The Prince of Spies Page 4

  “You had to risk your neck for it. How did you get up there?”

  In truth, it had been rather daunting, but her father had pulled strings to get her access, and he was with her the whole way. The dome was eighteen stories high, and she climbed a series of interior spiral and zigzag staircases to get most of the way up. Things didn’t get truly frightening until she climbed higher, where interior metal trusses supported the weight of the dome. It gave her a claustrophobic feeling, and the windowless space made her feel like she was in the hull of a ship, completely surrounded by trusses peppered with bolts the size of her forearm to hold up the concrete dome.

  She and her father crawled outside onto the narrow exterior workmen’s ledge so she could photograph the city from two hundred feet in the air. Stepping out into the bright sunlight had been awe-inspiring, but the wind tearing at her hair and clothing had been the biggest surprise. She’d gotten spectacular panoramic photographs of the city, as well as some close-ups of the embellishments on the Capitol dome.

  She described the process of getting onto the dome, and Luke seemed both fascinated and appalled that she had done such a thing.

  “My father was with me the whole time,” she said.

  “He actually permitted you to do such a foolhardy thing?”

  “My father has never stopped me from doing anything I truly wanted,” she replied. “Just the opposite. From the time I was a child, he taught me to dream big, and that if I wanted something badly enough, he’d let me fight for it. It didn’t matter that I was a girl. I’ve always known that he would be behind me the whole way.”

  “Your father sounds like a wise man.”

  She nodded. “I’m very lucky. Now, tell me which of the dome photos you think I should enlarge. I can only do four close-ups and five cityscapes.”

  Luke handed the stack back to her. “I’m not an artist. You pick.”

  She quickly selected the shots that showed the dome at its worst. An appropriations bill for restoring government buildings would be voted on soon, and the top of the dome wasn’t something officials could examine themselves.

  She attached a large piece of bromide paper to a frame on one end of the enlarging box, then slid the original negative into a smaller frame on the other side.

  “Now we need to darken the room, but I’m going to use the arc lamp to send a bright beam of light through the lens and then wait two minutes. The image will be imprinted on the larger piece of paper.”

  She pulled the drapes closed, plunging the room into darkness, then switched on the tungsten bulb to provide a dim amber glow in the room. The arc lamp at the small end of the enlarging box beamed through the negative, casting the image onto the bromide paper.

  “I feel like I should whisper,” Luke murmured in the darkness.

  “You don’t have to,” she whispered back. “All we have to do is hold still and not jostle the box. The chemicals are doing all the work.”

  She repeated the process to enlarge twelve additional pictures, then began the process of developing the photographs.

  “This is the stinky part,” she warned as she poured solution into the developing trays. She set the first page into the chemical bath, and Luke stood by her shoulder, watching as she gently tipped the tray to keep the liquid gently washing the paper. The images developed quickly, but if she didn’t lift them from the solution in time, they darkened to an unacceptable degree. After a minute, she lifted the paper out with tongs and set it in the stop bath to neutralize the chemicals. Ten seconds later, she set it in the final tray to fix the image. Then she clipped the photograph onto a clothesline to dry.

  After Luke watched the process a few times, he wanted to try. He caught on quickly, and soon she happily turned the task over to him. He was fun to watch as he went through the steps she’d taught him.

  “Do you like being a government photographer?” he asked as he clipped another photograph to the clothesline.

  “I love it. Developing the pictures is the most tedious part, but now that I’ve got you on the job, my life is just about perfect.”

  He smiled, but it vanished quickly. “I’ve heard some rumors about the photographers who work at your department.”

  She wondered about the note of concern in his voice. “That they’re going to give us the axe?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Maybe. All the photographers are compiling portfolios of our best work. The hope is that we can convince the department that a picture can tell an important story, but I’ll be fine no matter what happens. My father won’t let me starve.”

