Ghost Image (29 page)

“You've never heard of them?”

“I've been overseas for so many years I . . . no, I haven't.”

“I'd better get back to the conference,” she said. “I think you should talk to David and see if you can set up that session tomorrow.”

Arista Pharmaceutical must have been one of the companies Kevin contacted to ask about drug trials for his sister. And, as Thea had said, maybe he'd said something or dropped a hint that he might be able to locate seeds to an extinct plant more potent than modern-day water hyssop, something that had already proved effective in restoring memory loss. Was it David Arista who had been stalking Kevin because he already knew about the seeds?

“Sophie?” Olivia sounded impatient. “Are you still there? I said I think you should give David a call. We don't want to lose this opportunity.”

“Sure. I'll do that.”

“Let me know how it goes,” she said, and disconnected.

Footsteps crunched on the gravel behind me, and I looked up, shielding my eyes against the sunshine.

I didn't have to call David Arista.

He was standing right here.

22

H
e held out a hand, offering to help me up. The smile on his face looked more like a leer. I stood on my own, clutching my phone in both hands.

How much had he overheard of my conversation with Olivia? It probably didn't matter, because I already knew it was no accident or coincidence that he was here. His eyes strayed to the ground and the freshly swept dust that revealed the little inground safe.

I caught the look of triumph before he wiped it off his face and pasted on a smile.

“Isn't this a surprise? Aren't you supposed to be at the Smithsonian?” I asked.

“Not until two.” He indicated my phone. “Who were you talking to?”

I could have told him it was none of his business, but it didn't seem like a good idea.

“Olivia Upshaw. She says you can still get me into the Arts and Industries Building to take photos tomorrow.” He didn't
say anything, so I went on like this was a normal conversation. “Why don't we settle on a time now? I've got to get back to town for another meeting so I can't stay . . .”

He put his hand on my wrist, circling his fingers around it with unmistakable pressure. “You're not going anywhere.”

“Let go of me, David.”

He pulled the phone out of my hand and shoved it in his pocket. “Why don't we go for a little walk in the woods? They're planning to expand the cemetery in the next few years, right behind Arlington House. I think we ought to take a look.”

He wrenched my camera bag off my shoulder and twisted my arm so it was pinned behind my back. It hurt and I knew he meant to cause me pain. The day I met him he'd talked about his mother having a Jack-and-Jesus wall in their home and how often he'd visited the Eternal Flame with her as a kid. He probably knew this cemetery pretty well. And she was devoted to St. Francis of Assisi. He probably knew the monastery garden equally well.

“Let go of me and give me back my phone and my camera bag.”

He slid his other arm around my throat and leaned close to my ear. “Start walking, Sophie.” He applied a little pressure. “Do as I say.”

I gagged and he released his chokehold.

I refused to give him the pleasure of telling him he hurt me. Or that he scared me. “Did you follow me from the Castle?”

He gave me a heavy-lidded look. “Your GPS settings are turned on in your phone. I was able to track you quite easily.” This time his smile really was a leer. “New technology. My clients teach me things all the time. Now get moving. I've got a gun.”

If he brought it, he meant to use it. I said, with more bravado than I felt, “What are you going to do? Kill me? Is this what you did to Kevin? Threaten him first, then kill him?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” But his grip tightened and he shoved my arm hard enough to make me wince.

Just keep him talking, keep distracting him.

“Sure you do,” I said. “You came to London, too, didn't you? You were the one who met Will Tennant at the Chelsea Physic Garden.”

His expression turned ugly. “You've certainly been busy asking questions. You're smarter than I thought you were.”

“Not smart enough to put the paperwork for Kevin's book in a safe place so you wouldn't find it when you broke into my apartment,” I said. “They have security cameras at Asquith's, you know. Who was the woman? Who's helping you?”

“The courier who picked up that book has no idea who she got it for,” he said. “I'm not stupid. Get moving.”

“You came to the Tidal Basin the day I met Kevin. Neither of us saw you, but when I downloaded the pictures I took that day, I saw a man by the Roosevelt Memorial. You were only there for a moment and then you never showed up in any more pictures, almost like a ghost. But it was you.”

