by Diane Capri
And I could buy that. The battle over Andrews’s confirmation had been intense, but I hadn’t realized Warwick had put all his political clout on the line. If Andrews was confirmed, and Warwick lost this fight, Warwick’s career would be finished. The Democrats would replace him as party leader. He would go out in disgrace.
So Warwick had a personal stake in defeating Andrews’s confirmation, too. George probably viewed this as a gift of Trojan proportions. George was on the verge of winning a round against the Democrats with the Andrews nomination. And, I could tell by just looking at him, he’d loved it.
Jason was still focused. George, more savvy in the conversation game, could sense my waning interest and would have let it go. Jason, the lawyer, was honed in on the question. He foolishly brought it up again himself.
“Benson feared that Warwick’s behind-the-scenes opposition, supported by George’s efforts, was making a difference.” Jason stopped, took a deep breath, and just spit it out. “So, to save face, Benson sent an emissary to each member of the party the Friday night after the committee hearings closed. The evening Andy died. The President’s man said Benson had recently learned that the army had received sexual harassment complaints about Andrews.”
“What?” I asked.
He ignored me. “Although the complaints had been fully investigated and were unfounded, neither Andrews nor the President wanted them revealed.”
“What?” I asked again, feeling shocked and amazed, but titillated just the same.
Jason continued to ignore me, and finished up. “Andrews couldn’t withdraw, but the senators could vote no on the nomination, with no hard feelings.”
George added, “In fact, the President said he wished they would vote ‘no,’ to avoid political and personal embarrassment for everyone.”
I was completely dumfounded now. “He let them all off the hook? Gave up his leverage? Why?”
This was not politics as I knew it was played in every arena, from the condominium board to the school board to Capitol Hill. George frowned at Jason and Jason, finally noticing how far he’d gone, must have realized that he’d revealed too much.
“I don’t know why he did it. I’m not his advisor,” Jason snapped.
George explained, “That’s what we were discussing when you came in. Benson could have withdrawn the nomination when he saw Andrews wasn’t going to be confirmed. But he chose to sabotage Andrews instead. It was a damn sneaky move.”
And if General Andrews knew about it, the news might have caused him to kill himself. Maybe his death was a highly creative suicide after all, for which George could easily be framed. I could imagine Andrews getting a charge out of making George pay for ruining his appointment. That motive made more sense to me than the one Robbie had cooked up for George.
But, George would have a motive for murder only if Andrews’s nomination stayed on the table. When Andrews was rejected, George’s motive would disappear.
If this piece of information got out, George could be off the hook. Things were looking up.
Besides, I thought, it might have been a political faux pas if Benson’s treachery came to light after the vote, but it could be spun to the President’s favor. Benson could simply have said that he’d received new information about Andrews, information that changed his mind about nominating Andrews. He’d look foolish for not having known about the sexual harassment complaints before he nominated Andrews, but that was an oversight he would be forgiven for, especially since he attempted to correct the problem before Andrews was actually seated on the court.
Benson had the reputation of a crafty politician. I suspected he’d sent the emissary fully expecting his effort to become public at some point.
George and Jason began their argument again. I tuned it out, waiting until the feel of the noise suggested that I could tastefully throw Jason out for the night. That point came about twenty minutes later.
I heard Jason say, “You and I are never going to agree on this, and it’s getting late. I need to go.”
He was still in a huff, but the result was what I wanted.
“I’m sorry you have to leave, Jason, but it is getting late,” I said, much to Jason’s surprise and George’s, too, for that matter. I stood up and Jason had no real alternative but to do the same. I ushered him out with a hug and a promise to see him later in the week.
George would have followed Jason out, but I asked him to wait a while. “I really need to be going, Darling. It’s been a long day,” he said.
“Just a short night cap first?” I suggested.
We took our liqueur over to the couch. “You know,” I told him, “maybe Andy found out about Benson’s actions.” George said nothing.
I watched him through half closed eyelids. “If he found out, he could have been so upset that he killed himself, George. Maybe this really was a suicide.” I suggested it softly. “People are always surprised by a suicide.” I repeated what I’d read in Robbie Andrews’s online column, “And we never want to believe it was inevitable.”
“I can see why you think that’s possible,” George said, “but I don’t think it happened that way. You know the physical evidence doesn’t support the suicide theory. And so far, no one thinks Andy found out Benson betrayed him.”
I heard the smile in his voice as he said, “Nice try, though. It would have been an easier answer than having me on trial for murder.” He leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “I need to get going, sweetheart. It’s late, and I need my beauty sleep.” He got up to leave.
I grabbed his sleeve and got down to business.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Tampa, Florida
Friday 11:30 p.m.
January 28, 2000
“BEFORE YOU GO, I want us to talk about your gun. The murder weapon. I went out to the gun club, and the box is still in your locker. Why was your gun out if its box? How did it get removed from the club? And who took it?”
He’d drained his glass and leaned over to kiss me before he stood up again to leave. “Not now, Willa. It’s too late to get into all that.” He glanced quickly at his watch. “I’ve already discussed it with Olivia, anyway. Talk to her about it, or we can go over it later.”
