“Apparently the Senator’s son hired a private detective some months ago to gather evidence that would allow the Senator to obtain a divorce in which he was, in the eyes of his constituents at least, clearly not at fault. By which I mean evidence of his wife having an affair. He came up empty—until you came on the scene.” Osborn’s voice took on a certain dryness as he said that last.
Tom grimaced. “Isn’t that some sort of invasion of privacy?”
“Probably.” Osborn inclined his head. “But does
that mean the pictures will get thrown out of court? Under the circumstances there’s no chance at all.”
“Just because we were having an affair doesn’t mean she killed him.” Tom moved to stand beside the other wing chair, his arm resting along its top, one hand in the front pocket of his trousers. He’d been sitting in the chair earlier, but was obviously too much on edge to stay still for long.
“You’re right,” Osborn said. “And that’s the tack we have to take. I don’t see any sense in denying that the affair took place—that would be pretty stupid in the face of the overwhelming evidence that it did. So we need to paint it as just that: an affair. A quick, meaningless fling that
has ended
, and was certainly nothing to kill over. So like I said, Tom, you stay away from her.” He swiveled to look at Ronnie. “Mrs. Honneker, I don’t want him within half a mile of you, you hear?”
Ronnie glanced at Tom. He met her gaze. Telling her not to see him was like telling her not to breathe; she thought she would die if she didn’t.
“For how long?” she asked Osborn quietly.
Osborn glared at her, then glared at Tom, then glared at her again. “Mrs. Honneker, I don’t think you fully appreciate the gravity of your situation. The crime they are considering charging you with is a capital offense: first-degree murder with aggravating circumstances. They are serious enough about the case against you to ask me to tell you not to leave the state. The prosecutor may very well—no, he most certainly will—ask for the
death penalty
if you should be so charged. In which case we will have to convince twelve jurors that you did not kill your husband. We are starting
a campaign right now with those jurors in mind. The motive the prosecutors will almost certainly assign to you is that you wanted both your lover—
and
your husband’s money. Given the pre-nup, there was no way for you to have both unless you killed your husband. Forgive me for saying so, but you must know that you are not exactly beloved by a lot of people in this state. In fact you have a certain—reputation. The revelation that you had an affair with Tom while you were married to the Senator will almost certainly have a negative impact on the jury. There’s no getting around that. The Senator is not yet in his grave. We certainly don’t want pictures of you with Tom here popping up all over the place. Jurors don’t come into trials as blank slates. They come in with all their foibles and prejudices intact. I don’t want them any more prejudiced against you than they have to be.”
There was a moment’s silence. Both men looked at Ronnie. She glanced from Osborn to Tom and back.
“I’ll stay away from her,” Tom said. He moved back to the window. “But she is going to need somebody who’s on her side with her at the funeral and so forth. At this point I wouldn’t leave her at the mercy of any friend or relative of the Senator’s any more than I would leave a canary in a roomful of cats.”
“I understand you dragged her out of Sedgely last night after she had already gone upstairs to bed.” Osborn’s voice was dry again. They were talking to each other now as if she weren’t even present, Ronnie thought. Surprisingly it didn’t bother her. From the beginning she had not felt like an integral part of the meeting. She just could not seem to fully process
the fact that Lewis was dead and that she was suspected of killing him.
“I didn’t feel like I had much choice,” Tom said. “Between Alex Smitt and his damned pictures and the family and friends who were coming and going, Sedgely just didn’t seem like a good place to leave her. Hell, I wouldn’t have put it past them to have hauled her out of bed to question her again. Or Marsden to go berserk and attack her. At this point I feel like anything’s possible with them where she’s concerned.”
“I see your point.” Osborn looked at Tom with some speculation.
“I took her to my mother’s,” he said abruptly in response to that look.
And, Ronnie reflected, Sally McGuire had been warmly welcoming, too, providing her with supper and a bath and bed without asking any questions—at least not of her; Ronnie had little doubt that Tom had filled his mother in after she had gone to bed.
“To your mother’s?
Sally’s?
” Osborn sounded faintly appalled. Ronnie got the impression that he knew Tom’s mother well.
