"I thought you'd like to know your request triggered a recollection in my mind. So I ran a search last night after closing time and came up with something most interesting."
Heidi rubbed the cobwebs from her eyes. "I'm listening."
"There were no photographs on file of a treaty signing during nineteen fourteen," said Murphy. "I did find, however, an old shot of William Jennings Bryan, who was Wilson's secretary of state at the time; his undersecretary, Richard Essex; and Harvey Shields, identified in a caption only as a representative of His Majesty's government, entering a car."
"I fail to see a connection," said Heidi.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to mislead you. The photograph itself tells us very little. But on the back there is a small penciled notation in the lower left corner that is barely legible. It gives the date, May twentieth, nineteen fourteen, and says: "Bryan leaving White House with North American Treaty." Heidi clutched the phone. "So it really existed."
"My guess is it was only a prop
osed treaty." Murphy's pride at successfully meeting a challenge was obvious in his tone. "If you would like a copy of the photograph we must charge a small fee."
"Yes . . . yes, please. Could you also make an enlargement of the writing on the back?"
"No problem. You can pick up the prints anytime after three o'clock."
"That will be terrific. Thank you."
Heidi hung up the phone and lay back on the bed, happily basking in the feeling of accomplishment.
There was a connection after all. Then she remembered the flowers. A note was attached to one of the white roses.
You look ravishing out of uniform. Forgive me for not being near when you awoke.
Dirk
Heidi pressed the rose against her cheek and her lips parted in a lazy smile. The hours spent with Pitt returned as though observed through a pane of frosted glass, the sights and sounds fusing together in a dreamy sort of mist. He was like a phantom who had come and gone in a fantasy. Only the touch of their bodies lingered with clarity, that and a glowing soreness from within.
With reluctance she forced the reverie from her mind and picked up a Washington phone directory from the nightstand. Holding a long fingernail beneath a tiny printed number, she dialed and waited. On the third ring a voice answered.
"Department of State, can I help you?"
Shortly before two o'clock in the afternoon, John Essex pulled up his coat collar against a frigid north breeze and began to check the trays of his raft-culture grown mollusks. Essex's sophisticated farming operation, situated on Coles Point in Virginia, planted seed oysters, tending and cultivating them in ponds beside the Potomac River.
The old man was engrossed in taking a water sample when he heard his name called. A woman bundled in the blue overcoat of a naval officer stood on the pathway between the ponds, a pretty woman, if his seventy-five-year-old eyes were focusing properly. He packed his analysis kit and approached her slowly.
"Mr. Essex?" She smiled warmly. "I phoned earlier. My name is Heidi Milligan."
"You failed to mention your rank, Commander," he said, correctly identifying the insignia on her shoulder boards. Then his lips widened in a friendly smile. "I won't hold that against you. I'm an old friend of the navy. Would you like to come up to the house for a cup of tea?"
"Sounds marvelous," she replied. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."
"Nothing that can't wait for warmer weather. I should be indebted to you for most likely saving me from a case of pneumonia."
She turned up her nose at the odor that pervaded the air. "It smells like a fish market."
"Are you an oyster lover, Commander?"
"Of course. They form pearls, don't they?"
He laughed. "Spoken like a woman. A man would have praised their gastronomic qualities."
"Don't you mean their aphrodisiac qualities?"
"An undeserved myth."
She made a sour face. "I'm afraid I never developed a fondness for raw oysters."