House of Secrets - v4

by Richard Hawke

  Fergus was already laughing. “Good. That’s the correct reaction. I just want to be certain those animal paws of yours stay where they belong.”

  Andy eyed him. “I think you’re impugning my fine character, fine friend.”

  Fergus downshifted his levity. “Listen, it’s unofficially official, Andy, but you’re definitely on the short list. LaMott, Harrison, Bainbridge, and you. And I can tell you this, Harrison is not going to remain on the list for long.” Fergus made a drinking motion.

  Andy asked, “Is that official?”

  Fergus shook his head. “Nah. The whispering of the mice. But you can take it to the bank. Harrison’s out. That leaves three.”

  “So let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You’re telling me to keep my hands off a nineteen-year-old child or else I won’t even be considered for vice president.”

  Jim Fergus had known Andy long enough. “Don’t waste your righteousness on me, Senator. You know what my job is.”

  “To be my mother?”

  “If I didn’t happen to know that you adore your mother, I would take that as an insult. Yes. Fine. Mother says. Hyland’s people are going over all of you with an electron microscope. They blew it by not using one on Wyeth. They’re not going to make the same mistake again.”

  “Chris might still be clean,” Andy said. “It wouldn’t be the first time a so-called scandal turned to dust.”

  “Do you think he’s clean?”

  Andy paused. The question had certainly been turning over and over in his mind ever since the faint whisperings had begun about Chris Wyeth’s possible miscues. He didn’t want to admit to the sense, however deeply planted, that the portrayal of young Chris Wyeth playing a little fast and loose was far too credible.

  Jim Fergus did not care for his boss’s pause. “Andy, if you actually know something, for God’s sake… I don’t even care if you skip the veep thing. But do not get caught up in this. You have to tell Momma right now. You and Wyeth go way back. Will your name be popping up in connection with any of these allegations?”

  “What do your whispering mice tell you?”

  “Screw them. What do you tell me?”

  Andy took a slow sip of coffee. What he hated about himself at that very instant was the image that had popped into his head. It had nothing to do with the topic at hand. It was an image of Lindsay the intern. She was again crossing the office on her baby-deer legs and exiting through the doorway. But this time she was completely naked.

  “I’m clean, Jim,” Andy said to his aide. “When Chris Wyeth was AG, I was still chasing hillbilly girls down in old Virginny. I don’t know what the man was up to, if anything. You have my word, Chris has not said a thing to me on this whole topic since the news broke.”

  “Fine. But I happen to know you haven’t seen him since the news broke. No one has. Except Hyland last night. Apparently he was holed up at the estate all week.”

  “Well. True.”

  Fergus detected an evasion. He knew how to read Andy’s face. “Is it true? This isn’t your mother talking here now. It’s Fergie. Of course there’s no harm if you’ve talked to Wyeth over the phone in the last few days. But the man is radioactive right now. Loyalty takes a backseat in matters like this, at least until the air has cleared. Chris Wyeth has been, if I can coin the term, bunglingly out of D.C. until just the other day. It’s very not good, his hiding out like that at his Hamptons manse and canceling his appearances. That bunker-mentality look is not one that too many pols wear well. Now, I know you two didn’t have your tennis game Tuesday. And I know that you were in Miami until Friday, then you and Christine went up to Whitney’s for Easter. And—”

  Andy cut him off. “Jim. Should I submit to you my hour-by-hour diary?”

  “Hey, I just want to know if you had any face-to-face with Wyeth. If you did, I wish you hadn’t. It simply wouldn’t look good right now. I just don’t want to be blindsided. That’s my job. To keep your handsome ass clean.”

  “I haven’t seen Chris since last week.”

  Fergus took a beat to assess his boss’s response. Normally, the senator was possessed of a pretty decent poker face, but not today. Fergus saw right through it. Something was wrong. He nodded grimly.

