Murder on the Potomac Read Free

of anyone better to teach you than Hazel,” Tierney said.
    Pauline Juris chuckled softly and said, “Better that Hazel teach you than Wendell, Annabel. He’s a brilliant businessman, but his own checkbook will never qualify as a model.”
    Tierney laughed loudly. “She should know,” he said. “Pauline’s been balancing my checkbook for years.” He surveyed the faces at the table. “Well, shall we adjourn?”
    While the board members stood and chatted, Annabel went to where she’d draped her raincoat on a chair in the corner. She paused before picking it up as a hushed conversation between Tierney and Pauline Juris reached her ears: “I’m pretty goddamn fed up with Seymour’s temperamental outbursts and disregard for budget,” Tierney said. “Straighten him out when you see him tonight.” Annabel slipped into her coat and headed for the door. Suddenly, Tierney was at her side. “I’ll walk you to your car,” he said. “A hell of a building, but not the best neighborhood.”
    They descended to the first floor over a wide, redbrick staircase grooved by a century of shoes and stepped into the Great Hall, the scene of inaugural balls dating back to 1885 and Grover Cleveland. Harrison, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Taft had also feted their elections there. Woodrow Wilson chose not to have a ball in 1913, and it wasn’t until after World War II that such gala events again lit up Washington’s social calendar. One of Richard Nixon’s three 1968 balls was held in the National Building Museum. Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton had also used it as a setting to celebrate their elevation by voters to the White House.
    The building’s architect and chief engineer, Montgomery C. Meigs, quartermaster of the army, had been mandated in 1881 to find a suitable site and to design a fireproof building for a centralized Pension Bureau. Originally created in 1792 to serve disabled veterans and dependents of the Revolutionary War, the Pension Bureau had facilities scattered all over Washington and had become overwhelmed as the War of 1812 and the Mexican and Civil wars created new generations of needy veterans. Meigs’s budget was not to exceed $300,000.
    After researching Renaissance architecture around the world, including the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli of Rome and the Temple of Jupiter at Baalbeck (Meigs was determined that
his
columns would be larger than those at Baalbeck) and Palazzo Farnese of Rome, whose basic design would be his inspiration, he submitted his plans. Ground was broken in 1882, construction completed in 1887. The central section of the Great Hall was the largest of three courts separated bytwo screens of four huge Corinthian columns, each constructed of seventy thousand bricks and rising seventy-five feet into the air, their bases eight feet in diameter. It was the largest brick building in the world—more than fifteen million of them at a cost to the taxpayers of $886,614.04, testimony to the fact that government cost overruns are not a contemporary phenomenon.
    The huge hall now was in virtual darkness as they walked together, talking. Small perimeter lights dimmed to conserve electricity provided only faint, ethereal illumination. Annabel leaned against the hall’s central fountain and looked up to the gabled roof, 160 feet above. One of the many swallows that were the bane of the building’s management flew over her head, soared upward, and disappeared into the center bay’s cornice.
    “This has to be the most unusual building in Washington,” she said.
    “No argument from me,” said Tierney.
    “I’m just beginning to learn about it,” Annabel said. “I suppose being on the board will hasten the process.”
    “Heard all the ghost stories? Heard about the canaries?”
    Annabel laughed. “Ghost stories? Yes. Canaries? No.”
    “When Cleveland held his inaugural ball here, the roof wasn’t completed, so they draped the hall with a tarp. Then they released a cage