“W
E’VE GOT THEM.”
Alex Smitt was grinning as he walked into the commissary, where Tom and Kenny were drinking coffee. Or at least Kenny was drinking it. Tom had a cup in front of him, but he hadn’t taken so much as a sip. Dan was still closeted upstairs with the chief.
Tom jumped to his feet at Alex’s entrance. “What do you mean, you’ve got them?”
“A patrol car picked up your lady and the other woman hitchhiking on Route Five forty-eight in Claiborne County. Apparently they’ve been in quite a battle. Our boy says they beat some guy to death with a tire iron.”
“
What?
” Tom and Kenny both spoke in unison.
“And you thought she wasn’t violent.” Still grinning, Alex shook his head at Tom.
“Is she all right?”
“Seems to be. Apparently those ladies put up quite a fight. That guy they killed—he’s a professional. A real bad-ass. And I have to tell you, the other woman is
telling some real interesting tale about a bunch of murders connected to Senator Honneker and his boat. So maybe your lady isn’t the killer after all. We’ll hold off on arresting her while we check things out.”
“Where are you going?” Tom demanded. Alex was headed out the door.
“To see your lady in Claiborne County. We’ll be bringing her back here by and by, so wait around.”
“Like hell,” Tom said, following him.
Alex gave him a narrow-eyed look over his shoulder. “I said, wait here.”
“You putting me under arrest?”
“No.”
“Then I’m going with you. Or I can follow in my own car. It’s up to you. But I’m going.”
Chapter
55
September 20th
4:30 P.M.
A
S IT ENDED UP
, there was quite a cavalcade of cars headed into Claiborne County. Tom and Kenny rode with Alex Smitt. Dan rode with the police chief. Half a dozen patrol cars followed. Behind them came the media. How they had found out was anybody’s guess, but they had.
When they reached the lake—a large, private lake that was used primarily by fishermen—and got out, the first thing they saw was the white roof of a car floating in the muddy brown water.
Kenny took one look and groaned.
“My car,” he said piteously, and walked toward the edge of the water to stand looking at it.
Tom meanwhile focused on finding Ronnie. Even as the media vehicles were pulling up, he spotted her standing beside a narrow gravel road that led to a wooden dock. She was standing with a pair of state boys and another woman.
As soon as Tom located her, he headed toward her. Alex was right beside him. Dan, having just climbed out of Chief Kern’s car, was right behind him.
Ronnie’s hair framed her face in a wet red tangle. Mud streaked one cheek. Her black suit was wet and smeared with mud; its skirt was torn halfway up one thigh. She was bare-legged and barefoot.
When she saw him coming, her face lit up as if a light bulb had just been turned on beneath it. The sheer megawattage of her smile was enough to power the entire state.
“She is sure one gorgeous lady,” Alex muttered beside him, shaking his head.
Tom paid no attention. He was almost running now, and Ronnie was running toward him. When she reached him, she threw herself into his arms. They closed around her.
Tom finally let out the breath he’d been holding all day. She was home, and safe.
Chapter
56
September 21st
7:00
P.M
.
POPE
M
ARLA LET GO OF JERRY’S HAND
and stood up. He’d fallen asleep a few minutes before. He was weak—taking a bullet to the head had a tendency to do that to a man—but the doctors assured her that he would recover.
“Is he asleep, Mom?” Marla smiled at Lissy. She had insisted on coming to the hospital and, once there, had fussed over Jerry almost more than Marla had. And Jerry had been glad to see her too. It was almost as if they were a family, the three of them.
Maybe soon they would be.
The phone beside the hospital bed rang. Marla picked it up quickly, before it could wake Jerry.
“Hello?” she said.
“Marla?” There wasn’t any need for the caller to identify herself. After yesterday those
la-di-dah
accents were imprinted on her brain. But Mrs. Second Wife had turned out to be quite a surprise. She might sound like she ate caviar from a silver spoon three times a day, but when the chips had been down, she’d come through.
“Hi, Ronnie,” Marla said.
“How’s your boyfriend doing?”
Marla smiled down at the pudgy, balding man asleep in the bed. “Fine. How’s yours?”
