Mortal Friends (12 page)

I
didn’t hear from Bob the next day, or the next, or the day after that. I tried calling him at home but there was no answer, and his cell phone went to voice mail. I even got up the courage to call his office, knowing I would have to speak with the icy Felicity. She told me that “Mr. Poll” was “out of town,” but that she would be sure and give him the message that I had called. I clung to that gold bracelet as proof he still cared for me.

Later on that week I met Gunner at Usherville for a briefing session. Gunner had become like a kind of shrink to me, someone I could confide in without fear of betrayal. When I got there, he was sitting on the stone bench in front of the mausoleum, absorbed in a book. The instant he saw me, he shoved the book into his coat pocket.

“Whatcha reading?” I asked, sitting down beside him.

“Nothin’.”

“C’mon, Gunner, I want to know what detectives read.”

I held out my hand. He pulled out a ratty little paperback from his pocket and handed it to me reluctantly. It was called
The Book of Five Rings
.

“Never heard of it,” I said.

“Great book.”

“What’s so great about it?”

“For one thing, it teaches you how to have patience.”

“Boy, I should read it then.” I absently leafed through the pages without really looking at them. “I haven’t heard from Bob in a few days,” I said, glancing at Gunner out of the corner of my eye. He didn’t
say anything—purposely, no doubt. “I know you don’t like him, but look what he gave me.” I showed him the gold bracelet. “Isn’t it pretty?” Gunner gave it a cursory look, and still didn’t say anything.

“He had to go away on business,” I explained.

“Oh, yeah?”

“I’m sure he’ll be back soon, and I’ll hear from him then. Don’t you think?” Gunner shrugged. “Tell me something, would you give someone a gold bracelet if you didn’t care about them?”

He chuckled. “I couldn’t afford to give them a gold bracelet if I
did
care about them.”

“But you do think I’ll hear from him, right?”

“He’s your boyfriend. You tell me…. So how’s your girlfriend Violet doing?”

“I don’t know what to do about Violet. I can’t talk to her anymore.”

“I take it you still haven’t told her.”

“About Grant? No. We were all at the Kennedy Center last week. Cynthia gave Grant this stupid Golden Key award.”

“Yeah, I saw that in the paper. Nice picture of you and Mr. Wrong.”

I ignored the comment. “Cynthia put Grant next to her at the dinner. Poor Violet just sat there looking adoringly at Grant with the patented Nancy Reagan stare, totally oblivious to what’s going on right under her nose. It’s excruciating for me. I agonize about whether to tell her or not.”

“You think he’s still seeing this Rinehart woman?”

“Absolutely. They didn’t say a word to each other all night. That’s always the tip-off. I’m worried this is going to wreck my friendship with Violet.” I glanced up at the crypt. “I wonder who the Hollises were.”

“General Matthew P. Hollis was a Civil War hero. Fought for the Union. There’s a lot of Civil War dead buried here.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s your neighborhood. Don’t you know about this place?”

“Not much, I’m afraid.”

Gunner gave an amused shrug. “It’s interesting how people ignore what’s closest to them.”

“So tell me about it.”

“It actually has a connection to your pal Grant Bolton.”

“How so?”

“You know the Corcoran Gallery?”

“Sure.”

“In the late 1840s, old Mr. Corcoran bought the original fifteen acres this cemetery’s on. Corcoran also founded Riggs Bank, which was taken over by the Briggands in the ’80s, and then by the Bolton family when old Mr. Briggand went to jail. It’s now part of the Potomac Bank, if I’m not mistaken.”

“That’s exactly right. Grant thinks he’s in a bad-luck building because Mr. Briggand got caught.”

“You know the little stone chapel there as we come in? That was designed by James Renwick, the guy who designed the Smithsonian Castle and St. Patrick’s Cathedral up in your former neck of the woods. It’s called the Renwick Chapel.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked him.

“I was interested. Aren’t you interested in the history of Georgetown, owning an antiques store and everything?”

“I have a few other things on my mind at the moment.”

“Did you know your friend Gay Harding’s buried right next to that chapel?”

“Yes,
that
I knew…. Tell me something, Gunner. Do you think this bracelet’s some sort of consolation prize?”

“I don’t know. What did the good Mr. Poll have to say for himself?”

“I have a bad feeling.”

“How do you mean?”

“I think the bracelet’s his way of breaking up with me.”

“You should be so lucky.” Gunner smirked.

His knowing attitude irritated me. “You keep
saying
that. I know what you’re insinuating, and I just don’t believe it.”