  Luke continued clipping up her photographs, and even in the dim light she could see the affection on his face. “If your father lets you down, let me know,” he said. “I like rescuing damsels in distress.”

  “I’m not a damsel in distress.”

  “Could you pretend? I’m actually just searching for an excuse to see you again. Do you think that’s something we can arrange?”

  “I hope so.” She’d never in her life been so attracted to a man, and she scrambled for an opportunity for them to be together. “My father has tickets to a performance at the Lafayette Square Opera House. He’ll let us use them if I ask nicely.”

  Luke let out a low whistle. “He must be well-connected. I tried and failed to get tickets.”

  “He’s a congressman. People tend to offer him things like that.”

  Luke swiveled to look at her. “Oh? Who is he?”

  “Clyde Magruder, representative from the fourth district in Maryland.”

  Luke blanched and swallowed hard. She smiled, because despite her father’s lofty title, he wasn’t an intimidating person.

  “Your father is Clyde Magruder?” he asked in an awful whisper.

  “Yes. Do you know him?” It could be the only reason for his strange behavior.

  “Did you know my last name is Delacroix?”

  It felt like her heart stopped beating. She blinked, hoping she had misunderstood. “As in Delacroix Global Spice?” she finally stammered. “Are you joking?”

  “I wish I was.”

  She felt like a sleepwalker as she wandered to the window. The Delacroixs were terrible people. They were arrogant, privileged snobs who looked down on hardworking people like her father and grandfather.

  “Your brother has said horrible things about my family,” she managed to say. “Unforgivable things.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Luke said.

  Not long enough for her to forget. She still remembered coming home from school one blustery autumn day, delighted that she’d finally passed her math class, only to see her mother’s tear-stained face as she held a magazine on her lap. Gray Delacroix thought nothing of slandering them in the press, and that interview in which he attacked their entire family caused her parents no end of pain. Her grandfather won a libel suit against him, and the Delacroixs had to pay a shocking settlement fee, but money couldn’t restore a tainted reputation.

  Her mother wasn’t the sort of person who could absorb a punch. Words could leave scars, and that was one her mother still carried.

  “Your brother said my grandfather had dirt beneath his fingernails,” she said in a pained voice. “That he wasn’t fit to be in the food industry.”

  “That was my brother, not me.”

  She placed a hand over her heart, willing it to stop racing. She couldn’t blame Luke for something his brother had said. After all, it was years ago, and Luke was too young to have been involved in that nasty lawsuit. He was a good man. He risked his life to save Bandit. They held hands and laughed on the ice, even though they’d both been afraid. The Delacroixs had been trying to drive her family out of business for decades, but surely that was other people in his family, not Luke.

  She risked a glance at him. “You don’t believe all those terrible things your brother said about us, do you?”

  She wanted an immediate denial, but the sadness and regret on his face was all the answer she needed. He did believe those things. They were enemies.

  “Marianne, I’m so sorry,” he said. “You seem like a great person, but there’s too much bad blood here. We probably shouldn’t see each other again.”

  “You’re probably right,” she admitted. Any sort of liaison between them would be too difficult, but that didn’t stop the wanting. “I only wish we could have had another day or two before we found out.”

  “Maybe a week,” Luke agreed.

  “A month?”

  “How about a year?”

  She had to laugh at how easily he bantered with her. He was fun, but seeing him would be like throwing a bomb into her family’s home. It wasn’t worth it. At least now she understood why her father got so annoyed when he saw her picture of Luke with the dog. He’d known who Luke was and suggested she have nothing more to do with him. Blood was thicker than water. Even ice water, she thought inanely.

  At the door, Luke turned to her with an impish smile and wagged his finger in her face. “No more crawling on the Capitol dome, young lady.”

  “Too dangerous?”

  “Too dangerous,” he affirmed.

  “It probably was,” she admitted. “Good luck with the Don Quixote translation. I’ll look forward to it.”

  He winked at her. “It will be the best.”

