After Midnight

by Diana Palmer

  “In other words, even if I was willing to prove that I was incapacitated at the time of the hiring, it wouldn’t lessen my responsibility in the eyes of the law.”

  “That’s exactly right.” Wilson frowned. “Of course, Burke will be prosecuted along with you. He’s an accessory.”

  “Good. I hope they hang him out to dry. His brother-in-law Jurkins is my new solid waste manager, but I didn’t know about any relationship between the two of them until this came up. How am I supposed to know things like that?” He glanced at Wilson. “Can I prosecute Jurkins for making that decision without my preliminary approval?”

  “You did approve it,” Wilson said with forced patience. “Jurkins denies any wrongdoing. He said that he told you what he’d done and you said it was all right.”

  “But, my God, I had no idea who Burke was or that CWC’s record had been misrepresented to me!”

  “Jurkins swears that he can show you on paper what CWC did to discredit them. He also swears that he didn’t know Burke had been in any trouble, whether or not that’s true. You’re still culpable, regardless of that,” Wilson informed him. “I’m sorry. I can’t see any legal way out of this. You’ll have to plead guilty and hope that we can negotiate a reasonable settlement.”

  “While that SOB gets away scot-free?”

  “Which one?”

  “Burke.”

  “We’re investigating,” Wilson assured him.

  “Could kickbacks be involved here?” he asked suddenly, staring at his legal counsel. “If they were, there’ll be proof, won’t there?” Kane persisted.

  “Well…” He grimaced, sticking his hands deep in his pockets. “We can’t find any evidence that anyone who works for you has had any drastic change in lifestyles. We’re checking into employee backgrounds right now, though. If there is anything, we’ll turn it up.”

  Kane leaned back against his desk. “You mean that this whole situation was innocently arrived at?” he asked.

  “I can’t prove that it wasn’t at this point.”

  “Suppose I fire Jurkins?”

  “What for?” Wilson replied. “He’s done nothing except make a mistake in judgment, allegedly trying to save you money on operating expense. He’s full of apologies and explanations and excuses.”

  “We could take the case to the newspapers. My father’s, in fact.”

  “You aren’t thinking,” the other man said patiently. “Burke may be a scalawag, but he’s a working man with a family to support. If you start persecuting him, despite what he’s done, it’s only going to reinforce the negative image of your company as a money-hungry exploiter of working people. People will overlook his illegal dumping because you’re picking on him. In fact, the press will turn it around and make a hero of him—the little guy trying to make a buck, being persecuted by big business.”

  “I don’t believe this!”

  “I’ve seen it done. Being rich is its own punishment sometimes.”

  “I’ve provided hundreds of new jobs here,” Kane thundered. “I’ve employed minorities without government pressure and put them in top ex ecutive positions. I’ve donated to civic projects, I’ve helped renovate depressed areas…doesn’t any of that work in my favor?”

  “When the hanging fever dies down, it probably will. You only have to live through the interim.”

  “You’re just full of optimism, aren’t you?”

  Wilson got to his feet and went to shake hands with Kane. “I know it must look as if we’re all against you. Don’t give up. It’s early days yet.”

  Kane glowered at him. “And when it rains, it pours. Get out there and save my neck.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he promised.

  Nikki was exhausted when she and Derrie reached the old Victorian family home in the Battery.

  “You’d better sack out in the downstairs bedroom until you’re more fit to climb those stairs,” Derrie pointed out.

  “I guess so,” Nikki returned, with a wistful look at the gracefully curving staircase with its sedate gray carpet.

  Derrie helped Nikki into the bedroom and then unpacked for her while Nikki got into her pajamas and climbed in bed. “Good thing Mrs. B. has been here.”

  “If it wasn’t for Mrs. B. three times a week, I couldn’t keep this place,” Nikki pointed out. “She was a young girl when she kept house for Dad, but even middle age hasn’t slowed her down. Doesn’t she do a good job?”

  “Wonderful.” Derrie put the last of the dirty clothes in the laundry hamper. “You said that you’d had pneumonia for four days. However did you manage alone?”

