House of Secrets - v4 (12 page)

Senator Foster allowed the words to dissolve in their own sweet time. If he was a shade too theatrical in massaging the pause, so be it. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the knowing grin of the committee chairman.

“Mr. Sprague. I stand ready to apologize to the fortunate Miss Hammond for my characterization of her as a killer. I’m sure she is a lovely person, and she’s just doing her job. It was a harsh thing to say.” His eyes drifted to the gallery, then lowered again to the man at the table. “Perhaps, Mr. Sprague, you can show me how it’s done.”

The witness was confused. “I’m sorry, Senator. How what is done?”

“Apologizing, Mr. Sprague. Ross Foley’s widow and two of her three children are seated in the front row of the gallery. If you turn around, you can see them. Go ahead, sir. Have a look. They’re right there.”

Sprague knew he had no choice. Reluctantly, he twisted in his chair and peered up into the gallery.

Andy pulled the microphone closer. “Mrs. Foley. I don’t believe Mr. Sprague has any idea what you look like. Could you please help him out?”

A frail-looking black woman seated in the front of the gallery lifted her hand. She spoke some words, but they failed to travel down to the floor. A pair of preteens sat sullenly on either side of her.

Sprague turned back to the committee and waited for the senator from New York to complete the disemboweling. Andy Foster was only too happy to comply.

“If you’ll apologize to Mrs. Foley and her children for the unnecessary death of the late Mr. Foley, I will beg the forgiveness of your… your Benchmark Achiever of the Year, Miss Hammond. Do we have a deal, Mr. Sprague?”

B
ack in his office, Andy hung up his jacket and loosened his tie. Jim Fergus, the senator’s aide-de-camp, was already seated in his usual chair, fidgeting with a pencil. Grabbing a tissue from the box on his desk, Andy dabbed gingerly at the wound on his head. The stitches had come out that morning, and he had been warned of the possibility of slight oozing. The tissue came away dry.

Fergus asked, “Did you enjoy that? Beating up on the good Mr. Sprague?”

Andy moved behind his desk and dropped into his chair. “Did you?”

“If Frank Capra were alive, I’m sure
he
would have enjoyed it. Either that or started making plans to sue your ass.”

Andy laughed. “The man is holding a one-way ticket to hell, Jim. He is literally in the business of killing sick people. Under the guise of providing
insurance
. It’s seriously nuts. We’re in the realm of outright lunacy now. Ass over teakettle or whatever the hell the phrase is. Our clueless Mr. Sprague and the rest of his kind are steering a perverse course for this planet.”

Fergus gave a maybe-yes-maybe-no shrug. “Hey. Senator. The cameras are off. There’s no need to convince me. I say give the man a pair of cement boots and let’s move on.”

The office door opened and a young woman wearing a blue blazer and pleated skirt entered carrying a cup of coffee and a file folder. She brought them both to the senator’s desk, placing the cup down daintily. Andy cocked an eyebrow.

“What did you think, Lindsay? Did I beat up on poor Mr. Sprague too harshly?”

The intern blushed. “No, Senator. I mean, it’s like you said. It’s… To reward someone for refusing a person’s medical benefits…” She trailed off. Her slight Buffalo accent remained in the air.

“Well it
is
Miss Hammond’s job,” Andy said, sliding the coffee mug closer to him. “Correct? She was doing precisely what she was paid to do.”

The young woman looked uncertain. “But it’s… No. I mean, it’s not right.”

“But my browbeating. That’s what I’m asking. Was that right?”

Lindsay glanced at Jim Fergus, but he was no help. The intern attempted again to respond. “I don’t think you… you had to be… I mean. What he’s doing isn’t right. You… I don’t think
you
did anything wrong.”

Fergus could not hold back his laughter. “Let her go, Andy. For Christ’s sake, you’re browbeating your own intern on the topic of browbeating.”

Lindsay continued to blush. “I just finished, um, going over your Earth Day speech, Senator.” She set the file folder down on the desk. “It’s really something. It’s very inspiring, sir.”

