Red, White, and Blue

by Laura Hayden

  She answered. “Lee?”

  “I have that report you requested, Ms. Rosen.”

  The formality of Lee’s voice set off a few alarms. Kate had expected to get the results by e-mail. Why the phone call?

  The investigator continued. “Perhaps we can meet and I can give it to you in person.”

  In person? Lee never requested in-person meetings unless something was wrong or the material so sensitive that they didn’t trust it to be transmitted over the phone or Internet. Kate shivered at the memory of the last bombshell Lee had delivered in person, early in the campaign. Whatever the investigation had turned up concerning Timothy Colton and Maia Bari, it had to be bad.

  “The usual place?” she asked.

  The last time they’d met in the parking deck at Lee’s office building, then drove to Pentagon City mall—just two anonymous women in a sea of shoppers. But perhaps now, thanks to Kate’s higher profile position, she’d lost some of her anonymity.

  “Not this time. When are you headed home tonight?”

  Kate consulted her schedule and added the requisite two hours for the unexpected tasks that seemed to pop up every evening—par for the course when working at the White House. “Nine thirty, if I’m lucky.”

  “You took the Metro today, right?”

  Kate didn’t want to know how or why Lee knew this particular piece of information. Depending on her schedule, she sometimes came into town on the train and other times used a car service. But Lee wanted her to take the Metro now, it was clear. Less chance of an audience . . . or a tail.

  “Can we meet on the platform at the Vienna Metro station?”

  The Vienna station was only one stop beyond the Dunn Loring station, which Kate used. Once they finished their clandestine meeting, she could simply hop on the Metrorail and head back to her station, where her car was parked.

  “Sure. It’ll take about a half hour for me to get there. The train usually leaves McPherson at a quarter till ten.”

  “Okay, then we’ll meet around 10:15. When you arrive, don’t say anything when you see me, but just do what I do. Text me when you leave.”

  Kate didn’t know whether to be amused or alarmed by Lee’s James Bond imitation. The woman didn’t usually skew to the dramatic. She preferred more cloak than dagger. Kate agreed to the meeting and hung up. But her sense of danger intensified all out of proportion to what she’d asked Lee to look into.

  At nine o’clock, after a particularly long and hard day, Kate managed to put out all the fires that always cropped up after hours. The latest had been some concern over reports detailing the first hour of trading in the Tokyo stock market. Once Emily was fully briefed and the situation seemed to have calmed down in Japan, Kate gathered her things from her office, sent Lee a text message, exited the White House, and headed to the McPherson Square station.

  The one advantage of working late was that the 9:45 train held far fewer folks than it did at rush hour. The car she chose was only half-full and remained so at each stop with roughly the same number of people entering as exiting.

  Once the train crossed under the Potomac, it emerged aboveground into the cold, dark night, giving Kate a view of shadowy trees and cars’ headlights rushing alongside the tracks. From this point on, the number of riders dropped dramatically after each stop. Most were like her—commuters headed home after a late night at the office. She fought the automatic urge to rise from her seat when she reached her normal stop and instead stayed in place to continue on to the Vienna station, the last stop on the Orange line—or the first, depending on one’s perspective or direction.

  When she stepped out of the train car onto the exposed platform, a frigid wind hit her and continued to blast her as she stood there, looking for Lee. The threat of snow had faded from the forecast, but someone had forgotten to tell the wind that. It still contained the cold bite of potential snowfall.

  With as much nonchalance as she could muster, she glanced down the length of the platform, spotting a woman sitting on one of the concrete benches, reading a newspaper. The wind caught the pages every now and then, and one gust moved the paper long enough for Kate to recognize Lee.

  A moment later, Lee stood, folded her paper, and walked into the train that had just disgorged its passengers. Kate followed, choosing the second entrance to the train car so as not to follow totally in the investigator’s footsteps.

  Thanks to the sparse number of riders, no one else joined them in their railcar. Once home for the evening, few commuters headed back toward the District again. Kate and Lee sat down at opposite ends of the car, still feigning no interest in the other. It wasn’t until the train started moving that Lee stood, walked down the aisle, and sat by Kate.

  “Two strangers meet on a train . . . ,” Lee mocked.

  Kate slid over. “Whatever you have, it must be bad,” she said as Lee got settled in the seat next to her.

  “More like . . . sensitive. And you know my motto: ‘Don’t take chances you don’t have to.’”

  “I thought it was ‘The walls have ears.’”

  “That too.” Lee took a file from the oversize bag slung across her shoulder and pulled out the top page.

  “Here’s the usual background stuff on Colton and Bari. You already knew her exotic background was nothing but a sham. But I dug a little deeper, mostly into her last days, since we’d looked into her earlier years already. I found some bombshells. On the other hand, it was harder to find early dirt on Colton.”

  “The information was hidden?”

  “No. There just wasn’t anything interesting to speak of. Up till a couple of years ago, his life was pretty much a plain story—bright guy, good family, solid education, good work ethic.”

  “So . . . on the surface, he doesn’t sound like someone who would order an attack on someone he considered a rival for his position.”

  “Not before he started working for Talbot about eight years ago.”

