Dinner later that evening—Persia’s homemade chicken potpie—was a quiet occasion, with Eli, Quinn, and me talking about the work still to be done around the vineyard and Hope entertaining us with stories about her Barbie doll’s life as a circus performer, which seemed to involve mostly hopping up and down. Afterward, Quinn and I did the dishes while Eli put Hope to bed. We were nearly done cleaning up when Eli came back into the kitchen, bundled up to go outside.
“Are you staying in tonight?” he asked. “I was wondering if you’d mind baby-sitting Hope.”
It was a rhetorical question. He was definitely going out and he already knew I was staying home, since Quinn was still there.
“Yes to staying here and no, I don’t mind baby-sitting,” I said. “Can I ask where you’re going?”
“Just meeting a friend for a quick drink at the Inn.” He tried to look me in the eye, but his glance skittered sideways and he and Quinn exchanged looks. “I’ll have my phone on, of course. Call if you need me.”
“Sure,” I said. “Have fun. Does Hope know you’re going out?”
“Ah … not exactly. She’ll be okay, though. She was nearly asleep when I left her. Thanks a bunch, Luce. Don’t wait up. I might be late.” He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and bolted.
I hung the damp dish towel over the oven door handle and said to Quinn, “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?”
Quinn reached for the half-filled bottle of Cab that we’d been drinking at dinner. “Refill?”
I nodded. “You were saying?”
He got two clean wineglasses from a cupboard. “He met someone. And before you get on your high horse, I only found out because I was having a drink the other night at the Inn when they walked in. Will Baron was there, by the way.”
“Don’t change the subject. Eli met someone and you didn’t tell me?”
“Of course not. Where do you want to read these X-rated letters? The parlor?”
I nodded. “They’re upstairs in my study. I’ll get them if you’ll make a fire. And why not?”
“Why not what?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Eli’s new girlfriend?”
“Because it’s not my place and you know it. Eli should have told you.”
I gestured to the doorway through which my brother had vanished. “Well, you saw that. He didn’t.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to upset you, since he doesn’t have the best track record with women. Brandi.” He shook his head in disgust. “Man, I wouldn’t have lasted thirty seconds with her.”
“Too late for that. I am upset. He should trust me, you know? I mean, he’s living here, he and Hope…” I looked up at the ceiling. “I give up. Whatever.”
“Lucie.” Quinn put the wineglasses and the bottle on the counter and pulled me into his arms. “Calm down, sweetheart. He’ll tell you when he’s ready. You know that.” He kissed my forehead. “Go get the steamy letters, okay? Everything’s gonna be fine. I’ll meet you in the parlor.”
He was still tucking kindling between the logs when I came downstairs with the letters and the two photo albums, Angelica’s and the Studebakers’. I set everything on the coffee table while he lit the fire.
I untied the ribbon from the letters and he joined me on the sofa, pulling his reading glasses out of his pocket. “I think it makes the most sense to read them in chronological order,” I said. “Oldest first, when Zara was still living in Washington, before she got married. You read one and I’ll read one; then we’ll swap.”
Considering their racy content, I thought it was a good idea for him to read them to himself. I had skimmed the letters earlier, but now I took my time and read more carefully. Every so often, I could feel Quinn squirm next to me.
“I told you they were explicit,” I said.
“I feel like I’m reading porn.” He refilled our wineglasses. I’d hardly touched mine, but he’d drained his. “You didn’t tell me Warren Harding had a name for his—” He turned red.
“Are you referring to Mount Jerry?”
“Well.” He scratched the back of his neck, still beet red. “Yes, actually, I am. I mean, who does that?”
“Obviously he did. I wonder if Zara’s letters to him were as graphic. It must have been quite a torrid correspondence, not to mention a passionate relationship, Listen to this: ‘I cannot wait to bury my face in your milky breasts.’”
“Okay, okay.” Quinn shook his head, still flustered. “I guess Zara’s congressman father introduced her to Harding before she married Johnny and that’s when they started seeing each other. But then she moved to California and he was in Washington. So they must not have slept together after that. Just wrote letters about how crazy they were about each other and how great the sex had been. He was poetic, I’ll give him that.”
I picked up the last four letters, which I had set apart from the others. “These are from someone named Izzy. Either her sister or a friend. I read only one of them and it’s a lot of gossipy stuff, written after Zara married Johnny. Whoever she was, she knew about the affair.”
He held out a hand. “Let’s do this. May as well read ’em all.”
“I wonder why Angelica kept them.” I passed him a letter.
By the second letter, I knew the answer to that question. “Izzy knew about the baby,” I said. “This was written May 27, 1923. She was planning to go out to California to be with Zara in the summer and stay until the baby was born. And don’t ask me why, but she seems like a friend, not her sister.”