“Then how come you’re talking to me about it?”

“You said you wanted to know all the stuff that’s going on. Why are you so fixated on Bob?”

“And you’re asking me this because…?”

“I don’t think you’re right, okay? I mean, I really don’t think he’s capable of anything so terrible, but—”

“But?”

“Well, it’s just that I don’t feel I really know him, even though we’ve been going out all this time. If he does have this dark side, like everyone says, I’d kind of like to know what it is. I know he goes to
that strip club…. I mean, do you have any real proof other than your crazy intuition about him?”

Gunner bristled slightly. I’d hit a nerve.

“The other day you told me that story about Ted Bundy. Maybe those girls who escaped being his victims at the lake had an intuition. Intuitions aren’t crazy. In fact, they’re what separate a good detective from a great one.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“It’s cold. Let’s walk,” he said.

We walked in silence for a time. Then Gunner said, “You asked me about that book I was reading…. The author, Miyamoto Musashi, once killed thirty guys with a sword in each hand. One to fend off, one to kill. People always underestimated him. And he always surprised them. Know why? Because he saw through preconceptions and conventional wisdom and bureaucratic tyranny right down to the essence of things. He pierced the lies and got to the truth, even though people in his time thought he was crazy. No proof doesn’t mean a thing isn’t true. You gotta follow your gut. And my gut tells me that Bob Poll is somehow involved in this case.”

Our custom was to part ways well before the entrance to the cemetery. I tried to hand him back the book before he separated, but Gunner refused to take it.

“Read it,” he said. “You might learn something.”

A
fter that meeting with Gunner, I decided it was time Violet knew about Grant’s infidelity before this awful secret wrecked our friendship for good. I often dropped in on her unannounced in the morning for a cup of coffee on my way to work. I left the cemetery and walked over to her house, steeling myself for what was arguably to be the most difficult conversation of my life.

Violet and Grant lived in the same house Grant had when he was a bachelor—a yellow mini-mansion with white columns on the corner of Twenty-eighth and Q. Violet used to refer to it as Tara before she married Grant, when she wanted to show she was not impressed with the grandeur of the place. Maureen answered the door. “The ancient Maureener,” as Violet referred to her, was the old housekeeper who had been with Grant since practically his diaper days. She was usually a sunny, if doddery, old sort. But when I said hello this morning, she eyed me with all the friendliness of an enemy combatant. I paid no attention and walked past her to the back of the house.

Violet and Grant always had their breakfast on the sunporch, a room drowning in chintz, large china animals, and white wicker furniture about as cheerful as old bones. I expected to see Grant. But Violet was having breakfast with Peggy Myers. Peggy lived in Kalorama, and it was most unusual for her to be there at that hour of the morning.

“Morning, Peggy. Morning, Violet,” I said.

Peggy greeted me but Violet ostentatiously turned her back and stared out the bay window facing the back garden. I tried again.

“Good morning, Violet.”

Violet calmly sipped her coffee, refusing to turn around. “Is it very cold outside,
Peggy
?” she said at last.

“Not as cold as it is in here,” I said, hoping for a laugh.

Violet slammed down her coffee cup so it clattered on the saucer, and said, “You know, Peggy, if there’s one thing I hate above all other things in this world, it’s a
liar
.” She spit out the word.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that something really bad had happened, and that it somehow involved me. I dreaded to think. I made another stab at communication. Violet not only ignored me, she got up and walked out of the room. Her face looked like tear-stained pomegranate.

I pitched Peggy a hapless, bewildered look. Peggy said simply: “Grant left her.”

I sank down in a chair, poured myself a cup of coffee, and asked Peggy to tell me exactly what she knew. She recounted the whole story as it had just been told to her by Violet. Apparently, the night before, Grant announced he was leaving her—just like that. He packed a bag, told her he could be reached at the Four Seasons, and walked out—but not, unfortunately, before dragging
me
smack into the middle of it. He confessed he’d been having an affair with Cynthia and that I knew all about it. He told Violet I’d come to the bank to confront him. I couldn’t believe it. Grant wasn’t just an asshole. He was the whole intestinal tract.

“He wants a divorce,” Peggy said softly.

“Don’t tell me he wants to
marry
Cynthia?!”

“Looks that way.”

I sprang up and headed for the door. “I need to talk to Violet!”

“Not without a bulletproof vest!” Peggy cried. “She’s furious at you.”

I whirled around. “Furious at
me
? She should be furious at
Grant
, for Christ’s sakes!
I
didn’t do anything!”