  “You’re saying that working for Talbot changed him somehow?”

  “I don’t know. But if I had to guess, I’d say he didn’t change as much because of his association with Talbot. Instead, his finances changed.” She tapped a sheet of paper that looked like the first page of a credit report. “Six years ago, he inherited a considerable chunk of property and money—roughly equivalent to the state of Rhode Island in size and assets. Once he became stinkin’ rich, he kicked his childhood sweetheart fiancée to the curb and jumped right into the fast lane. Fast cars, fast money, and the fast women to help him enjoy his wealth.”

  Kate had seen both sides of people coming into sudden wealth: the good stewards who used it to make life better not just for themselves but for others, and those people who allowed money to derail their better nature. “Maybe he thought Talbot was his ticket to power.”

  “Possibly. But I’d say that with the size of his wealth, he could manage a fair amount of power on his own.”

  “It takes more than money to do that on any lasting level.” Although Kate had grown up in a decidedly middle-class family, her association with Emily and her old-money family and friends had taught Kate a lot about the role of wealth in the acquisition and control of power. She knew that—for better or for worse—the easiest way for a person without a moneyed background to suddenly attain the privilege, the respect, and—dare she say it?—the power that came with old money was to marry into it. She was surprised to find him in Maia’s company, rather than hitting up the eligible political heiresses in town. But she could certainly see Maia looking for an opportunity to marry money.

  “Maybe that’s why Maia became interested in him,” she pondered aloud. “Achieving a fortune had to be high on her list of life goals. The next best thing for a person like her to having money would be to marry it. But what did she bring into the equation that interested Colton, besides her obvious charms? I guess the question is: would she rely on her looks alone or would she try to sweeten the deal by—let’s say—selling some sensitive information concer
ning Emily’s campaign to her opponent before the election? Or worse, by enabling him to bring her down after it?”

  “Hard to say. One thing I can tell you: she was up to something. She made all kinds of contacts the last few weeks. I’m not sure what she was trying to pull, but I know it was big. But to find out what she was up to, I’m going to have to dig deeper. I’m not sure what I’m going to find when I start turning over rocks. Meanwhile, I’ve got motive, opportunity, and means. Motive is easy. Hers? Get rich quick, doing whatever she can. As to opportunity, I’ve found at least three social situations where she and Colton might—and I stress might—have gotten together. But nothing definitive to suggest they were getting together on a professional or personal front. I’ve also got her placed at the other party’s campaign committee, four senatorial offices, and the Speaker of the House’s private residence. She’s out of work. She might just be dropping off résumés. But it worries me, especially the connection to Talbot through Colton. I’ve got no pictures of the two of them in an embrace, much less dating, before the election. From what I can find, they didn’t get all Carville and Matalin on us until after the election. I think what bound them together might be something designed to bring down Emily’s presidency.”

  Kate glanced around at their unconventional surroundings as a somewhat tired voice from the speaker stated, “Next stop, Dunn Loring.” The announcement was promptly followed by the train’s decreased speed. This was important. She had to hear it out to the end. Kate wondered if their conversation might take the entire trip back to McPherson Square. If so, it would make for a longer day and shorter night’s sleep. If Buster wasn’t home, impatiently awaiting her, Kate would consider just going back to her office and crashing on the couch. She’d already stashed an overnight case and several extra sets of clothes there.

  She pushed ahead, despite the train’s slowdown into the next station. “Okay, so maybe Maia and Colton were up to something. It might be unusual, but not illegal. Anything they can do now would be too little too late to do us any real harm.” She tensed, knowing Lee hadn’t taken these precautions for their meeting without reason. “So there’s got to be another reason why we are playing spy games.”

  “Because of this.” Lee pulled out a second sheet of paper displaying a family tree. “It’s his pedigree.” She started at his name and traced a path up his lineage to his parents and then followed his mother’s branch to her parents. “Colton’s maternal grandmother was married twice. Colton’s mother was the product of the first marriage. The second marriage resulted in two more children, twin girls—Angela and Diane Kasdan.”

  Kate breathed in sharply, failing to hide her surprise. Angela Kasdan was the young coed who had been permanently injured, thanks to the deliberate inactions of a callous young college student named Charles Talbot. She’d finally died only a handful of years ago after living nearly thirty years in a coma.

  Kate and Lee both fell silent as the train stopped at the platform, the doors slid open, and two couples, obviously traveling together, stepped into the car. But they took seats at the opposite end, which would allow Kate and Lee enough privacy to continue their discussion. However, they waited until the train started moving before resuming their talk in lowered voices.

  Lee continued. “When Ms. Kasdan finally passed away, after spending twenty-nine years in her—” the investigator consulted another page—“‘persistent vegetative state,’ her entire fortune, $50.6 million, went to the only person named in her will: her nephew, Timothy Colton.”

  “He inherited? I’d have thought the inheritance would’ve made a lateral move—to her twin sister.”