  Nikki averted her eyes. “I didn’t eat much,” she said, “and I had a jug of bottled water by the bed. The antibiotics worked very fast.”

  “Oh, that’s right, you have a doctor for a neighbor up there, how silly of me to have forgotten,” Derrie said.

  “That’s right, Chad Holman lives just down the road,” Nikki assured her, relieved. It was highly unlikely that Derrie would run into Dr. Chad Holman to ask about Nikki’s return bout of pneumonia. Kane’s intervention would never have to be mentioned.

  “I told you that you were doing too much at Spoleto,” Derrie chided, glancing at the other woman as she lounged in the bed. “Summer pneumonia can be the very devil.”

  “I’m on the mend. I got chilled, that’s all. I’ll be more careful.”

  “You need to take better care of yourself,” Derrie chided.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nikki said. “Stop brooding. You’ve stopped working for my stupid brother, so you’re hardly required to worry about me.”

  “I’ll miss your stupid brother,” Derrie said sadly, as she looked at Nikki and smiled. “But it wasn’t because of him that I’ve been your friend.”

  “I know that. I’m sorry Clayton ever let himself get mixed up with Mosby,” Nikki said quietly. “My ex-husband is a desperate man, and Bett Watts makes a vicious coconspirator. They’re going to take my brother down if he isn’t very careful. This fight with Kane Lombard could be just the thing to do it, too. Mr. Lombard doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who takes anything lying down, and his family owns one vicious tabloid in New York.”

  “Mr. Lombard is very much on the defensive right now,” Derrie observed. “They say his plant is surrounded by rabid environmentalists with blown-up photos of the dead birds in that marsh.”

  Nikki winced. She could imagine how Kane would feel. She’d learned enough about him during their acquaintance to tell that he was a man who loved wildlife. He’d been against the lumbering bill when her own brother wasn’t. If he wanted to preserve the owl, certainly he wouldn’t do anything deliberately to kill birds.

  “I think you should know,” Derrie began slowly, “that some of those protestors who are picketing Mr. Lombard’s plant were hired to do it.”

  Nikki’s lips parted as she let out a sudden breath. “Does Clayton know?”

  Derrie turned, uncomfortable and uneasy. “Well, you see, that’s why I quit. It was your brother who hired them.”

  Chapter Ten

  Nikki couldn’t believe what she was hearing. But she knew that Derrie wouldn’t lie.

  “But Clayton has always been so concerned for the environment, especially here at home,” she said. “It’s Haralson, isn’t it?” she asked quietly. “He’s fighting in the way he knows best. But meanwhile, Clay is allowing himself to be used for what he thinks is political power.”

  “He thinks he’s doing it to protect you from a scandal,” Derrie replied, frowning. “Nikki, do you have a skeleton that Kane could rattle?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Nikki asked uncertainly. She chewed on a fingernail. “What are we going to do?”

  “Talk to Clay,” Derrie invited. “Perhaps he’ll listen to you. He’s gone deaf with me.”

  “I’m sorry you won’t stay,” Nikki murmured.

  “I can’t. He wanted me to call the television stations and get them over to Mr. Lombard’s plant.” She grimaced. “That
was Haralson’s suggestion, too, I’m pretty sure, but Clayton was willing to do it.”

  “I see.” Nikki didn’t recognize these tactics. Not only were they not like Clayton, they weren’t like Mosby, either. Mosby wasn’t a malicious man. Even in his antienvironment stance, his goal was to save jobs, to put people to work. He wasn’t working for personal gain. He never had. But he’d sent Haralson to help Clayton’s campaign. Why?

  “I would have refused to call the TV stations, too,” she said when Derrie appeared to be waiting for reassurance.

  Derrie forced herself to smile. “It feels funny to be without a job,” she said slowly.

  “What will you do?”

  “Something I may regret. I’m going to work for the competition. Sam Hewett asked me to work for him when the race started. He’s very pro-women’s rights and I know his family,” she said, grimacing at Nikki’s pained look. “He’s a good man and he won’t fight dirty. He has integrity—the sort of integrity that your brother always had until that Haralson man came along and started helping him.” She lowered her eyes. “I’m very sorry. I wish it hadn’t come to this.”