“I knew it wasn’t a good idea for her to stay with me, and that was the only other place I felt comfortable leaving her,” Tom said. “In fact if she can’t leave the state, I think that’s where she ought to stay while this whole thing is going down. The press won’t find her there, and my mother will make sure she eats and so forth.” He glanced at Ronnie with a frown. “I don’t think she’s quite—hitting on all cylinders right at the moment.”
“Are you saying that you think I am out of it?” Ronnie asked him with a hint of heat.
He smiled at her. “Something like that. It’s the shock, I think. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m perfectly fine.”
“I’ll take her to the funeral myself, and to anything else connected with this that seems necessary,” Osborn said abruptly. Though he didn’t say it in so many words, his response told Ronnie that he agreed with Tom’s assessment.
Maybe they were right. Maybe she
was
suffering a little bit from shock, Ronnie thought. That would explain the weird, disconnected feeling that kept stealing over her.
She hadn’t loved Lewis, but he had been her husband. To find him like that … Ronnie shuddered, remembering.
Tom was watching her. There was a hint of suppressed violence in his voice as he said, “Dammit, Dan, I think we ought to hire our own investigators. The police want to solve this: Pinning it on Ronnie makes it easy for them. Why should they even bother to look elsewhere? But the fact is she didn’t kill him.
If he
was murdered—and I have to say, having known him and the family for a long time, I don’t think he committed suicide—there’s a murderer loose out there. Somebody needs to find out who it is.”
“I agree with you about hiring our own investigators,” Osborn said. “But you do realize, once they look beyond Mrs. Honneker, who the next most likely candidate to have murdered the Senator is, don’t you?” Osborn’s voice grew testy. “It’s
you
, Tom, for pretty much the same reasons they will ascribe to her. In fact if you hadn’t been in California at the time with fifty witnesses to prove it, I’m sure they’d be looking at you
every bit as hard as they’re looking at her. Of course they may still think you could have hired somebody to do it. Or they may be thinking you conspired with Mrs. Honneker. You need your own lawyer, Tom. I can’t represent both of you, since if it comes to a trial, we may have to put on alternate theories. And you are certainly a viable alternate theory.”
Tom stared at him. “J didn’t kill him.
She
didn’t kill him. Neither of us hired anybody to kill him, and we didn’t conspire.”
Osborn sighed. “I am just telling you what is going through the investigators’ minds.”
“What about a polygraph?” Tom asked. “If Ronnie took a polygraph and passed, wouldn’t that put her in the clear?”
“I do not advocate my clients’ taking lie detector tests.”
“So what do you suggest?” Tom’s question was impatient.
“I suggest that we sit tight,” Osborn said very precisely. “And nothing more, until we see which way the wind is going to blow. You never know, they may still rule it a suicide. Mrs. Honneker, you are not to talk to police, reporters,
anybody
without my being present, is that clear? Any questions that may be put to you, refer the questioner to your lawyer. Tom, I was very serious about you having your own representation. I suggest Brian Hughes.” He scribbled a number on a piece of paper and passed it to Tom. “Now, Mrs. Honneker, there is one point I want to clear up: You say you went for a walk after the driver dropped you off at Sedgely. That would be approximately ten thirty-five to—what? eleven or so?”
Ronnie nodded. “Approximately yes.”
“Then, when you went inside, you went directly to your husband’s office, is that correct?”
“Yes.” Ronnie tried not to remember what she had found there, but she couldn’t help it. Lewis’s head in a puddle of blood—she forced her mind back to the present.
“Was it customary for you to do that? Go to your husband’s office upon coming in from an engagement? Or otherwise seek him out?”
“No.”
“Then why, on this particular night, did you do so?”
“I had something I wanted to tell him.”
“And that was?”
With a quick glance at Tom before focusing on Osborn, Ronnie said, “I was going to tell him that I wanted a divorce.”
From the corner of her eye Ronnie saw Tom go very still.
“What brought you to such a conclusion at that precise moment in time?”
She sent a flickering smile winging toward Tom, who was looking at her with his heart in his eyes.
