He nodded, never taking his eyes off her face. Dark, dark eyes, nearly black, and that voice of hers dripped as slow and smooth and rich as the syrup he’d poured over his waffles at Jenny’s.
“Yes, I’m FBI Agent Griffin Hammersmith, Delsey’s brother. It appears you already know Ruth.”
“Hi, Ruth. I think Delsey might be safe now, with two cops standin’ over her bed.” She stepped around him, and lightly laid her palm against Delsey’s white cheek. “Sweetie, you don’t look so hot. Can you tell me what happened?”
Griffin said, “There was a guard already outside her room when I came back in. How’d you get past him?”
Anna Castle turned, smiled at him. “Everybody eats at Maurie’s Diner. Do you know, Ruth, that Deputy Claus likes mayonnaise on his hamburgers?”
Delsey said, “Griffin, it’s okay, really, everybody knows and likes Anna.”
Anna looked at Griffin. “May I speak to your sister?”
“Don’t make her laugh,” he said. “It might bust her head open.”
“That might be tough,” Delsey said. “Anna’s funny.”
“Okay, sweetie, here’s the deal,” Anna said. “Rumors are flyin’ all over town ever since Henry started talkin’ to people at the diner about how you were naked and the paramedics were all guys, about how there was blood in your bathtub and someone bein’ there with you. That’s only one of them, admittedly the most interestin’. Believe me, everybody was wild to hear the details. You never mentioned a lover. You didn’t pick one up without tellin’ me, did you?”
Delsey laughed, squeezed her eyes shut at the shaft of pain slicing through her head. “You weren’t supposed to be funny, Anna.”
“I’m sorry. Here, this will help.” Anna smoothed out a dampened hand towel and lightly laid it on Delsey’s forehead. She leaned close. “That better?”
“Yeah, it is. Now, listen, I may have picked up a lover last night for all I know. I don’t remember. It’s like hitting a blank wall. Why did Henry come down to my apartment?”
“He said it was really late and he was hearin’ bumps and bangs, and then he heard you scream so he called 911. He stitched up his courage and went in your place and found you on your bathroom floor, lyin’ naked—he always lowers his voice and whispers it.” She shrugged, smiling. “You know Henry.”
She turned to Griffin. “I’m very glad you’re here. Your timin’ in Maestro is like a miracle. You guys have different last names. Why?”
“She married a loser crook, kicked him to the curb, but kept his last name because she said it made the muses of music swarm into her head. Delsey said you play the violin?”
“Actually, since I grew up in the Louisiana boondocks, bayou country, I played the fiddle first. I could still make you want to polka until you fall in a heap and shout yourself hoarse.” She turned back to Delsey. “You need to get your brain back together and tell us what happened. Exactly.”
West Potomac Park
The Lincoln Memorial
Washington, D.C.
Saturday morning
“Keep everyone back!” Metro Detective Ben Raven yelled to the three WPD officers as he knelt beside Savich at the broken body of a young man. It was hard to tell how long he’d been dead because he was frozen stiff. There was a small black halo of frozen blood around his smashed head. Did that mean he hadn’t died here?
It wasn’t ten o’clock yet and had been snowing hard since early that morning, so there was barely a trickle of traffic. Yet there were already at least twenty gawkers bundled up in their coats looking in on them, attracted by the yellow crime tape and all the police activity.
Ben told Savich a Park Service employee had found the body only an hour before and called 911. When Ben had realized the body was on federal land, he’d gotten hold of Savich as he was babying his Porsche through the ice-covered streets from Georgetown to the Hoover Building.
Savich looked up at the solitary figure of Abraham Lincoln, felt a familiar awe and sadness for the man, wondering as he often did whether Lincoln would have managed to bring the country together again if he hadn’t been assassinated. Savich looked away from the nineteen-foot marble statue and back down at the frozen, broken body. He was a boy, really, no more than twenty, Savich thought, lying close to Lincoln’s statue, one frozen arm flung out toward Lincoln’s chair. Savich knelt down beside him. Why was he naked? Why had his killer added this indignity? Savich found himself studying what remained of his young face. There was something about him that looked familiar. Who was he?