Death of a Political Plant (33 page)

“Oh,” he remonstrated, “it wasn’t that much.”

They heard a commotion in the other rooms. Gil lurched back, as Louise sprang up and ran to the living room. It was Bill and Janie, with Chris behind them, his hands full of luggage—

Her husband was appalled when he saw her, holding her at arm’s length so he could see her bandaged face. “Who did this to you?” he demanded in a shaking voice. “That man on the floor?”

“Ma!” cried Janie, and came over and gently hugged her. The girl looked different, older. “And to think I was gone when you needed me. Who is that weirdo?” And her curiosity took her over to where French was being unwrapped.

“Just hold me a minute,” Louise said to Bill, and fell silently into her husband’s arms, resting her uninjured cheek against his chest for a long moment. Then, she said, “I’m all right, really I am. Where should I start? So much has happened since you left.”

“At least give me the highlights,” insisted Bill, as he gently brushed her hair away from the injured cheek.

“It all started when Jay was killed two days ago, and someone stole his computer.”

“My God, how did he die?”

“I found him, at the bottom of the Mougeys’ fishpond, with his head bashed in…”

“Aw, Louise, you poor thing.” He gently stroked her hair. “Do they know … who killed him?”

“We think it’s his ex-wife, Lannie.”

“Louise, you should have called me.”

“I thought you’d know soon enough. I found some evidence in our toolshed. That explains all Jay’s nocturnal wanderings. And I also happened to find his computer disks—found one, rather, and had the second one given to me by his daughter, Melissa. And by the way, Bill, we have to take Melissa under our wing; she’ll need us.”

He shook his head in disbelief and looked down at her with his probing blue eyes. “How could you get involved so fast in a thing like this?”

“It was just by chance. I ran into Lannie yesterday, and I guess she became suspicious that I might have the disks. And then, of course, I had lunch with Tom Paschen in the Capitol—”

“Is he still bugging you to put on that program?”

She smiled. “Tom’s like a dog with a bone. At that lunch, I got a lead on what Jay was doing here in town. I called Congressman Goodrich’s headquarters to check it out. Bill, they definitely are in on this, because that man over there is one of them—it’s Ted French.”

“What?” cried Bill, and jerked his head around to look at the man on the other end of the room, who was now handcuffed and preparing to get up with the aid of a patrolman. “
Sonofabitch
—French!”

She held him a little tighter, not wanting him to go. “Bill, he isn’t the brains behind this. Somewhere along the line Lannie Gordon decided I must have the evidence. She got French to help her. He sneaked in here tonight and tried to strong-arm the information out of me. Then my plant friends came along and rescued me.”

“That bastard dared to lay a hand on you,” growled Bill, staring at her cheek. “Look at those bruises, and what the
hell’s under that bandage? We’ll see about that. I’m talkin’ to Geraghty.” He pulled himself away from Louise and stalked over to the detective, who took one look at Bill and quickly stationed himself in front of the prisoner.

Janie was huddled, talking to Chris. Now she came over to her mother. “Gee, Ma, maybe I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Done what?”

Her dark-lashed blue eyes were filled with guilt. “I didn’t know it was going to be so squirrelly around here, or I wouldn’t have invited them.”

“Invited them?”

Janie nodded vigorously, and Louise noticed for the first time that the front of her long blond hair was braided into cornrows. Louise reached out and touched them, and though liking the cornrows, missed the soft, smooth feel of her daughter’s hair.

“I could cancel,” continued Janie. “They’re not here yet.”

“Cancel who?”

“My buddies,” she said. “I invited a few of them to come and stay for a long weekend. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

Before Louise could stop herself, she said, “What’s a few more houseguests? It’ll be fun. You’ll have to double up, though; we have another girl coming to stay.”

Her daughter turned to the elated Chris, gave him a high five, and exclaimed, “Right on!” and they turned to go off together, but Janie suddenly whirled and returned and gave her mother another hug. “Thanks, Ma.”

Louise watched the young people skirt around the police and go out somewhere, and she hoped not to Chris’s house, empty of parents. More houseguests, and young ones, who liked grunge and rock and heaven knew what other kind of
music. But how could she scorn houseguests? Where would she be right now had it not been for her guests, who felt compelled to stop in to say good-bye?

