If A Man Answers

by Merline Lovelace

  He turned and caught her look. His smile tipped into one of his patented, Sam-only grins. Curling his arm around her shoulders, he drew her closer and bent down to be heard over the noise of the crowd.

  “You keep looking at me like that,” he murmured, “and we might have to slip out to the car for a few minutes to give those bucket seats one more try.”

  “You keep blowing in my ear like that and it will take more than a few minutes.”

  He started to reply, only to be cut off by the squawk of a microphone. Molly jumped, almost hitting Sam in the chin with her head, and shot a quick look at the little black evening bag resting beside her plate. To her profound relief, the noise had come from the center of the room, where a nervous lieutenant on a dais thumped the mike in front of him, raising another squawk.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.”

  A moment later, the sound of a gavel slamming down thundered through the speakers. Molly jumped again and swiveled around to face the head table. A crew-cut colonel surveyed the vast assemblage.

  “The mess is called to order. Mr. Vice, you may proceed.”

  The ceremonies got underway immediately. The honor guard paraded the colors, an astonishing litany of toasts were drunk, Mr. Vice pointed out infractions of the mess rules, intentional or otherwise, and the president sent various miscreants to the alcoholic and nonalcoholic grog bowls placed strategically around the room.

  Molly rose when the other civilian women rose, drank when the others lifted their glasses, smiled at the sometimes incomprehensible jargon and inside jokes. Through it all, however, her gaze kept straying back to the couple seated at the head table on either side of the colonel.

  Congressman Joshua Walters, and his wife, Jessica MacGiver Walters. One gray and smoothly handsome. The other raven-haired and elegant in rippling silver satin. She smiled out on the crowd with a remote sort of graciousness that could only come with wealth and long years in the spotlight.

  Or did that faint, smiling reserve stem from other, darker sources? Did she really know what kind of man she’d married? Could she have any idea that her husband might be a murderer?

  Molly was locked so intently on the wife that a few moments passed before she realized that the husband had locked on her.

  Her head snapped back. Her heart skipped.

  Walters gave no sign that he recognized her. No evidence that he’d noted her reaction. His expression didn’t change. His gaze didn’t falter. He observed her for another instant or two, then turned his head in response to some comment from the woman at his side.

  Molly clenched her hands under the tablecloth to still their trembling. Cold sweat dewed her back and bare shoulders.

  What had she expected? she thought savagely. That his composure would shatter at the sight of her? If he were the killer, he knew her name, but that didn’t necessarily mean he knew her face. Even if he did, he might think her presence here tonight just a coincidence.

  She was still trying to think of a subtle way to let him know she hadn’t arrived at the club by chance when fate, in the shape of a well-endowed young lieutenant, took the matter out of her hands.

  Chapter 13

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the smoking lamp is lit.”

  Cheers and whistles greeted Mr. Vice’s announcement. Four-hundred-plus chairs scraped back. Replete males stretched out legs and recharged glasses. Brightly gowned women made a general exodus to the ladies’ room.

  “Would you like to go powder your nose?”

  Molly smiled at the shy young captain’s wife across from her. “No, thanks.”

  “This is your last chance before the speeches start,” the pregnant Peg chimed in. “Unless that gorgeous creation you’re wearing comes equipped with a relief tube, you could be in trouble.”

  “No relief tube,” Molly replied, “but I’m pretty tough.”

  “I can attest to that,” Sam added with a lazy grin. “Why don’t we get some fresh air instead? Bring your purse, sweetheart.”

  The contrast between Sam’s casual endearment and his reference to her evening bag jolted Molly. She caught his eye and with it the swift reminder of the reason they’d attended this gathering of eagles.

  Her pulse quickening, she glanced past him to the head table. Jessica Walters and the General’s wife had already started weaving their way through the crowd. Cigars in hands, their husbands headed for the wall of glass doors that opened onto a patio strung with white lights and silvery blue streamers.

