Ellen Crosby - The Viognier Vendetta

“We’re old college friends.”

“You staying in this hotel, too, old college friend?”

“Yes.”

“So where is she?”

“I don’t know, but she’s not here. And I didn’t catch your name.”

“I didn’t throw it. Ian Philips. What about yours?”

The “two-bit prick” who had it in for Thomas Asher Investments. And he used to work with Rebecca, who had contacted him. How interesting.

“Lucie Montgomery. If you’ll excuse me, I’m awfully tired.”

“I really think you ought to have a drink with me, Lucie Montgomery, while we wait for our pal Rebecca. She ought to turn up before too long. They have a great Scotch bar here. The Round Robin.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

I started to walk toward the elevators, but he reached out and grabbed my arm. “Please.”

His grip hurt and I pulled my arm away. “I said, no thanks.”

A hotel concierge appeared at my side. “Everything all right, miss?”

“Absolutely. I just told Mr. Philips good night and that I’m going to my room.”

“Of course, miss. And, Mr. Philips, may I get a cab for you?”

“No, you may not. I’d like to have a drink in your bar, my good man. I just thought Ms. Montgomery would like to join me.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “My elevator’s here.”

I left them in the lobby and, on purpose, pushed the button for the ninth floor in case Ian Philips got clever and watched where I got off. I took the stairs to the seventh floor, looking over my shoulder at the deserted hall until I reached our rooms.

The suite looked as it had when I left, except that the maid had been in to turn down the beds and leave chocolates on the pillows. I sat down on the sofa, kicked off my evening shoes, and rubbed my temples.

Rebecca, Rebecca. Where are you? What in the hell are you doing? I lay back against the pillows, closed my eyes, and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

The telephone woke me and I sat up, wondering where I was and why I’d slept in my now badly creased evening dress. Thin streamers of sunlight from the gaps in the curtain panels striped the carpet. The phone, across the room on the desk, went to voice mail as I remembered Rebecca and that this was the Willard. I flopped back against the cushions as it rang again. This time I answered before the voice mail kicked in. A deep male voice asked if I was Lucie Montgomery.

“Yes.” I walked over to the bedroom. Neither bed had been slept in. “Who’s this?”

“Detective Ismail Horne with the Metropolitan Police Department. You were with Rebecca Natale yesterday afternoon.”

He knew; he wasn’t asking. I wondered who had told him.

“You found her?” I pushed back the heavy gold-and-scarlet curtains and blinked in the sudden brightness. Stupid question. Why else would he call at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning? “Is she all right?”

“We haven’t found her yet,” he said. “But we have some items of clothing that we’d like you to identify.”

I felt my throat close. “Rebecca’s clothing?”

“That’s what we’d like you to tell us.”

“Where do I meet you?”

“Fletcher’s Boat House,” he said. “On the river.”

Anyone who’s ever been out on the Potomac River knows Fletcher’s Boat House, which has been around for over 150 years. Located downstream from the tumbling foment of Great Falls and upstream from where the river widens into a serpentine ribbon as it flows past Washington, Fletcher’s is located in a peaceful wooded park where people come to picnic, let their dogs run, throw Frisbees, and sunbathe. If you didn’t know better, you could be deceived into believing that here the waters of the Potomac are calm and placid.

They are not.

Beneath the surface, boulders and steep channels form swirling eddies and powerful currents. In some places, the river is thirty to forty feet deep. One false step while fishing on a rocky outcrop along the banks and even the strongest swimmer will be swept away, unable to fight a current that comes at you like a fleet of trucks.

I’d been to Fletcher’s before, canoeing with friends on the river and on the adjacent C & O Canal, so I knew where the steep one-car-width entrance was located off Canal Road. The little gravel parking lot overflowed with red, white, and blue Metropolitan Police Department cruisers and emergency vehicles, but I found a spot into which I could shoehorn my Mini Cooper.

I got out of the car and looked around. Rebecca had been here last night? Doing what? Was this the site of a rendezvous gone wrong? Some of the stories—rumors, actually—about where she and Connor met for sex were pretty kinky.

As I crossed the footbridge over the canal, the moss green trailer where the boat rental and concession stand were located came into view. Next to it was an A-frame tackle shack where fishermen stocked up on supplies. A new-looking sign stated that Fletcher’s had been taken over by the National Park Service and was now operated by an organization called Guest Services, Incorporated. Good luck getting people to call it that.

Except for a gaudy row of red, orange, and yellow kayaks lined up along the bank of the canal, a blazing yellow forsythia bush, and a clump of daffodils next to the tackle shack, most of the scenery was tinted the browns and dull yellow greens of late winter. Even the sky was a washed-out shade of blue. Occasionally a filigree of pink cherry blossoms or green buds enveloped a lone tree like a mist, but otherwise as far as the eye could see there was only dense brush and skeletal trunks and branches bent toward the light and water. As for the river itself, it was murky and brackish at low tide. Broad mudflats made the boathouse, with its wilted American flag, look as if it were marooned on a small island.

In summer, the place is so lush with vegetation the Potomac all but disappears from view, but today I could see clear to the other shore. An occasional flash of movement at the crest of the steep, wooded ravine several hundred feet above the river came from cars zooming along the George Washington Parkway. Otherwise, that side of the river was not a hospitable place for fishermen—or for anyone to walk or hike. If Rebecca had come here, she had done so the same way I did.

A uniformed officer stopped me as I walked down the gravel path toward the boathouse. When I told him why I was here, he let me pass. On the river, a marine search boat with FAIRFAX COUNTY, VIRGINIA stenciled on the side moved into view. The knot in my stomach tightened. They were looking for Rebecca in the Potomac.

I stepped onto the boat shack gangway, which rocked back and forth so crazily I had to use my cane to keep my balance. Half a dozen red rowboats with FLETCHER’S and numbers stenciled on the sides lay overturned at the end of the pier. It looked like fishing and boating had been canceled for the day.

A female officer told me to wait by a wooden locker filled with oars while she told Detective Horne I was here. She walked over to a tall, slim man with ebony skin, close-cut salt-and-pepper hair, and the bearing of an ex-marine, and spoke to him. He nodded and came over, cradling a cup of coffee the color of the river water. His badge was clipped to his belt next to his gun, and he wore khakis, a plaid dress shirt, and a black all-weather jacket with the department logo embroidered on it. He also looked dead tired, like he might be working his second shift of the day.

“Appreciate you coming,” he said, after shaking my hand and introducing himself. “I understand you’re sharing a suite at the Willard paid for by Rebecca Natale. And one of her colleagues said you were with her yesterday afternoon before she disappeared.”