Geraghty apparently was giving Bill more details. She took the opportunity to go and find Gil Whitson. Leaning over his chair, she murmured, “You were great tonight, Gil.”

He basked in the praise. She said, “I want to ask you another enormous favor.”

“Anything, Louise,” he said.

“Mary Mougey’s koi: I’m just a little worried about them. They’re not as frisky as they were a week ago, you know, before they ate those fast-food snacks, and before Jay … ended up in the pond.”

“Hmm,” said Gil, frowning, “and you want me to go over and take a look.”

“Would you?”

“I’d be happy to; it could be the filtration system needs looking at. And on the way, I’ll neaten up those perennial plants scattered all over on the front porch. I’ll stick them back in their pots so they’ll be all right until you have a chance to get them in the ground.” He reached up and took her hand. “Louise, I’ve always felt guilty about McCormick.”

“Why? Just because you had a fight with him?”

He looked up at her with his catlike eyes. “It was a real fight. I popped him one, Louise, more or less in the nose. But I didn’t kill him, because he was laughing his head off when I left, honest. I was just too scared to say anything after I heard he was dead: I was afraid maybe he had a delayed reaction and fell into the pool.”

She
squeezed
his hand. “Jay died from wounds to the back of his head, And he probably deserved a pop in the nose. Poor man. He just didn’t deserve to die.”

When her husband came back to her side, she told him more about Jay’s story of the Goodrich campaign’s dirty tricks and Lannie Gordon’s role in huge illegal campaign contributions. “I’m-sure, from the way she acts, that she was tie one who killed Jay, though they may not ever prove it. She had more than one motive.”

“You mean, she lost major custody rights to Melissa,” said Bill. “You’d think a mature person could handle that.”

“Maybe she could have. But this story of Jay’s would have totally ruined her, Bill—wait until you read it. Lannie tipped the Goodrich campaign people to the neighborhood where Jay was living, I’m sure of that—because they sent a big thug to our house the day before Jay got killed.”

“My God, Louise—” cried Bill.

“It’s all right—I chased him off.” She would tell him details about that later, if ever. “Ted French insists that he didn’t kill anyone, just came here to try and get back the information that leaked out.”

Then she remembered something Melissa had said about how her mother started locking her bedroom against her daughter. “I have a feeling that when the police search Lannie’s house, they’ll find Jay’s computer stashed away among Lannie’s fancy clothes.”

“Louise,” said her husband, “you’ve saved the President’s chances for reelection, do you realize that? Tom Paschen’s going to be one happy man.”

“I think he will be.” She looked over at Geraghty. “But right now I have to go get some things for the police. Want to come with me?”

“My dear, I wouldn’t think of leaving you on your own.”

They went out to the toolshed and Louise took out her favorite English shovel. She grinned at Bill. “This one was
considered too lightweight for my plant friends to use as one of their weapons, you’ll notice, but it’s perfect for me.” They went to the patio garden. “I feel a little like Whittaker Chambers,” she said, as she stepped carefully among the plants.

“He hid his secret documents inside a pumpkin.” said Bill. “Where are yours?”

“Oh, scattered about.” With the shovel, she made one sharp thrust at the base of a pink nicotiana plant. Neatly, the robust annual popped out of the earth like the fat lid of a pot, only soggier. Underneath was a big, muddy plastic bag. She raised it up jubilantly. It contained the folder with the memos. “That’s the first one, the memos. Actually, they don’t prove anything.”

She carefully replaced the plant in the damp earth, then moved deeper into the garden and scooped up a wet clump of purple coneflowers. Resting underneath was a small double plastic bag, which she pulled out and offered to her husband. “A little dirty, but this is it: Jay’s story. And now one more.” On the far edge of the garden was a meadow rue. She prodded it up and reached underneath to extract another plastic package containing a disk.

“Just insurance, huh, burying this stuff in separate graves?”

“Yes, in case someone tried to torture it out of me, I thought separate hiding places would be good. I would hardly give up all three.”

Geraghty had apparently noticed their absence. He trailed out to the patio after them. With a huge smile lighting her face, Louise clambered out of her garden and handed him the packages. “Here, Detective Geraghty. And don’t say I never did anything for you.”

The detective turned to Bill. He raised an eyebrow and inclined his head toward Louise.