“The one I’m reading was written earlier.” Quinn sounded ominous. “October 18, 1922. Zara planned to come home for the holidays. Back to Washington for Thanksgiving and stay through Christmas and New Year’s.”
“She was here for the entire month of December?” I counted months on my fingers. “If she got pregnant in Washington, the baby would have been due sometime in August.” I looked at him. “Oh my God. What if it really was Harding’s child?”
He got up. “I’m getting that bottle of brandy I saw on the dining room sideboard. I need another drink. Want one?”
He left the room before I could answer, and I picked up the last letter from Izzy. It was dated July 4, 1923, and was unlike the others—only one short paragraph, no gossip or gushing.
Zee, my dearest darling, you should have nothing more to do with him. I told you he would break your heart, didn’t I? As you said, he and the Duchess will be staying at the Palace when they’re in San Francisco, but he won’t be in town for long. You mustn’t even think of trying to see him, especially not in your condition—it’s far too dangerous. Before long I will be with you and then I can hold you in my arms again and comfort you. I so wish the child were mine, as you well know, and I am longing to see you again. Your loving Izzy
Quinn walked into the room, holding two glasses and the bottle of brandy. He took one look at my face. “What?”
“Pour first. Then read.”
After he poured our brandies, I handed him the letter. A moment later, he said, “It almost sounds like they were—” He set the letter down.
“Lovers?”
“Maybe.” He looked around the room as if searching for the nearest exit so he could bolt through it. “I mean, why else would Izzy wish the child were hers? Jesus, this is weird. Do you think Izzy was jealous of Zara’s relationship with Harding? Maybe Izzy wanted Zara for herself.”
“I don’t know. But the letter is so…” I searched for the right word. “Possessive.”
“Do you think Zara was having an affair with this Izzy? And Warren Harding? And she was married to Johnny.” When I didn’t answer, he said in a soft voice, “No wonder Johnny—” He stopped.
“Killed her?” I said.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I have no idea what happened.”
“Do you think Gino knows?”
He blew out a long breath, like air leaving a tire. “He knows something. That’s why he’s trying to keep a lid on this.”
I drank my brandy and let the fiery taste burn my throat. Then I picked up Izzy’s last letter and read it again. “I wonder who the Duchess is and what Palace in San Francisco Izzy’s talking about.”
“The Palace is a hotel downtown,” Quinn said. “It’s one of those old-world places, and it does remind you of a palace. It’s a few blocks up from the Embarcadero on Market Street. Been around since the late 1800s.” He set down his glass. “You know what? Warren Harding died there. The hotel’s got a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings about his death and Calvin Coolidge taking over as president. A friend of mine who worked there showed it to me once.”
He picked up his phone, thumbed it on, and started typing. After a moment, he said, “I knew it. Harding was on a West Coast trip after a visit to Alaska. It was the first time any president had visited that state. He got sick while he and Florence Harding—whose nickname was ‘the Duchess’—were staying at the Palace Hotel. He died quite unexpectedly.”
“When?”
“August 2, 1923.”
“Kit e-mailed me Zara’s obituary.” I reached for my phone and found it. I enlarged the screen and read. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“Zara died the next day. August 3, 1923. I wonder if she saw Harding when he was in San Francisco. Maybe Johnny found out and he was so furious, he … did something about it.”
“No.” Quinn sounded adamant. “She was about to have a baby. Maybe Harding’s baby. You think a woman in her condition would take off on her own, make the trip from Calistoga to San Francisco, especially back in those days, when it took a lot longer to travel?”
“Izzy could have gone with her.”
“Izzy didn’t want her to go, according to the letter.” Quinn reawakened his phone and started scrolling. “The story about Harding’s death is pretty murky. After he died, Florence Harding refused to allow an autopsy and there was talk that maybe she got so tired of her husband’s shenanigans that she might have poisoned him.”
“Good Lord. I didn’t know that.”
“It was disproved later, obviously. If the First Lady had murdered the president, every school kid who studied American history would remember something like that. But still, a lot of stuff was swept under the carpet. And it’s true Florence Harding refused to allow anyone near Warren after he died. She had him embalmed and then she burned loads and loads of his letters and papers after she got back to Washington.”
“Like Angelica did with Zara’s things,” I said. “I wonder if that was a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Quinn said. “I wonder if Gino knows about these letters.”
“I doubt it. I think he would have said something.”
“He wanted Angelica’s family photo album, remember? Maybe he thought he’d find something tucked away in there.” He slid the album over and picked it up, setting it between us on our laps. As in the album Mick had inherited from the Studebakers, the photos were labeled, but Angelica had also added the dates they were taken.