He leaned toward me and held me for one of those kisses that still take my breath away. When we eventually pulled apart, he said, “Trust me, it’s not the link from the gun club we need to worry about. Goodnight.”
Resisting the childish urge to stamp my foot in frustration, I locked up and went to bed with quite a lot on my mind for my subconscious to work out.
Kate swears that your mind solves your problems overnight if you just remember to program the questions before you go to sleep. I sure had a lot of questions to be considered. If I woke up with the answers tomorrow, no one would be happier than I.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Tampa, Florida
Saturday 8:30 a.m.
January 29, 2000
PERHAPS I HAD SOME fabulous dreams that night, but when I awakened, I couldn’t remember any of them. The sunlight was streaming into the open window, the air quite chilly. I stretched my arms out in either direction, there being no reason to avoid taking up the whole bed since I was the only one in it. Again.
I let the dogs go out by themselves. The hell with it. I probably wasn’t going to be running any marathons any time soon, anyway. Sometimes resistance sidetracks me just like everyone else. Besides, I wanted my coffee and I wanted it now.
After a quick shower, I grabbed a to-go cup, picked up my tote bag with my investigative tools in it, and headed down to Greta. Traffic willing, I’d be out to Thonotosassa in less than thirty minutes. We pulled out over Plant Key Bridge and turned east on the Bayshore.
Multi-tasking, I picked up my cell phone and tackled the Olivia problem. George told me last night that they’d been having meetings and conversations that I didn’t know about. He’d told her about the gun. I was out of the loop and I didn’t like it. I’d never have hired the woman
if I’d known she was going to be uncontrollable. I left messages for her at all her offices, her car and her home. That I couldn’t find her made me even more uneasy. Who knows what she was out there doing that I didn’t know about.
Greta and I drove along the Bayshore beside the five mile continuous sidewalk, where once there had been a shore line. In a gentler era, where grand waterfront estates once stood, high-rise condominiums now blocked the view. The Tampa Tribune reported that three hundred new luxury condominiums were slated to be built with a Bayshore address. It was this kind of progress that made me happy to live on Plant Key. Owning our little island means we decide what gets built there.
I passed one of Tampa’s newest high-rise condominiums. I hadn’t been in the building, but the pictures I’d seen in the sales literature made it look like a reasonable abode for super-rich dudes like Donald Trump or Bill Gates.
Housing was still a relative bargain in most of the areas around Tampa. Retirees come here to live in very nice (and some not so nice) mobile home parks. Young families and empty nesters settled in Brandon and other suburbs where a nice house could still be had for affordable prices.
But people moving to Tampa from more expensive housing markets, like the northeast or northwest, could apparently afford the newest luxury high-rises or the just as pricey golf communities north of town.
The traffic puttered along, moving well below the posted forty-mile-per-hour speed limit, and my impatience didn’t hustle them along at all. Avoiding collisions with tourists who were driving erratically, stopping before they entered the expressway, turning left from the far right-hand lane, or doing forty miles an hour in a seventy mile an hour zone, was one of the challenges of the winter season.
My favorite bumper sticker around here reads: “Someday I’m going to retire, move to Michigan and drive slow.”
Once I reached the expressway, my attention focused on staying alive through the perpetual road construction. Was there a highway in America that wasn’t being repaired? I-4 had been disrupted by construction for all the years I’d lived in Tampa. Drivers must keep their wits about them to avoid getting killed by out of control eighteen-wheelers and sight-seeing tourists.
When I arrived, I was able to park near Deborah Andrews’s house this time. The house had once been grand, but it had changed, gotten older along with the rest of us. Apparently, no one here loved gardening and the lawn service didn’t do the world’s best job. All the plants were overgrown and out of control.
The normally delicate liriope resembled the larger, more robust philodendron. Tropical plants overcrowded every section of the walkway and grew tall enough to cover the windows. The lawn looked well-trimmed, but it had bare brown patches all over it, as if it was diseased and no one had bothered to plug it.
Nothing had been painted in much too long. The door hinges and hardware were rusted. The place seemed abandoned, unoccupied. An army man is often away from home, but Deborah had been living here for years, waiting for her husband to come back from wherever he’d been posted. Whatever she did to keep herself busy didn’t include house maintenance or gardening.
I rang the bell and eventually I heard someone shuffling toward the door, and talking. “Elizabeth, Judy, Caesar, get out of the way so I can open the door.”
The knob turned. I heard no lock being opened. The house was out in the country, but someone had come onto this property and murdered Deborah’s husband just a few days before. I would have had four locks, an alarm system and an armed guard installed by now, if I’d stayed here at all. It was curious that Deborah had done none of that.
Deborah opened the door wide, displaying no concern for the axe murderer who could have been standing there.
“Hello, Willa. Come on in,” she said, as she bent down and scooped up a long-haired cat. “Elizabeth, look who’s here. It’s Willa Carson. You remember Willa, don’t you, Judy?” This last was directed at another cat, standing near the door, off to the left.