  “So do I. Let me talk to Clayton before you rush into anything,” Nikki pleaded.

  Derrie moved closer, a hand going to her tangle of blond hair. “You don’t understand, Nikki,” she began. “He told me what he really thought of me. I guess because we joked so much I never took him seriously when he teased me about being a prude. But he was really mad this morning. He said the only reason he kept me around was because I was efficient.” She shook her head. “I didn’t realize how much I cared until then. It’s hopeless, you see,” she said with a sad smile. “I can’t make him love me.”

  Nikki knew how that felt. Her own heart was still raw from Kane’s unexpected rejection. “Oh, Derrie,” Nikki said miserably. “Whoever he gets as a replacement won’t come close to you. You’re the only long-term staff member he’s kept from the old days in the state house of representatives.”

  “I know. Well, I hope you and I will still be friends.”

  “Don’t be absurd, of course we will. Thank you for helping me get home, Derrie.”

  “Any time.” She picked up her purse and moved to the door. It was all beginning to hit her now. “I’ll call Mr. Hewett and then have a nice lazy weekend before I start back to work, if he still wants me, that is.”

  “I have no doubt that he will.”

  Nikki looked concerned and Derrie instantly knew why. “I’m not going to sell out Clayton, even if he is a rat.”

  Nikki flushed. “Derrie, I wasn’t thinking…”

  “Yes, you were, it’s quite natural to. But I’m not that mad. Mostly, I’m hurt.” She breathed heavily. “I’ll get over it. Life happens.”

  “Doesn’t it just?” Nikki said sadly, remembering Kane and what she’d had to sacrifice. “I want to know how things work out for you.”

  Derrie smiled at her. “You will, I promise.”

  Clayton came that night to see about Nikki. He looked drawn and preoccupied.

  “Worn out from learning to make coffee?” Nikki asked mockingly when he walked into the living room, curled up on the couch waiting for him.

  “So she told you,” he said. He dropped heavily into his armchair and stared at her. “You look awful.”

  “I feel better than I did,” she replied. “I caught a chill. Stupid of me, under the circumstances, but I’m better now.”

  “I’m glad. I would have come, but Derrie made it impossible,” he said angrily.

  She laughed in spite of herself. He looked as he had when they were children and someone took something he treasured away from him. The two of them looked very much alike except for the darkness of Nikki’s skin. He shared her dark hair but he had blue eyes, and she had green ones, a legacy from both sides of the family.

  “She quit,” he muttered. “Can you imagine? I asked her to do one little thing beyond her regular duties, and she walked out!”

  “I know why she walked out,” Nikki returned. “I’d have walked out, too. Haralson is destroying you, Clay. You’ve changed more than you realize.”

  He glared at her. “If the Lombards get hold of your marriage, do you have any idea what they’ll do to you and Mosby in that supermarket sleaze sheet they’ve made millions on?”

  “Yes, I know,” she agreed quietly. “And I’d rather face that than watch you use the same tactics to get reelected.”

  “You have to play hardball sometimes. Haralson knows what he’s doing. Maybe his methods are a little ruthless, but Lombard is ruthless, too.”

  “Not like this,” she said. “If he hit you, you’d see him coming.”

  His face cleared. He stared at her for a long moment. “How do you know?” he asked quietly.

  She hesitated. “I’ve read some very interesting things about him,” she said. She couldn’t tell her brother that she’d spent several days alone with Kane Lombard, or that she’d been falling in love with him. In Clayton’s current frame of mind, that would have been foolish.

  “No more Derrie,” Clayton was mumbling dully. “I can’t even believe it! She’s been with me for years, from when I was first elected to the state legislature until I was elected to Congress, she was always there. And now she walks out over a triviality.”

  “It isn’t a triviality,” she said.

  He glanced at her curiously. “Wake up, Nikki. You know what politics is like. Neither of us has ever been blind to what went on behind the curtains.”

  “Yes, but Clay, you’ve never been part of that before. You were an idealist.”