  “Fresh air sounds good,” Molly got out, her throat tight.

  Sam guided her through the crowd, his hand warm and reassuring at the small of her back. She clutched the little mesh bag to her chest and swept the ballroom with a quick, searching look. A flash of pale, oyster-colored satin caught her eye. At a table tucked in a distant corner, Dee Santos nodded imperceptibly. Her shoulder-length sweep of hennaed hair hid all sign of the wire that ran from her earpiece to the recorder in her jacket pocket. Molly didn’t see Kaplan or the ramrod straight Colonel Scott amid the forest of men in dark uniforms, but she knew they were somewhere in the vicinity.

  The glass patio doors slid open on smooth, silent bearings. A desert breeze, warm after the airconditioned chill of the huge ballroom, brushed Molly’s skin. Glass chinked against glass as bartenders poured drinks at the two small bars set up at either end of the patio. The haunting strains of “Wind Beneath My Wings” drifted through speakers. A few couples swayed to the music, pressed close together by the intimacy of the minuscule, open-air dance floor.

  The setting should have been magical. A blending of elegance and pride, of romance and seduction. On any other night, Molly would have melted into Sam’s arms and let the sheer beauty of the moment carry her away. Tonight, she absorbed the ambiance through the filter of wire-tight nerves. Her whole being was focused on the man who stood only a few yards away, surrounded by a small clutch of men and women.

  Josh Walters was in his element. Urbane, confident, relaxed, he smiled and held court with practiced ease. He hadn’t given his speech yet. During introductions of the head table, he and his wife had merely stood and waved in acknowledgment of the warm round of applause they received. Yet Molly could hear his voice in her head. Every wellmodulated syllable echoed with the clarity of a bell, punctuated by Joey Bennett’s terrified pleas and the splat of gunfire.

  With seeming casualness, Sam guided her across the patio. The small crowd around the congressman eddied and flowed. Two couples moved away, heading back to the ballroom. The General turned aside to speak to another officer. A captain hovered at Walters’s elbow, then hurried off toward the bar. For probably the first time that night, the congressman stood alone and unattended.

  “We’re locked on target, Mol.” Sam’s murmur was a wash of warmth against her cheek. “Let’s go get him.”

  They had taken only another step or two when a woman’s voice floated across the night air.

  “Major Henderson?”

  Sam slowed, turned, muttered a curse under his breath. A vivacious young officer with an hourglass figure that even Mae West would have envied slid the patio doors shut behind her and crossed the flagstones. Molly didn’t need an introduction to guess she was Lieutenant Donovitch of lip-lock fame.

  “Captain Green told me you were here. I’ve been looking for you.”

  Realizing that she hadn’t noticed Walters standing only a few yards away, Sam moved to intercept her. Before he could cut her off, she hurried into speech.

  “I won’t interrupt your evening. I just wanted to tell you I’ve been thinking about that matter we discussed the other day. I was stupid to let myself be intimidated. I’ll go to the authorities, if you think it will help.”

  Although the lieutenant had lowered her voice, Molly’s trained ear picked up every word. So, she saw on a swift indrawn breath, had Josh Walters.

  He stood as if cast in stone, his eyes narrowed on Sam and the lieutenant. Suddenly, his gaze whipped to Molly. For an u
nguarded instant, his handsome mask slipped. She held his stare, her heart crashing like thunder against her ribs.

  He knows!

  He knows who I am, and now he knows that Sam’s made a connection with Lieutenant Donovitch.

  Maybe he knows that Kaplan’s been asking questions, testing his alibi.

  Molly realized she had to act quickly to capitalize on the drama of the moment. Gliding forward, she hooked her arm in Sam’s.

  “Darling, you promised to introduce me to Congressman Walters. He’s right over there. You’ll excuse us, won’t you, lieutenant?”

  The young woman gave Molly a surprised look, then turned a pasty white when she saw the man standing a few yards away. Without another word, she turned and hurried off.

