"You're very special, Sam."
Smiling, he leaned over the console and kissed her cheek. "Get some rest. I'll give you a call tomorrow, see how Johnny is doing. Give Val a kiss for me."
Leah nodded and left the car. She stood on the graveled path, watching as Sam backed down the drive. He honked the horn before pulling out onto the highway and driving off into the dark.
Shamika opened the screen door for Leah as she mounted the porch. "Nice guy, is Sam. Sorry that I laughed at him earlier."
"Johnny's going to be fine."
"I know. They finally broke the news of Dolores's death about an hour ago. The reporter said something about the police finding cocaine in her purse. This could get very ugly, Leah."
"I'm certain the results of the blood tests will clear Johnny."
"Let's hope so. It's not going to look very good for him, considering he's been so outspoken about the use of drugs. God, he just did that anti-drug commercial—"
"I don't want to talk about it, Shamika."
Leah kicked off her shoes and tossed her sweater on the floor. She entered Val's bedroom, quietly lowered the bedside rail, and eased back his blanket.
Val opened his eyes as Leah shimmied under the covers and nestled her head on the pillow next to his. "Mama lonely?" he asked.
"Not when I'm with you," she whispered, smiling into his eyes.
An emergency call awoke her at six-thirty A.M., just as
Clyde
's Automotive Repair pulled into the driveway with her truck in tow. As Leah climbed out of her rumpled sundress and reached for her jeans, she listened to the tow driver explain to Shamika that all charges had been taken care of by Mr. Whitehorse. There were four new tires and a new wheel, the driver's window had been replaced, and the vehicle had been washed. The doctor might want to change the oil soon, however, and the spark plugs weren't looking so hot. If she cared to have it done at
Clyde
's they would make her a real deal, considering she was such a good friend of Johnny's.
Returning to the house, keys dangling from her finger, Shamika grinned at Leah as she pulled on a tee shirt and tucked it into her jeans. "My, my, it does pay to have friends in high places. Charges taken care of by Mr. Whitehorse, huh?"
"I'll pay him back." Leah snatched the keys from Shamika. "Have you heard anything—"
"Just that funeral arrangements for Dolores are pending. So what's the emergency?"
"A horse with choke."
"Lovely. Will you want breakfast when you get back?"
Grabbing up her purse and cell phone, Leah started out the door. "I'm going to the hospital afterward. If I get any more calls, direct them to Dean Crabbet. And give Val a big kiss for me when he wakes up."
By the time she reached Dan Braden's Quarter Horses, a half-hour drive from Leah's, the horse's impaction had cleared itself. Just to be on the safe side, she hung around for another twenty minutes, making certain there were no more heaves or spewing, draining nostrils. She collected her forty-five-dollar trip fee and headed for the hospital.
There were no police cars and barricades. No weeping, screaming young women, no television crews. Something was up.
The woman behind the registration desk peered at Leah over her bifocals. "Mr. Whitehorse is no longer at this hospital."
Leah checked her watch. "It's only eight-thirty. Surely he hasn't—"
"Left the hospital sometime last night, or early this morning. He was gone when I came on duty at five-thirty." She smiled and shrugged. "Sorry."
Sitting in the truck at a red light, Leah called home. Shamika answered on the second ring.
"Has Roy Moon or Johnny called?"
"Nope."
"Johnny's not at the hospital."
"That's good. It means he was well enough to leave."
"But the doctor said it was imperative that he stay the night for observation."
"Hon, from what you've told me about Mr. Whitehorse, I suspect he is going to do exactly what he wants to do. I doubt he's going to lay around in bed waiting for the vultures to land. He's going to find him a place to hole up for a while, keep out of the public eye while he gets his life back in order."
"I thought he might have called, is all."
Silence.
"I guess there's no reason for him to call, is there? I mean unless
Roy
told him I was at the hospital last night."
"I'm sure
Roy
told him."
The light changed and traffic surged around her.
"Sure you don't want some breakfast?" Shamika asked.
"Why not." Disconnecting the call, Leah then threw the phone on the seat.
There were two black cars parked in the driveway when Leah arrived home. Truck idling, she sat behind the steering wheel, staring at the government-issue license plates, feeling her stomach form a fist-sized knot. She thought of making an about-face and heading back to Braden's, just to make positively certain his horse was not still choking, but then a man in a brown sports coat got out of one of the cars and stood staring at her. She could hardly make an unnoticed getaway now.
She drove around the cars, ignoring the watchful driver, and parked by the barn. There was no use in stalling the inevitable, so she headed for the house, then peered through the screen door with her hands cupped around her eyes. Shamika sat at the kitchen table, softly encouraging Val to feed himself from the pile of scrambled eggs on his plate.