“You know what they say: the cover-up is always worse than the crime. Why does everyone always forget that?” Peggy mused aloud.

“I didn’t cover anything up. I just didn’t tell her. An omission is not a lie.”

Peggy let out this big guffaw and said: “Oh, honey, you’ve been in Washington too long!”

I stared at her, feeling totally defeated. “What should I do, Pegs?”

Peggy Myers was the Eisenhower of our little group. Whenever the troops had a dustup, she helped smooth the ruffled egos. She thought for a moment, then said, “I’d let her cool down for a couple of days. She’s going to need her friends to rally around. You above all, Reven. Give her some time. Then call.”

Very sound, sensible advice. Naturally, I didn’t take it. Peggy left, but instead of going with her like she suggested, I marched upstairs to find Violet. She wasn’t in that stifling Victorian enclave they called a bedroom—a room so full of knickknacks and bric-a-brac it looked like a thrift shop. She was one flight up, in Grant’s dreary green prison cell of an office, sitting staring at a photograph of her and Grant and Tee in a silver frame on his desk.

“Go away, traitor,” she said, without looking at me.

“Violet, please let me explain.”

“Go away. I have nothing to say to you.
Nothing!
”

She sounded so forbidding, I figured I’d take Peggy’s advice and try this another day. I was just about to leave when she swiveled around and started ranting at me. For someone with nothing to say, she proceeded to really let me have it, hardly drawing breath, telling me what a horrible bitch I was for going behind her back and for conspiring with Grant against her. I could see Grant had learned something from all his years in Washington. He’d spun my visit to him like a veteran campaign manager.

Violet accused me of being jealous of her and secretly pleased this had happened because I’d never gotten over the fact that Grant had chosen her over me back in the day. This was revisionist history at its most egregious. But I just stood and took it because I felt so sorry for her and so dismayed that my well-intentioned actions had contributed to her distress. Violet was taking out all her frustrations on me because she couldn’t take them out on Grant. I knew I had to be a big enough person to suffer the slings and arrows of a distraught friend, to see beyond the moment to the friendship itself.

Eventually she calmed down—no person, not even Violet, could have kept up that level of rage without spontaneously combusting. It was good for her to get it all out. I think she appreciated my stoic attitude, because when I walked over and put a sympathetic hand on her
shoulder, she didn’t swat it away. I took that as a sign she was already starting to forgive me. I sat down beside her.

“I’m so sorry, Vi. I just wanted to spare you finding out about it if I could. I knew how painful it would be for you. I’ve been in
agony
over whether or not to tell you. And, in fact, this morning I decided I would because I knew it was ruining our friendship. I couldn’t talk to you like I used to, and you sensed something was wrong. So I was going to tell you, no matter how hard it was. You’ve got to believe me. Look, I don’t know what Grant’s told you about our meeting, but I swear to God, I was not on his side. The reason I went to see him was to try and make him give her up. When I left, I thought he would.”

Violet didn’t respond right away. She looked thoughtful and sad. Finally, she spoke: “This is like when we were back in school, and you protected me. I appreciated it then. And I’ll always be grateful to you. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I came to Washington, because I knew I could count on you. But we’re not in school anymore, Rev. You’re not my nurse, and you had no right to play with my life.”

It was true, I had been Violet’s guardian angel in school because I was on top of the world then, and my word was law. I recalled what my father once told me. He said: “If you look back on your school days as the best days of your life, it means you never really grew up. You always see the world a certain way, no matter how it really is.” Dad stopped short of saying that people who constantly reminisced about the glory days of their youth were failures, because he was not a judgmental man. But I wondered if I was somehow living in the past, hoping for those brighter days of my youth to come back in another incarnation.

“What’s this going to do to Tee?” she said plaintively. “I can’t imagine how he’s going to take it.”

“He’s a strong, good kid. He’ll be okay.”

“He’ll probably blame me,” Violet said.

Tee was closer to Grant than he was to his mother, which was another reason the affair with Cynthia hurt Violet so badly. I think she feared her son would take his father’s side.

“I’m so sorry, honey. I was wrong. I guess I should have told you.”

“I don’t know…. Maybe not,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d have done in your place. You did what you thought was right.”

“I tried to, but maybe I fucked up…. Can you forgive me?”

We stared at each other for a long, emotional moment. I think that Violet and I always saw each other the way we were when we first met. Sure, our faces had crumbled with time, but those older masks couldn’t hide our youthful souls or all the things we’d gone through together. Few things are more precious than a good friend of long acquaintance. We were like a little country of two with our own secret history. No matter what happened around us, it was important to both of us to defend that precious turf. I think we both realized this at the same moment because we spontaneously burst into tears and fell into each other’s arms, sobbing. We had a good cry, then a serious talk. Scraping the barnacles off a long friendship is a painful but necessary process that often occurs after a shipwreck.