“Thank you,” Andy said. “We’ll see how the greenies feel about it next week.”

Fergus made a point of clearing his throat. “Ah… Lindsay? The senator and I need to talk.”

“Oh. Of course. I’m sorry.” The intern beat a hasty retreat.

“Cute,” Fergus said as soon as the door had clicked closed.

Andy was wincing at the taste of the coffee. “Lindsay? Yes. Nice girl. I’m not really sure how much use she’s actually going to be around here.”

“She dresses the place up nicely.”

“I was talking about the scared rabbit part.”

“You’re intimidating, Mr. Senator.”

“Oh, come on. That girl could have landed in a lot more intimidating offices than this one.”

“It’s your animal charm.”

“I’m moved.”

“By the way, I heard she has the clap.”

“What!”
Andy nearly spilled his coffee.

Fergus was already laughing. “Good. That’s the correct reaction. I just want to be certain those animal paws of yours stay where they belong.”

Andy eyed him. “I think you’re impugning my fine character, fine friend.”

Fergus downshifted his levity. “Listen, it’s unofficially official, Andy, but you’re definitely on the short list. LaMott, Harrison, Bainbridge, and you. And I can tell you this, Harrison is not going to remain on the list for long.” Fergus made a drinking motion.

Andy asked, “Is that official?”

Fergus shook his head. “Nah. The whispering of the mice. But you can take it to the bank. Harrison’s out. That leaves three.”

“So let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You’re telling me to keep my hands off a nineteen-year-old child or else I won’t even be considered for vice president.”

Jim Fergus had known Andy long enough. “Don’t waste your righteousness on me, Senator. You know what my job is.”

“To be my mother?”

“If I didn’t happen to know that you adore your mother, I would take that as an insult. Yes. Fine. Mother says. Hyland’s people are going over all of you with an electron microscope. They blew it by not using one on Wyeth. They’re not going to make the same mistake again.”

“Chris might still be clean,” Andy said. “It wouldn’t be the first time a so-called scandal turned to dust.”

“Do you think he’s clean?”

Andy paused. The question had certainly been turning over and over in his mind ever since the faint whisperings had begun about Chris Wyeth’s possible miscues. He didn’t want to admit to the sense, however deeply planted, that the portrayal of young Chris Wyeth playing a little fast and loose was far too credible.

Jim Fergus did not care for his boss’s pause. “Andy, if you actually know something, for God’s sake… I don’t even care if you skip the veep thing. But do
not
get caught up in this. You have to tell Momma right now. You and Wyeth go way back. Will your name be popping up in connection with any of these allegations?”

“What do your whispering mice tell you?”

“Screw them. What do
you
tell me?”

Andy took a slow sip of coffee. What he hated about himself at that very instant was the image that had popped into his head. It had nothing to do with the topic at hand. It was an image of Lindsay the intern. She was again crossing the office on her baby-deer legs and exiting through the doorway. But this time she was completely naked.

“I’m clean, Jim,” Andy said to his aide. “When Chris Wyeth was AG, I was still chasing hillbilly girls down in old Virginny. I don’t know what the man was up to, if anything. You have my word, Chris has not said a thing to me on this whole topic since the news broke.”

“Fine. But I happen to know you haven’t seen him since the news broke. No one has. Except Hyland last night. Apparently he was holed up at the estate all week.”

“Well. True.”

Fergus detected an evasion. He knew how to read Andy’s face.
“Is
it true? This isn’t your mother talking here now. It’s Fergie. Of course there’s no harm if you’ve talked to Wyeth over the phone in the last few days. But the man is radioactive right now. Loyalty takes a backseat in matters like this, at least until the air has cleared. Chris Wyeth has been, if I can coin the term, bunglingly out of D.C. until just the other day. It’s very not good, his hiding out like that at his Hamptons manse and canceling his appearances. That bunker-mentality look is not one that too many pols wear well. Now, I know you two didn’t have your tennis game Tuesday. And I know that you were in Miami until Friday, then you and Christine went up to Whitney’s for Easter. And—”

Andy cut him off. “Jim. Should I submit to you my hour-by-hour diary?”

