by Diana Palmer
“Senator Fowler,” she said quietly.
“Ms. Jones,” he replied. He stood over the desk with his hands in his pockets. “I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes?”
“Of course.” She indicated the chair in front of her desk.
He took his hands out of his pockets and sat down, crossing one long leg over the other. “I believe you know my son.”
She smiled. “Yes. I know Harley.”
“I…My wife and I haven’t seen him for many years,” he began. “We made terrible mistakes. Now, it seems that we’ll never be able to find our way back to him. He’s grown into a fine-looking young man. He…has a job?”
She nodded. “A very good one. And friends.”
“I’m glad. I’m very glad.” He hesitated. “We didn’t know how to cope with him. He was such a cocky youngster, so sure that he had all the answers.” He looked down at his shoes. “We should have been kinder.”
“You lost your daughter,” Alice said very gently.
He lifted his eyes and they shimmered with pain and grief. “I killed…my daughter,” he gritted. “Backed over her with my car rushing to get to a campaign rally.” He closed his eyes. “Afterward, I went mad.”
“So did your wife, I think,” Alice said quietly.
He nodded. He brushed at his eyes and averted them. “She was a superior court judge. She started drinking and quit the bench. She said she couldn’t sit in judgment on other people when her own mistakes were so terrible. She was on the phone when it happened. She’d just told our daughter, Cecily, to stop interrupting her and go away. You know, the sort of offhand remark parents make. It doesn’t mean they don’t love the child. Anyway, Cecily sneaked out the door and went behind the car, unbeknownst to me, apparently to get a toy she’d tossed under it. I jumped in without looking to see if there was anybody behind me. I was late getting to a meeting…Anyway, my wife never knew Cecily was outside until I started screaming, when I knew what I’d done.” He leaned forward. “We blamed each other. We had fights. Harley grieved. He blamed me, most of all. But he seemed to just get right on with his life afterward.”
“I don’t think any of you did that,” Alice replied. “I don’t think you dealt with it.”
He looked up. His blue eyes were damp. “How do you know so much?”
“I deal with death every day,” she said simply. “I’ve seen families torn apart by tragedies. Very few people admit that they need help, or get counseling. It is horrible to lose a child. It’s traumatic to lose one the way you did. You should have been in therapy, all of you.”
“I wasn’t the sort of person who could have admitted that,” he said simply. “I was more concerned with my image. It was an election year, you see. I threw myself into the campaign and thought that would accomplish the same thing. So did my wife.” He shook his head. “She decided to start a business, to keep busy.” He managed a smile. “Now we never see each other. After Harley left, we blamed each other for that, too.”
She studied the older man curiously. “You’re a politician. You must have access to investigators. You could have found Harley any time you wanted to.”
He hesitated. Then he nodded. “But that works both ways, Ms. Jones. He could have found us, too. We didn’t move around.”
“Harley said you wanted him to be part of a social set that he didn’t like.”
“Do you think I like it?” he asked suddenly and gave a bitter laugh. “I love my job. I have power. I can do a lot of good, and I do. But socializing is part of that job. I do more business at cocktail parties than I’ve ever done in my office in Washington. I make contacts, I get networks going, I research. I never stop.” He sighed. “I tried to explain that to Harley, but he thought I meant that I wanted to use him to reel in campaign workers.” He laughed. “It’s funny now. He was so green, so naive. He thought he knew all there was to know about politics and life.” He looked up. “I hope he’s learned that nothing is black or white.”
“He’s learned a lot,” she replied. “But he’s been running away from his past for years.”
“Too many years. I can’t approach him directly. He’d take off.” He clasped his hands together. “I was hoping you might find it in your heart to pave the way for me. Just a little. I only want to talk to him.”
She narrowed her eyes. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the woman we talked to at your fundraising party…?”
He stared at her with piercing blue eyes just a shade lighter than Harley’s. “You’re very quick.”
