that the affair between Harlan and Rebecca was over.
“Rebecca didn’t tell me herself,” I said, “but I know she was at Harlan Jennings’s home in Georgetown on Saturday afternoon. His, uh, his wife said the affair was over.”
Linh looked surprised. “The former senator? That Harlan Jennings?”
I’d let some cat out of God knew what bag. “Isn’t that who you were referring to?”
“I didn’t know his name,” she said, “but whoever it was—Senator Jennings or someone else—Rebecca had a very good reason not to disappear on Saturday.”
“What was that?”
Her voice wavered. “Because she was spotted on a surveillance camera at a pharmacy in Georgetown around five P.M. on Saturday. The police found the clerk who waited on her. She bought one of those pregnancy tests. And that’s why I’m sure my daughter didn’t run away somewhere. Because she thought she was pregnant. And knowing Rebecca, she would be deeply in love with the man who would have been her baby’s father.”