“Hey, I just want to know if you had any face-to-face with Wyeth. If you did, I wish you hadn’t. It simply wouldn’t look good right now. I just don’t want to be blindsided. That’s my job. To keep your handsome ass clean.”

“I haven’t seen Chris since last week.”

Fergus took a beat to assess his boss’s response. Normally, the senator was possessed of a pretty decent poker face, but not today. Fergus saw right through it. Something was wrong. He nodded grimly.

“That’s good,” he said. “Thank you.”

A
ndy sat at his desk with his chair spun toward the window. At the far end of the Mall, the Washington Monument softly pierced the darkening sky. The sun sat low on the horizon, just off to the right of the monument and some several billion miles away. Off to Andy’s left, an airliner was beginning its descent into Reagan National. A sliver of mercury growing ever larger.

Andy did not want his thoughts to go back to the increasingly surreal memory of what had taken place on Shelter Island. But there was really no choice. One week. Was that possible? Joy Resnick was now buried. That dreary rainy Monday. God at his maudlin best.

As best as he could determine, the police on Long Island were nowhere near sorting out what had happened in the hillside house that Thursday night. Andy was still keeping disciplined about not seeking information on the Internet. God only knew what sort of cookie-crumb trails such searching could leave behind and who was sitting in some nondescript building in that very city at that very instant trolling about for any such crumbs. That’s what the country was coming to.

Based on the various patterns of footprints in the wet grass outside the house where Joy Resnick had been murdered, the police were seeking two or three men. From what Andy did know, this much hadn’t changed. The matter of whether all three men or only one had been involved in the murder was still a matter of speculation. The physical evidence had made it clear that Joy had been engaged in sexual activity at some point in the hours before she was murdered. Whether or not the authorities were leaning toward an assumption of rape was something Andy had not discerned.

Naturally, the police were speaking with anyone who might have had an intimate involvement with the late Ms. Resnick.

Andy sipped a scotch as he tracked another plane sliding through the sky. Figuratively speaking, any one person should be in possession of only one Achilles’ heel, yet Andy seemed to have too many to even count. For one, his blood was on the scene. He’d done what he could before fleeing the house to mop up any of the blood that had oozed from his head wound, but he wasn’t fooling himself. He’d left some behind; he had no doubts about it.

And there was the matter of his DNA. He might as well have left a note behind, signed Senator Andrew P. Foster. Should speculation ever turn to actual suspicion, law enforcement had him by the genes. The blood evidence would be kid stuff.

Andy set the glass down on the windowsill and bobbed the melting ice chip with his finger. Particularly disconcerting was the Thursday afternoon flight he had taken from Miami to New York. Not only was his name firmly implanted in the airline’s computer system, but plenty of passengers had recognized him in both airports as well as on the flight itself. The pilot had even made a point of coming back to the cabin to introduce himself, and Andy had autographed a copy of his book for one of the other passengers.

What had he been thinking?

Andy plunged the ice chip down to the bottom of the glass and held it there. The most nagging thought, however, was the assailant himself. Joy’s killer. Whoever he was, he had had ample opportunity to look at the face of the man who had attempted so vainly to ward off his brutal attack. Had he looked? Andy had no idea. He thought possibly not, but there was just no way he could be certain.

A very large and very nasty shoe could well be suspended up there somewhere above his head, just waiting to drop. This was the possibility that Joy had been murdered
because
of whom she was sleeping with. Because of Andy himself. Had someone somehow gotten wind of his and Joy’s rendezvous and then targeted Joy for reasons that were yet to be revealed? Of the various thoughts that were plaguing Andy’s mind, this was the most sickening. This was the question that had Andy jumpy when his phones rang, or when he logged on to get his emails. Was the mental hell of this past week a piddling prelude to what was about to unfold?