“I didn’t start this job yesterday,” she replied, and smiled faintly.
He drew in a long breath. “I gave Dolores a hard time. She was deeply religious, but she got on my nerves. A man who’s forsaken religion doesn’t like sermons,” he added, laughing bitterly. “But she was a good person. My wife had a heart attack earlier this year. I hired a nurse to sit with her, when she got home from the hospital. Unknown to me, the nurse drugged my wife and left the house to party with her boyfriend. Dolores made sure I found out. Then she sat with my wife. They found a lot to talk about. After my wife got back on her feet, she began to change for the better. I think it was Dolores’s influence.” He hung his head. “I was harsh to Dolores the night of the fundraiser. That’s haunted me, too. I have a young protégé, our newest senator. He’s got a brother who makes me very nervous…” He lifted his eyes. “Sorry. I keep getting off the track. I do want you to help me reconnect with my son, if you can. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“Then why are you here, Senator?” she asked.
He looked her in the eye. “Dolores didn’t commit suicide.”
Her heart jumped, but she kept a straight face. She linked her hands in front of her on the desk and leaned forward. “Why do you think that?”
“Because once, when I was despondent, I made a joke about running my car into a tree. She was eloquent on the subject of suicide. She thought it was the greatest sin of all. She said that it was an insult to God and it caused so much grief for people who loved you.” He looked up. “I’m not an investigator, but I know she was right-handed. She was shot in the right side of her body.” He shook his head. “She wasn’t the sort of person to do that. She hated guns. I’m sure she never owned one. It doesn’t feel right.”
“I couldn’t force the assistant medical examiner to write it up as a homicide. He’s near retirement, and it was your employee who died. He’s afraid of you, of your influence. He knows that you stopped the investigation on the Kilraven case stone-cold.”
“I didn’t,” he said unexpectedly, and his mouth tightened. “Will Sanders is the new junior senator from Texas,” he continued. “He’s a nice guy, but his brother is a small-time hoodlum with some nasty contacts, who mixes with dangerous people. He’s involved in illegal enterprises. Will can’t stop him, but he does try to protect him. Obviously he thinks Hank knows something about the Kilraven case, and he doesn’t want it discovered.”
Alice’s blue eyes began to glitter. “Murder is a nasty business,” she pointed out. “Would you like to know what was done to Kilraven’s wife and three-year-old daughter?” she added. “He saw it up close, by accident. But I have autopsy photos that I’ve never shown anyone, if you’d like to see what happened to them.”
The senator paled. “I would not,” he replied. He stared into space. “I’m willing for Kilraven to look into the case. Rick Marquez’s colleague was sent to work in traffic control. I’m sorry for that. Will persuaded me to get her off the case. She’s a bulldog when it comes to homicide investigation, and she stops at nothing to solve a crime.” He looked up. “Will’s rather forceful in his way. I let him lead me sometimes. But I don’t want either of us being shown as obstructing a murder investigation, even one that’s seven years old. He’s probably afraid that his brother, Hank, may have knowledge of the perpetrator and Will’s trying to shield him. He’s done that all his life. But he has no idea what the media would do to him if it ever came out that
he’d hindered the discovery of a murderer, especially in a case as horrific as this.”
“I’ve seen what happens when people conceal evidence. It’s not pretty,” Alice said. “How can you help Kilraven?”
“For one thing, I can smooth the way for Marquez’s colleague. I’ll go have a talk with the police commissioner when I leave here. He’ll get her reassigned to Homicide. Here.” He scribbled a number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “That’s my private cell number. I keep two phones on me, but only a few people have access to this number. Tell Kilraven to call me. Or do you have his number?”
“Sure.” She pulled out her own cell phone, pushed a few buttons and wrote down Kilraven’s cell phone number on a scrap of paper. Odd, how familiar that number looked on paper. She handed it to the senator. “There.”
“Thanks. Uh, if you like,” he added with a smile as he stood up, “you could share my private number with Harley. He can call me anytime. Even if I’m standing at a podium making a speech somewhere. I won’t mind being interrupted.”