  “I can’t change anything until I garner some political clout, and I can’t do that until I’m reelected. Two years terms for Congressmen are outrageous, we aren’t even settled in office before we have to run for reelection. I want back in. I have plans, an itinerary,” he said, talking to himself. “How I win isn’t that important. Once I’m reelected, I’ve learned that nothing changes, no matter how hard you work,” he said dully.

  “Unemployment is growing by the day.” His face hardened. “Derrie’s worried about an owl and I’m trying to save jobs. Well, I can recoup my support right here in my own state. All I have to do is throw Lombard to the wolves. He’s been dumping chemicals in a marsh. The media is having a field day at his expense,” he added, brightening. “This is the first break I’ve had since the campaign began. I got full credit for helping catch him.”

  “Do you know what Mr. Lombard’s been through in the past year?”

  “Who doesn’t?” he said shortly, rising. He held up his hand when she threatened to continue. “Enough, Nikki. It doesn’t change facts. He’s guilty and I’m going to nail him to the wall.”

  “Mosby is behind you, I gather,” she said coldly.

  “He loaned me Haralson. He always liked me.”

  Nikki averted her eyes. Yes, he had. Mosby even liked Nikki, but that was all. She couldn’t forget the revulsion in Mosby’s eyes the one time she’d tried desperately to arouse him by stripping in front of him. The damage he’d done, without any malice at all, to her image as a woman was never going to be fully erased. Kane might have helped, but he had his own emotional barriers.

  “You’ve forgiven Mosby,” Clayton said slowly.

  “Yes,” Nikki replied softly. “He couldn’t help it.”

  Clayton winced. “If it got out, he’d kill himself,” he told her. “He’s a decent man, a very private man. He supports job programs and minorities, even if sometimes he only does it for political gain. The environmentalists may hate him, but they’re the only ones. He’s kind, in his way.”

  “Yes, I remember,” she said. Her heart was still bruised, and it didn’t help to recall Mosby with an injured bird on his lap driving wildly to the nearest veterinarian’s office to have it treated.

  “You never even suspected, did you?” Clayton said sadly. “Dad did, I think, but he wouldn’t admit it even to himself. He was too bent on saving his own skin. Mosby needed a
wife, and Dad needed Mosby.”

  “And the only one who suffered was me,” Nikki said miserably.

  “That’s not quite true,” Clayton told her. “Mosby was devastated when he realized exactly how you felt. It took him a long time to get over it. He’s more sensitive than most, and he doesn’t like hurting anyone.”

  “I know that,” she said. She looked at Clay. “But Bett doesn’t mind hurting people. She’s trained you so that you’re the same way lately.”

  He glared at her. “Bett is my business. And she doesn’t like you, either.”

  “Heavens, should that surprise me?” Nikki laughed. “I don’t think she owns anything except pin-striped suits and ties. I’ll bet you’ve never seen her in a dress.”

  Clayton scowled. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I like dresses,” she replied, her green eyes sparkling. “I don’t have to prove that I’m better than a man. I already know that I am,” she added wickedly.

  He sighed, shaking his head. “Nikki, you’re hopeless.”

  “Probably. Don’t lose yourself in the political maze,” she pleaded. “Don’t lose sight of why you ran for the office in the first place. You’re on the Energy and National Resources Subcommittee and the energy committee. You’ve made suggestions that won you more support on the hill. I’m very proud of you. Don’t blow all that to keep Mosby and Bett on the good side of the timber lobby.”

  “I’ll reconsider my position,” he told her. “Now. When you get back on your feet, I thought we’d throw a few gala parties.”

  “I know, beginning with one in Washington, D.C., in September,” she added, feeling brighter and happier as she considered the motif for the first party.

  “The primary election will be over by then,” he said uncomfortably.

  “And we’ll win,” she assured him, smiling. “And the party will be a celebration.”

  He hoped so, but didn’t put it into words.

  “I do love politics, Clay.”

  “So do I,” he seconded. “And I’ll try not to disillusion you too much with my campaign. Just remember, Nikki, we both have a lot to fear from Lombard. If he’s occupied with defending himself against the EPA rules, his family will be too busy trying to help him to pay much attention to you and Mosby before the primary. It’s only a delaying tactic, and he’s filthy rich. They won’t hang him too high.”