  Then the amusement in his face turned into reluctant admiration as he glanced back at the photographs hanging on the clothesline. “No matter what else happens, I think your pictures are wonderful. And so are you.”

  He closed the door behind him, and Marianne felt like she’d just lost a good friend.

  Luke was still mulling over his bad luck as he rode the streetcar back to the Alexandria neighborhood where he’d been born and raised.

  Marianne Magruder.
Magruder. Luke had plenty of friends, thousands of acquaintances, a handful of rivals, but only one real enemy in the world, and his name was Clyde Magruder.

  Luke wouldn’t let an inconvenient attraction stand in the way of a lifelong grudge. No matter how much he admired Marianne, he intended to get Clyde kicked out of Congress.

  He walked the last few blocks to the three-story colonial town house he shared with Gray and his wife. He was inexplicably tired as he mounted the steps and prepared to unlock the front door, but then paused.

  Arguing voices could be heard inside. He cocked his ear closer to listen, for it was clearly Gray’s voice berating Annabelle over something, and that was odd. Gray worshipped the ground Annabelle walked on, and they were still newlyweds. Luke didn’t want to walk into an embarrassing quarrel, but he still couldn’t tell the nature of their disagreement.

  It sounded like they were arguing about Annabelle’s job. She’d been working as a lab assistant at the Department of Agriculture for over a year, and she loved the work, but they were clearly squabbling about it. Annabelle said she liked her supervisor and didn’t want to quit.

  Then Gray said something too low to hear, and they both started laughing. It was freezing out here, and since it didn’t sound like a horrible lovers’ quarrel, Luke inserted his key in the lock and let himself inside. Gray and Annabelle were in the kitchen down the hall, and he stamped the snow from his feet to let them know he was there.

  “Luke!” Annabelle said warmly. “Come into the kitchen. I’ve made lamb stew for lunch. You’re the perfect person to help me talk sense into Gray.”

  Luke loved the sound of her voice. Everything about Annabelle was cheerful and optimistic, but as usual, Gray looked brooding and annoyed. The scent of simmering meat was too tempting to resist, and he helped himself to a bowl before joining them at the small kitchen table.

  “There’s a new initiative in the chemistry division at the Department of Agriculture,” Annabelle said. “They’re finally getting serious about proving the detrimental effect of chemical preservatives on human health and are launching a controlled scientific study to document the consequences.”

  “Excellent!” Luke said, wolfing another mouthful of stew. “Long past due, if you ask me.”

  Annabelle worked in the cereal grass laboratory, but lately she had been spending a few hours per week at the lab that tested some of the worst of the preservatives being pumped into the nation’s milk and meat supply. Borax, benzoate, and formaldehyde were supposed to extend the shelf life of dairy and meat, but none of them had ever been proven safe. There were no laws against the sale of adulterated food, and cost-cutting methods were shockingly creative. Butter was often only beef tallow steeped in yellow food dye. Chalk powder was used to disguise milk diluted with water. Children’s candy was colored with lead dyes.

  And sometimes coffee was adulterated with chicory and chemical flavorings, leading to three dead people in Philadelphia.

  He looked at Gray. “What’s your problem with the study? We ought to be dancing in the streets now that someone is finally doing something about this.”

  Gray’s face was somber. “They’re planning to use human test subjects,” he said quietly.

  Luke glanced at Annabelle. “True?”

  “True,” she confirmed. “But Dr. Wiley will be overseeing the experiment, and surely he wouldn’t do anything to harm the volunteers. He’s a medical doctor, after all.”

  “He’ll be feeding people borax!” Gray said. “Formaldehyde. How does one safely consume formaldehyde?”

  It looked like he wanted to say more, but Luke interrupted him. “Who will the test subjects be?”

  “We’ll be looking for twelve healthy young men,” Annabelle said. “They’ll get free room and board in exchange for participation.”