She stood up, too, smiling. “I’m going down there Wednesday for the New Year’s Eve celebration in town, as it happens, with Harley. I’ll pass it along. Thanks, Senator Fowler.”
He shook hands with her. “If I can pave the way for you in the investigation into Dolores’s death, I’ll be glad to,” he added.
“I’ll keep you in mind. Kilraven will be grateful for your help, I’m sure.”
He smiled, waved and left.
Alice sat down. Something wasn’t right. She pulled up her notes on the Jacobsville murder investigation and scrolled down to the series of numbers that Longfellow had transcribed from the piece of paper in the victim’s hand. Gasping, she pulled up Kilraven’s cell phone number on her own cell phone and compared them. The digits that were decipherable were a match for everything except the area code, which was missing. It wasn’t conclusive, but it was pretty certain that the murder victim had come to contact Kilraven. Which begged the question, did the victim know something about the old murder case?
Her first instinct was to pick up the phone and call Kilraven. But her second was caution. Without the missing numbers, it could be a coincidence. Better to let the senator call Kilraven and get him some help—Marquez’s detective friend—and go from there. Meanwhile, Alice would press Longfellow about the faded, wet portion of the paper where the first few numbers were, so far, unreadable. The FBI lab had the technology enabling them to pull up the faintest traces of ink. They might work a miracle for the investigation.
The thermos contained a tiny residue of coffee laced with a narcotic drug, Longfellow told Alice. “If it’s connected to your case,” the assistant investigator told Alice, “it could explain a lot. It would make the victim less able to defend himself from an attacker.”
“Fingerprints?”
Longfellow shook her head. “It was clean. Wiped, apparently, and just tossed away. It’s as if,” she added, frowning, “the killer was so confident that he left the thermos deliberately, to show his superiority.”
Alice smiled faintly. “I love it when perps do that,” she said. “When we catch them, and get them into court, that cockiness usually takes a nosedive. It’s a kick to see it.”
“Indeed,” Longfellow added. “I’ll keep digging, though,” she assured Alice.
“You do that. We’ll need every scrap of evidence we have to pin this murder on somebody. The killer’s good. Very good.” She frowned. “He’s probably done this before and never got caught.”
“That might explain his efficiency,” the other woman agreed. “But he missed that scrap of paper in the victim’s hand.”
“Every criminal slips up eventually. Let’s hope this is his swan song.”
“Oh, yes.”
Alice drove down to Jacobsville in her personal car, a little Honda with terrific gas mileage, and checked in at the motel. She’d reserved a room, to make sure she got one, because out-of-town people came for the New Year’s Eve celebration. Once she was checked in, she phoned Harley.
“I was going to come up and get you,” he protested.
“I don’t want you on the roads at night, either, Harley,” she replied softly.
He sighed. “What am I going to do with you, Alice?”
“I have several suggestions,” she began brightly.
He laughed. “You can tell me tonight. Barbara’s Café is staying open for the festivities. Suppose I come and get you about six, and we’ll have supper. Then we’ll go to the Cattlemen’s Association building where the party’s being held.”
“That sounds great.”
“It’s formal,” he added hesitantly.
“No worries. I brought my skimpy little black cocktail dress and my sassy boa.”
He chuckled. “Not a live one, I hope.”
“Nope.”
“I’ll see you later, then,” he said in a low, sexy tone.
“I’ll look forward to it.”
He hung up. So did she. Then she checked her watch. It was going to be a long afternoon.
Harley caught his breath when she opened the door. She was dressed in a little black silk dress with spaghetti straps and a brief, low-cut bodice that made the most of her pert breasts. The dress clung to her hips and fell to her knees in silky profusion. She wore dark hose and black slingback pumps. She’d used enough makeup to give her an odd, foreign appearance. Her lips, plumped with glossy red stay-on lipstick, were tempting. She wore a knitted black boa with blue feathery wisps and carried a small black evening bag with a long strap.