He didn't reply, but a muscle tightened in his jaw and I knew I was right.

“Why did you lie when you met me in the Ripley Garden?” I asked. “You said you came from the Chihuly exhibit at the Hirshhorn, except it had closed a week earlier. What were you doing at the Smithsonian? Were you meeting someone?”

“None of your business.”

“It had to be Yasmin,” I said. “Kevin talked to her after he left me at the Tidal Basin and advised her not to go through with the wedding when he saw the two of you together at the engagement party. I think he guessed you were having an affair. Yasmin called you because she must have been panicked that Kevin found out, so you came by to see her.”

“Kevin should have minded his own business.”

“One of you went to talk to him later at the monastery garden. Yasmin showed up early for a meeting with her mother and me at five o'clock, but you could have gone over there, too, after
you left me at the Smithsonian. I think Yasmin was so upset by the idea that Kevin might say something to Victor about your affair that either she or you tried to stop Kevin. One of you killed him.”

David frog-marched me around the side of the house. “That stupid little bitch has been more trouble than she's worth,” he said with venom. “She thinks she can manipulate anyone, including that fool Jaine. Now stop talking and get moving.”

I ignored him. “Did you kill Alastair Innes, too? Arrange an accident for him? Or did you have help in England?”

“Shut up.”

Our pace had slowed as he seemed to be working out how much I knew.

“You'll never be able to sell that book, you know,” I said. “It's one of a kind.”

“Don't be naïve. There are plenty of people who would be happy to buy it and keep their mouth shut. It happens all the time. You just have to find the right kind of buyer.”

“You found out about the seeds because Kevin was making inquiries to pharmaceutical companies about Alzheimer's drugs. He talked to someone at Arista Pharmaceutical, obviously. Then somehow you found out about the book . . . Yasmin must have told you. The only people who knew how valuable it was before Kevin died were Victor, his father, and Kevin. Victor must have told Yasmin, and since you two were lovers, she told you everything.”

“I offered to help Kevin,” he said. “We were willing to pay him a fortune for those seeds, even if they turned out to be nothing more than dust.”

“He didn't want your help or your money, he wanted to make this discovery on his own. So you started following him, stalking him. Were you the one who killed him?”

“I didn't kill him. He fell. And keep walking.”

“You left him on those steps and he died. And now you're going to kill me.”

“I don't have any choice. You're my last loose end. But I do appreciate you leading me to the seeds . . . I should have figured that out. All this time they're buried with good old Pierre L'Enfant.”

To our left was the flower garden. One of David's hands still had my arm in a vise grip behind my back, and he'd used the strap of my camera bag to secure my other arm. Anyone who saw us—and there was no one—would assume we were lovers out for a walk on a beautiful sun-dappled afternoon, unless they got close to us. Down below on Sheridan Drive, one of the main roads that wound through the cemetery, a large vehicle—maybe a tour bus, if I was lucky—was coming up the hill. I could hear the whine of the engine as it got closer.

“Don't try anything,” he said in my ear as his arm slipped around my neck again, “or I'll shoot.”

He was bluffing. He wouldn't shoot with witnesses around. The bus came into view by the Old Amphitheater, and it was my best chance. I bit his arm and wrenched out of his grip, shoving the camera bag into his gut. He yelped and absorbed the blow with a soft “ouf” as I took off. But apparently the bus was empty or out of service and the driver didn't see me. It lumbered past the stop for Arlington House and continued down the hill before disappearing from view. I ran into the amphitheater and ducked behind a boxwood hedge.

“I'll find you,” he shouted.

I heard his footsteps, so I took off running again, using the enormous white pillars and the hedge as screens. Someone had to be inside the mansion, even if I hadn't seen anyone. Wasn't it open for visitors? I ran fast, but he ran faster. He swung the camera bag, which caught me hard in the shoulder just as I rounded the corner by the L'Enfant memorial, and the blow knocked me to the ground. I skidded across the gravel on my hands and knees, ending up on the grass. As soon as I started to get up, he dove on top of me and together we rolled to the edge of the hill.