“These look like happy family pictures from the early days, after Johnny and Angelica were married.” Quinn turned pages quickly. “That’s Gino’s father and my grandmother.” He pointed to two dark-haired, chubby children who sat on their parents’ laps, serious expressions on their faces as they stared at the camera.
He started flipping faster. “These are all of the Tomassi clan after Zara was airbrushed out of the family. We won’t find anything about her here.”
He closed the album and started to set it back on the coffee table, but the pages, which were laced together by a slender silk cord, suddenly shifted and their weight caused them to fan out, as if they were going to tear. Quinn caught the album in time, but a newspaper clipping fell out and landed on the carpet. I picked it up and unfolded it.
It was the front page of the August 3, 1923, San Francisco Chronicle. The headline, of course, announced the death of President Warren Gamaliel Harding, the twenty-ninth president of the United States, who died of “a stroke of apoplexy” at 7:30 in the evening of August 2 in San Francisco, after traveling to Alaska and the western states on a “Voyage of Understanding.” The article went on to say that while the president had been unwell, no one had expected that he was so seriously ill; in fact, he had received visitors in the hotel’s eighth-floor Presidential Suite, where he was staying with Mrs. Harding.
Quinn drained the last of his brandy and set his glass on the table. “Maybe you were right and Zara was one of his visitors.”
“I’m afraid there’s more.” I reached for Mick’s album. “There’s something else I need to show you.”
He gave me a look, as if I’d just asked him what he wanted for his last meal before the execution.
“Zara was here. In Middleburg.” I slipped the studio pictures of Zara as a young woman out of the envelope and showed them to him. “You should see these first. They were with the letters in Angelica’s trunk. Zara, as she was.”
I waited until he had studied them before opening the album to the page with her sitting flirtatiously on Harding’s lap. “And here she is at a party at the Studebaker place in the 1920s.”
I heard his breath catch as he took stock of his great-grandfather’s first wife. He whistled softly and said, “Gino was right. She was a knockout.”
“I wonder if one of the other women in the picture is Izzy,” I said. “Too bad we don’t know anything about her, not even a last name. And none of her letters has a return address, just a Washington, D.C., postmark.”
“Yeah.” He seemed to be only half-listening. “Hey,” he said after a moment, “the woman in the back row, second from left.”
He had just zeroed in on Lucky. I stopped breathing as he looked more closely at her picture, then turned his head and stared at me.
“Her name is Lucy Montgomery,” I said before he could ask. “But everyone called her Lucky. She was Leland’s great-aunt, a real free spirit who lived all over the world, which is why he adored her. My mother used to say they were cut from the same bolt of cloth.”
“Your father’s great-aunt knew Zara. And Warren Harding.” He sounded like someone had just knocked the wind out of him. “And you could be her identical twin.”
He stared hard at me again, as though he were trying to imprint Lucky’s face over mine, see if there were any tiny differences between the two of us, or maybe this was some kind of crazy Photoshopped prank and it was really me after all.
“I recognized Lucky when I saw the album at Mick’s house yesterday. But I didn’t realize the woman on Harding’s lap was Zara until this morning, when I found the other pictures of her. Of course, she was younger then,” I said. “And you can’t say for sure Lucky and Zara knew each other just because they were at the same party.”
“Why not?”
“Because Warren Harding was probably the most famous guy there, and who wouldn’t want a photo op with him? ‘Look, Ma, me and the president.’ Just like today, except now it would be someone’s camera phone and a group selfie posted on the Internet two minutes later.”
“Maybe.”
“Lucky was visiting her family, my family, who lived next door to the Studebakers, so it would have been logical for her to be at that party. Who knows where Zara was staying, maybe with her family in Washington, maybe with Izzy. And we know where Warren Harding lived.”
“What are you getting at?” he asked.
“That neither of us knows if they were friends or just showed up together in a photo. I think the key to the puzzle is Izzy. Who was she?” I pointed to the picture. “Maybe she’s right here smiling at us. Maybe Gino knows who she is.”
“Maybe,” he said. “And believe me, he’s got plenty of explaining to do when I get hold of him.”
“You’re going to see him again?”
“You bet I am.” He tapped the letters. “Leverage. Now I’ve got some leverage over him.”
“Do you think he’ll tell you the truth?”
“He’d better not lie to me this time, or I’ll make him sorry he ever showed up here.”
That sounded like something Gino would have said, and now I wondered if there was more of the Tomassi side of the family in Quinn than he admitted. Because his threat sounded an awful lot like omertà.