Marla had to admit Ronnie’s guy was better-looking. Oh, well.
“Fine,” Ronnie answered. Marla got the impression that she was smiling at her guy just like Marla was smiling at hers. Only, presumably, hers was awake.
“Is your little girl with you?”
“Yes.”
“Tom said she’s really cute. And sweet.”
“Thanks. I’ll tell her.”
“Do you have the TV on?”
“No, why?”
“We’re on. Channel Twenty-four.”
“Hang on.” Marla picked up the remote. One click, a flip through the channels—and there was a picture of her and Ronnie, standing by the side of that lake yesterday.
Ronnie sure looked better wet and bedraggled than she did, Marla thought gloomily.
A woman’s head filled the screen: “This is Christine Gwen, coming to you with an exclusive update on the Senator Lewis Honneker murder case. Veronica Honneker has been declared innocent by the district attorney’s office. Indictments for a new suspect are being prepared as we speak. It happened this way: Yesterday at about noon Veronica Honneker was scheduled to turn herself in to the Jackson Metropolitan Police on charges that she murdered her husband. But instead she was kidnapped, along with another woman, twenty-four-year-old former call girl Marla Becker.”
A picture of Marla flashed on the screen.
“Mom, what’s a call girl?” Lissy asked.
“Someone who talks on the phone too much,” Marla said. “Now, hush.”
The newswoman related the saga of the kidnapping, ending up with shots of Marla and Ronnie standing bedraggled on the shore and the white car floating in the lake.
The final shot showed the sheet-covered body of their victim being lifted onto a stretcher.
When the show moved on to another segment, Marla spoke into the receiver.
“Ronnie?”
“Yes?”
“Know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think we done good.”
“Yeah,” Ronnie said. “Me too.”
There was a moment’s silence as they both savored how good it felt to be alive. Then Ronnie spoke again.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah.” Marla smiled. “Yesterday I found religion, and in about a week, I think, I’m gonna be getting married. If I can talk Jerry into it.”
Lissy’s eyes and mouth opened wide in delight as she heard that, and she clapped her hands together silently.
“I’m glad,” Ronnie said.
“You?” Marla asked.
“I’ll be fine. Actually I’m good. I’m with Tom.”
“That’s what I thought. Before I ever met you, I saw the pictures of the two of you together. You tell him, from me, that he sure has one sexy ass.”
Lissy was dancing around the room and didn’t hear.
Ronnie laughed. “I will. You take care now, you hear, Marla? And keep in touch.”
“You too,” Marla said, and hung up.
Chapter
57
September 21st
7:10
P.M
.
JACKSON
T
OM WAS SITTING
on the couch in his apartment with Ronnie snuggled up against his side. She was watching Christine Gwen tell everyone in Mississippi that she was innocent of her husband’s murder, and talking on the phone at the same time to her newest friend—former call girl Marla Becker.
Whoever it was that said politics made strange bedfellows was sure right.
His mobile phone began to ring. Tom stood up and went into the kitchen to answer it.
It was Alex Smitt.
“I wanted to let you know,” the detective said without preamble, “that we are preparing to charge Senator Beau Hilley in the death of Senator Honneker. Perhaps you’ll pass that news on to his widow? I haven’t been able to get in touch with her, but I presume you don’t have the same problem.”
“I’ll tell her,” Tom said. “She’ll be pleased—but shocked. Senator Hilley, hmm?” Tom had a vivid memory of him dancing with Ronnie on the night of Lewis’s party. “Jesus Christ, why?”
“Apparently Senator Honneker took Senator Hilley, Senator Clay Arnold of Pennsylvania, and Representative Ralph Smolski of Maryland out on his yacht, the
Sun-Chaser
, on July 10th. Also onboard were two call girls: Susan Martin and Claire Anson. It seems that in the course of some rough sex play, Senator Hilley killed Susan Martin. The other men onboard swore silence. Susan’s body was dumped overboard. Apparently Senator Hilley let the other men think that the second girl, Claire, was willing to be bought off. Instead he had her killed before she ever got off the dock that night. He had an aid by the name of Vince Tabor do it. Vince called himself Senator Hilley’s gardener. He used to brag that his motto was: “I plant ’em deep.” Actually he was a hired thug who did dirty work when Senator Hilley needed to have it done. And by the way, he was the guy your lady and Ms. Becker offed yesterday.”