  “Me too. So that’s why I dug a little deeper. It turns out that she and her sister were on the outs when they both had their wills drawn up. Sibling rivalries to the extreme. Daddy—he of the incredible wealth—had insisted that they have wills drawn up shortly after their twenty-first birthdays. The girls hadn’t gotten along for years—despite the supposed closeness of twins. Anyway, Angie chose her half nephew, Timothy Colton, as her sole beneficiary. Of course, at that time, she had nothing to leave behind to speak of, so it was more of a nyah, nyah, nyah nose-thumbing gesture to her sister than anything else. Then, when Daddy died five years after Angie was injured, she became a very rich coma patient. They didn’t even have to tap her principal to pay for her continued hospitalization.”

  Kate did some quick calculations. “In 1973, Colton must have been only a baby at the time.”

  “Less than a year old.”

  “So when she finally passed six years ago . . .”

  “Her still-impressive fortune, which had been invested wisely and compounded monthly, went to him.” Lee handed Kate the page marked Financial Overview, then leaned back in the hard plastic seat, displaying a sense of triumph. “And strangely enough, six years ago is when he seemed to have made his radical change in personality.”

  Kate studied the report. “Money can do that to you.”

  Lee grinned. “Someday, I’d like to have the opportunity to experience that for myself. Firsthand. But I think his recent behavior might be more than that. I wonder if he just found out what happened to his aunt. If so, a little revenge could be on his mind. Against Talbot for killing her. Against Emily for not letting the news leak out.”

  Kate ignored this. “What about his family? Anyone upset that he got Angela’s share?”

  “Not that I could find out. The two daughters were the only heirs. Diane, the other twin, got her portion right after their father died, and since then, she’s doubled it. She might have disliked that Colton got it, but I seriously doubt she would have killed for more money when she’s already rolling in it.”

  “What else do you have?”

  The investigator reached into her oversize bag to produce another folder. “Miss Maia. We already knew she was muddying the waters by trading on her resemblance to her aunt in looks and in name and confusing the heck out of the world. Half the reports said she was twenty-five; the other half, fifty-five. With her timeless sort of looks, she could have been either age. But it’s her relationship—if you can call it that—with Colton that snagged my attention. It seems . . . uneven.”

  “How so?”

  Lee produced several more pages of report. “I can’t find anything that puts them together before Christmas. I can come up with four different times they’ve been together since that time, but none of those occasions were what you or I would call a romantic rendezvous.” She pulled out four pictures, each capturing Timothy Colton and Maia Bari in deep conversation, but with body language and facial expressions that didn’t exactly scream, “We’re lovers!”

  Lee stabbed the first picture with her forefinger. “She looks like she’s been sucking on a lemon and he looks constipated. These are not the attributes of a couple planning to slide between the silky sheets at a romantic weekend on the Eastern shore.”

  “True.”

  Laughter echoed from the other end of the car, where the two couples huddled together in conversation. They were demonstrating the very sense of personal closeness that these pictures lacked. The people at the end of the car might be friends, they might be more, but they all shared a sense of comfort that reflected in their voices and body language.

  Kate turned one picture over and saw a reference number on the back. “Where did you get these?”

  “Interesting story.” Lee lowered her voice. “An investigator I know was following Bari around as a possible corespondent in a divorce case. The disgruntled wife thought her hubby was canoodling with our subject. As it turns out, Maia was completely in the clear. She was on assignment from her boss, Marjorie Redding, to help the man pick out some jewelry for his estranged wife. My friend proved that the mystery man Maia was hanging out with was Colton, not the accused husband. Security footage at the jewelry store showed Maia was simply advising the man when he purchased a diamond necklace, bracelet, and matching earrings. The wife was appeased by the report, especially when she r
eceived said jewelry, and poof! No more divorce proceedings.”

  Kate studied the picture of Maia and Colton some more. “They just don’t look like . . . lovers, do they?”

  “No. Then again, she’d be smart enough to not push him. If he got his money six years ago and still is unattached, then he’s probably gotten wary of women wanting him for the size of his wallet. A piece of work like her would know how to get under a man’s skin, make him think the relationship was entirely his idea. She was probably only in phase two of a multistep process to snare him.”

  “Lee Devlin, you’re a cynic.”

  “No, I’m a realist. I’ve seen people like her before. But the pictures, to me at least, seem to disprove that. He’s not looking at her like a man contemplating a beautiful woman. In any case, we’re talking about two people in a car together—a wealthy young man and a very opportunistic young woman. There are only two reasons why they’d be together: business or pleasure. Right now, I don’t think it was pleasure. If it was pleasure, then I could believe the wreck that killed them was an accident. A cocky young man showing off in his fast car for his girl. But if it was business, then what were they talking about? Or should I say who were they talking about? I’m betting it was Emily or Talbot. And I’m betting that, knowing Maia, it wasn’t exactly anything that was common knowledge. I bet it was too hot to handle. Especially if somebody killed them over it.”

  Kate contemplated the scenery beyond the window as it flew by. Lee was saying exactly what Kate couldn’t bring herself to say aloud. Thanks to Maia’s unofficial position as Emily’s chief snoop, the young woman had learned all about Charles Talbot’s involvement in Angela Kasdan’s death.

  Had she decided to leverage it?

  “What will you give me to tell you about how Charles Talbot essentially murdered your aunt?”