  “That’s good,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Andy sat at his desk with his chair spun toward the window. At the far end of the Mall, the Washington Monument softly pierced the darkening sky. The sun sat low on the horizon, just off to the right of the monument and some several billion miles away. Off to Andy’s left, an airliner was beginning its descent into Reagan National. A sliver of mercury growing ever larger.

  Andy did not want his thoughts to go back to the increasingly surreal memory of what had taken place on Shelter Island. But there was really no choice. One week. Was that possible? Joy Resnick was now buried. That dreary rainy Monday. God at his maudlin best.

  As best as he could determine, the police on Long Island were nowhere near sorting out what had happened in the hillside house that Thursday night. Andy was still keeping disciplined about not seeking information on the Internet. God only knew what sort of cookie-crumb trails such searching could leave behind and who was sitting in some nondescript building in that very city at that very instant trolling about for any such crumbs. That’s what the country was coming to.

  Based on the various patterns of footprints in the wet grass outside the house where Joy Resnick had been murdered, the police were seeking two or three men. From what Andy did know, this much hadn’t changed. The matter of whether all three men or only one had been involved in the murder was still a matter of speculation. The physical evidence had made it clear that Joy had been engaged in sexual activity at some point in the hours before she was murdered. Whether or not the authorities were leaning toward an assumption of rape was something Andy had not discerned.

  Naturally, the police were speaking with anyone who might have had an intimate involvement with the late Ms. Resnick.

  Andy sipped a scotch as he tracked another plane sliding through the sky. Figuratively speaking, any one person should be in possession of only one Achilles’ heel, yet Andy seemed to have too many to even count. For one, his blood was on the scene. He’d done what he could before fleeing the house to mop up any of the blood that had oozed from his head wound, but he wasn’t fooling himself. He’d left some behind; he had no doubts about it.

  And there was the matter of his DNA. He might as well have left a note behind, signed Senator Andrew P. Foster. Should speculation ever turn to actual suspicion, law enforcement had him by the genes. The blood evidence would be kid stuff.

  Andy set the glass down on the windowsill and bobbed the melting ice chip with his finger. Particularly disconcerting was the Thursday afternoon flight he had taken from Miami to New York. Not only was his name firmly implanted in the airline’s computer system, but plenty of passengers had recognized him in both airports as well as on the flight itself. The pilot had even made a point of coming back to the cabin to introduce himself, and Andy had autographed a copy of his book for one of the other passengers.

  What had he been thinking?

  Andy plunged the ice chip down to the bottom of the glass and held it there. The most nagging thought, however, was the assailant himself. Joy’s killer. Whoever he was, he had had ample opportunity to look at the face of the man who had attempted so vainly to ward off his brutal attack. Had he looked? Andy had no idea. He thought possibly not, but there was just no way he could be certain.

  A very large and very nasty shoe could well be suspended up there somewhere above his head, just waiting to drop. This was the possibility that Joy had been murdered because of whom she was sleeping with. Because of Andy himself. Had someone somehow gotten wind of his and Joy’s rendezvous and then targeted Joy for reasons that were yet to be revealed? Of the various thoughts that were plaguing Andy’s mind, this was the most sickening. This was the question that had Andy jumpy when his phones rang, or when he logged on
to get his emails. Was the mental hell of this past week a piddling prelude to what was about to unfold?

  Andy stared down at the sliver of ice pinned beneath his finger. His mind was so many miles away that when a voice sounded suddenly, the jolt that went through Andy’s body was enough to topple the glass.

  “Senator?”

  Andy could only imagine what the expression was on his face as he wheeled about, but whatever it was, it seemed nearly to make the new intern wet her panties.

  “I’m… I’m sorry. I…”

  Andy bent down and picked up the glass, grateful for the few seconds to pull himself together. Drinking by himself in his office. For Christ’s sake, not terrifically SOP.

  “No need to apologize,” Andy murmured. “I was just…” He trailed off.

  The intern’s expression was not inquisitive in the slightest. She pushed her hair from her face.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to barge in like that. I just thought I should tell you. I’ve, um… I’ve gone through the day’s phone messages. Greg and Linda both checked over my report. Maybe I… some people really do call in for funny things, don’t they?”