  Luke sagged back in his chair, a world of possibility opening up. For five years he’d been tormented by his role in the death of those people in Philadelphia. This could be his chance to repay his debt. His chance to strike a blow at the Magruders and any other food producer who pumped chemicals into their food. If he served as a test subject, he could cover the story as a journalist from the inside, and it would make news around the world.

  “Where do I sign up?” he asked. He was suddenly on his feet.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake!” Gray roared. “Sit back down. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “I’m going to sign up,” he repeated, looking at Annabelle, who seemed as stunned as Gray. “Tell me where I go to volunteer.”

  “Luke, I don’t think you’re healthy enough to volunteer,” she said.

  “You’re sick and underweight and not thinking with a clear head,” Gray said.

  Luke took his bowl to the stove, adding two more heaping scoops of meaty stew. “I won’t be underweight for long.”

  A new field of combat in his war against the Magruders had just opened, and he was going to be on the front lines.

  Four

  Vera Magruder was sobbing as she dragged a trunk out of the storage closet and toward her bedroom.

  “Mama, please,” Marianne urged. “Please put the trunk back. Papa will be home soon and will be able to explain everything.”

  At least she hoped he would. Clyde had been in Baltimore to meet with his constituents and was supposed to have returned last night, and Vera suspected the worst.

  Her mother opened the lid of the trunk to throw a handful of Clyde’s shirts inside. “He’s with that woman,” she wept. “I called home twice last night and the butler had no explanation for where he was. He’s with her! Her and that child.”

  “Shh,” Marianne said. “Sam might overhear.” Her nephew was visiting them again, and he was too young to learn about Clyde’s infidelities.

  It was impossible to know why Clyde had overstayed his visit to Baltimore, but it might well have been to see his young son, who was now eighteen months old. Clyde refused to cut ties with the boy’s mother because of the child they shared. He swore the affair was over, but he set Lottie O’Grady up in her own house and paid monthly support for her and the baby.

  Vera normally insisted on accompanying Clyde whenever business called him to Baltimore, but she had been feeling poorly last Friday, and Clyde swore on a stack of Bibles that he would behave himself. His failure to return last night awakened all of Vera’s fears.

  Vera threw some trousers atop the shirts, then dumped Clyde’s shoes into the trunk. “I won’t raise another illegitimate child. I won’t! I shouldn’t have agreed to it the first time.”

  Marianne looked away. She loved her mother, but sometimes Vera could be so thoughtless, and it hurt. Vera noticed and immediately switched tones.

  “Not that I regret it, darling! Come, give Mama a nice big hug.” She dragged Marianne into her arms. “You know I don’t mean anything by it. I love you like one of my own.”

  Marianne had always known Vera adopted her. As a child she had been told that her real mother died, but that wasn’t true. Her real mother had an affair with Clyde and had been paid handsomely to surrender the baby to the Magruders. Clyde wanted more children, but the doctor warned that Vera could never carry another baby after the trauma of her only son’s birth. Clyde never asked Vera if she would accept another child, he simply presented his wife with the three-month-old baby from his short-lived affair with an opera singer. Although Clyde doted on her, there was always a hint of tension where Vera was concerned. They could go months in loving harmony, but then something could trigger Vera’s insecurities, and the coldness returned.

  And that “something” had reared its head eighteen months ago when Clyde was caught in another affair. This time there was a little boy named Tommy as a result. At first Clyde tried to hide Tommy’s existence from Vera, but she found out, and their entire family had been walking on eggshells ever since.

  “Don’t frown, Marianne, it will make those grooves on your face permanent,” Vera coaxed. “Smile! There’s my pretty girl. A lady must always pay careful attention to her complexion.” As if taking her own advice, Vera blotted away her tears and reached for a box of powder to begin repairing her face.

  “Shall I hang Papa’s clothes back in the wardrobe?” Marianne asked. The bedroom looked like a bomb had exploded, with drawers hanging open and clothing mounded atop the open trunk.