“Son of a bitch,” Tom muttered.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind. Go on.”
“Well, apparently Senator Hilley did not trust his colleagues to keep their mouths shut about what happened. He was in line to be nominated for president, you know. Hell, I probably would have voted for him myself. Anyway he had Vince knock them off in ways that looked like accidents. Senator Arnold, for example, died in a plane accident that was no accident, and Representative Smolski drowned in a canoeing accident that was no accident. I think the plan was to make it look like Senator Honneker committed suicide, but that got screwed up because of the thing you and his lady had going on, and because she found the body.
Oh, well, sometimes we get it wrong at first; what matters is getting it right in the end.”
“Yeah,” Tom said sourly, thinking of the agony Ronnie had been put through.
“The fly in the ointment was Ms. Becker. As Susan’s roommate, apparently she knew too much. But Vince could never quite manage to kill her. When she linked up with Mrs. Honneker, Vince had tapped Dan Osborn’s phone when he heard on TV that Osborn was Mrs. Honneker’s lawyer so that Senator Hilley could keep abreast of any new developments in that direction so he heard Ms. Becker say she would be coming to Osborn’s office, and when; by the way, the Senator was very upset with Vince for getting Mrs. Honneker, for whom he apparently had a thing, involved—anyway, when Ms. Becker lined up with Mrs. Honneker, Vince and Senator Hilley decided she had to be taken out too. Ms. Becker was just going to disappear. Mrs. Honneker was going to be found at the wheel of the car that was driven into the lake. An autopsy would have revealed that she drowned, and it would have been presumed that, distraught because she was about to be arrested, she had killed herself. Fortunately the plan didn’t work.”
“Fortunately,” Tom said dryly. “How do you know all this, if you don’t mind telling me?”
“Painstaking investigative work,” Alex said, his voice grave. Then Tom could hear his sudden smile. “Actually Vince, being rather stupid, tape-recorded messages to himself. Everything he had done, was doing, and was about to do was on tape. He even had one of those little bitty tape recorders with him when he died. We found it on the lakeshore, near where he
must have gone into the water to finish the women off, along with his coat and shoes. With Senator Hilley’s explicit instructions for disposing of Ms. Becker and Mrs. Honneker. In Senator Hilley’s voice. Vince must have tape-recorded a phone call.”
“So there’s no question of his guilt?”
“None. We’ve even got a picture of the six of them together: Honneker, Hilley, Arnold, and Smolski with Susan Martin and Claire Anson. Apparently Ms. Martin took it with a time-activated camera and faxed a copy from the boat to Miss Melissa Becker on the night of the murder. We found the dated fax in with Melissa’s Beanie Baby collection. She had forgotten all about it. Apparently Vince about tore up Ms. Becker’s apartment looking for it later, but he didn’t find it.”
“I’m glad that this time you’ve got a solid case.”
“Yeah, me too. Well, have a good night.”
“You too.”
“And Tom, I’d be careful if I were you. What they did to Vince—those two ladies are
scary.
”
“Go to hell, Alex,” Tom said, and hung up. But he was grinning as he walked back into the living room.
Chapter
58
September 21st
7:15
P.M
.
“M
ARLA SAYS
to tell you that you have a nice ass,” Ronnie said to Tom, smiling as he walked back into the living room.
“Next time you talk to her, tell Marla I said thank you.” Tom sank down beside her on the couch, his arm stretched out behind her, and Ronnie laid her head back against the hard muscle. Like her he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and like her he was barefoot. Supper had been pizza, and they were having a marvelous time just sitting on the couch watching TV.
“Who were you talking to?” Ronnie asked. She was watching TV with only half an eye. What she was actually doing was enjoying the luxury of time. Time to just sit and look at him, to talk to him, to touch him. Time to laugh over silly jokes, and quarrel, and make up. Just—time.
“Alex Smitt.” Tom told her what the detective had said.