“Tom wasn’t willing for us to continue to see each other under the circumstances. The last time we met, he told me I had to choose: Lewis or him. That night I decided. I chose him.”
Osborn threw his pen in the air. “
There’s
the prosecution’s motive, all wrapped up in pretty paper and tied with a bow. Lord above, don’t tell that to anybody else. Might as well just sign a confession and have done with it.”
“Dan,” Tom said, “could you give us a minute? Please?”
Osborn looked from one to the other of them. “Goddamn it, Tom—all right. Five minutes. Not a second more. And after you leave this office, you’re not to see her again until this thing is
resolved
. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Tom said.
He looked at Ronnie. She looked back.
Osborn got up from his chair. “Five minutes,” he growled, and stomped from the room.
When he was gone, Tom came over and hunkered down in front of Ronnie’s chair. Taking her hand, he lifted it to his mouth, pressing his lips against the back. Ronnie smiled at him.
“You didn’t kill Lewis,” Tom said. It was a statement, not a question.
Ronnie shook her head.
“You had signed a prenuptial agreement that said you wouldn’t get any significant money in case of a divorce.”
Ronnie nodded.
“You were going to divorce him anyway.”
Ronnie nodded again. “For me.”
Ronnie smiled faintly. “I’d say that about sums it up.”
“Why?” His eyes were so intensely blue as they met hers that they would have put a sapphire to shame.
Reaching out, she ran a questing finger down the side of his face, then along the hard line of his jaw. His skin was smooth and very warm.
“Because I am in love with you.”
He stared at her without moving for a moment. His eyes blazed into hers. Then he was pulling her off the chair, down onto her knees on the floor in front of him, into his arms, and kissing her as if he meant to absorb her very soul.
Ronnie wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
There was a peremptory knock on the door.
Tom pulled his mouth from hers. He looked as dazed as she felt as he met her eyes, then glanced at the door.
“That wasn’t five minutes,” he said. “Dammit.”
They were both still kneeling when the door opened. Osborn walked in, raking them with a disapproving look as he closed the door.
“Your watch must run pretty fast,” Tom said, getting to his feet and pulling Ronnie up with him. His face was slightly flushed; his hand stayed around hers, warm and strong.
Osborn looked at Tom. If he noticed their joined hands, he ignored it. “You have a phone call. From your partner—Kenny Goodman, isn’t it? He says it’s urgent.”
Tom’s hand tightened around Ronnie’s for an instant before releasing it. She read worry in his face. From her own experience she knew that Kenny’s urgent phone calls weren’t likely to be good news.
“Can I take it in here?”
At Osborn’s nod Tom walked to the desk, picked up the receiver, and depressed a button.
Listening to Tom’s end of the conversation, Ronnie knew her instinct had been right: Kenny’s phone call was pure bad news.
“Thanks, Kenny. Bye.” Tom hung up, then looked at her for an instant before transferring his gaze to Osborn.
“The tabloids have got hold of those pictures I saw last night. The ones—hell, you know which ones. They’re going to hit the newsstands first thing tomorrow morning.” His mouth twisted. “So much for keeping pictures of Ronnie and me together out of the papers.”
Chapter
40
September 14th
B
Y THE FOUR P.M
. start of the funeral, the pictures were everywhere, even having made the front page of the venerable
Jackson Daily Journal
. Under the headline
SUICIDE OR HOMICIDE: IS WIFE’S AFFAIR KEY TO SENATOR’S DEATH
? there was a grainy shot of Ronnie kissing Tom in the parking lot of the Robbins Inn. An inside spread featured double pages filled with more—and more explicit—photographs.
The tabloids went all out. Headlines like
DID RONNIE DO IT
? and
SENATE SEX SCANDAL
accompanied pictures that were only saved from being pornographic by strategically placed black bars.
Ronnie would not have known the full extent of the coverage if reporters had not thrust the articles in her face asking for comments as soon as she appeared in front of Dan Osborn’s office, hanging on to his arm as she prepared to enter the limousine that would take them to the church. Her security detail pushed them back as they rushed her, but not before she was able to see enough to make her feel physically ill.