Ellen Crosby - The Viognier Vendetta

“Are you okay?” I asked. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Not enough,” she said.

“Or maybe a little too much? Maybe you should knock it off.”

“Come on,” she said.

We climbed the three flights of stairs, the marble treds worn so uneven I needed to hold on to the brass railing. I followed her into the glassed-in corridor that overlooked the immense octagonal Reading Room with its soaring coffered dome. Eight massive arched stained-glass windows with the seal of the United States and the seals of the states gave the room its natural light during the day. Now at night they were opaque, with an occasional glimmer of the jeweled stained glass winking in the dim light. Flanking each window was a carved figure on a pedestal supported by a dusky red Corinthian column. Two stories of arcades with views of book-lined alcoves ringed the perimeter of the room. On the balustrade across from us, eight pairs of bronze statues watched over hundreds of desks arranged below in concentric rows.

“Lucie.” Dominique shook my arm. “I need to talk to you.”

“Sorry, I got distracted. This place is so beautiful.”

“I know. Mon Dieu , I’m like a tiger at the end of my chair. I wish I could smoke. Do you think I could get away with it if I did it here? No one’s around. Just a puff or two?”

“In the Library of Congress? Oh, sure. No problem. There’s only miles and miles of books under our feet and some of the rarest books in the world all around us … Are you out of your mind?”

I grabbed her cigarettes and stuck them in my purse.

“All right, all right.” She sounded peeved. “Well, I need something.”

I thought of Ali Jennings, who probably had the something she needed.

“Calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

“You can’t repeat this to anyone, do you understand?” Her voice dropped to a whisper so I had to lean close to hear her. “This has to stay between closed walls.”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, yes. Between closed walls.”

She played with an antique onyx dinner ring that had belonged to our grandmother.

“It’s Simon. I overheard him talking to someone on the phone tonight. We were at the Inn and he asked if he could use my office while I finished up some things in the kitchen. When I came back the door was ajar. I almost walked in until I heard him talking about your friend Rebecca. Something about seeing to it that she disappeared for good.”

She reached for my hand. Hers felt like ice.

“Lucie, it scared me. I left and went back to the kitchen until he came for me. He doesn’t know I heard.”

I rubbed her hand, trying to warm it, hoping she didn’t notice my rising alarm. “What do you mean, seeing to it that Rebecca disappeared for good?” I asked. “Did he say how?”

“No. I don’t know … I don’t know. Don’t talk so loud. Someone might hear us. All I know is that it sounded like he had some idea where she is. I thought a homeless man killed her, or that Robin Hood person.”

I stared at the lovely carved figures across from us. Allegorical statues representing all that was good and decent in civilization. Poetry, Philosophy, Art, History, Commerce, Law, Science, Religion. Dominique and I were talking about none of these things.

“Is she alive or dead?” I asked.

“I don’t know ,” she repeated. “Simon’s probably looking for me, so I’d better go find him. I’ve been gone too long thinking about this. I don’t want him getting suspicious.”

“Don’t go back to Atoka with him tonight. You can come home with Mick and me. And for God’s sake, don’t drink any more. You know what they say, if you have secrets drink no wine.”

“I have to leave with him, or he’ll wonder what’s wrong. But I’m going to break it off after this. Tell him I’m not ready for a relationship … that I’m too busy with work. He’ll believe it with everything he’s got on his mind.”

“Dominique, if he finds out you overheard him …” I stopped.

What if he already knew? What if he’d seen her shadow on the threshold or heard the floorboards creak in the hall? Before I could speak, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “He won’t.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Nothing. Just carry on like everything’s all right. As for the rest of it, I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it. Don’t worry,” she said again. “I can handle this.”

She slipped out of the gallery and left me alone with the silent statues and busts that watched over the Reading Room.

And my fears about what might happen when the two of them were alone together and she burned her bridge.

After Dominique left, I stayed in the Visitors’ Gallery until I was sure enough time had passed that no one would connect us being together. I had told Mick I’d meet him at the exhibit and I’d promised Ali I’d find Harlan.

I walked downstairs past Minerva and the beautiful double marble columns that reminded me of a temple. While my cousin and I had been sequestered upstairs, the loggia had filled up with people touring the Asher Collection. I scanned the crowd but didn’t see Mick, so I pretended to study the contents of a glass cabinet containing a rough-looking cloth bag in case anyone happened to be watching me. I read the display card.

One of the linen bags sewn together by State Department clerk Stephen Pleasanton to transport documents including the original parchment of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, the correspondence of General Washington, the secret journals of Congress, and all treaties of the United States to Leesburg, Virginia, for safekeeping after fire destroyed much of Washington.

It was a source of pride for Leesburg that for two weeks in August 1814 the town had been the “temporary capital” of the United States when Washington was considered too unsafe to keep the country’s most important documents. I looked at the coarse fabric and tried to imagine our entire heritage being shoved into a couple of sacks, thrown on a wagon, and driven off into the night by a lowly clerk who thought it was a good idea to get our national treasures out of town.

I had nearly reached the end of the exhibit. The last few display cases contained drawings and architectural plans for rebuilding the White House and the Capitol after the fire. The very last case contained a drawing of Frederick Law Olmsted’s 1874 plans for landscaping the Capitol grounds.

Not only were the Capitol grounds designed under Olmsted’s direction, he also added the elegant West Front terraces along with a lovely grotto on the Senate side of the grounds where a bubbling spring was to be contained within a sheltered rocky enclosure.

Another fountain, more gardens. But this one was not defunct. Tomorrow we’d look for Rebecca’s package—or whatever it was—by the fountains at Dumbarton Oaks. What if she were still alive? Was she somewhere in Washington? Who would know besides Simon and Tommy?

Harlan?

As though he’d heard my thoughts, I looked up as he slipped through a doorway at the end of the south corridor. I couldn’t tell if he was hurrying toward someone—or away. The banners hanging from the doorways indicated it was a separate gallery containing two exhibits, one on the creation of the United States and another called “Thomas Jefferson’s Library.” I followed him, catching a glimpse of Sir Philip Sidney’s quote written above the doorway: THEY ARE NEVER ALONE THAT ARE ACCOMPANIED WITH NOBLE THOUGHTS.

I lost Harlan in the softly lit mazelike display of rare documents. Apparently he wasn’t here to see Jefferson’s handwritten rough draft of the Declaration of Independence or Washington’s notes scratched on a copy of the Constitution. I found him in the last gallery, a jewel-like circular room of mosaics and frescoes. He was alone, inside a coiled display of glass-enclosed bookcases filled with Jefferson’s original library. The books had been arranged as Jefferson had them at Monticello, into categories called Memory, Reason, and Imagination. In the dim light given off by tiny pinpoint spotlights—to preserve the rare books—it seemed as though we were bathed in the candlelight of Jefferson’s days.