He was bigger and stronger. He gave me one final shove, to send me down the hill, and started to get up. I grabbed his ankles and yanked hard. His feet went out from under him and I held on as he landed. He kicked again, this time his blows landing on my head and shoulders. Below us I heard voices, people shouting, probably watching from far below on the plaza next to the Eternal Flame.

My head felt like someone had taken a hammer to it and I tasted blood. He gave me another hard shove, and this time I couldn't hold on anymore. I fell away, tumbling down the long, steep hill. I dug in my heels and clawed at the ground, trying to grab at something to stop my momentum. Eventually I stopped rolling and lay there, winded, bloody, and sore.

By now the sirens were everywhere, and I knew they were coming for both of us. I got to my knees, ignoring the audience talking and pointing at me down below. Halfway up the hill, two men in camouflage uniforms carrying assault rifles ran toward me.

This wasn't going to be good.

“We've already got your friend,” one of them said, as the other one snapped handcuffs over the scrapes on my wrists. “You're under arrest.”

23

I
didn't return to Arlington Cemetery for six months, not until the middle of September, on an afternoon when the sky was so blue it hurt your eyes and the golden sunshine was warm and slanting. It took that long for Ryan Velis and Thea Stavros to call in every favor owed them in order to persuade the National Park Service to open the little safe below the marker by Pierre L'Enfant's grave. Then there was more wrangling about whose property the contents—if there were any—would be. Eventually it was decided that if there were indeed seeds inside the safe, they would go to Monticello to be cultivated, but it would be a joint project with the National Park Service. I was glad to hear from Ryan that seeds would also be sent to the Millennium Seed Bank in honor of Kevin and Alastair.

Though Thea and Olivia Upshaw pored over records and documents at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, no one could figure out what happened to the key that fit into the lock, which meant it would have to be drilled open. Considering Washington's bureaucracy, it was astonishing that it took
only months and not years to arrange permission for someone to break open the safe. Fortunately, it didn't require an act of Congress, or I figured I could be an old woman before we'd know how it all turned out.

The months leading up to that day had been busy and tumultuous. Nick came home from his grand tour of the Middle East and moved into Quill Russell's new Washington office, and I turned down the White House photographer's job with IPS, though I told Monica to keep me in mind if she needed an extra shooter from time to time. But the truth was I liked being my own boss. I was getting more work than I could handle, and most important, a wealthy friend of Max's offered to help with fund-raising for the Shoe Project and setting it up as a nonprofit charity, so Grace and I were busier than ever with that.

In a season of bad news, scandal, and heartache, there was some happiness and reason to celebrate when the doctors in Virginia finally figured out that Chappy's mental confusion had been caused by changes to his medication, as well as Chap himself, who had mixed up his prescriptions. He stayed with Harry and my mother in Middleburg until the beginning of May, when my mother was satisfied he was his old self. By then, Harry joked that they were driving each other nuts again and that keeping all sharp objects hidden from both of them had become a full-time job. So a few days later, Mom and Harry drove Chappy back to Connecticut so she could set up daily visits from a home helper, which was the middle ground everyone finally agreed on if he was going to stay in his house independently and not move to assisted living.

We had been lucky that it turned out well for my grandfather, but Victor's father died of complications from pneumonia a few weeks after I got back from London. Jack told me Victor decided not to return to Washington and planned to stay permanently in Europe, assuming his father's responsibilities and commuting between London and Vienna. He had broken off the engage
ment with Yasmin after he'd learned she and David had been lovers and that David had been blackmailing her about their affair in return for information about Kevin's book. Jack said what hurt Victor the most was her betrayal, going into his private e-mail and passing along to David correspondence relating to Kevin, his father, and the book.

As for Yasmin, Olivia told me she'd been fired from the Smithsonian, although she claimed she quit in order to campaign for her mother in West Virginia. Ironically, the day I heard the news I ran into her on the staircase on my way out of the Castle.

She was carrying a small box that looked like it contained the contents of her office. I moved aside to let her pass.

She gave me a defiant look and said, “Look what the cat dragged in. What are you doing here?”

I looked her in the eye. “Working.”