  By the time she and Sam stood face-to-face with Joshua Walters, Molly knew they’d missed their window of opportunity. The politician’s mask had dropped back into place. His handsome face registered nothing but pleasure as he thrust out his hand.

  “Sam! I told Jessie I thought I’d spotted you in the crowd earlier.”

  “Congressman.”

  “It’s good to see you looking so fit...and in such delightful company.”

  If that smooth, educated voice hadn’t raised the fine hairs on the back of Molly’s neck, Walters’s smile might have charmed her completely. It held just the right blend of polite inquiry and appreciation. She didn’t doubt that it got terrific results from the female half of the voting population. Sam made the necessary introductions, his voice low and deliberately neutral.

  “This is Molly Duncan. Molly, this is our elected representative, Congressman Joshua Walters.”

  With one hand crooked in Sam’s arm and the other firmly grasping her black evening bag, Molly neatly avoided any necessity of shaking hands with the man. Not only did she not want to touch him. She didn’t want her damp palms to clue him into how nervous she was.

  “Not my elected official,” she replied coolly. “I haven’t been here long enough to vote yet.”

  “Really?” Walters’s blue eyes held hers with the ease of a consummate crowd handler. “What brought you to our wonderful state?”

  He’d given her just the opening she needed. “A job, Congressman. I’m a translator and tour consultant with the Las Vegas Trade and Convention Center. I speak several languages, and have a good ear for accents” She tilted her head. “Yours, for example, caught my attention the first time I heard it.” To her intense disappointment, he didn’t rise to the bait.

  “I’m not surprised. After a year or two at Harvard, this Wisconsin farm boy sounded strange, even to himself.”

  Dammit, she couldn’t just come out and tell the bastard that he’d sounded more than strange the first time she’d heard him, he’d sounded calm and very, very deadly. Desperately, Molly sought for some way to shake his composure, to startle him into saying something Kaplan and company would catch on their recorder.

  The thought of the recorder triggered an idea. Detective Santos had said that technology hadn’t advanced enough to record vocal signatures, but Josh Walters might not know that.

  “You’re right. Your accent is certainly distinctive. You’d be an excellent candidate for a voice print, using the Hammerstein-Taguchi methodology.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Molly improvised wildly. “I studied linguistics before I decided to concentrate on spoken languages instead of the science of speech. One of the professors I studied with at the University of Tokyo helped develop the, uh, phonetic dimensions for vocal signatures.”

  The congressman’s smile didn’t lose its easy charm, but his eyes sharpened. So did Sam’s. Ignoring the warning press of his arm against hers, Molly plunged ahead.

  “Professor Taguchi demonstrated that some languages, like Japanese for instance, use only pitch to accent vowels and the consonants that surround them. Others, like English, use both pitch and loudness to create distinct speech patterns.”

  Dragging a quick breath, she played her bluff.

  “Each voice forms its own, distinct signature. If someone familiar with the Hammerstein-Taguchi methodology had captured yours on a telephone recorder and matched it to, say, one of the campaign ads I recently saw on TV, I think you’d be surprised at the results. Very surprised.”

  For the space of a single heartbeat, Molly thought she had him. Walters didn’t so much as blink, but a sudden, swift stillness stripped some of the attractiveness from his smile.

  Almost before she’d noted it, the stillness was gone. Moving with his customary grace, the congressman turned to accept a drink from the captain serving as his official escort.

  “Thanks, Pete. Have you met Major Henderson and...Ms. Duncan, wasn’t it?”

  The bastard. Molly would have wagered her last dollar that her name had been emblazoned on his brain since the night he shot Joey the Horse. He wouldn’t admit it now, though. He wouldn’t admit anything. The curtain of intimacy surrounding them had ripped apart with the young captain’s return.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,” he said, pumping Sam’s hand. “You, too, ma’am.”

  Walters sipped the smoky scotch his escort had brought and watched the interchange with a casualness that grated on Molly’s nerves like steel wool.