  Andy concurred. “They do.”

  The intern continued. “There is this one message. Actually, it’s about five or six of them. I mean, they’re all from the same person. Greg said to just erase them. It’s some kook. But I haven’t erased them yet. I didn’t know if — if you wanted to hear them anyway? Just in case? Or is that just me being stupid?”

  Andy slowly shook his head. “It’s not stupid at all, Lindsay. Why don’t we go give them a listen?”

  He followed the intern to the outer office. Only one light remained lit, giving the room a snug feel. The two stood on either side of Lindsay’s phone, which was at the edge of her small desk.

  Lindsay pushed a key on the phone several times. “Here. This is the first one.”

  Andy allowed his eyes to settle on the intern’s face as he awaited the message. She watched him as well, to read his expression. There was a soft beep in Andy’s ear, followed by a man’s voice. It was thick with an Eastern European accent. It could have been from any of a dozen countries.

  “This message is for the coward. You know who you are, and I know who you are. That is what is important. I know you. You will want to talk to me, Mr. Big Man. You will want to be good to me. In a very big way.”

  The man interrupted himself to cough. A burbly smoker’s cough. Lindsay’s pert eyebrows rose, as if tugged from above by a pair of strings. The man continued.

  “If I am your friend, you are free. No problems. But if you are a stupid coward, you will regret this. You want to be my friend. I will call back later, and I will want to talk to you. Make this happen.”

  The call clicked off. Andy marveled that the young woman couldn’t hear his heart slamming in his chest.

  “It’s silly, right?” Lindsay said. “I should just erase it.”

  “The other ones?” Andy didn’t recognize his own voice.

  “They’re pretty much the same. He seems to get a little angrier each time. Well, on the last one especially, he’s pretty annoyed. Greg said he sounds drunk. I wonder if—”

  She was interrupted by the sound of a commotion in the hallway. People were hurrying by the open door. A head appeared in the doorway. It was Senator Cutler from Colorado.

  “Andy! Turn on your TV. Wyeth is about to make a statement!”

  Cutler disappeared. Andy turned stiffly to the intern.

  “Delete them,” he said thickly. “Greg’s right. He’s a crank. I have no idea what he’s talking about. Delete them all.”

  No one at Masters and Weiss had quite decided what to do with Joy Resnick’s administrative assistant. The simple fact was, nobody really wanted to absorb Marion Mann into their staff. Marion had always been considered competent as far as her work was concerned, but she was a divisive presence. Not a happy woman. Membership into the natural cliques and affiliations of the workplace had always eluded her, and as a result she tried too hard, pushing her way awkwardly into people’s paths, making herself even more unwanted. On more than a few occasions Marion had allowed herself to be taken advantage of by men in the company. Most recently it had been the new jerk over in IT: a bumbling one-night stand in his messy gadget-filled apartment in Queens. Struggling through her hangover the following day, Marion had been mortified to overhear the jerk bragging to some of his buddies in the company lounge that he had “thrown Marion the Man a real bone last night.”

  The lukewarm feelings Joy Resnick had maintained concerning her assistant were known among the other account executives; everyone had gotten at least one earful over the past seven months. As Joy put it, the fit was just not fitting. In Marion’s year-end review, Joy had couched her assistant’s shortcomings as “a square-peg problem.” Although Marion had been considered mildly quirky when she’d first started at Masters and Weiss — those kicky glasses she wore, along with what had initially passed for an inspired fashion anarchy — much of that quirkiness had failed to prove anywhere near as endearing as Joy had hoped.

  Plus all the flirting. The sleeping around.

  The end result of all this was that in the wake of her boss’s murder, Marion Mann was now finding herself largely adrift at the office. A week after Joy’s death, nearly all of her active accounts had been passed off to other account execs, and Marion had spent most of the week filling the other execs in on various nuances of their adopted projects — at least, those aspects that Joy had shared with Marion. But aside from those meetings, Marion had been pretty much free to sit at her desk and grow moss.