I pushed the screen door open and it squeaked loudly enough on the rusty hinges that Deborah might not have needed an alarm after all. I stepped around Judy and two other cats, moving quickly to keep them from running out the door as I entered. “I don’t remember you, Judy,” I said, trying not to sound judgmental about the cats’ behavior, or their smell, which had been noticeable the last time I was here and was now overwhelming.
“You like cats, don’t you?” Deborah asked, as she walked farther toward the interior, in the same way she might have asked if I liked oxygen.
The house was dark and cool inside. Even without my small flashlight to illuminate the gloom, I noticed at least six other cats lying on the floor tile.
The litter boxes were out of sight, but definitely not well tended. The odor of ammonia from cat urine activated my gag reflex. I popped a piece of gum in my mouth and tried not to breathe.
“Sure, I love cats. George is allergic, though. What are their names?” I said, to be friendly.
“This one,” she said, stroking the cat she still held in her arms, “is Elizabeth Montgomery. Kind of looks like her, don’t you think? I always thought Liz had green cat eyes. Kind of like yours.”
Beautiful green cat eyes, George would have added, if he’d been here.
His absence ambushed me again. I felt the prickly sensation behind my eyes and quickly focused on something else.
Deborah prattled on. “Here is Judy Garland and that’s Caesar Romero.” She pointed to each cat as she introduced them to me. “The others are Betty Grable, Jimmy Stewart and that old one over there is George Burns. I’ve had him forever.”
I reached down to pick up Jimmy Stewart. Like his namesake, he was long and skinny and easy-going. He purred immediately, and I carried him along while I followed Deborah into the living room where cats sat on every available cushion.
“Marilyn Monroe,” Deborah said to another white cat, “move over and let Willa sit down.”
Marilyn showed no such signs of life, so I gently pushed her aside and sat down. White cat hair would be all over my navy wool slacks.
My hostess continued talking. “I collected the cats when all the children left home.”
“How did you ever come up with names for all of them?” I asked as I put Jimmy Stewart down on the floor. He didn’t go anywhere, just lounged at my feet. Marilyn Monroe jumped up to replace him in my lap. Swell, I thought. Now there would be long white cat hair on my thighs as well as my rump. I’d look like a sweater.
Deborah explained her methods of cat naming, in a long prattling paragraph that left no opening for me to respond. “I was in Key West with Andy once and we visited Hemingway House.
Hemingway loved cats. He had six-toed ones. They’ve kept descendants of his cats on the grounds and named them after movie stars. Andy thought that idea was so stupid, but I liked it. He didn’t like my cats anyway, so I just picked names for mine the same way. None of my friends have six toes, though.” She held up one of the cat’s feet to demonstrate.
She stopped a moment to breathe and then continued. “They’re so much better company than people, don’t you think?” She hugged Elizabeth and Judy at the same time.
Marilyn simultaneously kneaded my leg with her front paws and purred in my lap. I don’t know if she was better company than people, but the kneading was comforting.
She put Judy down and Caesar Romero jumped up in her lap. Elizabeth Montgomery moved over for him to sit down. He was polite about it.
Deborah began another of her monologues, which allowed me time to examine the cluttered, unkempt room. The same lack of maintenance that was evident outside carried through to the interior. “My friend gave me George Burns when Andy went off to the Middle East the first time. I was so lonesome here then. He’d been traveling on short trips for years, but he hadn’t been on assignment away from home since the children left.”
She continued talking, but my attention wandered. The cobwebs in every corner were barely visible in the gloom. Dust balls flew
over the tile floor, propelled by small breezes from an open window somewhere. Table tops were marked with paw prints and long cat hair blanketed the upholstery.
“Willa?”
I gave her a quizzical look. I came here because I thought either Deborah or the house would tell me something about Andy’s death. Now, I wondered whether I’d wasted my time.
She repeated, “I said we could film an epic here with all the talent we have now, right?
She was kidding. I think. She didn’t really seem to be talking to me at all. She seemed to know who I was, but she was distracted, unfocused.
Drinking? The last I’d heard, Deborah had entered a high-priced clinic and sobered up. Perhaps she’d had a relapse. God knows, she had been through enough stress lately to bring one on.
But I didn’t smell the acrid odor of metabolized alcohol. Then again, there was hardly anything I could smell except cats.
“Deborah,” I said gently, “I’m very sorry about Andy’s death. I wanted you to know that.”
She turned her blue eyes to me then, and looked squarely into my face for several moments before blinking slowly, like one of her cats. Then she smiled. Conversationally, she said, “I know you are, Willa. Just like I know George didn’t kill Andy. George is a good man.”
Given her daughter’s behavior, I’d worried that Deborah would be as nasty as Robbie had been.
I shouldn’t have worried. Deborah was so forgiving. That was probably what made her such a doormat to her husband and children all the years I’d known her.
“You must miss Andy,” I suggested, removing Marilyn Monroe from my lap and attempting to deposit her onto the floor. A mistake. As soon as Marilyn got down, Cary Grant jumped up.
I gave up and accepted a cat as a part of my suit. At least Cary Grant was black and his hair wouldn’t be so obvious on my slacks.