Harlan and Alison Jennings lived at Longmeadow, a two-hundred-acre estate off Zulla Road that had been in Harlan’s family for generations. A working farm with outbuildings and tenant houses since the time Leven Powell founded Middleburg in 1787, it had a storied and colorful history. On New Year’s Eve in 1850, a fire of questionable origin destroyed the modest stone house that had been there since colonial days. In its place, Harlan’s great-grandfather, recently married to a tobacco heiress with a taste for lavish entertaining, built a Greek Revival mansion with a columned front porch and a grand pedimented gable that rivaled the James River plantations. Their parties, especially during Prohibition, were legendary.
Harlan’s BMW convertible was parked in the circular drive when I pulled up in front of the house. I got out of the Mini and walked up the flagstone path lined with masses of pink and white tulips and daffodils of every shade of yellow, white, and orange. Ivy twined around the two columns flanking the front door. Stone urns were filled with fragrant-smelling Easter lilies. It looked as if someone recently had been sitting outside despite the dull day, leaving a glass and an empty bottle on a wicker table next to a Windsor rocking chair. A jacket—Harlan’s by the look of it—hung over the back of the chair.
I rang the doorbell and heard the Westminster chime echo inside. While I waited I stole a look at the bottle. Tequila, nearly empty. A brand I didn’t recognize. Maybe Harlan had read the Trib and decided to move directly from breakfast to happy hour.
A pretty Hispanic maid in a gray uniform opened the door. Her face was composed but she looked like she was in some distress.
“May I help you?”
“I’m Lucie Montgomery,” I said. “Dr. Jennings ordered a couple of cases of wine from my vineyard for her husband’s birthday party. I promised her I’d deliver them this morning. Is she around?”
She shook her head. “The señora went riding. Didn’t the senator tell you?”
“Harlan? No—I didn’t see him.”
She stepped out onto the porch and her eyes fell on the tequila bottle.
“Díos mio,” she said. “He drank all that?”
“All what?” I said. “You don’t mean he drank a whole bottle of tequila just now, do you?”
Good Lord, it would kill him.
“No, no. It was already open.” She gave me a reassuring smile that didn’t mask the lie. He’d drunk a lot and she knew it.
I picked up the bottle and held it up. “How much?”
She touched her heart with one hand like she was trying to catch her breath or compose herself. “It’s not for me to say anything about what my boss does, you know?”
“Maybe you ought to tell me your name. And it is for you to say if he drank as much as you seem to think he did. You’d better tell me what you know. He could be suffering from alcohol poisoning, meaning he needs medical help.”
The girl looked like a guilty child who’d been caught flat out in a lie. “My name is Dulcie. He drank half, maybe two-thirds.”
I groaned.
“Well, Dulcie, at least he didn’t get behind the wheel of his car,” I said. “Any idea where he is now, where he might have gone?”
“He might have gone back inside while I was upstairs,” she said.
I didn’t like the growing urgency in her voice, which now matched my own escalating anxiety. She still wasn’t telling me everything.
“What is it?” I asked. “Come on.”
The girl hesitated, too well trained to tell tales about her employers to strangers.
“Please,” I said. “I know about what’s going on, about the money problems. We need to find Senator Jennings. Right now.”
“He and the señora had an argument. They were screaming so loud I covered my ears, but I could still hear. When you came, I was cleaning up in the bedroom.”
“Cleaning up?”
“A broken lamp. I think Señora Jennings threw it. Then she left. That’s when he must have gotten the tequila. To get borracho.”
I knew that word. Drunk.
“You check the house,” I said. “I’ll look in the garden first. Then I’ll drive down to the stables.”
“He didn’t go to the stables,” she said. “That fight was pretty bad. She might … leave for a while.”
If Ali were contemplating walking out on Harlan, it must have been a fight for the record books.
“Okay,” I said, but Dulcie had already vanished.
I bumped into the rocking chair as I turned to leave the porch, knocking Harlan’s jacket to the ground. When I picked it up, something rolled out of one of the pockets.
A pill bottle. Alison’s prescription, her migraine medicine. At least it wasn’t empty. Tequila and pain pills. He wouldn’t be feeling a thing.
In fact, he might not even be breathing, wherever he was.
“Oh, God, Harlan,” I said. “Please don’t have done anything stupid.”
He’d be drunk and disoriented. I doubted he’d gotten far. The swimming pool in the backyard. It was heated and they kept it open year-round. One of Middleburg’s more eccentric traditions was the Jenningses’ annual impromptu pool party in honor of the first snowfall. No one admitted without a bathing suit—and you had to go swimming.
I stuck my head through the front door and yelled to the maid. “Call nine-one-one and tell them to send an ambulance. Tell them to hurry!”
He was facedown at the bottom of the deep end, fully dressed except for his shoes, socks, and a sweater that he’d taken the trouble to leave in a neat pile next to the diving board.
I dropped my cane, stripped off my jacket, and kicked off my own shoes. As I dove in, the image of Rebecca’s folded clothes on the dock last week flashed through my mind. Was I trying to rescue the man responsible for her disappearance? The water felt almost tropically warm. Thank God for small blessings. The air temperature was probably in the fifties. In an unheated pool with hypothermia brought on by the consumption of so much alcohol, he’d probably be dead within minutes. I touched the bottom, grabbing one of his arms with two hands and pulling on it. His body floated up enough for me to crook an arm around his neck and drag him with me.
Dulcie was on her knees by the steps in the shallow end when I surfaced with Harlan.
“Madre de Díos,” she said. “He’s dead.”
