Margaret Truman - Murder at Union Station

Book 20 in the Capital Crimes series, 2004

HAMILTON, BERMUDA

Anasty squall had blown across Pitts Bay earlier in the day, the wind tossing sheets of water against the landmark pink facade of the famed Hamilton Princess Hotel. Blue sky and sun followed the storm; the hotel was now bathed in lambent light.

Kathryn Jalick unlatched the sliding glass door of the second-floor suite, slid it open, and stepped out onto the small balcony overlooking the bay. She’d carried a large, fluffy white towel with her from the bathroom, which she used to wipe residual water from the two plastic chairs and glass-topped table. She returned inside to retrieve a glass of white wine she’d poured from a bottle purchased that morning in one of Hamilton’s downtown liquor stores, and took a chair.

Below was a pitch-n-putt green on which two men were engaged in conversation between putts. She knew both, one better than the other.

She’d been dating Richard Marienthal for three years. The anniversary of their first meeting was Tuesday of next week; marking such dates and occasions was important to Kathryn, and she was good at it.

They’d met at Irish Times, a popular place a block east of Union Station, in the northwest corner of the Capitol Hill area. Irish Times was one of three establishments within a block of each other catering to those seeking a wee bit o’ Ireland; The Dubliner and Powers Court Restaurant were the other two. A hundred years ago, when nearby Union Station was on the drawing board, its planned location was on the edge of Swampoodle, an infamous Irish slum, which was said to be the ideal place to turn a dishonest dollar. Those days were, of course, gone. A foul swamp had been transformed into a thriving neighborhood anchored by the station. If there were such a thing in Washington as an Irish neighborhood-which there isn’t-the area around North Capitol and F Streets would have to do. Although the pubs there were practically interchangeable-same beers, same atmosphere, same spirited conversation-patrons were fiercely loyal, including Marienthal, who wasn’t Irish but for whom authenticity was important, and who considered Irish Times to be, well, more authentic than the others.

He had been at the bar with Winard Jackson, an up-and-coming tenor sax player, when another friend brought Kathryn and a female friend into the room. If there was such a thing as love at first sight, Kathryn experienced it that evening, and try as she might to appear cool and disinterested, her immediate infatuation with him was almost comically obvious. Marienthal’s black musician friend, Jackson, eventually whispered in his ear, “I think the lady’s smitten with you, man. Time for me to split.” Marienthal and Kathryn were soon alone at the bar, where they lingered over fresh, bubbly tap beers.

It became apparent to Kathryn as they drank and talked that this Richard Marienthal was different from other young men she’d met since moving to Washington six years ago to pursue a career as a librarian. First hired by the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Library of Genealogy and Local History, she later landed a plum job at the prestigious Library of Congress, where she still worked. The daughter of a plainspoken Kansas pharmacist, Kathryn found most other men with whom she’d worked or dated too slick and sure of themselves, consumed with their appearance, terminally ambitious, and always pretending to know more than they did. Like Geoff Lowe, the young man practicing putting with Rich on the grounds of the Hamilton Princess.

Marienthal was none of those things. He was big and tousled, a teddy bear type. His face was boyish, although she judged him to be in his late twenties or early thirties. His smile, too, was boyish, meaning it looked the way it probably had when he was a little kid, with a hint of mischief in it. Smiles change with age, she knew, but his hadn’t. She liked it. This night in Irish Times, he wore a gray-and-red-checked shirt, baggy chino pants, and a tan safari jacket frayed at the neck.

Slightly tipsy, they decided to have dinner together, after which he escorted her home to her apartment on the fringe of Foggy Bottom. She hoped he would kiss her good night, which he did, lightly, like a campaign promise, without commitment. She hoped he would commit to seeing her again, which he also did, saying he would call the next day. He kept his word.

“He’s so gentle and kind, and really funny,” Kathryn told her sister back in Topeka on the phone that night. “And he’s a writer, too. Very handsome in a rugged sort of way, but not macho, if you know what I mean. He’s tall. I mean, a lot taller than me. I kidded that we’d have trouble dancing together. Know what he said? He said he’d install a little microphone in one of his shirt buttons and I could talk into it.” She giggled. “Know what else he told me? He told me my glasses not only make me look smart, they make me look sexy.” Kathryn Jalick had worn big round-shaped glasses since junior high school. She had never been happy about having to wear them-until this night. She and her sister laughed. Kathryn’s sudden acceptance of her black-rimmed glasses was symbolic of her acceptance of the large young man.

Three months later, she moved into Marienthal’s apartment in the Capitol Hill district, a block from the bustling Eastern Market at Seventh and C Streets, where they’d been living since, discovering more about each other every day and liking what they learned; haunting the market in search of fresh produce and honing their cooking skills for small dinner parties with friends; lazing in front of the small fireplace when the winds blew and ice covered the streets of Washington, D.C.; and strolling the neighborhood on Sunday mornings, buying the papers and going back to bed, where they usually spent the rest of the day under the covers catching up on the news and with each other.

She wrapped the white terrycloth robe tighter around her against a chilled wind off the bay and continued to watch Rich and Geoff Lowe on the putting green. She couldn’t hear their words, but she knew what they were discussing. How could she not? That’s all Richard had talked about for the past year. He was consumed with it, driven. “I’m a man on a mission,” he would often say when she questioned the long hours he worked on the book. She wished Rich hadn’t gotten involved with Lowe, a pretentious sort if she’d ever seen one, and she’d seen plenty of them in Washington, D.C., basking in the reflected glory of their powerful political bosses, like secretaries to high-profile physicians who assume their bosses’ status and press it upon patients.

Meeting like this in Bermuda was Lowe’s idea, silly cloak-and-dagger stuff, Kathryn thought. She didn’t like the influence Lowe seemed to have developed over Rich. The man she’d fallen in love with had been changing before her eyes since hooking up with the young Senate staffer, and not for the better.

Marienthal looked up and waved, gave her that boyish grin. She returned the greeting and raised her glass. “Up in a minute,” he yelled, and walked off the green with Lowe.

They had dinner that night in the hotel’s Harley’s Bistro, a large, modern room with huge windows overlooking the pool and Hamilton Harbor beyond, Rich, Kathryn, Lowe, and Ellen Kelly, who worked with Geoff but who was obviously more than that; they shared the same hotel room. Kathryn wished she and Rich could spend a week alone in romantic Bermuda, but that wasn’t in the cards. He’d been away for almost three weeks, returning to Washington from Israel only yesterday and announcing they were flying to Bermuda to meet Lowe and Ellen Kelly, who’d already been there a few days enjoying themselves.