Blow Up

ContentsCoverAlso by Ellen CrosbyTitle PageCopyrightDedicationEpigraphPrologueChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-OneChapter Twenty-TwoChapter Twenty-ThreeAcknowledgments Also by Ellen CrosbyThe Wine Country mysteriesTHE MERLOT MURDERSTHE CHARDONNAY CHARADETHE BORDEAUX BETRAYALTHE RIESLING RETRIBUTIONTHE VIOGNIER VENDETTATHE SAUVIGNON SECRETTHE CHAMPAGNE CONSPIRACYTHE VINEYARD VICTIMSHARVEST OF SECRETSTHE ANGELS’ SHARETHE FRENCH PARADOX *BITTER ROOTS *The Sophie Medina mysteriesMULTIPLE EXPOSURE *GHOST IMAGE *Other titlesMOSCOW NIGHTS* available from Severn House BLOW UP Ellen Crosby This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2023by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2023by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.This eBook edition first published in 2023 by Severn House,an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.severnhouse.comCopyright © Ellen Crosby, 2023All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Ellen Crosby to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0803-3 (cased)ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0805-7 (trade paper)ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0804-0 (e-book)This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.This eBook produced byPalimpsest Book Production Limited,Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland To Donna Andrews, John Gilstrap, Alan Orloff, and Art Taylor – my critique group friends and fellow writers, affectionately known as the Rumpus Writers. Thanks for twelve amazing years – and counting – of meeting every month without fail during which we’ve collectively written fifty-three books (eighty-five, in total) and more than a hundred short stories, and won or been nominated for too many awards to count. ‘I am a kind of spy.’– Vivian Meier, American street photographer who worked as a nanny for many years in suburban Chicago. Meier took over 150,000 photographs of daily street life in Chicago and New York and traveled worldwide. Her unusual background and keen photographic eye caused her to become an international celebrity after her work was discovered by accident posthumously.‘I mean, it’s very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.’– Diane Arbus, American photographer whose photographs helped normalize marginalized groups and individuals. PROLOGUEI was standing on a hilltop surrounded by twenty-two Corinthian columns that had once graced the US Capitol when Quill Russell finally told me the truth about my husband’s death – or at least he told me part of the story. What I wasn’t going to hear – and this I knew – was a detailed account of what exactly did happen. Especially when Quill said Nick’s death could never be officially acknowledged because he had been working undercover for the CIA. Nick had left the Agency a few years ago, but something, some assignment, had lured him back one last time.It had been three agonizing weeks since Nick’s funeral. Quill and Vicki Russell had been there. Quill had seen the depth of my grief, my heartache, my numb disbelief. He also understood that I hadn’t bought the made-up story the American Embassy in Vienna had put together: that Nick had been killed by a hit-and-run driver as he was leaving a bar in the Austrian capital late at night.I knew Quill had picked this particular place to have our tough, unvarnished conversation partially for its panoramic view of the surrounding countryside but mostly because it was practically guaranteed that on a scorching August midweek afternoon no one else would be here.The Capitol columns are arranged like a ruined Greek temple with a tumbling waterfall that leads down to a reflecting pool in a peaceful twenty-acre garden known as the National Arboretum. It is among Washington, DC’s less well-known tourist attractions, but the Arboretum is a jewel. It is most popular in spring when anyone who knew just how breathtaking it would be made the pilgrimage through one of DC’s more blighted, rundown areas to visit it; first for the cherry blossoms and later when the azaleas were flowering. Same thing in autumn when the foliage was at its loveliest. But now, on this late-August day, Quill and I literally had the place to ourselves – the kids were already back in school, summer vacation was over, folks had returned to work. The weather, however, was still hotter than the inside of hell, one of DC’s notorious dog days when the hammering heat and withering humidity were so intense you worried that if you stayed outside too long, your insides would liquify.Right off the bat, Quill told me no one at the CIA could ever admit Nick had been working for them – again – and that was how it had to be. The account the American Embassy had concocted was the official – and only – version of what happened. No one had seen the car that struck him. He had been pronounced dead at the scene.‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘You know it, Quill. Someone at the Agency should at least tell me what really happened. You could tell me. I’m his wife.’‘I know, sweetheart, I know. But other