“Not me. I'm leaving,” she said. “I'm done with this place. I'm campaigning for my mother, then I'm going to be Edward Jaine's new personal assistant. He has a private jet, you know. And half a dozen homes. I'm going to be traveling everywhere with him.”

I hadn't heard about that, but I supposed it made sense. “Congratulations, Yasmin. I hope it works out for you.”

“Stay out of my life,” she said with feeling. “I mean it.”

“I never wanted to be part of it.”

“Please.” She gave me a look of disdain. “You talked to Victor in London and afterward he told me he wanted to postpone the wedding. You probably had something to do with Kevin telling me he thought I should wait as well. You meddled in something that was none of your business, Sophie.”

“Victor had already made up his mind, and I didn't find out Kevin met you until after he was dead.”

“I don't believe you.”

I gave her a weary look. “I don't care. You got someone to pretend to be Victor's secretary in London so you could get me
to come to the Anchor pub, didn't you? What were you going to do? Talk to me or shove me into the river?”

Her eyes widened, but she tilted her chin and smirked. “I don't know what you're talking about. But if it had been me, I know what I would have done.”

“It was you.” I brushed past her and said, “I've got to go. Goodbye, Yasmin.”

I never saw her again, but in June Ursula lost her hard-fought primary, in part because of her opponent's deep pockets but also because of the scandal over Yasmin's wedding and David's upcoming trial. Nick told me Quill Russell said Ursula had immediately been courted to join a competing consulting firm in the merry-go-round world of Washington politics and lobbying, plus she had a book deal lined up when she finally left the Senate in January.

In July, David Arista was convicted of the murder of Brother Kevin Boyle in a trial that was swift and tawdry, the kind of scandal that livened up an otherwise quiet summer in Washington. The star witness had been Yasmin Gilberti.

She escaped relatively unscathed thanks to Ursula's lawyers, who brokered a deal in return for her cooperation at the trial. But Yasmin had claimed—and I believed her—that the reason she had arrived early at the monastery the day Kevin was killed was to talk him out of saying anything to Victor about postponing or even canceling the wedding after their upsetting meeting that morning. She hadn't known Kevin was dead until she ran into me and Paul Zarin, but once she heard the news, she'd been terrified that David Arista might have had something to do with it. By then she'd had enough of him, so she'd contacted Edward Jaine and told him everything about the book, knowing he'd move heaven and earth to get his hands on it and thwart David's plans.

As it turned out, I'd been right that someone at the monastery had been indirectly involved in Kevin's death. Paul Zarin,
the seminarian Xavier had been planning to dismiss, was David Arista's cousin. By then Paul had decided to leave the Franciscans and David promised him a job with Arista Pharmaceutical in return for keeping tabs on Kevin.

Jack showed up at David's trial every day, following it as a case study for his ethics class. He and I talked about it, of course, but the whole thing upset me more than I'd expected.

No matter how much I wanted to believe justice was being served and everyone was getting what was coming to them, it couldn't right the wrong, heal the hurt, or bring closure for me. What made it worse was that I knew Kevin would have forgiven everybody. He would have quoted Luke to me:
Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

But I was a long way from forgiveness.

At the end of August, three weeks before the ceremony at L'Enfant's grave was scheduled to take place, Perry asked me to fly over and help out in the bureau since he was down to a skeleton staff with people still on holiday or out sick. It was good to be back in London. By that time my American journalist colleagues had learned about the tantalizing mystery of the two-hundred-year-old seeds missing from the White House and their storied provenance, and it had unleashed a deluge of media interest. In my profession, it's never good when a journalist becomes the story; at least in London, I was able to drop out of sight for a while.

A few days before I flew home, I visited Zara Remington at the Chelsea Physic Garden, where she told me that Will Tennant was at Wormwood Scrubs prison in London awaiting trial for the murder of Alastair Innes. As I'd suspected, David Arista had been the American who had shown up at the garden asking about hyssop, and Will had lied in his description to throw me off. David had lucked out when he met Will, who not only also volunteered at the Millennium Seed Bank but was also in deep
trouble trying to repay gambling debts and more than willing to accept a bribe in return for information about the project Alastair was working on with Kevin.