  Only four days since Joy’s funeral, the shock of her murder was still resonating throughout the office. People passing by Joy’s office still paused to take a hushed look inside, as if they were peeking into a holy place. Except for the specific files that Marion had disseminated, Joy’s office remained exactly as it had been the previous Friday when the pair of detectives from Suffolk County had arrived with their horrific news. Naturally, they had wanted to interview Marion. The interview had taken place in the company’s hangar-sized conference room. Sitting at its comically huge table, Marion had felt like Alice in Wonderland in one of her shrinking episodes. The detectives had wanted to know if her boss had shared with Marion her plans for that past weekend. For example, had Joy spoken about anyone joining up with her at the place out on Shelter Island? Did Marion know if Joy Resnick had been seeing anyone? Any recent ex-boyfriends? Any enemies? Had Marion ever overheard her boss on the phone arguing with anyone? Had she seemed upset lately? Distracted? Anything?

  Unfortunately for the detectives, Marion had been unable to shine any light on who of Joy Resnick’s acquaintances could have possibly had anything to do with her murder. She did admit to the strained quality of her working relationship with her boss. Why bother trying to hide it? Any of a dozen or more other employees at Masters and Weiss would be telling them the same thing; the last thing Marion was going to do was put a false gloss on the matter. She told the detectives that her boss had been a perfectionist — which was true — and that as a result had not always been realistic in what she expected of other people. And not always so kind in the ways she demonstrated her disappointment when those unrealistic expectations went unmet.

  “Would you say she had a temper?” one of the detectives had asked. The cute one. Detective Brown Eyes.

  “You can write down the word diva,” Marion had replied pertly. “It’s shorter.”

  She explained to the detectives that there had been a lot expected of Joy at Masters and Weiss. Joy had been the company’s golden girl, Mr. Masters’s very own plunder some years back from one of the rival firms.

  “This job can have plenty of stress, of course,” Marion said sagely. “But that’s still no reason to treat people the way she sometimes treated them.”

  Brown Eyes asked, “And this would include you? This sort of treatment you’re talking about?”

  “Oh,
yes. Definitely me.” Marion’s laughter erupted nervously. “Probably me more than anyone else.”

  After the grilling, she had returned to her desk particularly proud of her interview. She had not hedged concerning her feelings about Joy. She’d spoken frankly, allowing the detectives to hear that there had been no love lost between her and her late boss. Certainly she had come off as a person with nothing to hide.

  Which could not have been further from the truth.

  Marion’s hand was trembling as she hung up the phone. She paused, then lifted the receiver from its cradle and set it down on the desk. She didn’t want it to ring again. She didn’t want to hear that horrible syrupy southern voice again. Ever again. On the day after Joy’s murder, the man must have phoned Marion half a dozen times at the office, and she had hung up on him each time without a word. All that weekend she had screened all her calls, refusing to pick up when she heard the snaky voice on her answering machine. It had been wishful thinking to assume that after Joy’s murder the unnerving man would have simply evaporated from her life. It seemed that just the opposite was developing. He was not going away at all. Not in the slightest.

  Marion removed her baroque eyeglasses and set them carefully down on the thick folder atop her desk. Her world went immediately blurry. As if she had descended underwater. Marion pulled a small plastic spray bottle from her top drawer, along with a blue chamois square, and methodically cleaned the lenses of her expensive glasses. Impressionistic blurs moved past her desk.

  Looking down at the fuzzy telephone, her mind moved back three months to the night the unwelcome Dixie drawl first crept into her ear. For the umpteenth time that week, she wished with all her heart that she could undo the events that had followed that first phone call.

  But of course it was too late for that. Her boss was dead.

  And it was Marion’s fault.

  Late January, and Marion had been home in her apartment in Murray Hill, watching the results show of Dancing with the Stars. She’d voted twelve times the night before for the soap opera guy. So cute, she couldn’t stand it. The phone began to ring and she had dragged it onto her lap, her eyes still pinned to the screen.