“We don’t know that. Come on, help me pull him out.” The contrast between the water and air temperatures felt like a slap across the face. “Hurry!”
We wrestled Harlan up the stairs and hauled him onto the deck of the pool. I rolled him onto his back. His lips and eyelids were blue and his skin looked waxy.
Dulcie started to cry. “What do I do?”
“Stop crying. I’m going to need your help. Go in the house and get some blankets. We have to warm him up.”
She rubbed her eyes with her fists like a child. “Okay.”
“Where’s the ambulance?”
“Coming.” She got up and started for the house.
“Run!” I yelled at her.
I tilted Harlan’s head back and put my ear against his chest. He wasn’t breathing. My hands were shaking too much from the cold to tell if he had a pulse. It had been years since I’d learned CPR and I’d never done it on anything except a dummy.
Dulcie returned with an armful of blankets that looked like they’d been pulled off someone’s bed.
“One for you, too,” she said. “You are shivering.”
She wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and we piled the others on top of Harlan.
“You push on his chest with both hands,” I said to her. “Like this. Do it when I tell you. I’m going to blow air into his lungs.”
I have no idea how long we worked together, me pinching Harlan’s nose and blowing into his mouth as hard as I could while Dulcie pumped his chest. She began murmuring in Spanish and I recognized the Lord’s Prayer. In spite of the blanket, I couldn’t stop shivering as my hands cramped up and I began losing feeling in my fingers.
It felt like I was losing Harlan, too, his life ebbing away in spite of our efforts. He had wanted to die. I needed him to want to live.
Finally we heard the sirens. Dulcie lifted her head and made the sign of the cross.
“Go around to the front and show them where we are,” I said.
This time she ran. I heard shouting and footsteps running toward the swimming pool. Two men in navy fire and rescue uniforms knelt on either side of Harlan. Around me voices swirled and colors flashed. Someone put her hands on my shoulders and gently moved me aside.
“We got him,” one of the paramedics said to me as he pulled off Harlan’s blankets and began tearing open his shirt. “How long have you been at it?”
“A couple of minutes I think.”
“Any idea how long he was in the water?”
“No.”
A blond woman in a yellow Loudoun County Fire Department jumpsuit helped me up. “Thanks, hon. Come on over here. Let them take care of your husband.”
Dulcie came over and stood next to me. She seemed calmer now, though she still looked pale. The blond showed me Ali’s pill bottle as the paramedics hooked Harlan up to a heart monitor and fitted an oxygen mask over his face. It took them about thirty seconds.
“I found these out front on the table next to an empty tequila bottle,” she said. “What’s he got in his stomach?”
I heard the man who had ripped open Harlan’s shirt say, “Body temp ninety-three point four. He’s got no pulse. Get the pads.”
Dulcie moaned and I put my arm around her.
“Half a bottle of tequila,” I said to the woman. “I don’t know how many pills.”
We watched a third paramedic unpack a defibrillator.
“Don’t look,” I said to Dulcie. She buried her head on my shoulder and I closed my eyes.
I heard the jolt as the machine went off and then someone said, “We got something. He’s back, but just barely.”
The blond said to me, “You can go to the hospital with him if you want. The battalion chief just showed up. He’ll drive you, but you ought to go inside and get out of those wet clothes first.”
“It’s not my house,” I said. “I’m just a friend of the family.”
She looked momentarily nonplussed, then turned to Dulcie. “Can you take her inside and get her something dry to wear, please?” To me she added, “Sorry. I thought you were his wife. Where is she?”
“The head groom is trying to find Señora Jennings,” Dulcie said.
“Jennings?”
“You don’t know whose house this is?” I asked.
“I’m new to the area. Sorry.”
“That’s Harlan Jennings lying there. Senator Harlan Jennings.”
“Oh, God. I read the paper this morning. That article on the front page.” She shook her head. “What a waste. Go change, hon. You’re shivering.”
I followed Dulcie as the two paramedics lifted Harlan, who now wore a cervical collar, onto a backboard. I wondered if they would put him on a suicide watch in the hospital. Would he try again to take his life?
I was changing into some of Ali’s clothes in the guest bathroom when I heard her frantic voice in the foyer. I finished dressing and went to find her.
She looked surprised to see me. “Why are you wearing … Oh, God! Dulcie told me you found him. I didn’t realize …”
“Sorry. My clothes were wet.” I fingered the buttons of her sweater. “I’ll return these later.”
“It’s okay, don’t be silly. Keep them. I’m so glad you were here. He could have died …”
“Don’t think about it,” I said. “He didn’t. Go to the hospital with him and everything will be fine.”
She laughed a mirthless laugh. “That’s so funny. Nothing will be fine. Not now, not ever. It’s over. Finished. We’ve lost everything.”
“Mrs. Jennings.” The battalion chief opened the front door and stuck his head inside. “We have to go. Would you like to ride in the ambulance or with me?”
“With you.” Ali laid a hand on my arm. “Good-bye, Lucie.”
I went outside as the ambulance pulled out of the driveway, sirens blaring. A Loudoun County fire engine followed and the battalion chief’s cruiser brought up the rear, first circling around the driveway in front of Dulcie and me. Dulcie clutched Harlan’s jacket against her chest like a shield. Ali never looked at either of us as the cruiser drove off.
“Thank you for saving his life,” Dulcie said.
“It was both of us,” I said. “We did it together.”
I got in the Mini and thought about Harlan and what Ali had just said before she left for the hospital. The latest—and probably not the last—casualty as the Asher empire continued its downward trajectory of destruction and ruin.