Leah, quietly as possible, stepped into the kitchen. Shamika looked around, eyebrows raised.
"Where is he?" Leah whispered.
"Waiting in the living room. Watching CNN, of course. I'll warn you, he's not happy."
"What have I done now?"
"Better have a look at that." Shamika thumbed toward a newspaper on the table.
Picking up the paper, Leah opened it to the headlines and a color photo of Dolores's smashed, blackened car. Dolores's and Johnny's pictures were side by side, the caption reading, "News Correspondent Killed Instantly in Fiery Crash.
Whitehorse
Under Investigation."
Frowning, Leah shook her head. "What's this got to do with my father and me?"
"Turn the page. Wait. Maybe you should sit down first."
Leah opened the paper.
There was a photo center page.
She and Johnny dancing together at Randy's Bar and Grill, smiling into one another's eyes, bodies close, a portrait of lovers.
"When the hell did they take that?" she said to herself.
"To summarize the story, you and Johnny are an item—a very juicy tidbit considering Johnny is out to destroy the senator. According to the valet at Randy's, Dolores left the restaurant in a huff of jealousy after finding you two 'wrapped in one another's arms on the dance floor.' She and Johnny had a terrible fight in the parking lot. Things got really ugly. Lots of screaming, crying, and profanity. They even scuffled. Johnny drove away from the restaurant like a bat out of hell."
"Shit."
"I'd say that was putting it mildly." Shamika gave Val a big smile and popped a piece of egg in his mouth.
"Would you like me to take Val for a drive?"
She shook her head and tossed the paper onto the table. "I'll handle it. Besides, I may need some backup."
Rubbing her hands on her jeans, Leah moved to the living room where her father, Senator Foster, sat on the sofa, his gaze fixed on a CNN correspondent reporting on some catastrophe in
India
—a barge sinking and drowning two hundred passengers. She stared at the back of his gray head, wishing she had taken the time to grab a glass of water. Her mouth always went dry as sand in his presence.
"Hi," she said, trying to sound cheery and failing miserably. "This is a surprise."
"Have you read the morning paper?" he replied.
"Just like you, Dad. Get right to the point. Forget about trivialities like 'Hello, sweetheart, long time no see, how are you, and, most importantly, how is my grandson?' If you're referring to the story of me and Johnny, I only just saw it as I came in the door."
"Come around here so I can see you."
She walked around the sofa, then stopped between the Senator and the television.
He looked her up and down, shaking his head. "You look like shit. You're a goddamn bag of bones. Don't you eat?"
"When I have time."
"Thank God your mother isn't alive to see what you've become. Living in this dump like some poor white trash, looking like a scarecrow, smelling like a pile of horse shit. I cringe everytime I think of what you gave up when divorcing Richard."
"Richard walked out on me, Dad. Remember?"
He made a noise and shook his head. "Can you blame him? Who the hell wants a wife who smells like horse shit all the time, who can't be bothered to wear a dress now and again, or put on makeup, or brush her hair for that matter? The man was a saint to stay with you as long as he did."
There came a clatter of dishes from the kitchen, a slamming of a cupboard door.
Leah crossed her arms and took a deep breath. "Get to the point, Dad."
"The point is, you're back with that goddamned Indian again."
"I'm not back with Johnny."
"You were photographed together last night. By now the Associated Press has picked up that story and plastered it from
California
to
Istanbul
. Jesus H. Christ, Leah. The man has been trying to torch my ass for the last two years. He has all but publicly said that I'm a crook, and here you are dancing cheek to cheek with the son-of-a-bitch. Do you realize how that looks? Just where the hell is your loyalty?"
Leah cleared her throat. "I danced once with Johnny.
Once.
I was at Randy's with a date—not Johnny. You can ask anyone there. Besides, it's really none of your business who I date. I'm not a child any longer, Senator. I'm a grown woman, and if I want to date Saddam Hussein I'll date him."
Foster left the sofa, and Leah stepped back. His face flushed red, his lips pressed so tightly against his teeth they looked white. "You can tell your Indian heartthrob that if he thinks he's going to ruin me, he's got another think coming."
Straightening his tie and buttoning his coat, Foster laughed to himself. "Of course, who the hell is going to believe a druggie?
Soon as those drug test results
come back, proving he was strung out on cocaine when he went off that road, he's history. The district attorney will bury him so far in prison he'll be an old man before he ever sees daylight again."
Foster walked from the room. Leah listened to his footsteps as he moved down the hall. The screen door slammed.
She ran to the door, her throat tight with all the words she wanted to scream at him.
As the driver opened the rear car door he dropped into the seat, glancing back at the house as the man in the brown sports coat shut the door, obliterating her father's face behind the tinted glass. The second black car backed down the drive and waited for her father's sedan to pull out onto the highway before falling in behind it.