According to Zara, Will's ID badge had been used on the swipe pads leading to the storage area the day Alastair and I were locked in the vault. Eventually Will had been arrested and charged with Alastair's murder after a neighbor identified him as the man she'd seen leaving Alastair's garage the night before his car went into the ravine and the police found Alastair's phone in his home.

On my last night in London, Perry got tickets to the BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall, the world-famous series of classical music concerts that begins each year in mid-July and lasts until mid-September. As it happened, it was American music night—Gershwin, Copland, and a mixture of jazz, blues, and country music. After it was over and we were leaving, Perry nudged me.

“Isn't that Victor Haupt-von Véssey across the aisle?” he asked. “And I recognize the woman he's with. Her father is the Earl of Chelmsford.”

I turned in time to get a glimpse of Victor with his arm around a pretty redhead who reminded me of Yasmin. They were laughing at something with the intimacy of an established couple, and their body language suggested that they were more than just acquaintances.

“It is,” I said. “I'm glad he's moved on, though she does look like Yasmin's double.”

“Want to say hello?”

I shook my head. “I think I'd better not.”

“You're still not over all this, are you?”

“I don't know how I could be until they open the safe next to Pierre L'Enfant's grave. I just hope the seeds are there and that Kevin was right. Or that I'm right about what I think he found.”

Perry squeezed my hand. “Come on, Medina, don't be so hard on yourself. The Franciscans have Kevin's book, and it
looks like they're going to loan it to the Library of Congress, at least for a while.”

“I guess Edward Jaine thought it was a good public relations move to say that he'd bought it but out of charity he'd given it to Kevin and the Franciscans,” I said. “It offset some of the horrible press after he got caught covering up that he was exporting toxic electronic waste to the Third World and passing it off as good equipment.”

“Maybe it's why he got off with only a big fine and avoided jail,” Perry said. “And the guy's smart. He'll rebuild his financial empire.”

“No doubt. Yasmin Gilberti is going to be his new personal assistant.”

“You still sound down in the dumps. Let's get a drink. Look at it this way. A week from today it will be all over. They're going to open that safe and you'll know for sure. Plus you get a world exclusive. That's why I've always loved you, Medina. You don't do anything by half measures.” He gave me his best cheesy smile. “Go big,” he said, “or go home.”

• • •

The day scheduled for opening the strongbox would have been Kevin's fifty-fifth birthday, a deliberate choice and posthumous tribute. The Park Service had set up a large white events tent around the L'Enfant grave with an enormous window at one end that looked out on the city and the Potomac. With the exception of Chappy and me as the two official photographers, and Grace, and a reporter from International Press Service, all the other media had been required to stay behind a rope line and were camped out on the steps of Arlington House.

The biggest concern was the condition of the seeds after two centuries, their fragility and preserving whatever package or container they were in. In addition to Ryan, Thea, Olivia, and Logan, along with a handful of VIPs from Monticello, the
Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and the White House, the only guests were people I'd asked to be there: Nick, Jack, Xavier, Max, and Bram Asquith. A locksmith hired by the Park Service would drill out the lock, but it had been decided that Ryan would be the one to look inside the strongbox.

Ryan surprised me by asking Xavier to say a prayer before we began, so we all bowed our heads while he asked for God's blessing on us and on Kevin. Then he quoted Genesis, a gentle reminder of what we might find inside the box:
For dust thou art and unto dust thou shall return.

The locksmith was good, but it took a few minutes before he drilled through the lock.

“Are you all right?” Nick said in my ear. “You look like you've stopped breathing.”

“I could be wrong. What if I'm wrong?”

He leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Don't second-guess yourself. Everyone here thinks you're right.”

I nodded and raised my camera.

“Okay, this is it.” Ryan sounded tense. He reached into the safe and for a long moment, he was silent.

The only sounds were the shutters clicking from my camera and Chappy's as now everyone seemed to be holding their breath. What if someone had been there already, or something else had been stored there and we'd got it wrong, or . . .

Then Ryan pulled something out of the safe. Everyone gasped as he held up a dark brown leather pouch with the reverence of a priest raising a communion chalice. In the slanted afternoon sunlight, the leather, embossed with the initials
Th J,
gleamed like old burnished gold.