After we dried our tears, Violet admitted she’d hacked into Grant’s computer and found all these e-mails between him and Cynthia. Their affair had been going on at least a year, maybe more.

“How did you get his password?” I asked her.

“He’s so unoriginal. It’s ‘Potomac.’ Surprise, surprise.”

Grant’s e-mails were terse and functional, obviously setting times and places of assignations, like “3:00, Rockville,” or “4:30, Days Inn.”

Cynthia’s e-mails were more forthcoming. She wrote things like, “You are all-powerful, the master of your fate and mine,” and “I am in awe of your strength and your wisdom. What a brilliant and sensitive man you are! I am totally in your hands.” She signed hers “C.”

I’m sure Grant believed it when she told him how marvelous he was. Either that, or he just wanted to hear it. In her e-mails, Cynthia came across as a helpless little southern belle, when in fact it was so clear to me she was the puppet mistress pulling his strings.

Violet then pulled up the Web site for the Cynthia A. Rinehart Foundation, which Grant had bookmarked. The screen lit up with a picture of Cynthia standing in front of the Kennedy Center—an enhanced and retouched version of the one that was used for the big article on her in the
Washington Post
. A blue banner floated above her head with “The Cynthia A. Rinehart Foundation” written in gold letters. Off to the side was a list of information links, including “Board Members,” “Golden Key Awards,” “News and Events,” and “The Art of Dying,” a nod to the original source of her wealth. Violet clicked on the list of board members, and an impressive array of names came up with pictures and biographies. Senator Pomador headed the field.
There was a large picture of the senator, a portly, white-haired man with teeth that looked like tiny tombstones. Violet was about to click on another link when we both looked at each other, and without saying a word, she shut down the computer. We’d had it.

We went back downstairs. Maureen made us a soothing cup of tea, and we sat in the living room. Violet told me she never had a clue about the affair until she and Grant got home from the party they’d gone to last night, and he abruptly announced he was leaving her on the spot. It was so like Grant to think he could avoid unpleasantness by simply packing his bags and withdrawing.

“I threatened to follow him and make a scene unless he told me the whole story. Soup to nuts. When he started talking, he couldn’t stop—just like some adolescent kid with a crush who needs to tell you every detail of a first date, including what he ate for dinner and the color of his socks. When he told me
you’d
gone to see him, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach,” she said.

As Violet described Grant’s version of our meeting, it was easy to see why she’d gotten the impression I was on his side. He’d twisted my expressions of sympathy to make them sound like I was cheering him on. I set her straight fast and made her understand that I was only thinking of her and how I could best help her.

I still blamed Cynthia much more than I blamed Grant. I told Violet I was sure that Cynthia had made the first move, and probably several moves after that. I pictured Grant as a granite boulder it took many pushes to dislodge. However, once he started rolling downhill, there was no stopping him. I told Violet she’d just have to make it super-tough for Grant to divorce her. It was then she admitted something to me I never knew before.

“I can’t make it that tough. We have a prenup.” She sighed.

“You’re
kidding
. You never told me that.”

“I know. I didn’t think it was very romantic. I signed it the day of the wedding. It’s generous enough. I won’t starve.”

I recalled the day Violet got married. The four o’clock ceremony took place in the Episcopal church on O Street. I was Violet’s matron of honor. Violet wafted down the aisle in a high-necked, old-fashioned dress studded with seed pearls, on the arm of Mr. Bolton Sr. Her own father had refused to attend when Violet forbade him to bring his gym teacher mistress. The church was packed with Grant’s
friends and relatives, and a sprinkling of Violet’s pals—mainly the people she’d recently met in Washington through me.

I remember Violet’s mother, a tense and tired-looking woman in a faded blue dress. She sat in a corner during the reception, chain-smoking and looking at her watch. She hardly spoke to a soul. Rainy Bolton was the one who had organized the wedding. The large tent on the back lawn of their sprawling house in Chevy Chase was decorated with ivy-covered columns and trellises. Everyone agreed the event was a model of understated elegance. Violet seemed so happy. Yet now I wondered if that last-minute prenuptial ambush had somehow put a crease in the ivory satin memory of that day.

Violet sipped her tea, looking morose. “If I divorce Grant, I go back to being nobody again,” she said.

I found this comment as sad as it was untrue.