“Will I do?” Alice asked innocently.
Harley couldn’t even speak. He nudged her back into the room, closed and locked the door, took off his hat and his jacket and pushed her gently onto the bed.
“Sorry,” he murmured as his mouth took hers like a whirlwind.
She moaned as he slid onto her, teasing her legs apart so that he could ease up her skirt and touch the soft flesh there with a lean, exploring hand.
His mouth became demanding. His hands moved up and down her yielding body, discovering soft curves and softer flesh beneath. With his mouth still insistent on her parting lips, he brushed away the spaghetti straps and bared her to the waist. He lifted his head to look at her taut, mauve-tipped breasts. “Beautiful,” he whispered, and his mouth diverted to the hardness, covered it delicately, and with a subtle suction that arched her off the bed in a stab of pleasure so deep that it seemed to make her swell all over.
She forced his head closer, writhing under him as the hunger built and built in the secret silence of the room. All she wanted was for him never to stop. She whispered it, moaning, coaxing, as the flames grew higher and higher, and his hands reached under her, searching for a waistband…
Her cell phone blared out the theme from the original Indiana Jones movie. They both jumped at the sound. Harley, his mind returning to normal, quickly drew his hands out from under Alice’s skirt with a grimace, and rolled away. He lay struggling to get his breath while she eased off the bed and retrieved her purse from the floor, where she’d dropped it.
“Jones,” she managed in a hoarse tone.
“Alice?” Hayes Carson asked, because she didn’t sound like herself.
“Yes,” she said, forcing herself to breathe normally. “Hayes?”
“Yes. I wanted to know if you found out anything about that thermos.” He hesitated. “Did I call at a bad time?”
She managed a laugh. “We could debate that,” she said. “Actually the thermos was clean. No fingerprints, but the liquid in it had traces of a narcotic laced in it,” she replied. “But Longfellow’s still looking. We’ve got the note at the FBI lab. Hopefully they’ll be able to get the missing numbers for us. But they’ve got a backlog and it’s the holidays. Not much hope for anything this week.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Well, we live in hope,” she said, and glanced at Harley, who was now sitting up and looking pained.
“We do. Coming to the celebration tonight?”
“Sure am. You coming?”
“I never miss it. Uh, is Harley bringing you?”
She laughed. “He is. We’ll see you there.”
“Sure thing.” He hung up.
She glanced at Harley with a wicked smile. “Well, we can think of Hayes as portable birth control tonight, can’t we?”
He burst out laughing despite his discomfort. He managed to get to his feet, still struggling to breathe normally. “I can think of a few other pertinent adjectives that would fit him.”
“Unprintable ones, I’ll bet.” She went up to him and put her hands on his broad chest. She reached up to kiss him softly. “It was good timing. I couldn’t have stopped.”
“Yeah. Me, neither,” he confessed, flushing a little. “It’s been a long dry spell.” He bent and brushed his mouth over hers. “But we’ve proven that we’re physically compatible,” he mused.
“Definitely.” She pursed her lips. “So how about we get married tomorrow morning?”
He chuckled. “Can’t. I’m brushing bulls for a regional show.”
“Brushing bulls?” she wondered aloud.
“Purebred herd sires. They have to be brushed and combed and dolled up. The more ribbons we win, the higher we can charge for their, uh, well, for straws.”
Of semen, he meant, but he was too nice to say it bluntly. “I know what straws are, Harley.” She grinned. “I get the idea.”
“So not tomorrow.”
“I live in hope,” she returned. She went to the mirror in the bathroom to repair her makeup, which was royally smeared. “Better check your face, too,” she called. “This never-smear lipstick has dishonest publicity. It does smear.”
He walked up behind her. His shirt was undone. She remembered doing that, her hands buried in the thick hair that covered his chest, tugging it while he kissed her. She flushed at the memory.