  “I’ve just been selected for Test Pilot School,” the captain confided to Sam eagerly. “I know you hold the record for operational test hours in experimental aircraft, but maybe I’ll blow it out of the skies one of these days.”

  “Maybe you will.”

  The General returned then, greeting Sam with a slap on the back and Molly with a smile. When another couple drifted up, Sam took the opportunity to excuse himself and Molly. He waited until a wall separated them from Walters to spin her around. The easy smile he’d shared with the young captain and the General had disappeared. In its place was a fury all the more fierce for being tightly leashed.

  “What in the hell were you doing?”

  She didn’t understand his anger. Neither did she appreciate it.

  “Exactly what I came here to do—trying to shake your friend up a little.”

  “With that garbage about voice signatures?”

  “Hey, he didn’t know it was garbage.”

  “You’d better hope he did, Molly.”

  “Why? What the heck are you so uptight about, anyway?”

  “You little fool. You deliberately gave him the impression you’ve got something on him. You didn’t go to the police with it, so he probably thinks you’re setting him up for blackmail.”

  “Well, I’m not, so...”

  “You know that,” Sam said savagely. “I know that. But Walters doesn’t. If he didn’t have a reason to silence you before, woman, you just handed him one on a silver platter.”

  Molly reared back. “I didn’t mean... I didn’t think...”

  “That’s obvious!”

  She made up for that deficiency now. Her mind racing, she considered the consequences of her on-the-spot improvisation. None of them particularly appealed to her.

  “Okay, maybe I got a little carried away.”

  “Carried away?” Sam gritted his teeth, controlling himself with an obvious effort. “Look, Walters might walk through that door at any moment. Let’s find Kaplan and talk this through.”

  Clamping a hand around her elbow, he steered her through the crowd. They rendezvoused with Kaplan and retreated to the manager’s office. Dee Santos joined them a few minutes later.

  “That was some performance, Ms. Duncan,” the detective said dryly. “You suckered me in for a while with that Hammerstein-Taguchi bit. Too bad you didn’t pull in our target.”

  “How do we know she didn’t?” Sam asked tersely.

  Kaplan hitched a hip on the corner of the manager’s desk. “You were there, Major. Do you think the congressman believed this voice patterning business?”

  “If he did, he didn’t show it.”

  “But we can’t discount the possibility,” the detectiv
e said slowly.

  He rubbed his pendulous cheeks, thinking, considering, then turned a sober face to Molly.

  “It might not be a bad idea for you stop by the station on the way home, Ms. Duncan. I’ll get the supply folks to issue you one of our beepers. All you have to do is depress the button and it sends a silent, coded alarm to central dispatch.”

  That sounded pretty good to her. “We’ll stop by.”

  “I wish we could dig up something concrete on the man,” Kaplan muttered. “This business with the lieutenant bothers me, but...”

  “She’s here tonight,” Sam informed him. “Walters overheard her say that she regretted letting herself be intimidated.”

  The detective’s face brightened considerably. “She said that. Good. Point her out to me and I’ll have a private chat with her. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get enough to convince the chief we should haul our congressman downtown for questioning.”

  When they returned to the ballroom, Sam and Molly both searched the crowd for the shapely young lieutenant. One of her friends informed Sam that she hadn’t felt well and decided to slip away early. They relayed that message to Kaplan and got back to their table just as the president of the mess called the room to order. When the noise quieted, the program resumed.

  After a lengthy and glowing introduction, Congressman Josh Walters took the podium to a rousing round of applause. Smiling, waving, joking, he finally silenced the room. Molly’s skin prickled as the voice that had come to haunt her rolled across the ballroom.

  Four hours later, the Mustang tooled through inky darkness, eating up the miles from downtown Vegas. Molly huddled in the passenger seat, fingering the small beeper Kaplan had given her while she chewed over the night’s events. Josh Walters’s charisma and powerful, passionate speech had added another troubling layer to her image of him as a murderer.