“Sure, if it’s okay with her.” said Bill.

Geraghty gave her a big hug.

“Our first guest tonight is Charles Hurd II, who helped uncover one of the biggest scandals in the history of presidential campaigns. The search for this story led to the tragic murder of his colleague, Jay McCormick” Channel Five newsman Jack Lederle was beginning his lead story on the evening news, his smooth face masking the frustration he felt at not getting two key parts of the story.

“We regret we were unable to have with us tonight Albert Kirkland, editor of the Sacramento Union, the paper that broke this dramatic story. We hope to be able to talk to Mr. Kirkland tomorrow night.”

First, the newsman recapped the sensational charges about presidential candidate Lloyd Goodrich’s campaign that immediately deflated his high poll numbers. How the Justice Department was preparing charges against top members of his staff, if not the congressman himself. How Jay McCormick’s former wife, Lannie Gordon, a tobacco industry spokesperson also implicated in the scandal, faced both murder charges for killing McCormick, and charges for illegally funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars from a charitable, tax-deductible foundation into the Goodrich campaign. How she was also implicated, along with Goodrich aide Ted French, in the assault with intent to do great bodily harm to WTBA-TV’s garden show host, Louise Eldridge.

Lederle didn’t go into further detail as to how Eldridge figured in the affair, for, much to his annoyance—and even
with the woman on their own Channel Five staff!—that tale was too tangled to be cleared up before air time.

“Now, Mr. Hurd.” and Lederle turned his shoulders to gaze at the young man seated across from him. Hurd, in the newsman’s opinion, was a bit of a PONSI, with his blond, blown-dried hair, Brooks Brothers summer suit, and self-important manner. Truly, a Person Of No Significant Influence. Though Hurd couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, his expression was prematurely grave, as if he thought God had endowed him with an enormous intellect, and the world should pay attention.

“This story has a strange genesis,” said Lederle. “Tell us how it developed. Your name, for instance, is there as contributor to this story, underneath the late Mr. McCormick’s byline. Mr. McCormick came from California months ago, expressly to infiltrate the Goodrich campaign, did he not? And when did you meet him? What was your role—leg man? Researcher?”

“Oh, more than that. But let’s be clear on this: I give Jay McCormick full credit for the idea. He saw these men in action out in California during the fall Senatorial campaign…”

“Now, of which men do you speak? The ones mentioned in yesterday’s
Sacramento Union
story?”

“Yes. Franklin Rawlings, Willie Upchurch, Ted French—that whole crew of political operatives. When he learned they would orchestrate Goodrich’s political campaign, he left a ten-year speechwriting career and jumped back into investigative journalism”—his gaze dropped modestly to the interview table—“which of course I’ve been engaged in exclusively for several years at the
Arlington Herald.
”

“So he came here to Washington…” coaxed Lederle, trying to get the young reporter back on track.

“Yes. That’s when we teamed up. I did the leg work, traveling to many states—thirteen, in fact, including California—to turn up the facts of the case. I dictated my stuff back to Jay on a daily basis.”

“But wait, Mr. Hurd, surely Mr. McCormick also was turning up the facts of the case. We’re talking about a political plant here, aren’t we? Wasn’t jay McCormick clever enough to infiltrate Goodrich’s campaign, without even breaking any laws?” The news anchor gave a polite chuckle. “These days, that’s really accomplishing something.”

“Well, yes,” said Hurd, wiggling uncomfortably in his chair. “And Jay turned up some good stuff—which, after consulting with me, we were able to follow up on. Lannie Gordon’s setting up of a 501 (C) (3) charitable non-profit foundation, for instance, that funneled huge amounts of money to Congressman Goodrich.”

“I understood Mr. McCormick is the one who picked that information up straight out of the downtown Goodrich campaign headquarters.”

Hurd put up a hand. “Mr. Lederle, you have to understand how this worked. None of this was handed to us on a silver platter; there was no convenient leak like ‘Deep Throat,’ as there was in Watergate. We had to scramble for every fact—to work very covertly and very hard. I did the follow-up of every one of his leads. And then when he got made…”

Lederle raised a worldly-wise eyebrow. “That’s an odd way to put it isn’t it? He wasn’t a criminal, now, was he?”